Chapter 38: The Maw of the Abyss
The ashes of Villa Antarion were still cooling, a smudge of desecration on the grey horizon visible from the sea lanes approaching Braavos, when King Baelon I Targaryen returned to Meereen. He did not return to triumph and parades; his victory had been a silent, vicious tearing at the hidden flesh of his enemy, a message delivered in shadow and flame intended for a select, terrified audience. His flagship, the Night Serpent, slipped into the Meereenese harbor under the same cloak of pre-dawn secrecy with which it had departed, its holds laden not with common plunder, but with the dark, esoteric spoils of an abyssal cult.
Baelon, his face an unreadable mask of cold satisfaction and simmering resolve, immediately closeted himself with Archmaester Vaellyn and Lord Larys Strong. The texts seized from the Antarion sanctum – scrolls bound in what felt disturbingly like human skin, tablets of greasy black basalt inscribed with clicking, guttural runes, and ledgers detailing coded transactions – were spread across the great stone table in his war room. The air thickened with the faint, unsettling scent of ancient brine and forgotten magic that clung to these artifacts.
"Decipher these, Archmaester," Baelon commanded, his voice a low, dangerous hum. "Every rune, every symbol, every ledger entry. I want to know their rituals, their lines of communication, the full extent of their network, and any mention of their Grand Beacon or the assassin 'Echo of Stillness.' The mind of Sylas Antarion yielded much, but these texts may hold corroboration, or details he himself did not fully comprehend."
Vaellyn, his scholarly demeanor tinged with a mixture of revulsion and obsessive curiosity, bowed. "It will be done, Your Grace. The language is unlike anything I have encountered, clearly pre-Valyrian, perhaps even pre-Ghiscari in its most ancient forms. But we have… methods. The blood samples from the Drowned Ones we slew at the villa, and the residue from the neutralized pool, may also provide insights into their altered physiology and the nature of the entities they seek to summon."
While Vaellyn's scholars embarked on their grim task, Larys Strong presented his latest intelligence from Braavos. The destruction of Villa Antarion, a known, if secluded, property of a prominent Keyholder family, had sent a seismic shock through the ruling elite of the Titan city.
"Panic is a strong word for the Braavosi, Your Grace," Larys reported, his voice a dry rustle, "but it is the closest approximation. The Antarion name, though a cadet branch, carries weight within the Iron Bank. The sheer audacity of the attack, so close to Braavos itself, and its… thoroughness… has terrified them. Keyholder families with known, or even suspected, ties to the Drowned Brethren are scrambling to reinforce their private defenses, accusing one another of bringing this doom upon them. There are whispers that several have quietly attempted to send emissaries to you, seeking terms, though none have dared do so openly for fear of the Sealord and the more fanatical elements."
Sealord Ferrego Antaryon, Larys continued, had reacted with public fury, denouncing Baelon's "cowardly act of terror against a noble house of Braavos" and vowing a swift and terrible vengeance. The Grand Mobilization of the Titan's Fleet was accelerated, with more warships being launched daily, their purple sails now a common, ominous sight in the Lagoon. Yet, beneath the public bluster, Larys's agents reported deep divisions within the Braavosi leadership. Some factions advocated for immediate, all-out war. Others, particularly those within the Iron Bank whose profits were being strangled by Baelon's economic warfare and Aemond's campaign in the Basilisk Isles, urged caution, even secret negotiations.
"The Faceless Men, however, remain an enigma," Larys added. "They have made no overt statement since their pro-bono offer. But the atmosphere in the House of Black and White is said to be… colder than usual. And there have been three more unexplained deaths amongst your lower-ranking administrators in Myr and Lys over the past week – subtle poisons, staged accidents. They are testing our vigilance, bleeding us by a thousand tiny cuts, even as we hunt their more significant operatives."
Baelon listened impassively. "Let them squabble. Let them fear. Their unity is a facade. As for these pinprick attacks, they are the buzzing of gnats. Our focus remains on the head of the serpent, not its twitching tail." His gaze drifted to a map of the far northern seas, towards the desolate, largely uncharted expanse of the Shivering Sea where Prince Aemond and Vhagar were engaged in a far more perilous hunt. News from that front was overdue.
The Frozen Hell of the Kraken's Maw
Weeks had passed since Aemond's fleet, cloaked by magic and shadow, had departed the newly conquered Basilisk Isles. The journey north had been a brutal ordeal. They had battled freakish, ice-laden storms that seemed summoned by a malevolent will, navigated through seas choked with colossal, razor-edged ice floes, and fought off monstrous, tentacled creatures that rose from the frigid depths, their forms unlike anything known to Westerosi sailors – creatures that Vhagar's flames had dispatched with shrieks that echoed across the frozen wastes. Several ships had been lost, their crews vanishing into the black, icy waters, a grim tribute to the unforgiving nature of their quarry's domain.
