[Chapter Size: 3100 Words.]
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Thrid Person POV
Essos, 296 AC.
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The group could finally breathe as they began moving stones and wooden beams from the fallen parts of the castle.
"Help me here," Jon said, grabbing a log as he started to carry it toward the door to close it.
"That was dangerous... So those things are known as greyscale..." Arya commented as she approached Daenerys. "Are you alright?" she asked the Targaryen.
"I'm... just a bit sore in the hip, but that was awful... this place is more dangerous than I thought..." she murmured, trying to stand up after Jon's grip, as he wanted to make sure she wouldn't fall.
Jon passed by them along with his guards, carrying a baker's pillar to the door while grabbing scattered stones and filling the entrance until it was sealed, as they had to prevent those things from entering again.
"Looks like we're done here, we can move on now," Jon said as he turned to scan the area attentively. The atmosphere inside was also heavy, mainly due to the bones scattered around. This was one of the few places still standing, what was left of Valyria when everything had turned to ruins, a civilization destroyed by its own glory.
"At least there's no more of that gas here," Arya commented, while only the royal guards were looking at the bones still wearing clothes tattered by time.
"They suffocated... despite trying to protect themselves here..." Jon commented as he saw them handling the bones. He turned forward to continue. "Let's move on," he said, his voice echoing through the silent place.
Everyone nodded as they began to follow Jon, entering one of the castle's doors as if he already knew the place.
They advanced cautiously, unsure of what they might encounter there, walking through corridors filled with draconic representations on the marble walls. Although they were not affected by the lava, they were now worn down by time and the heat that pervaded the entire place, almost melting and leaving twisted patterns on the surfaces.
"Are we heading to the vault, Jon?" Daenerys asked, trying to keep her voice steady, but clearly shaken by what they had just faced.
"Yes... I know the way, and we are getting close. The next room is the audience chamber..." Jon said, and moments later, they entered the space.
The room was dimly lit with a huge hole in the ceiling, large stones fallen in the middle of the space, which was also vast... more skeletons left with tattered clothes scattered around.
"They were slaves and nobles..." Arya commented, looking at the skeletons.
"Yes... but none of them seemed to belong to the family of this castle..." Jon added. "So they must have taken shelter inside the vault, if I'm not mistaken."
"My king!" a royal guard called his attention as Jon followed him to where he was now looking at a body.
Jon approached, finding many dead men-at-arms in the area, their swords either corroded along with the armor or completely useless.
But what Jon saw the royal guard pick up was a sword with a gleam that hadn't been affected by time at all, shining just as brightly as his katanas.
"Valyrian steel..." Arya said with admiration, gazing at the weapon being raised.
"Yes... these nobles were so wealthy that even their main guards wielded such weapons..." Jon remarked.
"If these guys had these kinds of weapons, how must the family itself have been..." another royal guard commented.
"You'll soon be surprised," Jon said, stepping forward. "Take the swords and let's continue. There's nothing but an empty throne with bodies scattered all over the place."
They then proceeded through an entrance behind the throne, where a hidden trapdoor was located. "The vault should be down there," Jon said as his guards approached him, inspecting the lock and trying to open it, but it seemed securely shut.
"My king... it appears to be locked from the other side," the royal guard said, and Jon nodded. He approached, gripping the handle and attempting to pull, as cracks began to sound from the force he applied, straining against the trapdoor, but it didn't seem enough.
"I could break it, but it would take hours with me forcing the entry. I'll do it another way. I want you all to move as far away from the vault as possible," Jon spoke firmly, and everyone did exactly as told.
As soon as everyone was at a safe distance, watching Jon with curiosity, he opened one hand while a fireball began to form, glowing in that moment.
He hurled the fireball again, which sped toward the ground before exploding. Everyone avoided looking at the flash of the explosion, which was enough to cover the trapdoor and a few meters around it.
The castle seemed to tremble slightly, while Jon looked concerned as dust began to fall from the ceiling, but it eventually stopped, realizing that it wouldn't collapse, though he still had to be careful.
The entrance was finally open, and as they left behind more skeletons, seemingly guarding the entrance, they proceeded down the stairs, descending more than 30 meters with torches in their hands due to the darkness.
The next room at the end of the stairs was a small chamber, with a massive door indicating the entrance to the vault. In front of the door, eight bodies, reduced to bones over time, were dressed in rusted armor, holding Valyrian steel swords.
Daenerys approached one of them, studying the magical steel.
"You're curious as to why the steel doesn't rust like the armor?" Jon asked before continuing, while she looked at him with her curious violet eyes. "That's a property of Valyrian steel. It isn't affected by time," Jon explained.
"Let's place the torches to light the area. We need to open the entrance," Jon ordered, and the royal guards, bringing the torches, began to replace the worn ones on the walls.
