Volantis
The windows were open to let in the evening breeze. Aemon sat at the long table, with a map of Essos spread before him, pins marking the Dothraki khalasars' likely paths, and the cities that feared their approach.
Trianna lounged at the other end, her eyes were filled with lust, a glass of dark wine in hand
"When Qohor, Norvos, and Pentos heard that you were helping Volantis against the Dothraki," she said, in a smooth voice, "they sent envoys. All three of them are quite desperate, actually. They literally begged for your help." She smiled, slow and deliberate. "I told them it would be your decision. Naturally."
Aemon raised a brow, leaning back in his chair. "Did they also offer to match what Volantis is paying?"
Trianna waved a hand. "Not yet. But they're ready to negotiate. They know how you laid waste to our forces, Aemon."
He looked back down at the map, tapping Vaes Dothrak lightly with a fingertip. "Trianna, I hope you understand what they are really asking. My agreement with you was to burn a few khalasars, hit Vaes Dothrak. To make a point that Volantis is off the limits." He met her gaze. "They want me to cripple the Dothraki. That means chasing them across the plains for months."
"I know," she said, watching him. "That's why I told them the decision is yours to make."
Aemon went quiet for a long moment. Six months, he thought. Maybe more. But if all three other cities match Volantis' price... His eyes flicked toward the eastern coast. That would alone fund the army, the fleet and the people that I will have to buy for them, for a long time.
He looked up again. "I'll do it. But only if all other three pay as much as Volantis does now each. And like Volantis they will also start sending the gold immediately. I don't want to hear something like 'After the Dothraki's are crippled' or any other non-sense."
Trianna grinned. "Then let's invite the envoys back for a second round."
She rose from her seat, slowly walking toward him, letting her hips sway just enough to make a point of it. When she reached him, she leaned in close, her fingers brushing the stubble on his cheek, her breath warm against his ear.
"Though... if you're going to be riding off into the grasslands," she murmured, voice rich and sultry, "perhaps I should give you something to remember me by."
Aemon didn't even blink and spoke in a calm and dry voice. "Your charms won't work on me, Trianna. So maybe save them for your husband. Might do your dead marriage some good."
She laughed, low and husky, a sound meant to linger. "One day, Aemon," she said, lips close enough that her words tickled his jaw, "I'll have you inside me."
He gave her a cool glance. "Keep dreaming."
That made her smile all the wider.
_______________________________________________________________________
Vaes Dothrak
The sky was clear above the Dothraki Sea, lit silver by the moon and the thousand stars the horselords worshipped. It was nearly midnight when Caraxes flew low enough to see the shimmer of campfires stretching across the plain. Some khalasars had gathered for a sacred meet. The stallions that mounted the world. The children of the grass. Proud, untamed, unbeaten.
They believed they were safe.
There were no walls in Vaes Dothrak. No sentries, no warning horns. No one expected an attack, and certainly not one from the above. This city was sacred. Blood was forbidden to spill within it. Not even a Dothraki dared to defy that taboo.
But Aemon Targaryen had no such constraints.
He leaned forward into the saddle, pressing a gloved hand against Caraxes' warm, scarred scales. The Blood Wyrm let out a low growl—not quite a roar—and angled his wings slightly, descending in silence. His long, serpentine body twisted as they approached, coiling in the sky like a crimson whip.
Below, tents stretched in every direction. Great herds of horses tied in long lines. Campfires were crackling. Dothraki men and women laughed and drank and fucked in the open air. No one was looking up.
"Dracarys," Aemon whispered.
And then the night cracked open.
Caraxes screamed—a high, monstrous shriek like tearing metal—and unleashed a torrent of fire that split the city with crimson flames, at its heart. The first pass carved straight through the center of Vaes Dothrak, incinerating tents, horses, wagons, people—everything in it's path.
The Dothraki reacted only after the second pass, and by then, the sky itself seemed to be bleeding fire. Caraxes didn't soar gently—he plunged and pivoted like a blade in a brawl, lashing low to the ground, his narrow body allowing for sharp maneuvers other dragons could never manage.
The Blood Wyrm danced through the air, his long tail sweeping wide and slamming down upon clusters of riders who had managed to regroup. With each pass, his fire raked the camps, reducing mounted dothrakis to ash and molten steel. Horses fled in terror, crashing through tents, dragging half-burned riders in their wake.
