The Northern Dragon - XXI (Patreon)

Chapter XXI - Starfallen Years Ago, weeks after Aevyr’s capture by Razin Itthobal and his unsullied. The sea was a cruel mistress, and Aevyr

Chapter XXI - Starfallen

Years Ago, weeks after Aevyr’s capture by Razin Itthobal and his unsullied.

The sea was a cruel mistress, and Aevyr Snow hated it with every fiber of his being. The salt stung his wrists where the manacles had rubbed his skin raw, and the deck of the ship groaned beneath him like a beast in its death throes. He was eleven, a boy of the North with the blood of Starfall in his veins, and yet here he was, chained in the belly of a Tyroshi slaver’s ship, surrounded by the stench of sweat, piss, and despair. The other captives, women and children alike, moaned or wept or stared blankly at the damp timbers. Aevyr did none of these things. He watched. He waited. His purple eyes, pale as winter frost, flickered with a fire that refused to gutter.

Every day he woke here, in this floating prison, with naught but his name and the stubborn beat of his heart.

The baby Giant had finally shut his bloody mouth, now it was just enduring like the rest of them. The wildlings on the other hand, were annoying, the girls and women had kept repeating that they would never bow to their captors, but their spirits were easily broken when slavers and sailors alike came down to relieve themselves.
Were some of them with child by now? Probably. Aevyr did not care, he did not care about them, he did not care about their sufferings or the baby giant or the bastards growing in the girls and women’s wombs. The only thing he care about was getting his hands on Razin Itthobal.

The damn slaver, he would rip his mustache off, then he would skin him alive and throw him in a pile of salt, then he’d burn him alive, then he’d tear out his heart and shove it in his mouth.

Snow, they called him, the name of a bastard, though his mother had been a Dayne and his father a Stark. Aevyr Snow, a name to spit upon, yet he clung to it as fiercely as he’d once clung to the hilt of his blade. In the North, he’d been a prodigy, a boy who danced with steel as if born to it, who could match men twice his age in the yard. 

Here, he was meat, a thing to be sold. Or so they all thought, for he would not break, he would never break, he’d kill them all, cruelly, fuck the honor his father had taught him, he'd tear them all to pieces!

The ship rocked as it cut through the waves, bound for Essos, for Meereen, where men bled for sport and gold flowed like blood. 

Aevyr marked the days by the slivers of light that pierced the hold’s cracks, counting the groans of the oarsmen and the lash of the overseer’s whip. 

He learned the slavers’ names: Captain Varyno, a Tyroshi with a forked blue beard and eyes like piss-yellow glass; Zirqo, the whip-hand, whose laughter was sharp as a flayed man’s scream; and Lysa, a woman with a scar across her lips who fed the captives gruel that tasted of ash and despair.

On the tenth day, Varyno came below, his rings clinking as he crouched before Aevyr. 

“You’re the one who fought, eh? The little wolf with a sword.” 

His voice was honeyed, but his smile was a blade. 

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Aevyr.” He said, biting back the Snow. He would not give them that.

Varyno’s eyes narrowed, but he only laughed. 

“Aevyr, then. You’ll fetch a fine price in Meereen. They love a fighter in the pits, and you’ve got the look of one who might live a week or two.”

Aevyr’s fingers twitched, aching for a blade, but he held his tongue. He was no fool. He’d seen what happened to the stupid wildling girl who’d tried to strangle Zirqo with her chains—flayed and thrown to the sharks, still screaming.

Aevyr would wait. He would live. And one day, he would carve his name into their bones.

The first stop they had made, had been Volantis, where a few wildling girls and women had apparently been sold as bedslaves to be trained. Not the most beautiful ones, those ones where destined for Yunkaï. And the ones whose pregnancy had been confirmed by the healer were destined to Astapor, the good masters of Astapor would pay a good price for them, as they needed their babes as sacrifice for the training of their Unsullied.

Aevyr would leave the ship before they did, for he was destined to Meereen and its fighting pits.

Meereen was a city of gold and dust, its pyramids looming like the teeth of some ancient beast. 

Razin Itthobal’s ship docked at a quay reeking of fish and tar, and Aevyr was herded with the other boys as well as the baby giant, into a market square where the sun burned hotter than any hearth in Winterfell. The air was thick with the cries of merchants, the clink of coin, and the wails of those who knew their fate. Aevyr stood tall, though his legs trembled from hunger, his dark hair matted with salt, his purple eyes scanning the crowd.

