Chapter 6: The Red Queen's Gambit
The psychic scream of a mother's grief, channeled through the bond of her dragon, was a weapon in its own right. It tore across the Narrow Sea from Dragonstone, a wave of pure, distilled agony that made the very air hum. Rhaenyra Targaryen, upon hearing of her son Lucerys's death, had collapsed, her rage so profound it had become a force of nature, radiating from her mount, Syrax, and poisoning the skies. The Blacks were no longer just rebels; they were an avenging fury. The war of ravens was definitively over.
From his temporary sanctuary on the storm-lashed coast, Krosis-Krif observed these emotional tempests with the detached curiosity of a seismologist studying an earthquake. He felt the shift in the currents of power, the raw, unthinking rage that now gripped the Black faction. It was perfect. Rage was the enemy of reason. A furious opponent was a predictable opponent, one who would make mistakes. And the first mistake, he knew, would be a retaliatory strike, likely led by the most reckless and dangerous of them all: Prince Daemon Targaryen.
Daemon, astride the blood-wyrm Caraxes, would answer Aemond's transgression. The book of history he remembered was about to be written in fire. The "an eye for an eye" philosophy would escalate until the whole world was blind. While Daemon plotted his revenge against Aemond—a long and personal affair that would culminate in their mutual destruction above the Gods Eye—the other pieces on the board would be moved. The Greens, emboldened by their victory at Storm's End, would seek to press their advantage. Lord Commander Criston Cole, the bitter, ambitious Kingmaker, would march on the Crownlands castles loyal to Rhaenyra. Rook's Rest was the key.
Krosis-Krif remembered the passage from Fire & Blood with chilling clarity. Lord Staunton of Rook's Rest would defy the Greens. Criston Cole would lay siege to his castle. Staunton would send a desperate plea to Rhaenyra for aid. And Rhaenyra would send a dragon. She would send her aunt, the formidable Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, upon her swift and terrible mount, Meleys, the Red Queen.
It was meant to be a show of force, a dragon against a land-bound army. But it was a trap. A brilliant, brutal trap laid by the Greens. For Aegon II on Sunfyre the Golden and Aemond on the great Vhagar would be lying in wait. They would spring from the clouds and fall upon the Red Queen. Two against one. It would be a slaughter. Meleys would be torn from the sky, and the brave Rhaenys would perish in the flaming wreckage of her mount, a pivotal moment that would demonstrate the Greens' air superiority and ruthless tactics.
A conventional mind, even a malevolent one, might see this as an opportunity to aid one side or the other. To save Rhaenys and earn the gratitude of the Blacks, or to ensure her demise and curry favour with the Greens. Krosis-Krif's mind was not conventional. Why let the Greens have the kill? Why allow them the morale boost and the strategic victory of eliminating a major threat? Why allow Vhagar and Sunfyre to work in concert, solidifying their deadly partnership?
No. The death of Meleys was a foregone conclusion. The only question was who would benefit. Krosis-Krif's cold, psychopathic logic presented a far more profitable answer: he would.
Eliminating Meleys before the battle at Rook's Rest would throw both sides into chaos. The Blacks would lose a powerful dragon and one of their most respected leaders without explanation. The Greens' carefully laid trap would be for naught; they would arrive to find their quarry already gone, leaving them to wonder what other power was at play. It would introduce a terrifying new element into their calculations, a phantom player who answered to no one. And most importantly, the raw power contained within a full-grown dragon and its royal Targaryen rider would be his, and his alone. The surge he'd received from the Triarchy fleet, as immense as it was, would be a flickering candle compared to the sun of a dragon's soul.
His decision made, Krosis-Krif slipped back into the sea. His new hunting ground would be the coastline of the Crownlands, the patrol route of the Red Queen. He became a living reef, a sentient abyssal plain, his colossal black form resting in the deep trenches offshore, his senses extended, waiting. He learned the patterns of the tides, the movements of whaling ships, and the aerial patrols of the dragons from Dragonstone.
He saw Vermax, Jacaerys's mount, flying north, a green streak against the grey sky. He saw Syrax, a golden shimmer kept close to the island, a reflection of her rider's grief-stricken inactivity. And then, he saw her.
Meleys was a magnificent creature, even to Krosis-Krif's jaded eyes. She was not as large as Vhagar or Caraxes, but she was built for speed, her scarlet scales a vibrant slash of colour against the clouds, her copper horns gleaming. She was called the Red Queen for a reason. There was a fiery regality to her, a powerful grace that her rider, Rhaenys Targaryen, embodied completely. He watched them from the deeps, his golden eyes unblinking, tracking their flight path. Rhaenys was a diligent guardian. She flew daily patrols, a crimson shield for Rhaenyra's vulnerable seat of power. It was this diligence, this predictability, that would be her doom.
Krosis-Krif chose his moment with the precision of an assassin. He picked a day when a thick bank of sea-fog was rolling in, a wet, grey blanket that would cling to the coast and muffle sound. He positioned himself in a deep channel directly beneath Meleys's favourite route, a path that took her over a desolate stretch of Blackwater Bay. He did not just lie in wait; he prepared the battlefield. He used his immense strength to stir the seabed, churning up silt and mud, creating a plume of murky water that would obscure his form even from draconic senses. He was not just a predator; he was the environment itself, hostile and waiting.
Aboard Meleys, Princess Rhaenys Targaryen felt a familiar unease. The death of young Lucerys had shaken her deeply, not just for the loss of the boy, but for what it represented: the final, irrevocable descent into a kinslaying war she had spent her life trying to prevent. Her husband, the Sea Snake, was old and bed-ridden. Her own children were gone. She flew these patrols out of duty to Rhaenyra, her niece, but her heart was heavy with foreboding. The fog, thick and clammy, did not help her mood. It felt like a shroud.
