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Essos, Meereen
First moon of 58 AC
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The air over Slaver's Bay had grown dense, heavy with a dry, suffocating heat that heralded the storm of fire Balerion the Black Dread was about to unleash. Atop the yellow-brick ramparts, the discipline of Meereen's defenders was crumbling rapidly. The archers and crossbowmen, who just minutes before had been smiling behind centuries of history and impenetrable stone, stood paralyzed as they gazed upon the immense monster darkening the sky.
Balerion was no legend or bedtime story meant to frighten children on winter nights. He was a mountain of scales and muscle, a jet-black shadow whose bat-like wings blotted out the last faint light of dusk. Beside him, Dreamfyre danced upon the air currents with lethal grace, her wings tracing near-perfect circles above the pyramids that rose into the sky—tombs of gold and marble that they were soon to become.
Aboard the Black Dread, Aerea Targaryen felt the beast's vibrations resounding directly through her bones. The armor of Valyrian steel she wore did not merely protect her; it caught the golden glare of the setting sun, making her shine like an angel, albeit far from a benevolent one. Her fingers, firm on the reinforced leather reins, did not tremble. Not a trace remained of the timid girl Rhaena had once tried to hide from the world.
Aerea looked down. From above, the more than five hundred thousand Dothraki horsemen resembled an ocean of iron and black leather. The horses—armored in chest-plates and bards of braided steel that Caspian himself had ordered forged in Qohor, based on the armor design from the Minecraft menu—pawed at the earth impatiently. The curved blades of their arakhs, forged from the finest steel brought from the kingdom's newly acquired smithies in Qohor, glinted with a cold, thirsty sheen.
Aerea tilted her head, searching for her mother's gaze. A few dozen yards away, Rhaena Targaryen hovered atop Dreamfyre. The Blue Queen kept her dragon in a high, distant circular flight pattern. Rhaena had no intention of intervening. She had flown to protect her daughter, but seeing Aerea's posture, she realized that interfering now would only push the young woman further away. Rhaena crossed her arms over the pommel of her saddle, watching her heir's composure with a mixture of bitter pride and awe. On Aerea's face there was no hesitation—only the resolve of a conqueror, like her ancestors before her.
Aerea tightened her thighs against Balerion's back and leaned forward, speaking to the beast with quiet firmness.
"Dracarys," Aerea whispered.
Balerion needed no shout. The Black Dread parted his jaws, revealing a cavern of teeth the size of executioner swords, as a red and golden glow ignited deep within his throat. With a single beat of his wings that generated a gust capable of overturning a wagon, the dragon dove with measured precision toward the Great Northern Gate of Meereen.
The flame that erupted from Balerion's maw was no ordinary fire. It was a column of solar heat—a tide of black fire edged with gold that consumed the very air. Aerea did not wish to reduce the entire city to ash; she knew her people required an entrance, not an empty funeral pyre. She directed the dragon's breath with precision against the section of wall flanking the bronze gates and the upper defensive towers.
The three-hundred-year-old yellow brick could not withstand it. Under the extreme heat of the Black Dread, the masonry did not merely crack; it melted, turning into a glowing sludge of liquid stone and ash. The defenders occupying the upper towers had no time to scream. Their bronze armor fused to their skin in seconds before they were vaporized by the shockwave. The impact of the dragon's breath shattered the iron mechanisms holding Meereen's bronze gates, driving them inward with a deafening roar that echoed off the distant mountains.
A breach of fire and ruin was left gaping in the northern wall—a colossal tear through which smoke rose toward the heavens like a black pillar.
Below, on the battlefield, Essino raised his arakh to the sky. The folded steel of its blade gleamed as it caught the light of the flames.
"Akeyn Makey!" the Bloodrider roared, adapting a word from the ancient language of the Joggwins as his own battle cry. "For the Khaleesi! For the Great Khal!"
The bone horn sounded once more, and the hundreds of thousands of horsemen charged.
The ground of Meereen shook as if the earth itself were splitting open. The tide of Dothraki advanced at a deafening gallop. They were no longer the bare-chested warriors of legend who fell before disciplined ranks of pikes; they were an armored war machine. The stallions, protected by light yet resilient armor, slammed into the defensive barricades the Meereenese had improvised behind the breach, shattering them like straw.
Caqokko entered the gap at the head of the vanguard, wielding his poleaxe with staggering force. The first Meereenese guard officer who attempted to stop him with an iron spear saw the tip of his weapon bounce uselessly off the Dothraki's steel breastplate, right before Caqokko's axe split both his helmet and skull in two.
"Death to the Masters!" Qrano shouted as he crossed the smoldering ruins, cutting throats with fluid, precise movements. His fine-steel arakh sliced through the cheap chainmail of the pit guards as if it were rotten cloth.
