"BOOOOOM!"
It was as if a nuclear bomb had gone off inside Benny's mind. His once-clear starry sea of consciousness instantly collapsed into a primordial chaos.
That enhanced strike of the "Smith's Hammer" even shook the trace of divinity buried deep within Jenny's soul, leaving it momentarily dazed.
In that fleeting moment of distraction, the dung-green "wyvern" moved with the agility of a monkey, flipping its body and diving straight at Benny.
They had already been close, no more than three to four hundred meters apart. With Big Black accelerating downward from above, by the time Benny regained his composure with Jenny's help, the creature's sharp beak was only thirty meters from his face.
"No! A true dragon? That's Blackfyre—he's evolved again, becoming a true divine dragon! What is Daenerys doing? She herself isn't even a demigod, so why let the dragon spirit's beast ascend first???"
Jenny's mental voice echoed with disbelief, shouting thoughts that defied reason.
If she had asked Daenerys directly, the queen would likely have been baffled: what was wrong with letting the dragon ascend first?
"No—!"
In that moment of spiritual exchange, countless thoughts could be conveyed, but for Benny, it was only enough for him to widen his eyes and scream a single word in terror.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
The wyvern's sharp beak warped and crumbled under the dragonflame, falling away to reveal blunt black-and-crimson scales beneath—the mouth of Big Black himself!
The dung-green wyvern was a disguise!Its dark red-tinged black scales had been painted dung-green, its head fitted with a false beaked snout. Even its wings had been sewn with wyvern flesh.
Back in Tolos, Daenerys had harvested more than twenty wyvern corpses. Their hides and wings were stripped, their remains burned, while the birdlike skulls and jawbones were dug from the ashes.
Many of those wyverns had been larger than Big Black. Fitting one of their beak-shaped skulls over his jaws was as simple as putting a bridle on a horse.
From among the six wyverns, she selected one closest in size to Big Black, painted its dung-green scales black, and shaded them with a thin crimson hue.
With this false "Blackfyre" left behind in Old Ghis to pacify spies, the real Big Black could disguise himself as a wyvern and lie in ambush, hunting down the petty thieves who dared steal from the Dragon Queen.
Compared to the enemy's seventy wyverns, New Ghis wasn't that important to Daenerys. So long as she could destroy it, she never intended to keep it as some cherished treasure.
Daenerys truly believed Matarys possessed seventy dragons. After torturing captured dragonriders, all had confessed that the first class of dragonrider cadets numbered one hundred.
Why train a hundred dragonriders without a hundred dragons?
Of those hundred, thirty had already been dealt with, leaving seventy riders and seventy-one dragons.
Seventy-one dragons!How could the Dragon Queen not scheme with every ounce of cunning she possessed?
And so this "wonderful" misunderstanding persisted. This time, forty had come, which meant Matarys still had thirty left!
But that was drifting off topic.
Even the White Knight riding on Big Black's back was fake. Daenerys had crafted an entire suit of White Knight armor.
At this moment, Big Black was the "Smith" among the Seven, his dragonflame shifting from the platinum of the "High Septon" to a vivid glazed crimson.
It was perhaps the brightest red in the world.
The dragonflame flowed like liquid crystal, and from certain angles, it reflected sunlight so finely that it looked as though Big Black were exhaling a spiral crystal lance.
A crystal spear.
This was the "Smith's Fire," divine flame imbued with the power of forging.
Benny's eyes shone with dazzling brilliance. His blue pupils flickered with countless overlapping shades of blue and violet, flashing like a hundred thousand eyes layered into a single 3D vision.
In that instant, Benny was no longer fighting alone.
He carried the proud legacy of Valyria. The spirits of Balerion, Meraxes, Vhagar, and others fused with his soul in that moment.
"Divide!" Benny uttered the single word in the Valyrian tongue of sorcery, his voice layered with countless male and female tones.
Daenerys not only understood, she realized he was using the same sorcery as herself—pyromancy!
She felt the dragonflame suddenly resisting her will, its form and direction being forcibly twisted.
It was as if a giant were kneading dough—perhaps clumsily, unable to mold it precisely, but still powerful enough to reshape it at will.
"Whoosh—" The crystal-like glazed crimson dragonflame, when within three feet of Benny, split apart like a river parting around a stone.
In that moment, Benny radiated nine parts majesty, one part arrogance.
Daenerys's pupils contracted, her expression becoming deadly serious.
That force's energy level was immense, instantly reminding her of the Song of Wind.
Perhaps Benny had invoked the power of Law itself.
The thought made her all the more shaken.
Could it be that the Song of Fire truly lay with Balerion?But only a true god could wield the Songs of Law, and Benny was clearly no true god.
The problem was, only a fire god singing the Song of Fire could wrest control of dragonflame from the "Smith."
And Big Black was not fighting alone either. He carried the proud legacy of House Targaryen. In that moment, Whitefyre and Daenerys herself fused their souls with him.
It was contradictory.
Daenerys was left in doubt and astonishment.
Though the telling seems long, in truth, Big Black's dive from thirty meters away took only a heartbeat.
Daenerys had intended to burn Benny alive, as Big Black skimmed past the ancient green dragon.
But now she changed her mind.
Big Black lowered his head, plunging through the crimson flames shattered by Benny, and slammed straight into the rider on the dragon's back with an "iron headbutt."
"Bang—roar—!"
Big Black, the Smith, was like a hammer striking blood-soaked mud, smashing into the old wyvern's back.
The mottled green swamp dragon shrieked in agony as it lost speed, while Big Black moved swiftly.
In an instant, like a child in a brawl, he twisted and mounted the old dragon's back, his claws hooking into its wing joints, his jaws clamping down on its neck.
The two dragons tumbled downward like Jack embracing Rose in Titanic, accelerating in their fall.
