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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
[---]
123 AC, Dragonstone
He whistled impressively, "Well, I'll be damned. Who would have thought?"
"What is it?" she couldn't help but ask. "Well, it looks like we're due a trip to Valyria. What do you think, kiddo? Wanna see what's left of your ancestral lands?"
It wasn't often that Helaena Targaryen was surprised. For all that she felt cursed with her dreams and threads, an upside was that she was very rarely surprised. And so, she woke up that morning, and she had felt the urge to meet with the Potters. She was looking forward to it even. Even the magic that she had seen hadn't truly surprised her. After all, she knew that they were sorcerers.
However, she did not expect to be on a small boat, sailing towards Valyria. At least, they were supposed to. They were still on Dragonstone, looking back at the manse that slowly disappeared in the distance.
A part of her wished to have refused their offer, but she couldn't help but yearn for the possibility of seeing something that no one in the living world had seen. This decision was her own, not one precipitated by any visions. It was something that she wanted, and it was thrilling for her to finally decide on something.
If she were honest, there was also some spite in her motivations. Her father was obsessed with their ancestral lands, enough that before his disease had progressed too quickly, he had spent more time playing with his marble model of the island than he did ruling, or with her and her siblings, combined.
So, yes, beneath it all, even if Helaena never told anyone of her coming adventure, she would know that she had seen more of Valyria than Viserys Targaryen ever would.
She was excited, but there was no hiding the terror beneath it all. "Are you sure no one will notice my disappearance?"
Lord Harry smirked at her, "It's a nice little trick I came up with. I call it the paradoxical notice-me-not charm."
His wife scoffed, "That's a ridiculous name and you know it."
"Hey, it's an amazing name, and appropriately descriptive. It's my spell and I can name it however I want," he replied with a pout, without any heat in his voice. "Anyway, it's sort of a spell that makes people not notice the absence of something. It's a good thing if you want to steal something. People wouldn't even notice that the item was stolen until the spell's effect fades away."
Lady Daphne rolled her eyes, "Harry, you're making us look like a bunch of thieves."
Helaena couldn't help but giggle at the byplay, which made the married couple slowly join her.
It took her a few moments to truly realise that she couldn't remember another time where she had felt like this, so alive and carefree, on a boat to an adventure, joking with people who were all but strangers to her.
That thought sobered her, and Helaena couldn't help but speak up, "How do you do it?"
The sorcerer had an understanding look on his face, but still didn't give her a straight answer, "Whatever do you mean, Helaena?"
"The world is a sad place, cruel and horrible. You know this."
"I do," he answered calmly.
"We are about to go to what was likely the centre of human cruelty in the world, to a place that none had ever returned from."
"We are," he affirmed.
"Then how do you laugh, do you smile, when you know what could happen to you, to the people around you, the monster they could become, the horrors that could befall them."
"Ah, that's quite a difficult question, you know. Very difficult indeed, and very prevalent to a seer, a Dreamer as you call it. You spent years seeing horrors in your dreams, greens and blacks slaying one another and committing one cruelty after another, and now you ponder on the uselessness of it all. I once had similar thoughts, and while my answer might satisfy you, I believe that learning your own will let you grow more into the person you are meant to be."
Helaena wasn't happy with that response, and it must have shown as Lord Harry chuckled and continued, "Don't give me that face, kiddo. But fine, let me ask you one thing. What is the one certainty in the world?"
The princess tried to think of an answer that would satisfy the sorcerer. Thankfully, he didn't seem to wait for an answer, "We all live, and we all die. Everyone, everything in the world, even gods, will one day perish. Everything that has a beginning has an end, me included. And everyone must face death alone. That final adventure is a personal one indeed. Then the question becomes as to why be happy at all in life, if everything inevitably ends in Death. The answer to this question is as simple as it is complex. It is because everything ends in death that makes it all the more important to be happy."
Helaena tilted her head. She understood some of what the sorcerer said, but not the underlying points: "I don't follow."
The sorcerer gave her a kind look, "You will, one day."
The princess wished to retort to that infuriatingly vague reply, only for the man to speak up loudly, looking into the distance, "We're getting close."
Helaena followed his gaze and released a gasp, "Is that the Smoking Sea? We just left Dragonstone. How is this possible?"
