The circular staircase reminded me painfully of Castlevania.
It wound upward in the same tight spiral as the towers of the spell forged castle, the same worn stone steps, yet these were black obsidian instead of the pale white I was familiar with. Still, for a moment, as I began my climb, I could almost imagine I was back in the castle, heading to the peak of the towers and its magnificent view of the North.
But this was not the cold and beautiful North, for outside this bastion of magically reinforced and preserved structure was ash and smog filled skies, broken towers, obliterated roads, crisscrossed by veins of molten magma, in comparison to the white trees and red leaves, as well as the snow peaked mountains of the Frostfangs.
A ruined civilization. I wondered if the Lands of Always Winter looked something like this. It was a curiosity that would be fulfilled sooner rather than later by my estimates.
The staircase was long, longer than it should have been given the external dimensions of the manse. Magic, clearly, creating space where there should not be any. The Valyrians had been masters of many such things. How hard would it truly have been, bending reality to their will as easily as they bent dragon flesh to human command.
The further I climbed, the more I felt an ache in my heart. It was regret. Regret that I never got to see the civilization at its peak, regret that such a civilization was gone, and their legacy was a slip of a girl with three dragons barely worth their names. Regret that they had flown too close to the sun like Icarus.
These were the thoughts running through me as I climbed for what felt like hours without fatigue. My body required no rest, nor even pause for breath. I stretched out my right hand to the side, gliding my fingers along the walls of the staircase, on which were carved images of dragons.
These were not the stylized representations I had seen elsewhere in Valyria. These were more detailed, almost anatomically precise renderings. I slowed when I got to a carving of a dragon in flight, its wings spread wide, every scale defined. Another stop had me at a dragon at rest, its tail curled around its body, its eyes closed in sleep. Further up, a dragon breathing fire, the flames rendered in such detail I could almost feel the heat.
It was beautiful.
At the top of the stairs, I found a door. It was simple compared to the ornate entrances below, just thick wood bound with iron, but I could feel the magic radiating from it even before I placed my hand on the surface. There were wards on them, different from the others that were around the castle. There was something to it that I could not quite name. After another few seconds of searching for an answer, I shrugged and moved on, for while I knew a lot, not even Dracula knew everything.
I pushed, and the door swung open easily, as if it had been waiting for me.
Light hit my face, actual sunlight, but not even the sun's glare could completely pierce the smog of poisonous gases and corrupted magic that acted as the clouds in Valyria, yet the fact that I could feel some heat spoke to just how far I had climbed.
I stepped out of the enclosed staircase onto the landing pad before me. It was massive, far larger than it had appeared from below. The surface was smooth stone, yet in more than one spot I could see grooves carved into the blackened stone from claws. At the edges of the circular pad, the stone had crumbled slightly, showing the four hundred years of weather and decay, but the center remained intact.
However, none of that mattered, because in the center of the landing pad, taking up nearly half its expanse, lay the bones of a dragon.
I stopped walking, simply staring at the sight before me.
It had been huge. Enormous. The skull alone was easily the size of a trailer, and the teeth were as long as a man. I walked closer and made a confirmation. Not just as long as any man, the fangs on the skeleton were as long as I was tall.
I tilted my head to take the massive beast in, and spotted the arch of the spine as it stretched for what had to be over two hundred feet, vertebrae like boulders arranged in precise anatomical order. The ribs arced downward, creating a cage large enough to hold a smaller manse. The wing bones, spread out to either side, were delicate compared to the rest of the skeleton but still thick as tree trunks.
This had been a dragon, one that had been brought up in the heart of Valyria, bred by the best of the best, taken care of by magic the Targaryens did not possess. This was a dragon that could lay waste to armies and reduce castles to rubble with its breath alone. I thought of the Black Dread, the renditions I had seen, the skull I could remember hung in the Red Keep.
Balerion's head would fit snugly in its mouth. It would have decapitated the strongest dragon house Targaryen had ever produced with a single bite. Yet for all that power it could have possessed, it had still died here, on this landing pad, in what I assumed was the very moment of the Doom.
I approached slowly, my mind cataloging every detail. The bones were blackened in places, scorched by heat intense enough to char even dragon bone. Some were cracked, showing the stress fractures of explosive force. The cervical vertebrae of the dead beast had jagged holes in them. It took me a closer examination to spot how symmetrical they were.
These were bites, and this was coming from someone that knew one or two things about biting. Something had feasted on the dragon after its death.
