Special thanks to the folks on pa-atreon for making this possible. Now without further ado let's get into it.

The rest of the journey to Valyria was smooth sailing. Quite literally. No idea what happened, but killing the Kraken seemed to have scared off the rest of the ocean's residents. No. That was stupid. Animals weren't that intelligent, were they? No idea.

All I knew was that after the Kraken, we didn't run into any other sea creatures. We got to Valyria almost a month after we'd set sail from Astapor.

The sight of Valyria itself took our collective breath away. More like it took my breath away. The Unsullied were more relaxed but still had very little ability to show human emotions like awe. It was difficult to know for sure if this Island was Valyria or just one of the satellite settlements. The volcanoes belching continuous smoke trails into the air hinted at the former.

We set down our anchor a few kilometres from the island and organised a scouting party. A contingent of thirty unsullied would be taking three of the boats to check if the Island was safe for landing. I wanted to be on one of the boats but practicality and logic won out in the end.

The scouts set forth and landed safely on the Island. That was when shit hit the fan. We went in to relax and just enjoy ourselves but a loud roar changed those plans. I looked up and felt my heart fall into my stomach. A dragon. A fucking dragon was flying at us. Straight at us. I cursed myself for my foolishness. Of course, Valyria had defences. Of course, a dragon was going to be one of those defences. There was no need for me to tell the crew to get ready. The Kraken had taught us a deadly lesson in that. There were about five ballistae on the deck of my flagship. It was one of the numerous customizations the shipmaster in Bravos had made.

The Unsullied manned the ballistae and fired shots at the dragon as it flew towards us. None of them were even close. The dragon dove down and set one of the ships on fire. Being closer to us made me realize that the dragon was nowhere as large as I'd feared. It was a thin, malnourished thing but it was no less dangerous. The mass of driftwood and bodies where one of my ships once sat was a testament to that. Fuck. The ballistae reloaded and were able to warn the dragon away from setting the next one on fire.

I pushed Greybeard away from the ballista he was manning to take his place. He'd missed his last two shots by a wide margin. I'd probably apologise for that later. If I remembered. I took aim and focused as the dragon dove again.

"Hold. Hold. Hold" I kept muttering to myself to remain focused. I held it all in. The people manning the other ballistae had already fired and missed. I watched the dragon open its mouth to set fire to our ship. I ignored all Greybeards' shouts at me to fire. I held my breath as I finally shot my bolt. It went in. Straight into its mouth and out its neck. An instant kill. I took a breath I didn't know I was holding. A dragon. A fucking dragon. I just killed a fucking dragon.

I watched it fall into the sea as if it was in slow motion. We calmed down in no time from the rush of adrenaline. We started assessing our losses. A whole ship was just gone. Luckily, a good portion of the unsullied on that ship had survived. I watched them swim towards the ships. It calmed my anger somewhat, but I was still infuriated. Greybeard walked up to me and just stood with me as I watched my crew go back to normal.

We waited a few hours before the scouts finally returned. Their report was that the Island itself seemed to only be inhabited by a small army of Stone men. Luckily the scouting party was smart enough to avoid contact. If any of them got Greyscale, they'd be on a one-way trip to the bottom of the ocean. I loved my crew, but the captain was the father to all, not one. The needs of the many and all that crap.

We decided on a plan. We were going to simply massacre the stone men before they found us and decided to ambush us. It was the prudent option. We moved the ships even closer to the Island before we all set off for Valyria. Not all of us though. We left enough people behind to prepare the ships to sail if there was an emergency of some sort.

We dismounted from our boats and went to the Stone men's settlement. All I'd read seemed to suggest that Stone men would be mad but for some reason, the ones here were able to build some sort of primitive society. They weren't sane by any metric, but they weren't as rabid as I'd expected.

The Unsullied marched in formation and I followed behind. It pained me but I wasn't going to be participating in this fight. The risk of catching Greyscale was just too high for my comfort. When we arrived at a point overlooking the settlement, our plan started to come into play.

