( Cletus )
The crowd cheered.
For what? He didn't know.
It was dark, too dark. There was something over his head. Couldn't he just remove it?
Wait, why were his hands tied?
The crowd cheered louder, but he couldn't understand what they were saying.
They cheered again.
What was going on?
And again.
He could make out bits.
Again.
Now he could hear them clearly.
Again.
"DEATH!" they chanted "DEATH TO THE TRAITORS!"
Traitors? When? What? Where was he?
Suddenly, the darkness gave way to light. A burst of sunshine as the sun blazed directly into his eyes, blinding him.
The crowd didn't stop chanting.
"DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!"
Death to who? To me? Why?
He scrambled to make out faces, but it was too much. He didn't know where he was, standing in front of a crowd, that was now pointing at him.
Suddenly, the crowd went silent. He turned around.
A young man appeared.
Quentyn?
Behind him, a woman that he didn't recognize. Long, silver, hair. Beautiful.
Quentyn marched calmly towards him.
"Any last words?" he said, calmly.
What? Quentyn, what was going on?
"What?" he scrambled to say. "Why?"
"People like you have been preying on the weak for too long. It's time to break the chains. Let the people free." He smiled.
"It's time to make the sun rise over Westeros. The dawn of a new age. One not defined by the few, but by the many. And you are an obstacle to that."
The crowd chanted again.
"DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!"
"Quentyn!" Cletus pleaded, as two guards brought him towards the chopping block. "I'm your friend."
His cries were desperate, but the prince remained emotionless.
"You were once." Quentyn nodded as the silver-haired lady placed a hand on his shoulder. "This is why I'm giving you this mercy."
A deafening screech was heard, but Cletus didn't have time to follow its origin as he was pushed down towards the block.
"Please, Quentyn." He pleaded desperately. "Send me into exile. I won't ever come back, I swear."
"So, you can join his whore of a sister in conspiring against him with the pretender?" the lady raged, her face still concealed behind the blinding sunlight. "Never. Consider yourself lucky to be on the block today, Yronwood."
"Arch, if you may." Quentyn signalled to Archibald, who came to Cletus' side, a huge sword on his belt, flanked by several skulls.
"Arch, please." Cletus tried a desperate last plea.
"This is a traitor's fate." Arch said with a snarl as he unsheathed his sword. "And the penalty is death."
"DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!" the crowd continued to chant.
Arch rose his sword.
"NO!" Cletus cried out.
The sword fell.
Cletus woke up on the ground.
Scrambling for breath, he quickly shoved a hand to his throat.
Nothing. Not even a scratch.
He looked around.
A simple room, and a bed that he'd fallen out of, with no one to be seen. Where was he? Was this really a nightmare?
He rushed to his window, looking over a small valley and steep cliffs, and the ramparts of a castle, extending beyond his own window. Under one of the castle windows was an unmistakable purple sigil.
Starfall. He was in Starfall.
Thank the gods. This was all a nightmare.
He struggled to get his clothes on, still shaken. It was well past midday when he managed to sluggishly get himself out of his room.
Starfall was a beautiful castle from the outside, but on the inside, it was a maze, with endless corridors crossing each other. And the least that could be said about him was that he didn't have the best sense of direction.
He finally managed to find Arch after a good hour of searching through the corridors and stumbling upon Gerris, who was just finishing an archery lesson.
"Damn, Cletus." Gerris chuckled. "Did you see a ghost? You look as white as a sheet."
"I had a pretty bad dream." Cletus answered truthfully.
"Oh?" Gerris acted surprised. "Bed wasn't good enough? Funnily enough I slept like I hadn't gotten sleep in years. The peacefulness and isolation of this place is doing me a lot of good."
"Good for you." Cletus scratched his head. "Any idea of where the others are?"
"Arch and Gulian are out horse-riding, and Quentyn is in a meeting with Lord Alyn Dayne, but he should have finished by now."
"A meeting? What about?"
"He didn't say. Mayhaps we should go ask."
Gerris didn't even wait for an answer as he started walking towards one of the towers.
"You coming?" Gerris asked as Cletus realized he hadn't even taken a step in his direction.
"Yes, yes…" he eventually conceded, putting a foot in front of the other.
Gerris had no problem navigating this maze, and soon enough, they found themselves on the top of one of the tallest, if not the tallest, towers in the castle, which overlooked the entire region.
Resting alone, looking at the roaring waters of the Torrentine below, was Quentyn, alone.
As they moved towards him, Quentyn suddenly began to talk, which scared Cletus for a brief moment, as he continued to hear the crowd from his dreams chanting in his head.
He tried clearing his mind, as he focused on what Quentyn was saying.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" the prince pointed to the scenery with a smile. "From here you can see the entire valley of the Torrentine from Meteor Port to the Skylash.