I circled the skeleton, examining it from every angle. The preservation magic that protected the manse extended here somewhat as well, I realized, but it was frayed, tattered and nearly nonexistent anymore. Without it, these bones would have turned to dust long ago.
My circuit solidified the thought that the dragon had been feasted on by something just as big, maybe even bigger. A dragon that had survived the Doom, and not just survived, a dragon that had thrived. I turned my head to the side, and my scarlet eyes widened the slightest at the sight before me.
Two stones, placed carefully beneath the humongous chest of the dragon, yet I could tell that the way the dragon had died, it had used the bulk of its frame to shelter the oddly shaped stones. Oddly shaped stones that I could feel a pulse of life from.
It had been hidden under the distraction that was the magic around us, but as I got closer I could feel it. Not quite a heartbeat, but life itself. I stretched out a hand and picked the two of them up, then using my cloak I brushed one, sending the dust, fallen smog and other detritus that had fallen over it away to reveal the truth.
These were not stones. They were eggs. Scaled eggs, and as I cradled them in my arms I could feel a warmth in them. I stared down at them in confusion. I had hoped to find dragon eggs here, but not like this, and not this fresh. For one, I was well aware of how ancient Valyrians stored their dragon eggs thanks to Marwyn.
Dragon eggs were kept in hatcheries, yet here were a pair of them. As I shifted back my attention to the dragon, I could feel my mind work, bringing up theories and discarding them just as quickly, the sum process of Dracula's intellect focused on a single task till I found my answer.
"You were pregnant."
I stated as I looked back to the dragon. "That was why you did not take off despite the world ending around you and the very air you breathed turning to poison. Instead you stayed to lay them and then used your body to protect them."
I turned back to the treasures in my hands and wrapped in my cloak. With most of the dirt and grime cleaned off, I could inspect them better. They felt alive, warm to the touch, and their scales felt supple, flexible and hard at the same time. These were not the same petrified lumps that Daenerys had been given on her wedding day.
I focused on them, then on the surroundings and came to an easy conclusion. Dragons were said to be intrinsically tied to the magic of this world for one. With the low tides that came with the dragons dying, Dany's eggs had grown petrified, an automatic protection against the times. These eggs had not needed to undergo that.
Magic had been lost to the wider world, but here, in this continuous Doom that had never ended, in this land filled with so much magic it had turned on itself and grown corrupted, magic had never slept.
Another difference was the size. They were bigger than I expected for one. Bigger than what had been shown in the show, which was either down to a size inconsistency or spoke to just how diminished dragons had become in the modern era in comparison to this four hundred year old egg, which made sense in some way.
Balerion had been the last dragon to be hatched in Valyria, and even discounting for how old he was, no other dragon ever got to quite his size, strength or match. Not even Vhagar. Yet the last time he came here, with Princess Aerea Targaryen on his back, he had fought something, something strong enough that he had humongous gashes on his armor like scales, and never quite recovered from his injuries which eventually led to his death.
The sound of a massive pair of wings beating somewhere above me forced me to tense. It was not quite fear, I had already noted that was an emotion Dracula had discarded a long time ago, instead it was caution in the face of the unknown. There was a dragon in these smog filled skies, and while distance might have blinded it to me and my entourage previously, I doubted it worked quite as well as high up as I was, which brought the question.
Could I take down a dragon that had survived for over four hundred years in a hostile environment that would have killed most in minutes or hours? A dragon that had most likely beaten Balerion badly enough that the Black Dread had raced back to Kings Landing half dead. I did not wait to answer that question. Instead I moved, turning into the blur and finding myself back in the staircase. A wave of my arms sent the doors closing behind me, while my other hand held up the two dragon eggs covered in my cloak.
I stretched out my senses, not just my physical but my magical senses too, and this time I could feel it. The dragon that ruled the skies of Valyria, the sole creature whose shriek had nearly broken my mirror when I scried Valyria, a beast whose single wing had been enough to blot out the skies above Castlevania.
It felt like a moving volcano to my senses, all fire, all anger, hatred, pain and corruption. Yet the more I focused on it, the less I could sense it. It seemed like it had turned away the moment I disappeared and had once again gotten lost in the chaotic magic and smog that filled the air.
If I was human, I would have let out a sigh of relief. Instead I found myself walking down the stairs once more in the direction I could feel Isaac's particular serene heartbeat. I had only two thoughts in mind. The first was what it would take to kill such a beast, and the second, what exactly Isaac could do with such a corpse.
