Slaughterhouse ━━ Aemond Targaryen

𝖎. You Must Be Guilty of Something

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Chapter One:
    You Must Be Guilty of Something

(112 A.C.)

A young girl is running. She knows not where her feet carry her, nor what she is running from, but there is a hushed prayer falling from her lips. Thorns and sticks prick at bare legs, red joins black and blue upon pale, freckled skin, and she's shaking. There is something that waits for her in the darkness, a great and terrible thing. It creeps up behind her, watching her, tormenting her. The footsteps she hears behind her are not human nor animal; she fears looking back and continues to run.

Has the Stranger come for her at last? This is what happens to girls who do not believe, who think themselves above their gods. They are hunted down like small animals and turned into prey, meek and powerless, they succumb. She falls, mud caking her knees as if the ground was embracing her one last time. And as she rests, she concedes. The taste of surrender is acrid in her mouth and unwelcome after a lifetime of perseverance.

In her final moments, she brings her dirt-stained legs to her chest and weeps. What else is there to do but shriek and wail? In her final moments, she is a babe again, screaming for her mother. In her final moments, she mourns her life as a widow mourns her late husband. She allows the grief to overcome and consume her.

The Stranger comes and wraps her in a cloak of darkness, taking her for its own.

This dream is too vivid to not be a vision, Vevienne thinks, for how does she know what the girl is feeling and thinking in such excruciating detail? She's seen it at least a thousand times before, and it only grows more nauseating each night. Sometimes, she can see through the eyes of the girl, and she too shakes in fear. Other times, it is as though she were the Stranger itself, a harbinger of death.

This time, she watches from above, an idle bystander and unwilling accomplice to the horror occurring beneath her.

Vevienne exits her chambers, still groggy and smelling of sleep. She has no interest in food on mornings like these; her dreams murder her appetite. Instead of going down to the kitchens, she stomps towards the maester's chambers. Maester Seamus is working on a concoction of sorts when Vevienne interrupts him, standing in the doorway with her jaw clenched.

He sighs. "Again?"

Silently, Vevienne enters and sits on a wooden chair across from him. The maester turns to open a small, brown cabinet and pulls out a bag of herbs. He then dumps the herbs into a copper kettle full of water and places it above the fire. He sits on his own rickety chair and continues to tinker with the potion as they wait.

"Would you like to tell me about it?" he asks.

Vevienne shrugs. "Nothing's changed, really."

"Sometimes talking about what ails us makes us feel better," he replies. "It certainly helps your sister feel better."

"You shouldn't ask Avya questions if you don't want her talking your ear off," Vevienne snorts.

"Perhaps you're right," the maester chuckles. The kettle has begun to vibrate, steam spills out of its sides. He holds it carefully, pouring Vevienne's tea into a ceramic cup. "Here you are, my lady. This will ease your nerves."

Vevienne holds the cup with two hands and takes a sip. The tea is boiling hot and burns the tip of her tongue, but the pit in her stomach hurts much worse. She takes a big gulp then, her whole tongue turning sore and raw. Her throat and chest burn, but she knows the physical pain will soon subside. She relaxes.