TBOV: Chapter Thirty: Ashes of Hope

Chapter Thirty: Ashes of Hope

“The things I do for love.”

―Jaime Lannister

…

The news had come like a carrion bird, black-winged and reeking of salt and slaughter. City Guards, their faces pale and eyes haunted, had stumbled in the hall, their words painting a scene of such cataclysm that Rhaenyra’s mind recoiled. Vermax and Arrax… fallen… six Green dragons… a sky filled with fire and death. Jace. Luke. Her boys. Gone. Swallowed by the monstrous maw of her half-brother’s ambition.

Aemond. The name was a shard of ice in her heart.

She raced through the opulent hallways of the Sealord’s private chambers, the air thick with the scent of fear and melting beeswax from overturned candelabra. Outside, on the street below, the roar of the Braavosi mob was a rising tide, the shouts of “Treason!” and “Death to the Targaryen whore!” growing louder, closer. The Sealord himself had already fled, the coward. Hope had parched with the city’s water, and now the beast was at the door.

Her grief was a raw, gaping wound, yet it would have to wait. Joffrey, her brave, terrified Joffrey, clung to her skirts, his young face a mask of dread as he marched after her. Little Aegon, barely more than a babe, was clutched in the arms of a trembling serving girl. Rhaenyra Targaryen, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, was a queen of ashes, her kingdom shrinking to the terrified faces of her remaining sons.

They slipped through a tapestry depicting the Titan’s first stride, into a seldom-used passage that stank of damp stone. Joffrey stumbled, and Rhaenyra pulled him close, her arm a band of iron around his small shoulders. The sounds of splintering wood and enraged shouts echoed somewhere behind them. 

They soon arrived at the Sealord’s stables, an obscene testament to Braavosi wealth, all polished marble and gilded fittings. Syrax was there, her golden scales gleaming in the dim torchlight, her great yellow eyes fixing on Rhaenyra with an almost mournful intelligence. Tyraxes, Joffrey’s mount, shifted restlessly beside her, a smaller, grey echo. And Stormcloud chirped and hissed from a shadowed alcove, a juvenile creature of smoke and fury, barely large enough to bear a small child, let alone contest what was surely coming.

“Aegon with me on Syrax,” Rhaenyra ordered, her mind racing. “Joffrey, to Tyraxes. Quickly now!”

There was no time for elaborate saddling. They scrambled onto their dragons, Aegon a trembling weight before her on Syrax’s broad back. Joffrey, his face set in a brave attempt at composure, managed to secure himself on Tyraxes. Stormcloud, sensing the urgency, spread its young wings, ready to follow.

The she-dragon turned ponderously to the great stable doors, barred from the inside. “Dracarys!” Rhaenyra screamed, and Syrax unleashed a torrent of golden flame. The ancient wood exploded outwards in a shower of burning splinters. Through the inferno they flew, Syrax leading, Tyraxes close behind, Stormcloud struggling to keep pace.

They burst into the pre-dawn sky, the cool air a shock against Rhaenyra’s fevered skin. Below, Braavos was a glittering constellation of chaos, torches like angry fireflies swarming the Sealord’s Palace. Rhaenyra did not look back. She urged Syrax eastward, away from the city, away from Westeros, towards the unknown sanctuary of the vast Essosi mainland. Anywhere else was surely safer than what laid behind them.

For a while, it seemed they might escape. The only sounds were the rhythmic beat of dragon wings and the rush of the wind. Joffrey flew beside her, a small silhouette on an equally small dragon. Aegon shivered in her arms, his small hands clutching her fiercely. Rhaenyra whispered soothing words to him, words she did not believe herself. We are alive. We are free.

But the sky was never truly empty for dragons at war.

First, a distant roar, like the rumble of an oncoming storm. Then, shapes detached themselves from the bruised clouds to the west. Four of them. Her blood ran cold.

The Bronze Fury, was unmistakable, a colossal shadow of destruction even from afar. Silverwing, and two others, smaller, darker—Seasmoke and the rugged, ugly form of Sheepstealer—flew by his side. Aemond’s infamous dragonseeds. They were hunting them.

“Faster!” Rhaenyra urged Syrax, her voice cracking. Syrax, noble and brave, strained, her great wings pumping with desperate strength. But the fat, golden queen was no match for the speed of Seasmoke, nor the sheer power of Vermithor. 

The pursuit was relentless. The enemy dragons gained, their forms growing larger, more menacing with each passing moment. Rhaenyra could see the riders now. They fanned out, cutting off any chance of escape, herding them.

A gout of bronze flame from Vermithor seared the air near Syrax’s wing, forcing Rhaenyra to bank sharply. Tyraxes shrieked as Seasmoke and Sheepstealer harried him. Joffrey cried out, his indistinct voice a sound of pure terror that tore at Rhaenyra’s soul.

“Land!” she screamed, her voice lost in the thunder of wings. “Joffrey, land!”

There was no choice. To fight was to die, to condemn her sons to the same fate as Jace and Luke. Syrax descended, her claws scraping against the rocky earth of an unfamiliar Essosi coastline. Tyraxes followed, stumbling as he landed, Joffrey nearly falling from his back. Stormcloud, exhausted, fluttered down beside them, a frightened fledgling that took shelter between the larger dragons.

Of the four Green dragons only one—Vermithor—landed, the rest circling above their massive forms blocking the sky, their eyes glowing with predatory light. Vermithor’s rider, a woman with a head of Targaryen silver hair, raised a gloved hand. The Bronze Fury lowered its great head, its rider’s voice, echoed loudly across the space as she shouted her instructions.

“Rhaenyra Targaryen! By order of Prince Aemond, Master of War and Sword of the True King Aegon, Second of His Name, I shall give the choice plain: Yield and face the King’s justice, or burn where you stand! What do you say! Mercy or death?”

Rhaenyra looked at Joffrey, at little Aegon, their faces streaked with tears and soot. Her heart, already broken, seemed to shatter into a thousand more pieces. Mercy… Aemond’s mercy. What mercy could the kinslayer, the butcher of the Stormlands, possibly know? He had murdered her sons, stolen her throne. And yet…

For Joffrey. For Aegon.

Queenly pride was a hard thing to swallow, harder even than grief. But a mother’s fear, that was a force that could break mountains, and it broke her now.

She straightened shakily on Syrax’s back, her voice hoarse but carrying. “I yield!” she cried out to Rowenna, to the circling dragons, to the uncaring sky. “I yield! But my sons… they must be unharmed! Swear it! Swear that no harm will come to my sons!”

Rowenna’s voice returned, cold and devoid of emotion. “The Good Prince offers your lives. Take it and follow me.”

✥✥✥​

…as recorded in the unfinished Triumphs and Tragedies of the Dragonlords, being the work of Maester Illyrio of Pentos, newly‑made chronicler in the service of the Targaryen Royal Institute, copied here with the usual cautions against bias and embroidery.

Thus fell Prince Jacaerys Velaryon and his brother Lucerys, heirs presumptive to the Princess Rhaenyra, with their noble mounts Vermax and Arrax for company. The skies north‑west of Braavos ran red that dusk, and the darkling sea beneath was lit by corpse‑fires and dragonflame. Braavos had wagered its fortunes upon a sudden flight for home; six green dragons answered in kind, and the Titan’s gamble proved a ruinous cast.

When the tide turned—as every pilot of the Narrow Sea swore it must—the Braavosi captains hoped the racing current would dash their Westerosi pursuers upon hidden reefs. Instead, the flow betrayed them, driving shattered hulls back toward the open sea or the jagged Shield Isles, there to founder. Behind came the longships and cog‑riders of Westeros, ahead the fanged maws of rock, and above, death with wings. Vhagar, Vermithor, and Silverwing stooped again and yet again, whilst Sheepstealer, Seasmoke, and flame‑bright Tessarion hunted stragglers. By nightfall the Braavosi armada was naught but burning spars and drowning men, the waves themselves fouled with pitch and gore.

Renowned Koja Terys, called the Unmasked, clove foes as he ever had, but when his flagship went down beneath him he was hauled from the smoking decks, stripped of sword, eye, and arm alike. With him perished Braavos’s last hope upon the water; their proud fleet was ended root and branch.

The watchers upon the hundred isles beheld their ruin in silence. Yet silence swiftly changed its face when Westerosi sails ghosted through the lagoon unopposed. Braavos thirsted—its cisterns fouled by ash, its canals brackish—and hope parched away with the water. Who first cried treason none can say, but mobs soon stormed the villas of the Sealord and the puissant Sarrens, whilst stones clattered on the doors of the Iron Bank. Those argent‑masked magisters who dared the waterways in flight found Red Cloaks waiting beneath the bridges, nets and nooses ready.

Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, with princes Joffrey and Aegon the Younger in train, slipped the Sealord’s Palace moments ere the doors were broken. Mounting Syrax, Tyraxes, and storm‑born Stormcloud, they sought refuge in the dusk sky—only to meet an iron wall of wings and be forced to land. Rowenna of the Rivers, astride the Bronze Fury, spoke for Prince Aemond and gave the choice plain: yield and be escorted home, or burn where they stop. Though queenly pride is a hard thing, a mother’s fear proved the harder. Rhaenyra bent the knee, and the last Blacks were shepherded south toward King’s Landing, under watchful dragon‑eye.

The Sealord himself had fled to the shadow of the Titan hours before the Westerosi took the lagoon, but even bronze colossi cannot keep hunger at bay. Envoys came forth under torn banners, pleading for mercy. Prince Aemond Targaryen, one‑eyed and unforgiving, accepted surrender at dawn. Barges of sweet water were poled upriver to still the riots; yet clemency carried iron shackles. Red Cloaks seized the Arsenal, the Chequy Port, the Sealord’s Palace, and—most keenly felt—the counting‑house of the Iron Bank, whose vaults were declared for the Crown and the Dragon’s Bank besides.

Vengeance had deeper fangs. Guided by the prince’s ire, Aemond’s soldiers smashed the doors of the House of Black and White. What transpired within its godless halls remains cloaked in secrecy; some say half a hundred Faceless Men died, others whisper twice that number were taken alive for darker purpose. The Black and White pools ran crimson, that much is certain.

With blades broken, coffers seized, and hidden daggers snapped, the prince arrayed new masters in old chairs. Braavosi guildlords who had urged surrender were left as puppets beneath Westerosi strings; the rest dangled from beams above the Plaza of Pride, or bobbed white in the green‑black canals. A fortnight passed, and the Unconquered City bent the knee in earnest. So ended the war kindled by two slain envoys. The Stepstones lay behind, the Titan before, and above them all circled Vhagar, a great beast tainted crimson in the dawn.