The slavers paraded them before a throng of buyers: silk-clad magisters, tattooed sellswords, and women with eyes as hard as the coins they clutched. Aevyr was the last to be sold, his youth and fire making him a curiosity. 

Varyno spun a tale of a “savage boy from the frozen North.” A lie, he was no savage, he was the son of the Lord of Winterfell, yet it was laced with enough truth to draw murmurs from the crowd. A fat man in crimson silks, his fingers heavy with rings, raised a hand. 

“Three hundred honors!” He called, his voice like oil on water.

“Four hundred.” Countered a lean man with a shaved head and a whip at his belt. His eyes, black as obsidian, lingered on Aevyr too long. 

“This one has the look of a pit fighter.”

The bidding climbed, and Aevyr’s heart pounded. 

He was no horse to be haggled over, no hound to be chained. 

Yet when the lean man—Qavo, master of the Great Pit of Meereen—claimed him for six hundred honors, Aevyr was shoved into a cart with three other boys, all older, all broken. 

He was not broken, and he never would be. The only thing that could potentially make him lose his cool, would be the damn giant —who was no baby but barely more than a toddler, as Aevyr came to realize now that he could give it a proper look — and the bloody cries of horror and confusion that had escaped his mouth once more.

The unusual creature had drawn cries of surprise and groans of disgust because of its ugliness and unusual appearance. Razin Itthobal presented it as a soon to be Giant from the Lands of Eternal Winter, and nobody questioned his description, for they had never seen something like this ever before in their small world filled with blood and horror.

Aevyr rolled his eyes at the young Giant, the beast was clearly suffering a great deal from the heat, its fur was not made for such a climate, if Razin Itthobal had any common sense, he’d shave it entirely and throw it in a bloody river so it could cool off.

In the end, and despite Qavo’s offer of five thousand honors, the giant was sold to the fat man in crimson silks whose name Aevyr did not care to learn.

He was already focused on his next trial, but first, he threw one last long and hateful glare at Razin Itthobal, for he wanted to be absolutely sure he would remember his face, even if it took him decades to get revenge on the pig.

(-)(-)(-)

Qavo’s compound was a sprawl of stone and sand, ringed by walls topped with iron spikes. Aevyr was stripped by slaves, scrubbed, and clad in a rough tunic that itched against his skin. The other boys whispered of the pits, of men torn apart by lions, of crowds that roared for blood. Aevyr listened, his hands clenching into fists. He was given a cell with a straw pallet and a bucket, and a sword—blunt, heavy, nothing like the balanced steel he’d wielded in the North. But it was a blade, and the familiar sensation of grasping a hilt was more than enough.

His training began at dawn, under the lash of a man called Red Ghaz, a Dothraki with a braid that swung to his waist. 

“Move, little wolf.” Ghaz barked, his arakh flashing as he drove Aevyr through drills until his arms burned and his legs shook. 

Aevyr was no stranger to pain—Winterfell’s yard had been a hard school—but this was different. Red Ghaz taught him to fight like a showman, to spin and leap for the crowd’s delight, to bleed without dying. 

Aevyr hated it, hated the mockery of it, but he learned. His Dayne blood sang when he moved, fluid as starlight, and his Stark blood growled when he struck, hard as iron.

He sparred with the other boys, breaking noses and cracking ribs, his speed and ferocity earning him curses and grudging respect. 

One, a broad-shouldered lad named Tycho, tried to gut him with a stolen knife. 

Aevyr disarmed him, leaving Tycho’s arm bent at an angle that made the others wince. 

Red Ghaz laughed and clapped Aevyr’s shoulder. 

“You’ll do, boy. You’ll do.”

At night, Aevyr lay on his pallet, dreaming of Winterfell’s godswood, of his father’s stern gaze, of Gilliane Glover’s hateful glare, of Jon’s brotherly smile. 

He did not know if his father and cousin sought him, if they even cared for a bastard’s fate. 

But he would not die here. He would live, and he would be free.

Some days he doubted, his father had a true born child yet to be born, and his cousin was a Prince, what was the life of a simple bastard to them?

But he always managed to get those dark thoughts out of his mind, Razin Itthobal had said that Jon and his dragon had tried to save him. That meant something, and his father loved him, of that Aevyr did not doubt.

But would they find him? This Aevyr doubted, he was on the other side of the World, how could they find him? And how would they get him back?

