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Game of Thrones: Archer's Ordinary Life
The Smoking Sea.
Centuries ago the Doom shattered the Valyrian peninsula. Volcanoes erupted, the earth split open, and the land sank. What was left became this nightmare stretch of water dotted with hundreds of jagged islands.
Even now, hundreds of years later, if you sailed close enough you'd see the thick gray fog that never lifted. Streaks of dull red and deep crimson drifted inside it, like something was still smoldering underneath.
This was the Smoking Sea.
No crashing waves. Just dead silence and a choking white haze so thick the sunlight couldn't break through.
Then a massive shadow sliced through the fog, gliding across the sky for a brief moment before vanishing again.
It was Onyxia in her true dragon form.
She soared through the heavy mist, clearly enjoying herself. The closer she flew to the heart of the Smoking Sea, the stronger the sharp, choking smell of sulfur became.
To her, it wasn't unpleasant. It was familiar. Comforting.
She cut through the haze, circled once, and landed at the base of a blackened mountain peak that looked like burnt charcoal.
Right before she touched down, she casually dropped the two large bundles she'd been carrying in her claws. They hit the ground with a thud and immediately started screaming inside the thick fishing nets.
Yes—bundles. Human bundles.
Seven or eight people, all of them suffering from greyscale.
Greyscale was one of the most terrifying fatal diseases in this world. It turned the victim's skin hard and gray, covered in blackish spots that felt like stone to the touch.
There was no reliable cure. As the disease worsened, the hardening spread across the entire body until the person died in agony.
And it was highly contagious. A single scratch or bite could pass it on. It seemed especially dangerous to young children—sometimes even skin contact was enough. Stannis Baratheon's only daughter, Shireen, had it.
Onyxia had snatched these seven or eight greyscale victims, wrapped them up like trash, and tossed them on the ground. They hit hard and cried out in pain.
They weren't just screaming from the impact. They were screaming because of what they'd just lived through—something no one would ever believe.
They had been carried off by a black dragon.
And that dragon had turned into a black-haired woman right in front of them.
A shape-shifting dragon? It was insane.
Every one of them felt like they were trapped in a nightmare.
The pain in their bodies told them it was real.
"Shut your mouths!" Onyxia snapped, her brows furrowed. "One more sound and I'll throw you into that lava pool over there!"
Her voice left no room for argument. The screaming stopped instantly. All of them stared at her with wide, terrified eyes, shaking like leaves.
Just a short distance away, thick black smoke rose from a bubbling pool of molten rock. The scorching heat rolling off it made death feel very close.
"Good. You're learning fast." Onyxia nodded, satisfied.
"From now on, you will call me Princess Oni."
She only used the first two syllables of her name. One reason was to keep these lowly mortals from speaking her full name too casually. The other…
"Oni" was "Neo" spelled backward—a little private joke aimed at Leo.
Onyxia didn't even realize she had already carved out a place for him in her thoughts.
"From today forward, you are my slaves. Your only job is to help build my new lair."
She pointed at the second bundle. Inside the nets were two dead wild bulls and several sacks of grain she had taken from elsewhere.
"That's your food. Follow them into the cave and get to work. And don't even think about running. This is the Smoking Sea. Without my protection, you'll die out there."
As she spoke, several more humans stepped out of a cave at the base of the cliff. Their faces and bodies were also covered in the same black-gray scales—clearly their greyscale was much further along.
The new captives were shocked to see how strong and energetic these "sick" people looked. They didn't seem weak or miserable at all.
Before they could think about it, the newcomers were herded into the cave to begin their new life of endless, sunless labor.
Just as Onyxia had said: after discovering the Smoking Sea, she had decided this was where she would build her new lair.
Exactly like the one she once had in Dustwallow Marsh.
The day she spotted the red comet approaching this planet, she knew the magic tide was returning.
After leaving Leo, she had flown across mountains, rivers, and oceans, following the last faint traces of magic on this world until she reached the Smoking Sea.
Thanks to everything Leo had told her, plus a few quick interrogations of locals, she now understood the history of the Valyrian Freehold.
She had chosen to settle on a massive island deep in the Smoking Sea—the ruins of the old Valyrian capital—right near the largest of the Fourteen Flames.
Even though the world had entered a long magic drought, faint traces of magical energy still lingered inside those volcanoes. That tiny amount leaking to the surface had created the Smoking Sea.
It was barely anything, but to Onyxia it felt like a drowning man suddenly finding an oxygen tube.
She would rebuild her lair here and wait for the magic tide to fully return.
But rebuilding required labor. A proud Black Dragon Princess wasn't about to do the digging herself.
She couldn't openly raid human cities either. Her blood contract with Leo forbade her from making war on humans.
After some careful scouting and questioning, she found the perfect workers.
These greyscale outcasts—already shunned and abandoned by human society—were ideal.
No one would miss them.
And no one would come looking.