A faint mist hung over the lanes of Oldtown, and the city was slowly coming back to life.
The houses were being rebuilt as well, stone upon stone. Oldtown had always been a city of stone.
Now there were simply many more tents belonging to merchants and knights. Most of the buildings burned down or destroyed by seawater and Kraken had already been demolished.
The cool autumn air was filled with the sounds of saws and hammers.
"Long live the king!"
"Long live the king!"
Common folk and soldiers carried timber on their shoulders through Oldtown's streets, while quarrymen's carts rolled along the muddy alleys. Many of them wore golden quartered badges on their chests.
Ordinary soldiers would rather roll dice, drink, and chase women, but Randyll would not let idle men take it easy.
In this regard, Randyll and Gendry were much the same when commanding troops.
Choose the finest, enforce discipline, and make one man worth ten.
The main difference was the quality of the soldiers. Gendry's guard knights were peerless under heaven, but the knights of ordinary lords were another matter.
In the bloody invasion brought by Crow's Eye, only the High Tower and the Citadel suffered relatively little damage.
The rest, the docks, the city hall, the Great Starry Sept, and the homes of the common people, had all met with disaster.
Golden quartered banners fluttered over Oldtown, and the people of Oldtown cheered warmly whenever they saw them.
From this day on, they would have to accept the fall of the beacon banner of the High Tower, and the rise of the Storm banner.
Before the square of the Great Starry Sept, gold-cloaked knights stood in formation, while the nobles gathered in different circles. The Reach, the Stormlands, and the Vale.
The Dornishmen stood apart as ever, while the men of the Iron Islands were the most awkward of all. Their reputation was already rotten in the streets.
King Gendry had arrived at the great square early to dissect the Blood Kraken and study the Sphinx and the stone beast.
The flames of the three Dragons surged like the tide. Balerion, Vhagar, and Viserion.
The charred beef and sea fish gave off an acrid, burnt smell, the smell of fire and heat.
Balerion tore into the cooked meat with his black fangs and swallowed it down in great mouthfuls. The Dragon grew stronger and stronger with fire and food.
"The bigger they get, the fiercer they become." The Hound, Sandor Clegane, watched those fearsome Dragons with a trace of fear. The smell of fire was not something a knight could withstand.
In truth, the Dragons wanted to sink their teeth into the Blood Kraken's flesh even more, but Gendry felt the thing had not yet been properly dissected, so he stopped them for the moment.
The white knights, the high advisers, and the knights surrounded the king like stars around the moon.
The corpse of the ten-tentacled Blood Kraken lay at one side of the square like a small blood-red mountain. Few dared approach it.
The Kraken moved by drawing in water and controlled the waves. Without the sea, the Kraken looked pitiful.
This was also why Crow's Eye longed for Dragons. Dragons could fight across almost any terrain and were the rulers of the sky, while Krakens could only wreak havoc in the ocean and the currents.
The Blood Kraken's body was covered in wounds, especially on the top of its head, where cuts of all sizes lay jagged and uneven. The once-red wounds had turned dark crimson.
After its blood had drained away, the Kraken's corpse carried a dead, silent stench.
It had been torn by iron anchors, pierced by long iron arrows, smashed by scorpion bolts, and burned by Dragonfire.
The Blood Kraken's skin was extremely tough. Without Dragonfire carrying rune magic to roast it, ordinary iron hooks would never have been able to harm it.
"So large." Gendry made a rough estimate. With its tentacles spread, the Blood Kraken could wrap around a great ship with three or four hundred oars, to say nothing of its enormous head.
The Blood Kraken was also called the North Sea Kraken. Its eyes were large and W-shaped, with black-red pupils.
Although it looked very much like an enormous squid, it was by no means an ordinary squid.
Ordinary squid lived very short lives. They reached sexual maturity at fourteen to eighteen months, mated and spawned in spring and summer, and lived only one or two years.
Krakens were different. With a touch of magic in them, their lives were far longer.
"Be careful, Your Grace," Ser Barristan Selmy warned.
"Do not worry, old knight." Gendry waved a hand.
Gendry put on his specially made boots, with spikes fixed beneath the soles.
He climbed onto the Kraken's corpse. Its skin felt slick beneath his boots. The outer hides of sea creatures were always coated in thick oil.
