FINALLY! It took me forever to finish this. I'm as bad as Martin :headdesk:

So anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by how much people liked my Varys omake, so I decided to try my hand at this again after demand for more omakes and inputs from other characters. I put this off after baurus rapidly finished this loop, but I decided to finish and post this anyway since I had already put so much work into it. Don't know if anyone's really gonna care now that the current loop, and maybe even this arc, has been over for so long. But since it's been a while since the last update, and the thread hasn't been all that active, I decided to go through with this anyway to get some more conversation going.

At any rate, here's a (long) snippet of what I suspect Jaime's had to deal with since he returned to King's Landing and was appointed to Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. And a proper farewell for a character whose death I felt was kinda glossed over. Hope you guys enjoy... maybe.

Omake (The White Cloak):

"How about Ser Raynald Westerling?" Ser Balon Swann asked from the right.

"Hmmm..." Jaime pondered the name for a bit. "He does have quite a bit of potential. But... too young. And immature. He still doesn't see war and fighting for the horror it truly is. We need more weathered men for the position."

"How about... Ser Lyle Crakehall?" posed Ser Arys Oakheart from the left.

"Now there is a man with the mind for this order," Jaime nodded his head. "He has the strength for it too. He could tear down a fully grown pine tree with only three swings of the axe, I heard. Although, I'm not sure if guard duty is really something he'd be willing to commit to. The man enjoys his freedom."

"Then... Ser Brynden Tully?" asked Balon.

"The Blackfish?" asked Arys. "The man's older than my lord father. Has to be past his prime. Wouldn't have the vigor to protect the queen if an attack like Stannis' besieged the capital again."

"Surely you jest," Balon replied, slightly miffed. "Ser Barristan was even older than him, and you'd still be hard pressed to find a more skilled warrior throughout the Seven Kingdoms. Tully would make a worthy contender, though. Did you hear that he and Robb Stark tore through the regiment of sellswords and Narrow Sea houses harassing their forces at the God's Eye?"

"I agree with Balon regarding the Blackfish's capability," Jaime pressed before Arys could retort. "The man may be advancing in years, but he is as shrewd, skilled, and honorable as they come. He has the accolades as well; a lauded veteran of the War of the Ninepenny Kings and Robert's Rebellion. His fame will do well to give the Kingsguard some memetic status. Young blood is always welcome, but with Ser Barristan gone, we need some wisdom and experience from the older generations to draw from."

That put that argument to rest. Jaime returned his gaze to The Book of the Brothers, continuing to think on the implications of appointing the Blackfish to the Kingsguard. He had always held an admiration with the Tully knight and his deeds, a main source of inspiration for him when he was training to become a knight during his childhood years. Brynden was truly a good fit for the depleted order, but it was his honor and emphasis on virtue that posed the biggest drawback. He had been amiable enough during their few interactions when the Tully host linked up with the Royal Guard towards the end of the war, and had showcased his tact and combat skill in the few battles the Rivermen and Northmen were needed for, but if he fell into the company that relentlessly vilified Jaime for killing King Aerys Targaryen...

He wouldn't be the first of the order to call me Kingslayer, Jaime thought darkly, but he would be a lot more deliberate about it. I certainly don't want someone like that under my command.

He half listened to Ser Balon and Ser Arys bounce other suggestions off each other. Jacelyn Bywater (killed during Stannis' assault), Lucas Blackwood (far from skilled enough), Ser Robar Royce (one of Renly's Rainbow Guard, and dead), Beric Dondarrion (already the lord of Blackhaven), one of the many Freys (HA!), and so on and so forth until someone knocked on the door and Jaime bid them enter.

His new squire, a clumsy and unassuming boy named Podrick Payne, peered in and gestured to Ser Jaime. "Forgive me, Lord Commander. The King and Queen have called a small council meeting and your presence is requested."

"Yes of course. We'll join them shortly." The two other whitecloaks followed Podrick out the door, leaving Jaime to stare at the White Book wistfully, still having trouble coming to terms with his new position.

To be the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard... he had dreamed of the white cloak since he was a boy, thinking it would be the greatest testament to his skills and dedication to becoming a great warrior to wear the same armor as living legends like the White Bull, the Sword of the Morning, Barristan the Bold and others, protecting the king and ensuring that the king could govern the realm and its people. That dream was shattered when Aerys Targaryen did everything he could to prove himself a king not worth protecting. The legends he once felt honored to walk amongst also sullied his ideals when they did nothing to stop the vile man from enforcing his will and wiles on the population. The very people he killed the Mad King to protect continued to rub salt into his wounds when they cast him down for doing the very thing they had strove to do for years.

But now, all of that disappointment and bitterness seemed to be slowly ebbing away into the corner of his mind. Things had changed. Jaime now had the power to turn the sullied order into something worth respecting again, and for some reason, he felt a deep and almost incessant obligation to do his duty with utmost devotion and earnestness. To reform the Kingsguard into a force as strong and worthy as the king they sought to protect. To ensure that the king he served, and the knights who would serve under him, would never trail down the paths that he and Aerys had so many years ago.

Awful memories and future prospects swirled in Jaime's head as he made a brisk march from the White Sword Tower to the Small Council Chamber within the main keep. He nodded to Balon and Arys to hold post outside the doors as he stepped inside.

Two of the legates of Joffrey's Royal Guard, Lancel Lannister and Renfred Rykker stood against opposite walls observing the meeting with a laxness that Jaime now knew belied their vigilance. The lords sitting at the table included Grandmaester Pycelle, looking attentive and diligent in a way Jaime rarely saw from the old coot, Varys who was oddly grim and even more observant than usual, Uncle Kevan who seemed perfectly placid and comfortable, Robb Stark near the far end focused with a weight to his posture, and a few others he didn't recognize.

Queen Sansa sat demurely left of her husband, managing to look graceful even with a slight red slash mark on her left cheek and her right arm bandaged and wrapped in a sling, courtesy of the wounds she had taken from her remarkable charge during Stannis' attack. His father Lord Tywin looked as stern and formidable as he had ever seen him to the king's right, casting a critical eye to his work on the table and occasionally at the others in the room. And of course King Joffrey at the far end of the table, seamlessly projecting discipline, authority, and intelligence with his fists held under his chin and his green eyes looking through everyone in the room. He looked dignified, confident, and in tune with his power in a way that neither Robert nor Aerys ever hoped of matching in all their years of sitting in that very seat.

"Lord Commander," Joffrey addressed him. "Thank you for coming. I hope I didn't tear you away from pressing business."

"Not dire, Your Grace," Jaime replied as he sat next to Kevan. "I'm still looking to see who will best fit the vacancies in the Kingsguard as per your request." He had asked Joffrey a couple of days ago if he could relinquish of any of his Guard officers for the White Cloaks, but the King was insistent that his Guardsmen had to remain distinguished from the other branches of military, and that they would not fit well with the subculture of chivalry and honor of knighthood. Jaime was frustrated that so many capable recruits were denied to him, but he understood Joffrey's reasoning. Those Guardsmen had that edge to them that true veterans of battle were cursed with. War was not a sport to them, as knights were brought up to believe it was.

"Let me know when you've assembled a complete list for me to ratify," Joffrey then turned to a large pot-bellied man in green robes with a gold trident sewn on the front. "Lord Manderly, you've been given all of the previous Master of Coin's accounts and ledgers as well as my own documents of all the setbacks the Blackworks is currently facing. Are you certain you are willing to take up this post and all of its tasks? I will not hold it against you if you find the workload overwhelming."

"You need not worry for me, your Grace," the Lord of White Harbor answered in a cheery tone and heavy Northern accent. "I do not claim to be the prodigious financer your dearly departed uncle was, but I assure you I can and will handle the responsibilities set upon me with utmost dedication."

"See to it that you do," Joffrey replied amiably. He then turned to a middle aged Crownlander lord wearing a pin of golden antlers over black and blue armor. "Lord Buckwell, do you accept the position as Master of War? This city is in dire need of a constant military command after my march and Stannis' attack."

"I do accept the responsibility, Your Grace," the Lord of the Antlers bowed lightly. "Though I must confess I do feel rather... auxiliary. I hardly see what invaluable contributions I could bring to the city's arm forces given the brilliance with which you and your Royal Guard commanded the tides of battle during the war."

"You sell yourself short. You were the most distinguished and successful of the Crownland commanders who answered my call, and proven yourself the most loyal. As the Night of the Wolf showed, I cannot always be there to protect the capital from outside threats, and I will not leave the city without adequate command and defenses again. Can I count on you to make up for that shortcoming?"

"You can, Your Grace. On that you have my word."

"While on the subject of armed forces," Joffrey turned to Kevan, "how many of your men can we expect to reinforce the city watch?"

"8,000 Your Grace," Ser Kevan replied. "All of whom are trained, bloodied, and have agreed to take up the posts of the city watch officially. I'm still enlisting more, but that is all I can offer primed and readied at the moment."

"They will suffice," Joffrey nodded gratefully to his great-uncle. "Now that those postings are sufficiently filled, let us turn towards the rest of the realm. Lord Varys, what news from the Vale and Dorne?"

"Prince Doran of Sunspear has yet to respond to requests for men," the Spider replied smoothly. "Nor to your offer of a betrothal between Princess Myrcella and Prince Trystane. Forgive me, Your Grace but I would not count on any cooperation from Dorne in the foreseeable future."

Joffrey grunted in agreement. He'd obviously been expecting as much. "Not what I was hoping for, but understandable given Dorne's... difficult history regarding relations to the crown." The king gave Tywin a pointed look, and received an annoyed scoff in return.

Father was not a man to tolerate criticism for, what passed in his mind at least, necessary and justifiable courses of actions. He was obstinate and undeterred in his ambition, sometimes to the point of defiance and at risk of alienating everyone around him. Jaime couldn't help but give him a subtle glare of disapproval himself. He would stand by his decision to kill the Mad King to his deathbed, but the defilement of Princess Elia and the butchering of her children...

Jaime swallowed something sour as he recalled the mangled corpses Father's men presented to Robert that awful day. He often wondered if Father had anything resembling a conscious left in him in his old age. There seemed to be no low he wouldn't stoop to to protect and bolster his all-important legacy.

"Regarding the Vale," Varys continued, "Lady Arryn remains silent as well, even more so than Dorne it would seem. She has ordered all her lords to limit communication to the other kingdoms to just matters of trade and news. Lords Redfort and Royce however have offered me quiet correspondence."

"And what do they have to say regarding the actions of their Lady Regent?" asked Tywin.

"They are growing worried and displeased with Lysa as of late. Her frantic state of mind since the death of her husband and her old friend Baelish's disappearance has taken an unsavory toll on her judgment. Apparently she has taken to spending all her time delegating rule of the Eyrie to her castellan and servants while mollycoddling her sickly son Robin. A pity what has become of such a tender woman. To lose her loved ones so abruptly."

"That does not excuse her sitting around and ordering all her lords to do nothing while the rest of her family is fighting for their lives," Robb Stark rebuked tersely. "Her good-brother was murdered here in the capital, her nieces and nephew nearly met the same fate, and the houses of her father and sister are at war while she—"

"Robb, hold your peace!" Sansa ordered. "Lysa will answer for cutting the Vale off from the Crown's authority in time, but let us exercise patience and contend with the problems we have in front of us."

Robb deflated and sighed ruefully, acknowledging his sister's authority. "Forgive me Sansa. Forgive me Your Grace. I spoke out of turn and let my frustrations take hold of me."

"It's alright, Lord Stark," Joffrey addressed the Warden of the North. "We all know this has been a trying time for you and your family."

"I'm afraid the North has more trials yet to face," Grandmaester Pycelle croaked, holding out a raven scroll for the Young Wolf to take. "A raven arrived this morning from Castle Black. Dark wings, dark words I warn you."

"Lord Commander Mormont was killed during his Great Ranging north of the wall," Robb sighed after reading the note. "An enormous wildling host is on the march. 100,000 strong according to the Night's Watch reports."

"Impossible," Pycelle bristled. "The wildlings are even more savage, undisciplined, and prone to infighting than the mountain tribes of the Vale. No man could gather such a host from such men."

"The warning of the coming winter is an efficient motivator for Northmen, Grandmaester," Robb replied. "Even more so for wildlings. After such a long summer, this winter will hit long and hard. This army will hit the Wall even harder if I don't return north with my men to help defend it."

"The North is obligated to move and fight wherever the King commands," Tywin reminded his fellow Lord Paramount. "And given the fact that the northern army was almost entirely absent from the war here in the south—"

"I seem to the recall that the men of the Westerlands didn't arrive in time to join their King until after a good portion of the fighting had ended," Joffrey's words cut through the budding tension like a knife, ending an argument Father had pressed for before it even began. "You'd do well to remember that Lord Lannister, as well as the fact that I do not need you to lecture lords of their duty on my behalf."

The air in the room felt colder as the King and his Hand stared each other for a moment. Everyone else in the room looked on in shocked silence as the fearsome Tywin Lannister was told off by a teenage king of two scant years. Father was looking at Joffrey with his famous glare of cold contempt that normally made lords of great houses and hardened knights tremble with fear, but Joffrey challenged him with a look of stern discipline that seamlessly brushed off Tywin's attempt to intimidate.

Jaime was for the umpteenth time stunned by just how powerful and self-sufficient his nephew had become. He had never made an attempt to grow close to any of... Cersei's children as they grew up, but having watched Joffrey all his life, he began to secretly dread the day Joffrey inherited Robert's crown and became king. Sure he'd nod and offer a dry agreement whenever Cersei would boast of how bold, willful, and perfect her golden prince was and how she couldn't wait for Robert to finally drink himself to death so that Joffrey could assume the throne, but in the privacy of his thoughts Jaime would count Joffrey's many flaws and even wonder how many of his shortcomings he shared with the Mad King. Cersei would have insisted all she wanted, but Jaime had little reason to believe that the realm would be any better off with Joffrey as ruler as opposed to Robert, regardless if the succession was peaceful or not.

But Seven Hells did Joffrey change his mind. Seemingly overnight the boy just... matured. Became every bit the warrior, intellectual, and sound moral authority that a king should be, in Jaime's opinion. He often wondered where this drastic change in character came from. Sansa was obviously a good influence on him, with her charisma, intelligence, and unexpected strength, but this had to be because of something within Joffrey, from before he met her. Was all of this in Joffrey all along? If so, why hide it all for so long under a veil of stupidity, cowardice, and cruelty? Where did Joffrey's astounding character come from to begin with? It couldn't have been from Robert, or Cersei, or... anywhere else. So many questions, so few answers.

Joffrey continued to stare back at Tywin until the old man had finally relented and offered the closest thing to a condolence he could make. "Understood, Your Grace,"

Joffrey nodded and returned his gaze to the rest of the council. "Regardless of their location, capability, or influence, an army of wildling invaders will only further damage the realm if they manage to breach the wall, which I should mention has not been properly manned or supplied in years. Something that the crown must rectify." He turned to Robb. "I will grant you leave to head north and aid the Night's Watch, but I ask that you stay here for at least a couple more weeks until we can get the matters of reconstruction and reassignment over and done with. I'm also planning a memorial service for your father and the fellow Northmen who died protecting the city from Stannis. Surely you should be here to honor them before you take their bodies back to Winterfell."

Robb's expression softened at the mention of his fallen brethren. "Of course Your Grace. And gratitude for the consideration you showed to them."

Joffrey nodded and stood up from the table. "I believe this meeting's business is finished. You are all dismissed. Grandmaester, Lord Tywin, you two remain. I have private matters to discuss with the both of you."

Everyone else save those mentioned cleared from the chamber. Tywin mouthed for Jaime to remain outside, prompting to take post outside the chamber and wait for his father and Pycelle to head out some twenty minutes later.

"What more did His Grace discuss with you?" asked Jaime as the fell in step.

"Your sister," Jaime immediately stiffened at the mention of her. "Queen Sansa and Pycelle have confirmed that Tyrion's murder was at her hand, and after hearing from Tommen and Myrcella of her behavior leading up to that night, it's become clear what we must do about her."

"You don't mean to try and convict her, do you?"

Tywin looked his son as if he were a simpleton. "Publicly charge the Queen Mother and sole female heir of House Lannister with murder, treason, and kinslaying? Do you honestly believe I'd allow that to happen? No, of course not. She may have sullied the family name and made a mockery of her son's reign, but she can still carry out her duty while serving out her sentence. Joffrey's commanded for her to be sent back to Casterly Rock, and after a year I will be allowed to arrange another marriage for her."

Jaime always had difficulty keeping his face schooled whenever Father spoke of Cersei's marital status, but after hearing of what she had done to Tyrion, doing so became much easier. "She will not at all appreciate being stripped of her authority here."

"She lost all right to her power when she made such a damning, stupid decision. She can cry, scream, and plead all she wants, but she has utterly failed in her duty to the crown. The least she can do is provide House Lannister with a few respectable heirs while she is still young and fertile and that is precisely what she will do."

Jaime was sorely tempted to make a snide remark on Cersei's marriage prospects suffering a huge downgrade since her youth, but thought better of it seeing what a dour mood Father was in. As if this latest stain on the Lannister name wasn't enough, the fact that Joffrey had risen Jaime to the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, cementing his place in the order beyond dispute and ruining any chance of Tywin making Jaime heir to Casterly Rock only confounded his irritation. Jaime could tell Tywin was incensed by the fact that Joffrey would not be swayed on the matters regarding his two remaining children, and the fact that he wasn't willing to put any effort into refusing the position or suggesting someone else made it worse.

