I loved it actually, so please, do keep going overboard. All of these are being added to my notes as Wizerys finds himself exploring them either by stumbling through them or because he knew about them.

Now the next update!.. and new cliffhanger because I am feeling generous/cruel like that.

Now onto the chapter:

Children locked in the basement was one thing. I could deal with that.

Corpses of Children hanging from the walls was another.

Do you ever feel a rage that just leaves you in a calm state of mind? That feeling of ringing in your ears as everything gains a clarity that was not there before?

What I assumed was a corpse in the corner made a wheezing sound, causing me to focus on the child. I ran toward the girl, a push of my will unlocking the manacles that had her chained to the wall. I pushed aside her blonde hair and looked for any obvious injury that needed immediate attention.

The girl slowly opened her eyes, and I had only a single moment to cover her mouth before she screamed.

"Shh..." I calmed her with a push of my will. While I drew the line on skinchanging into children, this was one of those occasions when I really could not let my rules limit me.

The girl looked at me with tearful eyes before nodding.

"You should leave... he will come for you." she gasped out in Braavosi that made me sigh in relief. If she was good enough to talk, that was... good right?

"It will be alright." I stated simply using my Magic to make her believe it, a small comfort that I knew she needed. I turned to Ser Richard to help me with the girl.

I took a few breaths, trying my best to calm my rapidly beating heart. The ringing in my ears had returned.

"Fuck," I whispered, unable to find any other words to describe it before I felt something at the back of my mind. A check on the `scouts` I had ordered around the house showed that light was coming from the room that I knew to be the bedroom. The Alchemist seemed to have woken up and the plan of putting him down while sleeping had gone out the window with it.

"Richie... get the girl outside and come back for me after," I commanded, using the code name that Ser Richard had found childish, while Ser Willem had found it amusing. Knowing that this would have to be a confrontation of some sort and I could not risk an innocent from getting caught in the crossfire... or be used as a hostage against me. I just had to play a different role to play it would seem.

"Are you sure about this?" hissed Ser Richard who seemed just as disgusted by what he had witnessed just as well.

"I will have a wee bit of a chat with the owner while you are out," I stated, taking out my knife and my wand. The Weirwood felt almost warm in my hand, the echo of the dragon almost eager for a fight.

While I would have preferred to use the dagger I `liberated` from the Sorrowful Men, using a poisoned dagger that I had no knowledge of countering myself was not a smart idea if I accidentally nicked myself. Granted, that poison was possibly made by the Warlocks of Qarth if my hunch about the actual people who sent that Assassin after me were true, but that only made the weapon more lethal to those with magic... which included me. I could probably resurrect myself by skinchanging back into my corpse, but using unknown poisons might throw away that chance and I did not want to use my other options as they were... less moral.

I closed my eyes of flesh and opened them again along with my Third Eye, seeing into the world as it truly was. I never gave much thought to my Third Eye, a fact that was probably neglectful in hindsight but it had been essentially blasted open the moment I had first waved my wand.

I could feel the influence that was being woven with each of my steps. Something was guiding me to the study, a compulsion that I could dismiss with ease. I still followed the path it laid for me though, springing the trap and hoping that it would make my opponent drop his guard.

The study was... what I expected from a man who was called `the Alchemist`. There were a lot of vials and devices around the room, a bookcase of decent size in one corner with maybe fifty or so tomes and scrolls.

A mental command had my owl fly up to the rafters, giving me eyes to the door I entered through.

I walked over to the desk that held two thick tomes and a scroll opened across them all, filled with High Valyrian Glyphs. It caught my curiosity as the use of Valyrian Glyphs had gone out of favor after the Doom. The Modern High Valyrian, as I liked to call it, used the Westerosi Common as a writing style instead of the Glyphs that probably contained some form of Magic, possibly another way of suppressing Magic by the Maesters.

"So you are the one that I have been seeking." said the voice behind me.

I turned around only to get a face full of a powder I did not know the nature of.

The Shield Spell I had managed to develop sucked against any solid weapon with enough mass, as it failed to stop a forceful strike of a knife before. It had been too much air and not solid enough in the end. That being said, against something as light as powder, it worked perfectly, stopping the airborne particles the Alchemist threw in my direction.

I smirked before slashing with my wand without a word, a thin line of red appearing along the man's arm as he instinctively shielded his neck from my attack. I did not waste time with words mostly because I needed the added speed and it was not time to play around.

"Impressive... how do you Westerosi say it... for a green boy." said the man in High Valyrian, smirking through it all, seemingly unfazed by the cut along his arm that was bleeding.

I dismissed the fact that he knew I was Westerosi. I did not have time to play 20 questions with the man. If he knew where I was from, I needed him dead just in case he also knew where I lived. I could not put Dany in danger.

