## Chapter 3: The Red Harvest
### I. The Architecture of a God
The rain had long since washed the blood from Lucion Lannister's armor by the time the Lannister column returned to Casterly Rock, but the phantom scent of iron and viscera lingered pleasantly in his memory. The annihilation of the Bloody Mummers had been more than a successful military operation; it had been a revelation. It had confirmed the fundamental physics of his new reality. Men were the ultimate resource.
Safely secured behind the heavy, iron-bound oak doors of his private chambers, Lucion stripped off his armor. He did not call for his squires or servants. He required absolute privacy for what was to come. He stood bare-chested in the center of the room, the flickering light of the hearth casting long, dancing shadows across the cold stone walls.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, centering his mind. In his past life, Victor Thorne had built his empire on careful investments. He understood that capital sitting stagnant was capital wasted. Power had to be applied, leveraged, and compounded.
*Status,* he commanded.
The blue, luminescent screen materialized instantly, casting a cold, artificial light across his face.
**Name:** Lucion Lannister (Victor Thorne)
**Title:** Heir to Casterly Rock
**Age:** 14
**Unassigned Stat Points:** 165
**Unassigned Skill Points:** 95
One hundred and sixty-five points. The sheer volume of raw, transformative energy at his disposal was intoxicating. He had spent years hunting the deadliest beasts in the Westerlands just to scrape together a fraction of this sum. The realization that a disorganized band of human scum held infinitely more value than the apex predators of the natural world fundamentally shifted his grand strategy.
He began the allocation process, his mind working with the cold precision of a ledger.
*Allocate 40 points to Strength.*
*Allocate 40 points to Agility.*
*Allocate 32 points to Vitality.*
*Allocate 20 points to Perception.*
*Allocate 20 points to Charisma.*
*Allocate 13 points to Intelligence.*
**[Processing Allocations...]**
The system prompt blinked, and then the agony hit him.
It was not the slow, building heat he had experienced after killing the stag years ago. This was a catastrophic, cellular-level restructuring. Lucion fell to his knees, his jaw clenched so tightly he tasted blood as his teeth ground together. He refused to scream. He was Victor Thorne; he had endured torture in a rival syndicate's basement in Chicago without making a sound. He would not break now.
His muscles tore and rebuilt themselves a thousand times a second, becoming inhumanly dense. His bones thickened, their marrow infused with a strange, thrumming energy that felt like liquid iron. His nervous system rewired itself, sensory input exploding in his brain. He could hear the individual heartbeats of the guards patrolling the corridors three floors below. He could smell the distinct metallic tang of the gold stored in the vaults deep beneath the Rock.
When the agonizing transformation finally subsided, Lucion lay on the stone floor, his chest heaving, his body drenched in cold sweat. He pushed himself up. The simple act of rising felt different. Gravity seemed like a suggestion rather than a law. He felt as though he could jump from the highest tower of Casterly Rock and land without a scratch.
He turned his attention to the Skill Points. Ninety-five points to shape his arsenal.
*Allocate 32 points to Swordsmanship (Westerosi).*
**[Skill Upgraded: Swordsmanship (Westerosi) Lvl 80 - Realm Peerless. Your blade is an extension of your will. You understand the geometry of combat perfectly.]**
*Allocate 20 points to Tactics (Modern & Medieval).*
**[Skill Upgraded: Tactics Lvl 60 - Grand Strategist. You perceive the battlefield as a chessboard. Enemy movements and logistical weak points are instantly apparent to you.]**
*Allocate 23 points to Stealth.*
**[Skill Upgraded: Stealth Lvl 43 - Master of Shadows. You can silence your heartbeat and mask your thermal footprint. You are entirely undetectable by ordinary senses when obscured.]**
He had 20 Skill Points remaining. He scrolled through the new options the system offered, unlocked by his massively inflated stats. One caught his eye immediately.
