Game of Thrones: StormBorn

295AC

It was a harrowing thing watching a quite possibly magical fungal infection grow on one's own shoulder over a period of months, trapped in a single room while you ate bread and stew and drank little other than boiled water.

It was an unpleasant experience, and one I was not entirely sure that I would live through, particularly when the infection began to creep up the side of my neck. From my reading, I knew the face was particularly vulnerable to greyscale due to the orifices present.

On the other hand, the rest of the castle's population seemed to be able to avoid it from my through-the-door conversations with Gerald. Maester Cresen had apparently taken to my recommendation of cooking all of the loot in bakers ovens with gusto, which likely helped remove it from whatever sorry piece of junk I had been infected by.

Well, presuming it was not magical. I had no idea if it was or not.

Still, I had little to do in the long hours and trackless days locked in my quarters other than taking searing baths and rubbing alcohol on the afflicted area, which did, admittedly, slow it's growth down. It just didn't seem to stop it.

I spent most of my time doing something that I likely should have done far earlier, given the precarious nature of life in this world. I had Maester Cressen being me a fresh book, and then I began to write down all I could think of that would be valuable to my family.

Ideas, concepts, insights. From Astronomy to political science and from steam engines to recoilless rifles I scoured my brain for everything useful that could be done, and when I finished that? I began to write what I knew of the future yet to come. Of the death of Robert, the nature of his children, why Littlefinger and Varys should be summarily executed if you ever got an excuse. What Daenerys would likely do with her Dragons and the invasion of the white walkers in the North both were clear enough as well.

It was grim work on my part, more akin to writing a last Will and Testament than anything I truly desired to put to paper in such a form, monotonous too.

By the fourth month, when I could finally confirm that the Greyscale had stopped, it was a new year. The infection had been slowed to a crawl for some time, so I had taken to marking my flesh with ink at intervals so that I could make sure that it actually properly stopped.

In a polished golden mirror, I stared at the damage, such as it was. The Stoney skin had crept over my right shoulder and down onto my chest, where it had ended, it's growth just above my right nipple, though it had thankfully let my arm and shoulder joint alone as far as I could tell. It was more stiff of disuse than due to disease I would wager.

Unfortunately, my neck and face were not equally spared. While it might still be less important for a man than a girl like my sister, it still stung to know that I would likely forever bare the scar of rocky flesh reaching up to around the base of my jaw on the right, with jagged growths that appeared like mountains stretching up my cheek.

I would likely never have been in handsome in more than a rugged way anyhow, given my parents, but the Gods seemed intent even to ruin that little chance in exchange for my prize of ancient wealth.

'I wonder if the Targayens put that vault here as a security against the Rhoynar plague. Ironic then, that they probably carried it here themselves.'

When No marks had been passed for the past week, I asked Maester Cressen to come to confirm that the disease had indeed stopped. He pricked me with needles, drew a bit of clear blood from beneath the skin, and then confirmed it.

"You appear to be healthy, if a somewhat scared young boy at the moment." he smiled, ruffling my hair. "Come let's get you to see your father."

"He is on Dragonstone?" I asked surprised, he had not come to speak to me since I asked him and mother to stay away.

"He has never left out of fear for you I suspect. The small council raised a fuss, but he silenced them by giving King Robert a Valyrian sword."

I nodded at that, it seemed like something Father would do, though the fact that he had stayed out of fear for me was touching in a way that was hard to describe.

"What else has changed while I have been shut up in there?"

"Well…" As we walked through the great fused-stone halls of Dragonstone, Maester Cressen informed me of what my father had done with all of the treasure, most of it was expected, but some of it…

"He's done what?"

"You heard me correctly, he decided that half the gold be set aside for "My son's expensive projects." I was quite surprised as well. But then, his men have taken a liking to your cannon I hear."

I blinked at the enormous sum that likely represented even as I entered the room of the painted table where my parents were having dinner.

Of course, what happened to the treasure fled my mind almost instantly as I saw the baby cradled in my Mother's arms, far too small to be Shireen.

"What?"