Chapter 2: The Golden Tide and the Shadow Legion
The years between seven and sixteen were a crucible for Aelyx Velaryon. Outwardly, he was the pride of his father, Aerion. His intellect was undeniable, his grasp of Valyrian history, rhetoric, and even the complex logistics of the Velaryon merchant fleet, surprisingly astute for his age. He was handsome, with the silver-gold hair of his ancestors, though his eyes held a violet intensity that was often unsettling to those who met his gaze for too long. He paid lip service to the training expected of a young dragonlord, learning the Valyrian reverence for their colossal mounts, though his own family's dragons were modest compared to the behemoths of the ruling forty families. He even feigned a polite, if distant, interest in the intricate, often venomous, social maneuverings of Valyrian high society.
Internally, however, Aelyx was a whirlwind of focused activity. Voldemort's iron will drove him, Flamel's ancient wisdom guided him, and the chilling memory of a lightning-bolt scar served as a constant reminder of the perils of hubris. His Occlumency shields became flawless, unbreachable fortresses. He practiced Legilimency with a terrifying subtlety, not to control, but to understand, to anticipate. He brushed against the minds of his tutors, discerning the true extent of their knowledge, their biases, their hidden fears. He observed the political currents of Valyria, the festering arrogance, the decadent complacency, the simmering rivalries that lay beneath the polished veneer of the Freehold's invincibility. All of it was data, cataloged and analyzed.
His Stark heritage continued to manifest in unsettling ways. The greensight sharpened, offering him fleeting, often brutal, glimpses of what was to come: the sky weeping fire, towers crumbling, a sea of screaming faces. These visions were a constant goad, reminding him that time was a luxury he could not afford to waste. His warging abilities grew in secret. He started with the firewyrms, then moved to the gulls that wheeled over the Velaryon estates by the sea, feeling the rush of wind beneath their wings, seeing the world from a dizzying new perspective. The thought of merging his consciousness with a dragon, truly feeling its primal power, its fiery heart, was a tantalizing prospect he held in reserve.
His study of magic was relentless. The knowledge of Voldemort and Flamel was a vast, inexhaustible library. He cross-referenced their understanding of spellcraft, potion-brewing, and ritualistic magic with the fragmented lore he could glean about Valyrian sorcery. Valyrian magic, he discovered, was deeply intertwined with blood and fire, potent but often crude and perilous. It lacked the finesse, the subtle control, of the spells he knew from his past life. He practiced in the dead of night, within a chamber in the expanded trunk, soundproofed and warded by spells that drew on both Voldemort's dark ingenuity and Flamel's protective charms. Simple transfigurations, charms, hexes – he was re-familiarizing himself with the feel of magic, adapting his previous understanding to the ambient magical currents of this new world.
The house-elves were his silent, unfailingly loyal instruments. Mipsy managed his hidden resources with meticulous care. Tibbit, under ever more sophisticated glamours, became his eyes and ears in the sprawling, dangerous city of Valyria, mapping its underbelly, identifying potential assets and threats. Kreely and Gorok, the strongest of the elves, were being subtly trained in more… assertive forms of intervention, should the need arise. The others maintained his secret chambers, brewed simple potions under his direction, and awaited his greater purpose for them.
As he approached his sixteenth year, a new urgency settled upon him. The Doom was now only four years away according to his best calculations based on the greensight visions and the historical echoes Flamel's soul retained. His plans for Skagos, for a hidden sanctuary, needed to accelerate. And for that, he needed two things Valyria had in abundance: wealth and manpower. Manpower of a specific, malleable kind.
The Philosopher's Stone. It lay dormant in its velvet-lined casket, deep within the trunk, its gentle hum a promise of untold power. Flamel had used it to live for centuries, to create enough gold for a comfortable, unassuming existence. Voldemort had craved its Elixir for true immortality. Aelyx saw it as the engine of his nascent empire.
The decision to finally utilize its transmutative properties on a grand scale was not taken lightly. Voldemort's soul-fragment urged immediate, ostentatious displays of wealth, the acquisition of power through overt dominance. But Flamel's caution, amplified by Aelyx's own deeply ingrained fear of repeating past mistakes, dictated a more subtle approach. Secrecy was paramount.
