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The Dothraki had struck in the early afternoon, once the city had failed to capitulate.

The battle had lasted but a few hours, if you could even call it such, but for miles around, the lands outside the city of Volantis had been plunged into a darkness as thorough as the depths of night.

The acrid tang in the air spoke of its cause, the choking swirling patterns in the great deep clouds of onyx flared and spun in a way that could have no celestial origin. 

The ground crunched beneath the heavy tread of Maegor’s armoured form. Already ash had settled over the destruction, the earliest to be inflamed falling down to cover the more recently deceased.

There would be little loot for the Free City, little that could be reclaimed from the Dothraki's vast train of plunder, no doubt bound for their sacred tent city, had the last city on their journey of plunder not been Volantis. The city had been weak ever since the Century of Blood, since his father had sided with Pentos against their expansion. Maegor considered that to have been the stronger action at the time, but now the Three Daughters were growing strong at the expense of Volantis, it did well to even the scales.

In all honestly, he had simply been bored.

He came to halt as a distressed animal moan rose from the ground, a few meters from his feet. It would have been a whiney of pain, no doubt, had the damage not been too great. He paced forwards through the ash, coming to halt behind the stricken form of one of the Dothraki's fabled horses. The dragon fire had claimed its hind quarters and much of its flank, but it clung to life, no longer strong enough to even thrash. Maegor regarded it for some time. A waste of a fine breed.

He did not delay in his granting of mercy, but he provided it none the less. Placing one boot down on the beast's head, his tread barely registered the end of its life as he proceeded through the burning maelstrom that had once been the Khalassar. There was no real reason to have landed, it was not his task to scout the land and ensure the Dothraki had been driven off, but one never knew what you might find beneath the forge of battle.

Their warcries broke out of the ash the moment he had cleared the remains of the steed. The warbling screams of Dothraki as they burst from the ash cloud. Three of them, barely more than youths, for the greatest of their warriors had all died in Balerion's first descent. They rode no steeds, no doubt having to abandon them in the process of survival. Here, perhaps, was a chance for them to redeem such cowardice by their peoples' merit.

Beneath his helm, Maegor's hard features split into a momentary grin.

"Come and take it." He snarled in their own tongue. Those who knew him passingly might mistake Maegor for a simple brute, he had always preferred martial and physical pursuits. In reality, he was singular. He could learn and focus on anything that brought him closer to his ambitions and that which he excelled. He felt it only fitting the enemy might understand him when he claimed their lives.

The first, and youngest, fell swiftly. He barreled towards with Prince with all the hot headed energy of youth, arakh posted to strike at the Valyrian. As was so common of the Dothraki, they underestimated the flexibility that plate of Westeros design allowed. Maegor ducked low under the blow, Blackfyre held even lower and pointed up in a thrusting motion, he took the young man in the gut, before rising with his own natural motion, splitting him in two from waist to temple. The resistance offered by the ending of this life slowed him no more than the death of the steed prior, literally stepping through the still disintegrating remains of the first man to get at the others.

While still young, they were no doubt more experienced than the first, and were moving forwards together. They must have seen at least one battle prior, even if it was simply a sack of a village, for they did not start at the sight of the foe appearing to simply burst through their prior comrade.

Usually, Maegor would fight such battles with a shield in hand, but he had left the protective implement upon his saddle. Against two opponents he would then have to rely on speed, force and the superiority of his weapon. Their first strikes met Blackfyre only a moment apart, the valyrian steel rebound on one arakh to throw back into the other. Their swords were back up too fast for Maegor to push hard on either. They were not fools, after the failure of their first strike they backed away, creating greater distance between themselves so that another combined parry wouldn't be possible from a second attempt.

Their first mistake, however, was to hesitate. Maegor's ability to fend off both blows put unnecessary caution in them. In their place, he would have pushed immediately. The pause could only benefit the outnumbered party.

"When you ran, was it your horses' or your mothers' screams that shamed you?" Maegor spoke again, perhaps the limits of complexity he had in Dothraki, but it was a phrase he'd learned deliberately for such a moment. It worked as intended, baiting one of them a moment before the other prepared to strike.

He entirely ignored the one slower to act, switching Blackfyre to his left hand, he took the arakh's furious blows on the weapon and gave them back in turn. The arakh was a weapon of great design for downward strikes from horseback, but it had a singular weakness in extended combat on foot. Turning the blade of his weapon, Maegor looped the bind of their blows through the curved hook of the weapon. Before the Dothraki could even realise what had occurred, Blackfyre had ruptured through his right eye.

