Chapter 35: The Echoes of Old Valyria
A century. In the grand, chaotic timescale of the world, it was an age of endings and brutal new beginnings. The Century of Blood, sparked by the Doom of Valyria, had raged true to its name, consuming kingdoms and scattering peoples like ash on the wind. Yet, on the northern coast of Slaver's Bay, that same century had been an era of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and creation. The Golden Dragon Theocracy, born from the whispers of a new god, had not only survived; it had thrived, becoming a bastion of order and progress in a world gone mad.
The god, from his timeless domain, watched his empire mature. The celestial map that was his sky showed the solid, unwavering golden light of his Theocracy, its borders now permanent and respected fixtures on the continent of Essos. The Great Trees of his provinces had merged into a single, colossal Tree of Light whose roots were the laws of the Covenant and whose boughs were the myriad institutions of a thriving civilization. His faith was the state, and the state was his faith. His long-term investment had yielded a blue-chip empire, a market leader in the competitive business of civilization.
But the most profound change was not in his domain, but in his first followers. The five former slaves who had huddled in a dark cistern were now the immortal Prophet-Regents of the world's newest superpower. While generations of their people had been born, had lived full lives under the security of the Covenant, and had died in peaceful old age, the five remained. The god's divine grace, the constant, nourishing flow of his essence, had protected them from the erosion of time. They did not age. They did not sicken. They endured.
Kaelen, the Prophet-Prince, was a figure of myth, his face, unchanged for a hundred years, known to every man, woman, and child in the empire. Lyra, the Prophetess of the Mind, had become a living library of statecraft, her strategic acumen honed over a century of observation and rule. Hesh, the Prophet of the Hand, was the great builder, his original Wyrm's Roads now part of a vast infrastructure network that was the envy of the world. Jorah, the Prophet of the Shield, was the eternal general of the Legions of the Wyrm, a grizzled, unchanging legend of martial discipline. And Elara, the Prophetess of the Heart, was the beloved high priestess of the Golden Dragon Church, the keeper of the empire's soul.
They were living gods in their own right, revered and beloved. But they were also profoundly, achingly alone. They had buried their friends, their children, and their grandchildren's children. They were islands of permanence in a river of mortal life, their unique bond with each other the only true companionship they had left. The god's gift of longevity was also a burden, a quiet, shared melancholy that tempered the glory of their rule.
The dragons, too, had grown. The original thirteen, the first children of the god's essence, were now magnificent, ancient beasts whose size rivaled the great dragons of Old Valyria. Aurorion the Golden, Rhaela's mount, was a beast of breathtaking size and intelligence, his scales the very colour of his divine father's domain. They had, as was their nature, multiplied. The great, secret Vault beneath Lysaro and the coastal aeries of the Theocracy now housed nearly fifty dragons of varying ages, their presence a silent, absolute deterrent that had kept the peace for decades. They were not weapons of war, but the sacred Guardian Fleet, the protectors of the faith, their occasional, majestic patrols a holy sight that reaffirmed the faith of the populace.
The Theocracy was at its zenith. It was powerful, peaceful, and utterly secure. And it was this very peace that was beginning to cause a divine, strategic restlessness in the heart of its god. An empire, like any great enterprise, cannot simply maintain; it must have a purpose, a new frontier to conquer, a new market to enter. The long peace had made them safe, but safety could lead to stagnation.
The new frontier announced itself with the arrival of a swift, grey-sailed ship bearing the sigil of The Serpent's Coil. It carried not cargo, but a single passenger: Lyra's top agent in the western seas. He brought news that would shatter the Theocracy's peaceful isolation and plunge them back into the Great Game on a scale they had never before imagined.
The High Council convened in their great chamber in Lysaro. The agent, a man whose grandfather had been one of the first refugees from Saris, laid out his intelligence report.
"It is Aegon Targaryen," the agent said, his voice steady but filled with the magnitude of his news. "He has been on Dragonstone for his entire life, brooding, planning. Now, he is ready. Our sources confirm he has built a fleet. His two sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys, will ride with him. They have the last three dragons of Old Valyria: Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes."
A deep silence fell over the chamber. The names of those dragons were legends, the namesakes of the very gods whose essence now resided in their own divine patron.
