Chapter 2: Whispers in the Desolation
The moniker, The Sovereign of Scales, settled into Alaric's consciousness with the comfortable weight of a perfectly balanced ledger. It was precise, evocative, and held a subtle menace that appealed to his predatory core. It spoke of transactions, of value given and received, a divine economy where faith was the ultimate currency and he, the celestial merchant, controlled the exchange rate. He was no benevolent shepherd; he was a broker of destinies, and the price, inevitably, would be steep.
His immediate surroundings, the aftermath of the Ironborn raid, offered little beyond grim testament to the brutality of this world. The last vestiges of smoke curled from the charred timbers of the longhouses, and the silence was heavy, broken only by the mournful cry of a distant gull and the whisper of the wind through the coarse grass. The reavers had moved on, their bloodlust sated for the moment, leaving behind a canvas of destruction. Alaric, in his nascent, semi-ethereal state, drifted through the ruins. He still felt tethered to a physical approximation of his former self, but the edges were blurred, his connection to the ground less absolute. It was as if he were a phantom, still learning the rules of his haunting.
He extended a shadowy hand towards a blackened, half-melted pewter cup lying amidst the debris. He focused, channeling that inner thrum of power, picturing the cup lifting. For a moment, it wobbled, a tiny vibration that could have been a trick of the wind. He intensified his concentration, a sliver of his mercantile ruthlessness sharpening his will. The cup scraped a hair's breadth across the dirt, then stilled.
Frustration, a rare but potent emotion for Alaric, flickered. This was… underwhelming. He was a god, damn it, not a poltergeist fumbling with household objects. But caution, his oldest and most reliable companion, tempered the frustration. He was new. Untrained. Like a newborn babe flexing its fingers, he had to learn control. Devouring other gods? That ambition felt a long, long way off if he couldn't even manage basic telekinesis.
He recalled the ease with which he had influenced the dying Ironborn's thoughts. Perhaps his strength lay less in crude physical manipulation and more in the subtle, insidious pathways of the mind. That was familiar territory. His entire mortal life had been built on understanding and exploiting the desires, fears, and ambitions of others.
Faith is the key, he reminded himself. Without believers, without their focused spiritual energy flowing towards me, I am merely a potential. An empty vessel. He needed to fill that echoing void within him.
The challenge was the initial investment. How does one acquire faith when one has none to begin with? It was the divine equivalent of needing capital to start a business, but his initial coin was belief itself. He couldn't simply announce his godhood from the heavens – he lacked the power for such a display, and even if he could, it would likely be met with disbelief or unwelcome attention from established divine players.
He needed a niche market, a demographic ripe for a new spiritual product. The Ironborn raid, while a missed opportunity in terms of immediate soul-harvesting, had illuminated a crucial aspect of this world: life was cheap, and the gods were often silent or, in the case of the Drowned God, catered to a very specific, violent worldview. Where there was suffering, there was a vacuum of hope. And where hope failed, desperation could be a powerful motivator.
Alaric decided to expand his search beyond the immediate, desolate coastline. He focused, not on moving his physical form, but on extending his awareness. He reached out with his nascent senses, attempting to 'feel' the emotional landscape around him. It was a strange sensation, like casting an invisible net into a sea of human sentiment. He brushed against flickers of contentment, currents of mundane anxiety, eddies of simple joys. These were not what he sought.
He was looking for the sharp, acrid tang of despair, the burning heat of unfulfilled ambition, the bitter chill of betrayal. These were the emotions that created cracks in the soul, openings through which a new god, a new offer, could seep.
His consciousness drifted, untethered from the ruined village. He swept over barren hills, patches of scraggly forest, and the grey, choppy waters of the coast. It was disorienting at first, this bodiless perception. He felt like a disembodied thought, a whisper on the wind. Yet, with each passing moment, his control sharpened fractionally. He learned to filter the overwhelming static of human emotion, to search for the specific frequencies that resonated with his purpose.
Hours passed in this state of ethereal exploration. He sensed the distant, disciplined fear of a Night's Watch patrol near the crumbling remnants of a forgotten holdfast. He felt the simmering resentment of a minor lordling forced to pay taxes to a distant, uncaring king. He even brushed against the cold, ancient power emanating from deep within the earth, something connected to the Old Gods, a power he instinctively knew to avoid for now. It felt vast, indifferent, and profoundly alien to his transactional nature.
Then, he found it. A spike of raw, unadulterated desperation, so potent it felt like a physical blow even to his current, insubstantial form. It was a beacon in the emotional wilderness.
