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Rating:
Teen And Up Audiences
Archive Warnings:
Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceMajor Character Death
Category:
Gen
Fandoms:
House of the Dragon (TV)Warhammer Fantasy
Characters:
Ikit ClawRhaenyra TargaryenJacaerys VelaryonLucerys Velaryon (Son of Rhaenyra)Baela TargaryenRhaena Targaryen (Daughter of Daemon)Daemon TargaryenCorlys "The Sea Snake" VelaryonHelaena TargaryenAddam VelaryonBackground & Cameo CharactersSilverwing | Alysanne Targaryen's DragonOriginal CharactersJoffrey Velaryon
Additional Tags:
Crack Treated SeriouslyCanon-Typical ViolenceThe Dance of the Dragons | Aegon II Targaryen v. Rhaenyra Targaryen EraAlternate Universe - Canon DivergenceCanonical Character DeathCharacter Turned Into a HumanIkit got isekai'd as Jace's twinSkaven Species (Warhammer Fantasy)Death to all GreensHuman ExperimentationScience ExperimentsIkit is his own warningSilverwing still has shit taste in male ridersPOV MultipleBackground RelationshipsBackground Character Deathshow canon onlyDragon RidersAnimal AbuseIkit is an abusive dragonriderTho he's fairly mellow compared to his SkavenselfGood Parent Rhaenyra TargaryenNo beta we die like LucerysDysfunctional FamilyCannibalismBlood and TortureCanon-Typical BehaviorBAMF Helaena Targaryen
Language:
English
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Published:2026-02-26Completed:2026-04-22Words:181,492Chapters:55/55Comments:1,270Kudos:749Bookmarks:160Hits:33,683
The Rat Prince of Westeros
SkilledWarriorKiwi
Chapter 50: Helaena
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Helaena had never felt more alive.
She never understood how dull and empty she had been before she accepted Lord Khorne's gifts.
Now every part of her burned, raw and violent and ferocious. Something she had never been and felt shredded into triumphant agony in response. The moment she stopped wanting to feel afraid, the chasm of grief and loss, the moment she accepted the forceful whispers of Lord Khorne, she drowned.
The ocean of boiling blood rose, swallowing her legs and encasing her torso, up and up until it rose over her neck and chin then to her lips where it spilled past her teeth and down her throat. Burned her organs as if she was roasting alive like everyone in the Doom as the cataclysm destroyed Valyria and was so hot even dragons burned.
Her despair, her loneliness, it was all seared away as she was reborn, bloody and squalling, just like when she first came into the world.
The touch of the Hunter of Souls brought a clarify Helaena never once felt. For as long as she could remember everything seemed murky, as if enshrouded in fog. Her life was distant, as if she was barely tethered to her body, and everyone around her like ghosts. The only ones that seemed so real was her children, her precious children. Jaehaera and Jaehaerys, born of her blood. Aegon was a nuisance, Aemond never truly listened to her, her mother and grandfather just treated her like a dimwitted child.
Even so it had taken some time before she moved past her fear and panic to finally accept Lord Khorne, she had been so afraid of the harsh violence she felt emanate from the gory form that reached out to her in her dreams, that tinted her vision red. The rage and hate seeped from her body like sweat, making her lash out at everyone around her, as if His very proximity was influencing her before she even returned the outreached hand.
And one by one they all left her in the aftermath of Jaehaerys's murder. Helaena had been too weak to protect him, she had simply stood there frightened and alone before those two men and then fled to let her child be butchered in his bed. Then in the following weeks she felt wounded, bleeding, and everyone around her barely cared. She had to sit behind her son's corpse as he was paraded through the street, as the smallfolk acted as if they cared. She had to pretend, as her mother scolded.
The Lord of Change had been prominent in her mind, the humming constantly following her and giving a vibrant sheen to everything the longer she lived. But in the grief and loneliness in the aftermath of Jaehaerys's murder He had been pushed back, submerged in her hollow darkness despite the occasional call.
Then her husband abandoned her, as if he ever cared about her, and abandoned Jaehaera as well. Then Aemond noticed her but it was only to seized her arm and try dragging her to his whims. Then Alicent abandoned her, the last one who had been there. Her mother had left, choosing to wander the forest in stupidity and regret as if her actions hadn't led to the murder of Helaena's child. And Alicent took it further in going to Dragonstone and selling out her children to Rhaenyra.
