Chapter 17: The Smoking Sea and the Serpent's Prize
The royal progress of King Baelon I Targaryen began with all the meticulously orchestrated grandeur befitting a monarch intent on surveying his domains and receiving the renewed fealty of his great lords. For three weeks, he endured the tedious ceremonies, the fawning addresses, the endless banquets as his retinue wound its way through the northern Crownlands and into the Riverlands. He played the part of the stern but just king, his pale eyes missing nothing, his pronouncements concise and laden with unspoken authority. Silverwing, his public mount, was a daily spectacle of draconic majesty, further cementing his image as a true Targaryen.
Then, at a small, fortified manor on the coast of the Cape of Eagles, overlooking the turbulent waters of the Narrow Sea, the King 'fell ill.' A sudden, violent fever, the Maesters accompanying the progress declared, necessitating absolute quiet and seclusion. The bulk of the royal retinue was ordered to proceed under the command of a trusted lord, carrying the King's regrets and promises to resume his tour once his health was restored. A select few of Baelon's personal guard, men whose loyalty was absolute and whose minds had been subtly conditioned over years to unquestioning obedience, remained.
Under the cover of a moonless night, while a magically crafted illusion of a feverish Baelon tossed and turned within the manor, the true King, accompanied by his silent, conditioned servants, boarded a sleek, black-hulled vessel. It was a ship of strange design, its lines more akin to an Essosi corsair than a Westerosi trading cog, its timbers treated with unknown resins, its sails dark as a raven's wing. Wards of Valyrian origin, painstakingly inscribed by Baelon himself, shimmered faintly around its hull, designed to repel storms, sea monsters, and prying eyes. Within the ship's magically expanded hold, Umbraxys, his shadow titan, rested in its pocket dimension, a silent, colossal heartbeat against the rhythm of the waves.
Their destination: Valyria. The haunted, doom-stricken heart of the ancient empire, the source of dragonlords and the crucible of the magic he now sought to master for his own eternal reign.
The voyage south was an exercise in Baelon's burgeoning command over the elements, a fusion of his innate wizarding power and the Valyrian sorceries he had unearthed. When a late autumn gale threatened to swamp their vessel, he had stood upon the prow, his black cloak whipping around him, and with a single, resonant Valyrian incantation, calmed the winds and stilled the raging sea, his eyes glowing with an inner, cold light that terrified his crew into even deeper submission. They encountered a nest of krakens in the deeper waters beyond the Stepstones, their immense tentacles lashing from the depths. Baelon, with a contemptuous wave of his hand, had sent Umbraxys's shadowy projections beneath the waves, and the krakens had fled in a flurry of ink and primal terror, sensing a predator far older and deadlier than themselves.
As they sailed further south, past the Basilisk Isles where corsair fleets were rumored to prey on unwary ships, Baelon allowed Umbraxys to partially manifest around their vessel at night – a vast, terrifying silhouette of shadow and wing that made even the boldest pirates give their strange, dark ship a wide berth. He found a grim satisfaction in this silent assertion of dominance.
His thoughts during the long voyage were a complex tapestry. The Targaryen blood in his veins, however diluted, felt a strange, almost melancholic pull towards the ruined homeland of his ancestors. But Lord Voldemort, the dominant consciousness, saw only a source of power, a graveyard of failed ambition from which he would pluck the final keys to his own, more successful, apotheosis. The Valyrians, for all their might, had fallen. He would not.
A brief, mental communion via the linked obsidian amulets brought news from Larys Strong in King's Landing. The realm was, as Larys put it, "as quiet as a sept on the Stranger's Day, Your Grace. Your peace is a heavy cloak." Queen Dowager Alicent had taken to fasting and lengthy prayer vigils, her grief and resentment curdling into a bitter, almost fanatical piety. Aegon remained lost in a wine-sodden apathy. Larys also relayed Rhaenyra's carefully worded message of 'concern' for the King's 'illness' and her continued loyalty, noting that Lord Corlys Velaryon had dispatched several fast ships to 'patrol' the Stepstones, ostensibly to ensure the safety of his granddaughter Baela (Daemon's widow, if reports of his death were true) but clearly also to assess Aemond's new dominion.
"Prince Aemond, Your Grace," Larys's mental whisper continued, tinged with his usual amusement, "rules the Stepstones like a young god of war. He has impaled the remaining pirate chieftains upon the shores of Bloodstone and Vhagar's shadow falls upon every passing ship. The Free Cities send tribute, not protests, now. He seems to derive a… singular satisfaction from his duties, and his loyalty to your commands, sealed by your… potent methods… appears absolute."
Baelon dismissed Larys. Aemond was a useful, if brutal, tool. His loyalty, bought with blood and magic, was a chain that would hold. For now.
Then, they entered the Smoking Sea. The air grew thick with ash and sulfur, the sky a perpetual, bruised twilight. The sea itself became a sickly, greenish-brown, its waters unnaturally warm, occasionally erupting in geysers of scalding steam. The Valyrian peninsula loomed on the horizon, a jagged silhouette of shattered mountains and ruined, obsidian towers, wreathed in poisonous smoke and the oppressive silence of utter desolation. The magical wards on Baelon's ship pulsed, straining against the ambient, chaotic magic of the Doom. His crew, even the conditioned servants, trembled, their faces pale with a primal dread.
Baelon, however, felt a strange exhilaration. This was the epicenter of the greatest magical cataclysm the world had ever known. The air itself thrummed with residual power, wild, untamed, dangerous – and incredibly potent. He could feel Umbraxys stirring in its lair, resonating with the haunted energies of its ancestral homeland.
