113(1): The Son of Ice and Fire, Dreaming the Past

Will post the rest with Alyxander's chapter tomorrow (Friday). I made some mistakes in some descriptions need to rewrite.

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Maekar stood on a road paved with fused black stone, smooth as glass. The sky above was a deep shade of violet, with the sun burning a rich golden-orange, casting an almost unnatural glow upon the fields before him. Greenseeing, even after learning from Brynden and becoming the Three-Eyed Crow himself, was still difficult—especially this far in the past—for he was in the Lands of Long Summer.

He took in the sight before him: fields of green and gold, a land of unrivaled beauty… yet tainted by the wretched suffering it concealed. Thousands of slaves toiled under the burning sun, their backs scarred and broken, their gaunt faces devoid of spirit. Their hands trembled from exhaustion, their legs wobbled, but they dared not slow down. Overseers watched over them with whips, their expressions devoid of sympathy, their voices sharp as knives.

Crack!

A whip lashed against a young slave’s back. The man collapsed onto the burning stone, his small hands clutching at the loose grain he had been carrying. A Valyrian overseer, his silver hair flowing past his shoulders, his pale face twisted into a sneer, approached lazily.

"Stand, mongrel."

The boy shuddered but did not move fast enough. The overseer grabbed him by his thin, malnourished arm and dragged him away, laughing as he did.

Maekar clenched his fists. This was Valyria. The real Valyria.

He walked forward, his eyes drawn to massive Valyrian estates that rose like monuments to excess across the countryside. Villas of pure white marble, their pillars adorned with golden statues of dragons and forgotten gods, their gardens filled with exotic flora from conquered lands—trees with blood-red fruit, vines of purple and gold, fountains that flowed not with water but with wine—tended by slaves bred only for beauty.

Within these estates, pleasure and cruelty were woven into one.

In one courtyard, a Valyrian noble, draped in sheer silk robes, lounged upon a couch of polished ivory, sipping wine from a goblet. Two naked slaves knelt at his feet, their faces blank, their wills shattered. He ran his fingers over their bodies idly, as though they were nothing more than decorative ornaments, petting them like one would a favored hound.

Nearby, another group of Valyrian lords and ladies, their eyes alight with sadistic glee, had gathered beneath a shaded pavilion where a spectacle was unfolding.

A man—a captured warrior from a conquered land—was bound to a black obsidian pillar, his flesh bare, his arms chained above his head. Before him stood a Valyrian woman, tall, elegant, her amethyst eyes gleaming with delight as she slowly peeled the skin from his chest with a dagger finer than silk. The man did not scream—his vocal cords had already been removed. The Valyrians watching laughed and toasted their drinks.

"Ah, the flesh peels so smoothly when the blood runs warm," the woman murmured, licking her fingers before turning back to the audience. "Shall we see how long he lasts?"

A murmur of amused approval ran through the gathered nobles.

Maekar did not want to explore more. Brynden had told him of other horrors the Valyrians in the time before the Doom had practiced—he had spoken of flesh gardens:

Limbs, torsos, faces—bodies sewn together into grotesque living art, their voices stolen, their minds broken. Some were forced into obscene positions, held in place by chains of silver and obsidian, left to wither under the burning sun. Others had been merged together, flesh twisted and reshaped by Valyrian sorcery, made to crawl, to beg, to entertain. Maekar was unwilling to see those horrors with his own eyes.

This was Valyria—the greatest empire the world had ever known.

 A paradise… a land of sheer beauty that housed a kingdom of monsters.

BOOM.

Maekar was startled by the sound. He looked to the south and saw a burst of fire and black smoke, an eruption splitting the heavens with a deafening roar. His breath caught in his throat as he watched the land itself convulse, as though the gods had reached down to rip it apart.

The explosion swallowed the horizon, its flames licking the sky, its smoke curling into monstrous shapes. A storm of molten rock, liquid fire, and choking ash spread through the lands. What had once been golden fields, lush groves, and vibrant estates was devoured in mere moments.

The rivers boiled away.

The trees burst into flames before turning to ash.

The very earth cracked open, swallowing entire palaces, towers, and manors into its flaming abyss.

Dragons fell from the sky along with their riders.

The sky darkened as black smoke blotted out the sun, the golden-orange glow replaced by an infernal red, casting the ruins of what had once been the Lands of Always Summer into eternal twilight.

And then, it was gone.

What was left was a wasteland—blackened, molten rock cooling into jagged obsidian plains. A once-fertile paradise twisted into a desert of ruin.

He closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. The world shifted again.

When he opened them, he was somewhere else—further back, thousands of years before the Doom.

He now stood near the Fourteen Flames.

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The volcanic peaks rumbled beneath the sky, pillars of fire and smoke reaching upward. . Lava rivers flowed through carved channels, winding between massive towers. He could see the city of Valyria in the distance, away from the burnt-black surroundings of the Fourteen Flames. Even from here, its vast spires of fused black stone rose higher than any fortress or city in Westeros.

He looked around. He was surrounded by tall, cylindrical towers—massive structures built directly into the volcanic rock of the Fourteen Flames. Their open ceilings exposed great stone perches where dragons nested, their monstrous forms silhouetted against the firelit sky. Some were coiled in slumber, others watched from above with burning eyes.

