Hearing the Dragon Mother speak, Drogon likely guessed her intentions. It was time for her to put on a show.
"Your Majesty, with the Unsullied, we can gradually grow stronger and gain the confidence and power to seek allies."
Barristan and Jorah each voiced their opinions, both eager for Daenerys to follow their advice. But Daenerys, ignoring them, held Drogon in her hands and swayed him back and forth, just as she had when teaching him to fly as a hatchling.
She hadn't expected her little dragon to grow so quickly, soaring through the skies. Luckily, Drogon could shrink, allowing him to remain by her side at all times.
Seeing Daenerys absorbed in teasing Drogon, Jorah and Barristan exchanged glances, wondering what was going through her mind.
*I'm being treated like a hatchling again? I shrank not to be babied all over again.* Drogon protested inwardly, flapping his wings to escape Daenerys's clutches.
Daenerys: "!!!"
"I'll negotiate the price with Kraznys tomorrow morning. Jorah, arrange the meeting."
"Your Majesty..."
Jorah and Barristan tried to protest further, but Daenerys ignored them. She strode ahead, returning to the ship and retiring to her cabin.
Drogon circled Astapor, finding no weapons that could threaten dragons. He warned Rhaegal and Viserion against flying too low. From the spoils the Dragon Mother had seized, he took a handful of gold and silver coins.
Though he'd sampled Astapor's cuisine and eaten plenty of cooked meat, it still couldn't compare to the fatty sheep of the Grasslands. The diminished appetite was detrimental to his development.
He decided to make another trip to the Grasslands before nightfall. As an adult, his cruising speed was around 300 kilometers per hour, with a top speed of 500. Even as a juvenile, his average speed was 500-600 kilometers per hour.
Two-thirds of an adult dragon's strength and physical prowess were concentrated in its juvenile form, making a round trip to the Grasslands take just over an hour.
***
Upon reaching the Grasslands, Drogon snatched a quick dinner to satisfy his hunger before flying further away. You can't keep shearing the same few sheep forever.
Watching the Dothraki tribes constantly migrating across the plains, Drogon's memory fragments surfaced again: the scene of Daenerys leading a tiny Khalasar out of the Grasslands into the Red Waste shortly after his birth. The memory stirred a sense of nostalgia.
On the ground, two Khalasars were engaged in a predatory battle. The weaker one's absorption was inevitable, and Dothraki warriors were already seizing captured women and taking them right there on the spot.
Drogon found the Dothraki custom of conducting all their affairs under the open sky deeply unsettling, but he couldn't intervene. This was their way of life.
Just as he was about to fly past, he suddenly spotted two familiar figures amidst the chaotic crowd: the mother and son he had encountered during his last visit to the Grasslands.
A burly Dothraki warrior blocked the mother and son as they fled in panic. He shoved the little boy aside and grabbed the woman, tearing at her clothes.
The child, knocked down, immediately scrambled to his feet and tried to pull his mother away. The warrior seized the boy's arm, swung him through the air, and hurled him onto the grass three meters away. This time, the child didn't get up right away. He struggled to crawl toward the woman, his fall clearly having been severe.
"Ah... a mouth fed by others is easily muzzled," Drogon sighed inwardly, swooping down.
"A dragon! It's a dragon!" The massive wings blotted out a patch of sunlight, and the Dothraki fighting on the grasslands immediately noticed the anomaly. They froze, then fled in all directions, some even running with their trousers still hanging loose.
Drogon caught up to the Dothraki warrior who had been tearing at the little boy's mother's clothes. With a single claw, he hooked the man and lifted him into the air. Once he was over twenty meters high, he dropped him to the ground.
The man struggled to rise after the fall, but couldn't get up. Even if he survived, he would be crippled for life.
Those watching from a distance, terrified by Drogon's ferocity, slowly began to retreat, while the more timid fled even further.
Most of the fleeing were the victorious Dothraki. The defeated side had lost nearly all their men, leaving only women, children, and the elderly. The women would serve as their playthings, and the children would be sold to slave traders.
Drogon unleashed a blast of dragonfire behind the fleeing crowd, igniting a wide swathe of grassland. The flames didn't touch the people; their purpose was purely deterrent.
Otherwise, after he left, the mother and child would still face rape and enslavement.
Khalasar, having emerged victorious, was not wrong; this was simply the law of the jungle on the Grasslands, where the strong prey on the weak.
After setting a few more fires to drive away the remaining people and letting out a furious roar, Drogon glanced at the mother and child huddled together and soared into the sky.
Just a few minutes into his flight, Drogon suddenly sensed a change in the white sphere that had always remained motionless in his mind. It wasn't that the sphere itself had changed, but rather that milky-yellow light particles were gathering around it.
It was as if the sun, previously surrounded only by a faint halo, was gradually radiating light. Nourished by this glow, the white sphere seemed to come alive, shedding its previous lifeless stillness.
"What's going on? Why is there suddenly activity?" Drogon wondered, puzzled by the changes in his mind. Unbeknownst to him, shortly after he had departed, the boy and his mother had prostrated themselves and bowed toward the direction he had flown.
Witnessing their actions, the surviving women and children also knelt down, though their hearts lacked the same reverence.
After circling the Grasslands, gorging himself and scattering most of the gold he carried, Drogon finally returned to Astapor.
***
The next day, Daenerys, accompanied by Jorah and others, met again with Kraznys the Good Master and another great Good Master. Drogon still perched on Daenerys's shoulder.
"Ask this Westerosi woman how many Unsullied she wants to buy," Kraznys said to the young female slave as Daenerys approached.
"I want to buy all the Unsullied!" Daenerys declared before the girl could speak.
"You want to buy all the Unsullied?" the girl asked, startled.
"You foolish Westerosi woman, do you know how many Unsullied we have? Eight thousand! You can't afford them," Kraznys said, unable to resist after hearing the translation. He thought Daenerys was mocking him.
"Yes, I want to buy them all, including those still in training and the newly castrated boys."
"How will you pay? Even if you were given to me, you couldn't afford them. And we don't sell untrained Unsullied—their poor combat performance would damage our reputation," Kraznys said with a lecherous grin.
"Your ships and cargo are worth at most twelve hundred Unsullied. Forget the rest," he continued.
"I have dragons! I need the untrained Unsullied to replace losses," Daenerys replied.
"Your Majesty, dragons cannot be exchanged."
"Your Majesty, eight thousand Unsullied are not worth a single dragon."
As soon as Daenerys finished speaking, two voices of protest rose. Jorah and Barristan had initially been puzzled by her desire to buy all the Unsullied, but they never imagined she would offer her dragons, which she considered her children, in exchange.