Chapter 44: The Queen's Bitter Reign, The Dragonpit's Fury, and the Shadow's Silent Gain (Dance of the Dragons: Part 3)
Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen's ascent to the Iron Throne, seized through Prince Daemon's cunning and the swift, fiery descent of their dragons upon King's Landing, proved to be a reign as brief and tumultuous as a summer storm. Her initial triumph soon curdled into a bitter draught of paranoia, cruelty, and escalating chaos. From his serene, timeless vantage point within the magically shielded heart of Mount Skatus, Aelyx Velaryon observed Rhaenyra's unravelling with the cold, dispassionate scrutiny of a vivisectionist examining a dying creature. Each misstep, each outburst of Targaryen arrogance, each drop of spilled blood was a lesson etched into the annals of his hidden kingdom.
While Lord Torrhen III Volmark (Aelyx's great-great-great-grandson, a man whose public gravitas and wisdom were now legendary in the North) maintained Skagos's impeccable neutrality, ensuring the island remained a haven of peace and prosperity, the true Lord of Skagos was consumed with the unfolding tragedy in the south. Tibbit's network of house-elf agents, now masters of infiltration operating within the very fabric of a war-torn King's Landing and the scattered encampments of Green and Black armies, provided Aelyx with a stream of intelligence so detailed it was as if he walked the blood-soaked streets himself.
Rhaenyra's rule in King's Landing began with a wave of executions. Green loyalists, or those merely suspected of harboring sympathies for the still-missing Aegon II, found themselves dragged before the Queen's harsh justice. Ser Otto Hightower, the cunning old Hand, was among the first to lose his head. While Aelyx understood the grim necessity of eliminating rivals in a civil war, he noted Rhaenyra's lack of finesse, her inability to temper justice with a show of magnanimity that might have won over wavering factions.
"She rules with a clenched fist, born of fear and grief," Aelyx commented to Lyanna, as they reviewed reports of Rhaenyra's increasingly erratic decrees. "Her losses – Lucerys, Jacaerys, the Red Queen Rhaenys – have poisoned her spirit. She sees enemies in every shadow, and her harshness breeds only more resentment."
The city of King's Landing, initially relieved to be rid of the more overt brutalities that might have been expected from Aegon II's faction, soon found itself groaning under Rhaenyra's heavy taxes, levied to fund her ongoing war effort. The treasury, largely emptied by the Greens before their flight, offered little succor. Famine began to stalk the narrow streets as trade routes were disrupted and the lands around the capital became battlegrounds. The smallfolk, who had once perhaps hoped for a more benevolent ruler in Rhaenyra, began to mutter her new moniker with growing venom: "Maegor with teats."
Prince Daemon, her husband and chief supporter, seemed to revel in the martial aspects of their rule, his counsel often leaning towards the ruthless and the spectacular. While his strategic brilliance had won them King's Landing, his arrogance and disdain for the niceties of governance further alienated the nobility and the common people.
Aelyx, observing all this, drew sharp contrasts with his own methods of rule over Skagos. His power was absolute, yes, but it was wielded from the shadows, maintained through prosperity, loyalty cultivated over generations, and an iron control that was rarely seen but always felt. Rhaenyra's power was overt, reactive, and increasingly based on fear and diminishing dragon superiority.
"She forgets," Aelyx instructed his assembled descendants in the Obsidian Council Chamber, as they studied the unfolding disaster in the south, "that even dragons cannot force true loyalty from a starving, terrified populace. Power, to endure, must be rooted in more than just fire and blood. It requires wisdom, foresight, and the consent, however grudging or manipulated, of the governed."
The war, meanwhile, continued its relentless, bloody course. While Rhaenyra held King's Landing, the Greens were far from defeated. Prince Aemond One-Eye, astride the colossal Vhagar, became a figure of pure terror in the Riverlands, burning holdfasts and slaughtering Black supporters with impunity. Lord Ormund Hightower, with young Prince Daeron Targaryen (Alicent's third son) and his elegant blue dragon Tessarion, led a formidable Green army from the Reach, slowly grinding its way towards the capital.
