Chapter 23: The Dragon's Dash, The Sept's Scarlet Stage
The flight south was a blur of impossible speed, a desperate race against a fate Torrhen Stark had foreseen with chilling clarity. Astride Morghul, the Obsidian Death, with Robb Stark a grim, wind-lashed figure clinging to Issylra's pearlescent scales beside them, Torrhen pushed his ancient dragons to their limits. The landscape of Westeros became a smeared canvas of green and brown far below, rivers like silver threads, mountains like crumpled parchment. Flamel's enchantments, woven into their saddles and Torrhen's own armor, deflected the worst of the wind shear, while Torrhen himself subtly manipulated air currents, lending their colossal wings an almost supernatural efficiency.
Robb, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs, was caught between terror and a wild, disbelieving exhilaration. The raw power of Issylra beneath him was intoxicating, her movements fluid and immense, her bond with the ancient King beside him a palpable force. He saw Torrhen, a figure of timeless authority, his dark hair streaming, his grey eyes fixed on the southern horizon, a terrifying embodiment of Northern will.
Torrhen's mind was a nexus of focused energy. His greensight was a searing, continuous vision of King's Landing, of Eddard Stark's final hours. He saw his descendant, noble and unbowed, refusing to confess to treason he did not commit, then being betrayed by Yoren of the Night's Watch who had tried to get him to confess for his daughters' sake, a confession that would seal his doom. He saw the crowds gathering before the Great Sept of Baelor, whipped into a frenzy by propagandists. He saw Joffrey Baratheon, the boy-king, preening on his makeshift dais, Queen Cersei's smug satisfaction, Ser Ilyn Payne, the King's Justice, testing the edge of Ice, Eddard's own Valyrian steel greatsword. The execution was not just planned; it was imminent, a spectacle for the masses.
Faster! Torrhen projected to Morghul and Issylra, a command that was less sound and more a surge of desperate will. The dragons responded with thunderous roars, their wingbeats accelerating to a furious, blurring rhythm, consuming leagues with each powerful stroke. The Philosopher's Stone pulsed against Torrhen's chest, feeding him an endless stream of vitality, sharpening his senses, allowing him to maintain the complex magical shields and guidances for their flight while simultaneously monitoring the unfolding tragedy in King's Landing.
Kaelen's cold fury simmered beneath his controlled exterior – the fury of a protector failing, of a carefully laid plan threatened by the cruel caprice of a boy-king. Flamel's ancient wisdom recognized the brutal turning of history's wheel, the inevitability of sacrifice. Torrhen Stark, the Eternal King, felt the bitter taste of a foreknowledge that offered vision but not always salvation for individuals caught in its path. He had gambled, revealing his hand to save Eddard, but the sands of time were running out with horrifying speed.
As the sun climbed towards its zenith, the sprawling mass of King's Landing appeared on the horizon, a smudge of grey and brown against the deep blue of Blackwater Bay. Torrhen's greensight showed him Eddard being forced onto the makeshift platform before the Sept, his head bowed but his dignity intact. Joffrey was speaking, his voice thin and cruel, condemning the "traitor."
"We are close," Torrhen mentally conveyed to Robb, whose face was ashen, his knuckles white where he gripped Issylra's scales. "Hold fast. Trust your dragon. Trust me."
They did not approach like conquering heroes, with banners flying. They came like a storm, cloaked until the last possible moment by illusions of mundane cloud cover Torrhen wove with Flamel's arts, their colossal forms hidden from the ground until they were almost directly overhead.
The plaza before the Great Sept of Baelor was a riot of color and noise, a grotesque festival of impending death. Eddard Stark stood upon the block, his gaze serene, finding his daughter Arya a fleeting moment in the crowd before Yoren grabbed her. Ser Ilyn Payne raised Ice, the Valyrian steel gleaming wickedly in the sunlight.
It was at that precise, horrifying instant, as the executioner's blade began its descent, that Torrhen dispelled his illusions.
One moment, the sky above the Sept was clear. The next, it was torn asunder by three earth-shattering roars as Skane, the Golden Terror, who had outpaced the Northern vanguard with his own furious speed and Torrhen's guidance, arrived almost simultaneously with his siblings from a slightly different vector, completing their terrifying trinity. Three colossal dragons, larger than any nightmare, materialised from the very air, their shadows engulfing the plaza in an unnatural, terrifying darkness.
Pandemonium erupted. The baying mob screamed, a sound of pure, animalistic terror, scrambling, trampling each other in a desperate attempt to flee. Gold Cloaks and Lannister guards stared upwards, their weapons falling from nerveless hands, their faces masks of disbelief. Joffrey shrieked, falling back from his dais. Cersei's smugness dissolved into a mask of horror. Even the stoic Ilyn Payne faltered, his executioner's stroke, already committed, wavering almost imperceptibly.
Almost.
Ice descended.
Torrhen saw it, a microsecond of perfect, horrifying clarity. The blade bit. Eddard Stark's head, a gout of crimson spraying from his severed neck, tumbled from the block.
A soundless roar of pure, elemental fury ripped through Torrhen's ancient soul. It was Kaelen's rage at a target lost, Flamel's despair at a life unjustly taken, and the Stark king's heartbroken wrath at the murder of his kin, his Warden, a good man. The Philosopher's Stone flared against his chest, not with the subtle warmth of life, but with the cold, burning fire of retribution, channeling his fury into an almost unbearable wave of power.
Robb Stark, on Issylra's back, saw his father's execution. A raw, ragged cry of anguish was torn from his throat, a sound that was drowned out by the symphony of draconic fury that Torrhen unleashed.
"NO!" Torrhen's voice, no longer amplified by mere magic but by the incandescent rage of centuries and the god-like power of the Stone, boomed across King's Landing, a sound that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Red Keep. "You have sealed your doom, Lannister filth! You have murdered the blood of Winter!"
