Chapter 53: The Last Dragon's Dream and the Shadow's Silent Hand (The Tragedy at Summerhall)
The reign of King Aegon V Targaryen, "Aegon the Unlikely," was a study in noble intentions tragically undone by the obstinacy of a realm resistant to change and the King's own poignant, ultimately fatal, obsession with restoring the dragons to Westeros. From his timeless citadel within Mount Skatus, Aelyx Velaryon observed this well-meaning, yet increasingly desperate, monarch with a mixture of pity and cold, strategic calculation. Aegon V, Aelyx knew, was dreaming a dead dream, one whose pursuit would inevitably lead to ruin.
Aegon V had inherited a realm still bearing the scars of Blackfyre rebellions, droughts, and plagues. His youth spent wandering Westeros with Ser Duncan the Tall had instilled in him a deep empathy for the smallfolk, and his reign was marked by numerous attempts to enact reforms that would curb the power of the great lords and improve the lives of the common people. These efforts, however, met with fierce resistance from a nobility unwilling to relinquish their ancient privileges. Aegon, frustrated and increasingly isolated, came to believe that only the power of dragons – the ultimate symbol and instrument of Targaryen authority – could enable him to enforce his will and forge a more just realm.
This belief became an all-consuming obsession. Tibbit's network of Emissaries and glamoured house-elf agents, now so deeply embedded in Southern society that they moved like unseen currents, brought Aelyx detailed reports of Aegon's desperate search for lost dragonlore. He sent emissaries to the ruins of Valyria, to Asshai by the Shadow, to any place rumored to hold secrets of dragon-hatching. He corresponded with maesters who delved into forbidden texts. And, most significantly, he began to gather the last remnants of the Targaryen dragon legacy: seven dragon eggs, long believed to be petrified, kept as curiosities in the Red Keep. Aegon V, fueled by prophecy and a desperate hope, intended to hatch them.
"He seeks to play with the embers of a fire his house long ago allowed to die out," Aelyx remarked to his immortal council, his voice echoing in the Obsidian Chamber. Generations of his descendants – his children ancient and powerful, his grandchildren mature leaders, his great-grandchildren accomplished sorcerers and dragonriders, and now even his great-great-grandchildren beginning their arcane tutelage – listened intently. "He has the Valyrian blood, yes, but lacks the true knowledge, the inherent magical command, the will that is required. What he plans at Summerhall… it is a pyre upon which he will sacrifice his hopes, and likely himself."
Summerhall, a pleasure castle of House Targaryen nestled near the Dornish Marches, was chosen as the site for Aegon V's great ritual. He gathered his closest family and loyal retainers, along with pyromancers and chests of wildfire, intending to use the volatile substance in a desperate attempt to quicken the ancient eggs. The year was 259 AC.
Aelyx knew this was an opportunity he could not ignore. These seven eggs, however petrified they might appear to mundane eyes, were the last known direct relics of the Targaryen dragon lines. To allow them to be consumed in Aegon's inevitable folly would be a dereliction of what Aelyx now saw as his sacred duty: the preservation and ultimate stewardship of all Valyrian dragon heritage. Moreover, their unique genetic markers could prove invaluable to his own centuries-long Skagosi dragon breeding programs, further enhancing the diversity and potency of his hidden legions.
"The eggs at Summerhall must be… secured," Aelyx announced, his violet eyes glinting with cold resolve. "They must be brought here, to Mount Skatus, where they will be given a true chance at life, under our care, shielded from the destructive ignorance of their current custodians."
The risks were astronomical. Summerhall would be a royal gathering, heavily guarded. The ritual itself promised chaos, but also intense scrutiny. Failure, and discovery, would expose Skagos's true nature to a Targaryen dynasty that, however weakened, still commanded the loyalty of the Seven Kingdoms. It could mean war, a war Aelyx was confident he could win, but one that would shatter his centuries of carefully constructed secrecy.
