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Unknown time, Unknown Place
He slowly pushed himself upright in the shallow water, his breath still uneven from whatever strange place he had been dragged out of, noticing that it seemingly spanned to an infinity, or perhaps it was the trunk of this strange, invisible tree of stars.
Daemon Targaryen felt completely and utterly drained, despite not knowing where exactly he was. Potter had not exactly answered most of his questions, having pushed to bring out his nephew Aemond from his own dream, or whatever the fuck he called it. He was still shaken by the memories he had of his father… of his mother… of Laena, whose faces, to his shame, he had begun to forget over time, shaken as he witnessed Rhaenyra's madness with his own two eyes.
His nephew had fared no better, for it was obvious that the boy's own experience had not been a pleasant one, and Daemon pretended not to see Aemond's reddened eyes after he awoke from the impossibly shallow waters they resided in. The succession aside, it had not escaped Daemon that his nephew was very much alike in temperament and in pride. Daemon would not wish to be pitied, given what he had just experienced, and he knew that Aemond was likely the same as well.
Instead, he decided to look around him. Daemon still did not know where he was, nor did he attempt to understand it, for it had felt impossible. Magic had likely played a great part in it, but the location was that of eternities and impossibilities. How else would one see stars flutter in the wind, but that was nought but a small matter compared to the impossibilities that surrounded them with every moment that they spent in this place.
Still, after some time, Aemond broke the silence, "What happened?"
"Well, as I said, the idea was to track down the Elder Dragons, and since one had hatched in front of us, let's just say that I hitched a ride with it. The energy release was a bit more violent than I expected, so I lost track of you both for a bit. It makes me glad that I decided to channel it instead of just letting it spread. That certainly wouldn't have been pretty, huh? Still, that should push back the Darkness of Sothoryos for a lot longer than I expected, so that's a good thing."
"And… And the other place?" Aemond asked, obviously not knowing what to call his experience. If he were completely honest, even after the sorcerer had explained, Daemon was still unsure about what truly happened, or the truth of what he experienced.
"Remnants of possibilities… These are the futures of potential past choices which hadn't been pruned yet." Potter answered.
"I don't understand," the boy commented.
The sorcerer smiled at him kindly, "You're thinking of time in a linear manner, from cause to effect. The truth is that the future is infinite, always in flux. Though Fate and Destiny may push the odds for a certain outcome, it still remains shaped by your decisions. With every choice that anyone makes, an infinity of futures becomes no more. In a balanced world, they would have been reaped in less than a second by the tides of Time, or allowed to branch into other worlds, completely and become utterly independent, should the choice be a critical one."
Daemon wished that he was surprised or anything of the like, but the sorcerer spoke of other worlds as if they were fact and given that he had never heard of a tree of stars existing, he could not exactly deny the man's words, even if he wished to. Or perhaps he was just too tired to argue, to question everything. Still, he couldn't help but comment out of sheer curiosity, "I suppose our world is not balanced then."
"It isn't, and that means that Time has to act with other means, and in this case, it pushes each timeline to destroy itself, leaving them as echoes of choices, until its inevitable end. And in such an imbalanced world, its destruction would not take overly long, not at a cosmic scale, really. You both experienced these possibilities, ones that your souls gravitated to, as you had asked yourself many times the very crucial question… What if? What if Alyssa Targaryen had not died on the birthing bed? What if Aemond Targaryen had not lost his eye on Driftmark? Each question is a leaf in an enormous tree of possibilities, which eventually wilt and die, as the laws of Time dictate."
Despite himself, Daemon's eyes drifted to the giant tree of stars that he could see in the distance. They had been walking towards it, though the sorcerer had not exactly said why that was. The tree itself was utterly magnificent, and he felt small simply looking at it.
He was so focused on it that he noticed a small star shine brightly for a moment, before starting to fall from the impossible tree, its light dimming with every moment, before it faded away onto the shallow sea that they walked through, and disappeared.
The Rogue Prince stared at where the star had disappeared and asked, "Is this the Tree of Possibilities that you speak of?"
