Do Not Presume to Know The Damned (Jacaerys x Helaena)

A Knight of Spicetown

He was back on the beach again. The white sands of Grey Gallows shifting treacherously beneath his feet as he stained them red with another man's blood. A cruel summer sun beat down on them, amplifying the stink of rotting corpses and overflowing latrines. Men pushed and shoved and stabbed at him, but he did not fall. The roar of two circling dragons and their fiery breath overhead almost muffled the screams of the dead and dying. The heat of the flames was against his skin, but he fought on. He would not meet the Stranger here, so far from home.

Clement, another boy from Spicetown, battled alongside him, focused as he blocked a Triarchy sword with his shield. A helm hid the boy's face, but eyes blue as the summer sky peered out with steely concentration as their enemies fell one-by-one. Quick with wit and quicker with a sword, Clement was everything he was supposed to be. Everything he desired.

The distraction was brief, but enough as someone shouldered into him, knocking him off-balance and sending him sprawling.

Ser Qarl Correy gasped into the present as glass embedded into the heel of his palm, drawing blood. Everything was far away and too close. The sounds of screaming and burning were distant, as if heard from underwater, but the heat of the body next to him was unbearably near. He wrinkled his nose against the harsh scent of pine tar filling the air. Qarl winced as he went to his knees. Tiny bits of glass in his skin stung something awful.

The woman lying next to him was dressed finely, dark hair gathered in an elaborate hairstyle. The hairnet she wore sparkled green as it captured the colour of wildfire. Her eyes were closed, her skin white as a Kingsguard's armour. Blood seeped from a vivid scarlet gash on her forehead. She must have knocked it on the lip of the marble bench as she fell. A boy, similarly well attired, crouched next to her. He was saying something to Qarl whilst shaking the woman's unresponsive body.

The amphitheatre was in chaos, with people scrambling towards the entrance they'd come in from. A bottleneck formed, one door attempting to fit over one hundred bodies, desperate to escape. Above, the ceiling was green with a grid of wildfire against the dark stone. Scaffolding crackled and burnt black as the drapes hanging from them fell in deadly tatters, setting people's clothes alight in the crowd.

Qarl struggled to his feet. Nearest the door was the royal entourage. Ser Harrold Westerling and Ser Criston Cole cut a path through the scared crowd. They had unsheathed their swords and brandished them threateningly.

"Out of the way," barked Ser Criston over and over. One hand was on his hilt and the other on Prince Aegon, as he led them in the direction of the door, Lord Commander Westerling at his side. Qarl was the last rat clinging to a sinking ship. He saw a flash of silver locs close behind the Kingsguard knights. Laenor was almost out, an ocean of bodies between them. Laenor left him.

"Ser, you must help my lady mother, please!" It was the young highborn lad, crouched next to his mother. He was crying, fat tears dripping from his chin. The Rosby boy, Qarl realised. He couldn't quite comprehend what Alyn Rosby asked and blinked at the child. The boy went back to pleading at his mother to wake. There was a bang from the stage as the heavy curtain fell, burning still as the jade flames consumed it.

He moved towards a gap in the fire between the left wall and fallen burning curtain. The alchemists must have another exit backstage. There was no hope of him making his way through the crowd, black with people as it was. The Rosby boy called out to him again, but Qarl would not stay to die with some highborn woman and her son. The fallen curtain ignited fires that spread towards the seats and escaping crowd. Ladies' gowns went up in a bright spark of light and lords' cloaks wouldn't quench when they threw themselves to the floor and writhed.

Above, the wooden scaffolding crackled and popped as it burnt.

An acolyte muscled past him in his brown robes, muttering frantically about spells under his breath. Qarl's blood froze as he did. The doddering fool of a grand master wouldn't stop talking about the safety precautions they'd taken for tonight. All the methods the alchemists used to avoid disaster. Including the false ceiling filled with a ton of fire-suffocating sand.