Meleys, too, was on edge. The swift red dragon grumbled, a low thrumming in her chest, her head swivelling as she tried to pierce the gloom. She sensed… something. A coldness in the water below. A wrongness. Rhaenys patted her neck, whispering reassurances in High Valyrian. "Easy, my beauty. It is only the fog."
She was wrong.
Krosis-Krif did not rise from the water. That would be too slow, it would give them a precious second to react. He attacked from below, a black missile of impossible mass and speed. He had calculated Meleys's airspeed and altitude. He had timed his ascent perfectly.
He erupted from the sea.
For Rhaenys, the world simply ended. One moment, she was flying through the grey mist. The next, the sea below her exploded upwards. It was not a wave; it was a solid entity, a living mountain of black scale and obsidian spines that rose to meet them. She had no time to scream, no time to urge Meleys away.
Krosis-Krif's jaws, an abyss lined with teeth like dragonglass daggers, clamped down on Meleys's underbelly. The Red Queen shrieked, a sound of pure agony and shock as bones, thicker than ancient oaks, shattered under the immense pressure. Rhaenys was almost thrown from the saddle by the sheer violence of the impact, her body slamming against Meleys's neck.
The Red Queen, for all her power and speed, was helpless. She was like a hawk seized in the jaws of a kraken. She breathed fire, a torrent of red-gold flame that washed over Krosis-Krif's head and face. It was a dragon's ultimate weapon, a fire hot enough to melt steel and turn stone to liquid.
The fire did nothing.
Krosis-Krif barely felt it. It was like a warm bath against his hide, which had been tempered by his own internal, far hotter plasma and strengthened by the consumption of countless lives. He didn't even blink his golden eyes. He simply tightened his grip.
Rhaenys Targaryen, her mind reeling with disbelief and terror, saw his eye. It was larger than her entire torso. And in its molten depths, she saw not the rage of a wild beast, but something far more terrifying: a cold, ancient, calculating intelligence. This was not a monster. This was an executioner. In that final, horrifying moment, the Queen Who Never Was understood that she had not stumbled into a predator's territory. She had been hunted.
With a final, brutal twist of his neck, Krosis-Krif snapped Meleys's spine. The magnificent Red Queen went limp, her fire extinguished, her vibrant scarlet scales turning dull as the life fled her body. Her wings, moments before beating against the sky, were now broken, tangled rags. The bond between rider and dragon, a sacred connection of soul and mind, shattered, and the psychic backlash struck Rhaenys like a physical blow, a wave of agony and loss that mercifully plunged her into darkness just as Krosis-Krif's other claw, with a surgeon's precision, plucked her from the saddle.
He held the two broken forms, the dragon in his jaws, the woman in his claw. He had done it. A key player was off the board. He returned to the depths as silently as he had risen, the fog closing over the spot where a legend had just died, leaving no trace but a faint, coppery scent of blood on the salt air.
He took his prize to a deep, underwater cavern he had found, a place of absolute darkness and pressure. There, he consumed them.
The rush of power was cataclysmic. It dwarfed everything that had come before. The life force of a thousand men from the Triarchy fleet had been a river. The soul of a full-grown dragon was a tsunami. He felt Meleys's fire, her speed, her very essence being absorbed into his own, reinforcing his draconic nature, purifying his internal flame. The power settled into his bones, his blood, his soul. He felt a new, deeper connection to the Dovahzul, the words of power resonating with a clarity that was almost overwhelming.
Then he consumed Rhaenys.
Her life flooded his mind. It was not the chaotic torrent he had experienced from the mountain clansmen. This was the life of a Targaryen princess, a dragonrider, a queen in all but name. He saw the Red Keep through her eyes. He felt her love for Corlys Velaryon, her pride in her children, Laenor and Laena. He experienced her bitterness at being passed over for the throne, her sharp political acumen, her deep understanding of the courtly game. He absorbed her memories of flying, her knowledge of her fellow dragons, her tactical assessment of Vhagar's strengths and Caraxes's weaknesses. He saw, through her eyes, the faces of Aegon, Aemond, Rhaenyra, and Daemon, not as historical figures from a book, but as people she knew, with flaws he could exploit.
It was an intelligence coup of unimaginable value. He now had the memories and experiences of one of the Black faction's most senior members. He understood their strategies, their fears, their hopes. He was no longer just an outside observer with a history book; he was an insider, armed with the secrets of one side and ready to hunt the other.
When it was over, Krosis-Krif lay in the crushing darkness of the abyss, the new power thrumming through him. His already immense size seemed to swell, his scales compacting and hardening even further. His mind, now containing the lifetimes of a man, a dragon, and a Targaryen princess, was a weapon of terrifying potency.
On Dragonstone, the sudden, inexplicable severing of Meleys's life signature would cause panic and confusion. Rhaenys, one of their most reliable assets, had simply vanished from the sky. They would find no body, no wreckage. They would blame the Greens, assuming it was a cowardly ambush, a new level of treachery, further fueling their hatred. The Greens, in turn, would be utterly baffled when their trap at Rook's Rest was sprung on an empty sky. The disappearance of the Red Queen would become a mystery, a ghost story whispered on both sides of the war.
Krosis-Krif had achieved his goals perfectly. He had grown stronger, gained invaluable intelligence, and sown chaos and paranoia among his future prey. He was no longer just the Black Silence of the mountains. He was the Ghost of the Gullet, the Unseen, a third, terrifying power in a war that had only known two. He had taken the Red Queen, and now he would let the other pieces bleed, waiting for the next perfect moment to remove another from the board. The game had changed, and he was the only one who understood the new rules.