"What do you mean Aegon ran away? Where did he go?"
Removing her helmet, her silver hair spilled out like a cascade of starlight, tumbling over the gently curved silver breastplate on her chest.
In the sunlight, her violet eyes, faintly flushed face, crystal-like hair, and polished armor all shimmered as if glowing on their own.
Aemond, however, had no mood to appreciate the queen's divine beauty. He sighed and said, "Aegon took his dragon and left for Westeros with Tyrion."
It had been half a month since the Battle of New Ghis.
Prepared against the unprepared, one-third of New Ghis's anti-dragon ballista formations were destroyed—it was nighttime, after all, and difficult to aim accurately. With that advantage, the Dragon Queen dominated the sky battle. Riding Drogon, she unleashed torrents of dragonfire, swung her massive sword, and slashed with claws and fangs, killing three dragons and five dragonriders.
The roars of dragons echoed for miles, reverberating across the bay. Every sailor, soldier, and officer within the city heard it—the wounded cries and dying screams of their own dragons.
Thirty-eight dragons collided like thirty-eight locomotives at full speed, followed by a chaotic melee that looked like a gang brawl with blades flashing in the streets.
That night, the sailors of the bay and the people of New Ghis saw dragonfire carve through the dark heavens like a god's blade, leaving a scar of blood across the stars.
That night, when dragons clashed against dragons, it was like divine drums being struck—the bay's surface trembled like a drumskin, thunder roaring across the waves.
That night, scales fell like snow, and blood rained over New Ghis.
The night battle was pure chaos, both sides fighting savagely and without order.
But the Dragon Queen's side had an overwhelming advantage with her three fire-breathing dragons.
Especially her—her fury was boundless. Every swing of her greatsword unleashed a forty-meter blade of fire that tore through the heavens.
When dragons brushed against her flames, their skin split open and burned; dragonriders struck by the fire weren't sliced apart but roasted alive inside their armor—like meat sealed in an iron casing.
Afterward, the Imp gave only one remark: "The Queen's way of fighting makes men despair."
In the end, the Dragon Queen won the dragon battle that night with a staggering ratio of one to twenty.
Well, Dany did lose one dragon herself.
Two dragonriders also perished—one fell with his dragon, crashing into the city square and leaving a bloody crater; another was crushed during a midair grapple, like a mosquito swollen with blood being slapped dead against a thigh.
The enemy lost fourteen dragons in total, and the Dragon Queen captured six.
It was an absolute slaughter.
With her victory in the skies, Dany gained complete air superiority. Her seventeen dragons bombarded the city at will.
At dawn, two thousand elite soldiers hidden in merchant ships stormed the docks of New Ghis, disarming the defenders, while troop transports from Old Ghis began landing along the coast.
By noon, New Ghis—the gateway from the western continent to the eastern Jade Sea—was firmly in the Dragon Queen's grasp.
The spoils were immense: treasure worth ten million gold dragons, over fifty thousand tons of grain and supplies, and more than twenty thousand prisoners from the Second and Third Legions of the Iron Legions, along with a dozen mercenary companies.
Even nine Valyrian steel swords were seized.
Yet Dany did not make things harder for New Ghis's merchants or sailors.
Nearly half of them had already been captured by her in Tolos, and some had only just ransomed themselves free in Astapor.
Besides, the bay of New Ghis was too vast—too many ships, too many routes. There was no way to block them all.
Because of that, more than half of the allied commanders stationed there managed to escape.
Those who didn't either had too few guards and were assassinated by Dany's killers, or were unlucky enough to die in the chaos, or fell in battle—defeated, slain, or captured.
The allied forces were astonishingly brave. Even after losing control of the skies, they maintained effective command and coordination, fighting tenaciously from street to street.
Though dragonfire rained wherever resistance was found, their armies never truly collapsed.
Partly, that was because Dany's raid had been sudden—she brought only four thousand ground troops to New Ghis, which gave the defenders the chance to fight back through urban warfare.
Capturing New Ghis wasn't the end—it was only the beginning of a chain of conflicts.
New Ghis was merely an isolated island. The true foundation of its power lay on the neighboring island of Ghien, which spanned over twenty thousand square kilometers.
(For comparison, Taiwan Province of China is only about 36,000 square kilometers...)
The allied fleet's First Squadron had originally been patrolling near Ghien Island, and that same night, many ships fled there for refuge.
Over the next half month, New Ghis raiders crossed the bay almost every night from Ghien Island to strike back.
The situation resembled the old railway guerrilla fighters taking revenge against the occupying soldiers.
In short, it was the Ghis guerrillas versus the true-dragon invaders.
Indeed, Dany looked every bit the part of an invader sweeping through villages—but her strategy was that of a guerrilla fighter.
She didn't seize New Ghis to rule it. Her goal was to disrupt the enemy's control of the Summer Sea trade routes.
Her strategic objective was the same as the railway guerrillas: to sabotage the enemy's transport hubs and raise the cost of their logistics to the front.
Picture it as the guerrillas capturing a key crossroads in a major transport corridor—not just blowing up the railway but also holding that segment to cut the enemy's lifeline.
The guerrillas themselves might have lacked the strength to hold the line.
But Dany did not.
She left behind two thousand of her Wings of Freedom.
Using the Ghiscari fortifications, those two thousand men turned a sixteen-square-kilometer island into a fortress at sea.
Destruction is always easier than creation—and she was a destroyer, determined to cripple the Summer Sea trade routes.
For the past half month, the allied First and Third Fleets had taken turns bombarding New Ghis with ship-mounted catapults and ballistae.
