47.The Fire that Burns against the Cold

The Young Queen

The piece of ice flickered almost gold and red in the dying flames of the torches as it swung at her neck so quickly that Shireen’s eyes struggled to follow.

TING!

The sword jerked away from her neck; the keening wail lingered in the air like a dirge as the ground between her and the Night King exploded in frost and stone. She felt the shrapnel bounce off her brigandine, and painful jolts ran through her feet and gloved hands, shielding her face. The Night King had retreated a dozen yards, and Shireen blinked at the rows of feathers and shafts before her, all embedded deep into the ground and stone.

Arrows?

Her ears were still ringing—whether from the terrible sound earlier or the hammering of her heart, she did not know. The air shimmered in front of her. The dire chill that threatened to freeze the world retreated as if scared, giving way to warmth. The dying torchlight flickered back to life, tinged with bright purple, giving hope to the tired Northmen.

Shireen couldn’t help but laugh hysterically.

Jon. Her husband was finally here—they had held out long enough.

But was it enough?

The White Walkers quickly shook off their surprise, and their thin crystalline blades continued striking into steel and hungrily sinking into flesh and bone. The Night King had craned up his icy head, glaring at the sky, not even sparing Shireen a single glance. He raised his sword above his head to intercept the shade falling like a black star through the fluttering snow above.

TING!

The Night King’s feet sank a third into the snowy ground as his sword was struck down by a black blade. No, not black, but dark bronze that seemed to drink in both the light and the darkness. For a short moment, the world paused as the black figure landed on his feet, the white wolf head on his cloak almost shining in the darkness.

“Stark!” someone cried out.

“The King is here!”

“Fight! FIGHT!”

“STARK!”

The already tired warriors fought with renewed vigour, as if their king’s presence alone was enough to grant them strength.

Perhaps it was.

The crushing weight upon her chest lifted at last, and Shireen stumbled back, gasping, away from the carnage. Her limbs trembled beneath her furs, and her desperate, raspy breaths steamed in the air.

The White Walkers converged upon Jon like carrion birds drawn to a corpse, pale swords glimmering with death in the failing light. Shireen opened her mouth to scream—but he moved first.

He became a tempest, a blur of darkness and bronze. The clash of frost and steel rang through the air, drowning all else, and for a moment, Shireen thought the icy fiends would swallow him whole.

Jon held.

The Night King and his Walkers were dangerous—swifter and stronger than any man. Jon was faster still, a blur cloaked in shadow, his black bronze gleaming like molten ink underneath the torchlight. Their pale swords clanged and keened and hissed, but none found purchase on his enchanted plate.

A screech tore through the air as an icy fiend shattered. Then another, and another. Her husband had abandoned blocking, his sword striking with ruthless precision at the gaps of the Walker’s black armour.

With each blow he struck, another of the pale fiends shattered into a spray of blue shards. Jon stepped back, and a black stick appeared in his left hand. From its tip came a deep, white-purple fire, coiling like serpents of flame and smoke, shaped like wolves, like dragons. They leapt from the smoking piece of wood, and the night was torn open with brightness so fierce it scorched Shireen’s eyes.

And then, the sky broke.

A torrent of black fire, veined with blue, descended from the heavens, drowning the ground in a flood of burning sapphire. It devoured the hordes of wights like an angry tide, and where it passed, only ash and flickering fire remained.

Winter descended from above—again larger than before, the beat of his wings like a slow, rhythmic war-drum, and his roar echoing like a thunderclap. He circled above the battlefield, weaving a blazing ring around the Northmen, a wall of flame to guard the last of the living from the dead. Then he wheeled again, facing the Bay, and unleashed another blast of fire. This time, the ice burned—burned, as though wildfire had caught in the sea itself. The water hissed and screamed as clouds of steam rose high, veiling the rest of the battlefield in white mist.

Shireen watched on, half numb with awe. Her husband had been upon the field for no more than moments, and already, the tide had turned.

Within the burning ring, the wights faltered, caught between the torches of the reformed battle lines and the encircling fire. They burned and fell, shrieking in inhuman voices. She could see it in the faces of the Northmen now: hope, courage. Blind devolution, even.

