Chapter 10: The Obsidian Hatchlings and the Fortress of Winter
Thirteen years. The number echoed in the quiet hum of Aerion's warded laboratories, in the distant roar of his hidden dragons, in the very thrum of the Elder Wand as it lay upon his workbench. At twenty-seven, Aerion Vaelaros moved with the quiet assurance of a man who had stared into the abyss of multiple futures and had meticulously planned his defiance of each. Valyria was a magnificent, dying beast, and he was a scavenger preparing for a feast that would fuel an epoch.
The two dragon eggs recovered from the ruins of House Volantys had yielded hatchlings as strange and potent as their origins suggested. The obsidian black egg had cracked to reveal a male dragon with scales like polished volcanic glass, so dark they seemed to swallow the light. His eyes were a burning, infernal red, and from his first breath, he exuded an aura of unnerving stillness and predatory focus. Aerion named him Nox, for the night he embodied. Nox displayed an early affinity for shadow magic, not true invisibility, but an uncanny ability to meld with dimly lit areas, becoming virtually undetectable. His fire was tinged with a corrosive, acidic quality, hinting at the reckless bio-alchemical experiments of his creators.
The shimmering silver egg had hatched a female, her scales like liquid moonlight, constantly shifting in hue from brilliant silver to a soft, pearlescent grey. Her eyes were intelligent pools of molten silver, and she possessed a delicate, almost ethereal beauty. Aerion named her Lumen. Lumen quickly demonstrated an aptitude for illusion and light manipulation, able to create dazzling flashes, subtle misdirections, or even project simple, ghostly images. More fascinatingly, she showed signs of a nascent, low-level telepathic ability, capable of projecting simple emotions or images into Aerion's mind without the directness of his warging bond, a trait likely engineered by the Volantys.
These two Volantys hatchlings, Nox and Lumen, brought Aerion's clandestine dragon count to nine. Their unique, almost unnatural abilities presented both opportunities and challenges. He would need to carefully guide their development, wary of any latent instability from their tainted lineage, but their potential for specialized roles within his future council was undeniable. Nox could be an unparalleled assassin or infiltrator, Lumen a master of deception and communication.
While these new lives unfolded in his Valyrian lair, Winterspire, his Skagosi sanctuary, reached a critical stage of development. The primary structures were complete, its geothermal power core hummed with steady energy, and its initial food and resource production systems were online. It was time to test its viability as a truly independent, defensible haven.
Aerion orchestrated a simulated siege. He couldn't risk a full-scale magical assault himself, but he could test its automated defenses and the responsiveness of its golem guardians. Using his advanced mental projection, he took direct control of Ignis Regis and Caelus from Valyria – a feat of magical multitasking that would have shattered any lesser mind – and launched a series of mock attacks on Winterspire's hidden entrances.
The results were impressive. Wards flared to life, deflecting Ignis Regis's potent fire blasts. Sections of the mountainside shimmered, revealing hidden emplacements from which animated Umbral Steel constructs unleashed bolts of concentrated magical energy. Runic traps triggered, creating temporary containment fields or disorienting illusions. Terrax, already remotely stationed on Skagos for this exercise and linked to the defensive grid, caused localized earth tremors that would have broken any conventional siege line. Glacies, also present on the island, blanketed approaches with disorienting ice fogs and projected phantom images of far larger dragons. The fortress held, its systems responding with cold, automated efficiency. Winterspire was not just a shelter; it was a fortress, a self-sustaining world designed to endure.
Back in Valyria, the societal decay was palpable. A series of powerful earthquakes, originating from the southern chain of the Fourteen Flames, rocked the peninsula. Buildings collapsed in the lower city, and even some of the grand Dragonlord manses showed cracks. Most Valyrians, in their arrogance, dismissed it as the land's usual restlessness. Aerion, however, recognized the deepening groans of a dying world. His greensight showed him the tectonic plates shifting, the magma chambers swelling. The Doom was drawing nearer, its breath hot on Valyria's neck.
He used the chaos caused by the earthquakes to his advantage. With infrastructure damaged and attention diverted to civic repairs and petty squabbles over relief efforts, he initiated the final phase of his resource extraction from House Vaelaros. Under the guise of reinforcing their own estate's foundations, he had his magically controlled agents (and sometimes Umbrax, shaping tunnels in the dead of night) create secret conduits to the Vaelaros vaults. Gold, gems, historical documents, family heirlooms – anything of portable value was systematically transferred to his own secure caches, ready for transport to Skagos. His father, Maelys, frail and increasingly detached from reality, barely noticed, content to preside over the hollow shell of their ancestral home. Aerion was ensuring that the true legacy of Vaelaros – its accumulated wealth and knowledge – would survive, albeit under new, singular management.
The spiritual accumulator, his grand engine for harnessing the Doom's soul-energy, required its final, perilous calibrations. The runic anchors were planted, the focusing array built. Now, he needed to perfect the safeguards. Channeling the death-screams of an entire civilization into the Philosopher's Stone was an act of unprecedented magical audacity. The backlash could incinerate his soul.
He spent weeks in deep meditation, Flamel's alchemical knowledge guiding him as he designed a multi-layered personal shield. It wasn't just a magical barrier, but a complex interplay of deflective energies, spiritual dampeners, and a direct mental interface with the focusing array, allowing him to modulate the flow and vent excess energy. He also created what he termed a 'soul-anchor' for himself – a small, intensely complex artifact of Umbral Steel and a sliver of a diamond transmuted by the Stone, attuned to his life force. This device, worn close to his heart, was designed to tether his consciousness, to prevent it from being torn apart or consumed by the sheer psychic onslaught he anticipated. Voldemort's iron will and mastery of self-preservation spells were invaluable in this, creating a final line of defense for his very essence.
