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Chapter 18 - Cure for Greyscale
🕑 Added 2025-05-19 08:05:18 +0000 UTCStorm Kingdom
Storm’s End
9 BAC
Ei watched as the child’s fever subsided, and her ragged breathing returned to normal, the infection gone from her face, not even leaving a scar.
The couple break down into a fresh wave of tears, hugging the child closer to their chests.
Unwilling to deal with the drama, the sole princess of the Storm Kingdom turned back to head to the castle, coming across the astonished faces of the guards, who let her pass without uttering a single word, too stunned to say anything at seeing the plague once said to be incurable, heal before their eyes.
—
“She did what?” Argilac asked the Maester who was too giddy on his feet for the King’s taste.
“The Princess found a cure for Greyscale!” Maester Larry exclaimed, his eyes shining like stars in a clear night in reverence.
There were methods to treat Greyscale, but their effectiveness varied. Peeling the infected skin off and applying ointment was one of the more effective methods, but most people, even with the milk of the poppy, couldn’t stand the excruciating pain, and died during the treatment.
That the Princess had created an ointment that took the infected skin off without any pain while treating the fever and the other symptoms caused by Greyscale was nothing sort of a miracle.
“Hah! That’s my daughter!” Argilac shouted, slapping his hand on his throne in jubilation, and the nobles gathered in the room exploded into cheers, singing the praises of the Princess.
“Where is she now?” He continued after the crowd began to quiet down.
“She is instructing the servants on how to prepare the ointment now, Your Grace.”
“Good, good. Now, we need to get as much of the cure as possible out to every place with Greyscale, and someone find me that accursed ship.” Argilac ordered. No way in the seven hells did he believe the Greyscale outbreak to be an accident. Whoever did this, did it on purpose, but he couldn’t begin to guess why.
One of the enemy kingdoms doing something like this was possible, but the Storm King didn’t think any of them could be unhinged enough to spread Greyscale, not even Mern, who had every reason to hate Argilac for killing his father, Garse.
The disease was known to be seen in the Iron Islands and Dragonstone, with some rumours claiming it was seen beyond the wall as well, and out of the three options, only the Iron Born were bastards enough to do this, but with how busy they were warring, Argilac doubted it was them.
No, whoever it was most likely came from the Free Cities, since Greyscale was more common there.
But who?
—
Weeping Town
Lord Tommen, no matter how scared for his life, knew keeping the Town under lockup was the best choice to stop Greyscale from spreading. Even in his tower, there were people afflicted with the disease, locked up in a different wing with only the aging Maester and the healers allowed to apply what remedies they had.
It had been two weeks since messengers from the Storm’s End had arrived, questioning the lack of letters and deliveries. He personally had explained the situation without letting the riders approach, and they had no one else approach after that.
His wife and children were safe, for now anyway, as everyday someone else got infected.
First it was one of the maids tending to his son, then the stable master, and yesterday, his brother had been infected with it.
He didn’t know what to do, other than to wait and hope the infection would somehow be brought under control.
With a bang, the door to his solar slammed to the wall, one of the guards, Aren, stormed inside, out of breath.
“My Lord, cure, cure from the Storm’s End.” He explained between gulps of breath before Tommen could ask what he thought he was doing.
“What!? Are you sure?” He rushed across the room, holding the guard by the arms, screaming out the question.
“Yes, My Lord. They say it was Princess Argella who found the cure.”
Rushing out of the room and down the stairs, almost stumbling to his death once, Lord Tommen Whitehead of the Weeping Tower wanted to see if this cure was real with his own eyes.
—
Eastern Dornish Marches
Stonehelm
Lord Calum Swann of the Stonehelm paced outside the room of his wife, afflicted with Greyscale, as the love of his life groaned in pain and fever, all because of that damn ship.
It wasn’t just his wife, though, as more than half of the farmsteads and villages had reported smallfolk with Greyscale. They had enough grain thanks to Princess Argella’s machines for a year, but shipping it would no doubt spread the disease.
He was going to have every member of the vessel drawn and quartered, damn the consequences.
A particularly long groan from his wife almost made him burst into the room to comfort her, but Calum stayed himself at the last second, knowing there was nothing he could do.
“My Lord.” Came the voice of his castellan and good-brother as the man entered the hallway with quick steps, holding out a small box with a purple paste in it.
“What is this?”
“Cure, from the Storm’s End. The knights who made the delivery say the Princess created it, and that it takes effect quickly.”
Taking the box, Calum burst into the room this time, approaching his wife against the Maester’s protests, and handed the cure to him.
