Chapter 15: The Gilded Cage Unlatches
The decree against Lord Tywin Lannister and Ser Gregor Clegane echoed through the Red Keep like a death knell for the fragile peace. King Robert, having finally been prodded into a semblance of decisive action by Eddard Stark's relentless integrity, seemed to believe he had asserted his authority. NJ, however, knew better. His "father" had merely signed a declaration of war, one Tywin Lannister would answer with fire and blood, not fealty.
King's Landing became a hive of frantic, whispered anxieties. Lannister loyalists looked pale and uncertain, caught between their fealty to the Crown and their terror of the Old Lion of Casterly Rock. Those who harbored grievances against the Lannisters – and there were many – began to stir with a cautious, predatory hope. Cersei was a whirlwind of contained fury and palpable fear. NJ, observing her, felt the chaotic storm of her emotions: her outrage at Robert's decree, her terror of her father's wrath (and what it might mean for her and her children if events spiraled out of control), and a desperate, clawing ambition to secure her own power, to protect her son's claim – his claim, as she believed it.
"That oaf of a husband has doomed us all!" she hissed at NJ during one of their private moments in her solar, her usual regal composure shattered. "He provokes my father, the one man who can truly keep this realm from collapsing, and for what? For that sanctimonious Northern fool Stark, who would see us all beggars in the street if it meant upholding his precious 'honor'!"
NJ, using his truth-sense, felt the raw, unvarnished terror beneath her rage. She truly believed Ned Stark was a mortal threat to her and her children. "Lord Stark is… uncompromising, Mother," NJ said, his voice a carefully crafted blend of Joffrey's fear and a dawning, resentful anger. "He whispers poison in Father's ear. He looks at me… strangely. As if he suspects… as if he doesn't believe I am truly Father's son." He let that last, insidious seed drop, knowing it would feed her deepest paranoia about the prophecies that haunted her.
Cersei's eyes widened, then narrowed into slits of green fire. "He would not dare," she whispered, but the fear in her voice was real. "The Hand overreaches. He will be dealt with."
NJ knew this was the moment. Cersei, desperate and cornered, would be looking for any means to remove Robert from the equation, at least temporarily, to give her room to maneuver against Stark. The hunt. Canonically, it was her solution.
"Father is so… unpredictable when he is angered," NJ continued, feigning a tremor in his voice. "He drinks so much. Perhaps… perhaps if he were to find some… distraction? A grand hunt? To clear his head? To remind him of his strength?" He made it sound like a frightened boy's naive suggestion, but it was a precisely aimed nudge.
Cersei looked at him, a strange, calculating light entering her eyes. "A hunt…" she mused. "Yes. Robert always enjoys a hunt. It soothes his temper. And it would take him away from Stark's incessant moralizing for a few days." She paused. "And Lancel… Lancel is so devoted. He would ensure the King is… well supplied… with his favorite vintage."
NJ felt a cold thrill. The pieces were falling into place, almost too easily. His mother, in her desperation, was walking the exact path he had anticipated.
Within two days, King Robert, cajoled by Cersei and plied with promises of magnificent stags and endless flagons of strongwine by his eager cousin and squire Lancel, announced a grand royal hunt in the Kingswood. A significant portion of the court, including many of the ablest knights and Lord Stark himself (much to his visible reluctance, but he could not refuse a royal command), prepared to accompany him.
This was NJ's opportunity. With the King, the Hand, and much of the Red Keep's martial strength preoccupied in the Kingswood for several days, the castle's security, while still formidable, would inevitably be less intensely focused. The hidden Targaryen vault he had sensed, with its promise of ancient scrolls and perhaps even lost Valyrian lore, called to him.
The night after the King's departure, NJ set his plan into motion. He feigned a sudden illness, a recurrence of some digestive trouble, and retired early to his chambers in Maegor's Holdfast, dismissing his servants and the single Kingsguard (the ever-oafish Ser Boros Blount, easily fooled) stationed outside his door with a Joffrey-esque display of petulant misery. Once he was certain he was alone, the Joffrey mask dissolved, replaced by a chilling, predatory focus.
