Chapter 32: The Dragon's Iron Peace
The ashes of Robert Baratheon's rebellion had barely cooled before Emperor Vaelyx I Targaryen began the monumental task of forging the fractured Seven Kingdoms into a compliant, productive cornerstone of his burgeoning Valyrian-Westerosi Empire. King's Landing, scarred but rapidly submitting to his iron will, became the stage for the next act of his conquest: the subjugation of the Westerosi nobility. Ravens, bearing imperial decrees sealed with his seven-flamed, three-headed dragon sigil, flew to every corner of the realm, summoning the lords paramount and their principal bannermen to the capital to swear fealty or be declared traitors to the Iron Throne.
The Great Council, when it convened in the vast, dragon-scorched Throne Room of the Red Keep, was a somber, fearful affair. Lords who had once swaggered with impunity now shuffled with downcast eyes, their fine silks and velvets unable to conceal their apprehension. Vaelyx presided from the Iron Throne, a figure of chilling, ethereal power in his black Valyrian-style armor. Astra, her snow-white scales shimmering like winter moonlight, lay curled at the base of the monstrous chair, her sapphire eyes occasionally flicking open to survey the assembled nobility, a silent, regal promise of annihilation for any who dared dissent. Aurumel often roosted on the high balconies, its golden glow casting an unsettling, divine light upon the proceedings. The other five dragons were a constant, terrifying presence in the skies above the city, their roars the new punctuation to imperial decrees.
One by one, the lords of Westeros knelt. Hoster Tully of Riverrun, old and frail, offered his submission through his son Edmure, whose fear was palpable. The proud knights of the Vale, their Lord Paramount Jon Arryn dead and their Eyrie feeling suddenly less impregnable, sent a delegation led by Bronze Yohn Royce, his craggy face a mask of reluctant obedience. Lesser Stormlords, their Stag king dead and their lands ravaged, bent the knee with grim resignation. Even some minor Lannister cousins, eager to distance themselves from Tywin's catastrophic defiance, offered their loyalty with a desperate, cloying sycophancy that Vaelyx met with cold disdain, though he accepted their oaths. He used Legilimency subtly, constantly, tasting their fear, their resentment, their greed, their fragile hopes. Those whose loyalty felt genuine, or whose skills were particularly valuable, found their lands confirmed. Those who harbored deep-seated defiance, however well masked, found their principal heirs summoned to King's Landing as "imperial wards," their castles garrisoned by Vaelyx's Essosi troops.
Two particular thorns, however, remained in Vaelyx's side: Stannis Baratheon on Dragonstone and Balon Greyjoy in the Iron Islands.
Stannis, the last adult Baratheon brother, had responded to Vaelyx's summons with a raven carrying a single, stark message: "I am the rightful King. Death before dishonor." Dragonstone, the ancient Targaryen island fortress, was strong, and Stannis was a notoriously unbending commander. Vaelyx, seeing both a symbolic and strategic necessity in reclaiming his ancestral seat and extinguishing the last Baratheon flame, dispatched Grand Admiral Orzono with a significant portion of the Dragon Fleet, including the captured Tyroshi and Volantene warships. Tempest and Argentus accompanied them.
The siege of Dragonstone was a brutal, foregone conclusion. Stannis's small fleet was annihilated by Tempest's storms and Argentus's lightning before it could even properly engage. The island's formidable volcanic rock defenses, designed to withstand conventional siege, crumbled under the sustained, coordinated assault of the two dragons. Vorlag and Ignis were later brought in to melt sections of the curtain wall, allowing the Aegis Guard, under Commander Valerion, to storm the fortress.
Stannis Baratheon, it was said, fought like a cornered wolf, his few remaining loyal knights dying around him. He fell in the Stone Drum, his borrowed crown clattering on the ancient stones, not to a dragon, but to a disciplined Unsullied spear thrust – a mundane end for such an iron-willed man, an end Vaelyx found grimly appropriate. His wife, Selyse, and daughter, Shireen, were taken captive. Selyse, a shrewish fanatic, was confined to a silent Essosi nunnery. Shireen, afflicted with greyscale but innocent, Vaelyx, in a rare display that some mistook for mercy but was merely pragmatic indifference to a child who posed no threat, sent to be fostered with a minor, loyal Reach house, far from power. Melisandre, the Red Priestess who had advised Stannis, attempted to unleash her fire magic against the invading Unsullied; Vaelyx, observing through Veridian who had silently scouted the castle, was intrigued by her abilities but ultimately had Astra, from high above, negate her powers with a beam of pure, cold energy that left the Red Woman shaken and powerless before she was taken captive by Lyra's agents for… further study. Dragonstone, the birthplace of Targaryens, was once again under dragon rule.
Balon Greyjoy's Ironborn rebellion was a more widespread, though less strategically vital, nuisance. His longships were reaving along the western coasts, from the Shield Islands to the shores of the Westerlands, a brazen defiance of Vaelyx's new imperial peace. Vaelyx, seeing an opportunity to further blood his fleet and his dragons, dispatched Orzono again, this time with the full might of the Dragon Fleet and four dragons – Tempest, Argentus, Vorlag, and Ignis.
