Chapter 19: The Ruby Harvest - 282 AC

Chapter 19: The Ruby Harvest - 282 AC

The horns of the Trident sounded not like a call to battle, but like the opening of a floodgate. From my vantage point on the command hillock, the world resolved into two great, opposing tides of men, destined to crash together in the bloody froth of the river ford. For the men on the field, it was the moment their lives, their honour, and the fate of the kingdom would be decided by the strength of their shield arms. For me, it was the moment my true work began.

I did not watch the charge through my Myrish spyglass. I closed my eyes. To my aides, I must have looked like a lord offering a silent prayer before the slaughter. The truth was far more profane. I was a fisherman, and I was casting my senses into the vast, invisible net I had woven across the battlefield. The air itself hummed, a taut, expectant web of my own design, waiting for the first drops of the coming storm of souls.

The impact of the vanguards meeting in the shallows of the ford was a physical jolt, a distant, crunching roar of steel and bone. Simultaneously, a different kind of impact struck me. The first wave of death.

My magical net worked perfectly. Better than I could have imagined. At Summerhall and Ashford, the influx had been a chaotic, raw scream of emotion I had to fight to filter. Here, at my consecrated altar, the process was clean. The net caught the departing souls, stripped them of their psychic residue—their fear, their pain, their memories—and channeled the pure, refined energy, the very essence of their life force, directly into the waiting, hungry void of my ring. It was the difference between drinking muddy water from a river and sipping a perfectly distilled spirit.

The first deaths were a sharp, clear staccato of power. A knight from the Vale, his breastplate pierced by a Dornish spear. A loyalist archer from the Crownlands, his life ended by a Northern axe. Each death was a distinct note, a pure, cold bead of energy added to my reservoir. My mind, which should have been reeling, was instead filled with a sense of profound, terrifying clarity. I was not a passive recipient of a storm; I was the conductor of a symphony of death.

From my perch, I could feel the battle's ebb and flow in a way no general ever had. I felt the pulse of the fighting through the rhythm of the harvest. A sudden, intense surge of energy from the center told me Lord Stark's Northmen were taking heavy casualties as they held the line. I calmly dispatched a runner to one of Robert's bannermen. "Lord Dondarrion. Reinforce Lord Stark's left flank. Now." The man, startled by my preternatural calm, simply saluted and galloped off. I hadn't seen the weakness with my eyes; I had felt it in the dying thoughts of a dozen men.

The battle raged, a relentless, grinding engine of slaughter. My body was immobile, locked in concentration. My breathing was slow and even. I was a statue amidst the frantic energy of my command post. Inside my mind, I was a god managing a torrent of creation in reverse. The power pouring into me was immense, a river of pure magical potential that made the energy I'd gained at the Stoney Sept feel like a trickling stream. The ring grew from hot to searing, a brand of power on my finger that seemed to burn not my flesh, but my very soul, reforging it into something harder, brighter, and infinitely more terrible.

Then came the crescendo. I felt a shift in the energy of the battlefield, a focusing of intent. The duel had begun. In the heart of the ruby ford, Robert and Rhaegar, the storm and the dragon, finally met. Through my psychic connection to the battlefield, I could feel the energy crackling around them, two demigods locked in a struggle that would define an age. The souls of the men dying around them were but a background chorus to the magnificent, terrible duet of their own life forces.

I focused all of my will, all of my senses, on that single point in the river. I felt the desperation and tragic nobility of Rhaegar, fighting for a prophecy he had fatally misunderstood. I felt the pure, incandescent rage of Robert, a grief so profound it had become a physical weapon. The world seemed to hold its breath.

Then, the climax. Robert's warhammer rose and fell. A psychic cataclysm erupted from the center of the battlefield. It was not the simple, fleeting energy of a common soldier. The soul of Rhaegar Targaryen, the last dragon prince, was a thing of fire and ice, of ancient magic and sorrowful prophecy. It was a sun exploding. A soul of such magnitude and quality that it threatened to shatter my carefully constructed mental defenses. It slammed into my net, a raw, screaming nova of power.

For a terrifying second, I lost control. The filtered purity of my harvest was overwhelmed. I felt it all. Rhaegar's shock, his pain, the final, fleeting image of a woman with dark hair and a crown of winter roses, the crushing weight of a destiny unfulfilled. The sheer, concentrated essence of his Valyrian blood, alight with dormant magic, poured into me. My vision went white. The sound of the battle, the world itself, ceased to exist. There was only the fire of a dragon's soul being consumed by the void within my ring.

