"Aaaaaah~~~~~~" Priestess Raza wailed amidst the flames, her voice shrill and high-pitched, filled with agony.
She wasn't as strong as she had imagined.
Daenerys sat cross-legged beside Drogo, personally tossing the torch into the pyre.
*Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!*
Thin, azure flames snaked through the pyre like swift serpents, following the trails of oil.
The oil first ignited the twigs and dry grass. Within seconds, the logs began to crackle and pop, and a wave of heat surged from the fire, washing over the crowd surrounding the funeral pyre. At first, it was as gentle and warm as a lover's caress, but the flames quickly transformed from serpents into dragons, twisting and soaring, baring their teeth and claws as they wantonly unleashed their light and heat.
Ser Jorah and the others watched the flames, hearing only the crisp crackling of burning wood and the priestess's chant.
Initially, Mirri's loud singing had served to mask her fear and vent her anguish. As the flames rose and the fire grew more intense, her voice became louder, sharper... then the thick smoke rolled in. She gasped, then gasped again, and again, until her song dissolved into trembling wails.
The smell wafted through the crowd with the heat, indistinguishable from the aroma of horse meat roasting over the bonfire. Yet, when Jorah caught the scent, he felt nauseous.
*Could that be the scent of my Princess?*
The thought made him gag, and he vomited violently.
The cross-shaped funeral pyre blazed to life, resembling a roaring dragon. Its roar drowned out the priestess's fading screams.
The fire dragon spewed long tongues of flame toward the sky and in every direction, licking the belly of the night sky and gnawing at the skin of the Dothraki.
In the thickening smoke, the horsemen, unable to bear the suffocating heat, retreated from the pyre, coughing.
The fire dragon roared in fury, unleashing a hellish wind that whipped the nearby banners into a frenzy. The firewood crackled and hissed, and glowing embers rose from the smoke, drifting into the boundless darkness like a thousand newborn fireflies.
Yet, within the inferno, Daenerys seemed to enter a strange world.
As her painted vest and silk pants and sandals burned, she initially mocked the priestess Mirri for trying to mask her wails with song. But soon, her attention was drawn to the Black Dragon Egg in her hands.
The egg radiated a heat far more intense than the flames. She nearly threw it away.
Daenerys immediately forced herself into the Dragon Dream state.
The fundamental principle of Dragon Dream was the fusion of her soul with the Black Dragon's. Her own soul was a complete "1," and "Black Dragon's soul + Daenerys's soul" still equaled "1"—a more complete "1."
*(PS: Martin didn't elaborate on Dragon Dream. This explanation draws inspiration from Wolf Dream and Wolf Spirit.)*
In the Dragon Dream state, she could access the Black Dragon's perspective and senses.
She found herself in a hellish realm of crimson flames, with the Black Dragon before her, its massive form once again blotting out the sky.
The Black Dragon opened its jaws and roared skyward. Countless tiny, firefly-like colored lights converged from beyond the heavens, forming a river that flowed into its throat.
Gold, silver, green, purple, bright red—the colors of the light motes were too numerous for Daenerys to count.
"This is..." Daenerys suddenly had an epiphany. "Dragon Hatching!"
She immediately contacted her Magic Artifact and, on the Character Panel, removed the Unburnt and Dragon Dream abilities. The Dragon Mother's bloodline talent also included the peculiar ability of Dragon Hatching.
Dragon Hatching: Infuse Dragon Eggs with flames and Spirit Essence, enabling fossilized Dragon Eggs (which retain their soul's essence), dead Dragon Eggs, and healthy Dragon Eggs to hatch into young dragons.
"What is Spirit Essence?"
As the thought arose, a piece of information flowed into her consciousness. Daenerys suddenly gained a deeper, more fundamental understanding of the Mother of Dragons' Dragon Hatching ability.
Spirit Essence is the fundamental substance of living souls. It exists throughout the world where life thrives, permeating the souls of all living beings.
In worlds without a Cycle of Reincarnation, it is the aggregation of Spirit Essence that miracles the birth of life from organic matter.
For example, a newborn infant is composed of both soul and flesh. The physical body is inherited from the parents, while the soul originates from the accumulation of Spirit Essence from the world within the body.
The three Dragon Eggs Governor Illyrio of Pentos gifted Daenerys had turned to stone over ten million years of history. Theoretically, like diamonds and gems, they were merely beautiful, lifeless objects.
Yet these fossilized Dragon Eggs met Daenerys Targaryen, whose bloodline was so rare it represented the ultimate achievement of Valyria's dragon-magic civilization.
Not just the Targaryen family—perhaps in all of Valyria's thousands of years of history, a "Dragon Mother" constitution like hers had never been seen before.
Perhaps Daenerys was an anomaly.
Her "Dragon Mother" ability, even unconsciously, could imbue the fossilized Dragon Eggs with the Spirit Essence of the world.
The rebirth of a fossilized Dragon Egg was a miracle, but dragons themselves are magical creatures embodying miracles, defying ordinary logic.
The original Daenerys had only subconsciously wished for her Dragon Egg to hatch a dragon. She had rarely actively developed her talents for Dragon Dreams and Dragon Hatching.
