149: Chapter 149 The Meeting of Wolves and Dragons

The ruins of The Wall. The watchtower. Nightfall.

The Nights Watch lit the signal beacons on the wall.

These were not warnings—they were orange-red flames announcing the arrival of the Dragon Clan, leaping high above the ruins of The Wall and illuminating half the night sky.

Three signal fires burned simultaneously on the highest tower. The flames swayed in the sea breeze but never extinguished—the members of The Nights Watch had added old canvas soaked in fish oil to the beacons, making them burn bright and long.

When Robb Stark led the vanguard of the Northern cavalry to the ruins of Eastwatch, the first thing he saw was a black dragon silhouette crouched on the broken battlements.

Its wings were half-spread, and its vertical pupils gleamed with light intertwined with dark gold and ice blue under the reflection of the signal fires—the dark gold veins on the newly grown reverse scale on its left chest were exceptionally clear in the firelight, like a piece of dark metal engraved with patterns.

Behind him followed Grey Wind, Sansa, and a dozen Northern cavalrymen. The warhorses recoiled a few steps upon seeing the Dragon; the riders pulled hard on the reins, cursing their horses under their breath.

Grey Wind let out a very low whimper in his throat upon seeing Drogon.

It was not fear—it was the instinctive awe of a direwolf upon recognizing a predator more Advanced than itself. His tail hung low, and his wolf ears were flattened against his head, but his yellow eyes remained fixed on Drogon, not backing away.

Drogon leaped down from the battlements. His dragon wings unfolded in mid-air to cushion the landing—the wingtips swept over the top of the watchtower, momentarily pressing the flames flat against the ground. He switched to his dragon-man form in mid-air and landed ten paces in front of Robb.

His vertical pupils met Robb's grey-blue eyes for a moment. Then, he turned to Sansa—on his left wrist, he still wore the obsidian foam bracelet she had braided for him. The foam's iridescence had become very dim, almost invisible under the reflection of the signal fires. It was about to stop glowing.

Robb spoke first. His voice was deeper than it had been in the tent, but it was steady.

"Brandon Stark, they all call me Robb. You are Drogon. Sansa said you helped her climb through the window in King's Landing. I owe you my thanks."

"No thanks needed. She found a safe landing spot on the windowsill herself; I didn't teach her that."

Drogon coiled his tail in front of him. His vertical pupils turned toward the direction of the Ice Cliff—the ball of ice-blue light on the Ice Cliff was still pulsing slowly, its frequency faster than it had been at dusk. The Ice Dragon was waking up.

"You are the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern coalition forces. The Night King's Ice Dragon is waiting for me on the Ice Cliff. I need your cavalry to form a line on the beach—not to charge, but to hold the breach in The Wall. I will lure the Ice Dragon away from the Ice Cliff; it won't be able to account for the wights on the ground while in the air. Your dragon-glass spearheads can take the opportunity to seal the breach."

Robb looked at him silently for a moment. His grey-blue eyes paused on that reverse scale on his left chest—the silver-grey trim on the edge of that scale was different from the others, emitting a faint cold light under the signal fires. Then, he extended his hand. House Stark never proactively reached out to anyone—this was a rare and special courtesy.

Drogon gripped his hand. The two palms clasped under the signal fires of The Wall's ruins. Robb's palm was rough, calloused from long-term sword wielding. Drogon's palm had scales—in his human form, the scales had receded beneath the skin, but a very thin layer of keratin remained on his palms.

"You saved my sister's life. The North owes you. Direwolf and Dragon—we fight side-by-side on The Wall tonight."

Sansa stood behind Robb, her deep blue eyes pausing on their clasped hands. Then she looked at the bracelet on Drogon's left wrist. The foam's iridescence had dimmed a little more—it was almost done glowing.

"The bracelet is about to stop glowing."

"I know. I came when it stopped glowing. Now is the time."

Above the ruins of The Wall. The darkest moment before dawn.

