dmims Chapter 11 Damon's Manor
Chapter 11 Damon's Manor
The Iron-bellied Dragon landed on the plaza of the island in the middle of the lake. Its claws struck the black stone slabs, and a dull tremor rose from the ground. Then its limbs buckled, and its entire body collapsed to the ground with a thud.
A gust of wind swept in from under the dragon's wings, carrying the fishy smell of the lake and the scent of wild grass growing in the cracks of the rocks. Hermione lifted her head from the dragon's back.
The square was vast, with black stone slabs stretching into the distance, their cracks filled with withered yellow grass. In the very center stood two statues, side by side facing the lake, their faces obscured. Further away, the stone pillars of the railing leaned precariously, as if no one had visited for many years.
Viserys slid off the dragon's neck, his legs trembling. He turned to Hermione first, and the dragon's tail gently placed her on the ground, still in the position of holding the dragon egg.
"Are you hurt?" His voice was hoarse.
Hermione looked down at herself; her sleeve was scorched, and there was a red welt on her arm. "I'm fine," she said quickly, looking up, "but my parents, Professor McGonagall, they're still in Gringotts, and that priest is still there. What if..."
“They’ll be fine,” Viserys interrupted her. “The priestess was after me; she chased after me when I rode away on my dragon. Professor McGonagall has time to lead them away in another direction.”
Hermione looked at him; his right arm was covered in burns, and his face was bruised. She nodded.
Then she turned around and really looked around the square. Wild grass squeezed out from the cracks in the stone slabs, the stone pillars of the railing leaned by the lake, and two black statues stood facing the lake, as if they had grown out of the ground.
"Why are we here?" she asked. "The dragon brought us here for a reason, didn't it?"
"This is what he left me." Viserys stood in the center of the plaza, gazing at the silent silhouettes of the two statues. "Damon Targaryen, my ancestor. Dumbledore said he left behind a manor in this world sealed by blood magic. Only Targaryen's blood can open it; the dragons have smelled the direction in my blood."
Hermione followed his gaze to the statue, then turned to the dragon lying in the square. Its pale scales were dazzling in the sunlight, and its eyes were almost closed, blinking incessantly. Its chest heaved violently, and its wings lay limply on the stone slabs, their edges marked with old scars.
"What happened to it?" Hermione's voice changed. "Is it injured?"
"Its eyes can't stand the light; it was kept underground for many years and never saw sunlight."
Hermione crouched down in front of the dragon, keeping eye to eye on it, but she didn't reach out to touch it. The dragon's eyes turned in her direction, blinking so rapidly they seemed to twitch.
Her voice was very soft, "It's been locked up the whole time?"
"Um."
Hermione didn't speak immediately. She looked into the dragon's light-sensitive eyes and its limp wings, their edges covered in old wounds. Then her brow furrowed slightly.
“In the tunnel,” she began, her voice even softer, as if afraid of startling it, “it was going to rush over there, it was so angry, but it turned to you. You told it to swallow that, the mysterious man, and it listened.”
She looked up, her eyes filled with pure confusion. "Why would it listen to you?"
Viserys crouched down, placing his hand on the dragon's nose. The runes on his palm were slightly warm, causing the dragon's pupils to dilate slightly and its blinking frequency to slow down.
"My family used to be the Dragon Kings. Dragons aren't tamed; they chose to stand with us. They smelled something in my blood."
"What is it?"
"Fire, fire is in the blood of the Targaryens."
Hermione watched as his hand pressed against the dragon's nose, and the dragon didn't blink. His right arm was covered in burns, stretching from his wrist to his elbow, with blood seeping from some places.
"You're injured, you're still bleeding, put your hand on it," she paused, "give it warmth."
She watched as the dragon slowly closed its eyelids.
"So it flew so far, got so tired, and is now lying here unable to move, but still followed you here."
She stood up, turned to the two statues, and walked over.
The woman, sculpted from black stone, wore a gown she had never seen before, her hair piled high, her face serene as if asleep. The man beside her was half a head taller, his hand on the hilt of his sword, gazing straight ahead.
The two stood side by side, facing the lake.
"Who is this?" Hermione asked.
"Raniela Targaryen, and her husband, Damon Targaryen."
Hermione's gaze shifted between the two stone faces before settling on where they stood side by side. "She's standing next to him, not behind him."
