King Aegon stood at the stern of the flagship with his hands on the rail and watched the eastern horizon fill with sails.
He had seen them before the lookouts called it, as he had been standing at this rail for the better part of an hour watching the smoke rise from the causeway and waiting for the signal that the gate was open. When the first dark shapes appeared on the line where the sea met the sky he had known what they were before his mind had finished forming the word.
"Ships," the lookout screamed from the masthead. "SHIPS TO THE EAST. HUNDREDS OF THEM."
Aegon turned from the rail.
"Get the fleet out to sea." His voice cut across the deck. "Every ship that can move, I want it under oar and out of this harbour in the next quarter hour. Signal the captains and form a line of battle on the eastern approach with the heavy dromons at the centre. We meet them in open water where we have room to fight."
Lord Elmo Tully was beside him within seconds. "Your Grace, the crews are ashore. Half of them went over with the assault force and the other half are on the transports. Even if every captain in this fleet heard the signal this instant, they could not get their oars manned before that fleet is on top of us."
"It doesn't matter!"
"Your Grace." Luthor Tyrell had come up on the other side. "With respect, my lord Tully is right. The fleet cannot form line in time. The wiser course is to evacuate to the island. Get every man we can onto the causeway and inside the walls. The fortress is ours now so we can hold—"
"And lose the entire royal fleet?!" Aegon's voice rose for the first time that day. "Every warship the Reach and the Westerlands and the Crownlands could put to sea, sitting at anchor with their crews on a beach while the enemy sails in and burns them at leisure. Is that your counsel, my lord?"
Luthor Tyrell said nothing.
Aegon turned back to the rail and looked east. The dark sails were closer now, close enough that he could see the shapes of the hulls beneath them.
"The Velaryons were stationed between here and the open sea," he said. "Two hundred ships in a screen that covered every approach from the east. If that fleet is here, then it came through that blockade and Lord Velaryon is either dead or captured and every ship he had is at the bottom of the Narrow Sea."
"So if we lose our fleet now then we are essentially land locked to Westeros." Aegon put one finger on the chart that was still spread across the small table beside the rail and traced a line. "So no my lord we will not evacurate to Dragonston. The channel between the island and the reef is narrow enough that only a dozen ships can pass through it abreast. I want the heavy dromons moved into that channel and anchored bow to stern to make a wall. They need to sit there and absorb the first charge and stop the enemy fleet from pouring into the harbour behind them."
"And the rest of the fleet?" Tully asked.
"The rest of the fleet goes around." Aegon's finger moved along the western side of the island. "The lighter galleys and the transports get under oar and move west, around the far side of Dragonstone. While the enemy fleet is battering itself against the dromons in the channel, the galleys come around the northern point and hit them from the flank. It is risky but we have more ships than them so it should—"
**SCREEEEEEEEEEECH**
The sound came down from the sky like the sky splitting open.
Every man stopped what they were doing and looked up though some were too terrified to do even that.
The clouds above Dragonstone were thick and as he watched they parted the way water parted around the prow of a ship, pushed aside by something moving through them from above.
Something black.
The first thing any of them saw was black. A vast expanse of it, so dark that it seemed to draw the light out of the sky around it. Then they saw the shape as its wings opened up, each one broader than the flagship was long.
Aegon had seen this dragon before.
He had seen it in his dreams that had come night after night for the better part of three years. A shadow that covered King's Landing from horizon to horizon. A city burning. His family dying on a wall while he stood helpless and watched. He had told himself it was a symbol. He had told himself it was the Blackfyres, the black dragon on their banners.
But he was wrong.
"Mother have mercy," someone whispered on the deck behind him.
"Seven preserve us." Another voice. "Seven preserve us, Seven preserve us, Seven preserve—"
"Get the boats. GET THE BOATS, we have to get off this—"
"Silence." But Aegon's own voice had gone thin and he could not make himself look away from the thing descending through the clouds. Every year of his life seemed to have gathered behind his eyes at once and pressed down on him with a weight that made it difficult to stand.
*The gate is open, and the fire has been let in.*
"Your Grace."
*And now you must choose which of them burns.*
"Your Grace. AEGON."