What cruel, yet delightful irony that the wealthiest, most influential man in Westeros could never seem to get the one thing he wants most of all no matter how much he tries.

"I should have been here," Jaime muttered. "I should've stopped her from doing something like this. Her own brother..."

"You were carrying out your charge to serve and protect the king. That Tyrion was too distracted by his whoring and drinking to realize the danger around him is his own fault."

Jaime clenched his fists in anger. Even with him dead and gone, his little brother was still little more than a waste of space in his father's eyes. There really wasn't much of a conscience or sense of sentimentality left in the Old Lion after all.

"Oh don't you start pouting. You are a man, not a simpering child. Fact is both your brother and sister condemned themselves with their actions. You are my only living child and sole progenitor of the Lannister legacy, despite the fact that you are restricted from inheriting all the rights and responsibilities that the position entails. Keep your head clear and attend to your duty with all the tact and vigilance your siblings lacked."

"Of course," Jaime muttered. With that Tywin marched off, and Jaime huffed an exasperated sigh. The mighty Tywin Lannister, the greatest king that never was. Quite the prestigious legacy he was leaving behind.

The casket was stately and well-decorated, rimmed with golden prongs and locks with the Lannister lion sigil engraved on its center. So expensive and well-crafted was it that one could be forgiven for thinking that it was built to house the remains of the Lord Paramount of the Westerlands himself, or perhaps even a King of the Rock of the olden days.

Father had ensured that Tyrion's body would be sent back to Casterly Rock in only the finest wears. Not because Tyrion had done anything to merit such a send off in Father's eyes, gods forbid. For all of Tyrion's supposedly many flaws and disappointments, he was still a lion of House Lannister. Gold had surrounded him when he came into this world, and gold would see him to his final resting place in turn.

Jaime caressed the fine ivory box slowly, the candles he had lit around the sept doing little to stave off the cold, solemn air that chilled him to the bone. His eyes were misty and constantly burning as he knelt before his fallen baby brother. This terrible numbness seemed to permeate his body, as if he was trying to subconsciously deny the horrible truth that he was staring at; that he had lost one of the few people he had been closest to all his life and that he was now essentially alone in this vast, cruel world.

"Hello little brother," he said softly, his voice cracking with emotion. "I'm sorry I couldn't have come sooner, but well... the war and... my other duties kept me from..." He trailed off. It seemed so asinine and apathetic to say that had been too busy to save Tyrion's life, let alone to say a proper farewell.

"So much has happened since I last saw you." Saw you last. "Joffrey has secured his status as the one true king of the realm. He utterly decimated Renly. Sansa protected the capital from Stannis and killed the man personally from what I hear. Those two are a force to be reckoned with. A king and queen the likes that this country has never seen..."

Dammit, what was he doing? Why would a ghost need a catch-up on what he was missing in the world of living?

He had never been good at processing and dealing with death, Jaime realized in hindsight. He cried for weeks after Mother died giving birth to Tyrion, ceasing in his misery only when Father harshly scolded him that Lannister men didn't show such weakness. He nearly lost the contents of his stomach when he witnessed the executions of Brandon and Rickard Stark, reliving the horrific sights and screams in his head for days. And he internalized his murder of the Mad King and the consequences of the act for years, hating the world that had cast him down for it and drawing into himself for so long that the was hardly able to act in a social manner anymore.

"I've become the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard now. Something that I only thought could happen in my wildest dreams and shared with you and you alone. Do... do you remember how we used to fantasize of going on great adventures together? Of forgoing our family name and the baggage that comes with it, of leaving Father and the Rock behind and just doing what our hearts desire? You travelling the world, finding a woman to love you, and creating a vineyard or business to settle down with somewhere warm. Me becoming a legendary knight, known only for my skill and gallantry, or a sellsword who traversed the seas, fighting all manner of warriors across the world?"

"I miss the days that life was that simple for us. When we could hide in the bowels of Casterly Rock and laugh and dream of things we could never be."

A cold gust of wind blew from the entrance of the sept and made the candles flicker.

"I... never told you this, but... when I talked of becoming a great warrior and chasing adventure wherever the wind blew... I always imagined you and Cersei would be right beside me. That we could revel and marvel at the world together. That one day, you two could finally grow to love each other and that we could have a great happy family amongst us three forever. But... I suppose I always knew that that in particular could never become real. Which is why I never told you... there's so many things that I never told you. That I... couldn't..."

He choked on his last thought. He had put up a good fight, but he lost control of his strength and felt tears streaming down like rivers down his face.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so, so sorry, Tyrion. For so many things. For not doing more to protect you from Father's wrath and disappointment, for not being around enough to keep you happy, for what happened with you and poor Tysha, for never being able to truly understand how sad and lonely you were..."

Jaime took a deep breath and cleared his throat. "And most of all, for never being able to see why you hated and feared Cersei so much. I never understood why she hated you. I was never able to change her mind about you. I tried to, truly I did. But I always became so caught up with what I felt for her, and what we did together, despite how wrong it was... and I let my work, and my dreams, and my bitterness and selfishness and everything else distance myself from the world. And I sought comfort in her arms and I let her indulge in her hate and lust and hauteur until she... and you..."

That black, trembling void in his heart that he felt since he first heard the news took hold of him and ripped a barrage of despair filled sobs from within. He leaned on the casket, crying as he hadn't in years as the grief, disbelief, anger, hate, self-loathing, and emptiness built to a fever pitch inside him and spilled out all at once. The world except for the bleak sept ceased to exist as the white cloak poured his aching heart out onto his brother's coffin.

He didn't know how long he stayed there, but when he finally got a hold of himself he knelt back up, wiped his face, and stared forward in silence, unsure of what to do or say to further express his regret to Tyrion's spectre.

A soft patter of footsteps sounded behind and Jaime whirled around. Queen Sansa was standing behind him in a black funereal gown holding a bouquet of flowers in her unbound hand. She looked quite solemn herself, and slightly flushed and guilty for intruding on such an intimate moment.

"Your Grace," Jaime stammered, quickly rising to his feet and bowing appropriately. "Forgive me. I did not know you were here."

"Please, none of that Ser Jaime," she answered. "I'm not here as your queen. I came to pay my respects to your brother, though I can see I am intruding so I'll come back later."

"No, it's alright. You intrude nothing. I just... let myself go a little. You don't have to leave on my account. Come, join me if you wish."

Sansa nodded gratefully and came to his side, kneeling before the casket and placing the flowers before it. She then closed her eyes and whispered her prayers, apologizing to Tyrion for failing to protect him, thanking him for being a loyal servant and good friend, and wishing him peace and acceptance in the afterlife by the Old Gods and the New.

The two sat in companionable silence for a while. Jaime felt an odd sense of comfort at the fact that someone else was here mourning for Tyrion, sharing the pain of his loss. He didn't have much of an opinion of Sansa Stark prior to his departure from King's Landing, but his brother had nothing but praise for her on the few occasions they spoke of her and Joffrey.

"I appreciate you doing this for him, Your Grace," Jaime started speaking again without giving much thought to why. "Forgive me for saying this, but I had thought with what you were forced to endure, with the deaths of your father and so many of your companions, your attentions would be towards mourning them."

Sansa cringed in pain at the mention of her brethren. "They do still weigh heavy on my mind, and I am still grieving them all, but with all the madness that ensued from that night, and the flood of responsibilities shouldered upon me after Tyrion's death, I never got the chance to properly say farewell to him. He was of great importance to me as well."

"I see."

"He spoke of you often, your brother."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Tyrion. He often spoke highly of you, when I asked him of his childhood and those he held dear to him. He always held you in the highest regard. For your skill in battle, your sense of honor and duty, your kind heart. You were a hero and protector to him. You do know how much you meant to him, didn't you?"

Another ache stabbed at his heart and spread throughout his being, but he ruthlessly squashed it down to address his liege. "Yes, I did. Tyrion knew very little love and companionship in his youth. People almost always rejected him because of his condition. Our mother died giving birth to him, our father was constantly away and never held any sort of affection for him, our aunt and uncles were similarly busy with their duties, and our sister... well..."

Sansa nodded in understand. "I can't imagine how lonely it must have been for him. Nor how much it must pain you to know what she did to him." She shifted uncomfortably on his knees, looking supremely guilty all of a sudden and unable to meet his gaze. "I suppose you must hold quite a bit of resentment towards me. Condemning your sister for this and forcing such terrible situation onto you."

Jaime closed his eyes as he recalled his reaction to the news all those weeks ago. Joffrey had summoned him to his tent in the Stormlands, looking pale and heartbroken despite his historic victory and barely able to meet Jaime's gaze when he handed him the letter from Sansa.

He could still remember the whirlwind of emotions that raged within him at Sansa's accusation of Cersei. He had denied it at first, furiously shouting and insisting that it had to be a mistake, even channeling some of Cersei's biased and poisonous diatribe about Sansa that she poured onto him during the nights they were entwined in bed in King's Landing. That Sansa was the one responsible and attempting to undermine Joffrey's authority in his shock, grief, and rage. Such treasonous words against Joffrey's queen and beloved wife should have warranted severe punishment, but Joffrey had taken it in grim understanding and merely had Sandor Clegane and his guard officers restrain him until he calmed down. He refused to see his King for over a week afterwards, unleashing his pain upon the battlefield as the wretched sods still loyal to Renly and backing Stannis continued to harass Joffrey's army.

Once he had vented, Jaime began to rationalize, and came to the awful realization that it had to be true. He had seen with his own eyes how much trust and respect Tyrion had gained and reciprocated to Joffrey and Sansa, and heard from his own mouth how great it was to work with them and what great hopes he had for the couple during their reign. The evidence Sansa had compiled was also too damning to ignore. And beyond all that, he knew Cersei.

He had always denied it, tried to insist to himself that the uglier parts of her personality and nature didn't outshine the beauty. That for all she could hate, that for however conceited and fickle she could be, she had her restraint. That for all she seemed to project all her problems on Tyrion, that for all the times she vocally wished he was never born and claimed he brought shame and misery on their family, she couldn't truly be capable of something like this. He was always beholden to her. She took advantage of that. And now, his brother was buried here, and his sister was so far removed from his heart, she was practically dead to him as well.

"It was... difficult to believe," Jaime admitted after a long, dreadful silence. "I... said things that I should not have. I held you in great doubt. But now, her guilt is clear to me. I... I think I always knew and feared somewhere in me that she was capable of something like this. He was never fooled though. If only I were as wise as he was. I could have protected him."

"Perhaps," she replied. "And perhaps if I had been more cautious, I could have averted all of this. We never know until it's too late, it seems."

Jaime nodded solemnly, watching as Sansa gently placed her good hand on the casket, a lone tear streaking down her face. Jaime thought back to when he first saw Cersei again upon his return to the capital. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, even clothed in a dirty rag for a dress with disheveled hair and a manic look in her poison green eyes. And yet that beauty that always took his breath away and weakened his reason and resolve barely registered when he had looked at her then.

As soon as she laid her eyes on him in her tower cell, she leapt to him, smothering kisses on him and whispering of how delighted she was that he had come to save her. Cersei had wasted no time in slandering Sansa, calling her a corrupt, conniving, witless, poisonous whore who was out to destroy the Lannister legacy and place the Starks as the tyrannical rulers of Westeros, and how it was up to Jaime to kill Sansa and her family, return Cersei to her power, and help her ween Joffrey off of Sansa's manipulation and set him straight and right again. So absorbed was she in her tirade that she was completely oblivious to Jaime's cold and unresponsive glare, and made her shocked and horrified when Jaime made it very clear he knew she was guilty.

The resulting argument had to have been heard by the half of the Red Keep. Cersei virulently cursed out him, Tyrion, Sansa, House Stark, Father, and all that she felt had conspired against her, all Jaime's yelling and damning statements of her hatred for Tyrion, lust for power, and bitterness over her 17 years of marriage of Robert getting to her rebutted by insults of him being weak-willed, easily manipulated, cowardly, vain, and not fit to be Father's heir. It hurt, but he had felt as though he had opened his eyes and truly seen his sister for the first time. All the subtle japes from Tyrion, the whispers of contempt of the smallfolk and other residents of the Red Keep, even the loud and frequent insults from Robert all seemed to make sense to him now. Jaime could feel nothing but shame at the fact that so many people had clued him in to how Cersei was not a redeemable person, and that it took so many of their deaths for him to finally understand.

That guilt was only compounded when Sansa asked him, "I do not wish to probe, but, did Cersei always harbor such resentment towards Tyrion? The way he spoke of her, there seemed to be not a trace of sibling fidelity between the two."

Jaime nodded glumly as flashes of some of the worst moments of Tyrion's life flashed before his eyes. "Yes. My sister always made it very clear that she had not a shred of love for him in her heart. My father was of a similar mind, and also inflicted on him a great deal of pain in his life." He then proceeded to briefly explain some of the worst things the two had done to the dwarf, from Cersei's abuse of him as a babe in front of the Martells of Dorne, their bias and stocked punishment towards them for any of his perceived wrongdoings, even the rape and defilement of Tysha, which nearly broke him in talking about again.

Sansa took it all in as gracefully as she could, but even she couldn't help the shocked looked of horror and disbelief on her face as she realized just how miserable her former friend truly was. Jaime didn't know why he was sharing so much about his brother so freely, but he realized that some of the pain he now felt was ebbing away as he shared it with someone else. Beyond just trying to deal with his guilt, he realized that now more than ever, it was important that someone else understand why Tyrion was such an astounding person in his own right, and why he needed someone to understand the pain he carried and what shaped him as a person.

Other than Joffrey, whose affinity to Tyrion after years of discrimination and contempt was a surprise to everyone, Sansa was perhaps the only person to truly look at Tyrion and see him for the brilliant mind, charming wit, and tender soul he truly was. It brought comfort and strength to Jaime knowing that this knowledge would help Sansa better understand him, and appreciate what he had brought to the table during his life.

"I think I understand," Sansa replied after Jaime finally finished. "I also understand why he held you in such high regard. You truly are a great brother to him, even now with him gone."

"Not that great, I'm afraid," he muttered looking down.

"You mustn't blame yourself for his fate, or what you failed to do for him. You were there for him in every way you could be, in every way a brother should. I wish I could connect with any of my siblings in such a way. I've never been truly close to any of them."

"Truly? I find that hard to believe. Robb deeply loves and respects you, and sees you as an equal. Jon would give his life to protect you without hesitation. And the little scamps Arya and Brandon seem to worship your strength and virtue."

Sansa chuckled lowly. "Regarding the last two, that's a recent change in opinion. And even so, I wasn't always so... worldly I suppose."

Jaime nodded and the two slipped back into comfortable silence again. Amazingly, he felt better having opened up to his niece-by-law. The festering wound had been balmed somewhat by her presence and sympathy. The girl had an ability to listen and relate to people he realized. To help them feel comfortable and honest with themselves. There was a gentleness and subtle wisdom to her strength and courage, an understanding of the pain of living and a drive to overcome it and help others do the same. No wonder Joffrey was so enamored with and loyal to her. No wonder everyone praised what a remarkable young woman she was. She was certainly a better queen than Cersei, he could admit to himself now.

The conversation died down after that, the two traded sparse insights and tales of their families before Sansa decided to end her respects and retire for the night. Before she could leave, Jaime called to her to say one last thing.

"May I be frank, Your Grace?" asked Jaime.

"But of course Ser, what is it?" the queen replied.

"I must confess this. I never had a very high opinion of your family. Your father and I had many bitter disagreements, and I let his perceived obsession with honor and pacificity color my judgment of him and you in turn. I had little to no faith in your capability as a prospective queen."

She didn't visibly react to his words, just stared at him with a blank expression patiently waiting for him to get ot his point. Jaime didn't know whether to feel unnerved or relieved.

"However, for all my issues with him, I won't deny that your father was a good man. A just and honest man, of the sort the realm rarely sees and direly needs more of. And he raised great children. In you and your brothers. I served under three kings over the course of my life, and the first two, Aerys and Robert, were colossal failures. One a murderous madman, the other a lazy, sloven drunk. I had all but abandoned the belief that there were such things as good kings in our time. You and Joffrey proved me wrong."

Jaime stood straight and held his head high to look proud and sincere as he looked at her. "You are every bit the queen that Westeros needs, more so than my sister ever was or poor Queen Rhaella ever had the chance to be. You have already handled the precarious situation regarding your coronation superbly well, and I know you and Joffrey will continue to rule this country well in the years to come. I wish to see you two succeed and lead this country to a brighter future, and I swear on my honor that I will protect the both of you and earn your trust. I imagine that you will probably take the words from the Kingslayer with a hefty grain of salt, but for all that my family and I have done, I wish to atone for through my service to you."

Sansa remained silent and her expression unreadable for an awfully long moment, before she nodded her head and offered a slight grin. "Thank you for your kind words, Ser Jaime. And let me make something clear in return. Do not think that I will hold you under the same scrutiny and scorn that Robert, my father, and so many others did. Whatever you've done in your past, as far as I am concerned, will remain in your past. So long as you stand by your words and carry out and your duty with integrity and assiduity, I see no reason why you can't restore honor to your name."

Jaime bowed, slightly stunned but greatly heartened by her words. She believed in him. Saw him for more than just a duplicitous oathbreaker. Trusted him even. For little other reason than for being her husband's uncle and carrying out his duty of keeping him safe on the battlefield. Did the queen's compassion know no bounds?

