My collection of some ideas floting around some are unfinished59.96%

Chapter 41: The Vulture’s Feast

Chapter 41: The Vulture's Feast

299 AC, Month of the Stranger

The War of the Five Kings was a symphony of self-destruction, and from his silent, fortified stage at Serpent's Head, Alaric Blackwood conducted it with the dispassionate mastery of a maestro. While the great houses of Westeros set their lands ablaze and spent their ancient fortunes on the pyre of ambition, Alaric's own domain flourished, an island of serene, productive order in a sea of fire and blood.

His days were a meticulously scheduled rotation between the three pillars of his existence. The mornings were for his domain. He would meet with Nervo in the Chamber of Accounts, a room that had become the true economic heart of the southern kingdoms. The reports from their network of agents were no longer about market opportunities; they were casualty lists and logistical nightmares for the warring kings, each one representing a new revenue stream for House Blackwood.

"Lord Tywin's forces have pushed the Stark army back from the Red Fork, my lord," Nervo reported, his finger tracing a path on the great map. "But his supply lines are stretched to the breaking point. The price we are charging his quartermasters for grain shipments has increased by another fifteen percent this week. They complain, but they pay."

"They have no choice," Alaric stated, his eyes cold. "An army cannot march on an empty stomach. Send a similar offer to Lord Stark's new position at the Blue Fork. Use a different intermediary. Remind them that our grain is of higher quality than anything the Freys can provide." He was fueling both sides of the conflict, bleeding the wolf and the lion with equal impartiality. His business was war itself.

He reviewed the production manifests from his forges. He was selling swords and spearheads to the northern rebels through White Harbor, while selling mail and plate to the Lannister armies through Lannisport. He had become the armorer to a continent at war with itself, taking the gold of all five kings and leaving them with the steel to continue their mutual annihilation. This was the purest form of business, a closed system of profit where the demand was fueled by the very product he supplied.

Afternoons were for his family, the living embodiment of his dynastic ambitions. He would walk with Lynesse in the magnificent gardens of the Keep. She had grown into her role as a great lady, her beauty now imbued with a serene confidence. The chaos of the outside world was a distant, terrifying rumour to her, a storm that could not touch their perfect, gilded sanctuary. She ran their household with flawless efficiency, hosted lavish gatherings for the merchants and envoys who flocked to the safety of Blackport, and remained the perfect, placid mother to his children.

"The Tyrells have declared for Renly," she said one afternoon, her brow furrowed with a hint of concern. "My father's house is sworn to Highgarden. Will they be safe?"

"Your father's house is old and wise, my love," Alaric reassured her, his voice a soothing balm. "They will bend whichever way the wind blows strongest. They will survive. As will we. Our concern is not with the squabbles of roses and stags." He had already dispatched a secret message to Lord Hightower, advising him to commit as few men as possible to Renly's cause, hinting at a "coming shift in the political landscape." It was a cryptic warning that would cement his reputation for foresight when Renly inevitably fell.

His time with his children was the most critical. Tyber, at nine, was a frighteningly intelligent boy. Alaric did not teach him swordplay; he taught him strategy, economics, and history. Their cyvasse games were brutal lessons in foresight and sacrifice.

"You gave up your dragon too easily," Alaric noted, as he cornered his son's king piece. "You valued its power in the moment over its strategic importance in the endgame."

"But I took your spearmen and your crossbowmen," Tyber countered, his violet-flecked eyes narrowed in concentration. "I inflicted more casualties."

"And I won the war," Alaric said simply. "Never forget the objective, Tyber. It is not to fight. It is to win. A lesson these so-called kings have yet to learn." He was forging his heir in his own image, creating a successor who would be even more ruthless, more calculating, than himself.

Cassia, his daughter, was a different kind of power. She was a quiet, observant child of seven, whose connection to the draconic essence in her blood manifested in strange, subtle ways. Animals were utterly docile in her presence. She seemed to know things before they happened, expressing a dislike for a visiting merchant moments before a raven arrived with news of his treachery. Alaric watched her development with keen, scientific interest. She was a wild card, a different application of the power he had harnessed.

But as always, his nights belonged to magic. In his sanctum, he became the ultimate observer of the war, his scrying bowl a window into the souls of his rivals. He watched the grand, foolish pageantry of Renly Baratheon's host, a great summer parade of knights who were about to march into oblivion. And he watched the grim, salt-sprayed shores of Dragonstone, where the true magical contest was taking shape.

He focused his senses, amplified by the Valyrian steel and the dragon eggs, on the chambers of Stannis Baratheon. He witnessed the nightly rituals of the red priestess, Melisandre. He saw her use sorcery to birth a creature of pure shadow, a thing of darkness and ephemeral life. He watched, with a scientist's detachment, as this shadow-assassin flowed from Stannis's tent and, days later, murdered the would-be king Renly Baratheon in the midst of his own bodyguards.

<> Prometheus analyzed, its voice cool in his mind. <>

<> Alaric noted. <>

He knew, with absolute certainty, what was coming next. Stannis, his army now swelled with the leaderless lords of the Stormlands, would march on King's Landing. The greatest battle of the war was imminent. The Battle of the Blackwater.

Weeks before Stannis's fleet even set sail, Alaric began his final preparations. It was his most audacious move yet, a plan to profit from the near-total destruction of the capital's economy.

"Nervo," he commanded. "Liquidate our physical assets within the walls of King's Landing. Sell our warehouses, our guild contracts, everything. Convert it to gold and store it here."

"My lord?" Nervo asked, shocked. "Our King's Landing operations are immensely profitable."

"They are about to become worthless," Alaric stated. "A great fire is coming to the city. One that will consume the port and much of the merchant district. I want all of our assets clear before it happens."

He also gave Ser Damon his orders. "The Onyx Fleet will begin 'anti-piracy drills' in the southern Stepstones. I want them far away from the Blackwater Bay when the battle begins. Our neutrality must be absolute and obvious."

He was moving his pieces off the board before the game even started.

Then, he sat back and watched.

His scrying bowl became his private theatre. He watched as Tyrion Lannister, the clever, despised Imp, prepared the city's desperate defense. He saw the smiths brewing the caches of wildfire. He saw the great chain being prepared across the mouth of the Blackwater Rush. He saw everything.

The night of the battle, he did not sleep. He sat in the darkness of his sanctum, the obsidian bowl before him glowing with a ghastly green light. He watched the entire battle unfold as if he were floating in the sky above it. He saw the initial success of Stannis's fleet, the trap being sprung, the great, horrifying inferno of the wildfire explosion that turned the bay into a sea of green hell. He saw the desperate fighting at the Mud Gate, the valour of the defenders, the slow, grinding advance of Stannis's superior forces.