Chapter 67: The War of Five Kings, The Dragon Queen's Rise, and The Shadow King's Distant Scrutiny (The Game Continues Outside)
The Fidelius Charm, once woven with the combined might of the Philosopher's Stone, the Deathly Hallows, and generations of accumulated Volmark magical power, had rendered Skagos a phantom isle, a whisper in the annals of forgotten lore. To the struggling, bleeding continent of Westeros, now convulsed by the internecine strife that history would name the War of the Five Kings, Skagos simply ceased to exist. Its vast wealth, its formidable (public) fleet, its disciplined armies, its wise Lord Volmark – all vanished from the maps, memories, and strategic calculations of the warring factions as if they had been a collective dream.
Within the eternal, magically sustained spring of Mount Skatus, however, Aelyx Velaryon and his immortal dynasty were anything but disconnected. The Obsidian Council Chamber had become a grand celestial observatory, its domed ceiling not only mirroring the starry heavens but now also serving as a vast, three-dimensional scrying surface. Lyra, Daenys, and their most gifted seer descendants – the Oracular Conclave, as Aelyx now termed them – worked in tireless shifts, their combined greensight and potent scrying spells piercing the veil of distance and chaos, projecting flickering, often horrifying, images of the unfolding war in the south. It was a grim, continuous lesson in mortal folly, ambition, and the brutal calculus of power.
Aelyx watched the demise of Eddard Stark – beheaded on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor by the whim of the boy-king Joffrey Lannister – with a cold, intellectual detachment. "Honor, unseasoned by pragmatism, is a death sentence in the courts of men," he remarked to his assembled family, as the illusionary image of Ned's noble head falling replayed before them. "He was a good man, a shield for the North. His death will unleash a fury that will consume many. But he was a pawn, and pawns are inevitably sacrificed in the greater game."
The eruption of Robb Stark, the Young Wolf, his declaration as King in the North, and his initial, brilliant string of victories against Lannister armies in the Riverlands were observed with keen interest. Aelyx noted Robb's martial prowess, his ability to inspire loyalty, the fierce devotion of his Northern and Riverland bannermen. He also noted the subtle, guiding hand of his mother, Catelyn Stark, and the strategic blunders born of youthful idealism.
"He fights with the heart of a wolf, but the political acumen of a pup," Aelyx analyzed, as reports detailed Robb's marriage to Jeyne Westerling, a match that broke his sacred oath to House Frey. "He wins battles but loses the war of alliances. Lord Walder Frey is not a man to forgive such a slight. And Tywin Lannister… Tywin plays a longer, colder game."
The other self-proclaimed kings played their parts in the bloody drama. Stannis Baratheon, stern and unyielding, embraced the Lord of Light, his red priestess Melisandre a figure of new and potent magical interest to Aelyx. He saw her shadow assassins, her fire visions, her burning of weirwoods. "A different kind of fire magic," Aelyx mused to Aenar. "Crude in some ways, reliant on faith and sacrifice, yet undeniably effective. We must understand its source, its limitations. R'hllor… another god vying for the souls of men. More grist for the mill of conflict." Stannis's devastating defeat at the Battle of the Blackwater, his fleet consumed by Tyrion Lannister's cunning use of wildfire, was a tactical masterclass Aelyx had his military strategists (Visenya, Maegor, and their leading descendants) study intently.
Renly Baratheon's flamboyant, short-lived bid for the throne, with the might of the Reach behind him, ended abruptly with his assassination by shadow magic, another act that sent ripples of intense curiosity through the arcane researchers of Mount Skatus. "Blood magic, shadow weaving… the Essosi arts are varied and often perilous," Aelyx commented. "Melisandre, or her god, possesses powers that warrant closer, if distant, scrutiny."
Balon Greyjoy crowning himself King of the Iron Islands and launching ill-fated raids upon the North while Robb Stark fought in the south was dismissed by Aelyx with contempt. "The squids are ever opportunistic, ever witless in their timing. They achieve nothing but earn the lasting enmity of a North that will, eventually, exact its due." (Public Lord Volmark, had he still existed in Westerosi perception, would have been instrumental in repelling these, but now the burden fell solely on the remaining Northern houses).
