A Rogue Dragon's Flight Chapter 7 (ASOIAF Daemon Tragryen SI)

House of the Dragon: A Study of Dragonstone.

By Aegor Targaryen [---] AC

Built three hundred years before the conquest of Westeros Dragonstone served as an outpost for the Valyrian Freehold, though its original purpose remains unknown some speculate that the ancient Dragon Lords once dreamed of remaking Westeros in their own image and that Dragonstone was the first step in doing so.

Many things have been said by many learned men before me, about how it was built with fire and magic, how dragons played an important role in its constructions, how grim and dark it is, on how it overflows with art depicting dragons but I’m here to share something personal, something important that one tends to forget.

Dragonstone is an old place and thanks to it many things that once were common have been forgotten and some new things have been overlooked. The perfect example of this is the passageways on the castle, some old made with magic and some new made by the elements places where it’s possible to hide or escape.

Dragonstone has many secret rooms and many hidden pathways that only the blood of the dragon can show and in this book I will tell you about the ones I have discovered and why I think it’s important to remember that despite the time that we Targaryen have lived here we can learn more about the place….

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[Dragonstone, Outer Curtain of the Castle]

Willam Royce

Willam felt like a worm as he wriggled himself free from the whole that he was sent to find, he wondered if the kingsguard ever did something like this for the king, but Willam doubted it, why would they need to crawl around to get out of a castle when they served at the king’s pleasure? With a sigh and a heave, Willam finally freed himself from his impromptu prison. Despite knowing the answer he still took a whiff of himself and like he expected Willam now smelled like a dead rat.

“Remember Willam, you’re doing this for the good of Runestone” the wielder of Lamentation brushed off as much of the dirt that he could from his armor and started making his way to the mountain with nothing more than a brown bag “Let’s hope Daemon’s plan works”

And so the most renowned knight from the Vale (Daemon wasn’t from the Vale so he didn’t count) started walking along the wall of the castle and in the direction of the mountain, things would have been easier if the hole Daemon told him about wasn’t so close to the water and facing in the opposite direction of the mountain but despite Willam being lucky he wasn’t that lucky.

Willam wanted to bring a cloak on the expedition but his friend had looked at him like he was stupid, as in Daemon’s own words ‘using a cloak is almost like screaming out I’m suspicious please stop me’ so he had left it behind. How a cloak was suspicious but a bag wasn’t Willam didn’t know, but his friend was smart enough to make farming viable on the freaking mountains so there had to be a bit of logic somewhere if he looked hard enough.

At least he knew what was in the bag though that didn’t make Willam feel better. The sound of glass striking glass came from his bag making him curse as one of the sentries on the wall glanced down at his position. Willam pushed himself against the wall, he had made quite the headway, he had been walking for at least an hour and wasn’t about to fuck it up right now.

“Is someone down there?!” the shout came directly from above but as Willam turned his head upward he couldn’t see the other person “Come out!”

As the man screamed Willam took the opportunity to check if what he carried had been broken, as he pushed his hand into the bag he noticed that some of it had spilled out making him grimace.

“Great now I have Daemon’s blood on my hand” Willam muttered as he tried to wipe the blood on the stone of the wall, Daemon had the theory that if he offered blood to one of the beasts he would have an easier time taming them. Willam thought that it would only make them want to eat Daemon but he wasn’t a Targaryen and didn’t know anything about magic or dragons so he would just do what he was told.

Thankfully there was a statue of a dragon on the side of the wall that he could use to wipe off the blood, this way even if someone came to check the wall they wouldn’t find any marks of bloodied hands on the wall.

As Willam wiped off the blood from his hand, the wall started to shake startling the sentries atop the wall and Willam himself, on the side just a few feet from the statue a door opened, normally he would never enter dark places that he hadn’t been to before but all the ruckus would soon have half the garrison on his tail and that would be worse than whatever could be down there.

Willma was also amazed as he passed through the door, there were no hinges or mechanisms on it so that it would open and he wondered how touching the dragon statue had opened up the place, the place looked ancient and he could recognize that some of the tapestries here had words in Valyrian, they were also in a surprisingly good state.

There was a desk filled with baubles and glass, a cauldron of some kind that was etched with the runes of the first men, and images of dragons. There were also three more statues in the room that were facing strange directions, one looked to be to the center of the castle, another was almost pointing upwards, and the most puzzling one seemed to be facing toward the volcano or what Willam thought was the direction of the volcano.

“Daemon’s got to see this” Willam should probably tell the king but that would also implicate him in his friend’s scheme to get himself a dragon and he doubted that the king would let that go “Now how do I get out of here?”

With a shrug Willam started touching every dragon statue in every way he could to see if that opened up the doors, the place was sealed so he doubted that anyone would notice what he did unless he opened the door that led him here again, but it looked like he couldn’t so there was nothing to worry about.

