High above a corner of the Valyrian Ruins, the demon dragon Sunfyre, a griffin, and a Three-headed Blood Eagle were locked in a mid-air battle.
The gale whipped up by the giant beasts' wings raged, and light and heat swept across the horizon.
From time to time, flames would erupt, with bright golden-red fire clashing against dark, blood-red flames.
The air became tangible due to the intense heat, creating ripples of high temperature.
This was a contest of pure strength, speed, and combat experience.
The victor would devour the loser's corpse as a trophy, wearing glory as their crown.
Viserys watched the griffin, its face blasted by golden-red Dragonflame; where its red eagle eyes once grew, there were now bleeding holes.
The blood-colored griffin's eye sockets were shattered, with bone and flesh flying everywhere.
The griffin let out a shrill wail, its scalding hot blood spraying across the sky.
Blood and shredded facial tissue flowed down its eagle-like face like two streams of bloody tears, looking exceptionally grotesque; having suddenly gone blind, the griffin could no longer maintain its balance.
The griffin began to thrash about in the sky like a headless fly, rising and falling erratically.
Pain and the loss of sight were fatal to a beast; the griffin, in a blind rage, lashed out at friend and foe alike, clawing and roaring in fury.
Its anger spilled over onto the Three-headed Blood Eagle.
Blood-red flames spewed from the griffin's mouth, dancing wildly in the air.
The Three-headed Blood Eagle was also somewhat confused; its ally had become uncontrollable.
Both the griffin and the Three-headed Blood Eagle relied on their eyes, unlike the Firewyrms and Human-Faced Worms that burrowed underground and relied on thermal imaging, being half-blind.
Even for a demon dragon, a dragon's weakness is its eyes.
Many dragons in wars have met their sudden end because of their eyes.
With its eyes destroyed, the griffin's already less-than-agile form suffered even more, and its flight movements became comical and clumsy.
It was also a matter of the griffin's anatomy; only avian and lightweight structures could fly high.
Although a demon dragon is not a bird, its dragon bones are light and hard, and with most of its body consisting of leathery wings and a tail, it is much lighter than it appears.
The dragon's streamlined body structure is highly aerodynamic, and combined with the fact that dragons are the most perfect creations of blood and fire, this is enough to make the demon dragon the master of the sky.
The griffin's body, however, was like a patchwork mess; the Blood Warlocks had forcibly stitched together a lion's torso, tail, and hind legs with an eagle's head, wings, and front claws to allow the griffin to fly.
It looked imposing and grand, but its flight performance was quite mediocre, as a lion's body is relatively heavy.
The griffin was not as fluid as the Blood Eagle, let alone the demon dragon.
The blood-colored griffin thrashed about in the air as if insane, but this only exposed more gaps in its defense.
The Three-headed Blood Eagle was also in a panic, attacking the demon dragon while simultaneously attacking the griffin.
Between life and death, the griffin was simply too slow.
"The throat, the griffin's throat," Viserys instructed.
"Dragonflame!"
Sunfyre also caught the griffin's opening, flying above the griffin to launch a fierce attack from a superior position.
The demon dragon's neck arched like a bow as it built up power.
The searing golden-red Dragonflame was unleashed again in the form of a fireball, this time aimed directly at the griffin's shrilly opened eagle beak.
The first round!
The second round of fireballs!
The golden Dragonflame exploded violently, the bright fireball as searing as the sun.
Under this strike, the griffin's head was caught in the blast of the Dragonflame; centered on its gaping throat, the majority of its head was shattered into a hollow void.
The wailing griffin let out one final, shrill cry before the Dragonflame, then plummeted violently to the ground.
The sound of its fall seemed to make the earth tremble, causing dust and smoke to billow endlessly.
Viserys did not look again at the falling griffin, whose body was studded with obsidian and sulfurous stones on the ground.
The death of the griffin was so miserable that it reminded Viserys of the story of the Winged Knight Artys Arryn of the Vale and the Griffin King dueling at the top of the Giant's Lance.
"The griffin falls into the valley, and the mountains praise the story of the Winged Knight. Artys, King of the Mountains."
This story is basically nonsense; House Arryn are the most orthodox of the Andals, and they have never possessed any magical wonders, nor could they have mixed with the first men.
It only suggests that perhaps there was such a hero in the Age of Heroes, but the name Arryn was forcibly attached to curry favor.
Moreover, griffins themselves do not exist; they are pets pasted together by the Blood Cult Dragon King.
Come to think of it, the ancestor of House Arryn was a knight who won by relying on a shadow warrior strategy.
In the Battle of the Seven Stars, Artys had one of his knights wear his spare silver armor, while he himself led elite knights up a goat path he had known since childhood, ambushing the army of the first men from high ground behind them.
Yet his descendants claimed the glory, and actually believed it themselves.
"The myths of the past are over; now is a new myth, a myth created by Viserys."
Once Viserys achieves victory, he believes that many singers and authors will justify his actions, provided he succeeds in restoring his kingdom.
The aerial battle happened in a flash; Sunfyre quickly pulled away to return to the fight with the Three-headed Blood Eagle.
Viserys looked at this slightly larger Three-headed Blood Eagle, its heads still a combination of a lion, an eagle, and a Unicorn.