Aemon was not idle either. He was commanding Caraxes and was also bending fire that was there to his will. It curled hungrily along the bones of burned wagons or licked at the dry grass under a destroyed yurt—he could feed it. With a twist of his hand, a push of will, he nudged the flames wider, deeper. He let them breathe hotter, let them move faster. Encouraging a force already unleashed.
The great statues of rearing stallions at the city's entrance shimmered with heat, bronze warping in the dragonfire. Aemon spared them only a glance as Caraxes swooped past again, another line of flame cutting across what had once been a temple square. Half the Dosh Khaleen's sacred pools had evaporated. The other half boiled.
His strategy was simple: destroy everything. Leave nothing. Give them no time to gather, to retaliate, to breathe.
Each pass was hitting different targets. The great horse herds. The chieftains' tents. The feasting circles. The temples. The markets. Every khalasar was burned in motion, scattering before they could form. The assault had come too fast. Too brutal.
And it kept going throughout the night.
Then Caraxes' breath came harder, a wet hiss between his jaws, and Aemon felt the twitch in the dragon's back muscles that meant small fatigue. Caraxes was not fresh anymore.
Still, Aemon didn't pull up.
"Rhaelys naejot! (One more run!)" he barked in High Valyrian.
Caraxes growled in reply and dove again. This time, not with flame—his belly scraped low above the horse lines, he was lashing his neck and catching any survivor Dothraki between his jaws, his tail was lashing out like a whip, slamming through the half-burned remnants of a feast table, then curling around a pair of riders who thought they could shoot him down with arrows.
The arrows never reached him. They never even lit the air. Caraxes flattened them both with one sweep of his wing as he passed.
Fools. They don't learn. Their arrows were bouncing off Caraxes' hide since third pass. If they had ran away instead of fighting, then they would have survived.
Aemon looked back.
Vaes Dothrak was gone.
Not crumbling. Not damaged. Gone.
Where once stood a city filled with horselords, slaves, smoke, bronze, and song, there was now only a broken hellscape of glowing cinders and charred bones. No khal remained in command. No herd was left intact. The bones of horses and men were indistinguishable in the ash. A place where no blood was to be spilled had become a pyre for tens of thousands.
He let Caraxes fly higher now, wings beating slower, heavier.
The Dothraki would never recover from this. Not truly. Their heart had been here—their soul. Their identity. Even those lucky few who survived would never ride the same way again.
The moon hung low behind them now. Far to the east, a hint of red touched the horizon. Dawn.
Caraxes rumbled, wings stretched wide, gliding.
Aemon smiled and silently celebrate his victory.
He would wait here for some time, because more Khalasars may come here. And it would be an easy way to destroy them. After that he would start his hunt as he was doing before coming here.
________________________________________________________________________
Aemon lay silent in the foothills east of the shattered city, Caraxes was coiled beside him in the scrub and dust. For three weeks they had remained hidden—watching. Waiting.
What had once been a holy place to all Dothraki—the meeting ground of khals, the bones of their revered dosh khaleen, the Mother of Mountains—was now blackened wreckage. The great idols had cracked and fallen. The sacred lake had boiled dry. The earth itself reeked of death.
Aemon had made sure of it.
And finally, the Dothraki came.
Not one khalasar, but two. His patience paid off.
Using his Myrish eye, Aemon watched them gather at the outskirts, thousands of riders circling like vultures, war cries mixing with the sounds of grief. Khals dismounted to walk through the ashes. Some broke their arakhs across their knees. Others tore their braids out with bloodied fists.
A single scream echoed across the valley—a woman's wail. And then another. Then dozens. Khaleesi and bloodriders alike dropped to their knees in horror at the sight of the temple's collapsed dome and the desecrated remains of the crones.
Aemon could see it. The khals were swearing blood. Their riders painted themselves with soot and ash, marking their horses with handprints of black, and began sharpening their arakhs by firelight.
They would ride out in vengeance.
"Kesy tubī vaoreznuni (They will ride into ruin)" Aemon murmured, his eyes cold.
Caraxes stirred beside him, rumbling low. His dragon had grown very restless. Now, the time had come.
Aemon mounted without a word and they ascended the skies.
He nudged Caraxes forward and let the descent begin.
They dropped like a thunderbolt, and then crimson wings spread wide, a snarl tearing from the dragon's throat. Caraxes opened his jaws and unleashed his crimson flames.
The first line of riders died before they could even properly see him.
No one was prepared.
They thought the horror was over.
They didn't know the reaper was still here.
