Chapter 5: The Carrion Crown
The air over Westeros grew thin and sharp in the third moon of 129 AC. It was a tension that transcended the simple chill of autumn. It was a political and magical pressure, a tightening of a great string that stretched from the sun-baked stones of Sunspear to the icy ramparts of Winterfell. At its epicenter was the Red Keep, a stone heart that had begun to fail. King Viserys I, First of His Name, was no longer a king, but a living corpse, a moldering relic kept breathing by the desperate efforts of the maesters. He was a symbol of a peace that was already dead, a peace whose flesh was rotting away to reveal the skeletal grin of war beneath.
From his throne of silent stone in the high mountains, Krosis-Krif could feel it. He had spent the past year in a state of deep, predatory patience, a coiled spring of black scale and incandescent rage. His brief, terrifying introduction to the Vale had served its purpose. The knights of House Arryn gave his mountains a wide berth, and the legends of the Black Silence had become a hushed but accepted truth in the halls of the Eyrie. He was a known variable, but one too frightening to solve. This suited him. It gave him the freedom to watch, to wait, for the moment he knew was coming.
He did not need spies or ravens to know the King was dying. He could feel the fraying of the world's weave. The dragons of his kind were restless. He could feel their agitation on the wind, a faint psychic thrum of anxiety carried from Dragonstone and King's Landing. They were extensions of their riders' wills, and the wills of the Targaryens were now stretched to the breaking point. He would sometimes fly to the very edge of the atmosphere, his immense wings beating against the thin, cold air, and simply listen. Not with his ears, but with his soul, the Dovah essence within him. He felt Vhagar's ancient, slumbering resentment, a vast and patient hatred. He felt Caraxes's bloodlust, a constant, high-pitched scream of violence. He felt Syrax's weary pride, and Sunfyre's vain arrogance. They were a symphony of impending doom, and Krosis-Krif was its most attentive audience.
His own power had reached a state of terrible grace. He was a creature of myth made real, so vast that the very concept of a rider was laughable. Who could hope to saddle a sentient storm? He had long ago exhausted the resources of the mountains, and his hunger had driven him to a new, macabre food source: the ships that plied the Bite, the narrow sea between the Vale and the North. He would descend from the clouds on moonless nights, a living asteroid of silent death, plucking entire cogs and galleys from the water. He would carry them back to his highest peaks and disassemble them, consuming the crew and the cargo, absorbing the energy of their lives and the knowledge from their water-logged books and ledgers. He learned of trade routes, political alliances, the price of saffron in Pentos and the strength of the Manderly fleet. He was not just a beast; he was becoming the most well-informed entity in Westeros.
It was during one such vigil, perched atop his highest peak under a sky littered with cold, indifferent stars, that he felt the string snap.
It was not a loud event. It was a sudden, deafening silence. A loosening of the world's tension. The psychic hum of the dragons, which had been a constant background noise for months, suddenly faltered. A wave of profound, bewildered grief washed over the ether, centered on Dragonstone. It was Syrax. Rhaenyra's dragon. The connection she shared with her rider was a deep one, and the death of her rider's father had sent a tremor of loss through her that echoed across the continent. It was followed by a spike of panicked, furious energy from King's Landing. Dreamfyre. Helaena's mount. She had felt it too.
King Viserys was dead.
Krosis-Krif rose, his colossal form unfolding like the coming of a second night. The moment had arrived. The years of waiting, of feasting, of growing, had all led to this. The Dance of the Dragons had begun.
He did not act with haste. His human mind, a cold repository of lore, clicked through the coming events with the precision of a well-oiled machine. The Greens will move first. Alicent and Otto Hightower will suppress the news. They will lock down the Red Keep, arrest the Blacks still at court, and convene the small council. Criston Cole, the Kingmaker, will bully them into crowning Aegon. They will send ravens demanding fealty. They will try to secure the treasury and the great houses.
