Blood of Old Valryia (Aemond Targaryen FF)

Chapter Two

Aesira leaned against Sakaris as she struggled to her feet, her body was still sore and weak from the journey, and the fall had only made it worse.

The she-dragon rumbled as she growled inside of her shut mouth, her displeasure was evident in the way her body tensed. Neither dragon nor rider seemed to be in a particularly good mood. Aesira, annoyed with the in-mouth growl, dared not to turn and berate the dragon, lest it startle the boy with the weapon and he accidentally skewered her. She could see that the boy was not as confident as he sounded, he was holding the weapon with a shaky hand and his eyes were filled with uncertainty. He looked even less confident than he did when he was sitting astride Vhagar.

"I owe you nothing, not even mine own name, boy." Aesira spat onto the sand, her tone filled with disdain and contempt.
The boy blinked in surprise, and his grip on the dagger seemed to loosen a bit.

"Boy. That means 'boy'," he repeated, dropping the point of the dagger a bit, "It's Valyrian, so you are one of us then. I'm Aemond...Targaryen."

"I am not one of you, Issaros." She snapped, using the word that had been hurled at her for years, the word that had been used to isolate her from everyone who had been born in Volantis. There truly was no word in the common tongue of Westeros that fully encapsulated the meaning of the word, and if there was, she didn't know it.

"You are from House Targaryen, are you not?"Aemond cocked an eyebrow, his tone was condescending, as if he thought she was simple-minded and incapable of grasping basic concepts. Aesira could feel her anger rising, she knew that he was repeating himself, using simpler words to belittle her. "Your name?"

"I choose not to give it to you," Aesira said, her words were hesitant and faltering. "You are not the one I am searching for." She could feel her own insecurity creeping in as she spoke, she hadn't spoken the common tongue in so long, and her fluency was not as strong as it should be.

Her mother had not cared enough to ensure she was fluent in the common tongue, and her father, having wanted nothing to do with Westeros, thought the language to be too primitive. Aesira knew that her hesitation and uncertainty were showing, and she couldn't help but feel a sense of embarrassment. She didn't want Aemond to think that she was weak or uneducated.

Aemond reaffirmed his grip on the hilt of his dagger, suddenly remembering himself, "And who are you looking for?"

Aesira's body moved with precision and speed as she fell forward, just far enough to pull her staff from the straps on her back. She expertly twisted the staff to knock the dagger from Aemond's too-tight grasp. Without a moment's hesitation, she struck the unsuspecting boy in his belly with the end of the staff. Aemond gasped and fell onto the sand, wheezing between breaths as he grappled around to reclaim his fallen dagger.

"Vhagar!" The name burst from his lips, a calling, a command.

Aesira ignored the barking pain in her legs as she crawled onto her own dragon's back once more, determined to take flight despite their exhaustion. As Sakaris flared her wings to climb into the sky, Vhagar let out an ear-splitting roar. The sound was so loud that Aesira clamped her hands atop her ears and shrieked, her eyes feeling like they would pop out of her face. The roar was deafening, and it shook the ground beneath her.

Sakaris drew her wings back in and lowered herself into the sand completely, a sign of submission to the larger and more dominant dragon, Vhagar. As she did so, her rider tumbled from her back, curling up into a ball on the sand, clearly in fear and defeat.

Minutes passed before Aesira felt safe enough to pull her hands away from her ears. The ringing in her ears was louder than any other sound in the entire world and for a moment, she thought she may have lost her hearing altogether, that she'd be stuck with the endless ringing in her ears, forever. As she slowly lowered her hands, she realized that the ringing in her ears had started to fade, and she could hear the sound of the wind and the waves.