She started to walk back out of the sept before she turned back to him one last time. "Ser Jaime. You are the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, a high-ranking servant and advisor to the king and queen. And to me, that should not mean that you should delegate your duty to only being a glorified bodyguard. You have your own wisdom and experiences to share, and your own idea of what a good monarch should be. Do not keep that wisdom to yourself, especially if one of us should stray from the praise you've lauded on to us. If you ever see that Joffrey and I are doing something you do not agree with, or if we are failing in our duty to the people, come and talk to us. Be our council."

"You'd have me make my own judgment to see to it that you and Joffrey remain good rulers?" Jaime asked. "Taking such action is what lead to me losing favor with King Aerys, and subsequently gaining my infamous moniker, in the first place."

Sansa smirked slightly and turned back towards the door. "It should not be solely the responsibility of a king, or a queen, to ensure the prosperity or protection of the realm and its people." With that she walked out.

Jaime stayed for a while longer, pondering the queen's words. She wished for him to keep her and Joffrey steadfast and good? Sansa Stark truly was a fascinating woman.

He'd often wondered what it would feel like to serve and fight for someone he believed in. What it would feel like to pledge his life to someone worthy of loyalty after years of disappointment and regret. Yet as he stood there, he felt a soothing warmth in his heart at the idea that someone still believed him to be a man of honor, and that inner, primal obligation to carry out his duty to the best of his ability burned within him, stronger than ever.

Perhaps this is what it feels like, he thought to himself.

He looked to his white cloak, folded and placed by the spot where he was kneeling before Tyrion's casket. He picked it up and held it, remembering all he had done and neglected to do in the years since he first put it on.

I have a second chance at honor and good service. I will not waste it this time.

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SkorpionWinz

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Oct 13, 2018

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Chapter 53: Nobody.

"She must have overslept," Mother said with a little frown, looking at the closed door by the other side of the dining room.

"Well, she should hurry if she wants breakfast at all," Father mused as he gazed at the window, luxuriating in the late morning sunlight streaming through it.

Arya suppressed a smirk, but Bran could read her mind all too well as he chuckled.

"What's so funny, Bran?" Robb asked him with a knowing smirk.

"Arya," he said innocently as he aimed at her with a fork.

Arya showed him her tongue as Mother's frown turned in her direction. "Arya," she started disapprovingly, "You shouldn't take joy in your sister's misfortunes," she sighed, and it seemed she was scolding her for something else beyond that little smirk.

"I'm sorry she'll get down for breakfast with bad hair," Arya relented, but Mother seemed far from satisfied as she shook her head.

"Listen to you mother, Arya," said Father after she gave him a pleading looking, before hiding his half smile with a slice of bread. He munched on the scrambled eggs as Mother looked at him with another sight.

Jon was -as always- seated on the farthest side of the table, as far away from Mother as he could. It wasn't far enough for him to share a private snort with Robb however.

"Any news about the deserter?" Robb changed the topic, bored with the familiar routine.

"No word on that yet," Father said after a moment.

"Ser Rodrik says they often die before making it past Last Hearth," Bran piped in.

Mother looked about to intervene, when Father silenced her with a look. Arya daydreamed about having that power, if only for a single day…

"It's true. Deserters of the Night's Watch are seldom well received amongst anyone, high and low…" he trailed off, nodding slightly. "If they find him, we'll have to carry out our duty," he said as he turned to Bran.

"He's too young, Ned," Mother tried before Bran interrupted her.

"I'm not! I'll be good, Father!" he said boldly, straightening his back. Arya couldn't help but huff as she looked at Father as well.

"I can too!" she said, but she realized that had been a bridge too far as Mother's frown turned into a glower.

"Absolutely not!" she sentenced as Bran howled in outrage and smacked her in the arm.

"You had to ruin it!" he raged, and Mother was about to stand up and exact retribution when the door opened and Sansa walked into the dining room. Arya felt a sort of vindictive satisfaction as she saw her sister's hair. She clearly hadn't taken even a second to work on it; something Arya knew would bother her for the rest of the day.

"Someone had trouble getting out of bed today," Father called out.

Sansa didn't seem to hear him, walking almost blindly to the table as she massaged the right side of her face. Arya smirking again as she prepared her fresh quiver for the day. Sansa hated being teased about her hair, especially when it was true!

Sansa sat beside her, blinking slowly as she looked at her plate. She looked almost haggard, dazed as she rubbed her eyes.

"Forgot your comb?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, her tone perfectly innocent and leaving no way for Mother to scold her.

"Hey," Sansa whispered as she saw her, ignoring the words as she blinked once more. "Hey," she whispered again, hugged her intensely. Arya was kind of stunned, her protests lingering in her mouth as her sister squeezed tightly.

What is going on?! She thought in a daze, wondering if she should pull Sansa's hair to make her go away.

She started to struggle when she realized this would be the perfect opportunity for her sister to smear an itchy make up or some other terrible substance all over her head… Sansa let her go almost immediately though, strangely reluctant. Arya was relieved and somewhat befuddled when she found no trace of a revenge prank on her hair or clothes... not that Sansa was particularly fond of them, but last night's little prank on her sister's room had left Arya a bit weary; on the lookout for possible retaliation no matter how unlikely.

Her sister seemed to be really seeing her surroundings for the first time, her face shifting through a dozen emotions in half as many seconds before settling in an oddly polite, neutral one. "Good morning Jon," she said as she turned to him, smiling almost apologetically as she reached out and squeezed his shoulder, a sort of acknowledgement in her gaze. Her half-brother –who had been smiling at the unusual behavior up till now- seemed extremely uncomfortable, smiling woodenly at Sansa as she fumbled for a second.

"I'm sorry, it's just… I had a nightmare," she said by way of explanation as most of the table looked at her in mild shock.

"Must have been a bad one," Mother said in confused sympathy, Robb trailing away from the conversation and gazing at Jon in disbelief. He shrugged back awkwardly as Sansa turned to her left, giving Bran a tight hug as she tickled him.

"Hey little knight," she greeted him warmly, messing up his hair. There was something odd in her voice, it sounded vaguely choked.

"Hey!" grumbled Bran, and Sansa chuckled as he struggled. She called out to Robb and Mother as Father stood up, placing his napkin on the table before walking around the table. His breakfast was done and a long day waited for the Lord of Winterfell.

"Glad you managed to get up on your own; it would have been the first one in years," he said as he passed her by, patting her shoulder. He was startled when Sansa stood up though, hugging him fiercely.

"Father," she said with a tight smile. Father seemed almost as befuddled as Arya herself as he rubbed Sansa's back, looking at Mother as if demanding an explanation.

"Must have been a terrible nightmare," he said awkwardly. Sansa was trawling her arms through Father's back, as if to make sure he was real. She was breathing deeply, her face buried in Father's shoulder as if she were five years old again. With a start, Arya realized Sansa was sobbing.

They were few and far between, but the muffled sound was unmistakable before she let him go, smiling apologetically and cleaning a few stray tears with her sleeve.

"Sansa, what happened-"

"It's just- I had a really bad nightmare…" she said as she swallowed another sob. "I'm glad you're okay," she said meekly before returning to her seat, taking a deep breath before looking at the table. "I'm glad you're all here," she said after swallowing one last sob and grabbing one of the freshly baked loafs on the bowl. She chomped it down quickly, ignoring the confused looks all around.

-: PD :-

Spoiler: Music

Joffrey cleared the last of the underbrush, slipping into the familiar clearing around Winterfell's heart tree. Sansa was leaning on it, gazing at its blood red eyes as Joffrey quickly walked towards her.

"Left me a little concerned when you didn't show up in the courtyard," he said as he embraced her from behind.

Gods I missed her, he thought as he breathed in her scent. Sansa's mind seemed far away though, grabbing one of Joffrey's arms and placing it around her belly as she kept staring at the Heart Tree.

"You alright? None of the wounds aching or hurting?" he asked her, concerned as Sansa kept looking at the Heart Tree.

"No, not really," she said after a moment.

"You don't sound convinced," said Joffrey, smiling lightly as he saw Lady sitting by her wife's side. The little pup seemed oddly formal, sitting back and gazing at Joffrey for a moment before yawning.

Sansa sighed, keeping a grip on Joffrey's hand as they sat on one of the white roots. "I felt so powerless…" she began, trying to give words to the feeling which had been gestating inside her during the past month.

"We'll take her seriously this time," Joffrey told her earnestly, "I've already got a few preliminary plans for a repeating ballista, as well as a variation on the mangonels used by the Dawn Fort."

Sansa smiled as Joffrey squeezed her hand, gesticulating as he kept explaining. "We'll burn down a few warehouses, but when I get the firepowder right we can set the ground for when the bitch returns… or rather, the skies," he said.

"Oh?" Sansa asked, humoring him.

"A trick I learned back in the Dawn Fort. Paint the sky red with incendiary and shrapnel charges; we could take out Daenerys pretty early in the battle if we time the first volley just right. With her gone the dragons should be a lot more stupid, and we can bait them into prepared killing grounds after-"

"We could also just send a killer after her, a competent one who's not in Varys' pocket," she pointed out.

Joffrey stopped mid explanation, hand in the air as he mimed the great explosions of the concussive charges. "Right, we could do that too," he said after a pregnant silence.

Sansa smiled wistfully before shaking her head, looking at the freshly fallen summer snow. "I'm not just talking about the dragons," she said finally. "Them, the shadow, Lyra's death, the war that is to come… the Others…" she trailed off before her voice her gaze hardened, "Seeing my own father getting stabbed to death by a shadow right in front of my eyes and not having a clue about how to stop it just put it all in perspective."

"I can go to Dragonstone around the fifth month or so," he pointed out, "Stab Melissandre in her sleep. In and out, no one will know."

"You're being foolish again, love," Sansa told him with a familiar sigh. "Racing around to fix my ills," she said warmly, caressed his hand.

Joffrey smiled sheepishly, "Wouldn't exactly help with the feeling of powerlessness, right?" he asked after a moment of introspection. "Gods know that having the might of the Seven Kingdoms under my thumb didn't help me back then," he said.

"It's not just about me, it's about having all the tools we can at our disposal," she said with a decisive nod, "It's about carrying my half of your burden, it's about making sure my family and my friends make it out alive from it all, it's about stopping the Red Priests and the dragons and the White Walkers and whatever other horror decides to come after the people I love," she said.

"You have another plan for this life," said Joffrey, and it was not a question.

"Magic," said Sansa, Joffrey's eyebrows shooting upwards and hiding under his long hair.

"Never could get my head around that," he commented idly.

"But I can. How did you put it? 'My very own sorceress'?" she asked with an impish smile.

"Something like that," Joffrey smiled back.

"I know I'm a warg, but I just know there's so much more I could do," she whispered, "The blood of the First Men sings true within me; I know this Joff… What if instead of spending a fortune preparing for Daenerys, I could face her mind directly, beyond the dragons? What if I could scout beyond your armies' van, rooting out enemy scouts and plans? What if we could… gaze beyond the frosts at the enemy's lair?" she said the last in a hush, a small undercurrent of awe within.

"You want instruction," he said.

"Yes," she answered back.

He stayed quiet as he studied the silent determination writ clear in her expression. "I've seen magic, Sansa. What it does to people, what it can turn them into if they're not careful…" he said as he gazed at her eyes.

She didn't have to tell him he'd be there for her. Her guardian against the madness and the insanity.

"Partners," he said after a moment.

"Partners," she said as well.

Fight fire with fire, he thought as he leaned back, letting the weight of the moment settle around them.

"Where do we go? The far north? If the rumors are anything to go by then there's more knowledge about warging there than in any place in the Seven Kingdoms," he said.

"I need more than warging, Joff," she said as she shook her head, "A lot more," she whispered as she swept Lady up in her arms, the tiny direwolf looking back seriously.

"Qarth?" Joffrey asked, twitching his nose, "They knew of magic, but there was a sense of decay there, of faded glories gone stale with time…" he trailed off as he looked at Sansa, "Not enough for our purposes," he said as he shook his head.

"Take us East," Sansa muttered, scratching Lady's head as the direwolf yawned again, "Let me devote a life to understanding what I have within me, what I am," she whispered as she gazed at Lady's drowsy eyes.

"Yi-Ti, the fractured empire… the land of a hundred princes and eternal civil war, of scheming chancellors and arcane tomes…" he mused, frowning in recollection.

Sansa turned to look at him as he thought, his eyes heavy with memories of cultists and shadow weavers.

"No, beyond," he said as he shook his head. "If we are to do this, then we will do it right," he sentenced, determination welling within him as well.

"Straight to the source," Sansa smiled, "You were never one for half measures."

"Not in a long time," he said as he took a deep breathe. "If there's a place where magic is felt in the very air, it's in the Shadow Lands," he said.

"Asshai-By-The-Shadow," Sansa whispered as the hair at the nape of her neck stood on edge, Lady's fur rising in unison as she stayed still, huddled within her mistress' grasp.

"And beyond, if we have to," he sentenced.

"Together," she said as she squeezed his hand.

"Together," he said as he squeezed back.

-: PD :-

"Take care not to touch the water, it brings only memories of deep sorrow," Zehian told them with the air of an oft recited saying. They crossed the ancient looking stone bridge quickly enough, same as the few local denizens of the city; all figures garbed in black and grey, hiding their bodies from the murky sunlight that struggled to reach the roads.

"Talk about redundant warnings," Joffrey whispered in Sansa's ears, her hand squeezing back in brief acknowledgement. Anyone foolish enough to drink water from a river that turned into a greenish black during nighttime deserved the consequences.

Asshai-By-The-Shadow was a quiet city; murmured whispers carried far by gentle winds that seemed to flow unimpeded by the ever present banks of heavy fog. The sprawling city was as big as Volantis, King's Landing and Braavos combined, but its population seemed perhaps a fifth of what it should have been. Figures between the mists were few and sparse, their masks and robes more in common with ghostly apparitions than flesh and blood humans.

"What is that?" Joffrey asked their paid guide as Zehian brought them to a small plaza where purpleish bushes scrawled out of the mortared stone road with a will of their own, seeping through the cracks and giving the illusion of movement as they swayed with the wind. Lady regarded the Ghost Grass with suspicion, sticking close to Sansa as their guide nodded.

"That is Master Hejias," murmured Zehian, gazing respectfully at the figure in the middle of the purple bushes. The man brought memories of cults and ancient whispers to Joffrey's mind, as he shared the look of a Grey Whisperer but for the color of his robe; white instead of grey, of a color with his long beard. His eyes were closed, and ramrod discipline straightened his back; perfect posture, unmovable arms near the waist, fingers joined and legs folded with an air of long practice and diligence.

"How long has he… been like that?" Sansa whispered in turn as they stopped walking, gazing at the good five or so meters of empty air that lay between the floating Master and the ground. It was as if the old man were sitting on an invisible cupboard, sturdy and unmoving.

"Decades, at least... Centuries, some whisper," said Zehian, only to hurry them along the almost deserted street.

"Why is he doing it?" Joffrey asked as he reluctantly returned his gaze to his small guide.

"The motives of the Aeromancers are not of this world. They seek beyond, to become one with the wind and be blown astray," he said before leading them through a side street. "Come, the day is short and there is much to see," he whispered urgently.

Sansa shook her head lightly when Joffrey arched an eyebrow, and their search continued. Her gaze wandered through the towers of paper and dark wood that seemed to emerge from the mist every few blocks; artful designs of understated craftsmanship throwing themselves up into the sky and loosing themselves within the mists above. Small lanterns placed at the corners of each block swayed with the wind, old Yi-Tish script drawn upon them and pleading salvation for long forgotten gods. Robed figures avoided her gaze as they emerged briefly from the mist, only to disappear again. It was noon and the darkness was barely held at bay; light fleeing from the shadows as the sun swayed above back to its slumber.

"The House of the West, blessed be they in blood," said Zehian as he stopped along with the road. The stones turned abruptly into a blackened dirt path, a snaking trail that turned upwards until the slope was crowned by an ancient manor, its windows barely bigger than the arrow slits of a westerosi keep. Unlike the rest of the city it was made out of chipped black stone and granite, topped by weathered pillars of twisting black that peeked from the mists above.

Sansa nodded when Joffrey looked at her, and he nodded back. "I can feel the… power. The weight of this place," she whispered as Lady's fur stood on edge. Four Houses had they seen, and it seemed they had finally found their match, the strongest of the four.

Tonight then, thought Joffrey.

-: PD :-

"More tea?" asked the masked figure, extending a delicate hand for the ornate pitcher. About the only fact that Sansa could deduce from her was that she was a woman, and skilled in shadowing her thoughts and emotions. Unsurprising perhaps, for someone who was in all likelihood a shadow weaver of great skill.

Meheesa of the House of the West had been waiting for them the moment Sansa and Joffrey had knocked on the manor's door, her face hidden behind a white mask and her body wrapped in a strange black garb that bordered between a robe and a multitude of interlocking bandages. She had bid them forward, and what had followed was one of the most tense conversations Sansa had ever had in any of her lives.

"Yes please," she agreed, looking at the way Joffrey tensed, eyeing the room suspiciously as he'd done a dozen times since they had started talking. They hadn't seen another soul since entering the House, but Joffrey was convinced they were being quietly watched… her beloved had communicated that and many other things through his gaze, his slow blinking a sure sign of wariness.

