Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The Cradle and the Grave

Year: 102 BC (Before Conquest) - The Day of Doom

The roar of his own rebirth was still echoing from the peaks, a defiant symphony of power against the encroaching silence of a world holding its breath, when the first true tremor hit. It was not like the shuddering of a groaning mountain or the localized quakes he had felt before. This was different. This was the world tearing itself asunder.

The very bedrock of the Valyrian peninsula, a land accustomed to the grumblings of its volcanic heart, convulsed with a violence that was utterly alien. It was a deep, gut-wrenching lurch, as if a colossal hand had seized the landmass and shaken it with malicious intent. From his vantage point, he saw one of the impossibly slender towers in the heart of the city, a spire of fused black stone that had stood for a thousand years, sway for a moment like a drunken giant. Then, with a silent, sickening grace, it snapped in the middle. The top half, a testament to the hubris of the Dragonlords, simply fell, tumbling end over end to smash into the city below, unleashing a cloud of pulverized obsidian and screams too distant to be heard, yet felt in the very air.

This was it. The Doom had begun.

The human part of his mind, the 21st-century fanboy, screamed in a mixture of vindicated horror and sheer, unadulterated terror. The draconic part, the ancient and now immortal Vermithrax, reacted with pure, instinctual fury. This was an assault on his home, his territory. The sky, his domain, was filling with smoke and the promise of fire.

He did not have time for awe or for mourning. Every second was a stolen jewel. His plan, conceived in a moment of desperate clarity, now seemed like a fragile hope against an apocalyptic certainty. The eggs. I have to get the eggs.

Where? Vermithrax's memories, a vast and ancient library, were now his to command. The dragon's mind, no longer clouded by the fog of age and decay, sorted through millennia of information with lightning speed. The Dragonlords, for all their power, were creatures of vanity and possessiveness. Their dragons were their ultimate symbols of status, and the eggs, the future of their bloodlines, were protected with paranoid jealousy. They were not kept in a central, communal hatchery. They were held in the private manors of the great families, in deep, geothermally heated vaults, cradles of stone warmed by the very fires that were now turning on their masters.

He launched himself into the air. The power was intoxicating. With a single, mighty downbeat of his wings, the ground fell away with breathtaking speed. The air, thick with the first spewings of ash, rushed past him, a gritty, sulfurous gale. He was a bronze thunderbolt against a sky rapidly turning bruised and grey.

His target was the largest and most prominent of the Dragonlord estates, sitting on a high promontory overlooking the city. The manor of House Belaerys, a family known for their pride and their magnificent stock of dragons. Vermithrax's memories told him they possessed a clutch of seven eggs, a treasure of unparalleled value.

As he flew, the world below descended into chaos. The initial quake had been a starting gun for a symphony of destruction. To the east, the most volatile of the Fourteen Flames, a behemoth named Ghiscar's Maw, erupted. It did not merely spew lava and ash; it exploded. The entire top of the mountain vaporized in a flash of incandescent light, sending a shockwave of pure force racing across the peninsula. He felt it as a physical blow, a hammer of superheated air that threatened to swat him from the sky. He angled his wings, using his newfound agility to ride the violent current, his roar a challenge to the mountain's own.

Below, the city was dying. The fused stone bridges, masterpieces of Valyrian magic, shattered like glass, dropping thousands into the streets and canals, which were already beginning to roil and steam. The great obsidian towers, one by one, were succumbing to the violent shaking, falling like a forest of black trees, crushing everything in their path. Rivers of lava, freed from their subterranean prisons, began to snake through the lower districts, consuming buildings and people with an indifferent hunger.

A part of him, the human part, recoiled from the sheer scale of the tragedy. He saw Dragonlords, the so-called masters of the world, scrambling from their palaces, their fine silks and jeweled robes offering no protection from the wrath of the earth. Some managed to reach their dragons, smaller, younger beasts tethered in walled courtyards. He saw a flash of emerald scales as a dragon took to the sky, its rider screaming commands, only for a chunk of a falling tower, the size of a small keep, to smash them into a bloody pulp against the ground.

There was no time for pity. His mission was all that mattered.

He reached the Belaerys estate. The magnificent palace, with its soaring arches and gardens of petrified fire-flowers, was already a ruin. The main keep had collapsed into a pile of rubble, and the ground was fissured with deep, glowing cracks that vented noxious, superheated steam. He ignored the destruction, his golden eyes scanning for the entrance to the vaults.

