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Daenerys was not even sure what her son was.
Correction, she was not even sure if her son was a creature. Through her life, she had met many animals. Horses, cattle, goats, camels, birds, fish, insects, basilisks, manticores, elephants, dolphins. Even among men there were the likes of the Dothraki, the brindled men of Sothoryos, Pentoshi and Lysene. But her son defied any type of creature known.
She had first found him in a puddle, while she was being escorted back to Vaes Dothrak after the funeral pyre had burned to nothing. Harming a khalessi returning to the horse city after the death of her Khal was forbidden, so Dany's small khalasar were granted safe passed through the dying village Khal Ghorgo had butchered and enslaved. Daenerys had noticed the pond, once surrounded by small houses and once littered with bright flowers, was now overflowing with corpses and water ruddy with blood and body fluids as they made their way past. The decapitated body of a seven year old boy had caught her attention, or rather a shape wiggling in the dark blood lying stagnant within the water around his cut off head.
Daenerys felt a deep urge to investigate and Rakharo and Doreah made no attempt to stop her as she waded into the water until she reached the boy's floating body. Blood and filth stained her horse-hide trousers but she paid it no mind as she bent down and with her cupped hands pulled forth a tadpole.
Doreah brought her a small barrel and they filled it with the bloody water and Daenerys took the small creature back with her. Irri and Jhaqi made no comment but Daenerys could tell they had no interest in the creature, and no real interest in conversing with a Dosh Khaleen. Doreah listened to her when Dany confided in the deep feeling of importance she felt for the tadpole, with its pitch-black flesh and strangely glowing eyes.
"He is important," she insisted, whispering the words against Doreah's ear. "Can you tell? He is precious."
"So you say," the bed-slave easily agreed. "Will you name him? Like a pet, even if it is not the Dothraki way. Have you thought of any, Khalessi?"
"Hedorah. I think he will like that name."
Ser Jorah said nothing about the tadpole even if he seemed saddened with how fixated she grew towards it as they headed closer and closer to Vaes Dothrak. The place she'd die in, after losing her husband, her son. Burning that maegi to death had given her bitter satisfaction but she was still alone. The tadpole helped soothe her loneliness and she kept the barrel close. Even slept with herself curled around it, the wood pressing against her abdomen and fingertips trailing in the water to which they were occasionally nibbled but never hard enough to draw blood.
Though she noted how Hedorah disliked the water when she replaced it with fresh water from a river. After some debating, she used the blood from a fresh rabbit to murk the water within the barrel and even gave him small cuttings of the rabbit's skin. Hedorah ate like any creature, even if she was unsure a tadpole was supposed to be so hungry for flesh. She started to feed him regularly, pouring more blood into his water until it was dark red like a bricks in a kiln and offered him skin, muscle and bone which he would devour with impunity.
"It is a strange thing," Rakharo had said when he saw her feeding the tadpole a lamb's head. Like the rest of the escort, they did not seem drawn to the tadpole. Just regarded it with an odd sense of puzzlement even as Dany kept him close.
In Vaes Dothrak, when she was abandoned by all of her khalasar but Doreah and given to the Dosh Khaleen, Dany kept the tadpole close with her. Hedorah grew until the barrel couldn't contain him so one cloudy night, with Doreah's help, she crept out and released him at the Womb of the World. The great pond would be large enough for him, and she felt he would grow well and the fish within would feed him.
At the very least, as one of the Dosh Khaleen she was permitted to travel to the Womb as often as she wished. A holy place for the Dothraki, the Dosh Khaleen would regularly travel there to bathe in the waters. Daenerys mentioned wishing contemplation and was allowed to come and go provided she informed the guards. They would wait down at the godsway, far enough they would not hear but close they could catch her if she went running off down the path.
Just another reminder she was prisoner, but she pushed those bitter thoughts aside to focus on her son.
"He needs to eat more," Daenerys said one night, irritated. Hedorah was swimming around in the shallows, darting around the reeds. He was already larger than a dog, body now more serpentine, and she could sense his hunger and dislike for the clear waters. He wanted blood and bone, death and dirt.
She could feel him, within her mind. A part of him slithering within her brain until she could sense him. Like an umbilical cord, connecting them to one another even when she was taken back to the temple. Mother and son, always connected. He was hungry and like any good mother she had to feed him.
