Dragonstone
Gaemon followed Daemon as they made their way upstairs, both of them climbing the stairs of the Stone Drum to reach the Chamber of the Painted Table of Dragonstone.
His father had given him a whole tour of the island and even taken him to Dragonmont, saving this chamber for the very end.
So here they were, Gaemon introduced to every nook and cranny of the island, making their way to the Chamber of the Painted Table.
Gaemon had read about it even in this world, in the books given to him by the maesters.
His mind was already conjuring images of the chamber from what he knew of it.
Four tall windows, each facing south, north, west, and east, placed between them and beneath the domed ceiling, a painted table depicting all of Westeros.
Though that was a lie of sorts, since the table didn’t capture the whole continent; Beyond the Wall was rendered no better than the Lands of Always Winter.
“Why do you think the dragons aren’t the reason mana is so deeply saturated here on Dragonstone?
You told Viserys the dragons are why mana runs potent around the Dragonpit, and within it.” His father asked as the doors of the chamber came into view.
“Because, unlike at the Dragonpit in King’s Landing, the mana here isn’t at its most potent at Dragonmont, where the dragons actually roost,” Gaemon replied as they both stood before the doors.
“I can see mana thicker than Dragonmont’s, lying beneath us.
The amount this island alone holds is massive.
The Dragonpit in King’s Landing doesn’t hold a candle to it.”
Daemon turned and looked at Gaemon with a proud smirk.
“This mana might be the reason our house came here.
It might be the reason Valyria chose this island in the first place, when the Stepstones would have made far more sense, given the trade routes.” His father surmised, turning back to open the doors the moment he finished speaking.
“Or the Valyrians chose it for the volcanic nature.
You seem to forget dragons love to nest near volcanoes.
And I suspect Valyrian sorcerers can only shape stone touched by volcanic activity, though I could be wrong, the Black Wall of Volantis exists, after all.” Gaemon said as he got his first good look at the Chamber of the Painted Table.
The chamber was just as he remembered from the books, the architecture, the placement of the table, the raised seat, the hearth, the iron brazier, all exactly as he’d read, save one thing.
But before addressing it, Gaemon let himself take in every detail of a place he’d only ever read about.
A few moments later, his eyes caught on one detail absent from both the maesters’ books and his memories of his past life.
Understandable, given the thickness of the magic layered over the doors, magic that had gone unseen by nearly everyone, even the Targaryens themselves.
Gaemon’s focus narrowed entirely onto how the magic worked, how it flowed to weave an illusion that had evaded the eyes of Targaryens for a century, riders of magic-breathing dragons no less.
“Gaemon.” His name, shouted, jolted him harshly out of the trance he’d fallen into.
He didn’t turn toward his father.
Instead he willed the mana, trying to shape it around the knife he’d drawn from his belt.
The magic on the door was tethered to a colossal sea of mana he could see churning beneath Dragonstone itself.
Gaemon couldn’t draw on that, so he tethered the illusion to his own mana instead.
The result was no different from what he had gotten back in King’s Landing, another failure.
His mana wrapped and flowed exactly as he willed it, but the outcome didn’t change.
His father was at his side in an instant, steadying him before he could fall, panic and concern warring on his face.
“What is it, Gaemon?” He asked.
Gaemon looked at him, then at the knife.
“Do you see this knife?” Gaemon asked.
Daemon looked at him quizzically but answered anyway, no sarcasm this time.
“Yes.
Clean and sharp.”
Gaemon sighed and pulled away from his father with a nod to show he was fine.
“Now do you see that door?” Gaemon asked again, pointing at the section of wall shielded entirely in swirling red mana.
“Are we playing a game now?”
“No, for god’s sake.
There is a door hidden by magic.
I can see it because I can see the mana at work hiding it from everyone’s view.”
Daemon looked at the wall Gaemon pointed to, one eyebrow raised.
But his expression shifted as the moments passed, and once he’d finished turning it over in his head, he looked back at Gaemon.
He opened his mouth.
