[Chapter Size: 3600 Words.]

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Third Person POV

North, 298 AC.

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Eragon was heading south at that moment, while Jon caught a glimpse of the sky to once again see the landscape he had only had the opportunity to witness a few times.

Jon had traveled south with Eragon only twice. The Wall was starting to appear as a thin line below, stretching across a vast expanse of land.

They were so high up that the Wall wasn’t impressive on its own, but it certainly had its beauty, as it was possible to see the bay and even the other side of the sea, near Bear Island.

Even Skagos, which was Jon’s destination, could be seen from there with the island fully stretched out.

Depending on the angle from those below, they might see something reflecting in the middle of the sky, with the sunlight creating an atmospheric phenomenon from the glare reflected off the metal armor, without imagining it could be a dragon flying.

Eragon wore a full suit of armor made from a magical steel so rare to the rest of the world, yet it had become common in Arctic.

That made Jon wonder.

Had the kingdom perhaps reached the limit of its advancement?

He couldn’t imagine what kinds of technologies they might still create.

They had the great sacred tree, which could be a source to energize magical runes, like those used in trade.

Advanced agriculture.

Multiple races, animals, and dragons.

The fastest ships on the seas with the largest fleet in existence.

Wildfire.

There were light stones that illuminated the kingdom.

And now, Valyrian Steel, which had replaced Elder Metal, which had become the kingdom’s secondary metal, while more and more Arcticans would have weapons and armor made of Valyrian steel, and the forges would further increase production.

Could Jon still build more things before the end of his life? It was hard to say, but very likely yes — he was still in his youth.

When Jon saw Skagos, Eragon began to tilt to the left as he turned toward the sea, heading toward the island.

Some mountain peaks were beginning to approach the island.

“I wonder if the dragon is on the island…” Jon remarked, passing through a cloud.

Upon exiting it, he had full visibility, analyzing and searching for where the dragon might be — the one he had made contact with only once on his first trip, more than seven years ago.

It had been here for at least a hundred and fifty years, so it didn’t seem like the dragon would be leaving the island easily.

Jon continued forward with Eragon.

Eragon began to glide, lowering his irises and leveling with the peaks, as he scanned the entire island. It was practically all covered by forests, but not uninhabited.

There were many rumors about Skagos, many of which he had heard during his history lessons in Winterfell, while stories of cannibalistic practices by the island’s inhabitants were frequently presented in the accounts that Maester Luwin used to share when speaking of that northern territory.

They even said those practices might still happen to this day.

Skagos had risen only once to fight alongside the North since Torrhen Stark had bent the knee to Aegon Targaryen. It was during the Dance of the Dragons, when the North was called to fight for Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Cregan Stark managed to bring the men of Skagos under his command.

The men of Skagos were proud and had declared that they would only obey a Stark who was worthy enough to raise their arms in favor of Winterfell.

It was a condition that, without a doubt, remained to this day.

And the North had failed to pull them in during Robert’s Rebellion.

Not that Jon could judge them for that. At that time, the North was in chaos. The daughter of the Lord of the North, Jon’s mother, had disappeared with everyone thinking she’d been kidnapped. The heir, Brandon Stark, had been killed along with Rickard Stark, and the second son had taken over Winterfell — Jon’s uncle — and the title of Warden of the North, even though he hadn’t even been raised in those lands.

Those men would never follow such a Stark.

But there was no doubt: the cannibalistic practices told to Northern children, and the difficult contact with Skagos… it was a belief that had ended some time ago.

Most of the tribes that truly practiced eating other humans were expelled from the island and had taken shelter north of the Wall.

Now, their fate in those lands beyond the Wall was uncertain. Jon didn’t really know the state of those cannibal tribes — he had forbidden any tribe that engaged in those practices from entering the walls of Arctic.

But Jon doubted there weren’t at least some cannibals — or rather, ex-cannibals — among the people of Arctic. With the North having become a mess, many tribes had mixed together. With almost 300,000 inhabitants in Arctic, some of them with that background could have passed through the groups inspecting newcomers entering through the gates.

And he could no longer control the lives of the hundreds of thousands who lived in Arctic. So that was unknown even to Jon.

