The year was seventeen AC, seventeen years after my father set foot on the mouth of the Blackwater Rush, and life in the fledgling capital of King’s Landing was utterly magnificent.
The air was sweet, the sewage system was a triumph of modern engineering, the local populace was polite, and the royal palace was a glowing monument to majestic architecture.
Yeah, that was a complete and utter lie.
This place sucked ass.
Even though four years had passed since my mother first carried me here from Dragonstone, the place had not grown on me in the slightest.
The Aegonfort was a glorified, mud-splattered timber pile barely holding itself together atop the highest hill in the city.
Alright, fine, perhaps I was exaggerating slightly.
Over the past few years, my father’s stonemasons had finally begun replacing the original wooden palisades with crude curtain walls made of grey river stone, making the fortress somewhat sturdy and moderately comfortable.
But that was about the extent of its charms.
There were no exquisite Valyrian silk tapestries hanging from the walls, no grand arched corridors, and no massive four-poster beds with feather-stuffed mattresses.
If I had to compare the castle to an architectural style from my previous life, it would be cold, functional Soviet brutalism.
It was entirely understandable, considering the fortress had to be thrown together in a hurry during the Conquest, but I personally believed it was high time Aegon renovated this fuckass heap.
Either that, or I could simply wait for the old man to kick the bucket and rebuild the entire capital myself.
For the most part, however, I did not lose sleep over the fortress’s ugly stone walls, because I spent the vast majority of my time on Dragonstone anyway.
Dragonstone was infinitely better in every conceivable way: dark, terrifying, steeped in ancient blood-magic, and blissfully quiet.
Letting out a wide yawn, I stretched my arms above my head and surveyed my rather mediocre bedchamber inside the Aegonfort.
Now, a casual observer might look at me and assume I was acting like a spoiled, highborn brat complaining about his castle accommodations.
That could not be further from the actual truth.
I did not give a single damn where I slept, so long as the room was dry and free of cold drafts.
But looking around this gloomy, barren chamber with its single narrow slit window and unadorned stone walls, I could not help but notice that my royal father was playing obvious favorites once again.
I was five years of age now, having been born in the twelfth year after the Conquest, though physically I looked far more like a ten-year-old child.
I was thick-boned, broad-shouldered, and possessed heavy wrists that made my arm muscles look like iron cables, maybe that was an exaggeration as well.
Ehh, probably not.
As far as my father was concerned, I did not particularly care about him, and he in turn barely acknowledged my existence.
All was fair at the end of the day.
I could easily understand why King Aegon doted so heavily on my elder brother Aenys.
Aenys had been born in seven AC to Queen Rhaenys, the beloved sister-wife whom father had lost in the sands of Dorne seven years ago.
Aegon clearly viewed raising Aenys as his sacred, tragic responsibility to her memory.
Still, understanding his grief did not justify his blatant neglect in my eyes.
If I were a normal five-year-old child instead of a reincarnated soul, I would have developed a catastrophic Freudian complex and spent my teenage years crying into my pillow over my daddy issues, fortunately that was not a case.
Though, whenever father and I bumped into each other in the corridors, we were perfectly civil in an awkward, distant sort of way.
A sharp, distinct knock echoed against the heavy oak door of my room, shattering my quiet reflections.
Raising a dark silver eyebrow, I pushed off the wooden stool and walked lazily across the floorboards to open it.
The moment the heavy door swung inward, a slender, silver-haired child quickly darted past my waist, ducking into my room and frantically scanning the corners like a thief on the run.
It was none other than my brother, Prince Aenys Targaryen himself.
Before closing the door, I threw a quick, amused glance at the iron-clad Kingsguard knight standing post in the hallway outside.
Why in the Seven Kingdoms did the royal bodyguard have enough spare knights to post full-time guards outside five-year-old children’s bedchambers?
The knight on duty today was Ser Robin Darklyn, a veteran warrior whose name I only remembered because of his infamous courtly nickname: Darkrobin.
What a goofy ass nickname.
That name sounded like it belonged in a gloomy teenage metal band, though his actual physical appearance was completely mundane.
He had plain brown hair, warm hazel eyes, and wore the shining, polished steel plate and pristine wool cloak of the Kingsguard.
Ser Robin caught my purple eyes, cleared his throat awkwardly, and offered me a strained smile.
I returned the gesture with a flat smile of my own before pulling the door shut between us.
Honestly, if I were a grown knight of the Kingsguard and I had to interact with a five-year-old child like me, I would be terrified of the kid too.
It is what it is.
Turning back around, I observed Aenys as he paced around my room.
I rarely saw my brother these days, as I spent most moons brooding in the volcanic towers of Dragonstone while he remained at court, but whenever possible, he had begun seeking out my company whenever we were under the same roof.
Clad in a fine tunic of violet silk lined with golden thread, the ten-year-old prince was technically twice my age, yet physically we were nearly the exact same height.
What he possessed in vertical height, he severely lacked in physical density.
Aenys was slender, pale, and narrow-shouldered, looking as though a strong gust of sea wind might snap him in half.
His watery purple eyes shone with genuine warmth as he reached into his tunic, hiding whatever small object he had brought with him behind his back.
“Brother!
It is good to see you,” Aenys said, his voice light, brimming with childhood enthusiasm.
