Chapter 27: The Dragon's Tithe
The Dragon's Peace was a masterpiece of cosmic engineering, and its architect was dying of boredom. From his silent throne of ruins on the Hill of Rhaenys, Krosis-Krif observed the world he had made. He saw the tidiness of Dorne's submission, the quiet efficiency of Rhaenyra's court, the muted, fearful rhythm of life in the Seven Kingdoms. He had achieved absolute order, absolute security. He had won the game so completely that the board itself had become uninteresting.
In his quiet moments of contemplation, as he sifted through the cosmos of memories he had consumed, a new and unfamiliar sensation pricked at his godlike consciousness: regret.
He remembered the final, explosive feast above the Gods Eye. He savored the memory of Vhagar's ancient power, the defiant fire of Caraxes, the bitter pride of Daemon, the obsessive rage of Aemond. The combined energy had been exquisite, a vintage of power so potent and complex that it had fundamentally transformed him. It had been the single greatest meal of his existence.
And in his drive for a tidy, threat-free world, he had consumed the last of it. He had reabsorbed the remaining Targaryen dragons, taking their lesser, but still piquant, energies into himself. It had been a lapse in foresight, a tactical error born of a desire for completion. He had tidied his pantry until it was bare of the one delicacy he truly craved. The ambient fear of the human population was a thin, watery gruel in comparison. He missed his snack.
A psychopath does not wallow in regret. A god does not accept a flawed system. He corrects it. The oversight was clear: he had destroyed a valuable, renewable resource instead of cultivating it. His human mind, with its penchant for long-term strategy, and his draconic soul, with its intrinsic connection to its own kind, merged into a new, grand, and terrible idea. He would not just be a ruler. He would become a farmer.
A new command bloomed from the hill, not a public proclamation, but a series of precise, personal summonses delivered directly into the minds of the chosen. It was an invitation to a family reunion.
They gathered at the foot of the hill, a strange and sorrowful assembly. Queen Rhaenyra came with her sons, Jacaerys and Joffrey. Dowager Queen Alicent came with her daughter Helaena, who walked with a vacant, doll-like placidity, and her son Aegon, the former king, who was pale, trembling, and sober for the first time in memory, a feat achieved only by the sheer terror of the summons. Lord Corlys was there, as was Otto Hightower. Even Larys Strong had hobbled his way from the Red Keep to observe. It was the first time the surviving heads of both factions of the Dance of the Dragons had stood together since before the war began. The tension between them was a palpable, bitter cold.
"So now we are summoned together like a happy family," Alicent said, her voice a low, venomous whisper to Otto. "Does the beast wish for us to perform tricks for its amusement?"
"Be silent, daughter," Otto hissed back. "It hears everything. It likely finds your bitterness… disorderly."
Rhaenyra overheard them, her expression tightening. "We are all here by the same command, Alicent. Your enmity is a relic of an age that is over. I suggest you leave it there."
Before the bitter dialogue could continue, the familiar, colossal weight of Krosis-Krif's attention settled upon them, silencing them all.
"I HAVE CONVENED THIS GATHERING OF YOUR… BLOODLINE," the voice bloomed in their minds, "BECAUSE I HAVE OBSERVED A FLAW IN THE NEW ORDER. AN OVERSIGHT IN MY INITIAL TIDYING OF THE REALM. A LACK OF CERTAIN… RESOURCES. YOU, THE DESCENDANTS OF OLD VALYRIA, ARE UNIQUELY SUITED TO ASSIST ME IN CORRECTING THIS OVERSIGHT."
The assembled Targaryens and Hightowers exchanged confused, fearful glances. What could this god possibly need from them?
"YOUR HOUSE'S POWER WAS BUILT UPON THE BACKS OF DRAGONS," the voice continued, a hint of something that felt disturbingly like nostalgia in its tone. "IN MY PURSUIT OF ABSOLUTE ORDER, I REABSORBED THESE CREATURES. THIS WAS AN ERROR. IT WAS EFFICIENT, BUT WASTEFUL. A VALUABLE CROP WAS HARVESTED WITHOUT A THOUGHT TO THE NEXT SEASON'S PLANTING."
Jacaerys's face went white. He understood first. "A crop…" he whispered aloud, his voice filled with dawning horror.
"YOU WILL BECOME KEEPERS," Krosis-Krif declared, the decree echoing in their souls. "YOU WILL BECOME SHEPHERDS OF A NEW FLOCK. MY FLOCK."
The god's plan unfolded in their minds, a vision of such perverse, calculated cruelty that it made all the horrors of the war seem like petty squabbles.
"I REQUIRE A SUSTAINABLE SOURCE OF THE ENERGY YOUR DRAGONS PROVIDED. THEREFORE, YOU WILL BREED THEM FOR ME. I WILL GATHER THE RAW MATERIALS. YOU WILL PROVIDE THE SKILLED LABOR."
A wave of sickness washed over Rhaenyra. She thought of Syrax, of the bond, the love. To be a farmer of her own kind…
"ALL DRAGON EGGS REMAINING IN YOUR POSSESSION WILL BE BROUGHT TO ME. FURTHERMORE, I WILL RETRIEVE THOSE LOST TO THE AGES. THE CLUTCHES THAT LIE DORMANT IN THE VOLCANIC CRADLES OF DRAGONSTONE. THE FORGOTTEN EGGS THAT LIE SCATTERED AMIDST THE RUINS OF VALYRIA ITSELF."