"It's a lot more complex than this. What you're seeing is what your mind interprets from your surroundings. It isn't supposed to actually look like a tree. This entire place isn't even meant to be three-dimensional in the first place, and yet it is, and it is for our own benefit. That, alone, is very telling."
"How so?" Aemond was the one who questioned them.
"We are expected here," Potter answered, before turning around at the tree and shouting, "Which is why it's very rude to keep us waiting."
Daemon would have called the sorcerer mad if, after a few seconds, some of the stars around them began to shift. They began to move together, being linked together into something completely and utterly impossible. He recognised an eye at first, then the face, and finally, the rest of the body, which joined one another to create a creature, one that was beyond anything that he had ever even imagined.
It was a dragon, and yet, it was larger than a mountain, taller than the Wall, and radiated power and majesty in a way that made him wish to kneel in subservience. Its scales were stars, its eyes suns, and its wings made of collections of stars that spiralled into infinities. It was, without a doubt, the greatest sight that Daemon had ever laid his eyes on.
Aemond did not fare better, having dropped to his knees, his lone eyes wide in awe at the creature that could likely destroy Dragonstone in seconds at most, who could decimate every Targaryen dragon at once, in but a single attack. He understood then the difference between a dragon and a god, for he had no doubt that before him was one of the old gods of Valyria, or as Harry Potter called them, an Elder Dragon.
The sorcerer had described them as more than gods, more than dragons, and Daemon had not grasped how right he was, for even compared to the god of Naath, the being before him stood superior in every measure.
The dragon god faced them, opened his maw, and spoke, "STRANGER!"
It was more akin to a roar, and yet there was so much intent condensed in this single word. It was a greeting, an acknowledgement of Harry Potter, and his title. He who came from far away. He who travelled across the eternities. He who weaved through space and time. He who has defied fate and mastered death, he who has freed them from their chains. He who had slain gods and demons…
It was so much. Too much. For even the world around them, which had been a darkened, shallow sea beneath a tree of stars, reacted, warped to accommodate this word. Daemon had known that Harry Potter was more than a simple magic user, for he spoke to gods as if they were his equal and used magicks that could be nothing but divine in nature. He had even thought that the man might be a god masquerading as a mortal, much like the fables of old. The sorcerer was no god; that was something that he knew for certain from the dragon's greeting, but he was certainly no mortal.
Speaking of whom, Harry Potter remained impassive, his gleaming eyes hardening at the greeting, seeming far more serious than he ever had before, "If you'd known that I would come, you should have saved me the hassle. Or, you could have just not fucked off back in Valyria, which was quite rude, if I say so myself."
For a moment, Daemon swore that he saw the collection of stars that made up the dragon's eye twinkle, "TRUTH!"
The following words were far denser than they were previously, and Daemon held his head in pain trying to understand the fleeting concepts that came through it. There was an acknowledgement of truth, but that something was necessary. An image of a dragon, great and yet young, soaring in the sky, the dragon that had just hatched, appeared in his mind, followed by an urgent concept of a darkness, great and yet terrible, swallowing the world, from the jungles of Sothoryos.
The Rogue Prince was a prince of the Seven Kingdoms, likely the deadliest man in the Known World, and yet he felt completely and utterly out of his depths as the dragon casually spoke of horrors. He had seen much in the visions that Harry Potter had shown him of the potential consequences of his decisions and their impact on his family. He had seen his daughters' faces in horrific fates, from death to being turned into monsters.
He had felt sickened afterwards, overthinking every decision that he had made to avoid hurting them so. And yet, these all paled compared to this darkness. It spread like a rot, turning everything around it into horrors, turning humans into mockeries of what they should be, and an endless horde of mutated… things, instead of what they truly were. And beneath it all a great being, one whose description escaped him completely and utterly, but whose terribleness lingered yet. Something that his mind struggled to comprehend, even with words that would not come here.
Daemon felt blood run down his nose as he attempted to make sense of it all. The boy, Aemond, looked much the same, looking almost haunted by what he had just seen.