Navigating the ruins was a nightmare. Islands of fused glass rose from boiling seas, ghostly outlines of once-proud cities shimmered in the ash-choked air, and the silence was broken only by the hiss of steam, the distant rumble of volcanic activity, and the mournful cry of unseen, mutated creatures. They saw ships, or rather, their skeletal remains, impaled on jagged obsidian spires or half-sunk in oily, bubbling bays – the remnants of foolish explorers who had dared these cursed waters.
Once, a colossal, winged shadow passed overhead, its form indistinct in the perpetual gloom, its cry a sound of pure agony and rage. Baelon identified it as a 'Doom-wyrm,' a dragon twisted and maddened by the cataclysm, a creature of immense, uncontrolled power. He had Umbraxys project a wave of its own dominant, cold dread, and the Doom-wyrm veered away, screeching, unwilling to challenge the unseen but terrifying presence.
Guided by the ancient texts he had memorized and by Umbraxys's heightened senses, which seemed particularly attuned to the magical currents of this blighted land, Baelon directed his ship towards a cluster of still-active volcanic islands near the heart of what was once Valyria's capital. The texts spoke of unique, crystalline formations within the deepest, hottest magma chambers, crystals that pulsed with the raw, elemental fire of the earth, imbued with the concentrated magical energies of the Fourteen Flames before their cataclysmic eruption. These were the 'Eyes of the Caldera,' the Valyrian volcanic crystals he sought.
The heat became unbearable, the air thick with noxious fumes that even magical filters struggled to purify. The ship anchored in a bay of black, steaming water, before a towering, shattered volcano whose peak still glowed with an angry red light.
"Wait here," Baelon commanded his pale, trembling crew. "If I do not return by the third moonrise, assume the worst and attempt to flee. Though I doubt you would make it far." He did not expect them to flee. Their conditioning, and their terror of him, was too strong.
He then allowed Umbraxys to fully emerge from its pocket dimension. The great shadow dragon materialized on the black sand beach, its obsidian scales seeming to drink in the hellish light, its molten gold eyes blazing with an unholy fire. In this blighted, magical wasteland, Umbraxys seemed… at home. More powerful, more real, its shadowy form gaining a new solidity, its aura of ancient dread amplified a hundredfold.
"This land sings a song of fire and ruin, Speaker," Umbraxys's voice echoed in his mind, deeper and more resonant than ever. "A song I know well."
"It is the song of our ascension, Umbraxys," Baelon replied, his own eyes glowing faintly in the gloom. "The final verse awaits us within that mountain."
Together, king and shadow dragon began their ascent into the smoking caldera. The path was treacherous, a landscape of razor-sharp obsidian, crumbling pumice, and rivers of molten rock. Mutated, fire-resistant creatures – giant, scuttling things with carapaces of volcanic rock and too many eyes – occasionally attacked, only to be consumed by Umbraxys's shadowflame or blasted apart by Baelon's deadly, precise curses.
As they neared the volcano's heart, a vast, partially collapsed lava tube that led deep into the earth, they found it guarded. Not by a creature, but by a remnant of Valyrian magical artifice – a colossal golem of fused obsidian and tormented fire-spirits, its form vaguely draconic, its eyes burning with an insensate rage. It rose from the magma pools, its roar shaking the very mountain.
"The old masters left guardians, it seems," Baelon observed, a cold smile on his face. "They sought to protect their secrets even from the Doom. Foolish."
The battle was cataclysmic. The golem was immensely powerful, its obsidian claws capable of rending stone, its breath a torrent of pure magma. But it was a creature of brute force and programmed instinct. Baelon, wielding his Valyrian-enhanced wizarding spells, attacked its magical bindings, while Umbraxys, a dervish of shadow and chilling black flame, tore at its physical form, its shadow-magic seeming to unravel the golem's fiery essence.
Finally, with a coordinated assault – Baelon shattering its core control rune with a precisely aimed, explosive curse of pure dark energy, and Umbraxys engulfing it in a vortex of soul-chilling shadowflame – the golem crumbled, its fiery spirit extinguishing with a final, agonizing shriek, its obsidian form collapsing into a smoking ruin.
Beyond the fallen guardian lay a cavern of breathtaking, terrifying beauty. The walls were lined with immense, pulsating crystals, glowing with shades of fiery orange, blood red, and molten gold – the Eyes of the Caldera. They thrummed with an almost unbearable magical power, the raw, untamed heart of the Valyrian volcanoes.
Baelon approached, Umbraxys coiling possessively behind him. He could feel the immense energy radiating from the crystals, an energy that resonated with his blood, with his magic, with the very core of his being. This was it. The final ingredient.
He carefully selected three perfect, fist-sized crystals, their internal fires burning with the most intense, stable light. As he plucked them from their matrix, the cavern trembled, and a wave of pure, elemental fire-magic washed over him. He absorbed it, not with his body, but with his will, his soul, Umbraxys acting as a conduit and a buffer, their combined power shaping and containing the volatile energies. He felt… stronger. More attuned to the primal forces of creation and destruction.
Holding the pulsating crystals, their heat a comforting inferno in his grasp, Baelon looked around the cavern. He saw other veins of crystals, other potential sources of power, ancient Valyrian constructs half-buried in cooled magma. This blighted peninsula was not just a tomb; it was a treasure trove of forgotten magic, a wellspring of power for one who dared to claim it.
He had what he came for. The ritual of immortality was now within his grasp. The journey back would be fraught with peril, but he possessed the means to overcome it. Valyria had yielded its prize to its new, self-proclaimed master.
King Baelon I Targaryen, Lord Voldemort reborn, stood in the heart of the fallen empire, the Eyes of the Caldera blazing in his hand, his shadow dragon a terrifying echo of his own dark majesty. He had faced the Doom and emerged not just unscathed, but empowered. The world, he knew with absolute certainty, would soon learn the true meaning of an eternal king, a god forged in fire, shadow, and the unyielding hunger of the void.