The Dothraki poured into Meereen like a plague of iron locusts. They spread through the main avenues and market squares. The city's resistance was crushed instantly. The city watch, accustomed to whipping defenseless slaves and maintaining order through cruelty, suddenly found themselves facing battle-hardened warriors who asked for no quarter and showed no mercy. The arakhs carved bloody arcs through the air; the armored horses trampled soldiers attempting to flee toward the pyramids, breaking ranks and crushing bones under their reinforced hooves. The clash of metal, the shrieks of the fallen, and the thunderous gallop echoed off the brick walls of the narrow streets, turning the proud Yellow City into a hunting maze.
In the skies above, Rhaena Targaryen observed the battle's progress from Dreamfyre's back. She felt a strange warmth in her chest—a blend of relief and ravenous pride. Aerea commanded Balerion with a mastery few would have thought possible for someone who had spent most of her life hidden away in stone chambers. The young Khaleesi flew the Black Dread in slow passes, ensuring the Dothraki vanguard advanced without being ambushed from side streets, using small bursts of flame to clear distant barricades.
She is a true dragon, Rhaena thought, a bitter smile touching her lips. I taught her to fear the world, and she has learned to rule it.
Yet, the dangers of war are never truly absent.
On the eastern wall, a contingent of elite Meereenese crossbowmen, protected by the stone parapet that remained standing, managed to set up three large defensive scorpions. Designed for naval warfare, they had been adapted to launch thick iron bolts. The commander, desperate as he watched the city fall, ordered them aimed at the shadow hovering above the northern breach.
"Aim for the rider!" the officer shrieked. "If the woman falls, the savages will lose their way!"
Two bolts shot forth with a sharp, metallic hiss. The first passed a few yards from Balerion's left wing, vanishing into the smoke. But the second, driven by extreme tension, tore through the air and struck hard against Balerion's chest.
The impact was brutal. The force caused Aerea to briefly lose her balance in the saddle, letting go of one of the reins while Balerion roared in pain at the blow against his chest scales.
From a distance, Rhaena saw the strike. She saw her daughter reel for a second atop her dragon.
In that instant, something snapped within Rhaena Targaryen.
The maternal instinct, suppressed for years by fear, exhaustion, and the resignation of past defeats, transformed into a blind, consuming rage. The cautious woman who had fled Maegor, the dowager queen who hid within the walls of Dragonstone, vanished entirely. In her place emerged the pure blood of Old Valyria—cold, calculating, and ruthless.
"They dared," Rhaena whispered. Her voice was barely a murmur, but an ancient hatred flared in her violet eyes. "They dared touch my daughter."
Rhaena pulled hard on Dreamfyre's leather reins, digging her heels into the dragon's flanks.
"Dracarys, Dreamfyre! HERE AND NOW!"
Dreamfyre, a beast long considered beautiful yet wild and difficult to bend, answered her rider's fury with a sharp, savage roar that split the sky. The cobalt dragon folded her wings and plunged in a suicidal dive toward the eastern wall, descending at breakneck speed.
The Meereenese crossbowmen scrambled to reload the scorpion, but it was already too late.
Dreamfyre swept along the wall's battlements. Her breath was not the heavy, black fire of Balerion, but a bright blue flame of such intense heat that it turned wood white and melted flesh instantly. Rhaena showed no mercy. She rode Dreamfyre down the entire length of the eastern wall, scorching the ramparts from end to end.
The blue fire bathed the stone, trapping the soldiers in their firing niches. Men ran engulfed in azure flames, throwing themselves from the forty-yard-high wall to the streets below to escape the agony, only to shatter on the pavement. The catapults and scorpions turned into blazing pyres that burst under the tension of their dry gut-strings.
Rhaena did not stop there. She wheeled Dreamfyre over the guard towers of the gatehouses, burning every archer, officer, or mercenary holding a weapon along the walls. The Blue Queen, who had initially intended only to be a cautious observer, became a relentless storm of fire that snuffed out any remaining attempt at a counterattack on the high walls.
Below, the Dothraki clearing the lower courtyards looked up, cheering the passage of the blue dragon.
"Hahahahah!" Caqokko roared, laughing wildly as he smashed through the doors of a magistrate's mansion with his armored horse.
By the time the sun had fully set behind the horizon of Slaver's Bay, the sounds of open combat had ceased, replaced by weeping, the crackle of burned stone, and the constant hum of half a million horsemen occupying the city. Meereen, the impenetrable city, the jewel of the Masters, had fallen in less than three hours.
The vast squares of flat brick were littered with the bodies of guards and mercenaries. The slaves, fearful at first, had begun pouring out from the pits and vaults, staring in disbelief at the corpses of their former oppressors and at the armored giants patrolling the streets on iron-clad horses.
In the central plaza, directly beneath the Great Pyramid of Meereen, Balerion lay upon the stone pavement, resting his massive head between his talons. His steady breathing released small plumes of smoke that kept the curious at bay. A few yards away, Dreamfyre folded her cobalt wings, maintaining a watchful stance.
Aerea dismounted from Balerion's back. Her Valyrian steel armor was streaked with soot and flecks of blood, but her face remained calm. Rhaena descended from Dreamfyre almost simultaneously. She rushed to her daughter, taking her face in both hands and inspecting her carefully.
