Game of Thrones: Viserys the Three-Headed Dragon.

Chapter 16 Madness from the Sea

Bachelor Goras compiled his findings into a manuscript and wanted to send it to the Citadel via traveling merchants. He needed the most knowledgeable and extensive doctor to eliminate his inner fear and madness through the most professional knowledge.

As a traveling maester, Maester Legolas spends most of his energy exploring the ancient legends of the villages formed along the streams of the Stormforest, and the hardwood forests where the children of the forest and giants were said to have roamed. He records the customs and living species of various places in the Stormforest, the ancient oak trees, the towering redwoods, and so on.

These things were originally planned to be written into a manuscript and serve as Legolas' thesis for promotion from a wandering maester to a doctor.

His manuscript project was called "The Rainforest Chronicles", and Legolas' dream was to write a great book like Dr. Hamun's "Stone Carvings" and Dr. Arnel's "Valley Chronicles". "Stone Carvings" listed the remains of the Star Axe stone carvings found in the Vale of Arryn, and "Valley Chronicles" recorded many mountain clans.

Legolas was determined to fill in the gaps in the Citadel's knowledge about the rainforest region.

However, it is not known whether to call it fortunate or unfortunate that Legolas encountered the autumn rain that swept around the Storm Forest.

The wind and rain had been falling non-stop for several months. About half a month ago, the supplies in the camp where Maester Legolas and the hunters and mercenaries he hired were located were soaked and moldy due to the increasingly heavy rain. They had to give up their plan to wait out the rain in an empty worker's hut in a lord's hardwood logging camp in the rainforest, and set out to return to the nearest town to replenish supplies and find an inn to rest and take a hot bath to wash away the fatigue caused by the continuous rain.

However, when they returned to the town, it was already overcrowded, and many villages along the surrounding streams had suffered varying degrees of disaster in the rain.

It was difficult to find a place to stay in the town, and thieves and robbers were everywhere.

However, one day, a rumor began to spread that someone claimed to have found countless sea fish stranded on a certain coast, and that they could find countless food without having to fish.

At first, Maester Legolas certainly did not believe such nonsense. However, as more and more victims headed to the rumored area and the town gradually became empty, the maester developed a strong curiosity.

So he called in his own mercenaries and went to investigate the truth of the rumors.

However, this was the beginning of a nightmare.

The victims said that the place where the stranded fish appeared was a remote coast. It took at least a day's journey to get there. The rainy season made the road slippery and muddy. Legolas and his party also encountered an unusually strong storm on the road. They lost their way in the storm and deviated from the route. Finally, they arrived at a low cliff above a strange bay by mistake.

There, they found a survivor in a delirious state, holding a bone weapon of unknown origin, and when he found Legolas and his party, the survivor attacked with the bone weapon like crazy.

After being subdued by the mercenaries, the survivor regained some consciousness and told an absurd story about fishmen and killings.

The survivor was a disaster-stricken refugee who heard that there were fish to be picked up on the coast. There were seven refugees with him. He claimed that he and his companions were attacked by strange and ferocious monsters with human faces. Those monsters suddenly appeared in the storm and brutally killed the refugees heading to the coast. His companions were unfortunately killed, and only he escaped.

Speaking of excitement, the survivor fell into delirium again, struggling and screaming.

As a last resort, the mercenary had to knock him out.

At first, Legolas certainly didn't believe the monster that the seemingly insane villager talked about.

Their finding of this man meant that the legendary coast was not far away.

The mercenaries in the team felt that the appearance of this villager here meant that the rumors were an obvious lie and that it might be bandits gathering to cause chaos.

But Maester Legolas decided to find out.

Because they had deviated from the route that day, they could only camp in a crack between rocks to avoid the rain. When the maester was cooking dinner, the villager woke up once. However, he was completely crazy and only roared loudly, calling for help. The mercenary had no choice but to knock him out again.

However, what happened that night still made Legolas feel like he was in a dream.

