A World of Death || ASOIAF Gamer Fic

A week after the final battle and the courtyard of Dragonstone had been swept clean.

The rubble from the boulders was gone, the broken arrows had been gathered up and scrapped and the blood that had soaked into the stones during the battle had been scrubbed at for most of the night by men with buckets and brushes, and where it would not come out they had thrown sand over it.

In the courtyard of the keep the dead lay in rows.

There were thousands of them, wrapped in sailcloth and laid out in lines that ran from the foot of the great hall's steps to the gatehouse, each one on a bier of planks taken from the wreckage of the ships that still smouldered in the harbour below. Some of the bundles were long and full and plainly held a whole man. Some were shorter than they should have been. Some were so small and so light that the men who had carried them had needed only one arm.

Those were not the worst of it.

The worst of it was the list that the maesters had been compiling through the night, the list of names that had no bundle to go with them. Men who had been on the ships when the dragon came. Men who had gone into the water and not come out. Men who had been turned to ash by the dragonfire, leaving nothing behind for their friends to carry up the causeway. There were more names on that list than there were bundles in the courtyard.

Nearly three times as many.

The survivors stood around the edges of the courtyard in silence.

Soldiers in the colours of a dozen houses stood shoulder to shoulder, the grey of Winterfell beside the gold of Casterly Rock beside the green of Highgarden beside the red and black of the royal household. Many of them were bandaged. Some leaned on spears because they could not stand without help. A few sat on the steps of the towers because they could not stand at all.

Nobody spoke.

Nobody moved.

The only sounds were the wind coming in off the sea and the gulls crying over the wreckage in the harbour and if you listened carefully men weeping quietly for their fallen friends.

The great lords stood on the steps of the great hall. Surrounding the royal family. Prince Duncan stood a step below his father with Prince Aerys stood beside him with Wildfyre at his hip and his face turned toward the sea, not at all interested in what was happening here.

King Aegon the Fifth stood at the centre of the top step.

He had not slept.

That was plain to anyone who looked at him.

The skin beneath his eyes was dark and there was a greyness to his face that had not been there before, he stood with his hands clasped in front of him and he looked out across the rows of the dead for a long time before he spoke.

"Thousands of good men lie before us today," he said.

"Yet even this pales in comparison to the dead in the harbour, or in the sea beyond it. We will never bring them home and will never lay them in the ground beside their fathers. Their wives will stand at the doors of their cottages in the Reach and the Westerlands and the North and the Riverlands and they will wait for a man who will never come home, and when the letter arrives it will tell them only that he died in the service of the realm and that his body could not be recovered."

He paused.

"I know this seems like poor thanks for the sacrifice that has been made here. Yet I also know there is nothing I can write in a letter that will be enough."

He unclasped his hands and lifted them slightly toward the rows of the dead.

"But I will say this... these men did not die for nothing. They did not die for a king's pride or a lord's ambition. They died because an enemy came across the sea with fire and steel, and that enemy meant to take everything from us. Our homes. Our lands. Our children."

"But they failed!!!"

"They failed because these men stood between that enemy and everything they held dear, and they held. They held when the walls were against them. They held when the fire came down from the sky. They held, and because they held, the Blackfyre threat that has hung over this realm for generations has been broken on this island."

A murmur went through the soldiers.

"They will not be forgotten. I swear it before the Seven and before every man here. Every name on the maesters' list will be carved in stone in the Red Keep, and every year on this day there will be a service held in the Great Sept for their memory, for as long as House Targaryen sits the Iron Throne. Their families will want for nothing. Their sons will be fostered. Their daughters will be dowered. That is the least that is owed them and I will pay it."

He was silent for a moment.

"There is one amongst the dead," he said solemnly, "who I must speak of by name."

Rickard Stark's jaw clenched and Brynden Tully looked down at his boots. At the top of the steps, Ser Llewyn Martell closed his eyes.

"Lord Arthur Pendragon of Brightwater Isle."

Aegon let the name sit in the air.