"This will require a team of unparalleled skill and discretion," Aelyx continued, his gaze falling upon his most trusted operatives. He would not lead this mission himself; his "death" generations prior was a cornerstone of their public deception. His son Aenar, master of enchantments and wards, now ancient but eternally vigorous, would oversee the magical aspects of the infiltration. His great-granddaughter, Lyra II (named for her seer ancestor, and possessing a similar, if less potent, greensight and an uncanny talent for stealth), a formidable sorceress and Shadow Guard commander in her late prime, would lead the field team. She would be accompanied by a small squad of only three of the most elite Shadow Guard, each a powerful magic-user and warrior, and a trio of Tibbit's most accomplished house-elf descendants, masters of apparition and silent manipulation.
"Your objective," Aelyx instructed Lyra II, "is not merely to take the eggs, but to replace them. We must leave no immediate sign of tampering. Aenar, you will craft seven perfect replicas from enchanted stone, transfigured to mimic the exact appearance, weight, and even residual magical aura of the Targaryen eggs. The substitution must be flawless. The chaos of Aegon's ritual, when it inevitably goes awry, will consume these stone replicas, and the world will believe the last Targaryen eggs perished in the flames with their king."
Lyra II, her violet eyes burning with a mixture of excitement and steely determination, nodded. "It will be done, Great Ancestor. The eggs will be brought to Skagos."
The intelligence gathering intensified. Lyra I and Daenys, Aelyx's seer daughters, focused their combined greensight on Summerhall, their visions filled with fire, screams, and the desperate, foolish hope of a doomed king. They pinpointed the exact location where the eggs would be kept – a central chamber within the castle, prepared for the ritual. They foresaw the arrival of the pyromancers, the volatile casks of wildfire, the growing unease among Aegon's retinue.
The Skagosi stealth-carrack, the Shadowlark (a newer, even more advanced version of the Nightwing), slipped from a hidden cove on Skagos, its illusionary cloaks rendering it a phantom against the stormy northern seas. Aboard were Lyra II, her small team of Shadow Guard, Aenar's perfectly crafted stone replica eggs nestled in magically cushioned and cooled caskets, and the three house-elves. Their journey south was swift and undetected.
They made landfall on a desolate stretch of the Stormlands coast, miles from Summerhall, under the cover of a moonless night. From there, the three house-elves, carrying Lyra II and her team via side-along apparition in short, carefully shielded jumps, began their perilous infiltration of the royal pleasure castle. The air around Summerhall was already thick with anticipation and a strange, feverish energy. King Aegon V, his eldest son Prince Duncan "the Small," and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, the beloved Ser Duncan the Tall, were all present, along with numerous courtiers, pyromancers whispering incantations over their volatile charges, and a heavy contingent of royal guards.
Lyra II and her team, cloaked in invisibility spells woven by Aenar and amplified by their own considerable power, moved like whispers through the less-guarded service corridors of Summerhall. The house-elves, with their innate ability to bypass mundane locks and navigate unseen, led the way. They reached the chamber where the seven Targaryen dragon eggs lay upon velvet cushions, surrounded by arcane diagrams and braziers filled with strange incense. The eggs themselves, Aelyx's team noted, did indeed feel ancient, their surfaces cold and stone-like, yet a faint, almost imperceptible thrum of dormant life still echoed within them, a magical potential only a true Valyrian adept could sense.
The substitution was an act of breathtaking magical skill and nerve. While two house-elves maintained a perimeter of magical silence and misdirection, Lyra II and Aenar (who, though not physically present, guided her every move through a mental link, his own formidable will reinforcing hers) carefully levitated each true dragon egg, replacing it with its perfectly transfigured stone replica. The replicas were flawless, imbued with a faint, artificial magical warmth and the exact visual characteristics of the originals. The true eggs were immediately placed into stasis caskets, which the third house-elf then apparated away in stages to a secure, magically shielded rendezvous point far from Summerhall, where the Shadowlark lay hidden.
The entire operation, from infiltration to substitution to the initial extraction of the real eggs, took less than an hour, conducted in absolute silence, under the very noses of the royal guards and the increasingly agitated pyromancers. It was a masterpiece of covert magical action.
