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Chapter 67 - Sweet Sunlight
🕑 Added 2025-12-18 17:13:00 +0000 UTCBeneath the Mountains of the Moon
Robert offered the fae the choice he had to the Children of the Forest and the giants.
The Matriarch was surprised by the offer but refused it. Their lives here might be hard compared to living on the surface, but her people were safe, and that’s what mattered most.
Still, Robert left the offer on the table, should the fae change their minds while Robert was alive.
While he enjoyed their hospitality, humans didn’t do well without sunlight for extended periods, and they were reaching the two-week mark since entering the tunnels.
He didn’t have much to do during that time except to spar with Sandor, as the fae were all busy with something in the palace, and whenever he asked, the answer was the same.
It did not concern him.
Returning would take three to four days, and he was already looking forward to feeling the sunlight on his skin again.
Caerindra would be coming with them as part of the bargain, and as the bargain was solely hers, no one else would accompany her, the Matriarch’s daughter or not.
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Supplied, rested, and ready to go, the four of them set to leave the tunnels and return to the surface, something no other fae had done in thousands of years, and Caerindra was nervous.
Backtracking all the way to the entrance in three days, Robert stopped by the burned husks of the spiders, taking the pincers of the largest one as a trophy, which had impressed the fae, as they were not monsters easily felled.
Not to a man who was making a habit of killing monsters, of course.
During the journey, he tried to learn more about Caerindra, but she did not like Robert at all and sneered every time he tried to make conversation.
She was perfectly fine with speaking to Sandor and especially to Leaf, however.
“Ah, sweet sunlight.” Robert held his arms out as the sun warmed his skin, while the cool breeze of the mountains ruffled his hair.
Ra, who was patrolling the area, came down once he saw Robert, greeting his father with a nudge and getting head rubs in return.
“I thought dragons had two legs and two wings.” Caerindra was standing back, wary, as she laid eyes on a dragon, the first fae to do so in thousands of years.
Thinking about it, she was doing a lot of firsts for her kind.
“My dragons grew after eating the heart of an archdemon.”
“The one you slayed? I shall admit, I am looking forward to seeing it.” If it was the human alone, the fae would not take his word for it, but Leaf had vouched for Robert, and it changed things.
Still, she wanted to see the corpse with her own eyes.
“Oh, you will. Now come on, let’s go.”
“I need to close the entrance first.” She turned around, and Robert whipped his head around to watch.
Caerindra laid her hands on the stone, humming, and it slowly began to fuse together. Jagged pieces of rocks grew from each side first, stabbing to the other side like knives in an alternating manner, before the gaps began to close and the surface smoothed out.
If he didn’t see it firsthand, even Robert wouldn’t believe there was a hole there once, a hole that he had literally hammered himself.
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Asgard
Caerindra was silent for much of the flight back to Asgard, choosing to enjoy the breeze, the sky, the sun, and the stars at night. Everything on the surface was news to her, and she was a curious person.
“This is your city then; it’s… nice,” she complimented Robert, though it sounded more like an insult to his ears.
Robert was quick to retort with, “Thanks, it has fresh air, the view in both the day and night is to die for, and there are no giant spiders around, unlike certain somewhere,” causing Caerindra’s face to scrunch.
“And would you look at that, there is the corpse of the archdemon, and the horns of the kraken.” Robert pointed down, flying Ra over the hill on purpose.
“Goodness,” Caerindra took a deep breath, feeling a sliver of the darkness once carried by the demon.
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“My lord, it is great to see you…” Tyrion, as usual, was there to greet him with Davos, but his words slowly died down upon seeing their new guest, who clearly was not a human but one of these Underdwellers he had left to seek.
“I see that we have a new guest,”
“That we do. This is Caerindra, a fae, whose people were the original creators of the dragonstone before the Valyrians stole it.”
“Well, someone is going to be mighty displeased with that.”
“Guide Caerindra to a guest room so she can rest, and make sure no one bothers her.”
“At once,” “This way, my lady.”
“What exactly are you? A child with the soul of a man?”
“A dwarf, merely an unfortunate boy born short and deformed,”
“Ah,”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have a magical remedy for it?”