"Are you all right?" Rhaena asked, her voice still trembling with battle adrenaline. "Balerion was hit. I saw the scorpion."
Aerea smiled faintly.
"I am fine, Mother," Aerea said. Then, looking into Rhaena's eyes, she added with warmth, "Though I must admit, Dreamfyre looked magnificent clearing those battlements. I didn't expect you to have my back like that."
Rhaena let out a long sigh, dropping her hands, though that hard glint she had rediscovered in the air remained in her eyes.
"You are my daughter, Aerea. I can let you fight your wars, but I will not allow any worm in this city to try and take your life as long as I draw breath. If you are going to claim this continent, I will help you."
The clatter of hooves interrupted their conversation.
Essino, Caqokko, and Qrano dismounted from their armored horses and advanced toward the two Targaryen women. Behind them, several hundred Dothraki warriors dragged forward more than a thousand men dressed in fine silk robes embroidered with gold and purple. They were the Great Masters of Meereen—the aristocrats of the pyramids, the owners of the slave pits, and the magistrates who hours ago had offered silver for the horde to leave. Among them was Grazdan zo Galare, weeping uncontrollably with his hands bound behind his back, his silk attire torn and dirt-stained.
Essino stopped three paces from Aerea. Resting his hand on the hilt of his arakh, he dropped to one knee. Caqokko and Qrano immediately followed suit, as did the warriors filling the square.
"Khaleesi," Essino said in his slow, deep Valyrian. "The city is yours. The gates are destroyed, the guards are dead, and the chains of the pits have been broken by our hands. The free men of this land acclaim you in the streets."
Aerea looked at the group of Meereenese nobles trembling on the ground, surrounded by armed riders.
"And these?" Aerea asked, gesturing toward the men in silk. "Who are they?"
"They are the Good Masters and the Great Masters of Meereen," Essino replied, spitting to the side with contempt. "The owners of human flesh. We have them all. We dragged them from their pyramids as they tried to hide from the fire."
Essino looked up, meeting Aerea's eyes directly.
"Tell us, Khaleesi. What would you have us do with them? What are your orders for the lords of this city?"
Aerea remained silent for a moment. She looked up at the colossal pyramids reaching toward the night sky, then at the whip marks on the backs of the slaves watching the scene from the edges of the square, and finally thought of the man who was not there—the king who had flown east to reduce Qarth to ashes for sending assassins after his life.
Aerea turned back to Essino.
"You have served Caspian from the very beginning, Essino," Aerea said, her voice clear. "You have ridden at his side in every campaign since the start. Tell me... what would the Great Khal do if he were standing in this square right now?"
Essino allowed a grim smile to touch his lips—a gesture reflecting his absolute respect for his Khal.
"A living enemy is a problem that returns with a dagger in the night. An enemy who begs for mercy is only waiting for you to turn your back so he can buy more steel. To the Khal... a dead enemy is one less enemy. And a living master is a chain that has not been fully broken."
Aerea listened to the Bloodrider's words. Feeling them resonate within her chest, she understood the true nature of the kingdom Caspian was building. It was not a kingdom of paper treaties or silver paid to keep the peace; it was a kingdom forged on relentless justice and the definitive end of ancient tyranny.
Aerea took a step forward. The Valyrian steel of her armor clanked softly. Her voice, strong and devoid of any hesitation, carried across the plaza.
"Then judgment is passed," Aerea declared, pointing at the bound nobles. "Every man who bore the title of Master... every man who bought, sold, or chained another human being... every man who grew rich off the sweat and blood of Meereen's slaves shall pay in the same coin he gave."
Aerea looked directly at Grazdan zo Galare, who let out a terrified wail as he realized the fate awaiting him.
"There will be no imprisonment for them," the Khaleesi continued. "No ransoms, no gold to buy their pardon. Crucify them all. From the city gates to the roads leading down to the river. Let every man, woman, and child who passes through the walls of Meereen know what happens to those who seek to chain the weak."
A moment of absolute silence fell over the square as the order was translated into Dothraki.
Then, the crowd exploded.
The Dothraki riders raised their arakhs to the sky, letting out a deafening roar that shook the walls of the Great Pyramid. The beating of shields, the clashing of steel, and the shouts of victory drowned out the pleading shrieks of the Meereenese nobles as they were forcibly dragged toward the outer walls and roads. The former slaves, realizing the sentence that had been passed, joined the clamor, cheering the name of the Targaryen queen who had restored their lives.
More than a thousand men—the entire aristocracy of the largest slave city in the world—were led outside. Along the banks of the Skahazadhan River and surrounding the yellow-brick walls Balerion had breached, the Dothraki began erecting the wooden crosses.
Rhaena stepped up beside her daughter, watching as the horsemen carried out the decree with terrifying efficiency.
"You will change the history of this continent, my daughter. And you began doing so tonight," Rhaena murmured, standing at her side.
Aerea did not look away from the beams rising against the starry sky.
"No, Mother," the young Khaleesi said, the night wind stirring her silver hair. "I am only beginning to change mine."