Chapter 37: Abyssal Reckoning at Villa Antarion
The journey to the secluded island lair of the Antarion family was undertaken with the chilling swiftness and secrecy that had become a hallmark of King Baelon's more personal endeavors. Three lean, dark-sailed war dromons, stripped of any Targaryen insignia and crewed by handpicked, tight-lipped veterans from the Volantene fleet, sliced through the indigo waters of the Narrow Sea, their course set for a small, mist-shrouded archipelago several leagues south of Braavos itself. Upon the flagship, the Night Serpent, Baelon Targaryen stood at the prow, a figure of coiled shadow against the moon-dappled waves, the sea wind tugging at his black cloak.
With him were twenty knights of his Dragon Guard, their Valyrian steel gleaming faintly even in the dim light, their faces set in grim lines of unwavering loyalty. Centurion Kael and fifty of his most savage, silent Freedmen were also aboard, their anticipation a palpable, hungry thing; they had traded the sands of Meereen for the salt spray of the sea, but their thirst for vengeance against any who represented hidden, oppressive powers remained unslaked. Above them, a far greater shadow than their ships, Silverwing cleaved the night sky, her scales like hammered moonlight, her senses linked with her rider's, a silent harbinger of the storm to come. Umbraxys, as always, was an unseen but overwhelming presence, its consciousness intertwined with Baelon's, extending its ethereal senses far ahead, probing the mists and the dark waters for any sign of ambush or arcane defense.
Baelon's mind was a crucible of cold focus. The Voldemort soul within him, the ancient architect of countless intricate schemes and devastating displays of power, felt a grim satisfaction in this direct, predatory act. This was not merely a strategic strike; it was a personal desecration of his enemy's sanctuary, a message carved in blood and fire. The Drowned Brethren, with their abyssal god and their faceless assassins, had dared to reach for him. Now, the Serpent was bringing the reckoning to their very doorstep.
As they neared the Antarion island, a low-lying smudge of land barely visible against the pre-dawn gloom, Baelon raised a hand. The small flotilla slowed, oars muffled, sails doused. He had chosen his time well: the dead of night, under a new moon, with a heavy sea mist – perhaps natural, perhaps encouraged by his own subtle weather magic – providing an additional cloak of concealment.
"The island is warded, Speaker," Umbraxys communicated, its thoughts like the rasp of ancient stone. "Old magic, tied to the tides and the blood of its inhabitants. Faint, but persistent. It sings a song of silence and drowning."
"Archmaester Vaellyn's countermeasures will be deployed," Baelon murmured, more to himself than to any other. Larys Strong, before their departure, had provided meticulously detailed charts of the island, procured at horrific cost from a terrified Braavosi smuggler, and Vaellyn had devised specific nullifying agents and counter-charms against known Braavosi sea-cult wards.
Under Baelon's direction, small, silent skiffs were lowered, carrying Kael and his Freedmen. Their task was to secure a beachhead, to neutralize any outlying sentries, and to disable any mundane alarms. They moved like specters, their dark forms swallowed by the mist and the surf. Baelon, from the deck of the Night Serpent, watched their progress through Umbraxys's senses, feeling their cold determination, their predatory anticipation.
The Serpent Slithers into the Nest
The Freedmen were brutally efficient. Several Braavosi guards, cloaked and armed, patrolling the island's perimeter paths, were dispatched with silent garrotes or swift, deep thrusts of obsidian daggers – weapons Kael's men had come to favor for their silence and their unnerving ability to inflict wounds that were slow to clot. No alarms were raised.
With the beachhead secured, Baelon himself prepared to land. He would not unleash Silverwing yet; her fury was a tool to be deployed with precision, for maximum psychological impact once the initial infiltration was complete. He, along with his Dragon Guard, boarded a larger landing craft. As they approached the island's rocky shore, his mages, cloaked and chanting softly, cast Vaellyn's nullifying agents into the water – rare herbs and powdered minerals that fizzed and dissolved, creating a temporary disruption in the local magical currents, designed to weaken the Antarions' ancestral wards.