She had known that the sorcerer had some way to get them there quickly, but she hadn't expected that. Had Rhaena experienced the same thing? She had tried to speak to the young girl in the last few days, but she seemed in a foul mood due to some spat with her sister. They were both being punished by her grandparents, which seemed to enrage her Uncle Daemon.
The Rogue Prince had not liked the fact that they were punished without his authority, especially since both girls seemed to oddly accept the punishment without complaining. Helaena wasn't looking forward to telling her about this trip. It seemed like the younger girl would be quite jealous of her current adventure.
Helaena shook her head and instead looked at the dense fog in the distance, which seemed to swallow the very sea whole. It was thicker than she expected, almost alive in the way it shifted and curled against the wind, swallowing the light around it. She had immediately recognised it as the sea that appeared from the shattered remnants of the Valyrian Peninsula, the one where very few had ever returned, and none who had successfully sailed to Valyria in the first place.
The man didn't answer her question and instead seemed more focused on the coming fog, although she could swear that she saw his lips twitch upwards in amusement.
He held the wolf medallion forward, and Helaena could almost hear a hum, "It seems that we were right. There is something in Valyria, but how does it relate to the White Walkers? The Long Night happened long before the Valyrians rode dragons."
Helaena's eyes widened as she realised that the medallion was connected to the White Walkers sometimes, a story that she wouldn't have even known if it weren't for Daeron's nursemaid, who had been from the North. Of course, her mother had the girl dismissed when she heard of her 'blasphemous' nature and replaced her with a 'proper', pious nursemaid who was dutiful and fearful of the Seven Who Are One.
The fact that the Potters treated the Long Night as fact was already worrying her, but she finally spoke up, "You claimed that you found that medallion in your last expedition."
"Yes, in Winterfell. It was a very lovely castle."
She blurted the words without even understanding the meanings, but they felt fitting: "The Beating Heart of the North."
For the first time, the sorcerer turned at her with a serious expression, instead of his usual mischievous one. He hummed, "A very strong gift indeed. A word of advice, Helaena. Your gifts, or curse if you like it, give you insight beyond most, and that knowledge will come at a price. Never let anything slip, for the words of a seer, or a dreamer could invite untold damage."
Helaena gulped and nodded rapidly; the man's expression turned back to normal, which was a good thing, as their small vessel entered the smoking fog of the cursed sea.
Immediately, everything changed. The sky darkened but wasn't completely black. It looked oddly grey, a sharp contrast to the sea, which seemed almost black, and yet bubbling.
Lord Harry had stiffened for a moment and grabbed his head before shaking it. His wife gave him a concerned look, which quickly morphed into understanding, "Are you alright, Lord Harry?"
"Oh, don't worry. I was a bit overwhelmed when we got in. I knew it was going to be bad, but not this much. So much misery in a single place. If I'm honest, it's a very good thing that someone came to the effort of keeping everything in."
"Keeping everything in." Helaena repeated, "I don't understand."
It was Lady Daphne who answered this time, "Someone or something created a barrier of some sort, to keep the malice of the Doom to just the Valyrian Peninsula. Did you not notice how everything changed when we entered the smoking sea? That's the barrier."
"Someone tried to stop the doom?" Helaena muttered. She tried to use her threads to help, but it was like they were snapped. No, they were tangled, unable to grasp anything.
She released a gasp of shock as it happened, and Lord Harry touched her forehead once more and quietened everything, "In places like this, with high concentrations of certain types of magics, especially chaotic in nature, divination methods could often fail. Here, this should also help with the fog a bit."
She saw something akin to an invisible bubble surrounding her head, which made her breathe easier even when she hadn't known that she had any issues. The fog itself had a foul smell like rotting stone and burnt flesh, and yet it hadn't registered until it was gone.
"The fog is pretty bad, isn't it? There's a magical component to it that makes you disoriented, and the entire place slowly sucks your life force dry. No wonder no one ever made it through. You wouldn't even need to get attacked by anything. You'd slowly get sucked dry by the entire place, probably going to sleep or falling unconscious from the strain, while you can't even leave because you're too much out of your mind to do it. I expected it to be some kind of poisonous gas or something, but this is actually a lot deadlier."
As if to prove him right, Helaena started to see completely deserted ships seemingly floating away in the oceans, seemingly untouched by anything but time, given the rot that seemed to infect them. This was likely just the most recent or most well-built ships, which hadn't sunk as their hulls rotted away.
