Game Of Thrones Joffrey Baratheon Purple Days

The leaves were wide and strong, of a deep green and riddled with yellow veins. Joffrey felt the texture gently, his fingers drawing the shape of the leaf as he followed the contours and then the veins themselves, feeling the sticky sap flowing within and beyond his grasp.

The great tree itself was a living work of art; intertwined branches spreading away from the center as if the whole tree were a slowed down explosion, figs and broad leaves crowning the tip of the tree in a splendor of green and yellow.

"Strong but bending; I wonder if that is what draws man to the greater trees," said a voice from behind him. Joffrey dragged his sight away from the monstrous fig tree that dominated the courtyard and regarded the waiting monk with a thoughtful expression. He wore clean white robes, and his head had been completely shaved except for a small grey beard which had been tied together into a compact form with two lengths of string.

Joffrey returned his gaze to the tree. "They are admired for their strength in the midst of storms, and for the shelter and food they provide... But for me it is their surety of purpose, the…" he trailed off, frowning as he glimpsed the sun shining through the leaves overhead, "… their serene presence in the moment," he murmured.

"So they are the epitome of the present? Monuments of the now?" asked the monk.

"Monuments of the now…" mused Joffrey. "But still in movement, always knowing where the sunlight is, always sure of their course as slow as it may be," he said as the monk walked beside him, peering up at the figs hanging above.

"But they shall never reach their destination, the sun too high for their grasping branches. Does that not evoke hopelessness?"

"Does it?" Joffrey answered with a question of his own, "They created their own journey, and lived through it until the end, whatever it was. Can anyone for ask more?"

"So it's not about the end, but the path itself?"

"Can one exist without the other? Can the end have meaning without the road?" said Joffrey.

"But doesn't the end also define the road? The very meaning of the question tying both path and resolution?" asked the monk.

"The serpent that eats its own tail. Meaning does not flow in a single direction, but spins eternally between both," Joffrey nodded after a moment.

They spent a while longer in silence before they both turned.

"Master Jeng," Joffrey said as he bowed, hands joined together at his chest.

"Master Joffrey," Jeng intoned as he bowed in turn. They shared a private smile before Jeng reached for two of the tree's lower hanging figs. He tossed one to Joffrey, who caught it easily. "Walk with me?" he asked before biting a juicy chunk out of the fig.

"Of course, then the young ones can return to their studies," said Joffrey as he gazed back at the half a dozen peeking students, who all immediately found something more interesting to stare at. For all that most of them were older than Joffrey by at least five years, he couldn't find it in himself to regard their curiosity and thirst for knowledge as anything but adorably juvenile. Perhaps even nostalgic.

"Restless few days?" asked Jeng as they walked away from the tree and the dispersing students, walking over a cobbled trail as they left the main courtyard.

"Yeah. They have once again locked my wife in for the week… 'So she may study uninterrupted'. The House of the South's need for secrecy borders on wanton paranoia sometimes," he said, a brief scowl marring the tranquility he otherwise felt in this place.

"The secrets of the flesh are no less deep than those of the mind, but war and intrigue have marked the former far more than the latter in this city," said Jeng, their walk carrying them below an arch of intertwined wood that divided two sections of the same garden.

Joffrey nodded before a small smile peeked through his lips. "You know why I'm here," he said, nibbling on the fig as the Master smiled.

"Indeed. We are ready," said Jeng, opening the paper door to the small dojo by the side of the garden. Inside awaited two sitting monks, a Paigo table between them.

"Master Joffrey!" called out the older one as he stood up, a brown skinned Ghsicary whose grandfatherly smile did little to hide the keen intellect behind his eyes.

"Master Gaharz," Joffrey bowed with him, "I hope Master Wo-Ti's blunders have not dulled your edge since last time?" he said.

"Owh!" Master Wo-Ti called out from the floor, giving Joffrey a deep nod instead of standing up and bowing. Joffrey roughly translated that to 'Greetings Master Joffrey. Would you care to get your ass reamed in a match right now?' in Wotese.