The fire rolled over in a sweeping arc, consuming horses, warriors, and all in it's way. Aemon guided Caraxes with precision, pass after pass, each timed to catch a gathering cluster of bloodriders or a khal attempting to rally his screamers. Some tried to charge the flames. Others tried to shoot him.
Caraxes did not give them time to organize properly.
Again and again they struck—one flank, then the other, circling like wolves around prey too angry to flee but too broken to fight smart.
Aemon offered no mercy.
During one pass, he saw one of the khals trying to rally what remained of his bloodriders beneath the charred great horse idol. The fire around them was already smoldering, and the heat in the air shimmered like a curtain.
Aemon held out a hand—to bend the fire to his will.
The leftover heat swirled forward like a wave, snatching wind and spark, driving it straight toward the idol. The flames danced, caught, and roared to life again, cloaking the khal and his men in a flash of screaming red.
The Dothraki broke after that.
The rest scattered, riding mad with no aim, their braids trailing fire, their horses screaming in panic. Some ran straight into the dragon's path. Others vanished into the burning grass, never to be seen again.
Due to grief and rage of Dothraki, it was even easier to destroy them this time.
Aemon circled once more, high above the blackened ruin. He turned Caraxes and vanished, not sparing a glance behind him.
________________________________________________________________________
Volantis
Trianna stood in her chamber's balcony, dressed in a gown of deep red silk, one shoulder bare, the other marked with a thin gold chain. She turned as the heavy doors opened.
Aemon stepped in. He was in his dragon riding clothes. His boots were caked in dust, his eyes darker than when he had first arrived.
Trianna smiled like a woman greeting a lover. "My dragon has returned," she said in a soft voice. "You did more than just cripple them, you know. You've shattered them. Forty khalasars—burned, scattered, broken. Only scraps remain now. Just few small khalasars."
Aemon didn't return the smile. He walked past her, straight to the table where a decanter of wine waited. He poured, drank deeply, and let the silence speak for a moment.
Trianna sauntered after him, slow and deliberate. "I've heard that Qohor and Norvos are hiring sellswords. The Unsullied, even. They are going to mop up the rest. It's all but over, thanks to you. Finally, the grasslands are free of those filthy animals."
Aemon turned his eyes to her.
"It. Took. Me. Seven. Fucking. Months."
His tone was tired. He was alone for all these months, for fuck sake. He set the cup down and leaned his weight on the table, knuckles white against the polished wood.
Trianna touched his shoulder lightly, her fingers gliding down the curve of his back.
"And we are grateful," she said, moving to his side. "All of us are. You'll be pleased to know all the gold has arrived safely at Dragonstone. All of it. With interest." Her voice dipped as she leaned closer. "I had them send something extra. Just for you."
He turned his head.
"I will rest," Aemon said, "for a few days. Then I will leave."
Trianna's smile never wavered. "What if I asked you to stay?"
He didn't answer.
She stepped even closer, hips brushing his. Her hand slid up his chest to his jaw, and with her lips close to his ear, she whispered, "You should let me thank you properly. Perhaps you would like something... memorable to take back to Dragonstone?"
"You can stop trying, Trianna," Aemon said quietly. "Your charms don't work on me. As I suggested before, try using them on your husband. Might save your marriage."
Her laugh was a low purr, thick with amusement and no shame at all. She added, eyes gleaming, "As I told you. One day, I'll have you inside me."
Aemon was already turning away. "Keep dreaming."
______________________________________________________________________
Valyria
Perhaps it had been a mistake to come here.
Aemon stood still at the outskirts of the ruins, watching the thin rivulets of lava snake down blackened hills in the distance. Even now, decades after the Doom, the land bled fire. The air shimmered with heat, thick with sulfur and something fouler. Caraxes snorted behind him, restless, wings twitching as if the place crawled beneath his claws.
The great city was not silent. It should have been. But it wasn't.
He had been seeing them since he had arrived—shadows, half-formed figures, drifting across broken streets and blackened columns. Ghosts, yes, but not like the ones from his dreams. These were not memories of the dead, or fragments of emotion left behind. These things screamed, their eyeless faces turned skyward in horror. They made no sound with their mouths, and yet their voices were everywhere.
And now, for the first time in a long time, Aemon was worried for his life. Not just for himself—but for Caraxes also. Protecting both of them from the unnatural forces of this place was wearing him thin. He had come prepared for poisonous fumes, not madness.
It better be worth it, he thought grimly.
