"Want to be a dragon knight? Do you have true dragon blood? Or are you a bastard of House Targaryen?" Aegon sneered, the corner of his lips
"Want to be a dragon knight? Do you have true dragon blood? Or are you a bastard of House Targaryen?" Aegon sneered, the corner of his lips curling with mockery.
Tyrion was not offended. He turned his head with a mischievous grin toward the Dragon Queen and asked, "If I were a bastard, would Your Majesty grant me a true dragon?"
"And whose bastard would you be?" Dany countered with a playful smile.
"Certainly not my father's," Aegon sneered.
"Then should I call you Uncle?" Tyrion teased.
"You really are a scoundrel," Aegon cursed furiously. "Even if you don't care about your father's honor, what about your mother?"
"My mother…" Tyrion froze for a moment, then said wistfully, "It feels like there has never been a 'mother' in my life."
Aegon was taken aback.
He suddenly remembered that the dwarf's mother had died giving birth to him.
After a pause, he sighed. "Me too. I have never seen my mother."
Dany almost wanted to add, "Same here," but she could not truly share the same sentiment as the two across from her.
The three motherless children fell into silence for a moment before Tyrion finally broke it. "I want to become a wyvern knight. How about you, Your Highness, join me? I'll give you the largest one."
"Wyvern?" Aegon's eyes lit up in sudden realization.
He looked at the six wyverns lying on the ground like obedient cats, then at the mighty Black who exuded majesty even while half-asleep. The excitement on his face slowly faded, replaced with calm determination. "No. I am a true dragon. I ride only true dragons and will only be a true dragon knight."
Tyrion shrugged indifferently. "Fine then, the biggest one is mine."
With that, he waddled on his short, deformed legs toward a forty-meter-long wyvern striped green and white on his left.
"Hissss—!" The wyvern opened its vicious eyes, snarling with menace. It even parted its beak-like jaws, eager to lunge and tear apart the dwarf standing before it.
"Ah—!" Tyrion's joy vanished, his face turning deathly pale with terror.
"Hmph!" A flash of crimson light flickered in Dany's violet eyes as she let out a cold snort.
"Hisss—screeech!" The wyvern trembled like a mouse before a tiger, bowing its head. Its entire body quivered violently as pitiful whimpers escaped its mouth, filled with pleading submission.
"What's happening?" Tyrion stepped back several paces, startled and confused.
Dany moved forward, the sharp click of her slender iron boots striking the stone floor as she approached Tyrion. She said calmly,
"You're well-read, with knowledge of many tomes from Sothoryos. Do you not know the nature of wyverns?"
Sothoryos was a land of plague and horrors, teeming with monsters, known as the "Green Hell." Yet wyverns still reigned supreme, at the very top of the food chain.
It seemed that Dany could tame dragons more easily than horses, but in truth, both dragons and wyverns were among the fiercest, most dangerous creatures in existence.
House Targaryen had bred dragons for over six thousand years, so familiar with them that nothing should surprise them anymore. Yet countless dragon tamers had still been devoured by the beasts they sought to master.
Wyverns, with their lower intelligence and untamed savagery, were even harder to subdue.
In fact, the entire world knew wyverns dwelled in the rainforests of Sothoryos, but none had ever attempted to tame one as a mount.
Aside from Valyrians, there had never been wyvern knights.
Think of it this way: in Earth's thousands of years of history, aside from unverifiable myths, who had ever heard of a general riding into battle on a lion or a tiger?
If lions and tigers could not be broken, how could one possibly subdue a wyvern, a creature ten or a hundred times stronger and more ferocious?
"What should I do?" Tyrion asked, turning to Dany.
Since she had chosen him to become a dragon knight, she must have a way for him to control it.
At this moment, Dany's expression grew a little strange.
After branding runes into the wyverns' minds, she could freely control them, even direct them from a distance.
Just as Jeyne had once compelled wyverns to fight Black across dozens of leagues.
But transferring control to a dragon knight required more. The knight needed either blood ties to, or a bond of faith with, the "demigod" who controlled the beasts.
This was why Jeyne had sent out invitations, gathering young nobles of the Fourteen Flames from city-states across the world to Matarys for dragon knight training.
For example, Linessa's husband, Triarch Tragar Ormollen of Lys, a trade prince.
After Dany burned the Garden of Pleasures, he had nearly become the most powerful man in Lys, commanding the fleets of the "Three Sisters."
By contrast, Steffon Belarys of Myr was but a minor noble, yet he became a dragon knight—while Tragar, who didn't even know of the wyvern host, did not.
The difference lay in blood.
Tragar, like Illyrio of Pentos, was a newly risen trade prince through seaborne commerce.
But Steffon's lineage was pure.
Even Grazdan the Warlord of Yunkai had some advantage, for his family had intermarried with Valyrian nobility long ago.
Though distant, his tall black-red hair and ruddy bronze skin still hinted at the faint traces of that heritage.
After the dragon battle yesterday, Dany had captured more than a dozen prisoners.
They did not know the exact blood sorcery used to transfer wyvern control, but they knew they had become dragon knights through such spells.
From there, things became simple.
The Dragon Queen used brutal means to break their mental defenses, invade their soul-scape, and seize their blood-magic runes. After rendering four of them idiots, she had finally gathered the full set of blood sorcery sigils.
She then contacted Quaithe to consult that master of blood sorcery.
