Looking ahead

That was all well and good, but idle talk meant nothing. In the end, everything had to come down to a detailed plan.

After all, he faced more than a decade of life on Essos, across the Narrow Sea.

It certainly would not be a pleasant trip, but a true test of survival. He had to prepare everything in advance if he wanted to handle it with ease.

First, and most fundamentally, came money. That was his highest priority.

There was no way I was going to follow the original Viserys's example, dragging Daenerys from one Free City to another, depending on other people's charity like a beggar. I didn't want even the slightest taste of sleeping rough and never knowing whether I would survive another day.

But making money was precisely the trickiest problem. How could a little kid living in the Red Keep, with no real power, amass enough wealth under everyone's noses to support himself for the next decade or more?

After all, unlike those all-powerful transmigrators who had come before him, he knew nothing about making soap, glass, or gunpowder, nor any modern tricks for making a fortune out of thin air. He was just an ordinary NPC with no useful skills.

It seemed he would have to take the long view and work out a plan slowly.

The most direct-and most tempting-option was still to find a way to empty House Targaryen's royal treasury when he left King's Landing.

As the royal house that had ruled Westeros for nearly three hundred years, they surely had treasures accumulated by their ancestors. After all, the man sitting on the Iron Throne was not yet House Baratheon's extravagant, utterly unrestrained Robert.

At a single tournament, the forty thousand gold dragons he awarded the jousting champion would have been enough to bankrupt a noble house. It was also his future unchecked spending that would leave the Iron Throne buried under a mountain of debt.

His new father, the Mad King Aerys, might have been mad, but aside from his expensive hobby of producing wildfire, his other expenses seemed fairly ordinary.

So there ought to be tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of gold dragons in the treasury.

If I could take most of that money, along with a few valuable dragon bones to sell in Essos, the gold dragons should last until the dragons hatched, even if I brought a few more people with me.

Speaking of debt, he vaguely remembered that House Baratheon later owed the Iron Bank an enormous sum, but that might well have been because the Iron Bank had backed Robert during the War of the Usurper.

Then, when Viserys was ready to reconquer Westeros, perhaps he could consider paying the Iron Bank a "visit" and collecting their "investment" in those traitors, with interest.

Money was the foundation, but capable people were the key to success or failure.

He had to make good use of his remaining time as Prince Viserys to befriend and recruit a few members of the Kingsguard who were highly skilled and reasonably trustworthy.

After all, he was a true Targaryen prince, and his bloodline was his greatest rallying cry. Even Robert's future claim to the Iron Throne rested on his being one-quarter Targaryen.

His first target was Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.

Having the man universally acknowledged as the greatest swordsman alive follow Viserys would be far better than letting him go to the Tower of Joy to protect Lyanna Stark, only to be ambushed by Howland Reed and die an ignominious death at Eddard Stark's hands.

Thinking back, protecting Lyanna had seemed unnecessary in the first place.

How could Eddard Stark, the Lord of the North renowned for his honor, possibly murder his own younger sister? He was even less likely to harm Jon Snow after she entrusted him with protecting her child on her deathbed.

Of course, he had no intention of protecting Jon Snow, the potential figure at the heart of "A Song of Ice and Fire."

Quite the opposite. One day, he would have to watch Jon draw his last breath, then burn his corpse to ashes with the fiercest dragonfire.

Viserys wanted to see whether Jon could still rise from a pile of ashes and perform those nauseating heroics again.

He did not particularly want to take Barristan the Bold with him. He could leave that man to follow his original course. Learning swordsmanship from him would be enough.

Because Barristan seemed to be in love with Arthur Dayne's sister, Ashara Dayne, and Viserys had already decided she would be his. After all, the other leading women were much younger than him, and he could hardly start acting like a beast so early.

Ashara was a good choice, and he could also change her tragic ending. Viserys suspected that, in the original story, her child had been Brandon's.

Brandon Stark had probably gotten together with her after the tournament at Harrenhal, since there had been mention of his relationship with Catelyn deteriorating over Ashara around that time.

Besides, Brandon had been a notorious womanizer. He had to change that outcome. The only good Brandon was a dead Brandon.

As for the others, their commander, Gerold Hightower, would probably stay close to protect the Mad King. Lewyn Martell would likely protect his niece, Elia Martell.

He would decide what to do about Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, and Oswell Whent after assessing the situation. First, he had to test their loyalty. There would be frequent assassination attempts later, not to mention the temptations offered by House Baratheon.

Another man he could recruit was Jon Darry, who had taken Viserys and the newborn Daenerys to Essos in the original story.

As for Jaime Lannister, he was not yet a member of the Kingsguard. He had only joined when Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, was its commander.

The Mad King had appointed him to spite Tywin Lannister.

Beyond recruiting powerful men, strengthening himself was equally important.

There were still two years until war broke out. He could not waste that precious time to grow. He had to begin training diligently in swordsmanship right away.

