Chapter 48: The Abyssal Heart Desecrated
The decision to strike at the Drowned Brethren's primary temple within Braavos was not made lightly, even by a being as audacious and powerful as King Baelon I Targaryen. It was a viper's nest nestled within the ribcage of a slumbering giant – the Titan. One false move, one outcry too loud, and the giant might awaken with catastrophic consequences. Yet, the intelligence wrested from Lyra Maelon and the Antarion texts, combined with Archmaester Vaellyn's groundbreaking discovery of the "abyssal deadening field" powered by the Ignis Shard, presented an opportunity too potent to ignore. To decapitate the cult in its own sanctuary, under the very noses of the Sealord and the Iron Bank, would be a masterstroke, sowing chaos and terror far exceeding any naval blockade or distant conquest.
Meereen became a crucible of intense, clandestine preparation. Baelon himself oversaw the final training of Centurion Kael's handpicked infiltration squad – fifty Freedmen, their bodies hardened by past servitude and present conflict, their loyalty to their Liberator King absolute, now augmented by a chilling, almost religious, zeal. They drilled in mockups of Braavosi canals and darkened temple corridors, learning to move with the silence of falling snow, to kill with the swiftness of striking vipers. Each was armed with an Ignis-tempered dagger that shimmered with an inner heat, and an obsidian amulet, devised by Vaellyn, designed to disrupt the oppressive psychic energies of concentrated abyssal magic.
Accompanying Kael's unit would be twenty of Ser Corlys Vaelaros's most seasoned Dragon Guard knights, chosen for their unwavering nerve and skill in close-quarters combat. Maester Arryk, his face pale but his eyes alight with a mixture of scholarly fascination and terror, was tasked with managing the arcane projector for the abyssal deadening field, a device Baelon himself would power using the Ignis Shard. And Baelon, the Serpent King, would be at the heart of the storm, his presence both a shield and a terrible sword for his chosen warriors. Silverwing would transport their core strike team, her flight cloaked by illusion and darkness, while two swift, unmarked Volantene galleys, carrying the bulk of Kael's Freedmen, would attempt a more conventional, though equally stealthy, infiltration via the outer canals, timed to coincide with Larys Strong's crescendo of psychological warfare.
Larys, from his web in Meereen, had already begun to tighten the noose of paranoia within Braavos. New, more damning (and expertly forged) documents surfaced, implicating several more Keyholder families and Iron Bank directorate members in the Drowned Brethren's heresies. Whispers of an impending "Night of Reckoning," where the cult would attempt to seize control of the city or offer up its prominent citizens to their abyssal god, spread like wildfire through the fog-choked alleys and opulent palazzos. The Sealord, Ferrego Antaryon, was reportedly besieged by accusations and counter-accusations, his authority crumbling as Braavos's elite began to devour itself. This carefully orchestrated chaos was designed to be the smokescreen for Baelon's surgical strike.
Into the Labyrinth of Shadows
Under the dark cloak of a moonless night, with a heavy, unnatural fog that Baelon subtly encouraged with his own weather-shaping abilities, Silverwing ascended from the Essosi coast, bearing Baelon, Kael, Ser Corlys, Maester Arryk, and ten Dragon Guard knights. The great dragon flew low over the turbulent waters of the Narrow Sea, her silver scales absorbing the darkness, her wingbeats muffled by arcane silencing charms. The remainder of the strike force, aboard the two galleys, used the fog and their knowledge of coastal currents to approach Braavos from its less-guarded southern aspect, aiming for a designated rendezvous point within the city's outer labyrinth of canals.
The journey was fraught with tension. Braavosi patrols, though likely distracted by the internal turmoil, were still a threat. Several times, Silverwing had to veer sharply or ascend into the higher cloud layers to avoid detection by keen-eyed lookouts or the eerie, sweeping green gaze of the distant, immobile Titan. Baelon, his senses amplified by Umbraxys and the thrumming power of the Ignis Shard on his gauntlet, navigated them through the night with unerring precision.
They rendezvoused with the galleys in a forgotten, algae-choked canal far from the city's bustling heart, a place Larys's agents had secured. From there, the full strike force, now numbering over seventy warriors, transferred to smaller, shallow-draft skiffs, their oars wrapped in cloth, their movements as silent as drifting leaves. They slipped through the bewildering maze of Braavos's waterways, past darkened warehouses, under ancient, crumbling bridges, ever deeper into the city's shadowy embrace. The air was thick with the scent of salt, decay, and the ever-present fog, but also with an undercurrent of fear and suspicion that was a testament to Larys's handiwork.
