Dragon's Fire

Shadows in the Deep

The sky above, the earth below

Raise me up again

Take me past the edge

I want to see the other side

(The Summoning - Sleep Token)

Nothing very exciting happened when Daenerys crossed over. She was almost expecting some kind of creature to pop up at her or a trap to keep others out. It was nearing dusk outside, so she could barely see anything through the gloom of the hall beyond the light coming from the open doors, but she squinted at the walls to see if there were any torches she could still get some use out of. It didn't look like...there! Over by the corner!

She made her way to the furthest right corner of the entry hall where a single, lonely torch lay beneath an empty sconce, it had a gooey substance on the end of it, something to keep it lit longer, no doubt. When she took it back outside where her dragons waited, she held it up and away from her body for Drogon to see, hoping he would get the message. Thankfully he understood after a short moment and sent a small spurt of flame to light up the end of the torch.

She looked to see that the entrance was too small for even her smallest son to fit through them. There was no way that any of her children would be able to follow her into the fortress, she would have to brave this journey alone.

Daenerys called out behind her, bidding her children to stay calm as she began delving deeper into the darkness, allowing it to swallow her whole. She could hear Viserion start to make clicking noises in the back of his throat and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Though she couldn't really blame him could she? She had just gotten attacked the night before by an unknown creature, so yes, she would try to be careful.

The entry hall was large, so much so that the light of the torch only went about ten feet around her before being swallowed by the darkness. What she could see was the beginnings of a staircase, one leading up the middle and one on either side of it leading down into the foundation of the mountain. She contemplated following the staircase down and exploring the caverns below but quickly turned her mind to the middle staircase leading upwards and out of sight.

As she began to climb the steps, she noticed the stone beneath her feet was black as night but had little rivers of white running all throughout it, making it look like the stars themselves had bled into it. Black marble.

By the time she reached the summit of the stairs she had worked up a sweat and a crick was forming in her side. Strangely, she could feel the faintest breeze whisper across her brow. There must have been vents of some kind leading from the outside into different parts of the caverns, as she was too far into the mountains to even have the little bit of light that was left trickle in from the one open door at the front.

Daenerys was now standing in another large room, large enough to be a few feet into the room and have the light from the torch not touch anything. A few feet more and the only thing that was in the flickering light was the bottom of a lone marble column rising from the ground to the right of the staircase railings. She walked to the other side of the stairs and found another column of the same black marble. Looking at the ground again she noticed something that was not in the entry hall nor on the stairs. Two gold lines in between the columns, making a path forward, each about two inches thick. She felt a shiver go down her spine as she started to follow the golden engraving deeper into the void of the mountain. It became clear to her that it was not a room, it was a hallway.

She sometimes strayed from the laid path to explore the walls, sometimes finding doors leading to individual chambers. Some were just broom cupboards, others looked to be meeting rooms or various dining halls with long tables that spanned the whole room. She found suits of armor holding once glorious swords that now fought only the aging of time. She even found a perfume bottle that still had about half of the liquid still there, though when she sprayed it, the smell was enough for her to put it down right away and vacate the room entirely.