The other man was not slow, and struck for Maegor. Even with the cutting edge of Valyrian steel, he would not be able to pull the blade free quite in time. With a desperate lunge, Maegor's right gauntlet caught the blade in motion.

The Prince emitted a howl of battle rage and pain as the force shuddered through his palm, but this gauntlet was that which held the reigns of Balerion, it had been reinforced against the pulling might of the world's greatest dragon, and one swipe of the blade would not cut through. Caught by surprise, the last Dothraki stumbled backwards as Maegor advanced towards him, driving him away and downwards, even as the motion pulled Blackfyre free from its previous kill.

As the final youth staggered and fell to his knee, still attempting to drive back against the force Maegor was applying, the pommel of Blackfyre came down atop his head. While the other two deaths had been clean, this was a brutal affair. Enough of whatever resided within the Dothraki's shattered skull clung on to life to still wrestle with the Prince, and so he hammered again…and again…and again. Only on the fourth strike with the blunt end of the weapon did he finally slump free.

Prince Maegor let out a satisfied grunt of victory at last, pausing only to wipe both ends of the ancient weapon upon the scorched rags of the final kill's clothing, before kicking him aside.

A moment later, and one of the vast clouds of smoke billowing around him seemed to rise. Balerion himself lingered close to the Prince, resting in the burning embrace of the carnage he had sown. The great beast stirred only to emit a roar, his vast head turned upwards towards the sky. For all the bone chilling horror such a roar could provide, it was not a roar of challenge, but of greeting, followed only shortly by the heavy beat of wings.

Vhandyr Balaerys watched in silence as the western prince let out his frustrations on the youth of the horse lords. [i]Misguided and foolishly prideful,[/i] he thought, regarding the Dothraki youth…though he supposed there were moments the quick of such a thought could have pressed in either direction of the melee.

The towering, stoic, Valyrian dragonrider was now mounted, having shifted from Terrax shortly after Maegor had. Terrax busied himself behind Vhandyr and his warhorse, landing near the giant black dragon and giving a roar that was more playful than it was terrifying. Vhandyr understood it on a level deeper than his own bones.

[i]Fly. Fly. Fly![/i]

Terrax wanted flight more than he wanted meat or war. For the first time since the Doom, the dragon felt he had a partner in flight. Vhandyr felt only bittersweet joy for the two beasts, certain of the parting of the two, knowing how much of Maegor still stayed focused on the slights and shortcomings in Westeros. Perhaps he would take the Prince up on his offer and tour the Westeros continent. His sister had already been dispatched, as wayward a traveler as their ancestors had always been.
Wisdom was to wait for Vaera’s dispatches before he decided, however.

“Shall we retire to Casmus Valelyx, Prince?”

Blackfyre was returned to his swordbelt before Maegor turned to regard the other Valyrian. For all their visual similarities the pair had more differences, but in many ways that is what allowed the bond of their friendship to function. Much akin to Balerion and Terrax, the differences  turned what would be the competition of rivals into the bond of companions.

"Little and less still to do here. If the fire was less consuming, I imagine we'd have cut more victory braids here than any since the Doom." As Maegor spoke and approached Vhandyr, a whiney of distress roused the nearby dragons, snorts of curiosity more than hunger, as a single rider approached. It was an impressive feat of both husbandry and handling that allowed the rider to bring his steed so close to the Dragons.

"Hail my lords," The rider sweapt down from the saddle, his accent and bearing marking him as one of the few that lived within the city that hailed from Westeros, or at least seemed so. In Maegor's sparring visits to Volantis during his exile he had moved a small portion of his household to Volantis, such that he was not entirely reliant on the whims of Vhandyr's people to remain informed and housed. The rider, clad in the red and black of the Targaryen household, waisted little time in approaching Maegor, handing over a bound scroll, set with a seal in the shape of the Citadel. There were few among their order that regarded Maegor with anything but scorn, but those few he had cultivated well. With a swift motion, Maegor broke the seal, before his eyes fell to read the letter. After but another few seconds, he cast the letter away and into one of the sputtering fires that had once been a Dothraki steed.

"I will return to Pentos, the Blood of the Dragon has need of their exiled son."