GOT : All Left Behind

The torches lining the ancient passage had not been lit in decades, centuries almost, and the tunnel itself was dominated by the musky smell of neglect. But still, he descended. He descended until the stairs came to an end and the floor leveled out.

And the Shrine of Morning was revealed.

It was by no means elaborate.

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A small, seven-sided room, a sept in miniature though only in shape. There were no devotional icons, no candles lit to the Seven, no incense filling the air.

No, there was only a statue of a kneeling knight, holding up a sword. While the knight was stone, the sword was not. None would ever mistake it for stone, not when the blade glowed ever so softly. It was an ancient blade, a design so old as to not even have fullers, the hilt lacking all ornamentation, but the primitivity of the design was deceptive. Truthfully, this was blade rivaled any forged by the dragonlords of Old Valyria.

Dawn.

His family's blade, meant to be wielded only by the finest warriors of his house.

Darion Dayne was not one of them.

He held no illusion that he would ever have been one of them.

But there was a dragon threatening his castle. He had to fight it. As a knight and a lord, he had to defend his home. And this was… lunacy, this was absolutely mad.

For the first moment since he had picked up his daughter, Darion hesitated. He was about to pick up a sword to fight a dragon! How mad could he be? What madness possessed him to think that this would make a difference?

No, the smart thing to do was to return to the sept, hide, and wait for this to blow over.

Like a wise man would.

All he had to do was hole up in the sept with his daughter.

Hide while a dragon was allowed to burn and ravish his lands. Hide while the killer of his wife and sons and remaining daughters had free rein to do as he wished to his lands. No, no, Darion did not -could not- know that they were dead. Mayhaps they yet lived.

Mayhaps Ser Raymun had succeeded in his duty to bring his family to the sept for safety.

If he had succeeded, then he did not need the sword.

He could wait out the storm with his family. Even if Ser Raymun had failed, he could still stay with Danelle, comfort her as her home was destroyed and all they could do was hide and listen.

But he would still be abandoning his holdings to their fate without so much as a fight.

Darion heard another roar from the dragon laying waste to Starfall, muffled by thick layers of stone, felt something stir within him.

No, he did not need the sword. He needed to hide. Like a craven, not a knight.

Was that what he was, then? A craven instead of a knight, rejecting yet another symbol of his family's legacy as his home burned around him?

His hand seized the grip of the ancient sword, the brittle old leather coming off in chunks as his finger tightened around it. Lifting it up, he found its weight to be no different from those of more mundane great swords. But in his hands, it felt… different. Alive. Like there was a greater purpose to it.

It was a sword of heroes, after all.

And what defined the greatest of heroes if not the willingness to face the greatest challenges in the direst circumstances?

Knowing what he had to do, Lord Darion Dayne returned to the sept.

He was glad to see little Danelle had heeded his warnings. His little darling had crammed herself beneath some pews, staying out of sight. Darion's heart ached at the sight, desiring to go to her to wrap her in his arms and tell her all would be well, but that was before he saw the figure just outside the sept.

A giant of a man in soot-stained white armor, patiently waiting in front of the entrance to the sept, wiping himself down with a rag.

Anger rose in his throat. The man who had attacked his family, had attacked his holdings, and he was standing there? On foot and vulnerable? The need for vengeance and blood sang in his veins.

Honor demanded vengeance.

He had the sword for it. Why not sheathe it in his neck?

No sooner had he cleared the threshold of the sept, the mad princeling addressed him.

"Lord Dayne," he greeted him, still respectful despite standing in a smoking ruin of all the lord had once held dear. That respectful tone felt all the more hollow when he noticed the Dayne banner he was using to clean his armor. Already, most of his right side had been freed of grime, revealing a black dragon dancing upon his breastplate. "So good of you to join me."

Darion wasted no time on words, swinging wildly at the princeling's head, but cutting only the air as his target stepped back. Just as swiftly as he had dodged, the princeling stepped in and planted a fist in his guts, doubling him over.

But instead of finishing the job, he simply stepped back once more, leaving Darion Dayne to regain his footing. And his weapon.

"What is this madness?" Darion hissed out between clenched teeth as his eyes beheld the destruction. The maester's tower still smoldered, filled with smoke rising high into the sky as the odd tongue of flame leaped from a window. The walls of his castle were a half-molten ruin, the walkways and crenelations long since having lost their original shape. The gatehouse in particular had become a twisted, molten mess, the stone and iron having melted into one.

But the keep was worst of all.

The keep where his family had slept peacefully not even a quarter of an hour ago…

Stone walls should not wrinkle and sag like rolls of fat.

Stone should not run and congeal.

Stone should not drip and form puddles.

