"If you want the Iron Throne, take it."
Yara Greyjoy's voice rang sharp and unyielding inside the damp, cavernous war chamber of Dragonstone. Her hands were braced against the edge of the Painted Table, her knuckles white as she leaned forward, her eyes blazing as she stared directly at Daenerys. She wanted this to be over already so that she could mount her uncle's head on a pike.
"We have an army of Unsullied, Dothraki, the Iron Fleet, and three fully grown dragons. We should hit King's Landing now. Hard. With everything we have. The Red Keep will be a scorched ruin, and the city will fall within a day."
"If we turn the dragons loose on a city of half a million souls, tens of thousands will die in the firestorm before the first gate is even breached," Tyrion interjected, his voice calm as if explaining to a child.
"It's called war, little man," Ellaria Sand shot back, her dark eyes flashing with contempt as she looked at the dwarf. She paced the room, the jewelry of Dorne clinking softly with every movement. "If you don't have the stomach for the blood it requires, perhaps you should scurry back into whichever hole you crawled out of."
Tyrion's jaw tightened, his mismatched eyes narrowing until they were mere slits. "Oh, I know quite well how you wage war, Lady Ellaria, and we don't make a habit of poisoning little girls ."
A suffocating silence fell over the room. The only sound was the distant, rhythmic crashing of waves against the obsidian cliffs below.
"Myrcella was innocent," Tyrion added, his voice dropping to a cold, dangerous whisper that vibrated with grief. His niece had died for the sins of her parents and grandparents. She was innocent, damn it, she didnt have to die.
"She was a Lannister," Ellaria sneered, her lip curling in a mask of pure, unadulterated hate. "In Dorne, we remember the blood on your father's hands. We remember the screams of Elia and her children. There are no innocent Lannisters. My only regret in this life is that Oberyn died fighting to save a creature as miserable as you from a fate you deserved."
"That's enough."
Daenerys' voice cut through the argument. She stood at the head of the table, her silver hair braided.
"Lord Tyrion is the Hand of the Queen. You will treat him with respect."
Ellaria frowned, her nostrils flaring, but she bowed her head and held her tongue. The tension remained. Daenerys stepped toward the map, her fingers trailing over the painted coasts of the continent. She looked at the carved wooden markers representing the Great Houses.
"I am not here to be Queen of the Ashes," she said, more to herself than to them.
"That's a very sentimental sentiment," Olenna Tyrell said dryly. The Queen of Thorns sat tucked away in her chair, her sharp, aged eyes studying the table before looking at the dragon queen. "Of course, I can't recall a queen more beloved by the realm than my granddaughter, Margaery. The common people adored her. The nobles flocked to her like moths to a flame. And what remains of her now? A handful of grey ash scattered in the ruins of the Great Sept."
"Commoners. Nobles. They are all children, really," Olenna continued. "They will only obey you when they fear you. Love is a fickle thing."
Daenerys nodded slowly. While a part of her does agree, she didn't want to be like her father, she had heard the tales, and whether true or false, somewhere, all were the same, of a madman who was feared by all, and she didn't want that.
"I'm grateful for your counsel, Lady Olenna. Truly. But you have all chosen to follow me because you believe in me. I will not attack King's Landing. We will not attack King's Landing." She emphasized the we, looking each woman in the eye.
"Then how do you mean to take the Iron Throne?" Olenna asked mockingly, her eyebrows arching high. "By asking Cersei nicely to step aside? Perhaps a strongly worded letter to the Citadel?"
"We will lay siege to the capital," Daenerys stated firmly. "We will cut off every road, every port, every supply line. Cersei will have her throne, but she will have no food for her gold cloaks. No grain for the starving masses. We will let the city see that their 'Lioness' is nothing but a starving cat trapped in a cage of her own making."
Tyrion stepped forward, elaborating on the plan. As he finished, Olenna looked at him with a flat, unimpressed expression.
"So your master plan is to win this war using our armies and our gold. Forgive me, Lord Hand, but why exactly did you bother bringing your Dothraki and Unsullied across the sea if they're just meant to sit on this rock and watch the grass grow? Or are they merely here to provide a scenic backdrop for your council meetings?"
An amused snort broke the air, followed by a soft slurping sound of someone drinking.
Daenerys closed her eyes briefly, a resigned sigh escaping her lips. Over the past month, she had grown accustomed to this specific brand of interruption. There was only one person, one being, who dared to intrude on her, to come and go as he pleased.
She turned toward the back wall, where the shadows seemed a bit deeper. He laid comfortably on a long chair he had clearly conjured from thin air, one hand by the side as he sipped from a weird cup.
