Pre-Chapter A/N:Another chapter on time? Guess my lock-in is going pretty well. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
I hadn't actually considered that the heat was going to be so much of a problem, I thought to myself as I watched Ben frantically fan himself. There was little fresh air coming into the hold we were in. Some of it came in, of course. Air-tight facilities were beyond the technological level of this society I found myself in, and air-tight would have been a bad idea either way considering that things were bad enough now.
Bad enough for everyone without the Blood of the Dragon running strongly within them, at least. I wondered how Vaemond was dealing with things right now. He did have Valyrian blood, so maybe he had the same advantages I did. The advantages that allowed me to sit in a stifling, balmy chamber without a bit of discomfort to show for it. It was cheating, plain and simple. But it was the best kind of cheating because I didn't have to do anything for it. I was just built different.
So instead of lording my superior constitution over those I led, I had retreated to my chambers when I was not needed for any of my duties, and I spent the time there making plans. Plans for what the Stepstones would become under my rule. Plans for what my children would eventually inherit and what their children after them would inherit as well.
Now that I had time to do nothing but think, it was clearer than ever that Westeros was a lost cause. The Dance would come. It was practically inevitable; Viserys would never resolve the succession sensibly while he lived, and Otto's ambition would never be tempered to the point where he would allow his grandchildren to be denied what he viewed as rightfully theirs.
And when the Dance came, I would have to pick a side. It might have been petty, but I knew it was not going to be Rhaenyra because fuck her. I also had my misgivings regarding the Hightowers. That would mean neutrality, and since there was no guarantee that both sides would destroy each other as thoroughly as they had managed in canon, there was a chance that the victor would deem it fit to come for us for our neutrality. Vhagar and Igneel would be the most dangerous dragons in the world by the time that came around, though. Sure, Vermithor and Silverwing would probably be larger than Igneel if his growth maintained its present rate, but I doubted either of them would be half as ferocious or as well trained as Igneel was.
Part of me salivated at the thought of having my children claim Vermithor and Silverwing when I eventually had some, but that would be an overreach of the highest order. If my children were to ride dragons, they would have to be new hatchlings, much the same way I took Igneel. Laena had been able to keep Vhagar because the dragon had left Targaryen territory to roost in the Stepstones. Going to the Dragonmont and stealing a pair of dragons would be beyond the pale.
Neutrality would be the choice, but I would have to be ready to face whoever remained afterwards. Whether it was Rhaenyra or the Hightowers that remained, there was always a chance that they would be dissatisfied with our decision not to back their claim. That would be the pretext they would use. It was what I would do in their place, because allowing House Velaryon to continue on the ascendancy while they suffered the aftermath of a war would be a mistake.
Even as I thought of it, another idea came to mind. There was a chance I could use the Dance to my advantage. That decree Viserys had made was bullshit. The Stepstones were mine and would belong to my children after me. I could force a recognition of that from either side as a condition for aid, but that was a terrible idea, for I would be gaining what had already once been mine for involving myself in the greatest butchery the world would have ever seen. Not just me, but Laena, our children, our people. Putting them all at stake for what they had already fought for would be foolish. No.
The Stepstones were mine, and I would not be negotiating for what was mine. And if the Stepstones could not be on offer, then there was nothing they could offer that would make it worth my time to involve myself in their petty war. I didn't want the Seven Kingdoms. Not truly. The opportunity to carve an enduring legacy at the top of the totem pole sounded tempting, but I knew it was a trap. The Seven Kingdoms were too big to change in one go. Anything I sought to achieve would have timescales measured in years and decades.
Jaehaerys' roads were the greatest single infrastructure project any king had managed so far, and they had taken him much of his life. Said roads were little more than dirt tracks in some places. I would spend my days dealing with self-important lords and their petty games over and over again. It was hell. On the other hand, the Stepstones were essentially virgin land. We'd destroyed whatever had stood there before our coming. Any settlers would do so by my will. I would be the one to appoint those who ruled in my stead, and I had the good sense to not make the lordships hereditary, giving me a sword held over their heads no matter what.
If I wanted to focus on the Stepstones, I would have to accept that there was a chance Driftmark would be lost to me. I hated even thinking about it, but if I were in their place after winning the Dance and a war with House Velaryon was on the cards, the best place to strike would be Driftmark. It was a single island, right next to the Targaryen seat of power, Dragonstone.
