The song of ice and fire

The Great Battle for Dawn

Rhaelle

I’m outside Winterfell this time, standing on the battlefield. It is night and dark but the flames Rhaegal and Drogon blow out illuminates everything. I see my father dressed in his plain leather armour, a thick fur cloak wrapping him. He rides on his horse and shards of dragon glass tipped arrows fly above him striking the dead from a far. Dothraki screamers riding in the background and the brave Unsullied infantrymen readying their dragonglass spears. This is the Great Battle for Dawn that Grand Maester Tarly had recorded in the history books.

The Night King stands there and I see his undead frost dragon screeching from above. The noise is so horrifying and deafening, I am shivering to the bone. Rhaegal comes flying towards Viserion. The Dragons battle each other and I watch in horror as Rhaegal falls to the ground. His neck burned by Viserion’s deadly blue flame. Drogon roars and I hear my mother’s scream. I know she is carrying my brother Daeron in her womb, barely three months at least. She has lost another dragon child of hers. And she will never recover from the loss.

The Night King turns around trying to command the storm clouds once again. I watch as his army of wights run, falling on the soldiers of men by the hundreds of thousands. I have to do something. And I have to be quick. Father is struggling but I know he is trying hard as he fights off the wights. I see the dragonglass tipped sword on the ground, underneath the pile of dead bodies.

How strange that amidst the chaos of battle among the living and the dead, I seem to glide easily in the mist and snow, still dressed in my silk nightdress I had worn to sleep. It’s like a dream. It is a dream, what else can it be? I know how the story ends. Father and Mama won the Great War. They didn’t lose or I won’t be here. I would not have been born if they had been defeated.

Father is dueling with the Night King now. While Drogon attacks Viserion, with my mother riding on his back. The Night King uses his ice spear and blocks father’s sword at every turn. He is a far superior warrior than my father, the King in the North. I can hear his thoughts. He is silently taunting my father.

No man can kill me don’t you know? You Northern Fool! No man living or dead can destroy me!

The Children of the Forest had made it so. They created him to defeat the First Men until he became a monster they could no longer control. Uncle Bran showed it to me before. No man can kill the Night King. He is invincible and almost omnipotent. He is the very definition of Death, enemy of all the living.

I remember my mother’s words, words she had spoken to Missandei in Astapor in what seems like ages ago. Valar Morghulis.

“All men must die…but we are not men.”

I don’t know who or what push me forward but I hold the dragonglass sword by its cold metal hilt. I see Father groaning, he is trying his best to defeat the Night King but it looks like he is losing and it makes me almost shut my eyes. I am afraid. I do not want my father to die. I do not want my parents to lose this war….

“Go on…”

It is my uncle Bran, I look at him unsure and he nods.

“You know what needs to be done.” He tells me.

I lunge forward and the dragonglass sword pierces the Night King’s torso. He turns around and stares at me. He sees me, he really sees me this time. His blue eyes look straight into mine and I immediately let go of the sword. Father then plunge Longclaw right into the Night King’s chest where his frozen heart should be. The Night King explodes into powdered snow and all the dead that follow him fall to the ground. My father breathes heavily and sighs. He has done what needs to be done and he has defeated the true enemy. He sees the dragonglass sword on the ground and for a while it puzzles him.

“Don’t you see?” Uncle Bran asks me. I only shrug still breathing deeply. I don’t believe what just happened. I helped Father. I had disarmed the Night King and allowed Father to kill him off.

“It is you…” He smiles that mysterious smile of his. “It was you, it has always been you…None of them could have defeated the Night King. No man living or dead.”

I am at a loss and stare at him.

“It is you all along Rhaelle…the prince… the princess that was promised who will bring the dawn.” He says.

It can’t be. I wasn’t alive then. Now? This is a dream…I am in a dream.

“I don’t understand.” I say to him.

“It is always meant to be this way. You are where you are always meant to be at, at the exact moment that you are needed, to do what you were always meant to do…It is a paradox of time,” Uncle Bran says and I only keep quiet. It sounds like a complicated riddle and my mind is too tired to figure it out.

I watch on as my mother gets off from Drogon and runs towards my father, tears flowing down her face. He envelopes her in his arms and kisses the top of her head firmly before raining kisses on her face and finally her lips. They are so much in love with each other, it warms my heart seeing it. The storm clouds seem to drift away and the sun starts peeking out. The day is breaking, it is dawn. It literally is dawn.

Prophecies are strange, dangerous things… I think to myself.