**[Unlock Skill: Aura of the Apex (Passive/Active) - Cost: 20 SP. Allows the user to weaponize their Charisma and Perception to project a localized field of pure, paralyzing terror. Weaker minds will break; stronger minds will hesitate.]**
*Unlock Aura of the Apex.*
**[Skill Unlocked.]**
Lucion stood up and walked to the full-length silver mirror resting in the corner of his chamber. The boy staring back at him was fourteen, but he possessed a physical presence that was utterly terrifying. His emerald eyes seemed to glow with an unnatural, predatory light. His muscles were perfectly defined, coiled with enough explosive power to punch through a castle gate.
He was a weapon of mass destruction wearing the skin of a Lannister lordling. And Westeros was about to bleed.
### II. The Spider of the Rock
Three days later, the storm that had been brewing over the Seven Kingdoms finally broke. Ravens arrived from King's Landing, Riverrun, and the Eyrie in a rapid, chaotic flurry. The Mad King had executed Rickard and Brandon Stark in a display of horrific cruelty. Jon Arryn had refused to surrender the heads of Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon.
The banners were called. Robert's Rebellion had begun.
Tywin Lannister summoned his war council immediately. The lords of the Westerlands—Crakehall, Marbrand, Brax, Lefford—gathered in the great hall of Casterly Rock, their voices raised in a cacophony of competing strategies and demands for blood.
Lucion stood silently at his father's right hand, watching the men argue. To his enhanced intellect and grandmaster tactical senses, their squabbling was like watching toddlers fight over wooden blocks. He saw the supply line vulnerabilities, the fatal flaws in Lord Brax's proposed march through the Riverlands, and the utter lack of intelligence regarding the royalist troop movements.
Tywin slammed his fist onto the heavy oak table, the sound echoing like a gunshot and instantly silencing the room.
"We do nothing," Tywin commanded, his voice cold and absolute. "The Westerlands will marshal its strength. We will gather our levies, forge our steel, and provision our castles. But we will not march. Let the stag and the dragon tear each other's throats out. When they are exhausted, bleeding, and begging for our gold and our swords, then House Lannister will decide who sits on the Iron Throne."
The lords grumbled, their martial pride stung, but no one dared argue with the Lion of the Rock.
As the council dispersed, Lucion slipped away, navigating the labyrinthine corridors until he reached the lower, disused levels of the fortress. He entered a dusty, windowless storeroom.
Sitting behind a makeshift desk overflowing with scrolls, cipher wheels, and melted candles was his ten-year-old brother, Tyrion.
"You're late," Tyrion remarked, not looking up as he scribbled furiously on a piece of parchment. "I expected you an hour ago, immediately after Father gave his grand decree of profitable cowardice."
Lucion smiled—a rare, genuine expression of amusement. "Pragmatism, Tyrion. Not cowardice. There is no profit in bleeding for a madman or a drunkard until the odds are fixed. What do your whispers tell you?"
Tyrion finally looked up, his mismatched eyes gleaming with an intelligence that far outstripped his years. The gold Lucion had provided over the past four years had not been wasted. Tyrion had built a network of informants—servants in the Red Keep, merchants traversing the Kingsroad, whores in Lannisport and King's Landing—that rivaled the crown's own Master of Whisperers.
"The realm is burning," Tyrion said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Robert Baratheon has smashed three royalist forces at Summerhall in a single day. The man fights like a demon. Mace Tyrell is marching on Storm's End with a massive host. The North is descending through the Neck, and Hoster Tully has joined the rebels, sealing the alliance with a double marriage: his daughters to Eddard Stark and Jon Arryn."
"And the King?" Lucion asked, leaning against the damp stone wall.
"Aerys is descending deeper into madness," Tyrion replied, shaking his head. "My birds in the Red Keep tell me he sees traitors in every shadow. He has Pyromancers working day and night beneath the city. He's stockpiling wildfire, Lucion. Thousands of jars. If the city falls, I believe the mad bastard intends to take everyone with him."
Lucion processed this information instantly. The wildfire was a complication, but also an opportunity.
"And what of our golden brother?" Lucion asked smoothly.
Tyrion's expression darkened. "Jaime is a glorified hostage. Aerys keeps him close, using him as a shield against Father. He forces Jaime to stand guard while he... while he burns people. It is breaking him, Lucion."