"A week ago, when the lords of this realm sat in council aboard my flagship and argued over how best to take this fortress, it was Lord Arthur who put forward the plan that won it. It was Lord Arthur who climbed the northern wall in the dark with four companions, and it was Lord Arthur who went down into this very courtyard alone, surrounded by the enemy, and held the gate while it was opened. The men who fought here told me afterward that they counted fifty dead at his feet before the cavalry came through. Fifty. Because of what he did in this courtyard, the army crossed the causeway in thirty seconds instead of dying on it by the thousand."

He looked down at the stones.

At the pale patches of sand.

"And when the gate was opened and the keep was taken, it was Lord Arthur who stood before the Blackfyre commander in the throne room of this fortress and ended him, so that more men would go back home instead of dying."

The king drew a breath.

"And when the dragon came."

His voice faltered, just slightly before he cleared his voice.

"When the dragon filled the sky with its fire and the fleet burned beneath it, and men who had never known fear in their lives threw down their weapons and ran, Lord Arthur did not run. He did not hide. He went to the walls and he found a way to strike at it. And when that was not enough, he took hold of the rope that bound it and let it carry him into the sky. He climbed to its back while it flew and fought Maelys Blackfyre, and killed him in single combat."

The courtyard was utterly silent.

"He did all of that," Aegon said quietly, "and then died of his wounds on a beach, alone, with the dragon he had brought down lying beside him."

Somewhere near the gatehouse a man made a sound that was not quite a sob.

"Without Arthur Pendragon, and without the men who lie before you, it is very possible that every one of us would be dead. That the fleet would be ash to the last ship. That this island would still be in enemy hands, and that the dragon would be flying toward King's Landing even now, with nothing left in this realm that could stand in its way."

He looked out across the courtyard at the faces of the living.

"We owe these men a debt that can never be repaid. And yet I mean to spend what years I have left trying."

He lowered his head.

For a long time nobody moved. Then, one by one, starting with the soldiers nearest the steps and spreading outward through the courtyard, the men gathered there lowered their heads as well, until every man on Dragonstone stood with his eyes on the ground and the only sound was the wind.

The septons came forward then and said the words over the dead.

The Father to judge them justly.

The Mother to grant them mercy.

The Warrior to honour their courage.

The Stranger to lead them gently to whatever lay beyond.

It was over within the hour.

The soldiers began to drift away in small groups, some of them lingering beside particular bundles, kneeling, touching the sailcloth with their hands before rising and walking away.

Aegon came down the steps and turned to Lord Luthor Tyrell.

"My lord. I would ask the Reach to provide the ships for the return. Your fleet suffered least of any in the harbour and you have the hulls to spare. I want every man in this courtyard carried home to the lands he came from and delivered to his family with honour. The crown will bear the cost."

Lord Tyrell bowed. "It will be done, Your Grace. I will have the first ships ready by the morning tide."

"Good. And I want a knight of your household to go with each ship. I do not want these men handed over at the docks by some clerk with a ledger who won't care for them."

"Your Grace, that is a great many knights."

"Then send a great many knights."

"Your Grace?" A voice came from behind them.

Aegon turned.

A boy stood at the foot of the steps. Perhaps fifteen, tall for his age and lean, with brown hair cut short and a face that was pale and blotched from crying. He wore a plain grey tunic with the Pendragon sigil stitched on the breast, and at his hip hung a good steel sword in a worn leather scabbard. Behind him, a pace back and filling the space like a small hill, stood a man so large that several of the lords on the steps stared at him before they looked at the boy at all.

"What is this," Luthor Tyrell said sharply. "Boy, you do not address His Grace without leave."

"Who let this child near the king?" one of the lesser lords behind him demanded. "Guards. Get him away from here."

"Seven hells, have some respect, the man is standing over the dead—"

"Enough," Aegon simply said and the lords fell silent.

He looked at the boy for a moment, and something in his face softened slightly.

"Who are you, lad."

The boy opened his mouth but it was Prince Duncan who answered, stepping down beside his father and putting a hand briefly on the boy's shoulder.

"This is Jory, Father. Arthur's squire."

Aegon's eyes moved over the boy again. "Arthur's squire," the king said. "Then you must have a great deal of character, Jory. Lord Arthur was not a man to choose lightly, and he did not suffer fools. If he took you into his service, it was because he saw something in you worth the teaching."

