Writer's Notes: look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's yet another GoT themed work! As if there weren't enough on this damn website already! Although, as we shall see, here's an idea that hopefully proves fresh and original as we take familiar folks and transplant them in, ahem, a separate PLANE of existence. So please make sure your seat back is in the upright position, your tray table stowed away, your seat belts fastened, and sit back, relax, and enjoy the FRIGHT.

Part I

Welcome Aboard

Daenerys gasped as she jolted forwards, though something pressing against her chest and waist was holding her back. Her heart was racing and her head spinning. Her neck was tight, like there was a noose hanging around it.

Her mind had gone blank, and she squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. The last thing she could remember was... was... yes, she could recall now. The armada had left what was once known as Slaver's Bay, now proudly renamed the Bay Of Dragons at her command. They were making full haste for the Seven Kingdoms, with a favorable wind, and an army the likes of which the Realm must not have seen since the days of the Conquest. It was under these conditions that she had decided to take a ride on the back of Drogon, to soar in the air so that her followers may behold their new Queen, the Unburnt, the Breaker Of Chains, and now, soon enough, the Queen On The Iron Throne.

On their way, of course, they would have to round the southern tip of Old Valyria. The great homeland of her forefathers, once the center of this world. Dany, like every other learned person in the known world, had grown up with the tales of the glory and ultimate tragedy to have befallen her ancestral homeland. And she also knew very well that it was oft said that The Doom still reigned in Old Valyria, ever defying and punishing all those who dared come before her shores seeking glory and conquest.

Once, one dragonlord by the name of Aurion, who had survived the Doom as he ruled over Qohor, had decided to raise a host and fly south to reclaim the glory of the old capital. Neither he nor any of his loyal retainers were ever seen nor heard from again. Likewise, much later, the Volantenes as well had tried to carve out a claim for themselves among the glories of old, only for the entire fleet to disappear. And to this day, even the most hardened and able-bodied of sailors dreaded to ever come within sight of that accursed land. And then, the Halfman had come to her and told her again of his uncle, Lord Gerion, who also had set out for that land in search of House Lannisters' sacred Valyrian Steel sword, again only to disappear with 'nary a trace.

In retrospect, all these things considered, perhaps it was indeed a foolish thing for the aspiring Young Queen to attempt a flyover of her ancient homeland. Perhaps... well, until that point, she was enjoying an unbroken stream of conquest: she had liberated Slaver's Bay, broken chains, usurped the power of the Old Masters, retaken the Khalassar that once rightfully belonged to her Sun And Star (with Fire And Blood, of course), and now all she had left was an easy conquest of a land, so she was told, was divided with half the Realm under a mad queen, and the support of at least two of the Seven Kingdoms at her back. Perhaps it was the expected ease of her inevitable victory looming on the horizon that had led her towards inviting a different challenge altogether. Perhaps this is what happens when you put someone of her age in command of such power. Or perhaps, who knows, there was no fault on her part, for there was something within the very land itself that corrupted all minds that came too close to it.

Whatever the case may have been, she had egged Drogon onwards, towards the setting sun glowing fiercely red in the dust and ash of the Fourteen Flames, forgetting for a moment all the lessons she had learnt.

At first, all had proceeded as normal - almost a little boring even. The seas below her looked as any other sea she had ever sailed upon before. When Drogon had at long last breached the shorelines, Dany had noted their unique shape and forms, dramatic spires of black stone and jagged cliffs against which the waves broke. But even these did not look too much out of the ordinary. She pushed Drogon onwards, and he had obliged to her will, maybe even a little more easily than was usual.

And that was when the green thunderstorm had blown up, appearing suddenly, out of nowhere.

Drogon hesitated for a split second, and she could sense there and then, through that ancient and unbreakable empathic bond that Valyrians shared with their noble mounts, that something had... scared him.

She calmed Drogon, and decided to land somewhere so that they may rest and wait out the storm. Very soon, they found themselves swallowed up in a squall, arcs of green lightning coming out all around them, the wind howling and raging around them. Black hailstones pelted dragon and rider both, hurting them; Dany was thrown back and forth violently, Drogon's scales below her cutting her below while above she was struck and bruised badly. And above it all, she thought for a moment she could hear screaming - the collective howling anguish and sorrow of the millions who had lost their lives here so long ago, now cursed to haunt this land forever after.