The losses of dragons on both sides were staggering, a profligate expenditure of Valyrian legacy that Aelyx found both appalling and strategically significant. The Battle of the Honeywine, the First Battle of Tumbleton – each engagement saw dragons fall, riders perish, and the unique magic of Valyria bleed away into the mud and smoke of Westeros.
"They are pruning their own family tree with dragonfire," Maegor Volmark, Aelyx's boisterous son, now a grimly seasoned observer of warfare, commented with a shake of his head. "By the time this Dance is done, there will be precious few true dragons left to any Targaryen."
Aelyx nodded. "And that, my son, is where our patience, our secrecy, and our own burgeoning dragon legions will one day grant us an unassailable advantage. Let them exhaust themselves. We will endure. We will grow."
Within the sanctuary of Mount Skatus, the seventeen Targaryen dragon eggs, rescued from Dragonstone and the Dragonpit, had begun to hatch. It was a moment of quiet, profound triumph for Aelyx. Under the carefully modulated heat of the deepest hatcheries, surrounded by warming enchantments and the gentle, constant thrum of phoenix song, the shells had cracked, revealing a new generation of dragons carrying the direct bloodlines of legendary Targaryen beasts.
There was a magnificent black hatchling, its scales shot through with veins of fiery red, undoubtedly from the egg Aelyx suspected had belonged to the line of Balerion himself. A trio of pale blue eggs, speckled with silver – Dreamfyre's legacy – yielded three beautiful, ethereal dragonlings. Two golden hatchlings, from the eggs found near the dying Sunfyre, shimmered with an inner light. The others, from Dragonstone's wilder clutches, were a kaleidoscope of greens, bronzes, and indigos, each unique, each pulsing with potent Valyrian fire.
These seventeen "Targaryen-Skagosi" hatchlings were immediately integrated into Aelyx's meticulous breeding program, their genetic heritage carefully cataloged by Aenar and his team of house-elf dracologists. They were not just additions to the Skagosi dragon numbers; they were a vital infusion of new blood, a safeguarding of lineages that might otherwise have been lost forever in the suicidal fury of the Dance. Aelyx envisioned them breeding with his own established Skagosi lines, creating dragons of unparalleled strength, intelligence, and unique magical affinities.
While new dragons were being born in the secret heart of Skagos, the dragons of King's Landing faced their doom, not at the hands of other dragons, but from the very people Rhaenyra Targaryen had alienated. The Storming of the Dragonpit was an event of such anarchic, bloody fury that even Aelyx, with his centuries of observing mortal folly, was taken aback by its suddenness and ferocity.
Driven by famine, fear, and the inflammatory rhetoric of a mad prophet known as the Shepherd, the smallfolk of King's Landing rose up in a desperate, suicidal mob. Their target: the Dragonpit, the symbol of Targaryen power, the lair of the beasts that had brought so much fire and terror to their lives. Tens of thousands swarmed the Hill of Rhaenys, armed with crude weapons, torches, and a collective madness.
The dragons within – Shrykos, Morghul, Tyraxes (Joffrey Velaryon's young dragon, as he had tried to fly to the Pit to save them and perished), and Queen Helaena's beloved Dreamfyre – were trapped. What followed was a massacre. The smallfolk, heedless of their own immense losses, overwhelmed the guards, broke into the Dragonpit, and, in a frenzy of terror and hatred, slaughtered the chained or confused dragons. Shrykos was killed by a woodsman's axe. Morghul was slain by a burning crossbowman. Tyraxes, managing to break his chains, killed hundreds before being brought down by the sheer weight of numbers and collapsing debris. Dreamfyre, the oldest and largest of the Pit dragons, broke free of her dome, slaughtered thousands in her fiery death throes, and ultimately brought much of the Dragonpit crashing down upon herself and her attackers.
