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Gaelithox's ferocity had been stirred to its fullest.
Only after it rose into the sky did the realization strike. Those bolts fired from within the castle were not mere warnings, but were aimed with deadly intent, meant to pierce its flesh and take its life.
It could not understand this. In its mind, the matter had been simple. The humans within the walls refused it food, so be it… there was no need to linger. It could leave and find prey elsewhere. There had always been some among the castle's people who seemed strangely protective of what went into its stomach.
Why, then, would they choose to kill it?
It could not fathom the reason, yet the lack of understanding did nothing to lessen the fury boiling in its chest. That rage surged upward, unstoppable, until it demanded to be loosed upon the world.
After reducing the stone corner tower at the Starpike's southeastern wall to rubble, the great blue-and-gold head rose, eyes locking upon the castle ahead. Under the full glare of the sun, its walls seemed to shiver like a living thing, trembling in the dragon's gaze.
It had no intention of sparing this place.
For in this world, not only men but every living creature was bound by the same truth: once a choice was made, a price had to be paid.
Gaelithox had chosen to trust the people here, and for that choice it now bore a ragged wound, a puncture as thick as a man's arm tearing through the membrane of its left wing.
The ambushers within the castle had made their own choice, striking at it from the shadows. Now they, too, would bear the cost of their decision.
And that cost would be paid in full… in the form of dragonfire, falling from the heavens in a storm of wrath.
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"RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"
The sight of the dragon tearing apart the seemingly unshakable tower of the castle left no more room for doubt in the hearts of those who still watched. Whatever its purpose in coming here today, mercy was not part of it. It had come to take their lives.
Panic swept through the castle like a living tide. Smoke billowed in thick, suffocating clouds, curling into the sky as flames leapt higher and higher, devouring wood and stone alike. The roar of the blaze became the castle's heartbeat, its rhythm quickening with fear.
People fled without thought for where their feet carried them. Those who had been first to run were already pouring out through the western and northern gates, disappearing into the countryside. The slower ones, those who had hesitated in their homes or lingered too long at their windows, were only now stumbling into the open streets, where the sight of the colossal shadow passing overhead froze them in place like prey before a predator.
In such a moment, no one had the heart, or the time, to care for anyone else. If you fell in the mud, no one reached for your hand. The only thing you might feel was the hard step of another's foot pressing into your back as they vaulted over you, fleeing with every shred of strength they possessed, desperate to outrun the death raining from the skies.
Starpike was vast, and for good reason. House Peake ranked among the most prominent noble families of the Reach, their influence and wealth woven deep into the land's history.
The Reach itself lay across wide, fertile plains, its richness and teeming population unmatched anywhere in Westeros. Here, the castles of the great houses sprawled across the land, ringed by broad towns and dense clusters of common folks' dwellings, each built on a scale meant to reflect the grandeur and prosperity of their lords.
And now, every stone and timber of that grandeur had become a target for Gaelithox.
Its first strikes fell upon the four corner towers of the castle walls, where the great siege crossbows stood guard.
Those engines of war were the only weapons that could pierce its hide, and so they were the first it sought to destroy.
Scalding dragonfire poured down in torrents, the heat so fierce that it made the very air shiver. Wherever the flames struck, wood caught in an instant, and with the crushing force of the fire's impact, a single blast was enough to ruin a ballista beyond all repair, no matter how much coin and labour had been poured into its making.
In the dragon's eyes, anything that moved, be it man or beast, was marked for destruction. It struck without distinction, sweeping the ground below in a storm of indiscriminate ruin.
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From the gate of the main keep came a figure running in a dishevelled rush, Lord Titus Peake himself.
In his flight he had snatched up a tunic from who-knows-whose wardrobe, slipping it over his body without caring whether it fit. The need to cover himself, however haphazardly, had outweighed all else.
No sooner had he cleared the great doors than a maddened horse burst across his path, so close it nearly bowled him from his feet.
One glance told him the animal had lost all reason, terror driving it into a frenzy. Nothing would halt its charge short of smashing itself against a wall or breaking its neck.
When his gaze shifted eastward, Lord Titus felt his cheek twitch involuntarily.
Through the thick coils of black smoke, he saw the stables engulfed in flames. The blaze roared and spat, devouring the fine timberwork and reducing to ash the prized warhorses bred by House Peake for generations.
Dragonfire burned far hotter than any ordinary flame. In many places it left not even the charred remains of its prey… only fine, drifting ash where life had once stood.
But he had no time to grieve, nor anyone to hear him if he did. In this chaos, there was no order, no commands, no honour left to shield a man.
