Commission: A true dragon (Silmarillion/House of the Dragon Oc/self-insert): chapter 1

The city stank of fish and shit and humanity pressed too close together.

Jacob pulled his hood lower over his face as he moved through the teeming streets of King's Landing, his leather boots, too fine, too well-made, need to scuff them more, navigating the refuse and filth that clogged the cobblestones. Around him, the great unwashed mass of the Targaryen jewel flowed like a river of desperation: fishwives hawking their wares, cutpurses eyeing marks, gold cloaks swaggering with their hands on their cudgels, and everywhere the smell of sweat and desperation.

Above it all, perched on Aegon's High Hill like a bloodstain against the sky, rose the Red Keep.

Seven lifetimes he had lived before this one. Seven different worlds, seven different deaths, seven different failures. And in the darkness between death and rebirth, they had come to him like they always did after each life. The Watchers. The Choosers. Beings without name or form who measured the weight of souls and found most wanting. They had offered him again a choice, as they sometimes did for those rare few who burned bright enough to catch Their attention.

"Where would you go this time?" They had asked in voices like the ringing of distant bells, like the cracking of ice over deep water. "What world calls to you?"

And Jacob, who had been Marcus, who had been Chen, who had been Aisha, who had been so many names he could barely remember them all, had laughed. It was a bitter sound, that laugh. A sound like breaking glass.

"Show me the world of dragons, songs, ice and fire," he had said. "Show me Westeros."

They had shown him. The petty wars. The endless scheming. The dragons, oh, the dragons. Great beasts, yes. Terrible in their way. Larger than horses, some of them. Balerion the Black Dread, largest of them all, whose wingspan could blot out the sun over a village.

Jacob had looked upon them and felt only contempt.

"These are not dragons," he had said to the Watchers. "These are lizards. These are drakes. Overgrown serpents with delusions of majesty. I will show them what a true dragon is. I will show these pretender kings what their ancestors should have bowed to."

The Watchers had been silent for a long moment. Then, as one, They had spoken: "So be it. But know this, the gift you carry will mark you. Change you. The bond between dragon and rider is not a chain. It is a fusion. A becoming. You will be neither fully man nor fully dragon, but something between. Something new. Something old. Are you certain?"

"I am," Jacob had said, and meant it with every fiber of his being.

They had bound him then to Ancalagon. Not the true Ancalagon, that titan had perished in another world, in another age, crushed beneath falling mountains when the host of the West had thrown down Morgoth. But the essence of Ancalagon. The concept. Dragon-thought. Dragon-soul. Dragon-being on a scale that made the Targaryen beasts look like newts swimming in a puddle.

The change had begun immediately.

His bones had lengthened. His spine had curved differently, supporting weight that wasn't there yet but would be. His eyes, he had wept when he first saw them in a mirror, wept because they were no longer human. Slitted pupils, vertical and golden with flecks of molten copper. Eyes that could see heat as color, that could count the scales on a fish from a hundred yards, that marked him as other the moment anyone looked too closely.

His teeth had grown sharper. His nails thicker, harder, almost talons. And across his shoulders, his chest, his forearms, scales. Not many. Not enough to call him monster. But enough that he had to wear long sleeves always, had to keep himself covered. They were black, those scales. Black like midnight. Black like the space between stars. And they were harder than the finest steel.

At seven feet tall, he towered over most men. His frame was broad, heavy with muscle that hadn't come from training but from simple existence. The dragon-bond did that. Made him more.

But the greatest change was the one no one could see. Deep in his chest, behind his sternum, there burned a second heart. Not a human heart. A dragon heart. And when it beat, when it truly beat in sync with his human pulse, the air around him grew warm. Smoke curled from his nostrils. And somewhere, in a cave far to the east, beyond Asshai, beyond the Shadow Lands, Ancalagon stirred.

He had spent so much time preparing for this moment. So much time learning the languages of this world, its customs, its hierarchies. So much time practicing control, learning to keep the heat inside, to keep the smoke from rising, to seem human when everything in him screamed dragon.

And now he was here. In King's Landing. The so-called capital of the Dragon Kings.

It was the year 107 After Aegon's Conquest, though the smallfolk rarely thought in such grand terms. To them it was simply another year of scraping by, of hoping the grain prices wouldn't rise too much, of praying the dragons overhead wouldn't decide their hovel looked like a good place to roost.

King Viserys I Targaryen sat the Iron Throne, that ugly monument to conquest and cruelty. By all accounts he was a pleasant king. Kind. Generous. Peaceful. The sort of man who preferred feasts to battles, who handed out gold freely and smiled at his courtiers.

