03 - The Journey

I strode from Helaena's chambers with purpose, my mind already racing toward the journey that lay before me.

First, I required a change of garb. The familiar weight of last night's courtly silks felt suddenly cloying, like chains wrought of gold and vanity.

I shed them for something more fitting. A supple leather armor, black as night and adorned with the golden tracery of the three-headed dragon. Light for flight. It clung like a second skin, wrought for the rigors of dragonback. Leather did not burn as readily as cloth, nor did it bind the body as steel might.

Aegon's memories whispered of how oft this garb had shielded him from Sunfyre's heat and the cutting winds that scoured the heavens.

Beyond that, my preparations remained sparse.

A leather purse clinked with six-and-forty gold dragons and a handful of silver stags, the remnants of my squandered allowance. Meager coin for one of royal blood, yet it would have to serve. I packed salt meat, hard cheese, and journey bread, along with a waterskin. Provisions to keep breath in my body, if not contentment.

A dagger hung at my belt, unremarkable but keen. Two swords completed my arms—gifts from some lord whose name escaped me. Fine steel, both, one to wield and one to sell when fortune turned her face away and coin grew scarce.

Maps proved essential, though I was forced to gather several fragments for want of finding one complete. A weighty tome on High Valyrian accompanied them. If I meant to carve out a future beyond these shores, I would need the tongue of Old Valyria.

Wisdom born of another life compelled me to add a small iron pot—armor against the unseen deaths that lurked in innocent streams. Men drank wine and ale not merely for pleasure, but because fermentation slew the rot that festered in their wells.

Practicality ruled my choices, though greed and sentiment whispered for more. Another blade? A pouch of eastern spices? Such notions withered beneath Ser Erryk's watchful gaze. My sworn shield lingered in my doorway like a hound scenting prey. Time grew short.

No sense in overplaying my hand.

My second visit to the Dragonpit found me arriving not afoot but by carriage and escort—a luxury afforded to princes, even those preparing to forsake their birthright. I forsake nothing, I told myself. I prepare for what must come.

It was a small, petty thing, all vanity truly, yet the flurry it caused—stable boys running, servants scrambling, guards assembling for what they deemed another royal whim—stirred dark amusement in my breast. Here was power I had never truly wielded, and I savored it even as I prepared to cast it aside.

Sunfyre awaited beyond the pit's mouth, a golden titan coiled in slumber. His scales caught the light like beaten gold kissed with rose, gleaming as molten ore might. He stirred at my approach, lifting his great head with a sound half-whistle, half-roar. Those eyes fixed upon mine, and I felt our bond thrum like a taut bowstring.

"Have I kept you waiting, my friend?" I murmured, my voice softer than I intended. Sunfyre’s excitement rippled through, and his massive form shifted eagerly as I’d dismounted from the carriage.

Ser Erryk's voice cut through the morning air, but his words seemed distant, drowned beneath my heart's thunder. The sight of my dragon-brother would never grow stale. My hand found his warm flank, and the world narrowed to naught but us.

I swung into the saddle without hesitation, feeling Sunfyre's familiar contours fit against me like pieces of some ancient puzzle. King's Landing sprawled below as we climbed, red tiles and grey stone blurring as we banked south toward the green depths of the Kingswood.

Am I a fool? The thought came unbidden as my resolve wavered.

I forced myself not to look back at the Red Keep, though I felt its pull—not merely the draw of the only home this flesh had known, but the weight of destiny I sought to escape.

I did not look back.

The winds offered no answers, yet they were pleasant company all the same.

— — — —

The world had never been kind to Ryan. A man born of accident, of passion's brief folly. His parents made no pretense of why he existed. "We married because of you," they would say. Not for him, but because of him. A burden thrust upon them, unwanted baggage.

No honeyed lies softened that truth. Only duty, cold as winter's blade. Long had he resented them, yet in time he came to respect their stark responsibility. And it was a responsibility, for they did not love him.

When they deigned to notice him at all, they shaped him with methodical precision, hammering lessons of obedience and propriety into his bones. Schooled to obey, to be the dutiful son.

He excelled at his studies, earned his place as an engineer. At work, they called him reliable—though he learned this meant malleable. He had been a naive fool then. He let them claim his victories, his coin, his acclaim.

