A true dragon(Silmarillion/House of the dragon/fire and blood): chapter 3: Seafood

It seems even if I may be wrong that you really like this story so kinda as a sorry (doing check up is exhausting non gonna lie) due to not posting as much as I should, here is mostly self indulgent chapter I wrote in two hours. Hope y’all like it.

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The sea was peaceful.

Jacob sat in the small fishing boat, barely more than a dinghy really, his legs crossed, his hands resting loosely on his knees. The little vessel rocked gently with the swells, drifting without purpose or direction. No oars. No sail. No provisions. Just a man and a boat and the endless expanse of grey-green water stretching to the horizon in every direction.

His eyes were closed.

He could feel the sun on his face, warm despite the ocean breeze. Could taste salt on his lips. Could hear the cry of gulls somewhere overhead, their calls distant and lonely. The water lapped against the hull with a rhythmic sound, almost hypnotic, and if anyone had been watching they might have thought him asleep.

They would have been wrong.

Jacob's senses extended outward, following the currents beneath the boat, mapping the temperature gradients in the water, tracking the movements of fish schools far below. This was the gift of the dragon bond, this awareness that went beyond human perception.

And right now, something in those depths was moving.

Something large.

His eyes snapped open.

The water erupted.

A tentacle, massive beyond comprehension, thick as an ancient oak and covered in suckers the size of wagon wheels, burst from the sea barely twenty feet from the boat. Water cascaded from it in waterfalls, and the stench hit Jacob immediately, rot and brine and something else, something primal that spoke of deep places and darker hungers.

The tentacle descended toward him with the weight of a falling tower.

Jacob's body moved before conscious thought could catch up. His legs unfolded, feet finding purchase on the boat's gunwale, and he launched himself upward. His body twisted in mid-air, spine curving, arms extending, and he rolled over the descending tentacle with inches to spare.

The appendage hit the boat.

Wood exploded. Planks shattered into splinters, the mast snapping like a twig, the whole vessel disintegrating into kindling in the space of a heartbeat. Pieces of hull rained down into the churning water, already being dragged under by the currents.

Jacob should have fallen with them.

Should have plunged into the sea, into the waiting embrace of whatever nightmare lurked below.

But beneath his boots, fire bloomed.

Dragon fire. It manifested under his feet like a platform of living flame, orange and gold and white at the core, hot enough that the air above it shimmered and danced. The flames didn't burn him, responded to his will as naturally as his own limbs, and he stood there suspended centimeters above the water's surface, balanced on nothing but heat and will.

The tentacle withdrew, sliding back into the depths with a sound like a heavy rope being dragged across stone. For a moment, the sea was calm again. Quiet.

Then it exploded.

Tentacles erupted from the water in every direction. Not one. Not two. Seven of them, no, eight, ten, more, too many to count, each one as massive as the first. They rose like the columns of some drowned temple being thrust upward by an angry god, water streaming from their surfaces, suckers pulsing with obscene life.

They came at Jacob from every angle.

The closest one swept in low, trying to catch him at the legs. Jacob's knees bent, his body dropping into a crouch, and the tentacle passed over his head close enough that droplets of seawater splashed across his face. Before he'd fully straightened, another came from the right, a horizontal strike aimed at his torso.

His hand touched the fire beneath his feet and pushed. The flames responded, propelling him sideways across the water's surface in a slide that left a trail of steam in his wake. The tentacle missed by a hand's breadth, the wind of its passage tugging at his cloak.

A third tentacle descended from above, a crushing blow meant to drive him down into the water. Jacob looked up, tilted his head slightly as if considering the problem, and then his legs coiled and released. He jumped straight up, the fire beneath his feet exploding outward in a pulse that carried him twenty feet into the air. The tentacle slammed into the space where he'd been, hitting the water with enough force to send up a geyser of spray.

Jacob landed back on his platform of flames, already moving, already anticipating the next attack. Two tentacles came at him simultaneously, one from each side, trying to crush him between them like a nut in a vise. He ran forward, feet barely touching the fire, and at the last instant before the tentacles met, he dropped to his knees and slid beneath the impact point.