She could spot at least five in the distance, some half-submerged, others leaning to the side, their sails in tatters, their flags long since faded to ash and mould. She couldn't even recognise any of the ships, and Lord Harry hummed, "Well, I suppose I'm curious why these ships especially still stand. They should have sunk years ago at the very least, even if they're in a sorry state now. What do you think, Helaena? Care for a little history lesson?"
The princess simply nodded. She was curious, that was certain, but this graveyard of ships unsettled her. She knew that the Potters would protect her, but this was still Valyria, and many arrogant men had once thought that they would plunder it to their hearts' content.
Their small ship moved on its own towards the closest one, and Lord Harry somehow created a ladder that allowed them to walk up to their partially sunken hull. Before they entered, he gave Helaena a very severe look, "Don't touch anything, and especially, don't disturb the water."
After nodding to the man, they all found themselves on one of the ships. Now that they stood on it, the wood looked odd, partially rotten but darker than she had seen on any other ship.
The vessel itself was, by far, the largest in the rest of the fleet. It reminded her slightly of her father's ship, perhaps even larger.
There was something that niggled inside her mind, like a small detail that she had forgotten. Lord Harry knelt on the ground and seemed mostly focused on the wood.
Helaena, on the other hand, froze at the sight of rotten skeletons, seemingly lying down against the hull or anything similar. Most seemed to be just skeletons, but some others wore what remained of full plate armour, almost entirely rusted away, but with a few remnants remaining.
She walked towards the Potters and overheard Lady Daphne speak up, "I didn't think mutations could happen in such a short span, especially with the obvious life force leeching in this place."
"Not necessarily," Lord Harry muttered, "Not if the mutation happened to a long-term form of magic, which seems to be what happened here."
Helaena latched onto what little she understood from their conversation, "The ship was protected by magic? Is that why it is still standing?"
Lord Harry shook his head, "In a way, but not quite. Someone used magic to protect the ship. It did not work; they would need to stop the fog from reaching their lungs, which is a bit more controlled than most mages could manage. When the crew inevitably died, the magic was aimless and stuck to the closest thing it could find, the ship itself, trying in vain to slow its sinking into the depths of these cursed waters. It did so by slowly warping the ship itself, making it part of the sea, in a way. You see this happening over centuries, but even then, this is at most a hundred and fifty years ago, a bit too short for these kinds of mutations to happen. Something accelerated things."
They carefully walked down the hull, and Helaena suppressed the urge to shudder as she saw dozens of skeletons in rusted chains lined up in a circle. She knew instinctively what had happened: "They were killed by the servants of fire."
Lady Daphne seemed to agree with her, "Yes, I heard accounts of the priests of R'hllor being able to do some basic sacrificial magic. Quite crude, in my opinion, but certainly effective. It also explains why the magic still lingers in the ship itself. I wonder whose ship this is. Red priests and plate armour… a very unusual combination, to say the least."
They walked back up and this time entered the cabin, and Helaena stared at the skeleton sleeping on what used to be a bed. On the other side of the room was the most intact object that she had seen since she set foot on the boat, a piece of golden armour with a familiar carving of a lion. Next to it was a sword with a rotten pommel, inside a decaying sheath. Lord Harry waved his hand, and a glowing circle appeared, making the sword float in the air like a bird. He turned his hand, and the rot and rust seemed to slowly disappear, as if time was in reverse, until the sword looked almost pristine.
He unsheathed the sword, and Helaena recognised the familiar wavy pattern in Valyrian Steel. The sorcerer shook his head at it, "I still hate these swords. Such a waste."
Before she could ask him to elaborate, he sheathed the sword and gave it to her, "That should help you defend yourself if you're in trouble. It will help you against most things, just in case. And it would make a nice souvenir, don't you think?"
"This is a lion's weapon."
"And now, it's a dragon's weapon. Come on, try it."
Helaena unsheathed the sword clumsily and accidentally cut through a piece of the ship, specifically, what looked like an old carving etched into the deck. She hadn't even felt any resistance, as if it wasn't there. She hadn't known that Valyrian Steel was so dangerous.
Of course, whatever marvel she felt was distracted by the sound of a thud in the distance, followed by a splash of water, making her wince slightly. She gave the sorcerer a sheepish look, and he took a deep breath, "Well, that's not good, is it?"
