Chapter 31: Feels like Victory
-Rhaena Targaryen-
The unknowing youngest daughter of the extra crispy Rogue Prince somberly stared out a tower window of the Red Keep, her melancholic mood only lifted briefly by the sight of Vermax approaching from the north. She hoped the green dragon brought with it glad tidings, but that deeply hurt part of her young heart feared to hear it. Rhaena never bet against Aegon.
Up until the news of her grandmother's capture and the death of her majestic red dragon, she held onto the hope that her beautiful cousin was once again making a mountain out of a mole hill, making that mountain all about him, and robbing the family of their capacity to hate each other by exhausting all their hate on him. She remembered fondly every family gathering he ruined with an outburst like he first did all those years ago the night of her mother's funeral. It frightened her so much back then, but as time turned her slowly into a woman she gained an incredible appreciation for the peace left behind in his wake. Yet she found no such relief, only greater heart ache from the hope denied.
As often the case she took small amusement from looking down on the city through a Myrrish Eye, choosing to follow Prince Jacaerys's descent from the Dragonpit. She hated looking at his plane features. Sickened sight of his base bastardry, the living humiliation of her Uncle Laenor. She deeply wondered if the Strong Boys had come from the right side of the sheets, would her beautiful cousin still have turned against their family?
When she lost sight of him on the Street of Sisters, she turned the far eye to where he and his ten knight escort would emerge at the great square at the foot of Visenya's Hill, the heart of the city where many of the major streets intersected. Her far-eye spotted a great movement of people emerging onto the square coming down the Street of Seeds, a huge mass of people stretching all the way back to the Cobbler's Square and beyond. At their head came a one armed man, his mouth opening wide, yelling back to the crowd behind him.
Jacaerys and his knights emerged onto the square soon after, and upon seeing the mass of oncoming smallfolk put spurs to their mounts. They sought the route to the keep but stopped abruptly, their way barred by men with pikes standing in their way. Rhaena screamed when the crowd surrounded the Prince and his knights, pulling them off their horses despite the men swinging their swords to stop them.
All of her hate for his bastardry ended when Jacaerys's head rose over the crowd on a pike, while the rest of his dismembered body parts were raised overhead by many people and pumped up and down in celebration of their barbarity. Her screams attracted attention, but Rhaena struggled to put into words what she saw. She managed to guide the Velaryon man-at-arms to what she witnessed. The man stiffened as he gained knowledge of the situation, then stormed off after saying 'I must report this to Ser Vaemond at once!' He took off down the tower, not even returning her far-eye.
The girl curled into a ball and wept at the horror of massed humanity. In one display Rhaena learned to fear and hate the smallfolk. She remembered feeling horrified by Aegon's burning of the city, but now exposed to true horror she understood the difference. She was merely scandalized, and now with new knowledge she cursed her cousin for not burning them all. She understood why. Aegon turned this city into a trap, another trap, just like every other her family stepped into since King Viserys's death. Her cousin savaged them again and again with impunity. Aegon's followers butchered Rhaenyra's in the fields, in the streets, and in their homes. Alone in the tower, Rhaena's heart grew three sizes to fit all the hate she learned that day. Her hate for the savage and stupid small folk, and her hate forming for two more people, including one she never thought she ever could.
Ser Vaemond Velaryon stormed into the room, and pulled Rhaena up off the floor. He looked down at her tear and snot streaked face and examined her eyes, looking for something within them that he apparently found. He handed her back the far-eye the other man took as his five sons followed him into the space.
He turned away from her to the open window, and from his coat withdrew his own far-eye, a longer and heavier bronze piece than her own. He quickly surveyed the scene below and raised an eyebrow.
"They are moving fast!" he declared in a tone of wonder, "Already almost to the Pit."
He turned his head to his silent sons and nodded, "Send out the Pentoshi sell swords to 'secure our route to the docks'." Something in Vaemond's tone shifted as he spoke, less like a man taking command in an emergency, and more like a mean girl who knows something some else doesn't, "Lock down the Red Keep after, but ensure 'the Queen's' access to her dragon remains unobstructed. Go now."