And if they didn’t commit crimes, they wouldn’t be caught. After all, killing another human to eat them was something repugnant to anyone in Arctic — and that would be found out.

From a shift in flight, Jon continued analyzing the island below him, while he could see several areas with built villages. There were even some constructions atop the mountains, built by local tribes.

He could see cleared areas with many little houses and continued circling the island calmly, wanting to analyze it fully — something he hadn’t been able to do before, since the Wall blocked his Warg abilities.

From a shift in flight, he made a full circle over a dozen minutes, while trying to cast his powers over the island, quickly connecting to the animals on land and birds in the sky. Some began to enter the villages or even captured memories to learn how people lived there.

That lasted a while, while Jon saw nothing interesting beyond the basics. But nothing about the black dragon.

Jon didn’t stop looking at the island for a moment, seeing great potential in it. This place could be a great port island — maybe he would make it so in the future, a bridge to Arctic, where the capital would be.

Then his eyes returned to the peaks, where there were volcanoes.

“How am I going to find him?” Jon wondered, unable to remember exactly where the entrance to the place was, as he closed his eyes after asking Eragon to stabilize in the air with a mental command.

He quickly began to search those mountains, trying to sense any presence with his Warg abilities, as had happened so many years ago.

And he wasn’t disappointed. He quickly managed to feel an ancient and powerful presence in the area. His mind clouded at that moment, as if he had the creature’s attention.

Finally, Jon seemed to lose even the awareness of his own body — something that shouldn’t happen — as everything went dark.

Green flames began to glow in the scene. And emerald eyes stared at him in the middle of the darkness.

“You again,” Jon could hear the creature transmitting its thoughts to him at that moment.

Quickly, Jon blinked and returned once again, with the wind hitting his face and Eragon standing still, looking back, sensing the disturbance in Jon’s mind.

“Let’s go there, Eragon. Follow my command,” Jon said, as Eragon began to flap his heavy wings, moving toward one of the central mountains, where Jon had already sensed the creature’s presence and confirmed that it was indeed on the island at that moment.

He quickly headed for that mountain, circling around it, finding a dormant volcano with a crater on one side.

The place was massive — at least 2,000 meters in diameter. When smoke rose from its scorched crusts, Jon could see granite, but there was no lava. It seemed hidden and deeper within the mountain.

Jon looked at the holes in that sphere and flew toward them, as Eragon began to descend, finally finding the hole he had seen through the green vision. He just hadn’t been sure which peak it was, which was why he had to resort to reaching for the creature’s mind.

The hole’s location, the entrance to the cave, was enormous. It was at least 150 meters wide and about 50 meters tall, made by the creature itself. Eragon landed calmly in front of the entrance, looking like an ant before the hole.

He adjusted himself, and Jon descended, landing on the heated granite rocks. He didn’t care about that. He stood facing the darkness in front of him and turned to Eragon.

“I want you to stay here for now. If we need to escape, I want you ready,” Jon said, perhaps about to do the craziest thing in the world.

Eragon didn’t stop looking at him with a shine of protest. Even the dragon recognized the madness his father was about to get into, after receiving the images of the dragon from the vision Jon had just had — through the bond they shared.

“I’ll handle this, but be ready for us to leave urgently. We’ll be better off in the air than on the ground.” He took a deep breath and began to move forward, stepping over the gravel across the cave floor, going only with his armor and sword.

He couldn’t bring Eragon because he first needed to get close to the dragon — and that dragon didn’t seem to like other dragons, attacking them immediately.

Jon didn’t want to take that risk.

He quickly stepped into the shadows of the cave, as echoes began to bounce along the walls. He was soon enveloped in darkness, raising one hand as a flame emerged — his rare illumination magic — and it floated up above his head.

All he could see in the following minutes was whatever lay about twenty meters ahead, at most, under that light, while his footsteps began to echo through the space.

The cave was so massive that it couldn’t be fully lit without Jon drawing far too much attention.

Jon kept going until he came across a wall, surprised. His eyes turned back, seeing the cave entrance far off in the distance, now just a tiny point of light.

He must have already walked over a kilometer. He had to admit the mountain was quite large as it stretched sideways beyond the volcano crater at an equally high level — no wonder the dragon chose to nest in this place.

