Chapter 55: The Tidal Reckoning, Delivered
The air in Elyria's citadel was thick with foreboding. Larys Strong's network, now chillingly efficient, had painted a grim tapestry of the Drowned Brethren's intentions. The "Conclave of the Deeps," as the captured Deep Speaker had babbled, was no mere gathering; it was to be a grand summoning, an unholy sacrament of blood and abyssal magic. Their chosen location: the accursed ruins of Yha-nthlei, a legendary sunken city whispered to lie in the lightless depths of the Basilisk Isles, a place where the veil between worlds was supposedly thin. From there, they intended to unleash not just one terror, but a coordinated tide of them, fulfilling their promised "Tidal Reckoning" against Baelon's burgeoning empire.
"They are marshaling everything," Larys reported in the lamp-lit war room, his voice low and devoid of inflection, which somehow made his words more ominous. "Fleets from a dozen hidden coves, priests from every shadowed shrine between the Stepstones and Sothoryos. They speak of awakening 'The Three Who Slumber,' ancient entities that even their own lore treats with trepidation. This is not a raid, Your Grace. It is intended to be an apocalyptic wave."
Aemond, his single sapphire eye blazing, slammed a gauntleted fist on the map table, rattling the carved wooden markers. "Then let us meet their wave with a storm of our own! Vhagar and Silverwing can burn Yha-nthlei from their maps before they even begin their profane chants!"
Maester Arryk, pale and clutching a bundle of scrolls, shook his head. "Prince Aemond, if even half of what our informants suggest is true, Yha-nthlei may not be a place dragons can easily assail. Submerged, warded by millennia of abyssal corruption… And the entities they seek to awaken… dragonfire might scatter their lesser spawn, but the core of such power… it could be like trying to burn the ocean itself."
Baelon listened, the Ignis Shard on his arm a warm, steady presence against his skin. He felt the cold, analytical part of his mind—the Voldemort fragment—processing the threat with chilling detachment. Apocalyptic ambitions require an apocalyptic response. Their greatest strength, their reliance on these abyssal entities, must become their catastrophic weakness. The Titan is the key.
"Dragonfire will play its part, brother," Baelon said, his voice calm, cutting through the tension. "But Maester Arryk is right. This calls for a… more nuanced approach. A surgical strike against the heart of their power. Lord Larys, what is the precise timing of this Conclave?"
"Their rituals are tied to the coming new moon, three nights from now, Your Grace. They believe the abyssal tides are strongest then."
"Three nights," Baelon mused. "Maester Arryk, the 'Throne of Seeing' and the Titan's resonance weapon – are they ready for a full-scale deployment?"
Arryk swallowed, a bead of sweat tracing a path down his temple. "Theoretically, Your Grace. The Throne is calibrated. The arcane mathematics for the resonance cascade are… terrifyingly complex, but sound. We believe, based on our localized tests, that if you can maintain the focus, and if the Ignis Shard can indeed act as the precise tuning conduit for the Titan's Heart-Fire, we can project a nullifying wave capable of disrupting their abyssal energies across a vast distance. But the power draw on the Titan will be unprecedented. And the mental strain on you, as the focal point…"
"I will bear it," Baelon stated, his gaze unwavering. "Umbraxys," he addressed the shadows that deepened in the corners of the room, "these 'Three Who Slumber.' What can you tell me of them?"
The shadow-wraith's mental voice seeped into their minds, cold as the grave. "Names whispered in forgotten eons, Speaker. The Abyssal Mother, the Tentacled King, the Silent Watcher from the Trench. They are not gods, but primal forces given monstrous form and a sliver of malevolent consciousness. To truly awaken them… the Drowned Brethren are fools. They would not control such beings; they would merely unleash an extinction event they themselves would be consumed by."
"Then we are not merely saving ourselves, but these fanatics from their own suicidal folly," Baelon said with a grim irony. "Aemond, you will prepare Vhagar and a select squadron of our swiftest ships. You will not engage Yha-nthlei directly, but patrol the periphery, a hundred leagues out. Your role will be to intercept any forces that scatter, any horrors that escape the primary… treatment. Kael, your Freedmen will crew these ships. Ser Corlys, the Dragon Guard will remain here, to secure Elyria. The rest of the fleet will form a defensive cordon closer to our shores."
Aemond looked momentarily balked at not being at the heart of the main assault, but then a slow, wolfish grin spread across his face. "Intercepting escapees? Very well, brother. Vhagar enjoys hunting stragglers. None shall pass."
The next two days were a blur of preparation. While Aemond drilled his squadron, Baelon spent hours in the scriptorium with Arryk and Larys, familiarizing himself with the Throne of Seeing, practicing the mental disciplines required to channel his will through the Ignis Shard and across the vast distance to the Titan of Braavos. The Shard itself seemed to hum with anticipation, its heat intensifying whenever he focused his intent upon the coming confrontation.