He chose his laboratory with care: a new, heavily warded sub-level within the magically expanded trunk, a chamber Tibbit had helped him excavate and reinforce using house-elf magic, far from any prying eyes or magical detection. The base materials were mundane: lead ingots acquired discreetly by Mipsy through carefully obscured purchases from various Valyrian smelters, and common stones gathered by the elves from desolate stretches of coastline.
The ritual itself was a fusion of Flamel's alchemical genius and Voldemort's focused intent. Aelyx, garbed in simple, dark robes, stood before the alchemical circle, the Stone pulsating softly on a obsidian pedestal. The air crackled with contained power. He didn't need the incantations Flamel had favored; Voldemort's will, channeled through the Stone, was a far more potent catalyst. He focused, visualizing the dull grey of lead atoms rearranging, reconfiguring into the bright, noble structure of gold.
A wave of scarlet light pulsed from the Stone, washing over the ingots. There was no sound, no explosion, just a silent, breathtaking transformation. The lead shimmered, then glowed, its surface flowing like liquid light before settling into the unmistakable, buttery sheen of pure, unadulterated gold. He repeated the process with the stones, watching them crumble and reform into glittering piles of golden nuggets.
The sheer ease of it, the limitlessness of it, was intoxicating. He could create mountains of gold, enough to buy kingdoms, to fund armies, to remake the world in his image. The Voldemort aspect of his soul reveled in this potential. But Aelyx, the cautious survivor, quickly reined it in. The gold was a means to an end, not the end itself.
Over several weeks, working in intense, clandestine sessions, he amassed a fortune that would have dwarfed the treasuries of the wealthiest Dragonlord families. The gold was melted down by the house-elves, under precise instructions, into standardized, untraceable bars and coins of archaic, unidentifiable designs – nothing that could be traced back to any known Valyrian mint. Mipsy then began the complex task of slowly, carefully, introducing this wealth into circulation through a labyrinthine network of cut-outs and disguised transactions, primarily in the bustling, anonymous slave markets of the Valyrian peninsula and its surrounding territories.
For his army, Aelyx had a specific vision. He needed absolute loyalty, a force bound to him alone, untainted by Valyrian arrogance or the fickle allegiances of Westerosi lords. He would build this force from the ground up. Valyria, for all its splendor, was built upon the backs of slaves. Millions toiled in its mines, its foundries, its estates, their lives brutal and short. They were a resource, plentiful and, to the Valyrians, disposable.
To Aelyx, they were raw material. His moral compass, already skewed by Voldemort's profound amorality, saw no ethical dilemma. These slaves were already condemned to a life of misery or a premature death. Under him, they would have purpose, protection, and a share in the security he intended to build – provided they gave him their undiluted, unwavering loyalty.
He targeted teenagers, from roughly thirteen to seventeen years of age. Old enough to possess resilience and the capacity for rigorous training, yet young enough for their worldviews to be reshaped, their loyalties forged anew. He sought a mix of strengths: the sturdy endurance of mine-workers, the latent agility of field hands, even the desperate cunning of those who had survived the harsh life of city slaves. He instructed Tibbit and the other elves, now operating under complex glamours that made them appear as seasoned, discreet slave traders or their agents, to look for sparks of defiance, intelligence, or simply a will to survive.
The number he had settled on was ambitious: thirty thousand. A force large enough to subdue the wildlings of Skagos, to carve out a defensible domain, and to form the core of his hidden sanctuary's guardians.
The acquisition was a masterpiece of logistical planning and covert operations, orchestrated by Aelyx from the shadows and executed by his house-elves. They never bought large lots from a single source. Instead, they made hundreds of small purchases from countless markets – from the grand slave depots of Valyria itself to the smaller, rougher markets in the tributary cities along the Skahazadhan River and the coastal towns of the Summer Sea. The gold, untraceable and plentiful, flowed like water.
