Game of Thrones: Viserys the Three-Headed Dragon.

Chapter 97: Exploring the Secret Passage
This was the first time that Viserys and Daenerys entered the so-called secret passage. Before that, they had only roughly seen the entrance and exit. At that time, Viserys' body could not be changed back and he could not get in. He could only wait outside with Daenerys, who was still disguising herself, for the Unsullied to come out and report.

This Unsullied guard is now Viserys's captain of the king's guard, and Viserys has given him a new name, "Godion", which means "guardian". He was the captain of the squad that once guarded the door for Viserys on the ship.

Viserys only brought one Unsullied guard with him, and the rest of the guards were ordered to guard outside the door.

To be honest, after entering, this secret passage was wider than Viserys had imagined. It could accommodate two people side by side, and the height above the head was always maintained at about eight feet. Viserys was about six feet tall, and he could not touch the top even with a torch in his hand. This secret passage was not cramped.

They entered through the mechanical wall behind the master bedroom closet. Godian, who had been in before, led the way with a torch in his hand. Viserys held a torch in one hand and touched the wall from time to time with the other. The materials of the wall and the stone stairs were all Valyria's representative fused black dragonstone.

Daenerys followed closely behind, also holding a torch and touching the black dragonstone on the wall from time to time.

The spiral staircase leading down is very deep.

Viserys counted silently in his mind. There were more than thirty steps in the spiral staircase. This meant that the bottom platform was already below the ground of the castle, and was about the same depth as a certain level of the dungeon.

At the bottom of the secret passage was a rectangular corridor that was slightly wider than the spiral staircase, and it was several dozen feet long from one end to the other. At the other end of the corridor was a spiral staircase similar to the one they had come down, and going up was the side sleeping room on the second floor of the main castle.

Viserys had estimated that if the main gate of the castle and the entrance to the city wall were horizontal, the underground corridor of this secret passage was actually slanted from the upper left to the lower right. In theory, if there was a vertical line in the platform under the secret passage, then one end of this vertical line would point directly to the interior of Longshan.

There was a lot of dust in the corridor, and the dust on the ground was left with the footprints of scattered footsteps. Viserys specifically asked people not to come in to clean it.

Here, Viserys began to speak: "Look carefully, there may be some mechanism here."

Godian, who had come in before, had actually tried to search, but he found nothing. However, after hearing the order, he still held up a torch and carefully explored the walls and floor of the corridor.

"Dany," Viserys called Daenerys to his side, "Follow me and tell me what you find." He didn't need Daenerys to help him discover something through various subtle clues like an experienced treasure hunter, he just needed her sudden inspiration and peculiar perception.

Daenerys stepped closer to her brother, "Yes, I know."

"In a place like this, there's a lot of dust, so footprints are the easiest to find." Viserys searched and spoke, hoping that this would give Daenerys some inspiration. He leaned over and carefully observed the footprints on the ground with a torch. "See? These footprints are different from the guards' standard boots, and they are very new. They came from the master bedroom, which means they belonged to the original owner of the castle. There are many and messy footprints, which means he has been here many times. Let's follow his footsteps."

It is not difficult to find the traces left by non-Unsullied standard boots. Following these traces slowly, we will find that these footsteps have stopped in the middle of the corridor.

"If my guess is correct, there should be something here, a mechanism. Otherwise, the footprints from two directions wouldn't intersect here, and it wouldn't be so messy." The footprints in the middle of the corridor were the messiest. The Unsullied who had come down before also found that the footprints stopped here, so they carefully looked for possible mechanisms.

"Look around, there might be something here." Viserys slowly raised the torch and looked up at the black dragonstone wall inch by inch from the bottom, trying to find a hidden mechanism behind a huge brick of the stone wall.

Daenerys knew what Viserys was looking for. Viserys told her that according to legend, there was a secret passage in the castle that led directly to the interior of Dragon Mountain, and she felt something in the crater, which was inside Dragon Mountain.