"He is a prince, she is a queen," Viserys said.
Hermione turned to look at him, her eyebrows slightly raised. "The Queen?"
"Rhaenyra was my father's ancestor. She was the heir to the Iron Throne, but her brother rebelled and fought for three years. She ultimately lost the war, but she was once the queen of the Seven Kingdoms, even if she only reigned for six months."
"And what about him?" Hermione asked, looking at Damon's statue. "He's the Queen's husband?"
"He was also her most skilled dragon knight. He fought half the battles in The Dance of the Blood Dragons." Viserist paused for a moment. "In our world, everyone thought he and Aemond perished together above Lake of the Eye. Neither of their bodies were ever found. Rhaenyra later died too, killed by her brother's dragon."
Hermione was silent for a moment. "So in our world, they couldn't stay together until the end."
"Um."
“But here,” Hermione looked up at the two statues side by side facing the lake, “he made them stand together. Not the queen and her general, not the prince and his wife.”
"What is it?"
"Two people," Hermione said.
A breeze blew across the lake, and she hugged the dragon egg a little tighter to her chest. Then her gaze shifted from the statue's face to the base.
"What's engraved on it?" she asked.
Viserys bent down, her fingers touching the base. It was a line of letters she couldn't understand, deeply engraved, untouched by wind and rain, as if the carver knew it would wait here for a long time.
"Nyke aōhon, se aōhon iksan." He read it out in a very low voice.
"What do you mean?" Hermione squatted down next to him and carefully placed the dragon egg on her lap.
"I am yours, and you are mine," they vowed.
Viserys's finger moved down, stopping at the very bottom of the base, almost touching the ground.
There was another line of scratches, much shallower, with uneven edges, as if made by a knife, which the wind and rain were smoothing out.
"These words are very similar to the words on the ring," he said.
Hermione bent down and looked closer. The letters had diacritics.
"This is French," she said slowly, "Je t'attendrai, même si la pierre m'oublie."
She paused for a moment.
"I will wait for you, even if the stones forget me."
Her fingers hovered above the engraving, but did not touch it.
"Is it the same person who gave you the dragon egg?" Hermione asked.
"I don't know her name, but the ring is hers, and she left the dragon egg too, so it must be the same person."
Hermione didn't stand up; she remained crouched, staring at the line of French inscriptions.
"She waited a long time," she said, "the stones almost wore her writing down."
A breeze blew across the lake, and Hermione finally stood up, picked up the dragon egg again, and looked around.
"But there's nothing here," she said, "only statues. Where's the manor?"
Viserys recalled Dumbledore's words: only Targaryen blood could break the seal.
He looked down at his right palm, then looked up at the hand of the Damon statue resting on the hilt of the sword.
There is a depression at the end of the sword hilt.
He walked over, grasped the dent with his right hand, and pressed the runes on his palm against the black stone. Blood seeped from the edges of the wound, and the runes glowed with a golden-red light.
He spoke, reciting a sentence in a language Hermione couldn't understand.
"PerzysĀnogār." means that blood and fire share the same origin.
Light shines through the black stone.
Light spread from Damon's chest to Renilla's chest, along their clasped hands, into the base, and into the ground. The stone slabs cracked in front of the statue's base, then sank down in an orderly fashion, forming a stone staircase extending into the ground. Faint fluorescent lights shone on the walls on both sides of the staircase, illuminating the path downwards.
Hermione stood at the entrance of the stone steps, mouth agape, eyes wide, the dragon egg clutched tightly in her arms.
"Just now, there was nothing here," her voice trailed off, "and then..."
She looked down at the stone steps sinking deeper into the ground, then looked up at the two lines of carvings on the statue's base. Two carvings, two languages, a wedding vow, a promise.
She looked down at the dragon egg in her arms.
“She can’t get in,” Hermione said, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “She found this place, she carved that phrase on the statue, but she can’t get in.”
Her fingers traced the fine texture of the eggshell.
"Now the egg is here, in a place she couldn't go in, but her egg went in."
She looked up at Viserys.
"Should we go down?"
Viserys stepped onto the first stone step, the stone creaking beneath his feet like a sigh. The fireflies brightened slightly as he passed, illuminating the darkness that lay ahead and an ancient, dry atmosphere.
Hermione hugged the dragon egg tightly and followed him down.