The next thing she knew, something had spooked Drogon so badly that he had, against her direction, pulled a sharp turn she had not thought him capable of before; so violent and sudden was the motion that Dany was thrown clear off his back and plummeted through the air towards her certain death on the jagged land below.

And then, just as she thought she was about to hit the ground, she found herself here. But, as she was about to find out, she had just crawled out of one nightmare, and was about to find herself in another.

Still breathing hard, she tried to get a grip of her surroundings. This was... strange. A second ago she was plunging through the air, and a moment before that, perched on Drogon's back. Now, she was sitting in a smooth and clean leather-bound chair, inside what she could only describe, at that moment, the most bizarre room she had ever had the fortune (or lack thereof) to find herself within. She had seen strange places before no doubt, in her visions granted her in the House Of The Undying. But whereas at least those locations were grounded somewhat in something she knew or had heard about before, the surroundings that now confronted her on all sides were downright alien to anything she had ever beheld before.

The room was tiny, and the wall that she was facing was curved, with a large window stretching across it, broken up into several panes of glass. Outside, it was nighttime, as she beheld the myriad stars, twinkling in the deep blue and purple skies above, and below them, the clouds gently swirling and... she stopped.

The clouds were below her.

Could she be dreaming? Aye, that must be it! Otherwise, where else could she possibly be? Atop a mountain, or just an incredibly tall tower that stretched up into the sky, some wondrous remnant of her people long lost and forgotten about and yet still standing, years after the Doom?

The next item that caught her view was the large desk-like panel right below the window, in front of her. It was covered in an endless array of tiny buttons, knobs, and little glowing glass vials with numbers and pointing arrows. Dany squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could and opened them again to make sure she wasn't dreaming or imagining any of this. There were tiny lights everywhere, like candles, and yet giving off more light whilst giving off no flame nor heat nor any thin wisps of smoke that she could smell. And there were labels everywhere, covering everything, written in what appeared to be the Common Tongue, but in words she could not understand nor comprehend. One of the glass vials confronting her displayed what looked like a round globe right behind it, the top half of it blue, the bottom half of it brown, and a thin white cross-shape in the middle of it, and little numbers and lines around the edges of it.

Jutting up right in front of her, coming up between her legs, was a weird three-pronged stick - kind of like a trident, but with smooth rounded points instead of sharp ones, and crafted out of some strange black material that felt a little like highly polished wood. Right now, both of her hands were clutching tightly either side of it.

Finally, as she could finally hear again and clear her mind from the ringing and screaming in her ears, she noted that there was a loud drowling sound filling the room, like a dragon breathing but constantly, and the source of which she knew not, and certainly regarded the answer to that question with both awe and dread.

All of this she beheld in two, maybe three seconds. Because just afterwards, she quickly learned that she was not alone.

"Woah, what the hell?" remarked a voice to her right, no doubt in response to her sudden outburst. It sounded familiar.

Dany turned to see to whom it belonged to. Sitting next to her, in a seat and position just like hers, was... Ser Jorah? And out of the corner of her eye, she saw there was a third person, sitting just behind the Bear Knight, one who looked like... Daario? And both were staring back at her.

"Captain, are you alright?" spoke the knight.

Dany took a good look at the man, and blinked in disbelief. "Jorah" looked as he did last she had seen him except... not quite at the same time. He was still that bulky, swarthy, barrel-chested knight who had first presented himself before her and her brother in Pentos all those long years back, encroaching on fifty, with a furrowed brow. But now he was mostly clean-shaven 'cept for the large bushy mustache, and he had a full head of shortly-cut but cleanly slicked-back hair. Indeed, were it not for that face she had come to know closely over all these times, she would not have known it was he.

And the clothing too was pecular. Dany might have traveled the length of the East, from the Free Cities, across to Qarth, but Ser Jorah's vestiments surprised her if for no other reason than just how plain and to-the-point it looked. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, impeccably white and clean-pressed, with a stiff collar and a smooth silklike black strip of cloth that ran from his neck down to his belly, culminating in a pointed arrow shape. Each of his shoulders was adorned with a small black board criss-crossed with three gold-bands - a simple but poignant indication of some kind of rank, no doubt. Like her, Jorah was also sitting in a smooth leather chair facing towards the window, his feet stretched out and resting on what looked like two pedals, like those you might find in a smith's shop, and his hands gripped tightly on a second trident-shape. He was also wearing a strange black tiara on his head, that covered his ears, and, attached to it, a small black cord that ran down to somewhere outside of Dany's field of vision.