"Yes, father." One of the dullards assented for the pack, and the fools departed to their tasks.
As they left, Rhaena worked through the words and tone of her great uncle, and found her mind halting on one phrase, "Did you say the Pit?"
"Aye." Vaemond answered and resumed his observation through his far-eye.
Rhaena pulled up her own, and joined him at the window, her gaze cast quickly to Visenya's Hill. There she expected to see the mob that murdered Jacaerys halted at the first barbican Aegon built going up the hill, but instead she found them past the third and advancing without opposition.
"Where are the Dragonkeepers?" she cried out in shock.
The fortifications going up the hill to the Dragonpit can be held by only a handful of men at each of the barbicans spread along the path up. Even if the Dragonkeepers made grievous errors, the multilayered defense should stall even an army, let alone a mass of rioters.
"They have revealed their true loyalty." Vaemond replied with cool ease.
Rhaena looked at the man, completely composed, even eager despite such a calamity befalling the Black cause, and she knew the truth of him. A false friend, like so many girls she interacted with growing up, only writ large and male. Rhaena even recognized this play, and it didn't take a deep tour of her recollection to understand that her uncle performed it worse than a ten name day old girl, the man almost incapable of hiding his contempt for all of them.
It was a classic maneuver amongst bitchy girls, a manufactured spectacle that puts a girl seemingly against one circle of girls, and thus into the trust of another opposing circle where she wreaks havoc. It's such a basic play that most girls grow beyond such basic cunning by the time they flower. Rhaena saw it so clearly, and wondered how in the name of the gods Rhaenyra missed it with Vaemond's stiff at best performance. It's almost like the Black Queen grew up without any friends.
With that thought Rhaena finalized her opinion, and admitted to herself that she hated that dumb bitch married to her father, and she hated her father too for enabling the dumb bitch and dragging them all into this unwinnable war. If anyone had taught that dumb bitch her proper place, none of this would have happened. It's all Rhaenyra's fault, and her father's fault for supporting her instead of putting her in a wife's proper place under his thumb.
His greed put her in this tower with a false knight. His greed put her sister, Baela, and her half brothers and half sister, down in the Keep with more false knights sending out the sellswords who might be the only men actually loyal to Rhaenyra in the capital. His greed got her grandmother captured and Meleys killed. She hoped he enjoyed his flight to the Riverlands enough to justify the capture of his entire family. Or worse.
Her stomach tossed and turned painfully at the thought. Would Aegon's false knights even take them all alive? Were they all about to die, while she remained still and silent with fright? She didn't know how long she spent lost in her own twisting mind when she finally gained the courage to try and warn the dumb bitch of the betrayal. She took a step back, but her uncle reached out quick like a snake and wrapped his thick calloused hand around her pale slender wrist like a manacle of steel. With a single glance he completely shut down all courage in her. What could she do? She was just a girl, and he was a man.
Neither of them needed their far eyes to witness the collapse of the great dome of the Dragonpit, the shocking sight stealing the breath of both. Then a shadow passed over the tower and Rhaena saw the last of her hope fly towards the dragon pit. Uncle Vaemond let her go to raise up his far-eye once more and his mouth opened into a perfect O, not an O of shock, but the O of a man who never before saw anything this good.
"It's just like he said…" he trailed off in awe.
Rhaena gasped when she saw Syrax suddenly bank and throw off its rider. Had the dumb bitch panicked so badly she forgot to fasten herself to her dragon? If not for Vaemond's next harm-joy filled admission she really would have thought so, no evidence to the contrary otherwise.
"The dumb bastard really stole the Whore's dragon…" Vaemond threw his head back in laughter declaring, "That's two!"
Joffrey stole his mother's dragon then fell off when it rebelled against him. Further evidence the Blacks never stood a chance against beautiful Aegon. Further fuel for the fires of Rhaena's hate. The pair stood together, composing themselves after the none stop rise of lunacy and betrayal until one of Vaemond's retarded sons returned.