The heat was pressing against him from all sides, an invisible hand trying to smother his Bubble Head. And that was saying something. He had known fire. Blood of the dragon flows in his veins. He is a dragonrider and a wizard. But this was different.
There was a reason, he thought, why it was said that demons now roamed these lands. It felt like he was being driven mad with every step he took.
He crouched near a twisted skeleton half-buried in ash, brushing away scorched dirt. Beneath the charred bones, faded and cracked, was a breastplate etched with a lion, still faintly gleaming gold.
Aemon stared.
So this is the greedy cunt King Tommen II of the Rock.
He looked around, then back at the broken armor.
"But how in the fuck did he reach this deep?" he muttered aloud. "This is leagues beyond the Smoking Sea."
His footsteps echoed as he approached what remained of a building—its roof collapsed, but the stone walls still stood high. From within, faint voices filtered through. Not screams this time, but wailing. Mourning. A different kind of sorrow, lower and more human, if such a word could still apply here.
Inside, it was cooler. Or perhaps just less suffocating. Bones lay scattered, fewer than outside, and the ghosts here weren't screaming to the heavens—they wept, some sitting on the broken chairs, others collapsed in corners. An entire civilization, the greatest the world had ever known, now reduced to echoes and ash.
It had all ended in a single day.
He wanted nothing more than to plunder the ruins and visit the city centre, and be gone.
He whispered "Lumos", and a white light flared to life above his hand, casting the room in pale glow. His other hand gripped his sword.
He moved carefully through the corridors, deeper into the structure. One room had weapons. Rows of them, racked along the walls: simple-hilted swords with smoky blades and rippling steel, unmistakable in their forging. Valyrian steel, and a lot of it. Bows carved from blackened bone—dragonbone, no doubt. Arrows still bundled in sealed barrels.
Aemon let out a low breath. "Fuck man…"
He touched one sword's hilt and lifted it, testing the weight. Perfectly balanced.
These all alone would be worth more than a minor kingdom, he thought. Now Rhaenys and I will finally have Valyrian blades of our own.
He kept going. Another chamber, and in it—finally—a vault, untouched by time or ravages of doom. He approached slowly, his heart thudding in spite of himself.
Please, he thought. No blood magic. Let it be simple. Let its original protection be dead. It's been decades after all. No one has reinforced them.
He raised his hand. "Alohomora."
There was a deep groan of gears, the grind of metal on metal, and then the door yawned inward for the first time in decades.
What lay beyond it nearly stole his breath.
Piles of tomes, gold and gems sparkled in the light of his hovering flame. Tapestries woven with ancient patterns, long lost sigils of houses that hadn't existed in thousands of years. Tomes with bindings of silver and scales, filled with knowledge no maester had ever read. Even his family doesn't have these many. Dragonhorns etched with runes. Even a suit of armor made of Valyrian steel. Perhaps we will learn how to make more.
And that was just one vault.
He grinned. Perhaps his suffering was worth it.
______________________________________________________________________
Three months.
It took him three fucking months to empty the ruins of Valyria. And take them back to the cove where Orys will arrive to pick them up.
_______________________________________________________________________
There was only one place left.
Aemon had always wanted to visit this place, but then he had decided to do it after his plundering was completed.
He stood before what had once been the center of the city, where a vast, cracked plaza stretched wide—the Forum. Here, the dragonlords of old had gathered, all the freeholders of Valyria who held sway over its politics and power. This was the place where wars were debated, where empires expansion was born and others condemned with but words. How many thousands had their fates sealed here without even knowing it?
Aemon stepped forward slowly, his boots crunching over blackened stone and scorched marble, gazing up at the broken pillars and half-melted statues.
Then—he heard it.
A scraping noise. Not wind. Not whispers.
Movement.
He turned his head, the hair on his neck rising. From the end of nearest corner, figures began to emerge.
At first, he thought they were more of the mournful dead. But no—these things did not drift or scream to the skies. They were moving normally, and their eyes glowed like embers in their skulls. They also looked alive.
They were walking toward him with clear ill intent.
His breath caught in his throat.
"Fuck," he whispered. "Fire wights."
He had heard of them in childhood—twisted echoes of men and women, creatures created in the darkest and hottest depths of Valyria's mines by blood mages of Valyria. Visenya had mentioned them once during his childhood days. Back then he had thought she was just trying to frighten him.
But they were real. And they were here.
They shouldn't be here.
The fourteen flames had exploded. The city had burned. The mines were buried. These creatures should have been buried dead in those mines. And yet here they were, walking like humans out from the very center of the city like ants from a rotted hive.