A hand closed on his shoulder and spun him around with a force that no one but a Kingsguard would have dared to use on the king's person, and Ser Gerold Hightower's face was inches from his own.
"We need to get you to Dragonstone now. This ship is a target and you are standing on it. The walls of that fortress were shaped by dragonfire and they will hold against it, but there is nothing on this deck that will."
Aegon blinked and the world came back into focus around him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. The keep. Everyone to the keep."
He turned to the men on the ships and filled his lungs.
"MAKE FOR THE KEEP. EVERY MAN, EVERY SHIP. THE WALLS WILL HOLD AGAINST DRAGONFIRE. GET TO THE CAUSEWAY AND GET INSIDE THE WALLS. LEAVE THE SHIPS. LEAVE EVERYTHING. MOVE."
The dragon dove.
It folded its wings against its body and dropped out of the sky like a stone, the air screaming around it, and at three hundred feet it opened its wings again and levelled out and swept across the harbour in a long straight run with its head lowered and its jaws opening wide.
An inferno of flames rioted from its mouth and in the time it took a man to blink several ships were already lit up in flames..
The dragon's head swept sideways.
The fire raked across the water and found the third ship and the fourth. Each one went up the same way, the sea itself catching alight around them as the burning pitch and oil spread across the surface.
"GO," Ser Gerold roared, and he seized Aegon under one arm and another kingsguard seized him under the other, and the two Kingsguard lifted the King of the Seven Kingdoms off his feet and ran.
Aegon looked back as the Kingsguard hauled him toward the gangway that connected the flagship to the next vessel in line.
A scorpion on the deck of a nearby dromon fired. The bolt went up and passed a hundred feet behind the dragon's tail and fell into the sea. A second scorpion fired from another ship. Its bolt struck the dragon's flank and skidded off the scales as though they were made of steel and spun away.
The dragon did not even turn its head.
It banked and it came around in a long curve over the burning harbour and it chose its next line.
The fire came again.
Six ships this time.
Aegon watched the flagship of House Redwyne, the pride of the Arbor fleet, a vessel that had cost more gold to build than most castles, become a torch. Then Ser Gerold's hand tightened on his arm and pulled him through the gangway and onto the next deck, and the next, and the next, toward the shore and the causeway and the walls that might save them.
Behind them, the fleet burned.
...
"RUN, LUNK. RUN. DON'T STOP, DON'T LOOK BACK, JUST RUN."
Jory had Lunk's enormous hand in both of his and he was hauling on it with all the strength in his fifteen-year-old body.
Jory had been sitting on a barrel near the mainmast sharpening his sword when the screech had come down from the sky and be had looked up just to see this thing coming through the clouds.
Now they were running.
They reached the rail of the ship they were on and Jory did not stop to think. He simply jumped. His boots hit the next ships deck and he stumbled and went down on one knee and came up running. Behind him Lunk hit the deck with a crash that shook the planking and he too came up running, or doing the closest thing to running that a body of that size was capable of.
"THIS WAY."
The cog's deck was crowded with sailors shoving past each other toward the far rail. Jory ducked under one man's arm and shouldered another aside and reached the rail. The next ship was a war galley and they prepared to go over the gangway but that's when the dragon came over.
Its shadow swept across the cog's deck like a curtain being drawn across the sun. Then its head dipped and the white fire poured out.
The two ships ahead in their path went up in flames and cracked down the centre from the heat and force of the fire.
"SEVEN HELLS. BACK, LUNK, WE CAN'T GO THAT WAY."
They turned back to the ships desk only to see that it was even worse than before. Men were screaming. Burning debris was raining down from the galley, chunks of blazing timber and rope and canvas landing on the decks of the ships around it and starting fires wherever they fell. A piece of burning mast the size of a tree trunk crashed onto the cog's foredeck thirty feet from where Jory stood and split the planking making the whole ship shudder.
"There!" Jory pointed. On the cog's port side, another vessel was moored to the ship. Its deck was nearly empty and beyond it was another ship, and beyond that one was the shallows near the causeway.
They ran for it.
The gap between the cog and the scout ship was wider than the last one, nearly eight feet, but luckily the scout's deck was lower. Jory reached the rail and looked down at the black water churning between the hulls and jumped. He hit the scout's deck hard and came up on his feet.