Jory's throat worked. "Thank you, Your Grace."

"You had something you wished to ask me."

"Yes, Your Grace." The boy swallowed hard and his hands were clenched at his sides. "I wanted to know... I wanted to ask..." He stopped. "What will happen to Ser Arthur, Your Grace. I did not see him with the others. I looked. I looked at every one of them, Your Grace, I went down every row, and he is not there, and nobody will tell me where he is."

The king's face frowned and for a moment he did not answer at all. He looked at the boy, and then past him toward the western wall of the courtyard, toward the sea beyond it and the small black island that sat a quarter mile off the shore.

When he looked back at Jory, his eyes were very tired. "Lord Arthur's body lies on the island where he fell," Aegon said. "And that is where it will stay for now..."

"Why." The word came out of Jory before he could stop it. "Why can he not come home. Why can he not go back to Brightwater with the others. His wives are there and he promised them he would—"

His voice cracked and he stopped.

"The dragon," Aegon said gently. "The dragon lies beside him on that beach, Jory, and it will not let us take him. It is wounded and it cannot fly, but it is alive, and it is guarding him. When our men landed there yesterday to recover his body, it would not let them near. It would not let anyone near. The only ones it would even suffer to approach were those of us with the blood of Valyria in our veins, and even then, when my son went close enough to touch him, it would not let him be moved."

Jory looked down at the stones while his shoulders were shaking. Behind him, Lunk reached out one hand and rested it on the top of the boy's head.

"Hear me, Jory," Aegon said. "I will do everything that is in my power to see that Arthur is brought home. I give you my word on that. He will lie at Brightwater, with his family, in the place he built. It may take time. But I will not leave him on that beach forever. You may tell his wives that from me, if you are the one who carries the news."

Jory nodded and wiped his face with the back of his wrist.

"Thank you, Your Grace," he managed.

He turned and walked away across the courtyard. Lunk followed a step behind him, one hand still resting on the boy's shoulder, and the two of them passed through the gatehouse and out of sight.

Aegon watched them go.

Prince Duncan stood beside him and did not speak until the lords had drifted away from the steps and the Kingsguard had fallen back to a respectful distance and the two of them were, for the first time since the battle, as close to alone as a king and his son could ever be.

"The fleet," Duncan said. "The lookouts watched them until they were past the horizon. They did not go back east toward Volantis. They went south."

"The Stepstones."

"There are a hundred places in those islands to hide a fleet and repair it. They lost their commander and their dragon and a good third of their ships, but they did not lose the rest."

"I know," Aegon agreed.

"Maelys is dead. But he had sons. They say the eldest is as large as his father and twice as cruel. They are not going to stop because we killed the old man. If anything, they will want vengeance."

Aegon nodded slowly.

"Then we stay here," he said. "We send ravens to every lord who did not answer the first summons and we tell them that this time there will be no excuses accepted. We rebuild what we can of the fleet from what the Reach and the Westerlands still have in their harbours. And when we are ready, we sail to the Stepstones and we finish it."

"And the dragon."

Aegon was quiet.

"We cannot leave it on that island forever," Duncan pressed. "The men are terrified of it. Half the soldiers on this island will not go near the western wall. And if the Blackfyres come back for it, if they find some way to take it back—"

"I know."

"Then what do we do with it."

Aegon looked west toward the small island. From where they stood they could not see the beach or the dark shape that lay upon it. But they both knew it was there.

"One of us stays," the king said at last. "And we try to do what our ancestors did and bond with it."

"And if we cannot."

Aegon closed his eyes.

"Then we cannot allow the Blackfyres to have it," he said quietly.

He did not say the rest.

He did not need to.

Duncan nodded grimly.

They stood together in silence for a time. Around them the courtyard was emptying. Soldiers were beginning to lift the biers and carry them toward the causeway and the ships that would take them home, four men to a bier, moving slowly and carefully down the steps and through the gatehouse.

Duncan watched them go.

"We dealt the enemy a blow they will not soon recover from," he said. "We took back Dragonstone, killed Maelys the Monstrous and brought down a dragon. The bards will sing about this day for a hundred years." He paused. "And yet I cannot make myself feel that it was worth what it cost."

