The hatchling dragons had just been born. They looked like malnourished kittens—skin and bones, with only their necks, tails, and wings clearly distinguishable, as if they had no torso at all. Cradled in the hands, they weighed almost nothing.
But once they spread their wings, it was a different story. Their wingspan was three times their body length. Each wing was a sheet of exquisite, semi-transparent skin, brilliant with color, stretched taut between long, slender bones.
Dany had it rough growing up. From the age of five, she drifted between the Nine Free Cities, living with barely enough food or clothing. She had suffered from malnutrition, and being so young—only fourteen—she had no real figure to speak of. Her breasts were barely the size of apples, completely unable to produce enough milk.
The little dragons had nothing to eat. Starving, they stretched their necks and screeched nonstop, like the smokestacks of steam locomotives, with scalding white vapor puffing out of their noses and mouths from time to time.
Dany tried giving them jerky, mare's milk, bloody raw meat, and cooked meat, placing it right in front of them. The hatchlings would only sniff it before turning their heads away.
She was frantic. Jorah didn't know how to feed them either. Before these three dragons were born, dragons had been extinct for over a hundred years. Their legends existed only in bedtime stories told to children.
It wasn't until the first fire bath that the black dragon wriggled free from Dany's arms and, ravenous, tore into a charred bone in the fire pit.
Then Dany understood. Dragons only ate meat that had been burned by fire—and it had to be completely charred.
They were still too young to breathe fire, unable to scorch their own food.
And the first thing that truly proved dragons were magical creatures wasn't being born of fire—but their terrifying appetite.
Dany had tested it herself. In one feeding, they could eat three times their own body weight!
(PS: This isn't someone talking nonsense. A Song of Ice and Fire really has this setting. If dragons couldn't eat this much, the White Walkers would've wiped out the world before Dany's dragons even grew up.)
Any so-called big eater, any Lang Weixian, would look like a little brother compared to these three dragons.
This completely violated her scientific worldview. Dany couldn't imagine where all that food was going.
Once, she deliberately pinched the black dragon's belly, feeling the food squirming inside, and then—
There was no "then."
He just kept eating, and his belly kept squirming, squirming nonstop, while he kept eating.
And because they ate so much, their bodies visibly grew larger with each passing day.
Dany happily thought that maybe she'd be able to ride a dragon very soon.
But to ride a dragon, it had to at least know how to fly. Her greedy little dragons never got more than two feet off the ground before flapping wildly and smashing headfirst back down.
Extremely embarrassing.
That day, as the egg-yolk-colored sun struggled up from the horizon, Dany rejoiced that her dragon babies could finally glide low through the air like paper airplanes.
After every feeding, she would carry her dragons in a bamboo basket, find an open area, and train them to fly.
Golden-red morning light slanted across the land. Dany held a dragon baby and hurled it upward with all her strength.
The hatchling flapped its wings and darted forward. Then she bent down and scooped up another one from the ground.
The dragons that crashed would crawl back to their mother on their own, lining up neatly and waiting for the next test flight.
At such times, there would often be a group of children, like little mud monkeys, wearing nothing but short pants, hiding behind distant hills. They stared with wide, almond-shaped eyes, "peeking" at her with curious gazes, occasionally letting out satisfied cries of wonder.
Around ten in the morning, Dothraki women would shout loudly, calling their children home to eat and sleep.
Mm, they usually slept until around four or five in the afternoon, tidied themselves up, and then continued on the road.
Among the Dothraki, except for the khaleesi and the kos, children were born with only mothers and no fathers.
Aside from a rare few, most couldn't even identify who their father was.
The khalasar would raise the children. When they grew up, they repeated their parents' fate—women giving birth, men becoming warriors, following the khalasar to wage war in all directions.
For thousands of years, this was how the Dothraki had lived.
Perhaps the future would change. After all, change had already appeared.
Dany hoisted the basket onto her back again, carrying the three little dragons, and slowly returned to the tents.
She first scrubbed the dirt from her body with fine red sand, then shared some jerky with the dragons. After that, she hugged them and fell into a deep sleep on a grass mat.
This time, with tents set up close to the low walls Dany had built, Doreah was finally able to sleep peacefully at noon.
Before this, not to mention this girl from Lys—even most Dothraki couldn't endure the stifling heat and were almost unable to sleep.
Even though Dany had fulfilled the responsibilities of a khalasar leader well, this was, after all, the Red Waste—the Plains of Purgatory.
On the third day at dusk, the khalasar had been traveling for only half an hour when an old man suddenly tilted his head and fell from his horse.
Because Dany had established a relatively strict system of leaders over tens, the incident of the old man falling was reported to her at the front of the column almost immediately.
She left Aggo and Rakharo with her, while Jhogo led most of the khalasar onward.
The main force couldn't stop—far ahead, scouting riders searching for water were still waiting for them!
The old man who had fallen had a pair of blue eyes glazed like dead fish. His skin was far paler than that of the other people, and at the roots of his graying hair was a hint of golden blond.
He wasn't a Dothraki, but a slave of Khal Drogo's khalasar.
After Dany took control of the khalasar, the first thing she did was remove the slave collars from their necks and grant all slaves the status of "khalasar people."
The old man before her, who had broken his left arm in the fall, was one of the first beneficiaries of the new system.