He focused, drawing his awareness towards the source. The 'signal' emanated from a small, dilapidated sept, nestled precariously on a cliff overlooking a stormy bay, perhaps a day's hard ride south of the raided village. It was an isolated place, forgotten by any significant authority, religious or secular. Perfect.
As he drew closer, the details sharpened. The sept was crudely built, its stone walls patched with driftwood and tar. The wind howled around it, threatening to tear the flimsy stained-glass windows – depicting faded, generic saints of the Seven – from their leaden frames. Inside, he sensed a handful of souls, no more than a dozen, their collective misery a palpable miasma.
He 'materialized', or rather, allowed his shadowy approximation of a form to coalesce within the darkest corner of the sept, near a crumbling altar. The air was thick with the smell of damp stone, stale incense, and unwashed bodies. A lone, flickering candle cast dancing shadows on the walls, barely holding the oppressive gloom at bay.
Before him knelt a collection of humanity at its lowest ebb. There was an old woman, her face a roadmap of hardship, muttering rote prayers to the Mother, her voice thin and reedy. A young man, gaunt and hollow-eyed, stared blankly at the Warrior, his posture slumped in defeat. A mother clutched two skeletal children, their faces pale, their breathing shallow; she was praying to the Crone for wisdom, but her aura screamed of despair so profound it bordered on nihilism. The others were in similar states – fishermen whose boats had been smashed by recent storms, a farmer whose meagre crops had failed, a woman whose husband had been taken by raiders, perhaps the very same Ironborn Alaric had witnessed.
And then there was the Septon.
He was a man well past his prime, his robes frayed, his face etched with a weary disillusionment that mirrored the despair of his tiny flock. He was going through the motions, chanting the litanies, but his heart wasn't in it. Alaric could feel the man's faith, once perhaps a steady flame, now reduced to a sputtering ember, choked by the relentless tide of suffering he had witnessed and been powerless to alleviate. His prayers to the Seven felt like a desperate habit rather than a genuine communion.
This Septon, Alaric realized, was the key. If he could sway the shepherd, the sheep might follow.
He waited, observing, his predatory patience honed by years of stalking lucrative deals. He listened to their pleas, their hopeless invocations.
"Mother, have mercy, my children are starving…"
"Warrior, give us strength, the sea has taken everything…"
"Smith, mend our broken lives…"
"Father, why have you forsaken us?"
The last was a raw whisper from the young, gaunt man, a crack in his carefully constructed piety. Alaric felt a cold spark of interest. Forsaken. Yes, that was a powerful sentiment. A sentiment he could work with.
The Septon, whose name Alaric divined as Eamon, finally finished his perfunctory service. His voice was hoarse. "Go in peace," he mumbled, the words tasting like ash in his own mouth. "May the Seven watch over you."
The small congregation shuffled out, their despair clinging to them like damp shrouds. Only Septon Eamon remained, slumping onto a rickety wooden bench, his head in his hands. The silence that descended was heavier than any prayer.
This was the moment.
Alaric didn't attempt a booming voice from the heavens. That was too crude, too easily dismissed as madness by a man already teetering on the edge. He chose a more insidious approach, the one he'd tested on the dying Ironborn, but refined.
He projected a thought, not into Eamon's mind directly, but into the space around him, a whisper that seemed to emanate from the very stones of the failing sept, from the sighing wind outside, from the deepest shadows within the man's own weary soul.
"Are they listening?"
The whisper was genderless, ageless, devoid of any accent Alaric had known. It was the essence of a question, imbued with a chilling neutrality.
Septon Eamon stiffened. His head snapped up, his eyes darting around the empty, shadow-filled sept. "Who's there?" he called out, his voice trembling slightly. "Is someone…?" He trailed off, doubt already creeping in. The wind, surely. Or his mind, finally succumbing to the strain.
Alaric waited a beat, letting the unease simmer. Then, another whisper, softer this time, more insidious.
"Do your Seven hear the hunger in the children's bellies? Do they feel the cold that seeps into your bones?"
Eamon scrambled to his feet, clutching the Seven-Pointed Star that hung around his neck, the metal cool against his clammy palm. "Show yourself, demon!" he hissed, fear warring with a lifetime of ingrained priestly defiance. "I rebuke you in the name of the Father, the Smith, the Warrior…"
"Demon?" The whisper held a hint of something that might have been amusement, if amusement could be so utterly devoid of warmth. "I offer not temptation to sin, Septon. I offer… an alternative accounting."
