c32 – Related
Then the rope was cut.
A desperate roar echoed from below, followed by a slight pause, then a dull thud, like a tattered sack heavy with a load falling to the ground.
Thud
all sound ceased, only the relentless crashing waves of the Narrow Sea against the black rocks beneath Dragonstone remained.
'Bloody Hand from Rhys' had fallen to his death from the cliff.
Viserys stood alone on the castle wall of Dragonstone, staring into the darkness below, unable to see anything through the night mist rolling in from the sea. The grappling hook attached to the other side also slipped free and fell to the ground with a sharp metallic clatter.
Viserys leaned against the cold stone window of the ancient Valyrian fortress, slightly panting.
"It's over."
Because of his height, he had actually been leaning dangerously over the edge of the narrow window arch, the same type of narrow openings built into Dragonstone's twisted towers. At the last moment he drew his sword and severed the rope held by the sellsword, sending the man plummeting from the high volcanic cliff that surrounded the castle.
Although it was midnight and the fortress was completely shrouded in darkness, making it impossible to see anything clearly from the window, Viserys was certain the man was dead.
There was no need to confirm.
Having lived on Dragonstone for half a year, Viserys was unlike the carefree Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, who often ran through the halls without caring about the dangers. Viserys had long since memorized the complicated structure of the castle the spiral towers shaped like dragons, the stone bridges, the courtyards, and the sheer cliffs that dropped straight into the sea.
Moreover, he had clearly heard the sound of something heavy striking stone.
There was no doubt the man had not fallen into the sea, but had instead smashed onto the jagged rocks below the castle wall, where the waves constantly crashed against Dragonstone's black volcanic shore.
No one could survive such a fall.
...
"I... killed someone again."
And now.
The boy jumped down from the stone window, leaning weakly against the corridor wall before slowly sliding down to the cold stone floor, not wanting to move a single finger.
Viserys was exhausted to the point of collapse. If not for his fierce will to survive the stubborn pride of a House Targaryen prince he probably would not have been able to keep running through the dark halls while being hunted.
Huff~
The boy sat on the ground, panting heavily, then raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
Much of the blood splattered across his face had already congealed.
The dried blood mixed with newly forming sweat, creating a disturbing contrast with the boy's youthful face and his clear pale-violet eyes the unmistakable eyes of old Valyria.
It was a chilling sight.
This seemingly innocent little boy had, in a very short time, used ambush, deception, hiding in the shadowed corridors, and careful planning to kill three hardened sellswords.
One of them had been killed near the outer tower.
Another had died in the passage after encountering Sir William, whose presence had forced the mercenaries to split their pursuit.
And the last one"Bloody Hand from Rhys" had just fallen from the cliff outside the window.
Viserys's long silver-gold hair clung to his cheeks as he breathed heavily, trying to calm his violently beating heart.
Only then did he finally have time to recall the entire incident.
"What... happened?"
When the attack began, Viserys had not even had time to react.
One moment he had been moving through the quiet halls of Dragonstone, and the next moment blades appeared in the darkness.
He only knew one thing.
These men had come to kill him.
So he ran.
He hid among the twisting staircases and dragon-shaped corridors of the castle.
He set traps, waited in ambush, and struck when they were careless.
Everything he did was simply to survive.
Yet even now, he still did not know who these people were or why they wanted him dead.
Viserys's first thought was Robert Baratheon, the new king who had taken the House Targaryen throne after Robert's Rebellion.
The Usurper hated every remaining Targaryen.
If Robert had truly learned that a surviving Targaryen prince was hiding on Dragonstone, sending assassins across the Narrow Sea would not be impossible.
In fact, Viserys's first guess was almost entirely correct.
But as for the identity of these killers, that was where Viserys was completely ignorant.
He knew very little about the cities and powers across the Narrow Sea in Essos.
Most of his knowledge came only from the travel journals he loved to read in the castle library books describing Braavos, Pentos, and the wealthy merchant cities of the Free Cities.
As for sellsword companies and the so-called Courageous Group, Viserys had absolutely no understanding.
Then his attention shifted to the strange black smoke he had absorbed after killing the men.
