Tarth – The Eastern Shore, Morning Cloaked in Smoke
The morning mist curled across the sea like breath from a sleeping giant, but it was not fog that dimmed the sun. It was shadow, winged and vast, swooping low with thunder in its wake.
Caraxes came screaming out of the eastern sky, a streak of crimson fury, his great wings slicing the smoke-heavy air like cleavers of war.
His long, serpentine body coiled mid-flight, tail whipping behind him with the elegance of death. The Blood Wyrm's roar shattered the calm, a sound like metal tearing, like gods wailing.
Below, the narrow sea was speckled with sails, black, blue, striped with the colors of exiles and freebooters. The pirates of Myr, once noblemen turned raiders, had claimed the sea lanes for months.
Now they looked up and saw judgment descending.
"Dragon!" someone screamed hoarsely from a sloop's deck.
"Gods help us, it's a bloody dragon!"
A chorus of shouts followed.
"To arms!"
"Loose the Scorpion ballista!"
"Sound the horns, warn the others!"
Bronze horns blared across the water, mournful and frantic, but their notes were swallowed by Caraxes's scream, deeper, older, mightier.
The dragon's chest heaved, and with a cough that sounded like a dying forge, he let loose his breath.
Fire.
A jet of dragonflame, thick and roiling, surged downward like a lance from the sky. It struck the flagship of the Myrish fleet amidships.
The ship seemed to buckle under the force. Planks curled. Ropes snapped and lashed like whips.
Fire poured down the sails and danced across the rigging like a living thing.
The smell, oh gods, the smell, was like burning hair, pitch, and boiling meat.
"Dragon Fire!" a pirate gasped, the word stolen from tongues, spat like a curse.
The flames consumed them. Men clutched at their faces, some screaming, others too shocked to speak. One leapt overboard, trailing smoke, only to hit the water with a hiss, and silence.
Another staggered toward the helm, his beard ablaze, crying out in Myrish:
"A curse upon you! A curse upon…"
His words were cut short as a piece of burning mast collapsed onto him, crushing him beneath flame and timber.
"The dragon! The dragon!" a beardless boy shrieked, struggling to unmoor a smaller galley.
His hands fumbled at the ropes, raw with salt and sweat, but it was too late. Caraxes passed overhead again, and the air turned to fire. The very sails ignited in seconds.
The boy stumbled back, eyes wide, as fire licked down the rigging like molten serpents. All around him, men screamed, some shouting for mercy, others just wailing, voices high and ragged.
On the nearby decks, the smell of piss and fear mingled. Some men dropped to their knees, praying to gods foreign and forgotten.
One Myrman, grizzled and scarred, clutched a dagger and spat at the sky.
"Come then, beast! I spit on your flame!"
Caraxes didn't hear. Or perhaps he did. But he did not care.
Another roar, and another column of fire turned the defiant man and his deck into a pyre.
Far above, riding the Blood Wyrm, a dark figure leaned low, his silver-gold hair whipping in the wind.
Plate and mail shimmered with heat, and his face, half-hidden behind a visor, was calm, focused.
Prince Aemon Targaryen gave a single command, "Dracarys!" and Caraxes obeyed.
The hunt had begun.
The pirates scattered, but there was no escape. Not from the sky. Not from the flame.
On the Tarth coast, Lord Cameron Tarth stood grimly. His face, lined with exhaustion, was stained with ash.
Around him, his men, stormland soldiers, scouts, household knights, stood stunned, their helmets tipped upward as they watched the fury in the sky.
Then, Caraxes circled once, wings stirring up sand and sea foam. With a powerful downward sweep, he descended. The earth trembled.
When Caraxes landed, it was like a siege engine had struck the earth, thoom, his massive clawed limbs digging into the beach.
His neck coiled like a serpent, steam rising from his nostrils. His maw opened, exposing fangs the length of swords.
From his saddle, Prince Aemon Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne, slid down, clad in dark plate chased with Valyrian steel accents, his white-blond hair trailing in the sea breeze.
His eyes, calm, royal, utterly assured, scanned the assembled men.
A moment of silence held, broken only by the hiss of steam from Caraxes' nostrils.
Then…
"The Blood of the Dragon!" someone shouted.
And then came cheers.
"Prince Aemon!"
"Long live the dragonrider!"
Lord Cameron Tarth stepped forward, his hand over his heart. He bowed low, deeply, not just out of protocol, but respect earned.
"Your Highness," he said, his voice hoarse with smoke, "My men and I… we owe you our lives, and Tarth, our island, owes you its survival."
Aemon dismounted fully and clasped the old knight by the forearm, helping him up.
"This is your island, Lord Tarth," he said. "I only brought the fire. You've held the line."
Cameron's weathered face cracked into a fierce smile. "Then let us press that fire west, into the bastards who defiled it."
Behind them, Caraxes growled low, his tail curling behind him, and the soldiers, still shaken but emboldened, gathered around the makeshift war table.