Seeing the blood falling from the man's arms, my first instinct was to assume he was not feeling the pain... a side effect that might indicate some form of possession. That thought was dismissed as it came since I knew from first-hand experience that pain was a good way to knock out a possession. A skinchanger could not keep the skin they were using after feeling physical pain, the original soul was simply able to overpower the foreign soul when it felt pain... it was just another peculiarity of Magic that meant the man before me was the real deal and he had a high tolerance for pain.

"What do you want with me?" I asked, curious and stalling for time. I carefully positioned myself so the man was facing away from the open door of the study.

"Nothing you need to worry yourself with." said the Alchemist with a smirk, his eyes noting the knife in my left hand. He was cautious of me, not willing to get close after seeing how I could cut him if he got closer. My cutting spell was way more powerful at close quarters as well, so it was not a game of chicken.

A few seconds later, the Alchemist casually waved his hand toward me. The flames from the hearth leaped towards me with the motion, only to stop as I took over the fire the moment my wand intercepted the fire. The dragon bone somehow connected with the flame and allowed me to take over the flame. A moment of inspiration and I swung my wand, using the flame as a whip that slapped towards the man's torso, pushing the Alchemist back. The next slash of the fire whip, Alchemist simply slapped away, dismissing the flames with ease that made me wary.

I noted that his hand had a red welt as if the flame had hurt him before our eyes connected. For a single moment, our minds connected, a battle of wills that came to an end as soon as it started, when the Alchemist flinched away from my mind when I pushed back against his intrusion.

Metaphysical spikes were countered completely, as I combined his style of Legilimency with what I had developed against animals, pushing against the intrusions as I bit the inside of my cheek, tasting my own blood and bringing my entire soul back to my own body, the connection to my owl breaking for a moment.

"Marvelous... simply marvelous." commented the Alchemist, seemingly impressed.

I took a calming breath, as this whole thing turned from a low magic setting to a full-on wizard duel real fast and I did not have the experience to survive longer... I had to end this quickly.

A stab of my wand launched a simple yet effective spell. A drill-like wind, similar to my Cutting Curse with the winds specifically meant to pierce. A hole through the torso would be hard to shrug off like cuts to the limbs after all.

The Alchemist was not fast enough to dodge the aptly named Piercing Curse... which got him in the torso, though his lack of reaction was making me more worried by the minute.

"No words?" asked the Alchemist, seemingly unfazed by the whole duel "Come now, boy, you have the potential to become the strongest Sorcerer I have met in while, surely..."

Whatever he was going to say next would remain a mystery to me, as I had flicked my wand while he was talking, letting a chair behind him slam onto his head. Talking was definitely a free action and the action economy won the fights from what I learned from Dungeons and Dragons. I would have to be content with filling in the blanks with one of the clichés like `you can learn great things with my guidance` or `you will make a perfect vessel for me to take over` or something equally amoral.

I barely reacted when a bolt of shadow flew towards me from where the man had fallen to his knees. My wand moved to intercept, knowing that I could take control of the shadow-smoke if my wand could just touch it.

Before the mess of shadows could reach me, my owl fell from the rafters, intercepting it instead, the mess of shadows ripped through the owl and I felt my companion get cut in twain as the spell ended. The blood splash onto my face and clothes as I just stood there, trying to get my bearings from the backlash of feeling the death of my familiar, the knife in my hand clattering to the ground.

I watched as the Alchemist got to his feet, raising his hand and throwing another bolt of shadows.

This time, I was prepared as my left hand reached to my belt, grasping the steel buckler, while my wand intercepted what I now knew to be a cutting curse.

The shadows were brought to my will, just as they intercepted the buckler. The steel shield fell apart into two pieces as the shadows touched it, providing just enough resistance to give me the time to take over and dismiss the spell by forcing my will through the shadows, breaking the will to cut while also changing its direction.

It worked, to a degree, as I was able to slap the shadow to the side as I swung my wand and my entire body to divert it away from my torso while stepping out of the way.

I felt something hot run along my left arm before I clutched the slow flow of blood. I felt it nick my left forearm when I touched it and feeling pain was good. If it felt cold, I would have to be worried but pain meant that it was a shallow cut. The bolt of shadow I had intercepted had cut through steel and barely stopped by my tunic bound with shadows, scoring flesh. This was the same tunic that had managed to stop a steel knife and it was cut like butter when faced against whatever Shadowbinding the Alchemist had used.

I could feel something trying to dig itself through my forearm, the shadow-binding was broken by my will but something remained within... and I needed to address it fast and that meant ending this fight soon.