What did it matter? He’d built his life on hope’s rotten timbers. He endured it all, believing somehow that success would mend what lay broken. Maybe if he bled enough, they’d see him. Love him.

They divorced the week his first wages arrived.

They split apart, dissolving into separate lives, their other families without a backward glance.

Duty done.

Seeing the futility of it all, he too walked away from everything he had built, everything he had endured. Then came the storm, the lightning. Yet those were kinder lessons, and truer.

Perhaps that emptiness had made the joining of souls much smoother, preventing the madness that should have come with divided selves.

Be that as it may, neither Ryan nor Aegon minded sleeping beneath the open sky, and by extension, neither did I.

Shelter came in the form of Sunfyre's massive wing, stretched over me like a scaled pavilion. A makeshift tent. Not the most comfortable arrangement, it’s killed my back, but far better than sleeping exposed to the elements. The Kingswood, thankfully, was crisscrossed with countless streams, their waters clear and cold, providing ample drink for both man and beast.

And the mere presence of the latter kept any threat at a respectful distance — wolves slunk back into their dens, and even the boldest boars dared not draw near — those were the lucky ones.

Fire and food, one might assume, would prove simple with a dragon companion.

Well…..

Starting fires proved unnecessary—the concern was ensuring Sunfyre didn't turn the wood into a blazing pyre. His flames were wild things; he knew nothing of restraint.

Catching a prey, however, revealed an unexpected trial.

Dragons were hunters, apex predators who struck terror into the hearts of beasts and men alike. So the songs claimed.

My Sunfyre seemed to have missed that lesson entirely. He was perhaps the laziest hunter in his species' history.

The magnificent golden beast preferred sleeping from dawn to dusk if I allowed it, stirring only for our flights or when I scratched that spot between his wings that made him purr like some oversized cat.

Getting him to hunt required embarrassing amounts of coaxing, and even then, I did most of the work, flushing prey while he deigned to make the final strike. The real battle came after—salvaging meat before he charred it beyond recognition. Dragons, it seemed, preferred their meals incinerated.

Reluctantly, I've found myself developing a taste for charred meat; it was less a preference and more a concession to reality. One does not argue culinary habits with a dragon.

Yet these were mere distractions from weightier concerns.

Knowing what I knew, my mind could find no rest. The peaceful setting did little to ease the anxieties scratching my bones.

At this junction, I had two concerns. My complete lack of agency within the Green faction — oh, the irony of being their supposed figurehead while being led by the nose — and the looming war, the Dance.

Mother was cold and manipulative toward her eldest son, yet she spoke truth in one matter. The Iron Throne was a cursed seat that demanded blood—my blood—before Rhaenyra could sit easy upon it. My entitled half-sister and her Blacks would see me dead. I was neither blind nor foolish enough to miss that truth. Dead, and not just me—my brothers, my son... innocent Jaehaerys.

I despised that throne, that sharp-edged monstrosity representing all the realm's stagnation, yet hatred would not save my boy.

He is not your son, came a voice in those long, brooding nights—sly and insidious, slithering through my resolve's cracks. You are not the true Aegon. They are not your kin. You owe them nothing. No blood binds you, no oath compels you. You have wings—fly away.

Much as I wished to sever myself and wash my hands of it all — the name I bore, obligations I never chose, familial ties I inherited — and heed that treacherous voice.

I found myself incapable of such acts.

Aegon might not be I, yet I was Aegon now. With all the burdens, expectations, and bloody legacy that entailed. Some would call this pretense, yet these feelings in my chest were no mummery.

I cared. I cared, and that was all that mattered.

The Iron Throne remained a cursed seat in my eyes, yet now I found myself bound to it by chains of survival—mine and theirs. Chains of my own forging.

I was yet to be clear on dates, but I set three years. That was all the time before the Dance began in earnest. I hoped more. It could be more but…. three years to build something of my own, gather strength, win followers who would serve me rather than my grandsire's schemes.

Three years were well enough for a pawn to become a player.

For that, I needed gold—rivers of it.

And for that, I needed gold, a steady stream of it preferably.

Armies could not be raised on promises alone, nor could they be sustained on words. Everything required gold — armies needed weapons, armor, supplies, and loyal men needed paying.

