AN: This is the last chapter I have had written, but I couldn't wait to post it. There might be one more chapter for the aftermath before we go south.
Kane gripped his spear tight. The weirwood caverns frightened him almost as much as the dragon had. He had only been inside them once, almost a decade ago. But travelling through them again, and he was once more a boy of ten and two, being sent to claim his destiny, equal parts excited and anxious.
Then he had seen the skeleton and all his excitement had fled. He had felt so guilty when he had first ran away, thinking himself a craven. Numerous times he had tried to return to it, and looking back, he had managed to get closer than most of his siblings had without even making the dragon twitch. There was only one reason for why he had survived those attempts.
Kane had no talent for dragon bonding.
He had the same blood as his brothers, but in a quirk of fate, he simply did not inherit a lick of dragon-riding talent. And this, the Cannibal's magic could not detect his mind.
After a year of surviving on his own and stealing or trading with the natives, he had seen his younger brother being brought the same way he was and walking, much more bravely than he had, to tame the dragon.
Kane had thought that his brother would have failed just as he had, but it proved to be a mistake. He had watched from a shadowy corner as the younger boy fell to his knees, and the dragon had snapped out a claw.
He had swore that he would never let it happen again. Over the years he had failed that vow as many times as he had upheld it, but he had always tried.
But now two of his brothers were dead and a third might be dying for all he knew. He did not know who to blame for it. Like as not, he could not dismiss the accusations that they had tried to force themselves on a woman. Genji's babbling excuses and apologies did not help either. And those three in particular had already had trouble with the natives several times.
What could he have done differently? They had no women in their caves and the natives were not as welcoming as he would have hoped. It was only natural for boys and young men to want a woman. He felt the desire himself, had even lain with widows in exchange for gifts, but knew better than to force it on an unwilling woman.
Could he have raised them better? He did not know how to be a parent to his younger brothers. He had barely had any parents himself. He had told his remaining brothers to hide in the cave, but would they really obey him? And if they did, for how long?
"Kane?" Nora called and he turned to look at his sister. He had assumed that she was sent to tame the dragon like they were, but the truth turned out stranger still.
"Yes?" He asked, loosening the grip on his spear, flexing his fingers that had gone white from the pressure.
"We are almost there. Aren't you excited?" He forced a smile at the excited girl and nodded, then looked ahead.
The sunlight was visible and the wolf howled towards the opening. The blonde girl ran after her beast, passing even their short guide, and he and Nora followed them. The Weirwood tree they came out of was smaller that the one on Skagos so he did not feel particularly impressed by it.
Nora on the other hand was mesmerised.
"It's the tree near the stream!" She exclaimed and went to run around it. When she came back to their side, she exclaimed again, "Where did the entrance go?!"
Sure enough, it had disappeared along with their guide and the path through the tree network was inaccessible again. With nothing else to do, Nora led them towards their father's Keep. As they were about to reach it, the blonde girl exclaimed something and raised her hands, and a red falcon came to land on it.
"Look, there's a letter!" Nora pointed and the blonde smirked.
"Why don't you open it and read?"
Nora blushed in embarrassment and said "I haven't yet learned how to."
Munda laughed mockingly.
"Oh, that's right! You're only good for these!" She grabbed his sister's teats and he hesitated between helping and looking away. He had been trying not to think about his sister's teats.
Nora let out a sound that made him uncomfortable and batted away the other girl's hands. He looked back but then looked away when he found her massaging her own teats. The falcon squawked angrily and Munda finally got to reading the letter.
"Oh, it's for Kane." She said and narrated the contents to him.
Brynden read the letter missive sent to him via one of the guides he had sent with Jon Snow.
"How did the dragon behave?" He asked the messenger in the Children's tongue. "Was it energetic or lethargic?"
The messenger confirmed what he had suspected. The dragon had been hibernating in the volcano, surviving on the magic from the fires of the volcano and whatever prey wandered in and was too weak to escape it. Waking up would have made him very fatigued and very hungry.
If Jon was flying it back to them, it could take them several days for an otherwise one day journey. But it seemed that the boy was not content with wasting these few days and had already planned on his next steps.
Going over the proposal in the letter, he chuckled. If the boy's audacious plan worked, there just might be a way for him to cheat death, though the process would not be easy in any way.
Brynden looked at the vines and roots that had become as much a part of his body as his heart was. The end result would be worth it, he told himself and got to removing them. It would reduce his life by a lot, even if he reattached himself to another tree, but it would be worth it.
…
Locomotion, personal locomotion with his own body, he realised that he had missed it. Not that he was walking on his own two legs, his bones had become too weak to carry his weight, he was riding a goat that he was warged into. Which was just as good.