I pointed my wand to the blood that was now flowing down my sleeve, trying to create shadow-smoke from my own blood. As I needed to end this fight as soon as possible, using a bit of my blood was worth my survival. Shadow-smoke was much more effective than what I normally used, as the man before me had shown. I somehow knew that I could weave it into my Cutting Curse and end this fight right there. Sacrificing a bit of my blood and soul was worth preserving the rest for all I cared, a few decades of my own life force meant nothing when compared to what this man would be able to do.

The problem was that I needed fire to produce shadow-smoke and the only source of fire had gone out when the Alchemist somehow threw the flame from the heart at me, not even needing a wand to do it.

"You know, I thought I would offer you a position by my side." said the man, his face now a rictus grin that was so unnatural it brought me a pause. The man knew he had won, I could feel the smugness radiating from him that brought a shiver down my spine.

"You mean under you? Find yourself another choir boy." I responded too fast for my brain-to-mouth filter to catch, causing the man to chuckle. I was not sure if he actually understood the reference or if the idea of a priest using children was a multiversal constant or not, I did not know. What I knew was that this person needed to die.

"If I wanted you dead, boy, you would be." countered the Alchemist, doing his best impression of a Sith Lord with their tried and true method of `join me or else` shtick. For a moment, it was an enticing proposition.

For a moment, I considered his offer, before the image of the blonde girl was replaced by a girl a bit younger and with lighter hair, the image of Dany filling me with a new rage.

"Well, I am waiting for a response." said the man his smirk not leaving his face. I really wanted to rip his face off.

"How is the dental plan?" I snarked in return, my tone calm as I gave up on trying to stop the blood from flowing and reaching out with my soul to the knife on the floor, sending it flying with a subtle flick of my wand.

"What is a dental plan?" asked the Man confused, as the flying knife punched through the man's heart, I knew it had done so... yet the Alchemist seemed unfazed by twelve inches of triangular war crime sticking through his heart.

"If that is your wish, I am sure I can find other uses for you." countered the man, still unfazed by having his heart stabbed.

`Fucking should have packed dragonglass` I mentally thought to myself as I braced myself for what is to come.

The man reached for his pocket, pulling out a vial, a vial that glinted green. I knew what it was, I remembered what it was, the screams of man and the laughter of my father.

I prepared for what I needed to do, my spell weaving itself around the desk, ready to flip it towards the man and block the vial of Wildfire. If I could just time it right, Wildfire would do what dragonglass could as well... probably.

Before either of us could react, I saw a glint of light behind the Alchemist and watched as a blade stuck through his mouth, causing him to drop the vial of what I knew to be Wildfire.

Behind the man, Ser Richard was standing, a necklace around his neck holding an amulet made from two distinctly colored pieces wood stuck together with blood and horse glue. While I could not use the Weirwood and Nightwood combination for myself, as it seemed to interfere with the way my magic worked, I was able to make a simple amulet from it that hid Ser Richard from my senses. I just had to bet that it would protect him from the sense of other magicals as well.

Ser Richard noticed the green vial from behind the Alchemist and yelped in shock, familiar with the green substance no doubt thanks to Aerys. His next reaction probably saved the day, as he pushed the man that refused to die along with the sword that was still stabbing through his mouth to where the wildfire had splashed but had not ignited.

The body fell on the green liquid and I watched as the blood touch the green liquid before the entire thing burst into green flames that nearly caused me to stumble back. A moment later, the Alchemist's body was consumed by the green flame and I acted on instinct.

With a mental push, the desk I was grabbing with metaphysical limbs flipped over and falling on top of the body of the Alchemist and the Wildfire. If the man still refused to die and tried to get up, the desk would hold him down... probably.

I watched unable to move as Ser Richard ran to my side, though I did not know why he did not simply choose to go back down the only way out... the same path that was now blocked by the spreading green flames.

"Thanks," I muttered, as Ser Richard caught me, as I was suddenly filled with a sense of nausea. Wildfire did not make me feel... good in any way or form.

"We should get... out," said Ser Richard, only to just notice that the green flames had spread enough to consume not just the body of the alchemist, but also the path to the door.

I watched the green flames block the path to the door and path downstairs, my mind trying to figure out a way to escape my own version of Summerhall.

I did not have a way through the Wildfire... as I could feel my very soul flinch away from the green flame on instinct when I tried to... push myself to take over the magical flames. If it were a normal fire, I could take over it, force it to cool down and go out but Wildfire proved its magical nature.

`That fire would burn my soul.` I thought to myself, knowing it to be the truth as I watched the Alchemist's body stay still within the green flames. I had caused enough physical damage to the man from Asshai to kill a normal man, and it had done absolutely nothing. I knew that the sword through the mouth had only made the man break his concentration for a moment, yet Wildfire was something else entirely, it would seem.

We needed another way out and the only way was through the window behind me.