The Iron Islands had never faced such a cataclysm. Their wooden longships were tinder against dragon fire. Their stone keeps, however grim, were no match for concentrated draconic assaults. Pyke itself was turned into a smoking ruin, its towers toppling into the turbulent sea. Balon Greyjoy, fighting with the mad courage of a cornered reaver, was reportedly consumed by Vorlag's black flames as he attempted a desperate last stand on his own crumbling battlements. His surviving sons, Maron and an already-broken Theon (if he had returned from his fostering with the Starks and been captured), were taken. Vaelyx had little use for broken things. He had the captured Ironborn captains swear oaths of fealty, their fleet broken, their islands devastated, their "Old Way" drowned in dragon fire and storms. He installed Asha Greyjoy, Balon's fierce and pragmatic daughter (captured during a daring but futile sea skirmish), as Lady of the Iron Islands, a puppet ruler bound by oaths and hostages, tasked with rebuilding her shattered domain and providing iron and ships for the Dragon Emperor. The Ironborn would reave no more, unless commanded to do so in Vaelyx's name.
With these major pockets of resistance crushed, Vaelyx focused on solidifying his imperial administration. Oberyn Martell, as Master of Laws, began drafting a new imperial code, one that centralized power in the Iron Throne, curtailed the traditional autonomy of the Great Houses, and established swift, brutal punishments for treason and sedition. Malakai, from his new offices in the Red Keep (and with branches still operating across Essos), oversaw the restructuring of the Seven Kingdoms' finances, redirecting taxes and trade revenue into the imperial treasury. Boros, as Master of Horse, managed the vast imperial stables and integrated Dothraki outriders with Westerosi light cavalry, creating a swift, terrifying internal security force. Ser Damon Sand, as Lord Commander of the Gold Cloaks, brought a brutal Essosi efficiency to the policing of King's Landing. Commander Valerion's Aegis Guard became the silent, unshakeable protectors of the Red Keep and the Emperor's person, their loyalty absolute. Jaime Lannister, a golden lion now leashed by Vaelyx's magic, served grimly in their ranks, a constant, visible symbol of defeated pride.
Vaelyx began to cautiously integrate competent Westerosi nobles into his regime, particularly those from houses with a history of Targaryen loyalty, or those whose skills he deemed indispensable, like Randyll Tarly. Tarly, his initial defiance crushed, his family's fate in Vaelyx's hands, was given command of a newly formed legion tasked with pacifying the more remote regions of the Stormlands, his movements and communications closely monitored by Lyra's agents. It was a dangerous gamble, but Vaelyx understood that ruling Westeros required more than just Essosi steel and dragon fire; it needed, eventually, a degree of Westerosi consent, however grudging.
His gaze, however, was increasingly drawn to matters beyond mere governance and military consolidation. Voldemort's ancient, insatiable curiosity for magic, for power beyond the mundane, began to stir more strongly now that the initial fires of conquest were being banked. Westeros, he knew from the fan-memory and his own observations, was a land of diminished magic, but not one entirely devoid of it.
He summoned several Archmaesters from the Citadel in Oldtown to King's Landing, ostensibly to advise him on history, law, and the governance of the realm. In reality, he probed their minds with Legilimency during their audiences, seeking to understand the true extent of their knowledge, their historical suppression of magic, and any hidden lore they possessed. He found them largely disappointing – learned, yes, but narrow-minded and fearful of true power. He resolved to eventually bring the Citadel itself under his direct control, to sift through its vast libraries for any forgotten Valyrian texts or secrets of Westerosi magic they had hoarded.
Lyra's agents were tasked with investigating rumors of weirwoods, greenseers, and the Old Gods of the North. While alien to his Valyrian and Voldemort sensibilities, Vaelyx recognized power in all its forms. Prophecies, too, intrigued him – the tales of Azor Ahai, the Prince That Was Promised. He, who knew the "true" outcome of those prophecies from the fan-memory, wondered how his arrival, his seven dragons, had twisted the threads of fate. Could he be the figure of prophecy? Or was he something far older, far darker, a cataclysm that rendered such tales irrelevant? He ordered the Red Keep's own ancient library searched for any texts related to Valyrian sorcery, dragonlore, and the esoteric histories of both Westeros and Essos.
He even began to consider the establishment of a new order within his empire, a select cadre of magically gifted individuals, trained by him, loyal to him, who could wield sorcery in his name. The Red Priestess Melisandre, now his captive, was a subject of intense study, her fire magic and shadowbinding abilities fascinating, if crude by his standards. Perhaps she, and others like her, could be… reshaped.
As the first year of Emperor Vaelyx I Targaryen's reign drew to a close, a semblance of the "Dragon's Iron Peace" had settled over the Seven Kingdoms. It was a peace born of terror, enforced by legions and dragons, but peace nonetheless. Banditry was ruthlessly suppressed. The Great Houses, humbled and watched, kept their ancient rivalries in check. Trade, under the auspices of Valyrian Ascendant Holdings, began to flow again, though its profits now lined imperial coffers.
Vaelyx sat upon the Iron Throne, no longer a foreign conqueror, but the undisputed master of two continents. His dragons, his seven terrible children, roosted upon the Red Keep, their shadows a constant reminder of his absolute authority. The military conquest of Westeros was largely complete. Now, a new, more insidious conquest began: the conquest of its soul, its secrets, its ancient and forgotten powers. The Lord of the Seven Flames was not merely content to rule; he intended to reignite the fires of magic in this new, dark age, with himself as its ultimate, eternal master.