The mercantile language was deliberate. Alaric was speaking to the core of his own being, and perhaps, to a pragmatism buried deep within Eamon, a pragmatism eroded by years of unanswered prayers.
"I… I don't understand," Eamon stammered, his gaze fixed on the darkest corner where Alaric's shadowy form was most concentrated, though he likely saw nothing but deeper shadow.
"You offer them words. Comfort that does not fill bellies. Promises of a distant paradise while their mortal lives crumble. Your gods demand devotion, piety, adherence to laws. And what is their return on that investment, Septon Eamon? Silence? Suffering?"
Each question was a carefully placed scalpel, dissecting the Septon's failing faith. Alaric could feel the man's internal struggle, the years of doubt now being given voice by an external, unseen entity.
"The gods test us," Eamon said, but his voice lacked conviction. It was a line learned by rote, a shield worn thin.
"And to what end? Do these tests build resilience? Or do they simply grind the unfortunate into dust? Consider your flock, Septon. Their faith is a flickering candle in a gale. What if there was a… different covenant? A more direct transaction?"
Eamon was breathing heavily now. "What are you?" he whispered, fear and a dawning, terrified curiosity mingling in his voice. "A spirit? One of the Old Gods?"
"I am… a becoming. A power that understands the value of exchange. You pray for intervention. What are you willing to offer in return? Not just blind faith. Not just empty rituals."
Alaric was treading carefully. He couldn't reveal his divine nature outright, not yet. He needed to cultivate an air of mystery, of potent, perhaps dangerous, possibility.
"We have nothing left to offer," Eamon said, a wave of despair washing over him. "Our nets are empty, our fields barren. Our spirits… broken."
"Not nothing, Septon Eamon. You have your will. Your capacity for belief. Your desperation. These are currencies of great value." Alaric paused, letting the silence stretch, amplifying the howl of the wind outside. "Imagine a god who answers. A god who provides not just for the pious, but for the pragmatic. A god who understands that survival, prosperity, even vengeance… these are worthy ambitions."
The word "vengeance" hung in the air. He had sensed the raw grief in the woman whose husband was taken. He had seen the impotent fury in the young man.
Eamon was silent for a long moment. He sank back onto the bench, his body trembling. The Seven-Pointed Star felt heavy, almost like a stone, around his neck. He had dedicated his life to the Seven. He had preached their word, administered their rites, clung to their teachings even as his world crumbled around him. And for what?
"What… what would such a god demand?" Eamon finally asked, his voice barely audible above the wind. It was not a rejection. It was a question. An opening.
Alaric felt a cold thrill, the first genuine surge of what he could only describe as divine satisfaction. The first potential investor was considering the terms.
"Recognition," the whisper came. "A vessel for belief. A conduit. You, Septon Eamon. You could be the first. The first to understand the new calculus of faith."
"Me?" Eamon looked around the desolate sept. "I am a failed priest in a forgotten corner of the world."
"All great enterprises begin with a single, decisive investment. Your current masters offer dwindling returns. I propose a new venture. One with… tangible results." Alaric decided it was time for a small demonstration. Nothing too dramatic. Just a nudge. He focused on the single flickering candle on the altar. It had been guttering, close to extinguishing. "Consider the flame, Septon."
As Eamon watched, the flame, which had been sinking low, suddenly flared. It burned brighter, taller, casting a stronger, steadier light that pushed back the encroaching shadows. It wasn't a roaring inferno, just a significant, undeniable revitalization.
Eamon stared, his eyes wide. It could be a draft, a natural flicker. But in the context of the whispers, of the oppressive atmosphere…
"Small displays for small faith," the voice murmured. "Greater belief yields greater returns. The storm that batters your coast, that smashes your fishermen's boats… what if it could be… dissuaded? What if the fish returned to your empty nets?"
These were the promises he would make. Not of an afterlife, not yet. But of immediate, tangible improvements. Alaric understood the hierarchy of needs. Survival first. Then, perhaps, ambition.
"This is… this is blasphemy," Eamon whispered, but the word was a reflex, devoid of its usual outrage. He was a drowning man, and a hand, however strange and unsettling, had just reached out from the depths.
"Is it blasphemy to seek survival, Septon? Is it blasphemy to desire an end to suffering for your people? Or is it simply… a different path? A path where the scales are balanced by mutual benefit, not blind servitude."
