Chapter 19: The Dragon King's Dawn
The ashes of the great pyre in the Dragonpit had barely cooled before King's Landing was irrevocably transformed. The city, once a hub of cynical intrigue and jaded power plays, now thrummed with a primal current of raw fear and ecstatic, religious awe. King Joffrey Baratheon, First of His Name, was no longer merely the boy who had inherited a throne amidst scandal and dispute; he was the Unburnt, the Dragon Hatcher, the Phoenix Prince whose divine right was seared into the consciousness of every soul who had witnessed or heard tell of the miracle.
NJ's first priority, even before the last terrified courtier had been helped to his feet, was the security and well-being of his seven new children. The hatchling dragons, small as underfed cats but radiating an intense, almost unbearable heat and an aura of ancient, predatory power, clung to him with fierce, possessive loyalty. He felt their nascent minds, bright, savage, and utterly devoted, brushing against his own, a chorus of tiny, fiery consciousnesses now inextricably linked to his will.
He commanded a section of Maegor's Holdfast, the most secure and most heavily Targaryen-saturated part of the Red Keep, to be cleared and repurposed. Drawing upon the Valyrian scrolls and his own absorbed dragonlore, he supervised the creation of a makeshift dragonry – chambers kept unnaturally warm by constantly stoked braziers, with sand pits for them to rest in and specially reinforced perches. Feeding them was an immediate challenge. The scrolls spoke of dragons thriving on cooked meat, their internal fire aiding digestion. NJ, with a Joffrey-esque command that brooked no argument, ordered the royal kitchens to provide a constant supply of freshly roasted kid, lamb, and beef, which he himself, often to the terror of the servants, would tear into manageable pieces and offer to the snapping, eager jaws of his brood.
He named them, drawing upon the grand, resonant names of Valyrian history and the celestial bodies his weirwood-sense now perceived with greater clarity. The obsidian one with crimson veins, the fiercest and boldest, he named Valerion, an echo of Balerion but distinctly his own. The forest green with bronze flecks, a cunning and watchful creature, became Veridian. The pale cream swirled with gold, serene but with a hidden fire, he called Aurum. The molten gold from Summerhall, radiating intense heat, was Ignis. The stormy blue, quick and agile, Tempestas. The snow-white, with eyes like chips of ice despite its fiery nature, Glacian – a nod to the balance of powers he himself embodied. And the last, the mottled grey and silver, whose hiss sounded like crackling lightning, he named Fulmen. Seven dragons, each unique, each a testament to his terrifying power.
The court of King Joffrey was now a place of hushed reverence and palpable terror. Lords and ladies who had once smirked behind their hands at Prince Joffrey's tantrums now prostrated themselves if his shadow so much as brushed them. His Small Council meetings became exercises in absolute, if subtly wielded, authority. Grand Maester Pycelle, his face a permanent mask of aged fear, agreed to every royal pronouncement without demur. Varys, the Spider, was even more obsequious than usual, his bald head bowed low, though NJ, with his truth-sense, felt the frantic, astonished calculations whirring behind the eunuch's placid facade. The Spider knew this changed every game on every board.
Cersei Lannister, his mother, was perhaps the most profoundly affected. The son she had schemed and murdered to place on the throne was now something far beyond her comprehension, far beyond her control. The fear in her eyes when she looked at him was now mingled with a strange, almost worshipful awe. She still attempted to advise him, to guide him as Queen Regent, but her words lacked their former imperious conviction. She was speaking not to her son, the boy she could manipulate, but to a nascent god-king, a creature of fire and ancient magic. NJ allowed her the pretense of her regency, for now. It was a useful shield, a way to deflect some of the burdens of daily governance while he focused on consolidating his true power – his dragons and his magical knowledge.
He immersed himself in the Valyrian scrolls with a new urgency. The texts, once arcane and theoretical, now resonated with the living reality of the seven small, fiery lives dependent on him. He deciphered passages on dragon speech – not words, but a complex interplay of emotions, images, and focused will. He began to practice it, spending hours with his hatchlings, his mind reaching out to theirs, forging a bond that went deeper than mere master and pet. He felt their fierce loyalty, their predatory joy, their boundless capacity for fire. He also learned of the dangers: of dragons growing too wild, of their fire turning uncontrollable, of the immense responsibility that came with commanding such power.
The news of the dragon hatching spread through Westeros like the very fire that had birthed them, consuming all other topics of conversation, reshaping alliances and enmities in its wake. Ravens carried the official proclamations, but it was the tales of eyewitnesses, distorted and amplified by fear and wonder, that truly captured the imagination of the realm.
Tywin Lannister, in his war camp in the Riverlands, received the raven from King's Landing in stony silence. Kevan Lannister, reading the dispatch aloud, faltered as he described Joffrey walking into the pyre and emerging with seven living dragons. Tywin's face, that granite mask of implacable will, betrayed nothing. But when Kevan finished, the Old Lion sat for a long time, his fingers steepled, his pale green eyes fixed on some distant point.
"Dragons," he said at last, his voice devoid of inflection. "The boy has hatched dragons."
"It… it seems impossible, brother," Kevan stammered. "Sorcery? A trick?"
"A trick that convinces tens of thousands, that makes seasoned knights and cynical lords fall to their knees, is no longer a trick, Kevan. It is power." Tywin's mind was already working, recalculating. His grandson, the key to Lannister dominance, was now a force of nature, a wielder of the very magic that had once made the Targaryens masters of the world. This made Joffrey an unparalleled asset, but also an infinitely more dangerous and unpredictable one. He could no longer be considered a mere puppet. A carefully worded message of congratulation, and a summons for a trusted agent to go to King's Landing to "observe and report" on the health and well-being of his royal grandson and these… new additions to the royal menagerie, was dispatched immediately.