The three sets of eyes of the Three-headed Blood Eagle flashed with bloody red; it craved a slaughter, but it also realized the danger of the battle.
A Blood Eagle companion had already died, and the griffin had died as well.
"Roar." All three heads of the Blood Eagle suddenly opened their mouths, spewing out dark red flames.
The Unicorn head, the lion head, and the giant eagle head roared together, the blood gem emitted a bewitching light, followed by the scorching of flames.
This time, the flames spewed by the Blood Eagle ostensibly attacked the golden dragon, but it suddenly turned to blast at Viserys.
A heatwave swept over; while that heat was not as searing as Dragonflame, it was still quite terrifying.
Viserys immediately spread his palm, guiding the flowing Fire Element in the air, his silver armor shining brilliantly.
A dance of water and fire, a fusion of the highest technology of Valyria and the highest technology of the rhoynar.
The Three-headed Blood Eagle's plan was quite vicious; it wanted to seriously injure Viserys to create some chaos, making it easier for itself to escape.
The demon dragon is relatively immune to some flames, but the Dragon Rider is certainly not; this is a dangerous profession, fearing being burned by fire and falling from great heights.
In the Battle of Rook's Rest, three dragons fought at an altitude of a thousand feet.
The Red Queen Meleys died from the fall, and Princess Rhaenys on her back was burned to a cinder.
Although Vhagar and Prince Aemond were unscathed, the Greens' Sunfyre was also heavily injured, with one wing almost torn off, and his rider Aegon II suffered half-body burns, a shattered pelvis, and multiple bone fractures, nearly losing his ability to fight.
But the Three-headed Blood Eagle's plan failed, because Viserys was also calling upon the dance of the Fire Element and the Water Element.
Although he had been attacked by the Three-headed Blood Eagle, Viserys remained unscathed.
While spewing fire, the Three-headed Blood Eagle had already begun to flee in the opposite direction.
"It's trying to run." Viserys saw the Three-headed Blood Eagle's route; seeing the griffin die suddenly and the sneak attack on Viserys fail, the Three-headed Blood Eagle had already planned to escape.
But now, it was the golden dragon Sunfyre's turn to pursue relentlessly.
Sunfyre became valiant; the Three-headed Blood Eagle had not only attacked him, but also his new partner.
Sunfyre's figure danced in the air like lightning; only a young dragon could be so agile.
In the Dance of the Dragons, only the fight between Seasmoke and the Blue Queen Tessarion could be considered a dance, because those two dragons were young.
Sunfyre was like a soaring eagle, like a nimble falcon, circling, biting, roaring, and spewing fire.
He did not need close-quarters attacks to drive the Three-headed Blood Eagle into a desperate situation.
The Three-headed Blood Eagle had dozens of new wounds all over its body, and its rage had accumulated to an unbearable level.
It was just that it could never keep up with Sunfyre, which made the Blood Eagle exceptionally angry.
Griffins and Blood Eagles are creations of Blood Magic modeled after demon dragons, but compared to demon dragons, they are only low-end versions in every respect.
Their speed cannot keep up, and their flames cannot keep up either.
Sunfyre suddenly flew high into the sky, and the golden-red flames he spewed burned the wings of the Three-headed Blood Eagle.
The Three-headed Blood Eagle appeared even more agitated, but the three streams of flames it spewed did not strike Sunfyre.
The golden dragon gracefully bypassed them in mid-air, reappearing in front of the Three-headed Blood Eagle's side.
"Dragonflame!"
The searing golden-red flames exploded violently, striking the lion's head and directly shattering more than half of it, with brain matter and blood dancing in the air.
Viserys saw the rain of blood; perhaps before it died, the lion only saw the searing golden-red.
But for an animal, this was also a kind of peace; now this Three-headed Blood Eagle was neither dead nor alive.
The Fire Element that Viserys had accumulated suddenly accelerated, passing through the eagle's eye socket like an arrow, a sharp blade made of fire.
"Roar." In an instant, the immense pain made it difficult for the Three-headed Blood Eagle to hold on; it was a hundred times worse than a dozen wounds, and it began to plummet rapidly.
Sunfyre continued to follow the Blood Eagle, his sword-sharp teeth biting into the neck of the central eagle head.
Sunfyre roared in anger, then used his strength to rip off the Blood Eagle's second head, obliterating the Blood Warlocks' creation without hesitation.
Viserys saw that terrifying force; the demon dragon bit down hard on the Blood Eagle's neck, and then applied force.
Sunfyre's strength was also extraordinary, and the second eagle head was directly thrown away.
The once imposing Three-headed Blood Eagle turned into a headless monster; the lion's head was mostly shattered, the eagle's head had been torn off by the demon dragon, and only the lonely third Unicorn head remained.
The Blood Eagle's broken body could no longer support flight, and even the bloody radiance in the Unicorn's head was slowly fading.
"Thud!" The corpse of the second Three-headed Blood Eagle slammed into the ground with great force again, creating a sound even louder than the griffin's.
The golden dragon hissed triumphantly in mid-air, the dragon's voice like thunder.
"Let's go, Sunfyre, and Long-Haired People, come back later to enjoy your food."
"Roar."
The demon dragon carried Viserys and continued to fly, without tidying up the broken battlefield.
This was not only the victory of Sunfyre, but also the victory of the Dragon Rider Viserys.