The Black Dragon's Final Echo

In 197 AC (the 197th year of the Conquest calendar), somewhere in an unnamed wilderness on the continent of Westeros, the bloodiest cold-steel war since the disappearance of the Targaryen dragons was about to begin.

This unnamed plain would soon be given a name by later generations—the Red Grassland.

Spears stood like a forest across the desolate plain, a jungle of steel, while an atmosphere of drawn blades and taut bows froze in the air.

Heavy shield walls stretched across the battlefield like mountains. Dense volleys of arrows poured down from the yellowing sky, obscuring sight and plunging heaven and earth alike into gloom.

Yellow sand churned beneath warhorses' hooves as the west wind howled. Blood on the battlefield dried swiftly, and the stench of gore filled the dust. The clash of swords and the wails of soldiers echoed across the boundless wilderness for what seemed an eternity.

Thousands upon thousands of lives vanished in haste, while more survivors continued onward without hesitation, trampling over mountains of corpses.

War was mercilessly displaying its most cruel face, revealing its power to devour all things.

Upon the low hills in the distance, a black dragon banner on a field of red fluttered like a struggling flame. Beneath it, the "Conqueror Reborn" was removing his armor with the help of his attendants, taking a brief rest.

Beneath his long silver-gold hair, deep violet eyes blazed brightly. The muscular lines of his broad shoulders and back put ancient Greek sculptures to shame.

All the world knew this: whenever Daemon Blackfyre held the sword Blackfyre, which bore his own name, the Warrior himself descended into the mortal world through his body.

"I am Daemon Blackfyre, the true king of the Seven Kingdoms!" Blackfyre cleaved through the smoke and pointed at the heavens. "Whoever stands against me—"

The final note of his declaration was cut short by the shriek of metal from his memories. Half an hour earlier, when Daemon Blackfyre had torn apart the earth with the might of the Warrior, this blade had clipped the wings of the eagle of the Vale...

He had first driven a wedge of heavy cavalry through House Arryn's Moon Gate knights. When Lord Donnel's blue-and-white eagle banner tilted amid the chaos, Daemon had charged alone into the heart of the enemy formation.

Daemon's heavy cavalry cut through the Moon Gate knights like a hot knife through butter, breaking their blue-and-white eagle banners one after another.

The end of "Mad" Wyl Waynwood had been steeped in grim irony. The fierce Vale warrior had just smashed through Blackfyre's shield wall with his axe when Daemon struck him from behind and sent him flying.

Waynwood was still laughing wildly as he fell from his horse, his bloodied teeth biting into the mud.

His silver-plated battleaxe spun seven times through the air before burying itself in the skull of his own messenger.

A knight of Nine Stars had tried to lock the Black Dragon's throat with a morningstar, but Blackfyre slipped like a venomous snake through the gap in the chain and nailed both knight and weapon to Lord Arryn's banner pole.

The bloodied moon-and-star sigil slid down the banner, wrapped around fragments of brain matter.

Donnel Arryn's near-death moment seemed to unfold in slow motion. Daemon's sword tip was less than half an inch from the lord's throat when a crystalline longsword abruptly blocked Blackfyre.

"Lady Forlorn is here." Gwayne Corbray's voice was colder than his blade.

The surviving Vale riders saw only that the Kingsguard's pure white cloak had been soaked through with blood and mud, yet the hand gripping his sword remained as steady as stone.

The clash of two swords composed a hymn to death. Every blow from Blackfyre carried a wave of molten-gold heat, twisting and steaming the air in its wake. Lady Forlorn, however, was like a polar gale, leaving frost wherever its gleam swept.

When the two Valyrian steel blades collided, they erupted not in sparks but in pale blue ghostfire, as if the dragon souls imprisoned within the steel when dragonflame had forged it a thousand years ago were roaring in fury.

The fierce battle gradually became a brutal dance of metal:

On the thirtieth exchange, Daemon spun and shattered Corbray's greaves. Iron fragments lodged in his leg bone like crushed diamonds set in agate.

On the one hundred and fifth exchange, Lady Forlorn sheared off the dragon-head ornament on the Black Dragon's shoulder plate. The broken silver dragon head bounced into the eye socket of an archer watching from afar, and he screamed as he clutched his face.

On the one hundred and forty-third exchange, Blackfyre split open the white enameled helm. Hot blood sprayed from Corbray's eyes and cheeks, hissing into vapor upon the dragon-scale patterns of the steel.

When Daemon's sword tip pressed against the Kingsguard's Adam's apple, he saw a strange sight reflected in the other man's pupils. Not the smoke and blood of the Red Grassland, but the training yard at King's Landing twenty years earlier—seven-year-old Daemon holding a wooden sword to ten-year-old Gwayne's neck as the boys collapsed in laughter over their game of "Aegon the Conqueror Battles the Last Dragonrider."