Dany held a skin of mare's milk to his mouth and asked, "How old are you?"
After checking him, she found no signs of heatstroke or dehydration. Instead, she noticed his mouth.
He was so old that not a single tooth remained.
"I… I don't remember, khaleesi," the old man said, drinking the fermented mare's milk and slowly waking from his daze.
"Where do you feel unwell?" Dany asked again.
"I—I—cough—my arm," the old man groaned in pain.
Dany frowned. Of course she knew his arm was broken, but she wanted to know why he had fallen from his horse.
She spent about twenty minutes cleaning the fracture and then used two wooden planks to splint and fix the reconnected arm.
Even if it was a comminuted fracture, this was all she could do. A doctor without medicine was no different from an ordinary person.
She instructed the horse herder Avanti, "Carry him onto the wagon."
Avanti was the leader of the ten-man group the old man belonged to, managing a team made up of elderly people, usually responsible for herding and guarding supplies.
Two elderly men removed several tents from the flatbed cart to make room for him, then hung those tents on the old man's saddle.
The caravan continued forward.
"Khaleesi, he should be left here. His time has come," said Dany's maid Irri, speaking in a tone as if announcing it to everyone. "No one should live longer than their teeth."
The other Dothraki nodded in agreement.
Dany disagreed. "Have you thought about it? The khalasar doesn't keep useless people. Why do you think he lived this long? The khal needs him. I suspect he must have some remarkable skill."
"Maybe medicine, maybe literature," she said, then immediately shook her head herself. "Not literature. Maybe he's exceptionally good at herding. Isn't that right, Avanti?"
Avanti rode behind Dany. Hearing her call, he skillfully urged his horse forward, coming alongside her but half a horse length behind, and praised her in an exaggerated tone, "Khaleesi, your insight is truly piercing. Nothing can escape your eyes."
The flattery was a bit stiff—but coming from a Dothraki's mouth, it was praise!
As rare as seeing a penguin at the North Pole.
"What special skill does he have?" Aggo asked curiously.
"Waisen is proficient in twelve kinds of Spring Chirping Techniques."
"Mhm, that blue-eyed Volantene is Waisen," Avanti added.
"Spring Chirping Techniques?" Dany looked puzzled. "What are Spring Chirping Techniques?"
"Tch, those stone-house people really fuss over everything," Avanti waved his hand dismissively.
Dany's cheeks flushed red as she immediately understood—it was sexual arts.
"How is that some amazing skill?" She felt slapped in the face and was thoroughly displeased.
Avanti read her expression and panicked a little. Straining to recall what old Waisen used to boast about, he hurriedly said, "Khaleesi, even the famous Qarth— the world's center for training female slaves—only knows seven kinds of Spring Chirping Techniques. And Waisen… he's from Volantis. He knows techniques that, before the Doom of Valyria, only Dragonlords used. Even though only five have been passed down, that's still enough to dominate the world."
Volantis was the only city of the ancient Valyrian Freehold to survive the great Doom, and is now one of the Nine Free Trade Cities.
Volantis's ruling class are pure Valyrian nobles, just as orthodox as House Targaryen.
Back then, the Targaryens were exiles.
"Even if he's number one in the world, he's already this old. What use is that? Why would the khal keep him?" Dany asked, confused.
"He is Khal Hago's father," Avanti said solemnly. "A khal cannot abandon his father."
"Hago… Khal Hago? Was Hago once the khal of another khalasar?" Dany grew even more puzzled.
"Not the bloodrider of Khal Drogo. This was Blue-Eyed Hago from twenty years ago. Our khalasar is so small now that there are at least three children named Hago."
"So that's how it is. This Waisen isn't simple at all," Dany nodded, pulling her white lion cloak tighter around her chest. She sighed, "The son of a slave actually became a khal."
"A half-blood. Hago's mother was Dothraki. Because Waisen served the previous khal well—after all, he was proficient in twelve kinds of Spring Chirping Techniques—his brave son became a ko.
"Later, Blue-Eyed Hago became a khal himself and made quite a name for himself on the great grass sea, until he encountered Khal Drogo's father…" Avanti said with a sigh.
Dany nodded inwardly. A person's value wasn't measured by strength alone. An old man's wisdom and rich experience were also precious assets.
"Khaleesi, you know that Khal Drogo was once kidnapped when he was young, right?" Avanti suddenly asked.
"I know. It was Kohollo who fought to the death to rescue him. That incident left two blade scars on Kohollo's face, deep enough to show bone. He became the khal's most trusted companion and later one of Drogo's bloodriders."
At that point, Dany's heart jolted. She gasped, "Could it have been Blue-Eyed Hago who did it?"
...
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Here are a few fan-fic titles that I've recently uploaded on my Patreon:
"Game of Thrones: Dragon Prince"
"Game of Thrones: Political Life"
"Game of Thrones: Holy Flame"
"The Game of Thrones Upgrade System"
"Game of Thrones: Lannister Kingdom"
"Game of Thrones: Godzilla vs. Dragons"
"Game of Thrones: Ruler of the Deep Seas "
"Game of Thrones The Glory of a Knight"
"Game of Thrones: The Most Powerful Dragon Queen"
" Game of Thrones: From the Elden Lord to the Young Wolf"
"Game of Thrones: Rise of a Lord with the Army-Building System"
(End Chapter)