"Do you know how to open this door, Jon?" Arya asked as Jon nodded.
"Let me see..." Jon ignored the bodies of the warriors who had remained outside to guard the vault and went to one of the walls, pulling out a false brick.
"The mechanism for this vault isn't that bad, but it can still be opened from the outside," Jon said as he grabbed some chains attached to the wall and began pulling with force. The chain started moving backward, while a mechanism began to unlock in the vault, making a loud click. The door responded as Jon continued pulling, putting into practice what he had seen in his vision of the vault's green mechanism when he planned this trip.
With a loud crack, the door started to unlock and came loose from the wall as Jon released the latch.
The metal groaned as the door slowly opened, revealing what lay on the other side, while the royal guards pulled at it after Jon asked, still holding the chains.
He let go, and the chains snapped back to the wall with force, but even though the latch clicked back in place, the door was no longer held to the wall.
"Now, let's see if everything I saw is still here," Jon said with an excited tone, starting to move forward along with the others.
Another dark room lay ahead, as the light from the entrance, with the torches the royal guards placed on the walls, revealed that the vault's floor was made of smooth stone, much better maintained than any other place they had stepped in the castle.
But what caught their attention the most was the metallic gleam that reflected faintly in the torchlight.
"This..." Arya seemed impressed by the wealth beginning to unfold before them.
"It seems we've arrived. Let's first replace the torches in this place so we can see what we have here," Jon ordered, and his guards began moving with him through the dark room, lighting the torches again. Fortunately, the place was no longer humid, which had dried out the wooden torches, making them easy to light.
There were piles upon piles of gold before them, weapons, and even Valyrian steel armor, two of which were complete sets.
"My king... this is an invaluable treasure," one of the royal guards said, gazing in awe.
"Yes... this is certainly what I expected to find here..." Jon said with some pride. This family had amassed wealth through trade at the port and even their own production of Valyrian steel, displaying riches that made even the most powerful families of Valyria look at them with a certain respect. After all, even though they weren't a family of dragonlords, this wealth had secured them a grand marriage, which allowed them to acquire a dragon. The wife of this lord passed her dragon to their son after her death. When the Doom came, this son was over 40 years old and still had his dragon, waiting to pass it on to his heir after his own death. But then their destruction happened, and Jon could see the family of that castle in the distance from them, all reduced to bones, dead from the passage of time.
"This..." Daenerys also followed him, looking cautiously at the many bones gathered there.
"Can you tell me what happened here, since we found the city? What measures did this family take?" Jon raised the question, analyzing the seven dead bodies there. He wanted to test his aunt's knowledge, as she had begun learning with lessons over the last moon.
"I..." Daenerys was surprised by the question and completely forgot about the terror they had faced outside the castle, focusing instead on what might have happened here. "I think during the Doom, they locked the castle so no one could enter..." she began, while Jon nodded, urging her to continue.
"They sealed the castle, unable to flee... and the family locked themselves in the vault, asking their guards to seal the entrance, not letting anyone from the castle inside... They took food and water with them, but in the end, they poisoned themselves..." she said, looking at what seemed to be a food pantry with water. But over time, the food was no longer rotten, it had petrified and corroded. There should have been water... but it must have gone bad.
"Very clever, Dia... you're right about that." Jon nodded, satisfied. One member of the family wore a Valyrian steel armor as well. "Even after protecting themselves from the flames and the gases... they were all killed..." Jon commented. "We should search for the dragon. If it died here, I would like its bones if they are still intact."
"Jon, how much money do you think is here... It's a lot!" Arya exclaimed next to him as he was about to investigate...
"That's tons of gold. There must be at least 5 million gold coins..." Jon said in admiration. With that, he would be even wealthier.
Jon's eyes passed over the armors, each adorned with draconic symbols and family crests. There were at least two of them on mannequins, totaling three in all, like spoils.
"My king... they would certainly suit you," a royal guard said with admiration.
"I intend to remake them as Artica armor with ancient runes... they will be even more beautiful and useful..." Jon commented, thinking of the future.
His gaze left the armors, along with the royal guards, while Arya looked at pieces with gemstones amid the gold. Something else caught his attention near Daenerys, where the family had died.
It was something that drew Jon's attention, so he moved toward it. He continued to the back of the vault, feeling a pull in that direction.
At the end of the room rested three large chests, carefully sealed and richly detailed, revealing something even more precious than everything else in the room. As he approached, Daenerys followed closely behind.
"I came here for the Valyrian steel armors, but this... this is a surprise..." Jon murmured, looking at the chests.
"What is it, Jon...?" Daenerys asked as Jon smiled.
"This is what you came for..." Jon remarked as he opened the first chest, revealing its contents to the girl, who looked on in astonishment.
