Chapter 28: The Obsidian Throne and the Serpent's Gaze
The passage of seasons on Dragon's Aerie was marked not by the gentle turning of leaves or the first fall of snow, but by the subtle shifts in the wind patterns across the Summer Sea, the intensity of the tropical downpours, and the ever-growing footprint of Aegis upon the black volcanic slopes of Aerea's Peak. Nearly a year had passed since Viserys and Daenerys had made their "Dragon's Flight" from Braavos, a year of relentless toil, constant vigilance, and the forging of a nascent realm from raw wilderness and disparate, often dangerous, human elements. Viserys, now a young man of sixteen, his Targaryen features sharpened by command, his body honed to a peak of unnatural strength and resilience, sat metaphorically upon an "Obsidian Throne" – a seat of power built from the island's unique black stone and the hard, unyielding nature of his own rule. But even in this remote sanctuary, he could feel the "Serpent's Gaze" of Magister Illyrio Mopatis, a distant, predatory awareness that promised future reckoning.
Aegis itself was transforming. Under Xaro Xhandar's obsessive direction, the initial timber palisade was being systematically replaced by formidable curtain walls of black volcanic basalt, quarried from the lower slopes of Mount Valyria. A central keep, the "Aerie Citadel" as Xaro grandly termed it, was rising stone by stone, its design a blend of utilitarian defensibility and subtle Valyrian architectural echoes that Viserys had sketched from Alistair Finch's memories. Obsidian, mined in increasing quantities, was being fashioned by newly recruited Braavosi smiths (lured by the promise of high wages and a new life) into razor-sharp blades for a specialized contingent of Phoenix Guard, arrowheads that could pierce conventional armor, and even decorative elements for the Citadel, its polished black surfaces gleaming with a captured, internal fire.
Lyra of Lys, with her team of apothecaries and agriculturalists, had achieved minor miracles. Terraced fields, painstakingly carved into the volcanic hillsides, now yielded harvests of hardy imported grains, yams, and a surprisingly nutritious native red root. She had successfully cultivated several unique island herbs with potent medicinal properties, some of which, when carefully processed, also exhibited mild psychoactive effects that she was cautiously researching for potential use in interrogation or as combat enhancers for elite troops – a line of inquiry Viserys encouraged with a pragmatist's interest, Alistair's ethical alarms now thoroughly muted by necessity.
The society taking root in Aegis was a volatile, yet increasingly cohesive, melting pot. Viserys's "First Laws," though harsh, were applied with a consistency that even Kiera Redfin's former corsairs had come to grudgingly respect. Ledger's meticulous management of resources ensured that, while luxuries were scarce, no one went hungry, and hard work was visibly rewarded. Viserys encouraged a unique "Aerie" identity, fostering competitions of skill between the Phoenix Guard and the Corsair Wing (in sailing, marksmanship, even organized brawling under Draq's watchful eye), establishing feast days to celebrate successful harvests or naval victories, and commissioning Archivist to begin compiling the "Annals of Aegis," a chronicle that would subtly weave together the diverse origins of its settlers into a shared narrative of resilience and loyalty to their unseen Lord.
The mystery of the precursor ruins on Wyvern's Roost continued to deepen, casting an enigmatic shadow over their new domain. Daenerys, now a striking young woman of nearly fourteen, her "dragon sight" becoming an increasingly potent and reliable intuitive compass, was the key to unlocking their secrets. Accompanied by Lyra of Lys, a deeply intrigued Archivist, and a heavily armed escort, she led further expeditions into the cyclopean structures. The "stone dragon eggs" they had discovered were brought to Aegis with great care and, following an insistent dream of Daenerys's, were placed in a specially constructed, geothermally heated chamber within the warmest part of the new Citadel, near a hissing volcanic vent. Daenerys spent hours with them, talking to them, sometimes humming ancient Valyrian lullabies she claimed to hear in her sleep. The stones remained inert, yet she swore she could feel a faint, slumbering life within, a warmth that only her touch seemed to awaken.
