Hiss!
The sky did not simply scream; it tore open.
A shadow, darker than the night and rimmed in shimmering gold, swept over the harbor. Then came the fire. It was not the flick of a torch or the orange glow of a campfire, but a roaring pillar of crimson-gold sunfire that descended like the wrath of a forgotten god.
The Tyroshi shield-wall—the bronze line that had held firm against thousands of desperate men—vanished. Where there had been armored soldiers and sturdy shields, there was now only liquid metal and the scent of charred bone. The formation didn't just break; it melted.
"Dragon!" Kalom shrieked, his voice cracking with a terror he had never known in twenty years of war. "Scatter! Break ranks and run!"
His veterans didn't need the order. The discipline of the Regulars dissolved into a frantic, mindless scramble. Even the bravest man finds his courage failing when the air itself turns to flame.
"Archers! Focus your fire!" Kalom roared, desperate to salvage the slaughter.
Six hundred bowmen, divided into squares, frantically nocked their arrows. They tracked the golden beast as it banked low, its wings beating with the sound of a thunderclap. Aegon, strapped into his saddle, felt the heat of Sunfyre's blood through the leather. He saw the archers and sneered.
He pulled on the reins, deliberately slowing the golden dragon as they wheeled over the quay. It was a lure—a piece of meat dangled before a dog.
"Loose!" Kalom screamed, seizing the opening.
A cloud of shafts hissed through the air, arching toward the golden silhouette. But Aegon was ready. With a sharp kick, he sent Sunfyre into a steep, rolling dive. Most of the arrows whispered harmlessly into the sea. A few struck the dragon's breastplate with a metallic clack, only to shatter against scales harder than castle-forged steel.
The archers stood frozen, their bows empty. Sunfyre didn't give them a second chance. The dragon accelerated, his throat glowing with an inner furnace. A torrent of gold-and-scarlet flame swept the archer squares, turning six hundred men into six hundred screaming torches in a single pass.
Miles away, another sound shook the city's foundations—a roar deeper, older, and more primal.
Vhagar.
The ancient bronze she-dragon crested the Temple of the Three-Headed God. Her roar was the declaration of a gladiator who had survived a hundred slaughters and hungered for one more. Dark green flames, thick as oil, bathed the temple's spires. The great marble statues of the Tyroshi faith, symbols of their pride and their history, buckled and ran like wax.
Leaving the temple a smoking ruin, Vhagar turned her sights toward the Archon's Palace. In Tyrosh, the Archon was elected through a symphony of bribery and threats—a system the citizens considered the only honest way to rule. But tonight, no amount of gold could bribe the fire.
Aegon watched the carnage from above, a cold satisfaction settling in his marrow. He had come for a raid, a simple reminder of his power, only to find the city already bleeding from a slave revolt.
Adaptability is the hallmark of a King, he thought.
He leaned forward, pressing his chest against Sunfyre's neck. Through their bond, he felt the dragon's predatory glee. Aegon had no pity for the masters. The Stepstones and the Disputed Lands were to be the forge in which he hammered out his claim to the Iron Throne. He had ten years—perhaps less—to prepare for the dance of dragons that awaited him in Westeros. He didn't have the luxury of slow diplomacy. If he had to burn the slave-lords of the Narrow Sea to cinders to secure his base, he would do so without a second thought.
Below, Kalom was no longer a commander. He was a rabbit. He fled through the smoke, cursing the name of his advisors. They had told him the dragons were predictable—that they could be countered with disciplined fire. They were wrong. This golden beast was faster, smarter, and possessed a cruel, human cunning. It had tricked him into wasting his volleys.
Kalom didn't see the shadow behind him. He didn't hear the scuff of a slave's boots over the roar of the fires.
Bang!
A heavy iron hoe caught him squarely in the back of the head.
"I have him! I have the butcher!" a slave screamed.
Within heartbeats, the man who had suppressed sixteen rebellions was vanished beneath a swarm of hands and jagged tools. He didn't even have time to scream before he was torn into wet ribbons of meat.
Sunfyre swept low over the quays again. Crimson flames licked the heels of the fleeing Regulars, incinerating twenty men at a time, yet the fire never touched the slaves.
Hidolf Heydry stood amidst the ash, his shovel lowered. He stared up at the golden dragon. He saw the way the beast chose its targets, the way it spared those in rags while hunting those in silk and bronze.
"The gods haven't come for us," Hidolf whispered, a wild, manic light in his eyes. "The Dragon-Kings have."
With the dragons clearing the path, the slaves no longer sought to escape. They turned back into the city. They shattered the collars of every man and woman they found, recruiting them into a swelling tide of vengeance. The uprising, once confined to the docks, became an avalanche.
Tyrosh, the city of dyes and decadence, became a living hell. The rising flames reflected the darkness that had been suppressed for centuries. The exploited and the broken were finally taking their tithe in blood.
Aegon watched it all through the smoke. He felt no remorse. The slave-lords were an obstacle to his ambition, and tonight, he would remove that obstacle at the root. If the world had to burn so he could sit the throne, then let the fires reach the stars.
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