A shaft of daylight pierced a gap in the lead-gray clouds and fell straight onto the rocky hilltop.
In that light, the pale-gold Dragon's scales shimmered like liquid gold, each one seeming to breathe.
They swallowed the light, then refracted it into an even more majestic golden radiance.
The silver-haired knight in black armor sat astride the Dragon's back, his blood-red cloak blazing like fire in the light.
The light enveloped them, marking them as beings beyond the mortal world.
Below stood the assembled Skull Band and Blood Oath Band.
Along with the hundred-odd pale-faced survivors from Tyrosh who had been escorted over, they all involuntarily held their breath.
They gazed up at a scene that seemed to have stepped out of an ancient mural or mythic epic.
Sunlight fell on Aegon's face as well, illuminating his sharply defined profile and reaching deep into his violet eyes.
Within those eyes, sparks seemed to catch fire beneath that shaft of daylight, spreading silently into a blaze.
He tilted his head slightly, looking toward the source of the light, toward the sky he had just conquered.
Rushing winds, drifting clouds, unfettered flight, a vantage point above all living things...
The feeling was not merely one of power. It was something deeper-a "freedom" that felt as though shackles he had worn since birth had suddenly burst open.
To command the wind, to command the thunder, to command this colossal beast was almost... to command his own fate.
The corner of his mouth lifted in a barely perceptible curve.
The faint gloom that so often lingered between his brows seemed to have been swept away by the winds of the high heavens during that flight through the clouds, when he had ruled the thunder.
He drew his gaze back from the horizon, his eyes