His father would not send the Northern army to slaver’s bay to save his bastard son, his lords would never follow him this far for so little. Only Jon could potentially find him thanks to Vermithor, but how would he get him out? A dragon alone was not enough and Jon was a boy his age.

Aevyr could only count on himself, and one way or another, he would be free, he would kill every person that stood on his way, no matter who or how old they were.

The day of his first fight came too soon, a month after his sale. The Great Pit of Meereen was a cauldron of noise and heat, its tiers packed with screaming merchants, jeering sailors, and magisters fanning themselves with silk. 

Aevyr stood in the shadowed tunnel, a blunt sword in his hand, a leather vest strapped across his chest. He was twelve now, his limbs wiry but strong, his eyes burning with a rage he could not name.

Qavo had come to him that morning, his black eyes gleaming. 

“Win, and you eat well tonight. Lose, and you feed the worms.” 

Aevyr had spat at his feet, earning a backhand that split his lip. He tasted blood now, iron and salt, as he stepped into the pit.

The crowd roared, a thousand voices baying for death. 

His opponent was a man grown, a Lyseni with a shaved head and a trident in hand. 

‘Khyro the Spear,’ the herald called him, and the crowd cheered louder. 

Aevyr was just 'the Northern whelp,’ a name that drew laughter. 

He gripped his sword, its weight wrong, its edge dull, but it would serve.

Khyro lunged, his trident thrusting for Aevyr’s chest. 

The boy danced aside, quick as a shadowcat, his Dayne blood guiding his feet. 

The crowd gasped, then cheered. Khyro snarled, sweeping his weapon in a wide arc. Aevyr ducked, rolled, and came up swinging, his blade cracking against the Lyseni’s knee. Khyro staggered, and Aevyr struck again, aiming for the wrist. The trident fell, and the crowd’s roar became a thunder.

He could have stopped there, could have let the fight end with Khyro disarmed. But Aevyr was no knight, no lordling bound by honor. He was a Snow, a bastard, a boy who’d been chained and sold. He tossed aside his useless sword and picked up Khyro’s trident, then he drove it into his enemy’s thigh, then his shoulder, then his chest, each blow a scream of defiance. 

The Lyseni fell, blood pooling in the sand, and the crowd surged to its feet, chanting a name they did not yet know.

Aevyr stood, chest heaving, blood dripping from his split lip. He raised the trident, not in triumph, but in promise. He would not die here. He would live. And one day, he would carve his way back to the North, to the stars, to the home from which he had been tore off.

Qavo watched from the high seats, his smile a crescent of teeth. 

“An investment well made.” He murmured to the magister beside him. “This one will bring us gold.”

Aevyr did not hear him. He heard only the crowd, the blood, and the stubborn beat of his own heart. He spat on Khyro’s corpse and planted the man’s own trident into his chest. Leaving him there for the worms to eat. Now, Meereen knew him, knew who he was, and they would remember him forever once he’d carve his name on each of their foreheads.

(-)(-)(-)

Today, the pit was alive with the roars of thousands of throats. The sun hung high, a merciless eye that baked the arena until the air shimmered with heat. Aevyr Snow stood in the shadowed tunnel, his heart a drumbeat, his hands gripping a blunt sword that felt wrong in his calloused palms. He was thirteen, already tall as a man grown, his wiry frame clad only in a leather vest and breeches that clung to his sweat-slick skin. His dark hair, shorn close for the pit’s spectacle, glistened with damp, and his purple eyes, sharp as winter frost, scanned the arena with a hunger born of desperation. He had killed so many people in the year he had spent in this accursed city. How many? He did not know as he had never counted. None of them had been fighters though, after Khyro’s surprising death at the hands of Aevyr, the bastard had been deemed worthy of spending more time and gold in order to be prepared against more experienced pit fighters. According to Qavo, Aevyr had won his first fight because his opponent had underestimated him, veterans of the pit were now wary of him and would kill him before he became too good. 

Qavo had then refused every offer from fighters’ owners for a fight against his new possession, the little wolf needed to be fed and trained before taking on Slaver’s Bay’s best.

So, during the past year, Aevyr had only killed children his age. Which had resembled more like executions than fights for Aevyr was a fighter, a warrior, a killer, and the others had been children.

Today however, today marked his return in the big game.

The herald’s voice boomed, a cruel heralding for a crueler game. 

