Chapter 27: The Serpent's Coils, The Dragonpit's Screams
The Dance of the Dragons, ignited by ambition and fanned by tragedy, now burned with an uncontrollable, all-consuming fury across the Seven Kingdoms. Sōsuke Aizen, the unseen god pulling the strings from the deepest shadows, watched this continental inferno with the serene satisfaction of an artist beholding his most chaotic, yet perfectly orchestrated, masterpiece. Every shriek of dying dragons, every clash of Valyrian steel, every torrent of mortal anguish, was a note in his symphony of souls, a tribute to his ever-expanding divinity.
The Battle of Rook's Rest had been a bloody overture. The fall of Princess Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys, a tragedy for the Blacks, had been a significant acquisition for Aizen. Aegon II's grievous injuries in the same battle, while a victory for Rhaenyra's cause, had only served to deepen the Greens' resolve and place the more ruthless Aemond "One-Eye" Targaryen and the cunning Hand, Ser Otto Hightower (before his eventual fall from grace and replacement by the more direct Criston Cole), in greater positions of influence – all outcomes Aizen had subtly nudged.
His Sentinel mercenary companies, now bearing fearsome, if fabricated, reputations – "The Ebon Scourge," "The Valyrian Phantoms," "The Iron Wyverns" – found themselves in high demand. One such company, "The Steel Regents," led by a towering, silent figure known only as "Commander Rex" (an advanced Sentinel construct with a sophisticated Valyrian appearance), was instrumental in the brutal First Battle of Tumbleton. Hired by the Greens to bolster their Reach forces, the Steel Regents fought with chilling, inhuman efficiency. They broke the lines of Lord Footly's Black supporters, their Valyrian steel swords (supplied from Aizen's endless hoard) reaping a grim harvest. Yet, their true orders from Aizen, relayed through Argent, were not to secure a swift Green victory. During the height of the battle, a "misunderstood command" saw them "accidentally" cut off a key flanking maneuver by their Green allies, allowing a significant portion of the Black forces to escape, ensuring the conflict in the Reach would continue to simmer and bleed. The souls from Tumbleton's slaughter flowed readily into Aizen's hidden siphons.
Aizen, as "Maester Valerion," continued to play his role with exquisite perfection within Queen Rhaenyra's Black Council on Dragonstone. His "ancient Valyrian wisdom" and "interpretations of dragon dreams" consistently pushed Rhaenyra and her fiery husband, Prince Daemon Targaryen, towards more aggressive, often riskier, strategies. He subtly fueled Daemon's existing penchant for brutality and Rhaenyra's growing paranoia, ensuring that any overture for peace, however faint, was dismissed as Green treachery.
When the Blacks, in their desperation for more dragonriders, made the call for "dragonseeds" – those of Valyrian bastard stock or with rumored Targaryen ancestry – to try and claim the riderless dragons on Dragonstone (Vermithor, Silverwing, Seasmoke, Sheepstealer, and the wild Cannibal), Aizen observed the proceedings with keen interest. This was a fascinating social and magical experiment. He did not directly interfere with most of the claimings, content to watch mortals gamble their lives for a taste of draconic power. However, for a particularly brutal and unstable individual, a former pig-herd named Hugh Hammer who managed to claim the mighty Vermithor (King Jaehaerys I's old mount), Aizen, through a subtle Kido-induced illusion perceived only by Hammer, presented himself as a "fiery messenger of the True Valyrian Will," promising Hammer untold power and glory if he embraced his most savage instincts. This ensured Hugh Hammer would become an even more destructive and unpredictable force in the wars to come, a useful tool for sowing further chaos. Similar subtle encouragements were given to Ulf the White, who claimed Silverwing. The "Two Betrayers," as they would become known, were being subtly groomed by Aizen for their future roles in prolonging the agony of the Dance.