Rhaenyra, on Dragonstone, will be ignorant for a time. When the news reaches her, it will be of her father's death and her brother's usurpation in the same breath. She will go into a rage-fueled labor. She will miscarry her child. She will form her own council, the Black Council. And she will send her sons.
That was the key. She would send her sons on dragonback to treat with the great lords. Jacaerys to the Eyrie and Winterfell. And Lucerys, the younger son, on his young dragon Arrax, to Storm's End. It was the first, pivotal, and most foolish mistake of the war. Sending a boy on a hatchling into the teeth of a storm to treat with a slighted lord, a lord who was already playing host to Prince Aemond and the she-devil Vhagar.
Arrax was doomed. And his death would be the point of no return. It would turn a war of ravens and proclamations into a war of fire and blood.
Krosis-Krif's plan was simple, elegant, and utterly predatory. He would not involve himself in the politics. He would not declare for the Green or the Black. Allegiance was a chain. He had broken his first chain at Dragonstone nine years ago; he would not forge another. His allegiance was to himself. His goal was not to ensure one side won, but to ensure both sides bled. Profusely. He would be the carrion bird, grown to the size of a god, feasting on the wreckage of their ambition.
He launched himself from his mountain peak, his great wings catching the air with a sound like tearing silk, a sound no one on the ground would ever hear. He ascended, climbing higher and higher, until the world below was a painted map. He flew east, out over the Narrow Sea, a black speck against the deep, star-dusted velvet of the stratosphere. He was leaving his kingdom of stone. It was time to hunt in richer waters.
His destination was the Gullet, the turbulent strait that separated Massey's Hook from the northern shores of the stormlands and the isle of Tarth. It was the maritime heart of the coming conflict. All sea traffic between King's Landing and Dragonstone had to pass through or around it. The Velaryon fleet, the strength of the Blacks, would seek to control it. The fleets of the Greens, and their powerful allies in the Triarchy of the Free Cities, would seek to break it. It was a corridor of chaos, a river of steel and wood, a future graveyard. It was the perfect hunting ground.
He found a temporary lair on the southern tip of Dragonstone itself, on a desolate, storm-blasted stretch of coast far from the castle and the Dragonmont. It was an act of supreme audacity. To hide in the heart of his enemy's territory. But he was so vast, so silent, that he could flatten himself against a black cliff face and become indistinguishable from the rock. He was a shadow hiding in other shadows. From here, he could watch. He could feel the furious, grieving energy emanating from the castle. He felt the birth of the Black Council. He felt Rhaenyra's agony and rage. And he felt the departure of the young dragons, Vermax and Arrax, setting out on their foolish errands.
He let them go. Their fates were sealed. Jacaerys would succeed. Lucerys would die. Interfering now would be premature. He needed the war to escalate beyond reconciliation. He needed blood to be spilled. He needed rage to cloud judgment.
His target was not a dragon. His target was the sinew of war: logistics.
His senses, honed by years of hunting ships, detected a fleet approaching from the south-east. It was a fleet of the Triarchy. He recognized their striped sails and the distinctive, swan-prowed shapes of their warships from the books he had consumed. They were Myrish and Tyroshi galleys, a hundred strong, sailing to pledge their strength to the Greens and blockade the Gullet. They were a formidable force, enough to challenge even the mighty Velaryon fleet. To the Blacks, they were a mortal threat. To Krosis-Krif, they were a buffet.
He waited for dusk. A storm was brewing, the sky turning a familiar, bruised purple. The storm was always his ally. He slipped into the water, his colossal body displacing waves without a sound. He was as adept in the sea as he was in the air. He swam, a living submarine of armored death, positioning himself directly in the fleet's path.
The admiral of the Triarchy fleet, a proud Myrish prince with jewels in his beard, stood on the deck of his flagship, the Triumph, and cursed the coming storm. He had hoped to trap the Velaryon fleet in the docks of Driftmark, but the weather was turning against him. Still, his ships were strong, his men were seasoned. They would weather the storm.