"He does seem to want blood and flesh," Doreah agreed, the girl still thin and wan but at her side. "Shall we gather a wagon of meat to take him? He grows larger every day."
Doreah was her only friend left, Ser Jorah remained as well but she could tell he was unsatisfied with the fact she had not left with him when they had the chance out in the Dothraki sea. The eggs were stones, her husband was dead as was her son. They were only ash left on the wind and Dany had nothing but her strange tadpole son. At the least Doreah remained, acting as a maid to the Dosh Khaleen so she could stay close with Daenerys even if she still wore that collar that Dany hated.
Still, she and Doreah did pile a wagon high with meat and that night spent the passing hours throwing the flesh and carcasses into the Womb of the World for Hedorah. He was growing, and as Doreah said tadpoles turn into frogs so Hedorah must turn into something.
"He is special," Daenerys agreed, holding a thick slice of mutton in hand. "I can tell. But I don't know what he will become. But it won't be a frog, I know that much. He will be...something else. Something very special."
After a moment she flung the mutton and it landed in the Womb with a splash, sending ripples across the surface. The water lurched after a brief pause and the meat was gone. Their wagon now empty, which was surprising considering the meat they had taken would be enough to feed over a dozen men.
The two girls settled upon the shore of the great lake, the moon rising high above and casting silver shadows across the water. The sand was slightly damp between her toes and Doreah was plaiting a thin braid into her golden hair.
Daenerys felt disjointed, her stomach still a dull ache. Hedorah would be her son now, after Rhaego was murdered within her, but she was unsure how to protect him. Doreah would stay with her, given protection as a maid to a Dosh Khaleen, after Irri and Jhaqi had left. Dany didn't know if Doreah truly though Hedorah was special but she appreciated the bed-slave's easy agreement with her even if she seemed as lost as Daenerys at times.
Though their lonely night was interrupted with Hedorah attacked and killed the horse hitched to the wagon, moving with far greater speed and force than either had anticipated as he surged from the water like a great eel. She had not realized just how big he had become until he was slithering up on land and killing a full grown horse and then dragging it into the water before either of them could react. Doreah and Dany just stared in shock as the waves lapped at the shore, the water already growing still.
"Your son is indeed growing strong, Khalessi," Doreah finally said, an expression of deep bewilderment on her face.
"He feasts on sheep and horses alike," Dany agreed. She thought she spied a deep glint of red out in the waters.
When Daenerys waded out into the Womb to inspect Hedorah- with Doreah staying safe on the shore, as Hedorah did not like any other than his mother approaching -she noticed how his skin was becoming oddly loose. Almost like algae entwined with seaweed. His eyes were also changing, from their bright silver to a gleaming red. It was odd, as she did not see him chew the horse but seemed to have dragged it within himself. She did not know what it mean, but stroked him several times along his smooth back before returning with Doreah to Vaes Dothrak, the wagon left behind.
She got banned to the Dosh Khaleen temple after that.
Daenerys raged and threw things at the wall, but despite being revered the Dosh Khaleen were still slaves of the Dothraki and she was now a prisoner in the temple and not allowed to leave even with an escort. She hated them all so much, but a girl of only fourteen name days had not the strength to tear her way through the door and run to the Womb of the World to be with her son. She hated them all and cursed them in her mind and occasionally out loud when her mood was especially foul.
But she still did her best to protect Doreah, accepting all responsibly and firm in the idea she had ordered the slave-girl to steal the wagon and horse. Doreah wisely did not contradict her and the girl was permitted to live instead of being strangled by a silken cloth for her theft. Dany was just enraged by the entire incident, as a Dosh Khaleen she should have every right to the meat and wagon but for some reason she now was not allowed so.
In the back of her mind she could sense her son and his confusion and want for her, and Dany was angry over being separated from him. A part of her, wild and vicious, wanted to set the entire Dosh Khaleen temple on fire and then flee to the Womb of the World, but rationality won out. She was no use to her son dead and Doreah was still visiting him. A slip of parchment snuck into Dany's half empty wine flagon, the High Valyrian barely legible and letters even worse, but enough that Dany knew Doreah was still feeding Hedorah even if he now never approached the slave but the meat she threw to him always vanished.
Still, it was some moons until Daenerys saw her son and that was at the presentation of a new khalessi, which at the very least meant she was able to leave Vaes Dothrak. For the new khalessi to devour a heart before them all to ensure a strong healthy male child for her khal.
