Chapter 2: The Unchaining
The aftermath of his confrontation with the princeling was a subtle but significant shift in the air. Fear, he learned, was a far more effective tool than simple aggression. The keepers, who had once seen him as a prized but manageable beast, now looked at him with a new wariness. They still fed him, their movements slow and deliberate, but they no longer entered the enclosure. The gate, once merely latched, was now barred with a heavy wooden beam. They spoke of him in whispers, the strange, guttural sounds he had made becoming a subject of fearful speculation among the lesser staff of Dragonstone. He heard them call him 'Aegon's Folly' and 'the Black Dread's shadow'. They were fools. He was not a shadow of a past legend; he was a new and terrible beginning.
His refusal of Aegon had marked him. No other lord or prince was brought to see him. He was deemed intractable, a wild and vicious anomaly. This suited Krosis-Krif perfectly. Solitude was a shield. It gave him time to observe, to plan, to grow. His mind, the human mind, was a supercomputer of paranoia and strategy layered over the predatory instincts of the dragon. While his clutch-mates wrestled and screeched, their minds consumed with the moment, he was dissecting his prison.
He cataloged the routines of the keepers with meticulous precision. He noted the changing of the guard, the timing of their meals, the way their vigilance waned during the deepest hours of the night or when the wind howled and the rains lashed against the island fortress. He studied the enclosure itself. The stone walls were smooth and high, fused by dragonfire long ago, impossible for a hatchling to climb. The barred gate was his only viable exit. The wooden beam was thick, but wood was flammable. His own fire was still little more than a superheated cough, a puff of smoke and a few fleeting embers capable of charring flesh but not setting thick, damp wood ablaze. Not yet. But the hunger was a constant, gnawing promise of greater power to come.
His growth was monstrous. In the span of a few months, he had outstripped his siblings entirely. He was now the size of a large wolf, his neck thick with muscle, his black scales overlapping like plates of polished onyx. His wings, once flimsy membranes, were now powerful, leathery appendages that he flexed and stretched constantly, feeling the strengthening sinews. He would often climb to the highest rock in their enclosure and spread them, catching the sea wind, his mind running simulations of flight, calculating lift and drag, memorizing the feel of the air currents.
The other hatchlings had become little more than a food source. He no longer bothered with the keepers' scraps. When the buckets of meat were tossed in, he would ignore them, his molten gold eyes fixed on his clutch-mates. He would stalk the weakest, a sickly green one, and in a merciless, efficient display of power, he would end it. His jaws, now capable of crushing bone, would snap its neck, and he would drag the carcass to his corner of the yard. The keepers would shout, horrified, but they were powerless to stop him. What could they do? Enter the lair of the cannibal dragon?
Each act of predation was a sacrament. As he consumed the flesh of his own kind, he felt an exponential surge in power that dwarfed what he gained from the butchered meat they provided. It was a darker, richer energy, as if he were absorbing not just the body, but the nascent draconic essence of his victims. A grim thought, born from his psychopathic human mind, occurred to him: if eating a dragon gave this much power, what would eating a human do? He filed the thought away for future consideration. Ruthlessness was a resource, and he would not squander it.
He spent his waking hours watching the sky. Dragonstone was an aviary of gods. He saw Syrax, Rhaenyra's golden queen, soaring gracefully on the updrafts from the Dragonmont. He watched the blood-wyrm Caraxes, his long, serpentine body twisting through the air with a predatory speed that even Krosis-Krif had to respect. Daemon's mount was a true killer. But the one that commanded his absolute attention was the one he only saw on rare occasions, a distant, living mountain that blotted out the sun. Vhagar. She was immense, her roar a physical force that vibrated in the stone beneath him. She was the endgame. The ultimate test. The matriarch of their kind, ancient and battle-scarred. He watched her with a cold, analytical dread. She was his yardstick. The day he could look upon her without a tremor of instinctual fear would be the day he was truly ready.
The plan for his escape coalesced around a simple, powerful observation: the Targaryens were arrogant. They believed their dragons were bound to them by magic and blood. They believed the beasts in their pens were theirs by right. It never occurred to them that one might possess the intelligence and the will to simply leave. His enclosure was strong, but it was designed to contain a beast, not a prisoner of war.
