On the boundless sea, the setting sun scattered liquid gold across the tips of the waves.
Ashara leaned against the gunwale, the sea breeze gently brushing her flaxen hair. She pressed her fingers to her lips and let out a long, melodious whistle. The sound skimmed over the surface of the water, vanishing into the shimmering distance.
After a moment of silence, the sea on the starboard side suddenly swelled into an ink-blue "hill." With a massive crash of water, a gigantic Sea King creature broke the surface—the peculiar beast the sailors called the "Sea Cat." Its enormous emerald eyes blinked, and then, with surprising affection, it rested its scaled paws on the high gunwale, letting streams of cold seawater cascade from its claws like miniature waterfalls.
"Hungry, aren't you?" Ashara chuckled softly, lifting a glistening silver mackerel from a wooden bucket beside her. The Sea Cat made urgent, gurgling noises, like a child begging for candy. She tossed the fish high into the air. The beast extended its neck with agility, caught the fish with precision, and swallowed it in a few gulps.
Euron laughed heartily. In truth, that bit of food wasn't even enough to fill the gap between its teeth; it was a snack at best.
The scene attracted a gaggle of young Greyjoys. They crowded at the other end of the deck, a mix of fear and curiosity. Little heads poked out from behind coils of rope and barrels, their voices rising in low, excited whispers. "Look! It's the Sea Cat!" "It's back! Look how big it is!"
Ashara turned, her gaze sweeping over the excited children. Her tone carried a gentle correction. "Don't just keep calling her 'Sea Cat'." She reached out, scratching the softer scales beneath the creature's chin with practiced ease. "She has a name. It's Marina."
The intelligence of the Sea King allowed it to understand her words. The massive Sea Cat named Marina narrowed its deep green eyes in contentment. Its enormous head bobbed up and down in rhythm with Ashara's scratching, and a satisfied purr vibrated from its throat, shaking the very planks of the deck. The sound was low and warm, blending with the evening glow into the infinite horizon of sea and sky.
While the warm scene lingered on the vast ocean, Balon Greyjoy stood high on the bridge, taking it all in. He watched Ashara's affectionate interaction with the gentle giant and listened to the children's innocent cheers, letting out a faint, almost imperceptible snort. A look of undeniable arrogance flashed across his face, weathered rough by the sea wind.
"Playing with pets... a woman's folly," he muttered low to himself. He strode to the other side of the gunwale, took a deep breath, and let out a piercing, long whistle that cut through the clouds. This sound was starkly different from Ashara's gentle summons; it carried raw wildness and an irresistible command, like a war drum beating upon the calm sea.
Before the whistle faded, the water on the port side seemed to be pulled downward by an invisible giant hand, suddenly forming a massive whirlpool. Then, a gigantic dorsal fin, shimmering with a cold, metallic luster, pierced the surface. Following it rose a terrifying behemoth—the Steel-Scaled Sawshark. Balon had named it "Razorfin."
Its body was four hundred meters long, like a moving mountain of iron. It was covered in scales the size of shields, each gleaming with a dull alloy sheen, like natural armor. Most terrifying was its towering dorsal fin—a row of jagged, scimitar-like teeth pointing toward the sky, their edges flashing dangerously white in the sunset. A ghostly blue barb flickered at its tail, ready to strike like lightning. When it slightly opened its massive maw, it revealed not just teeth, but a dense, layered forest of serrations, enough to convince any witness that it could easily grind the hardest hull into dust.
"This is worthy of being called a Sea King!" Balon laughed boldly, his eyes shining with the light of conquest. With a clean flip, he landed steadily on a custom-made metal high-backed chair fixed in front of Razorfin's broad dorsal fin. The chair melded with the giant shark's steel body, as if he were part of this killing machine.
"Razorfin! Go!" he commanded.
Razorfin's massive body launched suddenly, exploding with a terrifying speed completely disproportionate to its size. Like a black arrow loosed from a bow, it shot into the distance. Where it passed, the sea was forcibly split by that peerless power, and the giant serrated dorsal fin plowed a straight, bottomless white trench through the blue ocean. It was not swimming in the sea; it was slicing the entire ocean open with a blade.
Before the scar cut by Balon and "Razorfin" could heal, a deep, booming laugh filled with obvious disdain came from the flagship.
Everyone turned to see King Quellon, his thick arms resting on the railing. His bronze face shone with oil from drink and wind, his eyes glittering with a near-savage pride.
"Child's play!" His voice boomed like a bell, drowning out the noise of the waves. "Let me open your eyes to what a true ruler of the deep looks like!" He took a deep breath, his chest expanding like bellows, and roared toward the fathomless ink-blue waters: "Apophis—!"
The moment the name left his lips, it felt as if an ancient curse had been triggered.
The seawater beneath the ship turned bone-chillingly cold without warning. Light was rapidly swallowed as a massive shadow rose from the unobservable abyss. Then, it appeared.
A seven-hundred-meter giant serpent that coiled in the deepest trenches. Its body didn't swim; it crushed all light and hope as it ascended. Black-purple scales grew in reverse like rotting dragon scales, each edge sharp as a scalpel. Green, viscous liquid constantly oozed from the gaps between the scales, hitting the seawater with a tooth-aching hiss of corrosion. Even more horrific, the natural patterns of the scales eerily combined to form countless twisted skull shapes, as if millions of souls were permanently imprisoned beneath this writhing skin.