Baelon felt the subtle shift as the island's protective enchantments flickered and dimmed. "The song falters, Speaker," Umbraxys noted.
They landed in a secluded cove, the silence broken only by the lapping of waves and the crunch of boots on shingle. The Antarion villa, a sprawling structure of dark stone and salt-bleached timber, loomed atop a low cliff overlooking the sea, its windows mostly dark, save for a few flickering lights suggesting a household largely asleep, or an enemy supremely confident in their isolation.
Kael met them, his face a grim silhouette. "The outer patrols are silenced, Your Grace. No alarm given. The path to the villa is clear, but the structure itself… it feels wrong. Like a tomb that breathes."
"All places dedicated to forgotten gods feel thus, Centurion," Baelon replied, his eyes scanning the villa's brooding outline. "Lead the way. We will give its occupants a true reason to feel the chill of the grave."
The approach to the villa was through a twisted, overgrown garden, filled with strange, salt-resistant plants that seemed to writhe in the faint breeze. The Dragon Guard moved with disciplined precision, their armor making almost no sound, while Kael's Freedmen fanned out, their movements like those of hunting wolves.
The villa's main doors were of heavy, dark wood, bound with verdigrised bronze in the shape of coiling tentacles. Too obvious. Baelon, guided by Umbraxys's senses which could perceive the subtle flows of energy and the presence of hidden mechanisms, gestured towards a less conspicuous side entrance, a servant's door leading to the kitchens.
It was locked, but not for long. One of Baelon's mages whispered a word of unbinding, and the ancient lock clicked open with a soft sigh.
Inside, the air was cold, damp, and thick with the cloying scent of brine, incense, and something else… something subtly rotten, like decaying seaweed left too long in the sun. They moved through darkened kitchens, storerooms, and silent corridors, their objective the central hall and any hidden sanctums Lyra Maelon's interrogation had hinted at.
They encountered their first resistance in a long gallery leading towards the main living quarters. Two hulking figures, clad in dark, scaled armor that seemed to shift and ripple in the dim light, wielding heavy, nine-pronged tridents, stepped from the shadows. They were not entirely human; their skin had a greyish, piscine sheen, their eyes were wide and unblinking, and their movements, though swift, had an unnatural, fluid quality.
"Drowned Ones," Kael snarled, recognizing the description from Lyra's terrified confessions of the cult's initiated guardians.
The fight was brief but brutal. The Drowned Ones fought with a desperate, silent ferocity, their tridents whistling through the air. But they were no match for Valyrian steel and the disciplined fury of the Dragon Guard. One was decapitated by Ser Corlys Vaelaros, its head rolling across the polished stone floor, leaving a trail of blackish, oily blood. The other, Kael himself engaged, shattering its trident with a blow from his Ghiscari axe before cleaving its scaled torso nearly in two.
As the second Drowned One fell, it let out a gurgling, inhuman shriek, a sound that seemed to echo unnaturally through the villa. The alarm was raised.
"So much for subtlety," Baelon murmured, a cold smile touching his lips. "No matter. Let them come. Silverwing!" he projected his thoughts to his dragon, soaring high above. "Attend me. But do not yet unmake this place. I have… questions for its masters."
The Heart of the Abyss
Shouts and the clang of arms now echoed from deeper within the villa. The Antarion household was stirring. Baelon, his Dragon Guard forming a steel wedge around him, Kael's Freedmen flanking them, advanced towards the sounds of conflict.
They burst into a vast, circular chamber in the heart of the villa. The room was lit by eerie, phosphorescent fungi growing in niches along the walls, casting a sickly green-blue glow. In the center, a deep, circular pool of black, still water dominated the space. Around it, perhaps a dozen figures were arrayed – some in the scaled armor of Drowned One guardians, others in dark, hooded robes. Presiding over them, standing before a grotesque idol of a nine-armed kraken carved from what looked like greasy, black basalt, was a tall, imposing man with the harsh, aristocratic features of the Antarion lineage, his eyes burning with a fanatic's light. This was Lord Sylas Antarion, patriarch of his house and, Baelon surmised, high priest of this particular nest.