Her eyes were quickly drawn back to Jon.

Shireen gazed at the swirl of fire where her husband had disappeared. It twisted and twitched, roared and seared, as plumes of pale mist and inhuman shrieks echoed amidst the clash of bronze and ice. But little by little, the sound of fighting died, and so did the fire.

Amidst the cracked, steaming ground stood Jon like a spectre, not even a dent on his armour, though his cloak was sliced to shreds. His sword was drawn and ready, pointing towards the cocoon of amethyst flames the size of a bear that spun and pulsed furiously as if trying to choke something.

The Night King.

It was not over yet.

“Did we win, Your Grace?” a clansman rasped. His face was ash-smeared, his cheek torn open.

Scattered survivors stood among the heaps of ash and bones. They had been more than nine thousand strong just hours prior, and now barely hundreds remained. They had all fought to the last—perhaps because there was nowhere to flee.

“It’s not over yet!” Jon’s harsh voice rolled through the ash-strewn shore, and he did not take his eyes from the cocoon. “Away! All of you, get away!“

She obeyed, stumbling backwards.

A shape brushed her side. She turned, dagger raised, but stopped at once.

Ghost.

The direwolf was battered, one eye mangled, the other one burning bright red as he looked at his master. Ghost’s white coat was soaked with gore, the tip of his left ear was missing as if bitten off, and his breath laboured. But he was alive. Tension finally left her body. Shireen nearly wept as she collapsed into the mess of fur, not caring about the grime and the gore, as she buried her hand in his neck, scratching beneath his ear the way he liked

A part of Shireen was so tired she wanted to close her eyes and sleep. But she ground her teeth and held on. The fighting wasn’t over just yet.

Flashes of blue and black filtered through the curtain of flame from the Northwest. Doubtlessly, hordes of wights still surged out of the Gorge; the makeshift wooden walls were under assault, too. But just as the ring of fire protected them from any wights, so did it prevent the Northmen from retreating or aiding the Watchmen.

She looked to the hills, searching for Stormstrider, yet saw nothing but smoke and snow. Yet she knew he lived. She knew it with the same certainty she knew the sky was blue or that the sun rose from the east and set to the west.

It wasn’t long before the cocoon of fire fizzled out, and the Night King announced his presence with a blood-curdling shriek. His black armour somehow looked charred, yet his icy body and sword were pristine and unmarred by soot. His eyes burned blue with hatred and malice.

Then he moved, his figure becoming a blur her eyes struggled to follow.

Jon met him.

Ting!

They all blurred in the dark, and all Shireen could see was a storm of bronze and ice, an eerie blue clashing with bronze so dark it might as well have been black. The rock and bone beneath them sundered and splintered, sharpnels and splinters flying like bolts with each clash.

It was beyond anything mortals could achieve. It was not merely a fight of swords, but magic too. The ground frosted over at one moment, turning slippery, then melted as a wave of heat followed.

This was like a clash of gods.

The terrible keening clangour alone drove men to their knees. Some screamed and fell; others went silent, clutching their ears. Each strike was like the shriek of some sinister creature, lingering upon the air as it layered endlessly with the next blows. The ringing in Shireen’s ears turned unbearable, and she swayed, but held fast, her hands buried in Ghost’s fur.

The air around them continued to shimmer and twist.

Ice and flame danced against each other. Fire and frost continued to clash. It was enthralling; Shireen couldn’t tear her gaze away. Joy and hope coiled in her chest as the icy fiend was pushed back.

Jon had the upper hand. Slowly but surely, the dark shade pushed the icy one towards the shore.

Then, she felt a suffocating presence in the air. It was old, as old as the land itself, as cold as winter, and so malevolent it made Shireen’s blood curdle.

But it wasn’t aimed at her.

Frost bound the ashy ground below, and the air thickened with snow again as the previous cold returned with a vengeance and the flames guttered out.

She nestled closer into Ghost’s silky fur to escape the brunt of the evil chill. Shireen could see the snow above the clashing blurs vaguely coalesce into the enormous, angry face of a woman.

Jon did not falter. Blow by blow, he drove the Night King back, if slower than before.