“Ten champions of the pit!” He cried, naming warriors whose names were etched in blood: 

Zhaar the Black, a Sothoryi giant with an axe; Lysara, a Lyseni with twin daggers and a smile like a snake; Ghazdor, a Ghiscari whose spiked mace had crushed skulls beyond counting. 

Seven others followed, a motley host of sellswords, Dothraki screamers, and pit-scarred brutes, each a killer in their own right. 

The crowd cheered, their voices a tide, but the herald was not done. 

“And the chattel!” He bellowed. “The young, the untested, the fodder for your sport!”

Aevyr stepped into the sand, one of a dozen children herded into the pit like lambs to slaughter. They were slaves, stolen or sold, their eyes wide with fear or dull with resignation. A girl no older than ten clutched a spear too heavy for her arms; a boy with a shaved head whimpered, his knife trembling in his hand. Aevyr felt no pity. Pity was a luxury he could not afford. He was a Snow, a bastard, a descendant of Brandon the Builder and he now fought for his life. 

He would not die here. Ever.

The melee began with a gong’s clang, a sound that shook the air like a god’s wrath. The crowd surged to its feet, baying for blood, and the pit became a maelstrom. 

Zhaar’s axe cleaved the air, splitting the spear-girl’s skull before she could scream. 

Lysara danced through the chaos, her daggers flashing, a boy’s throat opened in a red smile. Aevyr moved, his body a blur, his Dayne blood guiding his feet as he ducked a Dothraki’s arakh. He was no match for these men in strength, not yet, but he was quick, cunning, and angry—angry enough to live.

He darted behind a fallen boy, using the body as a shield as Ghazdor’s mace swung wide, the spikes whistling. 

Aevyr rolled, sand gritty against his skin, and drove his sword into the Ghiscari’s knee. The man roared, stumbling, and Aevyr struck again, aiming for the neck. The head fell, and Aevyr scrambled away, his breath ragged. 

"Stay low." He thought. "Stay alive." 

He saw a chance, a gap in the chaos, and crawled through the sand, snatching a dropped dagger from a boy whose eyes stared blankly at the sky.

The pit was a butcher’s yard now, bodies strewn like broken dolls. The children were mostly gone, cut down or trampled, their blood mingling with the sand. Aevyr’s heart pounded, but his mind was clear, sharp as the dagger in his hand. He saw Lysara, her back turned as she gutted a sellsword, and he struck, driving the dagger into her thigh. She screamed, spinning, her daggers flashing, but Aevyr was already gone, slipping into the shadow of a Dothraki whose braid swung like a whip. He slashed the man’s calf, then rolled away as an axe missed his head by a hair’s breadth.

Luck was his ally, as much as skill. For as he roamed the arena maiming his older opponents, he took advantage of the fights their were in to strike them in the back and retreat. 

A sellsword tripped over a corpse, and Aevyr’s sword cracked against his skull, felling him. Zhaar’s axe caught another boy, but the giant’s swing left him open, and Aevyr darted in, his dagger slicing the tendon behind Zhaar’s knee. The Sothoryi bellowed, crashing to the sand, and Aevyr finished him with a thrust to the throat, his sword finding a gap in the giant’s guard. The crowd roared, their chants a fever, they did not know his name, not yet, but they would.

The melee dwindled, the sand a crimson mire. Only three remained: Aevyr, a Dothraki with a notched arakh, and a scarred sellsword whose spear had drunk deep. 

Aevyr’s body screamed with pain—a gash across his ribs where Lysara’s dagger had grazed him, a cut on his arm from a glancing blow, a bruise blooming on his thigh where a mace had clipped him. 

He was bleeding, swaying, but his eyes burned with a fire that would not die.

The Dothraki came first, his arakh a crescent of death. Aevyr ducked, his body moving on instinct, and drove his dagger into the man’s side. 

The Dothraki staggered, and the sellsword’s spear found his neck, ending him. 

The sellsword, cannier than the others, turned toward Aevyr, his spear thrusting for his chest. Aevyr sidestepped, but the spear’s tip scored his shoulder, drawing a hiss of pain. He feigned a stumble, luring the man closer, then sprang, his sword smashing into the sellsword’s jaw. The man fell, and Aevyr struck again, and again, until the sand was still.

He stood alone, the last in the pit, his chest heaving, his body a map of wounds. The crowd was a storm, their cheers a physical weight, but Aevyr barely heard them. Blood dripped from his arm, his ribs, his shoulder, pooling in the sand. He raised his sword, not in triumph, but in defiance, his purple eyes daring the Sun to take him.