The sorcerer, though, did not even look at them, staring at the god with a serious expression. Daemon felt as if he were but a page that was witnessing a conversation between Great Lords, one that shaped the lives of thousands of people, only on a much grander scale, one that he could seldom believe.
Finally, the man spoke, "An Outsider entity, or perhaps multiple ones, who had managed to breach into Sothoryos, warping an entire continent, one whose influence you circumvented. But why? There isn't much of interest here in this realm… It's a broken world, a remnant of a battlefield whose scars are still present to this day. It had to be something powerful, something that would bring them power over the void between worlds as well, something precious… Something impossible… Oh."
He stayed silent for a moment before answering, almost with a whisper, "There is a single thing that I have seen so far that truly brought power over chaos… The Light. They're after the fragment of Light."
Daemon did not know of what the sorcerer spoke of, but there was no mistaking the way his eyes widened, a hint of his previous wonder slipping through, as well as the faint feeling of approval from the dragon's sake, "I only realised what it was until… until it was too late. Order born of chaos, a paradox so powerful that the existence of a shard is the only thing that kept this entire plane of existence together. I could feel it then… A command, an edict, that forced this realm to be… material. Oh! Oh! I think I'm getting it now. That makes sense. That makes so much sense. There was never meant to be a material in the first place, was there? All of this shouldn't have happened, not really."
The sorcerer then burst into laughter, though the prince did not know why he did so. He barely understood half of his words, and yet, what little he did terrified him to the core. What did he mean when he said that the world should not have existed? It did exist, didn't it?
The man continued, unbothered by Daemon's concern, "I knew that there was something wrong. I knew it. I thought it was an imbalance, a remnant of the War in Heaven, but it was more than that, wasn't it? I might have helped stabilise things for a bit by freeing Death and Fate, and yet, that barely changed much, not in the way it should have. Because this entire world was never meant to be, was it? Thousands of years of history, of civilisations that rose and fell, lived on a world that was never supposed to exist in the first place. This was supposed to be the realm of a god, but someone used the fragment of Light on it. I don't know who it was, maybe it was the god that did it, but they did. And they made an edict to turn this into a material realm. It probably killed them, given the scale of it all, but this entire world was born of the fragment of Light, a mere shard, a remnant of a great entity, the so-called Maiden of Light. How terrifying it must have been then, I wonder, for only a spark to do all of this. You used it too, if I'm not wrong, to end the War in Heaven, to right this world after the Cataclysm that followed. Tell me, O' Dragon, am I wrong?"
For the first time, the Dragon seemed to have gone utterly still. The stars that made up its body stopped flickering, as if they did not know what to react before it seemingly relented, "ORDER!"
The words shook the world around him, and it was far worse than any of the previous words that the dragon had uttered. The content was dense, and most of it was lost to him. It spoke of a fragment of power found beneath the corpses of gods, one used to spread peace across battlefields, to chain away fledgling gods from influencing the world.
Countless battles, bloody and terrifying, flashed through his mind, against a darkness, a rot, that would not die. He saw mortal creatures be blessed by them to lock them away using the cursed black stone. He saw these same mortals be lured by false promises of the darkness and betray the dragons. He saw them punished, banished to the depths of the ocean, where Darkness only lurked.
He saw the darkness coming with it, and a great dragon made of white flames opposed it and destroyed it once and for all. He saw the necessity of it all, the potential devastation that might occur, the world itself appear as an endless night, without the light, turning into nought but ash.
It was too much, and Daemon was heaving halfway through. The scenes would simply not end, with one battle after another, before Harry Potter finally opened his mouth and yelled out, "ENOUGH!"
The pressure on Daemon's mind lessened completely, and it was only then that the prince realised that he was screaming. He was on the ground, coughing up blood, staining the dark, shallow sea beneath him. There was another source of screaming next to him, one that belonged to his nephew. As he looked at him, Daemon saw blood pouring from his lone eye and his nose, as he coughed up blood. He was sure that the man before him was no better.
Daemon looked up at the sorcerer, grateful for the relief from the sheer information that was within a single word, but found himself speechless at the sight.