He needed two things: a storm and more fire.
The fire came with growth. With each meal, the heat in his core intensified. His smoky coughs became controlled bursts of flame. He practiced at night, when the keepers were gone, aiming at pebbles and scorch-marking the far wall. He learned to focus the fire, to turn a wide gout of flame into a concentrated jet of incandescent heat. He was a quick study.
The storm came on a moonless night in the fourth month of his life. By now, he was the size of a pony, and the sole occupant of his enclosure. The other hatchlings were gone, either claimed by Targaryen children or consumed by him. The sky turned a bruised purple, and the wind began to scream like a banshee. Rain came down not in sheets, but in solid, wind-driven waves that crashed against the walls of the fortress. It was chaos. It was perfect.
The keepers, huddled in their guardhouse, would be paying little attention to the lone black dragon in the yard. The roar of the storm would cover any noise he made. This was the moment.
He moved to the gate, his powerful legs carrying him with a new, confident grace. He pressed his snout against the thick wooden beam. It was soaked with rain, which would make it harder to burn. A problem. But not an insurmountable one. He took a deep breath, his chest expanding, the forge in his gut roaring to life. He exhaled, not a wild blast, but a focused, lance of pure heat, white-hot at its core.
The wood hissed and steamed, the rainwater boiling away instantly. He didn't let up. He poured fire onto the same spot, a relentless, concentrated assault. The wood blackened, then glowed cherry-red. Smoke, thick and acrid, billowed around him, immediately torn away by the gale. It was exhausting. He could feel his internal reserves draining, the magical energy that fueled his gift being poured into this single act of liberation. Minutes stretched into an eternity. His throat felt raw, his lungs burned. But the wood was burning. A deep, glowing trench was forming in the center of the beam.
He stopped, panting, his head low. The beam was critically weakened, but not yet broken. He didn't have enough fire to sever it completely. He would have to use force. Backing away to the far end of the enclosure, he lowered his head and charged. He was not a battering ram; he was a missile of scale and bone, every ounce of his unnaturally accelerated growth put into this one impact.
He struck the glowing, weakened section of the beam with his armored skull. The sound was a sickening crunch of splintering wood and a dull thud that vibrated through his entire body. Pain flared in his head, but it was drowned out by a wave of triumphant adrenaline. The beam snapped. The two halves swung uselessly on their iron brackets. The gate, freed from its lock, scraped open a few inches in the wind.
Freedom.
He nudged the gate open and slipped out into the maelstrom. The wind hit him with the force of a physical blow, threatening to tear his wings from his body. The rain was blinding. He was outside, on the slopes of the Dragonmont, but he was still on the island. Still in their domain. He needed to fly.
He had never flown before. He had practiced, he had simulated, but he had never taken the leap. There was no time for hesitation. He could hear shouts from the guardhouse, faint against the howl of the storm. They had seen the broken gate.
Scrambling up the rocky slope, ignoring the sharp stones that scraped at his scales, he sought a high point, a precipice. He found a rocky outcrop overlooking the churning, black sea. This was it. The precipice of his new life. He spread his wings, and this time, the wind did not feel like an enemy. It felt like a promise. It flowed over the membranes, and he could feel the lift, the upward pressure begging him to release his hold on the earth.
He jumped.
For a terrifying second, he plunged downward. His stomach lurched. Instinct screamed at him to flap, to thrash. But his human mind took over. Don't panic. Feel the air. Become part of the storm. He angled his wings, catching the wind, turning his terrifying plunge into a controlled glide. Then he beat them, a powerful downstroke that pushed the storm itself away. And another. And another. He was clumsy, awkward, a fledgling fighting a hurricane. But he was flying.
He rose into the air, a black phantom against the tormented sky. Below him, Dragonstone was a cluster of faint lights. He saw torches moving near his empty pen. He let out a roar, not of defiance, but of pure, unadulterated ecstasy. The sound was different in the open air, deeper, more powerful. It was the sound of a god unshackled. He was Krosis-Krif, and he was free.
He did not soar towards the mainland immediately. That would be the expected path. He flew into the heart of the storm, out over the Narrow Sea, letting the tempest be his shield. Let them think the storm had killed him, that the foolish hatchling had been swept into the sea and drowned. Let them forget him. His survival depended on being forgotten.