As to Daario, the Tyroshi sellsword too was enclothed in similarly-foreign vestiments to Ser Jorah. Gone were the distinctive blue curls of his hair, the three-prongs of his beard, and the gold-tipped whiskers; like Ser Jorah, these all were cut down such that his hair was now short, almost to the scalp, and combed cleanly, and all that remained of his facial hair was a healthy growth of stubble. Only his face remained the same, and even there, she could see it in his blue eyes that the Stormcrow Captain's fierce bravado was a little more reserved that what she had come to know. He was sitting just behind the knight, but facing away from her; he didn't have a trident like either of them, but he did appear to be engaged in some kind of work at a desk full of blinking little lights before the commotion had pulled his attention away from it.

There was no other person in the room with them. Which was why she was completely startled when there came a fourth voice, loudly, as if the speaker were talking with his mouth pressed right up against both ears at the same time.

"Tower to Dragon One Niner," croaked the voice, accompanied by a hissing sound, before it repeated its strange incantation, "I repeat: tower to Dragon One Niner. Something to report? Over."

Dany realized she was wearing the same magical tiara on her head as Jorah was, and that this must have been the source of the voice. Abruptly, she yanked it off her head, and threw it. She then tried to get up from her seat, though the thick, grey belt across her waist kept her down. She pushed herself up harder, struggling to free herself. As she did so, she also pushed her trident forwards.

"Captain, what the hell?!" blurted Not-Jorah. Though she was trying to free herself from her chair's captivity, she did notice out of the corner of her eye that Jorah's own trident was also moving forward, in concert with hers. Jorah, acting quickly, tightened his grip on the object, his strong arms bulging visibly, and held it steady, even against Dany's own thrashing about.

All of her distress and shock at everything - the fall before and now this strange new world - it was now coming back to haunt Dany. In her surprise and panic, she stamped and pressed her feet down, not realizing that she too had a pair of foot-pedals in front of her.

"Captain! The rudder!" barked Jorah, furiously, "the rudder, dammit! What's gotten into you?!" Jorah's legs visibly stiffened as he kept his feet solid and locked on his own pedals.

"Hey! Easy, easy, Cap!" added Not-Daario, getting up from his seat. "Calm down!" As he did so, Dany noticed that he pressed a red button on the buckle on his waist; the belt came apart, allowing Daario to stand up without hindrance. Dany looked down and saw the same on her seat as well. Instinctively, she pushed it; immediately, the tight restraints released her, and she stood up.

Half-running, half-stumbling, she crawled out of her chair, pushed right past Daario, surprising him, and then bolted towards the door at the rear of their tiny room. It was a door unlike any she had seen before, but it had a recognizable handle, which she turned and threw open, and then rushed out through it.

The next room was just as strange as the one she had just stumbled out of. The ceiling was curved, and visibly ribbed, and there was a dim but pink lighting that bathed the entire place, with those same little flameless candles set into the ceiling. Dany shivered; it felt like she was standing inside the belly of an enormous dragon, the droning sound around her very much like one, long, unbroken breath. The hall stretched back away from her for some fifty feet, perhaps, before culminating in the top of what looked to be a spiral stairwell, reaching down deeper and deeper into the dragon's gut. The room was packed and crowded, with only a narrow strip of floorspace down the middle of it clear. To the left and right of it, there were rows upon rows of large armchairs.

And there were people filling each and every one of those chairs, people dressed in all manner of strange clothing. Most of them look relaxed or asleep or just too preoccupied in whatever they were doing, but several did look up and notice Dany in her frightened state. She looked to her right and gasped as she saw a brightly shining moving portrait on the wall; it depicted what was clearly a map, blue for the sea and green for land, and a small white dragon-like shape, its wings visibly outstretched, slowly lumbering its way across the map, depositing a thin white line behind it, like a spider spinning a lone strand of silk.