Harry Potter stood before him, the joviality he had before gone, and instead, he wore a silverly cloak that fluttered behind him, as well as a strange scythe, whose blade shifted with every look, changing colours, and perhaps even form. "You shall not harm them."
As the sorcerer made his proclamation, Daemon felt the world around them shift, and the darkened sky became grey. The Elder Dragon obviously bristled at the words, but the divine creature did not make any outward moves, "ACCEPTANCE!"
Daemon winced, preparing himself for another onslaught to assault his mind, only for it to never come. Instead, the words seemed almost restrained, and Daemon's mind was not assaulted by anything but a faint sense of begrudging agreement and a hint of warning.
Potter nodded to himself, satisfied by what had been communicated before stiffening, "So, this is what this is all about? You wanted the fragment of Light… But why didn't you get it yourself? Unless you couldn't… Ah, the edicts. The rules… Only physical creatures could go past the Black Stone. Ironic, huh? You were the ones who made it, the ones who truly mastered it, and the Mazemakers used it against you in their betrayal, in their fall into becoming the Deep Ones. You probably didn't expect a fledgling deity to find it. You probably also didn't expect R'hllor to use this power so subtly, to only power its divination. You could not directly out-plan him, not while he had the Light with him and focused so much on his expansion. A divination battle of divination, who held a piece of creation in the palm of his hand, wouldn't end well. But you did not need to be direct, did you? You only needed to wait… You needed to wait for me."
The sorcerer paused and looked at the sky around him, "You knew that I was coming here in search of a solution for what I had done. You used this to show me the coming threat, one that is greater than the war between gods over the Light that I feared at first, so that I would grant you the Light. And if you could predict this, then you should have also known long ago that I would come to this realm. I should have seen it earlier. There is only a single time when someone had gotten one over on me, and that was you. You knew of my goals, and you carefully ensured that R'hllor would be one of my targets. You let yourself be trapped during the Doom of Valyria, something that would allow R'hllor to expand, knowing that he would see me as a threat, knowing that my being outside this realm, my mastery over the Deathly Hallows, would put us against one another. You knew that I would win this fight…"
He took a deep breath before looking at the silent dragon in the eyes, "It was a perfect plan. I get what I want, and you get what you want. It would have probably been… cleaner if I just killed him. The Black Stone pit that surrounded the fragment of Light would have melted away, the connection breaking, allowing you to claim it. So why didn't you go with that? Ah, I see it now. I was wrong earlier. You hadn't expected me to come here, not at first. You didn't expect me to spare his life, to trap R'hllor the way that I did. You didn't expect me to shy away from finishing what I started, all to avoid a potential divine war. You didn't think I'd have cared. You didn't expect that I would have gotten… attached. And now, here we are…"
Daemon had stayed absolutely silent at the sorcerer's speech, some of which was to recover from the strain he had felt at the dragon's words earlier, and some was simply out of pure bafflement at what he heard.
The dragon regarded him in silence for a long moment.
The stars that made up its immense body flickered slowly, like distant suns. At last, its vast head inclined, and the heavens themselves seemed to tremble with the movement.
"AGREEMENT."
Daemon's mind felt a sense of agreement, a confirmation of truth, still restrained as per the sorcerer's request.
Speaking of whom, Harry Potter did not seem satisfied by the answer, and just exhaled slowly, his eyes still hard "You know what would come after, don't you? The moment R'hllor really dies, the moment the fragment of Light becomes unclaimed, every single divine creature will know that such a domain is now available. Everyone, Gods, Demons, and who knows what else, will descend upon this world like vultures upon a corpse. War will follow, even if you claim it before anyone else does. That's aside from your own war starting over again. Everything and everyone will be dragged into this war, and it will be the inhabitants of the Materium who will have the highest risk of being wiped out."
For a moment, the dragon said nothing. Then its vast wings shifted slightly, scattering constellations across the heavens, "NECESSITY."