On the third night, under the sliver of a new moon that offered little light to the world, Baelon entered the heavily warded chamber of the Throne of Seeing. The room was circular, the walls inscribed with glowing Valyrian glyphs that pulsed with a soft, internal light. At its center stood the Throne – a polished obsidian seat, cool to the touch, before a curved console of the same material. Brass armatures, tipped with crystals, were positioned around it. Maester Arryk and Lord Larys stood by, their faces taut with a mixture of scientific curiosity and profound anxiety.
Baelon settled into the Throne. It was surprisingly comfortable, molding slightly to his form. He placed his gauntleted hand, the one bearing the Ignis Shard, upon a designated indentation on the console. The Shard flared, a sudden blaze of crimson light that reflected in his eyes, and the Valyrian glyphs around the room brightened in response.
"Begin the interface sequence, Maester," Baelon commanded, his voice steady.
Arryk nodded, his hands flying over a series of levers and crystal arrays on a nearby lectern. "Connecting arcane conduits… establishing preliminary resonance with the Titan's Heart-Core… now, Your Grace. Extend your will. Through the Shard. Reach for the Titan."
Baelon closed his eyes. He focused his mind, drawing upon every ounce of his willpower, every lesson in mental discipline learned from ancient texts and the cold whispers of the Voldemort fragment. He pushed his consciousness outward, not as a diffuse thought, but as a focused beam, guided by the Ignis Shard. He felt the Shard become a burning coal in his hand, then a searing star, a conduit of immense, almost unbearable energy.
Suddenly, his perspective shifted, snapped across hundreds of leagues with a dizzying lurch. He was no longer in Elyria. He was the Titan of Braavos. He saw through its colossal, newly awakened eyes, the panorama of the storm-tossed sea spreading before him, the distant lights of Braavos a faint smudge on the horizon. He felt the immense, dormant power within its bronze shell, the roaring furnace of its Valyrian Heart-Core, now thrumming with an almost ecstatic energy as it resonated with the Shard he wore.
"Targeting array online, Your Grace," Larys's voice sounded distant, filtered through the arcane link. "We are feeding you the coordinates of Yha-nthlei, based on our best intelligence."
In Baelon's Titan-vision, a shimmering overlay appeared, highlighting a sector of the sea deep within the Basilisk Isles. He focused the Titan's gaze, and the image zoomed, sharpening with preternatural clarity. He saw it – the sunken city, not entirely submerged, but a collection of cyclopean, weed-choked ruins clinging to a vast, shattered caldera, parts of it still exposed to the air, lit by eerie, phosphorescent torches. Thousands of Drowned Brethren cultists swarmed the ruins, their chants a faint, disturbing hum even at this distance. Fleets of black-sailed ships choked the waters around the caldera.
And in the center of the caldera, the sea itself was beginning to churn, to bulge upwards as if something truly colossal was stirring beneath. Dark, oily tentacles, each thicker than Vhagar's body, were beginning to unfurl from the depths. A psychic wave of pure, unadulterated terror washed outwards, so potent that Baelon felt its echo even through the Titan's senses, a cold dread that tried to grip his soul.
"They are beginning, Your Grace!" Arryk's voice was strained. "The abyssal energies are spiking! The 'Three Who Slumber'… they are trying to bring them all forth at once!"
The Voldemort fragment within Baelon reacted with icy fury. Fools! Such power cannot be controlled, only unleashed or annihilated. Annihilate it, Baelon! Show them the true meaning of divine reckoning!
"Prepare to activate the resonance cascade," Baelon commanded, his voice amplified by the Titan's own ancient vocalizers, a sound that would have rolled like thunder across the Braavosi lagoon had any been near enough to hear. Within the Throne chamber in Elyria, his physical body was rigid, sweat beading on his brow, the Ignis Shard blazing with such intensity the metal of the gauntlet glowed cherry-red.
"Channeling Heart-Fire… focusing matrix aligned… Shard resonance at peak!" Arryk called out, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe. "Now, Your Grace! Unleash it!"
Baelon gathered his will, focused it into a single, unyielding point of annihilation. He imagined the resonant frequency of the Drowned God's power, the discordant, chaotic thrum of the abyss they worshipped. And then, through the Ignis Shard, he sang the counter-song. Not a song of voice, but of pure, focused arcane energy, a wave of absolute Valyrian order directed against the chaos of the deep.
From the eyes of the Titan of Braavos, no visible beam erupted. Instead, the very air around the colossus shimmered, vibrated with an almost sub-audible thrum of immense power. Then, faster than thought, a wave of pure, crystalline resonance – invisible, intangible, yet devastatingly potent – surged outwards, crossing the leagues in an instant.
