Gerion
Gerion Lannister had been in the seven hells for so long, he was not sure he was ever going to step out again.
His mind swam through murky waters, struggling toward consciousness like a drowning man clawing for the surface. The last thing he remembered was... what? Days? Weeks? Months? Time had become meaningless in this hellscape, bleeding together into an endless nightmare of heat and hunger and the constant whisper of mine, mine, mine echoing through his thoughts.
Desire, greed, and avarice had blinded and dulled him. He had been a puppet in his own body for longer than he could fathom or even think. But now those whispers and thoughts that had fueled him had grown strangely quiet. Muted. As if someone had thrown a blanket over the screaming chaos that had consumed his mind. For the first time in a long time, Gerion was aware.
His eyes blinked open with Herculean effort, and it took him long seconds before they could focus, but slowly they did. He could pick up unfamiliar stone above him, less like a roof and more like a cavern. He tried to move only to find out he was bound, and he shot up at once and was greeted by the sight of a man.
No, not a man, simply something that wore the shape of a man. His wide green eyes observed the figure with fear. He was tall, impossibly so, even while seated, with pale skin that was almost grey. Ears tilted to the back like drawings he had seen of the children of the forest. Hair as dark as a raven's wing, pulled back to reveal a face of aristocratic beauty marred only by eyes that burned like coals fresh from the forge.
Those eyes held him pinned as surely as the bindings around his wrists and ankles.
"Welcome back to the waking world, Gerion Lannister."
The figure spoke, voice as smooth as silk, yet wrapped with iron. His accent was unfamiliar, but that was the least thing in Gerion's mind at the moment.
"I..." Gerion's voice came out as a croak, his throat raw from disuse and screaming. He swallowed, tried again. "Where... who..."
"You are in a vault beneath a summer manse in the ruins of Valyria," the pale man said, his voice still carrying the cultured accent of nobility, though Gerion still couldn't place its origin. "As for who I am... you may call me Vlad."
Vlad. The name meant nothing to Gerion, yet something deep in his chest clenched at the sound of it. Some primal part of his brain that still remembered how to fear.
"My sword," Gerion gasped, sudden panic flooding through him. "Where's my, Brightroar! Where's—"
"Safe," Dracula replied, and with a casual gesture, the greatsword appeared in his hand as if summoned from thin air. Gerion blinked, and his eyes tracked backward, and realized that it had not simply appeared from thin air. The man had simply moved so fast his mind couldn't process it, retrieving the blade from where it leaned against the wall. "A magnificent weapon. Valyrian steel, forged in dragonfire and sorcery. The ancestral blade of House Lannister, lost for three generations."
Gerion's eyes locked onto Brightroar with an intensity that bordered on hunger. His fingers twitched, reaching for it despite the bindings. "Give it back. It's mine. I found it. I earned it. Do you know what I sacrificed? What I endured?" His voice was hoarse in desperation.
"I can guess," Vlad said softly, and there was something almost sympathetic in his tone. Almost. "You came here with men. Your brothers, cousins perhaps. Loyal retainers. You came seeking glory and gold, to reclaim your House's lost treasure and return home a hero."
Each word struck Gerion like a physical blow. Glory. He was not like his older brother, Tywin, perfect in everything that he did, nor was he like Kevan, ever loyal, a competent chamberlain, and though he was closer to Tygett, the other man's sheer talent and skill with the blade, a talent that led him to kill four men at the age of ten in the Ninepenny War, overshadowed what talent Gerion had with the blade.
So Gerion was left with being the youngest, the least accomplished, wildest, the one with the least to inherit, the one that had to tread the paths his older brothers had tread and be forgotten to time. Instead of being content with that, he had rejected that fate and had decided to strike out in hope of earning glory, fame, and renown in his own way.
He had not gone alone. Faces flashed through his mind, Stafford, his younger cousin, always eager to prove himself. Ser Harwyn, who had served the Lannisters for forty years. Young Lyman, barely knighted, who had begged to come along.
All dead. All rotting in this cursed land because of him.
