Freedom Maiden Island has such an excellent geographical location, practically the Hawaii of Slaver's Bay. Why, then, had it remained desolate and uninhabited for so long?
In fact, before the Great Cataclysm, there were already two cities on that pistol-shaped long island: Guzai (today's South Haven Town) and Vinos (today's New York Town).
During the Valyrian Great Cataclysm, the Fourteen Flames erupted, the land collapsed into the sea, and massive amounts of volcanic ash carrying high-energy magical factors should have blanketed the entire world, plunging it into an eternal winter of warped creatures.
But the gods intervened. They sealed off the Land of Endless Summer in its entirety, blocking all the "cursed mists" within the shattered continent. The neighboring Slaver's Bay was unaffected.
The gods' seal only blocked the volcanic ash and smoke laden with high-energy magical factors. It did not stop storms and tsunamis governed by physical laws.
All the seas within a thousand kilometers around Valyria were struck by tsunamis over a hundred meters high, and even the continent of Sothoryos on the opposite side was not spared.
Freedom Maiden Island, three hundred kilometers long and fifty kilometers wide, was completely submerged beneath the waves, and none of its inhabitants survived.
Dany knew this history, which was why she feared history might repeat itself.
As it turned out, she was not being overly alarmist. At around three in the morning the next day, fifteen-meter-high waves surged in from the southwest and directly swallowed more than half of New York Town. The other half, which served as a military base, had been built atop towering seaside cliffs.
Even Gene Island (New Ghis) to the east and Volantis to the west were struck by raging storm waves the following evening.
Amid the howling winds, waves four to five meters high crashed against the docks again and again.
This was the Great Cataclysm.
Well, a low-budget version of the Valyrian Great Cataclysm.
"Oros is finished!" Twenty kilometers southeast of Meereen, deep underground, Jenny's eyes streamed with bloody tears as she wailed in heart-rending despair.
The dwarf, who had been meditating with closed eyes, dispersed the fireball in his palm and asked curiously, "Did the Dragon Queen launch an air raid on Oros?
It must have been for the magic tower. Your magic tower suppressed her communications system."
"The entire Oros is gone, destroyed by subterranean fire, sunk into a sea of smoke. My people are all dead!" Jenny cried in despair.
"How did the Dragon Queen do it? Could it have been that giant turtle, the Old Man of the River? Did he summon another great flood, just like last time?" the dwarf asked in shock.
"The Old Man of the River wouldn't dare take a single step into the Sea of Smoke. His Majesty Balerion could turn him into a pot of turtle soup instantly. It was R'hllor. Forget it, you wouldn't understand even if I told you," Jenny said, shaking her head dejectedly.
R'hllor?
The dwarf was utterly astonished. What was going on lately? Gods kept appearing one after another. Could this be the legendary "circle"?
Had I unknowingly become part of the circle of top-tier transcendents as well?
"Oros sinking into the sea is practically a replay of the Great Cataclysm. Is His Majesty Balerion safe?" the dwarf asked with concern.
"His Majesty…" Thinking of the dwarf's status as the heir to the High Priest, Jenny hesitated for a moment, then decided not to hide it any longer. "His Majesty Balerion suffered heavy losses. Not only did Daenerys seal away one-fifth of his divine soul, but the Oros Cataclysm caused him to suffer backlash from the laws of the universe once again. After that, R'hllor even took advantage of his weakness. Sigh."
The dwarf was both shocked and regretful.
Shocked by the secret divine and demonic struggle over Oros, and regretful that Balerion had not died outright.
"What do you mean by backlash from the laws of the universe, and why 'once again'?" he asked, puzzled.
Jenny frowned in thought and said, "It's like magical backlash after a spell fails. Backlash from the laws is a higher-level form of magical backlash."
Seeing the dwarf's blank expression and his mouth opening as if he were about to ask more questions, Jenny waved her hand and sighed. "If you haven't experienced it yourself, it's very hard to explain clearly.
