Chapter 46: The Titan's Terms, The Serpent's Schemes
The palpable aura of the Titan of Braavos, that ancient, sorrowful power bound in bronze, lingered in King Baelon I Targaryen's mind long after Silverwing had carried him away from the fog-shrouded Lagoon. The "Watcher at the World's End" had not yielded, not truly, but it had revealed fissures in its implacable façade – a weariness of its eternal vigil, a profound disgust for the Drowned Brethren cult that festered within the city it guarded, and, most crucially, a conditional neutrality regarding Baelon's intent to purge that specific abyssal taint. Its terms were a razor's edge: cleanse the cult, but harm not Braavos itself, lest its full, cataclysmic wrath be unleashed.
Aboard the Night Serpent, as it sliced through the grey waters of the Narrow Sea on its swift return journey towards his Essosi dominion, Baelon convened an immediate council with Ser Corlys Vaelaros, Maester Arryk, and Centurion Kael. The men were still visibly shaken by what they had witnessed – the sheer scale of the Titan, its ancient, metallic voice resonating in their minds, their King's audacious dialogue with a living legend. Their fear of Baelon, already profound, had deepened into an almost religious awe; he was a being who conversed with bronze gods and primordial fire entities as if negotiating terms with a recalcitrant merchant prince.
"The Titan is a prisoner of its own ancient binding," Baelon declared, his voice calm, yet underscored by the vibrant, almost predatory energy of the Ignis Shard that still pulsed faintly on his gauntlet. "Its loyalty is to an idea of Braavos, an idea its current masters have thoroughly corrupted. It despises the Drowned God's influence as much as we do. This presents us with… an opportunity."
The Voldemort soul within him, a master manipulator and strategist, was already dissecting the encounter, formulating a new, more insidious approach to the subjugation of Braavos. A direct, overwhelming assault on the city, with the Titan actively hostile, would be a pyrrhic victory at best, a catastrophic defeat at worst. But if the Titan could be persuaded to "avert its gaze" while Baelon's forces surgically excised the Drowned Brethren from within… that was a path to victory worthy of his intellect.
Urgent, coded messages were dispatched via raven and arcane means to his key lieutenants. To Lord Larys Strong in Meereen, Baelon relayed the Titan's conditional neutrality and issued new directives that would shift the focus of their Braavosi operations from broad economic strangulation and external military pressure to a campaign of targeted infiltration, internal disruption, and surgical elimination of the Abyssal Cult.
A City to be Unwoven from Within
Upon his return to Meereen, Baelon plunged into a whirlwind of strategic planning. The Great Pyramid became the heart of a vast, intricate scheme to unravel Braavos from the inside out.
"Lord Larys," Baelon addressed his Master of Whisperers, the war room dominated by an immense, newly commissioned map of Braavos, detailing not just its canals and islands, but every known Keyholder palazzo, Iron Bank vault, and suspected Drowned Brethren locale gleaned from Lyra Maelon's confessions and the Antarion texts. "The Titan's terms grant us a narrow path. We must tread it with the utmost precision. Your primary task is no longer merely to gather intelligence, but to actively weaponize it within Braavos itself."
Larys, his clubfoot tapping almost imperceptibly, absorbed his King's words. "You intend to incite civil strife, Your Grace? To turn Braavosi against Braavosi?"
"Precisely," Baelon confirmed, a chilling smile touching his lips. "The Drowned Brethren have infiltrated the highest echelons of Braavosi society, even the Iron Bank and the ranks of the Keyholders. Lyra Maelon and the Antarion ledgers have given us names, alliances, hidden heresies. You will ensure this information reaches the right ears – rival Keyholder families untainted by the cult, factions within the Sealord's council who fear the Brethren's growing power, even patriotic elements within the Braavosi citizenry who would be horrified to learn how deeply this abyssal cancer has metastasized within their 'inviolate' city."
He envisioned a campaign of targeted leaks, forged documents, and carefully orchestrated scandals that would ignite a firestorm of accusations, mistrust, and internal purges within Braavos's ruling class. "Let them tear themselves apart," Baelon mused. "Let them cleanse their own house of the Drowned God's vermin, all while believing they are acting of their own volition to save their city. We will merely provide the… necessary illumination."