Larys's intelligence, gleaned from Lyra Maelon's broken confessions and corroborated by his own agents, had pinpointed the Drowned Brethren's primary temple. It was not a grand, obvious structure, but a series of interconnected, ancient warehouses and subterranean cisterns in the oldest, poorest, and most labyrinthine district of Braavos, known as the Sinking City – a place where the canals were choked with refuse, the buildings leaned precariously, and the City Watch rarely patrolled. It was a perfect festering ground for a cult that thrived in darkness and secrecy.
The Desecration of the Abyssal Heart
As they approached the target area, Maester Arryk produced a small, intricately carved compass of weirwood and silver. Its needle, instead of pointing north, quivered violently, then spun to indicate a nondescript, three-story warehouse, its stone walls slick with slime, its windows boarded shut. "The abyssal energy signature is strongest there, Your Grace," Arryk whispered, his voice trembling slightly. "And heavily warded. This is the place."
Baelon nodded, his eyes like chips of ice in the gloom. "Kael, Ser Corlys, your men know the plan. We secure the perimeter, neutralize any external sentries. Maester Arryk, prepare the projector for the deadening field. I will power it. Once the field is active, we breach and cleanse. No survivors who are not of strategic value. Destroy their idols, seize their texts, burn their unholy sanctuary to the ground."
The Freedmen, moving with the deadly grace of wraiths, fanned out, eliminating the few cloaked, armed sentries patrolling the nearby alleys with silent efficiency. The Dragon Guard formed a secure perimeter around the warehouse, their Ignis-tempered blades already drawn, their expressions grim.
Baelon stepped before the warehouse's main loading doors, heavy timbers bound with rusted iron. He could feel the oppressive weight of the Drowned Brethren's magic emanating from within, a cold, cloying presence that sought to instill dread and confusion. But the Ignis Shard on his gauntlet pulsed with a defiant, cleansing heat, pushing back against the abyssal chill.
He raised his hand, the Shard blazing with a sudden, intense light that cut through the fog. "Vaellyn's gift, Maester Arryk. Now!"
Arryk, his face illuminated by the Shard's fierce glow, activated the arcane projector – a complex device of spinning crystals, silver coils, and Ignis-infused conduits. As Baelon poured a torrent of raw, fiery energy from the Shard into the projector, it emitted a low, powerful hum that resonated deep within the earth. A shimmering dome of incandescent, golden-red energy, shot through with black obsidian flecks, rapidly expanded outwards from Baelon, enveloping the entire warehouse and a small portion of the surrounding alleys.
Within this dome, the oppressive abyssal energies seemed to recoil, to wither. The very air felt cleaner, though charged with a different kind of potent, almost volatile, magic. The Drowned Brethren's wards, Baelon sensed, were sputtering, failing, their dark power snuffed out by the primal fire of Ignis.
"The field is active, Your Grace!" Arryk announced, his voice strained from the effort of maintaining the projector's focus. "Their magic should be… significantly impaired within this radius!"
"Kael!" Baelon commanded. "Breach!"
With a roar that was more beast than man, Kael and his Freedmen slammed a heavy iron ram, brought for this purpose, against the warehouse doors. The ancient timbers splintered, then burst inwards. The strike team poured into the darkness beyond, their Ignis-blades casting an eerie, flickering light.
The interior of the warehouse was a nightmare. The ground floor was a vast, damp space, its stone walls covered in slimy, phosphorescent moss and disturbing, nine-limbed kraken carvings. In the center, a wide, circular shaft descended into the subterranean cisterns below, from which rose the sounds of guttural chanting and the faint, metallic tang of fresh blood. Dozens of robed cultists, their faces obscured by deep hoods, and several hulking Drowned One guardians, their scaled hides glistening, turned in shock as the doors burst open. Their surprise, however, quickly turned to fanatical rage.
The battle was immediate and savage. Within the confines of the abyssal deadening field, the Drowned Ones seemed… weaker, their movements less fluid, their unnatural resilience diminished. The cultists' attempts to cast spells resulted in pathetic flickers of dark energy that quickly died. The Freedmen and Dragon Guard, armed with their supernaturally sharp Ignis-blades and protected by their abyssal-warding amulets, tore into them with ruthless efficiency.