The scope of it was staggering. To return to the haunted, cursed heart of their ancestors' empire, a place no man had dared to tread for centuries.
"YOU, THE TARGARYEN FAMILY—ALL OF YOU WHO CARRY THE BLOOD—WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR INCUBATION AND HATCHING. YOU WILL RAISE THEM IN THE FIELDS BEYOND THIS CITY. YOU WILL CARE FOR THEM." The voice paused, letting the next, terrible term settle upon them. "BUT THESE DRAGONS ARE NOT FOR YOU. THEY ARE NOT FOR YOU TO RIDE, TO BOND WITH, OR TO USE FOR YOUR OWN GLORY. THEY ARE A RESOURCE. A CROP. AND I AM THE HARVESTER."
"A TITHE WILL BE PAID," Krosis-Krif stated, the words cold and absolute. "PERIODICALLY, A DRAGON, ONCE IT REACHES A CERTAIN MATURITY AND POTENCY, WILL BE BROUGHT TO THIS HILL. ITS ENERGY WILL BE… RETURNED TO THE SOURCE."
"You want us to be… your dragon farmers?" Jace cried out, his voice cracking with disbelief and rage. "To raise our own kind as cattle for your slaughter? To nurture them, only to lead them to you to be devoured?"
"YES," was the simple, devastating reply.
Alicent looked as though she might faint. Aegon, for his part, was simply staring into space, a thin line of drool on his chin, his mind unable to process the scale of the horror.
"This is a perversion beyond any imagining," Alicent whispered, clutching her seven-pointed star as if it could offer any protection. "To twist our legacy, our very blood, into… this."
Rhaenyra finally found her voice, a queen's voice, filled with a sorrow so profound it was almost majestic. "You give us peace, but you take our souls. You give us a crown, but you make us complicit in the eternal destruction of our own house. Why? Why this cruelty?"
"IT IS NOT CRUELTY. IT IS EFFICIENCY," the god corrected her. "AND YOUR SERVICE WILL BE REWARDED. A TASK OF THIS MAGNITUDE REQUIRES RESOURCES. YOUR REALM IS IMPOVERISHED BY YOUR FOOLISH WAR. THIS IS… UNTIDY. I WILL RECTIFY IT."
The final piece of the horrifying bargain fell into place.
"IN RETURN FOR YOUR SKILLED LABOR AS MY KEEPERS, I WILL REBUILD YOUR FORTUNES. I WILL PLUNDER THE VAULTS OF OLD VALYRIA, UNTOUCHED FOR CENTURIES. I WILL BRING YOU ITS TREASURES. ITS GOLD, ITS GEMS, ITS LOST ARTIFACTS. I WILL BRING YOU ITS FORGOTTEN STEEL."
The air before them began to shimmer. Not with heat, but with a distortion of space itself. A hole seemed to open in reality, a swirling vortex of grey mist. And from it, objects began to fall, landing softly on the ground before the stunned Targaryens.
First came chests, ancient and bound in strange metals, which burst open upon landing, spilling out a river of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, each larger than a man's fist. Then came stacks of gold bars, fused together by ancient heat, their weight making the very ground groan. Then came the blades.
Dozens of them, then a hundred. Valyrian steel swords, daggers, axes, and spears, their dark, ripple-patterned metal drinking the pale light. More Valyrian steel than had been seen in Westeros since before the Doom. It was a treasure beyond any king's wildest dreams.
And then came the eggs.
Cradled in shimmering fields of force, they floated from the vortex. Dozens upon dozens of them. Some were the familiar colours of the Targaryen clutches—green and bronze, black and red. But others were colours they had only read about in the oldest histories: shimmering silver, deep amethyst, opalescent white, and one, the size of a boulder, that seemed to be carved from living shadow and fire. The lost legacy of Valyria, the genetic future of their house, was laid bare at their feet.
Krosis-Krif had not just given them a command. He had made them an offer. He had presented them with a contract.
"THIS IS THE BARGAIN," the voice stated, its work done. "YOU WILL NURTURE MY FLOCK, AND I WILL MAKE YOUR KINGDOM THE WEALTHIEST IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. YOUR PEOPLE WILL WANT FOR NOTHING. YOUR COFFERS WILL OVERFLOW. ALL IT WILL COST YOU IS THE SOUL OF YOUR HOUSE. IT IS A GENEROUS OFFER."
The vortex closed. The god on the hill fell silent, its golden eyes watching them, waiting for their acceptance, though it knew they had no choice.
The two factions of the House of the Dragon—Rhaenyra and Alicent, Jacaerys and Aegon—stood together, united for the first time not by blood or marriage, but by a shared, monstrous purpose. They stared at the impossible wealth before them, a treasure vast enough to rebuild the entire continent. And they stared at the shimmering, beautiful, doomed eggs.
They had been given their new sacred duty. They were no longer conquerors. They were no longer even kings and queens in truth. They were the Wardens of the Dragon's Tithe, the farmers of a god's horrific feast.
Larys Strong, watching from the edge of the crowd, allowed himself the faintest of smiles. He turned to the defeated Otto Hightower, who was staring at the pile of Valyrian steel with the haunted eyes of a historian witnessing a miracle and a sacrilege at once.
"You see, my Lord Hightower?" Larys whispered, his voice full of a terrible, newfound cheer. "Our god is not a tyrant. He is an investor. And he has just given his new enterprise its seed funding."