Dark Sister, the Valyrian steel sword passed down through House Targaryen, was currently in the hands of Brynden Rivers, Bloodraven. One day, he would have to retrieve it himself.

As for the other famed sword, Blackfyre, everyone thought it had long been lost, but fragments of the original Viserys's memories told me it was hidden in the king's bedchamber. I had to take it with me when the time came.

As for why Rhaegar had not carried that legendary weapon at the Battle of the Trident, there was probably only one reason: Aerys II's paranoia had reached an incurable extreme.

He trusted no one, not even his heir, Rhaegar.

He would rather keep the sword hidden away while ordering the pyromancers to produce more wildfire, secretly burying it beneath every street in King's Landing so he could take the entire city's people to the grave with him if he lost.

That was also one reason Viserys had no desire whatsoever to save those members of House Targaryen-the madness in their blood was far too unstable.

In the original story, if not for Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, all of King's Landing and its hundreds of thousands of residents would have been reduced to scorched earth in the green flames of wildfire.

Then there was Rhaegar Targaryen, my newfound elder brother-another poor wretch haunted by prophetic nightmares.

He stubbornly believed that "the dragon has three heads," and obsessively interpreted that prophecy to mean he had to have three children.

After Elia Martell gave birth to Aegon and was left unable to bear another child, he actually carried off Lyanna Stark, who was already betrothed to Robert Baratheon, after awarding her the crown of Queen of Love and Beauty at the tournament at Harrenhal.

He completely disregarded the political tidal wave his actions would unleash, all for the sake of fathering a child from a prophecy.

Still, to be fair, Lyanna Stark might not have been entirely unwilling.

Rhaegar possessed the purest Targaryen blood: silver hair, violet eyes, handsome features, and graceful bearing, with an innate air of melancholy royalty. Lyanna, meanwhile, was the "flower of the North," with wolf blood running through her veins, freedom-loving and untamable by nature.

By contrast, although Robert Baratheon was tall, powerful, and exceptionally brave, his looks were rough. More damning still, he had frequented brothels from a young age and already fathered a bastard daughter while being fostered in the Vale.

It was understandable that a proud woman who yearned for romance, like Lyanna, would look down on a man like Robert and fall for Rhaegar instead. Unfortunately, that brief romance had lit the fuse of a war engulfing the Seven Kingdoms.

Still, Petyr, Littlefinger, had been right when he said that chaos was a ladder. Once those Targaryens were all dead, Viserys would become first in line to inherit.

So his plan was clear: once the War of the Usurper erupted in full and King's Landing descended into chaos, it would be the perfect time to return to Dragonstone and take Blackfyre with him.

Besides money and swords, there was one more thing essential to his future conquest-dragon eggs.

There were still two years before the war began. Viserys had to use that time to search Westeros for as many dragon eggs as he could find.

True, Illyrio, the future magister of Pentos, would give Daenerys three dragon eggs as a wedding gift after she married Khal Drogo.

Rumor had it that those were the three eggs laid by House Targaryen's Dreamfyre and subsequently lost, but he had serious doubts.

The eggs Illyrio gave her had completely turned to stone, which better matched his own claim that they were ancient objects "from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai."

In that case, the three dragon eggs Dreamfyre had truly lost might never have left King's Landing.

A strong instinct told him they might be hidden beneath the ruins of the Dragonpit, which had once been destroyed by a mob. He had to find an opportunity to investigate the place himself.

There was another place that might contain dragon eggs, one even more worth exploring than the Dragonpit-Summerhall.

It was the ultimate meeting point of House Targaryen's glory and tragedy.

Aegon V, "the king who should never have been king," had gathered seven dragon eggs to hatch dragons and shore up his faltering royal authority, as well as to express his devotion to the Seven. On that fateful day, he had held a ritual at Summerhall.

Instead, the wildfire had run out of control. Terrifying flames consumed everything, claiming the lives of the king himself and countless nobles, and utterly burning away House Targaryen's hope of bringing dragons back.

But based on conjectures pieced together from forum discussions and fragments of the original books in his previous life, there was a very good chance that unburned dragon eggs still lay buried beneath Summerhall's ruins! True dragons did not fear fire. That was an ironclad rule.

As the origin of true dragons, how could dragon eggs be so easily destroyed by flames, even wildfire? In Viserys's memories, the official Targaryen records had never clearly stated what had happened to those eggs. They seemed to have vanished into thin air.

That alone was highly suspicious.

Seven dragon eggs! Just imagining finding them all was thrilling. They would be enough to give Viserys an overwhelming head start in the coming struggle for supremacy.

Thoughts surged through him like a tide as Viserys sorted out each thread of his future. A clear, sweeping blueprint gradually took shape in his mind.

He could not keep daydreaming. He had to act at once.

Viserys took a deep breath, suppressed his excitement, and loudly summoned the maids waiting outside. In a slightly imperious tone suited to his current age and status, he ordered them to help him wash and dress.

A new day had begun-the day he would take his first step toward changing his fate.