"Eight years ago, the Others tried to use ice spiders to destroy the Wall, and I stopped them. It's been years since then—they must have come up with something else. Odahviing, we have to find an Other, even just one!"
Wright flew along the Wall for dozens of miles but found no trace of the Others. The attackers were nothing more than mindless wights and low-tier vampires. He captured a few of the wildling vampires and questioned them, but they knew nothing. After that, he turned them into ash and stuffed the remains into his pocket.
"If they dare desecrate a dragon's corpse, I will haunt them as a vengeful spirit!" Odahviing growled. He often spoke of lesser dragons with disdain, but deep down, they were still his kin—his bloodline. He could insult them, but no one else could. Undead creatures, least of all.
Atop Odahviing's head, two of his largest horns curved to the sides. In the middle, where Wright often gripped, the scales had worn smooth, forming two pale bands that resembled white rings.
Clang! Clang! Wright tapped Odahviing's horns with his greatsword. "The undead are the enemies of both dragons and men. Since they dare march south, they won't be returning north!"
Odahviing swooped lower, flying just two hundred meters above the forest. Countless fireballs and red sorceries exploded against his scales, but each time, a flash of white light shimmered across his enormous red body. His scales were already incredibly tough, and now they were further reinforced by Wright's transmutation magic, draping him in a layer of enchanted dragon armor.
Fire was one of the most effective weapons against the undead—and for a dragon, it was the least taxing attack to unleash.
A violent surge of golden-red dragonfire erupted from Odahviing's maw, carving long, blazing walls across the snow-covered land. Any position that dared launch magic at them was instantly reduced to a hellish inferno. Standing atop the dragon's thrashing head, Wright clung tightly to his horns, his eyes scanning the ground below. Any suspicious location was immediately consumed by dragonfire.
Unlike ordinary dragons, Odahviing could speak. He and Wright communicated during battle, covering each other's weaknesses. They were comrades-in-arms, friends—not merely rider and mount.
Since Wright, every Baratheon dragonrider had refused to see dragons as mere steeds or pets. Outsiders often spoke of the so-called "dragonblood pact", but in truth, all those bonds stemmed from the original vow between Wright and Odahviing—an oath between dragon and rider, sealed in blood, forging an unbreakable connection.
On the Wall, soldiers watched as fire spread eastward in the distance, painting the black night sky in golden-red hues.
"Odahviing!"
"Lord Wright has come to aid us!"
Wave after wave of enemies fell, giving the exhausted defenders a brief reprieve. They raised their weapons and shouted toward the dragon and the armored warrior atop its head.
Odahviing and Wright burned like living furnaces, their heat so intense that snowflakes evaporated the moment they touched them. The massive red-and-white dragon streaked across the Wall, trailing a plume of white smoke, his overwhelming firepower reigniting the soldiers' morale wherever he passed.
But once Odahviing flew eastward, the brief respite ended. Fireballs rained down upon the Wall once more, and an endless tide of wights and ice spiders surged southward. The brutal defense resumed.
While Odahviing fought, Wright focused all his attention on his magic sense.
A blast of dragonfire scorched the battlefield—only to abruptly cut off midstream. Odahviing twisted his massive wings and flipped midair, accelerating northward.
He dived toward what seemed to be an ordinary enemy encampment in the forest. Countless fireballs and red sorceries streaked toward his head, but Wright raised his hand and conjured a barrier to shield them.
BOOM! Golden-red explosions obscured Wright's vision, yet Odahviing did not unleash his dragonfire. As they neared the ground, the dragon flared his wings wide, halting abruptly—and with the momentum, he flung Wright downward.
Multiple enchantments surged through Wright's body as he gripped the Bloodscourge Blade. Raising his left arm to shield his eyes, he crashed through a giant wight, smashing deep into the six-meter-thick snow below.
Wights swarmed in, their rusted weapons gleaming as they poured into the crater, a black tide crashing down upon him.