Daenerys did not care for the ceremony. She did not care when this new khalessi ate the stallions heart before her khal, not even concentrating on the scene from where she stood with the other Dosh Khaleen. On the smell and sight of a crimson muscle being torn and swallowed, the khalessi looking young like herself. Another stolen childbride, surrounded by widows and her khal and his kos.
Daenerys wanted her son, and was still enraged she had been separated from him for so long. Their bond felt hot and tense within her mind, he wanted her as well but despite several attempts she kept being captured and dragged back to the temple. Ser Jorah had vanished after the second time he was caught helping her, something which only fueled her rage.
She wanted her child and her hatred grew each day for those that kept her away from him. She wished she could turn into a dragon and bathe them in fire and blood.
"Khalakka dothrae mr'anha!" the khalessi declared upon the rise, once she had swallowed down the last of the heart. Blood smeared her face and stained her hands crimson, and her expression was one of pride.
Dany ignored the screaming, the cheers, the drums and the horns. It was another fools tale, how many times has the Stallion been proclaimed only to die even as the oldest of the Dosh Khaleen spoke the same words she had spoken to Daenerys all those moons ago. The prince was riding, the Stallion, the khalessi naming her child in honour of her khal. Words were wind and that was all the Stallion was.
Daenerys wanted her son, she could sense him as well as feel her own rising hunger. A growing knot in her gut. She was also tired of the Dothraki and the stink of horsemeat.
Still, she followed along the progression with the rest of the Dosh Khaleen as they made their way up the godsway to the Womb of the World. Past the immense horse gate, past the fallen idols with the flickering torches, until the gleaming water of the great lake began to loom before them. Doreah had slipped to her side at one point, joining the rest of the slaves and eunuchs bracketing the Dosh Khaleen. Daenerys could see the bruises on her friend's bare arms, on her exposed shoulder, in the form of a hand prints when they passed a torch along the path, and felt a flush of rage that went unnoticed in the night.
The hunger in her stomach grew as they steadily treked up the path of the godsway, ancient stolen statues watching them silently.
They went to the great lake which was surrounded by the huge fringe of reeds, its water still and calm and so very dark in the clear night. Dany remembered being told the story of how the first rider and horse had emerged from the Womb of the World thousands of years ago. A strange algae was staining the rim of the lake and tainting the white sand, the threads thick and gleaming silver where it was inching across the shore. The hunger in her stomach felt like coals, deep and yawning and burning deep. She dreamed there were glints of red within the water, far off the shore like the comet had been. So distant and yet so bright.
The procession waited on the grassy shore as the new khalessi disrobed, intending on cleansing herself of the blood in the holy water of the Womb.
The twin glints of red within the lake vanished for a heartbeat. A blink.
It was then Daenerys realized the hunger she was feeling was not her own but rather Hedorah's. Panic lurched in her belly, banishing her disjointed disinterest in a heartbeat as everything became razor sharp, and she found herself running forward, reaching out to the new khalessi as the young girl went to step out into the waters of Womb of the World. Heedless of the danger lurking within.
"Don't, it's not safe-" her fingers had barely grazed the khalessi's bare shoulders when her khal backhanded Daenerys across the face.
Daenerys fell sprawling back across the sand, stunned and her lower lip split.
An instant later the water of the Womb of the World exploded forth, as a great trilling noise filled the air followed by a gigantic, enraged form. The khal who struck her was crushed underneath a hand that looked as if created by grey tendrils, blood splattering across the sand as the man died without even realizing it. The khalessi barely had time to let out a started scream before she was crushed as well, and then Doreah was throwing herself over Daenerys as the crowd around the Womb of the World let out panicked shrieks as a great form heaved itself up out of the water.
Doreah clung to Daenerys, even as she managed to sit up and rubbed a hand down the girl's back as Hedorah rampaged around them. Several feet away a Dothraki was writhing in the sand, the flesh melting off his face until gory bone was all that was left behind as his eyeballs liquefied. Another plummeted down from the air, striking the ground in a mess of snapped bones.
The water of the lake washed against Dany's legs, soaking her dress as Doreah remained close, and Daenerys saw how it left sticky, blackened splotches behind. Her son's strange biology had sickened the water, turned the Womb of the World into his own and polluted the clear water black with his oils.