The first sign of trouble was when the scout ship at the head of the formation simply vanished. One moment, its light was visible on the churning waves. The next, it was gone. There was no sound, no cry for help. It was just… erased. The admiral sent a runner to the signalman, but before an order could be given, the ship to his port side lifted out of the water.
It rose thirty, forty, fifty feet into the air, water streaming from its hull, men screaming as they tumbled from its decks. It was held aloft not by a wave, but by a claw. A single, black claw, each talon the size of a longship, had punched through the galley's keel and lifted it like a child's toy.
Then, the head emerged from the roiling sea.
Panic, absolute and soul-shattering, erupted across the fleet. This was no dragon of the Targaryens. This was a leviathan from the deepest, darkest trenches of nightmare. Its golden eyes burned with cold fire through the driving rain, and its sheer size was an offense to reason.
Krosis-Krif did not roar. He did not waste energy on theatrics. This was not a performance; this was feeding. He crushed the galley in his claw, the sound of splintering wood and screaming men a brief, satisfying crunch. He tossed the wreckage aside and moved on to the next ship.
It was a methodical, terrifyingly efficient slaughter. He used his tail to shatter the oars of one galley, leaving it helpless, before turning his attention to another. He surfaced beneath a third, his spined back breaking its keel and sending its men and contents spilling into the sea. He breathed fire, not a wide, wasteful gout, but a focused, white-hot lance that pierced the hull of the admiral's flagship below the waterline, turning its hold into a superheated cauldron.
The proud warships of the Triarchy became a flotilla of death traps. Their weapons were useless. What was a catapult against a living island? What was a scorpion bolt to a hide thicker than a castle wall? They could not fight. They could not flee. They could only die.
Krosis-Krif moved through them, consuming, destroying. He ate men from the decks, swallowed whole cargoes of grain and wine, and crushed hulls to get at the terrified soldiers within. He was not just destroying a fleet; he was absorbing it. He felt the familiar, glorious rush of power. The life force of a thousand men—warriors, sailors, slaves—poured into him, a potent cocktail of terror and defiance. He felt his own energy reserves, already vast, swell to an even greater magnitude. The knowledge from the minds of the admiral, the captains, the navigators, flooded him: their strategies, their understanding of the political situation in the Free Cities, their hatred for Daemon Targaryen and the Sea Snake. It was all fuel.
Within an hour, it was over. The pride of the Triarchy was gone. The sea was a graveyard of splintered wood, torn sails, and floating corpses, all quickly being pulled under by the storm and the silent, colossal predator that had caused it.
Krosis-Krif floated in the center of the wreckage, his great black head held high against the storm. He had achieved several things at once. He had fed, immensely. He had crippled the Greens' naval power before it could even be brought to bear. And he had done so in a way that would sow maximum confusion. When the survivors, if any were ever found, told their tale, who would they blame? The Velaryons? Did the Sea Snake command some monster from the deep? Or was it Daemon, the Rogue Prince, who was known to dabble in dark sorcery? No one would suspect a new, independent power. They would see this as an act of the Blacks, an escalation that would demand a brutal response.
He felt a new psychic tremor, this one sharp and piercing. A cry of pure, unadulterated rage and grief, coming from the west. From Storm's End. It was Rhaenyra again, feeling the death of her son through the empathic link to her own dragon.
Arrax was dead. Lucerys was dead. Prince Aemond had drawn first blood.
The Dance had truly begun.
A cold, cruel smile stretched Krosis-Krif's draconic features, a terrifying sight had anyone been there to witness it. Everything was proceeding as he had foreseen. The foolish, proud children of Valyria were about to tear each other to pieces. And he, the carrion king, was ready for the feast. His crown would be built from their bones. His throne would be their ashes. He sank beneath the waves, a silent god returning to the deep, leaving the storm to wash away the evidence of his banquet. The war had begun, and its greatest predator had just finished his appetizer.