Aegon said nothing.

"Arthur and I spoke of it. The night before we sailed from Brightwater. We stood on his balcony and looked down at the fleet, and I said it was an impressive sight, but he said it was a grim one. He said that some of the men on those ships had left their homes for the last time and did not know it yet. That there would be families across the realm who would never see their husbands or their sons again." Duncan's jaw clenched tightly.

He looked down at the pale sand on the flagstones.

"He did not know that he would be one of them."

Aegon put his hand on his son's shoulder.

He did not say anything for a moment. "The Stranger comes for all of us in the end, Duncan. For kings and for farmers and for knights and lords. There is no wall high enough to keep him out and no sword sharp enough to turn him away. That is the only promise the gods have ever kept to every man alike."

He tightened his grip.

"The most any of us can do is live well for those who are taken before us. Do the things they would have done had they lived and look after those they left behind." He paused. "Arthur left three wives and six children on that island. They are family to us, Duncan, whatever the law may say about it. Your daughter is one of them. My great-grandchildren are among them. We will take care of them. We will see that they want for nothing, and that his children grow up knowing who their father was and what he did. That is how we repay him."

Duncan nodded slowly as did not trust himself to speak.

Aegon let go of his shoulder and drew his black cloak tighter around himself against the wind coming off the sea.

"Come," the king said. "It has been a very long day, and a longer night before it, and neither of us has slept. We could both use the rest."

They turned and walked up the steps together into the great hall of Dragonstone, and behind them, one by one, the last of the dead were carried out through the gate.

_____________________________________

"RAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!"

The screaming had been going on for the better part of an hour.

Daemon Blackfyre, the eldest son of Maelys the Monstrous, stood on the main deck of the Black Dread with a sword in each hand, blood up to his elbows and the bodies of eleven crewmen scattered around him in various states of completeness.

His silver-gold hair had come loose from its tie and hung around his face in wet ropes and his violet eyes had gone to a place that was beyond rage and into something that did not have a name.

A twelfth man tried to run.

He was a rower, one of the oarsmen from the lower deck who had come up the ladder to see what the noise was about and had immediately understood his mistake. He turned and sprinted for the stern but Daemon crossed the deck nd caught him by the back of the neck and lifted him off his feet and slammed him face-first into the mainmast.

The man's nose and teeth and forehead hit the wood at the same time and Daemon pulled him back and did it again, and again, until the front of the man's skull was a crater and the mast was smeared red.

He let the body drop.

The crew who had not been killed had pressed themselves against the rails and the rigging as far from Daemon as the ship would allow, they stood there with their faces white and their eyes fixed on the blood-soaked giant who had just butchered a dozen of their shipmates because they happened to be standing near him when the news arrived.

Daemon's father was dead.

The dragon was lost.

Blackfyre, the ancestral sword, the blade that had been carried by every Blackfyre since the first Daemon had taken it across the Narrow Sea a century ago, was gone.

Daemon stood in the centre of the deck and breathed.

His chest heaved.

His hands shook.

The swords in his fists dripped red onto the planking beneath his boots and the blood pooled in the gaps between the deck boards.

He turned to the captain, a Tyroshi sellsword named Gorman who had been sailing for the Blackfyres for fifteen years and who was currently pressed against the stern rail with both hands visible and his face the colour of old candle wax.

"The priests," Daemon said. "Drag every man in red on this ship before me. Now."

Gormon swallowed. "My lord—"

"NOW!!!"

Gormon sent two of the surviving crewmen below decks and they returned within minutes with five red priests between them, the men in their crimson robes stumbling and blinking in the grey daylight as they were shoved and hauled up the ladder and onto the blood-slick deck. They were minor priests, acolytes and flame-keepers, men who had been assigned to the fleet by the temple in Volantis to provide spiritual guidance to the soldiers and to maintain the sacred fires that R'hllor demanded aboard every vessel in his service.

Daemon looked at the five of them.

They looked at the deck around them. At the bodies. At the blood and at the swords in Daemon's hands.