Speaking of armies, I know one lazy beast that ate enough for a small one. Sunfyre's appetite would become a concern as well, for which I’d need gold; for hares and foxes would not suffice for long.

I wracked my brain, searching for a solution. Opportunities were scarce in this age — one thing to fix once crowned. War and fighting seemed the only steady avenues for profit in this wretched age. One constant in this world that always needs men and always pays.

Becoming a sellsword…

The thought sickened me. A profession I despised, fit for men without honor or loyalty, driven only by greed. Betrayers who traded allegiance for coin, abandoning oaths at the first sign of richer spoils.

Yet there must be other ways.

Desperation breeds invention, though my notions bordered on absurd. Dragon-assisted transport? A courier system spanning the realm? Private displays of aerial prowess for gawking smallfolk? Perhaps dragon-fire glassmaking?

Each idea crumbled under scrutiny—impractical, slow to bear fruit, or simply ridiculous. Besides, Sunfyre was no circus beast to be paraded for fools' amusement. He was a dragon, a living storm of fire and fury, my sole friend and third soul.

In the end, the bitter truth remained—the only viable path was the one I loathed most.

I had more than my pride to think about, however. For Helaena, for Jaehaerys, for Jaehaera. For my family, I would swallow my pride, tarnish my name, wade through dishonor’s mire, and some.

Fly north to see the Wall and the icy wastes beyond. A place full of hard men and harder truths. Or perhaps the West, to scratch my fancy for castles. Casterly Rock, that lion-guarded fortress perched atop the cliffs of the Sunset Sea.

I was so tempted; who wouldn’t? A dragonlord has no chains of roads.

But those were childish fantasies. Such fancies had to be put aside. The Seven Kingdoms were under the rule or influence of the Iron Throne, and Grandfather was the true power behind; he would do anything to drag me back to King's Landing, in chains if need be.

No. There was no sanctuary for me in these lands. Even Dorne may fall under his shadow, and they have no love for a Targaryen there.

Across the Narrow Sea, then. Essos and its Free Cities.

Pentos crossed my mind first; it seemed a tempting prospect. From Ryan’s memory, they seem in need of a dragonrider and willing to pay handsomely for one. Daemon had tread there, however, and I could not trust that the kinslayer’s influence did not linger. A man who would murder his own blood, a child at that, my child…

He would not hesitate to see me undone if it served his violent whims.

Pentos was ruled out. Braavos came next, the most powerful of the Free Cities. The city of a hundred isles, built upon a lagoon, famed for its Sealord and… The Iron Bank.

A bank held great appeal, its will facilitate so much. But. I knew little of its dealings with the Iron Throne or my grandfather, but that was precisely the problem. Braavos was an unknown, and unknowns killed as surely as swords.

The other Free Cities were no better. Each had its ties or feuds to Westeros, its merchants and emissaries who would sell me to the highest bidder. My grandfather would offer any deal — gold, alliances, promises of power —to see me returned to his clutches.

Woefully ignorant, lacking the vital information needed to make a sound decision. I mulled over these thoughts for three days…. and poring over maps.

There was not one whole map of the world, but many fragmented, each with its own peculiarities and omissions. Some showed the known lands in meticulous detail, while others were crude sketches, half-formed and contradictory. Some showed cities where others showed wilderness. Even the coastlines couldn't agree with each other.

It was a frustrating puzzle that made my head spin, though that might have also been from the hours spent wheeling through the air with Sunfyre.

On the other hand, Learning the tongue of my ancestors proved easier. Aegon’s memories gave me an edge, a foundation upon which to build, albeit his limited knowledge of the language… or so I assumed.

It was on the third day that I eventually noticed. This was not mere aptitude, nor the lingering knowledge of Aegon’s past.

I devoured the tome, committing its contents to memory with an almost frightening speed, and High Valyrian came to me with an unnatural ease. The words spilled from my tongue as freely as wine from a broken cask, though my tongue shaped them with the clumsiness of one unaccustomed to their melody.

It was more than just natural aptitude. I wanted to believe. Having two souls, it seemed, had unexpected benefits. My mind worked differently now – faster, sharper, as if the merger of modern education and Valyrian blood had created something greater than the sum of its parts.

A subtle gift born of the strange union between two minds, two lives, and two souls.

On the third day, I chose our destination—Lys.