Furthermore, Larys was tasked with identifying the precise locations of the Drowned Brethren's hidden temples and ritual sites within Braavos – the "sacred silences" Lyra had spoken of. "Once these nests are identified," Baelon continued, his eyes glittering with cold fire, "we will deploy… specialized assets." He looked towards Centurion Kael, who stood at attention, his scarred face impassive but his eyes alight with understanding. "Kael, your most silent, most ruthless Freedmen – those who can move like shadows through a city of canals – will be trained for urban infiltration and surgical strikes. Their targets will be the high priests, the ritual leaders, the nerve centers of the cult. Precise, deniable operations. If conducted with sufficient skill, the Titan will indeed 'avert its gaze,' and Braavos will bleed from wounds it inflicts upon itself."
The Ignis Shard, Baelon theorized, could play a role even in this shadow war. He instructed Archmaester Vaellyn to research methods by which its primal fire energy could be used to create small, potent amulets or devices that could detect or disrupt the abyssal magic of the Drowned Brethren, tools that Larys's agents and Kael's urban commandos could wield.
The Northern Fury: Aemond in the Iron Islands
While Baelon plotted the insidious unraveling of Braavos, reports began to arrive from Prince Aemond's campaign in the Iron Islands. Having refitted his battered fleet after the destruction of the Grand Beacon, Aemond, astride the colossal Vhagar, had descended upon the bleak, iron-bound isles with the fury of a winter storm.
His mandate from Baelon was clear: eradicate any Drowned Brethren presence, hunt for "Echo of Stillness," and make a brutal example of the rebellious Greyjoys and their crude Drowned God cult, which Baelon saw as a potentially useful distraction or minor ally for his true abyssal enemies.
Aemond executed these orders with his characteristic, terrifying efficiency. Pyke, the ancient seat of House Greyjoy, was subjected to a merciless bombardment by Vhagar's flames, its towers crumbling, its populace screaming as dragonfire turned their stony keeps into molten ovens. Lord Vickon Greyjoy, the self-proclaimed King of Salt and Rock, was reportedly incinerated on his own Seastone Chair after refusing to bend the knee. His surviving sons and priests of their Drowned God were hunted down by Aemond's Unsullied auxiliaries and subjected to brutal interrogations, often involving Vhagar's close, personal attention.
The Ironborn, for all their bluster and reaving prowess, had never faced a foe like Aemond and Vhagar. Their longships were swatted from the sea like flies, their coastal fortresses shattered. The fear Aemond instilled was so profound that many lesser Iron Lords quickly offered their submission, renouncing their Drowned God and swearing fealty to the Targaryen King, their oaths extracted amidst the smoking ruins of their neighbors' keeps.
Aemond's dispatches to Baelon were filled with grim accounts of shattered fleets and burning villages, but also with intriguing intelligence. Several captured Drowned God priests, under duress, confessed to having given shelter to "pale, quiet women from the east, who spoke of a deeper, colder god and sought islands of profound silence." One such priest, before Vhagar's flames consumed him, shrieked of a hidden sea cave on the desolate isle of Old Wyk, a place sacred to their own Drowned God, where a "Sea Witch with eyes of winter and a voice of stillness" had recently taken refuge, performing strange rituals that made even the Ironborn priests uneasy.
"Echo of Stillness," Baelon surmised, reading Aemond's report, the Ignis Shard pulsing faintly on his gauntlet. "She seeks another 'sacred silence' to recover, or perhaps to attempt another summoning or communication with her abyssal master, now that their Grand Beacon is lost." He sent immediate orders back to Aemond: "Converge on Old Wyk. Vhagar is to seal every cave, boil every inlet if necessary. Find this Sea Witch. I want her, or definitive proof of her demise."
Simultaneously, Lord Tarly's legions in Westeros began their methodical, grim work in the Vale and the Fingers. Operating on intelligence provided by Larys's agents, they surrounded and besieged several isolated coastal communities and minor lordlings' keeps where Drowned Brethren cells were suspected. The resistance was often fanatical, the cultists preferring death to capture, sometimes even attempting to summon minor abyssal horrors or unleash plagues upon their attackers. But Tarly's disciplined soldiers, backed by siege engines and the ever-present threat of dragon intervention (as Jacaerys and Lucerys Velaryon, with their dragons, were now patrolling the Vale's coastline under Baelon's directive), slowly but surely ground down the opposition. The message was clear: Westeros would offer no sanctuary to the enemies of the Iron Throne.