Daenerys looked carefully at the place where the torchlight illuminated. The huge bricks and stones of the black walls were engraved with the patterns of dragon scales. The complex patterns engraved on the scales made it difficult to distinguish the traces of dust and the black walls. It was difficult to find some traces like on the flat floor of dragonstone.

She watched her brother searching bit by bit, and from time to time he reached out his hand to knock on the huge bricks and stones, which made a thudding sound, but the solid stone wall seemed to be a whole, and there was no hidden passage that he expected.

Daenerys reached out and touched a piece of the wall. She was shocked by the tight connections between the bricks, which required careful observation to be seen.

When she realized that this huge castle that could accommodate thousands of people was built one by one with huge and heavy black dragonstone bricks, she could hardly imagine how the Valyrian builders had buried the first cornerstone between these cliffs and then built this huge fortress brick by brick.

And what kind of skilled craftsmen sculpted the giant dragon statue, gargoyles and inscriptions on the bricks and stones on this castle?

A question suddenly occurred to Daenerys: "Where are the head and tail of this dragon?"

"What?" Viserys reacted immediately after hearing what Daenerys said, "Yes, the buildings in the castle are all made to imitate dragons. In theory, this corridor should be part of a dragon."

The architectural theme of Dragonstone is inseparable from the dragon. For example, the hall is a dragon lying on the ground, and people enter through the dragon head door which looks like its open mouth. There are wing doors and claw doors in the hall, and the back door is the dragon tail door. For example, the kitchen is a curled up dragon, and the dragon's belly is an oven, and the smoke and steam from the oven are discharged from its nostrils.

There are walls in this secret passage engraved with dragon scale patterns, so this passage is only a part of the body of the giant dragon, and its head and tail are not here.

Viserys remembered: "Its dragon head is on the wardrobe in the master bedroom!" The wardrobe was a long snout of a giant dragon with its mouth wide open and breathing fire, and the mechanism to open the secret passage in the wardrobe was a lamp holder in the shape of a dragon's nose.

With an idea in mind, Viserys immediately took Daenerys and asked Godian to lead the way back to the master bedroom on the second floor of the main castle.

The first thing that came to my mind as the switch of the secret passage was undoubtedly the dragon's eyes. I followed the long snout of the dragon in the closet and looked upwards. The snout of this dragon was very long, and the statue of its eyes was even above the huge opening window on the north side of the master bedroom. That position was too high. But after I had an idea, I could quickly follow the direction where I imagined the dragon's eyes were looking.

The giant dragon statue in the master bedroom only has half of its face, and the dragon statue is not as good as a human statue, so it is difficult to tell where its gaze is going.

But this dragon is breathing fire, so its gaze is undoubtedly looking in the direction it is breathing. There are only a few carvings of dragons breathing fire near the wardrobe, but they all point in the same direction.

It's a fireplace.

When he discovered it was a fireplace, Viserys felt that he should have noticed the anomaly earlier.

Even the King's bedroom next to the Table Hall in the Dragonstone Fortress has no fireplace, and can only be heated with a huge brazier. Because the castle was not built for comfort, but as a bridgehead military fortress for Valyria to spy on Westeros. It is very unreasonable for a fireplace, which is built for comfortable life, to appear in a military fortress. Viserys guessed that these two rooms should have been newly built by Targaryen after he moved from Valyria.

Soon, after searching inside and outside the fireplace, Viserys's guard captain, Godian, found that there was a movable brick in the fireplace that required a lot of force to press down. But after pressing it, nothing happened in the room.

However, Viserys immediately called Daenerys and Goder to go down to the corridor that had been unable to pass through before.

As expected, on the right side of the corridor, a door leading to the unknown appeared, which had not been there before.

A slight gust of hot wind was blowing in from outside the door.

"Godian, lead the way. Check the situation." Viserys ordered his captain. Although the Unsullied had begun to learn the Common Language from Missandei in private, Viserys was still accustomed to giving orders in Valyrian.

