[158] The Great Ash Sea

Chapter 158: The Great Ash Sea

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The Dothraki Sea stretched before us like an ocean of grass, rippling in waves that had once carried the greatest cavalry force in the known world. Now, three dragons cast shadows across those plains, and I couldn't help but taste the irony on my tongue.

Here's where it all began. Where the sniveling worm I used to be sold his sister for a crown that never came.

Viserion's muscles shifted beneath me as we descended toward the only thing that could generously be called a city in this wasteland. Vaes Dothrak sprawled below us. It was a monument to theft and conquest, decorated with the broken gods of a hundred defeated peoples.

"Brother." Daenerys's voice carried across the wind from Drogon's back. Even after so long, transformed as she was, with those eyes holding violet flame and her silver hair whipping like liquid moonlight, I could see the girl who'd once trembled before Khal Drogo. "I can’t believe we’re here.”

I guided Viserion to land on a ridge overlooking the city, Rhaegal following with labored wingbeats that made me more furious toward Trystane. The poison still worked through him despite my efforts, turning his magnificent jade scales dull as old copper.

"If you take a step back and look at this situation, yes, neither can I believe this is real. The two of us, riding dragons, about to have some twisted revenge," I said as Dany dismounted, her movements carrying that inhuman grace the ritual had given her.

Even in leather riding clothes, she moved like water given form, deadly and beautiful in equal measure. She stood at the edge, looking down at the sprawling camp. "This is where you sold me."

Not an accusation. Just fact.

"Yes." No point in denying it. "You’re my baby sister… Yet I traded you to a warlord for the promise of forty thousand screamers. Told myself it was for our birthright. Really, I was just a scared boy playing at being king."

The wind carried the scent of horse dung and fermented mare's milk from below. Already, riders were gathering, pointing at our dragons with a mixture of awe and aggression. Last time, they had only seen Viserion when I picked up the injured Dany from the Dothraki Sea. They'd never seen three at once.

They were about to see what three could do.

"I hated you for it," Dany said quietly. "Not at first. At first, I was just terrified. But later, when I learned to be Khaleesi, when I found my strength... I hated you for making me find it through ravishment and suffering."

My jaw clenched. "That Viserys… that weak man is dead. He died the moment I remembered who I really was."

She turned to me then, those impossible eyes searching my face. "Is he? Or does he live on in the Dragon King who takes what he wants without asking?"

"I take from those who would take from me. I conquer those who would see us weak." I gestured to the city below. "These are the people who made you a slave. Who would have used you until you broke, then tossed you aside for the next pretty thing. They made you strong, yes. But at what cost?"

"Everything has a cost." She looked back at Vaes Dothrak, where the massive hall of the Dosh Khaleen dominated the center like a grass-woven mountain. "The crones there told me I would bear the stallion who mounts the world. They spoke of prophecy while I bled on my wedding night."

The image made my fists clench. In my old life, watching the show, it had been dramatic television. Living it, knowing this was my sister...

"Then let's show them what their prophecies are worth." I pointed to the temple. "That place is where they blessed your slavery. You should be the one to burn it. Start the ceremony, Dany. Let them know the dragon queen has come home."

A smile touched her lips. Not kind, but satisfied. She remounted Drogon with grace, every movement oozing with the power flowing through her veins. My gift, my protection, making her more than human.

We descended together, three dragons casting apocalyptic shadows across the 'sacred' city. By the time we reached the outskirts, a small army had gathered.

At their head rode what had to be the current Khal, his bells chiming with each movement, bare chest scarred from a hundred victories.

"Khaleesi!" he called out in accented Common Tongue, his arakh held low but ready. I suppose it was common knowledge that their previous Khaleesi was the Mother of Dragons. "You return to the sacred city! Why you bring dragons to this place of peace?"

Dany hovered above him on Drogon, looking down like a goddess contemplating an insect. "I… am no Khaleesi,” she announced, and I felt satisfaction ripple through my veins. Yes, of course. She was no stupid Barbarian Queen. She was a Targaryen. “I am Daenerys Targaryen, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, and the Breaker of Chains. And I have come to collect a debt."

"What debt?" The Khal's brow furrowed. "You were wife to Khal Drogo! He is dead. You owe nothing, are owed nothing."

"I owe nothing," she agreed. Then her voice hardened to steel. "But you owe everything."