To her left, there was another small door, like the one she had just come out of, leading to what looked to be a closet; a sign on the front of it shown a simple drawing of a man and woman, a straight dividing line between them, and a little green label read, clearly in Common Tongue, the word "VACANT". She knew there and then that it promised her the only privacy she would find inside this strange locale. She threw herself against it... and promptly banged her head against it when it refused to budge. She found time to curse her own stupidity as she remembered to find the handle, open it, and then closed and locked it behind her once she was inside.

It was a latrine of some sort, the cramped space illuminated by yet another of those small upside-down candles set into the ceiling right above her head. There was a chamberpot jutting out of the wall, made from shining steel. Without thinking any further, she knelt down before this little throne she had found for herself, and threw up; the contents of her stomach came rushing out like a torrent, fueled by her sudden lightness in the head and the strange sensations that come from feeling in a body that is yours and yet is not at the same time. Whether it was more from shock or the new bump on her head, or perhaps something else about this bizarre and monstrous place she was in, she did not feel well at all.

She must have been there for Gods-know-how-long, before, head still swimming, she slowly stumbled back to her feet. Beside the privy was a shimmering steel washbasin, a large square mirror affixed above it. She took a good, long look.

The woman who looked back at her was... well, it was her, and yet it wasn't at the same time, if that description made any sense (but then again, what in the last few minutes had?). She was older, of about, perhaps five-and-thirty. Her long hair was tied up neatly in a bun, although in her panic, it had started to come undone, with several locks of hair hanging down to her shoulders. A little spittle of dried bile trailed off the left side of her mouth. She also had a chance to look at the strange new clothes. She was wearing the same strange white shirt as Jorah had been, and for the first time she could see that the tight noose-like constriction she felt around her neck was a black, pointed scarf similar, again, to that not-Jorah was wearing. And she also had a pair of small black boards adorning her shoulders, except these were marked with four gold bars each.

Several tears welled up in her eyes and flowed down her cheeks. She was frightened and lost and truly alone.

The cockpit door slammed shut. Flight Engineer Dario Miguel Naharez stared at it for a moment longer before turning back to face him.

"What was that all about?" asked Dario. "What the hell's wrong with jefe?"

"I don't know," breathed First Officer Jonathan "Jonah" de Mormont, as he relaxed back into his seat and sighed.

They were flying on autopilot, so he could take his hands and feet off the flight controls to rest them, now that he didn't have to fight back against their Captain suddenly going berserk for no apparent reason, trying to override the autopilot and probably damn near putting them into a tailspin. Jonah rubbed his sore legs and groaned. Yeah, at this altitude, they probably could have recovered long before hitting the ocean, but then of course the passengers would have panicked and there'd be puke all over the cabin. People would complain, point fingers and stuff, and the airline would have to do something, maybe refund everyone their tickets before then turning the brunt of their ire towards the crew. And the way these things usually played out, even if the fault rested solely with the Captain, it was unlikely that Jonah and Dario would just be let off so easily either, especially not someone with a track record like Jonah.

He frowned. "I... I dunno what's gotten into her mind. I've never seen her act like this before."

Jonah was 50, and had been working for DAL for some 10 years now, and a different carrier for 10 years before that. A tall, barrel-chested man with grizzled hair and a thick mustache, he'd always dreamed of flying ever since he was a little boy. By 30, he had finally achieved this life's dream when he completed training and got his pilot's license, though the honeymoon ended pretty quickly once he found out that the pilot's life wasn't nearly as exciting or romantic as he thought it would be. About 10 years ago, he had gotten himself involved in some... incident he'd rather not talk about right now, but suffice to say, led him to leaving his old employer for his current one. Unfortunately, now, because of having that on his record, and because he had probably joined DAL far too late in his career, it was unlikely now that he would ever make it to Captain before hitting the mandatory retirement age.

He glanced to his left, longingly, at the Captain's now empty seat.

Just then, his radio headset crackled and hissed again. "Tower to Dragon One Niner, Tower to Dragon One Niner; what's going on? We heard a scuffle in the cockpit. Over."

"Dragon One Niner, reading you loud and clear," replied Jonah, "situation normal. Apologies. Our captain, she had..." he paused as he thought about the best way to handle it, and then decided better not to make it too much of an issue, less they get ordered to land immediately, and all the hassle that would entail. "...she had to step out for a bit to use the lavatory. Over."