Weak, Jacob thought. Soft.

The true power in the city was Prince Daemon Targaryen. The Rogue Prince. Commander of the City Watch until just two years past, when his antics had finally pushed even gentle Viserys too far. Daemon with his Valyrian steel sword Dark Sister and his blood-red dragon Caraxes. Daemon who was brilliant and vicious and utterly amoral when it suited him.

Him, Jacob thought as he navigated the Street of Steel, hearing the ring of hammers on anvils. Him I want to meet.

The sun was high overhead, beating down with late summer heat. The year had been peaceful so far, no major wars, no great tragedies. Princess Rhaenyra, Viserys's only living child, was nine years old and already being called the Realm's Delight. Beautiful, charming, willful. Spoiled in the way that only the beloved daughter of a powerful man could be.

Jacob had no interest in the child. Not yet. She was too young, too unformed. In time, perhaps, she would be a player worth noting. But for now she was merely a pawn her father doted on.

No, it was Daemon he wanted. Daemon and the others. The ones who rode drakes they mistakenly deem dragons and thought themselves gods because of it.

I will show them, he thought, and the dragon-heart in his chest beat once, twice, sending a pulse of heat through his veins. I will show them all.

The throne room of the Red Keep was less impressive than he had expected.

Oh, it was large enough. The Iron Throne itself was grotesque, a towering monstrosity of melted swords, sharp edges and cruel angles, the seat from which Aegon the Conqueror had ruled. It looked uncomfortable. It looked dangerous. Which, Jacob supposed, was rather the point.

King Viserys I Targaryen lounged upon it with all the grace of a man sitting on a particularly lumpy cushion. He was in his early thirties, plump already from good living, his face open and friendly. He wore red and black, the colors of his house, and the crown on his head, a simple golden circlet with rubies, seemed almost an afterthought.

The king was hearing petitions. A tedious business, from the look of him. Jacob watched from the back of the throne room, just another hooded figure among the minor nobles and merchants waiting their turn. No one paid him mind. He had made certain of that.

The petition being heard was from a merchant complaining about tariffs on Dornish wine. Viserys listened with evident patience, nodding along, occasionally asking his Master of Coin a question. The matter was resolved amicably. The merchant bowed low, thanked His Grace profusely, and departed satisfied.

This is the dragon king? Jacob thought with contempt. This soft man who haggles over wine tariffs?

"Tedious, isn't it?"

The voice came from beside him. Jacob turned, carefully, keeping his hood up, and found himself looking at a man who could only be Daemon Targaryen.

He was shorter than Jacob, most men were, but there was a coiled intensity to him. Handsome in the sharp-featured Valyrian way, his silver-gold hair cut shorter than fashion dictated, his purple eyes bright with intelligence and malice in equal measure. He wore black and red, fine clothes but practical ones, and at his hip hung the distinctive rippled blade of Valyrian steel.

Dark Sister. The sword of Visenya Targaryen, passed down through the generations.

"I'm sorry?" Jacob said carefully, keeping his voice neutral, his accent as close to the common tongue of Westeros as he could manage.

"The petitions," Daemon said, gesturing languidly toward the throne. "Tedious beyond measure. My brother fancies himself a good king because he listens to every merchant and fishwife who comes bleating about their problems." The prince smiled, and it was not a kind expression. "Personally, I think a good king knows when to say 'no' and move on."

"Perhaps," Jacob said. "Or perhaps a good king knows that small problems ignored become large ones."

Daemon's eyes sharpened with interest. "A philosopher. How refreshing." He looked Jacob up and down, and his gaze lingered on the unusual height, the breadth of shoulder visible even beneath the cloak. "You're not from King's Landing. Not from Westeros at all, unless I miss my guess. Where do you hail from, stranger?"

"Everywhere and nowhere," Jacob said, which was true enough. "I travel."

"A sellsword?"

"Sometimes."

"Then you've come to the wrong city. We're at peace, gods help us. Has been for years. My brother prefers it that way." Daemon's smile turned mocking. "Peace. Songs. Dragons sleeping fat in their caves because there's no one worth burning. It's enough to make a man sick."

Jacob studied the prince. Really studied him. And what he saw was... interesting.

Daemon Targaryen was bored. Restless. A man bred for war and violence who had been forced into a peacetime role he had no interest in. He was dangerous the way a caged wolf was dangerous, all that barely contained violence looking for an outlet.

"You miss commanding the Gold Cloaks," Jacob observed.

Daemon's smile faded. His hand went to Dark Sister's hilt. "What do you know of that?"