"He has been most disrespectful in that regard, overturning all expectations," said Master Gaharz, folding his legs and sitting on the floor by the side of the table, leaving the opponent's place free. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to make Master Wo-Ti remember his real skill level?"

"And save us his boasting for the following month," Jeng added as he closed the door behind him.

"It will be my pleasure," said Joffrey as he sat opposite to Wo-Ti. The fat, round headed master smirked at the presumption. Big, meaty hands emerged from the folds of his robes as he arranged the pieces with deceptive gentleness, not even asking which color Joffrey wanted to take.

Because of course Wo-Ti would play black, ceding the initiative to Joffrey.

"Feeling confident today, huh?" he said before Master Jeng sat by the remaining side of the small table, the dark-brown wood paneling muffling his movement until he was suddenly sitting by their side.

"Heh," grunted Wo-Ti, which could be roughly translated as 'Come at me'.

And so the game was off to a quick start. Wo-Ti played as he fought, ponderous and powerful swipes of action that gave way to long moments of stillness, giving Joffrey enough rope until the time was ripe and the Master struck. Joffrey preferred the classics of Fol-Fing rather than his disciple and foremost apprentice, General Be-Ming, and so he feinted and hid, seeking to wear down the black pieces through constant movement and fierce engagements.

When he'd first arrived at the temple of the Aeromancers, high atop a large hill beyond Asshai's limits, Joffrey had been seeking little more than peace of mind. Sansa had been staying longer and longer within the confines of the House of the South, almost like a Septa in a quiet retreat. The moments they've had to talk had been few and far between… enough to leave Joffrey certain that she was safe, but not nearly enough to leave him untroubled.

He'd barely spent more than a single day meditating by the shadow of the fig tree when Master Jeng had approached and engaged him in philosophy as an equal, and from there to meeting Gahzan and Wo-Ti.

No matter how hard his denials and his lack of formal titles, all three monks insisted in calling him a Master, same as they referred to each other. In Yi-Tish the term spoke of someone possessing great wisdom and mastery of their own Way, and to be referred as such by the likes of them had been a profound acknowledgement of something, a something Joffrey was still busy deciphering.

"Hm," Wo-Ti grunted. He was grudgingly respectful of the showing, but certain of his opponent's defeat. He raised one bushy eyebrow, before extending one black bead forward by a single tile.

"This was a mistake," said Jeng.

"You have doomed us all, Master Joffrey," said Ghazan.

"Hah," said Wo-Ti. Which Joffrey translated as loud cheering and rude gestures.

"Well, this is unexpected," he said as he traced the brutal clash that would soon follow and wipe him out completely. Pure Be-Ming style… Fitting perhaps, for the man did slay his mentor after all.

"Sorry about that," said Joffrey, smiling sheepishly.

"Zhezhezhe," rasped Wo-Ti with a wide smile.

"Now you're just rubbing it in," said Jeng.

"…Best of three?" asked Joffrey.

Both Jeng and Gahzan stared at him in mute horror. One victory was one thing, but two? Wo-Ti might actually speak after that.

"Hmmm," said the burly Master, before nodding.

Joffrey twisted his neck left and right, working out the kinks. This was going to be a long afternoon.

Perhaps he would even stop worrying about Sansa for a minute or two…

-: PD :-

"You are distracted," rasped Calinnia. A twirling knot of unpleasantness curdled within her belly, and Sansa gasped.

"Isn't that counterproductive?" she asked before Calinnia waved her hand and another wave of pain rocked her belly as her own blood rebelled.

"Insolent child. You are blessed by the gift and the blood of ancient times, and yet you disappoint at every turn," she said, and Sansa thought she could detect the faintest trace of jealousy in her mentor's voice. She was a vaguely stooped figure, white bandages covering her form completely under a black robe, a green mask striped with red lines hiding her face.

"Forgive me, Matriarch," she said as she bowed her head. The grey and bare basalt of the small chamber's walls did strange things to sound, compounding and drowning it at the same time.