He was also no longer a tadpole or even the eel-like creature, instead he was vast, huge, having grown exponentially in the months apart. The ground shuddered beneath his weight. Towering over them all until his two crimson eyes looked like slices of a blood moon, his body a dark grey like metal and blending with the night sky. Perhaps over sixty meters tall, he would be even grander than the huge bronze stallion gates guarding Vaes Dothrak. So vast she had to tilt her head right back to see him proper.
Around them everyone died, with Doreah shaking like a newborn foal in her arms. The ache in Dany's lip was distant as she hugged the girl close, "It's alright, my son won't hurt you."
She was unsure if Doreah believed her but nonetheless the girl trusted her enough to not try and flee and simply clung tighter to her.
When the screams around them finally died- even if Dany could hear the panic rising from the distant city -and a vast shadow appeared over them, Daenerys did not fear. A great slithering noise as Hedorah's form seemed to compress upon itself, until his tar-like body surrounded them as two eyes, both taller than Dany's body, watched them closely. His shifting flesh a great wall that enveloped them even as his eyes glowed with a strange unnatural light and Doreah was shaking so badly Daenerys could hear her teeth rattling.
Gently, firmly, Daenerys pulled herself away from Doreah and reached out to her son. Her hand sank into Hedorah's grey skin; it was warm and slightly wet, reminding her of moss in a dark damp corner hidden away. His skin did not burn her, even if she could see a skinless arm jutting from one of the folds within his grey tendrils which seemed to make up most of his body.
She could sense her child assessing her, annoyance and hunger still thick within him which washed against her mind like a wave. At his mother being struck so blatantly in front of him, at the horselords locking her away, keeping them apart. Dany was just happy she was with her child again, after having lost her first and then they had tried to take away her other from her
Hedorah's body seemed to ripple and shimmer, the slime of his flesh shifting constantly while his great crimson eyes remained watchful and bright. Piercing torches within the dull grey of his body.
"What is he?" Doreah asked, staring up at Hedorah's form in awe and confusion but made no move to touch him as Dany was doing.
"I don't know," she answered truthfully, and could feel her son give the equivalent to a shrug through their bond. It seemed he did not know either, just that he was what he was.
Down the godsway and towards Vaes Dothrak Daenerys could hear shouts and knew the city would be mustering the horselords. Dany felt her rage deepen, at the thousands of slaves bound in the city. The way she had been locked up even as a Dosh Khaleen, the way the Dothraki had spent centuries raiding and raping and enslaving. She had never had the strength to stop it, to rip out the backbone of slavery, but now she knew she balanced upon the precipice of change. Now she had a son unlike any other, not a stallion or even a dragon but something else altogether. Something that defied any category or attempt at understanding, something even his mother knew not what he was while he himself was indifferent.
But she knew her son's strength and eagerness for battle. Even now the scores of Dothraki screamers had been slain in a matter of moments, crushed beneath Hedorah's bulk or flesh melted from their bones or absorbed through his skin as no more than meat for him to sup upon. Hedorah was hungry; he had been feeding off the blood and death through the water, which had seeped deep within the earth of Essos after centuries of slaughter, nurtured in the ghosts of violence across so many lifetimes. But now he was so vast he hungered for more and any decent mother would never hesitate to feed her child.
So with that in mind Daenerys reached out to her son, and a great hand carefully scooped up her slim body with a squealing Doreah flailing against her before he deposited them both on one slimy shoulder. Dany hugged the girl close to her side, and she quickly calmed even as her fingers bit into Dany's arm.
Hedorah's body seemed to stretch and swell, like a great ink stain spreading than any normal creature moving as he straightened up on his hind legs. Almost mimicking the form of a man, with arms and legs like one, but with great dripping grey tendrils and those huge red eyes that looked out towards the city of horselords.
Her son's flesh was warm and wet beneath her, and her hand sunk into the skin of his neck as if it were dough, but despite the slight irritation against the exposed skin on the palm of her hand Daenerys felt no discomfort. Certainly not like the Dothraki who had his flesh melted away, her son would not harm her.
Dorerah's grip was tight but Daenerys only felt elation as her son began to amble towards the great bronze archway of Vaes Dothrak even as screams began to raise as they realized what approached while a great poisonous fog rose around Hedorah's tendriled feet. Her husband and firstborn had been taken from her, but Dany had been giving a second chance. A monstrous child unlike any the world has ever known and she would have him usher in a new age.
Hungry and merciless her son was, but he had a mother to guide him.
Fanart by Tigers_apple! 🐯🍎