The room grew taut. She had come to be wary... nah, fear the man, the god, especially after what he had done in Meereen before they had left.
Back in Meereen, the stories had traveled faster than the dragons, and eventually they whispered of a "Foreign God" in the Great Pyramid, and the Red Priests had not taken that well, so they eventually decided to try to assassinate him.
She wasnt there for that part when they had attacked, but she heard what had happened. They told of how he had lain still on his bed, allowing them to exhaust their magic, and as their daggers and blades shattered against his skin.
Then, he had grown bored.
She had not seen all that, but she had definitely seen the consequences of their attack.
The pillar of flame that touched the clouds, consuming all. The flames had then shifted, taking the form of a gargantuan bird of fire, a phoenix he had told her later, that had perched upon the pyramid before vanishing into the clear sky.
That was the day they had learned his name, the name he had told for them to speak.
Aether.
"Lord Aether," Daenerys said, her voice a mix of caution and exhaustion. "I wasn't expecting you to join us today."
The Greyjoys looked wary, having seen his power before, but the Dornish and Tyrell bannermen shifted uneasily, their hands drifting toward the hilts of their swords. Only Olenna and Ellaria remained still, their eyes narrowing as they assessed the young man.
Aether glanced at the two matriarchs briefly before returning his gaze to the Dragon Queen.
"Our game is still ongoing, isn't it?" he said mildly, his green eyes reflecting the torchlight. "And I see you've managed to gather two of the great houses. A Tyrell and a Martell or what's left of the lines, anyway. It's quite a collection of broken things."
That comment seemed to anger both members of the houses, but he paid them no mind, and neither did Daenerys.
Hope flickered in Daenerys' chest. Was he about to grant her the dragon eggs he had promised in Meereen? She could feel the weight of his gaze, as though he could read her mind.
"But are they truly on your side?" Aether continued lazily, swiveling his cup. "Or are they merely aligned with you because your dragons are a convenient shield against the woman who killed their families?"
The hope in the room turned sour. Daenerys straightened her back, her violet eyes flashing with pride. "They are on my side. They have bent the knee. They have sworn loyalty to House Targaryen."
That was the first thing he had them do when they met, and they had.
Aether hummed, a small, knowing smile playing on his lips. "Well. I suppose I didn't specify that they had to love you, only that you had to get them on your side. I'll accept the tally for the game. Two houses gathered, two eggs."
"Who is this boy?"
The words cut across the chamber like a jagged blade. Olenna Tyrell's voice was cool, her gaze fixed on Aether with a level of scrutiny that would have withered a lesser man. She had spent a lifetime dismissing arrogant young men, and this one, despite his strange clothes, seemed no different.
The room froze. Tyrion looked as though he wanted to disappear into the floorboards. Grey Worm stepped closer to the Queen, his hand tightening on his spear, not out of aggression toward Olenna, but out of fear for what might happen next.
Daenerys knew that they had all learnt to fear the god after seeing what he could do.
Aether stopped mid-sip. His gaze drifted slowly toward Olenna. He didn't look angry, though he looked amused, but she wouldn't fall for it, his eyes told her he did not like being called boy.
"Boy?" he repeated softly, the word echoing around the room with an energy that made the teeth of everyone in the room ache. "Are you speaking of me, child?"
The air in the room suddenly felt heavy. The torches sputtered, their orange light dimming a little.
Most of the people in the room suddenly lowered their heads instinctually, but Olenna, however, did not. She had faced kings, madmen, and monsters for eighty years. She had outlived Aerys, Robert, and Joffrey. She wasn't about to be intimidated by a youth in strange clothes.
"Child?" she spat. "I have been alive since before you were fucked into your mother's womb."
Daenerys' breath caught. Tyrion stepped forward frantically, his hands raised in a placating gesture. "Forgive Lady Olenna, My Lord! She is… she is not accustomed to the presence of.....of someone such as yourself! She does not know who you are! Grief makes the mind dull and the tongue reckless!"
"To what? Politeness?" Aether interrupted, his voice perfectly calm. His face was absolutely neutral. He set his cup down on a small table that appeared out of the ether to catch it. He sat up, and as he did, the room seemed to shrink.
Then it came.
A crushing weight dropped onto everyone in the room, dropping all those who had not been sitting to their knees. It felt as though the ocean was pressing down on them as they were forced to drown.
Candles flickered violently, their flames turning a sickly, brilliant green before going out entirely, leaving the room illuminated only by the faint, pulsing glow from Aether himself. The sunlight through the windows dulled, the sky turning a bruised grey as if the sun itself were hiding in fear.
