Chapter 54: Tides of Terror, Echoes of Valyria
The pre-dawn sky over Elyria was the color of a dying ember as Baelon's war fleet slipped from the harbor. Ten swift-sailing Valyrian-designed frigates, crewed by a mixture of seasoned sailors and Kael's hard-bitten Freedmen, formed the vanguard. Larger galleasses, carrying contingents of the Dragon Guard and siege weaponry, followed. Above them, Silverwing and Vhagar cleaved the air, their leathern wings beating a powerful rhythm that promised retribution. The Ignis Shard on Baelon's gauntlet pulsed with a low, insistent heat, a familiar companion to the thrum of Silverwing's flight.
Aemond, a dark silhouette atop the colossal Vhagar, was a study in barely contained impatience. "Let us hope these sea-spawn offer better sport than the Braavosi city watch, brother," his voice, laced with anticipation, carried across the distance separating the dragons. "Vhagar thirsts for a challenge worthy of her flame."
"These are not men, Aemond," Baelon cautioned, his gaze scanning the grey, choppy waters of the Summer Sea. "They are extensions of an older, colder will. Observe their tactics, their forms. Maester Arryk needs precise information if the Titan is to be our counter to their deepest horrors."
The first days of the armed reconnaissance were eerily quiet. They patrolled the shipping lanes where Baelon's cogs had vanished, finding only drifting wreckage and the unsettling, oily slicks that hinted at unnatural presences. The mood aboard the flagship, Sea Serpent, grew tense. Kael, his scarred face grim, doubled the watch, his Freedmen's eyes constantly searching the waves.
Then, on the fourth morning, as a sickly green dawn broke through a lingering mist, the attack came. It wasn't a grand assault, but a swift, vicious probing strike. From the murky depths surrounding a treacherous reef, three grotesque shapes erupted. They were not krakens, not yet, but something akin to monstrous, armored squids, their bodies a sickly, phosphorescent green, their tentacles lined with razor-sharp, beak-like suckers. Accompanying them was a single, low-slung Drowned Brethren raiding galley, its black sails emblazoned with a leering, many-tentacled emblem.
"Engage!" Ser Corlys Valerius roared from the deck of the Sea Serpent. Archers loosed volleys, the arrows thudding largely ineffectively against the creatures' rubbery hides.
Vhagar descended like a thunderbolt. Aemond's cry of savage joy was lost in the dragon's earth-shattering roar as a torrent of black-and-red flame engulfed one of the squid-beasts. It shrieked, a sound like tearing metal and boiling steam, thrashing wildly as its flesh was cooked within its unnatural armor. Silverwing, under Baelon's precise direction, bathed another in silver fire, forcing it back, its tentacles lashing in agony.
The Drowned Brethren galley, seeing its escorts overwhelmed, attempted to flee. "Kael! Their ship is yours!" Baelon commanded. Kael and a score of his Freedmen, their grappling hooks already flying, expertly brought their frigate alongside the fleeing cultist vessel. The clash of steel was brief and brutal. The Freedmen, hardened by countless skirmishes, made short work of the fanatical but outmatched Drowned Ones.
Baelon, circling above on Silverwing, observed the dying struggles of the flame-scalded sea creatures. Their resilience was noteworthy; even charred and broken, they continued to writhe, attempting to drag themselves back into the depths. He noted the sickly luminescence, the specific patterns of their armor, the way their tentacles articulated. This was data.
When the brief battle concluded, Kael presented a captured Drowned Priest, bound and gagged, but his eyes still burning with cold fanaticism. "He was trying to scuttle the ship with this, Your Grace," Kael said, holding up a strange, pulsating orb of dark, veined stone. It radiated a palpable coldness.
Baelon felt the Ignis Shard react to the orb with a distinct surge of heat, a feeling of intense antipathy. "Maester Arryk will want to examine that. Carefully."
