Chapter 34: The Dragon-Lord's Shadow and the Whispers of Dominion
The ashes of Lord Stark's ambitions had barely cooled upon the plains before Blood Cove before Alaric, The Sovereign of Scales, began to weave the next, far grander tapestry of his divine dominion. The annihilation of the Northern army, a feat achieved through apocalyptic dragonfire and suicidal fanaticism, had not sated his hunger; it had merely whetted it, confirming the terrifying efficacy of his methods and the boundless potential of his Valyrian-augmented godhood. The world now knew, or would soon learn through terrified, fragmented whispers, that a new, terrible power had arisen in the desolate North, a god who commanded nightmares and dealt in absolutes.
The immediate aftermath within Alaric's rapidly expanding "Protectorate of the Scale" was a maelstrom of brutal consolidation and feverish preparation. Borin, the Master of Tithes, his pragmatism now honed to a razor's edge by the horrors he had witnessed and the unimaginable resources he now nominally controlled (the plunder of Stark's camp alone was considerable, let alone the Valyrian hoard Alaric occasionally "released" for specific projects), oversaw the logistical miracle of feeding and housing tens of thousands of followers. New, grimly functional settlements, built with astonishing speed using Valyrian-inspired architectural principles "revealed" by Alaric through Eamon, sprang up along the coast and slightly inland, each centered around a stark, obsidian Whisper Shrine. These were not places of comfort, but of discipline, production, and unwavering, fear-induced devotion.
The Legion of the Scale, though having suffered grievous losses against Stark, was rapidly replenished. Vargo's Reaving Fleet, its Valyrian steel-armed crews now legendary terrors of the northern seas, brought in a steady stream of "recruits" from captured ships and raided coastal villages – men given the stark choice between swearing the Blood Oath or feeding the Soul-Forge. Kael's land-based "Rebalancing Cohorts," equally feared, pacified the hinterlands, their swift, brutal subjugation of any lingering Stark loyalists or defiant local chieftains serving as potent examples. The training regimen for these new legionnaires was even harsher than before, a relentless crucible designed to burn away old allegiances and forge them into unthinking instruments of the Whisperer's will. Thom's Inquisitors, their numbers swelling, were the ever-present enforcers of this brutal transformation, their methods for extracting confessions and ensuring doctrinal purity becoming increasingly sophisticated and terrifying.
But it was the seventeen colossal dragons, each now a veritable living fortress of scale and fire, that formed the true bedrock of Alaric's power and the core of his future plans. Their upkeep was a monumental undertaking. While their deep-ocean hunts for krakens and other abyssal leviathans continued under Alaric's remote, storm-cloaked guidance, he knew this was unsustainable in the long term, especially as he planned to awaken more of his Valyrian egg hoard. Drawing upon the arcane biological and alchemical knowledge he had absorbed from the dead Valyrian gods, he began to experiment. He guided Asek and a select team of her most trusted (and magically sensitive) acolytes in the construction of vast, geothermally heated "Incubation Vats" deep within the Obsidian Eyrie. Into these, they poured immense quantities of rendered blubber from the dragons' kills, enriched with purified soul-energy from the Soul-Forge and rare minerals Alaric guided them to mine from the cliffs. The goal was to create a highly concentrated, divinely infused nutrient paste, a "Dragon's Ambrosia," that could supplement their diet, accelerate the growth of future hatchlings, and perhaps even allow him to subtly control their maturation and power output more precisely. It was a horrifying, quasi-scientific endeavor, another testament to Alaric's psychopathic pragmatism.
The "Dragon Rider" program became Alaric's most pressing secret project. Controlling seventeen Balerion-sized behemoths in coordinated battle through Eamon and Scalebane alone, as demonstrated against Stark, had pushed his divine energies and his High Priest's mortal frame to their absolute limits. He needed direct, bonded conduits. He selected his first candidates with chilling care: Kael, whose Valyrian axe hummed with a sympathetic resonance to draconic energy and whose will was as unyielding as winter iron; two of the most ferocious and fanatically loyal Obsidian Guard commanders who had survived the Stark cataclysm, their minds already seared by dragonfire and divine madness; and, most audaciously, the two "Scale-Sworn" adolescents, a boy named Malak and a girl named Lyra (a different Lyra, this one barely fifteen, her eyes holding an unnerving, ancient wisdom), who had practically grown up in the shadow of the Eyrie and displayed an almost telepathic empathy with the colossal beasts.