Jon turned his attention to the wall, raising the flame higher into the air. It began to float even farther up, illuminating more of the area.

The first thing Jon noticed was a gigantic claw mark on the wall, with three slashes so huge that each one could be ten times his size.

“He marked this place, then… well, not a surprise,” Jon remarked.

The dragon’s body had grown in these last years — it had expanded the space, since dragons still needed to feed. Studying Cannibal, Jon knew the dragon left once a week, during the night, to go to the Shimmering Sea and hunt whales for food.

It seemed like it didn’t want to draw too much attention — probably something it learned over the years after settling there to escape the Dance.

Jon couldn’t help but raise a curious gaze, still focused on the claw marks and analyzing them. He wondered why this dragon had fled in the middle of the war.

It wasn’t just that it had fled — the strange part was that it seemed to have the awareness that the other dragons were killing each other and chose to escape from it.

Jon didn’t understand, especially since there was no way — as far as he knew — that a dragon could be conscious of what was happening to the Targaryen family during the Dance.

He continued walking to one side, advancing about seventy meters, until he saw another path and followed it, leaving the entrance further behind.

Eragon was nervous outside. Jon could feel it through their mental bond, but it didn’t matter now. He kept moving forward. He had to explore the place, and Eragon would draw far more attention than the floating flame above him.

Cautiously, he went on until the path began to slope downward, realizing that the creature’s lair dipped slightly below ground level.

Jon had to admit — that dragon had done a lot of work to make that. At the same time, it made sense — it had over a century to carve out its home there.

Then, a stench of sulfur and rot began to hit his nose. He tried to hold his breath, finding it utterly unpleasant. He reached into a small pouch he kept at his waist, already anticipating he would find a nest full of bones and rotting meat left behind by corpses.

Jon continued, holding an herb close to his nose, removing all the foul odors as his breath was gently filtered by the small leaf he carried.

Then the bones began to appear around him — whale bones and those of other animals, as far as Jon could tell. Some were very old and decomposing.

He couldn’t even see the full extent of them as he walked on. This was the dragon’s dining hall, as Jon imagined.

He continued moving through the enormous tunnel.

A reddish light began to appear in the distance, coming from a lava lake far below, deeper into the mountain. As he proceeded, careful not to trip over the ancient carcasses, he noticed something even stranger.

There were even ships in that place, with silver and gold scattered across the ground.

‘With a body that size, it’s entirely possible he carried entire ships from the sea into his nest,’ he couldn’t help but think.

He found about three more ships, mostly burned and destroyed. There were even corpses — or rather, what was left of them — with bones still dressed in clothing, fallen across the floor and over the wood.

Jon ignored the entire area. He finally began to leave it behind, continuing toward the light with caution. A powerful glow was rising from below ahead of him, and he imagined he would find Cannibal in that spot as he approached the edge of the precipice.

Huge rocks covered the entire area, some of them so large they rose in ten-meter peaks. He had to maneuver around some of them and kept going until he saw the glowing chasm. As his gaze was lit by the glow and the heat brushed against his face, he extinguished his own flame.

He expected to find Cannibal there, but all he could see was a massive pool of lava, at least four hundred meters below where Jon stood.

And it was certainly a beautiful sight. In the green vision, he had seen Cannibal sleeping by the lava’s edge — but he wasn’t there, which made Jon wonder where he could be.

And as if in answer to his question, that was when he heard something massive shifting, and his eyes turned to the right, seeing only darkness.

“He’s here,” Jon murmured.

The dragon also seemed to sense the presence of an intruder, even though Jon wasn’t trying to reach into its mind the way he had done in the sky.

And that likely was what had awakened it from sleep, as the sounds of the place began to break with the force of the dragon finally rising from the ground. Jon grew cautious.

He could feel the massive creature lifting itself at that very moment. Then he saw a green glow in the distance, blinking — revealing the dragon’s eyes, which simply turned its head, breathing the air before its gaze locked on where Jon stood.

It had already caught Jon’s scent.

The King of Arctic kept his shield ready in his left hand and his right hand on his sword — which, at that point, looked more like a toothpick than an actual weapon capable of harming a creature of that size.