Lucion felt no pity for Jaime. Jaime had made his choice. "Keep watching King's Landing, Tyrion. I need to know the exact moment the rebel forces engage Rhaegar Targaryen's royal army. The moment that battle is decided, our father will move. And I need to be two steps ahead of him."
Tyrion nodded, pulling a fresh scroll toward him. "You know, for a man who claims to care only about margins and ledgers, you seem remarkably invested in the outcome of this war."
"I am invested in the harvest, little brother," Lucion said softly, his emerald eyes catching the candlelight. "And the season is upon us."
### III. The Kraken's Folly
While Tywin Lannister enforced strict neutrality on land, the chaos of the rebellion emboldened predators on the fringes of the realm. The Ironborn, sensing the distraction of the mainland lords, began to test the waters.
Quellon Greyjoy, the Lord Reaper of Pyke, desired peace, but he was old and his sons were restless. Longships began appearing off the coast of the Westerlands, raiding isolated fishing villages and merchant cogs. They were small incursions, deniable and swift, but they infuriated Tywin.
Lucion saw not an insult, but a buffet.
Without seeking his father's explicit permission—knowing Tywin would view it as a distraction from the larger geopolitical game—Lucion requisitioned three swift Lannister war galleys from the Lannisport docks. He manned them with two hundred of his most fanatically loyal guardsmen, men who had seen him butcher the Bloody Mummers and worshipped him as a god of war.
They sailed out into the Sunset Sea under the cover of a thick, rolling fog.
For three days, they hunted. Lucion's Perception stat of 52 meant he didn't need a crow's nest. He stood at the prow of his flagship, *The Golden Wrath*, his eyes piercing the dense mist, reading the currents and the subtle shifts in the wind.
On the fourth morning, he found them.
Three Ironborn longships, heavy with plunder and captive women, were sailing sluggishly toward the Iron Islands. They flew the scythe sigil of House Harlaw.
"Beat to quarters," Lucion ordered quietly. His voice, amplified slightly by his Charisma stat, carried perfectly across the deck without needing to be shouted.
The Lannister galleys, infinitely faster and better designed for ship-to-ship combat than the raiding longships, closed the distance rapidly. The Ironborn realized their peril too late. Horns blared across the grey water, and the raiders scrambled for their axes and shields.
Lucion did not order his archers to fire. He did not want to sink the ships and lose the points to the drowning sea. He wanted hand-to-hand combat.
"Ram them," Lucion commanded the captain. "Grapple and board. Leave none alive."
The *Golden Wrath* slammed into the broadside of the largest Ironborn longship with a deafening splinter of oak. Grappling hooks flew, locking the two vessels together in a deadly embrace.
Before the boarding planks could even be fully extended, Lucion vaulted over the railing.
He didn't wear his heavy plate armor today; he wore reinforced boiled leather and chainmail, prioritizing unhindered movement. He landed on the deck of the Ironborn ship like a meteor.
An Ironborn raider, a massive man with a salt-and-pepper beard, swung a heavy bearded axe at Lucion's head.
With Agility 85, the attack appeared to Lucion as if it were moving through molasses. He didn't even draw his sword. He stepped inside the arc of the swing, raised his hand, and drove his palm directly into the center of the man's chest.
With Strength 82, the impact was horrific. The Ironborn's ribcage shattered with a sound like dry branches snapping underfoot. The sheer kinetic force lifted the man off his feet and sent him flying backward off the ship and into the churning sea, dead before he hit the water.
**[Target Eliminated: Human (Ironborn Raider, Level 15)]**
**[Reward: +8 Stat Points, +4 Skill Points]**
Lucion grinned. The Ironborn were significantly higher level than the mainland bandits. The environmental harshness of their culture bred stronger, tougher opponents. More XP.
He drew his Castle-forged sword, the lion pommel catching the weak morning light.
The massacre began.