She saw it, then. The two blurs finally began to slow down. But the Night King was tiring faster. His black armour was whole, but his pale frost underneath was not. A deep cleft ran along his neck, like someone had chopped off a piece of ice, but that did not kill him like the White Walkers.

Another chip appeared. Each strike carved more, faster than the Night King could defend. The fiend gave up defending and desperately lashed out at Jon, but the cold sword bounced off Jon’s armour. Shireen could see it now, see the slow break of him.

Then, with one final roar, Jon struck with all of his might.

The icy neck gave way, and the Night King’s head tumbled to the wet ash below. The rest of his body cracked apart, crumpling into shards of ice.

The angry shriek echoing through the shore felt dim compared to the dying echo of the clash that still choked the surrounding air.

But there was no time to rejoice.

Above, the snow-face twisted in rage, thickening by the heartbeat. It screamed—a wordless, soundless howl—and lunged, plunging down like a wave of frost.

It swallowed the streak of purple flames, freezing it solid and then devouring Jon like one giant beast.

When the wind cleared, all that remained was a statue of ice. Her husband was frozen solid in mid-step, sword lashing out to the sky.

The Queen of the North let out a shuddering breath as desperation took hold of her again.

The cold had returned, far more suffocating than before.

?

The King in the North

As frost covered his flesh and his mind spun, Jon knew he was back at that place. Everything was dim, but he could see far enough.

The air felt different here; magic flowed freer, and time and space twisted as if someone had rewritten the very rules of existence.

He could barely feel Ghost and Winter’s presence at the edge of his mind as if they were a thousand miles away. The chill in the air was so tangible that it almost froze the breath in his throat.

He was back in that dream space where he had fought the many-eyed octopus monster of shadow and rot. But now, he was in a field of overwhelming darkness as far as his eyes could stretch, facing that same ancient thing that had almost killed him when he had tried to Apparate.

No, not a thing, but a she, and not merely a woman either, though she wore the shape of one. She sat upon a throne wrought from ice and shadow, in the heart of a ruin marked by shattered runestones. The runes circled her in broken rings in an arrangement that reminded him of an ancient mage prison.

She was beautiful, in the way a storm at sea is beautiful and majestic, the way a blizzard in the depth of winter is majestic. Her skin was pale as hoarfrost, her hair the blue-white of glacier melt, tumbling like silk about a face too flawless to be mortal. Her eyes burned like cold stars, blue and pitiless. She reminded Jon of the White Walkers, but far more delicate, alive, and far less… wrong.

Not as stiff as the White Walkers or the Night King, but something alive. Something real, but inhuman. And she was powerful; Jon could feel the roiling power in the air, all charged with fury and aimed at him. She looked every inch of how he had imagined the Corpse Queen from old Nan’s tales: beautiful, terrible, and great in equal measure, in a way no human could ever achieve.

She was naked and unabashed in it. With a body that would make any mortal woman jealous, nipples and lips the colour of winter roses… even Jon felt the stirring of lust. He quickly crushed it—there was no warmth in her; not in her skin, not in her gaze, not in her voice when she finally spoke.

“Damn you.” The words came twisted and cracked, a language Jon did not know but understood all the same. “Curse you, mortal. Your kind shall perish, and you shall be the first.“

She rose, though her feet remained bound to the black stone beneath her, etched with runes Jon could not read. Still imprisoned, then. But not powerless.

The air shimmered, heavy with power. Old magic, colder than any winter he had known. It radiated from her in waves, as if the dreamscape bowed to her will.

She began to chant the sound from her lips, much like a dirge sung at a graveside.

Jon leapt aside just as a bolt of darkness lanced toward him, black as pitch and thrumming with hunger. The Corpse Queen lifted her arms, and from the shadowed floor sprang buds of ice—quickly growing, forming into tall, pale shapes. Dozens of them. White Walkers.

They were like the ones Jon had just slain, but… lesser. Hollow. Incomplete, but still infinitely more dangerous than wights.

Such foes would be no challenge if Jon were fresh, but the earlier battle had exhausted him greatly.

Jon drew a breath, his chest tight with exhaustion. He had fought too many battles already. His limbs were leaden, his magic scraped thin. Only Grief felt sure in his hand, the sword singing for more battle.