"Return your mind to the present. The key to sorcery is blood, and to be attuned with it is to be attuned with power itself. Achieve dominion over your flesh, and the rest will follow," she said, repeating the same words which had been seared into Sansa's mind for almost a year now. There was barely any light within the chamber; a single lantern above the door behind her that only served to deepen the shadows of the place.

Sansa sighed, grasping the dagger once more. She bent her arm sideways, level with her head as she took a deep breath. She added another cut to the score others that peppered it, her heartbeat quickening as she gazed at the single drop of blood scurrying down towards her little finger.

She breathed in harshly as the drop stopped its journey, all of her senses embracing its shape, its form, its warmth. They aided as much as they hindered, giving Sansa information about the droplet for all that there was something beyond it; an invisible tether of infinite length and gargantuan size.

Within that drop of blood lay an ocean, and to move it was the task of titans.

Sansa tilted her head slightly, teeth clenched as her eyes drooped under the strain, an all-encompassing sensation demanding she gasped and vomited, that she cried and screamed and tore her eyes out.

Instead, she pulled.

She felt as if a hair thin rapier were being extracted from her esophagus, a vertical string of glass that bisected her being from below to the skies, an impossibly taut string that made her shudder as she gazed at the drop of blood slowly making its way back from where it came. It crawled up her arm lazily, stuttering alongside her will until it finally reached the tiny wound.

Sansa gasped as it entered back into her body for a single second, feeling strangely before it come back out along with a torrent red black blood.

She screamed in agony as she bled out abruptly, two black garbed men stepped forth from the shadows and grabbing her tightly as another two swiftly wrapped her arm in white cloth, holding her strongly as she thrashed screeched. Calinnia placed a single thumb on Sansa's forehead, her whole body growing taut like a bent plank, her agony peaking before it suddenly receded. The bleeding stopped immediately, but the savage pain kept rocking Sansa for an indefinite amount of time as the men left her, tasting of something familiar as it faded into the distance of her awareness.

"Mediocre," said Calinnia, crouching beside her gasping apprentice. The green mask was unmoving as it beheld her, and Sansa thought she could glimpse red eyes behind it.

"So much hesitation… tell me Sansa, what do you fear so much?" she asked her.

She said nothing, breathing slowly as she gazed up at the red eyes.

Calinnia hummed, standing up before walking towards the door. "Don't worry," she said, "It'll go away eventually… that hesitation… it always does."

She left the room and closed the door tightly, leaving Sansa on the floor as she tried to summon the willpower to stand up.

So faint with praise, she thought, struggling to regain control of her lungs. She managed to shake off the cobwebs in her eyes and the shock that still had her numb, dragging herself to the most illuminated corner of the small room… which was enough to see her palm when she extended her arm as far as it could go.

There she grabbed her legs tightly, making herself as small a lump as she could. Her will battled her eyes as they grew moist, and after a brutal clash with herself Sansa managed to keep the tears to a slow, infrequent trickle that lasted less than a minute.

To show weakness in this place would kill her more swiftly than a dozen Rejections of the Blood.

Rejection… she mused within her mind. Such an odd name. It felt vaguely insulting to call something so harrowing by so simple a word; such was it called when the Shadowbinder brought forth the power of blood, only to lose concentration in the midst of the work. The blood unleashed its power upon the body itself, with strength often proportional to the power of the bloodline being worked. The consequences of such a discharge could be fatal if aid was not administered by those versed in the lore, and soon…

There was a reason why lone Shadowbinders were either weak in power or dead. To understand blood magic enough to tame it one had to travel a road filled with it.

She leaned back on the wall, relaxing as Joffrey had taught her many years ago, letting her mind drift as she gazed within. Her husband had guided her through the method of sinking her consciousness to the depths of her own soul, to regard the contours of her very essence that resided at her core.

She did so now, marveling at the fractal construct of light and line, letting herself be swept by the sight and forget about the world above and its pain and blood. She traced the lance of purplish gold light skewering her very being, a bridge that reached far into the void and not at all, breaching through to the cluster of light both right beside her and far away.