But the two thousand defenders paid no mind. They merely tightened their defenses, concentrating their forces around the Great Pyramid and the city's underground tunnels—built by the Ghiscari as bunkers and escape routes after the wildfire bombardments had burned the city.
Unfortunately, the trebuchets had no effect on the Great Pyramid.
In fact, their range was too limited to even reach the Great Pyramid at the center of the city.
In other words, unless they managed to land on the beaches, the Allied forces had no way to threaten the Wings of Freedom inside New Ghis.
But did the Allies dare to launch an amphibious assault?They did try.
After a hard-fought struggle to capture the docks and scale the city walls, the dragons had already arrived from Astapor.
A beach assault, of course, couldn't possibly bring along ballistae weighing hundreds of kilograms. Even the most powerful handheld weapon—the heavy foot-drawn crossbow (the same kind Tyrion used in Game of Thrones to kill Tywin)—couldn't kill a dragon, especially now that the dragons were clad in steel belly armor weighing several hundred pounds.
At that time, Daenerys had just returned from New Ghis. In the early hours of dawn, the Allied forces launched their fifth amphibious assault. That's right—there had already been four before this. Once they broke through the docks, a shapeshifter inside the city immediately sent a message to the Dragon Queen.
Three and a half hours later, Daenerys flew twelve hundred kilometers and appeared above New Ghis.
The Allies had ten wyverns, hurling firebombs at the Great Pyramid and the Wings of Freedom positions.
The moment Drogon appeared, they swarmed to attack him.
But the dragon was faster than the wyverns, and the Dragon Queen could wield a forty-meter-long sword of flame. After cutting down two wyverns and burning four riders alive, the remaining wyverns fled back toward the Allied fleet. The fleet was equipped with anti-dragon ballistae, so Drogon didn't pursue.
With control of the skies secured, the rest was simple.
Under Daenerys's mastery of fire magic, Drogon no longer breathed a pillar of flame, but spread a hundred-meter-wide carpet of fire.
In just ten minutes, all four thousand enemy soldiers assaulting the city were burned to ashes. None survived.
During the previous four assaults, Daenerys had exercised restraint, striving to minimize casualties and had even taken about eight thousand prisoners.
But that had become a burden for her own forces, pushing them past the two-thousand-guard limit for managing captives—and it only encouraged the enemy to attempt a fifth landing.
Daenerys believed that after today's carnage, the Allies would think twice before attempting a sixth.
Having just defeated the Allies' fifth "encirclement," the Dragon Queen was in high spirits. But when she returned to Astapor at sunset, she was met with troubling news—Aegon had fled.
"For the Iron Throne! Aegon is returning to King's Landing to claim the Iron Throne," Aemon said.
"How did he suddenly come up with that idea? Was it Tyrion who talked him into it?" Daenerys asked.
Aemon sighed bitterly. "Where there is a dragon, there is power. And the growth of power fuels ambition. Becoming King of the Seven Kingdoms is far more appealing than being a patrol knight in Slaver's Bay."
"By that logic, shouldn't I already be ruling the heavens? It's just a wyvern. On the battlefields of Slaver's Bay, it doesn't even qualify to fight alone.
This morning, I killed two shadow wyverns myself," Daenerys retorted.
"Uh… your standards are higher. Westeros is not like here."
Aemon frowned in thought. "The Seven Kingdoms are in turmoil. Kevan is dead, and Cersei and the Tyrells are nearly at war in King's Landing, fighting for the throne.
Aegon sees this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Tyrion agrees with him.
It's not exactly that one persuaded the other. Aegon came to Slaver's Bay with only two goals—to marry you and to become a dragonrider.
From the very beginning, his purpose in coming here was to gain the power he needed for the Iron Throne.
Now that he has what he came for, it's not surprising he's left.
As for Tyrion, he came with Aegon to bring you back to Westeros.
He wants to use your strength to take revenge and to prove he's more than a Lannister name—that he's a man of worth."
"Sigh… I should have told him who he really was," old Aemon muttered regretfully.
"Does this count as betrayal? He didn't even bother to say goodbye before stealing my dragon," Daenerys sneered.
"You swore that the one who ends the Long Night shall be king. Aegon feared you wouldn't approve of his actions," Aemon explained. "So I wouldn't call it betrayal. He never swore allegiance to you. Tyrion, though…"
The old man gave a weary smile. "He's a man of kindness and courage, one who values family. But he can't see beyond being a Lannister.
You'll probably never receive his kindness or affection.
And his courage will never be shown on the battlefields of Slaver's Bay."
Don't make it sound so sentimental, as if I'm yearning for the dwarf's affection, Daenerys thought with a cold smile.
"Tyrion's always been cautious and cowardly, and I tolerated that. But now, on the eve of the Battle of Meereen, he's taken my two strongest wyverns. That's beyond forgiveness," she said coldly.
"What do you plan to do with them?" Aemon asked.
Daenerys hesitated. "Did he take Myrcella with him?"
"No. He said he would correct Cersei's mistakes and reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen, no matter the cost," Aemon replied with a strange look.
Whether Tyrion took Myrcella or not would determine the nature of their "flight."
"Your Grace, forgive me. I failed to stop the prince,"
Daenerys was still considering how to deal with the two defectors when Jon Connington approached with a look of guilt.
"Ser, you didn't leave?" Daenerys asked in surprise.
"I'm your military advisor. How could I abandon you on the eve of battle?" the old knight said solemnly.
(End of chapter)
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