Chapter Text
It was said that Targaryens were closer to gods than to men. The same was once said of the Valyrians of Old, who ruled Valyria and its many conquered lands from the top of their great beasts. The same was thought by those same dragonlords ate the height of their might. Some thought it was their hubris that turned them to ash. Others claimed it was a punishment from the gods for their great cruelty and many sins. Songs were made of how the greatest Empire to have ever existed was turned to ash in a day and a night from the wrath they brought upon themselves from the Fourteen Flames for enslaving, dark magic, necromancy and vile experiments. Those would be right.
Almost.
The truth, the world would never know was the true reason that led to the gods’ chosen nation to be vanquished, for it was not only hubris that brought Valyria its end, it was faithlessness.
At the height of their power. The dragonlords thought themselves invincible, true gods walking amongst common men, and soaring high above them. They grew careless with magic and negligent with their gods, for why should a god pay tribute to another if they were equals?
And so, all but a chosen few were punished.
It was on a stormy night that Daenys Targaryen woke up from what felt like her own death with the distinct memories of a life that she had not yet lived, but knew in her bones she would should she not change fate. The girl had been alive for thirteen sunturns when she had woken up, from melting along with Valyria with her family and her beloved Balerion, the dragon black as night who she had never seen before but knew came from the egg on her bedside. That would be twelve years in the future.
Daenys still felt the fires licking her skin, she still remembered how her brother Gaemon burned first, for he had hugged his sister and hid with her behind Balerion when the fires came and consumed his left wing before she could take flight atop her young dragon. She had twelve years to save her family from dying a second time with Valyria.
She told Gaemon first, and then her sister Eleana. The boy was three years her senior and the girl one. It was not fear that kept Daenys from telling their father Aenar first, she had not feared disbelief in even a single day in her life, for all knew the truth about her. Daenys was one of the dragonlords who possessed abilities beyond what even their peers had, those were called the demigods. While all dragonlords were said to have been descended from a single couple of demigods, it was known that all Fourteen gods sometimes blessed their kind with the half-god half-human child.
No one truly knew for sure how they came to be so, but all manuscripts from the dawn of Valyria were in accord with one truth. When their gods roamed this land to rebuild it from the long night, they created the first Valyrians, each god created their own pair, except for two gods.
Caraxes and Meraxes, the twin lovers gods of darkness and light, good and evil, balance and chaos, decided that, like them, their creations would always be born together, and exist only as a pair, for if one perished, the other would follow.
As time went, their half divine creations thrived in the fertile land they were granted. They multiplied and lived as shepherds in their small paradise. When the Great Other was banished from the land of the living and put to sleep, the Gods no longer lived amongst people as before, they descended, of course for a few night every now and then, but they could only see the world of mortals through the eyes of those of the same blood of the men and women they had created. For a day and a night they experienced life as that of the mortal they had chosen, as a silent spectator for what a mortal’s life feels like. From those expeditions, came the demigods.
They possessed powers beyond their peers, a small taste of what their divine parent had passed on to them. They were more durable, stronger, faster than others and some even had abilities beyond belief. From them came the legends of the blood mages and sorcerers from Old Valyria, for their skill and powers were truly remarkable. From their descendents came the dragonlords, for the great dragons Agarrax had created recognized in their blood a piece of the gods themselves, as long as they kept the bloodlines amongst their peers.
Their abilities ranged greatly amongst demigods, but each of them was similarly matched amongst themselves. All but for one kind.
Caraxes and Meraxes’ half human children came always as twins, like them. The twin gods experienced the mortal world as a couple and through a couple, and every time they blessed the world with a set of twins. A boy and a girl meant to exist together as their godly parents, for Caraxes could not conceive a world living without his sister, and Meraxes could not bear to live as a single being. Existing together granted each twin unparalleled and unprecedented power, for each would mirror and expend what the other had. They did not age and they did not die unless killed, for good and evil must always be a constant in this world
It was a common misconception to assume this or that god held more power than another, but the truth was that all things came from balance and chaos, darkness and light in equal measure. From Caraxes and Meraxes. The gods acted as one, for none knew which held good or evil, for they had both at all times. And so, their children came to be the most powerful of all, even amongst their kind.
It was through their overbearing power that new dragons came to exist, for if Agarrax had gifted the world with dragons, they had never produced a single egg until the first demigod twins to have become dragonlords had children of their own. And so began in Old Valyria the age of dragonlords and demigods.
As demigods, unusual abilities were a norm in Valyria, Daenys, the demigod daughter of Tessarion, and gifted with premonition was confident she would be believed and her warnings heeded. So she told her father Aenar Targaryen, who planned their leave from the Freehold without hesitation and headed West with his entire family, his household, all his coin, five adult dragons, three hatchlings and thirty eight dragon eggs. The same trust in her words, cannot be said for all dragonlords. The Targaryens were not the most influential family in the Freehold, and when the head of the Targaryens brought the subject to his closest few amongst the nobility, he was not believed and was somewhat betrayed. Word spread that the Targaryens claimed Valyria would fall and end in fire, and that all should flee. The family was mocked and fell into disgrace amongst the high and mighty, for such an end was inconceivable to the powerful masters of the skies who thought themselves equals to the gods who gave them power.
Knowing of the impending Doom that awaited Valyria, in the years that preceded it, the Targaryens strived to preserve and possess all they could in terms of knowledge, books, relics, weapons, craftsmanship, health staff and such that could be brought or bought from Valyria, for they knew it would soon end.
They settled in Dragonstone, in the castle of a rarely used outpost for the Freehold. At first, Aenar feared retribution for taking over the keep, but managed to purchase it for a relatively small amount of money from the Empire, for his peers thought their stay to be a self imposed exile of a man who fled in disgrace.
In the years that followed, Dragonstone was made into a small piece of Valyria. They built temples to the gods that saved them and Guild to train new healers, teachers, architects, blacksmiths and such. It is said that Aenar Targaryen spent nearly half of his fortune to fully staff the Guild and fill it with books and tomes with the best he could pay from Valyria itself in hopes of not losing all the knowledge that only his people had.
On the same night that Valyria fell, Daenys woke again, from another vision. This time she had the answer to the question she had been asking herself for the past twelve years. Why was she warned amongst all other demigods and children of Tessarion like herself? Why did her divine mother choose to spear her family and not someone else’s?
On the same night Valirya met its end, Daenys saw herself face to face with the Great Other who would rise again. The Great Other who would bathe the world in ice if not for a girl of her line who would come 700 years in the future. On the night her motherland saw its might for the last time, Daenys saw that from her blood will come the heir that was promised, and theirs shall be the song of ice and fire.