He immediately grabbed her and ran out, only for her to hear thuds and feel the ship's stillness disappear.
She heard the noise before she understood what it meant. A soft splash, followed by wet, dragging footsteps scraping against wood. Helaena turned toward the sound, just in time to see them climbing over the railing, figures with pale, cracked skin and empty eyes, their movements uneven but fast.
She stepped back instinctively, her mind struggling to understand what she was seeing. It didn't make any sense. She recognised her attackers as Stone Men, people who had suffered from Greyscale until their wits had been robbed, often found in the Sorrows. She only knew this because of her Septa telling her of her great aunt, Maegelle, who had died of the disease, and was one of the most pious women from the Targaryen Dynasty.
There shouldn't be any reason why they were in the Smoking Sea, or how they survived for so long.
However, she didn't get to finish her thoughts.
One of them lunged forward, screeching, its hands outstretched like claws. Helaena froze. The thing was nearly on her. Then Lady Daphne moved. She raised her hand, and the Stone Men fell apart mid-motion, their limbs severed, and torsos cracked. They hit the deck hard and didn't move again.
Helaena stared at the bodies. They didn't bleed. There was no blood at all, only dust and fragments of what looked like hardened skin and bone.
Before she could say anything, Lord Harry stepped forward and waved his hand over the bodies. The remains slowly faded into dust before disappearing.
And yet, one of them, a corpse with only its upper body still remaining, and yet it moved. Lord Harry raised his hand and created some of his magic circles once more, only to freeze, as the magic seemingly rotted away. Immediately, the circle turned black and disappeared, with the body also turning into dust. The sorcerer seemed focused on what had happened and muttered, "Bloody hell."
His surprised expression slowly morphed into a happy one, "Oh, I haven't been surprised in a while. How exciting."
Before Helaena could yell at him for saying that, the bubbling sea in the distance stilled for a moment, before something extremely large appeared. She didn't know what it was. It looked like a mixture of a serpent with the head of a dragon.
It had jagged, half-formed wings, like a wyrm that never finished growing, but it was definitely larger than any dragon she had seen before, even more than Balerion's skeleton. Its body was twisted irregularly, in a way that reminded her of the Stone Men she had seen earlier. The creature didn't roar or screech. It just launched itself from the sea. Helaena stared at the useless yet priceless sword in her hand, only to blink and find herself back on their smaller ship, looking from a distance as the creature attacked the vessel when they used to be just been a few moments prior.
Only, somehow, the ship attacked back.
Its hull warped, stretching forward as a massive wooden maw split open from the bow. Sharp splinters formed into jagged teeth. The ship bit down on the creature like a giant animal.
She couldn't help but gape at it, and the sorcerer snorted beside her, "It's a nice trick, isn't it? Animating a ship of mutated wood that had a warped preservation enchantment empowered by sacrificial magic. That's a new one, even for me, but useful. Though I didn't think Greyscale could infect… whatever this thing is. You know what, I'll call it a Stone Sea Dragon."
His wife rolled his eyes, "If we spent time labelling every mutated creature here, we'd be here for centuries, Harry. And also, that's a stupid name."
Lord Harry pouted again, as if he was more bothered by his wife's criticism than he was with the battle they were witnessing, "That fight should distract anything still alive. At least now we won't be swarmed by Stone Men. Also, Helaena, try to be more careful with the sword."
The princess blushed and sheathed the Valyrian Steel sword. She didn't remember its name, only that the Lannisters had lost their ancestral sword in a failed trip to Valyria.
Lord Harry put on an odd hat on his head and adjusted the sails, "Well, that was exciting. Now, let's see what else this place has to offer."
His wife was writing in her usual book and hummed in approval, yet Helaena didn't answer. She couldn't. She simply stared at the battle until it faded away into the fog. Despite the danger, despite the fact that her heart was pounding, she couldn't help but have a large smile on her face.
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AN: This is essentially the introduction to the Valyria arc, I guess, and a way to show that this place is dangerous and unpredictable, more so than anything they'd seen in Westeros so far. I was a bit tempted to add someone else to Valyria, but Helaena will have a role to play other than just some observer to the Potters, as well as a journey of self-discovery for her, as in realising who she was without her inevitable visions messing with her. I do have a very cool thing planned with the Greyscale, at least, I like to think it is, and I introduced a bit of it here. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
[---]
If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.