His research into the Long Night, spurred by the unsettling visions, yielded a curious discovery from the looted Volantys grimoires. Amidst texts detailing their monstrous chimerical experiments was a fragmented treatise on 'cryo-elemental binding' and attempts to create 'entities of sentient frost'. It spoke of a 'Heart of Winter,' a mythical artifact or location that was the source of all true cold magic, and creatures that were its antithesis – beings of 'un-fire' or 'living shadow-flame.' The descriptions were garbled, filtered through the Volantys' typically arrogant and self-serving lens, but the parallels to the Others and dragonfire were too strong to ignore. The 'Heart of Winter'… could this relate to the ancient standing stones he had seen on Skagos, or perhaps something even further north? It was another puzzle piece, another thread to be woven into his long-term strategy for Winterspire's role in the world's future. He tasked his warged arctic predators on Skagos to begin scouting the northernmost regions of the island with renewed focus, searching for any anomalies that matched the Volantys' cryptic descriptions.
Aerion's personal magical power had reached a zenith few sorcerers in history could have claimed. He had long since mastered wandless and non-verbal casting for most of his Harry Potter world spells. He could now manipulate the elements on a grand scale, calling storms, shaping earth, or conjuring fire with terrifying ease, his Valyrian blood augmenting Voldemort's refined techniques. He had recently perfected a unique spell of his own devising: 'Animus Umbra,' or 'Soul Shadow.' It allowed him to project a sentient shadow of himself, capable of limited independent action, spellcasting, and reconnaissance, linked directly to his consciousness. It was an incredibly draining spell, requiring immense concentration and drawing upon his own life force, but it was an invaluable tool for managing his increasingly complex affairs and for scouting dangerous locations without personal risk.
The logistics of maintaining nine dragons – Veridian, Umbrax, Ignis Regis, Caelus, Glacies, Marina, Terrax, Nox, and Lumen – in secret beneath Valyria were a constant, monumental undertaking. His subterranean lair was now a vast, multi-levelled ecosystem, a hidden world powered by magically tapped geothermal vents and complex enchantments. Ignis Regis and Caelus were colossal, fully adult dragons, their presence shaking the very rock. Glacies was a silent, frozen god in his icy domain. Even the younger ones – Marina, Terrax, Nox, and Lumen – were rapidly approaching significant size and power.
Aerion had started conducting coordinated flight drills with all seven of his 'secret' dragons in the dead of the Valyrian night, far out over the Smoking Sea, using powerful illusionary cloaks woven by Lumen and himself to mask their passage. They flew in formations he designed, practicing combined attacks, defensive maneuvers, and rapid deployment strategies. It was a sight that would have driven any other Valyrian mad with terror or envy – a private fleet of dragons, each unique, each bound to his will, moving as one. This was the nascent Dragon Council, the future protectors of Winterspire.
His escape plan for the Doom was now meticulously detailed. His personal bolt-hole cavern was ready, its emergency portkeys triple-checked. The challenge was transporting the seven younger dragons. Ignis Regis, Caelus, and Glacies were now large enough and strong enough to make the flight to the rendezvous point with him, alongside Veridian and Umbrax. For Marina, Terrax, Nox, and Lumen – still too young for such an arduous, unassisted journey through a cataclysm – he had prepared specially designed, magically expanded transport chests, similar to the one he'd used for the Smoking Sea eggs, but larger, reinforced with Umbral Steel, and equipped with sophisticated stasis and life-support enchantments. These would be carried by Veridian and Ignis Regis, his two largest and strongest dragons. It was a risky, cumbersome solution, but the only viable one.
The Philosopher's Stone, now intricately linked to the heavily shielded focusing array of the spiritual accumulator, pulsed with a steady, quiet power. Aerion had created a final, master batch of the Elixir of Life – enough to sustain himself and his nine dragons through any conceivable ordeal and to ensure their transition to true, ageless immortality once the Stone was fully charged. He had also begun to subtly imbue his Umbral Steel weapons and armor with trace amounts of the Elixir during their forging, hoping to give them self-repairing qualities and an even stronger connection to his life force.
The Resurrection Stone. During a deep meditative trance, while contemplating the nature of the soul-energy he was about to harvest, Aerion had cautiously extended his magical senses towards it. He did not attempt to activate it, but merely to perceive its essence. He felt an overwhelming coldness, a profound emptiness, but also a terrifying potential – the Stone seemed to resonate with the very boundaries of existence, a key to understanding not just death,
but the echoes souls left behind, their lingering attachments, their potential for manipulation. He recoiled from its depths, realizing that true mastery of such an artifact was a path far more perilous than even Voldemort had ever imagined. For now, it would remain locked away, its secrets too dangerous for even him to actively pursue.
Thirteen years. As he stood on his hidden balcony, overlooking his silent, powerful draconic children, Aerion felt the immense, crushing weight of his destiny. He was a creature of profound contradictions: a dark sorcerer with the knowledge of ages, a ruthless pragmatist building an ark of salvation, a Valyrian Dragonlord plotting the circumvention of his own people's doom to profit from their ashes. The Long Night loomed in the distant future, a challenge that dwarfed even the fall of the Freehold. But Aerion was ready. His nets were cast, his fortress built, his dragons prepared. The Obsidian City would burn, and from its cinders, under his solitary, watchful gaze, a new age of magic, hidden and eternal, would begin. The final countdown had truly started.