Aemon stepped forward, voice calm but commanding:
"The enemy has strongholds in the Stepstones. Some hide in the caves and cliffs. But their fleet is broken."
"The fleet of House Velaryon has already surrounded the islands from the far side. All escape to Essos has been cut off."
He looked across the smoke-filled sea.
"Now, we root out the rot. No mercy for pirates."
Cameron nodded. "I know the island's passes. We'll strike from three angles. We corner them like rats."
The smoke rising from the sea mixed with the morning mist, cloaking the rugged hills around the landing site in a shifting haze of grey.
On one such ridge, crouched low behind wind-cut rocks and sparse brush, two Myrish scouts, faces blackened with soot and desperation, watched the enemy below.
"All dead…" murmured the older one, voice hoarse as wind over bone.
The younger one didn't speak. His expression was hollow, lips cracked, eyes unfocused. There was nothing left in him to grieve.
Their families had all died in the Myrish civil war, parents, sisters, lovers burned in the madness that tore their homeland apart.
Only the men had escaped, crawling like rats from the wreckage of Myr, ferrying what little they could to the Stepstones.
They became pirates not for greed, but because nothing else remained.
They had carved out a cruel sort of life among the shattered islands, raiding for food, for coin, for revenge.
But the gods had turned their faces.
And now the last of their people were ash, slain by fire that fell from the sky like divine wrath.
They had fled the shoreline when the dragon descended, escaping flame and death by mere chance.
Their armor was scorched, their faces grim with fury.
One clutched a curved bow, the other a small quiver of dark-fletched arrows, the heads glistening faintly with a sticky black substance, a Myrish poison brewed from coral sap and spider-root, meant to stop even the strongest heart in minutes.
They hadn't forgotten their commander's last words: "Kill the dragonrider. Strike when he least expects it."
Below, the Targaryen prince stood proud beside his dragon, his guard thin in this moment of planning.
The great wyrm Caraxes lay coiled behind him, smoke curling lazily from its nostrils, but its eyes were half-lidded, tired after the burning, distracted.
Now was the time.
The first scout drew the bowstring, his breath calm despite the chaos in his gut.
His aim, perfected through years of practice and countless raids in the Stepstones, found the slender space between shoulder and helm, the vulnerable gap in the dragonlord's neck armor.
A whisper of wind passed.
Then, twang.
The arrow flew like a hawk.
Straight. Silent. Deadly.
It struck Prince Aemon just as he turned his head to respond to Lord Tarth. The shaft drove deep, burying itself in the side of his neck, just below the ear. He staggered.
The war table overturned.
Caraxes' head snapped up instantly with a guttural roar that shook the shoreline.
Soldiers shouted in alarm as the prince dropped to one knee, clutching at the shaft.
Blood spilled in thick red sheets across his gorget, and his eyes, once clear and focused, glazed with pain and confusion.
"Prince Aemon!" cried Lord Cameron, rushing to his side. "Get the maester! Hurry!"
Panic swept the Tarth camp like wildfire.
Men drew weapons, scanning the ridges.
"There!" someone shouted, pointing toward the ridge as the scouts began to flee.
A group of archers and light cavalrymen chased up the slope.
The scouts ran fast, leaping from rock to rock, but one stumbled on a loose patch of shale, a fatal mistake.
An arrow struck him in the thigh, and the next in the back. He toppled down the hill, landing with a sickening crack.
The second scout was caught alive, beaten bloody before being dragged back in irons.
Back at the war table, Prince Aemon lay in the sand, pale and shaking. His breathing was shallow; the poisoned arrow had done its work well.
Caraxes let out a howl, not a roar of fury, but a scream of grief, low and long, that echoed across the hills and through the sea.
The soldiers fell silent.
Even Lord Cameron stood still, wide-eyed.
Then the maester arrived, too late.
The wound could not be closed. The poison had already seized the prince's heart.
Aemon's eyes fluttered, and for a moment, he looked up at the sky, where the clouds drifted like pale dragons.
There, there he saw them.
Jocelyn. Her dark hair. Her smile, that soft and knowing smile, like she already knew he was coming.
Behind her stood Rhaenys, proud, radiant, clad in the red of House Targaryen, her hand resting on a gentle swell, her belly round with child.
Aemon's lips parted, but no sound came.
Just breath.
A breath of awe.
Or regret.
Will it be a girl? Or a boy?
Will they know me?
A tear streaked from the corner of his eye, carving a line through the grime.
And then… nothing.
He lay still. The Prince of Dragonstone. The Heir to the Iron Throne. Husband. Father. Grandfather-to-be.
Gone.
Lord Cameron fell to his knees beside the prince's body, stunned. He placed a hand upon the chest of the heir to the Iron Throne, blood wetting his fingers.
"…Gods help us," he whispered. "The blood of the dragon is slain."
No one spoke. The soldiers stood frozen, stricken by the weight of what had occurred.
And far behind them, Caraxes roared again, a sound of ancient rage, shaking the very stones of the island. His eyes locked onto the fallen prince.
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