Its triangular head was twenty meters wide. With a bone-chilling grinding sound, its massive jaws slowly split open nearly one hundred and eighty degrees, revealing seven rows of spiraling, ghostly fangs. The serpent's body bulged in unsettling segments, with every vertebra piercing the skin to form pale, gear-like "bone-spur gills." They opened and closed with its breathing, like rows of rotating, bloody saw blades.
Its skin was a sickly translucent color, faintly revealing the glowing venom flowing like magma within its body.
This beast named Apophis seemed to fully understand that its master summoned it for a display of power. It didn't unleash its full strength, merely releasing a wisp of toxin. The surrounding waters instantly turned into a zone of death. Schools of fish dissolved into flesh and blood in the blink of an eye, sinking as white bones. A strange, oily sheen, colorful as paint but smelling of bitter almonds and rotting corpses, spread across the surface.
"Heh heh." King Quellon smiled with satisfaction at this domain of death, patting the skull-scaled head.
Apophis obediently lowered that terrifying, massive head slowly to the edge of the deck, the weight making the wooden hull groan in protest. King Quellon boldly grabbed a thick, tough rein connected to the serpent's bone gills and leaped agilely onto the back of the serpent's neck, bristling with bone spurs and mucus.
"Go!"
With his command, Apophis slid silently into the water. It didn't sprint violently like Razorfin, but every subtle churn of its massive trunk, every opening and closing of a scale, created countless deadly, massive whirlpools beneath the surface. The entire sea seemed to turn into a pot of boiling, thick soup stirred by an invisible giant ladle—chaotic waves and clustered vortexes displaying unmatched destructive power from the abyss.
---
While King Quellon's Apophis churned the sea, whipping up deadly whirlpools, Ashara had already gently patted the massive head of the Sea Cat—Marina.
Affection showed in those giant emerald eyes, but Marina obediently sank into the deep sea, stirring up a gentle wave. Ashara watched the massive shadow disappear into the gloomy blue, a look of undeniable protection in her eyes. She couldn't bear to let the gentle Marina get dragged into this vortex of dangerous one-upmanship, not even to be touched by a drop of that venom.
Not far away, Euron stood quietly in the shadows, taking in the grandstanding of his father and brother. A bitter, imperceptible smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, dissolving into the sea wind before it reached his eyes. When he distributed these Sea King beasts to his family, was it really so they could use them to show off?
What flashed before his eyes was the image of the Greyjoy fleet sailing alone through storms. He couldn't always protect every longship, safeguard every patch of sea they conquered or traded in. These behemoths were meant to be mobile fortresses, deep-sea deterrents, cornerstones to secure the family's trade routes and extend the Iron Islands' rule—not toys for a pissing contest.
His thoughts drifted further, skimming over the noisy waters. Fortunately, his battle-crazed uncle Baelor Blacktyde—now stationed in the Stepstones—wasn't here. Otherwise, with his temper, he would surely summon his terrifying deep-sea spider, "Thousand-Eyes," a monster covered in giant eyes that could scare the piss out of bloodthirsty pirates, to join this increasingly absurd "gathering" of Sea Kings. Then, this sea wouldn't just be sliced and poisoned; it would be turned into a complete exhibition of madness and chaos.
While the vast sea still churned with undercurrents from the power of the three beasts, the atmosphere on deck had quietly shifted.
Victarion, Urrigon, and Aeron—Euron's three younger brothers—had gathered around at some point. They didn't speak, but their eyes, tempered by the sea wind and unmistakably Greyjoy, stared unblinkingly at their brother. In those gazes mixed undisguised longing and the young ambition to prove themselves.
Immediately following them, another set of younger eyes turned his way. Rodrik and Maron, two half-grown lads, along with their sharp-eyed sister Asha, joined this silent petition.
Euron had once stood before a roaring bonfire, promising to the waves and the stars: "Every Greyjoy in whose veins flows the blood of salt and iron shall possess a Sea King beast to guard their voyage." The children remembered this sentence better than any house words.
On the periphery of the group, Dagmer, newly granted the Greyjoy name, looked particularly uneasy. This warrior famous for his bravery dared only to steal a quick, reverent glance at Euron from the corner of his eye before quickly lowering his head to study the grain of the deck beneath his feet. He wasn't sure if such immense glory would grace a name not born to it.
Euron's gaze slowly swept over these faces—three brothers, three nephews and nieces, one anxious new member, and... the image of the swaddled infant, Theon, barely a month old, floated into his mind.
Seven. No, eight. Eight in total.
An invisible pressure, far more draining than controlling a Sea King, instantly gripped him. He could almost hear the doors of his deep-sea treasury groaning. Euron raised a hand, rubbing his suddenly throbbing temples hard, and let out a sigh mixed with helplessness and amusement.
"Alright," his voice broke the silence, carrying an undeniable authority. "Stop looking at me like that. I have never spoken falsely on my promises."
His gaze landed one by one on those youngest, most fervent faces, his tone iron-clad. "But the rules remain unchanged—you must wait until after your coming-of-age ceremony."
Euron cast a cold, sideways glance at the little dwarf, Tyrion, who had been staring at him intently. "What are you looking at? You're a Lannister!"
Tyrion looked up to the heavens and sighed long and hard, lamenting the unfairness of fate for his surname for the first time...