Finally, guided by Archmaester Vaellyn's unsettlingly accurate predictions and the faint, disturbing resonance of a captured Abyssal Lodestone, they had found it: the Kraken's Maw. It was not an island, but a vast, circular depression in the sea, a submerged volcanic caldera miles wide, perpetually shrouded in a cloying, unnatural fog that deadened sound and chilled the soul. The water within the Maw was black as ink, unnaturally calm in its center, yet ringed by treacherous, churning currents and jagged, ice-encrusted pinnacles of volcanic rock that rose from the depths like broken teeth. The air itself felt wrong, imbued with a profound, ancient cold and a sense of crushing pressure, as if the weight of the ocean depths was pressing down upon them.
Vhagar, ancient and immense as she was, reacted with uncharacteristic agitation as they approached, her roars taking on a guttural, uneasy timbre. Aemond, his single sapphire eye burning with a mixture of grim determination and savage excitement, ordered his remaining ships to form a loose cordon around the perimeter of the Maw, while he and Vhagar ascended to scout the source of the unnatural energies Vaellyn's instruments indicated were emanating from its heart.
What he saw defied easy description. In the very center of the black, still water, something pulsed with a faint, sickly luminescence – not a structure, initially, but a vast, swirling vortex of shadowy energy, shot through with veins of oily, black light. Strange, discordant music, like the groaning of a dying leviathan mixed with the whispers of a thousand drowning men, seemed to emanate from it, a sound that frayed the nerves and induced nauseating vertigo. Around this vortex, sections of the water would occasionally heave upwards, revealing glimpses of cyclopean, non-Euclidean ruins on the caldera floor – structures that no human hand could have built, their angles all wrong, their surfaces covered in disturbing, alien hieroglyphs.
"So, this is the Drowned God's privy chamber," Aemond muttered to Vhagar, his voice tight. "A fittingly foul hole."
As Vhagar circled lower, the defenders of the Kraken's Maw revealed themselves. From the black waters, dozens, then scores, of Drowned Ones emerged, their scaled bodies more massive and grotesque than those encountered at Villa Antarion. Some rode upon the backs of monstrous, blind crustaceans with razor-sharp claws. Others, their forms hideously swollen and distorted, propelled themselves through the water with powerful, fluked tails, wielding tridents crackling with abyssal energy. And from the depths of the vortex itself, three immense, shadowy tentacles, each thicker than Vhagar's body, unfurled, their tips lined with grasping suckers that seemed to weep black ichor.
The battle for the Kraken's Maw was a vision of hell. Vhagar, enraged by the alien wrongness of the place and the unnatural creatures that assailed her, became a cataclysm of fire and fury. She dove through the fog, her flames turning the black water to steam, incinerating Drowned Ones and their monstrous steeds. Aemond, his Valyrian steel blade a blur of silver, fought from her back, his war cries lost in the cacophony of roars, shrieks, and the unholy music of the abyss.
The legionaries and Unsullied on the ships engaged the Drowned Ones attempting to board them, their disciplined volleys of arrows and spears meeting waves of fanatical, amphibious attackers. The sea around the Maw churned red and black with blood and ichor. Vaellyn's anti-magic devices, deployed from the ships, sent pulses of disruptive energy towards the vortex, causing the shadowy tentacles to recoil and the abyssal music to falter, but the effect was temporary; the power emanating from the Maw was immense, ancient, and deeply entrenched.
One of the colossal tentacles lashed out, narrowly missing Vhagar but smashing two Targaryen dromons to splinters, their crews dragged screaming into the black depths. Aemond, his face a mask of cold rage, urged Vhagar higher, then dove directly at the base of the tentacles, unleashing a sustained torrent of dragonflame that was almost white in its intensity. The tentacles hissed and recoiled, segments of their shadowy forms dissolving like smoke, but they were not destroyed, merely driven back into the vortex.
It was clear that the vortex itself, the Grand Beacon, was the source of the enemy's power. Aemond knew he had to strike at its heart. Recalling Vaellyn's desperate hypothesis, he signaled his remaining ships. They began to deploy the primary weapon Vaellyn had devised: massive casks filled with a highly unstable alchemical mixture of powdered weirwood heartwood (sacrilegiously obtained), concentrated sea salt, and dragon's blood, all encased in magically resonant clay. These were essentially arcane depth charges, designed to create a violent, purifying backlash when exposed to the Beacon's specific abyssal energies.
Under a hail of attacks from resurgent Drowned Ones, Aemond and Vhagar provided cover, their flames creating a wall of fire around the ships as they maneuvered into position. One by one, the casks were launched into the vortex.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the black water in the center of the Maw began to boil. The unholy music reached a deafening, mind-shattering crescendo. The vortex pulsed violently, and a wave of pure, crushing despair washed over Aemond's forces, causing many of his men to cry out and clutch their heads in agony. Even Vhagar faltered in the air, her roar turning into a sound of pain.
Then, with a sound that was not a sound, but a tearing of the very fabric of reality, the vortex imploded. A column of incandescent, emerald-green light, shot through with streaks of utter blackness, erupted from the depths, punching a hole through the unnatural fog and searing the sky above. The remaining shadowy tentacles were instantly vaporized. The Drowned Ones shrieked and dissolved into foul-smelling mist. The cyclopean ruins on the caldera floor glowed with an unholy light, then began to crack and crumble.
The Kraken's Maw was dying.