Then the woman had the audacity to claim it was to protect her. Helaena had never hated anyone before that moment. At least Aegon and Aemond hadn't tried to hide what they were. Her mother had lied and schemed and backstabbed and then when Helaena was the one to suffer the consequence, when Alicent's children were the ones being maimed and murdered, it was then Alicent ran away and begged for mercy from the woman she raged to her children about for years. She destroyed her integrity and Helaena hated her so immensely. For all Alicent's claims that Rhaenyra was a whore, as far as Helaena was concerned only one of them sold out her family and it wasn't Helaena's sister
It was in that night she finally accepted His hand. Knowing that her own mother had given up and Helaena could not bear to be a victim again. Alicent had spent years lecturing them all on how Rhaenyra would kill them for her throne, and Helaena had no trust in either of them.
Now even if she was killed it would be within battle, she was tired of simply being the Miserable Queen. Queen Helaena, the one who did nothing. Who hated flying, who just sat and sobbed and grieved. Who panicked as a mob attacked her in the streets, the same mob she tried to satiate by parading her dead child before them like some exotic animal. No one even asked her if she wanted to be queen, to usurp Rhaenyra. Nobody asked her how she felt, nobody asked her for anything during King Aegon's rule. Alicent had ruled in many aspects with King Viserys but here nobody cared about Helaena, not even Alicent. It had been all about Aegon. She was just his useless passive wife.
She hadn't realized it at the time but when her mind become flooded with Chaos years ago it had opened a gateway. Tiny, no larger than a fingernail, but enough Gods beyond could reach forth. With mutterings she realized her nephew Ikit had been responsible for this split and after she accepted the Blood God a part of her lamented in being afraid of him so long ago when he confronted her. He was like her, she now knew. He was blessed and she yearned to see him again as her blood seared hot.
And within this bloody civil it he would be. She left King's Landing, needing to blood herself before she could do anything else. And with the clarity of Khorne, her visions sharpened. She saw what House Baratheon would do to her kin, saw the hammer shatter a breastplate inlaid with a crimson dragon. Child displaced, fields and rivers running red. War was glorious and she would strike the first blow so what would be never came to be.
Dreamfyre was awaiting her as Helaena left the city with her. Helaena had felt ashamed when she went to her dragon, remembering how she had shunned her companion for so long. No taste for flying, a coward and crippled. Dreamfyre had once been bound to the Queen of the East and West, and Helaena would honour Princess Rhaena. She bit off her pinky fingers, feeding them to Dreamfyre, then mounted her dragon and left the city while thinking of nothing but fire and blood.
It would all be beautiful.
The way an earthquake was beautiful, the way fire was beautiful. The way the screams of the dying was beautiful, the way the organs within one spilling forth were beautiful. Beautiful in how fields of massacred dead would feed the flowers and crops, the way battle rage was beautiful. Glorious battle, the eternal warfare. Peace was a farce that was simply wasted time between wars.
Valkia the Bloody, Arbaal the Undefeated, Egil Styrbjorn, Hargrim Dreadaxe, U'Zhul the Skulltaker, Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and even further back to the enslavement and massacres of Old Valyria- so many images, so much emotion flooding through her mind like a sea of boiling blood. The flow of lives and memories not her own, fed by Khorne's will and reminded her of her dragonsblood. She had been chained, wings snipped and mind filled with boredom of the Seven who never spoke at all. She was no Maiden or Mother or Crone, she was a dragon and fire and death was her origin.
Lord Khorne had given her the Gift of Arms when she accepted Him, the chainsword felt so achingly alive and warm in her hands. First she killed upon Dreamfyre's back and then by her own force, blood staining her and flooding with body with a strength she never dreamed possible.
Blood magic was within her, all magic practiced by the Valyrians was rooted in blood and fire magic. As she accepted the Blood God she would not use sorcery for offense, for He forbade that in His higher servants, but He cared not for its use in defense. So when Helaena killed the blood stained her limbs and she knew only death could pay for life. So mortal wounds inflicted upon her would heal as long as she spilled blood just as swift. The blood fed into her, knitting tore flesh together, as she wielded it by a long slumbering instinct bore of her ancestry. Bloodmagic was the most powerful of all sorceresses and the most forbidden.
But Helaena was no longer a coward. She seized her history, her origins, urged by His overwhelming will, and she found bloody satisfaction.
For Lord Khorne.
Storm's End died by her hand, with Helaena killing everyone and everything. She could hear their hearts, tracking down the stragglers and cleaning their skulls to offer to her lord.