She turned Drogon toward the temple, that massive structure where the dosh khaleen practiced their blood magic and proclaimed their prophecies. Where they'd declared her child would conquer the world. Where they'd blessed her sale into slavery.

Where they’d tried to crown me with molten gold.

The word that came from her lips was almost gentle.

"Dracarys."

Black-tinted flames erupted from Drogon's maw, not the golden flame of Viserion or the green of Rhaegal, but something darker. Hungrier. The temple didn't burn. It disappeared, consumed so completely that even the smoke seemed to flee. The crones inside didn't have time to scream.

The Khal's roar of rage was drowned out by the war cries of a hundred thousand throats.

They came like a tide.

****

"Magnificent," I smiled, watching the horde surge toward us.

The Dothraki moved as one vast organism, a living sea of horses and steel. Their arrows filled the sky like a plague of locusts, only to turn to ash against dragonscale. Their war cries shook the earth, a hundred thousand voices united in fury.

Time to remind the world why dragons conquered it.

"Dany, take the western flank!" I called out, already guiding Viserion into a dive. "Try to stay back if possible and leave most for me, my magic needs the kills! Rhaegal, stay close. We're going to feed you enough death to burn out that poison."

What followed wasn't a battle. It was an execution.

Viserion's flames carved through their ranks like a golden scythe through wheat. I watched a young rider, probably no older than sixteen, raise his arakh in defiance. The weapon melted in his hand, the liquid metal fusing with his flesh before the rest of him caught fire. He screamed for his mother in Dothraki as he died.

Another rider, this one with grey in his beard, tried to rally his khalasar. "Stand firm! They are only three! We are legion! We are b–" Rhaegal's green fire caught him mid-speech, and he toppled from his horse, still burning as the mount trampled him in its panic.

The notifications came like rain:

[Your dragon, Rhaegal, has killed a human - Dothraki Horse Rider.]

[You've received experience points.]

Again and again, a constant stream of death made digital.

I guided Viserion low, her flames washing over a packed formation trying to organize a charge. The front ranks simply ceased to exist, vaporized by heat that could melt stone. Those behind them caught fire from proximity, their screams joining the hellish chorus. Horses went mad with terror, throwing riders and trampling them in their panic to flee.

But there was nowhere to flee to.

"Herd them back!" I commanded, slowly standing up atop Viserion. I spread my wings and began to hover above Viserion.

The sight of a man with dragon wings broke something in these dirty barbarians. I heard prayers to their horse god, pleas for mercy, curses in a dozen dialects.

A woman, for they had women warriors too, stood her ground as others fled. She was magnificent in her defiance, twin arakhs spinning as if she could cut the very flames. I admired her for the three seconds it took Viserion to reduce her to carbon.

To the west, Drogon moved like divine judgment. Dany had abandoned any pretense of mercy, her dragon's sizzling fire punching holes through their formations. I watched her strafe a supply line, the wagons exploding into splinters, their contents, food, water, children's toys, scattered across the burning grass.

Children's toys. There are children down there.

The thought came and went. This was war. This was necessity. This was the price of power.

[You've leveled up!]

[You've leveled up!]

[You've leveled up!]

[You've leveled…!]

[You've…!]

[You've reached Level 87.]

More and more levels showered me as minutes turned into hours. Rhaegal, despite his weakness, fought with desperate fury. Every blast of green flame seemed to strengthen him, as if the death itself was medicine.

His targeting was less precise than his siblings, but what he lacked in accuracy he made up for in enthusiasm. An entire khalasar simply vanished under his assault, three thousand riders reduced to ash and memory.

"That's it, boy," I murmured. "Feed. Grow strong."

The grass itself caught fire, creating a wall of flame that trapped thousands. They milled in panic, some trying to ride through the inferno, others dismounting to pray. None of it mattered. Viserion swept over them like the hand of an angry god, and they were no more.

An hour in, the organized resistance broke entirely. What had been a coordinated horde became a terrified group of individuals, each barbarian seeking their own salvation. Some rode for the mountains. Others tried to hide among the burning remnants of their city. A few, driven mad by the horror, charged directly at the dragons, seeking a quick death.

We gave them what they sought.

"You learned to fly," I called to Dany as she soared past on her own wings, Drogon circling below.

"Recently!" Her voice carried a wild edge, drunk on destruction. "The power you gave me, it keeps revealing new gifts. Although to be fair, it was obvious wings would allow me flight, I just didn’t have the courage to do it."