“We don’t, but perhaps consider these Targaryens; their filthy blood magic might be of use.”
“Considering they despise Lord Robert and the Targaryens haven’t practiced any kind of magic in centuries, that is unlikely to happen.”
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Their willful guest chose to rest and eat dinner in her room but was present the following morning at breakfast.
No one bothered her with words or by contact, but Robert could not stop them from looking, and it was fine as long as Caerindra was not disturbed.
She was willing to fill her end of the bargain starting today, desiring to return to her home as quickly as possible, and so Robert gathered Marwyn along with the aspiring Glass Candle Operators he was training, which was termed by Robert to have this official feeling to it.
“Glass candles?”
“Valyrian objects that the dragonlords used to see across the land, send visions and dreams, and speak to one another.” Robert slowed down near the end due to Caendria’s reddening face.
“I’m feeling there is a story there,” and he would bet his hammer that it was tied to the Valyrians.
Rummaging through her bag, the fae pulled out a blue crystal mirror. “This is a Neu’simar, crystals that we use to speak to each other from long distances, and more. I cannot believe those bastards stole them too,” she explained, shocking more than one person, but especially Robert himself.
Holy shit, the fae had two-way mirrors.
“Those thieving bastards,” he spat, still stuck on the mirrors, but shelved it aside for now, pulling Marwyn close by the shoulder.
“Anyway, this is Marwyn, the closest thing to a mage we have, and these are our aspirants who may have magic in their blood.” He pointed at the cadets gathered in the Administrative Hall.
Irked by Robert’s quick dismissal, Caerindra began to inspect the men and women lining up before her.
One by one, she dismissed them with “not you,” “nay,” “nay,” “maybe,” and “definitely not,” but did not send the last one away, a young girl of around sixteen if Robert had to guess.
Caerindra inspected her in silence, while the young girl was getting more nervous by the second.
Tyrion informed him that she was an orphan, doing odd jobs to earn a living, and had been chosen by Marwyn due to her affinity for magic, by pure chance, as she was working in Valhalla to keep his room clean.
“She is, by far, the best one to teach the Echo,” the girl was averting her eyes, entirely out of her depth.
“What’s your name, dearie?” Robert asked the young girl, who raised her head briefly before looking down and muttering her name,
“Ellyn, my lord.”
“Ellyn, how would you like to learn your letters along with magic and move to a much higher-paying position?” He would get straight to the matter, because once again, he had work piling up in his office.
“Me?” the girl asked, accidentally raising her voice, before looking down again, flustered, realizing what she had done.
Oh boy, self-confidence issues, “Yes, you.”
“I… I would be grateful, my lord.”
“Then it’s settled. She is your first student while we search for more.” Robert put his arm on Caendria’s shoulder, but the fae pushed his arm off by the wrist.
“I don’t think so. I only agreed to teach one person, not more.”
Well, there went his chance to sneak in an additional student or two into the lessons. “Is there a way I can convince you otherwise?”
Maybe they could bargain again.
“There is not.”
“Then, Ellyn, learn well; it’s really important.”
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“I must admit, you returned sooner than expected. I thought it would take more time.” Tyrion was fascinated by their guest, as another legend had just been revealed as true.
“I was lucky. I mean, the girl hurried without thinking much, and they didn’t seem to make a problem out of it.” Even by the standards of his luck so far, this was something new for Robert.
Leaf coughed, and the table turned to her, assuming she had something important to say. “They did, actually. There were discussions, ranging from never letting you leave to outright killing you to free Caerindra from her obligations. If it wasn’t for the fact that her name would be sullied due to her overeagerness, blood might have been shed.” Whether Robert could have killed several hundred warriors in their territory or not wasn’t a question she wanted answered.
In the end, the fault lay with Caerindra, mostly, whose bargain with Robert would have been her way of proving herself to the Coven, and instead, it had achieved the opposite.
Her words, while impactful as a witness of the results of Robert's deeds, were not enough to turn the heated discussions in their favor, and in the end, it was the customs of the fae that had stopped them.
