Chereads / Winter Empire / Chapter 14 - Valyria I

Chapter 14 - Valyria I

The gigantic carrack Poseidon, flagship of the Crown Prince just passed The Gulf of Grief and is approaching the Smoking Sea. The whole crew was growing restless until they suddenly stopped sailing and anchored in their place, while their prince left alone on a small boat with nothing but a couple of oars to row with to the dreaded doomed city.

Sirius finally survived the suffocating smoke of the sea and reached the shore of Valyria. His body was healing and detoxifying itself continuously as no poison could kill a shifter wolf except the venom of the cold ones, so volcanic ash was trifling to him, except that the overwhelming metabolic rate that he went by burned through his stamina. He needed a source of food as his food consumption now will be much faster than his estimates. He spent the rest of the night wandering aimlessly until he could finally see a magnificent stone roofless tower that sounded like something from a fairytale. A Medieval Tower that is so high it looks like a skyscraper from Sirius's place. He started heading towards that tower.

Two hours later, his ear twitched as he suddenly jumped only to see in his previous place a ferocious firewyrm slithered out of the ground with preying eyes staring at him in hunger. He suddenly jumped towards it and the wyrm was dumbfounded when that small animal suddenly turned into a horse-sized wolf. The last scene it witnessed was the vanishing fast claws of this beast tearing into its neck before its head flew off. In his wolf form, Sirius feasted briefly on the softest parts of its meat before he smelled approaching enemies. He howled and took off to slaughter his next targets.

He met a horde of four massive wyrms and three younglings. He headed to the largest wyrms, he did not attack its body but pounced directly at its head. Its fire-breathing maw and sharp teeth were a threat to him.

White light flashed as he swung his claw.

The wyrm nimbly dodged and crept on his back as fast as lighting and bit at him.

He felt a sharp searing pain as his neck bled extensively as blood is being pumped rapidly through his veins because of the adrenaline rush in his body.

His thick furry mane mitigated the bite, yet he still bled as the fiery venom of the wyrm aggressively ran through his bloodstream. His wide eyes could see another wyrm opening his maw widely to send a fiery breath towards him.

His wolf instincts took control and he rolled on the ground and the fire burned the wyrm clinging onto his neck.

He separated himself quickly from the wyrm and clawed its guts till he reached its beating heart and stabbed through it with his sharp claws.

He leaped in a chaotic manner and reached the other wyrm still gathering another flame in its mouth, and like a flash of white light passed through the wyrm leaving a flying head with a tiny flame left in it and a twitching headless body twitching around.

He quickly slaughtered the other two adult wyrms, with nothing but a few burned furs. The younglings crawled away in fear, yet Sirius bit their heads off savagely leaving behind a scene of carnage with severed guts and serpent parts thrown around.

He swiftly left the area, clutching a headless body in his teeth, as wyrms will soon swarm over to the smell of the spilled blood.

He soon rested in a shady space between two large boulders, wolfed down his prey, and closed his eyes for a few minutes to heal and detoxify the poison in his bloodstream.

After two nights of nonending slaughter, he finally reached the base of the tower, leaving a trail of blooded wyrm corpses, with no trace of blemish on his skin. Only Sirius can know how many times he was bitten, burned, and clawed by the firewyrms, yet his healing covers all his scars but the mental ones. Thankfully, the exciting battles he had are raising his adaptability to the wolf body and are bringing more and more of his latent strength to the surface. Although Sirius had the bloodline of the strongest Qiuleute wolf, this doesn't make him the strongest immediately, it is just the hidden potential in his blood. To harness this potential and turn it into power and strength available for his use, he has to fight and hunt and grow his pack.

Wolves can only draw out their inner strength by going through bloody battles and hunts. Surely, there is an upper limit to their growth, but for Sirius, this limit is still far away. The strongest Wolf could control a pack of hundreds of wolves and suppress them all to the ground by a single growl, his howl could summon the wolves thousands of leagues away, he could crush cold ones alone in a single leap he can bite off a bloodsucker. Sirius still had a long journey ahead of him, he needed to hunt more, to fight more, to carve out his path of slaughter and carnage in fights both in his human and in wolf form.

