Oaths and Vows {Jaime Lannister}

Prologue

The girl stood alone atop the balcony of the blackened castle she called home, looking out at the lands around them. The ground within the castle and for a fair distance around it grew grass that seemed to glow a brilliant sheen of white. Beyond that, however, was a desolate wasteland of smoldering ash as black as black could get. It was from that substance, hardened a thousand years or more ago by dragon fire, that the castle of Shadowstone was built.

The smoothed bricks of Shadowstone Castle showed no sign of ever housing dragon fire though, and the stone felt as cold as it always did; the only cold thing in Asshai it often seemed. Her chambers stood at the top peek of the tallest tower of four, the one that stood to the southern end of the castle, overlooking the other three towers that rose up like a staircase twisting around the tall dome that marked the Great Hall and the Throne room, both seldom ever used.

They weren't all black, the Four Towers of Shadowstone. They all had Bright white stone that shone in the any light, especially against the black of the other stone. They spiraled up and around like snakes and dragons fighting as they coiled their way up the towers. A perfect depiction of the battles that took place between the Dragons of the Targaryens and the Basilisks of the Emrys'.

The dome was different however, as on the walls were white stone made in the likeness of flames and through it Basilisks of black stone slithered, unburned, unscathed, and unstoppable in their wrath with bright yellow jewels for its eyes. Above soared dragons with eyes made in the same yellow jewels shinning in any light that graced them, just as everything else aside from the jet black stone that never seemed to catch any light at all, no matter what was done to it.

Her chambers were always dark because of that, despite the bright blue flames that blazed from the wall torches. There was a hearth too, one carved fancily of white stone and silver snakes, with a carving of a white stone eagle flying above them that had an eye of yellow gemstone. Her bed stood against the wall opposite it, a mattress of rose petals with drapings of silver and gold.

The exit was opposite the Balcony, but at the moment she had no interest in it. The girl's bright blue eyes remained staring over the edge of the balcony, her long fiery red curls blowing freely around her head. She was beautiful, even if she disagreed with everyone who'd ever told her she was. Her face was a soft heart shape, with her chin coming to a gentle point. Her nose was cute and small, with a slight tip and her lips were pale and shiny, giving the pale girl the look of a pixie.

She was dressed in simplistic clothes, as she often was. A top of dark blue and a pants of black fabric. On her arms were dark blue wrist guards that ended in pointed tips over the top of her hand and her palm. There was fur around it, the fur of a bear that she had hunted down with her father. Around her neck were two necklaces, one was plane dark rope wrapped tightly around twice and the other was a rune. Plane silver in color aside from the runic carving of waves clashing against one another, it was a rune of water, used to represent the second most powerful rank of magic.

The most powerful being air, third being earth. It had taken her eighteen years of her life to achieve water, and now she was going to receive air. All she had left to do to be granted the next and final Rune by her Lady Mother Gwen was take her vow of silence, and then she'd be equal in power with her Lady mother and the first mage reach the rune so young.

In truth, she had been ready to take the vow for two years already, she was just not prepared to lose her voice. She knew she would not truly lose the ability to talk, but to say the words were to bind yourself to silence forever, and she wasn't sure if she would be able to hold her tongue. But she was ready now; she felt it in her heart and in her soul, there was no choice for her, it was time.

She looked to the west, and stared as the sun began to lower itself behind the smoldering mountains of ash. It is time, she thought. Moving away from the balcony and moving to the mantle above the hearth, she dipped her two fingers into the pale grey-blue skin paint and dragged them straight down over her right eye, and grabbed her long dark grey cloak of silk.