The first one opened his mouth to speak and Daemon simply stepped forward and swung the sword and the blade went through the man's neck below the jaw, the head came away from the body and hit the deck with a heavy wet thud and rolled toward the edge while the body stayed standing for a moment before the knees buckled and it folded forward and the stump of the neck pumped blood in spurts across the planking.

The second priest screamed.

Daemon grabbed him by the front of his robe and hauled him close and drove the sword in his left hand up through the man's stomach and out through his back. The priest's scream turned into a wet gurgle and his hands came up and clutched at Daemon's wrists and Daemon twisted the blade and ripped it free sideways and the man's guts spilled out of the wound and hit the deck in a wet pink pile.

The third tried to run wnd made it three steps before Daemon threw one of his swords overhand and the blade went through the man's back between the shoulder blades and punched out through his chest.

The fourth dropped to his knees and started praying and Daemon walked to him and looked down at him for a moment and then stomped on the back of his neck.

The fifth was young.

He was perhaps twenty with the close-cropped hair and he was on his knees in the blood with his hands pressed together in front of his face and his eyes screwed shut and his whole body shaking so badly that the flame pendant at his throat was swinging.

"Please," he whispered. "Please, my lord, I beg you, I am only a keeper of the flame, I have done nothing, I swear to you by the Lord of Light I have done nothing—"

Daemon crouched in front of him.

"The Lord of Light," Daemon repeated. "The Lord of Light promised my father victory. Your high priest stood in our throne room and told us that the flames had spoken and that the time was right and that the Targaryens would break before us. Your god lied."

"The flames are never wrong, my lord. The flames are the breath of R'hllor himself, they cannot deceive, they can only show what is and what will be, and if the interpretation was flawed then the fault lies with the priest who read them, not with the god who—"

Daemon put his hands on both sides of the young man's head and squeezed.

The skull held for a moment and then it did not, and the sound it made when it gave way was nothing that any of the men on that deck would ever be able to forget.

Daemon stood up and wiped his hands on the dead novice's robe.

He turned to face the crew and the officers and the soldiers who were gathered along the rails, all of them watching him.

"The fleet makes for the Stepstones," he said. "We anchor at Bloodstone. Every ship that can still float gets repaired. Every hull that cannot is stripped for timber and iron. I want ravens sent to Volantis, to Myr, to Tyrosh, to every city in Essos that has men under contract to us. The army my father was holding in reserve comes west. All of it. Every sellsword, every slave soldier, every man who can hold a spear. I want them on ships and I want them sailing before the month is out."

He picked up the sword he had thrown and pulled it out of the dead priest's back.

"And when the army arrives and the fleet is ready, I am going to raze Westeros."

The men on the deck exchanged glances.

"But before that I am going to walk into the temple of R'hllor and I am going to drag the high priest out of his sanctum by his bald white head and I am going to have him drawn and quartered in the square in bloodstone. So that every man in that city understands what happens to people who make promises to my family and do not keep them."

A murmur ran through the soldiers on the deck. Some of them shifted their weight uncomfortably. Others looked at the flame pendants they wore at their own throats. A few of the Volantene sellswords, men who had been raised in the shadow of the temple and who still prayed to R'hllor when the nights were dark, exchanged looks that said more than words.

Daemon saw it.

He reached out and grabbed the nearest believer by the throat, a tall Volantene with the flame tattoo on his cheek that marked a man who had been dedicated to the temple as a child, and he lifted him until the man's boots left the deck and held him there at arm's length with one hand while the soldier's legs kicked and his fingers clawed uselessly at the grip.

"Does anyone," Daemon said, turning his head slowly to sweep the deck with those empty violet eyes, "need me to repeat myself."

The Volantene's face was turning purple.

Nobody spoke.

"Good."

...

The Stepstones were a chain of rocky islands scattered across the narrow strait between Westeros and Essos, too small for proper settlement and too numerous to properly chart, and the pirates and sellsails who used them as bases had carved harbours and shelters and crude fortifications into every cove and inlet that offered protection from the open sea.

Bloodstone was the largest.

