the dragon waits [kay]

Eros had spent his entire life in Dragonstone and the surrounding kingdom. He knew every town and farm, every forest and plain, every river and lake. Every stone of the castle, his ancestral home, was as familiar to him as his own body; he could walk the passages blindfolded and never find himself lost. The stallion was used to living on the coast, skewering sea monsters to feed the hounds and swimming with dragons without fear of being eaten by one. The great beasts had been all around him - in the history of his House, in his blood, as the castle's architectural motif, ambassadors from the draconic kingdom, his parents' partnered drakes, his own dragoness... His eyes stung with tears at the thought of her. Damn his father, his mother, every unicorn in the kingdom - they could all roast in dragon fire for all he cared. Losing Eos, his constant companion since coming into this miserable plane of existence, felt like having half his heart torn out. Without Eos by his side, Eros was lost.

This place - Chaos, the natives called it? (Eros thought it strange that the land should have one name when it was not one nation, but he said nothing of it, as trying to argue the strangeness of it with them would do nothing.) It had a dragon of its own. He'd never caught sight of the beast himself, and only one of the unicorns he had spoken to so far had. The mare, an elderly broodmare with horns worn to nubs, was kind enough to tell him the story of the dragon's razing of Eoteu. She told him that she had been born in the island nation, whose technological and magical advancements supposedly outshone any other. (His own nationalism made it hard for him to believe this, but he again held his tongue for the sake of saving time.) Sehk, as the people had named him, arose from his tomb and laid waste to Eoteu, either burning or eating alive much of the population. She and her family were fortunate enough to survive the initial attack and flee to the mainland. Few others had been so lucky; the mare had not met any other Eoteu refugees outside of her kin in over a decade. There had been reports of the dead rising from their graves, life breathed into their corpses by Sehk's necromancy. Eros had trouble believing this portion of the tale. None of the dragons he had met in Dragonstone showed even the slightest penchant for magic, let alone an art as dark and complicated as necromancy. He thought it much more likely that the sudden mass grave exodus was caused by some unhinged necromancer, seeking world domination.

The walking dead had been sighted throughout the three nations, from the mountains of Zyran down to the bleak expanse known as Melancholy. Eros wanted to see one of the monsters for himself, so he'd spent his first month in Chaos roaming from one remote location to the next. He had at last come to Botrus, timing his arrival so that he came in the dead of night. His wet nurse had fed him (more or less) the same spooky stories as every other foal, tweaked a bit to fit the various nasty beasties that tromped through the kingdom. While there was no taming effect on his behavior, he'd eagerly soaked up the information they had to teach him. Knowing the fighting style and daily life of the nightmarish creatures roaming his homeland had saved his and Eos' skins on their hunts. In the stories, zombies and the like generally began their routine when the moon came up. Eros wanted to see if he could catch one of these revenants crossing over from Botrus, and if he could kill it. The snowy stallion loved knowing that he had the power to do so. It made him feel much safer.

He stood at the edge of the cliff, waiting. Though definitely crystal clear during the day, the island at which he stared was nothing more than a hulking black blur now. Occasionally the patchy clouds would shift, letting thin shafts of moonlight shine through. From his vantage point what they revealed looked like charred, pockmarked teeth sprouting from an equally blackened jaw. He wondered what all he could find among the ruins. It was virtually impossible for everything to have been burned, and the dragon's presence would likely have warded off any looters. He would have to go and explore it some day, far in the future. Perhaps when Sehk was eventually taken care of; doubtless there was some prophesied hero running  about that would gladly slay him.

A wind shifted the clouds, plunging him into darkness. Without the moonlight he could see only the barest hints of outlines. His eyes began to ache as they struggled to focus. His ears pricked at the sound of hooves coming from somewhere behind him. He whirled around to face whatever it was. He lowered his head, aiming his horns at the approaching equine. "Name yourself." It was a command, one that he expected to be  obeyed. Though they had cast him out, Eros was still very much the Targaryen prince in heart and mind.