Flames coiled around the altar like an enormous serpent.
The yellow fire soon deepened into a blazing crimson.
The altar supporting the statues quickly began to buckle beneath the serpent-like blaze, groaning and cracking with ear-grating creaks.
For a brief moment, Malaqo thought the statues upon the altar were begging for mercy.
More likely, it was only the heat distorting the air.
Descriptions like this appeared frequently in The Complete History of Valyria and The History of the Valyrian Conquest.
Both works recorded countless battlefields where dragonfire seemed to burn holes through the heavens themselves.
Compared to those tales, the scene before them was hardly extraordinary.
Soon, the massive altar, standing nearly eight meters tall, billowed thick black smoke.
The smoke gathered into dark clouds that rushed directly toward the mists of Chroyane.
"It's clearing! The fog is clearing!"
Wherever the smoke reached, the gray mist dissolved with astonishing speed.
The soldiers and nobles of Volantis burst into excited cheers.
This meant the natural barrier protecting Viserys along the Rhoyne had vanished completely.
His mere hundred or so warships could never hope to stand against the Volantene fleet.
Once Braavos added its own ships to the campaign, the outcome would be even more hopeless.
Before long, the fog above Chroyane grew thinner and thinner. The shroud that had covered the city for centuries steadily shrank.
At last, the city once known as the Festival City revealed itself once more.
Only then did Malaqo realize that even in ruin, Chroyane dwarfed Volantis.
Though much of the city still disappeared into the distance, he could already estimate its size.
It had been at least three times larger than Volantis.
Its population must once have exceeded a million souls, perhaps considerably more.
At the height of its glory, Chroyane alone could muster an army of two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in a remarkably short time.
The entire Sorrows may once have held well over two million people.
No wonder it had required three hundred dragons for Valyria to finally conquer it.
Even at the height of its own splendor, Volantis could never compare to Chroyane's shadow.
"My Triarch! A dragon! It's the dragon!"
Prompted by an attendant, Malaqo looked upward.
A black dragon with a wingspan of roughly three meters circled above Chroyane.
Against the blue sky, it looked like a streak of spilled ink.
Its appearance caused a brief stir.
The panic quickly faded.
The creature was simply too small.
It could hardly be called a true dragon.
"Archers!" Malaqo shouted immediately. "Ready your bows! Whoever kills that dragon will receive ten thousand thousand gold honors and one hundred slaves!"
The enormous reward instantly ignited the soldiers' enthusiasm.
Every archer fixed burning eyes upon the dragon overhead. The moment it descended low enough, they would fill it with arrows.
Benerro had noticed the black dragon as well.
'A dragon spirit rider... Interesting.'
A faint smile crossed his face.
He recognized at once that Viserys's consciousness resided within the young black dragon.
He also saw how cautious the young king was.
There was no intention of flying lower.
Benerro simply instructed the red priests and fire mages beside him to continue the ritual.
His judgment was correct.
High above, Viserys guided Balerion as he surveyed Chroyane below.
The gray mist had nearly vanished.
Flying more than three hundred meters overhead, he could already distinguish the city's streets.
He even spotted the broken bridge where he had once ventured with his companions.
The stone men upon that bridge were clearly visible.
Only the ever-darkening smoke continued drifting across the sky.
As the fog disappeared and sunlight fell upon them once more, the stone men hurried to leave the bridge.
But victims of greyscale were anything but agile.
The way they staggered along reminded Viserys uncannily of the zombies from films he had watched before coming to this world.
Even after the fog had fully lifted, it took over half an hour before the bridge finally emptied.
Then, not far from the broken bridge, the river suddenly began to boil.
Green sludge churned through the water, turning it murky.
The ghost fleet that had once barred Viserys's passage emerged before everyone's eyes.
Upon the flagship's mast still hung a golden cage.
Standing proudly upon its prow was the legendary Shrouded Lord himself.
Prince Garin of Chroyane.
What surprised Viserys was not Garin's appearance.
His armor and cloak remained immaculate, as though untouched by centuries.
He stood exactly as he must have on the day he faced the dragons of Valyria.
Straight-backed.
Proud.
Ready for battle.
He sensed Viserys's presence just as clearly.
Garin looked up at the young dragon and noticed the blue spear hanging from its jaws.
Immediately, he understood Viserys's intention.
Without hesitation, Viserys flew directly above him. The blue spear dropped through the air.
Garin reached up and caught it effortlessly.
Along the riverbank, Benerro, Malaqo, and the others witnessed the exchange.
"A ship!"
"A warship!"
"There's someone aboard!"
"Is that... the Shrouded Lord?"
The Volantene nobles erupted into astonished whispers.
Benerro remained unmoved.
Instead, he raised his voice toward the river.
"Prince Garin, if you abandon Chroyane and swear yourself to the Lord of Light, your life shall be spared."
Garin merely sneered.
He did not even bother answering.
Centuries ago, he had refused to yield before three hundred Valyrian dragons.
He certainly would not bow now before nothing more than a cloud of black smoke.
Raising the princely spear high above his head, he brought it crashing downward.
The river exploded.
A colossal wave rose into the sky, towering dozens of meters high.
It was large enough to annihilate an entire fleet.
The black smoke, however, moved with unnatural agility. It twisted aside in an instant, narrowly avoiding the crashing wave.
But Garin had already prepared his next strike.
With all his strength, he hurled the blue spear.
It streaked across the sky like a bolt of sapphire lightning before plunging directly into the heart of the black smoke.
The smoke swallowed the spear whole.
For a heartbeat, everything stood perfectly still.
Everyone watched in silence.
Even Viserys, looking through Balerion's golden eyes, stared unblinking at the motionless cloud.
Then it happened.
A crimson bolt of lightning burst from within the smoke.
It struck Garin without missing by so much as an inch.
Crack!
A deafening blast echoed across heaven and earth, as though the world itself had split apart.
Garin and his entire ghost fleet were shattered by the scarlet lightning.
As the spectral fleet sank beneath the river, both the black smoke and the flames upon the altar rapidly dwindled.
Viserys knew what that meant.
The true war was about to begin.
He would soon face an armada unlike anything seen in centuries.
And an army whose size rivaled any assembled in generations.
The question now was how to destroy that fleet while simultaneously defeating the combined forces of Westeros and Braavos.
With a powerful beat of its wings, the black dragon turned and flew back toward Gohor.
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