I dismounted before Olyvar could protest, my boots crunching on the brittle, glass like surface of the volcanic rock. The heat intensified as I moved further from the path, the air becoming thick with sulfurous fumes that made my eyes water.
"Your Highness, it's not safe!" one of the guards shouted, reaching out to grab my shoulder. "There are unstable passages and gas pockets that could choke a man in seconds!"
I brushed his hand off without looking back. "I've survived worse than a little smoke," I replied, my voice carrying a sharp edge. "Stay where you are and keep watch. I'll be fine."
I was stubborn stubborn in a way that made Olyvar smirk and the guards groan in frustration. They tried to stop me three more times, but I simply circled around them or ignored their warnings entirely, pushing deeper into the throat of the mountain.
The caves were cathedral like in their scale, vast chambers of black stone where the temperature rose with every step. The only sound was the distant drip of mineral rich water and the low, rumbling growl of the volcano beneath my feet. The darkness was absolute except for where my torch cast dancing shadows against walls that seemed to weep molten tears.
I climbed over rubble and crawled through narrow fissures, my hands getting scraped and my clothes stained with ash. Then, in a chamber where the air felt ancient and still, I saw it.
Half buried in the volcanic debris was a curved piece of bone, bleached white by time but still massive in scale. I knelt beside it, running my fingers along its surface. It wasn't just any bone; it was a rib, easily twice the length of a man. A few yards away, partially collapsed under a fallen slab of rock, lay what looked like a section of a skull, the empty socket where an eye might have once gazed upon the world from a height no bird could reach.
I stared at the remains, the silence of the cave pressing in on me. Olyvar said dragons were dead, and in every way that mattered to the world, they were. But touching the bone felt like touching a memory. It was a reminder of what House Targaryen had been before it became a collection of broken people and prophecies.
"Not dead," I whispered to myself, my fingers still tracing the ancient calcium. "Just waiting."
I left the heat of the Dragonmont behind, the cool salt air of the coastline hitting me like a relief. The tide was receding, revealing stretches of black sand and jagged rocks that looked like broken teeth.
As I rode along the shore, something caught my eye a dark fissure in the cliff face, partially concealed by a curtain of hanging vines and ancient sea moss. It was almost hidden, a secret kept by the mountain and the sea for centuries.
"Over there," I said, pointing. I led my horse toward the opening, dismounting at the threshold where the smell of salt mingled with something older and more metallic.
"I don't like this, Your Highness," Olyvar muttered, though he followed anyway. The guards formed a loose perimeter behind us, their torches casting dancing, nervous shadows against the wet walls. As we pushed deeper into the cave, the passage opened up into a vast chamber where the ceiling vaulted nearly fifty feet overhead. The sound of the ocean echoed in from the back of the cave, a rhythmic booming that felt like a heartbeat.
One of the guards suddenly shrieked, stumbling backward and nearly dropping his torch. "Sweet Seven! What in the name of the Seven is that!"
The torchlight swept across the chamber, and we all stopped dead.
Dominating the entire space was a skeleton. Not a fragment, not a rib or a skull a whole skeleton. The dragon was massive, its vertebrae curving up toward the ceiling like a mountain range of bone, its ribcage forming a cathedral of ivory white against the black stone. It had died in a crouch, its skull resting on the cave floor, jaw agape in a final, eternal roar. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping.com.
"Seven Hells," Ser Olyvar swore, his voice hushed. He stepped forward, his usual bravado replaced by genuine awe. The knight looked down at the ground around the main skeleton, where smaller, shattered fragments of bone lay scattered like kindling.
I walked closer, my eyes tracking the carnage. The smaller bones weren't from the same dragon; they were too small, too varied. They were the remnants of other dragons, torn apart and consumed.
"It was probably the Cannibal," I whispered, my voice echoing in the hollow chamber. "The wild dragon who ate other dragons more than a hundred and fifty years ago. This was his lair."
I looked up at the towering skeleton. The Cannibal had been the ultimate predator, the dragon that refused to be tamed by any rider. Even in death, the skeleton radiated a sense of ferocious independence. It didn't belong to a king or a prince; it belonged only to itself.
I reached out, my fingers brushing against the ancient, calcified bone of the great beast's rib. I didn't feel a mystical connection or a dragon's fire in my veins I was a man from another world after all, but I felt something else. A strange, echoing recognition.
The Cannibal had been an outcast, a monster feared and loathed by his own kind, living in the shadows because he refused to play by the rules of the dragonlords. He had been a pariah, and in that, he was more like me than any Targaryen prince I had ever known.
