The Dragonwolf, the Krakens, and the Ancestors

A/N: Well guys and gals, we have finally reached chapter 80. Thank you all for the support along the way. It has certainly helped fuel my drive. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one, and here is to 80 chapters more :D

EDIT: Just wanted to let you know that I came to realize after posting the chapter that I posted the wrong title for it. I ended up changing my mind and deciding that one fitted a future chapter further down the line a lot better. So, for those that already got the notification early with the previous title, there is your answer for why it is different now. Enjoy.

Hours later, when Theon Greyjoy would finally find some private time to talk about the day's events with his sister Yara, he would have responded that, if questioned about how he felt in the first thirty seconds after they unexpectedly arrived in Braavos, to say he was completely and utterly stupefied would be a serious understatement. The Ironborn was stunned out of his mind, his mind going numb and refusing to send signals to the rest of his body as he stared at the sight before him, leaving him totally fixed to the spot. Even his lungs stopped working for a few seconds, such was his shock.

He stood, leaning against the mast of the Black Wind he had fallen against in surprise and holding himself up by placing his hands on it. Jon Snow, the famous Bastard of Winterfell that he grew up with after becoming a ward to Ned Stark, was riding an enormous dragon while staring at him with an unreadable expression. Theon couldn't even comprehend how it was that this came to pass or start to wrap his head around the fact that he must have somehow been responsible for bringing them forth and their fleet from thousands of miles in the blink of an eye. But as the seconds passed, he started to remember their past together in the North and how much Jon had loved his brother Robb.

Which in turn, reminded him of his own betrayal...

Before he knew it, he was walking closer towards the floating figures, his mind still a bit dazed. Behind him, he heard Yara call to him but looking back, he could not remember what it was that she had said. Probably something to the effect that when she had told him back on Volantis to kill himself if he truly felt he was so broken that there was no going back, this manner of suicide was not what she had in mind. Regardless, he pressed on until he was standing just a few feet near the dragon and his rider, forcing himself to look at Jon in the eyes.

The Northerner watched him approach in silence from his glorious mount, his expression as impenetrable as before, possibly waiting for him to make the first move. He didn't know if it was the shock that was hitting him in full ****, the potential danger of the legendary beast rattling him, or perhaps the bittersweet memories of his youth, turned darker by his own actions. All he knew was that a swell of emotions gripped him tight and before he realized it, he had collapsed on his knees.

"I am sorry, Jon...for everything. Gods, I am so sorry..." He babbled, tears running across his face. "I should never have betrayed Robb or your father's memory. I should never have spit on your family like that. I am so sorry..."

There was absolute silence across the deck for a few seconds, aside from a gasp from his sister that probably steamed from surprise, as she had never seen the Bastard of Winterfell before and now could see he had somehow bonded with a dragon. Theon couldn't bring himself to care much about that. His focus was on Jon's face waiting to see how he would respond.

The answer started to come when he made a gesture with his hand and the dragon lowered its shoulder as it flew down slowly, which allowed his feet to touch the deck. He locked eyes with Theon for a moment longer, before his lips curled into a sad smile.

"I believe you," He responded in a calm voice. "Deep down, I don't think I was entirely sure until just now but yes, I truly believe you are sorry for what you have done."

He took a deep breath and offered him his hand. Theon's jaw dropped at that, unwilling to make himself believe this could actually be happening. But after a brief, paralyzing moment where he dreaded this could be a sick game like the ones Ramsay used to play on him, he allowed himself to dare hope and reach for his hand.

And when he didn't slap his own away before screaming in rage but actually lifted him up, Theon Greyjoy felt an unexpected sense of peace he hadn't experienced in a long, long time.

"We have much to talk about," He told him. "But first, I need you to help me calm down the crews of your sister's ships. "They are scattered all along the Braavosi canals and I want to assure them that, while I used my magic to bring them all here, I mean them no harm. But if they start to attack the Braavosi City Guard along the canals in their confusion, things might escalate needlessly. Do you have any signal you can send the ships that could reassure them?"

Before Theon could reply, he saw Yara approaching slowly, out of the corner of his eye.

"So...you are Jon Snow," The Ironborn Captain said in a wary but curious tone.

Then she shook her head as if to clear it.

"There's...there's my white kraken sail," She said, staring at Jon with a calculating but hesitant gaze. "My men know I only raise it when I want to negotiate with someone and thus lets them know that I will not tolerate raiding."

Jon scratched his chin for a moment, before looking to opposite sides of the canal ad all the ships scattered there. "That might work but we will need a higher ground for them to pay attention to it among all this confusion, along with a sign that makes it clear you are the one that authorized the use of that flag of truce."

Then, he hesitated for a moment before shrugging to himself. "Which means the most effective way to accomplish both things will be for the two of you to ride my dragon alongside me while I make a pass above the fleet, with the two of you showing your faces and the banner as well."

Theon's jaw dropped in shock again but this time, his sister's followed his. After shaking her head, Yara stared at him in disbelief. "You want us to ride that dragon of yours? Is that even safe for us? Wait, how is that even safe for you? You are not a Targaryen!"

"That's a long story but, as I said, this would probably be the fastest ways to calm your men before they do something in their confusion they might come to regret," Jon stressed. "And yes, I assure you that it will be safe for you to ride behind me as long as I deemed it so."

Yara tilted her head at that, her eyes narrowing. "Was that a threat?"

"A fact," He said simply, his tone even. "And a reminder that dragons do not react well to those that harm their riders."

