Valyria VI

After five days of grueling travel, the party had dwindled to seventy-one. Everyone was exhausted, and many were wounded. Yet the instinct to survive and their tenacious hold on a faint hope somewhere deep in the unknown kept them moving.

Conditions grew harsher. The smell of sulfur and the searing heat in the air intensified, and they could faintly hear the rumble of volcanic peaks erupting in the distance.

They climbed another steep ridge formed from cooled lava. This time, however, a vast, relatively flat basin lay below. At its center was an enormous volcanic crater more than several miles across. Thick smoke poured steadily from its mouth, staining the sky a grayish yellow. Above that roiling smoke, a massive dark silhouette circled.

It was a dragon.

A real, living dragon.

Its entire body was clad in deep, almost pure black scales. Only when light occasionally pierced the smoke did their edges gleam a dark red. It appeared to be more than fifty meters long, and its spread wings cast a shadow like a small mountain. It flew slowly, with an elegance and majesty that suggested it was surveying its domain, yet every beat of its wings churned the scorching air below and stirred up clouds of smoke and dust.

It closely resembled the little black dragon Marius had described seeing ten years ago. Perhaps it was the same one, only now, after decades had passed, it had grown into a young adult.

All the survivors held their breath. Forgetting their exhaustion and fear, they gazed at the creature of myth, caught in a tangle of awe, reverence, and disbelief.

The black dragon seemed to notice the tiny intruders as well. It shifted its posture in the air, then landed on a broad rock ledge jutting from the crater's inner wall. Folding its wings, it settled its enormous body there like a small mountain.

Its blood-red, firelike eyes were half closed, as though it were dozing. It showed no intention of paying Viserys and the others any heed.

Viserys stood at the crater's edge, the strong wind whipping his silver hair. He gazed at the black dragon on the ledge and felt a stirring in his blood. Was it this dragon? Was it calling to me? Or was something deep inside the volcano using it to draw me here?

He took a deep breath, preparing to speak-or rather, to try reaching the black dragon with his mind.

Just then, something changed abruptly.

Without warning, a torrent of ancient, unfathomable consciousness erupted, vast beyond imagining. It swept toward them from the volcano's deepest reaches-or, more precisely, as though it came from the very heavens and earth of the entire ruined expanse of Valyria.

There was no malice in that consciousness, but it carried an immense volume of information that bore directly down on Viserys's soul.

Viserys felt as though an enormous club had struck his mind. He grunted and swayed, only staying upright by planting Blackfyre against the ground. His consciousness was already guttering like a candle in the wind.

The others behind him fared even worse. Before they could so much as cry out, their eyes rolled back and they collapsed together. In an instant, the entire party had been laid low.

Dead silence settled over the crater's edge.

Viserys endured the tumultuous assault within his mind and struggled to steady himself. His vision had blurred, but his pale violet eyes remained fixed on the depths of the crater, the source of that immense consciousness.

Then a shocking sight unfolded before him. The volcano's interior churned violently, and the almost viscous lake of dark red magma began to change drastically. At its center, the magma swirled as though stirred by an invisible giant hand, forming a vast vortex. The center of the vortex sank downward, as though opening into the depths of the world.

Then it rose.

The first things to break through the surface of the magma lake were three immense heads, each as large as the bow of a warship. The central head was the most majestic, its draconic snout sharply defined, its nostrils venting scorching air flecked with golden sparks. The left head was somewhat more slender, its eyes holding scrutiny and intelligence. The right was bulkier, radiating a primal savagery.

Next came three necks like colossal pillars holding up the sky. Each was covered in thick, dark golden scales that looked as though they had been forged over untold ages. In the lava's glow, their edges flashed with a cold, hard metallic sheen. This was the very three-headed dragon that had appeared in his dreams.

King Ghidorah?

As he finally saw the beast clearly, a name sprang unbidden into Viserys's mind-a name from distant Earth, belonging to a legendary Titan.

The three-headed dragon before him bore a striking resemblance to King Ghidorah, the creature known in his memories of his previous life as "Monster Zero" and the "Planet Eater." Above all, there were the three heads standing side by side in a posture of absolute dominion, and the oppressive aura surrounding its body, as though it had come from the depths of the stars.

Its enormous body slowly rose from the magma, carrying cascades of crimson lava. It dwarfed the black dragon perched on the ledge, and when fully spread, its wings could blot out the sky over the entire crater. Lingering magma slid slowly from its dark golden scales, revealing intricate, mysterious natural patterns beneath. Most unsettling of all was the pale golden energy field flowing around it, seeming to bend even light and space slightly in its vicinity.

King Ghidorah-for now, that would be its name-focused all six immense eyes, as though cast from molten gold, on Viserys. Gone was the detached scrutiny of the dream. Instead, something more complex entered its gaze, as though it had found something unexpected yet entirely understandable.

"A small, yet unusual existence."

A vast, low voice sounded directly in the depths of Viserys's soul, replacing the indiscriminate assault of consciousness. It spoke in no language; the information passed directly through thought, filling him with a strange feeling.

Viserys felt his mind wrapped in a gentle yet irresistible power and drawn away. His consciousness seemed to leave his body and enter a strange space composed entirely of light, shadow, and streams of information. There was no up or down, left or right-only endless flowing light and slowly revolving phantoms of stars.

A mental manifestation of the three-headed dragon appeared "before" him. Though countless times smaller, it still inspired involuntary fear at the mere sight of it.

"Do not be frightened, human hatchling. I find the imprint of your soul most intriguing. You seem not to belong wholly to this world, yet you are deeply entwined with its bloodlines." King Ghidorah's central head conveyed the clear thoughts with a hint of curiosity.