Her dreams led them to another hidden chamber beneath the primary altar on Wyvern's Roost. This one contained not eggs, but a series of vast, breathtaking murals, rendered in vibrant, unfaded pigments, depicting a tall, slender, silver-haired people with violet eyes, living in harmony with magnificent, intelligent-looking dragons of every conceivable color. These beings were shown building cities of black stone, soaring through the skies, and wielding what appeared to be potent fire magic. But later murals depicted a terrible cataclysm – skies raining fire, the earth splitting open, the dragons perishing in agony, and the silver-haired people fleeing in terror, or being consumed by a shadowy, malevolent force. Archivist, his scholarly excitement warring with a creeping dread, began to suspect these were not just any precursor civilization, but perhaps a lost, pre-Valyrian dragonlord culture, one whose fate might hold a warning, or a promise, for the last Targaryens. Lyra of Lys discovered that certain unique fungi growing only within these ruins, when combined with powdered obsidian and volcanic salts, created a luminescent paste that, when applied to the glyphs accompanying the murals, caused them to glow with an inner light, revealing intricate patterns and what seemed to be astronomical charts or genealogical records of unimaginable antiquity.
The Phoenix Fleet, the Dragon's Talon, was the instrument of Viserys's will upon the seas. The flagship Balerion, now joined by her newly launched sister ships, the Meraxes and the Vhagar (Xaro Xhandar, with Viserys's approval, had embraced the Targaryen nomenclature with Qartheen flamboyance), formed the core of a formidable naval squadron. These Phoenix-class frigates, faster and more heavily armed than anything of comparable size in the Free City navies, began aggressive "sanitization" patrols in a hundred-league radius around Dragon's Aerie, ruthlessly eliminating any opportunistic pirate crews or slaver ships that strayed too close. Their reputation as ghost ships, appearing from nowhere and striking with devastating precision, began to spread through the grog shops and pirate dens of the Basilisk Isles and the Summer Sea.
Commodore Kiera Redfin, her Corsair Wing now more disciplined but no less ferocious, was given more specific, deniable assignments. She became Viserys's scourge against his commercial and political rivals. Under the Phoenix Company banner (when it suited Viserys's purpose) or her own blood-red sails (when deniability was paramount), she launched lightning raids against Illyrio Mopatis's less legitimate shipping ventures in the Disputed Lands, "liberated" valuable cargoes from Volantene merchants known to be supplying his enemies, and even conducted daring reconnaissance missions into heavily patrolled Ghiscari waters, her knowledge of hidden coves and corsair tactics invaluable. Her loyalty to Viserys, while still rooted in pragmatism and a healthy fear of his power, was also evolving into a grudging respect for his strategic genius and his unwavering support for her own ambitions, so long as they aligned with his. A recent, particularly brutal example had been made of one of her captains who, in a fit of greed, had attacked a Summer Islander trading vessel that Viserys had explicitly marked as friendly. The captain and his entire bridge crew were delivered to Aegis in irons by Kiera herself. Viserys convened a swift, public court-martial in the central plaza. The evidence was irrefutable. The sentence – death by keelhauling, carried out by Kiera's own former shipmates under the stern gaze of the Phoenix Guard – sent a chilling message throughout Aegis: the Lord of the Aerie's laws, and his designated alliances, were absolute.
Viserys himself was undergoing a subtle but profound transformation. The daily burdens of direct rule – settling disputes between factions, allocating scarce resources, planning long-term infrastructure projects, maintaining morale, and constantly guarding against internal and external threats – were forging him into a leader of formidable capacity. Alistair Finch's vast historical knowledge provided the theoretical framework for his decisions, but it was Viserys Targaryen's innate ruthlessness, his superhuman resilience, and his growing, almost preternatural, intuition that allowed him to navigate the treacherous currents of his burgeoning realm.