If you really must, just think of it as causing damage to the world and then being punished by the world's consciousness.
The Valyrian Great Cataclysm four hundred years ago dealt His Majesty a devastating blow and put him into slumber for a full hundred years."
The dwarf's large nose twitched a few times as he asked nervously, "Did Daenerys suffer any backlash?"
"No."
"She didn't?" The dwarf let out a sigh of relief, though his tone was tinged with regret and anger.
"I built the magic tower. It had nothing to do with her," Jenny said bitterly.
"What about R'hllor? You said it was Him causing trouble."
"His methods were very subtle. Even if there was backlash, it would have been very slight."
"Alas, with His Majesty Balerion severely injured, we're in serious trouble!" the dwarf lamented.
"We must overcome all difficulties and serve His Majesty with all our strength," Jenny said in a deep voice.
"How are we supposed to do that?" the dwarf said helplessly. "Raiding villages around Meereen won't harm Daenerys at her core, and it certainly won't bring any tangible benefit to His Majesty.
Why don't we take advantage of the few hundred war elephants we still have and launch a decisive battle?
I'll be the vanguard. I swear I won't be like my uncle. I'll charge at the front. Even if I die, I'll die on the front line of the battlefield!"
"That old turtle is lying in the river channels near Meereen. We absolutely cannot charge Meereen head-on again," Jenny said, shaking her head. A bone-deep hatred flashed in her eyes. "The Long Night has arrived. I want the entire Slaver's Bay to be buried with Oros!
Meereen has a river and that old turtle. We'll shift the battlefield and go to the dry, warm plains of Yunkai!
I'll wage a tunnel war against Daenerys. Before the temperature drops and the dragonworms freeze to death, I'll destroy all her farmland, pastures, and granaries!"
"Aah!" the dwarf cried out in alarm. What he feared most had finally happened.
In fact, he had always known that, given Jenny's current predicament, the best choice was to abandon any hope of a decisive frontal showdown, stay away from the riverways that threatened the dragonworms, and focus single-mindedly on sabotage.
That was why he had been pretending to be hot-blooded all along, encouraging Jenny to confront the Dragon Queen head-on.
Tyrion was not the Hand of the King of Slaver's Bay, so he naturally had no reason to worry about the common people there.
But Jenny had enraged the Dragon Queen. How could the Dragon Queen not vent her fury on him as well?
He was still counting on her to purge the Balerion thoughts from his sea of consciousness!
No, this would not do. He had to warn the Dragon Queen. Whether she had the means to deal with Jenny was none of his concern. All he wanted was to remove himself from the range of the Dragon Queen's raging flames.
He could not get away himself, but he could send a messenger.
Fortunately, he had taken advantage of the chaos back then to get rid of his bargain-basement father. Now that the elephant troops were under his command, perhaps he could make Cadillac "lose contact"!
"What are you thinking about?" Jenny's shout interrupted the dwarf's wandering thoughts.
"I'm thinking about how to serve His Majesty Balerion!" the dwarf blurted out.
Jenny smiled seductively, like a fierce tiger pouncing on a lamb, and pressed the dwarf down onto the soft couch.
"Just keep working like that."
The Wall really had collapsed.
After ascending to a demigod of wind and fire, Dany shook off the three wyverns and headed straight for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
The Wall collapsed in the afternoon. Near evening, the Gate God opened a spatial gate and handed over his divine realm to Dany. Without lingering, she immediately appointed Barristan as Commander-in-Chief of the volunteer army and, that very night, began preparing to form a wyvern legion to rush to Dragonstone. After dinner, Dany set out at once for the North, but ended up delayed in Oros for most of the night.
As a result, it was not until the next afternoon, around four o'clock, that Dany finally "arrived late."
The sky was dim, like a rainy day, as if a hundred layers of thick gray quilts had been draped over the heavens.
The boundary between day and night had lost its clarity.
Perhaps all the moisture in the air had already turned into ice and snow and fallen to the ground yesterday, for there was no blizzard of goose-feather snow today.