The tentacles collided above him with a wet, meaty sound. Mucus and seawater rained down, and Jacob wrinkled his nose at the smell even as he was rolling back to his feet, spinning to face the next threat.

And there were always more threats.

The tentacles moved with terrifying speed despite their size, whipping through the air, churning the water to foam, creating wind strong enough to sting exposed skin. They struck from above and below, from left and right, sometimes working in concert, sometimes attacking independently, and through it all Jacob danced.

Because that's what it was. A dance.

His body flowed from one movement to the next with liquid grace. When a tentacle swept low, he leaped. When one struck high, he dropped. When they came from the sides, he twisted, his torso bending at angles that shouldn't have been possible, scales glinting on his skin where his shirt had torn.

A massive appendage came at him head-on, moving faster than a charging horse. Jacob's hand shot out, palm flat, and he planted it on the approaching surface. His body pivoted, swinging around the tentacle like a gymnast on a high bar, his legs extended, and for a brief moment he was horizontal, suspended by one arm, before his momentum carried him around and over to land back on his platform of fire on the other side.

The tentacle retracted, searching for him, finding nothing but empty air.

Another came from behind, silent, trying to catch him unaware. But Jacob's awareness extended in all directions. He felt the displacement of water, felt the shift in air pressure, and he leaned forward, his weight shifting onto the balls of his feet. His body described a perfect arc, a backflip that carried him up and over the reaching tentacle, his hair brushing its suckered surface as he passed. He landed facing the opposite direction, already moving again, the fire beneath his feet flaring brighter with each step.

The assault continued. Tentacles crashed into the space where he'd been a heartbeat before, again and again, never quite catching him, never quite making contact. Steam rose where they struck near his platform of flames, thick and white and smelling of cooked seafood. The air filled with spray and the roar of disturbed water and the whistle of massive appendages cutting through air.

And through it all, Jacob's expression never changed.

No fear. No strain. His breathing remained even, his movements economical. He looked almost bored, like a man going through a familiar exercise routine, something done a thousand times before and destined to be done a thousand times more.

One tentacle rose directly beneath him, trying to snatch him from below like a frog's tongue catching a fly. Jacob's feet left his fire platform and he twisted in mid-air, his body inverting, his hand reaching down to press against the rising tentacle's surface. He used it as a springboard, pushing off, flipping forward to land meters away on a fresh patch of manifested flame.

The tentacle continued upward, overshoot its target, and crashed back down sending up another plume of spray that caught the light and made temporary rainbows.

Jacob shook water from his hair, his golden eyes tracking the movements of his attackers with that predatory calm that marked him as something other. Something more. His lips quirked into the faintest suggestion of a smile.

"Getting tired?" he asked the sea. "Or are you just warming up?"

The answer came immediately.

Every tentacle, all of them at once, withdrew. They slid back into the water with synchronous precision, disappearing beneath the grey-green surface, and for a moment there was nothing but the sound of waves settling, of disturbed water trying to find its level again.

Jacob stood on his platform of flames, waiting, watching. He could feel it down there, massive beyond reckoning, circling beneath him like a wolf circling prey. His dragon like senses painted him a picture of something vast and ancient, something that had hunted these waters since before men had learned to build boats.

Something that was done playing.

The tentacles erupted again, but this time they didn't attack. They rose in a circle around him, eight, ten, twelve of them, forming a cage of flesh that blocked every direction. Left, right, forward, back, all sealed by walls of suckered muscle.

All except up.

Jacob looked at the ring of tentacles, looked at the narrow column of open sky directly above him, and his smile widened. It showed teeth. Sharp teeth.

"Finally," he murmured.

The fire beneath his feet compressed, grew denser, hotter, the flames shifting from orange to white. Then it exploded.

Jacob rocketed upward like a ballista bolt, propelled by a concentrated blast of dragon fire that turned the water beneath him to steam. He rose fifty feet in a heartbeat, a hundred, the wind screaming past him, his cloak snapping like a banner.