—
The scene repeated all over the Storm Kingdom, from the smallest of hamlets to the keeps of the nobles, as the deliveries of the cure were made.
And when Greyscale was healed as if it was a blemish, and not a deadly disease, people of the Kingdom celebrated their miracle Princess.
Rich merchants and nobles sent gifts of jewelry, clothing, fabric, shoes and chests full of silver and gold, and the smallfolk did the only thing they could, and prayed to the Seven for the health, prosperity and continued success of Princess Argella.
Slowly, the plague was being eradicated one village at a time, which meant they could afford to send men out to find the cause of it.
The knights, led by Lord Garrin Caron, the soon to be the good-brother of the King, visited the small port House Swann had built, named the Grain Port as it was the chief export item of the land. They learned from merchants and dock workers that the ship, The Vengeance, had docked at the small port, bought some grain, sold expensive clothing and jewelry, toys and statues for cheap, sometimes even giving away some of the wares for free to the smallfolk - exactly what they had done in Tarth and the Weeping Town- which had to be burned due to the orders of the King, since everything sold by the ship could be the source of the disease.
After that, the ship had sailed back to the Free Cities. Lord Whitehead had already sent ships after it, but it was unlikely to yield anything since it was unknown where the ship came from.
—
Unknown to the knights, and the ships sent after The Vengeance, someone with a greater chance of finding the vessel was on the hunt.
Ei, after the production and distribution of the cure was underway, which didn't take much time since it was a simple affair, decided to search the ship on her own, atop the Thunder Dragon. The construct had flown fast enough to break through the sound barrier, and only accelerated from there, crossing half of the sea in minutes.
She watched over the Narrow Sea, checking every ship within her sight, and eventually found the ship responsible for starting a plague on her lands.
The Electro Archon stepped aside, floating, and the dragon dived down, disappearing below the sea.
—
The crew of The Vengeance were happy, as they would be earning a fortune since they completed their commission successfully, and now were sailing towards Pentos slowly, enjoying the spare time they had with wine and food.
Sailing an old woman to Westeros so she could sell some wares at the Storm Kingdom wasn’t usually the kind of job they did, but she was willing to pay more than what they earned in months and Captain Kalyro saw no need to refuse. She had kept her wares close, refusing to interact much with them, and even hired haulers from the docks they had visited, saving the crew the trouble.
None of them liked dealing with the arrogance of the rich merchants and nobles, but as long as the pay was good, the crew knew to shut their mouths, so naturally, this woman was the best Captain Kalyro had ever worked for.
“Hey, what is that?” A sailor cleaning the deck asked, pointing at the blur that seemed to be falling down at high speeds.
While rare, things falling from the sky wasn’t unheard of, mostly some birds dying in the sky and falling down.
What was unheard of, was something that was bigger than his ship falling out of the sky, if the general shape of the blur was anything to go by. He didn’t even have the opportunity to throw his shock off, before whatever it was hit the water, disappearing below the sea.
The crew tried to spot it, but it was unnecessary, as the creature showed itself.
Springing from the sea, the serpentine monster coiled around the ship, throwing the screaming crew around and shaking the ship. Its body lit up with purple light, and to their astonishment, the ship eventually began to rise, slowly at first, and then picking up speed, and within minutes the vessel entered the clouds, vanishing from sight.
The crew, hanging on for dear life, began to pray to what deity they worshipped, even the ones that didn’t believe in gods quickly found themselves begging to be saved by a higher power.
The dragon slowed down, and the crew finally opened their eyes.
The pink, white and orange hues would definitely be beautiful enough to warm the heart of even the most ruthless captain out there, but the only thing the sailors felt was dread, as the monster had carried the ship above the clouds.
“Such a delightful sight, yet I can not enjoy it right now, since you decided to spread a plague on my lands. Enlighten me as to why, Captain, so I may decide your fates.” A voice came, and Kalyro slowly raised his head, his head faint from the height, and as such he wasn’t sure if what he saw was real.
Floating with one leg crossed beneath the other, she was dressed in a light purple robe that barely covered her thighs, and was held together by a sash that had a gold and dark purple ornament on it, with some sort of purple leggings covering the rest of her legs.
Dark purple hair and light purple eyes with a hairpiece on the right side of her head, she certainly looked too good to be real.
“What are you?” Kalyro grunted out, forcing himself up, and immediately fell on his knees, black spots exploding in his eyes.
“The one who has the lives of you and your crew in her hands. Now, tell me, why did you spread Greyscale on the Storm Kingdom?” She asked, floating closer to the captain, while the monster keeping the ship in the air growled as if affirming the question of its master.