"Do you yield, future White Knight?" the silver-haired boy in his memory had asked with a gap-toothed grin.

In reality, Daemon abruptly withdrew his sword. He knocked his blinded and gravely wounded old friend unconscious with the pommel, then protected him until the remaining royalist forces retreated. "Take him away! Red Fang, if this noble fool dies, I'll use your skull as a wine cup!"

As Red Fang dragged Corbray back into the smoke, Daemon's Blackfyre carved a deep groove into the earth. That fissure would nourish the fantasies of future singers, though none would know it was a true dragon's futile struggle against fate.

His thoughts returning to the present, the briefly rested Daemon turned to face the fresh tide of death. Beneath the dim sun, Blackfyre gleamed with a dark red light, like a living thing that had drunk its fill of blood.

The first volley descended like poisonous bees. He spun and swung his sword, and the shriek of Valyrian steel tearing through the air drowned out even the whistle of the arrows.

Seven arrows were cut into fourteen pieces. Another three scraped across his dragon-scale armor, throwing bright sparks from his shoulder plate.

The second charge followed immediately—dozens of Vale knights rushed forward with keen swords in hand.

Daemon laughed. It was the laugh of dragonfire illuminating the sky when Aegon the Conqueror burned Harrenhal.

"Come!" he roared, charging forward in return.

Blackfyre became an arc of death. The first warhorse had both forelegs severed at the knee, and its scream threw its rider into a forest of spears. The second stroke pierced a gap in plate armor, the sword tip bursting from the knight's back with a still-beating heart impaled upon it. The third knight's kite shield and right arm flew into the air, raining blood across the horrified visors of his comrades.

When the last man reined in his horse and tried to flee, Daemon leaped up, seized its tail, and used the momentum to flip onto its back. Blackfyre entered beneath the knight's jaw, and the dull crack of his skull breaking sounded like ripe fruit hitting the ground. The surviving horse bolted wildly, dragging its master's headless corpse behind it and leaving a scarlet trail of entrails.

But only then did the true threat bare its fangs.

The banner of Bloodraven, Brynden Rivers, rose upon a distant ridge. His cloak of raven feathers billowed in the wind like a living creature. Three hundred archers of the Raven's Teeth emerged from the flank, their poisoned arrowheads glinting ghostly blue in the shadows.

"Black Dragon! I am here!" A hoarse cry pierced the battlefield. "Fight for the true dragon!"

Daemon's supporters climbed from heaps of corpses. House Bracken's red horse banner and House Peake's golden castle gathered amid the smoke, and the shattered shield wall rose once more. But the arrows were faster than loyalty.

The boy holding the Black Dragon banner high was only twelve when arrows pierced his body—Daemon's eldest son, Aegon. He fell to his knees, yet his bloodied hand still clutched the banner tightly. Silver hair and scarlet dragon emblems intertwined in the wind like an elegy, while the fluttering black dragon kissed the earth.

Daemon saw Oswell Bracken pinned to the scorched ground by three spears, still hacking at horse legs with a broken sword. He saw Gawen Peake charging the enemy line with his gilded breastplate crushed like scrap metal, fragments of his organs spilling from his mouth...

In the end, loyalty could not keep pace with death.

Blackfyre gave a dragonlike hum as Daemon cleaved through two rune-armored warriors of House Royce, then leaped onto a boulder upon their convulsing bodies.

An arrow grazed his neck, leaving a bloodstain that burned like fire. He looked toward the hilltop—Brynden's blood-red single eye was piercing through the battlefield, fixed upon him. Brynden knew that if the boy still had even one breath left, Daemon would never abandon him and flee alone.

The final charge began, and ended just as quickly.

With a wave of Bloodraven's hand, the rain of arrows briefly ceased. Across the distance, Daemon's lip movements drifted away with bloody foam.

"Brynden..." Daemon's lips moved soundlessly as his sword tip pointed toward the hilltop.

The final charge became a streak of silver lightning. The moment Daemon leaped down from the rock, the silver chain binding his hair snapped, and three hundred poisoned arrows descended like feeding ravens.

The first arrow pierced his knee, and he heard Aegon's cries twist into a dragon's roar.

The second tore through his lung. In his hallucination, a dragon black as coal was breathing black flame.

When the third arrow struck his chest in a triangular pattern, Blackfyre slipped from his hand and plunged into the scorched earth like the bone of a fallen dragon.

In his final moments, the smoke of the Red Grassland twisted and swirled, becoming the fading shadow of a black dragon sweeping across the sky.

It was that absurd, yet it was also the cruel truth.

The Black Dragon who wielded the sword Blackfyre, the Warrior descended to earth, Daemon Blackfyre—the man who had sparked a war that divided the Seven Kingdoms for nearly a year and made half the realm fight for him—died beneath the arrow storm of his half-brother, Brynden Rivers.