The purchased slaves were not immediately brought together. That would have been impossible to hide. Instead, using a combination of house-elf apparition (side-along apparition for small groups, under cloaking spells), hidden compartments in mundane merchant vessels (crewed by magically controlled temporary servants or deeply Obliviated sailors), and a network of magically shielded temporary holding sites scouted by Tibbit in remote, desolate areas, the teenagers were spirited away.
These initial encounters were often brutal. The slaves were terrified, confused, expecting only more hardship. Kreely and Gorok, their small forms belying their magical strength, maintained order, their methods swift and uncompromising, but never gratuitously cruel. Aelyx had been clear: he needed their will broken enough to accept a new master, but not so shattered as to render them useless.
Once secured, small groups were brought to the true staging ground: a vast, magically excavated series of caverns deep beneath an uninhabited, rocky islet a few days' sail from the Valyrian coast, a place Aelyx had identified through a combination of old Velaryon sea charts and Tibbit's extensive scouting. The entrance was a narrow, magically concealed fissure in a cliff face, accessible only at low tide and shielded by powerful repellent charms against both mundane and magical detection.
Inside, house-elf magic had wrought a marvel. The caverns were lit by softly glowing crystals, ventilated by magical currents, and equipped with basic but clean living quarters, training grounds, and stores of food and water (much of it magically duplicated or preserved). It was here that the true work began.
Aelyx made his first appearance to them not as a Valyrian lord, but as something… other. He used a subtle glamour, not to change his features entirely, but to lend them an ageless, slightly ethereal quality. His silver-gold hair seemed to catch the light in an unnatural way, and his violet eyes glowed with an inner power. He spoke to them not in High Valyrian, the language of their oppressors, but in a simplified trade tongue, and promised them something they had never known: a future.
"You have been slaves," his voice echoed in the main cavern, amplified by a Sonorus charm, as thousands of wary, frightened eyes watched him. "Your lives were not your own. Your futures were chains and toil. I offer you a different path."
He paused, letting his words sink in. "I offer you freedom from your past masters. I offer you purpose. I offer you strength. In return, I ask for one thing: your absolute, unbreakable loyalty. Serve me, fight for me, and you will be part of something greater than yourselves. You will be the foundation of a new people, a new power, hidden from the cruelties of this world. Betray me, or falter in your devotion, and you will wish for the mercy of your former owners."
There was no kindness in his voice, only cold, hard promise. Voldemort's understanding of power dynamics was at play. He was not offering them a choice; he was offering them a new master, but one whose ambitions, if they served well, would ultimately benefit them.
The training regimen was brutal, designed to strip away their old identities and forge them into a unified, disciplined force. The house-elves, led by Mipsy (logistics and indoctrination), Kreely (physical conditioning and discipline), and Gorok (combat training), were relentless instructors. They were aided by Pip and Elara, who managed the surprisingly complex tasks of feeding and clothing such a multitude, and Fimble and Winky, who handled sanitation and rudimentary medical care, their house-elf healing magic surprisingly effective on mundane wounds.
Days were filled with grueling physical conditioning – running, climbing, strength training. They were taught to fight with short swords, spears, and bows – practical, effective weapons suitable for irregular warfare in a rugged terrain like Skagos. Stealth, discipline, and absolute obedience were hammered into them. Flamel's knowledge provided insights into efficient training methods, while Voldemort's contributed to the psychological conditioning.
Aelyx himself oversaw the indoctrination. He used subtle Legilimency to identify potential troublemakers or those whose wills were too resistant, making them disappear quietly in the night – a chilling example to the others. For the rest, he cultivated an aura of an almost divine benefactor, a powerful, enigmatic figure who held their fate in his hands. He had the house-elves teach them a newly created, simple runic script and a spoken language, a blend of basic Valyrian and guttural sounds, unintelligible to outsiders – their own secret tongue. This further isolated them from the outside world and bound them together.
He also introduced rudimentary magical concepts, not to make them sorcerers – that gift was for his bloodline alone – but to instill in them an awe and respect for his power, and to make them more effective servants. They learned about wards, simple glamours (to recognize, not cast), and the terrifying might of his personal magic, which he demonstrated sparingly but with devastating effect.