"His target," the agent continued, "is Westeros. He intends to land at the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. He has sent ravens to the seven kings who rule the continent, from the Starks in the North to the Martells in Dorne. He has given them a choice: bend the knee and accept him as the one true king of all Westeros, or be destroyed."
The agent finished his report and retreated. The five immortal Prophets sat in silence, the geopolitical map of their world irrevocably altered in a single moment.
"Let the savages of Westeros slaughter each other," Jorah said finally, his voice a low growl. He had spent decades ensuring the peace of their borders, and had little interest in the affairs of another continent. "It is not our concern."
"It is very much our concern, Jorah," Lyra countered, her mind already spinning, calculating the new strategic variables. "Aegon has three dragons of the old blood. If he fails, it is nothing. If he succeeds, if he unifies that entire continent under a single Targaryen dynasty, he will have created a superpower on our western flank. An empire whose power, in time, could rival our own. A rival empire ruled by the other dragonlords."
"The Principles of the Covenant would call his conquest tyranny," Elara mused softly. "He seeks to rule by fire and blood, not by offering a better system. But is it our place to intervene in the affairs of a land so far away?"
"What would be the profit in it?" Hesh asked, ever the pragmatist. "War is expensive. Intervention is a drain on resources we could be using to further perfect our own cities."
The debate was fierce. To intervene was to risk being drawn into a costly foreign war. To do nothing was to risk the rise of a powerful, potential rival. They were a nation that had mastered the art of playing the game in Essos. But Westeros was a new board, with new pieces and new rules.
Kaelen listened, feeling the weight of their decision. He knew, as he always did, that the final strategic move must come from the god. He closed his eyes, presenting the complex new problem to his patron.
The whisper came as a vision of a grand game of cyvasse. On one side of the board was a single, powerful, black dragon piece—Aegon. On the other side were seven smaller, mismatched pieces—a wolf, a lion, a falcon, a trout, a sun, a stag, and a kraken. The dragon piece was clearly the strongest, but the seven pieces together controlled the entire board.
Then, a third, ghostly hand, Kaelen's own, entered the game. It did not sweep the pieces from the board. Instead, it made a series of subtle moves. It nudged a lion piece forward, strengthening its position. It placed a small, defensive block in front of the sun piece. It subtly altered the terrain, making the dragon's path more difficult, more treacherous. The hand was not trying to win the game itself; it was trying to ensure the game would be long, bloody, and indecisive, bleeding the strength of all the players.
The god's message was one of sublime, ruthless, long-term strategy.
A rising king is a disruptive force. Do not crush him, for his ambition can serve your purpose by keeping your rivals occupied. Do not aid him, for his absolute victory will create a powerful new rival. Instead, become the hidden patron of his staunchest opposition. A long, costly, and brutal war of conquest in Westeros will keep their eyes turned inward for a generation. It will drain their wealth and bleed their armies. Ensure Aegon's conquest is not a swift flight of victory, but a grinding, bloody slog. A weakened victor, ruling a fractured and resentful kingdom, is no threat at all.
"We will not declare war," Kaelen announced to the council, his voice filled with the cold clarity of the divine plan. "And we will not stand idle. We will become the shadow brokers of this conflict. We will ensure this war of conquest is the most difficult and expensive in the history of man."
The plan they devised was Operation Dragon's Shadow, a covert action designed to bleed the nascent Targaryen dynasty before it could ever truly begin.
"Aegon's greatest strengths are his dragons' overwhelming power and the disunity of the seven kings," Lyra explained, taking charge of the operational planning. "We cannot counter his dragons directly, not without revealing our own. But we can arm and advise his most resilient opponents, giving them the tools to make his conquest a nightmare."
They identified two primary targets for their covert aid. The first was the Kingdom of the Rock, ruled by the proud and fabulously wealthy House Lannister. Their gold gave them the means to fund a long war. The second was Dorne, ruled by House Martell. Their harsh desert terrain and their fierce, independent spirit made them famously difficult to conquer.
"We will not send them our legions or our dragons," Lyra continued. "We will send them something far more valuable: a technological and strategic edge."