He turned.
Lunk was standing at the rail of the cog looking down at the gap.
"LUNK. JUMP."
"Too far."
"IT'S NOT TOO FAR. JUMP."
"Lunk fall in the water. Lunk cannot swim."
"LUNK, PLEASE, YOU HAVE TO—"
The dragon came around again on the other side of the fleet, and the fire it breathed hit a cluster of ships near the eastern edge of the fleet. But the shockwave of the ignition rolled across the water and hit the cog and the scout ship together and both vessels heaved sideways.
Lunk jumped.
He did not so much leap as fall forward. His enormous body left the cog's rail at the moment the gap was narrowest and crossed the space and hit the scout ship's deck like a boulder dropped from a cliff.
"Lunk did not fall in the water."
"No you didn't, now come on."
They ran across the scout ship's deck and crossed it in seconds. At the far rail the next ship was another transport, though the gap was too far and there was no gangplank to walk over, only a tangle of mooring lines stretched between the two hulls.
Jory grabbed the nearest line and started to climb hand over hand.
He was halfway across when the transport caught fire and within seconds the flames had run along the deck and up the rigging and the entire forward half of the ship was ablaze. The mooring line Jory was hanging from quickly caught and was starting ti burn.
"Shit!"
The line snapped and Jory hit the water flat on his back and the impact drove the air out of his lungs and the cold water closed over his head and everything went dark. For a moment he wondered how water could be so warm before he snapped out of it and started kicking for the surface gasping as he did.
"JORY."
Lunk's voice, from above. The big man was leaning over the scout ship's rail with one arm extended down toward the water.
"JORY. GRAB LUNK'S HAND."
It was too far. Lunk's hand was eight feet above the water and Jory could barely keep his own head above the surface.
"I CAN'T REACH—"
Something hit the water beside him.
It scared Jory half to death. It was large and pale, and it surfaced beside Jory with a snort and a spray of water and turned its head toward him.
Quiet.
The pale horse was swimming beside Jory who had no idea how she had gotten off whatever ship she had been on. He had no idea how a horse could navigate through dozens of burning ships when they could barely escape.
But he also did not care. He grabbed the mane with both hands and hauled himself onto her back and she turned in the water without being told and swam to an adjacent ship that was halfway in the water and sinking.
She stepped onto the slanted deck up and jumped up before turning and jumping back onto the other ship.
Lunk stared with a blank smile.
"Horse," he said.
"LUNK, GET ON THE HORSE."
He walked forward and put his enormous hands on Quiet's back and heaved himself up behind Jory with a grunt.
Quiet did not so much as shift beneath the weight.
She turned toward the burning transport and gathered herself and Jory felt the muscles in her back bunch beneath him like coiled rope.
She was rushed forward and cleared the gap of burning water and landed on the transport's afterdeck, the only part of the ship not yet fully ablaze, and she did not stop. She kept going, jumping between ships before landing in the shallows and running up the beach and eventually the path to the keep.
"Jory is safe."
"We're safe," Jory gasped. "We're safe. Oh gods. Oh gods, Lunk, we're—"
They both then covered their ears as the sound of what seemed to be the sky whip cracking echoed out.
JOOR ZAH FRUL
Jory stared up at the walls.
"What," he said. "What in seven hells was rhat..."
_____________________________________
Arthur stood on the battlement with Rickard beside him and watched the fleet burn.
────────────────────
[QUEST ACQUIRED]
────────────────────
THE BLACK DRAGON
────────────────────
Description:
The enemy has revealed its greatest weapon. A dragon flies over Dragonstone and the royal fleet burns beneath it. The enemy commander rides upon its back. If they are not stopped, everything you have built will follow the ships into the fire.
────────────────────
Objectives:
• Slay the enemy commander
• Slay the dragon
Optional Objective:
• ???
────────────────────
Rewards:
• Otherworld Token (Legendary)
• Dragon Soul
Optional Reward:
• ???
────────────────────
(AN: Damn that is definitely not a wyvern I wonder what the loyalists will do now. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
Support if ya want.
Patreon /captainalfie78works