Signal fires burned fiercely on the wall. On the beach, the Dothraki Cavalry had finished forming their ranks, spears in front, scimitars behind. Under Robb's command, the Northern cavalry cut into the breach of The Wall from the east side, their dragon-glass spearheads gleaming with a cold, dark light under the reflection of the signal fires. The remnants of The Nights Watch on the wall drew their last bundles of dragon-glass arrows, aiming them toward the direction of the Ice Cliff.

Drogon soared into the sky from the watchtower.

When his dragon wings fully unfolded, they obscured half of the watchtower, the wingtips sweeping through the flames to pull out a trail of dark gold light. Within five seconds, he climbed to a height level with the Ice Cliff, the newly grown reverse scale on his left chest gleaming with an intertwined dark gold and silver-white luster under the dual reflection of the signal fires and the Ice Cliff's cold light. The crystal armor of the Pseudo-Ice Dragon Form began to spread from the tip of his tail, covering his spine up to his dragon head—translucent ice armor condensed from dark blue ice crystals on the surface of his scales.

On the Ice Cliff, the Ice Dragon spread its wings.

The ice storm whipped up by its ice wings swept the broken rocks and ice shards on both sides of the crack in The Wall into the air, the ice shards reflecting countless tiny cold rays under the moonlight. The Night King rode on the back of the Ice Dragon, his ice-crystal longsword pointing toward Drogon, his ice-blue eyes devoid of any fluctuation—it was not calmness, but eight thousand years of waiting having worn away all emotion.

The two dragons stared at each other from less than three hundred meters away. Dark gold vertical pupils met ice-blue dragon eyes. Ice Fire burned into two dark blue arcs on the edges of Drogon's wing membranes, and the Ice Dragon's throat core pulsed with ice-blue cold light, wrapped in runes. The air within three hundred meters was squeezed by the two Dragon powers until it vibrated slightly; even the snow on the Ice Cliff slid down with a rustle in the clash of Dragon power.

System pop-up. White text.

"Fusion Dragon Breath ready. Ice Fire first strike 70% output → freeze-crack runes → Fire Dragon Breath follow-up 30% output → inject into core. Switching window: no more than two heartbeats. Estimated single consumption of Fusion Dragon Breath—about 35% of Bloodline energy. Host's current Bloodline is 2400; estimated remaining combat power after Fusion can sustain subsequent air combat. Once the ice crystal core is shattered, the Ice Dragon will lose its power source—but the Night King himself will not fall to his death. Suggestion: After shattering the core, immediately shift combat focus from the Ice Dragon to the Night King."

The Ice Dragon struck first.

Its giant mouth opened—not in the posture of the Old Valyria Dragon Clan, but a forced release of White Walker frost runes. The runes in its throat lit up the instant its mouth opened, and eight thousand extremely fine frost rune lines exploded outward from the core, forming an expanding ball of ice-blue light. The ball of light condensed into a beam at the front of the dragon's mouth, spraying a beam of ice-blue Ice Fire several meters in diameter.

That was not fire. It was White Walker frost compressed to the extreme. The air along its path instantly condensed into ice crystals upon contact with the Ice Fire, the ice crystals forming a continuously extending ice bridge in the air. The ice bridge stretched from the edge of the Ice Cliff all the way to the sky above the ruins of The Wall, glowing with an eerie blue light under the reflection of the signal fires.

Drogon did not dodge.

He took the first blast of Ice Fire head-on with the crystal armor of his Pseudo-Ice Dragon Form—the Ice Fire exploded against the crystal armor, freezing and cracking a few small ice marks onto his left wing membrane, the ice crystals at the edges of the marks continuously spreading. His left wing's flapping frequency was forced to drop by half a beat. But he did not retreat.

He was waiting. Waiting for the moment the Ice Dragon opened its throat to spray the second blast. Melisandre had said: Runes are weakest when the throat is opened.

The Ice Dragon opened its throat.