The tower was now right in front of him. He shifted to his human form as he is confident now his shifting speed grew to be so fast as he reached the level of Jacob Black to shift in a few seconds. He explored the tower and found nothing that survived the doom except for a huge pillar in the middle of the tower. It was a weird pillar that looked more like a stele, it reminded him of the obelisks thrown around in the deserts of Egypt. The stele had a sleek metallic shape except for the runes inscribed keenly into it. He could read a warning, "Doom Shall Come on Swift Draconic Wings to Him Who Disturbs the Peace of the Dragon King." He was shocked at the ominous threat, he craned to look closely at a small hidden text inscribed down the warning, He could not read it clearly as it was semi-ruined by the wear and tear of ages that passed. He could read some barely comprehensible words. The more he read the more he felt his blood freezing and his hands trembling in fear.

He could only read the haphazard words in the lines, "Jaqiarzir naejot se darys hen eli vali...Se Zaldrīzes... Se Zokla. Zyhon zirtys perzys zemitsy se arlie vys." It literally translated to "Glory to the King of First Men...The Dragon...The Wolf. His Frozen Fire shall Forge the New World." He stared like a frozen statue for some time to comprehend the queer words. He could comprehend that the Valyrian Dragonlords had their prophetical dreams like the Daenys The Dreamer, who predicted the doom and saved House Targaryen, but still, this did not look comprehensible by any means.

Even if we considered Jon Snow or Aegon Targaryen, the Promised Prince, he was never a dragonlord as he never bonded with a dragon. How can he have fire and why is it frozen, is it talking about the dragon Viserion when he is turned Undead? Does that mean the mentioned king is the Night King? Yet still, the Night King was a First Man and a King but he is definitely no wolf.

Sirius kept contemplating the text till he finally realized the obvious yet confusing answer.

"Could it be me?" He questioned himself skeptically. Logically, he and his father are the only ones who can legitimately be called King of the First Men. The Andal Usurper could never rule over the First Men. Yet again, King Cregan is a wolf but he is no dragon as he has no Valyrian blood. The last missing piece is the frozen fire that he does not have a clue what is it. It might mean dragonglass yet it does not seem right. It might actually mean literally a frozen fire or a blue fire which makes sense because blue fire is the hottest fire to exist.

The rest of the verses are so deeply damaged that he can't comprehend it. He only recognized the words "Jiōragon", "Prūmia" and "anogar". They literally translate to "Offer", "Heart" and "Blood". Sirius suddenly decided to trust his guts and gripped a sharp rock and stabbed it through his heart. He literally touched his heart with his hands enduring the agonizing pain and placed his bloodied hands over the stele before he fainted in heartwrenching pain.

He woke up later with a fully healed body and found the stele smashed to smithereens leaving a chasm leading down to a dark unknown place. He steeled his heart and jumped down. He fell for a few seconds and hit the ground as he grunted in pain.

Sirius marveled at the beautiful room lit in blue light coming from falling lava that looked like a reddish-blue curtain. He was not extremely shocked at the sight of the blue lava, as he knew about it from his old world, it is just bottled-up sulfur burning in volcanos. What shocked him is the massive altar that looked like a white bony cradle. He saw the bluish-white monstrosity that lay before him, it was a fucking dragon egg. It was not petrified even. It was shining white and blue, he could hear a heartbeat pulsing inside it. He was dancing in manic pulsating glee as he looked longingly at the egg like it is a sea of gold coins.

He started inspecting his surroundings again. Before the altar lay a table with a fabric spread over it. Inching closer, Sirius recognized the fabric as a blue flag with a massive book resting over it. He grabbed the book and its title read "Valyrian Grimoire". It was a huge book written in High Valyrian, it recounts the history of Valyria from its foundation to its doom. It had recounts of their various battles, conquests, innovations, and lifestyle.