The Unsullied maintained their almost instinctively precise formation, but the air had frozen solid.
Even men subjected to brutal training from childhood, with most of their humanity long since ground away, could suffer a brief lapse in the logic of obedience when confronted with power beyond their comprehension.
Their master? Dead.
Reduced to an unrecognizable heap of mashed flesh beneath the beast's claws.
Orders? None.
They still stood where they were, forming a silent square.
But now, that silence was no longer flawless discipline. It was a bewildered suspension.
King Ghidorah slowly folded his pale golden wing membranes, and the last trace of lightning vanished along the edges of his scales.
Aegon leaped from the dragon's back. His boots squelched through the mixture of paving stones and flesh crushed beneath the dragon's claws.
He walked up to the dark red splatter of pulped flesh, his gaze settling on half an arm protruding from beneath the edge of a dragon claw, its ornate vambrace twisted out of shape.
The five fingers lay slightly spread, their tips still twitching involuntarily.
He bent down and pulled a short, jet-black whip with a pigeon's-blood ruby set in its handle from the still-warm palm.
The whip was heavy, retaining the last warmth of its former owner.
Aegon straightened and turned toward the Unsullied in the middle of the street.
He raised the obsidian whip in his hand, its ruby refracting a cold gleam in the strengthening daylight.
"Now," he said, his voice cutting through the thin chill of dawn, as clear as a blade scraping across every listener's eardrums, "obey my commands."
He paused, sweeping his gaze over the expressionless faces hidden beneath spiked helmets.
"I will give you a different life."
He tilted his head slightly, glancing at King Ghidorah's fearsome, bone-armored head.
"Or