As the war ground on, Aizen's manipulations grew bolder, his use of Kyōka Suigetsu more ambitious. During the fiercely contested Battle of the Honeywine, where Lord Ormund Hightower's Green forces clashed with a large Black army, Aizen, observing from a safe distance in a simple traveler's disguise, decided to "test" the limits of battlefield-scale illusion. For a critical hour, he wove a subtle but pervasive illusion over a section of the Green lines, making a depleted Black contingent appear as a fresh, overwhelming wave of reinforcements. Lord Hightower, deceived, committed his reserves prematurely, leading to a bloody, grinding stalemate instead of a potential Green breakthrough. The confusion, the wasted lives, the sheer despair of soldiers fighting phantom enemies – it was all exquisite nourishment for the Hōgyoku.
The ultimate prize for Aizen in this phase of the Dance, however, was King's Landing. Rhaenyra's desire to take her father's throne was all-consuming. Aizen, as Maester Valerion, meticulously guided her war council towards this objective, "discovering" weaknesses in the city's defenses (weaknesses his own Faceless Men had often helped create by sabotaging key structures or eliminating diligent watch commanders) and proposing daring, high-risk strategies for the assault.
When Rhaenyra's forces finally besieged King's Landing, Aizen ensured the city's fall would be as chaotic and soul-rich as possible. His agents within the city – Faceless Men posing as merchants, Gold Cloaks, even disgruntled septons – fanned the flames of discontent among the starving, terrified populace. They spread rumors of Green atrocities, of Aegon II's madness, of Rhaenyra's imminent, merciless vengeance. Simultaneously, other agents (or the same ones, with different faces) whispered to Green loyalists that Rhaenyra planned to put the entire city to the sword, encouraging desperate, futile resistance.
As the Black armies breached the city walls, with Caraxes, Syrax, and other Black dragons raining fire from above, Aizen was there, disguised as a humble healer tending to the "wounded" near the city gates, his true purpose to be at the epicenter of the spiritual release. He felt the terror of the fleeing smallfolk, the defiance of the last Green defenders, the savage triumph of the conquering Blacks. The city became a charnel house, and its collective death cry was a symphony to his divine ears.
But the true masterpiece of orchestrated chaos within King's Landing was yet to come: the Storming of the Dragonpit. The Shepherd, a one-handed, half-mad prophet, had been preaching damnation against the Targaryens and their dragons for months, his fervor growing with the city's suffering. Aizen had taken a keen interest in this Shepherd. He did not create the man's madness, but he certainly amplified it. Using subtle Kido to enhance The Shepherd's ragged charisma, and Kyōka Suigetsu to project terrifying, "divinely inspired" visions into the prophet's mind – visions of dragons as demons, of the Dragonpit as the heart of Westeros's corruption – Aizen transformed him from a street-corner ranter into a figure capable of inciting mass hysteria.
When Rhaenyra took King's Landing and the remaining Green dragons (including Aegon II's Dreamfyre, Helaena's mount, and the young Tyraxes, Joffrey Velaryon's dragon who was stabled there) were confined to the Dragonpit, The Shepherd's moment arrived. Fueled by hunger, fear, religious fanaticism, and Aizen's unseen manipulations, a vast mob of commoners, armed with crude weapons and righteous fury, marched on the Dragonpit.
Aizen, in an unassuming disguise, was amidst the mob, a silent observer and conductor. He watched with cold fascination as thousands of enraged smallfolk, driven by a collective madness he had carefully nurtured, threw themselves against the massive dome. He felt the raw, potent spiritual energy of their fanatical belief, their terror, their hatred.