It struck Yha-nthlei not as an explosion, but as a discordant chord that shattered the symphony of the Drowned Brethren's dark ritual.
Baelon, through the Titan's senses, witnessed the effect. The oily tentacles of the awakening horror writhed, not in strength, but in sudden, unimaginable agony. The creature – or creatures – let out a silent, psychic scream that Baelon felt as a spike of pure white pain in his own mind, a shriek that echoed across the abyssal plains. The dark energies fueling its manifestation fractured, sputtered, and then began to unravel.
The Drowned Brethren priests, their faces contorted in a rictus of horror and disbelief, were consumed by their own failing magic. Some exploded in showers of black ichor. Others simply collapsed, their life force extinguished as the abyssal entities they had sought to command recoiled or were torn apart by the conflicting resonances. The very stones of Yha-nthlei seemed to groan, ancient wards failing, structures crumbling as the sympathetic vibrations tore through them. The sea around the caldera frothed and boiled, not with summoning, but with the death throes of lesser spawn caught in the cascade.
The psychic backlash was immense. Baelon grit his teeth, his body arching in the Throne of Seeing, the Ignis Shard now a vortex of tormenting heat on his arm. He felt the Titan strain, its ancient frame vibrating under the immense power it was channeling. Hold! he commanded himself, pouring more of his will into the Shard, into the Titan. Maintain the frequency! Purge them!
For what felt like an eternity, the resonance cascade flooded Yha-nthlei. The colossal entity, or entities, beneath the waves thrashed and then, with a final, soul-wrenching psychic shudder, began to recede, its partially manifested form dissolving back into the abyss, grievously wounded, perhaps even fundamentally unmade in this plane of existence.
When Baelon finally, carefully, let the cascade subside, the Titan's senses showed him a scene of utter devastation. Yha-nthlei was a smoking, shattered ruin. The Drowned Brethren fleets were in disarray, many ships sinking, their crews dead or mad. The psychic emanations of the abyss were not gone, but they were muted, scattered, broken.
He felt a profound, bone-deep exhaustion, but also a terrible, cold triumph. The Ignis Shard pulsed, now not with searing heat, but with a sated, almost smug warmth. The Titan's Heart-Core, while massively drained, was already beginning to draw upon its deeper reserves, its Valyrian pathways flaring as it replenished its stolen fire.
"Status?" Baelon managed, his voice raspy in the Elyria chamber.
Maester Arryk was staring at his instruments, his jaw slack. "The abyssal energy signature… it's… it's collapsed, Your Grace. Reduced by ninety percent. The primary summoning… failed. Catastrophically. For them." He looked at Baelon with an expression of utter awe. "You… the Titan… it was… definitive."
Larys Strong, ever pragmatic, added, "Our long-range scryers confirm chaos among the surviving Drowned Brethren vessels. They are scattering, broken. Prince Aemond's squadron is well-positioned to intercept the largest pockets of survivors attempting to flee eastward."
Baelon nodded, taking a shuddering breath as he slowly disconnected his mind from the Titan. The return to his own body was jarring. The Throne chamber seemed small, mundane after the god-like perspective he had just experienced. His arm throbbed, not with pain, but with the deep ache of expended power.
"Good," he said simply. He had faced their Tidal Reckoning and delivered one of his own.
Over the next few hours, reports trickled in from Aemond's hunting parties. Vhagar and Silverwing (Baelon, though weary, had insisted on joining the mop-up once he recovered slightly, tasting the victory firsthand) harried the fleeing remnants of the Drowned Brethren's armada. There was no grand creature left to fight, only terrified cultists in sinking ships. Kael's Freedmen boarded several vessels, capturing more high-ranking Drowned Priests, their faces masks of utter despair, their faith shattered.
The "Conclave of the Deeps" had become the Drowned Brethren's Götterdämmerung. Their grand offensive was not just broken; their leadership in the southern seas was annihilated, their connection to their most powerful abyssal patrons severely damaged.
As dawn broke over Elyria, casting its light on a weary but victorious Baelon Targaryen, Umbraxys manifested beside him on the citadel ramparts. "You have struck a blow that will echo in the lightless trenches for an age, Speaker," the shadow-wraith acknowledged, a note of something akin to respect in its chilling tones. "You have silenced some of the Old Ones, for a time. But the Abyss is patient. And it remembers."
Baelon looked out at the rising sun. He knew Umbraxys spoke the truth. The war was not over. But the rules had fundamentally changed. He had wielded a power that dwarfed dragonfire, a power that could reshape reality on a vast scale. The Titan of Braavos, his Serpent's Aegis, had proven its worth beyond his wildest imaginings. The cost was immense, the vigilance eternal, but the path to his New Valyria, built on such terrible and wondrous foundations, was now clearer than ever. The world had witnessed the first true act of a new god-king, and it would never be the same.