It did not matter how great at magic they were; just like the other races out there, it was pride that defeated them.
“Huh, good thing they didn’t. I wouldn’t want to kill them all.” Robert knew something was going on behind closed doors, but not the details, and he had just learned the fae might have actually tried something.
“Caerindra was also reprimanded severely. There is a great chance she cannot inherit the position of the Matriarch after her mother,” the Child of the Forest revealed, and Robert actually felt a bit guilty.
“Thanks, Leaf, I feel bad now.” Thinking about it, he and Caerindra were on the same boat as heirs unable to inherit their birthright.
Not that the fae would see it as a consolation.
“On better tidings, we received our first shipment of food from the Iron Islands.” Tyrion pulled up the basket on the floor, and inside was one giant fruit that he handed to Robert.
It was wide enough to cover at least three-quarters of his large hands and was at least seven inches tall.
“What is this?” It looked like a red apple, but the ones that you would find in a competition are specifically cultivated to be bigger than normal.
“An apple, my lord.”
Wiping the surface with his sleeve, Robert took a bite. It was crisp, juicy, and sweet, leaving him wanting more. “How in the hell?”
“Bounty of the mother tree,” Leaf leaped up to explain.
Damn, this was one of the best decisions he ever made. “Well, send her something in my name, whatever your mother tree wants.”
“The corpse of the demon?” the little green elf asked without much thought, but that was one thing Robert was not going to part with.
“No, but when I kill something magical again, I’ll send the remains to her. How does that sound?”
“We are thankful for your generosity.”
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Ellyn was excused from her duties, given her own room, and had a lesson plan drawn for her.
In the morning, she would learn her letters with Maester Olivar or one of the scholars until lunch after breaking her fast and then learn the Echo from Caendria until sundown.
The fae had requested the help of his dragons to melt stone, since there weren’t any fire mountains around to acquire molten rock, which was easier to shape and control.
He had assigned Slifer to the duty of melting stones for the lessons as needed, while assigning guards to Ellyn.
She had just become too important to leave alone.
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The year 290 AC was nearing its end, and Robert decided to inspect the current state of the end-of-year reports.
First were the trade fleets. As Asgard grew in numbers and land, more and more could be produced for trade with the rest of Westeros and Essos. By now, each trade mission was making fifty thousand gold on average per three months, equaling around two hundred thousand gold dragons that flowed back to the production centers and guilds.
The shipyards were only constrained by the amount of timber arriving from White Harbor, and the trade fleet was growing slowly but steadily.
Furthermore, the construction guild was swarmed with orders and was having a hard time finding more workers. In fact, the entire guild system was in the middle of a conflict, trying to recruit the available workers.
One good side of having so much money to spend on his city, Asgard, was that it had a harder time finding workers than workers finding work.
It pleased Robert to see that his people were living better than the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.
The food shipment from the Iron Islands, which he would rename soon, was sold at cost, so everyone in the city would be able to eat properly.
Tyrion’s management of the Advancement Fair was progressing nicely, and the rewards had even drawn outside attention, bringing in more scholars from Essos.
There were fewer people interested in making “a contraption using waterwheels to make forging simpler and less costly,” as it was a more demanding and harder-to-meet work compared to “a writing tool that does not require constant refilling.”
Unlike his previous ideas, which were considered flights of fancy by a dragonrider, the Westerosi nobles understood that Robert hadn’t just gotten fortunate with the dragons, the demon, or the kraken.
Whatever Robert was doing, it was bound to be interesting and bountiful.
One more thing he decided to do before the year's end was to start with the investment Robert had promised his father.
The old man wouldn’t wait forever before getting prissy again, and he didn’t want to get into an argument while visiting his little sister.
Between ruling a bustling and growing city, daily spars to keep his perfect body in shape, and all the other work, Robert was busy from sunrise to sunset each day.
But it was fine. He actually enjoyed the work, and the amount of wealth he was sitting on wouldn’t do any good gathering dust.
Comments
orcun demir
Oh yes, it will be legendary.
LordRhyolith
Another great chapter. Pretty curious about the next big thing, cuz it looks like something is about to happen - like always when things go too smoothly
