"Screech, screech, screech!"The white bats swarmed across the sky like a rolling black cloud.
The Vajra swung its arms and slaughtered wildly, yet there were simply too many bats. They soon clung to its body, covering its fur in a dense layer that made Dany's skin crawl.
Before her eyes, the white bats' milky, translucent bellies began to swell, expanding into dark-red balloons.
They were draining the Vajra's blood, and doing it frighteningly fast.
Driven mad, the Vajra clawed at itself in panic, slapping apart the swollen, round-bellied white bats and sending blood splattering in every direction.
It was a battle of attrition, the bats trading numbers for the Vajra's blood.
They were endless, blotting out most of the sky above the valley, while the Vajra was still a creature of flesh and blood.
In truth, the situation was even worse than Dany had assumed. The white bats were not only draining its blood but also injecting a toxin that numbed and stiffened its muscles.
"Awwooo—!"The Vajra cried for the Dragon Queen's help.
"If you don't find something useful in that cave later, you're dead!"
Cursing under her breath, Dany entered the Fifth-Stage Dragon Soul state and unleashed Soulbreak.
A sharp hum rang out.
For an instant, Drogon's body stiffened. Then the Fifth-Stage Dragon Soul receded, his spirit returned to his body, and he was normal again.
Below, a rain of bats fell into the ravine, cracking against the ground like hail.
To Dany's surprise, only a small portion of the bats had died outright. Most of them merely staggered drunkenly on the ground, still twitching and struggling.
"These aren't ordinary blood-sucking bats!"
Her mind stirred. Drogon dove, spraying dragonfire downward.
Under her fire-controlling spell, the dragonfire spread from a narrow jet into a wide fan.
"Crackle, crackle!"The bats near the riverbank burst like beans in boiling oil.
Spirit Imbuement—
Dany was stunned. These bats were indeed different. Compared to the thousand beasts she had burned earlier, their spiritual essence was far denser.
And within the spiritual rain drifting into her mindscape, she sensed faint traces of divinity.
As thin as cotton fluff drifting along a river embankment in spring, but unmistakably divine.
"There's an evil god in that cave!"
The Dragon Queen's eyes lit with fire. With one simple sentence, she both explained the situation and passed judgment.
An evil god.
"Monster, come out and face your death!"
The promise of profit filled her with energy. She activated Fourth-Stage Dragon Soul, struck the bats on the ground with three consecutive Soulbreaks, then commanded the Vajra to charge into the cave.
She did not burn the rest of the bats.
They were scattered across the valley—on the wildlings' huts, in their yards, in their wheat fields, on the river's surface. Unless she burned the entire valley down, she could not incinerate them all.
But she had no desire to destroy the wildlings' homes, even though the surviving wildlings were baring their teeth at her and Drogon, weapons raised, eager to attack.
Thudding heavily, drenched in blood and gore, the Vajra charged forward without needing her order. Its true target seemed to be the cave to begin with.
"Do not kill it. Whatever that thing is, bring it out alive!" Dany shouted after it.
"Roar—!"The Vajra was indeed intelligent. Hearing her, it actually paused at the entrance, nodded in Drogon's direction, then crawled inside.
There was no fierce battle within the cave—no screams, no roars, no flashes of magic. After only three minutes, the Vajra emerged with a millstone-sized yellow rock in one hand and a bat the size of a city bus in the other.
Compared to the Vajra's enormous hands, it looked as if it held an eraser in its left palm and a plump hen in its right.
The giant bat's skin was also milky white, but streaked with vivid red patterns.
"Seven hells—what kind of monster is that?!"
If it were only a bat spirit, its size alone wouldn't shock Dany.
But the bat's drooping head was unmistakably human.
The smaller blood bats had heads shaped like dogs, but the one dangling from the Vajra's grip… its head resembled a clam shell, and inside it was half of a person—half submerged within the shell.
Inside the clam-shell head was a slick-skinned woman, her body a pale gray-white covered in blood-red vein-like lines. Her figure was voluptuous, temptingly curved, yet her head was shriveled and ancient, like a crone who had lived ten thousand years.
"Uwooooo—!"
Seeing the bat spirit, the tattooed valley people broke into panic. Women, children, and the weak collapsed to their knees wailing; the braver men and women screamed and charged at the Vajra.
"Roar—!"The Vajra had no patience for them. It lifted its roof-sized foot and stomped down, leaving behind massive wet footprints.
Blood and flesh smeared across the brown earth.
The warriors were crushed in moments. The remaining cowards collapsed, sobbing in despair.
For the tattooed people of Gourd Valley, this was an apocalyptic catastrophe.
Even their own god had been captured, its fate uncertain.
"Roar—!"The Vajra puffed out its chest, full of pride and arrogance.
"Skreee—"Drogon cast a disdainful glance at it, perched atop the stone wall outside the cave.
Standing on the dragon's back, Dany motioned at the giant ape. "Vajra, bring the bat spirit here."
The Vajra rumbled anxiously. Staring at the tiny figure only a dozen meters away, its breath quickened slightly and a savage glint appeared in its golden-brown eyes.
It wanted to try something.
Drogon sensed it instantly. His blood-red vertical pupils blazed with solid light—the visible force of a demigod's soul. Sparks jumped from his jaws and shot forward, stopping a dozen meters away and scorching a patch of the Vajra's thick brow.
"Idiot. Come here," Drogon growled, voice low and sinister.
He didn't even need Dany's influence; he slipped into full Smaug-mode entirely on his own.