Alaric needed a name for himself, one he could reveal to this first, hesitant convert. The Sovereign of Scales was his own internal designation, his true title. But for a fledgling faith, he needed something simpler, more approachable, yet still hinting at his power.
He thought of the raven and the coin, the key. He thought of secrets, of whispers.
"They call me… the Whisperer in the Vault," he finally offered. It sounded ancient, mysterious. It hinted at hidden knowledge, at guarded treasures, at transactions made in confidence. A vault could hold riches, but it could also hold souls.
"The Whisperer… in the Vault," Eamon repeated slowly. The name sent a shiver down his spine, yet it did not have the overtly demonic connotations he might have expected. It was… intriguing.
"Your people are suffering, Septon Eamon. Their prayers to the Seven fall on deaf ears. Offer them a new prayer. A prayer to the one who listens in the shadows, who values sincere exchange over empty ritual. Test the waters. See what surfaces."
Alaric needed a first act of faith. A small sacrifice. Not blood, not yet. That would come later, for more… committed followers. For now, something symbolic.
"Take the symbol of your old, unanswered faith," the whisper directed, its intensity subtly increasing. "The star around your neck. It represents a covenant that has failed you. Place it upon the altar. And in its stead, speak my name. Ask for a sign. A small one. Proof that the exchange has been noted."
Septon Eamon's hand went to the Seven-Pointed Star. His fingers trembled as he fumbled with the clasp. This was it. The point of no return. To even consider this was to step onto a path shrouded in terrifying uncertainty. Yet, the alternative was the continued, grinding despair, the slow death of his flock and his own spirit. He thought of the children's hungry faces, the hollow eyes of the young man, the woman's raw grief. What had the Seven done for them lately?
The candle flame still burned bright, a steady, unwavering beacon in the gloom.
With a shaking hand, Eamon unclasped the star. It felt strangely heavy in his palm. He walked to the altar, his legs unsteady, and placed the silver symbol down, next to the revitalized candle. The metal gleamed dully in the enhanced light.
He took a deep breath. "Whisperer in the Vault," he began, his voice raspy, hesitant. "If you are… if you hear… I ask for…" He didn't know what to ask for. Something small, as the voice had suggested. Proof.
"Ask for the wind to calm," the voice prompted gently. "Just for a moment. A brief respite from the storm that plagues this coast. A sign that your offering, your attention, has been received."
Eamon closed his eyes. He was a Septon of the Faith, a man sworn to the Seven. What he was doing was a betrayal of everything he had ever known. But the desperation was a powerful corrosive. "Whisperer in the Vault," he said again, his voice a little firmer now. "If you hold power over the unseen currents, grant us a moment's peace. Still the wind that batters these walls."
He waited, his heart pounding. The only sound was the continued howl of the gale outside, mocking his fragile hope. Doubt began to solidify. This was madness. He was talking to shadows, deluding himself.
And then, it happened.
The howling of the wind outside didn't just lessen, it ceased. For a full minute, perhaps two, an unnatural, profound stillness fell over the cliffside sept. The rain still lashed against the windows, but the driving force of the wind was gone. Inside the sept, the candle flame burned perfectly straight, its light unwavering. The oppressive silence was broken only by Eamon's ragged breathing.
Just as suddenly as it had stopped, the wind returned, resuming its furious assault on the ancient stones. But that moment of absolute calm, of impossible stillness, had been undeniable.
Eamon opened his eyes, staring at the candle, then at the Seven-Pointed Star lying discarded on the altar. A shiver, not of fear this time, but of something akin to awe, ran through him.
"The first transaction," the whisper echoed, softer now, almost satisfied. "A small token. The scales have tipped, ever so slightly. Now, Septon Eamon. Go to your flock. Tell them of the Whisperer in the Vault. Tell them there is a new power that listens. A power that trades. Their belief, their focused will, for tangible change. Start small. Gather their intent. And then, we shall discuss larger ventures."
Alaric, The Sovereign of Scales, felt a minuscule, yet distinct, trickle of energy flow towards him. It wasn't much, barely a drop in the vast ocean of his divine potential. But it was a start. Eamon's fear, his desperation, and now, his dawning, terrified belief – it was the first coin in the coffers of The Whisperer in the Vault.
He allowed his shadowy form to recede further, to melt back into the deepest darkness of the sept. He had planted the seed. Now, he would watch, cautiously, to see if it would take root in the barren soil of Septon Eamon's broken faith and the desperation of his forgotten flock. The Game of Thrones had gained a new, unseen player, and his first pawn was tentatively in motion. The collection had begun.