Chapter 35: The Dragon's Long View, A Kingdom of Stone and Shadow

Chapter 35: The Dragon's Long View, A Kingdom of Stone and Shadow

The ashes of the Dragonpit were a monument to the self-immolating folly of House Targaryen. King's Landing, under Queen Rhaenyra's increasingly unhinged rule, was a corpse feasting upon itself, its streets slick with blood and tears, its air thick with the Shepherd's mad prophecies and the stench of starvation. Rico Moretti, now a creature more dragon than man, his veins thrumming with the combined jēdar of six legendary beasts and three royal Targaryens, looked upon this charnel house of ambition and felt not triumph, but a vast, draconic disdain.

These were the squabbles of mayflies, their brief, furious lives sputtering out in a meaningless blaze. He, with a lifespan now stretching across centuries, with the power to command the very elements and the potential to birth a new dynasty of dragonlords, was beyond such petty concerns. The Dance of the Dragons, which had once seemed the ultimate game, was now merely a distant, messy prelude to his own, far grander design.

"They will burn themselves out, Alaric," Rico rumbled one night, his voice now carrying a permanent, subtle resonance, like distant thunder. They stood on the highest parapet of his warehouse fortress, overlooking the smoldering, riot-torn city. Obsidius, his firstborn dragon, now the size of a small warship, was a vast, silent shadow coiled around the base of the tower, his golden eyes occasionally reflecting the fires below. The other three hatchlings – the fierce green-bronze Viridiax, the swift black Nocturne, and the sapphire-eyed Nymeria – were restless in their hidden lairs beneath, their growing power a palpable pressure in the earth. "Rhaenyra, Aemond, their pathetic loyalists… they are gnats caught in a wildfire of their own making. Let them."

Alaric, who now seemed to have aged a decade in the mere weeks since Rico's full transformation, shivered, pulling his robes tighter despite the unnatural warmth that always seemed to radiate from his master. "And what then, Lord… Dragon?" he dared to whisper, the honorific new, hesitant, yet utterly appropriate.

Rico's golden-flecked eyes, now often slitted like a cat's or a reptile's in moments of deep thought, turned towards the cold, distant north. "Then, Maester, we build. We prepare. We wait. This continent is vast. Its memory is long, but its attention is fleeting. We will find a place where dragons can soar unseen, where a new power can take root, far from the madness of these warring children."

His gaze had fallen upon Skagos. The Stone Island. A name whispered with fear and revulsion in the Seven Kingdoms, a place of rumored cannibals, savage clans, and perpetual, biting winds, isolated in the freezing Shivering Sea. To Westeros, it was a barbarian wasteland, a forgotten hell. To Rico, with his dragon's perspective, it was perfect: remote, defensible, sparsely populated by mortals who would be no match for his power, and large enough to house a growing flight of dragons. A place where he could nurture his strength, hatch his final, enigmatic white egg, and lay the foundations of an empire that would outlast the Targaryens by centuries.

The decision, once made, was enacted with the swift, brutal efficiency that was Rico's hallmark. His "disappearance" from King's Landing needed to be carefully orchestrated. He couldn't simply vanish; that would invite suspicion, perhaps even investigation from whatever faction eventually crawled from the wreckage of the Dance.

He summoned his inner circle – those who would accompany him on this new, epic venture. Jax, his loyalty now a bedrock of terrified devotion, would be his fist. Shiv and Vorian, his silent, lethal shadows. Harl, whose connection to the dragons was second only to Rico's own, would be their chief keeper. Lyra, her alchemical skills now invaluable for more than just poisons (she was already experimenting with fire-resistant salves and compounds to aid dragon scale health, under Alaric's guidance), would be their mistress of potions. Mathis, his terror now a permanent fixture but his financial genius undiminished, would manage the immense resources required for this exodus and the establishment of a new domain. Perwyn, master forger, would create the documents, the histories, the very legitimacy of their future hidden kingdom. And Alaric, of course, the keeper of lore, the interpreter of Valyrian secrets, would be Rico's grand vizier.

To those left behind – a carefully selected cadre of his most ruthless but less imaginative lieutenants who would continue to manage his King's Landing underworld empire – Rico created a compelling narrative. He was, they were told, finally succumbing to the lure of the Free Cities, taking his vast wealth to Essos to live as a merchant prince, weary of the endless, bloody squabbles of Westeros. He would leave his King's Landing operations in their capable hands, expecting tribute and loyalty, his return uncertain but his wrath, should they fail him, absolute. To solidify this, he had Mathis transfer a significant (but by no means total) amount of gold to Essosi banking contacts (a legacy of Malatesta and The Scales), creating a believable financial trail.