Below, the tentacles converged on the space where he'd been, slamming together with enough force to pulp stone. But he was already gone, already climbing higher, and as he reached the apex of his jump, as gravity began to reclaim him and his ascent slowed, he looked down.

The sea was rising.

No, not rising. Swelling. Bulging upward like something impossibly large was surfacing from the depths, displacing water that had nowhere to go but up. The tentacles withdrew, pulling back toward the center of that rising mass, and Jacob hung suspended at the peak of his arc, watching with fierce satisfaction as the thing revealed itself.

Come on, he thought, his savage smile growing wider.

The kraken broke the surface.

It rose like an island being born, like a mountain dragging itself from the ocean floor. Water cascaded from its body in torrents, in waterfalls that roared louder than any storm. The waves it created spread outward in concentric rings, each one tall enough to capsize a warship.

The creature's mantle was the size of a great hall, a dome of mottled grey-green flesh that pulsed with obscene life. Scars crisscrossed its surface, white against the darker skin, some of them old enough to have healed into thick ridges, others still raw and weeping something that might have been blood or might have been ichor or might have been something for which there was no name.

Its eyes emerged next. Not two. Not eight. But dozens of them, scattered across that vast mantle in a random pattern that hurt to look at, that suggested some mistake in creation, some fundamental wrongness in the universe that allowed such a thing to exist. They were yellow, those eyes. Yellow like pus, like infected wounds, like the belly of something dead and rotting on a beach. And they had no pupils. Just blank, staring surfaces that seemed to drink in light and give nothing back.

The tentacles, now Jacob could see all of them, didn't grow from any central point. They sprouted from random locations across the mantle, twelve of them, no, fifteen, more, new ones still emerging from folds in that diseased flesh. Each was different, some covered in suckers, others lined with hooks like ship's grapples, still others ridged with bone spurs that wept green fluid.

And the smell.

Gods, the smell.

It was death. It was decay. It was everything that had ever rotted in the deep places of the ocean concentrated into a miasma so thick it was almost visible. The smell of drowned sailors left to bloat and burst, of whale carcasses picked clean by scavengers, of things that lived in the dark and fed on worse things still.

But worst of all was the mouth.

As Jacob watched, suspended now at the peak of his arc and beginning to fall back toward that nightmare, the kraken's mantle split. Not along any natural seam, but through the center, the flesh simply tearing itself apart to reveal what lay beneath.

Teeth.

Rows upon rows of them, spiraling inward toward a throat that seemed to go down forever. They weren't uniform, weren't organized into any pattern that suggested intelligent design. They were chaos made physical. Some were flat and wide, crushing teeth meant for breaking shells and bones. Others were needle-sharp, meant for piercing and holding. Still others were serrated like saws, curving backward to ensure that anything caught could never escape.

They were made of yellowed bone, or perhaps calcified cartilage, and many were broken, jagged stumps that spoke of ancient battles. But there were always more, growing in behind the damaged ones, pushing forward in an endless cycle of replacement. The jaw kept opening, wider, wider, until Jacob could see all the way down that spiraling throat, could see pale things writhing in the darkness there, parasites or symbiotes or perhaps just bits of previous meals still trying to crawl free.

The maw yawned beneath him now, easily wide enough to swallow a longship whole. The teeth glistened with slime that dripped in thick ropes, sizzling when it hit the water below. The throat pulsed rhythmically, drawing in massive gulps of air that created a wind of their own, a sucking force that pulled at Jacob's clothes and hair.

The kraken rose to meet him as he fell, its mouth opening wider still, impossibly wide, and Jacob descended into that nightmare of teeth and darkness and ancient hunger.

And he smiled.

"Shouldn't a monster, a predator like you, know?" Jacob said, his voice carrying clearly despite the roar of wind and water. "A free meal, especially when it's appetizing, never presents itself for no reason."

The jaws were beginning to close now, rows of teeth moving inward, the throat pulsing with anticipation. In seconds he would be trapped, crushed, dissolved in whatever acidic hell existed in that creature's gut.

