The brown dragon crashed a short distance away. One of its colossal wings was snapped at a grotesque angle, the tip sheared off and lost somewhere in the fall. It thrashed weakly against the earth, thick plumes of scalding, smoking blood spraying from its ruined neck.
The light had already faded from its massive black eyes. Solomon's colossal body pressed down upon it, the sheer, crushing weight of his form making the very earth shudder.
Solomon lowered his head. Driven entirely by the animal instinct of the body he inhabited, his jaws clamped down and ripped the brown dragon's throat wide open, permanently ending its resistance.
He had no other thoughts. The capacity for reason was gone. There was only instinct.
Then, he began to feed.
He tore at the flesh and swallowed, but what flooded his senses was not the heavy metallic tang of blood or the satisfaction of meat.
With every massive bite he swallowed, a pure, incandescent torrent of energy rushed into his body. The current washed through his bones and veins, rapidly filling the terrifying, hollow void that had been bleeding his life away.
The paralyzing weakness of impending death began to recede.
He could feel it with absolute clarity: the hemorrhaging of his life force into the thin air had been halted. He was gorging himself on another dragon not to fill a stomach, but to make himself "whole" again.
When he swallowed the final shred of energy-rich flesh, the corpse of the brown dragon was gone. Only a scattering of shattered, ruined bones remained.
And he felt stronger, vastly more complete than before. The lethal starvation was entirely eradicated. In its place surged an unprecedented, explosive sense of power—a feeling that he could level this entire mountain range with a single strike.
He threw his colossal head back toward the blood-stained night sky and unleashed a roar of absolute majesty and satiation.
The sound shattered the heavens, echoing endlessly through the peaks of the Mountains of the Moon.
Solomon shot up from the mattress, gasping for air as if he had been drowning.
His chest heaved violently. He leaned over the edge of the bed, his body racked by violent, uncontrollable dry heaves.
What the hell kind of sleep paralysis was that?
Every single sense had been far too real. The heavy, sulfurous stench of raw dragon meat. The searing, acidic burn of dragon blood sliding down his throat.
Cold sweat soaked the collar of his tunic, clinging clammy and freezing against his skin. The bedchamber was dead quiet, filled only by the ragged sound of his own breathing and the scraping in his throat.
Was it really just a dream?
He swallowed hard. He could still taste it—the lingering, phantom aftertaste of consumed energy, a bizarre mixture of brimstone and raw life force coating the back of his tongue.
The phantom terror of his life bleeding away, followed by the euphoric, god-like rush of power returning, still vibrated through the marrow of his bones.
He held his hands up in the dim light spilling from the corridor. The skin was smooth, the knuckles distinct.
They were human hands. Yet only moments ago, he possessed the absolute certainty that these hands had been a pair of colossal, razor-sharp talons tearing through flesh and scale.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the inferno of the dream remained burned into the back of his eyelids.
This is too bizarre. Damn it.
Any trace of sleep had been utterly eradicated. Solomon pushed himself up from the bed, forcing his trembling muscles to steady.
I might be the only person in the history of Westeros to actually taste dragon meat, he thought grimly. And it tastes fucking awful.
He needed air. He needed the biting mountain wind to clear the sulfur from his head. He strode out of the bedchamber, heading for the main entrance of the Lion's Den.
When he reached the lord's hall, his footsteps ground to a halt.
Who the hell are these sturdy women?
The sheer, jarring visual impact of the lineup snapped the last lingering disorientation of the dragon dream right out of him. This row of tough, weathered, eccentric-looking peasant women was more effective than a bucket of ice water to the face.
He looked at Lushen and Lauchlan, who were practically vibrating with eager anticipation, offering him smiles that bordered on obsequious. Then he looked at Bolin standing to the side, whose face was a portrait of pure, unadulterated shock.
Lushen and Lauchlan exchanged a triumphant glance and began to stammer out the tale of their painstaking labor.
They proudly explained how they had observed Lady Evelyn, deduced the Lord's "unique" aesthetic tastes, and scoured the townships to assemble this elite cadre of perfectly qualified candidates.
Solomon listened in silence. His facial expression did not change by a single fraction of an inch, but internally, the sheer, crushing awkwardness of the situation nearly made him choke.