Defending it was going to be a hassle. There was the chance an attack at Driftmark could even be feigned to draw out our dragons, and then ships would come from the other end of Westeros—Lannisport or the Iron Islands, perhaps—to raze the Stepstones while we were gone.
So if war ever broke out between us and those on the throne, we would have to abandon Driftmark. We didn't have bodies upon bodies to toss into the meat grinder like they did. We would have to evacuate the island best we could, destroy whatever we couldn't take with us to deny them any use of our resources, and then focus our energy on the Stepstones.
But if that happened, there was a chance we could get something else. During the journey, I'd taken a good look at both Lys and Volantis. The latter was a bastion of strength even now, but the former? They were integrating more and more together through the Triarchy. Their loss to me had driven them even closer together—the three daughters. So there was a chance that I could swoop in and conquer all three of them at the same time. When the Dance broke out, I could use the distraction in Westeros to launch my own campaign.
A victory of the sort I would obtain there would be a show of strength that would dissuade the rest of Westeros from wanting to wage war against us. But then again, it could do the opposite. Losses in such a victory were inevitable, and they could serve as a signal to the rest of Westeros that we were weak and ripe for the taking. Then there was the chance that taking the Triarchy would lead to expanded conflict with Volantis or with Braavos. Neither of them would much appreciate an expansion of our interests in mainland Essos.
Of course, instead of the Triarchy, I could go after Volantis. Volantis didn't have much in the way of allies thanks to all the misbehaviour they'd been getting up to. Casus belli in that case wasn't going to be all that hard to find either, with them ignoring every overture we made to normalise relations between the Stepstones and them. But then, if I took Volantis, the Triarchy and Braavos would still be opposed to it simply because it represented an expansion of my interests into Essos. For all the daughters praised the legacy of Valyria and each claimed a succession in their own way, none of them wanted to see the empire return, and, for better or worse, House Velaryon represented what remained of Valyria more than any others except perhaps the Targaryens who had actually been dragon lords. Perhaps in a few generations, we would be the undisputed premier Valyrian house, especially with the Targaryens likely to cripple themselves in the Dance.
So Volantis would not be a bad target, but would not be a particularly good one. Of course, there was the maximalist approach of saying, why not both? Volantis and the Triarchy. It would take careful planning and would bring an end to whatever hopes we had of a good relationship with Braavos, but what use would we have for them when we had taken so much in? That would be the birth of a truly massive kingdom. A kingdom with little in the way of weaknesses. Food from the extremely fertile Disputed Lands, industry from the Stepstones, and luxury goods from Volantis.
All these cities had massive slave populations as well, so there was a good chance that I could win over most of the populace post-conquest. I had no interest in abiding slavery in any territory I controlled, so freeing them should give me some points to start things off with. I would have to do it quickly. An ideal conquest would proceed one city at a time, taking the time to carefully integrate each city with my existing economy and government. But that ran the risk of the others coming together to oppose my next conquest. Or even attacking while I was trying to integrate a new conquest was a risk.
But then doing it quickly ran the very real risk of biting off more than we could chew.
"Why did I agree to this?" Ser Ben's voice cut me from my thoughts.
"Having second thoughts, ser?" I asked with a building smirk. He was not taking well to the stifling conditions at all. His refusal to take off his armour ran the very real risk of leading to a sudden heat stroke.
"Seventh, in truth. Valyria. It sounds like a dream. Gold enough to fill a hundred ships, and steel worth more than gold or silver, and then there is the magic. No one from our houses has lived without dreaming of it. But I have lived this long by knowing an essential truth. Dreams do not come true. It has been so long since I last saw home—my mother and siblings. I fear I will die here so far from them."
"Is that so? You ride with me, Ben. With me, dreams do come true. Wait and see. I have never failed you, have I?" I asked, and almost like I had cued it, there was a call from outside the door.
"Land ahoy!" the voice called.
I turned to look at Ben, giving him a smirk.
"Let's go have a look at our target, shall we?" I asked.
We left my chambers. He finally stripped that damnable armour off to put on the plague suit so we could make our way onto the deck. I signalled one of the sailors to hide the damned thing so he wouldn't put it back on when we returned.
We emerged onto the deck and found much of our vision blocked by the steam that gave this sea its name—why it was called the Smoking Sea and not the Steaming Sea was beyond me.
"This way, my lord," one of the sailors called. We followed his lead until we reached a point on the deck from which we could use the far-eyes to see through the narrow corridor in the steam that had opened up to give us a view of the peninsula. It was... magnificent.