The more I considered it, the more perfect it seemed. The city's position within the Triarchy provided a natural shield against my grandfather's influence. As Hand of the King, he couldn't openly treat with them while they warred against a lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not while the King still drew breath and the war of succession still a brewing storm.

They were the enemies of the realm, and he would not openly make pacts with them, at least not yet.

Secondly, Lys was, by all accounts, the weakest of the Three Daughters. Ruled not by warriors but by merchants who had never known true hardship. Grown fat and soft on their profits from pleasure houses and wine. Their expertise lay not in warfare, but in the finer things in life and most decadent comforts, silks, wines, perfumes, and cheap and exquisite whores.

And poisons.

Their infamy in that regard was well-known. I would mind what I ate and drank, but healthy paranoia might preserve me longer than blind trust.

Thirdly, the Rogare Bank. Lys’s wealth was not merely in flesh and finery but in coin. A powerful institution, said to rival even the Iron Bank of Braavos. Such an institution would be invaluable to any endeavor. With their backing, I could fund an army, hire ships, and secure my independence, hopefully faster than expected.

And finally, perhaps most importantly, Lys was simply the easiest of the Free Cities to reach. The maps —wretched things that they were — agreed on this much: Lys was the largest isle in the Stepstones.

A crude travel plan was made. Fly further south to Dorne, then east when we have reached the sand.

We traveled by night and slept by day. Flying by daylight would have been madness; the sight of a golden dragon in the skies would spark a hundred tongues wagging. Lords and common folk alike would carry tales of a dragon-rider westward, and word might reach my grandfather before I reached Dorne. Caution dictated the hours of our flight.

The journey to Dorne's mountains took five nights, though we might have managed it in two had we pushed hard.

Caution played a part, yet not the only one. I used the time to train flight with Sunfyre, working on his maneuverability. He might not match Vhagar's size, but he could be faster, more agile. We practiced sharp turns between peaks, sudden dives into valleys, and quick ascents that left my stomach somewhere far below us.

I lost count of times I emptied my belly, twice scrubbing bile's stench from armor. The training served me more than him.

Sunfyre responded well — most of the time. But when the mood struck him, the lazy beast would flounder, wings beating in a half-hearted rhythm, as though to say, Must we really? Yet, he was clever in his own way. He always found the safest places to land — forest clearings, hidden valleys, and caves. He had a such a keen eye for the latter.

Navigation, however, proved to be a thornier problem. The maps, as established by now, were less guides than they were maddening guesses, but the lack of a compass meant we were constantly at risk of veering off course.

I had resorted to rudimentary methods. Extending a right arm toward the sunrise and a left to the sunset gave a crude sense of direction: north before me, south at my back, east to my right, and west to my left. It was far from ideal.

The method required clear skies and knowledge of true east, and even then, couldn't match the precision of a proper compass.

Doubtful such a device existed in this world, at least not in common use. Perhaps in Yi Ti, the far-eastern lands that mirrored ancient China, they possessed such instruments. Lodestone suspended in a bowl of water, if Ryan’s memory served me right, used for geomancy and fortune-telling, however not for navigation.

Sailor or dragonrider, navigation was paramount. A single misstep could strand men in some desolate corner of the world, far from their intended destination.

A compass would be revolutionary and necessary. That was why, when Sunfyre landed in an abandoned iron mine in the Dornish mountains, I spent four days scouring, sifting through rubble, crawling through narrow passages, searching for lodestone.

Four days in the barren mountains of rocks and thorny shrubs, and dust.

Sunfyre was less than pleased — a hungry dragon was an irritable dragon, and when we finally found a mountain goat, I made the mistake of reaching for a piece before Sunfyre had finished. The snap of his jaws, missing my fingers by a breath, was a sharp reminder of my place in the feeding hierarchy.

I had overreached, I admit. But I considered it worth the price — the lodestone would prove invaluable for future navigation, even if it meant a few hungry nights. Sunfyre's mood improved marginally after his meal, though his lingering irritation was all the motivation I needed to press on.

In the end, the effort bore fruit. I found a modest piece of lodestone.

With it secured, we wasted no more time. We struck east from Dorne, finding the scattered isles of the Stepstones within what I guessed was an hour's flight from the Dornish shores.

And nearly a vexed full day more before our destination appeared on the horizon.

Lys.