__
Melisandre
It was said often enough that one could not plan for everything, a saying Melisandre of Asshai knew as the truth. She had journeyed and traveled enough in her desire to spread the gospel of the Lord of Light to know that unexpected variables were bound to happen. What she had not expected was for it to go wrong on that very first night.
She stood alone before the wooden gates of the settlement she had sought for days, her red robes torn and stained with blood, most of it not her own. The ruby at her throat was her only comfort as it pulsed with a faint warmth, the major thing that had pushed her onwards in the past week of travel through the frozen hell beyond the Wall.
Around her, the Frostfangs loomed like the teeth of some great beast, and behind her, down the slope she had struggled to climb, was the Haunted Forest, and in the crafted labyrinth of white trees and red leaves lay the bodies of her acolytes. Good men and women who had followed her into the North, who had believed in the Lord of Light's vision, who had died screaming in the darkness as things with dead eyes and colder hands tore them apart.
She ignored the loss of the slavers that had died as well. Theirs had been as wasteful as their wretched purpose had been. Instead she thought back to her acolytes. Every night they had been attacked, and every night they had been forced to flee. The injuries and horror had piled up and one by one she had begun to lose them.
Their sacrifices had bought her time. Time to run, to flee past the Haunted Forest and deeper into the mountains even as the Lord of Light remained quiet despite their plights. She had prayed and prayed and then, like a miracle, the attacks had stopped.
The moment she had crossed into the Frostfangs proper, the pursuit had simply ended. No more wights stumbling after her in the darkness. No more blue glowing eyes whenever night fell, only crows and bats.
Evidence of Rhollor's blessings most assuredly.
Now she stood before the settlement's gates, exhausted and alone, and wondered if this was truly where the Lord of Light had meant for her to go. The solid walls before her were not as crude as she had expected. Smoke rose from within, the smell of cooking meat and burning wood. There was life here in the midst of all the death she had come to face over the past week.
Movement on the walls. Guards noticing her approach. She could see them pointing, hear the distant shouts of alarm. A woman alone in red robes, appearing out of the Frostfangs, it must look suspicious.
She did not blame them. She would be suspicious too.
The gates did not open. Instead, a voice called down from the walls, its words were spoken in an unfamiliar tongue.
"I cannot understand you."
There was quiet for a few seconds before another voice called out, rough and accented, yet it was in the familiar Common Tongue of Westeros. "State your business, kneeler."
"I seek shelter," Melisandre called back, her voice hoarse from days of disuse. "I am a servant of the Lord of Light, and I have traveled far to reach this place."
"We do not want southern gods here." Another voice, a woman this time. "Turn around and go back to your Wall."
Melisandre closed her eyes, feeling the ruby pulse against her skin. She needed to convince them. She could not spend another second out here, not when she was this close to her goal. The question was how?
Her eyes snapped open just as a commotion erupted at the gates.
"Let her in." Another voice called out. This one was different from the others. Clearer, with an accent she could not quite place. Not quite southern, not quite Free Folk either.
"But Master Hector..."
"We cannot leave her out there. Southerner or not, nobody deserves to be left for the wights and Others." The new voice appealed to reason, and at once the gate began to groan open, just the slightest. Melisandre did not need another sign, instead she hurried forward and slipped through the gate. In her hurry she stepped on her ripped gown and fell forward only to be caught by a pair of strong arms.
"Are you alright, my lady?"
She looked upward to her savior and knew him at once. The voice matched the face. Master Hector, they had called him. He was tall, taller than the Free Folk around here, with dark brown skin that seemed almost polished. His features were more beautiful than handsome, like a bedslave from Lys, but it was the pale hair and kind eyes that drew her attention the most.
Perhaps her initial suspicion had been right. An escaped pleasure slave?
Inside the settlement, a crowd had gathered around them. Men and women in furs and leather, all staring at her with varying degrees of hostility and curiosity. Children peeked out from behind their parents, eyes wide at the sight of her red robes.
She did not pay attention to them. Instead she focused on the beautiful man that still cradled her in his arms. Already she could see a dusting of red on his cheeks. A malleable one, she mused to herself, a soft smile slowly spread across her features. She pushed herself back gently, reorienting herself, then she took in a breath as she shifted into a formal and polite bow, one she would give to a lord or king once invited to court, a bow that coincidentally showed off her cleavage in the right light.
"My name is Melisandre of Asshai, Master Hector. Thank you for letting me in. I believe we have much to discuss."
A/N: Dragon Eggs, and Melisandre.