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Chapter 16: Fire and Blood
🕑 Added 2025-09-05 11:35:49 +0000 UTC"Aaaaiiiiieeeeeeeee!"
The Lhazareen priestess wailed in the heart of the flames, her voice a high, piercing shriek of pure agony. She was not, in the end, as strong as she had pretended to be.
Daenerys, sitting cross-legged beside Drogo, had thrown the torch into the pyre herself.
Whoosh.
Small blue flames, like swift snakes, darted across the pyre, following the wet trails of oil. They ignited the dry grass and twigs first, and then, seconds later, the great logs began to crackle and pop. A wave of heat rolled outward, washing over the silent Dothraki. At first, it was like a lover's caress, gentle and warm. But then the fire snakes grew into fire dragons, roaring to life, baring their teeth and claws as they greedily devoured the wood.
Ser Jorah and the others could only watch, their faces illuminated by the growing inferno, the only sounds the crackling of the pyre and the singing of the priestess. Mirri had started singing loudly, a defiant chant to cover her fear. But as the flames climbed higher, her song grew sharper, more frantic… then the thick smoke reached her, and she gasped. Another gasp. And then the song shattered into a trembling, terrified wail.
The smell of roasting flesh, sickeningly similar to the camp's nightly meals, drifted into the crowd. Jorah felt his stomach heave. Will my princess smell like that? The thought was so horrific that a violent retch escaped him, and he turned away and threw up on the scorched earth.
The cross-shaped pyre was now a single, roaring beast of a fire, its voice overwhelming the priestess's fading screams. It spat a long tongue of flame toward the night sky, its heat biting at the skin of the Dothraki, who coughed and stumbled back from the suffocating smoke. The fire roared, hissing and spitting, sending thousands of glowing embers spiraling up into the boundless night, like a swarm of newborn fireflies.
And inside that inferno, Daenerys entered a strange new world.
Her clothes smoked and burned away to nothing. She felt a brief, detached amusement, remembering Mirri’s screams. But her attention was quickly consumed by the black dragon egg in her arms. It was pulsing with a heat far more intense than the flames around her, an inner furnace so powerful she could barely resist the urge to drop it. To withstand the sensation, she closed her eyes and forced her mind away, plunging into the Dragon Dream.
It was a place of pure sensation. She was one with the dragon, and the dragon was one with her. Through its senses, she saw a world of blood-red purgatorial fire. Before her, as vast as the sky, was the great black dragon of her dreams. It raised its head and roared, and as it did, the air itself seemed to shimmer. Countless points of light—gold, silver, bronze, green, purple, and scarlet—began to coalesce from the smoke, drawn from the souls of the burning horses, the burning bloodriders, and the burning witch. They flowed together, forming a brilliant, colorful river that streamed into the dragon's open maw.
Hatching, her soul whispered in understanding. Only death may pay for life. It was not a devil's bargain. It was a law of magic, as real and as fundamental as gravity. The life force being consumed by the fire was not being destroyed; it was being reforged.
Her predecessor had done this subconsciously, driven by instinct and grief. But the new Dany acted with purpose.
Dahei, she called to the great black dragon in her mind, using the simple, childish name she’d given him. Big Black. I will help you.
The next moment, her perspective shifted. She was no longer on the ground looking up, but riding on the great dragon's neck, her rightful place. A sense of sublime belonging washed over her. She was one with the dragon, reborn with him in the fire.
Suddenly, she felt them. For the first time, she sensed the other two. The white and the green. They burst from their eggs in her dream, taking flight to join their brother. They were a trio of glorious, terrible beauty, her wingmen, her children. Together, the four of them soared through a vast, colorful ocean of life and energy. They were power. They were freedom. They were home.
She was the Mother of Dragons. It was her blood, her magic, her destiny.
The fire weakened around midnight, the roaring flames sinking into a vast, white-hot bed of embers that scorched the ground and shimmered in the air. As the first cold mists of dawn were burned away by the rising sun, Jorah Mormont, who had been tormented by grief all night, finally found the courage to approach. He stepped onto the scalding ash, his boots sinking into the hot powder, and found her in the center of the cross-shaped pyre.
She was squatting on the ground, surrounded by the charred bones of men and horses. She was completely naked, covered from head to toe in a thick layer of grey soot, her skin the same color as the ash around her. Only her hair, a shocking, untouched cascade of silver-gold, identified her.
"Seven Hells," he breathed, a prayer of pure, ecstatic disbelief. He stumbled forward, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
Hiss.
A shiny black head, no bigger than his hand, emerged from the silver tangle of her hair. It hissed at him, exhaling a few wisps of white smoke from its nostrils. Jorah snatched his hand back as if he’d been burned, his eyes locking onto the two tiny, coal-red embers that were the creature's eyes.
"Dragon?" he whispered, his voice shaking. The creature flapped a pair of delicate, leathery wings. A dragon. Miraculously, impossibly born from the fire.
Without another thought, the knight fell to his knees, his expression one of utter, reverent awe.
Waking from her strange, transcendent state, Daenerys slowly raised her head. She looked at Jorah, then past him, to her people.
Every last one of them—the men, the women, the children, even Odo’s captured warriors—had laid down their weapons and were kneeling on the sand, their faces pressed to the smoking ground in silent, absolute submission. She knew, in that moment, that she had won them. Not with fear, not with Drogo's power, but with a miracle. They were hers now, today, tomorrow, and forever.
Covered in soot, she stood up. The black dragon was draped over her shoulders, its slender neck wrapped loosely around her own. The other two—the green and the cream-and-gold—were latched onto her breasts, suckling.
"Irri," she commanded, her voice clear and strong. "Bring me my clothes. Dorea, Jhiqui, prepare water for my bath."
Irri trotted forward with a silk robe, her hands trembling as she carefully draped it over Dany’s shoulders. Her eyes fell on the two nursing dragons, and her face went pale with a sudden, dawning realization.
"The Stallion Who Mounts the World," she murmured, her voice filled with awe. "This… this is the Stallion! Khaleesi, you have truly given birth to the horse that rides the world! The prophecy… it has come true."
"You talk too much," Dany said, a faint smile on her lips.
Hiss!
The black dragon on her shoulder instantly turned its head and hissed at the terrified handmaiden. Its two siblings immediately unlatched from her breasts and joined in, their own tiny hisses echoing their brother’s.
"Oh!" Irri covered her mouth, her eyes wide with a fear that was quickly turning into pure, unadulterated worship.