"There are few who would dare the path of shadows, even fewer still those who would hail from the Sunset Kingdoms in search of such a path," said Meheesa, revolving her tea with a small silver spoon.

"Those who would dare seek the truths of this world are few indeed, both in my land and elsewhere. Is it not the nature of mankind to close its eyes and reject what lies beyond?" said Sansa.

"Well spoken, especially for one so new to the language as you," the woman let slip the tiny bit of information.

Sansa skipped the probe without a second thought, tilting her head, "Are we agreed then? Secret for secret, instruction for limited servitude?" she asked her would be tutor, the tongue of Yi-Ti and most of the true East flowing smoothly as she gazed beyond the mask, looking at her eyes.

Meheesa tilted her head minutely, "It is a hard bargain you drive, young one. And you've given so few morsels of information… so few prizes for knowledge that most in this city would kill for…" she trailed off with a whisper.

"Knowledge of the future for knowledge of the past, practical instruction for temporal servitude; a more than adequate bargain for both our parts," said Sansa, her face giving nothing away as she sipped her tea. Lady was a statue by her side, following Meheesa's every movement.

"Perhaps… what an interesting couple you both make," Meheesa said in turn, looking at Sansa's 'bodyguard'. She took a long sniff of air, before letting it go with a pleasurable sigh, "So strong the power in both your bloodlines… have you begotten a child with him yet?" she asked Sansa as her gaze lingered on Joffrey.

Sansa frowned minutely, her teeth clenched for a moment as her composure fractured. Her mind moved quickly through denial to misdirection, racing through possible courses of action.

She saw right through the bodyguard act… She's a powerful player, to have seen through Joffrey's composure so quickly, she thought.

"We have not. Such concerns are far from my mind at the moment," she said instead, smoothing her face back into blankness. Meheesa's mask made reading her twice as hard, and left her at a disadvantage considering her own lack thereof.

She seemed to eye them for a short while, before nodding lightly as she stood up. "I must confer with my peers. Please, make use of our hospitality in the meanwhile," she said as she waved at the room with a hand. There were bookshelves and small liquor cabinets arrayed throughout it; padded carpets and tropical wooden tables holding artwork and glass hookahs. Sansa ignored the understated finery, taking a deep breath of air instead. She nodded respectfully as she stood up as well, gazing at Meheesa as the hair at the nape of her neck tingling and her heartbeat sped up.

Meheesa of the House of the West smelled of lies, lust, and sick, impending treachery.

"Joff," she called out to him lightly as Meheesa turned her back upon them, walking towards the door at a sedate pace. Her husband understood her implicitly and acted without doubt; long strides carrying him to Meheesa's back in but a second. Brightroar had not fully materialized when it pierced the shadow weaver's back, the fractals mixing with her blood as Valyrian steel emerged through her heart and chest.

"How many of them?!" Joffrey shouted as he extracted the blade from the gasping woman, shadows of blood and darkness forming around her wounds before Joffrey decapitated her cleanly in one swift cut.

"At least six more, behind that bookshelf!" Sansa told him as Lady snarled lowly, the bookshelf in question collapsing down to the floor and revealing cloth wrapped men wielding long, curved knifes. They said nothing as they charged, Joffrey filling the silence with a roar of his own as Stars emerged into this world from behind him in mid leap, slamming into the first wave and savaging the men with claw and fang as he reached them half a second later, twirling Brightroar in a spectacle of golden light and severing limbs and heads.

Sansa felt goose bumps around her right shoulder as Lady twisted around, and she ducked just as a small bolt flew past her. Daggers fell from her sleeves as she turned, jerking her head aside as a curved knife tore through her cheek. Her riposte was instinctive and instantaneous, cutting through the man's hand with one dagger and piercing his throat with the other one. He gurgled as he tumbled back, replaced by another attacker as he leapt from a sudden hole on the ceiling. The black robed man landed on the floor with barely a sound, knives glinting and dripping with something.

"More here!" She shouted as she stepped back, avoiding a flurry of strikes as Lady leapt at the man's heels. Sansa spun and dodged, her reflexes barely keeping up with the whirling dance of death that was the black-bandaged man, but it was not enough. One of the knives sliced through the tendons on her left hand, and Sansa screamed through clenched teeth as she dropped one of her daggers. She took a step forward and received another cut on the shoulder before she could ram her remaining dagger through the man's heart, making use of Lady's distraction.

She felt as if it had been her own heart the one which had been torn apart as wind blew throughout the room, putting out candles and lamps as shadows deepened. Lady mourned in agony as her own shadow somehow came alive; a twisting dark mass of viscous substance that strangled her in moments, covering her body completely and pressing her against the ground in a sickening crunch until she was dissolved to nothing in a second.

"Lady!" Sansa screamed, feeling somewhat sleepy despite the horror. Joffrey was limping towards her, his sword held at the ready as a woman strode slowly into the room, garbed as Meheesa had been. Her mask was midnight blue instead of white, streaks of darkness running through it as blood bubbled out of the slain assassins. It seeped through the floor, reaching her heels and crawling up her legs as she raised her hands.

"I've been poisoned," Sansa managed through the encroaching darkness both within and without, "They want our blood," she whispered, feeling weak, the shadows somehow growing deeper still as she realized the cut on Joffrey's shoulder as well.

They wanted them alive.

"I'm ending it," he said as he reached her, holding her by the shoulder as Brightroar pierced her heart cleanly. Sansa gasped, blood bubbling from her mouth as Joffrey tore the blade through her wound in an instant of agony that soon gave way to seeping purple fractals. She fell on the floor as Joffrey turned the blade around, angling for his own heart.

"Not yet," whispered the blue mask as Joffrey's own blood erupted from his wrists, forming thick, dark red pillars that bound him to the floor.

"S-S-Staaaaaarsss-" Joffrey gurgled as the Silver Lion blinked across the room, its form indistinct as it dissolved and reformed in front of Joffrey until it was almost gone, a lone, disintegrating paw tearing through Joffrey's throat.

"No. Tell me your secrets," whispered the blue masked figure as it reached Joffrey in but a second, hundreds of black tendrils emerging from her back and cradling Joffrey as if he were a child, darkness pouring into his mangled throat.

NO, thought Sansa, folding within herself as the Purple squeezed, pulling his/her's/the Purple Pillars with all her might as Joffrey gasped in surprise and the fabric of the encroaching Purple thrummed in strained harmony, his body jerking wildly for a millionth of a second as the world folded on itself and she felt him reach her, his presence reassuringly close as they directed their attention upwards and the Pillars pulled them backwards at unfathomable speed, pain blooming around them.

-: PD :-

"Your turn," Sansa told him with a wayward smile.

"Right, sorry," said Joffrey, shaking his head lightly before returning his gaze to the cyvasse board. He spent a few minutes thinking of a way around Sansa's trap before smiling deviously and arranging a double feint, moving his elephant forward as a fake sacrifice.

Sansa hummed as she leaned on the table, her elbows holding her head up as she scanned the board.

"More wine?" asked a brown skinned man, and Joffrey even managed to hide the scowl at the sight of his slave collar… this time.

"Please," he said with a nod, waiting for Sansa to make her move.

"I don't know how you can stand that wine," she said, still eyeing the board and pouting every now and then, her hand floating around the air in search of the right piece to grasp.

"Persimmons are not that bad," he said, his gaze returning to the street in front of the small, open aired tavern. He examined the marching group of legionaries closely, nodding approvingly at the tight formation and stern gaze of the soldiers. Freemen and slaves moved aside quickly as the century marched through the street, the optio at the head carrying the thunderbolt wielding harpy of New Ghis, identical as the one drawn across the wide tower shields of the legionaries.

He frowned when he gazed back at the board. "How did you know it was a ruse?" he asked her.

"You've never liked sacrificing troops," she said after a little sigh, "You scrounge your eyelids a bit and your hands fist like a baby's… it always gives you away," she continued with a sly smile.

"Oh," Joffrey nodded along, "I'll be sure to keep my hands in check then. Especially when your eyes flutter like drunken butterflies."

"Please don't," she said as she blushed a bit, "It was only a jest," she clarified as Joffrey moved his elephant away from the failed ruse, rapidly coming up with another plan that saw two of Sansa's siege towers destroyed.

"I thought so," he said with a snort. The game continued for a while then, the patrons coming and leaving as they relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. Most of the others were freemen dockhands, working long shifts at the docks that kept the lifeblood of trade moving. A few sailors of the New Ghis Navy also called the Ghe'zeras home, coming in with happy smiles and leaving with brawls and scowls as they ran out of gold.

"Do you think that other people… see the Purple, when we die?" He asked her as the game flowed back and forth.

"I don't know… maybe," Sansa said as she nursed her mug of strong ale, "Brightroar certainly gives out a light show every time you pull it out of your soul. Maybe it's like that for our bodies but in reverse," she thought out loud.

"Hm. If that's the case then we must have left quite the riddle after every death…"

"Have you ever thought about what happens to the worlds we leave behind… the lives within it?" she asked after a moment.

"Many times… I reckon they all have their souls reversed as well, carried along with the rest of the cosmos and none the wiser for it."

"To think otherwise would be madness," Sansa said after a while, nodding repeatedly as she gazed at the board.

"Hm. The sheer amount of power though… to make everything crawl back, years upon years," Joffrey trailed off as he moved his horseman to the right, slaying Sansa's dragon.

"It's certainly on a scale undreamt of by any mage or sorcerer of our era, that's for sure. How our… creators managed such a feat but couldn't bring an end to the Long Night itself is a question I've wrestled with a lot, some nights," she confessed.

Joffrey snorted, "An endeavor doomed to failure," he said.

"The Deep Ones seemed to have a pretty firm grasp of the order of things, and they were as mortal as you or I."

"They also, oh, orchestrated a master plan spanning eons of foresight and dimensions beyond our comprehension. There's a difference between mortal and mortal, Sansa," he said.

"Hey!" he protested when he felt a muzzle emerge from between his arm and his waist. He was too slow, and before he knew it Lady was happily munching through his long slice of sweetened ham.

Sansa was smiling and making baby noises as she scratched the happy direwolve's cheeks, ignoring Joffrey grumbling. "You'll be the one to bargain with the innkeeper for another loaf," he told her.

"As if it were that hard. One little jiggle of these and he'll sell us another loaf for a bent copper," she said as she moved her breasts slightly.

"Using your own body as a weapon. Lady Teyia would be proud," he said after a hearty chuckle.

"Her Braavosi ways would be wasted on this bunch," she said as she flicked her eyes towards the burly innkeeper menacing a long piece of iron at an arguing dockworker.

"Hm, too much subtlety. And pelts, she did love her snowfox pelts," he added.

"You did too."

"They suit you rather well, what can I say?" he said with a smile.

Sansa hummed as she smiled with him, her hand going for one of her footman.

"He'll get killed by my dragon," Joffrey offered.

Sansa stopped, gazed at the board again, and tried to move her elephant.

"He'll die in two turns. Knights are powerful like that," he said. "Wisdom of our homeland."

Sansa scowled, leaned back on her chair, and tapped her chin. She gazed at the board for a good long five minutes before grunting in exasperation. "Is there any way to get my Archon out of there?!" she asked him.

"Nope."

"But I had this double flanking maneuver prepared with this group of footmen that-"

"Would have been stopped by that siege tower, once I moved it three squares up and two left," Joffrey completed the sentence as he pointed at his siege tower behind two footmen, strategically placed to block the whole future move.

"I don't like this game," she said with a grunt.

"You liked it well enough back in Winterfell."

"That's because you were going easy on me!"

"So you admit you'd prefer the easy way? I thought you didn't want me to patronize you," Joffrey asked as he raised an eyebrow high, leaning on the last word.

"Bleahg," said the once Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, weaver of mercantile plots, and warg. His wife truly was the peak of eloquence.

"Best of five?" he said.

"Gods no!" she said before standing up, giving a tiny bellow as she stretched like a lazy cat. Lady followed her motions as she shoved her paws forward, her tail wagging slowly as she blinked and stretched with an almighty yawn. "I want to go for a walk, stretch my legs. Besides, it's getting late."

"Good idea," he said as he stood up, bending his neck a bit and working out the cricks.

Sansa paid the barkeep –leaning forward suggestively as she haggled the price- as Joffrey stashed the cyvasse set. Soon enough they were walking atop the cobbled streets of New Ghis, the yelling of a thousand traders speaking in a dozen tongues mixing with the high pitched shrills of the seagulls. They sorted through the jeering and partying privateers, slave hunters and dockhands toasting their meads of fermented milk, and walked past the great statues of dead generals and legates of ages past, born when the Valyrian Freehold was but a dream within the minds of errant goat herders. They took the high road away from the docks, up the cliffs and around the naval dockyards. From there they could see the high stepped pyramids of the city center; great bonfires roaring from their yellow tips.

They walked with their hands intertwined, Lady chasing multicolored birds that sometimes swooped down to the earth and pierced the ground with their long beaks.

"She'll catch one one these days and end up with a hole in the head for her troubles," said Joffrey.

"Direwolf's skulls are made of sterner stuff," said Sansa, their walk carrying them through a dirt path overrun with cart grooves and the occasional tree looming over the road.

"Don't I know it," said Joffrey, hiding a smirk. They sat on a big tree stump to watch the sunset, Lady yawning again as she trotted to their side and lay on her belly.

"… The House of the West was a bad idea," said Sansa.

Joffrey grunted acknowledgment, taking a deep breath. "Yeah."

"… I was thinking of trying for the House of the South," she said after a while.

"What makes you think it'll go any different?"

"They're the weakest of the four houses, for starters. Something happened about a hundred years ago that almost wiped them out, and according to what we found out in the Imperial Library they never really recovered."

"Yei-Kuh was less of a historian and more of a buffoon. They almost laughed us out of the library when you asked for that tome back in Yin," said Joffrey.

"You said his sources seemed legitimate enough…" she trailed off, "At least for his scholarly work," she added. "They won't be in a position to gamble or backstab, not when what we offer could set them back on their local equivalent of the game of thrones."

Joffrey tilted his head from side to side as he hummed, "We'll need something more than mere information about the future. All this talk of 'secrets for secrets' may sound poetic, but nothing prods greed like the physical... it would be a good idea to arrive bearing gifts."

"What're you thinking about?"

"The Warlocks," Joffrey told her. "I remember the bastards had a Valyrian glass candle the last time I was there. The thing was just lying there atop a table as the Warlock used it on my tablet… We should loot it from them, and maybe set the whole building on fire on our way out, do the world a favor."

"We won't lose too much time. We need to resupply at Qarth anyway," Sansa thought out loud.

They trailed off into silence as they weighted their options; the way forward filled with unknowns. Joffrey stared at Sansa with slight smile until she blinked slowly, a smile of her own growing amidst the uncertainty. "What?" she asked him.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and kissed her deeply, and she returned the kiss in full after a second. She leant on him until his back was against the stump, her red locks spilling over his chest as she rested her head over it.

"We'll be okay Joff," she whispered as she nuzzled his neck, holding him tight. A deep flame tickled her chest, her gut, and she held him close as she breathed slowly, "Nobody will stop us. Not Stannis, not Aegon, not Daenerys, not all the sorcerers in the world."

"Nobody," said Joffrey, looking at the darkening sky and the seagulls whirling overhead, dancing in the air.

Is this calm resolution what it feels to be an adult? Joffrey asked himself. Fate had never allowed him to grow old, to watch his body turn frail and see his seed grow into a loving family… He didn't know what was waiting for them in the Shadowlands, but his course was set; his motions sure. The Captain knows the way forward, the tiller is set.

All that remains is to sail into the storm, for he can do no other.

"Nobody," he repeated, holding his wife close. He let the sound of the sea wash over him, mixed with the gentle swaying of Sansa's chest. "Don't lose yourself," he whispered, stroking her hair as he remembered the shrieks of cultists and madmen, shadows and illusions warping their perception of the world into a mixture of pure madness and terrifying reality.

"We'll be lost together," she whispered back.

-: PD :-

Spoiler: Music

Qarth had brought mixed memories, old days of confusion and fear and wonder. Of Daenerys he'd seen nothing and heard little, for it seemed the latent madwoman had not yet reached the City of a Thousand Years. Joffrey had long ago learned about his curiosity, catalogued and ordered it, breathed and lived in it, and so he'd learnt to prioritize. For all his curiosity about the how's and why's of Daenery's journey, the reasons behind her descent into madness, there were deeper and much more important mysteries still on the horizon.

When the tablet disappeared, Joffrey made the journey to the House of the Undying. He had turned right again and again, right and up the stairs as the wisdom of the Undying demanded. He'd ended up in a circular room with no other exits, a lone altar in the middle of the room showing nothing for his efforts.

"Your curiosity betrays you, Prince Joffrey of House Baratheon," said Pyat Pree as he emerged from the only entrance. Joffrey gazed at him, watching the way his bronze rings jingled lightly around his unnaturally stretched neck.

The man smirked as another one emerged from behind one of the room's pillars. The second Pyat Pree's eyebrows –though he barely had them- were raised in apparent surprise as he examined him. "You are quite arrogant, little prince, to seek which was meant for greater minds," he told him.