On Dragonstone, Stannis Baratheon crushed the raven's message in his fist, his teeth grinding. "Lies! Mummery! Dark magic conjured by that incestuous whore and her demon-spawn!" he raged. But even his iron denial was shaken by the consistency of the reports.
Melisandre, however, saw patterns in the flames. "The Lord of Light works in mysterious ways, Your Grace," she intoned, her red eyes glowing. "A great fire has been kindled in King's Landing. These are the fires of change, of a new age dawning. Whether this Joffrey is a true flame or a fleeting shadow, his dragons are real. They are power. And power must serve the Chosen One." She saw not a rival to her R'hllor, but a new, potent element in the great war she prophesied, an element that might need to be claimed, or destroyed.
In Robb Stark's war camp, as he marched south to rescue his father (unaware that Ned was already beyond such rescue, his fate sealed by Joffrey's earlier decree and Littlefinger's public "confession" which had painted Ned as a traitor to a divinely anointed King), the news of dragons fell like a mountain of ice. The Northern lords, brave and fierce in conventional warfare, were stunned into silence. Dragons. It was a word from legend, a power their ancestors had faced and, at great cost, sometimes survived, but never truly overcome.
"He hatches dragons?" young Robb said, his voice barely a whisper, looking to his mother Catelyn, whose face was a mask of horrified disbelief. "How is this possible?"
"Magic, my son," Catelyn said, her own guilt over Littlefinger's manipulations and Tyrion's abduction now compounded by this new, terrifying reality. "The Lannisters, or Joffrey himself, have delved into arts best left forgotten. This changes everything."
Some Northern lords, like the Greatjon Umber, roared defiance, proclaiming they would fight dragons as readily as lions. Others, more pragmatic, grew quiet, the implications of facing a king who commanded the ancient fires of Valyria sinking in. Robb's task, already monumental, had just become infinitely more complex. How did one wage war against a legend made flesh?
The High Septon in King's Landing, a man whose position depended on navigating the treacherous currents of royal power, found himself in a difficult position. Joffrey's fire "miracle" and now the dragon hatching were events steeped in magic that felt far more pagan and elemental than the serene doctrines of the Seven. Yet, to denounce a king who could walk through fire and command dragons was unthinkable. After a period of intense, fearful "meditation" (and several pointed inquiries from the new King's increasingly assertive representatives), the High Septon issued a carefully worded proclamation: The Seven worked in wondrous ways, and the return of dragons, symbols of the Old Valyrian empire from which the Targaryen kings (and thus, distantly, King Joffrey through his Baratheon line) had sprung, was clearly a sign of divine favor, a blessing upon Joffrey's reign, a promise of a new age of strength and glory for Westeros, guided by a king touched by the gods. It was a masterful piece of theological contortionism, and it served NJ's purposes perfectly.
Envoys began to arrive in King's Landing, not just from houses seeking favor, but from those genuinely terrified or utterly bewildered. NJ received them in the Throne Room, often with one or two of his small dragons perched on his shoulder or coiled at his feet, their jewel-like eyes glittering, their presence radiating a palpable heat and an unnerving, predatory intelligence. His Joffrey persona was still present – the bored tone, the occasional cruel remark – but it was now underpinned by an undeniable, almost tangible aura of power that made even the boldest ambassadors choose their words with extreme care. His truth-sense allowed him to dissect their carefully crafted speeches, to sense the fear, the greed, the genuine confusion behind their diplomatic overtures.
He spent his days consolidating his rule, his nights with his dragons and his Valyrian scrolls. He was learning to feed their prodigious appetites, to soothe their fiery tempers, to communicate with them through a burgeoning telepathic bond that felt like an extension of his own dragon essence. He discovered each had a distinct personality: Valerion, the bold explorer; Veridian, the silent, watchful hunter; Aurum, the calm, almost regal one; Ignis, a creature of pure, joyful flame; Tempestas, restless and quick as lightning; Glacian, aloof and beautiful, with a gaze that seemed to pierce through illusions; and Fulmen, whose temper was as volatile as a summer storm.
His understanding of Valyrian magic grew. He learned that the bond with his dragons could potentially amplify his own nascent magical abilities. The scrolls spoke of dragonlords who could influence the minds of lesser men, who could draw upon their dragons' fire to enhance their own vitality, even to scry across vast distances. These were powers NJ was determined to master.
His long-term vision began to solidify. The War of the Five Kings was an inevitability, a painful but necessary pruning of the realm's dead wood. He would win it, using not just armies, but fear, and eventually, the overwhelming power of his dragons. Once Westeros was united under his absolute, unchallengeable rule, he would turn his attention to the true enemy: the ancient, icy threat of the Long Night, the Great Other whose coming he had felt in the weirwood's deepest memories. Dragons were the ultimate weapon against ice. He had been given the tools to save this world, not as a benevolent hero, but as a ruthless, all-powerful savior, a god-emperor in the making.
The Joffrey mask was becoming less a disguise and more a thin, almost translucent, veneer over the terrible, magnificent being he was becoming. He was King Joffrey, the Dragon Lord, the Phoenix Prince. His reign was dawning not in the gentle light of common kings, but in the fiery glow of a new Valyria, rising from the ashes of a complacent world. And all of Westeros, whether they knew it or not, was being remade in his image, an image of fire, and blood, and absolute, terrifying power.