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The Flames of Winter	By : Brostani Category: G through L > Game of Thrones Views: 12982 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire, nor the characters from them. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-The Dragon
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It began in the godswood. Eddard Stark—Lord Paramount of the North, Lord of Winterfell, and Warden of the North—could often be found there, any time he had to make a difficult decision or felt unsure that he was doing the right thing. A highly moral and conscientious man, Ned spent time there frequently. Because of this, he was the first to notice the change in the heart-tree at the center of the godswood.
At first it merely seemed to be a trick of the light, a shadow on the heart-tree's face, but when he looked closer, he realized that this was no shadow. Some kind of sticky black sap was coming from the heart-tree's "mouth." Now, he knew that sap often oozed from the faces of heart-trees—triggered by the deep cuts into the trunk of the weirwood to create the faces, especially the cuts for the eyes—but it was usually a rich, deep blood red. This was the glossy black of dragonglass, and the way the light hit it, it almost seemed to burn with an internal fire. He kneeled, bringing his face closer to the anomaly.
Ned touched the black sap, and it felt hot on his fingertips, hotter than anything should feel in the chill of the godswood. Distracted by the strange heat and almost unaware of his actions, he brought his fingers to his mouth, thin strands of sap stretching back to the mass on the tree, and tasted the sap.
The moment his fingers touched his tongue, a surge of heat flowed through his body, and knowledge he had no way of knowing flooded his mind. Winterfell's heart-tree was part of a web, of sorts, of all heart-trees, a web that had its own kind of intelligence and its own kind of power that was greater than the sum of its parts. That creation had come at a cost—the sealing away of a god (an Old God, Ned's mind supplied), banished into the web by the Children of the Forest and the other Old Gods.
The Old God in the web was the soul of the first dragon, who had existed for thousands of years before the now-lost kingdom of Valyria was founded by his descendants, both human and dragon. (Wait...the Valyrians were actually descended from dragons?) He had been sealed away because of his conflict with the other Old Gods and their worshippers.
The dragon god—he was so old that he had no name, or if he had once had a name he had long forgotten it—disagreed with their plans to fight the ravagers (the First Men). The dragon had better relations with the First Men than most of the Old Gods and the Children, through his evident power and his...personal relationships with some of them. Some he had taught to create dragonsteel (Valyrian steel?), some he had given eggs to, and some he had bedded. (...Bedded?) He was a god of fire, of passion, of heat. Yes, he bedded the First Men—the women for children, more followers to serve him, and the men for pleasure. He had his own ways to win their loyalty, and he believed that he could expand that to all the First Men, in time.
The other gods disagreed and disapproved: they found him amoral and hedonistic, not caring about the taboos they held dear: incest, kinslaying, bastardy. They also believed he did not truly care about the fate of their original followers, the Children, in favor of his fascination with these new invaders. When they proposed the creation of the Others (the...White Walkers? They truly existed?) through the use of his sacred dragonglass, monsters meant to fight the First Men, he protested violently, and the other gods banded together to seal him into the newly-created web of weirwoods. They powered the web with his own power, his soul locked away behind a barrier meant to last forever. His followers among Men quickly fled, taking their worship of him back across the world, along with some dragon eggs, to their homeland of what would become Valyria.
The dragon god could only watch, through the web, as the Others overtook their creators. Without him, their stores of dragonglass and dragonsteel quickly failed, and the remaining Children and the other Old Gods were forced to make peace with the invading First Men, in spite of it all. The dragon internally raged at the needless waste of life, and vowed revenge on those who had walled him away. Over thousands of years, the seal began to lose power, leading the dragon to anticipate freedom. A century and a half ago, he suddenly felt many of the magics of the world that had been bound to his draconic descendants now bonding to him, giving him increased power (the extinction of the dragons did this, Ned thought) and an increased ability to push at the bonds holding him prisoner.
Now...now the dragon was free. He was free to get his revenge. But he was weakened, and he needed a willing host to share himself with. One of his own descendants would be best, but a descendant of the First Men would do as well. Allowing him in would change Eddard, of course, but only by making him more like the dragon...and who would not want that?
(I worship the Old Gods, as my fathers before me have for thousands of years! I do not want to wreak vengeance on them, even for turning on one of their own. And those taboos they hold dear—I hold them as well. I do not think I can willingly allow you in.)