The true horror, the event that solidified Aelyx's contempt for the self-destructive nature of mortal ambition, was the Red Wedding. Lyra and Daenys had foreseen it in nightmarish, fragmented visions of blood, feasting, and wolf pelts nailed to doors, but even they were unprepared for the sheer, calculated barbarity of it. As the illusionary images played out in the Obsidian Chamber – Robb Stark, his mother Catelyn, his pregnant wife, his loyal bannermen, all slaughtered under Walder Frey's roof in a monstrous breach of guest right, orchestrated by Tywin Lannister – a rare, palpable silence fell over even Aelyx's immortal family.
"This," Aelyx finally said, his voice like the grinding of icebergs, "is the nadir of so-called honor among these Westerosi lords. Betrayal, kinslaying, the violation of the most sacred vows, all for fleeting power and petty vengeance. Tywin Lannister has won this war, for now, but he has sown a field of hatred that will yield bitter harvests for generations. The North will remember. And we… we shall also remember." Though he had no love for Robb Stark's ultimately doomed cause, the sheer, vile treachery of the Red Wedding offended Aelyx's sense of order, his Valyrian disdain for such crude, dishonorable butchery when cleaner, more efficient methods of power consolidation existed.
With Robb Stark dead, the North fell into chaos. The Boltons, rewarded with the Wardenship of the North for their part in the Red Wedding, began their cruel reign. The Ironborn still clung to parts of the western coast. Stannis Baratheon, having retreated from his defeat at the Blackwater, eventually sailed north, answering the Night's Watch's desperate call for aid against the wildling host of Mance Rayder. His arrival at the Wall, his defeat of the wildlings, and his subsequent uneasy presence in the North, were all noted by Aelyx.
"Stannis now camps at the edge of the true Pprimordial darkness," Aelyx observed. "Closer than any southern king to the ancient magic of the Wall and the stirring threat beyond. Melisandre's fire will be tested against an older, colder ice. This will be… instructive." His seers were tasked with monitoring any magical emanations from the Wall, any signs of the Others' growing power, or any unusual interactions between Stannis's R'hllorite magic and the ancient spells woven into the Wall's foundations.
But the most significant development in the world beyond Skagos, the one that caused the most profound stir within the sanctuary, was the news from Essos. Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled daughter of the Mad King, the last known public Targaryen with her brother Viserys (whose own ignominious death in Vaes Dothrak Aelyx's agents had duly reported), had done the impossible. She had hatched three dragon eggs.
The first reports were fantastical, dismissed by most in Westeros as traveler's tales. But Aelyx's Emissaries in the Free Cities, and eventually Lyra's greensight, confirmed the unbelievable truth: three young dragons, small but undeniably real, now accompanied the last Targaryen princess on her perilous journey through the Red Waste and Slaver's Bay.
"Three," Aelyx breathed, when the confirmation was absolute, a look of something akin to incredulous respect in his ancient eyes. He, with all his knowledge, all his power, the Philosopher's Stone, and the controlled environment of Mount Skatus, had hatched his own dragons, including the Summerhall Seven, through immense effort and arcane science. Daenerys Targaryen, a mere girl, with nothing but her Valyrian blood and three petrified eggs, had achieved it through some confluence of blood magic, fire, and perhaps, sheer desperate will upon Drogo's funeral pyre.
"How?" Aenar, his master dragonologist, asked, his voice filled with scholarly awe. "The texts speak of blood and fire, yes, but the precise conditions, the necessary sacrifices, the aligning of magical currents… it has been lost for centuries, even to our deepest research into Valyrian lore before the Doom, save for what you have painstakingly rediscovered, Greatfather."