“There is so much I have been longing to tell you!” I forced a soft, easy smile onto my face and scratched the back of my neck.
To be completely transparent, I never quite knew how to converse with him.
At his core, Aenys was a sweet, frail, naive child, whereas my mind was that of a mature person.
Engaging him in normal childhood chatter was remarkably difficult, at least on the days when I wasn’t busy beating his ass to the floorboards for fun.
In the beginning, I had been deeply conflicted about how to treat Aenys.
From a cold, ruthless strategy perspective, my elder brother was the primary obstacle standing between me and the Iron Throne.
Yet I held a strong, visceral aversion to the idea of murdering him.
In Georgie’s universe, kinslaying was the ultimate, unforgivable taboo, cursed by the Old Gods, the New Gods, and every cosmic force in existence.
Murdering your own blood was a guaranteed way to ensure your eventual, horrific downfall, and I already had enough medieval hazards to worry about without inviting ancient blood curses onto my head.
As the years marched on, my internal stance on fratricide had softened even further.
Aenys was genuinely fond of me.
While I actively tried not to foster deep brotherly affection toward him, just in case he met a tragic end or political necessity forced my hand down the road, it still felt dirty to contemplate throat-slitting a boy who looked at me with unconditional trust.
My current long-term plan was far simpler: I would sit back, cultivate my own power, and wait for his fragile immune system or a bad riding accident to do the heavy lifting for me.
Aenys, on the other hand, held zero reservations about our relationship.
For reasons I could not entirely fathom, my frail elder brother practically worshipped the ground I walked on, idolizing me and my quiet demeanor as though I were a mythical hero from the Age of Heroes.
Realizing that the quiet silence in the chamber was becoming prolonged, I dispelled my thoughts and offered him a polite response.
“It is good to see you as well, Aenys.
How have you been faring?” I sauntered over to the tall, narrow window, leaning my heavy forearms against the stone ledge to peer down at the sprawling settlement below.
King’s Landing was hardly a true city yet; it was a chaotic, disorganized warren of wooden hovels, leather tents, and muddy tracks.
Yet everywhere I looked, construction gangs were hard at work.
Masons were hauling granite blocks, carpenters were hammering roof beams, and draft horses were dragging heavy timber wagons through the mud.
It was slow, ugly work, but the capital was undeniably taking shape before my eyes.
“Oh!
I forgot to tell you, but did you know that father went out somewhere again?” Aenys exclaimed, rushing over to my side with his eyes shining like bright amethysts.
He carefully withdrew his hands from behind his back, revealing a sharp object held delicately in his hands.
“While leaving, he gave me this!” I leaned down to inspect the dagger.
It was indeed a striking specimen.
The surface of it was a brilliant, shimmering silver, laced with intricate, swirling veins of pale sky-blue that seemed to catch the sunlight streaming through the window.
All in all however, it was a completely normal dagger, nothing magical or Valyrian about it, much to my disappointment.
“I have been keeping it with myself at all times.
Just in case I get attacked,” Aenys babbled, his voice rising in excitement as he gently stroked the handle.
“I can’t wait to learn how to use it!” “That is wonderful news, Aenys,” I replied smoothly, offering him an encouraging nod to keep him happy.
“Surely you will make a fine assassin, or whatever.” To be honest, I was not very interested in the dagger, it looked rather boring to me over all.
And in my own expert and intelligent opinion, Aenys would forget about it pretty soon as well.
As expected, Aenys continued to chatter endlessly about potential names for his dagger, before it lost his attention and he started to ramble about his dragon instead.
Quicksilver, if I was not wrong.
I hadn’t seen it yet, but it was supposed to be a beautiful beast, something that would die by my hands in the future.
Or would it?
It was hard to say now.
A sudden, thunderous roar echoed across the sky, vibrating through the stone walls of the chamber and rattling the glass panes in the window frame.
The deafening sound instantly silenced Aenys’s chatter.
We both turned our heads toward the sky, gazing out over the mud-drenched roofs of the city.
High above the clouds, a massive, terrifying shadow was carving through the heavens, blocking out the sun as it swept over the Blackwater Rush.
It was Balerion the Black Dread.
Even from miles away, the sheer, staggering scale of the black dragon was breathtaking.
His jet-black wings spanned the horizon like a storm cloud, his long, armored tail whipping through the air as he glided effortlessly above the capital.
He was an absolute apex predator, an unnatural living weapon of mass destruction that made every human achievement below him look utterly pathetic.
Aenys stared out the window with wide, fearful eyes before turning back to face me, his curiosity piqued.
“What about you, Maegor?” Aenys asked, his voice quiet with genuine wonder as he paced around my wooden stool.
“Your mother told me that you rejected every single cradled egg the dragonkeepers offered to you in your nursery.
You refused them all and have not asked for another since.
What dragon do you intend to ride when you come of age?” I did not answer him immediately.
Instead, I leaned back against the rough stone wall, resting my heavy hands on my hips while my purple eyes tracked the serpentine, terrifying silhouette of the Black Dread circling high above the Aegonfort.
A small smile crept onto my face as I stared into the sky.
“I have my eyes set on one dragon only,” I murmured softly, my voice echoing in the quiet chamber as I watched the king of dragons roar into the wind.
“And I will accept no other.” …
Word Count: 2106.