Chapter Text
Prologue
I was twelve when I woke up. I had always had strange dreams since I was born on Lonely Light in 282 AC. Dreams that felt too real, Dreams that came true, but it wasn’t until the year 294 that I went to sleep in the below deck of The Silence and woke up a man grown. I awoke as a young man in a strange world. He sat in front of a television, which I only knew because I now had his memories, and he watched a show called Game of Thrones. I saw and felt everything. The War of the Five Kings, the Song of Ice and Fire, my world's future. By the end Jon Targaryen faced the Night King, but he was alone; his cousins all dead or lost, his aunt stranded in Essos, and Westeros was being pillaged by Euron and the Ironborn. Jon failed and died alone, the world froze over and all was lost. As the dream vision came to an end I felt like I had lived for twenty years in a world completely unlike my own.
I knew I was still asleep as I woke to an empty ship, save for a sea eagle aboard the bow. My feet carried me forward under a will of their own, this was more like the dreams I normally had instead of living a whole life on an alien world. The sea eagle’s beak opened and the voice of my father drifted out-
“Dreams are messages from the Deep… What is dead may never die, but rises again harder and stronger… It is your time… Time to drown and live again…”
And then I woke.
Chapter One
Awaking aboard The Silence isn’t pleasant on a normal day, but this morning my head was pounding like a war maul was repeatedly crushing my skull. Heading to my station I staggered as I moved the pain immense. The new memories were pushing me to a state of catatonia, but both lives new Euron would kill me if I caused him problems. Raqiro, my sea eagle landed next to my station and nuzzled his head against mine. Raqiro was my first familiar, a massive sea eagle I bonded with when he was young and still small, nesting aboard my mother’s small island home. Euron didn’t like any talking except his own, but I could tell my hindrance was noticed by his mute crew and he himself would soon know something was different.
My head was still throbbing when I was dragged into the captain’s quarters.
“Something you want to tell me boy?” Euron questioned his son.
“I think it’s time for me to drown.” I had to be audacious if I was going to survive without giving away what I now knew.
“And then we should start collecting more familiars right away.” I continued.
Euron’s one eye gazed at me. I knew he was suspicious, but I hoped he would be intrigued enough by my pitches to ask the questions I wanted him to and not the ones I didn’t.
“You know religion is always nonsense, yes?”
“I know… but magic is real, it’s why you made my mother your rock wife, so I could have the Farwynd’s magic… and I had a dream. It was a message from the Drowned God, he needs me to become stronger.” Neither of my lives were very big on religion like Euron, but it’s better if he thought I was; it would explain my knowledge and differences as well as make my father underestimate me.
“Very well, one of my men is ordained to do the drowning and I have a few ideas about the bonding I want to try.”
By the end of the day, under the light of the dying sun a mute “priest” lowered me by rope from the deck into the water. The frigid waves rocked and washed over me and then I was in the cold embrace of the ocean with the light fading out above me.
I couldn’t breathe or move when I opened my eyes and found myself on the tallest tower of Lonely Light. Before me was Euron, but it was clear he died in the water- he was bloated and dripping. His mouth sagged open.
“You stand before me as defiant as your father, but unlike him you’ll save my people, your mother’s people. So little Greyjoy, leave my depths with my blessing and save the Ironborn, save the world.” And with those words ringing in my ears the waterlogged corpse of my father pushed me off the tower and I plummeted to the sea below. As I broke the surface of the water I blacked out. My senses slowly returned until I felt the deck beneath my feet and my eyes opened to see Euron smirking at me from over the shoulder of the drowner.
“Enjoy your ‘rebirth’, boy?”
For the next three years, Euron took me all over the world: in the seas around Ib I bonded with a spotted whale, the locals call them Orkas which roughly translates to killer whale, Euron likes that name better and after feeling what the beast felt I decided to name him Euron. We stopped off in the frozen north beyond the wall where I bonded with an Ice Bear, I named him Frostclaw, unoriginal I know but it felt fitting. Euron took me to the Basilisk Isles and the jungles of Sothoryos where we found a spotted cat bigger than a hound. I saw it drag what looked like a swamp lion out of a river before I mastered it too. The locals called it a jaguar, I named her Lyka. I also discovered a small creature known as a monkey, he had been a pet of someone Euron murdered and my father thought it was silly to bond with him as he wasn’t dangerous until I explained the utility of having a creature that can hold things. I named him Laodikio. In Leviathan Sound I tamed my only fish, a massive shark I named Angogon. At this point it was becoming difficult to source the necessary feed and my mind was starting to feel full, but Euron had one last idea. After a series of particularly bloodless raids Euron sacrificed five dozen people by drowning, chanting the whole time. The water around the boat begins to ripple as shadows slither under the surface, and then crimson and salmon tentacles begin to lift out surrounding the boat. They must be over 20 feet and thicker than the biggest snakes in Sothoryos, now I know why Euron had me leave my aquatic familiars back by the Stepstones. Euron was still chanting but he was glaring at me so I knew he wanted me to get on with it and bond the kraken before it sank his ship. I wasn’t even sure I could bond something so big but I was blessed by the Drowned God and I was definitely going to try. My mind reached out grasping on to the immense consciousness of the kraken, like Euron (the whale) it appeared it had an incredible level of intelligence, so I began to soothe it instead of dominate. I showed it my purpose, my ambition, my power, and I could feel its acceptance, and its hunger… which was good because I was ready, in three years after waking up with Earth empathy and apathy I had grown into my body and reaved with the most bloodthirsty of Ironborn across Planetos, but I knew it was only a matter of time before Euron gave up on making me his weapon or escalated his methods. He simply wasn’t built to be around people, and so my eyes turned milky white and the large feeler tentacle wrapped around my father. The chanting stopped.
“What the fuck!? Dagon! Bond this creature now!” But then he must have turned to me or so I assumed because of his next words.
“Crew, kill the boy! Ugh!” His orders were cut off by my tentacle crushing his ribcage before dragging him below and stuffing him into my maw. The other tentacles had scattered the crew across deck keeping them from body and with Dalton’s legendary hunger appeased I returned to my body, I hadn’t killed them because to be honest I needed them still. The Silence needed a crew and I needed men, though I did have a plan to get more.
The silent crew returned to their feet as the tentacles writhed around the ship. The most bloodthirsty and fearless Ironborn crew in the world looked amongst themselves and the tentacles before they all sheathed weapons and knelt to me. I had raped and murdered, drowned and dreamed, I had been a man by any Ironborn metric for years, but now I was a Captain and I had less than a year until everything kicks off, it was time to start moving aggressively.