She had used no chants, no focus, merely raw power forced into a crude shape. Such foolishness would quickly exhaust even the strongest of wizards from his last life, but the Corpse Queen felt like an ocean of magic, cold, vengeful, and unending. Why would she care about minor things like efficiency when her ability to wield magic was inexhaustible?

Jon ignored the small pang of envy and focused on his current dilemma as he dodged another streak of oily darkness that made his skin crawl. At this rate, he could never fight his way through these new Walkers, never reach the Corpse Queen as she tried to bury him in ancient curses.

This was not the waking world, that much he knew now. But it was no less dangerous, like a twisted reflection of reality. A dreamscape of what could have been. Or of what would have been. A mix of past and future. It was his mind that was pulled here, not his body.

A smile spread across his lips.

He focused—and in his hand appeared a wand of elder, its weight familiar, its power untested here. He flicked it toward the nearest White Walker, ‘Confringo!’

A fiery orange streak erupted, and the thing shattered, screaming as a child dashed against stone.

Jon smiled as a year of frustrations drained away in an instant. Magic worked here.

The Corpse Queen hurled curses at him, bolts of dark light that seethed with hatred. Jon ducked and spun, his wand dancing into a zig-zag pattern, “AVADA KEDAVRA!”

Legs locked in ice and stone, she did not even try to avoid. But then, the bright green curse struck her bare breast dead-on.

She didn’t flinch.

The spell light faded, revealing her cold flesh unmarred and no less beautiful than before, and the Corpse Queen, alive and angered even further.

More bolts of darkness and ice hurled his way, forcing him to dodge. He tried conjuring obsidian—nothing came. Transfiguration failed him. He weaved a whip of fire instead, and it cracked through the air, smashing the ice-spawn like a smith’s hammer upon thin glass.

The next streak of darkness, however, landed right before his feet. It churned and moved like a living creature. Jon could feel the hunger, the desire to devour so fervent that it resonated in the darkness and magic itself. It morphed into a goo that twisted and slithered towards Jon like a snake. It kept shifting as it moved; one moment, it looked long and thin like a serpent; the next, it was short and plump like a boar or a rabbit.

It was wrong.

He stepped back, lashing the fiery whip at it, but it bounced off. The blasting curse disappeared into the shadowy goo like a stone thrown in a stormy sea. The darkness only grew in size and sped toward Jon faster. A heavy strike with Grief glanced off, the rebound rattling his whole arm as if he had struck a wall of solid steel. Jon started to retreat, but the White Walkers were trying to encircle him.

The barrage of spells from the Corpse Queen and the advancing White Walkers slowly saw him cornered. She seemed like a vengeful goddess, darkness and ice dancing at the tip of her elegant fingers. The icy dolls multiplied by the heartbeat, joined by creatures made of shadow. More shapeless curses whistled at him, and all of the magic was done effortlessly. It felt like he was fighting a blizzard.

Jon began to falter. He was too young, and his body was too tired from the earlier battle, and his waning magic felt paltry before the Corpse Queen.

He did not surrender, nor did he slow down.

He kept retreating as Grief still danced through the air, cleaving through the closest White Walkers or their shadowy counterparts. But all of them were far less solid, far less dangerous than the churning darkness, crawling quicker and quicker after him. His wand lashed out one spell after another, but the Corpse Queen was faster. She was like a machine gun, casting more and more magic with no respite.

He testily swept his wand out, conjuring a belch of purple fire at the chasing shadow, but it only grew a mouth, devoured the flames, and burped.

“Expecto Patronum!”

An ethereal draconic shape erupted from the tip of his wand, but its presence only slowed the hungry shadow for a heartbeat before dispersing.

Jon’s heart sank. He knew more spells, of course, but his mind and magic were too worn down to attempt them without risk.

The shifting, shadowy monster slithering through the ground finally caught up. A hiss of pain escaped his lips as his legs were crushed—the only thing preventing it from becoming minced meat was his armour. But the pressure alone bruised his flesh and threatened to pulverise his bones.

Grief once again bounced off the formless, shadowy leech.

