[AELOR’S POV]
After that first day of flying with my mother, I was finally allowed to fly without her.
The only strict rule was that I stay within our lands.
I accepted the condition readily, since there was nowhere else I really needed to go at this stage of my life.
The Saltpans were the farthest I ever traveled.
From high in the air there, I could make out distant mountains stretching toward the lands of the Eyrie.
Each time I reached the edge of our territory, I circled once, patted Ancalagon’s neck, and turned back.
But I never wanted to break my mother’s trust, and that was the main reason I always kept Ancalagon safely within our borders.
I also flew with Maegelle.
She frequently asked her mother for permission, and Queen Alysanne gladly granted it.
The dragonkeepers had added a second seat behind mine once Ancalagon grew large enough to carry two, and Maegelle always checked its straps herself before we left the ground.
Baelon and Alyssa had far too much stubborn pride to fly with me.
This was especially true of Baelon, who boasted that he would soon claim a dragon much larger than Ancalagon and fly entirely on his own.
This meant that Maegelle and I spent a lot of quiet time together in the sky, and it strengthened our growing friendship.
“What do you see yourself becoming when you get older, Aelor?” Maegelle asked.
Ancalagon was flying high above the clouds, and we were watching the calm white sea of mist below us in silence.
Maegelle trailed her fingers through the mist whenever we skimmed its surface, and she laughed softly when it curled around her wrist.
“I’m not sure yet, but I guess I’ll just inherit the territory from my mother once I’m old enough. I really don’t want her to be constantly exhausted from heavy work that she shouldn’t have to do alone,” I replied without hesitation.
Ruling Harrenhal, or Everspring by then, was simply what I needed to do when I grew up.
“I understand that part. But what do you want for yourself, apart from wanting Aunt Rhaena to relax and enjoy her life? What do you imagine yourself doing in the future? Have you ever thought about it?” Maegelle pressed, rephrasing her earlier question.
She was clearly thinking of something specific.
“No, I haven’t. But what prompted such a sudden question? Do you have any long term goals of your own?” I asked in turn.
She flushed bright red and seemed to search for an answer, but none came.
She fidgeted with the strap of her seat and then stared very hard at the clouds.
I was hardly stupid.
I could tell she had developed a crush on me.
But we were far too young to understand such complicated feelings, and even in my previous life, I had been single from birth.
I was nearly twenty three when I died in my previous world, and I still did not understand what it truly meant to be in love.
So when she did not answer right away, I did not press her.
I decided to let fate decide what would happen between us.
Besides, I knew I would eventually be betrothed to a king’s daughter, and who was to say it would not be Maegelle?
She was the closest to my age.
Alyssa, meanwhile, was clearly headed for Baelon, something I already knew from the histories of my past life. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Despite constantly teasing each other, those two exchanged lingering glances, and I was confident the Queen, an extremely perceptive woman, had noticed them too.
Maegelle and I flew above the clouds in peaceful silence.
A few moments later, I noticed a dark storm gathering in the far distance, its edges flickering with lightning.
I decided not to risk it and to end our flight for the day.
Maegelle agreed when I pointed the storm out, so I carefully turned Ancalagon back toward the castle.
Still, as we flew home, Maegelle’s question kept echoing in my mind.
‘What do I actually want to do for myself in the future?’ I thought.
I already knew I did not want to sit on the Iron Throne.
Ruling the entire realm was not only demanding but also dangerous.
I did want to know whether there was anything personal I wanted to accomplish in this new life.
‘I’m still very young.
I’m confident that I’ll find what I want to do,’ I reminded myself.
Despite my memories of a past life, I was only six years old in this one.
And thanks to the magic of my Essence, I could easily live for millennia if I wished.
I had plenty of time to think about my ultimate goal.
Perhaps I would fall in love with someone and enjoy the long days that followed together.
Or maybe I would build a legendary dynasty that could eclipse the entire known world.
There were many grand possibilities to consider, and thankfully, I had all the time in the world to choose.
[AELOR’S POV]
When I was not flying with Ancalagon, I spent my time inside with our resident maester.
We often discussed complex theories and occasionally carried out physical experiments.
This routine began when the old man discovered how strong my focus was and how unusual my ability to learn.
He quickly began to impart all the knowledge he had gained at the Citadel, purely to test my mind and see where my learning could take me.
If the maesters were not actively plotting to destroy every piece of magical proof in the realm, they seemed to be scholars who could not be stopped from discussing their favorite subjects.
Our maester was clearly on the gentler side.
He was simply a natural skeptic, not someone who removed historical evidence, and my passive telepathy had shown me as much from the day it first awakened.
At first, he was skeptical of the powerful magic infused into my very being.
But as evidence accumulated, and he saw the changes that had spread across our entire territory, even a strict man of science like him had to accept the truth about magic.
That acceptance did not mean he had stopped questioning the finer points of my abilities.
I did not trust him fully yet, but I trusted him enough to collaborate.
We were now working together to develop a building material I called cement.
In my past life, I had read an article about the properties of ancient Roman cement, specifically its ability to heal its own cracks over time.
The mental enhancement from my Essence had helped me recall the base ingredients perfectly, but I did not know the exact ratio or how to mix them properly.
The article had not gone into those specifics, and I had never handled the material in person.
So I decided to rediscover Roman cement in this medieval world.
Having it would let the coming renovation of the castle move much faster, and it would strengthen the stonework significantly, as the surviving buildings of that ancient era in my old world had proven.
On this day, we were working in the maester’s workshop.
I watched carefully as he mixed one part dry quicklime with three parts sifted volcanic ash, ash that my mother’s merchants had shipped in from Dragonstone at no small cost.
“Ash from Dragonstone does not come cheap, my lord,” the maester said as he worked.
“I hope this batch justifies it.”
“Mix them thoroughly. The last time we tried this, the batch came out far too dry to use,” I told him.
We had tried this method several times before.
As he stirred the powder, I gradually poured fresh water into the wooden basin and watched the mixture react.
I stopped pouring when I thought the consistency was right, while the old man kept working the thick paste.
I then shoveled the wet paste into the wooden mold we had prepared and spread it over the two parts of rock aggregate already packed inside.
The mixture grew hot, which gave me hope that the reaction was working.
I compacted the wet material over and over with a heavy tool until I was certain it was packed tightly enough.
We both stood back and waited for the block to set.
It was far sooner than I had expected, but after fifteen minutes of silence, we watched the entire mixture harden into a solid block.
The maester looked at me expectantly and handed me the iron shovel.
“If this works, my lord, I shall have to rewrite half of what the Citadel taught me about lime,” he said.
I took a deep breath and prepared myself for yet another frustrating setback.
“Here goes nothing,” I replied.
I swung the shovel at the hardened block with all the strength my small arms could manage.
The iron head rang against the surface without leaving a mark, and the thick wooden handle snapped in half.
“We did it!” the maester and I yelled together, and we cheered loudly in the workshop.
In my mind, I could already see the towers of the castle rising again, bound together by stone that would outlast us all.
Our experiment, which had demanded endless recalibration, endless recalculation, and the gathering of ingredients uncommon in this part of the realm, had finally succeeded.
The maester knelt to examine the block and found not a single chip on it.
He tapped it with a knuckle, then with the broken handle, and muttered that even Valyrian masons would have envied it.
“Next,” I told him, still grinning, “we will test whether it hardens underwater,”