That was all that was said. There was no denial, no polite lie, just a faint sense of apathy, as if the inhabitants of this world held no worth. This was one of his ancestors' gods. Daemon had journeyed across the world, faced horrors, all for this moment, to glimpse the majesty of the Old Gods of Valyria, and yet, they seemed utterly unconcerned with anything but their war because it was this war against this Darkness that mattered most to them, with everything else being secondary. As for humans, they were small, short-lived creatures, whose death was inevitable.
For a moment, Daemon feared that the sorcerer was convinced by their words somehow, "No."
The dragon's immense eyes burned brighter as he repeated, "INEVITABLE!"
This time, he was not as gentle as he once was, for visions of the darkness of Sothoryos spreading, swallowing everything, were before them. It felt… inevitable, completely and utterly, that this would be what occurred to them all, an absolute destruction, because of Harry Potter's defiance, that an uncertain war was better than certain destruction.
Daemon had to agree with them, even if he did not want to. However, the sorcerer remained utterly and completely unconvinced, "I came here to ask your advice. I had hoped… I had hoped that you would have counselled me, advised me to make up for my mistake, for my short-sighted way that I handled R'hllor, to avoid the damage that I could have created, but I see it now. You never cared about any of them, did you? I don't know why you feel it's all right to just dismiss the damage of another war. You obviously have ambitions for this realm, but I will not let you doom its inhabitants for them."
For a time, there was no answer. And yet, Daemon dared not move. He knelt still upon the black water, breath ragged in his chest, his body trembling from the strain of the visions that had been forced upon his mind. Beside him, Aemond remained bowed, blood staining the surface of the sea like dark wine. Neither prince spoke.
They simply stared at the world around them, and they only shifted when they noticed the constellations that littered the sky begin to move. It was slow, at least far slower than it should have been, but the constellations twisted and bent, breaking apart and reforming into familiar shapes. He recognised the outline of a wing at first, and it was not long until a dozen great shapes descended from the heavens, each one as large as a mountain, at the very least. He knew immediately what they were, the rest of the Elder Dragons, the rest of the Pantheon of Gods of Old Valyria.
The divine dragons surrounded them, and Daemon felt a pressure descend upon him. It was different from being overwhelmed by the creature's words, and yet, in a way, it was far worse. It was quickly becoming harder to breathe, harder to stand, for even instinct told him to bow and obey these mighty beings.
Beside him, Aemond dropped fully to his knees, his shoulders trembling, as blood still stained the dark waters beneath him.
Then the pressure suddenly disappeared, being resisted by… something. He stood there, not having moved an inch, and yet, Daemon knew that some magic was afoot, for his cloak seemed to almost release a silver glow that repelled it, and his scythe's blade shimmered with shifting colours that moved across its surface, with shapes appearing and folding impossibly with every moment.
Finally, he moved and looked up at the dragons without a hint of fear in his eyes, "You've made your point, but it's time for you to hear mine. You've shown me that you know exactly who I am, the Lord of Space and Time, he who has mastered Death. You know what I have done, what I am capable of. So, tell me, O' Dragons, powerful as you may be, is this truly a fight that you wish to pick?"
Daemon felt the pressure that he had felt before intensify, and yet, Potter's own negated it, as he stared at the greatest beings that the prince had witnessed, without a hint of fear in his eyes. It was after a moment of pure stillness that he realised that the Elder Dragons, the Old Gods of Valyria, looked upon the lone figure standing upon the black water, one that was no larger than an ant to them, and hesitated.
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Excerpt from: Of Folklore and Legends in Recent Eras
By Archmaester Samuel of Highgarden
It is rare for one to grow up in the Seven Kingdoms without knowing of its greatest legends. As a member of House Tarly of the Reach, I have personally grown up with the tales of Garth Greenhand, just as I am sure that tales of Bran the Builder are prevalent in the North, those of Durran Godsgrief in the Stormlands, and Lann the Clever in the Westerlands.