Morghul, the Obsidian Death, responded to his master's psychic command. He did not unleash a torrent of flame upon the terrified, scattering crowds – Torrhen's control, even in his fury, was absolute. Instead, Morghul's shadow seemed to deepen, to expand, to solidify. Tendrils of pure, cold darkness, more terrifying than any fire, lashed out from him, not touching the smallfolk, but striking with pinpoint accuracy at the symbols of Lannister and Baratheon power. Stone lions on Lannister banners shattered into dust. The golden stag banners of Baratheon were ripped to shreds by invisible claws of shadow. The dais upon which Joffrey cowered cracked and splintered.
Issylra, Winter's Light, at a command from Robb that was more a heartbroken surge of grief than a conscious order, but which she understood through her bond with Torrhen, unleashed a focused blizzard of razor-sharp ice shards, not into the crowd, but high above, creating a terrifying, glittering vortex of winter's fury that sent shards raining down upon the retreating Lannister guards, forcing them to break ranks and flee in disarray.
Skane, the Golden Terror, his roar a continuous inferno, did not burn the Sept, nor the Red Keep, not yet. Instead, he circled above, a terrifying sun of molten gold, his mere presence a promise of annihilation. He let loose targeted blasts of fire at the battlements of the Red Keep visible from the plaza, melting stone, sending guards screaming, a clear message that no fortress could withstand him.
Torrhen, his face a mask of cold, terrible wrath, guided Morghul lower. The dragon landed with an earth-jarring thud before the bloodstained platform, his colossal obsidian form radiating an aura of ancient menace. With a gentleness that belied his terrifying appearance, Morghul used his massive snout to nudge Eddard Stark's headless body, then his severed head, which lay nearby. Torrhen, dismounting, his ice-steel sword now drawn and glowing faintly with an inner, cold light, personally retrieved his descendant's remains, his Valyrian steel greatsword, Ice, which Ilyn Payne had dropped in terror. The crowd had vanished, leaving only the dead and dying from the stampede, and the utterly petrified remnants of Joffrey's court.
Joffrey, white-faced and trembling, shrieked from behind a barricade of terrified Kingsguard. "Kill them! Kill the monsters! I am your King!"
Torrhen turned his burning gaze upon the boy-king. "You are no king," he stated, his voice resonating with the power of the Stone, each word striking Joffrey with physical force, making him stagger. "You are a witless puppet, a murderer of honorable men. And you, Cersei Lannister," his gaze shifted to the Queen Mother, who was being dragged away by Ser Meryn Trant, her face a mask of terrified hatred, "your crimes are known. Your incestuous bastards will not long pollute that throne."
He did not linger. His purpose here, the rescue, had failed in its primary objective, though the secondary one – to announce his return with undeniable, terrifying force – had been spectacularly achieved. He remounted Morghul, Eddard's body and head carefully secured in a magically shielded repository he had prepared.
"Robb," he projected to his great-grandson, who was slumped on Issylra's back, weeping openly, "your father is avenged, but our war has just begun. We leave this accursed city. Let it stew in its terror."
With a final, coordinated roar of defiance and sorrow, the three dragons of winter launched themselves back into the sky, leaving behind a city in chaos, a new king terrified out of his wits, and a court that had just witnessed the awakening of a power beyond their darkest nightmares. They did not burn King's Landing to the ground – not yet. Torrhen's fury was cold, calculating. He needed the city, or at least its resources, intact for now. But a message had been sent, written in shadow, ice, and the promise of dragonfire.
They flew north, meeting the vanguard of Robb's army, now led by a stunned but resolute Greatjon Umber, who had seen the distant glow and heard the impossible roars from King's Landing. Skane rejoined his siblings, his fiery presence a beacon for the advancing Northmen.
When Torrhen and Robb landed, the young Stark heir slid from Issylra's back, his legs barely supporting him, his face tear-streaked but his eyes now burning with a cold fire that mirrored his ancient ancestor's. The Northern lords gathered, their expressions a mixture of grief for Eddard and a new, almost fanatical devotion to the ancient King who had returned with such terrifying power.
Torrhen laid Eddard Stark's body, and Ice, before his son. "He died as he lived," Torrhen said, his voice heavy. "A man of honor. A true Stark. His legacy will not be forgotten. And his death will be avenged a thousandfold."
He then addressed the assembled lords. "King's Landing has seen our power. They know the North is no longer a distant, pliable vassal. They know true dragons fly again, under the banner of the Direwolf. Lord Tywin Lannister marches from the west. Stannis and Renly Baratheon squabble for their dead brother's crown in the south. The realm is in chaos. This is our opportunity."
"The War of Five Kings?" His lips curled in a semblance of Kaelen's predatory smile. "Let us reduce their number. The Lannisters are first. We will break their armies in the field, sack their golden Casterly Rock, and salt the earth where their arrogance grew. We will secure the Riverlands, forge alliances with those who see the wisdom of siding with true power. And then, we will ensure the North is never threatened again. The Iron Throne? Let it rust. The North will be free, inviolate, a kingdom unto itself, ruled by Starks, guarded by dragons, until the end of days, or until the Long Night falls, whichever comes first."
The Philosopher's Stone pulsed with a vibrant, almost joyful energy, resonating with his master's cold, hard resolve. The grief for Eddard was real, a wound in Torrhen's ancient soul. But it was also fuel. Fuel for the war to come. Fuel for the vengeance the North demanded.
The King Who Knelt was no more. In his place stood Torrhen Stark, the Dragon King of Winter, his patience finally exhausted, his power unleashed. Westeros was about to learn the true meaning of the Stark words: Winter is Coming. And this time, it rode on the wings of ancient, unstoppable dragons.