Why weren't they near any of the buildings I plundered? Why now? Why here?
There was no time for answers.
He turned and ran.
Caraxes was waiting in the clearing beyond the ruined arch, with his tail coiled, and his wings outstretched. The moment the dragon sensed his rider's panic, he reared up, snarling.
Aemon nearly made it.
Then pain lanced through his left arm. He screamed—a raw, guttural sound—as a fire wight grabbed him, its fingers searing through his cloak and into his flesh. He could feel it—something ancient and hateful trying to claw inside.
His reflexs took over. And he banished all the creatures back just enough. His eyes flashed with fury.
"Caraxes!" he shouted, voice hoarse. "Dracarys!"
The dragon's roar split the air, and fire surged forth in a torrent of searing crimson, engulfing the advancing fire wights. They shrieked and hissed, their bodies blackening and twisting in the heat, but even as they were being destroyed, they kept moving like a snail, walking forward.
Aemon scrambled onto the saddle, blood was running down his arm, and took the reins.
"Sōvēs!"
Caraxes leapt into the air, wings hammering downward. As they rose, Aemon guided the flames that Caraxes had already spewed. Controlling the flame, bending it, making it hotter, keeping the fire-wights back with sheets of living heat until they were all destroyed.
He didn't look down again.
He didn't want to know what other horrors are here.
Not yet.
He needed to survive first.
Then he would worry about answers later on.
________________________________________________________________________
Volantis
When Aemon opened his eyes, the first thing he felt was the burn in his throat—dry as sand beneath a summer sun. His vision was blurry at first, the soft light of the room warping the golden and crimson patterns etched into the walls and ceilings.
He shifted slowly, groaning at the ache in his body. Beside the bed stood a small pitcher of water, beads of condensation clinging to its sides. He reached for it with shaky hands, poured it into a nearby cup, and drank greedily. The coolness was a balm to his throat, chasing away the dryness like a wave washing over cracked earth.
Only after he had drunk his fill did he look around.
The room was ornate, clearly part of a palace—Volantene, if he guessed right then he was is Trianna's palace. Her colors were present in the silken drapes, the intricate carvings, the soft cushions that filled the corners. In the far end of the chamber, curled up on a modest bed too small for a lady of her rank, lay Trianna, fast asleep.
Aemon frowned and looked down at his arm.
The pain was gone. More than gone—completely healed.
He pulled back the sleeve to inspect the wound. His skin was whole, smooth, there was no flesh wound… but not untouched. There, wrapping around his forearm, was a pale mark—slightly lighter than the rest of his already pale skin, shaped unmistakably like a hand. Fingers curled in a ghostly grip.
He stared at it, silent.
Perhaps his slight movement must have stirred her.
Trianna blinked awake, rising groggily. When her gaze found him sitting up, her face brightened with exhausted relief.
Before he could say anything, she spoke.
"Aemon… I'm not going to ask you where that wound came from," she said, voice soft but firm. "I know you too well to think you would actually tell me."
He exhaled through a faint smile. "Thanks, Trianna." Then, more seriously, "How… how was I healed?"
She crossed the room and sat at the edge of his bed. "When you arrived a week ago, you collapsed right in front of my palace doors, after you climbed down Caraxes and walked a little bit. Thankfully your dragon didn't attack me, and I brought you inside. You were burning with fever, barely conscious. The healers said your arm couldn't be saved. They were preparing to remove it, so that the rot didn't spread."
Aemon glanced at the mark again.
"But then," she continued, "one of the priestesses of the Temple of Tessarion came to me. She said she could help. She claimed her goddess guided her to you." Her expression turned thoughtful. "I let her try. She worked without pause for three days without any sleep. She used just herbs, spells, incense and fire. I stayed close in case something went wrong. But… she succeeded."
He sat in silence for a moment, taking it in. Then, quietly, "It's been a week?"
Trianna nodded. "Seven days since you landed in my courtyard half-dead."
"I need to meet this priestess," Aemon said. "I don't know what would've happened if I hadn't come here."
"You'll meet her," Trianna said. "But not before we've had lunch. And dinner. I won't hear a word of protest."
Aemon chuckled, the tension in his shoulders easing. "Yes, Trianna. I'll eat with you." He gave her a long look. "And thank you… for everything. For being a good friend."
Trianna smiled softly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "That's what friends are for. Even dragonlords like you."
Aemon thought Orys will have to wait if he had arrived. His instructions were clear.