Jacob's smile widened. His eyes, those golden dragon-eyes, reflected the firelight that was already beginning to build in his chest.

He whispered a single word.

"Ancalagon."

The sea exploded.

Not with water this time, but with fire.

A lance of flame, white-hot and impossibly concentrated, tore through the ocean from the east. It punched through wave and water like they were gossamer, turning everything in its path to steam, and it struck the kraken squarely in the center of its exposed mantle.

The creature's scream was like nothing Jacob had ever heard. It wasn't a sound. It was a vibration, a frequency that made his bones ache and his teeth hurt. The kraken convulsed, its tentacles thrashing wildly, its maw snapping shut just inches below Jacob's falling boots.

But the fire didn't stop.

It poured through the creature's body, cooking it from the inside out. The grey-green flesh turned red, then white, then began to char. The eyes burst one by one, spraying thick fluid that sizzled when it met the flames. The tentacles seized up, rigid, as the nerves controlling them were burned away.

And still the fire came.

The water around the kraken began to boil. Not just heat, not just steam, but a true rolling boil that churned and frothed and sent up clouds of vapor that rose hundreds of feet into the air. The smell of cooking seafood filled the air, overpowering even the stench of the creature's natural rot.

Jacob twisted in mid-air, reorienting himself, and with a thought manifested his platform of fire beneath his feet. He stood suspended above the dying kraken, watching as its massive body slowly collapsed, the flesh turning from white to golden-brown, the juices inside boiling and rupturing through cracks in the now-crispy skin.

The creature made one final sound, a death rattle that seemed to come from the depths of the earth itself, and then it went still. Its body settled into the water with a titanic splash, already beginning to break apart, cooked flesh separating from bone, and the smell, gods, the smell of cooked octopus, charred and seasoned by the salt of the sea itself.

Jacob descended slowly, his platform of fire lowering him toward the massive corpse. As he approached, he saw something else emerging from the east.

Ancalagon.

The great dragon rose from the waves like a second dawn, water streaming from his scales, his wings spread wide enough to cast a shadow over the entire battlefield. His golden eyes, each one the size of a house, fixed on the cooked kraken with unmistakable interest.

By the time Jacob's feet touched the still-hot surface of the creature's mantle, Ancalagon was already there, his massive jaws tearing chunks of cooked flesh free, gulping them down with evident satisfaction.

Jacob watched his dragon eat for a moment, then sighed.

"You could have waited for me," he muttered under his breath but there was no real complaint in his voice.

Jacob walked across the kraken's cooked surface, his boots finding purchase on what had been its head, or at least what he thought had been its head, the anatomy of such creatures was difficult to parse even in death. He drew the sword from his belt he had gained from a certain prideful prince, a simple looking thing when you thought about it, good steel, Valyrian steel and cut a chunk of flesh from a part that looked properly cooked, white and flaky and steaming.

He held it up, examining it for a moment, then looked down at the corpse beneath his feet.

"Anyway," Jacob said, his voice carrying the formal cadence of a man giving thanks before a meal. "Thank you for the meal."

Then he bit into it.

The flesh was hot enough to burn, tender, slightly sweet from the creature's natural juices, and seasoned perfectly by the salt water and the fire that had cooked it.

It tasted like victory.

Jacob chewed slowly, savoring it, watching as Ancalagon continued to feast, the great dragon's contentment washing through their bond like warm honey.

Around them, the sea was finally beginning to calm. The waves settling, the steam dissipating, revealing a sky that was still clear and blue and utterly indifferent to the violence that had just played out beneath it.

Somewhere to the north, King's Landing would be in chaos. Viserys would be mourning when he heard of what happened to his brother. The realm would be trying to understand what had happened, how different the eternal game known as the one of thrones will continue forward with this new piece.

But here, now, there was just a man and his dragon and a feast earned through guile and fire.

Jacob took another bite of kraken, feeling the heat of it, the substance of it, and allowed himself a moment of satisfaction.

The Stepstones awaited. There was work to be done, a realm to carve out, a point to be made.

But for now, for this brief moment of peace, he would eat.

The islands could wait.