A noble of lofty rank in calmer days, Lord Titus now found himself stripped of all station in the eyes of the crowd. In the face of such terror, a lord was no more than another body scrambling for survival, no more than the dust beneath the dragon's wings.
One glance at his own sorry appearance was enough to remind him that he could not, in this state, hold his head high and call himself "Lord Peake" before the others. The title that had once commanded respect would only sound hollow now.
Yet even in the midst of fire and fear, the honour of House Peake still mattered. It was the one thing that could not be surrendered, even when all else was already burning.
So he lowered his head, pulled his collar close, and ran, legs pumping as hard as they would carry him, blending into the tide of people surging northward. Only by leaving the castle as quickly as possible could he avoid being swallowed whole by dragonfire, burned to nothing but ash in an instant.
He had not gone far along Starpike's main thoroughfare when a sudden, earth-shaking roar split the air.
The sound was so loud it made every runner falter, hearts jolting in their chests. Almost as one, they turned to look, and what they saw rooted many to the spot.
The great blue-and-gold dragon had descended, its colossal body slamming down upon the roof of the main keep.
Its long, serpentine neck curved downward, the massive jaws yawning open. From within, a blinding torrent of dragonfire poured into the marble ceilings of the keep, the flames flooding downward like molten sunlight.
In barely two heartbeats, the thick stonework of the top floor cracked apart with a deafening crash, followed swiftly by the collapse of the level beneath it.
The giant dragon spread its wings wide, rising in the billowing clouds of smoke and dust like a demon clawing its way out from the pits of hell.
It drew in a breath, then unleashed another torrent of fire so fierce it could split stone and shatter small hills, the heat hammering against the keep with relentless fury.
Titus Peake, along with the rest of the fleeing townsfolk, stared in horror as the once-imposing stronghold, began to glow from the highest floor downward. The walls were turning red, slow and steady, as though the entire keep had become a great iron brand heating in the forge.
From the narrow windows burst thin, writhing tongues of flame, their shapes sharp and restless like snakes snapping at the open air. Even a glance was enough to reveal the kind of heat now filling the halls within, a heat so merciless it would strip the flesh from bone in seconds.
Cold sweat trickled down Lord Titus's back. If he had hesitated even a moment longer inside those walls, the dragonfire would have reduced him to nothing but molten remains.
The lord's chambers were on the topmost floor. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, picturing his wife, the Lannister woman who had once been so proud of her beauty. Now, in every sense, she no longer belonged to this world.
Would her soul, he wondered, be able to withstand the dragon's flames and find its way back into the arms of the gods?
The thought had barely formed when the rising panic around him dragged him back to the present. The cries of fear were growing louder by the second.
Snapped out of his daze, Titus lifted his head, and in that instant his breath caught tight in his chest.
The great blue and gold dragon had not ceased its assault for even a moment. The stream of fire pouring from its maw still battered the keep without pause, relentless and merciless.
The castle that had once been a fortress of dark grey brick and stone now glowed a deep, terrible red, the colour of heated iron pulled straight from the forge.
Then, before the eyes of every last soul watching, the sealed keep split apart from its very heart with a thunderous crack.
"BOOOOM!"
A deafening boom shook the air.
It was as if a bubble filled with molten rock had burst. Blazing crimson flames erupted outward, carrying with them chunks of stone already softening in the heat, scattering in every direction in a rain of fire and ruin.
And with that, all the pride of House Peake collapsed into the dirt, gone without a trace.
For a full ten seconds, the crowd stood there frozen, stunned into silence. Then, somewhere among them, a single sharp scream broke the stillness, and suddenly the spell shattered. The rest turned and fled again, scattering like startled birds, racing for the gates.
To the common folk, a noble's castle had always been the strongest thing in the world, a wall that no disaster could break. They had stopped to watch because they clung to that hope, that the lords' keep might somehow withstand this calamity that had fallen from the sky.
But the shattering of the keep was also the shattering of their final hope in the nobility. And with that last illusion gone, despair took hold. They abandoned their homes without a backward glance and ran for their lives beyond the castle walls.
Someone shouted above the chaos, their voice cracking with panic.
"Run! The lord's already been burned to death!"
At the very back of the fleeing crowd, Titus Peake heard it and nearly spat blood from rage.
But he could not refute it.
On any other day, a man who spoke such words would have been cut down on the spot as a spy or a traitor.
But now, the Lord of Starpike could barely keep himself alive. He had no strength left to think of silencing others.