Riding out into the clearing next to the stream, he saw the majestic dragon with his own eye. The dragon stood half a mile away from them, like he and Jon had agreed upon before the meeting. He had been worried about an ambush or a sudden attack, but this was reassuring. He had seen his death, his body burning in Cannibal's fire. That was a curse, but also a blessing. It meant that nothing except for the dragon could kill him.
"Bloodraven," Jon Snow called. "You look awful."
He let his lone eye roam over the people present at the meeting.
Leila and another woman were there to his left, representing their family. Both women had horrified looks at his state, though Leila was better at hiding them than her younger sister.
Jon and his three wives stood to his right, and with them were two men, one tied up on the ground, the other on his knees. His eye zeroed in on them, examining their physique, looking for any deformities, before he nodded in approval. He was quite sure he knew who they were.
"Not for long, I should hope." He replied.
"Straight to business then. Are the terms clear to you?"
"They are. But not why you would organise this… council all of a sudden."
"I have seen the corpses you have left behind on your quest to escape your fate, and I see no reason that you would stop now." Snow gritted out.
"My only choices are to burn you like the prophecies told you I would, or spend my life avoiding your attempts to kill me."
Brynden scoffed. He would never do something that directly against fate. Or he would have already tried to assassinate the boy.
"The third option," the boy continued, "is to fulfil the prophecy in a way that lets you still survive in a different way. But if I do that for you, there's no reason for me to not demand things in return."
"Fine. I accept the terms you have sent me." He agreed.
"Let's recite them then." Snow insisted, "So there are no misunderstandings."
At his nod, the other bastard spoke out.
"You are to return every child still in your care."
Brynden's goat bleated and as if on command, half a dozen boys came running out of the weirwood cavern. The women stood still in shock and even Snow's eyes widened. The kids ran out, enjoying the sunlight and Leila called them towards herself.
He turned to Jon and smiled. The boy took it as an indication to continue.
"You are to repay them for every son you cannot return with two aurochs, not too old, and seeds of a herb or vegetable of a different kind."
His goat bleated again and nothing happened. Brynden rolled his one eye and looked at Leila, then said.
"The boys have the seeds."
He waited for the women to check their pockets and then they waited for a flustered Loaf to come out leading a herd of domesticated aurochs. Jon Snow counted the cattle and frowned at the number. Anger flickered in his eyes.
"You are to give your protection to the residents of Craster's Keep, until they have learnt enough to protect themselves."
He nodded towards Loaf. The girl had wanted to interact with humans anyway. It was better to keep her where he could keep an eye on her than let her just wander away.
"And you would not demand anything more from them."
He nodded impatiently, and Snow nodded back, and turned towards Leila.
"Your family will pay me a portion of the herbs grown by you, and allow me a say in what you plant.
And you will not attempt to get vengeance on the Raven.
Is this acceptable to you?"
The women looked at Brynden apprehensively and agreed hastily, as if wanting to wash their hands off of him as soon as possible.
Snow nodded and said, "Then it is my turn."
The Baratheon bastard stepped forward and dragged the man lying on the ground to him. Brynden impatiently urged his mount forward, ignoring the older man struggling weakly to get to his brother. But the blonde girl standing over him held him still.
The younger man was brought to him and their eyes met. Brynden took another look to ensure that the dragon had not moved and praised Jon Snow's patience at not trying to solve his problems with dragonfire, then took a deep breath. He had never warged another man. There was never any need so desperate.
But he needed to now, to preserve his life, or perhaps get a second life as the people called it.
He could have found a new body himself, but prophecies were treacherous things and could come true in unexpected ways. So getting Snow's cooperation was necessary so they could have Cannibal burn his old body and declare the prophecy fulfilled.
So he threw his spirit into the boy's body. His target had tried to close his eyes, but it had been too late, and their spirits faced each other in a short and brutal fight.
He would rather have taken another skinchanger, but they had too much natural defences. And he could not risk the target's natural talent being stronger or just lucky enough to defeat his spirit.
But this boy, Genji he saw in the memories, had no such defences, and thus was easily crushed by him. Brynden, his eyes still closed, took a minute to marvel at his healthy body, taking in deep breaths to
"Since you are no longer in your own body, your life is no longer in danger from me or mine, nor will it ever be." He heard Jon Snow say. "Thus my own side of the agreement is complete."
Brynden opened his new eyes and noticed two things. The first was that he had two of them. The second thing was that Brother Kane, his mind supplied to him, bore down on him with the blonde girl's axe.
His newly regained depth perception let him see in great detail as the axe stuck his head. The broken voice in the back of his mind sobbed in relief as they both died.
AN: Let me know if the povs I chose made the sequence of events clear.
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