Chapter 6: The Shadow of the Bat

Chapter 6: The Shadow of the Bat

266 AC, Month of the Dragon

The air in King's Landing was growing thick with unspoken anxieties. It was a subtle shift, a change in barometric pressure that only those with a finely tuned sense of the political weather could detect. The King's moods, once the subject of courtly jest, were now a source of genuine fear. His generosity was as sudden and terrifying as his rages, and his suspicion fell like a shadow on everyone, most pointedly on the one man who had brought the realm unparalleled peace and prosperity: his Hand, Tywin Lannister.

Damon felt the change not as a fear, but as an opportunity. A chaotic market was a profitable market, and the Seven Kingdoms were on the verge of a major correction. He sat in the quiet, elegant consultation room of The Atelier, listening to a report that was worth more than all the saffron in the Treasurer's Guild.

Across from him, Larys, the steward of House Darklyn, shifted nervously. The man had become an invaluable asset, his reports always precise, his fear of his secret patron ensuring absolute loyalty.

"Lord Denys is… insistent, Master Damon," Larys whispered, his eyes darting towards the door. "He has sent a third petition to the Red Keep for a new town charter. He argues that Duskendale's prosperity is being strangled by the Crown's port taxes. He wishes to deal directly with merchants from the Free Cities, without the King's tariffs."

Damon remained silent, his fingers steepled before him. He let the steward talk, his mind a calm ocean beneath the man's babbling stream of words. With his telepathy, he was doing more than listening. He was experiencing the situation in the Darklyn manse secondhand. He felt Lord Denys's burning, arrogant pride, a nobleman's indignation that a King would deny him what he saw as his birthright. He felt the sharper, more cunning ambition of his wife, the Myrish Serala, who whispered poisons of grandeur and independence in her husband's ear each night. And he felt the growing unease of the household guards and servants, who saw their lord striding down a path from which there was no easy return.

The Defiance of Duskendale. It was beginning. Right on schedule.

"The Hand, Lord Tywin, has advised my lord to withdraw his petition," Larys continued, his voice trembling slightly. "He warned that the King is in no mood for demands. But Lord Denys… he called the Hand 'the King's glorified clerk'. He said that he would not be dictated to by a man who serves at the King's pleasure. He plans to withhold his taxes at the end of the year if a new charter is not granted."

That was it. The final, fatal move. Denys Darklyn was a fool, a textbook case of a man whose pride had blinded him to the realities of power. He saw a Targaryen king, but he didn't understand he was truly defying the Golden Lion of Casterly Rock.

"Thank you, Larys. This is valuable intelligence," Damon said, his voice calm and even. He slid a small, heavy purse across the table. "For your trouble." He pushed a wave of placid reassurance towards the steward, calming the man's frayed nerves. "You are doing fine work. Continue to observe. Report everything, no matter how trivial it seems."

As Larys scurried away, Damon turned to the map of the Crownlands hanging on his wall. His knowledge of the future was a map of its own, and the confluence of the two gave him a clarity of vision that was nearly godlike. He knew that Lord Denys would eventually invite the King to Duskendale to discuss the matter in person, a final, desperate gamble. He knew Aerys would accept, against Tywin's direct advice. And he knew it would be a trap. The King would be taken hostage, and a six-month standoff would ensue, culminating in Tywin's brutal, decisive assault on the town and Ser Barristan Selmy's legendary single-handed rescue of the King.

Damon had no intention of stopping it. The Defiance was a necessary fever. It would cement Aerys's paranoia, shatter his relationship with Tywin, and elevate men like Barristan Selmy. It was a vital domino in the chain reaction that led to Robert's Rebellion. His goal was to be positioned perfectly to catch the pieces when they fell.

His first move was financial. He summoned Silas, his moneylender, for a clandestine meeting.

"We are diversifying our portfolio," Damon announced, unrolling a detailed map of the lands surrounding the port of Duskendale. "Our interests in the Stokeworth properties are a long-term project. This is more… time-sensitive."

Silas peered at the map. "Duskendale, master? Risky. The whispers say Lord Darklyn is on the verge of treason."

"Whispers are the wind," Damon said dismissively. "We will use them to our advantage. The landowners in this region are nervous. They fear their fields will be burned in a conflict between the Crown and their liege lord. They will be looking to sell, and to sell cheaply."

He began to tap specific locations on the map, outlining tracts of farmland, small quarries, and forested areas. All of them were outside the town walls, but they controlled the primary roads and resources leading into Duskendale.

"You will establish a new holding company, based out of Maidenpool to avoid suspicion. You will approach these landowners through proxies. Offer them fair prices, even slightly above their current, panicked valuation. We are not looking to haggle. We want to acquire these properties quickly and quietly before the situation escalates."

"But if Lord Darklyn is defeated, the Crown will seize his lands," Silas protested, confused. "What value is there in the periphery?"

"The Crown will seize the town and the Darklyn family's personal manse," Damon corrected him, his voice laced with the patience of a teacher explaining a simple concept to a child. "They will then have a vested interest in ensuring the prosperity and security of their new asset. They will need to rebuild, to expand the port, to fortify the roads. And to do that, they will need the surrounding land. The land that we will own. We are buying the cheap land that the King will need to buy back at a premium tomorrow. Let Lord Denys play for a new charter. We are playing for the entire board."

