Chapter 120: A Haunting Threat
The Sons of the Harpy who believed themselves far from Drogon froze in terror when they saw their companions suddenly pierced through, their bodies left with gaping holes where the dragon had passed.
No one dared continue slaughtering spectators.
Panic spread instantly. The masked assassins began scattering in every direction, desperately trying to flee the arena.
But no matter how fast they ran, they could never outrun Drogon.
Before they could take more than a few steps, a small black shadow would flash through the air—piercing straight through their chests.
Only when they glanced down and saw the massive hole torn through their bodies did they collapse, dying in unwilling disbelief.
The remaining Unsullied, the newly trained soldiers, and Jorah's men also witnessed Drogon's devastating attack.
Watching him tear through the Harpies with terrifying speed, they realized it was only a matter of time before every last assassin was dead.
The hunted quickly became the hunters.
Some began pursuing the fleeing Harpies, while others rushed to block the exits of the arena, ensuring that none could escape.
Within just ten minutes, hundreds of Sons of the Harpy had been slaughtered.
Yet Drogon showed no sign of stopping.
Nearly another ten minutes passed before the last Harpy fell. At last, not a single one remained standing anywhere in the arena.
Only then did Drogon end the massacre.
He flew back and settled calmly onto Daenerys's shoulder.
Despite having pierced through nearly a thousand enemies, not a single drop of blood stained his body.
His dark crimson scales remained smooth and reflective, as if polished metal.
Seeing Drogon return to her shoulder, Daenerys carefully examined him. Aside from a faint scar near the base of his newly grown forelimb, he appeared unharmed.
Only then did she finally relax.
If Drogon had not arrived in time, she and her advisors might all have died in the attack.
Tyrion and the others stared at the perfectly composed dragon perched on Daenerys's shoulder, still unable to reconcile the elegant creature before them with the battlefield below—where corpses with massive holes torn through their bodies lay scattered across the sand.
Yara Greyjoy, witnessing Drogon's power for the first time, was even more stunned.
She had seen his adult form, immense and nearly impossible to harm.
But she had also witnessed the terrifying lethality of his juvenile form.
Before arriving in Meereen, she had only heard rumors that Queen Daenerys possessed three dragons. Beyond that, she knew almost nothing.
She had never imagined the black dragon could be this terrifying.
Not only did he possess four limbs, unlike the others, but his appearance was utterly different from the other two dragons.
Weapons could barely harm him. He could change his size at will.
Yara could hardly imagine the devastation that would follow if this dragon shrank down and unleashed that same killing speed within an army of tens of thousands.
The thought alone made her shiver.
Even those who already knew how powerful Drogon was could not hide their shock as they stared at the bodies scattered across the arena—each corpse pierced clean through with a gaping hole.
Drogon was becoming stronger and stronger, and the speed of his transformation continued to astonish them.
Yet compared with Daenerys's advisors, the people most shocked were the surviving spectators of the arena.
Drogon's appearance alone had already stunned them. His enormous size and fearsome form were far beyond anything they had expected.
Those who had never seen him before were stunned—but even the people of Slaver's Bay who had seen him before were equally astonished. When Drogon first arrived, many had thought an entirely new kind of dragon had appeared.
Only when they saw him defending Daenerys did they begin to suspect that it might be her black dragon, Drogon. And when he shrank back into his smaller form, they were finally certain.
They simply could not understand how he had changed so drastically.
Not only had his appearance and coloration become different, he had even grown two additional forelimbs.
With the Sons of the Harpy completely eliminated, soldiers began clearing the arena. The bodies of the assassins were arranged neatly in rows, waiting to be identified.
Daenerys did not immediately order the arena gates opened to let the surviving spectators leave. Instead, she asked them to identify the masked attackers—those who had nearly killed them or had murdered their friends and family.
Looking at the nearly thousand corpses laid out in orderly rows, each one pierced through the chest, the witnesses were once again shaken by the sight.
Yet the spectators held little resentment toward Daenerys for keeping them there.
Compared to those who had died, they already considered themselves fortunate. Waiting a little longer meant nothing—especially when the queen's purpose was to uncover more members of the Sons of the Harpy and avenge the victims.
Daenerys then ordered Grey Worm and Jorah to investigate the situation outside the arena and determine whether any other riots had erupted in Meereen.
The rest of her advisors remained inside, waiting for their report.
Less than twenty minutes later, Grey Worm and Jorah returned.
No unrest had occurred anywhere else in the city. It appeared that the Sons of the Harpy had concentrated all their forces on the arena.
Clearly, this attack had been a carefully planned assassination attempt targeting Daenerys and her advisors—and it had been launched precisely when Drogon was not by her side.
After witnessing how Drogon had slaughtered hundreds of Harpies during the previous uprising, they would never have dared attack while he was present.
Through the spectators' identification of the corpses, it soon became clear that only a small portion of the attackers came from the three cities of Slaver's Bay.
Most of the dead were strangers to them.
Once the identification was complete, Daenerys ordered the Unsullied to allow the spectators to leave the arena.
She also commanded the soldiers to carry the bodies outside the arena and arrange them once more. The bodies of the innocent spectators who had been killed were placed among them.
The people of Meereen were then invited to identify both the Harpy assassins and the bodies of their own loved ones.
At the same time, the display served another purpose—to show the people of Meereen the brutality of the Sons of the Harpy, and to warn them not to join such a movement blindly.
More than an hour later, the identification process was finished.
The results matched those obtained earlier inside the arena: only a small number of the attackers came from Slaver's Bay.
The reddish-brown hair of the unidentified bodies made their origins easy to guess.
They likely came from New Ghis and Old Ghis, cities that had long been the main supporters of the Sons of the Harpy. Their people had also taken part in the previous uprising.
They had even attempted to attack Yunkai and Astapor. Fortunately, Rhaegal and Viserion had helped defend those cities, preventing disaster.
Daenerys had been too occupied stabilizing Slaver's Bay to deal with New Ghis and Old Ghis.
She had never expected their nobles to repeatedly send the Sons of the Harpy to attack Meereen—twice coming dangerously close to success.
After everyone finished analyzing the situation, Tyrion stepped forward with a proposal.
"Your Grace, I believe we should send troops against New Ghis and Old Ghis. They have plotted attacks against us twice and even attempted to seize Yunkai and Astapor. If we do not respond, rulers across the world—including the nobles of Westeros—will begin to see you as weak. That would be extremely harmful to your future campaign to unite the Seven Kingdoms."
Daenerys fully understood the consequences Tyrion described.
If she allowed the world to view her as weak, it would not only undermine her rule over Slaver's Bay—it would also make it far harder to secure allies.
After all, no one wished to ally with a ruler who appeared powerless.
Originally, Daenerys had planned to stabilize Slaver's Bay before crossing the Narrow Sea to claim Westeros.
Her true goal had always been King's Landing, the Iron Throne, and the ancestral seat of her family—Dragonstone.
She had remained in Slaver's Bay for two reasons.
First, she refused to allow the slaves she had freed to fall back into chains.
Second, her military strength was still insufficient. She needed time to gather strength.
But while she had hoped to rule Slaver's Bay peacefully, the nobles of New Ghis and Old Ghis clearly had no intention of letting her remain.
Again and again, they had tried to drive her away.
"If we launch a war against Ghis," Daenerys said slowly, voicing her greatest concern, "we will lose many soldiers."