-: PD :-

"Get your head out of the clouds, Master Joffrey!" said Master Jeng.

Joffrey huffed before bending his legs, propelling himself back on his feet with the strength of his legs and back.

"The mind transcends the body, but neglecting the body brings shame upon the mind," said Master Gaharz, leaning his head on a hand as he sat by the side of the small garden.

"Next time I'll be teaching," Joffrey grunted as he massaged his shoulder, "I'll introduce you all to something my homeland calls 'tourney swords'," he swore.

"We'll be looking forward for it, but for now your Ho leaves much to be desired," said Master Jeng as he repeated the kata, settling his hands in the middle of his chest before turning his feet slightly rightwards. "Ho!" he shouted as he extended one hand forward and placed the other one almost behind his head, extended backwards.

"Ho!" shouted Joffrey, copying the motions. His knees were slightly bent, his back thick with perspiration; his whole body was a coiled spring, waiting for the moment.

Master Jeng advanced upon him like a leaping storm, his barely audible grunts marking each attack of his fists and legs. Joffrey retreated instantly, redirecting the flurry of fists and open palms above his shoulders or away from his chest. He tried to sweep Jeng's legs from under him, but the Master jumped just the bare minimum amount to avoid the sweep before he planted an open palm on Joffrey's esophagus. Joffrey tumbled back, coughing as his own palm caught one of Jeng's fists and he struck his elbow joint.

Jeng retreated then, testing his arm as they circled once more. Joffrey couldn't repress a slight smile as they kept turning, bare feet sliding over the grass slowly as they turned and Master Gaharz took a sip of tea. This time, it was Joffrey who struck first; legs whirling as he jumped in a strange mixture of Ho and Water Dancing, two strikes in quick succession. Jeng ducked below one but couldn't avoid the other one, grunting as he stumbled back. The willy Master was undeterred though, quickly following up with a whirlwind of classic Ho strikes and dodges; Jeng's preferred style was akin to the wind itself, quick and furious and nowhere to be found when you needed to grasp it.

Joffrey tumbled to the ground again.

"This was not what I had in mind when I asked you to teach me Aeromancy," he said drily, before standing up once more and bowing.

"'True magic is the knowledge of thyself, to master both mind and body,'" Master Gaharz said again.

Joffrey shook his head as he looked at the brown skinned Ghiscary, "I've a get a hold of those books you keep quoting, if only to make sure you're not making this stuff out of thin air," he said.

Gaharz regarded him for a moment before he frowned, "Your pun," he said, "Was awful."

Joffrey waited.

"… But I'll lend you Master Jue's Meditations and Master Malayios' Forms of the Wind," he added with a fake sigh.

Joffrey smiled at the man before sitting next to him, taking another tea cup as Master Jeng sat by the other. Even though Joffrey had never tried to master an unarmed fighting style, it seemed some things were truly universal. After each Paigo session, the Masters liked to spar in their preferred styles, to loosen the body and let the mind drift after the matches.

"Even though your grasp over Ho is almost nonexistent, your control over your own body is truly magnificent," Jeng said after a moment, "Where did you learn to move like that?" he asked him.

"A lot of different teachers from all over the world, and a lot of practice over the years," he said.

Master Wo-Ti grunted in what appeared to be disbelief. He was sitting behind them over a wide, blackened tree stump, eyes closed as his bushy eyebrows twitched lightly. Legends said that when the Poisoned Men of Ulthos breached the Temple of the Aeromancers with their breath of death and their bloated backs, Master Gyogi had leaned on a fig tree not too dissimilar from the one near the entrance, receiving the invaders not with violence but with reason. Through a whole day and a whole night he'd talked to the cursed men of Ulthos until they were enlightened, their madness condensing into the fig tree and burning it black. Master Gyogi had then delivered one, single blow to the tree with an open palm and a bent index finger; the killing blow of Fhe…

The tree had toppled instantly, felled in half and carried away by the Master. It was said he'd tossed it into the depths of the Furious Sea to the far east, transferring the madness into the waters themselves.