"Perhaps," Aelyx mused, "it is not always knowledge, but a primal connection, a moment of perfect, terrible synergy. Or perhaps, the world itself is changing, old magic stirring anew as the Long Night approaches, making such… miracles possible once more, even for the untutored. Regardless, she has done it. There are now other dragons in the world, however young, however distant."
This changed his calculations. His dynasty was no longer the sole inheritor of dragonpower, merely its overwhelmingly dominant, albeit secret, possessor. Daenerys Targaryen, with her three fledgling beasts, was a new, unpredictable variable in the great game. Aelyx immediately tasked his Essosi Emissaries with gathering every scrap of information about her: her personality, her advisors, her goals, the growth and temperament of her dragons (Drogon, Rhaegal, Viserion). He wanted to know everything.
Was she a threat? Not yet. A potential ally in some distant, unforeseen future? Unlikely, given his commitment to secrecy. A future rival? Perhaps. Or merely another Valyrian destined to burn too brightly, too quickly? Only time, and his eternal vigilance, would tell.
While Westeros tore itself apart and a new Dragon Queen rose in the East, life within the Fidelius-protected Skagos continued its serene, timeless rhythm. The great-great-great-grandchildren of Aelyx and Lyanna were now young adults, their magical education in full swing, their worldview shaped entirely by the sanctuary's unique culture. They learned of the War of the Five Kings as a distant, tragic history lesson, a testament to the folly of mortals and the wisdom of their Shadow King's Great Seclusion. Their dragon mounts, Skagosi-born and bred, were magnificent creatures, far outnumbering and outclassing Daenerys's young trio.
The vast libraries of Mount Skatus grew ever larger, filled with mundane knowledge gathered by Emissaries alongside arcane lore. Aelyx, with Aenar and their teams, delved into forgotten sciences, Valyrian engineering, and advanced magical theory, seeking not just power, but understanding. They perfected geothermal energy systems to power their subterranean cities, developed magical means of communication that were instantaneous and untraceable within their domain, and even experimented with enchantments that could subtly influence the local Skagosi climate within their hidden valleys, creating micro-ecosystems of improbable bounty.
The preparation for the Long Night remained their ultimate, unwavering focus. The Skagosi dragon legions drilled in tactics designed to combat creatures of ice and shadow. Forges glowed, producing weapons of enchanted dragonglass and Valyrian-Skagosi steel. Wards around the island were constantly reinforced, tested against imagined assaults by armies of the dead and the chilling magic of the Others. Aelyx was building not just a kingdom, but an ark, a fortress against the end of the world.
The War of the Five Kings eventually sputtered towards a new, uneasy status quo in the south. With Robb Stark, Renly Baratheon, Balon Greyjoy, and Stannis Baratheon (defeated and now largely irrelevant after his disastrous attempt to take King's Landing, despite his later efforts at the Wall) either dead or marginalized, and Joffrey Baratheon poisoned at his own wedding feast, young Tommen Baratheon, another of Cersei's incestuous brood, sat the Iron Throne, his reign controlled by his grandfather Tywin Lannister, and after Tywin's own shocking demise at the hands of his son Tyrion, by an increasingly unstable Cersei herself.
The realm was broken, bleeding, its great houses weakened, its people weary of war. The Faith Militant rose again in King's Landing, a new power challenging the battered Lannister-Baratheon regime. Stannis Baratheon, at the Wall, fought against the wildlings and became increasingly entangled in the prophecies of Melisandre and the looming threat from beyond. And far away in Essos, Daenerys Targaryen, the Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, was carving out her own path, learning to rule, learning to wield the power of her growing beasts.
Aelyx Velaryon watched it all from his silent, Northern throne, a god observing the chaotic, self-destructive scrabbling of lesser beings. The game outside continued, its players changing, its fortunes shifting like winter winds. But within Skagos, the Shadow King's game remained constant, its pieces immortal, its strategy eternal, its victory assured, played out on a board that spanned not mere kingdoms, but the very fabric of time and magic itself. The world was forgetting Skagos, but Skagos, and its hidden master, had forgotten nothing. And it was preparing.