Gendry looked it over again and again. From the back, there was one raised spot, standing out from the rest like a crane among chickens, a small lump that jutted out abruptly.
"This unexpected bulge should be the Bloodstone that Crow's Eye carried off."
Gendry held the Supreme sword, its purple blade aimed at the Blood Kraken's back.
Firelight gathered along the purple edge of Supreme. The Kraken's skin was terribly thick and solid. An ordinary steel blade likely would not have hurt it much.
Only someone like Gendry, wielding a Valyrian steel sword with the added power of flame runes, could cut through the Kraken's flesh with relative ease.
"Pshk! Pshk!"
Gendry personally began cutting open the Blood Kraken with Supreme.
"What kind of sword is that?" the lame Willas Tyrell asked curiously, leaning on his cane as he spoke to his younger brother, Garlan Tyrell.
Willas was a little older than Garlan, but he had the same brown curls and brown eyes typical of House Tyrell, only with a thicker beard.
"A Valyrian steel sword with a purple blade," Garlan whispered. "This sword seems like the Dragonhorn and Just Maid. Once activated, it carries a touch of magical power."
"How many famous swords does that make now?" Willas asked enviously.
"The blue sword Just Maid, the golden sword Fury, the black sword Orphan-Maker, the Arakh curved sword Storm, and the red-black greataxe Scream of the Kraken.
"This purple sword is already the sixth. Judging by its power, it does not seem inferior to Just Maid."
"Six. A full six..." Willas was so envious he almost wanted to cry. What kind of treatment and luck was this? The king's fortune truly seemed like the Warrior descending to earth.
In the past, only the Targaryen royal family had ever held two famous Valyrian steel swords at the same time.
But King Gendry had six whole blades. These famous swords seemed as cheap as cabbages in his hands.
And the king's weapons were not merely famous swords. Just Maid and this purple sword looked to be on the level of legends.
Even famous swords had ranks. A greatsword like Ice could be reforged into two smaller blades, while those bearing runes stood at the very peak.
Many Great Lords, such as the Arryns, the Tyrells, and the Martells, did not even have an ordinary Valyrian steel sword.
The most miserable were the Lannisters, who had once possessed Brightroar and then lost it. Tywin had sought one for years without success, and no one had ever paid him any heed.
Willas had heard about Tywin's efforts as well. At least three times, Tywin had approached impoverished houses in the realm and offered a fortune to buy their Valyrian steel swords, only to be refused every time.
Great houses were happy to marry into House Lannister, but when it came to their ancestral swords, there was no room for discussion.
"And then there is the Valyrian steel armor King Gendry is wearing. Look at it. That is worth a kingdom," Garlan said, pointing to the Dragonkeeper armor on Gendry's body.
Whenever Gendry swung the purple sword, the edges of the black scale armor gave off a crimson-gold glow so bright it was impossible to look at directly.
"Could this be the strength of the Warrior descended to earth?" Willas stared, utterly numb. He had never seen such a lavish war in his life.
Garlan also looked at the king with envy. Gendry's armory was simply unmatched.
"Still, I did receive a sword bestowed by the king, and I also got a Valyrian steel dagger from the Ironborn." Garlan said it as a small comfort for his own disappointment.
Gendry swung the Supreme longsword, and the deeper he cut, the more startled he became. There truly seemed to be an extraordinary discovery inside.
As the flesh was pulled open, the hard object in the Blood Kraken's back slowly revealed its shape. It was a massive gray-white throne embedded in the Kraken's back, as if the monster had grown an extra section of spine.
A huge gray-white throne made of bone.
It was hard to imagine how enormous the creature it came from must once have been.
"That is the Grey King's Pale Throne!" Rodrik Harlaw, the most knowledgeable "reader" among the Ironborn, suddenly snapped back to his senses.
On Old Wyk, Nagga's forty-four ribs rose from the earth like huge white tree trunks, each as thick as the mast of a great sailing ship and twice as tall.
The largest creature in the sea had been the sea dragon, and the Grey King had slain it.
"Reader, Daughter of the Kraken, come forward!" Gendry called.
"I am here, Your Grace." Rodrik stepped forward.
"Tell us what you know."
"The Ironborn have this legend. Nagga was the first sea dragon in the world, the mightiest creature ever born from the sea. It fed on Krakens and sea beasts, and when angered, it could swallow an entire island. But the Grey King slew it with his own hands... The Drowned God turned its bones to stone so future generations of Ironborn would forever remember the deeds of their first king," Rodrik said, looking at the huge pale throne.