"Quite arrogant indeed," said another Pyat Pree as he hefted a chain. Joffrey realized his right hand had been clapped in irons from one second to the next, the chains appearing as if from thin air. "No matter," said another Pyat as he pulled from the chains clasped to his left hand, "Rejoice, for you shall be opened up for your secrets, your body a source of illumination so that the shade may run deeper," he intoned as both of Joffrey's arms went taut, held horizontally.

Joffrey sighed as he looked at the irons, "I feared you once, you know?" he said, tilting his head lightly as he gazed at the chains. The warlocks seemed slightly amused, and Joffrey smiled with them.

"I've lived for so much time…" he mused, gazing at the manacle around his right arm, "There's a sort of rhythm to this world, to existence perhaps… a sort of raw stuff that floods silence and noise, steel and rock, water and sky, storms… almost like a song… its so hard to put into words…" he said before trailing off, eyes clouded. "Have you ever heard it? The… melody? The harmony?" he asked them earnestly, almost pleadingly.

One of the Pree's scoffed, walking closer to him, "You are naught but dust and dreams, impermanent and mundane. How can you even try to understand what is beyond you?" he asked, his hollow voice rebounding within the room.

Joffrey nodded thoughtfully, gazing at the man, "That's the thing, warlock," he said, "If we are all but dust and dreams, then what is a dream's dream?"

The warlock frowned as Joffrey let out a big breath.

"Less than nothing," he mused. The man stumbled back, mouth agape as Joffrey's sight returned to his right hand.

The manacle was gone, along with the chain.

"The absence of the song gives the dream's dream away," he told them, "Illusions of shadow and light which are not actually real… as much as any of us can claim to be at least," he said as he materialized Brightroar and the room bloomed in eldritch purple light. He struck the sword against the other chain, the striking of Vlayrian steel against shadow and falsehood a sharp twine of noise which was gone as soon as it was felt.

"What are you?" whispered the Pree who'd been in front of him, stumbling back.

"A weapon," said Joffrey as he grabbed him by the shoulder and ran Brightroar through his chest. "This blade. My wife and I. We were made by the dreamers above us," he explained as the man gurgled and Joffrey twisted the wound open, extracting the blade upwards and tearing the man's shoulder apart.

"How many dreamers beyond them? What are we all to them?" he asked them as Pyat fell to the ground, the other Pree's jumping at him with bared blades and blurred steps. He avoided their daggers as Brightroar carved long lines through their forms, cutting their unarmored bodies in half until the last Pree raised his hands to the heavens and took in a harrowing breath, staggering Joffrey.

Joffrey felt as if his blood were boiling, an invisible hand choking him as he stumbled to the ground. He snarled as Stars roared with him, the Silver Lion emerging into reality right behind the last Pree and tearing the man's head off with massive jaws. He breathed easily as he stood up, massaging his throat before Stars prowled to his side, jamming his big head against Joffrey's thigh.

"Good job," he said with a smile as he patted the lion's head. He turned towards the door and made his way out of there, following the call of the tablet.

"Let's hunt," he told Stars.

He started with a light jog, the tabled homing him in, Brightroar a flash of light in his hands as he cut down surprised warlocks. He was running now, mind adrift as he turned corners abruptly and crashed against trios of warlocks, their surprised expressions turning into disbelieving pain as Valyrian steel painted the walls red. He ambushed them with Stars, the lion renting them apart before they could work their twisted sorceries; panicked shouting turning into screams of horror that locked in their throats as Joffrey moved silently and let his ears guide him to the nearest prey in his way. He entered their quarters unannounced, walking behind warlocks as they desperately gulped down goblets filled with Shade of the Evening. The black, purplish liquid didn't spend long inside them though; and the sorcerers gazed at their bellies in confusion, stunned as they watched the droplets of their hallowed liquid lazily travelling down Brightroar's edge, the blade itself pinning them to walls and cabinets.

He went up and down stairs, through thresholds of solid stone and obsidian, past twisted nightmares and illusions and startled yells as Stars roared and hunted the warlocks through corridors and ritual chambers. After confronting the horrors of K'Dath and the twisted cultists from the Beyond, after glimpsing the morsels of true darkness hidden between the crevasse of Asshai by the Shadow, after learning the harrowing truth of what most mortals called the Red Comet, Joffrey regarded the Warlocks of Qarth as little else but faded echoes of a long dead scream; shadows of shadows weaving dreams out of dreams, feverishly drinking their drinks and poultices in the vain hopes of reaching apotheosis.

Once their coherence had been broken, their ritual circles torn asunder, the vast majority of the rank and file were nothing but petty conjurers.

He emerged into a study he barely remembered, sheathing his bloodied blade in intricately carved dragonbone. There he found Sansa, red spear in hand as she surveyed the room. "Distraction did the job?" he asked her as he closed the door behind him.

"Like a charm," she said, fascinated as she gazed at the twisted form of the glass candle. The thing was wickedly sharp; a twisting pole of obsidian no longer than Joffrey's forearm and black as night.

"Last time I was here that thing was warping color as if they were mere suggestions," Joffrey said as he approached the candle warily, right next to the whalebone tablet. "Did he give you any trouble?" he asked her as he gazed at the dead warlock.

"None, he was too busy obsessing over the tablet… and the glass candle. It was distorting light like nobody's business too," she said, grabbing the artifact gently. "Think it'll be enough? We could stay a while longer, look for more…"

Joffrey bit his lip, gazing at the twisting candle. "Let's not push our luck, by now they must be rallying," he said instead.

Sansa nodded quickly as she grabbed a nearby oil lantern and smashed it against books and tables filled with parchment. She'd already grabbed a few of them and stuffed them in a satchel, but the rest went up in flames as Joffrey did the same to drapes and carpets, the fires soon raging out of control as they ran through the lower levels.

They would stop in Yin as they'd done before, to gather supplies and a braver crew… and after that, Asshai would beckon once more.

-: PD :-

Last edited: Oct 13, 2018

Purple Days (ASOIAF): From one day to the other, Joffrey Baratheon wakes up a changed man. Far from the spoiled boy-child known to the court of King's Landing, the Joffrey that comes out of his room three days after the death of John Arryn walks with the stride of a veteran commander and leader of men. A scholar, a sea-captain, a general, a lover. This is the story of how he became that man, and how he came to know his purpose through a cycle of endless death and rebirth that saw him explore his self and the known world from Braavos to Sothoryios and from Old Town to Yi-Ti... and beyond. (Character Development, Adventure, Worldbuilding, Mystery & Suspense, Romance, Action). (Turtledove 2017 winner!).

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baurus

Oct 13, 2018

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Threadmarks Art Omake: The Glass Candle. New

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Victoro

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Nov 5, 2018

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#4,827

Merry Halloween!

Spoiler: Better Scan here

And this one is the olde version:

Spoiler: Light up your Glass Candles!Trick or Treat?

Spoiler: There is some creepy shit in Planetos...

Eeek! Hope you guys like the fanart. I did after the last chapter were our heroes kick some magic Ass in the mistic distant orient. And since these loops our heroes will be in the Jedi route I put a nice Braavosi mask in Sansa since it seems to be the custom to the Sorceress there.

I wonder if Break Havok in the Clone Magus house will influence the way Daenerys act in this loop... Are they the guys that send the poison that necrosed her arm right?

Last edited: Nov 7, 2018

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Threadmarks Chapter 54: Air. New

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baurus

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#4,838

Chapter 54: Air.

The leaves were wide and strong, of a deep green and riddled with yellow veins. Joffrey felt the texture gently, his fingers drawing the shape of the leaf as he followed the contours and then the veins themselves, feeling the sticky sap flowing within and beyond his grasp.

The great tree itself was a living work of art; intertwined branches spreading away from the center as if the whole tree were a slowed down explosion, figs and broad leaves crowning the tip of the tree in a splendor of green and yellow.

"Strong but bending; I wonder if that is what draws man to the greater trees," said a voice from behind him. Joffrey dragged his sight away from the monstrous fig tree that dominated the courtyard and regarded the waiting monk with a thoughtful expression. He wore clean white robes, and his head had been completely shaved except for a small grey beard which had been tied together into a compact form with two lengths of string.

Joffrey returned his gaze to the tree. "They are admired for their strength in the midst of storms, and for the shelter and food they provide... But for me it is their surety of purpose, the…" he trailed off, frowning as he glimpsed the sun shining through the leaves overhead, "… their serene presence in the moment," he murmured.

"So they are the epitome of the present? Monuments of the now?" asked the monk.

"Monuments of the now…" mused Joffrey. "But still in movement, always knowing where the sunlight is, always sure of their course as slow as it may be," he said as the monk walked beside him, peering up at the figs hanging above.

"But they shall never reach their destination, the sun too high for their grasping branches. Does that not evoke hopelessness?"

"Does it?" Joffrey answered with a question of his own, "They created their own journey, and lived through it until the end, whatever it was. Can anyone for ask more?"

"So it's not about the end, but the path itself?"

"Can one exist without the other? Can the end have meaning without the road?" said Joffrey.

"But doesn't the end also define the road? The very meaning of the question tying both path and resolution?" asked the monk.

"The serpent that eats its own tail. Meaning does not flow in a single direction, but spins eternally between both," Joffrey nodded after a moment.

They spent a while longer in silence before they both turned.

"Master Jeng," Joffrey said as he bowed, hands joined together at his chest.

"Master Joffrey," Jeng intoned as he bowed in turn. They shared a private smile before Jeng reached for two of the tree's lower hanging figs. He tossed one to Joffrey, who caught it easily. "Walk with me?" he asked before biting a juicy chunk out of the fig.

"Of course, then the young ones can return to their studies," said Joffrey as he gazed back at the half a dozen peeking students, who all immediately found something more interesting to stare at. For all that most of them were older than Joffrey by at least five years, he couldn't find it in himself to regard their curiosity and thirst for knowledge as anything but adorably juvenile. Perhaps even nostalgic.

"Restless few days?" asked Jeng as they walked away from the tree and the dispersing students, walking over a cobbled trail as they left the main courtyard.

"Yeah. They have once again locked my wife in for the week… 'So she may study uninterrupted'. The House of the South's need for secrecy borders on wanton paranoia sometimes," he said, a brief scowl marring the tranquility he otherwise felt in this place.

"The secrets of the flesh are no less deep than those of the mind, but war and intrigue have marked the former far more than the latter in this city," said Jeng, their walk carrying them below an arch of intertwined wood that divided two sections of the same garden.

Joffrey nodded before a small smile peeked through his lips. "You know why I'm here," he said, nibbling on the fig as the Master smiled.

"Indeed. We are ready," said Jeng, opening the paper door to the small dojo by the side of the garden. Inside awaited two sitting monks, a Paigo table between them.

"Master Joffrey!" called out the older one as he stood up, a brown skinned Ghsicary whose grandfatherly smile did little to hide the keen intellect behind his eyes.

"Master Gaharz," Joffrey bowed with him, "I hope Master Wo-Ti's blunders have not dulled your edge since last time?" he said.

"Owh!" Master Wo-Ti called out from the floor, giving Joffrey a deep nod instead of standing up and bowing. Joffrey roughly translated that to 'Greetings Master Joffrey. Would you care to get your ass reamed in a match right now?' in Wotese.

"He has been most disrespectful in that regard, overturning all expectations," said Master Gaharz, folding his legs and sitting on the floor by the side of the table, leaving the opponent's place free. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to make Master Wo-Ti remember his real skill level?"

"And save us his boasting for the following month," Jeng added as he closed the door behind him.

"It will be my pleasure," said Joffrey as he sat opposite to Wo-Ti. The fat, round headed master smirked at the presumption. Big, meaty hands emerged from the folds of his robes as he arranged the pieces with deceptive gentleness, not even asking which color Joffrey wanted to take.

Because of course Wo-Ti would play black, ceding the initiative to Joffrey.

"Feeling confident today, huh?" he said before Master Jeng sat by the remaining side of the small table, the dark-brown wood paneling muffling his movement until he was suddenly sitting by their side.

"Heh," grunted Wo-Ti, which could be roughly translated as 'Come at me'.

And so the game was off to a quick start. Wo-Ti played as he fought, ponderous and powerful swipes of action that gave way to long moments of stillness, giving Joffrey enough rope until the time was ripe and the Master struck. Joffrey preferred the classics of Fol-Fing rather than his disciple and foremost apprentice, General Be-Ming, and so he feinted and hid, seeking to wear down the black pieces through constant movement and fierce engagements.

When he'd first arrived at the temple of the Aeromancers, high atop a large hill beyond Asshai's limits, Joffrey had been seeking little more than peace of mind. Sansa had been staying longer and longer within the confines of the House of the South, almost like a Septa in a quiet retreat. The moments they've had to talk had been few and far between… enough to leave Joffrey certain that she was safe, but not nearly enough to leave him untroubled.

He'd barely spent more than a single day meditating by the shadow of the fig tree when Master Jeng had approached and engaged him in philosophy as an equal, and from there to meeting Gahzan and Wo-Ti.

No matter how hard his denials and his lack of formal titles, all three monks insisted in calling him a Master, same as they referred to each other. In Yi-Tish the term spoke of someone possessing great wisdom and mastery of their own Way, and to be referred as such by the likes of them had been a profound acknowledgement of something, a something Joffrey was still busy deciphering.

"Hm," Wo-Ti grunted. He was grudgingly respectful of the showing, but certain of his opponent's defeat. He raised one bushy eyebrow, before extending one black bead forward by a single tile.

"This was a mistake," said Jeng.

"You have doomed us all, Master Joffrey," said Ghazan.

"Hah," said Wo-Ti. Which Joffrey translated as loud cheering and rude gestures.

"Well, this is unexpected," he said as he traced the brutal clash that would soon follow and wipe him out completely. Pure Be-Ming style… Fitting perhaps, for the man did slay his mentor after all.

"Sorry about that," said Joffrey, smiling sheepishly.

"Zhezhezhe," rasped Wo-Ti with a wide smile.

"Now you're just rubbing it in," said Jeng.

"…Best of three?" asked Joffrey.

Both Jeng and Gahzan stared at him in mute horror. One victory was one thing, but two? Wo-Ti might actually speak after that.

"Hmmm," said the burly Master, before nodding.

Joffrey twisted his neck left and right, working out the kinks. This was going to be a long afternoon.

Perhaps he would even stop worrying about Sansa for a minute or two…

-: PD :-

"You are distracted," rasped Calinnia. A twirling knot of unpleasantness curdled within her belly, and Sansa gasped.

"Isn't that counterproductive?" she asked before Calinnia waved her hand and another wave of pain rocked her belly as her own blood rebelled.

"Insolent child. You are blessed by the gift and the blood of ancient times, and yet you disappoint at every turn," she said, and Sansa thought she could detect the faintest trace of jealousy in her mentor's voice. She was a vaguely stooped figure, white bandages covering her form completely under a black robe, a green mask striped with red lines hiding her face.

"Forgive me, Matriarch," she said as she bowed her head. The grey and bare basalt of the small chamber's walls did strange things to sound, compounding and drowning it at the same time.

"Return your mind to the present. The key to sorcery is blood, and to be attuned with it is to be attuned with power itself. Achieve dominion over your flesh, and the rest will follow," she said, repeating the same words which had been seared into Sansa's mind for almost a year now. There was barely any light within the chamber; a single lantern above the door behind her that only served to deepen the shadows of the place.

Sansa sighed, grasping the dagger once more. She bent her arm sideways, level with her head as she took a deep breath. She added another cut to the score others that peppered it, her heartbeat quickening as she gazed at the single drop of blood scurrying down towards her little finger.

She breathed in harshly as the drop stopped its journey, all of her senses embracing its shape, its form, its warmth. They aided as much as they hindered, giving Sansa information about the droplet for all that there was something beyond it; an invisible tether of infinite length and gargantuan size.

Within that drop of blood lay an ocean, and to move it was the task of titans.

Sansa tilted her head slightly, teeth clenched as her eyes drooped under the strain, an all-encompassing sensation demanding she gasped and vomited, that she cried and screamed and tore her eyes out.

Instead, she pulled.

She felt as if a hair thin rapier were being extracted from her esophagus, a vertical string of glass that bisected her being from below to the skies, an impossibly taut string that made her shudder as she gazed at the drop of blood slowly making its way back from where it came. It crawled up her arm lazily, stuttering alongside her will until it finally reached the tiny wound.

Sansa gasped as it entered back into her body for a single second, feeling strangely before it come back out along with a torrent red black blood.

She screamed in agony as she bled out abruptly, two black garbed men stepped forth from the shadows and grabbing her tightly as another two swiftly wrapped her arm in white cloth, holding her strongly as she thrashed screeched. Calinnia placed a single thumb on Sansa's forehead, her whole body growing taut like a bent plank, her agony peaking before it suddenly receded. The bleeding stopped immediately, but the savage pain kept rocking Sansa for an indefinite amount of time as the men left her, tasting of something familiar as it faded into the distance of her awareness.

"Mediocre," said Calinnia, crouching beside her gasping apprentice. The green mask was unmoving as it beheld her, and Sansa thought she could glimpse red eyes behind it.

"So much hesitation… tell me Sansa, what do you fear so much?" she asked her.

She said nothing, breathing slowly as she gazed up at the red eyes.

Calinnia hummed, standing up before walking towards the door. "Don't worry," she said, "It'll go away eventually… that hesitation… it always does."

She left the room and closed the door tightly, leaving Sansa on the floor as she tried to summon the willpower to stand up.