“Can you open it?
Unveil whatever magic has hidden it from my eyes?” The question came exactly as expected.
“I can try,” Gaemon said, walking toward the swirling red mana, which carried the taste of Targaryen blood, metallic, with a reptilian undertone beneath it.
He approached the foreign mana cautiously and studied it with full intensity.
The thought of lifting his blindfold crossed his mind; he discarded it just as quickly.
It took some time, but he traced the flow of mana back to a single point, where it curved into a very particular shape.
Gaemon glanced back at his father, who was staring at the wall with his own eyes, and at his son, who studied it with the eyes of a maester.
Gaemon turned back to the point and considered it again.
Should he risk it?
He could read the flow of mana, trace its shape, but that didn’t mean he could predict what would happen if he actually touched it.
“What is it?” Daemon asked, catching the struggle written across Gaemon’s face.
Gaemon took a deep breath and let his mana coat his hand.
The pain was forgotten entirely as time seemed to slow, his Six Eyes tracing every turn and twist of the red mana, hunting for any hint of harm before it could strike outward.
His focus split three ways, and he barely registered the moment his fingers touched the section of wall that was protruding, ever so slightly, from the rest of the structure.
The sensation of something slicing his finger snapped his hand back instantly.
A groan of stone followed as a door-shaped section slid inward into the wall.
The opening was narrow, room enough for one grown man.
Gaemon and Daemon watched in silence as a square gap opened in the structure, seamless, without so much as a crack marking where it had been.
Gaemon looked at his father, who felt the gaze and looked back, shock still written across his face.
Daemon needed no instruction.
He drew Dark Sister from its sheath and lit a torch from the flame still burning in the iron brazier.
His father stopped Gaemon from taking the lead, going first himself, one hand on his sword, the other on the torch.
Beyond the hidden door was dark, ink-dark, with only the torchlight to fill it as the stairs curved downward, coiled the way one might expect if serpents had designed them.
Neither of them spoke as they began their descent.
The stairway was so dense with magic that it took Gaemon a while to catch the red mana swirling within the seventh step, and by the time he did, his father had already set his boot on it.
Before Gaemon could speak, Daemon lurched back up the stairs as the sole of his boot evaporated the instant it touched stone.
Gaemon caught the thin layer of leather barely holding on, protecting what remained of his father’s foot, and even as a Targaryen, one who could bear heat most men couldn’t, this was something else entirely; they both watched the leather simply vanish, as though it had never been there at all.
“What is this sorcery?” Daemon shouted.
“A trap.
Crafted and placed by the same sorcerer who hid this chamber under illusion and set the blood lock upon it,” Gaemon explained.
Looking closer at the magic this time, he could make out the glyphs worked into it.
He didn’t know Valyrian glyphs well, but he recognized blood, thanks to his father’s habit of reciting the words of House Targaryen in High Valyrian more times than Gaemon could count, and insisting he learn to write them too.
The man was madly in love with his house and its history.
“Fucking mad woman.
Grandfather was right, she was as mad and cruel as her son.
Fuck her—” Daemon launched into a stream of curses filthy enough to make a sailor blush.
“Woman?
You know who set the illusion and the trap?” Gaemon asked, curious.
Since the moment he’d set foot on this stairway, he’d assumed some nameless Valyrian sorcerer had built it, and that something interesting waited at the other end.
That his father knew the identity, and the gender, of whoever it was, caught him off guard, and pulled his curiosity along with it.
“You don’t know?” Daemon asked, standing and yanking off the burned boot, tossing it aside.
“It’s Visenya’s hidden chamber, Gaemon.
You’ve found the door to the vault where that bitch hid everything our house once knew of magic.
What I brought you here to read, scrolls of what Valyrians could do, not how they did it, that’s all that’s left, because the petty queen hid the rest before she croaked.
Now the two of us will bring that lost knowledge back to our family.
So keep your eyes open.
She was known for her vindictiveness and her cruelty.
I doubt one trap will be the last of it.”