As Lyra II and her team began their own silent, phased withdrawal from Summerhall, the first signs of Aegon V's desperate ritual commencing became apparent. Chants grew louder, the scent of wildfire stronger, a palpable sense of dangerous, uncontrolled energy building within the castle. Lyra's own greensight flared, showing her a sudden, catastrophic eruption of green flame, screams, collapsing stone.
"The King has lit his own funeral pyre," she reported grimly to Aelyx through their mental link, as she and her team made their final, apparating leap to safety, miles from the unfolding tragedy.
The Tragedy at Summerhall, as it came to be known, was a disaster of horrific proportions. Aegon V's attempt to hatch dragons with wildfire resulted in an inferno that consumed the entire castle, killing the King himself, his son Prince Duncan, the Lord Commander Ser Duncan the Tall, and many others of his court and household. Amidst the flames and chaos, however, a new life began: Princess Rhaella Targaryen, wife of Aegon's second son and heir Prince Jaehaerys, gave birth to a son, Rhaegar, born amidst salt and smoke, a birth that would itself become legend. Aelyx's agents, observing from a safe distance, noted this poignant detail, another thread in the tangled skein of Targaryen prophecy and destiny.
The news of Summerhall sent a fresh wave of grief and instability across the Seven Kingdoms. King Jaehaerys II Targaryen, Aegon V's second son, ascended a throne overshadowed by his father's tragic obsession and the loss of so many beloved figures. The realm mourned, and the dream of dragons returning to Westeros seemed to die with Aegon V in the ashes of his pleasure castle. No one suspected that the seven eggs, the last hope of their line, had not perished, but had instead been spirited away to a secret northern fastness.
Aboard the Shadowlark, sailing swiftly and silently back towards Skagos, Lyra II and Aenar (who had joined them magically for the final leg, to personally oversee the precious cargo) examined the seven ancient Targaryen eggs. They glowed with a faint, inner warmth within their stasis caskets, their stony appearance already seeming to lessen, as if responding to the proximity of true Valyrian magic and the ambient power Aenar was channeling around them.
When they were finally presented to Aelyx in the deepest, warmest hatchery of Mount Skatus, surrounded by the vibrant, pulsing life of hundreds of Skagosi dragon eggs and hatchlings, the Shadow King regarded them with profound satisfaction. These were not just seven more eggs; they were the last direct genetic link to the dragons of Aegon the Conqueror and his Valyrian ancestors, lines distinct from those Aelyx himself had preserved from the Doom or had cultivated on Skagos.
"They are magnificent," Aelyx breathed, his hand hovering over one particularly large egg of midnight blue, shot through with veins of silver. "Aegon the Fifth, for all his folly, had a true Valyrian's yearning for the flame. He sought to awaken them with uncontrolled fire and base alchemy. We shall awaken them with true knowledge, with patience, with the very essence of the magic that birthed their kind."
He immediately set Aenar and his most skilled house-elf dragonologists to the task of carefully, slowly, coaxing the life within these ancient eggs back to full vitality. It would be a long, delicate process, requiring immense magical energy, precise alchemical treatments, and perhaps even the direct intervention of the phoenixes' life-giving aura. But Aelyx was confident. He had saved these last embers from the Targaryen pyre, and on Skagos, they would blaze forth anew, their fire forever part of his own hidden, eternal flame.
Publicly, Lord Aelyx Volmark II of Skagos sent heartfelt condolences to King Jaehaerys II, along with another massive contribution of gold to aid the Crown in its time of sorrow and to help "rebuild what was lost." Skagos mourned with the realm, its loyalty impeccable, its true actions utterly unsuspected.
The Tragedy at Summerhall was a grim chapter in the decline of House Targaryen. It marked the end of their overt attempts to reclaim their draconic heritage. But for Aelyx Velaryon, it was a clandestine triumph, a daring acquisition that further solidified his status as the secret, undisputed master of all dragonkind. While the world mourned the last Targaryen dragons, new ones, carrying those very bloodlines, would soon awaken in the hidden heart of Skagos, their future inextricably bound to the eternal destiny of the Shadow King and his immortal dynasty. The game of ages continued, and Aelyx had just secured some of its most precious pieces.