He moved through his chambers, his senses heightened, the direwolf's stealth and the dragon's silent power thrumming within him. He had prepared for this. Over the preceding weeks, he had subtly "weakened" the ancient mortar around the bricked-up archway in the undercroft during his previous "explorations." Not by crude force, but by focused, minute applications of his internal dragon fire – tiny, almost imperceptible bursts of intense heat directed at specific points, causing the centuries-old binding to become brittle and friable. It was a delicate, dangerous process, requiring immense control, for any carelessness could have resulted in a tell-tale scorch mark or even a minor collapse. He had also used the weirwood's earth-sense to understand the stresses in the stonework, identifying the weakest points.
Navigating the darkened, silent corridors of Maegor's Holdfast and into the deeper undercroft was child's play for him now. He reached the sealed archway. The air here was cold, still, heavy with the scent of dust and forgotten ages. Taking a deep breath, he focused his will. He didn't need brute strength. He used a combination of precisely applied pressure, leveraging his slowly increasing physical prowess, and a final, carefully directed pulse of his internal dragon energy – not as fire, but as a concussive, resonant force.
There was a faint cracking sound, then a grating, as the ancient bricks, their mortar compromised, began to shift. Slowly, carefully, he worked them loose, one by one, creating a narrow opening. The air that wafted from within was impossibly stale, carrying the dry, papery scent of extreme antiquity, and something else… a faint, metallic tang, like ozone, that resonated with the dragon magic within him.
He slipped through the opening into a small, circular chamber, utterly dark. He didn't need a torch. His dragon-enhanced vision pierced the gloom as if it were midday. The room was small, stone-lined, and astonishingly well-preserved. And in its center, upon a simple stone pedestal, lay not a hoard of gold or jewels, but a collection of scrolls, bound in what looked like cured dragonhide, and a single, long, slender case of blackened wood, intricately carved with Valyrian glyphs.
His heart – or rather, the cold, analytical core that served as its equivalent – gave a leap of triumph. He approached the pedestal. The scrolls felt… alive in his senses, thrumming with dormant knowledge. He picked one up. The dragonhide was brittle, the parchment within incredibly fragile. He unrolled it a fraction, his eyes scanning the elegant, spidery script. High Valyrian. And not just any Valyrian, but texts dealing with… blood magic, dragonlore, the forging of Valyrian steel, and, most astonishingly, theories on the nature of the Doom itself, penned by a Valyrian loremaster who had, by some miracle, been away from the Freehold when it collapsed. This was knowledge lost to the world, knowledge that could reshape his understanding of magic, of power, of the very foundations of this world's most potent forces.
He then turned to the wooden case. It was sealed with intricate clasps. He focused his weirwood-sense, trying to perceive its contents without opening it. He felt… metal. Long, slender, perfectly balanced. And imbued with an incredible, ancient power, a fire that slept but was not dead. A Valyrian steel sword. But not just any sword. This felt… older, purer, than even the Targaryen ancestral blades he knew of from history. Perhaps a blade brought from Valyria before Aegon's Conquest, hidden here by some forgotten Targaryen king.
He did not have time to study them now. He carefully re-rolled the scroll, gathered as many as he could safely carry along with the sword case, and slipped back through the opening, meticulously replacing the bricks to leave no immediate trace of his passage, though he knew a careful inspection would reveal the disturbance. He would worry about that later. For now, he had his prize.
Back in his chambers, he concealed the scrolls and the sword case within a hidden compartment he had discovered in the ancient wardrobe – one of those secrets the wardrobe's essence had yielded to him earlier. He would study them at leisure. This was a power-up, a knowledge gain, beyond anything he could have hoped for.
The days passed with Robert and his hunting party still away. NJ used the time to begin his study of the Valyrian scrolls, a slow, painstaking process, his intellect grappling with the archaic language (though his Targaryen and dragon essences provided a surprising degree of innate comprehension) and the arcane, often terrifying, concepts within. He learned of rituals that could bind fire to will, of the symbiotic, almost spiritual, connection between dragonlords and their mounts, of the intricate stellar alignments and volcanic energies required to forge Valyrian steel. It was a glimpse into a civilization that had wielded godlike power and had ultimately been consumed by it. A warning, perhaps, but also an irresistible temptation.