The oldest houses in the realm take pride in their connection to these myths, which date back before the coming of the Andals, to the Age of Heroes itself. These are established roots in our history, though these tales have been passed down through oral tradition for thousands of years, so their veracity may have changed over the ages. Nevertheless, I had found myself asking myself, with the resurgence of magic, if any legends had spawned from there. I was surprised to have seen many examples, and while some could be explained by the lack of understanding of the higher mysteries at the time, such as the tales of the Bastard Witch of Harrenhal, which were likely widely overdramatised, a few remain completely and utterly mysterious, and none more so than the legends of the Sorcerer of Dragonstone.
It is said that in 123 AC, also known as the year of calamities, a great magic user settled onto the island of Dragonstone, which at the time had been under the authority of Rhaenyra Targaryen. This is verifiable, for there were many confirmed accounts of letters in that time period that spoke of rumours of such a thing. However, it was not until the princess had flown to the Capital and somehow healed her ailing father that the world truly realised that there were some truths to them. We know not for certain if magic was used in the healing of King Viserys the Peaceful, and yet, given the state of the King before and after the Princess's visit, it does seem like the most logical theory.
Healing magic was a rare gift indeed, even to this day. Its presence alone is very sought after by every noble, from the Royal Family to Landed Knights. Alas, the magic's appearance seemed to be sporadic in nature, despite the many attempts to tie it to one's bloodline. The most prevalent theory was that the Sorcerer of Dragonstone was a magic user who specialised in healing, but that does not explain the fact that divining Dragonstone during his supposed presence on the isle remains a great challenge that even the brightest sorcerer could not manage.
Still, tales did spread of the sorcerer, of a man who lived in a manse that was part of a volcano, who destroyed an army of Shadowbinders with a swipe of his hands, and who made dragons cower with a look of his eyes. There were stories that he had wrestled the infamous Cannibal and summoned storms from the heavens for his own will. Most of this is exaggerated nonsense, of course, but there were written reports of a failed assassination attempt by Shadowbinders of Asshai, but no mention of the sorcerer and even then, with very sparse details. Given the events of the Darkest Day, it is possible that the royal family or the dragons were the target of such an attack. A few believe that this information was purposely destroyed by the Citadel of Old, before the reformation, given their obvious sentiment towards magic, as evidence had shown that they had done the same many times after.
To this day, the name of the Sorcerer of Dragonstone is not known, but a few consider him to be 'Harry Potter', a man who King Viserys the Peaceful, himself, greeted in the Capital for a day, and had not been seen since. A few suppose that it had been a bastard of House Potter that he legitimatised, though House Potter of the Reach denied any knowledge of the man.
Nevertheless, it brings disbelief that a true figure of legend, who had turned into myth, seemed to have existed in truth, yet very few seemed to care about it. Perhaps it is but a childish fancy of mine, but I cannot, in good conscience, allow such a truth to be forgotten in the past. And I shall endeavour to uncover it myself, for I shall sail to Dragonstone soon, as I have heard whispers of a structure connected to the Dragonmont being found on the island, and though most consider it a mummer's tale, I shall uncover the truth with my own two eyes.
Yet I cannot help but wonder, as I prepare for this journey, whether the truth I seek will be one meant for mortal understanding at all. For if even a fragment of these tales holds merit, then the Sorcerer of Dragonstone was no mere healer nor hedge wizard of passing fame, but something far stranger, something that the realm itself, and perhaps even the royal family, had chosen to forget.
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AN: This chapter really got away from me, and I'm not sure about it. I sort of had it in my head, but it was a struggle to put it into words; the result was denser than I would have liked, lore-wise. The gist of it was that instead of the gods being formed out of chaos from the faiths of the inhabitants of the Materium, the universe was supposed to be one of gods alone. Someone actively created the Materium out of the realm of a god using the fragment of Light, which is why it's so central and why it is so sought out.
The Elder Dragons were able to divine that Harry would come to Planetos, knowing that he would seek out gods for his ritual, and arranged things to perfectly put him against R'hllor, so that they could claim the Light. I sort of omitted a lot of things, like what the Elder Dragons' plans really are, their war against the Outsiders, why Sothoryos has a breach and the true nature of the Darkness there, but honestly, the chapter had gotten a bit out of hand, so I'm saving them for the future. As usual, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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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 on them, so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.