The Great Khal

Indie RP blog for Game of Throne's Khal Drogo. Canon divergent and cross-over friendly. Beloved by Zeke. graphics by @supergirlrph

Drogo grimaced beneath his golden mask, tilting his head towards the ceiling of the ready room beneath the fighting pit. Those who would be fighting that day would prepare in other rooms in the network of chambers beneath the pits, then wait in rooms just beneath the arenas for their turn to step into the light and fight.      It hadn't been too bad, at first, this cyclical new life. He was well fed, and appointed rich bed chambers; all the better to keep him rested and energized to make his masters their coin. The fights had been a welcome distraction, until the distraction wore off.      Once a great khal, with 40,000 riders behind him and an untold number of women and slaves, as well as a wife and an unborn son, now he was nothing but a slave, propped up in a cage to fight until it was time to sink back out of sight. The lifestyle difference was stark and unfulfilling. He missed the open, rolling plains of the Dothraki Sea, missed the giggles of children and the voices and laughter of thousands of throats. More than that, he missed his wife. With hair like the whitest cotton, captivating purple eyes, skin softer than silk, and a touch so gentle it softened his hard heart, it was the all consuming will to see her again that had brought him back.      And see her he had, eventually. But she had not seen him.      Seated above the pits he fought in, she scarcely looked down. Even if she did, the mask he was made to wear prevented her not only from seeing his face, but from recognizing his voice, as the construction of it distorted any sound he made.      Another day, another fight. She would be there, just beyond his reaching, and that was the cruelest thing of all. At least in the Night Lands, there had been no way for her to reach across that veil, but here...      His thoughts spin away from him as a voice catches his attention- a voice he knows. His eyes flick back and forth across the chamber and catch on a head of greying blond hair that he would recognize anywhere. Jorah Mormont.      His heart seizes painfully in his chest as the memory of Daenerys' attempted poisoning shoots through him and he surges to his feet. Before he can head for Jorah, a horn sounds; the signal for the fighters to enter the pit.      He growls, heart pounding in his ears, and his eyes flick from Jorah to the pit's entrance before he mounts the ramp. Jorah and four other men step up as well, and Drogo quickly sized them up as he entered the pit.

The tent's flap was open to let in what fresh air and sunlight there was to be found. On the edge of the Dothraki Sea, the land was hot and miserable. The mood in the camp was subdued; their numbers had been decimated, their khal's survival was uncertain, and their khaleesi was exhausted and distracted.      It seemed like the only sound was the squalling khalakka. Drogo's firstborn son and the son of their khaleesi, no one dared to complain about the sound.      In the khal's tent, with the exception of Rhaego's squirming and complaining, things were still. Drogo's eyes flitted beneath their lids, the only outward sign of anything happening beneath.

Hoofbeats echoed in the murky darkness around him, uneven and chaotic.

     Drogo spun in the gloom. He sought any frame of reference- a landmark, a person... hell, he'd have taken a blade of grass at that point. But there was simply nothing.

     A horse screamed behind him, close, and he turned again. A figure finally appeared in the featureless landscape; the black Stallion with purple eyes, which had been with him since he was young. Something was different this time, though. Those purple eyes were wide with panic.

     The darkness fled beneath the horse's hooves. Golden grass sprouted from each spot a hoof touched the ground, but the blades quickly turned white and whithered. The ground beneath the Stallion's hooves began to roil. The uneasiness in Drogo's chest blossomed into fullblown panic but, before he could turn and run, the ground crumbled and fell away into blackness. He and the Stallion went tumbling into the inky depths.      He wasn't sure how long he fell- it could have been seconds, minutes, or hours he spent adrift, falling through empty space with no stimulus except for the distant squealing of horses. The first new sound, he almost missed. It was the faint coo of a baby.      He turned, trying to locate the source, and the ground came crashing up to meet him. A bed of wilted grass, and the bones of men and horses unburned, the dead who had never reached the Night Lands, surrounded him. The grave threatened to swallow him, but... a faint light illuminated the grim place.      The coo sounded again, from somewhere high above, and Drogo looked up. Sheer earthen walls surrounded him but, far above... sunlight, barely reaching him in the deep pit. He looked around and saw only bones and and wilted grass.      From above, a nicker and a baby's laugh. His son was up there. He knew it as surely as he knew his own two hands.      There was only one option: climb.