Meanwhile, in the Red Keep, the political storm continued to brew. Ned Stark, emboldened by Robert's absence and driven by his unwavering conviction, finally made his move. NJ learned of it through his usual channels – the panicked whispers of Cersei's ladies-in-waiting, the grim satisfaction of the few Stark loyalists remaining in the castle, the very stones of the Queen's solar which he "read" after the fact. Ned had confronted Cersei, accusing her directly of adultery and incest, declaring her children bastards with no claim to the throne, and advising her to flee King's Landing before Robert returned, to spare herself and her children the King's inevitable wrath.
NJ felt a cold amusement at Ned's folly. The honorable wolf, offering the lioness a chance to escape? He didn't understand the game at all. Cersei, NJ knew, would not flee. She would fight. She would unleash hell.
Her reaction, as absorbed from the lingering emotional turmoil in her solar, had been one of terrified fury, then icy resolve. She had denied everything, of course, her pride and her fear warring within her. But Ned had planted the seed of her doom, and his own.
Then came the raven. Not to the Red Keep directly, but to the hunting party in the Kingswood, though word reached the capital with astonishing speed, carried by frantic outriders. King Robert had been grievously wounded. Gored by a massive boar. A hunting accident.
The castle erupted in carefully controlled chaos. Cersei, when she received the news, feigned distraught grief, but NJ's truth-sense, when he was summoned to her presence, picked up the triumphant, terrified exultation thrumming beneath her performance. Her gamble, her manipulation of Lancel and the strongwine, had paid off in the most spectacular, if brutal, fashion. Jaime, who had also been on the hunt and returned with the King, looked grim and withdrawn, his face unreadable, but NJ sensed a deep, conflicting turmoil within him – relief, perhaps, but also a warrior's distaste for such an ignoble end for a king, even one he despised.
NJ played his part to perfection. He was Joffrey, the grieving son, his face pale with (feigned) shock, his eyes wide with (carefully practiced) childish fear and sorrow. He clung to his mother, allowing her to comfort him, even as his mind was already light-years ahead, calculating, planning, preparing for the power vacuum.
The King was dying. That much was clear. He was brought back to the Red Keep, a broken, bleeding wreck, his boisterous life fading with every agonized breath. Ned Stark, his face a mask of profound grief and grim duty, was constantly at his side. And it was there, on his deathbed, that Robert Baratheon, First of His Name, in a final, lucid act of folly and misplaced trust, named Eddard Stark Lord Regent and Protector of the Realm, to rule until Joffrey came of age. He dictated his will, unaware that Littlefinger, present as a witness, was already altering the wording, changing "my son Joffrey" or "my heir Joffrey" to the more ambiguous "the rightful heir," a subtle treachery that would have enormous consequences.
NJ knew all of this. The Red Keep was a sieve of information for one with his abilities. Servants gossiped. Guards whispered. The very stones seemed to sigh with the weight of impending change. He was ready.
The night Robert Baratheon finally died, a profound, almost unnatural stillness fell over the Red Keep. It was the quiet before the storm. NJ stood in his chambers, the newly acquired Valyrian sword – its name, he had discovered from one of the scrolls, was Umbraexys, Shadowfire – now unsheathed, its dark, rippling steel cool in his hand. He felt its ancient power, a perfect conduit for his own internal dragon fire. The scrolls lay open on his desk, their forbidden knowledge seeping into his mind.
He was no longer just Joffrey, the boy prince. He was a vessel of ancient magics, a repository of forgotten lore, an intellect of terrifying capacity. He was on the cusp of kingship. Ned Stark, with his honorable intentions and Robert's worthless will, was an obstacle to be removed. Cersei, his mother and regent-to-be, was a tool to be managed, her ambition and paranoia levers he could pull. Littlefinger and Varys were rivals to be outmaneuvered. The Great Houses were pieces on the board, to be played against each other until he could bring them all to heel.
His first act as King, he decided, would be to deal with Eddard Stark. Swiftly. Decisively. There could be no Protector of the Realm but himself, no challenge to his (or rather, Cersei's, for now) authority. The Joffrey mask would be replaced by a crown. But the entity beneath, the serpent with the heart of a dragon and the wisdom of the weirwood, would be the true power on the Iron Throne.
He looked out over King's Landing, the city lights twinkling like fallen stars. A new reign was dawning. His reign. Forged in secrets, lies, and murder. Tempered by ancient magic and an intellect beyond mortal ken. It would be a reign that would change Westeros forever. The gilded cage had unlatched. The beast within was about to be unleashed.
.