Then the creature began to walk, moving closer to Jon as its massive paws struck the ground with force, creating small tremors. From afar, it was the largest creature he had ever seen in his life. He wondered how something of that size had never been noticed, even if it only hunted at night, over the span of one hundred and fifty years.

It still didn’t seem to see Jon as it kept moving forward. Each step made the ground shake more as it approached.

Jon was reminded of the terrifying creature standing before him.

It continued until the light from the lava lake below began to illuminate its body. Now, not only did its eyes shine in the dark, but its head started to appear — black as the darkness itself, filled with the traits of a spiked dragon, its eyes full of malice, its mouth half-open, growling in warning with razor-sharp teeth.

Jon didn’t know whether to be terrified or awed by such a creature when he was nothing more than an insect in comparison.

It kept leaning forward, still not seeing Jon, until the reflection from the lava began to glint off his armor. Its eyes started to lock onto the human who stood just nearby.

Still, unmoving, facing it, near the stone pillars.

Its eyes froze on him as the creature simply didn’t seem immediately hostile — it studied him, as if confused, wondering what this being was and what he was doing there.

Jon stood still, hoping to make contact with the creature for the first time. He hoped to connect with it — a bold idea, but it could only work here, this close, where he could form the bond he intended.

As everyone had told him, it was far too risky.

Now he could see they hadn’t been wrong. The creature was immense, its gaze full of malice and lethality beyond anything Jon had ever seen.

This was a powerful weapon of war. And Jon was still willing to risk everything for it.

The creature continued to stare at him, as if still studying.

‘Now!’ Jon kept his gaze locked on it, beginning to release his powers, trying to reach into the creature’s mind.

Immediately, it was offended by the attempt, pulling its head back in rejection.

It began to growl, and the sound echoed like a hot, dangerous breath through the entire cavern. But Jon stood firm, and even before the monster, he kept facing it.

It recognized that it was he who had tried to invade its mind before — seven years earlier.

And that enraged it. It was furious now, while Jon simply kept trying to enter its mind, forging a more powerful connection by being so close to the creature.

Jon was betting everything. Either he would dominate the creature, or it would prepare to kill him. He began to create mental confusion within it, as it started shaking its head from side to side, growling.

And Jon stood his ground — his nose began to bleed beneath his helmet as he tried to push his mind into Cannibal’s.

The sound of its growl echoed through the entire place, resonating across the giant cavern. It seemed to lose balance, stepping backward, making the very cave tremble.

Jon remained focused, trying to seize control of its mind. The creature grew increasingly enraged, now roaring with such force that everything shook.

Jon could see this was becoming dangerous, yet he still held firm for as long as he could — even as the dragon spun its body, lashing its tail into piles of stone, exploding rock dangerously close to Jon.

The creature, now even more furious, took another step back and, still thrashing its head, began to spit green flames from its mouth, hurling them directly at the place where Jon stood.

He saw it and leapt — throwing himself into the stone pillars — while regaining focus on the creature, trying to dominate it again, blood pouring uncontrollably from his nose.

With the dragon experiencing a brief moment of relief as Jon was forced to break off his mental assault to dodge the flames, it was enough for it to shatter the psychic war that had been waged by the human.

It finally stopped moving and turned its gaze directly to the stone piles where the man was hiding.

“ROOOOOAAAARRRR”

Its roar was so intense Jon’s ears rang in pain. The sound echoed through the entire cavern, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it was heard across the entire island.

It had finally broken Jon’s mental control.

He took a deep breath. His initial plan had failed — but the connection between them still lingered.

He quickly drew his sword and raised his shield, watching from beside the stone pillars as the creature locked its gaze onto him once again.

A deadly gaze.

A gaze that wanted to kill him right there.

Jon stood firm, muscles tense.

Without warning, the creature opened its mouth between the pillars and began spitting green fire. The flames shot through the gaps in the rocks, and Jon kept hidden behind them.

The deadly battle against Cannibal, a dragon over a hundred meters long, had begun at that moment.

And his opponent was Jon — just one man, one meter ninety tall — fifty times smaller than that creature.

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