Here's the new chapter after reaching 210 Power Stones!
Ser Arthur Dayne
Sweat trailed down his torso in rivulets. His body strained, brow furrowed in focus. Two hours had passed since he started to exercise before sunrise, yet despite the physical toll, his breathing remained steady.
Arthur Dayne could feel his muscles contract in sequence as he swung Dawn, the movement originating from a slight twist of his hips, through his core, until all that power finally coursed through his arms.
The greatsword cut through the air like a whip just as he exhaled, pale metal shimmering against the sunlight shining from the window of his room.
Using the weight behind the swing, he flowed into the next form, never stopping for even a fraction of a second, feet sliding through the marble floor in a shallow arc. In his mind's eye, half-a-dozen men surrounded him.
He moved with them as if in a dance. Breathe, parry, then twist to get around another attacker. A lunge forward, thrust, jump to the side, block an overhead slash.
For a fleeting moment, he thought he could hear the clashing of their swords, thought he could feel the warmth of the noon sun baking him inside the stifling helm, feel the grains of sand scratching inside his armor, blown there by a distant breeze.
Then he was back in the room in Casterly Rock, inhaling and exhaling, forearms burning as he swiped Dawn around him one last time.
This particular battle had been against Tarly knights, he thought, somewhere on a high plateau of the Red Mountains, back when the Daynes were kings of the Torrentine and still contested lands in the Reach.
He could almost anchor himself in the ancient memories for a minute at a time now, though the longer he practiced and the more he tired, the less he could immerse himself in it.
Weary and covered in sweat, he looked down the length of his arm, past Dawn's leather-wrapped hilt, its cross-shaped guard, and all the way until the pale metal of the greatsword narrowed to a point.
Pulling it back to hold it lengthwise before him, he took a moment to admire his house's pride.
Arthur had been only a child when he first held Dawn. His father had let him take it in hand after years of pleading, but only when he was ten, as was custom, and only to hold it for a moment.
He cried for days when Alric, older than him by two years, got to hold Dawn before him, believing his brother would inherit not only the lordship of Starfall but the title of Sword of the Morning as well
What would be left for Arthur if even the possibility of being given that famed title was taken from him?
Back then, it felt like a dream to finally hold the legendary greatsword of his house. A weapon more steeped in legend and myth than any Valyrian sword in the realm. Not even the lost longsword Blackfyre, the sword of kings, could compare to it, at least in his mind.
Surprisingly, it hadn't felt any different than other swords, even the dull-bladed ones he'd started using in the yard by the time he was eight. The disappointment must have shown on his face, for his father had chuckled as he watched him.
"Not quite what you expected?" he had said.
Arthur didn't know what to say, he only knew that if he opened his mouth, he might start to cry.
His father's hands settled heavily on his shoulders. "If every man that touched the sword suddenly became its master, there wouldn't be much meaning to the title, would there?"
Then father gave him a warm smile. "The blade does not make the man the Sword of the Morning, Arthur. The man must make himself so."
"How?" he asked, frowning.
His father hadn't had an answer to that. He had never carried it into battle, despite fighting in the Stepstones during Maely's war. He had left the greatsword on the mantle above the fireplace, as it always sat whenever it waited for a wielder.
Back then, he thought his father was half mad for leaving the sword unused. He was told that, though any Dayne could wield it like any other sword, most lords and knights from their house respected Dawn's legacy too much to use it without being its true wielder.
The reason behind that was shrouded by half-told tales and legends still spoken around campfires by the elders of Starfall, stories they themselves grew up on, as had their fathers and fathers' fathers. Stories that said Dawn would awaken only to those deemed worthy of wielding it, and so most Daynes dared not take it when the sword remained silent.
His father had said that the family vault, supposedly holding the written records all the way from the first Dayne, who followed a falling star to the place they built their castle and forged Dawn with its heart, to every single man who'd wielded the sword and came to be known as a Sword of the Morning, had burned down a few years after Aegon's Conquest, so those scrambled tales were the only thing they had resembling a guide on how to use Dawn.
Whether those records had truly existed, they didn't know. But the fire was real enough, as the maester of the castle had survived long enough to send a raven telling the Citadel that Starfall burned bright against the night sky.
It was only years later, when he was sixteen, that he finally understood why his father had said what he said, that one must become the Sword of the Morning first before they could wield their family's star-forged greatsword.
He had joined some of the household knights to hunt down a group of bandits who'd raided a village on the outskirts of their land. That night, after their group got separated during a sandstorm, Arthur had found himself surrounded by five of the bandits once the storm had blown through.
It turned out they were no mere bandits, but a group of disgraced knights and men-at-arms led by a Blackmont bastard that had fled from their lands after failing to overthrow his cousin. In that moment, as those men closed in on him with weapons drawn and death in their minds, Arthur had done the only thing he could—he fought.
He fought so desperately, so precisely, so intuitively, that he'd let go of all his doubts, all his fears, all his thoughts.
He surrendered the ringing of metal, to the rhythm of his breathing, until he was no longer the second son of lord Dayne, no longer a brother or a squire. No longer a man. He was just a weapon. Just a sword.
And the next day when he came home, blood still staining his surcoat red, Dawn accepted him, shining as bright as a falling star, and he became the Sword of the Morning.
Shaking himself from his thoughts, Arthur went about finishing his routine, cleaning himself up on the basin with a washcloth and oiling his sword before dressing up in the whites of his office.
His room, which he shared with Ser Barristan as they accompanied the prince, sat next to their charge's apartments in the Rock, and it was a matter of minutes before he was stationed outside the doors waiting for Rhaegar's return.
He made sure to never immerse himself in the memory training out in the yard. The only ones to have seen this practice were his family back on Starfall, the prince, and his brothers in white, though none beyond the prince knew exactly what he was doing.
He still did not know to what extent he could access the memories of the past Swords of the Morning. Sometimes he feared drowning in them, falling deeply enough in the memories he was never able to return, and so he made sure to practice away from prying eyes, though that was a rare accomplishment in a place like King's Landing.
Ulrick Dayne, the only Dayne to hold the title of Sword of the Morning after the fire, had not been much of a writer, so Arthur was left to intuit the powers of the sword on his own. The ancient memories foremost amongst them, though certainly not the only one.
xxx
Read ahead if you want. Chapters on [PATREON] are longer than on Webnovel. Patreon is 10 chapters ahead, which is roughly equivalent to 20-25 Webnovel chapters.
patreon(dot)com/pathliar