So faint with praise, she thought, struggling to regain control of her lungs. She managed to shake off the cobwebs in her eyes and the shock that still had her numb, dragging herself to the most illuminated corner of the small room… which was enough to see her palm when she extended her arm as far as it could go.

There she grabbed her legs tightly, making herself as small a lump as she could. Her will battled her eyes as they grew moist, and after a brutal clash with herself Sansa managed to keep the tears to a slow, infrequent trickle that lasted less than a minute.

To show weakness in this place would kill her more swiftly than a dozen Rejections of the Blood.

Rejection… she mused within her mind. Such an odd name. It felt vaguely insulting to call something so harrowing by so simple a word; such was it called when the Shadowbinder brought forth the power of blood, only to lose concentration in the midst of the work. The blood unleashed its power upon the body itself, with strength often proportional to the power of the bloodline being worked. The consequences of such a discharge could be fatal if aid was not administered by those versed in the lore, and soon…

There was a reason why lone Shadowbinders were either weak in power or dead. To understand blood magic enough to tame it one had to travel a road filled with it.

She leaned back on the wall, relaxing as Joffrey had taught her many years ago, letting her mind drift as she gazed within. Her husband had guided her through the method of sinking her consciousness to the depths of her own soul, to regard the contours of her very essence that resided at her core.

She did so now, marveling at the fractal construct of light and line, letting herself be swept by the sight and forget about the world above and its pain and blood. She traced the lance of purplish gold light skewering her very being, a bridge that reached far into the void and not at all, breaching through to the cluster of light both right beside her and far away.

-: PD :-

"Get your head out of the clouds, Master Joffrey!" said Master Jeng.

Joffrey huffed before bending his legs, propelling himself back on his feet with the strength of his legs and back.

"The mind transcends the body, but neglecting the body brings shame upon the mind," said Master Gaharz, leaning his head on a hand as he sat by the side of the small garden.

"Next time I'll be teaching," Joffrey grunted as he massaged his shoulder, "I'll introduce you all to something my homeland calls 'tourney swords'," he swore.

"We'll be looking forward for it, but for now your Ho leaves much to be desired," said Master Jeng as he repeated the kata, settling his hands in the middle of his chest before turning his feet slightly rightwards. "Ho!" he shouted as he extended one hand forward and placed the other one almost behind his head, extended backwards.

"Ho!" shouted Joffrey, copying the motions. His knees were slightly bent, his back thick with perspiration; his whole body was a coiled spring, waiting for the moment.

Master Jeng advanced upon him like a leaping storm, his barely audible grunts marking each attack of his fists and legs. Joffrey retreated instantly, redirecting the flurry of fists and open palms above his shoulders or away from his chest. He tried to sweep Jeng's legs from under him, but the Master jumped just the bare minimum amount to avoid the sweep before he planted an open palm on Joffrey's esophagus. Joffrey tumbled back, coughing as his own palm caught one of Jeng's fists and he struck his elbow joint.

Jeng retreated then, testing his arm as they circled once more. Joffrey couldn't repress a slight smile as they kept turning, bare feet sliding over the grass slowly as they turned and Master Gaharz took a sip of tea. This time, it was Joffrey who struck first; legs whirling as he jumped in a strange mixture of Ho and Water Dancing, two strikes in quick succession. Jeng ducked below one but couldn't avoid the other one, grunting as he stumbled back. The willy Master was undeterred though, quickly following up with a whirlwind of classic Ho strikes and dodges; Jeng's preferred style was akin to the wind itself, quick and furious and nowhere to be found when you needed to grasp it.

Joffrey tumbled to the ground again.

"This was not what I had in mind when I asked you to teach me Aeromancy," he said drily, before standing up once more and bowing.

"'True magic is the knowledge of thyself, to master both mind and body,'" Master Gaharz said again.

Joffrey shook his head as he looked at the brown skinned Ghiscary, "I've a get a hold of those books you keep quoting, if only to make sure you're not making this stuff out of thin air," he said.

Gaharz regarded him for a moment before he frowned, "Your pun," he said, "Was awful."

Joffrey waited.

"… But I'll lend you Master Jue's Meditations and Master Malayios' Forms of the Wind," he added with a fake sigh.

Joffrey smiled at the man before sitting next to him, taking another tea cup as Master Jeng sat by the other. Even though Joffrey had never tried to master an unarmed fighting style, it seemed some things were truly universal. After each Paigo session, the Masters liked to spar in their preferred styles, to loosen the body and let the mind drift after the matches.

"Even though your grasp over Ho is almost nonexistent, your control over your own body is truly magnificent," Jeng said after a moment, "Where did you learn to move like that?" he asked him.

"A lot of different teachers from all over the world, and a lot of practice over the years," he said.

Master Wo-Ti grunted in what appeared to be disbelief. He was sitting behind them over a wide, blackened tree stump, eyes closed as his bushy eyebrows twitched lightly. Legends said that when the Poisoned Men of Ulthos breached the Temple of the Aeromancers with their breath of death and their bloated backs, Master Gyogi had leaned on a fig tree not too dissimilar from the one near the entrance, receiving the invaders not with violence but with reason. Through a whole day and a whole night he'd talked to the cursed men of Ulthos until they were enlightened, their madness condensing into the fig tree and burning it black. Master Gyogi had then delivered one, single blow to the tree with an open palm and a bent index finger; the killing blow of Fhe…

The tree had toppled instantly, felled in half and carried away by the Master. It was said he'd tossed it into the depths of the Furious Sea to the far east, transferring the madness into the waters themselves.

To think atop the blackened stump was traditionally seen as a way to meditate about the nature of reason and madness itself… Needless to say, Joffrey was a frequent visitor of the tree stump, spending long afternoons meditating about the nature of what he'd long ago called the Red; the slaughter-loving madness that had always seemed a deep part of his self.

He blinked away the errant thoughts and realized Wo-Ti had kept up the skepticism, staring at him with half lidded eyes. The Master eventually relented though, nodding slightly in what -for him- was a massive complement to Joffrey's future abilities.

"I think you're right," said Master Grazhan, turning his sight from Wo-Ti to Joffrey, "The core of it is already within you; the awareness of the sitting warrior… I dare say Joffrey, all you need to learn are the kata's themselves and you could eventually defeat Master Jeng rather easily."

"I'm flattered," he said, nodding lightly.

Wo-Ti grunted harshly.

"… I don't think I got that," said Joffrey.

"He thinks your false modesty is unbecoming of you," said Master Gaharz, "No one moves like that at your age," he said as he eyed him strangely.

"I-"

"You don't have to explain," he said as he waved a hand, "Your journey before reaching this place has been a long one… I hope that what you learn here aids you when you return to it," he said as his gaze returned to the horizon.

They spent a while in silence, and Joffrey took a while to bask in the strong scent of jasmine after he'd taken a sip from his own tea, looking at the horizon at well and upwards, gazing at the Red Comet above and its long tail, sailing through the void between the stars with destruction as it only purpose.

The Masters had been teaching him their distinct styles. Master Gaharz dominated Yii, a style characterized by needle like strikes that made the Master's fingers seem like daggers, every oddly stilted motion fluid on its own; a serenity of motion that left Joffrey permanently off balance. It was said that the Matriarchs of Asshai feared it, for the blows could even interrupt budding sorcery, hindering and slowing the flow of blood itself.

Master Wo-Ti preferred Khai, a style Joffrey had been passingly familiar with. It lived by heavy strikes and powerful motions meant to stir the blood and stand ones ground. Designed almost as a counterpoint to Yii many centuries ago, it had been created with the use of armor in mind… The Jade Scribes of the Dawn Fort had specialized in it, for its katas were renowned for their attunement to sorcery and Shadowbinding. Joffrey had learnt the basics of it many, many years ago at the instruction of his old friend and subordinate, Captain Jhos.

The styles were more than mere fighting techniques though. They were consolidations of lore and Ways of thinking. Philosophies of the self and the world. Discussing their precepts and worldviews with the Masters themselves had been a favored past time of Joffrey during the last year, as Sansa's stays in the House of the South turned longer and longer.

He realized the Masters had drifted back to meditating, and Joffrey decided to join them. He descended deep into his self, not even needing the subtle pull of the tablet by now. He descended down the familiar paths, the depths of within drowning all that was without, as he arrived at the core of his soul and self, a state of being crossed by invisible purple tethers.

He let himself drift in the timeless expanse, until a slight twinge startled him.

It was not from without, but from within. Joffrey was surprised to feel… something else, a lingering gaze from afar and beside. Joffrey found himself smiling without knowing why, his body knowing the reason before his mind.

Sansa? He asked.

There was no answer, but the comforting warmth was unmistakable. Awe traversed his being as he felt his wife in the distance, mind racing quickly as he tried to tie the dots.

Brightroar… the connector… he thought slowly, focusing on the bridge of purple and gold that pierced his being. He could somehow feel her surprise, her awareness that he too was looking back.

There were no thoughts, only errant emotions and textures of feeling that traversed through the golden bridge… brief impressions of meaning which were soon lost to the void, but not before Joffrey tasted their meaning.

How fascinating, he thought, watching the bridge. Sometimes it was easy to forget that they were not truly human, or perhaps not only so. Their stay in Asshai would apparently be a long one, but even then the time would eventually come… the time where they'd either have to accomplish their purpose, or die trying to avoid it.

The time of destruction.

… It always did.

-: PD :-

Purple Days (ASOIAF): From one day to the other, Joffrey Baratheon wakes up a changed man. Far from the spoiled boy-child known to the court of King's Landing, the Joffrey that comes out of his room three days after the death of John Arryn walks with the stride of a veteran commander and leader of men. A scholar, a sea-captain, a general, a lover. This is the story of how he became that man, and how he came to know his purpose through a cycle of endless death and rebirth that saw him explore his self and the known world from Braavos to Sothoryios and from Old Town to Yi-Ti... and beyond. (Character Development, Adventure, Worldbuilding, Mystery & Suspense, Romance, Action). (Turtledove 2017 winner!).

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Threadmarks Chapter 55: Echo. New

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Nov 8, 2018

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Chapter 55: Echo.

Spoiler: Music

Asshai's harbor was a district of its own, ruled by the merchants who regularly traded with the city. It had its own laws, its own private guard, and even a ruling council of representatives from the ten most influential trading concerns. It was a melting pot of Ghiscary expeditions and Qarthi merchants, a dock where Yi-Tish traders and grand carracks from Port Moraq mingled freely, a city within a city where a hundred languages mixed into what was known the world over as the trading tongue.

Sansa had noticed something peculiar when she'd first seen the self-governing district. The sailors and the guards never stepped past the Grey Road, the path that divided the district from the city proper. Merchants sold their wares at the warehouses of the Council that lay just a few steps from the road itself; the only few places where the denizens of Asshai –the Shadowmen- went forth to trade. Even thieves preferred to turn around and surrender to the brutal Council Guard, the prospect of forced labor as galley slaves a better alternative than what would happen if they were caught on the other side of the road…

By ancient tradition, the Matriarchs of the city left the merchants to the harbor, to do as they saw fit. They saw their presence as a helpful luxury, but any who broke ancient tradition and stirred trouble beyond the Grey Road would… Pay.

There's a reason almost no crime happens within the city, Sansa thought as she nodded at Calinnia.

"Bring him forward," said the Matriarch.

The two black garbed guards dragged the barely conscious man by the arms, settling him on his knees in front of Sansa. The black basalt halls of the House of the South were laid bare of tapestries and ornaments; only abstract designs showing in the distance as the stone hall stretched upwards.

"Please… I only wanted it… to sell…" the man babbled slowly in Yi-Tish, in a trance wholly of his own making, fear and panic leaving him dazed in his hour of need. His gaze slowly drifted upwards as the guards stood back, meeting Sansa's cold eyes. "Please… only wanted to sell it, put a little coin in me' pouch…." he said louder, his pupils shifting as he blinked in the midst of the penumbra. Sansa thought there was some primal instinct working within him, a primal fear just now whispering its gut clenching conclusion as the man started to shiver.

"For the crimes committed beneath the Shadow, I condemn you," Sansa intoned as she raised her hand.

He shook his head, really looking at his surroundings for the first time as the final piece of the puzzle settled. He was about to experience the reason why those who committed crimes beneath the Shadow of Asshai were never heard off again.

"No, NO!" he screamed as he struggled to stand up, but Sansa took a step forward and planted a palm firmly on his chest, just over his heart.

"For the gift of blood, I commend you," she said as the man stared at her eyes in horror. Sansa stared back as the man screamed, paralyzed in place as he trembled ever so slightly despite the harrowing pain now crisscrossing his body.

Sansa gritted her teeth, feeling as taught as a string as she willed the blood within the man to come to her. She could already feel it, churning and bubbling beneath her grasp; but a hair's breathe away from her. Calinnia could have accomplished this in a second, but her own inexperience showed, and the man's scream turned shrill as Sansa bit her own lip and pUlLeD with all her will.

The man's scream cut off as he was left breathless, watching his own blood bubbled from his heart and through his ruptured skin, pooling around Sansa's palm. The breathless agony was somehow worse, the man's befuddled gaze turning from the strange sight of his own blood slowly being absorbed by Sansa's hand.

He stared at her half lidded eyes in incomprehension as she drained his life away.

It tasted like a light summer wine, barely a drip of power flowing beneath the flavor, and it was still enough to leave Sansa in near ecstasy, the sweet treat entering her bloodstream and revitalizing her both in mind and body.

The man's silent agony did not cut off abruptly. It was more of a gradual descent into oblivion, his eyes slowly closing as Sansa withdrew her pristine pink hand and he swayed like a leaf in the wind. He collapsed backwards, partly shriveled as blood slowly oozed around him, pooling around the basalt tiles of the ritual hall. The six other masked figures watching at a distance were unperturbed, standing still as statues.

"How do you feel?" asked Calinnia.

Sansa took a step back, standing just a little behind the Matriarch before bending her neck a bit and sighing. "I feel… invigorated," she said.

The Matriarch murmured, and Sansa could detect the faint trace of a smile in her voice as her mask tilted downwards. "You absorbed more than half of it," she said with the slightest tinge of approval, watching the blood left by the corpse's trail as it was carried away by the blackguards.

"I have a competent teacher," said Sansa with a slight tilt of the head. Calinnia preferred her compliments to be simple and direct.

She hummed in appreciation before waving off the rest of the audience, "Leave us," she said.

The six figures -all masked in green - bowed before walking backwards, melding with the long shadows of the hall until Sansa lost sight of them.

"Seven years," she mused out loud as she kept watching at the blood stains, "It's been barely seven years since you arrived at my doorstep, and yet your control over blood now borders on competence," she said. "Tell me Sansa, what is the secret behind your progress?"

"Study and dedication," she said.

"Yes, you barely do anything beyond study… besides going out with that boy every now and then…"

The implicit threat was clear, but Sansa refrained from speaking out.

"The latent power within your blood, perhaps? To be a Caller and a Vessel at once is a boon few possess in a given century… but no, I suspect it is something else."

Sansa was still, her pale hands behind her back.

"Tell me dear, did you encounter something else before you came to me?" she asked as she turned, her green-and-red striped mask growing closer as she walked towards her.

"None, Matriarch," she answered.

Calinnia seemed to regard her with amusement for a moment, before she looked around the hall itself. "It's okay dear, everyone in this accursed city lives by their lies and secrets," she said as she gazed at the blood stains on the floor, "From the tiniest of robber merchants… to even the most astute of Callers," she said as she turned to Sansa once more.

Sansa said nothing, one wrist turning slowly as she opened her hand. She felt the weight of the serpentine dagger in her sleeve, just a slight twist away from falling firmly in her grasp.

Her next words took Sansa by surprise, however. "You're ready. Or near enough it makes no difference. I'll call for Noonshadow within the next month."

Sansa's hands fisted, her heart quickening before she managed to lick her suddenly parched lips. "Isn't that premature, Matriarch? There are many of the higher mysteries I don't yet understand," she said.

"They are all built from the same foundations," she said dismissively, "After you've mastered the basic core of it all the rest is just a matter of time… time and experimentation," she said while walking around her, "And you've taken to the basics quite remarkably. It's something about the taste, isn't it?" she whispered.

There was a slight, unnerving spring to Calinnia's step, a sort of repressed glee as she kept walking in a circle around her, "So few people get it. Even amongst the most gifted of Callers blood is seen as a mere instrument of power, or even worse; an intoxicant," she added in sudden indignation, "As if it were mere ecstasy what lies within its grasp…" she trailed off before leaning in on Sansa's ear, her voice almost inaudible.

"But you and I, we know better, don't we?" she asked.

Sansa shuffled, swallowing mechanically as her hands fidgeted. "Yes," she finally whispered.

"The other Callers may indulge in days of stupor, generously sucking my harem dry in their intoxicated bliss… and yet they don't feel it," said Calinnia, as if she were confessing a great secret. "Tell me Sansa, beyond the bliss of fresh blood invigorating your being, what do you feel?" she asked.

Sansa felt her mouth open almost against her will, not knowing what she was going to say until the words crawled out of her throat, "It has something… beyond… Beyond here…" she said. She was not talking about geography or time, and Calinnia knew it.

"It's not the ecstasy you and I crave," murmured Calinnia, "It's the whispers of apotheosis."

She laughed suddenly, chuckling lowly as she departed Sansa's side. "No, you understand. The rest will come by its own will, in time."

Sansa stood still until Calinnia had left her, and it was only then that she felt she could breathe again. It was only when she started walking towards the hall's exit that Sansa noticed her slippers were caked in dried blood.