The next encounter, two days later, was of a different magnitude entirely. They had ventured further south, near a string of uninhabited, mist-shrouded islands known in local legends as the 'Kraken's Teeth.' As if summoned by their proximity, the sea began to boil. Not with heat, but with a churning, unnatural disturbance. A low, sub-sonic hum vibrated through the hulls of the ships, unsettling the sailors, making their teeth ache and their minds fill with a primal dread.
Then, it rose.
This was no mere squid. This was a juvenile kraken, but 'juvenile' was a relative term for a creature whose central body was the size of a small longship, a mass of mottled, shifting flesh that seemed to absorb the light. Its eyes, vast and milky-white, devoid of pupils, radiated an ancient, alien malice. Dozens of tentacles, thick as tree trunks and twice as long, writhed around it, some ending in barbed clubs, others in serrated, chitinous blades.
"By the Seven Hells…" Ser Corlys breathed, his hand gripping his sword hilt so tightly his knuckles were white.
Aemond, however, laughed, a wild, exultant sound. "Now this is a hunt! Vhagar! To glory!"
Vhagar, ancient and terrible, met the challenge head-on. She dove, unleashing a sustained river of fire that turned the surface of the sea to steam around the kraken. The creature roared, a sound that was felt as much as heard, a psychic shockwave that made several sailors collapse, clutching their heads. Its massive tentacles lashed out, one narrowly missing Vhagar's wing, another smashing down on one of Baelon's frigates, cleaving it in two with a sound of splintering wood and screaming men.
Baelon, his face a grim mask, directed Silverwing with deadly precision. Her silver flames, while perhaps less overwhelmingly destructive than Vhagar's, seemed to possess a purer, more focused heat that made the kraken recoil, its alien flesh sizzling and popping. He noted how it tried to shield its great, sightless eyes, how certain tentacles seemed more vulnerable than others. He saw smaller, lamprey-like parasites clinging to its hide, perhaps symbiotes or lesser spawn.
The battle was a chaotic ballet of fire, water, and monstrous fury. The Drowned Brethren, emboldened by the appearance of their demigod's spawn, launched a coordinated attack with a half-dozen heavily armed galleys, attempting to board Baelon's ships amidst the confusion. Kael and his Freedmen, alongside the Dragon Guard, fought like demons on the blood-slick decks, repelling boarders while trying to avoid the kraken's flailing appendages.
Aemond, lost in the berserker rage of battle, took Vhagar low, a daring pass that allowed the dragon to seize one of the kraken's larger tentacles in her massive jaws, tearing it free in a gout of black, stinking ichor. The kraken shrieked again, its psychic cry intensifying, and a cloud of oily, disorienting ink filled the air.
Baelon, fighting to maintain control as Silverwing bucked beneath him, felt the insidious mental pressure from the kraken. It was a wave of despair, of terror, designed to break the will. He pushed back with his own arcane strength, the Voldemort fragment within him offering a core of icy resilience against the psychic assault. Fear is a tool, Baelon. Do not let it be used against you. Understand its source, its frequency, and it can be countered.
One of the kraken's tentacles, barbed and swift, lashed towards Silverwing. Baelon reacted instantly, his sorcerous shield flaring, but the sheer kinetic force of the blow was immense. It glanced off the shield, but still sent Silverwing into a jarring spin. For a terrifying moment, he fought for control, the sea rushing up to meet them. He poured his will into his dragon, the Ignis Shard blazing on his arm, and Silverwing, with a desperate beat of her powerful wings, righted herself, screaming her fury.
The battle raged for what felt like an eternity. Finally, wounded, bleeding from dozens of burns and a great, gaping wound where Vhagar had torn its limb, the juvenile kraken began to retreat, sinking slowly beneath the waves, its psychic lament a fading throb of agony and rage. The remaining Drowned Brethren ships, their morale broken, scattered and fled, pursued by Aemond and Vhagar, who were not inclined to show mercy.