That night, Legolas suddenly heard faint drum sounds and strange roars amidst the thunder and lightning outside, and strange red lights flickered from time to time at the cracks in the rocks. He climbed out of the tent and found that the mercenaries were already looking in one direction in fear.

The disturbing blood-red light of lightning illuminated a corner of the sky not far away. The storm that night was particularly severe, and the strange phenomenon in that part of the sky lasted for an unknown amount of time, as if a god had returned there.

They stayed there that night until late in the evening, until the strange phenomenon in the sky died down.

A feeling of uneasiness began to spread, and almost no one could sleep that night.

The next day, after a quick breakfast, Legolas was determined to go to the place where the strange phenomenon in the sky occurred last night. The mercenaries refused outright until Legolas doubled the price of his services. Only then did they reluctantly agree to go.

Legolas and his companions soon saw a scene that they would never forget: a beach covered with countless dead fish and a tragic battlefield.

When they found "people" cleaning up the bodies on the battlefield in the rain, they should have left immediately. However, they had just crossed the strange beach, and in that uneasy atmosphere, seeing "people" was a reassuring thing.

However, when they got closer and saw clearly that the "person" picking up the corpses in the rain was actually a monster with a human face and webbed hands and feet, horrified screams immediately came out of their throats involuntarily and they ran away.

One of the mercenaries failed to escape, and the monster chased them. Maester Legolas was lucky that he was not the slowest runner among them.

The mercenary's wailing and cries for help and the monster's roar seemed to still echo in my ears.

This nightmare-like experience caused Legolas to suffer an unprecedented mental shock. He could not even remember how he ran back to the town in the storm.

The other mercenary who was traveling with him had already run away in the wind and rain, and no one knew what happened to the villager they rescued.

Legolas' heart was filled with shadows, and he had only one idea in his mind, to record his experience of this trip, compile his findings into a manuscript, and send it to the Citadel.

In fact, as Legolas calmed down from his fear.

He found that the monster seemed to correspond to a strange race mentioned by Maester Sillen in his manuscript "Strange Stone", the Deep Ones.

Maester Sillan was a bastard maester from the Iron Islands about a century ago. In his manuscript, The Strange Stone, he described a "strange, deformed race, half-human, half-beast, born from creatures on the salt sea and human women" as the Deep Ones. Sillan believed that the Deep Ones were the prototype of the mermaid myth, and their ancestors, the sea creatures, were the prototype of the Drowned God worship. He also said that some ancient buildings on the Iron Islands, the foundations of the towering towers and the Sea Stone Seats of the Iron Islands were built of a similar oily black stone. The origin of these black stone buildings is unknown, so he presumed that they were all created by the Deep Ones.

The text recorded in Xierlun's "Strange Stone" was too exaggerated and bizarre, and was judged by the Academy to be nonsense without any basis.

But Legolas had seen this book before. He had aspired to become a maester who explored the unknown corners of the Seven Kingdoms, so during his studies in the Citadel, he thoroughly studied the customs and practices of the Seven Kingdoms that had been recorded by maesters. That was why he chose the relatively less mentioned rainforest area as his research object.

Legolas believed that he had encountered the Deep Ones, and that these monsters and aliens might really exist. The manuscript of the maester Sillan might not be a hypothesis of the Ironborn, but a true account. There might indeed be a twisted and terrifying race of mermen in the ocean.

When the manuscripts were finished, Legolas placed them in a maester's box that he carried with him. He recorded what he saw as accurately as possible, with a clear and coherent statement that would prove his sanity.

But soon, he thought that he had seen the horrible monster with his own eyes, but the doctors of the academy had not seen it. Based on this manuscript alone, he might not only not get an answer, but also be judged by the academy as talking nonsense without any basis, just like Bachelor Sillen a century ago.

A crazy idea came to Legolas' mind. Perhaps he should produce evidence. Perhaps this would be his chance to become one of the great maesters in the history of the city.

Since there are living creatures on the seashore now, why should he go far away to seek answers from the academy?

(End of this chapter)