Chapter 18: The Conqueror's Scars, The Phantom's Echo
The battlefield, a vast, blood-soaked canvas of mud and shattered steel beneath a sky still bruised with the memory of dragonfire, was deceptively quiet. Aegon Targaryen, astride a weary Balerion whose black scales were scarred and smoking from his titanic duel with Aerion's Vhagarion, surveyed the grim vista. His forces had won the day; the banners of the Southern Coalition lay trampled in the gore, their armies broken, their proud lords mostly dead or captured. Yet, the silence was not that of triumphant peace, but of profound, aching loss.
The price of this victory had been ruinous. Thousands of his best soldiers, veterans of Harrenhal and the Field of Fire, lay among the enemy dead. The green fields were stained crimson for leagues. Orys Baratheon, his staunchest friend and commander, clung to life by a thread, his wounds festering despite the maesters' best efforts. And Rhaenys… Aegon's gaze drifted to where Meraxes had crash-landed, a silver mountain now grounded, her left wing a mangled ruin of torn sinew and charred bone. His sister-queen was inconsolable, her grief a raw wound that mirrored the physical agony of her beloved dragon. Meraxes would fly no more, not in this conquest, perhaps never again.
This was not the clean, decisive triumph Aegon had envisioned when he accepted Aerion's audacious challenge. This was a butchery, a mutual annihilation from which Lord Aerion Vaelaros and his core Valyrian Legion had seemingly evaporated, leaving Aegon to count his dead and grapple with a victory that felt more like a catastrophic wound.
In the days that followed, as the Targaryen army licked its grievous injuries and began the grim task of burying the dead and interrogating the few highborn captives from the Southern Coalition, Aegon convened his war council within his hastily erected command pavilion. The mood was somber, heavy with exhaustion and a gnawing uncertainty that Aerion Vaelaros had expertly sown.
"He is gone," Aegon stated, his voice flat, devoid of triumph. He spread a map of southern Westeros across the campaign table, its surface already stained with wine and the grime of war. "Scouts report no sign of his black ships along the coasts. His dragons vanished into the storm clouds as if they were spirits. The Iron Islands, when our fastest reconnaissance dragons flew over Pyke, appeared… quiet. His banner still flies, but the main harbor is empty of his war fleet. It's as if he and his 'Lost Legion' were never truly there, save for the dead they left behind."
Visenya, her face hard as flint, slammed a gauntleted fist onto the table. "He played us, brother! He lured us into this… this abattoir! He fought not to win territory, but to bleed us, to test our strength, and then fled like a shadow. What manner of Valyrian fights like that?"
"A cunning one," Rhaenys said, her voice hoarse from weeping, her eyes red-rimmed but holding a new, harder glint. "One who spoke of 'deeper truths' and 'cosmic imbalance.' He was no mere warlord. His Valyrian knights… they fought like nothing human. Silent. Tireless. They did not break. They simply… withdrew when commanded."
The questions, the mysteries surrounding Lord Aerion Vaelaros, hung heavy in the air.
"His motives," Orys Baratheon rasped from his sickbed, his voice weak but his mind still sharp when lucid between bouts of fever. "That is the poison in this victory. Why gather such a force of disparate lords – Dornish, Reachmen, Stormlanders who should hate each other – only to commit them to a single, grinding battle and then abandon the field when his own Valyrian core was still largely intact? He could have pressed his advantage when Meraxes fell. He could have fought Balerion to a truer standstill. He chose not to."
"He said he sought to understand my vision for Westeros, to see if it aligned with some 'true Valyrian restoration'," Aegon recalled, the memory of Aerion's cool, condescending intellect still fresh. "He spoke of Valyria's fall being due to hubris and a lack of true wisdom, implying he possessed what our ancestors lacked."
"Arrogant pronouncements," Visenya scoffed. "But his power was undeniable. That Vhagarion of his… it is a beast from the darkest pits of the Fourteen Flames. And his other dragons, though smaller, fought with a discipline that ours… that ours must learn." The admission was clearly painful for her.
The council debated endlessly. Was Aerion a madman, a sorcerer reveling in chaos, as some of the captured, terrified Reach lords now claimed? Unlikely, given the clear strategic brilliance he had displayed in both gathering his coalition and conducting the battle. Was he the vanguard of a larger, hidden Valyrian empire, testing Westeros's defenses before a full-scale invasion? If so, where was this empire, and why reveal his hand so dramatically only to vanish? Was he truly the last scion of a forgotten Valyrian house, driven by some obscure prophecy or ancient vendetta?
"His magic," Rhaenys murmured, her gaze distant. "It was not like the fire magic of our ancestors, not entirely. Those shields he wove, the blasts of force… it felt… different. Colder. More controlled." She remembered the eerie calm of Aerion's eyes, even as dragons tore at each other in the sky above him.
The fate of Aerion's Westerosi allies was another puzzle. Most of their leaders were dead. The Dornish contingents had retreated south, bloodied but unbowed, their hatred for the Targaryens only deepened by this new betrayal from a supposed Valyrian ally. The Reach and Stormland rebels were shattered, their lands now ripe for Aegon to impose his definitive rule. Had Aerion deliberately sacrificed them? Or was his retreat a sign of weakness, a forced abandonment of a losing cause? The latter seemed unlikely, given the disciplined nature of the Legion's withdrawal.
Aegon ordered his most trusted agents, his swiftest riders, and even his remaining dragons (Balerion and Visenya's Vhagar, as Meraxes was now confined to a makeshift dragon-pen, her wing being tended by maesters who offered little hope for a full recovery) to scour the southern coasts, the Stepstones, even to send discreet inquiries to the Free Cities. He wanted any scrap of information about Lord Aerion Vaelaros, his black fleet, his hidden sanctuary.