The Vajra's massive, wall-thick body trembled twice. Then, with lowered head and eyes, it obediently walked forward, crouched, and lifted what it carried to Dany's eye level.
Ever since learning the runes on the sea monster horn, Dany understood that the "Monster Horn" had a fatal flaw in controlling beasts:
It ruled by intimidation.
There was no true partnership.
If the monster could kill its master, destroy the horn, and reclaim the fragment of soul split from it, it would regain freedom.
Thus the master had to remain constantly vigilant for betrayal.
A skill like this was, frankly, quite useless to her.
Well, the animal companions of skinchangers can also turn on their masters. For example, the six-shape man Varamyr failed in his magical duel with Old Maege, and when his soul suffered heavy damage, the shadowcat seized the opportunity and bit through his throat.
Setting those thoughts aside, Dany began to examine the spoils King Kong had brought back.
The millstone-sized yellow "rock" was not a rock at all, but dog-head gold!There was a good chance that a gold mine lay somewhere inside the cave.
"You think I need this?" Dany asked, pointing at the lump of gold.
King Kong nodded, looking puzzled.
It seemed surprised that she showed no delight at the sight of gold.
Dany waved her hand for it to toss the gold away, then turned her gaze to the bat spirit.
"Human? Monster?"
She repeated the question in Valyrian, the Common Tongue, the Old Tongue, and in her barely passable Yi language.
The old woman inside the soft "shell" did not answer, but her eyelids—dry and shriveled like old bark—trembled slightly, revealing a pair of compound eyes that glittered like the stars.
The countless tiny facets shimmered with a strange, bewitching light. They were not frightening, but deeply unsettling.It was like watching ten thousand earthworms twist into a ball right in front of you. You might not be scared, but you would feel a chill down your spine and goosebumps creeping up your arms.
Dany swallowed hard, wondering if she should just torch the thing and be done with it.
"..." It spoke at last. The voice was old, yet melodious, as beautiful as the sweetest music.
Dany could not understand the words, but she knew exactly what it was saying.
The First Tongue!
Her violet irises trembled a few times, as if a drop of ink had fallen into a pool of clear water. The ink spread out, and the violet was replaced by inky blackness.
Then, bit by bit, the blackness surfaced and peeled away, as though droplets of ink were floating out of her eyes. Her eyes cleared again, returning to their violet color.
"Caw, caw, caw!"The ink gathered together and formed a giant raven.
The raven circled Dany twice and finally landed on her shoulder. "Your Grace, were you looking for me?"
This was the raven Dany had brought back from the Green Seer Sanctuary.
It was the second life of a child of the forest, a raven Dany had named Fugin and Munin (ps).
When Dany first set foot on Westeros, the Three-Eyed Raven had once split off a thought and sent it into the body of the children's raven. From thousands of miles away, he used that raven to whisper the "Green Seer's Murmur" to her.
At the time, the raven had slipped into her sea of consciousness through her eyes without her noticing—though in truth, Dany had felt something. She had only practiced the Grand Mage's meditation for a little over ten days. Her understanding of the supernatural was still vague and incomplete.
Since the Green Seer could hide a raven in her consciousness, once Dany obtained the raven, she too could "open the door and invite the thief," allowing Fugin and Munin into her mental space.
As the second life of a child of the forest, the raven possessed a body formed of spirit and magic. It could convert itself into a soul-state filled with magic—in other words, a spirit form.
It was like when Dany hatched dragons, using fire to shape their flesh and blood.
A newborn dragon's body was also formed by the fusion of fire and soul.
However, dragons cannot switch freely between physical form and spirit form like ravens can.
If a raven dies and its soul dissipates, its form solidifies into mere flesh.
Didn't one unlucky one die in Dany's hands and end up cooked by the Night's Watch?
Because of her own experience, Dany had long suspected that Brynden's great raven could transform into a spirit. She simply assumed that ability belonged exclusively to the Three-Eyed Raven—until she left Westeros with Fugin and Munin.
Once they departed the land that was the children's homeland, the two great ravens deflated like punctured bladders, their inner magic rapidly leaking away.
Dany panicked, thinking they were about to die.
Fugin told her they would not die—they just could no longer take on spirit form.
As for the magic they lost, it originally belonged to the Three-Eyed Raven. Since they had left the domain of the Old Gods, that magic had simply returned to its rightful owner.
This gave Dany an idea: could the ravens accept her magic instead?
At that time, she had two meditation methods, corresponding to two kinds of magic: Green Seer magic and Fire Mage magic.
The results of her experiment delighted her. The ravens rejected fire magic, but they could absorb her Green Seer magic.
Dany was also disappointed. Brynden could cast spells through his ravens, but most of her Green Seer abilities were passive—passively resilient soul, passive immortality of spirit.
Still, she held onto hope. By using Green Seer magic to make the ravens attune to her spiritual power, perhaps they might someday grow accustomed to her fire magic as well.
After all, magic equals spiritual force plus natural elements.
"Fugin, this creature is speaking the First Tongue. Help me translate." Dany pointed at the bat spirit and spoke to the great raven.
(ps: Odin's two ravens are called Huginn and Muninn, meaning "thought" and "memory."At dawn each day, the two ravens fly from Odin's shoulders into the mortal world, seeing all and hearing all.At night, they return to his shoulders and whisper everything they witnessed into his ears.A reader suggested using these names, and I found it very fitting—and quite the coincidence.)
(End of chapter)
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