To think atop the blackened stump was traditionally seen as a way to meditate about the nature of reason and madness itself… Needless to say, Joffrey was a frequent visitor of the tree stump, spending long afternoons meditating about the nature of what he'd long ago called the Red; the slaughter-loving madness that had always seemed a deep part of his self.

He blinked away the errant thoughts and realized Wo-Ti had kept up the skepticism, staring at him with half lidded eyes. The Master eventually relented though, nodding slightly in what -for him- was a massive complement to Joffrey's future abilities.

"I think you're right," said Master Grazhan, turning his sight from Wo-Ti to Joffrey, "The core of it is already within you; the awareness of the sitting warrior… I dare say Joffrey, all you need to learn are the kata's themselves and you could eventually defeat Master Jeng rather easily."

"I'm flattered," he said, nodding lightly.

Wo-Ti grunted harshly.

"… I don't think I got that," said Joffrey.

"He thinks your false modesty is unbecoming of you," said Master Gaharz, "No one moves like that at your age," he said as he eyed him strangely.

"I-"

"You don't have to explain," he said as he waved a hand, "Your journey before reaching this place has been a long one… I hope that what you learn here aids you when you return to it," he said as his gaze returned to the horizon.

They spent a while in silence, and Joffrey took a while to bask in the strong scent of jasmine after he'd taken a sip from his own tea, looking at the horizon at well and upwards, gazing at the Red Comet above and its long tail, sailing through the void between the stars with destruction as it only purpose.

The Masters had been teaching him their distinct styles. Master Gaharz dominated Yii, a style characterized by needle like strikes that made the Master's fingers seem like daggers, every oddly stilted motion fluid on its own; a serenity of motion that left Joffrey permanently off balance. It was said that the Matriarchs of Asshai feared it, for the blows could even interrupt budding sorcery, hindering and slowing the flow of blood itself.

Master Wo-Ti preferred Khai, a style Joffrey had been passingly familiar with. It lived by heavy strikes and powerful motions meant to stir the blood and stand ones ground. Designed almost as a counterpoint to Yii many centuries ago, it had been created with the use of armor in mind… The Jade Scribes of the Dawn Fort had specialized in it, for its katas were renowned for their attunement to sorcery and Shadowbinding. Joffrey had learnt the basics of it many, many years ago at the instruction of his old friend and subordinate, Captain Jhos.

The styles were more than mere fighting techniques though. They were consolidations of lore and Ways of thinking. Philosophies of the self and the world. Discussing their precepts and worldviews with the Masters themselves had been a favored past time of Joffrey during the last year, as Sansa's stays in the House of the South turned longer and longer.

He realized the Masters had drifted back to meditating, and Joffrey decided to join them. He descended deep into his self, not even needing the subtle pull of the tablet by now. He descended down the familiar paths, the depths of within drowning all that was without, as he arrived at the core of his soul and self, a state of being crossed by invisible purple tethers.

He let himself drift in the timeless expanse, until a slight twinge startled him.

It was not from without, but from within. Joffrey was surprised to feel… something else, a lingering gaze from afar and beside. Joffrey found himself smiling without knowing why, his body knowing the reason before his mind.

Sansa? He asked.

There was no answer, but the comforting warmth was unmistakable. Awe traversed his being as he felt his wife in the distance, mind racing quickly as he tried to tie the dots.

Brightroar… the connector… he thought slowly, focusing on the bridge of purple and gold that pierced his being. He could somehow feel her surprise, her awareness that he too was looking back.

There were no thoughts, only errant emotions and textures of feeling that traversed through the golden bridge… brief impressions of meaning which were soon lost to the void, but not before Joffrey tasted their meaning.

How fascinating, he thought, watching the bridge. Sometimes it was easy to forget that they were not truly human, or perhaps not only so. Their stay in Asshai would apparently be a long one, but even then the time would eventually come… the time where they'd either have to accomplish their purpose, or die trying to avoid it.

The time of destruction.

… It always did.

-: PD :-