Their training was beyond brutal. It involved prolonged exposure to the dragons' overwhelming presence, mediations with Scalebane to attune their minds to Alaric's will and the dragons' primal consciousness, and terrifying "trust exercises" where they would be left alone in the Eyrie with a specific, unchained dragon, their survival dependent on their ability to project absolute fearlessness and unwavering devotion. Alaric, drawing on fragmented Valyrian dragon-bonding lore, guided Eamon in crafting special obsidian amulets for each candidate, etched with glyphs of control and empathy, designed to be worn directly against their skin. The first attempts at actual mounting, even on the (relatively) more placid of the elder twelve, were fraught with peril. One Obsidian Guard commander was instantly incinerated when his courage faltered for a microsecond. But Kael, his will a match for any beast, eventually managed a terrifying, uncontrolled flight on the back of Night-Reaper, the obsidian alpha, clinging on for dear life as the dragon unleashed its fury on a deserted rock stack far out at sea. Malak and the young Lyra, their minds perhaps more malleable, more open to the primal connection, showed even greater promise, achieving a rudimentary, almost instinctual rapport with two of the younger Valyrian dragons – the golden "Aurum" and the silver-shadow "Umbra." The age of Alaric's Dragon Lords was dawning, a prospect that promised both unimaginable power and terrifying instability.
While these internal transformations consolidated Alaric's dominion, the wider world reeled from the news of Stark's annihilation. Lord Eddard Stark, a broken shadow of his former self, had indeed reached White Harbor. His tale, when finally pieced together from his fevered ramblings and the corroborating accounts of other survivors, was so fantastical – seventeen colossal dragons, a heretic god wielding Valyrian magic, an army of fanatics armed with black steel – that many Northern lords initially dismissed it as grief-induced madness. But the evidence was irrefutable: the Northern army was gone. Wyman Manderly, Lord of White Harbor, a man known for his shrewdness and pragmatism, listened with growing horror. His own fleet had been savaged, his own Septon Marius incinerated by what he now understood to be one of these very same creatures. He knew the threat was real, existential. He immediately ordered White Harbor's formidable defenses to be tripled, its harbor chained, and sent frantic, desperate ravens not just south to King's Landing, but also to the Eyrie in the Vale, to Riverrun, even to distant Highgarden and Casterly Rock, begging for a unified Westerosi response to this "draconic apocalypse" unfolding in the North.
The Faith of the Seven was plunged into apoplectic fury. The High Septon in Oldtown, after days of prayer and fasting, issued a formal Bull of Eternal Damnation against "Alaric, the self-proclaimed Sovereign of Scales, the Usurper God, the Demon of Blood Cove, and all his accursed followers and their hell-spawned wyrms." He called for a Great Crusade, the likes of which had not been seen since the Andal invasion, urging every true believer in the Seven Kingdoms to take up arms and march north to cleanse the land of this ultimate heresy. The response was mixed. While many pious lords and common folk were horrified, the Seven Kingdoms were rife with their own internal divisions, and King Robert Baratheon, though reportedly shocked by the news, was more inclined to another hunt or a tourney than leading a massive, costly war against a distant, possibly mythical, dragon god in the frozen North. However, certain powerful, devout houses in the Reach and the Westerlands began to seriously consider the High Septon's call, seeing both a spiritual duty and a potential opportunity for glory and influence.
The most immediate and unpredictable factor remained House Bolton. Roose Bolton had, as expected, made no overt move following Stark's defeat. His domain was a black hole of information. Alaric, however, decided he could no longer afford such ambiguity. He needed to know where the Leech Lord stood, or, at the very least, ensure his neutrality during the inevitable larger conflict to come. He chose a typically audacious and terrifying method of communication.
Under the cover of a moonless, stormy night, Alaric directed Eamon to dispatch a single, colossal dragon – Umbra, the silver-shadow wyrm, whose scales allowed it to blend almost perfectly with the night sky and whose movements were preternaturally silent – on a specific mission. Umbra, with the young Lyra clinging precariously to its back (her first true, terrifyingly solo flight, guided by Alaric's will through her amulet), did not attack the Dreadfort. Instead, it landed with barely a whisper upon the highest, most inaccessible tower of the ancient, fearsome castle. Lyra, her face pale but her eyes burning with divine purpose, then delivered a message, not to Roose Bolton himself, but to the empty battlements, her voice amplified by Alaric to carry over the howling wind – a message that was both an offering and a chilling warning.
She spoke of the Whisperer's inevitable dominion, of the fall of Stark, of the power that now resided in Blood Cove. She proposed no alliance, but a "continued mutual understanding of separate spheres of influence, and a shared appreciation for the… necessary culling of weaker elements that impede true order." She concluded by stating that a gift, a token of the Whisperer's "attentive regard," would be left. Then, as silently as it had arrived, Umbra launched itself back into the storm, leaving behind, impaled upon the Dreadfort's grim banner of the Flayed Man, the still-twitching, freshly flayed corpse of Ser Regis, the captive knight. Regis, Alaric had decided after much deliberation, had outlived his usefulness; his final "service" was to deliver this terrifying, unmistakable message to Roose Bolton – a demonstration of Alaric's ruthlessness, his reach, and his understanding of Bolton's own gruesome predilections.