He finally understood how this monumental misunderstanding had occurred.
He opened his mouth, fully intending to scold them for wasting time on such absolute nonsense. But before the words left his tongue, a different thought struck him.
He looked at the women again. Their faces were weathered, their features undeniably odd, but their eyes held no calculation, no flattery, no hidden daggers. There was only simple, rugged honesty and a sliver of desperate hope for a better life.
Their hands were calloused. Their shoulders were broad. These were women who knew how to survive.
Beautiful women do attract trouble, Solomon thought. They cause distractions. They cloud judgment.
And these women... looking at them really does wake me the hell up.
They had just pulled him out of a terrifying magical panic attack just by standing there.
Solomon's gaze drifted slowly down the line of nervous women, until it stopped dead on the face of a middle-aged woman near the center.
Her face had been heavily battered by the wind and sun. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes were as deep as dried riverbeds. But Solomon recognized her.
Long ago, back at the Reekfort, he had personally handed grain to this desperate woman.
"Old Huck's wife?" Solomon's voice was quiet, steady.
The woman jumped as if struck. Her head snapped up, her eyes wide with shock.
She had never, in her wildest dreams, imagined that Lord Solomon would actually remember her face.
"Lord Solomon..." The woman's voice broke instantly. Her knees gave out and she collapsed to the stone floor, pressing her forehead against the cold tiles, weeping softly.
"Lord Solomon... you remember me."
"I will never forget a single person who has bled or sacrificed for me," Solomon replied. He genuinely didn't know what else to say. You were one of the very first people I met when I took over. How could I forget?
He let a brief silence hang before asking, "...You and Old Huck's children. Are you living well?"
The woman raised her head, tears cutting tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "Yes! We are well! Lord Solomon! Even we received the bereavement silver! The children are eating full meals now!"
"My family will repay your kindness, My Lord! We swear it!"
"I... I can even find work inside the fortress now." She sobbed openly, repeating her thanks over and over. "You may call me Val, Lord Solomon."
Solomon nodded slowly and reached down to pull her back to her feet. Then, he shifted his gaze to Lushen and Lauchlan.
He cleared his throat. Remembering the suffocating terror of the dragon dream, and how the sheer shock of seeing these women had pulled him back to reality, he deliberately hardened his expression. He pitched his voice low, adopting an air of profound, philosophical depth.
"Mm. You two... have done well."
Lushen and Lauchlan's eyes lit up like torches.
Bolin, meanwhile, stared blankly at the line of "unique" women, then stared helplessly at Solomon's young, serious face.
An absurd, terrifying revelation detonated inside the blacksmith's brain.
So... it's true? Lord Solomon actually... likes this?
The towering image he held in his heart of a brilliant, ruthless, calculating warlord instantly fractured—only to rebuild itself upon the ruins into something far more bizarre and awe-inspiring.
He realized that this young lord was even more... unfathomable... than he had ever imagined.
Seeing the bizarre mixture of awe and horror on their faces, Solomon felt a brief pang of regret. Is this going to ruin my reputation? Make me look like a lunatic?
He thought for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the women who were holding their breath. Then he looked directly at his two fiercely proud commanders.
"Beautiful women," Solomon declared, his tone cold and absolute, "are poison. They grind away a man's iron will."
"They are like delicate flowers raised in a glasshouse. Pretty to look at, and utterly useless for anything else."
Solomon paused, letting the silence stretch, before delivering his masterstroke.
"But these women... they are exactly right. Looking at them every day clears my head. It reminds me to stay awake. It ensures I never drown in comfort."
"Remember this, both of you! You should strive for the same!"
"Beautiful women are the finest liars in the world!"
Standing to the side, listening to Lord Solomon openly confirm his tastes, and seeing the absolute smug validation on the faces of Lushen and Lauchlan, Bolin felt as if a siege ram had just struck him between the eyes.
Buzz. His entire worldview collapsed, then reassembled itself into a twisted new shape.
Gods above! The young lord... Lord Solomon genuinely prefers this!
And his reasoning is so... so incredibly enlightened!
Bolin's reverence for Solomon instantly rocketed to a new, dangerously mystical height.
The mind of this Lord... it is simply beyond the comprehension of ordinary men.
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