“We didn’t.” Kalyro stuttered out, as fear blossomed in his heart like an invasive weed due to something he couldn’t understand,
“Really? Your ship visited Tarth, the Weeping Town and the Grain Port, selling wares, and days after you left, Greyscale began to spread. Not to mention, I can easily feel the curse the disease radiates in the lower deck, so why don’t you try again, perhaps this time with the truth?” The woman, witch, whatever she was, explained, and Kalyro realized what she was talking about.
“The woman, Elmyra, the wares belong to her, I swear we had nothing to do with it.” He begged, getting closer to passing out from the pressure bearing down on him, before it lifted up completely, allowing him to breathe.
“Bring her to me, then, and we shall see.”
Kalyro rose, his legs shaking, and went to retrieve the woman, leaning on the railings to steady himself, questioning if he ate something and was dreaming right now, or did that woman bring the wrath of a god on them.
The Captain of The Vengeance knew the offer was too good to be true from the start, he just didn’t expect it to bite them in the arse this way.
Comments
Вергилий Спардович
BTW, I'm still very interested and would like to see Ei's opinion on such cool things as "right of the first night" and "serfdom", as well as a conversation with "father" on these topics. (The author in one chapter already expressed the MC's opinion that people's lives in this world are really shit, but the MC seems to mention this purely in passing because, well, in fact, she has her own things to do) But it seems to me that she, in theory, as a wise and rather compassionate and empathic deity, and also as a woman (Contrary to popular belief, usually a woman, unfortunately, has a pussy and she gets fucked there) should be at least very outraged by the current situation in her "fem", and at most force her to decisively kill someone, well, because these "humans" have already gone completely nuts. P.s - regarding the conversation about the "first night" with dad. The right of the first night in Westeros was abolished under Queen Alicent, I think, and there this knight so hypocritically and amusingly described how, according to their oaths to the "gods", they are obliged to guard and protect women (but, of course, if their lord wants to rape a couple (a hundred or two) peasant girls (usually from 12 years old, fuck), then the knight is like "that's all our powers. You haven't seen me, I haven't seen you" (hypocritical assholes, btw). But I digress. So, the right of the first night, it seems, was served up by all these bastards under the sauce that the gods gave them the right to own land, to power and, consequently, to people and to fuck a woman at a wedding with her husband, bitch! (attention, I remind you, they got married there from the age of 12-13, yeah) But the peasants are not slaves, yeah... So, I wonder how Argilac will try all this rubbing nonsense to a real fucking god, who in turn does not remember ever approving such bullshit by law. And I would also like to hear her opinion on this issue. P.s.s — Regarding the relationship with the future stepmother. In the Middle Ages, especially in the royal and related environment, there can be no future queen - a girl-god's dandelion (well, absolutely not). The stepmother of the main character will definitely try to take her "under her wing", to confuse her with the help of septa about such crap as "give birth to children for some grandfather, get married and be a sow - this is good, this is right, this is fucking awesome", to exile somewhere or an attempt to marry her off with benefit for herself and somewhere far away, out of sight. Moreover, in such an environment, even in theory there could not be such a stupid girl like the same Samsa (Sansa Stark. It was Martin, due to his feeblemindedness, who came up with such nonsense). A noble girl who is masturbated and prepared to be a potential lady or queen is almost always a cold-blooded scumbag and, where necessary, a calculating and hypocritical beast, for whom there are only the interests of her house. And Ei, as the daughter of the king's previous wife, is a direct threat to her future bastards. (A woman is married to a king only for one purpose - to put her blood on the throne, and not just for fun.) In the situation with Ei, there should be the same theme as with Hightowers and Rhaenyra in House of the Dragon. Constant struggle for power.) And if (When) the stepmother fails to gain a foothold as the main woman in this chicken coop called the Storm Kingdom, then problems will begin and sticking spokes in the wheels (Let's say - secretly spreading rumors, for example, about the fact that the main character sold her soul to the devil for medicine and in general this medicine heals the body in exchange for the soul or other nonsense. Even such crap will work, because people are completely uneducated and superstitious. Even now, in the age of global education, science and knowledge, there are morons who believe in all sorts of crap like the Church of Scientology and other crap, and then even more so). The Chinese have great wisdom of the ages on this topic. They have a compound hieroglyph of three parts. At the bottom are two hieroglyphs that mean “woman”, and at the top, in the center above them, is the hieroglyph “roof”. And in turn, this entire compound hieroglyph can be translated into a more understandable language as “Scandal”, “Conflict” or “Problem” P.s.s.s - Sorry for such a long comment, but I wanted to, so to speak, take an interest and express my opinion.