And for Jaehaera, her sweet precious daughter. Helaena gave her mercy, which He was willing to ignore. Jaehaera had been a simple, quiet girl. The chaos and carnage of war would consume her, and Helaena had seen so many visions of atrocities inflicted against little girls. Helaena broke her neck then melted her flesh and now Jaehaera's skull hung at her hip. Her precious little girl.
Helaena then spent her days rampaging across the Stormlands, reason less and less. She could feel him in Westeros, at King's Landing. A potent smell she instinctively knew to be warpstone, to be Skaven. She knew the word but knew not what it meant. When she thought of it all she could think of was that great horned demon with the realm of rats and how it had attempted to seize her. That was her nephew's patron god, Helaena knew. But that was all she knew.
However Helaena did not want to wait, Khorne hated idleness and Helaena was still learning battle. She tracked down men and women and children and butchered them all, she hunted them down in the Red Mountains and any villages close to the hills were razed.
She even thought of crossing over into Dorne fully and butchering them, let them put their defiance back to the test as how much they bragged about Meraxes's fate. Helaena was still proud of her nephew and his attack of Sunspear and the Three Daughters, four cities bleeding and she had livid loving dreams that week. She wished she could have joined him, regardless of their Gods quarrels.
But she felt him when he finally came to her. All of her cells shifting within her like a mass of mites, drawing her back to Storm's End of where he awaited.
Prince Ikit would be a worthy opponent, every part of her whispered. The stronger she got the easier butchering men became. Khorne cared not, all He desired was for His warriors to kill quickly and efficiently and to let the blood flow, yet martial courage was one of His aspects.
Dreamfyre was glorious now, having spent years of Helaena's neglect trapped in the Dragonpit and now she had sharpened her instincts as if from a long sleep. Dreamfyre's flight was hurried, as Helaena was burning with excitement as Storm's End came into view and she saw Silverwing's monstrous form lounging upon the burnt land beyond.
The immense she-dragon raised her head, watching as Dreamfyre flew overhead yet made no attempt to attack. Helaena felt something lurch in her stomach as she spotted the huge bell tower upon the dragon's back, hungry and wild and thinking of bright red eyes. Then Dreamfyre landed in the burnt courtyard and Helaena dismounted to find Prince Ikit awaiting her in the Round Hall of Storm's End.
Her nephew was so beautiful. Helaena had no idea how she had never once realized it.
She could see him truly, not simply with that black shadow lurking behind him, but with his grey fur and long snout with dagger-like fangs. Those eyes glowing green, and the sheer stench of murder radiating off him like a cloud. The hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands that he had butchered. She could smell it upon him and all but swooned, saliva filling her mouth.
Helaena could not understand the reason for why so much slaughter hung upon her nephew or even why he looked as a great silver-furred ratman, but logic and reason had long since sloughed from her mind like blood down a drain. Ikit looked that way because it was who he was and that was all there was to it. The same way she was bloodied and armoured and that was who she was now. The meek delicate girl she had used to be died in blood and fire.
And so when Ikit got to his feet and brandished his halberd at her, Helaena attacked him with gusto.
His halberd screeched against her chainsword, Ikit more than strong enough to meet her in direct strikes. His weapon was forged from Valyrian steel and augmented with various runes and warpstone magics, forcing her backwards as the bone carpet snapped beneath them.
Helaena darted forward, the roaring teeth of her weapon angling for Ikit's face. He dodged, knocking aside the strike so her weapon screeched across the stone. Lightning forked across his body, his eyes burning pools of light. When it scraped the skin of her arms it made the flesh bubble and burn.
The air grew charged as they traded blows in the Round Hall, at one point knocking over a pile of skulls. The bones on the ground split beneath their feet, making them stumble or skid on the shards yet neither faltered.
Helaena's excitement was madness, uncaring as to how the soles of her feet bled freely. Her fixation upon fighting someone who could match her blow-to-blow, the destruction and violence.
More, more, more.
Ikit dodged her lunge, darting around her to kick her hard in the back of the knee. Helaena stumbled down, just as quickly leaping back up only to be backhanded so hard it split open her lip and then headbutted. She fell over, rolling to avoid the vicious blade of the halberd than smashed onto the ground where her head had just been.
"Just die-die!" Ikit screeched at her, managing to seize her by the ends of her hair as she leapt back to her feet.
Helaena just laughed in response, using a broken femur from the ground to stab him in the eye. His punch in the stomach was so hard she felt something crack inside, blood running freely down her face as she was thrown through a tower of skulls. They scattered around her, bone clacking and cracking against the ancient stone even as Ikit yanked the bone from his destroyed eye to leave a gory socket behind.
