Chapter 9: The Ash-Choked Shore
The cacophony from Vaelyx's cabin was a chorus of draconic distress, a wave of raw, primal energy that even the hardened Tyroshi captain, Orzono, could feel as an unsettling vibration in the deck planks beneath his feet. Vaelyx, his face a pale, unreadable mask, strode into his heavily warded sanctum, the door sealing with a decisive click behind him. Inside the suitcase, the volcanic grotto was chaos. Vorlag, Ignis, Veridian, and Aurumel were reacting violently to the potent, wild magic of their ancestral homeland. Flames erupted haphazardly, wings thrashed, and their combined mental screeches threatened to overwhelm even his formidable Occlumency shields.
The three remaining eggs were the epicenter of the disturbance. The bronze egg with silver swirls, the white one veined with sapphire, and the deep stormy blue were all glowing with an almost painful intensity, vibrating so fiercely they skittered across the obsidian floor. Cracks were already spider-webbing across their surfaces. They were going to hatch, all of them, and soon. The ambient magic of Valyria was acting as an irresistible catalyst.
He had to get them, and the imminently hatching eggs, off "The Sea Serpent." Now.
"Captain Orzono," Vaelyx's voice was calm but carried an undeniable urgency as he re-emerged on deck. "We make landfall immediately. Lyra, scout the coast. Find a defensible cove, a cave system, anything that offers shelter. Kaelen, Boros, prepare a landing party. We establish a shore base."
Orzono paled further at the thought of setting foot on the cursed shores of Valyria, but one look at Valerius's glacial eyes had him barking orders. Lyra, nimble as a shadow cat, was already scaling the rigging, her keen eyes scanning the treacherous, smoke-wreathed coastline.
After an agonizing hour, during which Vaelyx felt the mounting pressure from the eggs within his suitcase like a physical weight, Lyra signaled from the crow's nest. She had spotted a narrow, hidden inlet, almost invisible amidst a jumble of black, obsidian-like cliffs, leading to what appeared to be a series of interconnected sea caves.
Navigating "The Sea Serpent" through the treacherous, reef-strewn inlet tested Orzono's skill to its limit. Finally, they dropped anchor in a small, eerily calm lagoon, the water the colour of bruised plums. Sheer black cliffs rose on three sides, their surfaces glistening with strange mineral deposits. The air was thick with the smell of sulfur and ancient decay.
Kaelen, Boros, and ten sellswords, their faces grim, established a perimeter on the narrow, black-sand beach. Vaelyx, carrying the surprisingly heavy suitcase, stepped onto Valyrian soil for the first time. A faint tremor ran through him, not of fear, but of a strange, dark resonance, as if the very land recognized a scion of its lost masters.
The largest cave Lyra had identified was surprisingly stable, its entrance partially concealed by a recent rockfall. Inside, it opened into a series of surprisingly dry chambers. Vaelyx, leaving Kaelen to oversee the unloading of essential supplies, retreated into the deepest part of the cave system with his suitcase. He worked with feverish intensity, Voldemort's knowledge of warding and structural enchantment allowing him to quickly reinforce the cave, expand a central chamber, and erect powerful silencing and concealment charms. This would be their hidden nursery, their Valyrian foothold.
He carefully placed the suitcase on the cave floor and opened it. The three eggs were practically incandescent. The bronze egg with silver swirls was the most active, a distinct tapping coming from within.
It hatched first, with a surprisingly metallic clang as a shard of its shell broke away. A dragonet with scales the colour of burnished bronze, intricately patterned with swirling veins of gleaming silver, emerged. It was powerfully built, its limbs thick, its claws already looking formidable. Its eyes were like polished hematite, intelligent and assessing. It shook its head, then let out a series of sharp, clicking sounds, almost like striking metal, before a plume of brilliant, crackling blue-white energy – not flame, but something akin to lightning – erupted from its snout, striking a nearby stalactite and shattering it.
Leaving his four older dragons (Vorlag, Veridian, Ignis, and Aurumel) within the suitcase under strict commands to accept Argentus and remain quiescent, Vaelyx prepared for their first foray into the Valyrian ruins. He chose a small, elite team: Lyra, her senses invaluable in this cursed land; Kaelen and Boros, for their martial prowess; and three of his most reliable sellswords.