Air traffic control's voice responded, flat and unconvinced. "Roger that. Alert us immediately if any further issue arises. Over."

"Affirmative," replied Jonah, "wilco. Over and out." Damn it, Dany, he thought to himself, I hope this is just a bad case of the runs and nothing worse.

Captain Amelia Daniels (or "Dany" as she was affectionately known by friends and co-workers) was the airline's first female pilot certified for the jumbo. She had been promoted to Captain just three years earlier, also one of the youngest to achieve that rank in the company's history, and with all the fanfare that entailed.

Granted, of course, this was probably all part of some affirmative action campaign on the airline's part, you know, for good publicity. Flying was still very much a man's job; for all this talk lately about "workplace diversity" and "equal opportunities" and whatnot, less than two percent of all pilots were women. But the airline could sure do with any public show of good faith they could get right now, you know, after the recent spate of delays and cancellations and overbookings, all the complaints about safety and sanitation and lost luggage and shitty treatment of passengers who had missed their connections, all the controversies like... well, for example, who could forget about that recent incident just a few months ago when one of DAL's executives, spoilt brat, held up a whole flight at the gate because he got upset at the cabin crew for serving him nuts in a bag rather than on a plate? The "Nutgate" incident was all over the evening news for a damn bloody week. Blond little shithead, still fresh outta business school, who only got his position on the board because of mommy pulling the strings, no doubt about that.

There was another good reason too for promoting people like Dany while they were still pretty fresh, and it was the fact that the median age for the unionized flight crews right now was getting to be north of fifty, meaning that soon enough, there was expected to be a huge spike in turnover as pilots began hitting retirement en masse. This was also why the Flight Engineer station on all these flights were mostly being assigned to younger guys like Dario here, in the hopes that this would get them the experience for at least some of them to make it to Captain or First Officer.

And of course, on top of all this, the fact that "Cap'n Dany" wasn't too hard on the eyes certainly didn't hurt her newfound celebrity as the "poster girl for the airline" either, even landed herself a spot in some of their travel magazines and on billboards, "Ride The Dragon!" and all that... and...

Stop it, Jonah scolded himself. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. She was much younger than he was. Yeah, by now, they had flown several flights together now, and usually on long haul routes like this one - which meant they did have a lot of time to sit together and talk about things. Granted, flying long distance also meant that they were usually flying a widebody, and thus there was always a third person joining them (and yes, for all this talk about these new fangled digital "glass cockpits" just coming out now on some of the newer jets that meant only two pilots were needed, it was unlikely DAL would be upgrading their fleet for quite a while to come, all things considered. For now, everything would continue to be good ol' analogue).

"You okay?" chimed in Dario, noticing the glum expression on Jonah's face, "c'mon man, I don't need you crapping out on me too! Don't think I can land by myself."

Jonah snapped out of it. "I'm fine," he grunted.

"Well, whatever it is, I sure as hell hope it wasn't the fish," quipped Dario, settling back into his seat and fastening his seatbelt. "I had that for dinner too."

"That's why I got the steak," replied Jonah. "Kid, word of advice, never get the seafood option. Even if we are getting the same shit as First Class, I wouldn't trust it. Ever."

There was indeed some wisdom to Jonah's sage advice: everyone knew that the airline had been cutting corners for years, with some longtime flyers and crew alike noting a precipitous drop in the quality of the meal service. All the finest wines and liquors were gone from the First Class menu, and the alcohol selection down in Coach now only rolled around with the lunch or dinner service (unless a particularly desperate passenger was willing to slide a few extra bucks to one of the stewardesses outside of proper mealtimes). There were even reports going around in the tabloids that they'd managed to save tens of thousands last year just by eliminating one olive from every salad served in First and Business. On that note, Jonah took a sip from the steaming mug on his cupholder. Yeah, the coffee was reliably terrible as always, even with four or five whole packets of sugar mixed in, but at least it did the job of keeping him up and on his toes. He figured he'd need it, especially if Dany wasn't feeling so well.

They waited for several minutes to see if the Captain came back, all the while wondering what was wrong with her, or where she had gone to, though at the very least the fact that no one had called the cockpit yet to complain about their pilot running up and down the aisles screaming her head off was a somewhat reassuring sign. Maybe, hopefully, all she needed was a nice long bathroom break.