The first arm of the operation was economic and industrial. Lyra, using one of the Serpent Trading Company's most discreet shell corporations, dispatched agents to Lannisport. They made an offer to Lord Lannister. They would provide his armies with a limited but crucial supply of the Theocracy's superior steel—enough to armor his honor guard and his top commanders. They would also sell him, at a very reasonable price, the blueprints for advanced siege engines—scorpions and catapults of a superior Valyrian design, drawn by Septon Barthos and improved by Hesh's engineers. These weapons would be far more accurate and powerful than anything in Westeros, and potentially capable of injuring a dragon.
The second arm of the operation was medical and tactical. This was Elara's mission. She dispatched a team from her Covenant Corps to Dorne, not as agents of the Theocracy, but as a neutral order of healers called the "Quiet Sisters." Their mission was to offer their advanced medical services to the Dornish armies. By introducing superior techniques for treating burns, setting broken bones, and preventing infection, they would drastically reduce Dornish casualties, allowing their armies to endure and fight longer. Secretly, these "healers" would also carry tactical knowledge gleaned from Barthos's texts about Valyrian dragon-warfare—advice on using terrain for cover, on the effectiveness of massed scorpion fire, on targeting a dragon's eyes and wings. They would teach the Dornish how to fight a guerrilla war against gods of the sky.
It was a plan of immense subtlety. They were not giving their new partners the means to win, but the means to resist. To prolong the conflict, to raise the cost of every victory for Aegon, and to ensure that even if he forged his Iron Throne, he would sit upon it ruling a kingdom exhausted by war and seething with resentment.
The final piece of the plan was a direct message, a whisper from one dragon power to another. Kaelen himself penned a letter. It was written on fine vellum, in flawless High Valyrian. It was not addressed to Aegon Targaryen, but to his sister-wife, Visenya, who Lyra's intelligence suggested was the most pragmatic and intelligent of the three. The letter was delivered to Dragonstone by a lone, swift ship that appeared in the night and vanished before dawn.
The letter was a masterpiece of veiled threat and implied power.
To the blood of Old Valyria, it began. It has come to our attention that you intend to bring the fire of our ancestors to a new continent. A worthy ambition. As the preeminent power in Essos and the inheritors of the true, living legacy of the Freehold, we watch your endeavor with great interest. We do not seek conflict with our distant kin. We trust you will confine your ambitions to the lands west of the Narrow Sea. Essos is under our protection. Should your gaze ever drift eastward, know this: the world is larger and more full of wonders and terrors than your maps have told you. There are more dragons in the sky than just your own.
It was not signed by a king or a prophet. It was sealed with the simple, powerful sigil of a single, golden, coiled dragon. It was a polite, diplomatic notice that the world had changed. It let the Targaryens know they were being watched, and that their monopoly on dragon power was an illusion.
With the pieces in place, the council stood before the great map. Lyra placed markers on Casterly Rock and Sunspear, indicating their new, secret spheres of influence. They had become patrons of war, investors in chaos. Their long, peaceful isolation was over. They were back in the Great Game, and the board was now the entire known world.
That night, Kaelen descended into the vast, warm darkness of the Vault. The air hummed with the slow, powerful breathing of nearly fifty sleeping dragons. He walked to the central cavern, where Aurorion the Golden, now a beast of terrifying size and ancient majesty, rested. The dragon's rider, Rhaela, now a woman in her prime and the commander of the Wyrmguard, stood vigil.
Kaelen looked at the magnificent creature, the first child of his god's new world. "The dragons of the west fly to war, Rhaela," he said softly, his voice echoing in the immense space. "They seek to forge an empire with fire and blood."
Rhaela placed a hand on Aurorion's massive golden snout. The dragon opened a single eye, its pupil a vertical slit in a sea of molten gold, and looked at Kaelen with an intelligence that was more than human.
"Let them," Rhaela replied, her voice filled with unshakable confidence. "Soon enough, the world will learn the difference between the dragons of a fallen empire, and the divine children of the Golden Wyrm."
The god, in his domain, watched the subtle moves being made on the map of Westeros. The long peace had served its purpose, allowing his empire to grow deep and strong roots. Now, the branches were beginning to spread, casting their shadow over other continents. He had built his fortress. He had secured his borders. Now, he would ensure that no other dragon-led empire would ever rise to challenge his own. The game was long, and he, alone among all the powers of the world, was truly immortal. He had all the time he needed.