Ice and Fire: Reign of the Dragon.

Chapter 413: Ice Song, Start
When the elders' nagging ended, Jonil found the prince, who had just been nagged and was alone in the godswood.

The night in the Godswood was as dark as ink, and only the pale branches of the Heart Tree glowed faintly in the moonlight. Baelor Targaryen leaned against the tree trunk, his fingertips unconsciously stroking the hilt of the sword. The sword that won him the victory in the tournament now lay quietly in its sheath, as if recalling the glory of the past few days.

Jonil Varese sat down beside him, the bronze wristbands rubbing against the leather making a slight sound. He threw a bag of candied lemons to the prince, the sour aroma was particularly refreshing in the cool night breeze.

"So," Joniel bit into a lemon and grimaced, "now can you tell me what you really want?"

Baelor did not answer immediately. He looked up at the starry sky, his violet eyes reflecting countless stars, as if he was looking for a specific star. According to legend, the dragon kings of Valyria once carved the names of dragons on the stars, allowing them to guide their descendants forever.

"Dream Fire." He finally spoke, his voice as light as a sigh, yet as heavy as a vow.

Jonnir's brows furrowed slightly. The old dragon was the oldest dragon in the Targaryen dragon group and one of the only remaining big dragons. But Dreamfire was also one of the most difficult dragons to tame. She rarely left the depths of the dragon pit. The last time she left was when Blackfyre caused trouble in the dragon pit. Dreamfire came forward to reorganize the order of the dragon pit. The last time she appeared, she burned three dragon guards who tried to approach her into charcoal.

"She burned three dragon guards last time." Jonniel reminded, his tone calm, but his eyes were sharp as a sword. "None of them had any bad intentions."

Beile chuckled and took out a piece of blue scale from his arms - the edge had been rubbed smooth like jade.

"She gave it to me," the prince whispered, his fingertips gently running over the scales. "Three years ago, I went to visit the dragon in the dragon's lair, and she was watching me from the entrance. I was terrified, thinking she would breathe fire, but she only glanced at me and retreated back into the cave."

Jonniel took the scale and felt it was warm, as if it still had the residual heat of dragon flame. He was silent for a moment, then suddenly stood up, took out a roll of old parchment from his arms, and slowly unfolded it in the moonlight.

"This is a diagram of the dragon's anatomy. There is also a copy in the library of Dragonstone." He pointed to the fine lines on the parchment. "In the past, we would be familiar with these things before training dragons. If you want to tame Dreamfire, learn this first."

Baelor looked closely. The most sensitive areas of the dragon's neck, back, and wing roots were marked on the blueprint. Some places were circled in red ink, with notes in ancient Valyrian next to them: "A light touch here can soothe the dragon's anger."

"How did you get this?" Belle asked in surprise.

Jonniel raised his lips slightly. "Uncle Igor gave it to you. You are not old enough yet. When you are old enough, His Majesty will give you something like this. He went through the same thing. Uncle said that a true dragon rider must not only know how to control a dragon, but also learn to listen."

The night wind suddenly rose, and the red leaves of the heart tree rustled, as if the ancient gods were whispering.

"I will tame her," Belle whispered, more like a promise to himself, "not with chains, but with..."

"Understand." Jonnell continued, and the two smiled at each other.

The summer in the south is still hot.

In the shadow of Frostfang, the wind ripped at the fur cloak like the howling spirits of the dead.

The leader of the Thenns felt a chill piercing his bones. His hunting team had been tracking the mammoth for three days and should have returned to the camp before sunset, but the footprints in the ice valley were getting deeper and deeper, as if something was luring them deeper into the land of eternal winter.

"Magna," the young hunter Yor lowered his voice, the tip of his bronze spear trembling slightly, "Have we gone too far?"

The Thenns never admit to fear, but Magnar's thumb unconsciously rubbed the runes on his ancestral battle axe, which were the "Winter Rejection" spells carved in the era of the First Men. Legend has it that it can repel the breath of the God of Cold.

"Shut up, boy," he spat, his spittle freezing before it hit the ground. "Wait till we get that elephant back—Oooooh!"

A sharp howl that did not belong to any wild animal pierced the cold wind.

Three hundred steps away, a dark blue crack suddenly exploded on the ice wall. Ice crystals splashed like a rainstorm, and in the scattered ice fragments, a figure slowly stood up.

It was taller and thinner than a human, with skin like a translucent layer of ice wrapped around blue blood vessels. Its eyes burned with a fire colder than the aurora, and in its hand was a long sword that looked like it was carved from thousands of years of ice, with the blade wrapped in a constantly twisting frost mist.

The most terrifying thing is the mount under its crotch, a mammoth made of corpse parts, its rotten muscles forcibly glued together by ice crystals, and the same phantom blue will-o'-the-wisp flickering in its empty eye sockets.