Baelon surveyed the aftermath. Two of his frigates were lost, with heavy casualties. Several others were damaged. But they had prevailed. More importantly, they had gathered invaluable intelligence – the kraken's attack patterns, its vulnerabilities, samples of its ichor and flesh from the severed tentacle, and several more Drowned Brethren prisoners, including a heavily tattooed 'Deep Speaker' who seemed to be one of the summoners.
Meanwhile, back in Elyria, the scriptorium dedicated to the Titan's secrets was a place of intense frustration and dawning wonder. Maester Arryk, his robes stained with ink and sweat, pored over the Valyrian schematics, his brow furrowed in concentration. Larys Strong, with his team of scribes and cipher-masters, meticulously cross-referenced texts, searching for the key to unlocking the "resonance nullification" system.
The "Throne of Seeing," as Larys had dubbed it, was taking shape in an adjacent, heavily warded chamber. It was less a throne and more a complex interface: a large, curved obsidian slab that would, theoretically, display data relayed from the Titan, surrounded by brass armatures and crystal conduits designed to help a user focus their will and interpret the flow of information. But the control system for the Titan's projected energies remained elusive.
"It's the power source, Lord Larys, and the modulation!" Arryk exclaimed one afternoon, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "The glyphs speak of drawing upon the 'Heart-Fire' and converting it through a 'harmonic resonating chamber' that no longer seems to exist, or is depicted so abstractly I cannot identify it within the Titan's main structure. To create a nullifying wave against abyssal energies, we need to generate a counter-resonance of immense power and precision. Brute force won't work; it needs to be… an anti-song."
Larys, ever calm, pointed to a newly translated passage. "This section, Maester, speaks of the 'Cinderfell Echo' – the term used in the Titan's own internal lexicon for what His Grace carries, the Ignis Shard. It suggests the Shard itself might be a key, a missing component, or at least a focusing element for this 'Heart-Fire' energy."
Umbraxys, who often lingered in the scriptorium, a silent, watchful shadow, chose this moment to offer a sliver of insight, its voice a dry rustle in their minds. "The Cinderfell was a shaper of realities, a singer of songs that could unmake stars. Its echo… your Shard, Speaker… it understands harmony and discord on a cosmic scale. The Titan was built by those who knew such songs. Perhaps the Titan does not lack a chamber, but awaits the conductor."
Just as Arryk was about to dismiss this as shadow-wraith poetry, a dispatch rider arrived, bearing urgent news from Baelon: details of the kraken encounter, samples of its tissue preserved in brine, and the captured Deep Speaker, who was already being… interrogated… by Baelon's specialists. Crucially, Baelon included his own observations on the kraken's psychic attacks and its reactions to dragonfire, along with a query: "The creature's mental assault felt… rhythmic. A resonant frequency of despair. Can this be a key?"
This new information, particularly the idea of a 'resonant frequency,' struck a chord with Arryk. "Rhythmic… a frequency…" he muttered, his eyes lighting up. He rushed back to the schematics, his earlier despair forgotten. "If the abyssal energies have a dominant resonance, then a counter-resonance… yes! The Shard wouldn't just power it; it would tune it! It would be the tuning fork for the Titan's orchestra of destruction!"
A week later, the Volantene envoy arrived in Elyria. Triarch Nyessos Vhassar, a portly man with shrewd eyes and fingers laden with gemstones, was all smiles and platitudes. He was received by Lady Lyra Celtigar, as Baelon and Aemond were still at sea, mopping up the remnants of the Drowned Brethren fleet that had supported the kraken.
"Lady Celtigar," Vhassar purred, after presenting lavish gifts, "Old Volantis rejoices at the news from Braavos! The Serpent King has clipped the Drowned God's tentacles, it seems. A service to all who sail the Summer Sea." He paused, his eyes twinkling. "Though, some in the Triarchy wonder at the… methods. To claim the Titan itself! A feat worthy of the Valyrian dragonlords of old. We are, of course, eager to understand how this new… arrangement… will affect the traditional spheres of influence."