"Blasphemers!" Sylas Antarion roared, his voice surprisingly powerful. "You dare defile the sacred space of Him Who Slumbers Beneath the Tides! You will all drown in your own blood for this sacrilege!"
He raised a gnarled, staff-like scepter, topped with a cluster of dark, iridescent pearls, and began to chant in a guttural, clicking language that grated on the ears. The black pool in the center of the room began to churn, and a terrifying, multi-tentacled shape started to rise from its Stygian depths.
Baelon did not wait to see what horrors it would fully unleash. "Vaellyn's gift, now!" he commanded one of his mages.
The mage hurled a small, clay orb into the pool. It shattered on the surface, releasing a cloud of shimmering, silvery dust that spread rapidly across the water. The dust reacted violently with the abyssal energies. The churning water hissed and steamed, the rising tentacled shape letting out a deafening, psychic shriek of agony before collapsing back into the depths, which began to bubble and roil as if boiling. The silvery dust seemed to neutralize the pool's dark magic, turning its surface from black to a murky, inert grey.
Sylas Antarion stared in disbelief and rage as his summoned entity was so easily dispelled. "Witchcraft! You will pay for…"
His threat was cut short as Silverwing, responding to Baelon's earlier call, chose that moment to make her presence known. With a sound like tearing mountains, a section of the chamber's domed ceiling imploded inwards as the great silver dragon smashed through it, landing with a ground-shaking impact on the far side of the pool, her roar a cataclysm of sound and fury. Her silver scales seemed to blaze in the phosphorescent glow, her eyes molten gold.
The Drowned Ones and robed cultists, already disoriented by the neutralization of their sacred pool, were thrown into utter panic by the sudden appearance of a fully grown, enraged dragon within their sanctum.
"Now, my children," Baelon said, his voice cutting through the chaos, "reap the harvest."
The Dragon Guard and Kael's Freedmen surged forward. The fight was a slaughter. The Drowned Ones, deprived of their summoned monstrosity and facing a dragon and elite Targaryen warriors, were cut down without mercy. The robed cultists, mostly scholars or decadent nobles rather than warriors, offered little resistance, many screaming and trying to flee, only to be met by Kael's axe or a legionary's spear.
Baelon himself strode towards Sylas Antarion, who stood frozen in a mixture of terror and apoplectic fury before his desecrated idol. Silverwing let out another deafening roar, her hot breath washing over the high priest, singeing his robes.
"Lord Antarion, I presume," Baelon said, his voice dripping with icy contempt. "Your 'Him Who Slumbers' seems to be… indisposed. Perhaps you would care to answer some questions in his stead?"
Sylas Antarion, his face contorted, spat a string of curses in the guttural tongue of his cult, then lunged at Baelon, a sacrificial dagger suddenly appearing in his hand.
Baelon sidestepped the clumsy attack with contemptuous ease, then brought the pommel of Truth down in a crushing blow to the side of Antarion's head. The high priest collapsed like a sack of stones, unconscious but alive. Baelon needed him that way, at least for a short while.
Spoils of Sacrilege
With the defenders annihilated or captured, Baelon ordered a thorough search of the sanctum and the villa. What they found confirmed Lyra Maelon's confessions and painted an even darker picture of the Drowned Brethren's activities.
Hidden chambers behind the basalt kraken idol revealed shelves laden with disturbing artifacts: more Abyssal Lodestone coins, ritual daggers crafted from human bone and obsidian, scrolls written in the same clicking, guttural language Sylas Antarion had spoken, detailing sacrificial rites and prophecies of the "Great Quietus." They found detailed maps of Braavos's canal systems, with certain Keyholder palazzos and Iron Bank vaults marked with the nine-armed kraken symbol. There were also ledgers, written in coded Braavosi, detailing financial transactions between the Antarion family, several other prominent Braavosi houses, and shadowy intermediaries in various Free Cities, funneling vast sums towards "the Work of the Deep."