The ensuing slaughter within the Dragonpit was a spectacle of almost unparalleled horror, even for war-torn Westeros. Four Targaryen dragons – Shrykos, Morghul, Tyraxes, and Dreamfyre – were slain by the sheer numbers and desperate courage of the mob, though they took thousands of their attackers with them in fiery death. The fifth dragon, Syrax (Rhaenyra's own mount, who flew to the Pit from the Red Keep), also perished in the chaos. Each dragon's death was an explosion of primal, elemental soul-energy, a feast for Aizen that dwarfed the death of mere mortals. He stood amidst the burning, collapsing dome, the screams of men and dragons echoing around him, and drank it all in, the Hōgyoku blazing with an almost painful intensity as it assimilated these unique, potent essences. This was a different kind of harvest – not the ordered release of battlefield souls, but the chaotic, frenzied energy of popular uprising and deicidal rage. It added new, darker textures to his evolving divinity.
In the aftermath of King's Landing's fall and the Dragonpit's destruction, Rhaenyra's hold on the Iron Throne was tenuous, her spirit increasingly consumed by paranoia and grief (much of it subtly exacerbated by "Maester Valerion's" counsel). Aegon II had escaped the city, badly wounded, and the Greens were regrouping. The Dance was far from over; it had merely entered a new, even more desperate and brutal phase.
Aizen, during the chaos of a particularly savage street battle in King's Landing or a skirmish between dragonriders, would sometimes allow himself a more direct, if still completely deniable, intervention. Clad in an unremarkable suit of dark armor, his face always shadowed or turned away, he might appear as a "mysterious knight of unknown allegiance." A precisely aimed Kido blast, disguised as a stray dragonfire burst or a collapsing building, might eliminate a particularly effective commander on one side, or "accidentally" wound a dragon that was pressing its advantage too effectively, always ensuring the balance of slaughter was maintained. Kyōka Suigetsu would erase any clear memory of his presence from witnesses, leaving only confused, contradictory accounts of a "phantom warrior" or a "ghost of the battlefield."
The Hōgyoku, now an intrinsic sun within Aizen's being, had never felt more vibrant. The constant, high-intensity stream of souls from the Dance – noble Valyrian dragonriders, ancient and powerful dragons, tens of thousands of desperate mortal soldiers and civilians – was accelerating his evolution at a rate unseen since the Doom of Valyria itself. He felt his understanding of this world's spiritual laws, its flows of life and death, its very metaphysical fabric, becoming almost absolute. New divine abilities began to stir within him: a deeper control over elemental forces drawn from the dragon souls, a chilling mastery over fear and despair drawn from the mortal terror, and an even more profound ability to manipulate the threads of causality, not just to predict, but to guide events towards his desired outcomes with effortless precision.
From the Obsidian Spire, Ignis Primus, the colossal magma dragon, watched the unfolding drama in Westeros through its psychic link with Aizen. Its intelligence was now vast, its patience mirroring its master's, but its desire to unleash its primordial fire upon the lesser dragons tearing each other apart was a constant, burning ember in their shared consciousness.
"They are like hatchlings squabbling over scraps, Master," Ignis Primus conveyed, its thoughts like the slow grind of tectonic plates. "Their fire is brief, their fury undirected. One breath from me would cleanse the skies of their petty conflict."
Aizen would calm his magnificent creation with a projection of serene power. "Their pettiness serves a grander purpose, my First Fire. They are meticulously pruning their own lineage, culling their own strength, offering their very essence to fuel a power they cannot comprehend. Your time will come. When the ashes of their Dance have settled, and a new, even greater despair blankets this land, then you shall be the herald of a truly new age. For now, let them scream. Let them burn. The feast is far from over."
Indeed, the Dance of the Dragons was reaching a horrifying crescendo. Rhaenyra's brief, tragic reign in King's Landing would end in flight. Aegon II would eventually retake his capital, but at a terrible cost. More dragons would die. More heroes would fall. More betrayals would stain the honor of great houses. And through it all, Sōsuke Aizen, the god in the shadows, would watch, and weave, and reap. Westeros was his abattoir, its people and its magnificent beasts the willing sacrifices upon the altar of his unending, divine hunger. The Dragonpit's screams were merely the latest chorus in his grand, evolving opera of souls.