This was all very well, the dragon god thought, except that the Others still existed. He could feel their power increasing, enabled by the draining of magics from the land into the sealed dragon, and soon, very soon—measured not in centuries or in decades, but in a matter of months or years—another Long Winter would begin. The Others would come as they did before, and they would turn the North into a desolate, icy wasteland unfit for human life, before they would do the same to all the land. The dragon god could stop that, but only if Eddard allowed him in. Was Eddard willing to watch his warriors, his villagers—his children—fall before such an onslaught?
Eddard could feel the truth in the dragon god's words, and the mere thought horrified him. He could see his loved ones suffering in his mind's eye. Was he willing to sacrifice them for his morals, for his piety? Honor had a price, but was the price too high if it were the lives of those he cared about, those under his protection, his family?
It was. If allowing the dragon in even gave his people a fighting chance against the White Walkers, he would give up anything and everything he was. This was what it meant to be a Stark. Winter was coming—winter was here—and the North had to be prepared to deal with it.
(Very well. I accept.) Though he was apprehensive—no, actually terrified, he placed his other hand firmly on the black sap.
A fiery joy not his own filled him, and a boiling blackness surged from the mouth of the heart tree toward Ned. Ned had a brief moment of terror before it surrounded him, penetrating his clothes as though they didn't exist, entering his body through every opening and pore, filling him with a raging, burning heat that nevertheless left him unburnt. An observer from the outside would have seen the raging blackness go into Ned as he collapsed to the ground and went into a silent seizure, body and face spasming into a rictus that could have been pain or pleasure. The cold, hard ice that lay at the core of every Stark melted and boiled, and all of the worries, all of the fears, all of the restraints that had plagued him as long as he could remember—his humanity—were set aflame and he could feel them burning to ash.
It was a matter of moments before Ned Stark rose, born anew. He was Ned, with all of Ned's memories, and he was the dragon, with all of his memories and powers, and he was something more than either. He was both direwolf and dragon. He felt young, strong, full of power and stamina. He could feel a massive reserve of power at his command. Ned felt like he could throttle a giant with his bare hands in the daytime and then fuck a pretty boy—who in his thoughts had the girlish face of his son Bran—until the sun came up the next morning. Intellectually, he knew that the old Ned would have been aghast at such a thought, if only at the suggestions of adultery, incest, and bedding not only the same gender, but also a child. The new Ned, however, knew that this was only because the old Ned was saddled with useless morals and qualms. Ned now understood the way things truly were. There was power, used to control and preserve one's own life and others', and there was pleasure, that which made those lives worth living. Those were the great pillars of the world, for those who could see it...the pleasure of power and the power of pleasure. He was free now, and he liked both, and enjoyed both, and had no qualms about using both.
And he had many reasons to use his power. The other Old Gods, now mere shadows of their former selves. The Children of the Forest, living in hiding far to the North. And the Others, building power to sweep down like a wave of ice.
He bared his teeth in a snarl as he thought about his vengeance, and the motion led him to catch a glimpse of himself in the still waters of the godswood. His eyes were a smooth black obsidian from lid to lid, and his hair was now the silver of Valyrian steel. The hair made him look like one of his remaining direct human descendants, the Targaryens. He also recognized that his personality was much closer to the Targaryens than the Ned Stark he had been before—the dragon would out, he supposed. He smiled as he thought that Robert would have kittens, seeing his friend Ned looking like a hated Targaryen.
With but a simple twist of thought, his hair and eyes appeared just as they had before. He did not want people suspecting his change until he had the opportunity to share its glory with them. They would not understand if they saw him like this, but as the dragon god, he had had ways of earning and ensuring his followers' absolute loyalty. He would do the same now as he had then, and—as Ned's and the dragon's memories merged to form a new thought, his eyes widened. Oh yes, that would be perfect. Ned was sad to think that he would soon be without the dragon within him, but he knew at least everything the dragon had taught him would remain, and he would remain one of the dragon's most trusted worshippers. But right now he could feel the fiery darkness within him boiling, itching to be shared, and he would begin now.
****
In a cavern deep under the earth, enveloped in the deepest roots of a heart-tree, an ancient-looking man screamed in horror.
Small figures darted to him, voices high and eerie. "What is it? What has happened?"
Tears ran from the man's unseeing eyes. "It has begun. The Dragon is free, and we are all lost."
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The Flames of Winter