(-)(-)(-)

The Great Pit of Meereen had spat Aevyr Snow back into the world of the living, but the sand still clung to his wounds, a gritty reminder of the blood he’d spilled. 

At thirteen, he was a scarecrow of a boy, tall and wiry, his body a canvas of cuts and bruises from the melee that had left ten men and women, as well as a dozen children dead. 

His ribs throbbed where Lysara’s dagger had kissed him, his shoulder burned from a spear’s graze, and his thigh ached with every step. 

Yet he was alive, the last standing in a pit that devoured the weak, and the crowd’s chants still echoed in his ears: "Young Star! Young Star!" 

They did not know his name, but Qavo did, and Qavo’s smile was a crescent of teeth as he counted his coin.

The master of the pit summoned Aevyr to a chamber above the arena, a place of polished stone and silken drapes that reeked of wealth. Qavo sat on a cushioned chair, his black eyes gleaming like wet obsidian, his fingers heavy with rings that clinked as he gestured. 

“You’ve done well, boy.” He said, his voice smooth as oil. “The magisters wager fortunes on you now. You’ve filled my coffers, and for that, you’ll not go unrewarded.”

Aevyr stood, his leather vest stiff with dried blood, his purple eyes hard as flint. He wanted to spit, to curse, to drive his sword through Qavo’s throat. 

But he was no fool. He’d seen what happened to slaves who defied their masters—flayed, broken, fed to dogs. 

So he nodded, his jaw tight, and said nothing. 

"I am Aevyr Snow." He thought, the name a vow. "I will live. I will be free."

The physician came first, a stooped man named Maqiro, said to be the finest in Meereen. His hands were deft, his eyes sharp as he probed Aevyr’s wounds in a chamber lit by flickering lamps. “You’re lucky, boy.” Maqiro muttered, his fingers threading a needle with silk. “A half-inch deeper, and this cut would’ve gutted you like a fish.” 

He stitched the gash across Aevyr’s ribs, then the one on his shoulder, his touch precise but cold. Aevyr bit back a hiss, his Stark blood keeping him still, his Dayne blood fueling his pride. Maqiro smeared a foul-smelling paste over the wounds, muttering of herbs from Qarth and balms from Yi Ti. 

“You’ll scar.” he said, “but you’ll fight again.”

Aevyr did not thank him. He stared at the ceiling, his mind on Winterfell’s snows, on the father who had loved him as a trueborn son and the mother whose face he never saw. The physician was no kindness, no more than the chains had been. 

He was Qavo’s tool, a means to keep the pit’s newest prize alive.

Next came the feast, a spectacle that mocked the gruel and meat Aevyr had known since his capture. Servants bore platters to a low table in Qavo’s courtyard, where fountains burbled and jasmine scented the air. 

There was roasted lamb glazed with honey, figs stuffed with almonds, flatbreads warm from the oven, and wine as dark as blood. Aevyr sat, his wounds bandaged, his body aching, and ate. 

The lamb was tender, the figs sweet, but each bite was ash in his mouth. 

He was no guest here, no lordling at a feast. He was a beast fed to keep it strong, a wolf in a gilded cage.

Qavo watched from across the table, his smile sharp. 

“Eat, boy.” He said. “You’ll need your strength for the next fight. The crowd loves you now, but they’ll love you more when you’re a man grown.” 

Aevyr’s fingers tightened on his knife, a blunt thing meant for cutting meat, not throats. He forced himself to nod, to chew, to swallow. To refuse was to invite the whip, and he would not give Qavo the satisfaction.

The bath came last, a final indignity cloaked as a reward. The chamber was warm, its walls tiled in blue and gold, a marble pool steaming with scented water. 

Three girls, none older than sixteen, waited there, their eyes downcast, their hands holding jars of oil and cloths, though none of them wore any of the latter.

They were slaves, like him, their lives no more their own than his. 

Qavo’s voice followed Aevyr into the room, a parting jest: 

“Let them ease your pains, boy. You’ve earned it.”

Aevyr stood rigid as the girls stripped his bloodied clothes, their fingers light but practiced. He hated it—their touch, their silence, the way they moved as if trained to please. 

He was no pet, no prized stallion to be pampered. 

He was Aevyr Snow, yet he did not pull away. To refuse was to anger Qavo, and angering Qavo meant pain, meant death. So he stepped into the pool, the water stinging his wounds, and let the girls work.