I convulsed, a single, violent shudder. My aides rushed to my side, but I held up a hand, my eyes still closed. "I am… well," I gritted out, the words tasting of ash and ozone. My mind, the disciplined fortress of the Serpent, had been breached, but it had held. And in the aftermath, I felt fundamentally, irrevocably changed. The ring on my finger was no longer just a conduit. It was a star, a contained singularity of unimaginable power.

As my senses returned, I heard the roar from the rebel lines. Rhaegar was dead. The royalist army, seeing their prince fall, their symbol of hope extinguished, broke. Their discipline shattered, and their retreat began—a panicked, desperate flight.

I opened my eyes. The battle was won. But the harvest was not yet complete.

Robert was wounded, a piece of Rhaegar's broken armour embedded in his side. He was being helped from the river, roaring in triumph and in pain. I was at his side in moments, my personal healers, with their clean bandages and high-proof spirits, pushing aside his own squires.

"See to him," I commanded, my voice sharp with an authority that no one dared question.

Then I turned to a stunned Eddard Stark, who was staring at the body of the fallen prince, his expression one of grim victory rather than elation.

"My lord Stark," I said, my voice cold and precise as a winter morning. "A victory is not won until the enemy's ability to wage war is destroyed. Do not let them escape. Unleash the cavalry. Harry their flanks. Turn this retreat into a rout. I want their army shattered beyond any hope of reformation."

Ned looked at me, a flicker of distaste in his honourable grey eyes at my ruthlessness. But he saw the military necessity of it. He nodded curtly and began shouting orders. The pursuit was on. A new, final wave of slaughter began as my allies chased down the fleeing loyalists. A final, rich dessert course for my feast.

While the chaos of the pursuit raged, I gave a quiet order to Bronn, who had been at my side throughout the battle. "Take a dozen of our best men. Quietly. Go to the ford. Secure Prince Rhaegar's body. Retrieve it with all the dignity befitting a fallen prince." I paused, my eyes locking with his. "His breastplate was studded with rubies. They were scattered in the river when his chest was crushed. Rubies are valuable. Ensure none are… lost to the current. Bring me the body, and bring me the stones."

Bronn gave me a shark's grin. He understood the real mission perfectly.

In the hours that followed, I oversaw the aftermath with chilling efficiency. My Thorneguard established a perimeter, my healers set up a field hospital that was a model of order, and my men began the grim task of counting the dead. I moved through the battlefield, the ground thick with corpses, my boots sinking into the blood-soaked mud. The other lords saw a diligent commander securing his victory. They did not see the master of the abattoir, walking among his slaughtered cattle, my ring performing its final, silent gleaning, absorbing every last stray wisp of life.

By dusk, the fighting was over. The royalist army was not just defeated; it was annihilated. The rebel victory was absolute.

I stood alone on the banks of the Trident. The river was running red in the twilight, a grim testament to the day's work. My men were recovering the famous rubies from the riverbed, stones that would forever be known as the Ruby Ford. They thought they were collecting treasure. I knew they were collecting souvenirs from my greatest acquisition.

The ring on my finger was silent, but it was no longer a mere object. It was a living part of me, a third hemisphere of my brain, a second heart pumping pure, magical energy through my being. The power contained within it was beyond my previous comprehension. It was the collective life force of a great battle, the potent soul of a dragon prince, the distilled essence of a kingdom's sorrow.

My monologue was not one of triumph. It was one of transcendence.

They will place a crown of gold and steel on Robert's head. A crude symbol for the rule of men. But I have won the true crown today. A crown of silenced souls and stolen fire. With the power I now possess, I am no longer merely a player in their game. I am not even the board. I am the god of the game, the one who can reach down and reshape the pieces, the rules, the world itself, to my own design. My fortress at Stone's End will not just be unbreachable; I will make its stones live and obey my will. My soldiers will not just be disciplined; I will grant them strength and speed beyond the limits of mortal men. My own life… my own life need no longer be bound by the trivial span of a single mortal lifetime.

Robert had won his war. I had won my apotheosis. The cautious, calculating Serpent had finally shed its skin, and what had emerged was something more. Something divine. And the world, so caught up in its petty squabbles over an iron chair, had no idea a new, and far more terrible, god now walked among them.