"My, my," Aether said softly. His voice rattling their bones. "Some children believe that a handful of decades spent bickering over a pile of rusted swords and a chair made of scrap metal makes their lives significant. Don't they."
His eyes began to glow with green fire that seemed to swirl.
"I know you have lost your family, girl," he said, and the word 'girl' seemed to hit Olenna with the force of a physical blow, seemingly stripping away her eighty years of status in that single syllable. "But call me 'boy' again…"
The stone floor beneath their feet began to tremble. Dust fell from the vaulted ceiling. The Painted Table, massive and heavy, groaned as if it were about to crack under the strain of the aura.
"…and I will uproot Highgarden from the earth. I will wipe its memory from this world so thoroughly that not even the dirt will remember the name Tyrell. I will make it so that your house never existed in the songs of men."
The pressure intensified. Ellaria Sand dropped to both knees, gasping for breath as if the air had been sucked out of the room. Several Unsullied guards collapsed outright, their spears clattering against the stone. Even Yara Greyjoy had to brace herself against the table, her face pale and sweat beading on her brow.
"And I will ensure," Aether finished quietly, leaning forward until all Olenna could see in her field of vision were his glowing eyes, "that you spend the rest of eternity suffering in my hands. Personally."
Silence. Pure, absolute, and terrifying.
Olenna's breath was shallow and ragged. For the first time in her long life, her sharp tongue found no purchase. She looked into those green eyes and saw not a man, not a boy, but an abyss that was looking back with total, unblinking indifference.
Daenerys stepped forward, her own knees shaking, and before the chair Aether had occupied.
"My lord," she said, her voice firm despite the terror vibrating in her chest. "Lady Olenna meant no true disrespect. She is the last of her line, and her mind is consumed by the fire that took her family. Please. For the sake of our game."
The pressure lingered for a heartbeat longer, as his eyes turned to her, and then slowly, it lifted. The light returned to the room. The sound of the sea could be heard again beyond the walls, the crashing waves sounding like a reprieve.
Aether leaned back, the fire in his eyes fading into a dull, emerald simmer. "Grief," he murmured. "A fragile excuse for such a lack of manners."
His gaze drifted over the room, lingering on the pale faces of the lords and ladies who had, moments ago, been arguing about how to rule a kingdom.
"Now Daenerys." His eyes met hers, and for a moment, she felt terrified about what he was about ot say before he summoned two of the dragon eggs, and her mind froze before she quickly grabbed them.
"Thank you," she said, but her eyes were no longer on him as she cradled the eggs.
"Missandei, come," she called her attendant, "take care of them until I'm able to hatch them." She gave her the eggs.
"Wait," lord Aether called out, making them stop, and Daenerys was scared he'd want to take them back. "I did not give you dragon eggs just to wait years for them to hatch and grow. " Bring them here," he said, stretching out his hand.
Daenerys seemed to hesitate as Missandei looked at her. She didn't really have a choice, so she nodded at the woman.
By now, everyone was watching them.
Missandei handed him the eggs as he set them on the table, and both his hands started to glow a brilliant gold light as he faced both hands toward the eggs. The light flowed into them for a few seconds it stayed like that before he stopped. There was a second of silence before the eggs started shaking and cracked open as two dragons emerged.
The first one on the left had golden scales with Green eyes, while the right one had Green scales and bright red eyes. They squealed and tumbled as Daenerys moved forward, and she grabbed them both.
"It will take a bit, but they should reach the same size as your other dragons in about a few months," he said, and that shocked her.
'Only months,' she looked at him. That means by the time the war with Cersei was already on, she would have 5 full grown dragons, and that was if she didn't get the last one.
Now she wanted the last one even more.
Then his chair vanished. The table he had used vanished, and without another word, he was simply gone like usual.
The chamber remained frozen long after his departure. Olenna Tyrell straightened her silks slowly, but her hands were trembling so violently she had to hide them deep in her sleeves. She didn't speak. She didn't look at anyone as she stared at the two new dragons that the dragon queen had
Tyrion swallowed hard, his throat clicking in the heavy silence. He looked at the empty space where the god had stood and then at his Queen.
"Well," he muttered, his voice cracking and dry. "At least he didn't turn into a giant flaming bird this time. I suppose we should take our victories where we can find them."
"My... my ah queen who....who was that?" Ellaria Sand spoke, shaken to her core.
————————————————————
If you want to read ahead and access 40 advanced chapters, check the patreon. $4 Dollars
Link:patreon/Phantomking785