They kneaded his shoulders, his arms, his back, their hands slick with oil that smelled of lavender and myrrh. One girl, her hair a cascade of black curls, grabbed his manhood and stroke it. Aevyr wanted to scream at her to let him go, to get her fucking hands of him. But the memory of the last slave that had refused the girls’ services was still vivid in his mind.

"A man that can’t enjoy a woman’s touch has no need for a cock."

"You have a big cock." The slave girl said in meereenese, a tongue that Aevyr had half-learned since he had arrived in this hell of a place, her voice was soft, her eyes wary, and Aevyr did not even wonder nor did he care if she meant it or if it was another of Qavo’s scripts. 

He said nothing for he did not care about her nor did he care about her words, his purple eyes fixed on the tiles, his mind a storm of rage and shame. 

Their hands were gentle, their touches meant to soothe, but they were chains all the same, binding him to this city, this life, this lie.

Aevyr said nothing when one of the slave girls kneeled to take his manhood up her mouth, nor did he say anything when another presented her behind for his to take. However, when one tried to kiss him, he caught her by the throat and threw her a hateful glare that promised more pain than she could have ever imagined.

The girl misinterpreted his intentions though, for she submissively turned to offer her behind as well. Forcing Aevyr to take her like he had taken the previous one, in order to make sure their master would not punish him.

When he was done, they dressed him in a clean tunic, soft as silk, and led him back to his cell. 

The straw pallet was new and clean, the stone walls had been scrubbed, but Aevyr felt the weight of Qavo’s gifts like manacles. 

The physician had mended his body, the feast had filled his belly, the bath had eased his pains, the girls had eased his mind, but none of it was for him. 

It was for the crowd, for the coin, for the legend Qavo was forging. Young Star, they called him, but he was more. He was Aevyr Snow, and he would not be tamed.

He lay on his pallet, his wounds throbbing beneath their stitches, his stomach heavy with lamb and wine. The memory of the melee lingered—the sand, the blood, the bodies. 

He had survived, not by strength alone, but by cunning, by luck, by the fire in his blood. He thought of the North, of the godswood’s heart tree, of his cousin’s dragon and the northern stars and clouds. He thought of freedom, a dream sharper than any blade.

Qavo’s voice echoed in his mind, a poison disguised as praise. 

"You’ve filled my coffers, boy."

 Aevyr’s fists clenched, his nails biting into his palms. 

He was no boy, no pet, no prize. He was a wolf, a bastard who would carve his way free.

His purple eyes burned in the dark as he swore to have revenge on them all.

(-)(-)(-)

The Great Pit of Meereen was a crucible of blood and ambition, its sands stained with the dreams of the dead. 

Aevyr Snow stood at its edge, a boy no longer, though not yet a man, his purple eyes like chips of iced blood beneath a brow slick with sweat. At fourteen, he towered over most of his foes, a lean giant of six feet, his frame hardened by the meals Qavo’s coin had bought him.

His dark hair, once wild as a northman’s, was shorn close, his face clean-shaven to please the crowds, who demanded their champions be as beautiful as they were brutal. 

He was no longer the ragged boy stolen from Westeros. He was something else, something the Meereenese had forged in fire and sand.

Gone was the name ‘Young Star’, they called him the Starfallen, a name Qavo had crafted with all the cunning of a magister’s tongue. 

“Young Star is no name for the pit.” The master had said, his black eyes glinting. 

“You are no mere bastard here. You are a star torn from the Lands of Savages, fallen to burn this city bright.”

 The crowd had taken to it, chanting “Starfallen! Starfallen!” as Aevyr carved his way through men and beasts, his sword a streak of light in the dust-choked air. 

He wore a cloak of deep indigo now, embroidered with a single silver star, and when he stepped into the pit, the crowd rose as one, their roars shaking the ancient stones.

Aevyr hated it. 

The name, the cloak, the cheers—they were chains as surely as the manacles he’d worn on the ship that had taken him from his homeland. Yet he played the part, for to falter was to die. His body had grown strong, fed on lamb and lentils to fuel his growth, to make him a spectacle. At near six feet, he was a colossus among the pit fighters, his limbs corded with muscle, his movements a deadly dance that blended the grace of the Daynes with the savagery of the Starks. He was a legend in the making, and Meereen loved him for it. 

But Aevyr Snow loved nothing, save the thought of freedom, a dream as distant as the North.