Baelon, maintaining the deadening field with an immense exertion of will, his connection to the Ignis Shard a torrent of fire in his veins, advanced into the warehouse, Ser Corlys and a handful of Dragon Guard forming a protective cordon around him and Maester Arryk. He observed the fighting with a cold, tactical eye, occasionally unleashing a focused blast of obsidian-laced fire from his free hand to incinerate a particularly resilient Drowned One or a group of cultists attempting to rally.
The fighting on the ground floor was a brutal, close-quarters affair, but Baelon's forces, empowered and protected, were clearly superior. Kael, his Ghiscari axe a whirlwind of destruction, carved a path towards the central shaft. "The heart of their filth lies below, Your Grace!" he bellowed over the din.
"Secure this level, then descend," Baelon commanded. "Leave none alive."
As the last of the ground-floor defenders were cut down, Kael and his Freedmen, their blades dripping with blackish cultist blood, prepared to rappel into the cisterns. Baelon, however, sensed a greater concentration of abyssal power emanating from a reinforced door at the far end of the warehouse, a door that seemed to absorb the light and radiate an intense cold, even within his deadening field.
"Kael, take half your men down the shaft," Baelon ordered. "Ser Corlys, with me. We will investigate that door. Maester Arryk, maintain the field's integrity with all your strength."
The reinforced door was sealed with complex iron locks and inscribed with glowing, malevolent runes that still pulsed faintly despite the deadening field. Baelon did not bother with mundane methods. He focused the power of the Ignis Shard into a concentrated beam, and the door, locks, runes and all, simply melted, then vaporized, revealing a stone staircase spiraling downwards into an even deeper, more oppressive darkness.
The Sanctum of the Silent Patriarch
The air grew colder, thicker, as Baelon, Ser Corlys, and their five Dragon Guard knights descended. The deadening field still held, but the ambient abyssal energy here was so potent that it felt like wading through viscous, freezing water. The only light came from Baelon's Ignis Shard and the faint, fiery hum of the Dragon Guards' blades.
The staircase opened into a vast, circular cavern, clearly a natural formation adapted by the cult. Its walls were slick with moisture and covered in grotesque, bas-relief carvings of krakens, drowning men, and alien, cyclopean cities beneath stormy seas. In the center of the cavern, on a raised dais of black, oily stone, stood a towering, nine-foot-tall monolith of the same material, shaped vaguely like a nine-armed kraken, its surface seeming to writhe with trapped, shadowy forms. This was no mere idol; it pulsed with a palpable, malevolent power, a direct conduit to the Drowned God itself, and the source of the overwhelming abyssal energy that even Baelon's field could not entirely suppress.
Before this monolith stood a single figure, taller and more imposing than the other cultists, clad in elaborate robes woven with silver thread that depicted coiling tentacles and drowning stars. Its face was hidden by a mask carved from what looked like bleached cuttlefish bone, shaped into a parody of a serene, multi-eyed visage. In its hand, it held a long, serrated staff of a strange, black metal that seemed to drink the light. This was clearly the High Priest of the Drowned Brethren in Braavos, the master of this unholy sanctuary.
"So," the High Priest's voice rasped, amplified by the acoustics of the cavern, sounding like the grinding of shells and the sigh of a dying tide. "The Fire-Serpent dares to crawl into the very heart of the Silent Patriarch's embrace. Your arrogance is… remarkable, Anathema."
"Your 'Patriarch' will find my embrace considerably less welcoming," Baelon retorted, the Ignis Shard flaring brighter, its heat pushing back against the cavern's oppressive chill. "Your reign of shadow in this city ends tonight, priest."
The High Priest let out a dry, rattling laugh. "End? Foolish spark. The Great Quietus is inevitable. The tides always rise. The Deep always claims. You are but a fleeting, noisy flame, soon to be extinguished."
It raised its serrated staff, and despite the deadening field, a wave of palpable despair and nauseating vertigo washed over Baelon's Dragon Guard. Two of them stumbled, their Ignis-blades flickering. The monolith behind the High Priest pulsed, and the shadowy forms within it seemed to writhe with greater intensity.
"Your trinkets may dampen the hymns of the Deep, Fire-Serpent," the High Priest hissed, "but they cannot silence the Patriarch's direct voice within His chosen sanctum!"
The High Priest then charged, moving with an unnatural speed and grace for its size, its staff a blur of black metal aimed at Baelon's head. Ser Corlys and the Dragon Guard leaped to intercept, their Ignis-blades clashing against the light-devouring staff. The impact sent jarring shockwaves through their arms; the staff was unnaturally resilient, imbued with a potent abyssal energy that even their empowered blades struggled to overcome directly.
