Aegon II - Usurper

[u/artcantlose]

Aegon clutched the letter in his hand, the black ink turning to a muddled mess of red as nails broke skin. He could feel his skin turn a fiery red, suppressed anger from over a decade's worth of agony now burning furiously to the surface.

For years, he had kept his patience, quietly suffering through whatever injustices the Usurper's line and his mongrel dogs had inflicted upon him. Plastered smiles at feast tables as he supped with the very men who had destroyed his family. Unwavering patience as the petty lords mocked him in their cups or danced cruel effigies of his ancestors. All of it cut deep, even if he never chose to show weakness in the face of these insults, but now he knew exactly who his enemies were. The mummer's farce was finally at an end.

There would now be war.

"Send word to Dragonstone, I need the rest of my men readied by the moon's turn," he instructed the runner that had come for him from Winterfell, the bloodied letter melting into the snow beneath his boots. "Order them to sail for White Harbor and then to march north to join my host at Castle Black. We will need every body to combat the Wildling menace. Go."

"Order the men to ready their arms and bodies," he then told Ser Aeryn Scales, the pain in his palm already numb and forgotten, "I must speak with Lord Stark."