"Dragon eggs... intact." Daenerys murmured as she approached, amazed, while Jon picked up one of the eggs, a black one, and handed it to her. She reached out to touch it, hesitating for a second as if afraid that a simple touch might break it.
"Don't be afraid... they are very healthy and well-preserved... all are dragons waiting to be born soon," Jon said with a smile. There were five eggs in that chest, and if there were three chests, that meant a total of 15 eggs.
"..." Daenerys took the egg, looking at him with admiration as she registered its touch, feeling the hard, rough surface. She didn't even notice the tear running down her cheek at that moment, feeling so close to what she had always dreamed of since she was a little girl, when she first learned about her family and what they represented.
"It's alive... I can feel its warmth!" she couldn't help but exclaim with awe, her emotions now focused on a future where she rode a dragon, just like her children. Her gaze fell on Jon as he smiled at her and moved on to the next chests, opening each one.
As he suspected, each held five dragon eggs. Arya also approached, wearing a necklace with a large, blood-red ruby.
"Incredible... dragons... but didn't you say this family was only allowed to have one dragon?" she questioned Jon, who nodded.
"That was true... but it seems they were hiding the fact that the dragon they had was highly fertile, and they managed to keep it a secret. After all, I doubt the dragonlord families would have allowed this to happen... This family was like the Velaryons of Westeros, despite their Valyrian origin, they were never known as dragonlords," Jon explained, while his attention shifted to another part of the vault, leaving the eggs behind as Arya and Daenerys continued examining them.
"What is this..." Jon murmured, a bit surprised as he looked at a painting... on the wall. "This is a map... or rather, a piece of it..." Jon commented, staring at the map of Valyria itself, but it was incomplete. Suddenly, he felt a warmth coming from his pocket.
His hand reached in, pulling out the key he had received from R'hllor, which began to glow. Jon looked between the key and the painting, where the same symbol from the key started to appear on the map.
"What does this mean... Is it part of the map? Could this be the place R'hllor mentioned regarding his sword?" Jon asked himself, as he noticed something written below the painting in Valyrian.
"Where the stallion guides the sky and the mother watches from her mountain, the path to the secret will be revealed."
He frowned, pondering. "The stallion guides the sky... mother and mountain..." he muttered to himself, trying to make sense of the words. At first, it seemed like an abstract riddle, unrelated to what he knew about Valyria.
Then, suddenly, a memory surfaced. The "stallion" and the "mother of mountains." His mind traveled north of where he was now, to the lands of the Dothraki.
"Vaes Dothrak..." Jon concluded quietly. "The mother of mountains... the home of the Dothraki. The second part of the map is there. Should I go there...?" Jon couldn't help but feel surprised by this, recalling R'hllor's words.
'Your journey has only just begun, and your true challenges will start now. You will face a war in the East, your exile in Vaes Dothrak, the first battle against the dead in the North, then the fight between the southern kingdoms, the integration of the North into Artica, and later, the battle against the false Dragon King in the South with the conquest of the Seven Kingdoms...' The god's words echoed in his mind.
'Even though I don't understand most of what that meant... still... he foresaw my journey to those lands... I must go...' Jon wondered, a little lost in thought about what he should do. After all, it seemed many things would happen, especially regarding the 'war in the East...' He wondered what he would find there if the Red God was right.
"Jon... is something wrong? What is this?" Daenerys approached him at that moment, looking concerned, while his eyes were fixed on the map.
"This is a map of Valyria, or at least part of it..." Jon replied, not wanting to say much more. He simply sighed and turned back to his aunt. "In any case... let's leave this for now, we can't take everything onto the ship."
Jon then turned his attention to everyone in the vault. "In any case... we can't take these things from this place yet, and I want to investigate one more thing in the castle. Let's leave the vault for now," Jon instructed, while Daenerys clutched the black egg, not seeming to want to let it go.
"Take that egg with you. We're heading back to the ship as soon as we finish here. I don't intend to take anything from this place without the giants, so we have to return. After all, Wind's magic won't last forever. Now, everyone, follow me," Jon said at the end as he began to head back toward the entrance. All the guards, Arya, and Daenerys, with her egg, followed him.
He led them once more through the castle, down the corridors, until they reached an entrance on the eastern side, not the main one, and finally emerged outside through this door without needing to blow it open.
As they moved toward what appeared to be a workshop, they finally encountered a massive structure.
"This...!!" The royal guards were left stunned by what they were seeing.
"It's still intact from the Doom. This is excellent... my Articans, this is the key to finally producing Valyrian steel in Artica—a special forge!" Jon declared with a smile. This was the most important thing that had brought him here, a forge made entirely of Valyrian steel, something that would bring Artica into the age of Valyrian steel and surpass even Valyria itself.
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Raccoon Here:
I'm thinking of doing a time skip and skipping the war in Yi-Ti by 6 moons.
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