She was beautiful in her terrible glory, silver hair streaming, violet eyes blazing with inner fire. My sister, my weapon, my creation. The frightened girl sold to Drogo was gone. In her place flew something altogether more dangerous.

[You've reached Level 95.]

[Wyrm-Blight toxin 80% purged from Rhaegal.]

Since my level was connected to my dragons, it strengthened them too. The Great Grass Sea burned. What had been an ocean of green became a hellscape of black glass and charred bone. The air itself seemed to scream with the voices of the dead.

Somewhere in that inferno, the Khal who'd challenged us died, his bells melting into his skull. By the time the sun began to set, it was over.

A hundred thousand Dothraki.

The greatest cavalry force in the world. The scourge of Essos.

Gone. Defeated, massacred, annihilated, and burnt into a sea of ashes.

We landed in what had been the center of Vaes Dothrak. The sacred city was now a monument to ash, the stolen gods of conquered peoples standing as silent witnesses to a genocide that dwarfed any their original worshippers had suffered.

Rhaegal looked better. Not totally healed, that would take time, but his pain seemed to be gone now, and his scales had regained some luster, his eyes some clarity. The poison fought a losing battle against the sheer life force we'd fed him.

The final level up of the day flashed before me.

[Ding! Viserys Tararyen, you've reached Level 100.]

[Congratulations! You've reached the first milestone!]

I dismissed the notifications, as well as the choice of new abilities. Numbers on a screen. I’d choose them later, when making my way to Braavos next. The real count lay around us in carbonized bone and melted bronze.

"Brother." Dany's voice cracked. She stood among the ashes, looking up at the starry sky. She looked beautiful like that.

She slowly looked down, meeting eyes with me, as tears cut through the soot on her face. "I need a hug."

I pulled her against me without hesitation. She sobbed into my chest, her body shaking with emotions too complex for words. Joy at vengeance achieved. Horror at what we'd done. Relief that the ghosts of her past were finally, truly dead.

"It's over," I murmured into her hair. "They can never hurt you again."

"I know." Her arms tightened around me. "I know. But brother... what have we become?"

I looked out over the devastation we'd wrought. The Dothraki Sea was no more. In its place stretched an ash-covered wasteland that would be barren for generations.

"We've become what we needed to be," I said finally.  Creatures of fire and blood, beautiful and terrible, capable of miracles and atrocities in equal measure. "We are Dragons."

****

Oh, how odd it felt. How good it felt.

The ash clung to Daenerys’s skin like a second layer, a dark veil over her pale flesh as she stood amidst the ruins of Vaes Dothrak, hugging her brother. The air was filled with the scent of charred earth and death, a bitter tang that coated her tongue. Her heart thundered in her chest like a chaotic drumbeat of triumph and sorrow, rage and relief.

She’d burned it all. Every last memory of her enslavement, every trace of the girl who’d been sold here. Yet, as she clung to Viserys, his strong arms a fortress around her trembling frame, something deeper stirred. Something raw and hungry.

“Viserys. Brother…” she whispered, her voice ragged from tears and shouting over the roar of dragonfire. She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes, those violet depths mirroring her own, burning with a ferocity that matched the wasteland around them. “Kiss me.”

His gaze sharpened like a predator catching the scent of need. He didn’t hesitate. His lips crashed into hers, hard and claiming, tasting of smoke and iron. It wasn’t gentle, and she didn’t want it to be. Her fingers tangled in his silver hair, pulling him closer, needing to feel him against her, to drown out the screams still echoing in her mind.

The kiss deepened into a mess of their tongues, and his hands were everywhere at once. They roamed her curves with a possessive greed, as if she belonged to him, and only him. Then again, did she not? Did she have the freedom to choose another man? Truly, she was his. As she was meant to be. As she was born to be.

He gripped the swell of her hips, sliding up to cup her breasts through the scorched leather of her riding gear. A low growl rumbled in his chest as he squeezed, thumbs brushing over sensitive peaks, sending sharp jolts of heat through her.

Then his hand came down hard on her ass, a sharp spank that made her gasp into his mouth, the sting blending with a dark thrill.

“Viserys,” she breathed, half plea, half demand, as he pushed her backward. Her boots crunched into the still-warm ashes, the heat seeping through the soles, but it didn’t burn. Fire couldn’t touch her. Couldn’t touch them.

They were dragons, born of flame and blood, and the scorched earth beneath them was as much their home as any castle.