Arcane Arms and Abyssal Whispers
In Meereen, Archmaester Vaellyn and his team of scholars and mages delved deeper into the mysteries of the Ignis Shard and the Antarion texts. Vaellyn confirmed that the Shard's energy could indeed be used to temporarily empower Valyrian steel, granting it an unnatural sharpness and the ability to inflict wounds that were exceptionally difficult for even magically-enhanced individuals to heal – a property that would be invaluable against creatures like the Drowned Ones or even "Echo of Stillness" with her regenerative capabilities. He began overseeing the careful re-tempering of the Dragon Guard's blades and even some of Baelon's personal weaponry.
The Antarion texts, once deciphered, proved to be a treasure trove of Drowned Brethren lore. They detailed complex rituals for communing with "He of the Nine Arms," methods for enchanting Abyssal Lodestones, and even disturbing accounts of breeding or summoning creatures from the deepest oceanic trenches to serve as guardians or assassins. One particularly unsettling passage spoke of "Listeners" – individuals who, through prolonged exposure to the abyssal energies of a Beacon or through horrific self-mutilation, could hear the direct whispers of their god, often becoming conduits for its will, but also invariably descending into madness. Lyra Maelon, Vaellyn suspected, may have been on such a path.
More practically, the texts contained schematics for Braavosi "ice-cutter" technology, revealing that the crystalline projectors utilized a magically amplified form of elemental cold, but were vulnerable to specific sonic frequencies and intense, focused heat – information Baelon immediately relayed to his naval commanders and Vaellyn for the development of countermeasures.
Vaellyn's research into the Titan of Braavos, however, remained frustratingly slow. The legends were contradictory, the Valyrian texts on its construction deliberately obscure or lost. He did find further references to its "Heart-Core" being the source of its animation and its bound consciousness, likely protected by layers of impenetrable bronze and potent Valyrian wards. He theorized that only a power of similar or greater magnitude, or a precise understanding of its original binding enchantments, could hope to neutralize it. The Ignis Shard, he suggested, might offer a key, but to bring it directly against the Titan's core would be a gamble of unimaginable proportions.
The Unseen War
Baelon, orchestrating this multi-front war from his throne in Meereen, felt the tendrils of his power, his will, extending further than ever before. He was not just a king, nor merely a sorcerer; he was becoming an architect of global conflict, a grand master playing a deadly game against ancient gods and intractable empires. The Voldemort soul within him, which had once sought to dominate a single nation, now found its ambitions expanding to encompass continents, oceans, perhaps even the very fabric of reality.
The Ignis Shard was a constant presence, its fiery energy a counterpoint to his own icy resolve. He learned to draw upon its power more efficiently, to use its heat not just for destruction, but for clarity of thought, for enhanced scrying, for a deeper connection to the primal energies of the world. He found he could subtly influence the weather in his immediate vicinity, summon small gouts of obsidian-laced flame at will, and imbue his commands with an even greater weight of authority that bent men to his will not just through fear, but through an almost irresistible magical compulsion.
Yet, the war was far from won. Braavos remained defiant, its mobilized fleet a constant threat, its Faceless Men still weaving their deadly plots in the shadows. The Drowned God, though its Grand Beacon was silenced, was an ancient, pervasive entity, its cult resilient, its assassin "Echo of Stillness" still a venomous phantom in the wild. The Titan of Braavos, despite its conditional neutrality towards his purge of the cult, remained an unpredictable, colossal power that could turn against him if he overstepped its vaguely defined terms.
And then there was Ignis, the Slumbering God of Cinderfell, observing his war against the "False Deep" from its fiery throne. Baelon knew that the token he carried was not just a gift, but a test. His flame had to prove strong enough to scorch the shadows. The fate of his burgeoning empire, perhaps even the balance of power between the ancient elemental forces of this world, rested upon his ability to prosecute this war to its bitter, absolute conclusion.
As reports continued to flow in – of Aemond's brutal progress in the Iron Islands, of Tarly's grim purges in the Vale, of Larys's agents beginning to sow discord within the highest circles of Braavos, of Vaellyn's scholars unlocking new secrets of abyssal magic and Titan-lore – Baelon prepared for his next move. The Titan's terms had opened a new, treacherous path into the heart of Braavos. It was time to see if his Serpent's schemes could truly unravel the Titan city from within, before its bronze guardian was forced to choose a side definitively. The whispers in the Lagoon were about to become screams.