"Nagga's ribs became the beams and pillars of the Grey King's hall. Its mouth became his throne, and its teeth were his towering pale crown. The Grey King used her fire to warm his hall." Asha Greyjoy continued the rest of the tale, one every Ironborn knew by heart.
"After the Grey King died, the Storm God extinguished Nagga's fire. The Grey King's great throne and tapestries were stolen by traitors, while the roof and walls slowly rotted away, leaving only Nagga's bones," Rodrik said, recounting what came afterward.
The scene fell silent. Crow's Eye's strangeness had truly exceeded everyone's imagination.
"Nagga bones. The Blood Kraken."
The lords and knights held their breath. If they had not seen it with their own eyes, they would never have believed the world could become so bizarre.
Crow's Eye seemed to possess another kind of destiny, with countless evil powers gathered into him. Fortunately, Gendry had won the war.
Otherwise, none of them dared imagine how miserable their days would have become.
"Submission. Power." Gendry studied the Grey King's massive throne, made from Nagga's mouth.
Nagga represented power, command of the ocean, the king of storms and tides.
Perhaps this was one of the reasons the Blood Kraken could control and summon Krakens of all sizes.
Crow's Eye sacrificed lives to the Drowned God and the Storm God in exchange for tsunamis and storms, for the delight of evil gods and the cheering of Krakens.
Through the Grey King's throne, the Blood Kraken might have been able to control groups of Krakens within a certain distance, because Nagga carried a kind of suppressive power.
"No. But this is far from enough!" Gendry examined the Grey King's throne.
He continued digging with his sword. Not far from the gray-white throne embedded in the Blood Kraken's flesh, there seemed to be another hard object.
Gendry kept hacking with the longsword, and sure enough, beneath the throne, he found a huge, irregular black stone. Perhaps only a meteorite could look like that.
"It is a stone." Gendry's sword moved faster and faster, and the stone gradually revealed its full outline.
"I am the Bloodstone Emperor. I am the Lord of Blood, the Lord of Black Stone. Fear me, serve me, obey me, follow me. The stars are in place. The true god descends!"
As the black stone revealed itself completely, those twisted red words carried a thick reek of blood, and the dense crimson color instantly pierced deep into Gendry's mind.
"Everyone, stand farther back! Move away, now!" Gendry immediately shouted. His voice boomed like thunder as he warned the onlookers not to look at the black stone.
"Ahhh!"
The nobles who saw the black stone hurriedly turned their heads away, yet they still felt a dizzying weightlessness, as though they had been struck by some kind of radiation. It was a violent agony.
It felt as if millions of sharp blades were trying to stab into their brains.
Gendry felt as though his mouth and nose had been drowned in blood. It smelled of the night sky, blood, and spiritual madness.
Gendry seemed to see scene after scene. A black meteorite fell from the sky into a magnificent palace, one that seemed like a heavenly court.
The people around it went mad under the black stone's "radiation," slaughtering one another as they sank into frenzy.
A splendid king with blood-red eyes appeared first, peerlessly handsome, but with eyes full of deep gloom and evil.
Around the black stone, the Bloodstone Emperor and the Amethyst Empress argued.
The Bloodstone Emperor slew the Amethyst Empress with his sword, an incomparably beautiful woman with silver-gold hair and amethyst eyes. Then he sacrificed both the Empress's blood and his own to the stone.
The Bloodstone Emperor also carved runes into the black stone, driving all the people into madness, making them worship the black night sky and the stars together.
When the Bloodstone appeared, the darkness grew longer and longer.
With the Bloodstone, the Bloodstone Emperor could control people's minds, and it also strengthened his own mental power.
For the Bloodstone Emperor, the pleasure of watching humanity fall into madness and frenzy far surpassed mere thought or destruction.
Through sacrifices of flesh and blood, the Bloodstone Emperor's rule became very long.
"Bronze Shield! Stony Wall!"
Gendry immediately awakened the fire elements. The Stony Wall stood like the Wall itself, stopping him from sinking deeper into the blood-colored illusion.
Black-red flames blazed around Gendry. The fire gathered before him, shifting constantly between shield and stone wall.