She turned her gaze, and realized there was not a single drop of blood left on the floor.

-: PD :-

The House of the South had been chiseled out of the mountain itself. Asshai the city was nestled within the mountains of the Shadowlands of course, but the House of the South was a structure almost at the city limits, chiseled out of the nearest foothills. Raw basalt and granite had been molded into a structure that emerged as if from the mountain itself; intricately carved pillars and abstract designs peppered the outer area, and the light of the sun struggled to reach just past the threshold.

Sansa walked quickly away from its shadow, her back straight as she walked past the two blackguards by the entrance. She did not pay them any mind, for they were little more than physical vessels for the will of the Matriarchs in the minds of the Asshai'. Indoctrinated slave soldiers descended from House harems whose blood had been deemed insufficiently useful.

She went down the ruined alleyways of the abandoned streets surrounding the House, navigating them expertly before she turned in a whirl, serpentine dagger ready to cut her own wrist as she crouched.

The black robed figure leapt from the second story of the ruined house by her right, landing crouched with barely a sound. He stood up like a panther, his movements almost leisurely slow and betraying a sort of coiled strength.

"Joffrey. I thought we were to meet in the Temple," she said, slowly putting down the dagger.

Joffrey took off the cowl as he walked towards her, sporting his usual half smile, "You know me, I got impatient."

"Then you should learn to wait," she told him before storming off.

"What? Sansa?" Joffrey called out, but she was already walking away.

"Sansa!" he called out once more, "Sansa!" he said as he grabbed her hand. She twisted his as her dagger went for his throat, but he stopped her with a lock that bent her arm upwards.

"What the hells are you-"

Sansa swapped hands with her dagger, but Joffrey caught her other hand too and twisted in a semi-circle, ending with her back pinned against the wall by Joffrey.

His confusion slowly gave way to understanding as he stared at her eyes and she struggled to avoid them, "They made you do it again, did they?" he asked her slowly, "You're always like this after you do it…"

Sansa kept trying to avoid his gaze, looking at the floor as she stopped struggling. "But never like this… Sansa. Sansa look at me," he said as he bent his head slightly, forcing her eyes to meet his own. "You don't have to appear strong to me. They're not watching you right now."

Her gaze seemed to pierce through his, and Joffrey took a deep breath. "We can take turns Sansa. We can take turns," he said, and the dagger slipped from her hands and fell on the ground as she closed her eyes.

She laid her head against his chest gently, her hands untangling from the lock and grasping his back tightly. Joffrey said nothing as he hugged her back, her slow falling tears punctuated by lone, strangled sobs that dared to emerge every now and then.

-: PD :-

The small cabin was one of many that littered the second 'terrace' of the grand work that was the Temple of the Aeromancers. Made of three distinct terraces carved out of the mountains themselves, all three sections served different functions. The second one hosted a litany of small wood-and-paper cabins built for the apprentices and acolytes which sought the illumination of true Masters in the Temple proper, up by the third level. The cabins themselves were simple affairs made of wood and treated paper, furnished with a chest and a small cabinet. Each held a miniature kitchen, a fireplace, a small table, and a cot.

… The Masters had insisted that he'd settle in the third terrace, but he'd refused.

For all that Joffrey had lived in great mercantile estates and castles fit for rulers of continents, he'd found that this little cabin –whom he'd called home for over 7 years now- had something almost intimate, a deeper sense of self when inhabited by him. Perhaps it was the complete lack of servants, or the closed, single interior that guaranteed line of sight everywhere within the small cabin… regardless, it made for a heavenly retreat from the intrigues of the city and the constant spars with the Masters.

He sighed as he wiggled, molding himself to Sansa's form as he pressed against her back, passing an arm over her and holding her gently. The cot was at ground level, but its small size could sometimes be a luxury of its own. Sansa grabbed his arm like a pillow, caressing it gently.

"Did you defeat Master Wo-Ti this week?" she asked him.

"Almost."

"Must be tough, finding your match after all these years."

Joffrey hummed, his mind drifting with the white noise of the crickets outside. Despite Asshai not boasting a single animal or plant except for Ghost Grass and the occasional visit by Lady, the Temple of the Aeromancers seemed to teem with life.

"Not really. Back in the Dawn Fort there were plenty of people who could kick my butt at Paigo. Captain Sabu for one…"

"You told me Sabu was a stoic man, akin to a rock in temperament. Master Wo-Ti sounds awfully familiar," said Sansa.

"Perhaps there's something to be said for the rock approach," he conceded.

"Or maybe you just lack patience," she said as she turned his arm slightly.

"That too," he chuckled.

The rattle made by the enormous crickets outside was the only noise besides their gentle breathing until Sansa stirred. Lady's head emerged from the mound of greyish white fur inhabiting the corner of the cabin, blinking slowly at them. She'd grown monstrously during the past few years, to the point she had difficulty entering the cabin.

It's serious then, thought Joffrey, bracing himself.

"Calinnia is calling Noonshadow. The rest of the Houses will meet us in Stygai once the day comes. Within the next month I'll be a member of the House of the South… or dead," she said.

Joffrey's embrace turned even tighter, "I thought it took two decades to reach that level of confidence," he said.

"Well, she's convinced…"

"And you?"

The crickets answered for her, and Joffrey blinked slowly.

"And you, Sansa?" he asked again.

"Yes."

"But… that's good right?" he asked, confused.

"Yes Joffrey… I'm ready," she said, her nails biting into his arm as she squeezed, "That's the thing. I… I love it," she said in dread.

Joffrey kissed her bare shoulder, "I won't judge you," he said quietly.

"Blood… no, the thing that blood holds… Joff…" she whispered as she put his hand over her mouth in silent horror, "It feels like… it feels like the Purple."

Joffrey said nothing as his breath hitched, feeling pinpricks all over his back, still as a marble statue as Sansa breathed through his hand.

"But it's like… like the other way around… like the other side of it. There's no pain, there's just this all-consuming expanse of raw power that glimpses all too fast, too fast to understand anything…"

"We knew blood magic caused feelings of bliss and euphoria on its practitioners, but-"

"No Joff, this is different. Yes blood can feel like a summer wine or the purest Arbor Gold depending on its potency, and many Shadowbinders revel in that feeling… but this goes deeper. I've never would have realized it if I'd not seen the full picture after every time we die. I don't think most maegi even realize the sheer… otherness that they are using. It's, it's-"

"Transcendent."

"Yes. Yes that's it," she said, slowly lowering Joffrey's hand and massaging it compulsively. "And every time I call it I want more. The power to destroy our enemies. The power to live our life the way we want it to. The power to traverse time…"

"… It's all interconnected, dreams within dreams," said Joffrey, holding her close.

"We live and die again and again, we peer into the deepest abyss…"

"Each time closer to understanding it all…" Joffrey finished the sentence.

"What will I become at the end of this? Joff, what are we turning into?" she said, slipping further down beneath the blanket and against Joffrey.

"The captains of our fate," he said without a shadow of a doubt.

"Dear, now's not the time for your sailor's wisdom," she called out halfheartedly.

He responded by withdrawing his arm and massaging her back, slowly getting rid of the knots of tension that traversed its length. "The Purple… it blurs the line between what the real and the imagination. Between the world and the mind," he said as Sansa sighed, his calloused hands working their way down, "But… how real was the line to begin with?"

He took a while to compose his thoughts, giving form to muddled sensations from within.

He stopped the massage slowly, his thumbs tracing circles over Sansa's skin, "I'm starting to think the distinction was arbitrary. It's all interconnected, it's all the same thing," he said, frowning. "I'd thought it was a characteristic of the Purple, but in truth it's a universal constant."

Sansa sighed, staring at the wood-and-paper wall and the shadows thrown by the striking moonlight. "You're talking about that… something that… that permeates everything…"

"Yeah… Or perhaps everything is part of that something," said Joffrey, "The Song…"

"I'm afraid Joffrey," she said suddenly, "I'm afraid what will happen when we peel away the curtain. I'm afraid to see the stage." Joffrey could feel her accelerated heartbeat, fear and awe warring within her soul as she confessed weakness.

"We'll see it together," he whispered in her ear, "Side-by-side, we'll see beyond the curtain. We'll become captains. Rulers of our fate," he said fiercely, possessed by an inner flame that fed off unbreakable certainty.

"We'll cut our strings," she said, "We'll cut our strings, together," she whispered the last word almost breathlessly as she turned within his grip, her face but a hair's breath away from his; deep blue eyes boring into his own.

Joffrey kissed her savagely, and Sansa grasped him tightly as she climbed on top of him, deepening it. Her long hair was like a curtain around Joffrey's head, and his hands felt the long scars crisscrossing her as she arched back in pleasure. They were gifts of her training, marks on the long road towards the truth; pain and knowledge held hand in hand. The crickets muffled their gasps as the moon crossed the night sky and the Red Comet glowed in otherworldly light.

-: PD :-

"I heard you'll be leaving soon," said Master Gaharz as Joffrey reached the blackened tree stump. The Master of the Second Way was sitting in the green grass around the stump, his robes as pristine as ever.

Joffrey sat on the stump itself, folding his knees into a half lotus position. The rest of the garden was deserted, the late hour seeing almost all of the students back on the second terrace. "I am. My wife will pass the test beneath the shadow of Fallen Stygai within this month."

"And so her training comes to an end. Tell me Master Joffrey, what was the prize the House of the South asked in return for such instruction?"

"A relic from the times of Ancient Valyria… and twenty years of service," he said.

"They will not let go of her before her time, I hope you understand that," said Gaharz, sorrow in his voice. "All Houses hold repositories with great amounts of blood extracted from each member. To renege on a deal with a patron House would be a fate worse than death, no matter how far you run."

"I'll keep it in mind," he said, nodding at the Master. "I wanted to thank you. I already spoke to Masters Wo-Ti and Jeng… The ways you meld meditation and martial arts are truly a thing to behold… I wanted… to thank you, for the instruction."

"In teaching, one learns," said Gaharz, before a small smile peeked through his lips. "Quite painfully too, those 'tourney swords' of yours were hard to get a handle of."

Joffrey grunted, smiling at the old Master, "Watching Master Wo-Ti trying to make sense of a two hander was a gift that I will always cherish," he said.

They spent a few seconds in silence while Joffrey tapped fingers against his thigh.

"And yet that is not the only reason you came here today," said the old Ghiscary.

"No, Master."

Gaharz chuckled, his eyes still closed as his frame wobbled lightly, "The power to tame that demon lies wholly between your own hands. You do not need my voice to guide you."

"But it helps, Master. It helps me understand," he said.

"… Very well then, you know what to do," said the Master.

Joffrey closed his eyes, leaving the ambient noise to fade into the background or be made part of his distant awareness. His mind was blank, like one of the fig tree's leaves swaying through the wind.

"Do you remember it?" asked Gaharz.

"Yes," he said, feeling a deep thirst within him, the promise of all consuming joy so close at hand.

"How did it feel?" asked the distant voice.

Joffrey shuffled minutely, remembering the savage glee as he butchered Aegon Targeryen.

"Good," he said. It had felt more than good. Power. Bliss. Joy.

"Try to follow that feeling, trace it to your body."

Joffrey did so, breathing slowly as he remembered the pleasurable blood running through his body. The savage joy of butchering his enemies and imposing his will upon them.

"My chest," he said, breathing a bit more harshly.

"How does it look? What are its dimensions," said the voice.

"It's… it's red… it's coiled in there… a chained beast…"

"What does it want?"

"To be let out," he said quickly, his breath hitching. "To maim. Kill. He loves it. He loves it so much," he rasped, trying to give words to something deep within. A curse he'd known before even the Purple, though he hadn't named it as such back then.

"What is its name?"

"The Red," Joffrey said immediately, remembering Ned Stark's face as he twisted in agony.

There was silence, the tree stump uncomfortable to sit on as he shuffled.

"It's true name," said Gaharz.

"… the Red!" he said again, remembering Nalia's torn face.

"It's true name."

Joffrey struggled to feel the beast, to look at its eyes and admit it.

He clambered up to his feet, shaking the dust off his robes as he jumped from the stump. "Thank you for your patience, Master," he said with a bow, thoroughly ashamed with himself even if he needed to go right now.

"You cannot escape from it, Master Joffrey. You cannot escape what is part of you," Gaharz called out as Joffrey walked away from the stump and the sitting master.

"Goodbye and good fortune, Master Gaharz," he called out, bowing low before walking past the twin dojos and down the rocky arc that delineated the start of the path downwards.

-: PD :-

The road to Stygai was long and treacherous. They followed the dark Ash River through the Shadow Mountains, keeping to the black fused rock road that traversed its side. Ghost Grass grew in abundance there, pale purple stalks that never seemed to sway with the wind.

The caravan from the House of the South was small but shrouded in power. Dagger armed blackguards carried small packs with supplies while Matriarch Calinnia herself was carried by palanquin. The black bandaged servants had hollow stares as they carried the scarcely adorned vehicle, itself guarded on both sides by two Shadowbinders,

Sansa walked in front of the palanquin, her back straight and her unmasked face bare for all to see. This was supposed to be the last time anyone who was not from the House of the South would see her true face. Joffrey walked behind her with Lady, keeping an eye out for ambushes and other… things.

It was said that the Shadowlands grew wild and dangerous the nearer one got to Stygai. Otherworldly beings were said to inhabit the fallen city, fell dragons and shadow demons roaming its cursed depths. It was said even Shadowbinders feared it, but Joffrey had never heard them mutter a word about it.

He could see it in the way they walked though. They were scared.

To be part of a House meant being a part of the ancient compact that bound the Four Houses together. It meant protection against blood hunt from rivals, and the embracing of all the duties and responsibilities of your chosen House. It was much like being a scion of a Westerosi noble house, assuming its sins, duties, and privileges as your own. Unlike Westerosi houses though, there were no dynasties in Asshai. The mantle of the Matriarch passed to her chosen successor, and adoption was the only way the Houses grew. Children were born away from the city itself in secret, fortified locations; the product of carefully cultivated bloodlines that carried the power of ancient sorcerers. Those deemed of insufficient power were raised as blackguards or servants, while those who had the ancient echo of power within their veins…

They were called Vessels, locked away inside the redoubts of the Four Houses. Blood Harems; their single purpose in life to feed blood to the Matriarch and her entourage. They were one of the deciding factors when measuring a House's streanght against a rival one… and their destruction or theft marked setbacks that could take centuries for a House to truly recover.

To have entered that world, every Shadowbinder had survived Noonshadow. The ceremony killed the weak, and acknowledged the strong. It welcomed the new member into the compact or took their life in the attempt.

"We're here," whispered Sansa.

Their timing had been exact. It was noon; sunrays descending from on high and illuminating a little valley in front of them. Joffrey blinked in confusion, taking a step next to her. "Are you… sure?" he said, watching the small valley formed within the Shadow Mountains. The road sloped downwards at a light angle, reaching for the center of the barren valley.

"I am," she whispered, watching the palanquin as the servants left it on the ground. Calinnia promptly walked out of it, surveying their deserted destination through the tiny holes in her mask.

"I thought Stygai would be more…" Joffrey struggled to speak his mind, making a vague movement with his hands. "There?" he said, watching the way the other Shadowbinders kept a respectful distance from the slope.

"Let us go. The sun won't wait," she said as she strode towards the valley, her long robes hiding her legs as she seemed to glide downwards through the sloping hill. Sansa gave Lady a big hug before following Calinnia down.

"Any of these crazies so much as twitch and you end them, alright Lady?" Joffrey whispered as he scratched the giant direwolfe's fur. Lady gazed at him quizzically before ramming her large head against his chest and sending him on his way.

Joffrey barely felt the sun as they descended, as if the rays themselves had lost all heat. The three of them walked alone, but he thought he could see other figures in the distance, closing in from the three other cardinal points.

They were the first to arrive at an unspecified stopping point. Calinnia turned to them, "Do not interfere or you'll both die," she told him with a negligent wave of her hand. Her eyes were for Sansa only though; she grabbed her by the shoulders painfully, and Joffrey had to resist the impulse to draw his blade as Sansa cringed ever so slightly.

"Remember everything I taught you. You will pass this trial," she commanded, her voice descending to a whisper, "We cannot afford failure, not now. One more whiff of weakness and the House of the West will end us. Do you understand, Sansa?"

"I do."

She got even closer to Sansa, almost touching her forehead with the mask, "You will become a Caller of the South. In time, your power shall be the instrument through which our House will exact retribution on the West," she said with a barely contained snarl.

Sansa nodded, and Calinnia returned it as she stepped back as composed as ever. "Do not die," she said.

The three other groups kept getting closer, and Joffrey squeezed Sansa's hand as they waited. She was shivering, her lips pale as she turned to look at him. "Remember, I'll see you back in Winterfell all goes wrong," he said.

She looked at him for a long while, before slowly shaking her head. "No one will stop us, remember?"

"No one," he said.

Calinnia raised her hands, addressing the first group to arrive. "Who dares tread in the Shadow?"

The lead woman was a stooped figure, her mask the shape of the sun with rays erupting from its depths. "The House of the East comes. We'll bear witness to this Calling," she said.

"Kijima," said Calinnia, nodding at the stooped figure, "I see you are still infatuated with the fire peddlers," said continued, gazing at her two companions with disdain.