"They died," Gerion whispered, his voice breaking. "All of them. The Doom... it's still happening. The air itself is poison. The magic in the stones drives men mad. We had protections, masks, and charms bought from every hedge witch and maester we could find, but they weren't enough. One by one, they fell." He spoke in a hurry, excuses dropping from his lips.
He looked up at Vlad, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, tears tracked through the grime on his face. "I should have died with them. Should have laid down and let Valyria claim me like it claimed everything else. But I found it. Found Brightroar in the ruins of a great ship of Lannister make. And I thought... I thought if I could just hold on, just survive long enough to bring it home..."
"But survival became all that mattered, in time," the man known as Vlad finished. "How long have you been here, Gerion Lannister?"
"I don't know," Gerion admitted, his voice hollow. "Months? A year? More? The smog never clears. The sun never truly rises. I lost count of the days. Lost myself." He looked down at his hands, seeing the blackened nails, the way his veins stood out dark against his pale skin. "What have I become?"
"Something caught between life and death," another figure spoke, draped in a heavy cloak and a bronze-looking helmet with valves. "My name is Marwyn, Archmaester Marwyn of the Citadel," the figure said, by means of introduction. Gerion gripped onto that name and title. That was familiar. A maester, and not just a regular one, but one of the highest ranks their ilk could gain.
The Archmaester moved closer, his scholar's curiosity overriding his caution. "The magic here has preserved your body even as it poisoned you. You should be dead, Ser Gerion. By all rights, you should have succumbed years ago. But something kept you alive."
"The blade," another figure said quietly from where he stood guard near the vault entrance. This one did not deem it fit to identify himself. His accent was just as strange as Vlad's, but he also wore the breathing apparatus the Archmaester wore, which made Gerion's attention snap back to Vlad in realization.
The pale-skinned stranger was not scared of the air.
"The Valyrian steel. It's protecting him, isn't it? Acting as a focus for the magic, keeping the worst of the corruption at bay," the still unnamed man said.
Vlad tilted his head, studying both man and sword with those unsettling crimson eyes. "Perceptive, Isaac. Yes, Brightroar has been serving as a ward, albeit an imperfect one. Valyrian steel was forged with spells to resist magic, among other properties. It's been filtering the corruption, keeping Gerion alive but unable to fully heal or recover."
He set the sword down, close enough for Gerion to see but far enough that he couldn't reach it. "Which brings us to an interesting question, Ser Gerion. What happens now? You're alive, barely, corrupted by this land's poison but not yet lost. You have three choices before you."
Gerion licked his cracked lips. "What choices?"
"First," Dracula held up one pale finger, "you can die. Cleanly, quickly, with what dignity remains to you. I can make it painless. You would join your men in whatever afterlife awaits, and perhaps find some peace."
The offer hung in the air. Part of Gerion wanted to take it, wanted this endless nightmare to end. But the survivor in him, the part that had kept him breathing through months of hell, rebelled at the thought.
"The second. What's the second?" he croaked out.
"Second, you can leave this place with us. We have protections you lack, resources, and knowledge that might cleanse you of Valyria's taint. It would not be easy, the corruption has sunk deep into your flesh and blood. It has changed you in ways that are both intriguing and yet deadly. But it might be possible to make you whole again. Or at least whole enough to return home."
Hope, fragile as a freshly kindled flame, came to life in Gerion's chest. Home. Casterly Rock. His family. Tywin, Kevan, Tygett, even his little niece and nephew, Cersei and Jaime... He would also get to see the sun again, to breathe clean air, to sleep without nightmares...
"And the third option?" he asked, though part of him already knew he wouldn't like the answer.
Vlad's smile widened, showing teeth that were perhaps a touch too sharp. Gerion's heart skipped a bit in his chest when the man spoke once more. "The third option is that you stay here. Continue your existence as you have been, slowly succumbing to the corruption until you become something no longer recognizable as human. A guardian of this manse, perhaps. A warning to future treasure seekers. I understand there's a certain poetry to it."