The results were deeply frustrating. The black ships had vanished without a trace. Some Pentoshi merchants reported seeing unidentified black sails far out to sea weeks prior, but nothing concrete. The Stepstones, when scouted by Visenya on Vhagar, yielded only a few hastily abandoned, minor pirate coves, none large enough to suggest the base of a force like the Lost Legion. It was as if Aerion's entire operation had been a phantom, appearing and disappearing at will. Any "clues" they did find – a discarded Vaelaros banner on a deserted beach, a rumor in a Lysene pillow house of a silver-haired Valyrian seeking ancient charts – felt like carefully planted misdirection, designed to lead them on futile chases.
The psychological toll on Aegon and his inner circle was significant. Aegon, the Conqueror, who had bent kingdoms to his will with dragonfire and determination, now faced an enemy he could not understand, an enemy whose motives were opaque, whose strength was unknown, and whose intelligence seemed to rival or even surpass his own. Aerion's parting words about "shadows in this world" and Aegon's lack of "true Valyrian wisdom" echoed in his quieter moments, breeding a nascent paranoia. Was he truly master of his own destiny, or a pawn in some larger, unseen game? He found himself re-evaluating his own Valyrian heritage, wondering what "lost lore" Aerion possessed that had been denied to his own ancestors on Dragonstone. He pushed these thoughts away, focusing on the practicalities of consolidating his battered kingdom, but the seed of doubt had been planted.
Visenya's warrior spirit was incensed. She craved a decisive confrontation, a clear enemy to strike down. This phantom Valyrian, who fought with such devastating effect only to melt away, was anathema to her nature. She became more ruthless in her dealings with the newly conquered territories, seeing potential traitors and Aerion sympathizers everywhere, advocating for swift and brutal reprisals against any hint of dissent.
Rhaenys, more introspective, found herself increasingly drawn to the mysteries Aerion represented. While she mourned Meraxes and hated Aerion for the suffering he had caused, his words about a deeper Valyrian wisdom, about avoiding the mistakes of the past, resonated with a part of her that had always been more curious, more scholarly than her siblings. She began to delve into the fragmented Valyrian texts they possessed on Dragonstone, searching for any mention of House Vaelaros or the kind of arcane knowledge Aerion had hinted at.
The Maesters of the Citadel, when consulted, were equally baffled. The Vaelaros name was obscure, barely a footnote in their Valyrian genealogies. The descriptions of Aerion's dragons, his Legionaries' armor and fighting style, the nature of his ships – none of it matched any known Valyrian faction or colonial remnant. They could only offer theories involving powerful, forgotten sorcery or pacts with unknown entities.
Across Westeros, the legend of Lord Aerion Vaelaros grew with each retelling, becoming more monstrous, more magical. Some whispered he was a lich-lord from the ruins of Valyria, commanding legions of the dead. Others claimed he was the Drowned God incarnate, come to aid the Ironborn (though his subsequent actions in Pyke confused that narrative). The Faith of the Seven, through its septons, began to preach against him as a dark sorcerer, a demonic agent sent to tempt the faithful and sow chaos, a convenient scapegoat for the horrors of the recent battle. This, Aizen would have noted with amusement, only served to amplify Aerion's mystique and the fear he inspired.
And while Westeros seethed with rumor, confusion, and the bloody aftermath of his orchestrated war, Aizen Sōsuke was far away, secure within the silent, imposing heart of the Obsidian Spire. He observed the chaos he had wrought through his long-range scrying Kido, a faint, satisfied smile playing on his lips. The Hōgyoku, engorged with the spiritual bounty of the "Reddened Fields" (as the battle site was now being called), pulsed with a vibrant, almost ecstatic energy, integrating the new power, pushing Aizen further along the path of his transcendent evolution. He felt stronger, his perceptions sharper, his command over the fundamental energies of this world more profound.
His silence, his Legion's disappearance, was a deliberate act. It fostered uncertainty, bred paranoia, and allowed the seeds of discord he had planted to germinate in the fertile soil of Westerosi fear. Aegon and his council could search, they could theorize, but they would find no easy answers, for they were trying to understand the motives of a god through the lens of mortal ambition.
Aizen turned his attention back to his own, far grander designs. Ignis Primus was stirring, its psychic voice now a constant, powerful presence in his mind, eager for its own debut upon the world stage. His research into soul mechanics, refined Valyrian magic, and Kido hybridization was yielding new, terrifying possibilities. He was contemplating the creation of more sophisticated spiritual constructs, perhaps even beings capable of independent thought and possessing unique abilities derived from the potent souls he had harvested – precursors to a new kind of army, loyal only to him.
Westeros, he mused, was but one theater in a global drama he was only just beginning to script. The confusion and fear of Aegon Targaryen were amusing, but ultimately, Aegon was just another piece on the board, a powerful but predictable one. The "Lost Legion" had served its purpose for now, establishing Aizen's (Aerion's) credentials as a major power, securing a vast tribute of souls, and thoroughly destabilizing the Conqueror's nascent reign.
"Let them puzzle over motives and search for phantoms," Aizen thought, a cold, divine amusement shimmering in his eyes. "Their ignorance is my shield, their fear my tool. The true game has layers they cannot even begin to perceive."
He knew that eventually, Aegon, or his successors, would be forced to confront the "Aerion" problem again. Or perhaps another power, another conflict, would draw Aizen's attention first. The world was full of souls waiting to be harvested, full of civilizations ripe for manipulation. His retreat was merely a pause, a time to consolidate, to grow stronger, and to prepare the next, even grander, act in his eternal play. The echoes of the phantom lord would haunt the Iron Throne for generations, a chilling reminder of the day Valyrian power had returned to Westeros not as a singular conquest, but as an enigma, a harbinger of a god who moved in shadows, patiently awaiting his next feast.