They ventured towards the shattered dragonlord's manse they had sighted from the ship, a grim silhouette against the perpetually smoldering sky. The silence of Valyria was profound, broken only by the sigh of volcanic vents, the drip of water in unseen caverns, and the crunch of their boots on ash-covered obsidian. Melted stone flowed like frozen rivers, buildings were rent and twisted into impossible shapes, and skeletons, both human and disturbingly unidentifiable, lay half-buried in the grime, some fused into the very rock by unimaginable heat.
The manse was a ruin of cyclopean proportions. Black, basalt-like walls, impossibly tall and thick, were cracked and sundered. Vaelyx ran a hand over a section of relatively intact wall. It was smooth as glass, yet harder than any known stone, cool to the touch despite the ambient geothermal heat.
"Valyrian stonecraft," Kaelen murmured, awestruck despite himself.
Inside, dust lay thick as shrouds. Collapsed ceilings revealed glimpses of vast, echoing halls. Strange, iridescent fungi grew in shadowed corners, pulsing with a faint, unhealthy light. Lyra, moving ahead, suddenly froze, signaling them back. She pointed to a series of almost invisible glyphs carved into the flagstones, glowing with a faint, menacing energy.
"Magical trap," Vaelyx stated, his eyes narrowed. Voldemort's knowledge of ancient warding schemes recognized the pattern. "A death curse, triggered by pressure." He spent several minutes studying the glyphs, then, with precise, non-verbal incantations, began to unravel the spell, diverting its lethal energy into the surrounding stone, which groaned and cracked under the strain.
They proceeded with extreme caution. In what might have once been a grand library, towering shelves of carved obsidian stood mostly empty, their contents long since turned to dust or looted by time. However, in a hidden alcove, behind a fallen tapestry of woven metal threads, Vaelyx found a small, sealed scroll case made of dragonbone. Inside, miraculously preserved, was a single scroll of what felt like treated hide, covered in intricate Valyrian script and complex arcane diagrams. His breath caught. This was no mere historical record; the faint thrum of magic emanating from it suggested it was a work of practical sorcery.
Further exploration yielded a tarnished Valyrian steel dagger half-buried in rubble, its edge still unnaturally sharp, and several shards of obsidian – dragon glass – which Kaelen collected with grim satisfaction.
The primary danger came not from traps, but from the land's twisted inhabitants. As they were examining a vast, circular chamber that might have been a ritual site, a pack of creatures skittered out from the shadows. They were roughly humanoid, but their limbs were too long, their skin the colour of ash, their eyes burning red embers. "Ash ghouls," Boros snarled, hefting his axe.
The creatures attacked with a terrifying, silent ferocity. Kaelen's Valyrian steel blade sang as it met them, each blow severing limbs or cleaving skulls. Boros was a whirlwind of destruction, his axe biting deep. Lyra, with her poisoned blades, moved like a phantom, striking from the flanks. Vaelyx, however, unleashed a fraction more of his true power than he ever had in Pentos. Dark Curses, learned from Voldemort's forbidden repertoire, flew from his disguised wand-hand. Expulso charms blasted ghouls apart, Diffindo Maxima sliced through them with contemptuous ease. One particularly large ghoul lunged for him; a silent, non-verbal Petrificus Totalus froze it mid-leap, and a follow-up Reducto turned it to a cloud of greasy dust.
His men, even in the heat of battle, couldn't fail to notice the devastating effectiveness of "Valerius's" seemingly effortless interventions. The awe in their eyes deepened, now tinged with a more profound fear.
They returned to the cave base as the perpetual twilight deepened into a Stygian gloom. The sellswords were pale and shaken, but also exhilarated by their survival and the tangible treasures they carried. Vaelyx, however, was focused on the dragonbone scroll case. Retreating into the suitcase, he carefully unrolled the scroll. It detailed a complex Valyrian ritual for bonding dragon to rider, not through force of will alone, but through a shared exchange of blood and magic, promising a deeper, more symbiotic connection. It also hinted at techniques for accelerating a dragon's growth and magical maturity, using Valyrian spell-craft and specific geothermal locations abundant in the cursed land. This was a find of incalculable value.
As he was absorbing the scroll's contents, a sharp cracking sound came from the section of the grotto where he had placed the two remaining eggs under stasis. The white egg with sapphire flecks was fracturing, a brilliant blue light spilling from within. The final two were impatient.
Valyria was already yielding its secrets, its dangers, and its most potent gifts. Vaelyx Targaryen, the Serpent Prince, stood on the precipice of commanding a full flight of seven dragons, in the very heart of their ancient, blighted empire. The game was escalating far faster than he had anticipated, and the stakes were becoming impossibly high.