`It is the second floor... we can survive that.` I mentally declared, mostly to convince myself. I just needed to make the opening wide enough to actually be able to pass through.

Aiming my wand to the wall, a wordless roar exploded from my mouth, just as the wall exploded outwards as I pushed out with all my metaphysical might, the warm air forming into a compressed ball before exploding outwards, breaking through the window... and the wall in a display of Magic I did not know I could pull off. It had left us with just enough of an opening to jump through. I noted that the spell had a lot more power than I was expecting but I did not really care about that at that specific moment.

My eyes landed on the items on the floor, broken vials and knickknacks along with the scroll and two books. I noticed that the flames were consuming the rest of the library so I made a grab for what I could get my hands on.

Grabbing the scroll and two books that had fallen to the floor from the desk, I jumped from the second floor down. A push of my will to my wand had the winds pick me up, not strong enough to make me fly but definitely enough to slow down my fall.

"Jump." I declared, looking at the hesitant Ser Richard, who was still inside the house, looking at me. "Trust me."

The knight jumped, as I willed the very wind to slow his fall. While I was still an eleven-year-old in a physical sense, Ser Richard was an adult in armor and he was heavier than I was by a large margin.

Still, the spell held as the man landed on his feet before falling over to his back. The fact that he was able to get up meant nothing was broken so that was good for us.

I rolled up the scroll and placed the three pieces of loot into my satchel. I would have preferred more but I was not going to cry over it. The Alchemist deserved to be put down and that was my primary goal after seeing the bones of the kids he sacrificed.

My mind briefly went over to the bones of the children... the idea of using their souls was nauseating and they were probably already bound to something given the way the Alchemist was able to use Shadow-Binding. I watched the flames grow to cover the entire second floor, a brief prayer leaving my lips hoping that the souls of those sacrificed would be released through the fire to whatever afterlife there was. I knew that R'hollor would take those souls, so to him, I prayed for once.

The green flame turned red just a moment after my prayer, making me wonder if R'hollor was listening. I reached out with my soul and touched the flame, just enough to feel that the Wildfire was burnt out.

I pushed my own will into flame, confining it to eat away at the house only and not spread further than that. Feeling souls linger in the flame, I felt that they were not hostile at all as I would have thought the soul of the Alchemist would be, I pushed my will through them, binding them to follow my command. Enchanting the fire to limit itself, I pulled back. Burning down the entirety of Braavos would not benefit me for now and I did not want the Faceless Men angry at me for going overboard.

"We should get away from here," I noted as I came to my own body, now that I knew the spell would work. "I think I can use a drink," I commented breathing heavily, as I took out bandages and tried my best to stop the bleeding on my arm.

"I don't think it would solve anything, your grace." countered Ser Richard, his body stiff as he seemed indecisive on whether or not he agreed with me.

I paused what I was doing, replaying the words of the knight in my mind before chuckling at the irony of it. I turned to see Ser Richard on his knees.

I was confused as it took me a while to register the words the man was saying.

"I offer my services to King Viserys Targaryen, Third of his Name. I will shield your back and keep your counsel and give my life for yours if need be. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New." said Ser Richard Lonmouth, the Knight of Skulls and Kisses.

That was the first time Ser Richard had referred to me as a king instead of a prince.

"And I vow that you shall always have a place by my hearth, and meat and mead at my table. And I pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you dishonor. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New," I said, as my hand went to the pommel of my wand, something made me add "I swear it by wood and bone, by bronze and iron, by ice and fire. Arise, Ser Richard."

"Don't forget about the girl," I added after Ser Richard got up from where he was kneeling, his eyes sharper than before. "We will find her family if she has one."

"Yes, your grace." responded the knight turning to the direction of where I assumed the girl had been before stopping and turning. "Your Grace... what do you know about the Song of Ice and Fire?" asked the former squire of my brother.

"Oh... fuck." I could only respond to that.

I was going to blame Rhaegar for the headache I was about to get from this, I was sure of it.

AN:

The climax to the Alchemist Arc. Unfortunately, shitty DM nerfs the loot.

Wizerys looks at green flames and shrugs "it is the same color... I think."

I really wanted to write a Wizard Duel so here it is. It also shows where Wizerys stacks in the totem pole as the Wand allows him to match up to people with probably greater experience and training than he ever has, but he does not automatically win.

House of the Dragon made this whole thing a lot easier to write since the Prophecy of Ice and Fire seems to be a canon thing now. It is in Fire and Blood and the new show, so it is in this one as well. The fact that Richard knows about it implies that he learned it from Rhaegar and the books imply that Rhaegar knew about "The Song of Ice and Fire" somehow.

It does put Richard's mental state in a better frame. Poor guy was probably thinking that the end of the world was coming and the only person who did something about it went and got his chest caved in by Robert "More-Wine" Baratheon.