"That's not a choice," Gerion spat. "That's damning me to a life not worth living."
"All three are damnation in their own way," Dracula replied, his tone low. "The first is an ending. The third is stagnation. Only the second offers progress, maybe change, but also hope, and hope has a price."
"What price?" Gerion asked warily. Nothing came free in this world, and certainly not in Valyria.
"Service," Dracula said simply. "If I invest the time and resources to cleanse you, to return you to some semblance of health, then you will owe me a debt. One I may call upon when it suits me."
"You want me to swear to you? Abandon my House?"
"I don't want anything from you," Vlad corrected. "What you swear, what oaths you choose to keep or break, those are your concern. But understand this, if you leave here with us, if you accept my help, then you will owe me. Direct service underneath me, while I figure out how to permanently cure you, if that is what you truly desire. From what I saw earlier, there are certain perks to this, your... mutations would perhaps be an appropriate name for it."
Gerion stared at the figure. He was still not certain what exactly he was. What he knew was that no mortal man had eyes like that or moved the way he did, and he tried to think through the fog still clouding his mind. Something had calmed the raging madness in him, but it hadn't restored his full faculties. He was wounded, poisoned, corrupted. Without help, he would die here. With help...
His eyes drifted to Brightroar, gleaming in the dim alchemical light of the vault.
"If I agree," he said slowly, "if I accept your help... Brightroar remains mine?"
"The blade is yours by right of heritage and blood," Dracula said. "I have no interest in claiming it. Though I may borrow it for study purposes from time to time."
Study purposes. That should have alarmed Gerion, but he was too tired, too desperate to care. He looked at the other two men in the vault. The memory was vague, but he remembered bits and pieces of it, like a play watched while drunk or under the milk of the poppy. The still unnamed man had bested him in combat despite his corruption-fueled strength, and then there was the Archmaester who had drugged him into docility.
Neither had killed him when they easily could have. That had to count for something.
"I choose the second option," Gerion said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "I choose to live. Seven help me, I choose to live."
Vlad's smile softened into something that almost resembled approval. "A wise choice, Gerion Lannister. Survival is the first and most important virtue. Everything else can be rebuilt from that foundation."
He turned to Marwyn. "Archmaester, what do you think about him?"
Marwyn was already pulling out various vials and pouches from his seemingly bottomless bag. "Nothing can be done here for one. You do not treat an alcoholic in the middle of a bar, or a thief in the heart of a vault. We would need to take him away from here first, then we would need time, mainly. The corruption is deep, much like the one I told you I encountered on the Isle of Toads.
"I'll need to prepare a regimen of sweet sleep to keep him calm constantly, plus various herbs and compounds to flush the mundane poison from his system. We'll need to feed him properly as well, real food, not whatever he's been surviving on. Only after we do that can we know more."
Vlad nodded in agreement before rising to his full imposing height of at least seven feet. "We'll spend the night here, let Ser Gerion regain some strength. At first light, or what passes for it in this place, we depart. We will return Ser Gerion to the castle and confine him, then come back to continue our exploration. Isaac, help the Archmaester with whatever he needs. I'll keep watch."
Gerion turned to the figure now named Isaac as he nodded and moved to assist Marwyn, who was already examining his wounds and muttering about blood humors and corrupted essence.
He watched them work, still not quite believing he'd survived, that he had a chance to escape this hell. His eyes found Brightroar again, and he felt that familiar pull, that need to hold it, to keep it close.
"Rest, Ser Gerion," Dracula's voice drifted from where he'd positioned himself near the vault entrance. "You have a long road ahead of you. Save your strength. Marwyn, give him something that will allow him to sleep."
"Are you not going to unbind me?" Gerion asked as he shifted uncomfortably in his bindings, and Vlad smiled at him, once more showing those too-sharp teeth.
"What do you think?"
Marwyn finished mixing a concoction, and before Gerion could think twice about the offer and the deal he had accepted, the concoction was shoved down his throat, and once more he was lulled to a shaky sleep, but for the first time, he didn't sink below the muddy waters.