The Unsullied spread out, encircling the settlement. They made a shield wall and stretched out their spears. Like the rabid animals that they'd become, the stone men rushed at the unsullied. It was a slaughter. Not a single one of the unsullied even got touched. After the bloodbath was over, the unsullied tossed their spears onto the bodies. I had a group of unsullied who'd been given extra clothes to cover every part of their skin and gather the bodies into a pyre. We burned the clothes, the spears, and the bodies. We burned the settlement too.

With that bit of unpleasantness behind us, we made our way to the city itself. Valyria was a towering mass. It was made up of towers strewn across the island. There were a couple hundred of us on the Island, so we divided the searching. There were at least dozens of still intact towers and castles. We split up into groups of 20 to search every one. They had instructions to take every tome, dragon egg, weapon, or armour they found.

I went straight to the castle in the centre. It was the most intact one, and I suspected it to be the general gathering place of the valyrian free lords. They ruled as a council of 40, and that council would have to have somewhere to meet up.

The journey to the castle was not as perilous as I'd expected. The air was filled with smoke, but with wet clothes over our faces, that was no bother. The bridge we passed seemed to be on the verge of collapse but we made it through. Hopefully, we'd also be able to make it back.

The castle's entrance was blocked by a piece of fallen stone. I was done with hiding my gift. The Unsullied had proven their loyalty. I walked up to the stone and picked it up. It looked like it weighed at least a ton, but I didn't even feel the strain. Super soldier for the win. I threw the rock over and we walked inside.

The first thing we met at the entrance into the castle was a large entrance hall, filled with dragonglass statues. Every single one of the statues was of dragons, large dragon statues. The most impressive one was of a dragon mid-flight. It had a small tendril of obsidian keeping it propped up.

We kept moving in and separated as we walked in. Groups of unsullied moved into corners, to different floors to search and find everything here. I moved straight inside. I kept going and ignored the unsullied that kept branching away from me. By the time I got to the middle of the building, I found a room that was one of my goals. It was the library. It lay behind an impressively heavy set of doors.

I walked in and felt the air turn stale. It was almost like the air didn't move here. Everything in the room was perfectly still. It was like time hadn't even passed in the library. I went to one of the shelves and picked up a random scroll. The information in it astounded me. It was a treatise written by one Aerian Baelerys about the value of human sacrifice.

He seemed to be attempting to explain why a human sacrifice was so valuable for magic. Animals were arguably more powerful than humans physically but even one human was worth more than a hundred cows as a sacrifice. It was a very complicated technical piece. His high valyrian was a rambling mess. I became even more thankful for Luwin teaching me the language.

I settled down to read as much as I could. The library wasn't too large, but it had enough material to keep me occupied for months. They were texts on magic though, so reading them wouldn't be a chore. It would even be fun.

I wasn't able to read for thirty minutes before the Unsullied searching the other parts of the castle returned with their reports. Apparently, they were able to find an armoury filled to the brim with Valyrian still weapons. A true treasure trove. They also found a room filled with gold and jewelry. Valuable, but not what I was here for. They kept giving their reports and my impatience finally won out.

"Did anyone find dragon eggs?" I interrupted the unsullied that was going into detail on the Jewellery he found in a vault dedicated to jewels.

"Aye, Captain. They've all turned to stone though" The unsullied in control of these folks, Greyshield spoke out. I didn't care about that though. Daenerys had woke dragons for stone with no idea of what she was doing. With a library like this one, I was going to be doing the same.

"How many?" I asked him with the mother of all smiles on my face.

"Five and ten, my lord." Lovely. Just lovely.

I gave orders to consolidate the things our ships could carry and I settled down to continue reading with a smile that refused to die.

A/N; Thanks for reading. We're already halfway through chapter 12 on the pa-atreon page. Feel free to join me there if you can. Same username as up here. The link's on my profile.