He watched in awe as the flames ushered upward, licking the dark sky, getting higher and higher as if in a desperate need to reach the moon. Illuminated by the fire, the light distorting his face to a mask of deranged insanity, he observed his work – the true masterpiece of a sophisticated genius, his signature left in every detail, in every brush stroke, in every blob of crimson on the canvas, in every cry for help frozen in the air.
The screams of those burning alive were carried away by the wind, eventually turning the small fire into a gigantic wave of madness. The air was heavy with the smell of burnt flesh, overpowering your senses and choking you with the single deadliest hold on earth. The only thing more easily detected were the pleas for help of those who were scrambling for their last breath while their existence crumbled to ashes. The thick curtain of smoke was slowly, gradually encircling them, their very own circle of hell, their final resting place.
The screams echoed across the Red Keep, creating a cacophony of agony and misery, but Aerys II Targaryen sat on his Iron Throne seemingly unimpressed by the atrocities happening before his eyes. At once he stood up abruptly and turned to his pyromancer. 'Burn them all,' he barked. But before he could give his next command, behind him a sword was unsheathed and a sudden sharp pain lit afire his entire body. The Mad King swayed and then collapsed on the marble floor with a heavy thud, his crown clanking loudly against the cold, hard surface and rolling towards the welcoming warmth of the fire, Jaime Lannister's sword sticking from his back. 'Burn 'em all,' he said through strained laughter, choking on the river of blood already formed in his mouth. 'Burn 'em all,' were the last words he managed to mutter before the force of life left him forever, before death claimed his scathed soul. The words that were the Mad King's legacy.
When the great iron gates of the Red Keep swung open and Ned Stark bursted in the room clad in full battle armour, sweat trickling down his face and mixing with the blood of those he had slain, with a dozen knights following at his heels, he halted at the sight of the Mad King's lifeless body sprawled on the floor in a puddle of blood, wrecked in a fit of great agony. An unfamiliar sense that can only be defined as morbid dread seeped through the cracks in his armour, clasping his rapidly beating heart in its deadly grasp, planting itself in his muscles, paralyzing him, engraving itself on his bones, marking his existence. Unable to breathe, to move, Ned cautiously lifted his gaze upward, to the Iron Throne. His eyes traced the outline of every step, the curve of every crevice, mapped every inch of marble and stone along the way. This tentative dance came to an end when his eyes reached the base of the Iron Throne to find it already occupied.
From the seat of the great Dragon Dynasty, forged from the swords of a thousand foes, at him stared back the green eyes of Jaime Lannister, the usual glint of mischief gone from his gaze, leaving Ned Stark staring at two dark, empty bottomless pits that did not betray any emotion. Instead his grip loosened and the blade, forever stained with the blood of the last dragon king, slipped from his hand. In the palpable, suffocating silence of the Red Keep, just moments ago alive with loud shrieks and desperate pleas, the loud clank of the blade when it hit the crimson marble was deafening. Still unable to process what was happening before him, Ned Stark just stood there, his gaze fixed firmly on Jamie and his white cloak, now tinted with barely a touch of red, once a sign of great honour, but today the proof of his betrayal. The eternal trance might have lingered heavy in the air forever if it wasn't from a low chuckle that barely escaped Jaime's lips. It brought Ned back to the cold, harsh reality.
'Kingslayer,' he said with raw contempt, the loathing in his voice thick and yet foreign in his ears, his eyes burning with fury, the breastplate covering his chest heaving with his labored breathing, his nostrils flaring, betraying blind anger. 'Seize the oathbreaker!'
Amidst his fury, he failed to notice that the laughter didn't quite reach Jaime's eyes before it died in his throat.
He offered no resistance when everyone lounged at him at once.