The eight thousand rune lines of the throat core curled outward as it opened its mouth, exposing the core—the ice-blue light core looked like a frozen heart in the darkness. It took two heartbeats for the runes to heal. Within those two heartbeats, the core was exposed.

Drogon's vertical pupils suddenly constricted.

Ice Fire and Fire Dragon Breath condensed simultaneously within his chest—not mixed, but parallel. Ice below, fire above. The two mutually exclusive elements were forcibly separated by the suppression power of his Ancestral Dragon Bloodline at the reverse scale, surging into his dragon throat along two parallel energy channels. Switching window: one heartbeat. Two heartbeats.

He sprayed a beam of Fusion Dragon Breath, condensed to the extreme, from his dragon throat.

The first strike was dark gold and dark blue Ice Fire. It accurately hit the center of the Ice Dragon's throat rune shield—the runes froze under the extremely low temperature for less than half a heartbeat. The frozen rune lines turned into brittle ice threads, shattering under the pressure of the Dragon Breath.

Immediately after—one heartbeat interval—the pure gold Fire Dragon Breath poured into the rune crack along the same trajectory as the Ice Fire. The Fire Dragon Breath passed through the shattered rune lines and poured into the core.

Ice and fire acted simultaneously inside the ice crystal core—the Ice Fire froze and cracked the runes from the outside, while the Fire Dragon Breath heated the core from the inside. Extreme heat and extreme cold exerted opposing stress on the same ice crystal core simultaneously. The surface of the core exploded with countless cracks amidst the piercing sound of ice crystals shattering.

Cracks radiated outward from the center of the core, each fissure extending along the woven lines of the frost runes—the rune lines and the core were one, and if the runes shattered, the core would shatter too.

The White Walker runes were torn from the inside under the impact of the Fusion Dragon Breath, and fragments gushed out from the Ice Dragon's throat. The ice crystal fragments exploded into a continuously spreading light rain in the air, each fragment reflecting the orange-red of the signal fires and the silver-white of the moonlight, like a reverse rain of ice crystals sprinkling down onto the ruins of The Wall.

The Ice Dragon let out a wail that the entire North could hear.

It was not the scream of a living creature—it was the extremely high-frequency vibration produced when frost is shattered from within. The ten-thousand-year-old ice skeleton lost the support of the frost runes after the core shattered, and it began to collapse inward from the throat.

The left wing shattered first—the frost runes at the wing root broke first, the ice wing severed from the root, and the entire ice wing shattered into three pieces in the air, falling into the crack of The Wall. The right wing followed closely behind, its ice crystal skeleton peeling off from the wingtips under the pull of gravity, ice fragments pouring down like a waterfall.

The massive ice body plummeted toward the crack in The Wall. The wind pressure generated during the fall pressed the flames on the watchtower until they were almost extinguished. The ice body slammed into the ice layer at the bottom of the crack, shattering into countless ice rocks of varying sizes; the ice rocks collided with each other deep in the crack, emitting a low roar like an iceberg collapsing.

The Night King leaped off the back of the Ice Dragon. He did not fall—the moment before the Ice Dragon shattered, he stepped on the fragments of the ice wing and leaped onto the edge of the Ice Cliff. He stabbed his ice-crystal longsword into the Ice Cliff to steady his body.

His ice-blue eyes showed no fluctuation. The Ice Dragon was shattered; the mount he had waited eight thousand years for had turned into ruins in less than a quarter of an hour of fighting. But he did not turn back to look at those fragments. His eyes remained fixed on Drogon.

The ice-shard storm slowly dissipated between the two. The ice layer on the Ice Cliff was cracked by the shockwave of the Ice Dragon's fall, creating a dozen new fissures extending from the edge of the Ice Cliff inward, forming spiderweb-like cracks. Below the Ice Cliff, the remains of the Ice Dragon were scattered at the bottom of the crack in The Wall, the core fragments still emitting a faint blue light—that light was slowly extinguishing.