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Chapter 1 - Awaken (Rewritten)
🕑 Added 2025-09-04 19:25:27 +0000 UTCEarth
It was a fine spring day as a young man was walking outside to enjoy the fresh air.
Matt turned the corner, ready to visit his favorite bakery, and before he could understand what had happened, a speeding car out of control slammed into him.
Thrown back like a ragdoll, Matt tried to breathe, only to cough blood and wheeze due to the sharp, agonizing pain of his ribs puncturing his organs. Pedestrians gathered, calling the emergency services for an ambulance, but it was too late. Blood began to pool around the young man, who was hacking and trembling in shock, before he went still.
The sunlight dimmed, and before the sight of the gathered crowd, Matt’s eyes went glossy.
—
Winds of Glory
Merchant Ship Heading to Braavos
Narrow Sea
281 AC
Matt lurched out of his bed, breathing heavily and sweating, immediately patting his chest, checking himself for any wounds.
When his hands weren’t sticky and hot with blood, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Just a nightmare." Matt thought as he made to take off the covers and rise, only to see a worn-looking brown blanket instead of the usual Star Wars one he had.
Matt quickly got up but felt disoriented and stumbled, falling to the floor. The room was too dark to see anything clearly, so he reached for the window, where a small ray of light filtered into the room.
Pulling the wooden hatch open, which in itself was weird, Matt took a look outside.
“What the fuck?!” He shouted because rather than seeing the street his apartment window looked to, he saw a sea.
Endless, boundless sea.
Now that the room was illuminated, Matt could see that he was inside a wooden ship.
More importantly, his hands weren’t his, and neither was the voice. The body he was seeing was muscled like a powerlifter, tall, at least six and a half feet, and nothing like his own softer and five-foot-eight body.
Ignoring his surroundings, Matt searched for a mirror or any other reflective surface to take a good look at himself.
Interestingly enough, he found shiny, gray steel plate armor with a prancing stag emblem, like the kind you would see in a museum.
Taking the chestplate closer to the window, Matt saw a face on the surface, one that most certainly wasn’t his. Well sculpted, handsome, with a short but growing beard and mustache, raven-dark hair, and electric blue eyes.
This body definitely wasn’t his. Matt searched the sack that contained the armor but found nothing else, except for a pouch containing gold coins with a three-headed dragon on one side, clothes, and a hammer that looked more like an anvil with a handle.
Sitting down, Matt put his head in his hands, trying to make sense of this situation.
How the fuck did he even find himself in a medieval setting like this? Was this a prank? He had some friends, but none that would go this far.
"Lord Robert, may I come in?" "Queried," a voice said, with an accent he was sure he had never heard before.
“Lord Robert?” he thought, unsure as to who the man was calling out to.
“Yes?” Matt asked to see if the man was looking for the owner of this body.
A short, middle-aged man entered, his hair just beginning to gray, and gave a shallow bow with his head.
"We will be making landfall soon, my lord; you best get ready." The short, middle-aged man informed him, and Matt nodded, playing along.
—
Braavos
Matt walked out of the ship in a daze, dressed in the medieval clothes that Robert had, with the armor in the same sack and the pouch tied around his neck to avoid getting pickpocketed.
It wouldn’t do for him to be without money while trying to make sense of where the hell he was.
So far, all he knew was that this body belonged to a man named Robert, he had several items with the prancing stag emblem, and he had gold coins with a three-headed dragon on one side.
The conclusion was easy to make but no less baffling. Matt somehow ended up in the body of Robert Baratheon in the ASOIAF universe, but what he was doing in Braavos wasn’t clear, because as far as Matt knew, Robert never left Westeros.
Of course, provided he was inhabiting the body of Robert Baratheon, the Demon of the Trident, and not a distant ancestor with the same name.
A sailor, drunk and barely able to walk, shouldered Robert. The man shouted something in a language he did not recognize, and Matt raised an eyebrow. The sailor blinked, realizing his face only came to Matt’s, or rather, Robert’s chest, and quickly excused himself.
Hungry and suffering from a headache, he looked around for a tavern and saw a sign with a mug carved on it. Walking inside, Matt did indeed find a tavern and took a seat out of the way.
A barmaid came after a couple of minutes and, again, spoke in a language Matt didn’t understand at all.
Instead of trying to communicate with the woman, Matt just pointed at another table where several men had ordered whole roasted chickens and alcohol. The young woman nodded and left to carry out the order.
Perhaps with some food in his belly, this damn headache would go away, but for now, all he could do was to wait while massaging his temples.
Was he in the Game of Thrones era? Or sometime before that? Perhaps this wasn’t the Robert Baratheon from the show but an ancestor that had decided to leave Westeros for some reason?
His questions came to a halt as the barmaid brought the chicken, and Matt’s mouth watered. He tore into the chicken and bread while only drinking from the mug to swallow the food easier.
The first chicken was gone in the blink of an eye, and Matt ordered two more and demolished them as well. His headache subsided enough that he felt comfortable leaving the tavern.
Taking a gold coin out of the pouch on his neck, Robert handed it to the barmaid, who bowed deeply before handing him several silver coins.
Good to know that the gold dragon was valuable enough for him to live comfortably for some time.
His generous payment had drawn the attention of a group who surrounded Matt as he turned to leave.