"What is this madness?" he repeated, the leather-bound grip of Dawn creaking as his fists tightened, yet more chunks of leather dropping free. The weight of the sword seemed to come less and less, and he found it hard to resist the urge to swing blindly, ineffectual as the last attempt had been.

The princeling did not answer immediately, the blank face of his helmet staring impassively ahead as he drew the hammer at his waist.

A hammer, crude and brutal, with a spike opposite the head.

An appropriate weapon for such a brute.

"Now that is something you do not see every day," the degenerate descendant of the dragonlords mused. Though his face was hidden behind the frozen visage of his helmet, there was exaggerated amusement in his words. False amusement, Darion realized, to hide something else. "The man who allowed this war to happen, suddenly angry that it affected him too."

"Allowed this war to happen?" The audacity of this mad princeling was something else. "I gave your father everything he needed to best Prince Morion! I gave your realm everything it needed!"

"Everything except peace," the princeling observed, beginning to pace like an impatient animal. As though he were the predator and Darion the prey. "You are a mighty lord. You and your fellow lords of the Red Mountains, your fellow Stony Dornishmen, you did not want this war, did you? Together, you could have averted this entire affair."

"Is that what this is all about?" he asked. "You bring war because I could not convince my bull-headed liege to abandon his idiotic plan to invade the Stormlands?"

"I bring war because your liege declared war," the princeling said, the good humor falling away and simmering rage filling his tone. "Except he lacked even the common courtesy to do that much. A surprise attack, putting an end to decades of peace for a failed invasion."

"Well, congratulations, you defeated Prince Morion." Were his hands open, he might have considered a round of applause. "Collect your reparations and get back to your side of the mountains before I send raiders to do unto King's Landing as we did unto Highgarden."

"That was my father's idea," the princeling admitted, the pacing faster and more intense, as though he dearly wished to do something else. As though the movement existed only to stay his hand. "At least, until my brother died. Until my brother was murdered for no greater sin than defending his father's lands from an invasion by a bloodthirsty tyrant."

"And that justified the murder of my family?" Darion Dayne asked incredulously. The moment he had seen the molten ruin of his keep, he had known his family was dead. There was no way to avoid the truth. His family had not made it to the sept.

They had died.

They had died because of some abomination of incest caught an arrow in an unfortunate place.

"You could have prevented it," the prince declared simply, abandoning his pacing and refusing to answer the question. The hammer came up, pointed straight ahead. "You could have stopped this war before it started, you and Lords Fowler and Yronwood. But you chose to be a half-hearted traitor. Willing to betray your liege with ravens, but not willing to raise arms against him. A traitor without the courage to act."

Enough.

He would not stand for this… for this abomination to call him a craven.

He was a knight, damn it! He would live and die a knight!

Roaring in anger, Lord Darion Dayne rushed at the princeling, swinging wildly, aiming to split him open from hip to groin, armor be damned.

But as Dawn descended, it never reached its target.

Quick as a flash, that hammer moved, and Darion's hands were empty. Dawn clattered across the ground a few feet away, and the princeling leveled his hammer squarely at his chest.

This was it, wasn't it?

This was how Lord Darion Dayne, the son of Lady Clarisse Dayne, would die. His chest was to be caved in by an inbred and insane princeling from across the mountains.

He closed his eyes, praying that his daughter would know to avert her eyes, praying that she would be spared from whatever cruel fate the princeling had in store for her. Darion would accept his fate, accept his ribs being splintered and his heart being pulped, so long as she was safe.

But his prayers were interrupted by a wave of furnace heat enveloping him from behind. The sweat that had gathered on him evaporated at once, only to immediately be replaced by a new sheen.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he turned, until he saw the beast that had destroyed the castle he had called home for decades.

Darion did not even come up to the nostrils that had bathed him in furnace winds. The bared teeth were each nearly as long his arm. Horns taller than he ringed the head, and a pair of venomous green eyes bored into him.

He had known the beast was large, but it was another to be right in front of it, craning his neck just to look it in the eye.

"Cannibal," the mad princeling called out, his voice carrying no particular emotion or order, but the beast withdrew its head. The neck coiled back on itself as the massive creature withdrew to the shadow of the walls.

What tortures had he inflicted upon this animal that it was so subservient to him? What sort of monster stood before him that a creature the size of a small keep withdrew at a word? No, he knew the answer to that.

It was the kind of monster that would melt a keep with women and children inside it with no warning. The kind of monster for whom ancient vows of vassalage were temporary inconveniences.

Turning around once more, Darion realized with no small amount of horror that the Targaryen had picked up Dawn, admiring the blade.

That was his family's sword! A sword with a legend predating even the oldest kingdoms of Westeros! A sword passed from the finest knight to the finest knight of his family!

But Darion Dayne, Lord of Starfall, never had a chance to voice those protests.

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