Rhaenyra's own dragon, Syrax, sensing the death of her kin, broke her chains in the Red Keep's yard and flew to the Dragonpit, only to be overwhelmed by the mob, pelted with stones and spears, and eventually brought down, her golden scales stained with her own blood and that of countless commoners.
Lyra and Daenys, witnessing these events through their tortured greensight, were physically ill, their connection to the dying dragons a searing agony. Aelyx, though his face remained an impassive mask, felt a cold fury at the sheer, wasteful stupidity of it all.
"Five Targaryen dragons dead in a single night," he announced to his horrified family. "Slain not by rival dragonlords, not by cunning warriors, but by a mob of terrified, starving commoners. This… this is the nadir of Targaryen rule. To lose control so completely, to allow their greatest symbols of power to be torn apart by the very people they are sworn to protect… Rhaenyra has failed not just as a queen, but as a Valyrian, as a guardian of the dragon flame."
The Storming of the Dragonpit was a catastrophic blow to Rhaenyra's reign and her psyche. Her son Joffrey was dead. Her own dragon Syrax was dead. The city was in open, bloody revolt. Her authority had shattered. With Green armies closing in, and King's Landing no longer safe, Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, broken and paranoid, was forced to flee the capital she had held for less than half a year, escaping with a few loyalists, her remaining wealth dwindling, her claim to the Iron Throne now little more than a desperate hope.
Aelyx watched her flight with detached interest. He had no sympathy for her, nor for her Green rivals. They were all pieces in a game of self-destruction. His focus remained on the long-term implications. The Targaryen dragon population was being decimated at an alarming rate. Vhagar, under Aemond's command, was still a terrifying force for the Greens. Daemon Targaryen and Caraxes, along with the dragonseeds Nettles on Sheepstealer, Hugh Hammer on Vermithor, and Ulf the White on Silverwing, still fought for the Blacks. But many of the great dragons of the Conquest era were now gone, or their riders dead. The balance of draconic power in Westeros was irrevocably shifting.
"The age of overwhelming Targaryen dragon supremacy is ending, whether they realize it yet or not," Aelyx mused to Lyanna. "This Dance will bleed them of their greatest strength for generations, perhaps forever. When the fires finally die down, their depleted dragon numbers will make them vulnerable in ways Aegon the Conqueror could never have imagined."
He looked towards the vast, magically shielded caverns beneath Mount Skatus, where over two hundred and seventy Skagosi dragons now laired, including the seventeen new Targaryen bloodline hatchlings. His own hidden air force was not only intact but growing, its strength preserved, its riders disciplined, their magic potent.
The public Lord Volmark of Skagos sent expressions of profound sorrow (and discreet relief shipments of Skagosi grain to the beleaguered North, further cementing their loyalty) at the news of the chaos in King's Landing and the tragic loss of so many royal dragons. He reaffirmed Skagos's unwavering neutrality in the Targaryen dispute, its primary concern the peace and well-being of the North under the guidance of Lord Stark.
Aelyx knew the Dance was far from over. Rhaenyra was a fugitive, but still a queen to her loyalists. Aegon II, though rumored to be still recovering from his wounds at Rook's Rest, would eventually re-emerge. Aemond One-Eye and Daemon Targaryen, two of the most formidable dragonriders alive, were still on the board, their inevitable confrontation likely to be a spectacle of legendary destruction. More battles would be fought, more betrayals enacted.
But Aelyx felt a growing certainty. The Targaryens were burning their own house down. And from the ashes, patiently, silently, the shadow kingdom of Skagos would continue to rise, its own fires tended, its own dragons nurtured, its own eternal destiny unfolding according to a plan laid down centuries ago by an immortal mind that saw beyond the fleeting, fiery tragedies of mortal kings and queens. The third act of the Dance was about to begin, and Aelyx Velaryon would be watching, his harvest already gathered, his own dragons dreaming beneath the silent mountain.