He shoved her down, and she let him, falling into the ash with a soft thud. It puffed up around her like a gray cloud that settled on her skin as he loomed above, his presence a weight that pinned her more than his body. His hands tore at her clothes, ripping away the leather with a ferocity that matched the inferno they’d unleashed.

She matched his urgency, clawing at his tunic, yanking it free to reveal the hard muscles of his chest, dusted with ash and sweat. Their garments fell away, discarded into the blackened ruin, leaving them bare to the cooling night air and the last flickering embers.

Naked, they collided again, rolling across the ash-strewn ground. The heat of it kissed her skin, a lover’s caress that couldn’t harm, only heighten every sensation.

She wrestled for control, pushing against his strength until she straddled him, her thighs clamping around his waist. He allowed it, for if he didn’t, she could never overpower him in strength. Her brother was much stronger than the creature she’d become.

Her silver hair fell in a wild curtain around them as she looked down at him, her breath coming in sharp pants. “I… I’ll take the lead this time,” she said. Desire burned in her core, a need so fierce it bordered on pain. She wanted him. Needed him. After all the destruction, all the pain of this place, she craved something to fill the void.

“You’re mine,” she hissed, her voice low and guttural, as she reached between them. Her fingers found his length, hard and ready, and she guided him to her entrance, slick with want. She sank down, taking him in with a shuddering moan, her body stretching to accommodate the raw power of him.

His [Dragondick] ability wasn’t just a boast; it was a force, filling her to the brim, pushing her to the edge of reason with the first thrust.

“Gods, sister, someone’s horny today,” he groaned, his hands gripping her hips, urging her to move. And she did. She rode him with a hunger that bordered on feral, her body rocking against his, her motions grinding ash into their skin. The heat of the ground, the last muttering flames crackling around them like popping corn, only fueled her.

Every thrust was a reclaiming, a way to erase the ghosts of Vaes Dothrak, to rewrite her story in this sea of ash. The pleasure was a great bonus, of course. Gods, why did he feel so good…?

Viserys thrust up to meet her, his strength driving her higher, his strokes brutal and yet full of pleasure. It was as if he sought to atone for every wrong done to her here, every tear shed in this cursed place, by drowning her in ecstasy. She couldn’t complain. Her nails raked down his chest, leaving red trails through the soot, marking him as hers as much as she was his. The world narrowed to the heat of their bodies, the slap of skin against skin, the ragged gasps that mingled with the dying whispers of fire.

“Harder, my imbecile of a brother, fuck me harder,” she demanded, her voice breaking on the word, and he obeyed. His grip tightened, bruising, as he flipped them, pinning her beneath him once more. He drove into her with relentless force, his thrusts pushing her deeper into the ash, the heat of it cradling her as he claimed her.

She arched into him, meeting every movement, her body a live wire of sensation, coiling tighter and tighter until she shattered. If he wanted, he could grab her hair, push her face into the ash, and break her. He didn’t, he allowed her to enjoy whatever she wanted to do this once. And she couldn’t be more confused. Maybe she wanted her face to be pushed down...

Her cry echoed across the ruined plain, a sound of triumphal orgasm. Waves of pleasure ripped through her, dragging her into a realm where nothing existed but the feel of him. Viserys followed, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he spilled his royal seeds into her, his body shuddering with the force of it.

They collapsed together, panting, tangled in ash and each other. The last of the flames flickered nearby, casting fleeting shadows over their entwined forms.

The heat of the ground lingered like a natural warm bed beneath them, untroubling to their dragon-forged skin. Daenerys rested her head on his chest, listening to the thunder of his heartbeat, feeling the weight of what they’d done. Both the destruction and this act of raw, desperate connection.

“Viserys,” she murmured, tracing circles on his skin through the soot. She raised her head, looking into his eyes. Her face went red as she confessed, “I think… I want to be fucked really tough by that hard, thick cock of yours with my ass up and face buried in the ash. Brother… won’t you fuck me properly?”

His hand tightened in her hair, pulling her closer. “I had a feeling. Riding isn’t for you sister. Get into position. The night is young.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the truth of his words settle into her bones, truly realizing where they were compared to their past. They were dragons… and they were happy together.

With her ass up, face pushed into the ash, nostrils filling as she found it difficult to breathe, Dany’s ass jiggled as her brother filled her up just the way she wanted him to. Today was beautiful for her, and she knew she’d remember this fuck for the rest of her life.

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