Nearby, fireball bombardments ceased. The ice spider horde retracted their webs, hastily relocating. In the pitch-black night, the undead, Wright, and Odahviing needed no light to see.
Deep beneath the snow, a crimson glow flickered.
"RAAHH!!"
Wright roared, unleashing crescent-shaped sword waves that blasted upward from the pit, carving through the night sky. His full-powered strikes sent the packed snow collapsing.
Beneath the snow, Wright had found something unnatural.
Odahviing landed near Wright as well. The dragon let out a furious roar and swept its massive wings, determined to wipe out everything around Wright that could still move!
Countless thick trees, mixed with severed limbs of wights, were sent flying hundreds of meters into the air. Ignoring the wights and vampires clambering onto its body, Odahviing lowered its head, eyes burning with rage, and unleashed golden-red dragonfire, skimming across the ground. As its head swung, the flames carved a massive semicircle of fire into the earth.
While Odahviing fought on the ground, Wright dug through the deep snow, slashing out ten crescent-shaped waves of sword energy in succession, momentarily clearing the wights around him.
A shriveled, half-chest cavity with a single remaining arm grabbed onto Wright's leg armor. With a hissing sound, the fingers turned to blackened cinders, crumbling away, leaving only a bare bone tapping uselessly against the armor with a dull clinking. The dragonbone and Valyrian steel of the battle armor proved invaluable against the undead.
The frozen, hardened earth was littered with writhing remains of wights. Deep in enemy territory, Wright had no intention of wasting energy on the defenseless. He stepped over the squirming bones, and with each stride, the heated Valyrian steel under his boots seared the corpses with a sizzling sound.
Wright approached an ice wall, pressing his hand against its surface. The smooth, polished ice was thick and unnatural in formation. The unique magic he sensed was coming from within.
"Hss~ Ha~" A horde of wights shrieked as they surged toward him again.
Gripping his greatsword with both hands, Wright swung from right to left in a sweeping arc. A blood-red wave of sword energy shot out at waist height, skimming just above the ground. The wights were sliced clean through—their lower halves kept running forward while the upper bodies collapsed, soon trampled into mush by those behind them.
Using the force of the slash, Wright twisted his waist and swung again. With both hands gripping the greatsword, he slashed upward against the ice wall, then brought the blade crashing down in a diagonal strike.
A cross-shaped gash split the ice wall. Wright inhaled sharply, let out a battle cry, and delivered a powerful kick. With a thunderous crash, a man-sized hole burst open in the ice.
"What the hell is this?"
The ice wall was just one face of a cubic ice chamber. Stepping inside, Wright casually sealed the hole with ice magic, momentarily ignoring the wights hammering against the wall.
Before him stood a bizarre metallic construct.
A three-to-four-meter-tall metal pole with numerous horizontal branches of varying lengths, resembling a metallic pine tree.
The base of the pole was secured by three supports embedded deep into the ice. A blood-soaked magic circle, linking the ice chamber to the base of the structure, was drawn around it. Nearby, a human corpse lay on the ground, hands folded over its chest, with a stab wound in its stomach—the source of the blood sustaining the magic.
At the very center of the magic circle, beneath the triangular support structure of the pole, rested an ice-blue severed head of a White Walker.
"Vampiric blood magic, a White Walker's head, and crude human-forged metal—these damn things!"
Wright crouched to examine the formation. He poked at the head, confirming it was loose and tilted slightly, and the cut at the base was clean. It wasn't a White Walker buried in the ice—it was a severed head.
Suddenly, the White Walker's eyes snapped open, locking onto Wright as it spoke:
"Dragon...spawn..."
"The hell, it's still alive?!" Wright exclaimed, gripping the White Walker's ear and lifting the head to eye level.
His free hand slowly moved behind his back, thumb brushing against the dagger sheathed in the metal belt of his armor, ready to strike at any moment.