"What news do you bring?" her great uncle demanded with a barely controlled stoic face.
"The King's bastards sallied out with the Pentoshi, they ride for the Dragonpit." the man responded, then turned his simpleton gaze on her and his countenance widened in slow understanding of his audience.
"Stop, you fool!" Vaemond shouted when he went for the dagger on his belt, "We have won. The gods favor us, as they favor the true King of Westeros, Aegon the Great, second of his name! Come, boy, let us inform the Whore and her last Kingsguard of the joyous news! The war is over. It hardly feels like it even began."
Rhaena followed the pair out of the room and down the steps of the tower, hoping to at least feel some satisfaction from seeing the look on the dumb bitch's face when she finally understands her proper place. How could she have ever thought she would ever be Queen in Aegon's world?
-Larys-
The Master of Whispers watched his magnum opus unfold from the eyes of his Fireflys - men broken under torture for his use in skinchanging, a method he learned at the foot of his king, gleamed while he listened to the man tell stories of the world to children at many a feast - hopping between them as they died amidst the fire and smoke consuming those whom stormed the Dragonpit, an event he carefully crafted and timed.
The Shepard, the firebrand preacher, was entirely an independent actor, beholden to no one, but the first of his flock, the men who shouted loudest with him, fed him, sheltered him, defended him, all men loyal to Larys Strong's patronage. They guided the Shepard, and the flock, and they whipped up the anti-dragon fury that started when Aegon burned down much of Flea Bottom and looted the city. The fury that boiled over due to Rhaenyra seeking to squeeze everything left out of the impoverished masses in her desperation for treasury.
Larys guided tens of thousands of smallfolk to storm the Dragonpit and end the tyranny of fire. What a wondrous joke. He watched in glee as they marched to their doom pouring into the pit, into the inferno, all by his will, by his schemes, by his magic. It made him harder than choking the White Worm on his strong cock, something he intended to repeat after he finished documenting his great achievement, possibly the greatest feat of spycraft of all time.
He watched a man hew a small dragon's skull with an axe, and another dragon take a spear through the eye, he saw the dragon of a prince strangle itself in its chains. He watched the Pink Dread earn its title while Moondancer's head came off its body by a Valyrian Steel sword. Sea Smoke ably defended itself until the greatest and most powerful dragon in the pit took a crossbow bolt to the eye and in its agony smashed itself through a key column bearing the load of the great dome, kicking off a chain reaction from the fire weakened structural elements of the grand building, bringing the great dome down atop the lot. Soon after he watched the dumb yellow beast ridden by the queen dive into the mob outside the pit. It could have roasted them all to death mid flight, but instead fought them on the ground, where its clumsy body succumbed to a death by a thousand cuts by the desperate mass of smallfolk.
Larys quivered in satisfaction. He'd orchestrated the deaths of eight dragons and the thefts of four more. Not since the Doom was there a greater bane of dragons and dragonlords than he. His eyes rolled back down and he beheld the massive tent pitched in his britches. With purpose he dragged his clubfoot behind him until he reached his destination where he manipulated a few ropes to bring the White Worm, the up-jumped whore who considered herself his rival, into position. Her back on the mattress, her head hanging off, her silver gold hair shorn off as a way to further break her pride without harming her wonderful pale Valyrian flesh. With his excellence in rope-play he puppeted her body so he could suck on her perfect little toes while he filled her throat with his cock.
Thrusting through her obedient lips felt like a lesser victory than his magnum opus, but still like victory.
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I went through a bunch of PoV's before settling on what I felt the most perfect in Rhaena. She was the perfect instrument to reveal the ironic twist climax, that Aegon for all his machismo and misogyny, delivered the final blow of his plans through tribal mean-girl tactics, and Rhaenyra - that pillar of feminist fantasy - couldn't see it coming because she didn't have any friends growing up. The situation made even more funny because we see Rhaena's narration warped by the same pretty boy privilege that plagued Rhaenyra through the build up.
I love this story so much.
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