Most chillingly, they found a small, hidden alcove containing a single, black cushion upon which rested a lock of dark hair tied with a silver thread, and a small, exquisitely carved wooden bird – a nightingale. Beside it lay a single, shed scale from a dragon, shimmering with an unnatural, oily iridescence. Baelon recognized the scale's faint, lingering magical signature. "Echo of Stillness," he murmured. This was clearly a personal shrine, either to her, or by her. Had she recuperated here after her escape from Meereen? Or was this a symbolic link, a focus for her own powers? The implications were unsettling.
Lord Sylas Antarion, revived with a splash of icy water from the now-inert pool, proved a difficult subject for interrogation, even under the direct, terrifying gaze of Baelon and the menacing presence of Silverwing. His fanaticism was deeply ingrained. But Baelon, drawing upon the Voldemort soul's mastery of mental violation, bypassed verbal questioning. He plunged directly into Antarion's mind, a brutal, overwhelming assault that shattered the high priest's psychic defenses like glass.
Images, thoughts, and memories flooded Baelon's consciousness: the horrifying rituals performed in this very chamber, the faces of other high-ranking Drowned Brethren in Braavos, their secret meeting places within the city's labyrinthine underbelly, the true extent of their infiltration of the Iron Bank's directorate, and their desperate, ongoing efforts to locate more "sleeping ones," ancient leviathans or entities of the deep that their god could awaken to hasten the Great Quietus. He also learned that "Echo of Stillness" had indeed briefly sheltered here after her escape, before being spirited away by other cultists towards a more secure, hidden sanctuary, her destination unknown even to Sylas, but rumored to be connected to the Grand Beacon in the Kraken's Maw.
When Baelon withdrew from Sylas Antarion's ravaged mind, the high priest was left a drooling, mindless wreck. His usefulness was at an end.
The Kraken's Villa Burns
"Kael," Baelon commanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "Dispose of him. And the others. Leave no one alive. Gather all texts, all artifacts of value. What cannot be carried, burn. Let this island serve as a pyre, a beacon of warning to their brethren in Braavos."
As his forces looted the villa and executed the remaining cultists, Baelon stood on the cliff edge, looking out over the dark, turbulent sea towards the distant, unseen Braavos. The raid had been a resounding success. He had struck a direct blow against a Keyholder family, a core cell of the Drowned Brethren, and acquired invaluable intelligence. The message would be unmistakable.
Silverwing landed beside him, nuzzling his shoulder, her great golden eyes reflecting the fires that were now beginning to consume the Antarion villa. He laid a hand on her warm snout.
"Well done, my beauty," he murmured. "A fitting overture to the songs we shall sing in Braavos itself, in due time."
As dawn approached, casting a blood-red stain across the eastern sky, Baelon's ships, laden with dark spoils and the grim satisfaction of a mission accomplished, sailed away from the burning island. The acrid smoke from Villa Antarion would be the first news to reach Braavos of the Serpent King's retribution.
Larys Strong's agents in the Titan city, Baelon knew, would already be working to amplify the terror, to spread rumors of his demonic power, of his ability to strike anywhere, anytime. The Keyholders would be looking over their shoulders, wondering who among them was next, wondering how deep the King of Meereen's knowledge truly went.
News from Aemond's expedition in the far north was still pending. The Kraken's Maw was a distant, perilous objective. But Baelon felt a renewed confidence. He had faced the cult's guardians, plundered their secrets, and burned one of their nests. The Drowned God and its servants were not invulnerable. They could bleed. They could burn.
Back in Meereen, Baelon knew he would analyze the new texts, the new maps, the new names. The war against the Abyssal Cult was far from over. But with each strike, he uncoiled further, his fangs sinking deeper into the heart of this ancient, shadowy enemy. The reckoning at Villa Antarion was but a single, vicious bite. The true feast of vengeance was yet to come.