"Only what I hear in taverns," Jacob said easily. "Men talk. They say Prince Daemon made the City Watch into something to be feared. They say he prowled the streets himself, meting out justice with his own hands. They say King Viserys dismissed him because he was too effective."

"My brother dismissed me," Daemon said coldly, "because I gave his stillborn son a crown. Called the boy the 'Heir for a Day' in a jest." His smile was bitter now. "Viserys did not appreciate my humor."

No, Jacob thought. I imagine he did not.

There was something deeply wrong with Daemon Targaryen. Not wrong in a broken way, he was clearly intelligent, clearly capable. Wrong in the way a blade was wrong when it had been sharpened too many times on one side. Unbalanced. Eager to cut.

This was a man who would burn the world if it would alleviate his boredom.

"You wear your cloak pulled low," Daemon observed, his purple eyes studying Jacob's hood with open curiosity. "Hiding something?"

"Perhaps I simply value my privacy, my prince."

"Or perhaps you're disfigured. Or marked. Or wanted for some crime." Daemon's hand stayed on Dark Sister's hilt. "Show me your face, stranger. I don't like mysteries in my brother's keep."

Jacob considered. The smart thing would be to leave. To slip away, come back another time when Daemon wasn't lurking in throne rooms looking for entertainment.

But then, he hadn't come all this way to be smart.

He had come to make a point.

"As you wish," Jacob said, and pushed back his hood.

The effect was immediate.

Daemon's eyes widened. Around them, conversations stuttered to a halt. Even King Viserys, still seated on the Iron Throne hearing another tedious petition, paused mid-sentence and turned to look.

Jacob's face was human enough. Handsome, even, in a harsh-featured way. But his eyes, those vertical slitted pupils, golden and inhuman, marked him immediately as other. And when he met Daemon's gaze directly, smoke curled from his nostrils. Just a wisp. Just a hint. But unmistakable.

"What are you?" Daemon breathed, and his hand tightened on Dark Sister.

"Your better," Jacob said simply.

Then Daemon lunged.

To his credit, Daemon Targaryen was fast.

Dark Sister cleared its sheath in a silver blur, the Valyrian steel singing as it cut through air. The blade came at Jacob's throat in a perfect executioner's strike, fast, economical, lethal.

Jacob caught the blade.

His hand, his bare hand, closed around the Valyrian steel two inches from his throat. The black scales across his palm and fingers glittered in the light streaming through the high windows. Daemon's eyes widened in shock as he pulled, trying to free his sword, and found it held as if in a vice.

The throne room erupted into chaos.

"GUARDS!" someone shouted.

The Kingsguard, two of them stationed near the throne, were already moving, white cloaks streaming behind them as they rushed forward. Ser Harrold Westerling and Ser Steffon Darklyn, if Jacob remembered correctly. Good men. Loyal. About to be very disappointed.

"I mean no harm to your king," Jacob said calmly, still holding Dark Sister. The Valyrian steel was warm in his grip. He could feel its edge trying to bite into his scales and failing. "But neither will I be threatened in his hall."

"Release my sword," Daemon hissed, "or I'll,"

"You'll what?" Jacob's other hand came up, and he placed it flat against Daemon's chest. Then he pushed.

It wasn't a hard push. Just enough.

Daemon went flying backward. Not tumbling, flying. He crashed into a support pillar fifteen feet away with a sound like a sack of meat hitting stone, slid down, and lay stunned on the marble floor.

The Kingsguard reached Jacob. Ser Harrold Westerling was shouting something, his longsword raised. Ser Steffon had drawn his blade as well.

Jacob sighed. "I don't want to hurt anyone," he said, and meant it.

Then he opened his mouth and breathed.

No flame. Not yet. That would be crass. Excessive. And he was trying to make a point, not commit regicide.

But smoke poured out. Thick, black, choking smoke that filled the throne room in seconds. It smelled of sulfur and old fire, of mountains burning and cities reduced to ash. The Kingsguard stumbled back, coughing, their eyes streaming. Throughout the hall, courtiers screamed and ran for the exits.

When the smoke cleared, Jacob controlling it, pulling it back into himself with an effort of will, the throne room had transformed. Half the people had fled. The rest stood frozen, staring at him with expressions ranging from terror to awe.

King Viserys I Targaryen stood in front of his ugly throne, his pleasant face gone pale. Behind him, a young girl with silver-gold hair had emerged from a side door, Princess Rhaenyra, curious no doubt about the commotion. Her eyes were very wide.

Daemon was climbing to his feet, one hand pressed to his ribs. He looked at Jacob with something that might have been respect. Or might have been the calculation of a predator sizing up a rival.