For two days, he flew. He rode the storm until it blew itself out, leaving him under a sky of brilliant, unfamiliar stars. His body ached with a profound exhaustion he had never known. Hunger, a vast and terrifying abyss, had opened within him again. He was flying over the choppy grey waves of the sea, and there was nothing to eat. He descended, skimming the waves, his sharp eyes scanning the water. He spotted a dark shape, a large shark drawn to the surface by the recent turmoil. He dove, his claws extended. He had never hunted in the water, but instinct and intelligence guided him. He hit the shark with stunning force, his claws sinking deep into its back. The thrashing was immense, but in the open water, he was stronger. He lifted the great fish from the sea, its weight straining his young muscles, and flew on.
He found a desolate, rocky islet and landed, his claws scraping for purchase. He devoured the shark, blood and saltwater mingling on his snout. The surge of power was immediate and immense. His aches faded, replaced by a thrumming vitality. His scales felt thicker, his fire hotter. He was adapting, evolving, with every meal.
His destination was the Mountains of the Moon. He remembered the maps from the books. They were a vast, untamed wilderness. High, cold, sparsely populated, and shunned by most. They were full of shadowcats, mountain lions, and hardy goats. More importantly, they were close enough to the Vale's farmlands for raiding, yet remote enough to offer countless hidden valleys and caves for a lair. It was the perfect place to grow, to amass power in secret while the world of men marched inexorably towards its self-destructive war.
Crossing the mainland was a risk. He flew only at night, a black shadow gliding under the moon. He passed over the Kingswood, a dark and tangled sea of trees. He saw the glow of King's Landing in the distance, a cancerous light on the horizon, and veered far to the north, his contempt a palpable thing. That city was a deathtrap. The Dragonpit, a gilded cage that sapped the strength of his kind, was a monument to the foolishness of his species in trusting mankind.
Finally, after a week of travel, he saw them. The Mountains of the Moon, their snow-dusted peaks scraping the sky like jagged teeth. They were even more imposing than he had imagined. He flew into their embrace, the air growing thin and cold. This was a place of solitude and savage beauty. This was his kingdom.
He spent days searching for the perfect lair. He needed a cave high on a cliff face, inaccessible from below. It needed to be deep, defensible, and have a clear view of the surrounding territory. He found it on the eastern face of one of the highest peaks: a gaping maw in the rock, partially hidden by a stony overhang, its entrance thousands of feet above the valley floor.
He landed on the ledge before it, his wings folding neatly against his back. By now, he was the size of a small horse, a formidable predator in his own right, though still a mere speck against the backdrop of the mountains. The cave was deep, smelling of rock and ancient cold. It was perfect. This would be his sanctuary, his fortress, the crucible in which he would forge himself into a king.
That evening, he made his first true hunt on land. He soared down from his peak into a high meadow as dusk settled, his shadow passing silently over the grass. He spotted a herd of mountain goats, their thick coats doing little to protect them from the predator in the sky. He chose the largest, a great, shaggy-coated billy with immense, curved horns. He dove, not with a roar, but in absolute silence. The goats scattered in panic only when his shadow fell upon them. It was too late. His claws hooked into the billy's back, and a single, powerful bite from his massive jaws snapped its spine.
The kill was clean, efficient, and deeply satisfying. He dragged the carcass back to the ledge of his new lair. As he ate, he looked out over the vast expanse of Westeros spread below him. The sun was setting, painting the sky in hues of orange and blood. He felt the familiar, intoxicating surge of power, the raw flesh of the goat fueling his miraculous growth.
He was no one's Folly. He was no one's mount. He was not a pawn in a game of thrones. He was an independent power, a rogue variable in the equation of the world. Here, in the lonely heart of the mountains, Krosis-Krif would prepare for the coming Dance. He would feast, he would grow, and he would watch the world of men burn, waiting for his moment. The fools in King's Landing and on Dragonstone could have their politics and their posturing. He had the hunger, the mountains, and time. He had a future of his own making, to be built on a foundation of bone and paid for in blood. The unchaining was complete. Now, the ascension would begin.