The exodus itself was a logistical masterpiece of stealth and audacity. Five dragon eggs, including the still-dormant pale white one, were carefully packed in chests insulated with volcanic sand and imbued with Alaric's subtle warming enchantments. Obsidius, Viridiax, Nocturne, and Nymeria, though growing rapidly, were still young enough to be partially sedated by Lyra's potent herbal draughts and transported within the specially modified, cavernous holds of three large, nondescript merchant cogs Rico had acquired through his Essosi network. These ships, ostensibly carrying "bulk grain and salted meat for the northern garrisons" (a fiction supported by Perwyn's flawless forged manifests and shipping orders), were heavily armed with Rico's own men, disguised as common sailors.

His personal forge, his library of Valyrian scrolls and Kennard's journals, his arsenal of unique weapons, his treasury of gold and gemstones, and a breeding stock of hardy livestock were all loaded under the cover of moonless nights and the city's ongoing chaos. The departure was timed to coincide with a particularly vicious series of food riots near the docks and a brutal crackdown by Rhaenyra's Gold Cloaks, ensuring all official attention was diverted.

As their small flotilla slipped out of Blackwater Bay, Rico stood on the deck of his flagship, The Shadowwing, watching the distant, flickering fires of King's Landing recede. He felt no sentiment, no regret. That city had been a crucible, a stepping stone. His gaze was fixed on the future, on the vast, untamed north.

The journey to Skagos was arduous, a constant battle against storms, treacherous currents, and the ever-present need for secrecy. The young dragons, despite Lyra's sedatives, were restless in their confinement, their roars sometimes echoing from the holds, terrifying the regular crewmen who had been hired for the voyage (and who would, Rico had already decided, meet unfortunate "accidents" once they reached their destination, to preserve the secret of his new lair). Rico would spend hours in the holds with them, his mere presence, his draconic aura, soothing their agitation, their telepathic connection a silent symphony of command and reassurance. He was their alpha, their god.

After weeks at sea, under skies that grew ever greyer and colder, they finally sighted it: Skagos, the Stone Isle. It rose from the churning, ice-flecked waters of the Shivering Sea like a colossal, petrified beast, its jagged peaks wreathed in mist, its shores a forbidding tangle of black rock and stunted, wind-lashed forests. It radiated an aura of primal savagery, of ancient, brooding power, that resonated with the dragon within Rico. This, he knew, was the place.

Their initial landing was in a secluded, mist-shrouded cove on the island's northern coast, a place Rico had identified through careful study of ancient, half-forgotten mariners' charts found in Malatesta's collection. The air was bitingly cold, smelling of pine, salt, and something else – a faint, musky scent that spoke of wild, untamed creatures.

The Skagosi, the infamous Stone Men, were not long in making their presence known. They were a savage, fiercely territorial people, clad in rough furs and crudely cured hides, their faces often tattooed with swirling, barbaric patterns. Rumors of their cannibalism, Rico suspected, were likely exaggerated to keep outsiders away, but their ferocity was undeniable. They attacked the landing parties with stone axes, flint-tipped spears, and a terrifying, guttural battle-cry that echoed through the bleak landscape.

Rico did not engage them in a conventional war. That would be a waste of his resources, his time. He was a dragon, and dragons did not parley with ants; they burned them or ignored them. He unleashed a campaign of calculated terror, of unseen death.

Shiv and his handpicked hunters, now armed with Rico-forged Tyroshi steel bows and arrows, became ghosts in the Skagosi forests, picking off chieftains and war-leaders from impossible distances, leaving no trace but a swift, silent death. Lyra developed subtle poisons, delivered via contaminated water sources or tainted game, that sowed sickness and discord among the Skagosi clans. Vorian led heavily armed patrols that established a secure perimeter around their initial landing zone, their superior steel and discipline no match for the Skagosi's primitive weaponry.

But Rico's greatest weapon was psychological. He allowed glimpses of his young dragons – a vast, obsidian wing blotting out the moon, a terrifying roar echoing from the mountain peaks, a sudden, inexplicable blast of fire consuming a sacred Skagosi stone circle. He didn't need to unleash their full fury; the mere suggestion of their presence, of a new, terrible god awakening on their island, was enough to shatter the Skagosi morale. Their shamans and wise women spoke of ancient prophecies, of stone dragons returning to claim their birthright.

Within months, the Skagosi clans of the northern peninsula were broken, their resistance replaced by a terrified, grudging submission. Rico did not seek to exterminate them. He needed a subject populace, however primitive, to provide labor, to act as a buffer against any future intrusion from the mainland. He established his rule through a combination of overwhelming power and carefully selected local chieftains whom he either bribed, intimidated, or replaced with his own, more pliable appointees. The Skagosi, a people who had resisted the rule of Winterfell for centuries, now bowed to a new, unseen, and infinitely more terrifying master.