"Ancient Gods" Yoel's prayer froze in his throat. That's when the ice spider appeared.

They emerged from the cracks in the ice, each the size of a hound, with eight limbs like blades sharpened by ice picks, and their abdomens so transparent that the blue internal organs squirming inside could be seen. The first spider pounced on the hunter at the end of the team, and the ice spikes in its mouthparts pierced directly into the brain through the eye sockets, making a creepy sucking sound as it sucked.

Magna's battle axe smashed the second spider's head, and the armor of ice crystals was chopped by the bronze axe blade. The Thenns realized that these monsters hated bronze. But the joy was fleeting, because the ice sword was already slashing towards them.

At the moment when the axe blade collided with the ice sword, Magnar heard the wailing of his ancestors. His battle axe rune burst into a final red light, and then shattered like fragile glass. The second sword cut through his bearskin armor, and the wound did not bleed, but quickly formed a layer of spreading frost.

As he ran away, Yoel looked back and saw that Magnar's body was slowly freezing from the inside, with a strange blue light coming from under his skin. The leader's final expression was not one of fear, but of sudden enlightenment:

"It turns out that the legends of our ancestors are all true. Run fast."

When the ice spider's sharp legs pierced through Yoel's back, he vaguely saw more blue eyes lighting up in the wind and snow.

Deep in the weirwood caverns, time is as thick as honey.

The body of this generation of Three-Eyed Raven, which coexisted with the tree roots, suddenly twitched violently, and its rotten wood-like skin broke into countless tiny cracks.

"My Lord!" Bright Moon, the Child of the Forest, cut open his palm with an obsidian dagger and dripped fluorescent green blood into the crow's dry lips. The other Children of the Forest immediately gathered around and chanted spells that were older than human language. "They are back."

The roots of the weirwood trees on the cave walls began to ooze tears of blood.

"In the ice valley to the north," the crows' voices sounded like the chorus of thousands of dying souls, "a tribe of the Thenns. It has been harvested. The song of ice has already sounded. We are running out of time, but there is still time."

Bright Moon immediately understood the meaning of "harvest". Thousands of years ago, during the long night, the Children of the Forest called the slaughter of the White Walkers this way. Those aliens not only wanted to kill, but also to transform lives into slaves of winter.

"It's just a scout riding a mammoth. We have the ability to intercept this scout." She stroked the inscription on the dagger that symbolized the "sun and moon", "before it contacts the main force."

"May the ancient gods bless you, Bright Moon."

Thirty children of the forest set out at the full moon. They rode giant wolves, snow bears and shadow mountain cats, and carried obsidian spears and bows and arrows. The oldest wizard used a bone needle to carve the Eye of the Sun on each warrior's forehead, which was painted with paint made of obsidian powder mixed with fish beam wood juice. The three-eyed crow personally cast a blessing magic on each warrior, which could temporarily resist the erosion of ice magic.

The ambush took place in the darkest hour before dawn.

The Children of the Forest used a kind of mushroom that could imitate human screams to lure the dead team led by the White Walker into an ice rift full of traps. The first round of arrow rain smashed the heads of five dead ghosts, but the real threat was the White Walker riding a mammoth corpse.

Every time it swings its ice sword, the moisture in the air condenses into deadly ice cones. A child of the forest was pierced by an ice spear that suddenly shot out from the ground, and his blood froze into a red icicle before it could even flow out. Liangyue saw with her own eyes that her comrade "Rubberfoot"'s giant wolf was injected with venom by the ice spider, and in the blink of an eye the entire wolf head turned into an ice sculpture.

"Now!" Liangyue blew the "Summer Horn" made of a unicorn's horn, which was covered with ancient runes. The Three-Eyed Raven used his own blood to activate this ancient magic prop.

The sound waves shattered all the ice cones within a hundred steps, and the movements of the White Walkers also slowed down. Bright Moon took the opportunity to jump onto the mammoth corpse and stabbed the White Walker in the back with the obsidian dagger.

At the moment the blue fire exploded, he saw the truth under the enemy's armor.
That was not armor at all, but bones that coexisted with ice, and in every bone there flowed a dark blue liquid that looked like blood.

As the surviving children of the forest dragged the bodies of their companions back to the cave, the Three-Eyed Raven was using his roots to read an ancient book made of human skin.

"The Ice Song has begun." The eyes of the Three-Eyed Raven reflected the words that were melting on the pages of the book. "But we still have time. The White Walkers will not wake up in large numbers immediately. They are also waiting for the climax of the Ice Song."

Liangyue suddenly discovered that the weirwood where the crows had taken root was even more withered than yesterday.

(End of this chapter)