Chapter 74: Arthur 31
293AC
I pinched at the space in-between my eyes as the Sword finally hit the open water. Even with all the potential that the Islands presented I was glad to be leaving them. The sooner the better, in my opinion, it would be a long and grueling journey home. At least a couple of months presuming the wind remained constant, possibly longer, or shorter if we got lucky, but still long enough that I worried.
At the very least the morning had seen me deal with one of my greatest potential problems. My eyes were drawn down to my bandaged hand. Asha, my new sister, and bound with magic I had no idea how to replicate, and never had expected to cast in the first case.
It was a silly thing, bound up in pop-culture and novels. Oh, I knew how to make Valyrian blood oaths, but like most of their magic it required a sacrifice of slaves proportional to the weight of the oath, and it was thus like most of their magic useless to me. No, whatever it was I cast today was powerful, but it was not the cursed magic of the Valyrians, it was a binding of blood freely given. Even now I could feel a sort of care that I was quite sure I had not felt before forming in my heart for Asha. I had wished her no real harm before true, but now I found myself worrying about whether her father would even accept her with a ship, or if he did not how much that might hurt her.
It was odd as if the feelings were creating themselves, but I would not deny their truth nonetheless, and I was sworn to them. I would just have to be careful of making similar oaths in the future. Whatever magic I had tapped into was changing my very mind, and I couldn't take that lightly.
In addition, I doubt my father would be happy I had sworn to treat a Greyjoy as a blood-sister, or my mother for that part. But then I didn't really intend to mention the magical component. Let them just call it a discretion of youth, or a useful way to forge an alliance. They likely wouldn't understand what I now felt unless they experienced it themselves. I could no longer dismiss the value and feelings of Asha any more than I could Eric or Shireen. I would ensure that all of them had a good life and that they got to live it as they wished.
Honestly, I doubted that I would ever perform such a ritual again, at least not without far more careful wording. I tapped my fingers on the table as I thought. 'Perhaps a modified version for my marriage. I'm sure Ariane would like it.'
I could see it, though it would, unfortunately, need to be bereft of flowery language. That was too great a risk with magic, better to be concise and get the point across.
'Still, it isn't so bad.' If Asha felt half of what I was feeling then she couldn't betray me, I certainly couldn't imagine discarding her anymore, something that I had seen as a real possibility earlier in the morning. Having her as a sister would be worth the cost I was sure, but how much of that surety came from my spell.
'Fucking magical bullshit.' I grumbled to myself. Technology could be experimented with, in a safe environment, but blood pacts? You kind of had to mean it. I much preferred Alchemy, it was clearly magical sure, but it wasn't completely out of nowhere like the spell this morning or my ridiculous lightning. Alchemy was magic that looked and felt like science, something I could control feasibly. As far as I could tell there were no deep ones or pacts with dark gods involved. Of course, thoughts of that magic brought to mind the idea of Gerald.
One year...
I had one year presumed dead, minus however many days since I had left the coast before he would dig the books out of their hiding place in the Dragonglass Tower and share them with my father, that or 297 AC, whichever came first. I wouldn't leave my father Flat-footed in the War of the Five Kings.
Presuming that war even happened, which it might well not. At least not the way it ought to.
'Gah, the Game of Thrones is a pain in the ass.'
I personally would much rather just conquer the world through brute force. Unfortunately, guile was sometimes necessary, and my position put a target on my back from birth.
I wonder if my father had even realized the scope of my private army yet? A thousand two hundred men under arms would be big even for a large house, outside of the reach anyhow, and that wasn't even counting my sailors, which easily tripled the number.
Would he be proud? Shocked? I had told him of its creation and growth in my letters but been discrete about its size so as to not hand Varys anything unnecessarily.
Hell, if he let it grow apace, it might now be fifteen-hundred strong, with more by the time I got back as grizzled old sellswords and greenhorn alike were busted into line so they could fight properly. Dragonstone possessed the world's first boot camp.
I grumbled as I felt the ship start to turn again, tacking into the wind at a hard angle.
Someday this cool tropical current would be the lifeblood of my empire, but for now?
For now, it was just a pain in my ass.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone