Alicent walked beside Aemond through the dim halls of the Red Keep. The castle felt hollow now.
Gone were the musicians that once drifted through its corridors, the laughter of feasts, the endless swarm of petitioners and courtiers that had followed Viserys like moths around a flame.
Now? The Keep felt like a corpse.
"The Hand wishes for me to fight?" Aemond asked at last.
"Just the ramblings of an old man." Alicent offered him a faint smile, though her eyes lingered on his mask. "You needn't concern yourself with it. The forces we can muster will be enough to deter Rhaenyra. I will not allow you to endanger yourself, not this time."
Aemond gave a low chuckle.
"You said it yourself, Mother. What good are men when faced with a dragon?"
Alicent said nothing.
The torchlight washed across his sharp features as they continued onward. Taller than her now. Taller than most men in court.
"You fear losing Vhagar more than you fear losing me," Aemond said.
"That is not true."
"No?" His eye settled upon her. "Then why keep me from war?"
"Because war is not won by one glorious charge nor by any songs sung by fools after the fact. It is won by cunning, strategy and patience."
Aemond's smile faded.
"And yet your 'cunning' placed Aegon upon the throne."
Alicent kept her gaze forward. "Aegon is your eldest brother, your king."
"Yes," Aemond replied. "But why?"
"I ride the largest dragon in the world. I have studied the histories, law, and philosophy. I trained while Aegon drank himself insensible in wine sinks and brothels." His voice sharpened. "I have only sacrificed for this family while Aegon mocked it."
Alicent finally stopped walking as she stared at the crackling sconces beside them.
"You think a crown rests easiest upon the worthiest head?" She asked quietly.
Aemond did not answer.
"Aegon is weak," Alicent continued. "Foolish. Vain. Easily led. But what use is it to sit on the throne if one cannot wield it?" She turned fully toward him now. "A king alone is nothing. The throne is not power, Aemond. It is only a seat."
"Power belongs to those who understand how to grasp it." Hunger burned in her eyes.
"Aegon need only sit the throne and heed our counsel. It can only be him. Otto understands this. I understand this. Our entire claim is built on his legitimacy as Viserys' eldest male heir…" She whispered. "The realm would never have accepted you."
Aemond stared at her in silence.
Then, slowly, he stepped closer.
"And what am I, Mother?"
Before she could answer, Aemond spoke again. "You claim this is all for me, for our family, but…" He shook his head. "You speak of us, your own children, as pieces to be placed upon a cyvasse board," he said. "Aegon upon the throne. Me to war. Daeron to Oldtown."
His one remaining eye gleamed as they regarded her with an indifference that no son should show his mother. "Throughout my childhood, you bemoaned Rhaenyra's ambition, her ruthlessness, her impetuous nature…Yet, here I wonder, are you and Rhaenyra truly any different?"
"Aemond—"
But he was already turning away, the long dark cloak trailing behind him as he disappeared deeper into the halls of the Red Keep, leaving Alicent alone beneath dancing firelight and her own ghosts.
"You needn't worry, Your Grace, if the crown wills it, Vhagar and I are only glad to ease its burdens."
***
Time passed, and Baelon found himself helplessly confined to these dream sequences one after another.
Worse of all, he was here by himself.
He had no idea how Helaena was faring. Was she trapped in a similar nightmare? Or was she outside right now, curiously poking at his unconscious body while he suffered through the deranged memories of a dead god?
He did not know.
All he knew was that Tyrax was insane.
Completely insane.
He had once wondered what gods did in their leisure time, and now that he finally had his answer, he wanted nothing more than to travel back in time and slap his younger self for ever being curious.
Far from wisdom, intelligence or creation, these visions had only shown him death, destruction and a wilfulness he had only ever seen in children.
Baelon watched him challenge gods the way drunkards challenged strangers in taverns. It did not matter the size and shape; they were all equal under his fist.
And every single memory carried the same feeling beneath it all.
Joy.
Tyrax loved this.
The scene shifted around him once more.
Baelon suddenly found himself standing upon a rocky coastline beneath blackened skies. Salt filled the air alongside the stench of blood and rotting carcasses.
Far below, waves crashed violently against jagged cliffs while thousands of mortals crowded the shoreline and primitive harbour beyond.
They were screaming.
Cheering.
Praying.
At first, Baelon did not understand why. Then the entire sea bulged upward aside.
Ships were hurled upward like toys before vanishing beneath colossal waves. The surface ruptured, and a creature emerged from the depths.
It was massive. Far larger than any dragon Baelon had ever seen.
Its body resembled some horrific union between serpent and whale, covered in black scales slick with seawater.
Barnacles larger than houses clung to its sides while dozens of pale eyes opened and closed across its neck, each twitching restlessly.
When it screamed, the sea screamed with it.
The sound alone shattered windows along the coast. Men dropped to their knees, clutching bleeding ears as harbour towers cracked apart.
Then Tyrax jumped onto the thing from a high point on the coast, Baelon along with him and struck the beast.
Water exploded skyward in towering walls as Tyrax buried his hands deep into the leviathan's spine, his laughter reverberating louder than the storm itself.
The leviathan thrashed wildly in his grasp; however, Tyrax did not relent and inched forward along its spine.
Soon, he set his feet upon its body and seized its neck with both hands.
And with a roar that drowned out the heavens…
Schliiick!
Tyrax ripped its head clean off.
Black blood rained across the coastline as the severed head crashed into the harbour, crushing buildings beneath it.
The mortals did not flee.
They cheered harder. Louder.
Others prostrated themselves against the shore in worship as Tyrax descended upon the corpse like a starving beast.
He tore into it with neither dignity nor restraint, devouring chunks of flesh while steam and blood poured from his jaws.
Baelon watched in horrified silence as thousands of humans celebrated the massacre like spectators at a festival.
Still, all Baelon could do was watch as the scene around him faded once more, swallowed by darkness before another memory began to take shape.
However, as Baelon looked upon the scene around him, he found something…off.
Why was he burning?
No.
Why was Tyrax burning?
The body from which Baelon viewed the world suddenly convulsed violently.
A scream tore free from its throat, not a roar of rage or triumph, but an agonised shriek that scarcely belonged to a God.
As Baelon heard its voice, his pupils shrank.
It was familiar.
Terribly familiar.
No…
This was not Tyrax.
This...was Balerion.
Balerion twitched against the sky in maddened rage, and before him, suspended within the air itself, something was forming.
Something familiar. A doppleganger. A shadow.
At first, it resembled little more than a malformed silhouette; however, with each passing moment, its appearance grew clearer, and with it, Balerion weakened.
Baelon watched in horror as strands of Divinity were ripped from Balerion and fed into the creature like veins pumping blood into a parasite.
Balerion's flames began to dim; his immense body now twitched weakly in the sky.
Even the darkness around him seemed thinner somehow, fading away like smoke scattered by the wind.
'He failed this ritual…' Baelon pondered. 'Didn't he?'
Whilst Balerion seemed to be weakening, he was by no means in mortal danger, and he doubted a God would be unable to recover from this.
On the other hand, the shadow was only growing more solid by each passing moment, aiming to materialise and succeed at any moment.
However, everything he knew said Balerion's attempt had ended in disaster.
But this…did not look like failure.
Yet before the thought could settle, the clone suddenly convulsed.
Its body jerked. Bones snapped and reformed beneath skin that could not decide what shape it wished to take.
One moment, it resembled Balerion, the next some grotesque abomination stitched together from light and shadow.
Then...it moved.
The malformed creature lunged toward the weakened Balerion with feral hunger as the sky exploded with molten rock and flame.
Baelon watched in frozen horror as the creature buried its teeth into Balerion's neck and tore free entire chunks of 'flesh'.
Balerion roared.
Not in rage.
Not in fury.
Agony.
Pure, helpless agony as the clone devoured him relentlessly.
It ate and ate and ate.
Like a starving animal consuming its own dying parent.
Yet with every bite, the creature became more unstable.
Its body swelled grotesquely, pulsing violently as energies and Divinities of all kinds surged beneath its skin.
Darkness leaked endlessly from cracks along its form while blinding gold erupted from beneath its chest and throat.
The air around it began to distort around it.
Then—
The clone burst apart.
Clouds were pierced, the air smashed, and the ground cratered.
If there truly was a heaven above, it had already been lost in the aftermath of this explosion.
Two enormous entities emerged from the explosion and lingered high above the world.
One was deep and dark as the night sky. Merely gazing upon it filled Baelon with a suffocating sense of decay and hunger.
The other burned brighter than the sun itself, radiant and divine, wings formed from cascading light that illuminated the oceans below like daylight.
Beneath them lay Balerion.
Dying.
Its colossal body trembled weakly against the ruined sky, its remaining eye unfocused as darkness slowly swelled within it.
"No…" Balerion rasped. "How…how could I fail here…?"
The God-king forced trembling limbs beneath himself, desperately trying to rise. His limbs dug trenches through clouds as he pushed upward through sheer will alone.
Alas, he collapsed instantly.
Above him, the two entities ignored their creator entirely.
The radiant being surged forward first, unleashing torrents of golden flame. The dark entity answered with waves of black fog that consumed light itself.
On and on they fought.
Yet, below them, abandoned and forgotten, their creator died.
Pathetically.
Soon, silence followed as the split clones headed elsewhere to continue their fight, whilst Baelon simply stared at the mourning sky above.
What in the Seven just happened?
Baelon understood well that this ought to have been the day Baelon attempted the ritual and failed.
But…the manner of its failures was beyond his wildest imaginings.
What were those two beings?
Did his own failed ritual end up like this?
Thankfully, if Helaena was still conscious outside, his body was in safe hands, unlikely to be devoured by some ravenous shadow. Hopefully…
Then suddenly his perspective shifted.
The world blurred into streaks of shadow as Baelon realised he no longer inhabited Balerion's corpse.
He was something else now. Instead, he was now a mass of black fog hurtling across the skies at impossible speed.
The world beneath became indistinct flashes of ocean and storm before the darkness finally descended upon a lonely island far from everything else.
At its centre stood a dying tree.
Its bark was pale and cracked, barren beneath a glum sky. The black energy surged toward it instinctively.
Baelon felt it seep into the roots.
Into the trunk. Into every hollow vein of the dying wood.
The tree shuddered violently, as black covered what was once pale, vitality filling what was once hollow.
And, soon, the tree had been reborn.
Unfortunately, for Baelon, he was not given even a moment's respite as once again he found his sight fading as he found himself elsewhere.
But this time, he was not in another dream but in a rather familiar void.
"Tyrax…he was truly the most obstinate among us."
The familiar voice appeared beside Baelon without warning, carrying an almost nostalgic amusement that immediately set his nerves on edge.
Baelon stiffened.
The darkness surrounding him remained unchanged, endless black fog stretching in every direction, yet suddenly it no longer felt empty.
"Kael'thir?" Baelon asked cautiously.
"Hah."
The laugh echoed around him from nowhere and everywhere at once. Warm yet mocking.
Still, no one appeared before him.
Baelon felt his heart tense. He knew it was likely this ritual was a set-up, but what hope did he have otherwise?
Obediently serve as a puppet to fate? Remain a slave to futures he could only see but not change?
No.
He would never bow his head and hope fortune would smile upon him. He had done that far too many times in the past.
It was only when he actively sought to change his destiny that anything meaningful was achieved.
Now…he could only hope the preparations he had made in advance could help him survive this tribulation of his.