Potions from Flamel's repertoire were used subtly: strengthening draughts to aid their physical development, potions to ward off common sicknesses that could cripple such a large, confined group, and, more controversially within Aelyx's own mind, draughts that engendered a sense of well-being and mild suggestibility during their indoctrination sessions. He avoided anything akin to the Imperius Curse for the rank and file; he remembered all too well how such control could be broken or turned. He wanted loyalty born of dependency and cultivated belief, not brute magical force. For his most trusted commanders, who would emerge over time, perhaps more… binding methods would be considered.
As his seventeenth year approached, three years before the projected Doom, the Shadow Legion – for so Aelyx had secretly named them – was taking shape. Thirty thousand lean, hardened teenagers, their eyes no longer holding the dull despair of slaves, but a new, fierce light. They were clad in dark, practical leather armor, dyed with pigments found in the caverns, and armed with weapons forged by house-elves in magically created smithies, the metal treated with alchemical processes known to Flamel to enhance its strength and durability. They moved with a silent coordination that was eerie to behold. Their loyalty to Aelyx was absolute, a fanatical devotion cultivated in the darkness, away from the sun and the eyes of the world.
While this hidden army grew, Aelyx Velaryon maintained his public façade. He showed a growing interest in the Velaryon family's extensive shipping concerns, using it as a cover to subtly acquire ships – not Valyrian warships, but sturdy, unassuming merchant cogs and galleys from various Free Cities, ostensibly for expanding trade routes. These ships, crewed by more magically controlled or Obliviated sailors, would be the transport for his Legion when the time came to unleash them upon Skagos. His knowledge of the Velaryon ledgers also allowed Mipsy to more effectively launder the vast sums of gold the Stone produced, channeling it through complex trade deals and investments that enriched House Velaryon on the surface, masking the true, inexhaustible source of his wealth.
His mother, Lyra, sometimes looked at him with a strange, searching expression in her grey Stark eyes. He felt her natural empathy, perhaps even a faint, unconscious brush of her own latent greensight, sensing the profound changes in him, the vast, cold purpose that now defined her son. But she said nothing, her melancholy deepening. His father, Aerion, saw only a son growing into a capable, if unusually reserved, young man, a future pillar of their House.
They had no idea that beneath their roof, within their very city, a power was rising that owed nothing to Valyrian steel or dragon flame. Aelyx felt a grim satisfaction. The Dragonlords, in their arrogance, were blind. They played their games of power, oblivious to the true storm gathering on their horizon, and equally oblivious to the silent, patient predator moving in their midst.
His dragon egg collection had also begun, albeit slowly and with extreme caution. Through intermediaries, using the intelligence gathered by Tibbit, he had identified two minor Dragonlord families teetering on the brink of financial ruin. A carefully orchestrated series of 'misfortunes' – a lost trade shipment, a competitor undercutting their prices (both subtly arranged by Aelyx's burgeoning network) – pushed them over the edge. Then, a discreet offer was made through a chain of anonymous agents: a fortune in gold for a single, fertile dragon egg. Desperate, shamed, but needing the infusion of wealth to save their ancient names from utter collapse, both families had secretly, reluctantly, agreed.
Two precious eggs now rested in a specially prepared, temperature-controlled chamber within the trunk, nestled beside the still-unhatched phoenix eggs. One was a deep obsidian black with crimson swirls, the other a mottled green and bronze. They pulsed with a fierce, contained heat, a promise of future power. He resisted the urge to try and hatch them immediately. That would come later, in the sanctuary he would build. For now, their acquisition was a victory, a small step towards his ultimate goal of a dynasty of immortal, dragon-riding wizards.
The conquest of Skagos was the next crucial stage. It would be the Shadow Legion's first test, and his first act of overt, albeit deniable, conquest. Three years before the Doom. The clock was ticking. The Valyrian Freehold slumbered on the edge of annihilation, and Aelyx Velaryon, the boy who was so much more, was meticulously laying the foundations of an empire built on secrets, sorcery, and the unwavering loyalty of an army born in darkness.