"It is not time for questions yet, my dear Prophet." R'hllor was clearly pleased that Aegor had begun to accept her words and ask questions, yet she shook her head and refused to answer. "Listen until I finish. The answer lies within."
She did not linger on the matter of exposing his identity as a transmigrator but continued her tale without pause.
"When my mother entered, or rather was banished into this world, it was already occupied by a native master who treated it as private territory. My mother's sudden arrival was seen as an invasion, and she immediately received a demand from the original owner, telling her to leave at once."
"This request was understandable, but it was based on a false assumption. My mother was not what that native god thought she was, a traveler who could simply return to another world. She had no ability to move through worlds on her own. Although she regretted disturbing others, she had no choice but to explain her plight honestly and request acceptance and a small space in which to live."
"You can guess what happened next. That native god was not the generous kind. The only reason he did not attack immediately was because he sensed the newcomer would not be easy to handle. But when my mother refused to leave, and even demanded that the Valyrian Peninsula, though it was not called that then, be ceded to her as her domain, the battle became inevitable."
R'hllor did not ask Aegor to guess the ending. After a brief pause, she continued directly.
"A war between a world's master and a cross-world invader. You can imagine the scale. I cannot describe the battle itself because I was still in my mother's womb when it happened, not yet fully formed. But the result was clear. My mother, though not powerful among True Dragons, had just suffered a forced passage through spacetime and was pregnant, yet the native master of a low-magic world was not especially formidable either. Their battle ended with my mother's victory. That stingy and irritable native god, who wished to keep a peninsula, instead lost the entire world. His body was destroyed and he was almost annihilated in both form and spirit."
"Almost?" Aegor seized the opening.
"Almost," R'hllor confirmed. "As the former master of the world, he had his own hidden protections. My mother did not erase him completely. As a high-level dragon of lawful good nature, having accidentally intruded upon another's home, then beaten the owner and driven him out... she could not bring herself to hunt him down once she had already won. Of course, there was another reason. She was injured, and because of the violent battle, she went into premature labor and gave birth to me in the ruins, leaving her unable to continue the pursuit."
…
Dragons were egg-laying creatures. How could there be premature birth? Did she miscarry after taking human form?
Aegor was curious, but he refrained from asking. R'hllor clearly had no intention of explaining. Instead, as she floated motionless, the pitch-black void around them began to ripple and transform. The half-rebuilt world Aegor had failed to reshape began shifting rapidly, as if time were being fast-forwarded.
Countless faintly glowing fragments of matter drifted in from endless distances, colliding, rotating, fusing, and gathering into a growing mass. In moments, the fragments condensed into a colossal molten sphere, glowing red and spinning beneath them.
It was a newborn planet.
R'hllor and Aegor drifted in orbit, overlooking its surface.
The transformation continued. The molten crust cooled. Water pooled in lowlands to form oceans. Land emerged. Life began its slow awakening. After half a minute of rapid evolution, the images slowed. The planet now shone with blue and green. Its rotation steadied. Time eased into the present.
Aegor recognized it instantly. Westeros lay beneath them, long and narrow between two oceans. At its northern end stretched a pale line cutting the land in two, the great Ice Wall.
This was his dream. So why could she control it better than he could?
Aegor muttered inwardly, though he understood the reason. Even a dreamer with full control could not fully shape what he had never seen or understood. What she had displayed was far beyond the imagination of a mortal dreamer.
R'hllor drifted beside him, raised her hand, and pointed northwest of the Wall.
"My mother drove that enemy into the Land of Always Winter, that barren polar ice cap where it appears to be winter forever. She named it his refuge and reached a unilateral agreement. As long as he never left, she would spare him."
So that was how this tale aligned with reality.
The Cold God was the original master of the world, beaten and driven north by an outsider.
Aegor was stunned. Compared to this inhuman senior transmigrator, he was utterly insignificant. And he had only just begun to relish the feeling of becoming a great man.
But admiration faded quickly. A glaring flaw appeared in the story.
"So the enemy we struggle against now is just a defeated remnant your mother once spared. Yet now he has crossed the line she drew and invaded the human realms. Why would you, or your mother, not punish him? Why warn us instead, telling us not to approach or attempt to eliminate him?"
R'hllor looked at him with interest, impressed that a mortal could remain so rational even in a dream.
"You have touched the heart of the matter. The story is only half told, and the latter half is longer than the first. Since you will wake soon, I will be brief."
Her tone held urgency as she continued.
"My mother was a True Dragon. Under normal circumstances, living in a medium or high-magic world, she would have survived comfortably for thousands of years even without advancing further. But in this world, where magic is thin and unstable, she was like a whale stranded on land. She could not gather enough energy to heal her injuries from that battle. A hundred years after birthing me, she died of old wounds and old age."
So the dragon transmigrator was dead.
Aegor frowned. If the Cold God's enemy was gone, why had he not reclaimed the world?
"That Cold God, upon discovering my mother's death, indeed grew restless. While my attention drifted, he regained some ground. But he soon discovered that I, whom he had ignored entirely, had grown in one century to surpass my mother."
She tilted her head slightly.
"After a brief exchange, the one you call the Battle of the Dawn, he realized the outcome would be disastrous. He admitted defeat, withdrew to his lair, and pretended to be dead once again."
"I considered erasing him fully. But I was too confident, and it felt troublesome. More importantly, I was occupied with another matter. I postponed it. Later, an accident occurred."
Her voice slowed, and she looked straight at Aegor.
"You should ask again why I call myself the Daughter of the True Dragon."
Aegor nearly groaned. What he wanted to ask was about the accident. But he followed her script.
"Fine. Why?"
"Because my mother was a True Dragon. But I am not. I have only half Dragonblood."
"Huh?" Aegor stared. "Half? With the other half being... what?"
"That is the key."
She continued calmly.
"Though my mother rarely spoke of it, my appearance and physiology, which resemble yours, make it clear that my father was human. But he was certainly not an ordinary man. I am the evidence."
"Though born of a True Dragon, I was human in form at birth. Though I cannot shift between dragon and human, I am superior to my mother in almost every aspect. Stronger. More beautiful. More agile. My control over energy is far more refined. And most importantly, I am far more long-lived."
Aegor narrowed his eyes, studying her. She looked youthful, no older than Daenerys. How old was she truly?
"Magic was thin, and my mother, who should have lived thousands of years, died at just over one hundred. I, though constrained by this world as well, have lived for thousands of years without aging. Death is nowhere near."
R'hllor met his gaze, satisfied with the shock she found there.
"Every clue points to one conclusion. The other half of my blood must come from an unimaginably powerful human. Or, as I prefer to summarize it… my father was a human deity."
(To be continued.)