Vermithrax's memory guided him. Not the main entrance, which was buried under tons of rock, but a secondary, hidden passage, a service tunnel for the keepers who tended the eggs. It was carved into the cliff face the manor was built upon. He banked sharply, his massive form casting a fleeting shadow over the chaos, and landed on a wide, shattered ledge.

The tunnel entrance was a heavy, ornate gate of carved stone and Valyrian steel, now twisted and warped in its frame. In his previous, dying state, it would have been an impassable barrier. Now, it was a minor inconvenience. He reared back, gathering the inferno in his chest. The fire that erupted from his maw was no longer a flickering ember. It was a concentrated torrent of liquid gold, a sun-spear of pure energy that struck the gate with a deafening hiss. The Valyrian steel, famed for its resilience, glowed white-hot, bubbled, and then simply ceased to exist, vaporized by a heat that rivaled the core of the volcanoes.

He plunged into the darkness beyond, his eyes, adapted to the gloom of deep lairs and the glare of the sun, adjusting instantly. The tunnel sloped steeply downwards, the air growing thick and warm. The walls were carved with intricate glyphs of power and protection, now flickering erratically as the magical energies of the peninsula went haywire.

The ground shook again, more violently this time. A section of the tunnel roof ahead of him collapsed, and he was forced to bulldoze his way through a mountain of fallen rock, the stones scraping and screeching against his newly invulnerable scales. He felt no pain, only a grim, relentless determination.

He broke through into the vault. It was a large, circular chamber, its walls lined with niches of polished basalt. In the center of the room, a pillar of raw, uncut crystal pulsed with a soft, internal light, channeling the geothermal heat that kept the chamber at a constant, sweltering temperature. And resting on beds of black sand within the niches were the eggs.

Seven of them. Each one was the size of a large melon, their surfaces a mesmerizing swirl of color and texture. One was a deep, midnight black, veined with angry streaks of blood-red. Another was a pale cream, dappled with bronze and gold. A third was the color of jade, so deep and lustrous it seemed to drink the light. They were breathtakingly beautiful, each one a promise of a magnificent life, a potential king or queen of the sky.

He had to transport them. How? His claws, designed for rending and tearing, were too clumsy. His mouth, a furnace of death, was out of the question. He needed a container, something to cradle them.

His eyes scanned the chamber. Against one wall were the tools of the keepers: nets woven from fire-resistant fibers, padded tongs, and a large, reinforced transport chest made of petrified ironwood, bound with bronze. It was perfect.

He tried to seize it with his claws, but his talons were too large for the handles. Frustration, a hot, prickly emotion, flared within him. He was a god of destruction, but the simple task of lifting a box was beyond him. He had to think. Think like a human.

He used his snout, the most dexterous part of his massive head, to nudge and push the chest towards the center of the room. It was a slow, awkward process, a giant trying to perform surgery with a sledgehammer. Once it was positioned, he carefully, painstakingly, used the tip of one massive claw to hook the eggs, one by one, and roll them from their sandy nests into the open chest. He worked with a surgeon's focus, his every movement a study in controlled power. The world outside could be ending, the screams of the dying echoing down the tunnel, but in this moment, his entire universe was contained within this small, stone cradle.

Once the last egg was secured, he nudged the heavy lid of the chest closed and used his jaw to carefully grip the entire container. The ironwood groaned under the pressure of his teeth, but it held. He had his prize.

As he turned to leave, a new sound reached him. A high-pitched, desperate shrieking. It was coming from deeper within the vault complex, from a collapsed section at the far end of the chamber. It was the cry of a hatchling.

His mission was the eggs. They were the future, pristine and unhatched. A hatchling was a complication. It would be terrified, difficult to control, and a potential liability during his escape. The logical, human part of his brain told him to leave it. The mission was too important.

But the sound… it was a cry of pure terror and loneliness, a baby calling for its mother in the dark. And the ancient, draconic instincts now woven into his soul screamed protect. A hatchling was a dragon. It was kin.

He hesitated for only a second. With a growl of frustration at the complication, he gently placed the chest of eggs back on the floor and moved towards the sound. A massive rockfall blocked a connecting tunnel, but he could see a faint light through the cracks. The hatchling was on the other side.