The Blackfyre fleet anchored in the deep natural harbour on the island's western side within four days of leaving Dragonstone, and the work of repairing the damaged ships began immediately. Daemon drove the crews with a brutality that bordered on the suicidal, working them in shifts that ran from dawn to midnight and flogging any man who slowed.

Three men died in the first week from exhaustion and one from a beating that went further than even Daemon had intended, and the rest learned quickly that the eldest son of Maelys the Monstrous did not share his father's occasional willingness to be patient.

His brothers and sisters arrived within the week.

Aegor came first, the massive third-born with his greatsword and his flat dead eyes, sailing in from a patrol route off the coast of Tyrosh with six warships and four hundred men.

Haegon followed two days later from Myr, bringing eight ships and the report that the Triarchy's support was wavering now that Maelys was dead and the dragon was lost.

The twins, Visenya and Baela, came together from Lys with a dozen light raiders and the news that two of the lesser Blackfyre sons had been killed.

Daemon gathered them in the largest building on Bloodstone, a stone keep that had been built by pirates a century earlier and had changed hands so many times that nobody remembered who had laid the first stone. He told them about their father's death. He told them about Blackfyre being lost. He told them about the dragon, wounded and grounded on the island off Dragonstone, still alive but beyond their reach.

He then told them the plan of destroying Westeros.

But first he told them about the high priest.

He told them he was going to kill him and then he took fifty of his best men and marched them through the small town that had grown up around the harbour on Bloodstone's western shore, past the taverns and the brothels and the warehouses until they reached the far end of the settlement where the temple stood.

It was not a grand temple. It was a modest building of red stone with a domed roof and a pair of bronze doors and a perpetual fire burning in a brazier at the entrance.

Daemon stopped in front of the bronze doors.

His fifty men fanned out behind him in a semicircle with their swords drawn. The people of the town who had been going about their business in the street stopped and stared and then quickly found reasons to be elsewhere.

"Drag every man in red out of this building," Daemon ordered. "Kill any who resist. Bring the high priest to me alive. I want him able to scream when I take him apart."

His men moved toward the doors.

"That will not be necessary." A voice came from inside the temple.

The bronze doors swung open slowly and the firelight from the sacred brazier spilled out across the threshold and turned the dirt of the street a deep flickering orange. The red priests who had been inside the temple filed out in a line, their heads bowed, their hands folded, and they parted to either side of the doorway like a curtain being drawn back.

High Priest Holden stepped through.

He was exactly as he had been in Volantis. The same impossible height. The same smooth white skin. The same wide thin-lipped smile that sat on the lower half of his face and did not move.

He stopped in the doorway and looked at Daemon with those small dark eyes.

"Young Daemon," he said warmly. "You seem troubled. What has happened to upset you so."

Daemon's hands tightened on his swords.

"You know what happened."

"I know what the flames have shown me. They show me a great many things, young Daemon, and not all of them are pleasant to look upon. Tell me in your own words what troubles you, and perhaps I may offer counsel."

"Counsel." Daemon took a step forward. "My father is dead. Maelys Blackfyre, the man you promised a throne and a kingdom and a thousand years of glory, is dead because a Targaryen dog cut him apart. Blackfyre is gone. The sword that has been carried by my family for a century, the sword that is the symbol of our claim and our right is in the hands of our enemies. And the dragon." His voice cracked. "The dragon that you told my father would be the instrument of our victory is grounded and wounded and guarding the corpse of the man who brought it down, and we cannot get anywhere near it because the Targaryen fleet now holds Dragonstone and everything around it."

He took another step.

"All of this happened because you told my father the time was right. You stood in our throne room and you promised him that the Targaryen fleet would be trapped and that the dragon would burn them all. You gave him your assurances and your prophecies and your visions in the flame, and every single one of them was wrong, and my father is dead because he believed you."

Holden's smile did not change.

Daemon's jaw clenched.

"I am going to kill you," Daemon said. "I am going to kill every man in red on this island and then I am going to sail to Volantis and burn your temple to the ground and sow the ashes with salt. I curse you and I curse your god and I curse every flame you have ever lit and every word you have ever spoken. My father trusted you but I will not make the same mistake."