There was a moment of tension as his sister and Jon locked their eyes with each other. Then Theon swallowed and hoped he was doing the right thing as he approached her. He placed a hand on her shoulder to catch her attention and then took a deep breath.

"Yara, I have no idea how Jon managed to bring us here but you saw the colossal Titan; you know where we are," He stressed. "And that means, if we try to fight our way out of here, we will be lucky if half of us make it out to the open sea. We really do need to make sure the rest of the Ironborn do not make that choice for us, at least until we can hear what Jon has to say."

She stared at him for a long moment, as if searching for something in his eyes, perhaps a hint of disloyalty. He hoped she wasn't disappointed with him but regardless, it wasn't long before she sighed.

"Bring the flag now," His queen ordered. "It seems we will be staying here a while. And I will be damned if I am not curious about what it is like to fly."

Theon nodded and hurried to the door that led to Yara's cabin. There, he quickly found the white kraken sail.

He took a deep breath before grabbing it and turning back, his pace filled with a strong sense of purpose for the first time in a while.

"Wait, what?!" Sansa asked, her eyes widened, as the full implications of what Josera had said started to sink in. "So, I am warg too?"

"I wouldn't say that if I wasn't sure, my Lady," The younger half-brother to Lord Forrester replied. "It took a while for me to make sense of the spark of the Old Gods in you, however. It felt a bit stunted until recently. Which made me hesitate to say anything before, because the only times I have heard of the potential for warging weakening to the point of never fully emerging again is in the rare cases when a very young warg just barely starts forming a warg bond with the animal they trust and like most, only for the beast to die violently before the talents fully develop," He explained. "As I understand it from the talk of camp, that's not quite what happened with your direwolf since I heard your father actually faked her **** before sending her to recover with men he trusted, instead of actually killing her, as the late King Robert commanded. But I suppose that believing your first potential familiar was dead could have interfered with the growth of your warging abilities."

Sansa was quiet for a moment, taking all of that in and putting two and two together with her additional information; realizing that Jon's wish which enabled him to ensure Lady's rebirth must have started to restore their then stillborn warging bond.

"And now that we have spent long enough in each other's presence again, my new...powers are blooming," She thought, her eyes widening again at the realization that she actually inherited actual magical powers in her own right and not something directly tied to her godly brother.

Which begged a few questions...

"Given some of my recent dreams among other things, I think I have reason to believe you," The Lady of Winterfell in exile admitted. "But...I must say I am surprised that my brother Bran became a greenseer and that Jon also gained strong magical abilities. I can't remember anything that would lead me to think my father was a skinchanger too and he certainly never told me any story about his own parents and grandparents having that gift. Does this magical talent skip generations sometimes? And where does the power even come from?" She broke off, hoping he would have answers.

"That it does," Josera replied with a nod. "Although it is a bit unusual for more than one sibling to inherit those traits in any given generation. Case in point, the fact that while all my Forrester siblings carry the potential in their blood, I am the only one of them that can actually warg."

"As for where you could have gotten it," He went on, "well, before going to the North Grove to help guard it, my father gave my sister and I access to as many written references that talked about warging, and in my sister's case, blood magic due to the talent Elsera inherited from our mother. They were usually written by Maesters, Septons, visitors to the Wall, and the like and I devoured those scrolls in order to broaden my horizons in that regard. And what I can tell you from my research is that the power probably entered the Stark bloodline long before Aegon's Conquest, back when your ancestors were still expanding their rule over the present-day North and taking the daughters of conquered foes as wives."

Sansa raised an eyebrow at that. "Any specific examples you may know about?"

"Two of them, actually," The skinchanger responded. "For example, I read that thousands of years ago, Rickard Stark, the King in the North of the time, killed the last of the Marsh Kings and married his daughter, thus annexing the Neck to the realm of Winterfell. That's important because, according to Spring, the Child of the Forest we meet at the North Grove and came back with us, humans first gained the power of warging and greensight due to countless unions between the First Men and members of that elder race in the thousands of years between their peace treaty in the Dawn Age and the coming of the Andals. And since most of the Crannogmen of the Neck are still somewhat short of stature because they were the society from the North with the highest concentration Children's blood within them, especially back then, it stands to reason that when the daughter of the last March King became tied to your bloodline, she passed her powers to her descendants."

"Huh," The redhead said slowly. "I did know that was how my ancestors annexed the Neck but not the part about warging coming from the Children of the Forest or their connection to the Crannogmen of the swamps. Interesting...what was the other example?"

Josera shrugged. "The details are more scarce about that one, but essentially, when the Starks conquered the peninsula of Sea Dragon Point so long ago, they took it from a monarch that called himself the Warg King. It seems he had a few daughters and they bore your own ancestors several children of their own, but I was never quite clear from the records if they were wards or wives to members of your House. Regardless of that, the result would have been the same: additional concentration of warging blood merging with the Stark line."

"I see..." Sansa murmured, analyzing the information he was sharing with her. "I suppose that explains it then."

Then she took a deep breath. "Alright then. I am not sure how far I can tap into this power but, at the end of the day, I am not a warrior so if you could teach me how to warg Lady, that would be a tremendous help in the battle to come."

Josera chuckled a bit. "Indeed, and if I were to back you up by warging into my huge bear familiar, well, I suppose that could also help hurt enemy morale. Anyway, let's go outside and find your direwolf then. If you want to be ready in time, we have to start soon."

A/N: A bit of extra exposition with historical content from the books in order to answer Sansa's queries but I hope you especially enjoyed the reunion with Theon. More on that in the very next chapter, once it's ready.

Until next time!