He had to personally resolve a dangerous conspiracy among a dozen of Kiera's former core veterans who, resentful of the new discipline and dreaming of a return to unchecked piracy, had plotted to seize one of the Phoenix Company's smaller sloops and desert. Shadowfoot's agents within Kiera's own retinue (Viserys trusted no one completely) uncovered the plot. Viserys didn't delegate the confrontation. He summoned the ringleaders to the nearly completed Aerie Citadel. There, in the cavernous, torch-lit Great Hall, flanked by Draq and Morrec, and with Kiera herself present (her expression unreadable), Viserys confronted them. He didn't raise his voice. He simply laid out the evidence of their treason, his violet eyes burning into theirs, his mental "sensing" abilities allowing him to parse their fear, their defiance, their guilt, with chilling accuracy. When one of the conspirators, a massive, scarred corsair, made a desperate lunge, Viserys moved with a speed that was a blur, his hand shooting out, not with a weapon, but with an open palm strike to the man's chest that sent him flying across the hall to crash, breathless and stunned, against the far stone wall. The display of effortless, overwhelming power, far beyond that of any normal youth, silenced all further protest. Their trial was swift, their guilt undeniable. Viserys, however, chose not execution, which might have made martyrs of them among Kiera's remaining loyalists. Instead, he sentenced them to a year of hard labor in Xaro Xhandar's obsidian mines, under the most brutal conditions, their ships and plunder forfeit. It was a living death, a constant reminder of the price of disloyalty, and a more strategically sound outcome than simple execution. Kiera, watching, understood the cold calculus of his mercy, and the iron fist within it.
Daenerys, now a young woman on the cusp of her fourteenth nameday, blossomed in the wild, elemental environment of Dragon's Aerie. The oppressive secrecy of their Braavosi life fell away, replaced by a sense of belonging, of purpose. She took an active interest in the development of Aegis, often accompanying Lyra of Lys on her botanical expeditions or Ledger on his rounds of the storehouses and newly planted fields. The settlers, particularly the Braavosi families Viserys had recruited, began to look to her with a genuine affection and reverence, seeing in her not just the Lord's sister, but a princess of almost ethereal beauty and grace, a living symbol of their House's mystique. Her "dragon sight" continued to evolve. She no longer just dreamed of the islands; she seemed to feel them, particularly Mount Valyria. She would often sit for hours on the Citadel's highest balcony, gazing at the smoking peak, claiming she could hear the "heartbeat of the earth," the "whispers of sleeping fire." These pronouncements, initially dismissed by some as fanciful, gained credence when her intuitions led to the discovery of a new, major geothermal fissure that Xaro Xhandar was able to tap for heating the Citadel and powering his workshops, or when she accurately predicted a minor earthquake that allowed for timely evacuations from unstable sections of the obsidian mines. Viserys, while still grounding his own decisions in Alistair's rationalism, increasingly treated Daenerys's insights as valuable, if unconventional, intelligence.
The serpent, Illyrio Mopatis, however, was not idle. Kipp, his intelligence network in Myr now working in close coordination with Shadowfoot's Braavosi operations, sent alarming news. Illyrio, his suspicions thoroughly aroused by the Vaelaros fleet disaster, Kiera Redfin's resurgence under a new banner, and the persistent rumors of a well-funded, technologically advanced settlement rising in the southern Summer Sea, had dispatched a specially commissioned, heavily armed Pentoshi "merchantman," the Golden Pelican, on a dedicated reconnaissance mission. Its captain, a trusted Illyrio loyalist, was under orders to locate this new southern power, assess its strength and intentions, and, if possible, identify its backers. The Golden Pelican was reported to be equipped with scrying glasses of Myrish make and carried a contingent of Illyrio's best spies and bravos.
The news sent a ripple of urgency through Aegis. This was the first direct probe from a major, hostile power. Viserys immediately convened his war council. Kiera argued for an immediate, preemptive strike – to hunt down the Golden Pelican with their Phoenix fleet and destroy it before it could report back. Draq advocated for strengthening Aegis's defenses and preparing for a potential siege. Valerion Qo counseled caution, suggesting they try to intercept and identify the vessel, then decide on a course of action.
Viserys listened to all, then made his decision, a blend of caution, cunning, and calculated ruthlessness. "We will not attack them unprovoked in open waters," he declared. "That would confirm their suspicions of our aggression and potentially draw the ire of other Free Cities who value freedom of navigation, however hypocritically. Instead, we will lure them in. We will allow them to 'discover' Dragon's Aerie. But they will see only what we want them to see."