This passage that obviously leads to Longshan is very warm. Observing from the door that appears, the wall behind the door is very thick, more than ten feet, and is made entirely of huge black stone bricks.

Entering this passage and pressing your hand against the wall of the stone passage, you can feel the warmth.

The passage was smooth and warm, and the walls were made of huge black stone bricks engraved with dragon scales. After walking out of the door, there was a very obvious black stone brick bulge in the corner of the outside wall.

"Wait, Godian, try to see if this is the switch of a secret door." In order to verify that the protrusion on the black stone brick could open and close the secret door in the thick stone wall, Viserys took Daenerys back to the corridor and left Godian there to try it.

The stone passage was endlessly deep and sloped downward. Viserys needed to make sure that he and Daenerys could come back normally after going in.

This was not the first time that Viserys had done such a thing. Although Daenerys sympathized with the loyal captain of the guard, she could only pray secretly that he would not trigger any fatal trap.

The captain of the guard, Godin, who led the king's advance, had no complaints and just followed Viserys' orders in silence.

After Viserys and Daenerys returned to the corridor, Godian pushed the masonry protrusion, and a low rumbling sound was heard inside and outside the secret door. Then, huge black stone slabs slowly slid out from the heavy door wall. Under the light of the torch, the wall was pieced together like a puzzle. When the sound subsided, the place where the door was just now was left with a solid, crack-free stone wall.

Then, the low muffled sound was heard again, and the stone wall cracked. Pieces of black stone slabs were retracted from the wall behind the door, revealing a secret door leading to an unknown place.

"Yes." Viserys led Daenerys back into the stone passage. "Lead the way."

This stone passage is very deep. When walking inside it, you can clearly feel that you are walking diagonally downward in the direction of Longshan. The deeper you go, the hotter the air in the passage.

Godian, wearing armor, was breathing increasingly heavily and he looked very uncomfortable from the sultry heat. Even Daenerys was sweating profusely.

The stone passage continued to extend inwards, with no end in sight. The passage was not very straight, and Viserys felt it was a huge arc.

They walked for a while, and gradually, the stone walls in the passage felt hot to the touch.

"Stop." Viserys called to stop the forward movement. "Godion, the road ahead is no longer suitable for you to continue. Go back to the entrance of the passage and wait for us."

The captain of the guard turned solemnly, nodded to Viserys, and then turned back in the direction he came without any question.

Viserys raised his torch and looked at the still dark and deep Blackstone passage: "Do you know how far we have come, Dany?"

Daenerys swallowed and said, "I counted the steps I took, and it's 266 steps to get here." Even though the road is inclined, this is undoubtedly the inside of Dragon Mountain.

Viserys asked with some anticipation: "Do you feel anything here?"

But Daenerys shook her head. "It's just heat, nothing else."

As they continued forward, the air in the passage became increasingly hotter, until their boots began to smoke as they stepped on the black stone slabs, as if they would catch fire at any moment.

When Daenerys reached the 332nd step, the passage seemed to have reached the bottom and began to slope upward. Despite this, the road ahead was still extremely hot. Viserys and Daenerys had to take off their boots and walk barefoot on the hot stone passage.

Finally, at Daenerys' 450th step, they saw a faint red light at the end of the stone passage. At Daenerys' 518th step, the stone passage came to an end.

At the end of the passage is an iron gate, which is a bolted door and not locked.

From the passage, you can see through the iron gate that the space outside is much larger than the passage. There is a red light source shining from behind a cliff outside a huge stone platform. A huge black stone building stands on a huge stone platform not far from the door. The building is made of black stone like the castle. The main building consists of a garden building and four towers. There are carvings of giant dragons flying in the sky on them. There are many gargoyles of various shapes built along the walls of the building.

If you look closely, you will find that there are huge human statues on the carved dragons. They are either standing, sitting, or holding swords high and riding on the dragons.

If I'm not mistaken, this is a tomb.

(End of this chapter)