That illusion left Gendry deeply shaken. It had felt terrifyingly real.
Gendry directed his flames to burn the black stone, but it did not change in the slightest.
Yet as sunlight slowly poured in, the bloody smell around them gradually weakened, and the Bloodstone became like an ordinary stone.
"This stone has to stay under sunlight. In the dark, it is too terrifying." Gendry wiped the sweat from his brow.
Gendry checked it carefully many times to make sure nothing had been missed.
He climbed down from the Blood Kraken's corpse and shoved hard, sending the two attached objects rolling off the Kraken's body.
The huge gray-white throne and the irregular Bloodstone were exposed beneath the sun.
Some nobles were still vomiting from the brief moment when the Bloodstone first appeared.
"Place this stone where the sun is strongest. Anyone who touches it will be treated as a traitor," Gendry announced.
"What exactly is going on?" asked Marwyn the Mage.
"Crow's Eye was a madman. He placed the Nagga Throne and the Bloodstone of the Church of Starry Wisdom in Place inside the Kraken's body," Gendry answered.
"So that is it. No wonder he was so terrifying!" Marwyn understood at once. "The Church of Starry Wisdom in Place loves the night, because in darkness, the power of the Bloodstone is unparalleled."
"The Drowned God, the Storm God, and the Old Gods. Three extremely evil Old Gods," the red priestess said uneasily.
The Nagga Throne was the power of the sea. It represented the ocean and Krakens, and even "storms." In ancient times, Nagga may have been an envoy of the Storm God as well.
As for the Bloodstone of the Bloodstone Emperor, its power lay mainly in mental control. It could increase spiritual radiation, allowing one to control and toy with people's minds.
For a Skinchanger genius like Crow's Eye, the Bloodstone was like adding wings to a tiger.
"He wanted to become a god!" Gendry said. "What a freak!"
Crow's Eye controlled the Blood Kraken, was himself a genius Skinchanger, and understood flesh-and-blood sacrifice.
That meant he could summon storms and waves, while also wielding mental invasion.
Once he used the Dragonhorn to ambush a Dragon and seize it for himself, four mighty powers would gather in one body. Calling him a "god" would not be strange at all.
As for lifespan, the Bloodstone itself could devour blood to extend the Kraken's life.
And Crow's Eye could continually possess his own bastards to replace his body. If the Blood Kraken died, there would still be other Krakens.
"He truly did have that possibility," Moqorro said, gazing at the Blood Kraken's corpse. "Three powers gathered in one body, and Crow's Eye still wanted to control a Dragon through the horn. That would be four powers: ocean, sky, storm, and spirit."
"Marwyn, Melisandre, Moqorro," Gendry ordered. "Watch the Bloodstone. Do not let ordinary people touch it."
Gendry then examined the Sphinx and the stone beast statues. Why had these statues been able to fly?
After seeing true wonders and true evil, Nagga and the Bloodstone, these fake statues seemed almost childish.
The runes on them were indeed too crude. The Maesters of the Citadel had done everything they could, paying who knew how much blood and gold, searching everywhere for the bones of Dragons and Wyverns to study. Managing to reach this level had not been easy.
"It is runes," Gendry thought. "They used Dragon or Wyvern bones as the base, then combined them with black stone, crystal, and steel to carry the runes. The Sphinx's flames come from oil jars and pipes in the throat and belly. What it spits is only a crude imitation of wildfire. They have also mastered a crude version of the Dragonhorn."
The carriers for runes were usually stone, crystal, or steel. But an ordinary person's life-fire could not keep the stone beast's runes running for long, which made the stone beasts extremely impractical.
Blood for blood. Activating it once cost a human life.
"The best carrier for flight is Dragonbone, because Dragonbone is light and hard. Put simply, these stone statues were still based on Dragons or Dragonbone." Gendry looked them over, then set them down again. They were far too clumsy.
The flying power and flame intensity of the stone beasts and Sphinxes were far inferior to those of true Dragons.
As for intelligence, there was little to say. At most, they could serve as a surprise weapon in Oldtown.
The lords looked at King Gendry's back with awe. An emperor. A true emperor.
If even Crow's Eye, terrifying as he was, could not stand against the Storm, then was the king who gathered the identities of "Storm," "Dragonlord," "Sword of Morning," and "Pyromancer" not also a truly divine emperor walking among men?
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