Meanwhile, Benny's body, crushed into gore, unsurprisingly dissolved into writhing dragon-worms—chopstick-thick, arm-length, slimy pink, clumping together like a boiling pot of noodles.
The "noodles" writhed like the tentacles of a monster, wrapping around Big Black's neck and quickly spreading toward the Dragon Queen on his back.
Without the grotesque dragon-worms, the scene would have looked very much like The Dance of the Dragons at Lake God's Eye (ps).
But Big Black was a demigod "Blacksmith." His might and strength surpassed Caraxes by far, and the Old Swamp Dragon was only a wyvern, far inferior to the true dragon Vhagar.
Thus, Big Black was able to crush the Old Swamp Dragon, even pressing its soul down with his draconic divine might, forcing it into a puppet-like state—stiff, motionless, and unable to resist while it was beaten.
Dany had arranged it this way on purpose, since Beni was in the middle of the wyvern swarm, with fifteen shadow dragons circling and watching hungrily nearby.
Big Black dove rapidly with the swamp dragon in tow, avoiding the shadow dragons' encirclement.
"Exhausted of tricks!"
Dany gave a cold laugh, unleashing another soul strike in her dual-dragon-spirit state. Like a bolt of lightning, it caused the dragon-worms surging toward her to tremble violently.
"Hissss—BOOM!"
Linked through dragon-spirit communion, Big Black breathed dragonfire at the very instant she struck.
It was still the "Blacksmith's" enamel-crimson crystal flame.
The fire spewed from Big Black's jaws but didn't scorch the Old Dragon's neck in front of him. Instead, the flames curled backward, wrapping his neck in a dazzling crimson "scarf."
"Crackle—pop—pop!"
The dragon-worms caught in the flames writhed like worms dropped into boiling oil. They swelled, their skins bursting with sprays of red ichor, which ignited mid-air like kerosene.
One had to remember that back in Oros, neither Big Black nor Little White's dragonfire could harm the worms at all. At best, it stopped them from merging into human form.
"No—!"
Every dragon-worm shrieked a soul-piercing wail before turning to ash. Each cry was different—man or woman, young or old—but all sent chills straight into the heart.
"Abomination, die!"
Dany unleashed another soul strike, this time with only Little White's single-dragon-spirit.
They were too close to the ground now. Big Black had to control their descent every moment and couldn't afford to freeze up. (If his soul slipped into Dany's mind, his body would stiffen briefly.)
"You cannot kill me. Beni is only one of my countless forms. I will return—AAHH—"
Dany didn't waste words. After the soul strike, she immediately infused the flames with spirit, grinding the soul into fragments and converting it into unclaimed spirit-essence.
"Whooosh!"
A cascade of nine-colored essence poured into Dany's sea of consciousness.
She thought her soul had already reached saturation and couldn't absorb more. But the nine-colored vortex suddenly quaked, like a giant fish swallowing an ocean, and above it appeared an even larger, hazier vortex formed entirely of essence.
It was the nine-colored vortex frantically devouring the essence—essence from Balerion, imbued with the divinity of the "Song of Fire."
Before her eyes, Dany's nine-colored vortex grew more vivid, as though a painted landscape had suddenly become a living scene of nature.
Like earth washed clean by spring rain and bathed in its first radiant dawn.
From her soles to the tips of her hair, a tingling current ran through Dany. The sensation was so intoxicating she nearly moaned aloud.
It felt as though a long, aching hunger had finally been sated.
Her sorcery wasn't just refined in quality, gaining a trace of the "Song of Fire," but its total power doubled instantly—equivalent to ten years of arduous cultivation.
But Balerion was ruined.
"Ahhhh! My divinity, my soul, it's vanishing? Impossible! What have you done? What witchcraft is this? Could it be… a gift beyond dragon-spirit—AAHH—"
With that final ripple of thought, Balerion's divine fragment within Beni's mind was utterly consumed, transformed into essence, and became a great tonic for the Dragon Queen.
And tonic it was. Even this single fragment rivaled the Immortals Dany had once encountered in Qarth.
No wonder the Grand Warlocks had spoken so disdainfully of the Immortals.
No wonder, now that Big Black was a demigod, killing even one fragment of Balerion was so difficult. Yet back when Big Black was only a few months old, he had destroyed the Immortals.
"Hahahahaha!" Dany stood with hands on her hips, laughing wildly atop Big Black's back. "So Balerion was not my calamity, but my chance for ascension!"
And Balerion himself had said it—Beni was just one of his countless soul-splits.
But even this one alone had given her ten years of power. If she devoured them all…
Ten thousand years of cultivation?
"Hissss—" Big Black roared, reminding his mother of the urgent matter at hand: bite the enemy to death, or let it crash down?
(ps: The duel was between the two mightiest dragons of the time—Vhagar and Caraxes—and their riders, Prince Aemond and Prince Daemon.
The dragons took flight at dusk, their roars heard for miles around Lake God's Eye.
The flames were so bright that fishermen feared the sky itself would ignite.
Caraxes struck from Aemond's blind side, ramming Vhagar and locking its jaws around her neck, using the last glare of sunset to blind the prince. The two beasts wrestled in midair, plummeting downward.
Vhagar tore one of Caraxes' wings and ripped open its belly, yet Caraxes never loosened his bite.
At that moment, Daemon leapt from his saddle onto Vhagar's back. Aemond fumbled with the chain at his waist, unable to free it. Daemon drew Dark Sister and drove the sword through his nephew's blind eye and out the back of his neck.
Both dragons crashed into the waters of Lake God's Eye, the waves flooding the farmland in a bloody tide.
Two foolhardy Targaryens perished with their dragons, dragging the mightiest beasts of their age to ruin. Tragic, tragic, tragic!)
(End of Chapter)
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