He moved through the crowded deck like a scythe through wheat. He didn't use flashy, tourney-style parries. He used absolute, brutal efficiency. Every movement was calculated to sever an artery, crush a windpipe, or pierce a heart in the exact fraction of a second required.
Three raiders charged him with spears. Lucion activated his *Aura of the Apex*.
A wave of palpable, suffocating dread blasted outward from him. The three Ironborn physically recoiled, their eyes widening in sudden, irrational terror. Their hands shook. They hesitated for a half-second.
A half-second was an eternity for Lucion.
*Swish. Swish. Crunch.* He decapitated the first, severed the spear hand of the second before driving his blade through his throat, and grabbed the third by the face, crushing his skull against the mast of the ship with a sickening *crack*.
**[Target Eliminated...]**
**[Target Eliminated...]**
**[Target Eliminated...]**
**[Reward: +26 Stat Points, +13 Skill Points]**
The system prompts flashed in the corner of his vision in a rapid, continuous stream. It was an arcade of slaughter. His men boarded behind him, taking care of the stragglers, but they mostly just watched in horrified awe as their fourteen-year-old lord dismantled a crew of hardened sea reavers single-handedly.
The captain of the longship, a towering brute wielding twin axes, roared a challenge, charging Lucion through the carnage.
"Die, mainlander scum!" the captain bellowed.
Lucion didn't bother engaging in a duel. He threw his sword.
The blade crossed the distance between them with the speed of a fired ballista bolt. It pierced the captain's chainmail, shattered his sternum, and pinned him to the heavy wooden door of the captain's cabin, the point emerging a foot out the other side.
**[Target Eliminated: Human (Ironborn Captain, Level 25)]**
**[Reward: +15 Stat Points, +8 Skill Points]**
Lucion walked over, casually ripped his sword from the dead man's chest, and wiped the blood on the captain's cloak. He surveyed the deck. It was awash with blood, the scuppers running red into the sea.
He had cleared the flagship in less than three minutes. The other two longships, seeing the sheer, supernatural butchery occurring on their leader's vessel, tried to break away and flee. Lucion's galleys chased them down and sank them, burning the survivors as they floundered in the water.
By the time the sun reached its zenith, Lucion had accumulated over 400 Stat Points and 200 Skill Points. He felt like a god.
Let the realm play their Game of Thrones. He was playing an entirely different game, and he was winning.
### IV. The Lion's Pounce
Months bled into a year. The war dragged on, chewing up tens of thousands of lives.
Then, the decisive raven arrived.
Lucion was in the great hall when Maester Creylen brought the scroll to Tywin. The old man's hands were shaking. Tywin broke the royal seal, read the contents, and his face remained an impassive mask of stone.
"Rhaegar Targaryen is dead," Tywin announced to the silent hall. "Robert Baratheon crushed his chest with a warhammer at the crossing of the Trident. The royal army is broken and routing."
A collective gasp echoed through the room. The Targaryen dynasty, which had ruled for nearly three hundred years, was shattering.
"We march," Tywin declared, rolling up the scroll. "Summon the banners. We ride for King's Landing with twelve thousand men."
Later that evening, Lucion entered his father's solar unannounced. Tywin was staring at a large map of the crownlands.
"You intend to sack the city, Father," Lucion stated. It wasn't a question.
Tywin glanced at him. "The Mad King thinks we are coming to defend him. Pycelle will ensure the gates are opened to us. Once inside, we secure the city for Robert Baratheon. We present him with the city, and we prove that House Lannister's loyalty lies with the new regime."
"And the Targaryen children?" Lucion asked carefully.
"They are dragonspawn. They represent a threat to Robert's claim. They must be eliminated," Tywin said coldly. "I am sending Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch to Maegor's Holdfast to deal with Elia Martell and the infants."
Victor Thorne, the criminal mastermind within Lucion, recoiled at the sheer stupidity of this plan. It wasn't the morality of murdering children that bothered him—he had ordered the deaths of entire families in Chicago to secure his territory. It was the geopolitical blowback.