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[Dragonstone, Chamber of the Painted Table]

Daemon Targaryen

“What in the seven hells was that?!” I screamed out as the castle stopped shaking, there could be no earthquakes on Dragonstone. No one in their right mind would build a castle on a place where the ground shifted and even if the Valyrians were not the best at deciding where to build something, (Seriously! why build a city surrounded by volcanos!) they should know that building on a place with earthquakes was a waste of time.

“Father, has there ever been an earthquake on the island before?” Baelon asked the king who looked just as disturbed as I was both Aemman and Rhea were holding onto each other while the kingsguard kept their sovereign on his feet.

“No, not even when the Dragonmont is at its most active, this has to be something else” the king turned to look at the ocean and for a moment I feared the worst, a tsunami here could spell disaster for all of us. The king stared out at the ocean for a few minutes that might as well have been hours before he turned back to us “The Sea appears to be calm, there is no cataclysm coming for us and the sky is as clear as ever”

“No sign of a maelstrom?” Viserys asked as he went to comfort his wife, Rhea also didn’t waste any time in running to me and I held her as firmly as possible.

“None and there are no ashes in the sky so the Dragonmont is not responsible for this” the king looked worried and I could not blame him, this seemed like an act of god and since I was in a place with dragons I couldn’t discard that.

“Perhaps we should go to the gardens or the courtyard, any place where we can be sure that no rock is going to fall on our heads” I said while kissing Rhea’s forehead in a comforting manner “Staying inside the castle could be our doom if it falls on top of us”

The king looked pensive but nodded “No matter what it is, we will face it on a stronger position if we’re out of danger, send a message to the servants to get out of the castle while we discover what is-“

The castle shook again startling everyone if the kingsguard were any slower the old man might have fallen face-first into a table. The quaking stopped and without words, we all started moving toward the gardens on top of the castle, a place so high would normally be worse than just staying inside but the gardens had a support structure apart from the castle and the earth it was filled with would make for a softer fall compared to the rock that composed the walls of the castle.

One of the kingsguard moved apart from us and went to the lower levels of the castle to tell the servants to evacuate, as we approached the door leading to the gardens the quaking started again but since we were so close we decided to run for it, Baleon even grabbed the king and put him on his shoulder as if he were a sack of potatoes and ran with him like that much to my amusement.

Once we stepped into the gardens the quaking disappeared and a very happy Baelon put his father down, the old man didn’t look very happy at what my father had done but he didn’t rebuke him for it even if Jaehaerys clearly wanted to.

“Well at least we can confirm that it’s the castle moving and not something else” Baelon said in good cheer as the danger had seemingly passed.

“Forgive me if I don’t share your enthusiasm Baelon but I’m worried about what is happening to our family’s ancestral home,” the king said as he rubbed his face “What would the realm say if we suddenly lost Dragonstone”

“You could just fly over every castle in Westeros along with your heir and show them that losing a piece of rock is hardly something that will stop house Targaryen” my response was met with a hard look from the king.

“That’s the same thing Maegor would do but perhaps you don’t know your history as well as your numbers Daemon, people will kill you if you do that”

It wasn’t probably a good idea to go against the king but I wasn’t about to stay silent “Please! As if anyone with half a brain didn’t know that it was thanks to you that Maegor died, sure poison is not very honorable but drugging him up until Maegor couldn’t tell up from down is hardly poisoning him. I bet you felt happy as you took revenge in the name of your family and I doubt anyone from our family would be doing that to me, so no need to worry about me”

The king looked shocked as did the rest of the people accompanying us, my father was the first to regain his composure and speak after what I had just revealed “Daaemon what are you talking about?”

“You seriously didn’t tell him about the plan to make the faith militant appear dangerous by making allusion to them killing Maegor when it was clearly you who did it? I know you like to keep secrets and all but letting your heir know wouldn’t be so bad”

They all looked at me like I was crazy but the more time it took for the king to deny it the more they believed what I had just said but the final nail in the coffin came with the king’s question.

“How did you know?” there was no anger in his voice, just confusion as if he believed that nobody would ever discover what he had done.

“Well, for one, accounts of Maegor’s last moments were filled with him talking to spirits so it was easy to relate that to drugs” They looked at me as if I was the crazy one but since I discovered it they were the crazy ones “and there was no way that anyone from the faith militant could get close to someone as paranoid as Maegor ‘I kill the builders of my castle’ Targaryen, besides you had the most to gain from it and you could get your revenge too” not to mention that he had to have help from the rest of his family or at least some of them.

An awkward silence spread through the gardens as they processed what I had told them and I decided to open my mouth again “you could just pretend I didn’t say anything”

This time even the whole kingsguard was glaring at me as if it was my fault that Jaehaerys killed Maegor so many years ago.