Their words were foreign to him as always, and one of them stepped in his way when Matt moved to leave and reached for the coin pouch. His headache began to intensify, as if an orchestra’s worth of war drums were banging inside his skull.
One of the men pulled a knife, his vision went dark, and Matt felt himself slip into unconsciousness.
—
When Matt came to be, he was standing in the middle of the tavern. The group that had surrounded him were strewn all over the tavern. One was hanging from the candle chandelier, another had his head shown through a wall, and one of them, the one with the knife, was dead.
His guts were spilled all over the floor, and Matt looked at his trembling hands, covered in blood.
Pushing down the urge to empty his breakfast, he tossed another golden coin to the barmaid and bolted out of the door.
—
Hiding in a different tavern, Matt rented a room for a silver coin, and to his luck, the barmaid this time spoke Westerosi common.
Apparently, he was in Braavos, and the current Sea Lord was Ferrego Antaryon, who was the canon Sea Lord as far as Matt remembered.
So, he was in Braavos, in the ASOIAF universe, most likely before the rebellion, of course if there was even going to be one, in the body of Robert Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End.
None of this made sense without knowing what the hell was going on.
Too tired from the strangeness of the whole situation and more than a little nauseous due to the bloodbath in the tavern, Matt went to sleep after barring the door with the hammer.
—
Robert groaned as he woke up. “Bloody hell, did I drink too much again?” He grumbled, getting off the bed to take a look out the window. Hopefully, they were close to Braavos now.
Blinking in astonishment, he didn’t see the Narrow Sea, but Braavos itself. “Fuck. How the hell did I get here?” Even if the ship had docked, he should not have been in the city, resting in a bed.
His head throbbed, and a memory slipped through it. He remembered now the fight at the bar, the thrill of the violence, and the flow of the blood.
But nothing before that, not how he came to be in that tavern, nor how he came to be in this room.
Nothing.
Surely, he didn’t drink enough to forget most of the day? It was only a couple of bottles of wine at most.
At least he hadn’t lost anything, right? Jumping out of the bed, Robert saw his hammer barring the door and his armor and clothes lying on the sack, but no sign of his coin.
Emptying the sack, he found nothing and began to search the room and eventually found it beneath the pillow. It would be another notch in his string of bad fortune had he lost the pouch.
First Rhaegar and Lyanna at Harrenhal, and then being exiled.
Just remembering the Targaryen bastard made his head ache as if artillery shells were raining inside his skull.
Robert frowned. What the fuck was an artillery?
Shaking his head, he went to find breakfast to fill his starving stomach. He would think better once full.
—
The Heir to Storm’s End felt as if he hadn’t eaten in ages and rectified it by eating enough to feed a family and sending it all down with a mug of ale.
Now, he needed a plan.
But first, he paid for the food.
—
Returning to his room, he began to consider his options. He wasn’t going to sit down on his arse for five whole years and couldn’t return to Westeros.
Which left joining a sellsword band as the only option that appealed to him.
To fight for glory, coin, and victory. What else could a man like him want?
A woman to warm his bed, but that thought led to Lyanna again, making his headache worse.
Well, at least Braavosi courtesans were famous, and he could afford to have some fun. Dressing, Robert reached for the door, only for his feet to not move forward.
“What the fuck?!” Robert could feel his whole body getting stiff, and no matter what, he couldn’t force himself to move.
Only when he decided to take a step back did his body obey him.
Not many things could unsettle Robert Baratheon, but not being in control of his own body? That was definitely one.
Moving back and forth, he found himself unable to get out of the room.
Robert wasn’t a godly man by any means, but were the Seven just telling him not to go to a pleasure house?
Sufficiently cowed, he sat down on the bed.
Rubbing his head in disbelief, Robert felt a sudden weariness wash over him, and before long, he fell asleep.
—
Matt woke up to find himself dressed, which shouldn’t have been possible because he slept almost naked, and felt a strange fullness. The coin pouch was tied to his belt, rather than around his neck, and it was almost noon.
Shit, did taking over the body make him schizophrenic? Or was the original owner, Robert Baratheon, still here?
The thought of sharing a body with someone else disturbed Matt, and there was only one way he could get answers.
Finding paper, or rather, parchment, and a quill proved to be more challenging than expected, but eventually, he had succeeded.
Laying the parchment on the small nightstand, Matt wrote down a note and put it inside the coin pouch; he began to plan.
Since he was in the ASOIAF universe, and for some reason in Braavos right now, he needed a way to make a living. Unfortunately, Matt’s skills as an accountant were hardly useful, unless he found himself employed by a noble or a really rich merchant.
And the idea of spending his life as a mere worker in a fantasy world did not appeal to him.
This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and there was only one path he could follow.
Dragons.
He knew how to hatch dragon eggs and just needed to find them. Fortunately, Pentos wasn’t that distant from Braavos, and Illyrio Mopatis should have just what he sought.
If he could steal the eggs, and preferably Blackfyre if the magister had it.
Matt stopped, thinking. This line of thought was extremely dangerous, because getting caught meant certain death, yet he found himself feeling anticipation rather than fear.
Perhaps it was because he died once, and the thought of a second time did not scare him as much as it did?
Regardless, Matt wouldn’t waste this newfound life, but he wouldn’t live like he used to.
Now why did the idea of visiting a brothel cross his mind all of a sudden?