His expression was hateful and twisted, the mirage of a ratman snarling at her like a beast as it shimmered across his human flesh.
"You dare strike me-me?!" his scream was so loud it stabbed at her ears.
Helaena ignored the blood staining her face, slicking her lip, as she ran to him; a skull was thrown at his head which he battered aside with his halberd, and then he blocked her chainsword. The teeth screeched and spat sparks as they flared against the handle of his weapon, Helaena wanting nothing more than to eat the flesh of his destroyed eye.
Then green lightning flared over his body and Helaena shrieked as the current shot from Ikit, through their joined weapons, to seize her flesh in crackling energy.
The voltage was vile and focused, twisting her limbs and making her jerk and spasm. The agony was overwhelming and exquisite, her skin begging to split and blacken. Within, her heart twisted and thudded as the lightning contorted her organs while setting the ends of her hair on fire.
The flame flared up to her skull and with a burst of strength Helaena managed to yank her left arm forward and slam it down on their interlocked weapons. The chainsword blade tore open her forearm, blood splattering them both, before she gut-kicked Ikit and knocked him away.
Vision twisting she seized her weapon in both hands, body shaking as she tried to force it back under control as aftershocks snapped at her burnt flesh. She barely had time to yank up her weapon when the halberd struck it, knocking the chainsword aside as a gauntlet-clad hand seized her face, tight around her jaw and covering her mouth, then smashing her to hard into the ground several skulls shattered under the impact and a crater formed in the stone.
Ikit's expression was twisted and hateful, one eye a bloody hole and the other twisting with green magic. He screamed something at her, but Helaena's body was still suffering from the lightning. Her own magic was working, the torn and burnt flesh beginning to heal, but Ikit's grip was so tight she could feel her jaw and teeth beginning to stain, threatening to fracture.
Helaena's fist struck Ikit in the face, snapping his head to the side but not making his loosen his grip on her face. Again and again she struck him, the noise producing sharp cracks and she struck him with unnatural strength. Then the third time he snapped his head to the side, sharp teeth sinking into her hand and biting off three of her fingers to leave her with just a thumb.
Undeterred she used her other hand to jam her fingers into his bloodied eye socket, until he screeched and recoiled from her. She rolled, a boot kicking her in the stomach and sending her skidding backwards on the ground. She leapt up onto her feet, vision finally stabilizing, but she was too slow to stop Ikit from reaching her uncontested.
And he yanked the little skull from her hip to smash it into the side of the head where it shattered like kindling, making her stumble with a shout.
She clawed at her hip, a twist in her stomach as her bloodrage was briefly beaten back by the horror of a mother who had just lost the precious remains of her children.
Helaena felt a angry flare in her stomach, snatching up her chainsword as she whipped about to face her nephew only to see him bolt from the Round Hall and out towards the courtyard.
Skaven are cravens, a part of her mind whispered in singsong. Of course he'd run the moment the fight proved too tedious.
"Get back here!" Helaena screamed, sprinting after him as wrath filled her to make her vision twisted and pulse. Her severed fingers were regrowing, but with delicate scales and hooked talons and her own mouth seemed too sharp.
Outside Dreamfyre yelped, the ground shaking as Silverwing clambered over the ramparts and curtain wall. Only Dreamfyre taking flight prevented her from being trampled, with Ikit scurrying up onto Silverwing and the huge beast launching herself off the side of the wall to go soaring over Shipbreaker Bay and then spiraling upwards into the sky as the bell tower rang.
At Helaena's shout Dreamfyre swiftly landed and Helaena mounted her dragon. Her fury made them both mad, Dreamfyre roaring as she spread her pink wings and launching herself up in pursuit of the much larger dragon. Fire snapped from her jaws, sputtering uselessly against the tower.
Helaena barely made it half way up over the immense drum tower when Silverwing flared out her wings high above, a great snapping of chains echoing through the cold night air. Helaena squinted upwards, even as Dreamfyre continued to ascend, and seeing how in her hind legs Silverwing was holding a giant steel orb.
Which she then dropped, the orb plummeting down towards them.
Dreamfyre dodged it easily, even as Silverwing folded her wings and dived down so she ducked around the massive outer curtain wall of Storm's End. Barely even a split second after Silverwing's bulk whipped around the wall of Storm's End, the orb hurtling past Dreamfyre as she banked sharply, did an immense click resound through the air and suddenly the orb split open, showing a pulsating core of warpstone and dragon eggs.
Then the world erupted into green fire.
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