"What are you?" Viserys asked, and his voice was surprisingly steady. "What manner of creature stands before the Iron Throne?"

Jacob looked at the king. Looked at the frightened courtiers. Looked at young Rhaenyra with her expression of mingled fear and fascination. Looked at Daemon, still watching him like a hawk watches a hare.

And then he smiled. It was not a kind smile. His teeth were too sharp for that.

"I am a dragon rider," he said simply. "But not like you. Never like you."

He turned then, his long cloak swirling, and began walking toward the great doors of the throne room. The crowd parted before him like water before the prow of a ship. No one dared touch him. No one dared speak.

"STOP!"

The voice was Daemon's. The prince had found his feet, found his courage. He stood swaying slightly, Dark Sister back in his hand. "You attack a prince of the realm in the king's own hall and think to simply walk away?"

Jacob stopped. Turned. And the expression on his face made strong men take a step back.

"I defended myself from an unwarranted attack," he said softly. "But if you wish to press the matter, Daemon Targaryen, then by all means, call your dragon. Call Caraxes the Blood Wyrm. Summon him from wherever he sleeps, and I will show you what a true dragon looks like."

"You're bluffing," Daemon said, but there was uncertainty in his voice now. "Even with your unnaturalness, it remains that only the blood of Aegon can ride dragons and that all the remaining dragons are safe on Dragonstone,"

"ANCALAGON!" Jacob's voice rang out like a bell, like thunder, like the ending of worlds. It wasn't a shout. It was a summoning. A calling that resonated on frequencies human ears couldn't quite catch but human souls could feel.

The Red Keep trembled.

It was subtle at first. Just a vibration in the stones. The kind of thing you might dismiss as a cart rumbling past outside or a heavy door slamming somewhere. But it grew. And grew. Until the very floor was shaking, until dust fell from the rafters, until the Iron Throne itself groaned and shifted on its base.

A shadow fell across the high windows.

Impossible. The sun was directly overhead. There should be no shadows. But there it was, darkness, spreading like spilled ink across the colored glass, blotting out the light.

Someone screamed.

Princess Rhaenyra ran to a window, her nine-year-old curiosity overwhelming her fear. What she saw there made her go very still. Very quiet. When she turned back to look at Jacob, her violet eyes were round as coins.

"Father," she whispered. "Father, come look."

King Viserys, for all his soft nature, was no coward. He descended from the Iron Throne, carefully, always carefully, those damned swords were sharp, and moved to the window. What he saw there drained what little color remained in his face.

"Gods," he breathed. "Old gods and new. What is that?"

Jacob walked to stand beside them. Through the window, he could see the sky. Except he couldn't. Because the sky was gone.

In its place, stretching from horizon to horizon, were wings.

Black wings. Wings so vast that each beat of them sent gales howling through the streets of King's Landing below. Wings that blocked out the sun not over a village but over an entire city.

And beneath those wings, a body. Serpentine. Scaled. Each scale the size of a greatshield. A neck that seemed to go on forever, thicker around than the walls of the Red Keep. And at the end of that neck...

A head.

Ancalagon's head was the size of Aegon's High Hill itself. His jaws could swallow the Dragonpit whole. His eyes, eyes like Jacob's, golden and slitted and utterly devoid of mercy, were each larger than a village. When he opened his mouth, the teeth revealed there were not teeth. They were mountains. They were towers. They were the ending of everything.

The dragon, the true dragon, circled overhead once. The beating of his wings sent tiles flying from roofs, tore banners from their poles, capsized boats in Blackwater Bay. The sound was like the ending of the world.

And then, with a movement impossibly graceful for something so vast, Ancalagon descended.

He did not land. There was nowhere in the city large enough for him to land. Instead, he hung there, suspended on wings that seemed to bend reality around them, his terrible head lowering until one golden eye, just one, was level with the highest tower of the Red Keep.

In that eye, the entire castle was reflected. Tiny. Insignificant. A toy that could be crushed with an idle thought.

Jacob felt his dragon-heart beating in sync with his human pulse. Felt the heat building in his chest, the smoke coiling in his lungs. He was Ancalagon and Ancalagon was him. Two beings, two souls, one existence.

He turned to look at Daemon. At Viserys. At young Rhaenyra.

"This," he said softly, "is a dragon. What you ride, Prince Daemon, are pets. Lizards. Beasts that could be killed by a man with a lucky arrow and the will to use it."

He gestured to the window, to the impossibility hanging in the sky outside.