With his initial territory secured, Rico began the monumental task of forging his dragon's roost. He had chosen a vast, dormant volcanic caldera nestled deep within the island's most inaccessible mountain range, a place of primal, geothermal energy, its entrance hidden by a labyrinth of narrow, treacherous gorges. Here, using his own superhuman strength, the coerced labor of the Skagosi, and the engineering genius of Alaric (who had found ancient Valyrian architectural principles in the scrolls that resonated with volcanic lairs), they began to carve out a fortress, a city, a new Dragonstone hidden from the world.

Rico himself, in his secret forge brought piece by painstaking piece from King's Landing and reassembled within the caldera, worked tirelessly, shaping not just steel, but stone itself, using his draconic fire and Valyrian blood-will to mold the volcanic rock, to raise towers that scraped the storm-wracked sky, to delve caverns vast enough to house a flight of adult dragons. It was a labor of centuries, compressed into years by his inhuman power and singular vision.

His four young dragons thrived in the wild, untamed environment of Skagos. They hunted in the mountains, their roars echoing through the valleys, growing larger, stronger, their bond with Rico deepening into an unbreakable, telepathic union. Obsidius, his scales now like polished jet, his golden eyes blazing with terrifying intelligence, was already a formidable beast, his shadow a harbinger of doom. Viridiax, Nocturne, and Nymeria were close behind, each developing their own unique personalities, their own deadly graces.

And then there was the pale white egg. It remained cold, dormant, a silent enigma in the heart of their hidden hatchery. Alaric theorized it might require a different catalyst, a different kind of magic, perhaps something connected to the ice and shadow of the far north, or even to the ancient sorceries of the Skagosi themselves, which he was now beginning to study with a morbid fascination. Rico, with his dragon's patience, was content to let it wait. He had time.

Years bled into a decade, then two. News from the south, when it reached them via Rico's discreet Essosi shipping contacts or the occasional, daring raven flight, spoke of the Dance of the Dragons dragging on, a seemingly endless cycle of bloody battles, betrayals, and pyrrhic victories. Rhaenyra's disastrous reign in King's Landing had ended with her fleeing the city, only to be eventually captured and fed to Aegon II's (or rather, Sunfyre's) recovering dragon. Aegon II himself had briefly regained the throne, only to be poisoned by his own council. The realm was shattered, exhausted, its great houses decimated, its fields fallow, its people broken. The age of dragons in Westeros was dying, guttering out like a spent candle.

But here, in the hidden heart of Skagos, a new age of dragons was dawning. Rico's fortress, Volcārys (High Valyrian for "Dragonstone of the Fire Mountain," a name he had chosen), was now a marvel of dark, forbidding architecture, a fusion of Valyrian engineering and his own demonic aesthetic. His Skagosi subjects, though still savage and fearful, were now his, their fierce warrior traditions channeled into serving their unseen Dragonlord. His human followers, the core of his new "House Moretti" (though he was already contemplating a more fitting, Valyrian-esque name for his dynasty, one that resonated with fire and shadow), were the architects of a new, hidden civilization, their loyalty to him absolute, their children growing up knowing no other god.

Rico himself, his human appearance now subtly but irrevocably altered by the draconic power within him – his eyes almost permanently golden-flecked, his skin possessing an unnatural resilience, his aura one of palpable, ancient power – spent his days training his dragons, mastering his own burgeoning magical abilities (he was now capable of wielding raw elemental fire, of shaping his will into tangible force, of communing with the very stones of his volcanic lair), and delving ever deeper into the forbidden lore of the Valyrian scrolls with Alaric. He was no longer just a dragon in human flesh; he was becoming something more, something that transcended both.

He looked out from the highest tower of Volcārys, his four magnificent dragons circling in the stormy sky above, their roars a symphony of possessive loyalty. The petty squabbles of Westeros, the Dance of dying Targaryens, were less than gnats to him now. He had five hundred years, perhaps more. He had the blood of kings and gods and dragons. He had the knowledge of Old Valyria. He had an unassailable fortress, a growing army, and a flight of dragons that would one day rival the might of the Targaryen dynasty at its zenith.

The world would forget Rico Moretti, the Razor of Flea Bottom. It would forget the Dance of the Dragons. But it would learn to fear the coming of a new age, an age forged in secret fire and dragon's blood, an age that would rise from the frozen north to consume the world. The Dragonlord of Skagos was patient. His game was long. And he had only just begun.