Jon roared with frustration—he could feel his magic drained through the gaps in his armour. He was now immobilised, too, and the Corpse Queen took the chance to fling two more shadowy leeches at him; Jon caught one with his sword, flinging it away while the second smashed at his chest, knocking the air out of his lungs and toppling him down on the ground.

The breastplate was the thickest part of his armour, and it held up under the pressure, even if breathing became hard. The drain on his magic only increased, but two could play the game of devouring and destruction.

The wand tore through the air in a complex motion.

“O flames of wrath, ancient and wild, crawl forth from the void, devour the world, unleash destruction. Abyssal Inferno!”

Rings of hungry purple flame latched onto the writhing darkness covering his chest and limbs. The world paused for a heartbeat as the flames of the void clashed with the hungering shadows.

The fire won.

The pressure on his chest and leg was gone, and Jon forced his flesh to heal and bones to knit back together just enough to wobble back on his feet.

He was still surrounded by lesser shades and White Walkers. The Corpse Queen gnashed her teeth and sent an icy streak at him, but the flames of the void devoured it. They then expanded in a hungry circle, eager to consume everything, and almost all of Jon’s efforts were in reigning it in—or, more accurately, directing it away from himself.

The Corpse Queen turned serious. She started singing in her eerie language that sounded like ice cracking and the rumbling snow. As she finished, a circle of frost covered the now mammoth-sized fire, trying to lock it in place. The air was filled with the hissing of steam, but the ice kept spreading, creeping in an eager attempt to cover each petal of the hungry void flame. Jon’s mind lurched as he tried to command the flames better, but he was too tired already, so he released control.

At that time, the tug on his mind grew stronger. A tear opened in the darkness above, and Winter squeezed himself through, announcing his presence with a rumbling roar.

He belched a torrent of fire at the Corpse Queen, but she merely ignored it. The blue flames that engulfed her instantly froze and fell off, shattering into a million pieces as she continued chanting. The void flames finally froze, too, and the ice encasing them turned into a small prison.

The Corpse Queen continued hurling spells at Jon and the dragon, but Jon managed to evade most of them while Winter swerved out of the way of most and ate the rest as if they were a tasty snack.

With his dragon here, the tide shifted. The newly-made Walkers melted like snow under Winter’s dragonflame, burning through the shadowy figures.

But victory was still so close yet so far out of reach—the Corpse Queen had merely accessed a fraction of her power, while Jon was nearly exhausted mentally, physically, and magically.

And the Killing Curse was the single most powerful piece of magic—to resist it meant that nothing else would work against the Corpse Queen. Immunity to magic. And if Transfiguration couldn’t happen…

There was one last trump card.

Jon focused his weary mind to the limit, gathering his dwindling magic and twisting his wand with an angry jab.

The ground groaned as one giant glowing fissure ran down the icy throne all the way through the middle of the Corpse Queen as if space itself tried to break apart. Then, the world paused for a heartbeat.

His mind and body almost unravelled under the crushing pressure—his magic was not thick enough to shatter reality properly, and the backwash had come. The dark ground below split into two; the throne and the stone binding her feet broke through the middle, but she was not dead, if sluggish and wheezing in pain.

Jon squeezed the last drop of his magic and then some more as he closed his eyes. Destination, determination, deliberation.

There was no crushing resistance, even if space seemed harder to fold. Jon landed with a spin beside the throne, using his momentum to drive Grief into the Corpse Queen’s breast.

She grew still, her cold blue eyes widening in surprise. A blinding azure light erupted from the place where Grief had pierced her flesh. From there, cracks spread, forming glowing fissures as sinister blue sifted through them.

Jon couldn’t tear his eyes from the Corpse Queen’s face. She was perfect in every sense, down to her delicate nose or the dark blue lips pressed into a scowl that demanded he have a taste. An irresistible temptation. But he was too tired to move—his mind, magic, and body had been stripped bare and some more in the battle.

Her face was no longer twisted with anger, her cold blue eyes full of sorrow as they beheld Jon as if seeing him for the first time.

“…You… look just like him…”

The fissures grew and grew, and the Corpse Queen started crumbling apart like a broken vase. The world around him shattered, and Jon’s mind spun as he fell into the sweet embrace of sleep.