His growth spurt had been as much of a blessing as it had become a curse.

The nights had become worse than the days. 

By day, he fought, his blade singing as it split flesh and bone. By night, he was a prize, a curiosity for the highborn of Meereen. 

The magisters and their wives, their daughters and their courtesans, came to Qavo’s compound, their silks rustling, their eyes hungry. Aevyr was no Unsullied, no gelded warrior bound to obey without question. 

He was whole, a fact that drew whispers and coin from the women of Meereen, who saw in him a savage beauty, a wolf in chains they could command for a night.

He despised them. Their perfumes choked him, their hands pawed at him like he was a beast in a menagerie. Yet Qavo’s word was law, and Aevyr had learned the cost of defiance—lashes across the back, a month in the dark cells, a knife held to his balls.

So he endured, his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as perfumed fingers traced the scars on his chest. Each night carved another wound in his soul, deeper than any blade could cut.

It was in the moonless dark of his fourteenth year that Qavo brought her to him. 

Her name was Ysmeine, a concubine of forty summers, her hair streaked with silver, her eyes heavy with secrets. She was no beauty, not like the highborn women who paid to touch Aevyr, but there was a grace to her. 

“You are to learn, Starfallen.” Qavo said, his voice smooth as oil. 

“The crowd loves a champion, but a man who can please as well as kill is worth more than gold.” Aevyr’s stomach churned, but he said nothing. To speak was to invite the whip.

Ysmeine came to his cell, her robes whispering against the stone floor. She carried a lamp that cast flickering shadows, and when she sat beside him, her touch was gentle, almost kind. 

“I am no enemy, boy.” She said, her voice low, accented with the lilt of Lys. 

“This is but another chain. We wear them together.”

Aevyr turned his face away, his fists clenched. 

“I want no part of this.” He growled, his voice rough with the accent of the North. “I am no whore.”

“You are whatever your master says you are.” Ysmeine replied, her eyes meeting his. “Just like me, we are slaves, and slaves do as they are bid. You fight in the pit to live. This, too, is a fight. And you must learn the ways of winning it.

She let her robes slid along her body and legs, revealing a partially wrinkled body, with sagging breasts and chubby thighs.

She spoke of the arts of love, of touches and whispers, of how to please without losing oneself. Aevyr listened, his heart a storm of rage and shame. He hated her, hated Qavo, hated the city that had made him a spectacle. Yet he learned, as he had learned to wield a sword, to dodge a spear, to smile for the crowd. Ysmeine was patient, her lessons clinical, her touch devoid of cruelty. She guided him through each of their sessions, wether she was on all four, lying on her back, or on top of his twenty-six years younger body.

She did not speak too much that had been a relief, allowing Aevyr to focus on how he could take care of Qavo’s clients and please them to avoid punishment.

When she left with his seed dripping on her thigh, he got angry, for her scent was all over him and he had no way of cleaning himself.

So he laid awake on his straw pallet, trying to think about the North, about his sibling who had been born, about the promise he had extracted from Jaehaeron to take care of it if he couldn’t.

He did not even remember what it felt like to be cold in this hellish place where the Sun had driven Winter away. He had barely felt any wind on his face since he had been placed in that damn cell.
But one day, he swore, he would feel the cold air and Northern winds on his face once more, but not before he’d kill them all, Qavo, Razin Itthobal and even that whore Ysmeine.

AN: I know a lot of you had found Aevyr and the wildlings fate to be sad and horrible. Well, that’s the horror of Slaver’s Bay to you, where people are cattle and pets, where babes are means to an end and are mass produced for disgusting reasons. You think that’s horrible? You’re right, just like the time Tyrion raped a slave girl in A Dance with Dragons, just like the Unsullied’s training or Meereen’s fighting pits. Before the Civil War in the US, the states of the South, who had no way to buy slaves anymore since buying slaves offshore had been banned, had modified the law to suit their needs of multiplying slaves: any child born from a slave would inherit its mother’s status, no matter who the father of the child is (While the previous law stipulated that the child inherit his father’s status). And that is just an example of how horrible slavery used to be, I picked slavery in the US as an example, but slavery in Middle East was (and still is in some places) a million times worse.

I’m sorry if you guys find that hard to read, even thought that was the whole purpose of those scenes, Aevyr’s story is as such, his life is horrible and it will have repercussions on the whole story later.
I still hope you guys enjoy this story, next chapter will be about Daenerys and Rhaenyra ;). Take care.