Baelon, however, saw his opportunity. While his knights engaged the High Priest, he focused his will, and the full, unrestrained power of the Ignis Shard, into a single, devastating lance of pure, primal fire – the same attack that had vaporized the Braavosi privateer. He aimed it not at the High Priest, but at the colossal, pulsating monolith, the cult's primary conduit to their abyssal god.
The cavern was filled with a blinding, searing light as the obsidian-laced fire of Ignis struck the ancient, unholy relic. There was a sound like the world cracking open, a deafening implosion followed by an explosion of dark, icy energy as the monolith, overloaded by a power it could not comprehend or contain, shattered into a million shrieking fragments. The High Priest screamed, a terrible, inhuman sound, as its connection to its god was violently severed, its borrowed power extinguished. It stumbled, its serrated staff clattering to the stone floor, its cuttlefish bone mask cracking.
Ser Corlys Vaelaros, seizing the moment, thrust his Ignis-tempered longsword through the High Priest's robed chest. The priest gurgled, black ichor spilling from its lips and the cracks in its mask, then collapsed, its body already beginning to dissolve into a foul-smelling sludge.
Victory's Price, and a Titan's Silence
With the monolith destroyed and the High Priest slain, the oppressive abyssal energy in the cavern vanished, replaced by the clean, almost sterile, heat of Baelon's deadening field. Kael and his Freedmen, having secured the cisterns below (dispatching another score of cultists and several more Drowned One guardians, though not without taking some losses of their own), now emerged, their faces grim but triumphant.
The Drowned Brethren's primary temple in Braavos, their Abyssal Heart, had been desecrated, its power broken. Baelon ordered his forces to gather any remaining texts, artifacts, or Abyssal Lodestones (several smaller ones were found in niches around the shattered monolith), then to set the entire warehouse complex ablaze. Let the fires burn high, a beacon of his wrath visible even from the Sealord's palace.
Their extraction from Braavos was tense, but surprisingly uneventful. Larys Strong's campaign of misinformation had thrown the city's leadership into such disarray, with accusations and counter-accusations of heresy and treason flying between Keyholder families and Iron Bank factions, that the City Watch was paralyzed, its attention focused inwards. The smoke and flames rising from the Sinking City were attributed by many to another outbreak of this internal strife.
Crucially, the Titan of Braavos remained still. Its emerald eyes continued their silent vigil over the Lagoon, but it made no move to intervene as Baelon's forces slipped back out into the open sea under the cover of the lingering, magically-enhanced fog. It had, it seemed, honored its grim, conditional neutrality. The Serpent King had purged the specific taint, and the Watcher had, for now, averted its gaze.
Aboard the Night Serpent, as Braavos receded into the mists behind them, Baelon examined the spoils. The texts were mostly litanies and sacrificial rites, but several ledgers detailed the cult's financial network, implicating more Iron Bank officials and even a few merchant lords in Westeros. They had also recovered a large, perfectly preserved Abyssal Lodestone from the High Priest's private chamber, one that hummed with a particularly potent, cold energy – perhaps a direct communication device, or a key to another, even more hidden, sanctuary.
The victory was significant, a devastating blow to the Drowned Brethren's operations in their very capital. But it had come at a cost. Five of Kael's Freedmen and two Dragon Guard knights had fallen, their bodies either lost in the cisterns or consumed by abyssal magic before the deadening field had fully taken effect. Their sacrifice, Baelon knew, would cement the loyalty of the survivors, but it was a reminder that even with his augmented power, this war was far from bloodless.
As he stood on the deck, the Ignis Shard cool now in his gauntlet, its fiery energies temporarily depleted by the effort of maintaining the deadening field and shattering the monolith, Baelon looked towards the West. Aemond's hunt for "Echo of Stillness" in the Iron Islands continued. The purges in the Vale and the Fingers were ongoing. And now, Braavos itself had been proven vulnerable, its sacred heart pierced by his shadow warriors.
The whispers in the Lagoon had indeed become screams. But Baelon knew this was not the end. It was merely the end of the beginning. The Drowned God was an ancient, pervasive entity. Its cult was resilient. And Braavos, even wounded and divided, was still a formidable power. The war for the soul of Essos, and perhaps for the balance of the world's oldest powers, was entering a new, even more dangerous, and far more personal, phase. The Titan had averted its gaze this time. Baelon wondered what it would take to make it truly kneel.