He didn't waste time with finesse. He slammed his body into the rockfall, once, twice, a living battering ram of bronze and fury. The rocks crumbled, and he burst through into a smaller, secondary vault.

There, amidst the dust and debris, was a tiny dragon, no larger than a house cat. Its scales were a brilliant, shimmering silver, and its eyes were wide pools of molten gold, currently filled with terror. It had hatched prematurely, likely shocked into life by the violent quakes. One of its wings was bent at an unnatural angle, clearly broken in the rockfall. It hissed at him, a tiny, pathetic sound, trying to make itself look bigger.

He softened his posture, lowering his massive head to the ground to appear less threatening. He projected a feeling of calm, of reassurance, a wave of ancient, paternal energy that was a core part of Vermithrax's being. I am here to help, little one. Do not be afraid.

The hatchling's hissing subsided, replaced by a confused, questioning chirp. It tentatively limped towards him, dragging its broken wing. The sight of its pain and its trust struck a chord deep within him. He would not leave this one to die.

But how to carry it? He couldn't put it in the chest with the eggs; it would be crushed. He couldn't carry it in his mouth.

He looked down at his own massive form. His neck was long and powerful, with ridges of thick, bony plates running down its length. He carefully, gently, nudged the tiny silver hatchling with his snout, encouraging it to climb. The little dragon, sensing his intent, used its sharp claws to find purchase on his scales, scrambling up his neck until it found a secure spot between two of the large dorsal plates behind his head. It was a precarious perch, but it would have to do.

With the hatchling clinging to his neck and the chest of eggs once again firmly in his jaws, he turned and began the journey back to the surface. The escape was even more perilous than the descent. The tunnel was actively collapsing, the very air vibrating with the death throes of Valyria. He burst out onto the ledge into a scene from a madman's nightmare.

The sky was no longer grey; it was a churning, roiling cauldron of black ash and fiery red clouds, lit from below by the hellish glow of a thousand lava flows. The sea itself was boiling, great plumes of steam rising where the molten rock met the water. The remaining towers of Valyria were falling, and the entire peninsula seemed to be sinking into the enraged ocean. The Fourteen Flames were no longer individual mountains; they had become a continuous, unbroken wall of fire, a crown of annihilation for the doomed empire.

There was no time to find other estates, no time to search for more eggs. The window of opportunity was closing, slamming shut with the force of a continent-shattering explosion. He had to leave. Now.

With the tiny hatchling clinging desperately to his neck and the precious future of his race clutched in his jaw, he leaped from the cliff. His wings caught the violent, ash-choked wind, and he climbed, a bronze phoenix rising from the ashes of the world's greatest empire.

He flew south, away from the heart of the destruction, his powerful wings pumping with a steady, relentless rhythm. The air was a maelstrom of pyroclastic debris and toxic gas. Chunks of pumice, still glowing with internal heat, rained down around him, and he weaved through them with a dancer's grace. The heat was immense, a physical presence that would have cooked a lesser creature alive, but his immortal body, bathed in the waters of the Fountain of Youth, barely registered it.

He flew for what felt like hours, the sounds of the Doom, the screaming of the earth and the cries of the dying, slowly fading behind him. He did not look back. He could not. The sight of the cataclysm, of the grave of an entire civilization, was a memory that would be seared into his mind forever. He had to focus on the future, the fragile, precious future he held in his care.

As the sun began to set, casting long, bloody-red shadows across the boiling, ash-strewn sea, he finally cleared the worst of the fallout. The air grew cleaner, the sky above shifting from black to a deep, star-dusted indigo. He looked down at the chest in his mouth, then twisted his head to see the small, silver hatchling, which had fallen into an exhausted sleep, nestled securely behind his head.

Seven eggs and a single hatchling. It was a pittance, a tragic, heartbreaking fraction of what had been lost. But it was a start. It was hope.

He adjusted his flight path, turning his great head definitively towards the vast, unknown expanse of the south. Towards Sothoryos. He was no longer just a fan, no longer just a man in a dragon's body. He was a refugee, a savior, an ark. He was the guardian of the last dragons, the sole inheritor of a legacy of fire and blood. And as the last light of Valyria died on the horizon behind him, he flew on into the darkness, carrying the cradle of his kind away from their grave. The weight of their future was heavy, but for the first time since his impossible awakening, he felt not weary, but powerful. He had a purpose. He would not fail.