As I pulled my hand away, something caught the light. A sharp, metallic glint wedged between two massive vertebrae, half buried in the centuries of accumulated ash and bone dust.
"What is it, Prince?" Olyvar asked, his hand instinctively moving to his sword as he sensed my sudden stillness.
I didn't answer. I moved toward the light, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs. I knelt in the debris, brushing away layers of ancient grime with unsteady fingers. As the ash cleared, my eyes flew open, wide with shock.
There, nestled in the hollow of the dragon's ribcage like it was being protected by the bones themselves, was an egg.
It wasn't the shimmering gold or polished crimson of the Targaryen eggs I had read about in books. This one was rougher, more organic. It was a deep, charcoal grey, mottled with spots of blood red that looked like fresh wounds across its surface. It felt warm to the touch, pulsing with a faint, almost imperceptible heat that seemed to defy the cold stone of the cave.
"A dragon egg," I breathed, the words feeling inadequate. "A real one."
"By the Mother," one of the guards whispered, crossing himself. "How could it still be whole after all this time?"
I stared at it, the implications crashing over me like a wave. An egg from the Cannibal's hoard. An egg that had survived the death of its mother and the passage of generations in the dark. This wasn't just treasure; it was a spark.
I clutched the egg against my chest as we rode back toward Dragonstone, its strange, mottled surface warm through my tunic. The charcoal grey stone felt alive, pulsing with a rhythm that matched my own heartbeat. The guards rode in a protective formation around us, their eyes darting nervously toward the object in my arms as if it might ignite at any moment.
"I wonder how much I could sell it for..." I mused aloud, staring down at the blood red spots. "The Iron Bank would probably pay enough to buy half the Green Hills for something like this." Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
The silence that followed was broken by the sound of Olyvar's horse shifting violently as he whirled around in his saddle. His face was pale, his eyes wide with genuine outrage.
"Are you mad?!" he roared, the sound echoing off the cliff walls. "That's a dragon egg, boy! A real one! You're a Targaryen, for fuck's sake that's not just gold, that's a piece of your own legacy!"
I didn't even flinch. I just rolled my eyes, feeling the familiar irritation of being lectured by someone who still believed in the romanticism of dragons. "Legacy doesn't pay for new siege engines, Olyvar. And it certainly doesn't pay for the grain shipments."
I shrugged, looking back toward the horizon where the smoke of Dragonstone met the sky. "It's pretty, sure. But it's useless. It's a rock that won't hatch, and a rock that won't hatch won't help me build a port."
Olyvar stared at me as if I had just confessed to treason. "Useless? You're holding the power of gods in your hands and you're talking about market prices like you're haggling over fish at a market!"
"Market prices are real, Olyvar," I countered coolly. "Dragons are fairy tales."
I could feel the heat from the egg seeping through my clothes, a constant reminder of its presence. I told myself I was being practical, that I was being the merchant prince I had promised to be. But even as I said it, I couldn't stop my fingers from unconsciously stroking the rough, warm shell, wondering if some part of me was lying to myself.
I had just carefully placed the egg on my nightstand, the deep red spots gleaming under the lamplight. I was about to strip off my ash stained tunic when the door didn't just open it burst.
"What in the name of the Seven " Larys started, but his voice died in his throat.
I jumped back, startled, as my entire Small Council crowded into my room. It was a ridiculous sight: Kellan, Vaelen, Gareth, Larys, and even Olyvar crammed into the space. They all came to a dead halt, their gazes drawn as one to the nightstand.
"What the hell, guys?" I asked, throwing my arms up in frustration. "Do none of you know how to knock? Or is privacy just a concept I haven't imported from the Green Hills yet?"
Nobody answered. The usual bickering and chatter of the council had been replaced by a silence so absolute it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. Six pairs of eyes were locked on the grey and red egg, their expressions ranging from pure shock to something approaching religious awe.
Gareth, who usually saw everything in terms of profit margins, actually dropped his ledger. The parchment fluttered to the floor, forgotten. "Is that..." he whispered, his voice cracking. "Is that what I think it is?"
Larys took a half step forward, his hands shaking slightly. "The color... the texture... it's not a fossil. It's warm. I can feel the heat from here."
Vaelen didn't speak, but his one eye was fixed on the egg with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. He wasn't looking at it as a treasure; he was looking at it as a political earthquake.
Olyvar crossed his arms, though he couldn't hide the triumphant smirk on his face. "Told you it wasn't useless, you greedy little bastard."