Lyra, well-briefed by Larys, offered polite but non-committal responses. "His Grace, King Baelon, acts always to secure peace and stability in these troubled lands. The Titan of Braavos, under his guidance, will serve as a bulwark against chaos."
Vhassar smiled, a predatory glint in his eyes. "Indeed, indeed. A bulwark. And such bulwarks, of course, require… maintenance. Resources. Volantis has always been a friend to those who champion order." His implication was clear: cooperation had a price, and Volantis expected to be a favored partner, or perhaps, to gently remind Baelon of their own ancient power.
When Baelon and Aemond finally returned to Elyria, weary but grimly triumphant, they brought with them not just captured cultists and charts of Drowned Brethren hideouts, but a palpable sense of urgency. The juvenile kraken was just one. The Deep Speaker, under duress, had babbled of "greater terrors yet to awaken," of "the Trident of the Threekening," and of a "Conclave of the Deeps" being called to unleash a true "Tidal Reckoning."
Baelon went straight to the scriptorium. Maester Arryk, his eyes shining with an almost manic light, met him at the door. "Your Grace! Your insights were invaluable! The resonant frequencies… the Shard as a tuning element… we believe we understand the principle! The 'harmonic resonating chamber' isn't a physical place, but an arcane state the Heart-Core can achieve when properly interfaced with the Ignis Shard's specific energies!"
Larys Strong elaborated, gesturing towards the nearly completed Throne of Seeing. "We believe that from this interface, Your Grace, by attuning your will through the Shard, you can direct the Titan to project a focused wave of disruptive arcane energy, tuned specifically to the resonant frequencies of the Drowned Brethren's abyssal magic. It won't be a crude blast, but a precise, sympathetic unmaking."
"Have you tested it?" Baelon asked, the Ignis Shard on his arm pulsing hotter, as if in anticipation.
"Not at full power, or at range, Your Grace," Arryk admitted. "The calculations for targeting across such distances are… immense. And the potential feedback if miscalibrated… But we have achieved stable, localized resonance shifts in the laboratory, using the captured Drowned Brethren artifacts as test subjects. The pulsating orb Kael recovered? We were able to render it inert, to disrupt its abyssal signature until it crumbled to dust, using a miniature crystal matrix attuned via a sliver of your own shed blood provided for the Shard's initial binding rituals, to simulate the Shard's specific resonance."
A grim smile touched Baelon's lips. "Rendered inert. Excellent." He looked at the Throne of Seeing. "Prepare it. The Drowned Brethren are planning something larger. We will give them their 'Tidal Reckoning,' but it will be delivered by the fires of New Valyria, and the unblinking eye of its awakened sentinel."
Later, he met with Triarch Vhassar. The Volantene diplomat, faced with Baelon himself – a figure radiating an aura of immense power, flanked by the fearsome Aemond, and with the unspoken knowledge of the Titan of Braavos hanging in the air – was considerably less jovial.
"Triarch Vhassar," Baelon began, his voice calm but carrying an edge of steel, "Volantis speaks of friendship and order. I am creating order. The Titan of Braavos now ensures that the northern waters are… orderly. My dragons ensure the same in the south. Those who align with this new order will prosper. Those who oppose it, or who seek to undermine it, will find themselves facing forces beyond their comprehension."
Vhassar, for all his shrewdness, could only manage a strained smile and renewed assurances of Volantis's unwavering support. He would return to his Triarchs with a message far different, and far more alarming, than the one he had intended to deliver.
As the envoy departed, Baelon stood on the ramparts of Elyria, looking out over the dark sea. The Shard throbbed, a hungry heart beating in time with his own. The Titan, a silent giant leagues away, waited for his command. The Drowned Brethren were stirring their deepest horrors. The game was escalating. But Baelon Targaryen, with the lore of Valyria being painstakingly rediscovered and the terrible Cinderfell's echo bound to his will, was ready to meet them, not just on the waves, but in the very resonant frequencies of existence itself. The true test of the Serpent's Aegis was about to begin.