The roaring current of the Torrentine as it rushes towards the Summer Sea, stuck in between the steep cliffs of the Gorges of the Torrentine, rocks and vegetation covering its flanks as the cliffs fade into blue-green water below. A beautiful sight."
Quentyn turned to face them, and his smile fell.
"Are you alright, Cletus? You don't look well."
"Cletus seems to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed." Gerris jested.
"Just…" Cletus tried to focus as he couldn't look into Quentyn's eyes without remembering that night's dream. "A nightmare. It'll go away, I just need to clear my mind."
"Don't clear it too much." Gerris warned him. "It's a five-hundred-foot drop from here to the river below."
"It's the exact place where Ashara Dayne took her own life." Quentyn nodded. "One day, she decided to climb all those stairs, had one last look at this beautiful scenery, and jumped off."
"A tragedy." Gerris nodded. "Was that the subject of the discussion with Lord Alyn?"
"Yes and no." Quentyn shrugged. "Indirectly, I suppose. But I swore to Lord Alyn not to say a word. It was hard enough to get him talking, the man is old but when he stares at you with these purple eyes of his, it is hard to keep your composure."
"And you're not very confrontational." Gerris chuckled.
"I'm the worst." The prince chuckled. "But we had aligning interests. About High Hermitage first, and about monetary exchanges. We arranged a trade. Information for information. Gold for gold."
"Information?" Cletus finally snapped out of his reverie.
"Again, I cannot reveal the subject of our conversation." Quentyn shook his head. "But again, as lord Alyn said, no secret can stay hidden forever. Mayhaps one day it'll be the right time to tell the truth, but not now."
"And what about the gold part?" Gerris asked, intrigued.
"Ah, the part that I can share with you." Quentyn smirked, as he reached towards his pocket. "Do you know what this is?"
Cletus squinted to get a better look of what the prince was holding. It was a small flower, purple in colour, with extremely small petals.
Both he and Gerris shook their heads.
"This is lavender." Quentyn answered. "It grows all around the valley of the Torrentine, from Meteor Port to the reaches of Lacroyne, Castle Arstan and Valstead. Now, take a stalk, both of you, and rub the purple part between your hands until only the stem is left."
Cletus reached for one of the stalks, took it between his hands, and did as Quentyn said, rubbing the flowers until there was nothing left but a green stem.
"Now smell your hands."
Cletus raised his hands, and suddenly, he gasped.
The smell was unbelievably good, and filled his nostrils with a relaxing sensation. Suddenly, his mind relaxed, and he felt as soothed as ever as the smell of the flower filled his lungs.
"This…is amazing." Gerris laughed. "The smell of this flower…it's so…"
"Relaxing?" Quentyn asked. "Yes, that is why the Dornish and Essosi use it in their oils. But what if I told you that we could make something more out of it."
"What do you mean?" Cletus asked.
"I mean, what if you could take the smell of this flower, or any flower for that matter, mix it with water and alcohol, put it in a small glass container, and use it at any given time, so that you do not smell of sweat all day, but rather smell of lavender, jasmine, rose, orange, or anything you wish?"
"The ladies would be aching to get some of this from the Prince's Pass to Planky Town…" Gerris laughed.
"And I guess you'll be working on how to put this scent in a bottle if I'm correct?" Cletus asked.
"Oh no." Quentyn laughed. "I already have."
He pulled out a small bottle of the substance, made with dornish glass. On it was a small band, with the Martell sigil over it, where the fine print read:
...
( Jasmine )
Sunshine
A perfume created by Quentyn Martell
"You madman…" Gerris gasped.
"It's only a prototype." Quentyn shrugged. "But it gets the point across. I'll send some over for my sister's nameday. She'll love it."
"And I guess you took credit for this." Cletus added, his mouth agape as he sniffed the fragrance from the small bottle.
"Aye." Quentyn nodded. "Creating these takes time, and the supplies will be rare, but as it stands, the lands around Starfall and Yronwood contain a wide variety of flowers, including lavender and jasmine, and little flasks like these will soon make me, lord Dayne and you lot extremely rich."
Gerris and Cletus looked at each other in disbelief.
"What?" Quentyn smiled.
"You didn't think I'd make you lot miss out. You're my friends. As obnoxious as you can be sometimes, you're still my friends, and I know I can count on you. You'd have done the same for me."
Gerris started laughing, and hugged Quentyn deeply. Cletus could only join in.
"You're a genius, you know that?" Gerris asked Quentyn.
"Don't blow things out of proportion." Quentyn smiled as they broke the hug. "It is a step in the right direction."
"What direction?" Cletus asked.
Quentyn smiled.
"Control."
===================
hey guys I was thinking of putting a goal for you guys to reach.
if you guys managed to reach it, I will release an extra chapter this week.
The first goal is to have 150 power Stones, by the end of this week.