Moreover, Dany's own knowledge of magic had greatly expanded since she had helped Jaqen's child craft the art of "neither man nor ghost."
Thus, in just one night, she created a new form of blood sorcery, different from Balerion's.
A 2.0 improved version.
"Clang!" Dany drew the sword Clear Sky from her waist and stepped before Black, gently tapping his brow.
"Crack!" A dark-red scale split apart, and a few drops of steaming crimson dragon blood seeped out.
Dany raised her hand, summoning a tiny flame of pale gold from Black's nostril. It wrapped around the bead of dragon blood, now the size of a broad bean, and hovered in midair.
"Come here." She beckoned to the dwarf standing stiffly to the side.
"Uh, what do I do?" Tyrion asked, his face full of astonishment.
"Lie down, close your eyes. It might hurt a little, but bear it and don't scream," Dany said.
Tyrion looked bewildered, but he did as she instructed.
Dany gripped the lump of dragonflame blood in her palm, chanting an incantation. The lump twisted and warped, breaking apart into countless tiny runes invisible to the naked eye.
When the runes reformed into a complete square-shaped spell seal, she crouched down and pressed it hard against Tyrion's brow.
"Hiss!" It was like a red-hot branding iron searing into raw pork.
Sizzling sounds filled the air.
White smoke laced with a scorched stench spread around them.
"Aaaargh!" Tyrion howled like a slaughtered pig.
He tried to struggle and rise, but his body only convulsed uncontrollably, like someone in the grip of fever.
"What's wrong with him?" Aegon asked, shaken and terrified.
"Endure the bitterest suffering to stand above others. Without this pain etched into his very bones, how could he ever ride a dragon in glory?" Aunt Dany said calmly.
When Dany finally withdrew her hand, a dark red mark had appeared at Tyrion's brow—a square rune the size of a thumbnail.
"Huff, huff—" Tyrion opened his eyes, gasping in confusion.
"What—what happened to me? Gods, it hurts. My head feels like it's splitting open, like a dragon has drilled its way inside—swelling, burning."
"It is a dragon. A wisp of Drogon's spirit condensed into a brand," Dany replied with a smile.
Infused with the divine power of the Faith of the Seven, that spirit mark also carried the undying essence of a greenseer's soul.
Unless Dany herself erased it, or one day Tyrion's power surpassed both hers and Drogon's combined, or some true god lent him aid, no one could ever erase that imprint.
In other words, not even Balerion himself could strip Tyrion of control over his wyvern.
It was a kind of "anti-theft" safeguard.
After seizing six of Balerion's wyverns so easily, Dany felt both joy and caution. She would not allow her dragons, even the lesser wyverns, to be stolen by others.
Yes—the right to ride wyverns belonged to the dragonrider, but ultimate ownership always lay with the Dragon Queen.
"Now try again," she encouraged.
"Try what?" Tyrion, still dazed from the pain, asked.
"Try taming a wyvern. Approach it, press your forehead to its head, brow to brow, and tell it: I want to forge a bond with you, eternal and unbreakable, until death."
"Oh." Tyrion climbed up, rubbed his swollen brow, and after gathering himself, said doubtfully, "You're serious? It tried to bite me just now. If I stick my head out and it snaps it off, are you paying for that?"
"I'll pay," Dany replied.
Tyrion gave her a careful look. Though she was smiling faintly, her expression showed no sign of jest.
"Drogon, watch closely—don't let it kill me."
Muttering to Drogon, the Imp cautiously stepped forward, inching closer to the green-and-white striped, sharp-beaked wyvern.
It didn't bite. Instead, its enormous, bowl-sized eyes simply stared at the careful dwarf approaching.
The Imp reached out and touched its nose.
The wyvern gave a low snort.
"Whew!" Tyrion let out a long breath of relief.
Following the Dragon Queen's instructions, he pressed his forehead to its head, and nervously recited: "Wyvern, I want to forge a bond with you, eternal and unbreakable, until death!"
"Buzz!"
The instant the words left his mouth, Tyrion's small body shuddered. He felt some strange force within him flow through his brow into the creature opposite him. His swollen head suddenly felt lighter.
Then, a cool "liquid" streamed back from the wyvern, spreading from his mind through his entire body. The comfort was overwhelming, and he couldn't help but shiver.
Meanwhile, the square rune on his brow shifted like a cluster of tadpoles, quickly crawling and rearranging into the form of a wyvern spreading its wings to fly.
"By the Seven— I, I can feel it…" Tyrion, clutching the wyvern's head and staring into its giant eyes, cried out in shock, "I can command it! I can speak with it!"
"Hissss—" The wyvern gave a low cry and tapped its sharp, hard beak against Tyrion's helmet.
"Ah! It's not an illusion—I really can command it!"
Overjoyed, Tyrion shouted to Dany and Aegon, "Did you see that? It pecked my head—I told it to do that!"
As if afraid they might not believe him, the dwarf insisted, "I swear it! Believe me!"
He could not pass exact thoughts to the wyvern, but he understood its general intent.
It was beyond the crude control a beast-tamer had over animals, though still short of the spiritual communion between dragon and dragonlord.
"Impossible…" Aegon muttered.
Dany, however, said matter-of-factly, "This is my blood magic. If you cannot commune with a wyvern, what kind of dragonrider are you?"
(End of chapter)
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