"That is a mistake, Father," Lucion said, stepping up to the table. "If we butcher the Princess of Dorne and her children, we make a permanent, blood-feud enemy of House Martell. Dorne will never forgive us. We will hand Robert the throne, but we will paint a target on our own backs for a generation."
Tywin's eyes narrowed. "What do you propose? We cannot leave them alive. Robert will want them dead."
"Let Robert kill them," Lucion countered smoothly. "Or let him bear the political burden of keeping them captive. Our objective is leverage. If we secure Elia and the children alive, we hold the most valuable hostages in the realm. We give them to Robert as a gift, but the realm will know *we* captured them. If Robert executes them, the blood is on his hands, and Dorne hates the Baratheons. If he keeps them, we have shown mercy, and Dorne owes us a debt."
Tywin stared at him, the gears turning in his Machiavellian mind. He saw the logic instantly. It was a cleaner, more profitable play.
"Furthermore," Lucion continued, sensing his father yielding, "I want the vanguard. I want to be the one to breach the Red Keep. I will secure the royal family myself, and I will ensure Jaime is extracted safely from the throne room."
Tywin considered this for a long moment. Lucion was fifteen now. He was tall, powerfully built, and had proven his lethality against the outlaws and the Ironborn. He was ready.
"You will lead a thousand of our best cavalry," Tywin decreed. "You will ride ahead of the main host. The moment the gates are open, you bypass the city and strike directly for the Red Keep. You secure the children, and you find your brother. Take Clegane and Lorch with you, but command them strictly. I want the children alive, Lucion. Ensure it."
"They will not be harmed," Lucion promised.
He turned and left the solar, a dark, predatory thrill surging through his veins. Tywin thought he was securing hostages. Lucion was securing something entirely different.
The Red Keep was defended by the remnants of the Targaryen loyalists and, more importantly, the Kingsguard. Elite, high-level knights. Boss mobs.
And Lucion was going to farm them all.
### V. The Red Harvest
The capital city of Westeros smelled of fear, smoke, and human waste.
From the vantage point of his massive warhorse, Lucion Lannister looked upon the towering walls of King's Landing. It was the year 283 AC. The Lannister host of twelve thousand men stood arrayed before the Lion Gate, their crimson banners snapping in the wind.
For hours, they waited. Then, the massive iron-studded oak doors began to groan. Grand Maester Pycelle had convinced the Mad King that Tywin Lannister had come to save him. The trap was sprung.
"Vanguard, with me!" Lucion roared, drawing his sword.
He didn't wait for the gates to open fully. As soon as the gap was wide enough for two horses, Lucion spurred his mount forward, leading a wedge of heavily armored Westerland cavalry directly into the city.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the illusion of rescue shattered.
"Lannister!" the cry went up from the City Watchmen on the walls, quickly turning into screams of terror as the vanguard began to cut them down.
"Ignore the city!" Lucion commanded, his *Aura of the Apex* amplifying his voice so it rang like a bell over the clamor of the sudden battle. "Ride for the Red Keep! Leave the looting to the infantry!"
They thundered through the streets of King's Landing like a crimson avalanche. Smallfolk screamed and scattered, trampling each other in their desperation to escape the armored warhorses. Lucion didn't care about the smallfolk. They yielded single-digit stats. He had his eyes locked on the massive, rust-colored fortress rising above the city on Aegon's High Hill.
They reached the gates of the Red Keep. The drawbridge was up, the portcullis down. Targaryen guardsmen manned the battlements, raining arrows down upon the Lannister cavalry.
"Battering ram!" Ser Amory Lorch screamed, his high, reedy voice grating on Lucion's nerves.
"Too slow," Lucion muttered.
He dismounted. His stats were currently sitting at a terrifying threshold: Strength 250, Agility 220, Vitality 180. He was no longer playing the same game as these men.
He walked up to the heavy iron portcullis. Arrows shattered against his armor, and those that found the gaps in the joints sparked against his bare skin beneath his tunic, unable to penetrate his inhuman Vitality. He ignored them.
He grabbed the thick iron bars of the portcullis with both hands. He braced his boots against the cobblestones.
He pulled.