"THIS is what your ancestors should have bowed to and called dragon. THIS is what ruled the skies when all the worlds of the multiverse were young and dragons were gods, not tools. THIS," his voice rose, and with it rose the heat, until the air around him shimmered like summer heat over cobblestones, "THIS is power beyond your comprehension. And I have come to your little kingdom of pretenders to remind you all of a truth you have forgotten."

He stepped closer to Daemon. The prince had gone deathly pale, his purple eyes locked on the window, on the shadow that swallowed the world. His hand trembled on Dark Sister's hilt. For the first time in his life, perhaps, Daemon Targaryen knew fear. True fear. The kind that turned your bowels to water and made you want to fall to your knees and beg.

Jacob leaned in close, close enough that Daemon could smell the sulfur on his breath, could see the inhuman quality of those golden eyes, could feel the heat radiating from skin that was half-scales.

"House of the Dragon," Jacob said, his voice soft, almost gentle, "when you only ride mere drakes? Blood of the Dragon when you bleed and die like any man?" He laughed then, and it was a terrible sound, empty of mirth, full of contempt. "Don't fucking make me laugh."

He straightened, turning to address the entire throne room, his voice carrying to every corner, echoing off stone and steel.

"Still, I can see that you want me to swallow my words, princeling. So I'll give you the opportunity. I'll give you all the opportunity." His smile was sharp enough to cut. "I declare that the Stepstones are mine. Because what kind of dragon rider doesn't own shit? All of your house, your soldiers, your drakes can come at me. You know where to find me."

The challenge hung in the air like the smoke that still wisped from Jacob's nostrils. The Stepstones. That chain of rocky islands between Westeros and Essos, plagued by pirates and raiders, contested territory that no one had successfully held for long. He was claiming them. Daring the entire Targaryen dynasty to stop him.

The throne room was silent as a tomb.

Then Jacob turned and walked, not toward the doors, but toward the windows. The great stained glass windows that showed scenes of Aegon's Conquest, of dragons burning Harrenhal, of the submission of the Seven Kingdoms.

He didn't slow.

"My lord, wait," someone called out, perhaps Ser Harrold, perhaps another. "You cannot,"

Jacob leapt.

His legs flexed, muscles enhanced by the dragon-bond releasing power that no human body should contain. He launched himself at the window, through it, the colored glass exploding outward in a cascade of red and black and gold shards that caught the light like falling stars.

And he was falling, falling from the highest tower of the Red Keep, seven hundred feet of empty air between him and the cobblestones of the courtyard below, and every person who watched from that shattered window expected to see him die.

But Ancalagon was there.

The great dragon's head, moving with impossible precision for something so vast, intercepted Jacob's fall. The man, if he could still be called merely a man, landed on that enormous skull between the ridge of horns each larger than a castle tower, landed running, his boots finding purchase on scales that were like mountains unto themselves.

He ran the length of that skull, that neck, ran along a spine where each vertebra was the size of a warship, until he reached the place where the wings met the body. There, in the hollow between those vast wing-joints, he settled, pressed himself against scales that burned with inner fire.

And Ancalagon roared.

The sound was not a sound. It was the ending of things. It was the crack of the world splitting. It was every nightmare given voice, every terror made real. The roar hit King's Landing like a physical force. Windows shattered. Walls cracked. The Iron Throne, that ugly monument of melted swords, rang like a bell as the sound wave struck it.

People fell to their knees, hands over their ears, some weeping, some screaming, some simply frozen in terror so profound that their minds could not process it.

In the throne room, Princess Rhaenyra had her hands pressed to her ears, tears streaming down her face, but her eyes, her violet eyes, were still fixed on the window. On the dragon. On the impossible, terrifying, magnificent sight before her.

Daemon Targaryen had fallen to one knee, but he was smiling. Smiling even as blood trickled from his ears, even as his whole body shook with the aftershocks of that roar. Because he understood now. Understood what power really looked like. Understood how small he was. How small they all were.

And part of him, the mad part, the part that had always yearned for something more, was exhilarated.

King Viserys stood at the window, one hand braced against the frame, and watched as Ancalagon spread his wings. The movement was like watching continents shift. Like watching the sky itself unfold.

One beat of those wings, just one, and the dragon rose. Rose into the sky that had been his domain before the world was young, before men had crawled from caves, before dragons had been anything but dreams and nightmares.

Another beat, and he was already distant, already dwindling, though dwindling was perhaps the wrong word for something that would still cast a shadow over Dragonstone if he passed over it.

A third beat, and he was turning, turning south and east, toward where the Stepstones lay scattered across the sea like broken teeth.

And then he was gone, and the sky was blue again, and the sun shone down on King's Landing as it always had