These were not just any towers. They belonged to the most powerful among the Forty Families—the rulers of the Valyrian Freehold. The elite dragonlords lived closest to the flames by right; the heat, the fire, the very breath of the volcanoes was their domain, and they believed their gods dwelled within the Fourteen Flames themselves.

His own family, though they were dragonlords, could not compare to those residing in these towers. They were the smallest, the weakest of all the dragonlord families.

Maekar began walking. He had been exploring Valyria for the last two months, trying to discover the secret of Valyrian steel. But for some reason, he could never reach the Fourteen Flames where he knew the forge was. So he had decided to try again from the Isle of Faces—where he was now—and it had worked. He was able to see the Fourteen Flames and explore it through his greenseeing.

As he made his way through labyrinthine streets carved from black stone, he saw slaves everywhere. Their backs were scarred and bent, their chains rattling as they toiled under the merciless sun and the volcanic heat.

A whip cracked. A scream followed.

A young woman—frail and sickly—collapsed in the street. The overseer, a broad-shouldered freeman draped in dark linen, scowled and lifted his whip again. The lash struck once, twice, three times. The woman did not move. The overseer cursed, waving over two others to drag her lifeless body away. She would be fed to the flames.

Maekar clenched his fists and forced himself to move on.

The Freemen—those who were neither Valyrian nor slaves—walked freely among the enslaved masses. Their heads were held high, but their eyes lowered whenever they passed someone of higher class. They were second-class citizens, allowed to own businesses and homes, yet forever barred from true power.

Farther up the road, he passed true Valyrian citizens: silver-haired and violet-eyed, but lacking dragons of their own. They were scribes, merchants, alchemists, healers, commanders, and soldiers who made up the vast majority of Valyria’s free population. Unlike the dragonlords, they did not have dragons. Their descendants would one day become the people of Lys, Myr, and Volantis—the Free Cities.

Maekar continued on, his path leading him closer to the heart of the volcano, where the greatest forge in the Freehold was said to lie. The tunnels wound through natural caverns, their walls glowing with the reflected light of distant lava flows.

And then he saw it: a chamber vast beyond imagining.

The walls of the volcano stretched high above him, disappearing into a haze of heat and smoke. The ground was carved into terraced platforms, each level dedicated to a different part of the forging process. At the very center of the chamber stood a monolithic black stone, its surface carved with glowing runes that pulsed with energy.

Two dragons were chained to it—massive creatures with scales black as night and eyes that burned like molten gold. Their chains were forged of Valyrian steel, holding them in place, wings half-spread, their maws bound shut.

“Well,” he muttered, “I’ve found it.”

Was dragonfire the secret to forging Valyrian steel? If so, they were in luck—Westeros had four dragons now. He just needed to…

He paused, hearing the sound of chains rattling, echoing through the cavern.

Five men knelt before the forge, stripped naked, their bodies covered with Valyrian runes drawn in blood. Their expressions were vacant, eyes empty—they had already accepted their fate. Above them stood a firemage, his face hidden by a dragon-headed mask. He raised his hands high, a curved obsidian dagger glinting in the firelight. His voice rang out in a low, droning chant.

In one swift motion, he slit the throat of the first man.

The sacrifice collapsed forward, blood pouring into the forge and hissing as it met the molten steel. The flames roared to life, growing taller and stronger, turning an unnatural shade of violet and gold. One by one, the remaining four were offered to the fire. Each time the dagger fell, the forge burned brighter. Each death fed the steel.

Maekar felt his stomach churn as he realized the horrific truth.

This was how Valyrian steel was made. Through fire and blood.

But that was not the worst of it. At the far end of the forge, beyond the hammering smiths and chanting mages, Maekar saw something even more horrifying. More slaves knelt in chains, shoulders trembling, faces lowered toward a massive pit carved into the volcanic rock. Around the pit stood a ring of firemages, their robes embroidered with symbols of dragons and flame, their hands outstretched toward the Fourteen Flames high above.

As one, the mages lowered their hands.

The slaves were pushed forward.

Their first screams rang out, piercing and raw with terror. But their deaths were not swift. The flames did not burn them instantly. Instead, they wrapped around their bodies, clinging to their flesh and consuming them slowly, as if feeding on their suffering.

What in all the fuck was wrong with these people?

Brynden had told him how the Valyrians had descended into their worst depravity by the time of the Doom. He was certain that if not for the Doom, they would have caused another catastrophe and destroyed themselves eventually.

Maekar gritted his teeth, his hands clenching into fists as he watched. This was why Valyrian steel was unlike any other metal. And this was why he would never recreate it. 

Never. 

There was no threat big enough to justify such horror.

He took a step back, then another.

He had seen enough.

He needed to leave.

The vision broke.

Maekar gasped, his eyes snapping open. The first thing he saw was the massive weirwood above him, its pale branches swaying gently in the night breeze. And then—Leaf stood before him, her golden-green eyes unblinking.

“Brynden had the same look in his eyes when he viewed Valyria,” Leaf said softly, her gaze fixed on Maekar’s face.

He did not answer immediately. He simply stood, brushing the dirt off his tunic as the memory of the horrific forges still lingered in his mind. He exhaled slowly, his heartbeat finally beginning to calm.

Leaf tilted her head. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yes… and no.” His expression darkened.