Chapter 4 - Life without her

Ulf Pov

115 AC

Three hundred and sixty-five days. That is how long it has been since she left this world. I won't lie, It has been tough.

I thought that I would be sent to the small orphanage present on the Island which was managed by the lone septa and septon but that was not to be. Gerardys told me that he was in need of a helper and that I fit the bill. But I knew that the old softie did not want me to leave.

I wondered about how 'Ulf', in the original series must have lived all alone. I knew that I would be mentally depressed If my mother had died when I was a child, but my mind was much more aged than that of a five-year-old 'Ulf" who must have seen the horrible death that our mother suffered.

It was not a surprise that he turned out to be a broken man who consumed his grief by drinking. Truly a sad story If there ever was one.

There were times when I felt terribly lonely and morose , but those feelings were washed away as soon as I caught sight of Silverwing.

She would know how I felt and would cheer me up by trying to lick me with her big slobbery tongue while I would be squealing away to glory.

But of course, all this happened at night when most of the guards were busy sleeping. I would take proper precautions before ever venturing out.

It was also in the last year when I finally spoke to the master at arms or rather he lectured me while I just stood there and listened.

"Boy, your mother is dead and there is no one left to take care of you. She is sure as hell not going to be coming back. In order to survive in this world you need to know how to swing a fucking sword instead of spending the day locked up in that tower with the maester. Once you turn six-name days old I will start your training to become a man at arms or if you are even remotely good then, a knight. That is the least that you can do for your mother's sake, boy", he said.

Despite the fact that whatever he said was true It still infuriated me that he was telling me what my mother wanted for me. As if he ever knew her. Plus the time that I spent with gerardys was not useless. He was teaching me a lot about the uses of various herbs in order to make medicines and the various healing techniques known to him.

I wanted nothing more than to call Silverwing and burn the man down, because of what he said and not because of how he would betray Rhaenyra in the future.

That was when I realized that due to my connection with Silverwing, my emotions would grow stronger for example If I would be happy I would be jumping around the whole day, but if I was angry then by the gods I would be fucking pissed off. I guess due to the fact of me still retaining some of the childishness and not being mentally mature enough was the reason for such outbursts.

That would also explain as to why the Targaryen did not let their children bond with a dragon when they were just five namedays old like in my case. Just imagine a baby Targaryen going and burning a castle just because his nanny did not give him any lemon cakes after dinner. It surely was terrifying.

Another thing that I realized is that If there was a Guinness book of world records for being the youngest-ever dragon rider, the prize would easily go to yours truly.

It was at such moments that the childish part of my brain wanted to go and fly directly to Kingslanding to announce to the entire world that I was the youngest dragon rider in the history of Planetos, but the image of my head being on a spike dissuaded my thought process completely.

As I was busy dreaming about me becoming the future dragon knight and saving some maiden from her ivory tower, Gerardys came In and gave me h a present. As soon as I got hold of It, I squealed with delight. It was a book about the Fourty Families of Valyria.

I guess after the mad bastard known as the "Blessed" burnt most of the valerian texts due to the fact that they were against his religion there were no books about the families in the future timeline. But I am pretty sure that the grey rats must have stolen some copies, the fact that they also had glass candles which were previously thought to be extinct since the process of making it was lost during the "doom".

I then quickly went and hugged the kind maester and he just gave me a kind smile and told me about how he will increase the difficulty of the lessons in the future to which I nodded my head with gusto which resulted in him laughing loudly. But we were then rudely interrupted when a guard came in and told me to get to the courtyard.

I guess my time had come to prove myself in the training yard.

"From this day on, you all will call me Ser Alfred and not anything else. It has become my sad fucking responsibility to train you sorry lot. I expect that each and everyone one of you will obey my commands. I will be teaching you how to fight an enemy instead of you just pissing yourselves at seeing a man with a sword. I was there at Tarth when Prince Baelon and I along with good men, slaughtered the fucking Myrish for defying the dragon. So when I tell you to run you will run. If I tell you to eat shit you will. Mind you If anyone and I mean anyone tries to defy my authority then I will send your body to the seven hells, Do you understand me? I said do you understand me?".

"Aye Ser", we all shouted together worried about what Ser Alfred would do If he caught any of us lacking.

I won't lie, I saw one of the boys nearly pissing his pants after hearing the speech given by Ser Alfred.

He truly was terrifying, and currently, he was looking at me as If peering into my soul and telling me to give up my sorry existence.

"Now run until you all fall down", he said in a tone that reminded me of the Bootcamp videos that I had seen of the army.

But despite being the youngest present there I was the first to start running since In this life I had a goal and that consisted of me becoming the greatest knight in the history of Westeros. So I clenched my but cheeks and ran my ass off.

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116 Ac

Ser Alfred Pov

It had been two years since I had lost her, my sweet Mary. Oh, what a lovely girl she was always smiling and being kind to everyone, but the fucking gods took her away, just like they had taken his sister. Now all that remained was his grand-nephew Ulf. The only part left of his late niece and sister.

By the seven he wanted to gut the fucking prince when his sister told him that she was with child, but before he could do anything the Myrish killed him. Too bad, I always wanted to know how it felt to gut a 'dragon'.

But then tragedy struck when she died due to childbirth leaving me with only my niece on an Island far away from the Westerlands where his 'home' was. But then when uncle drove me and my sister away with nothing but my sword in hand and the clothes on our back that I realized that 'home' was just an illusion"

But the past was the past and one thing that I realized was that one should never dwell in the past for long.

Currently, I was watching the spar going on between Ulf and another boy who was older than his grandnephew by a few years. But the fight was totally one-sided. Despite the fact that the boy had a bigger physique than Ulf he was unable to strike him due to the fact that Ulf made use of his speed to continuously dodge the strikes while making minimal use of his sword. Eventually, the older boy ran out of strength and that was when Ulf finally attacked. There was a flurry of strikes and before you know it the boy was on the ground with Ulf asking him to yield with his wooden sword on the boy's neck.

It truly was astonishing at the pace that his grandnephew grew in terms of his martial training. It had been barely a year since he had started but he showed a lot of improvement. I was pretty sure that he would become a good swordsman once he grew up.

I was worried that like the various prodigies that I had seen he would become overconfident and that would lead to his eventual downfall. So I made it a fact to never praise the boy, but to his surprise, the boy never got angry rather he listened carefully and never threw tantrums like a certain rogue had when I had first started training him.

Another good thing was that Ulf always was kind to his peers and tried to help them get better, just like his mother. There were times when I wanted to go and tell him the true nature of our relationship but then I did not do it since It would be for the better that he never knew about the failure of a grand-uncle who was unable to save the person that he loved the most in the world.

It was then that I saw the Maester approach with a sealed letter. After I finished reading the letter I started bellowing out orders. It seemed that the Princess was finally coming to Dragonstone.