Sweeter Than Evil ||| Cregan Stark

eighteen

One year earlier.

It was horrible. That was what Daenys would remember the most about the experience.

Cannibal had flown from Dragonstone toward the east with little interference from Daenys. She had to wonder if he was a descendant of Valyria himself. Closer than any of the dragons her family laid claim to. If he was almost as old, if not older, than Vhagar, then there was a good chance it was the truth. He flew for hours without stopping anywhere to hunt or rest. Ironically, for the first time in weeks, Daenys slept peacefully on his back as the weather in the sky began to warm, which told her they were getting closer.

The first sign that they were approaching Valyria was the change in the colour of the sky. Daenys had always heard the stories of how the sky above Valyria was perpetually red from the Fourteen Flames and how the islands had broken apart. That proved to be true when blue faded into orange and orange faded into red. Sailors often never even got close to Valyria, as legends said that anyone who sighted the shores of Valyria was never seen again. Daenys intended to fly straight to the centre. Her grandfather's model of Valyria was still fresh in her mind, Daenys remembered being obsessed with it as a child. Studying the buildings and mountains and architecture. Hopefully, it came in handy.

The second sign they were approaching Valyria was the heat. It was humid in the Free Cities, hot enough that Daenys sat up on the back of Cannibak and pulled her cloak off. But when they were approaching the shattered Valyrian peninsula, the heat was stifling. Daenys was a Targaryen, she ran hot and could handle heat. But that was a very different type. The type coming from fourteen living mountains with lava and flame. Cannibal seemed to be a fan, however. Daenys thought he might stay a while before he went back to Dragonstone.

Her third warning sign that she was approaching Old Valyria was the Smoking Sea. On closer approach, Cannibal dipped lower than the clouds and Daenys saw the sea beneath the smoke. It didn't smoke, as water couldn't smoke, but after the Doom, water from the rest of the sea rushed in and subsequently surrounded the living mountains. The activity of those mountains kept the sea boiling and was one of the reasons sailors never dared sail for Valyria despite the rumours of the treasure still left in the biggest city.

The fourth and final sign was the city itself. Old Valyria had been fragmented when the cataclysmic Doom occurred. But the city of Valyria resided in the centre of the largest surviving island, surrounded by cliffs from where the island had broken away from the mainland. Even from above, Daenys could see how vast the city had once been. Seeing it for the very first time, the place where her family originated, where her namesake was born, made something snap into place for Daenys.

Valyria was a place of a very wicked nature. Despite what advancement it made, the power it held over the rest of the Known World, the people of Valyria were privy to torture and sacrifice of the slaves they purchased. Slaving was one thing entirely. But it was so much worse to send scores of those slaves to burn from the inside out in the belly of living mountains to mine.

Daenys kept that in her mind as she stared at the ruins of what was once the most prosperous empire that had ever been. Seeing an entire civilization's abandoned and destroyed remains was incredibly terrifying. From the sky, Daenys could see that much of the land of the island was fractured in different places. The howling nature of those fractures spoke to what was inside of them.

But the city hasn't been completely demolished. While a majority of the towers, castles, roads, and infrastructure had crumbled completely in the destruction and heat, some of them didn't. Valyrians dealt with heat often to build their empire and some of their buildings survived the heat that the civilians and even dragons could not. It was not so preposterous to Daenys that blades and other artifacts had survived the doom either. Those things were more durable than fickle flesh and bone.