This new Daenerys, however, understood that at this critical moment, she needed to act.
"Big Black, I'll help you," she called out to the Black Dragon above her.
In the next instant, her position shifted. She was no longer on the ground scorched by flames but atop the Black Dragon's obsidian scales.
She rode on the dragon's neck.
As if arriving at her destined place, Daenerys experienced a new understanding: she and the dragon were becoming one, and together they would be reborn in the raging flames.
In that moment, the Spirit Essence above the Black Dragon's head grew denser and denser, gradually forming a rainbow vortex above its open maw. To the uninitiated, it might have looked like it was charging up a Tailed Beast Bomb!
"Roar! Roar!" After an unknown interval, Daenerys sensed dragons other than Big Black for the first time—the White Dragon and the Green Dragon.
Even when she had held the Dragon Egg, she had been unable to establish Dragon Dream connections with the White and Green Dragons as she had with Big Black. But now, she clearly "saw" the White Dragon and Green Dragon flying toward her.
Riding her Black Dragon, with the White Dragon and Green Dragon soaring like wingmen around her, the four of them freely soared through the rainbow-colored ocean.
They were so joyful, so proud, that the sky itself was beneath her feet.
She was the Mother of Dragons, a giantess destined by her bloodline to be a mother of dragons. Though fate may have orchestrated her birth, her talent had nothing to do with any other deity or entity.
"Only death can buy life"—a phrase uttered by the Witch-Demoness, who spoke it as a servant of the devils in the shadows.
The Lord of Shadows was an evil god, a demon, and simultaneously another identity of R'hllor, who together with the Lord of Light formed the complete deity of 'R'hllor'.
The Targaryens belonged to the ancient Valyrian people, who had their own gods: Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar.
They had no Lord of Light R'hllor.
During the Valyrian era, the civilization of dragons and magic flourished to its peak, completely without R'hllor's influence.
The Lord of Light may have coveted dragons, but He had no connection to them whatsoever.
Daenerys's "birth" of dragons had nothing to do with the Lord of Light. Her Mother of Dragons constitution stemmed from Valyria's supreme blood magic.
By midnight, the flames had dwindled to the point where no open fire was visible, but the red-hot embers beneath the ashes continued to scorch the earth and air.
Not until the morning sun burned away the night's chill could Jorah Mormont finally endure the scorching ground. He found Daenerys at the center of the cross-shaped ash pile.
She was crouched low, surrounded by charred embers, glowing embers, and the calcified bones of humans and horses. Her entire body was naked, her lower half buried in nearly half a meter of ash. Her bare arms and back were visible, but without her striking silver hair, he would have barely recognized the figure, its skin the same color as the charcoal.
(PS: In *A Song of Ice and Fire*, Daenerys's hair is not immune to fire, but in *Game of Thrones*, her silver locks remain undamaged. I can't bring myself to accept a Daenerys with a lightbulb-shaped head, so I'm sticking with the TV show's portrayal.)
"Seven save us!" he exclaimed in ecstatic relief, bending to support her shoulder.
*Hiss—Hiss—* A gleaming, obsidian "snake head" slithered from Daenerys's hair, hissing and exhaling wisps of white smoke from its nostrils and mouth.
The joy on Jorah's face instantly turned to terror. He snatched his hand back as if electrocuted, his eyes meeting the snake head's glowing eyes, red as embers.
"A dragon?!" he rasped.
Though he didn't want to believe it, the long neck behind the snake head supported a pair of flapping wings that stirred up clouds of ash. This was no snake, but a dragon, a miracle born from the blazing flames.
The knight said nothing. He took a few steps back and, with a reverence he had never shown before, knelt on one knee.
Daenerys snapped out of her trance. Slowly, she lifted her head, first glancing at Mormont, then sweeping her gaze over the Cass people behind him.
Every Dothraki—man, woman, and child—even the ten Ogo warriors held captive, dropped their weapons. They pressed their faces to the smoking ground, kneeling in awe on the sandy earth.
Daenerys knew that from this moment on, they were completely hers. Today, tomorrow, and forever. Not the submission born of fear for Drogo's power, but a genuine, heartfelt reverence for her.
She stood naked, bathed in ash, her head held high while everyone else bowed their heads.
"Eli, fetch my clothes. Doreah, Ji Qi, prepare hot water for my bath," she commanded her handmaidens.
The Black Dragon perched on her shoulder, its serpentine neck coiled almost completely around Daenerys's throat. The other two hung from her chest, which she cradled with her arms.
Eli hurried back with a silk robe and carefully draped it over Daenerys. As she watched the two young dragons suckling, her face suddenly paled, and she murmured, "Riding the horse of the world... this is riding the horse of the world! Khaleesi, you have indeed given birth to the horse of the world. The old woman's prophecy has come true."
"You talk too much," Daenerys said coolly.
"Hiss! Hiss!" The Black Dragon immediately turned its head and glared at Eli, its two brothers releasing Daenerys and joining in its hissing.
"Waaah..." The poor centaur girl covered her mouth, on the verge of tears.
(End of Chapter)