The Lord of the Dreadfort's response, when it came weeks later via a terrified merchant forced to carry a sealed, unmarked scroll, was as chillingly concise as the man himself: "The North remembers. The Dreadfort observes. Imbalance is… untidy. For now." It was not an alliance, not even true neutrality. But it was a grudging acknowledgement, a temporary stay. Roose Bolton would continue to watch, to wait, his own cold game playing out in the shadows of Alaric's fiery ascent.
The situation in the Stonelands with Melisandre also demanded Alaric's attention. Asek's campaign of subtle sabotage and fear-mongering, coupled with the terrifying example made of Lord Harwood, had stalled the Red Priestess's momentum but not broken her will. She was a fanatic, her faith in R'hllor absolute. Reports indicated she was performing powerful fire rituals, calling upon her god for aid, and attempting to rally new converts with promises of salvation from the "coming darkness" and protection from the "shadow god of the coast." Alaric knew he could not afford a protracted spiritual war on two fronts. He decided on a more direct, if still carefully calibrated, approach.
He tasked Kael, now one of his nascent dragon riders (having achieved a grudging, terrifying bond with Night-Reaper), with a secret, high-speed mission. Kael, mounted on the colossal obsidian dragon, would fly under the deepest cover of night and Alaric-conjured storms, not to attack Melisandre directly, but to deliver an ultimatum to her largest secular patron in the region, a powerful marcher lord who was wavering between his fear of the Red Woman and his even greater fear of Blood Cove. Kael's arrival on dragonback, a vision of apocalyptic terror materializing from a lightning-streaked sky, was designed to be unanswerably persuasive. The lord was given a simple choice: withdraw all support from Melisandre and offer a substantial "tithe of appeasement" to the Sovereign of Scales, or see his lands and his lineage "erased from the ledger." The lord, faced with Night-Reaper's incandescent fury, chose wisely. Melisandre found her primary source of local funding and military support abruptly cut off, her position in the Stonelands suddenly far more precarious. It was another victory for Alaric, achieved through the terrifying projection of his draconic might, a clear message that his influence was not confined to the coasts.
Alaric continued to delve into his Valyrian-enhanced divinity. The prophecy of the Great Other and the Long Night, delivered through Asek, remained a constant, chilling undercurrent in his strategic calculations. He knew from his past life's lore that this was the ultimate, world-ending threat. His current conflicts with mortal lords and rival faiths, even his burgeoning draconic empire, were but petty squabbles in the face of such an ancient, cosmic evil. He began to use the vast libraries of Valyrian knowledge he had plundered, tasking his most intelligent (and magically screened) acolytes, under Asek's guidance, with translating and deciphering ancient texts, searching for any lore, any forgotten magic, any prophecy related to the Others, to dragons, and to the cyclical war between ice and fire. He began to see his own rise not just as a personal ascension to godhood, but perhaps as a necessary, if terrifying, rebalancing of power in a world teetering on the brink of an even greater darkness. Could his dragons, his legions, his own ruthless will, be the very force that Westeros, however unwillingly, needed to survive the coming winter? The thought was both arrogant and chillingly plausible.
The chapter concluded with Alaric standing, in his shadowy divine form, within the heart of the Obsidian Eyrie. Around him, seventeen colossal dragons, echoes of Balerion, stirred in their slumber, their fiery breath misting in the vast, magically expanded caverns. The five newest Valyrian wyrmlings, already the size of warhorses, snapped and hissed, their unique powers beginning to manifest more clearly. Eamon, a skeletal figure fused with Scalebane, stood motionless, a living conduit to Alaric's will. The Grand Repository thrummed with the power of countless harvested souls.
A new message had arrived, this one from the distant South, carried by a nearly dead merchant captain whose ship had been miraculously spared by Vargo's reavers in exchange for the information. King Robert Baratheon, finally roused from his indolence by the combined pressure of the Faith, the pleas of Lord Manderly, and the sheer, unbelievable horror of the tales emerging from the North, had, with great reluctance, finally sanctioned a Royal Decree. He had declared Alaric, The Sovereign of Scales, an enemy of the Iron Throne and all true gods, his cult a cancerous blight to be purged. He had called upon the Great Houses of the South – Lannister, Tyrell, Baratheon (his own brothers), Arryn – to contribute men and ships to a Grand Royal Army and Fleet, to sail north and join with Lord Stark's (presumed) reconstituted forces and Lord Manderly to enact the King's justice.
It was no longer just a Northern crusade or a religious war. It was the full, if perhaps disjointed and grudgingly assembled, might of the Seven Kingdoms beginning to turn its ponderous, iron gaze towards Blood Cove.
Alaric felt a flicker of something that, in a mortal, might have been excitement, or perhaps the cold, thrilling anticipation of a grandmaster before a truly worthy opponent. The game was escalating to its ultimate level. The whispers of ruin were becoming a roar. And he, the Dragon God of the North, with his seventeen living apocalypses, was ready to meet them. The true rebalancing of Westeros was about to begin, and its price would be a world consumed by fire, or remade in his terrifying, obsidian image.