Clang...
He slowly drew the short sword at his waist.
The blade, though clear and sharp, was still stained with dark blood.
This was the blood from when he killed the first mercenary.
The sword reflected a faint light in the firelight, and Viserys' gaze was fixed on that reflection. Three seconds later...
Whoosh~
The black mist slowly reformed before his eyes.
It was still written in ancient High Valyrian script, the strange symbols representing the sun, moon, water, and earth.
Viserys didn't know the true nature of this black mist, but one thing he was absolutely certain of:
this black mist, his mysterious "golden finger," had an inexplicable connection to the ancient Valyrian Freehold, the legendary empire destroyed centuries ago by a catastrophic disaster known throughout the world as the Doom of Valyria.
Half a year ago, when he first landed on Dragonstone for his coronation as the surviving prince of House Targaryen, he had suddenly fainted while standing beneath the statues of the Faith of the Seven in the castle's ancient sept.
After that moment, he dreamed countless strange and terrifying dreams.
The most vivid and longest of them was a vision of unimaginable destruction.
Volcanoes erupting across the land, the ground splitting apart with earth-shaking force, magnificent dragonlord cities collapsing beneath rivers of fire, and the once unified peninsula shattering into scattered islands in a boiling sea.
In that nightmare he seemed to witness the end of the greatest civilization humanity had ever known.
Since that moment, the most prosperous empire in human history an empire ruled by dragonlords who commanded living dragons and sorcery had been completely erased from the world.
The ruins of Valyria eventually became what sailors and merchants now feared as the Smoking Sea, a cursed region sometimes called the "Sea of Smoke" or "Devil's Land," where broken ruins, demons, and shadows were said to linger.
Even four hundred years later, almost no ship dared sail there.
Its secrets remained buried forever beneath ash, smoke, and cursed waters.
The Targaryen family had once been a minor house among the dragonlords of Valyria.
Twelve years before the Doom, a prophet was born within the Targaryen family.
That girl was Daenys the Dreamer.
She foresaw the coming destruction through prophetic dreams and persuaded her father, Aenar Targaryen, to abandon Valyria entirely and move the family westward to Dragonstone, the Valyrian outpost located near the continent of Westeros.
Because of that decision, the Targaryens escaped the Doom.
What had once been merely a minor dragonlord house later rose to power and conquered Westeros, ruling the Seven Kingdoms for nearly three hundred years after Aegon I Targaryen began the Aegon's Conquest.
Viserys had learned all of this after arriving at Dragonstone and studying the ancient books stored in the castle's library, which had served as the Targaryen stronghold for centuries.
At the same time, the old maester of the castle patiently explained many legends and historical accounts about Valyrian civilization to Viserys.
After all, this was the history of the Targaryens themselves.
To understand the histories of the great noble houses of Westeros, a king must first understand the origin of his own bloodline.
"Perhaps... one day I will unravel this secret."
Viserys thought silently, his pale violet eyes fixed on the swirling black mist before him, including the mysterious characters written in High Valyrian.
Inside the mist, the strange symbols slowly formed clear words.
[Viserys Targaryen]
Sun Element: 5
Earth Element: 6
Water Element: 8
Moon Element: 20
Meanwhile, besides this, there was also a thin wisp of black smoke drifting outside the main cluster of mist.
He had absorbed it after killing the first mercenary earlier in the night, but he had intentionally restrained it, preventing it from immediately merging into his body.
Viserys wanted to test something.
He wondered whether he could control this wisp of black smoke and direct it to enhance a specific ability that he desired.
The two enemies he killed afterward had not produced any additional black smoke that he could absorb.
This made Viserys suspect that the phenomenon might be related to the way the enemy died.
The first mercenary had been killed directly by his blade.
But the others had died from traps and distance attacks.
Because of that difference, Viserys guessed that the condition for absorbing this strange black mist from an enemy required him to personally kill them in close combat.
Direct contact seemed necessary for the power to flow into him.
But as for the true nature of this power, Viserys had absolutely no idea.
Was it the absorption of their souls?
Or perhaps…
the lingering life force that still remained within their corpses after death?
...