Revelation
Thirtieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC
In the days and weeks to come, that night with the moon peering down between tattered clouds at the pockmarked face of King's Landing would be made into a thing of tale and legend. Would-be seers will claim to have smelled the change in the air before the sun was even down, and all manner of disreputable information brokers would say to any who would hear them that they had always been in the pay of the Dragon and they had known what the tenth hour of the night would bring. Meanwhile, the handful of folk who did know or suspect what was to come, be it eastern merchants with a silver sword pin among their effects or Chataya's girls preparing for the company of Legion officers and airmen, were quiet as could be hoped, though one might at times see them scrutinize the sky more than the dreary weather warranted.
On the high towers of the Red Keep, still scarred by death and flame, ravens roosted that had never been part of any Maester's rookery. As to the Grand Maester himself, he had vanished as though into thin air, though the rumor had not yet trickled from the ranks of courtiers and Lannister Armsmen down through the Gold Cloaks, the tradesmen, and the servants to join the cauldron of gossip that bubbled away in the streets. Tygett, newly arrived from Dragonstone, looked on upon an abysmal circumstance likely to get much worse. If only he knew how much worse it might get.
***
On a narrow street both close and infinitely distant from the richly appointed bedroom of the Lannister knight, a man who might be any age from twenty to sixty under the layer of grime and grit that came with living in Fleabottom, looked up at the sky with his own worry.
"Fuck me with a hot poker," Simon Sorefoot cursed under his breath. The heavy cloud rolling in from the east might mean rain, and he did not have a roof to squat under tonight. The best he might hope for was a place under Butcher's Bridge if someone had chased away the pack of dogs that had made it their lair last week.
A great roar shook the air like thunder, and a beast so great as to almost beggar belief flew from it bright with the light of ten-thousand stars. Then the cloud parted, and from it spun a glittering spectacle of lights, cold blues and vivid greens, threads of crimson bright as blood. The Maesters would have called it aurora and spoken of the latitudes in which it might be observed, the Free Folk of the distant Far North would have called them the ice lights and warded them off as a sign of dark things, but Simon Sorefoot, who had never been out of King's Landing a day in his life and barely out of Fleabottom, called it magic and he was not wrong.
In the midst of the magic there floated a great ship like a carp among minnows, and on it the crimson sigil of the dragon with three heads that had flown from the battlements of the Red Keep for all but the last eleven years. The Dragons were back.
Simon Sorefoot's gaze fixed upon the ship and the figures made tiny with distance upon it. Though his eyes strained to see them, somehow his mind and his heart knew that the one that shone brightest with a terrible golden light was the King come to set the realm to right. He had never cared for any king nor any prince, not Aerys, not Rhaegar, and not Robert, why should he? He only knew their names so that he might curse them when cursing the Seven for his lot lacked the proper immediacy.
"Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the city of Sorcerer's Deep, an Imperator has been crowned."
The message seared into his mind like a brand burned with truth that could not be denied, not words at all, but thoughts heavy in the mind as though some god had come down and spoken them in one's ear.
"You were made to toil and suffer in darkness by wicked kings and scheming lords, but today, I come to end their reign. With me, I bring my Legions, so that the righteous shall know reprieve, and that the wicked shall know fear."
This too rang truer than anything Symon had ever heard, and with it a mad hope bubbled in his chest that was in defiance of all sense and the lessons of a life hard learned. The last time armed men had come to King's Landing it had been wreck and rapine through a bloody night and into bitter morning. Why would these Legions be different? And yet they
felt different as the kiss of warm spring rain was different from sleet.
"With me, I bring my healers, so that you may know succor. No longer shall you be made to starve. No longer shall you fear sickness and rot."
For the first time since the words had started, he could hear something else—weeping, harsh and hacking. It took him a moment to realize that he was doing it. It took him longer still to realize why he had been doing it, for he had never wept for joy before.
***
A few streets to the south and quite a bit closer to the Great Sept of Baelor on Eel Alley, a man in the silk cap and fur-fringed doublet, a once prosperous merchant who had seen better days, looked out his window in stunned shock, his ears filled with the sound of marching feet yet his eyes fixed to the spectacle in the sky. Trite descriptions of the sort he had always decried on the lips of third rate poets passed through Able Arthur's mind.
Like an angel descending on a silver stair from heaven. A voice like the Father's own truth rang in his mind:
"With me, I bring the light, so that it may warm your hearts and minds."
It should have sounded trite and foolish, the sort of circus the highborn liked to put on for fools easily distracted by bright colors and loud trumpets, but somehow a lifetime of cynicism simply was not enough to bear the weight of those words. Like the tide sweeping in from the sea, they swallowed Arthur's doubts and left only the urge to
believe the promise being made as fiercely as he imagined other men believed in the Seven Who Are One. In that place and in that moment, it did not matter how or why, it only mattered that the true King had returned and the world would change.
He stumbled from the room and down the stairs to join the gathering crowds almost without realizing what he was doing, the words still echoing in his mind.
***
"So come forth and see, for the dawn has come."
The city of King's Landing breathed as one, rich and poor, man and woman, the cynic and the faithful. Thousands, tens of thousands, converged on the plaza before the Great Sept of Baelor, moved to obey by a power stranger than mere enchantment. Some walked with hope, others with fearful awe, but many, most even, walked with both beating in their chests between the wonder of the lights and the shadow of the Dragon. A great crowd gathered before the holy place that Baelor built, though it was not the Seven for whom they had come to bear witness.
A robed man, his face pinched and a pale green that seemed even more faded in the lights of the spectacle, walked out of the sept in the company of a young girl oddly enough. But for the hand of the Gods, the girl would have been in Tarth many leagues distant, and but for the presence of the Chosen, the High Septon would have refused the Dragon's call.
"As the High Septon who served almost three centuries past recognized Aegon, so too I now recognize Viserys, First of His Name."
Those few in the crowd who actually knew and cared about the proper count of kings moved uneasily.
It should have been Viserys the Third. But the luminous young King did not seem to take offense, and indeed his smile grew at the words before he spoke at last aloud.
What does Viserys say to the High Septon and the Chosen of the Warrior?
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OOC: I could have done a lot more perspective shifts, but this update is already one of the longest I have done for the quest and it has three break points. Hope you guys enjoy.