Silas stared, his mind finally grasping the sheer, predatory genius of the plan. Damon was betting on a war, a crisis he knew was coming, and positioning himself to be the sole beneficiary of the reconstruction.

With the financial pieces in motion, Damon turned to the more subtle art of political manipulation. He began to weave a web of contradictory rumors, using his various assets as conduits. He had Lady Rosby, during a fitting for a new gown, mention to her gaggle of attending ladies that she'd heard from a Myrish silk merchant that Lord Darklyn's wife, Serala, had secured immense financial backing from her family and their powerful friends in the Free Cities. The rumor, baseless but plausible, spread through the court like wildfire, eventually reaching the ears of Varys's little birds and, inevitably, the King himself. It was designed to inflame Aerys's paranoia, transforming Lord Denys from a petulant lord into the agent of a foreign conspiracy.

Simultaneously, through his networks in the merchant guilds, he spread a different story in Duskendale and the surrounding ports. The whispers there were that a deal was imminent, that the King was impressed by Lord Denys's boldness and was preparing to grant a revolutionary new charter that would make Duskendale the richest port in the Seven Kingdoms. This encouraged local merchants to increase their investments, to take out loans, to fill their warehouses with goods. It was a cruel, calculated move to maximize the economic devastation when the town fell, ensuring the recovery would be longer, more expensive, and more dependent on the resources that Damon now controlled.

Amidst these grand machinations, his personal enterprise continued to flourish. The balm he had created for Ser Gerold Hightower had proven to be a miracle. The Lord Commander, a man not given to effusiveness, had become Damon's most powerful advocate. This led to a new, promising introduction.

Lord Lucerys Velaryon, the Master of Ships and head of a house with a long and proud naval tradition, requested a meeting. He was a man in his late sixties, with a face weathered by sea-salt and a piercing blue gaze. He carried himself with an authority that came not from a title, but from a lifetime of command.

"Ser Gerold speaks of you in terms I would not have believed from a man so stoic," Lord Lucerys began, his voice a deep rumble. He didn't waste time on pleasantries. "He says you are a craftsman of results."

"I am a purveyor of solutions to unique problems, my lord," Damon replied.

"I have such a problem," the admiral admitted, a flicker of embarrassment in his eyes. "For most of my life, the sea has been my home. But in my advancing years… I find the motion of the waves affects me more than it once did. The maesters offer me nothing but poppy milk, which dulls the senses. A captain with dull senses is a danger to his ship and his crew."

Sea-sickness. A simple problem of the inner ear, a concept these people couldn't begin to grasp. Damon knew of dozens of simple, herbal remedies from his former life.

"The sea's rhythm can be… disharmonious to a man's internal rhythm," Damon said, cloaking his modern knowledge in mystical language. "It is a matter of re-establishing balance. A specific preparation of ginger root, steeped into a tea with a touch of peppermint, can be remarkably effective at calming the stomach and settling the mind."

He provided Lord Velaryon with a small tin of a carefully prepared herbal blend. It was simple, cheap to produce, but to the Master of Ships, it was a priceless treasure. A week later, a missive arrived from Lord Velaryon. He had just returned from a patrol to Dragonstone through a vicious storm and had not felt a moment of discomfort. The gratitude in the letter was immense. Damon now had a direct line to the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and the Master of Ships, two of the most powerful military figures in the realm. His web was growing stronger, its threads reaching into the very heart of the Targaryen power structure.

His own power, the strange, terrifying gift of his rebirth, was also evolving. The incident with the ledger had been a wake-up call. His raw, emotional power was a liability if not controlled. He changed his training regimen. It was no longer about brute force, about lifting heavier objects. It was about finesse, about containment.

He spent hours in his locked laboratory, not moving things, but holding them still. He would place a single, perfect droplet of water on a needlepoint and use his telekinesis to hold it there, a perfect sphere, fighting gravity and evaporation. He would light a candle and practice controlling the flame, making it shrink to a tiny bead of light or flare into a controlled inferno, all without consuming the wax any faster. It was agonizing, mentally exhausting work. He was taming the dragon in his mind, teaching it to obey not just his commands, but his will. He was learning to build a dam around the raging river of his power, so that he could open the sluice gates on his own terms.

One evening, as he meditated, trying to feel and control the very air molecules in the room, he focused on the map of Duskendale on his wall. He thought of the pieces he had set in motion: the land purchases, the rumors, the manipulation of Lord Denys's pride. He envisioned the coming conflict, the smoke, the screams, the chaos. He saw Tywin Lannister, grim and victorious. He saw a terrified Aerys, his madness taking root. And he saw himself, standing in the shadows, counting his profits.

A cold, pure, and utterly psychopathic sense of satisfaction filled him. He felt no remorse for the lives that would be ruined, the men who would die. They were abstractions, numbers on a balance sheet. The smallfolk of Duskendale were no more real to him than the pixelated citizens of the computer games he had played in his youth. They were collateral damage in his pursuit of ultimate power.

He opened his eyes. On the map, a tiny speck of dust on the town of Duskendale lifted into the air, spun once, and then fell away. It was an insignificant, almost unconscious act of telekinesis, a physical manifestation of his complete and total focus.

He smiled. The shadow of the bat of House Darklyn was lengthening, and soon it would cover the town in darkness. But Damon was a creature of the shadows. And in the darkness, he would thrive.