How do you celebrate earning the title of the most decorated season of television in Emmy history? For Game of Thrones, that means revealing the secrets behind one of the show’s best visual effects: the dragons.

Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) may have brought her reptilian children Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion to life through fire onscreen, but offscreen, it takes much more planning, preparation, and skill to realize the three full-size, fire-breathing dragons from the pages of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels.

Pixomondo, an international visual effects company, just released an epic reel (video above) depicting how they created the three dragons for season five, and oh man do they go into detail.

The video, “Mastering the Dragons,” gives a close-up view of all the steps necessary to bring a dragon to life. And the work isn’t just skin-deep — Pixomondo designs layers of muscles and bones underneath the scales to give the creatures the correct movements. You also get to see what it’s like for Clarke to act opposite the “dragons” in scenes … a.k.a. staring at large construction cranes or green-screened poles with markers.

But for all those faint of heart, beware: the video also goes into excruciatingly realistic detail for when two of Dany’s dragons burn a man alive and rip his body apart to eat it. Yes, there are body parts and guts and blood that go flying. Hey, when has Game of Thrones ever gone easy on the gore and violence?

Especially if this potential character return — major spoilers ahead! — turns out to be true:

But what do you think? Sound off in the comments.

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Image Credit: HBO