His plan was intricate. Aegis would be put on high alert, but its true strength – the Phoenix-class warships, the full complement of the Phoenix Guard, the obsidian weaponry – would be carefully concealed. The Nyx and a few of Kiera's older, more genuinely piratical-looking sloops would be the only vessels visible in the lagoon. The settlement itself would be made to appear as a rough, somewhat prosperous, but ultimately vulnerable independent pirate haven, ruled by the formidable but perhaps overconfident Commodore Kiera, with a strong contingent of "Tyroshi mercenaries" (the Phoenix Guard, in slightly altered insignia) as her primary enforcers. The goal was to present an image of a valuable but ultimately digestible target, one Illyrio might believe he could eventually control or co-opt through his usual methods of bribery, infiltration, and intimidation, rather than an immediate, existential threat requiring a massive military response.
When the Golden Pelican was finally sighted by Phoenix Fleet patrols cautiously approaching the Dragon's Aerie archipelago, the charade began. Kiera Redfin, aboard her Sea Viper, sailed out to meet them, feigning surprise and then blustering aggression, eventually "allowing" the Pentoshi captain, after a show of force and a demand for a hefty "anchorage fee," to enter the lagoon of Aegis to "trade for provisions."
The Pentoshi captain and his handpicked landing party were given a carefully stage-managed tour of Aegis. They saw well-armed corsairs, bustling (but not overly prosperous) markets, and impressive (but seemingly incomplete) fortifications. They were treated to a lavish, if somewhat barbaric, feast in Kiera's longhouse, filled with boasts of recent plunder and veiled threats against outsiders. Viserys himself, disguised as a young, taciturn Braavosi scribe in Kiera's employ, observed them from the shadows, his enhanced senses picking up their whispered comments, their assessing gazes, their attempts to subtly bribe lower-ranking corsairs for information. He used his mental "sensing" to try and gauge the Pentoshi captain's true intentions, feeling a current of deep suspicion and avarice beneath the man's veneer of diplomatic politeness.
The crucial moment came when the Pentoshi captain, under the pretext of discussing ongoing trade, attempted to subtly probe Kiera about her "backers" and the source of her fleet's advanced weaponry and discipline. Kiera, following Viserys's script, laughed dismissively, claiming her success was due to her own genius and the "luck of the Drowned God," while hinting vaguely at "powerful friends in the east who appreciate discretion." She allowed the Pentoshi spies to "discover" a few carefully planted (and largely misleading) charts and manifests.
After three days, the Golden Pelican departed, its captain outwardly satisfied but inwardly, Viserys sensed, still deeply suspicious yet also intrigued by the potential for future exploitation of this "upstart pirate queen." Viserys knew it was a temporary reprieve. Illyrio would not be so easily fooled. But he had bought time, and he had presented a carefully crafted illusion of manageable strength rather than overwhelming, immediate threat. The Serpent's Gaze had fallen upon them, but the Dragon's Talon had, for now, remained largely concealed.
Shadowfoot, in Braavos, reported that the Iron Bank, while still extending credit to the Phoenix Company's legitimate trading ventures, had begun making discreet inquiries among other Essosi financial houses about the Company's ultimate ownership and the true extent of its "southern assets." The Bank's institutional memory was long, its patience legendary, but its tolerance for opacity, especially concerning entities that moved vast sums of gold, was finite.
News from Westeros, meanwhile, was sparse but significant. King Robert's health was reportedly failing, his excesses finally taking their toll. Whispers of plots and counter-plots at court were rife. Lord Eddard Stark, isolated in the North, was said to be increasingly troubled by events in the capital. Viserys filed this all away. The Usurper's demise would inevitably create a power vacuum, a chaotic scramble for the Iron Throne. His own timeline, he realized, might need to be accelerated. Dragon's Aerie was no longer just a sanctuary; it was rapidly becoming the launchpad for a destiny that felt both terrifyingly close and impossibly distant. The Obsidian Throne was a hard seat, and the path ahead was paved with peril, but Viserys Targaryen, Lord of the Aerie, felt the fire of his ancestors burning brighter than ever within him, ready to meet the coming storm.