The skyline of Valyria was dominated by the volcanoes where its dragons had once roosted. The acclaimed Fourteen Flames burned strongly, as strong as ever, I suspected. Each of them belched smoke continuously. And then there was the rest of the city. The buildings remained standing for the most part. There was a thick coating of volcanic ash on all of them, I could see. But apart from that, all the ones a reasonable distance from the volcanoes still stood.
Near the middle of the island city was a massive building with a domed roof and several spire towers that rose from it in the shape of dragons moulded from black stone roaring up at the sky. The building was massive. Easily of a size with the Red Keep and most likely bigger if I was judging the scale of things correctly. That had probably been the centre building where the Freehold's government had been administered from.
It stood stalwart, one of the last remnants of an empire that had once ruled the world—or at least the parts of the world that it cared to rule—and then there was the rest of the city. Several buildings stood untouched like nothing had happened. It was like a city frozen in time. Scary. Part of me ached to see it. To reach it, but I had to be disciplined.
Greed was the undoing of many men in my position. There was no need to reach Valyria. I panned my gaze over to the road that joined them together and beheld what remained of Tyria. Where Valyria had been astonishing in its level of preservation, Tyria was astonishing in its level of destruction. The entire place was now a wasteland like I had feared, but there was still more destruction than there should have been considering the Doom had originated from Valyria itself. Several buildings had collapsed into naught but rubble, with most of them being on the outskirts. In the middle of the city stood a central building that was like the one that stood in the middle of Valyria in the same way that water was like oil. They were both massive, but that is where the similarities ended.
Where the Valyrian building was meant to convey beauty and the sophistication of Valyrian architecture, the Tyrian one was a fortress. It was built to ward off invaders more than anything else. That made sense to some extent. Attacking Tyria was one of the few ways to reach Valyria after all, so it made sense that they sought to prevent that from being the case.
I looked through the city and then I froze. There! A black shadow flitted between two buildings so quickly that part of me wondered if it was a mirage. Some effect of the heat that I couldn't quite feel consciously but was still affecting me nonetheless. But then again, there it was. Another shadow between a different set of buildings this time.
"Ser Ben?" I called slowly, not trying to allow any panic to seep into my voice—even though I was feeling quite a bit of it welling up in my gut. We could turn back; we could fucking turn back.
"My lord?"
"Please pan your far-eye over to Tyria and tell me if you see any movement," I said, careful not to allow my voice to carry too far so he was the only one who actually heard me. Credit to him, he asked no follow-up questions and turned his attention just as I had instructed him to.
I kept my gaze roaming the city looking for more, and before I could see anything else, I heard a yelp as the sound of the wood and glass clattering to the deck we stood atop echoed through the still silence.
"Seven Hells," he said, feet taking him backwards. I felt a calmness take hold of me at his reaction. It was like the panic he felt—he felt for two. Because I could not allow myself to panic. Not when we had come this far. Not when there was so much to be ventured.
"What did you see, Ser Ben?" I asked even as my gaze continued to search. I wanted to catch one of them in stillness, but it seemed that they could not stay still. Neither could they abide the sun for long. They shot between buildings, seeking the shade and then abandoning it in some perverse cycle of motion and stillness. If the sun was the only thing preventing them from running rampant like I feared, then what would happen when the sun went down? I shuddered to think of it.
"I asked what you saw, my good ser," I prompted, knowing that there was no burying it—not after the reaction he just had.
"There is a creature there. Something from the Seven Hells. It moved faster than any human could," he said. I nodded, keeping my gaze on the city.
I near flinched as this time, instead of one of the spectres, I saw two. They slammed into each other with a savage intensity. They wrestled for dominance out in the open for a few seconds, and in that time, I eagerly devoured what I could of their appearance. One of them claimed victory, slamming the other into the wall of a house and then biting down on its neck so savagely that it near separated its head from its shoulders with the attack. And then, when the other had stilled—dead—it began to feed, eating the body of its fellow with no hesitation. Cannibals, I realised.
"Indeed. Well, it is time to prepare ourselves to send it back where it came from," I said, not letting slip that there was more than one of the things.
"How long till landfall on Tyria?" I asked the man next to me.
"Two nights, my lord. But surely you do not intend for us to..."
"To what? To do the thing we came here for? Of course I do. And so do you. Prepare yourselves for landfall," I said.
A/N: Yes, my version of Valyria is markedly different from canon. Call it Author fiat. Surely no one thought Valyria would be easy. Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.