Besides, who in their right mind would choose this moment to be a spy? A spy for whom? The dragon? Was there in all the world anything more absurd than that?
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"Your Grace, it's been two days already. We still haven't heard a single word about Gaelithox?"
Daenerys Targaryen sat in the high seat of the Water Gardens, her violet eyes fixed steadily on Prince Doran Martell beside her.
"Yes," Doran answered, his tone calm and unhurried. "The last word we had placed Gaelithox flying toward the northwestern mountains."
The prince himself did not seem overly troubled. He sat there steadily, as though nothing could shake him. In his view, with a creature the size of Gaelithox, there was no one in all of Westeros who could suddenly pose a real threat to it.
"Northwest?" Daenerys' gaze sharpened. "Prince, do you think there's a chance Gaelithox might have flown into Reach territory?"
At that, Doran's brows drew together ever so slightly. He remembered that back in Sunspear he had sent word to every major lord in the realm, making it clear that if a dragon appeared in their lands, it was to be welcomed with the finest food and drink they could muster.
In time, he had even received a handful of replies from certain lords. Those letters had all praised the might and majesty of Her Grace's dragon, but they had also slipped in a request — could Sunspear perhaps settle the bill for the dragon's meals? Gaelithox, they complained, had an appetite like no other, and feeding such a beast was a burden only a great and extravagantly wealthy house like House Martell could possibly bear.
Since so much time had passed without any incident, Doran had felt no real worry about the dragon's long flights abroad.
But now, with Daenerys voicing her suspicion, the thought struck him for the first time. Aside from Dorne, no other realm had treated the dragon with such open-handed generosity.
"Your Grace is suggesting," he said slowly, "that Gaelithox might do as it did here in Dorne, descend into a castle expecting to be fed, and that the lords of the Reach might respond by attacking it?"
Daenerys shook her head. She was neither Clay nor Gaelithox, and she could not claim to know the creature's mind. But if there was even the slightest chance of such a thing, it would be trouble indeed.
"We must be ready for anything, Prince," she said firmly.
Doran nodded in agreement, though in truth, until King Clay returned, neither of them intended to send troops into the Reach or into the Stormlands. Watching one enemy tear into another, only to sweep in later and defeat the last survivor… that was far too satisfying and efficient a strategy to abandon lightly.
But if Clay's dragon were to sweep down upon the Reach and set some grand blaze, then the situation would be far less amusing.
For the Dornish, reaching the very heart of House Tyrell at Highgarden required grinding through enemy territory one castle at a time, taking each stronghold in turn.
No competent commander would ever allow enemy fortresses to stand behind his army's lines, threatening his rear.
Yet for a dragon, such rules meant nothing at all.
If the dragon wished it, it could simply ignore every army in its path and descend straight upon Highgarden itself, unchallenged and unstoppable.
And that, Doran thought grimly, might not be a blessing. For if such a thing happened, the Tyrells on the front lines, and with them, the many proud lords of the Reach, would be like startled birds struck by an arrow's shadow, their composure shattered in an instant.
They would tear themselves away from Renly's host, abandon the fight before them, and drive their banners homeward in a desperate rush to defend their own lands.
And that was the last thing Clay and Daenerys wished to see.
In Clay's original plan, the war for King's Landing had to end with one crown falling to the ground. Only then, after securing the North by breaking the Lannisters and the Vale, would his forces sweep south from two fronts to crush the final remaining crown. That would be the closing act of this long, bloody civil war of the Seven Kingdoms.
But striking at the Reach too soon might ruin that design entirely. It could force the two rival crowns to set aside their quarrels for the moment, uniting their strength against Dorne.
And that, both Daenerys and Prince Doran Martell knew, would be disastrous.
Yet if Gaelithox truly had flown to the Reach to burn and kill, then there would be no turning back.
"Prince," Daenerys said at last, her voice sharp with resolve, "send word to the border fortress that last sighted Gaelithox. Tell them to find out exactly where it is, and to do so without delay."
"If it proves to be as we fear, then summon every noble of Dorne to Sunspear once more. If war is unavoidable, then we must be ready to act. At the very least, our armies must move into the borderlands and hold the Prince's Pass."
"I will find a way to reach Clay. At this point, the decision must be his to make."
Her tone was firm, every word leaving no space for hesitation.
Prince Doran inclined his head in silent agreement.
And so, a single raven, carrying a command from Sunspear that no one dared refuse, took flight toward Dorne's distant northwestern frontier.
A new war, it seemed, might soon be upon them!
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[Chapter End's]
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