Aside from the ghostly howling of the violent northern wind, the sky over Eastwatch was quiet and clear.
The Wall stood two hundred meters high and dozens of meters thick, its inner layers built of stone, with an outer layer of glacier artificially encasing it.
Now, the Wall was like a martial artist whose spine had been shattered by a peerless master, collapsed limply onto the ground. Its once-majestic body had become a long, low mound.
A mound of stone and ice, the grave of the Night's Watch.
It also looked like a long lump of dough on a chopping board, waiting to be cut into bun-sized pieces.
Dany brought three giant dragons with her. Little Green was the first to leave the formation, tasked with patrolling Seal Bay to the east in search of the Eastwatch fleet.
After reaching Eastwatch, Big Black stayed with Dany, while Little White continued westward, flying along the Wall to search for traces of the Night's Watch and the Others.
"I am the Great Guardian of Light. Where are the Night's Watch?!" Big Black shouted down at the snow-covered mound below.
"Where are the Night's Watch?!" Circling above Eastwatch, Big Black called out continuously for five minutes, yet received no response at all.
Dany was not out of her mind, hoping to summon the ghosts of the Night's Watch, or rather, the Others.
She knew that the Night's Watch lived in surface towers in summer and retreated into underground tunnels in winter.
The tunnels had existed for thousands of years. The upper layers of soil were frozen as hard as iron, and even the collapse of the Wall would not crush all of the tunnels. Thus, Dany guessed that some members of the Night's Watch had survived by hiding in them.
"The Mother of Dragons has arrived. Are there any surviving members of the Night's Watch?"
Big Black lowered his altitude to 150 meters. His voice grew even more resounding, infused with divine soul power. His immense dragon威压 could penetrate dozens of meters into the ground.
If there were a mage with strong mental power, even if he were deaf, he would still be able to "hear" Big Black's voice.
Ordinary people might not be able to discern the information carried by mental power, but they should at least know that a giant dragon was calling to them, provided they had encountered dragon威压 before.
"Woo woo woo." This time, there was finally a response. From beneath the mound, at the former site of Eastwatch Castle, came faint, ghostly wails, like the sobbing of spirits.
Just as Dany was about to ride her dragon down to where the horn sounded, her heart stirred suddenly. She turned toward the west. Little White had made an unexpected discovery.
By then, Little White had flown about thirty kilometers west and reached the edge of the collapsed Wall.
"The Wall hasn't completely collapsed!" Dany was both startled and delighted.
This meant that more than eighty percent of the Wall's watchtowers might have been preserved. The Wall was five hundred kilometers long, and thirty kilometers was less than one-tenth of it. That meant many members of the Night's Watch were still alive, and it meant they were likely under attack by the Others right now.
With that thought, Dany grew anxious again.
"Night's Watch, listen up. The Wall has not completely collapsed. The Dragon Queen is going to rescue the western watchtowers first!"
"Woo woo woo." Whether those underground understood Big Black's words or not, the horn calls suddenly grew urgent.
But once Dany had made a decision, she would not change it lightly.
Moreover, priorities mattered. Staying at Eastwatch to dig people out was far less urgent than rescuing Castle Black.
Big Black spread his wings and accelerated westward.
Four kilometers west of Eastwatch lay the Night's Watch shipyard, Greenshield.
It was located by a river south of the Wall and thus had not been buried by the glacial earth and stone from the Wall's collapse.
Big Black let out a roar. No one answered.
Continuing west, at a castle called Beacon Tower, Dany saw a section of the Wall that had collapsed halfway.
The Beacon Tower itself had been smashed by falling glacier ice, but two stone towers remained intact.
Still, there was no one.
As she looked at the Wall, with its glaciers sloughing off and huge fissures splitting its inner stone layers, a thought that had first arisen when Dany came to the Wall awakened once more: to test whether dragonfire could bring down the Wall, just as the undead dragon had done in the finale of Game of Thrones.
(End of chapter)
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