He lunged at a speed that seemed impossible for his size. Daemon was, by any measure, one of the most dangerous swordsmen in the known world, trained since birth by the finest sellsword captains in Essos and hardened in the fighting pits of Volantis, and he closed the distance between himself and the high priest in two explosive strides with both blades rising for the killing stroke.

Holden raised one hand and flame bloomed from the high priest's open palm like a flower opening, a solid column of orange and white flame that erupted outward with a sound like a sail catching a sudden gale and hit Daemon Blackfyre square in the chest.

The eldest son of Maelys the Monstrous went up like a torch.

The flames wrapped around him instantly, crawling up his armour and his arms and his face with a speed and an intensity that seemed unlike any natural fire. His hair burned away in a single flash. His skin blackened and split. He screamed, a high keening sound that did not sound like it could come from a man of his size, and he staggered backward with both swords still in his burning hands, swinging wildly at the air as though the flames were something he could cut.

He fell on the dirt of the street and rolled and thrashed and screamed, and the fire kept burning, and the fifty men behind him stood frozen with their swords drawn and their faces lit by the light of their commander's body.

He stopped moving.

Yet the fire burned on.

Holden's smile widened.

"Is there anyone else," he said pleasantly, "who wishes to stand against the Lord of Light."

Nobody spoke.

Nobody breathed.

The only sounds were the crackling of the fires and the distant noise of the harbour and the cry of gulls over the water.

"Good." Holden stepped forward over the body of Daemon Blackfyre, his crimson robes trailing through the ash, and he walked into the space between the soldiers and the soldiers parted for him the way water parted for a ship's prow, pressing back against the walls of the buildings on either side, and their swords lowered as he passed.

He stopped in the centre of the street.

"Your lord is dead," Holden said, and his voice carried to every ear on the island. "Taken by the fire that gave them their purpose and the fire that has now reclaimed them. That is the way of R'hllor. The Lord of Light gives and the Lord of Light takes, and those who oppose him are consumed, and those who serve him are exalted."

He raised his hands.

Fire bloomed from both palms again, not columns this time but a flowing radiance that poured upward from his fingers like water running in reverse, climbing into the sky in twin pillars of orange and white that rose above the rooftops and above the temple dome and above the masts of the ships in the harbour until they could be seen from every point on the island. The heat of them pressed down on the soldiers in the street and the townsfolk who had gathered at the edges and the red priests who stood in the doorway of the temple, and the firelight turned every face the same shade of orange.

"I am the High Priest of R'hllor," Holden said, and his voice rose with the flames, growing louder without seeming to change in pitch, growing until it filled the street and the harbour and the sky. "I am the voice of the Lord of Light in this world and the instrument of his will. Maelys Blackfyre served that will and when he fell it was not because the Lord of Light abandoned him but because the Lord of Light has chosen a different path, a straighter path, a path that does not require the crude ambitions of violent men to walk it."

The pillars of fire twisted and braided around one another above his head. "The army of the Blackfyres is now the army of R'hllor. The fleet of the Blackfyres is now the fleet of R'hllor. Every soldier, every sailor, every sellsword, every slave who carries a weapon in the name of the black dragon now carries it in the name of the Lord of Light, and the Lord of Light does not lose."

He brought his hands together.

The twin pillars merged into a single column of white fire that shot straight up into the sky and punched through the clouds above the island and kept going, a pillar of light visible for a hundred miles in every direction, a beacon that every ship on the Narrow Sea and every watchman on the coasts of Westeros and Essos would see and wonder at and fear.

"We will go to Westeros," Holden said, and the smile on his face was the widest they had ever seen it, wide enough that it seemed to split the smooth white flesh from ear to ear, wide enough that the small dark eyes above it almost disappeared into the folds of the cheeks. "We will go with fire. We will go with the strength of a hundred thousand men and the power of a god. And we will bathe that kingdom in flame until every false idol has been burned and every false king has been consumed and the only light that remains is the light of R'hllor."

He lowered his hands.

"Now then," he said quietly. "We have a great deal of work to do."

(AN: Judge Holden has killed Daemon and taken control of the blackfyre army. Just what are the strange fire powers he has displayed? Are those a gift from Rhllor? Arthur is also dead. Damn. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)

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