The sound was apocalyptic. The heavy iron shrieked as it was forced upward against its gears. Stone cracked and dust showered down from the archway. The Targaryen guards on the wall stopped firing, staring in absolute, paralyzed disbelief as a single, fifteen-year-old boy lifted a gate designed to withstand a siege engine.
Lucion lifted it high enough for a horse to pass under, his muscles not even straining.
"Hold it open!" he barked to a group of his most loyal guardsmen, who rushed forward with heavy wooden beams to prop the iron gate up.
Lucion drew his sword and stepped into the courtyard of the Red Keep.
The slaughter began immediately. Dozens of Targaryen loyalists charged him. It was a meat grinder.
Lucion moved with the devastating, beautiful grace of a natural disaster. He didn't just kill; he obliterated. He backhanded a knight in full plate armor, the sheer force caving in the man's breastplate and sending him flying thirty feet through the air to crash into a stone column. He sidestepped a halberd thrust, grabbed the shaft, and whipped the weapon and the man holding it in a wide arc, using him as a bludgeon to crush three other attackers.
**[System Prompts Cascading... +12 SP... +15 SP... +10 SP...]**
He didn't bother checking the notifications. The power was flowing into him like a raging river.
He carved a bloody path directly toward Maegor's Holdfast, the inner fortress where the royal family resided. As he approached the drawbridge, he saw Ser Amory Lorch and his men attempting to hack their way through the door.
"Hold!" Lucion commanded.
Lorch turned, his piggy eyes wide with battle-lust. "We must secure the dragonspawn, My Lord! Orders!"
"My orders, Lorch," Lucion said, walking toward him, his sword dripping red. "And I told you they are to be taken alive."
"They're too much trouble alive!" Lorch sneered, turning back to the door. "Better to end them now and tell your father they resisted!"
Victor Thorne abhorred insubordination.
Lucion didn't argue. He activated his Agility. He crossed the distance in a fraction of a heartbeat, grabbed Lorch by the back of his neck, and drove his face directly into the spiked iron wood of the Holdfast door. The sickening crunch of bone ended Lorch's miserable life instantly.
**[Target Eliminated: Human (Ser Amory Lorch, Level 30)]**
**[Reward: +20 Stat Points, +10 Skill Points]**
Lucion let the body drop. The Lannister guards accompanying Lorch backed away in terror.
"Breach the door," Lucion commanded them coldly. "If anyone touches the Princess or her children, I will skin them alive."
They hurried to obey, smashing the locks.
Lucion burst into the royal nursery. The scene inside made his blood run cold, not out of morality, but out of sheer fury at a broken plan.
Princess Elia Martell was backed into a corner, clutching her infant son Aegon to her chest, her daughter Rhaenys weeping behind her. And standing over them, his massive greatsword raised to strike, was Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides. The giant was covered in blood, his eyes mad with absolute savagery.
He hadn't waited for the door; he had scaled the wall and come through the window.
"Clegane!" Lucion roared, his voice hitting the giant with the physical force of a gale.
Gregor turned, his brutish face contorted in rage. "Mine," he grunted. "My kills."
"You disobeyed a direct order," Lucion stated calmly, stepping fully into the room. He sheathed his sword. He didn't need it.
Gregor laughed, a booming, ugly sound. He turned away from Elia and raised his greatsword, pointing it at Lucion. "Little lordling wants to play. I'll break you like a twig."
The Mountain charged. He was eight feet of muscle and armored rage, moving with a speed that terrified normal men. He swung his massive, six-foot blade in a horizontal arc designed to cut Lucion in half.
Lucion didn't dodge. He stood his ground.
As the blade swung toward his waist, Lucion simply reached out his bare hand and caught the flat of the blade.
The impact should have sheared his arm off. Instead, a shockwave rippled through the room, shattering the remaining glass in the windows. The greatsword stopped dead in its tracks.
Gregor's eyes widened behind his helm, a flicker of genuine confusion and primal fear penetrating his bloodlust. He tried to pull the sword back, to wrench it from the boy's grip. He couldn't move it an inch. It was as if the blade were embedded in solid granite.