When the light finally subsided, the vortex was gone. The black water was still, but now it seemed… empty. Lifeless. The oppressive atmosphere had lifted, replaced by the clean, cold sting of the Shivering Sea air. Aemond, his armor coated in ice and black slime, his face grim, surveyed the scene. He had paid a heavy price – nearly a third of his fleet lost, hundreds of soldiers slain – but the Grand Beacon of the Drowned Brethren, it seemed, was no more.
His first message to Baelon, sent via a specially bred storm-raven capable of enduring the northern tempests, was terse: "The Maw is silenced. Beacon destroyed. Heavy losses. Found evidence of recent, significant ritual activity, and symbols suggesting a convergence or anointing. Also, this." Attached to the raven's leg was a small, waterlogged journal, bound in what appeared to be sharkskin, its pages filled with the same clicking, guttural runes found in the Antarion villa, and, crucially, several crudely drawn but recognizable maps of desolate coastal regions within the Vale of Arryn and the northern Fingers in Westeros, each marked with the nine-armed kraken.
The Serpent Considers, The Abyss Recoils
Baelon received Aemond's report and the sharkskin journal in Meereen with a mixture of grim satisfaction and sharp, analytical focus. The destruction of the Grand Beacon was a monumental victory, a crippling blow to the Drowned Brethren's ability to communicate, to channel power, and perhaps even to sustain their more unnatural servitors. The cost had been high, but Aemond had proven his worth, and Vhagar her enduring might.
The journal, however, was of even greater immediate interest. While Vaellyn's scholars struggled with its full translation, the maps were clear enough. The cult had hidden sanctuaries, places of power, not just in the far Essosi north or the Basilisk Isles, but in Westeros itself, in regions supposedly under the Iron Throne's dominion. The Vale, with its isolated mountain ranges and storm-lashed coasts, and the Fingers, a desolate, sparsely populated peninsula, were ideal hiding places. And this suggested that "Echo of Stillness," if she indeed sought a place of "sacred silence" to recover, might have fled not to some distant, mythical land, but back towards the heart of Baelon's own kingdom.
"It seems our Drowned God has more than one nest to tend, Umbraxys," Baelon mused, tracing the crude maps with a thoughtful finger. The Voldemort aspect of his soul considered the implications. An enemy burrowed within his primary domain was both an insult and an opportunity. He could not allow such a cancer to fester.
Larys Strong, who had been listening to Baelon's summary of Aemond's report, offered, "The Arryns of the Vale, Your Grace, have always been proud and insular. And the Lords of the Fingers… a wretched, impoverished lot, prone to superstition and easily bought. If this cult has taken root there, it may have done so undisturbed for generations."
"Disturbed they shall now be," Baelon stated, his eyes glittering. "The purge in Essos has been effective. It is time we extended that same courtesy to Westeros."
His mind was already racing. Aemond's forces were battered but triumphant; they would need time to refit and recover, perhaps establishing a permanent watch over the remnants of the Kraken's Maw. But Baelon had other assets. His legions in Westeros, the Velaryon fleet, even Rhaenyra and her dragons on Dragonstone, could be mobilized.
But before he issued those orders, another piece of intelligence arrived, this one from Larys's spies in Braavos, delivered with unprecedented urgency. The destruction of the Grand Beacon, it seemed, had not gone unnoticed by the powers within the Titan city. The Sealord, Ferrego Antaryon, had not made a public address. The Iron Bank had issued no new threats. Instead, something far more chilling had occurred.
The great Titan of Braavos, the colossal bronze automaton that guarded the harbor entrance, had begun to move. Not its usual, slow, ponderous opening of its legs to allow ships to pass, but other, smaller movements. Its head had turned, its gaze sweeping southwards, towards the direction of the Antarion villa's burning. Its great bronze hands, it was whispered, had clenched into fists. And from deep within its metal shell, a low, resonant hum, almost a groan, had been heard by those brave or foolish enough to listen closely – a sound that had not been heard in centuries, a sound that legend claimed was the Titan itself stirring to war.
Baelon listened to this report, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. "So, the puppets react when their master's strings are cut," he murmured. "The Drowned God feels its wounds, and its bronze idol echoes its pain. Interesting." He looked at Larys. "Does this inanimate giant truly pose a threat, Lord Larys? Or is it merely a scarecrow for superstitious sailors?"
"Legend claims, Your Grace," Larys replied, his voice carefully neutral, "that the Titan is more than mere bronze. That it is animated by ancient Valyrian magic, or by the bound spirit of a god itself. That in times of direst need, it can, and will, defend Braavos with a power beyond mortal comprehension."
"Valyrian magic can be unmade," Baelon said, his eyes gleaming with a sudden, almost manic light. "And gods can be broken." The prospect of facing such a legendary, monumental foe, of dismantling Braavos's ultimate guardian, clearly appealed to the Voldemort soul within him.
The Maw of the Abyss had been silenced, but its echoes were now resonating through Braavos, awakening its most ancient and formidable defenses. Baelon's war against the Drowned Brethren and their shadowy city was about to escalate to a new, terrifying level. He had struck at their heart; now, their very idol was stirring in response. The game was far from over. It was merely preparing for a battle of titans.