"You're a mad dog, Clegane," Lucion whispered, his eyes blazing with unnatural green fire. "And mad dogs get put down."
Lucion squeezed his hand. The Valyrian-adjacent, incredibly thick steel of the Mountain's greatsword buckled and snapped in half with a loud *crack*.
Before Gregor could react to his broken weapon, Lucion moved. He drove his right fist directly into the center of Gregor's heavy breastplate.
With 250 Strength, the punch possessed the kinetic energy of a siege boulder. The heavy steel plate crumpled inward like tin foil. Gregor's ribcage shattered completely, the bone fragments driven deep into his lungs and heart. The giant was lifted entirely off his feet, crashing backward through the heavy wooden door of the nursery and landing in a crumpled, ruined heap in the corridor outside. He twitched once, blood bubbling from the eye slits of his helm, and died.
**[Target Eliminated: Human Boss (Ser Gregor Clegane, Level 65)]**
**[Reward: +80 Stat Points, +40 Skill Points, Trait Unlocked: Giant's Fortitude]**
The massive payout washed over him, a euphoric surge of absolute power. He had just killed the most feared man in Westeros with a single punch.
He turned back to Elia Martell. The Princess of Dorne was staring at him, her dark eyes wide with an indescribable mixture of terror and awe. She clutched her children tighter, trembling uncontrollably.
Lucion smoothed his expression, letting the terrifying aura fade, and adopted a mask of perfect, chivalric calm. He bowed deeply.
"Princess Elia," Lucion said smoothly, his voice returning to a cultured, aristocratic cadence. "I am Lord Lucion Lannister. You and your children are safe. My father's men have secured the Keep. You are under the protection of Casterly Rock."
He didn't wait for her to reply. He turned on his heel and strode out of the room, stepping over the massive, crushed corpse of the Mountain.
The harvest in the Keep was largely over. Now, he had to secure the throne room. He had to find Jaime.
He moved rapidly through the winding, blood-slicked corridors, his enhanced perception guiding him toward the massive oak and bronze doors of the Great Hall.
He pushed the doors open.
The cavernous room was eerily quiet, the only sound the distant screaming from the city below. At the far end of the hall, rising like a twisted, monstrous metal beast, was the Iron Throne.
Sitting on it, a golden sword resting across his knees, his white Kingsguard armor covered in blood, was Jaime Lannister.
At the base of the throne, sprawled in a pool of his own filth and blood, his throat slit from ear to ear, was King Aerys Targaryen.
Jaime looked up as Lucion approached, his handsome face utterly hollow, his eyes blank and haunted.
"He wanted to burn it," Jaime whispered, his voice cracking. "He told his Pyromancers to ignite the wildfire. He wanted to burn the city, the people, everything. Let him be the king of ashes, he said."
Lucion walked up the steps of the throne, his boots splashing in the dead king's blood. He stopped a few steps below Jaime.
"You did what you had to do, brother," Lucion said, his voice entirely devoid of judgment. Victor Thorne didn't care about oaths; he cared about results. Jaime had eliminated a volatile variable. "You saved a million lives."
Jaime let out a bitter, barking laugh. "The realm won't see it that way. They'll call me Kingslayer. Oathbreaker. A man without honor."
"Honor is a currency for dead men, Jaime," Lucion replied coldly. "You are alive. Our House has secured the capital. The Targaryen dynasty is dead, and the new king will owe his crown to the Lannisters."
Lucion reached out and gripped Jaime's shoulder, his fingers digging into the white enameled plate.
"Stand up, brother," Lucion commanded, his voice echoing in the massive hall. "Get off that chair before Eddard Stark or Robert Baratheon walk through those doors and get the wrong idea. The game has changed today. And House Lannister is dealing the cards."
As Jaime slowly rose from the Iron Throne, Lucion looked down at the dead king, and then out toward the doors of the Great Hall. The system pulsed warmly in his mind. The war was over, but for the Kingpin of Casterly Rock, the true conquest of Westeros had only just begun.