"But it's so easy to show them the truth," said Kijima as a bandaged hand emerged from the folds of her dark red robe. "The priestesses of the Red God are already halfway there," she said, giddy as if she were a child as she caressed the shoulders of her two masked companions, "For what is their Red God and fire itself without its shadow," she said as her two companions shivered, whether in ecstasy or terror Joffrey could not tell.

The second group arrived from the north, garbed in bundles of dark silk which covered them completely except for their eyes. "Who dares tread in the Shadow?" said Calinnia.

"The House of the North comes. We'll bear witness to this Calling," whispered the lead figure of the three, all but indistinguishable from its companions except for the fact that she stopped walking a step ahead of them.

"Jiia," said Calinnia.

Jiia said nothing as she bowed, returning to her position and standing still with her hands behind her back.

The last to arrive came from the west at a sedate pace. Joffrey's breath hitched as he recognized the blue mask, hand squeezing the pommel of his sword as he flicked his gaze to Sansa. She shook her head though, staring at the masked figure. She walked alone, every step gracefully choreographed as she reached the group and gazed at Calinnia and Sansa.

"Who dares tread in the Shadow?" said Calinnia.

Blue Mask stared at them, tilting her head lightly as her gaze turned to Joffrey. "You have broken tradition Calinnia, bringing a Vessel to a Calling. Have you brought your entire retinue as well? Do they lie waiting in ambush?" she asked in a grave voice.

"A Vessel here?!" said Kijima, nostrils flaring as she gazed at Joffrey in shock. "It's true!" she said as Jiia's hands returned from her back and she took a step forward.

Show me your secrets, Joffrey remembered, and he was a second away from summoning Brightroar when Calinnia laughed. "Oh Wylla, you have grown senile in time… Can't you see how he looks at her? How eager he is to violence? How he seeks her gaze?" she said mockingly.

Wylla was silent, gazing at Joffrey and back to Sansa slowly.

"Ohhh… a mate," said Kijima, as if it all made sense now. "Please excuse us, my friend," she said as she bowed repeatedly, addressing Joffrey directly for the first time, "I hadn't realized… Oh Calinnia, I should have known better than to doubt you…"

"He's still a Vessel under your thumb Calinnia, and a powerful one," said Wylla, blue mask glinting under the strange sun, "A Vessel which you could use as fuel for an attack while we are distracted with the Calling."

Calinnia straightened, seemingly surprised, "I thought you weren't scared of me. This is a nice surprise… The great House of the West fearful of the South once more?" she mused out loud.

Kijima spoke over Wylla immediately, before she could get a single word in edgewise, "It's been too long since a mate was present for a Calling. And I thought we'd get another boring, quick show," she said, almost jumping from the excitement, "What was the last one we saw? Must have been close to forty years now… what was her name-?"

"Rominya," said Jiia, a mere statement of fact.

"Ah yes, she was one of yours…" said Kijima, looking at Jiia, "Her mate kept desperately stabbing himself, trying to give her a bit more of an oomph… of course, he only ended up prolonging her agony," she said with a distant voice. "Before he bled out himself," she added as an afterthought as she forgot about Joffrey and returned her gaze to Wylla.

"It's still too dangerous," said the Matriarch of the West.

"He's got a right to be here. I thought you'd know that Wylla, being as how the House of the West has always leaned so heavily on Tradition," said Calinnia, the last few words coming out a touch acerbically.

"Ow. She got you there dear," said Kijima.

"It is known," said Jiia.

Wylla's mask tilted from Matriarch to Matriarch, and to Joffrey's ears he could detect the slightest of sighs before she nodded slowly.

"Who dares tread in the Shadow?" said Calinnia.

There was a slight pause before Wylla spoke, "The House of the West comes. We'll bear witness to this Calling," she said, clearly enunciating every word.

"Good," said Calinnia, "Though talking about traditions, is it not expected to come with two companions to Noonshadow?" she said.

"It is only customary, not Tradition," said Wylla.

Calinnia hummed, pleased. "Then we are settled," she said quickly.

"Let's get to it, I can hardly wait," said Kijima. With that all the other groups turned and walked towards their original directions, the three -soon to be four- points forming a circle around a small section of the empty place, centered on where they had just talked. Joffrey looked at the sun in confusion, then back to the small shadow at the center of the gathering.

I would have sworn that was not there before… he thought.

"Well spoken, my Matriarch," said Sansa, "The House of the West will walk away from this diminished in the eyes of the others."

"Bah, they can afford to lose a bit of prestige. No, they got what they wanted," she said, gazing at the sun.

"… Time," said Sansa.

"Yes. It's close to half past noon now. Do not dally," said Calinnia before striding south.

Sansa nodded quickly, but Joffrey grabbed her before she could stand right in the middle of the great circle. "Sansa, what the red Matriarch said… is it true? Could I shed my blood to power your magic?"

Sansa frowned as he looked at him, "Yes, in theory. The traditions surrounding all this are very old and often nonsensical; they're supposed to come from the time when Stygai was still… well, still existed. One such tradition speaks about willing blood sacrifice during the Calling, though only… mates or family were allowed to do so…"

"So I could-"

"It's bound to hurt more than it will help Joffrey. Too much concentration split in multiple tasks… it is said merely surviving the… thing takes one's entire mind."

Joffrey sighed, tapping the hilt of his sword, "Alright. Take care," he said, hesitant to move.

Sansa grabbed his head with both hands and kissed him before pushing him off, "Go! We have to be out of here in less than half an hour!"

Joffrey jogged back towards Calinnia, reaching her side just as the Matriarch raised both hands horizontally, seemingly staring at nothing.

"She better make it out of this unharmed. For your sake," said Joffrey as he stood behind her.

Calinnia snorted as the other Matriarchs swept their arms up, synchronized with each other.

"You don't believe me?" asked Joffrey.

"Oh I believe you just fine, brave knight… But I'll have far bigger problems if Sansa fails… One whiff of weakness and the other Houses will do nothing while the West destroys us…" she muttered as she sighed in mild unpleasantness, tiny rivulets of blood emerging from her nails and falling to the ground.

"Callers, Shadowbinders… whatever you want to call them. How many have you tried to induct during the last twenty years?" Joffrey asked her as he watched sprays of blood emerge from the other Matriarchs, the blood itself turning into smoke as it traced a circumference.

"Too many. All failures… your wife though… Oh a reckoning will come…" she said, and Joffrey could hear the smile. She gasped, craning her neck as her blood connected with that shed by Kijima and Wylla. "Strange. There's barely any pull behind Wylla…" she muttered.

"Is that bad?" Joffrey asked quickly.

"Perhaps. No reserves. She'd be left weak after the ritual…" she said before gasping again, her eyes turning white as she kept raising her hands and the connected blood line boiled, throwing up black smoke which started to construct a dome of shadow and black mist with Sansa right in the middle.

"Wylla. That blood. I felt she had it. When we spoke," Calinnia stuttered quickly, "Now it's gone. Somewhere. Beware treachery," she rasped before wheezing as if near death, shaking lightly as she raised her arms even higher and the bubbling smoke coalesced into an opaque dome.

"Matriarch?" Joffrey asked, but she was in a trance, mumbling something in an ancient Yi-Tish dialect Joffrey couldn't make heads or tails off. The other Matriarchs were doing the same, their voices rising in unison as the shadows deepened and they repeated the word again and again.

-: PD :-

Sansa was breathing deeply, forcing her lungs into a steady rhythm as a dome of raw power closed her off from the outside world. Not a single sound could be heard from outside it, and she knew the effect went both ways. She could barely glimpse Joffrey's form as he ducked and struggled to look inside, his eyes unerringly looking for hers. He was worried… after all, most Noonshadow ceremonies lasted less than three minutes, the candidates dead or worse.

In tune with your own power. Feel the weight of it slithering through your veins, she thought as she felt it, her awareness growing to encompass the shimmering river of power coursing through her own being.

Spoiler: Music

She was ready as she opened her eyes, gazing at the whirlwind of smoke and blood forming in front of her. The blood demon was a construct that echoed the hate and fury that somehow permeated this place, given form by the power of the four Matriarchs combined and given a single will through words muttered in a language long dead, a single objective simple enough to hold such outpouring of power for a small bit of time. Sickly pulsating blood interwove with smoke, forming two grotesque legs before continuing upwards into a red torso of squirming darkness that sprouted bulky arms and a deformed, screaming head.

Kill, the blood itself seemed to whisper.

The blood demon screamed with a thousand voices, the screams of agony of all the people whose blood had been harvested to build the abomination. It sprung at her, a misshaped mockery of the human form now sprinting on all four limbs as Sansa stomped one feet on the ground and slammed her arms together.

She gritted her teeth in pain as she felt her own blood emerge through her fingers, swiftly turning into a black smoke that scurried through the ground. Her will directed her essence, and she watched through half lidded eyes as chains of smoke tied the demon to the ground, though its screams never ceased.

Khai or the Third Way was the martial art of sorcerers, devised in part to facilitate the flow of blood. Sansa followed its most basic forms, slowly arching her elbows and joining her fists by her belly. She let out a harsh breath as she pulled both hands downwards, the demon screeching as it slammed into the earth, her smoking blood covering it almost completely.

Her heart hammered her ears as she stumbled towards the chained demon, the quivering mound of darkness radiating hate and fury and death. She bit her own tongue as she reached it and placed a hand on it, seeking to disrupt what tied it together.

"Sleep," she intoned, her mind worming through the frontier where their blood mixed, seeking to grasp the demon itself and reduce it to nothing.

She gasped when her mind slipped, bouncing against a wall of order and will. Everything the beast was not.

The demon's hollow skull gazed at her before its bulging flesh rippled, standing up in two legs as the chains of her will broke apart and it towered above her like a mountain. It roared with a thousand quivering voices as one brutish column of darkness and pulsing red blood raked her chest, sending her tumbling through the ground.

Sansa gurgled, turning on her back and gazing at the great slash on her belly. She tried to build a bandage out of her shredded robes before the demon shrilled as it charged, four limbs striking the ground hard enough to leave marks as it rammed her with horns made of darkness.

She gasped in agony as the rolling stopped, looking at the two holes puncturing her chest. Her trembling hands grasped her torn robes sluggishly, not quite sure what to do with them. She gazed at the blood pouring out of her chest in dumb amazement, breathing slowly as she died.

No, she thought.

She blinked slowly as she stumbled upright, discarding the piece of bloodied cloth. She took a deep breath that rattled her to her very being, her own blood answering like her direwolf as it scurried from all over the small circle, entering back into her bloodstream.

You are mine. I command you, she thought as she willed the wounds closed, her own blood clotting rapidly. The Demon slammed its fists against the ground in an almost childish tantrum, screaming in frustration before suddenly leaping at her with arms outstretched.

Sansa ducked and rolled sideways, letting the Demon fly past her as pools of her own blood tried to chain him to the ground again. They couldn't, she couldn't grasp the thinking illusion of death and madness. There was something else behind it, something protecting it from afar and slapping away Sansa's efforts.

The Demon turned like a cat, whirling to face her and lifting one great arm in the air.

The blood of the Magnars of Winter runs through me, she thought as she cut her own wrist with her nails and she rolled away from the blow that shook the earth. She snarled as the blood from the wound turned smoky black and a blade of pure darkness as long as her forearm emerged into being.

The legacy of the First Men Kings is mine to command, she remembered as she ducked beneath claws of blood and darkness, her own pale blade striking true and sinking into the Demon. She felt righteous, as if something deep inside her had always been meant for this. The thing screamed like a choir in disharmony as she twisted her hand, slashing outwards and gutting it. Smoke and boiling blood erupted from the wound, specks of it burning her face as the Demon convulsed.

She felt the wave before she saw it; the blood of sorcerers emerging from the ground and fueling the gutted nightmare, lending it strength and agonizing existence.

"Joffrey! They're feeding it!" she screamed at her husband, who was silently shuffling around the borders of the dome, constantly moving as he tried to see what was happening on the other side. He stopped immediately, but though his mouth moved Sansa couldn't hear anything about what he was saying.

The dome, we can't communicate, she thought before a shrill roar announced the pain that soon burned across her right shoulder.

She screamed as she fell to the ground, rolling away just in time before the column like fists of the beast tore her apart. She centered herself as she stood up, one foot sliding back as her knees bent slightly and she jerked aside, avoiding another strike. She was pure instinct as she parried one tremendous claw after another, following the motions and movements Joffrey had taught her after years of training with her daggers almost every day. She mixed the attacks with the stances of Khai, seeking to empower herself with long, harsh movements that pumped her blood and made her scream in agony.

No matter how brutal the cut however, the Demon managed to reform its limbs, each time driven to ever greater peaks of fury. It's heavy strikes left craters on the earth, and its claws tilled the ground like the great iron ploughs sold to the prosperous yeoman farmers who lived near Winterfell.

She traced the flow of power that seemed to be feeding it, her mind completely in tune with the present like never before. She followed the direction of the emerging blood, following the echo until it emerged nearby and she became one with Lady.

One of her eyes turned white as she cut the Demon's arm, but the sudden vertigo of living two realities at once left her ill prepared for the blow that left a long slash on her leg. She used the wound to fuel a short lived limb, a pillar of darkness that parried the next blow and allowed her to spin away with an Ibbenese feint.

-: PD :-

The desperate Ib-Makak left much to be desired, but it was good enough to see Sansa disentangle herself from the Demon in a whirlwind of movement, leaving her facing Joffrey. When he saw her looking at him, one of her eyes blue and the other white, he knew exactly what to do. Lady howled by his side as she reached the dome in seconds, looking at him before reversing course and running.

Something was wrong, and his wife needed him.

Joffrey abandoned the notion of gutting Wylla from behind and instead ran after Lady. The noon sun had already crossed that invisible boundary in the sky, descending ever so slowly towards the distant sea.

We can't have much time, he thought quickly, Maybe fifteen minutes or so.

The shadows were growing deeper and darker, a fact deeply distressing to Joffrey as he gazed back and failed to find any structures around him whatsoever. As the sun moved, shadows seemed to sprung as if from nowhere. Soon the empty plain was filled with lengthening gashes of black that seemed darker than the void between the stars, the silhouette of a whole city emerging whole cloth as Stygai woke up…

Joffrey dreaded to think what would happen if they stayed here much longer.

Lady skidded to a stop in front of a wall that had not been there a second before, growling at the curious figures staring from the other side. They all wore masks of studded bronze, part of an enormous crowd of people swaying to the words of a distant speaker, raising his hands to the air in unison with the crowd. A few of them by the back of the crowd turned when they saw Joffrey, pale hands emerging from robes as they sought to grab him.

"Stand back!" he roared as he hefted Brightroar, the figures recoiling back as he cut the air with it. Lady ran left, leaving the wall behind as Joffrey followed. She whimpered as the alleyway they were following ended in a dead end, scratching the wall as she looked up.

"That… was not there before…" Joffrey muttered as he gazed up at the dark tower. "Where to Sansa? Up?!" he said.

Lady nodded franticly, so he took a few steps back as he sheathed Brightroar in dragonbone and pressed it against the belt by his back, next to his small backpack. He took off at a run, crawling up the wall with the momentum as his hands moved by a will of their own and he rapidly gained altitude. He grunted as he climbed at a steady pace, using protruding bricks and ornamental jades as handholds.

Joffrey took a moment to gaze back and wished he didn't. The silhouette of Stygai was now not even pretending to follow the shadows as laid by the sun. Instead, the shadows themselves seemed to be accelerating, as if it were afternoon already inside the accursed city. Ruined buildings emerged from the blotches of darkness in his sight, impossibly tall towers made of dark bricks and peppered with enough jades to buy a kingdom, long gardens filled with sub species of Ghost Grass that were liked sentinel pines reaching up into the sky.

Gods… what happened here must have made the Doom look like a fire at the local tavern, he thought in awed terror, before shaking himself and continuing the climb. He reached the top of it soon enough, vaulting through the opened window and finding not an army of specters, but two figures… one of which was very familiar indeed.

"Kill him," said Meheesa of the House of the West as she peered into a great bowl filled with swirling blood.

Joffrey moved unconsciously, battle-hardened instincts honed through the centuries making him jump right and avoid a blur that would have gone straight to his neck. A woman garbed in the same black bandages as Meheesa, but sporting a cyan mask instead of a white one, was already by his side, iron hard fists blurring as they struck his chest.

Joffrey grunted as he let himself fall backwards, rolling on his back and springing back up as he clutched his stomach in agony. Cyan mask strode fast and low, chopping the air with her hands and striking like a mace whenever Joffrey parried.

He snarled as he ducked low and unsheathed Brightroar, the Valyrain Steel leaving a long gash by the side of the woman as she shrieked and stumbled back.

"You fool! Do not spill blood here-" Meheesa cut herself off as she watched the way the blood arching through the air, flowing sluggishly from the wound by Cyan Mask's side until it just stopped in midair.

The room trembled, and Joffrey shivered as the blood turned flat and expanded into a sort of frazzled window with bubbling contours. Bronze masked people were looking at something outside through the same window Joffrey had used to enter the tower, but they turned quickly enough when they saw the shimmering oval at their backs.

"Just sightseeing, don't mind me!" Joffrey told the things as he dropped Brightroar and assumed a swaying stance, fingers bunched together and arms bent and up front, "YII!" he shouted as he finalized the stance, the shout itself serving as a sort of ritual focus for the mind and the movements that were to come.

The woman attacked him from both front and back, a second Cyan Mask trying to hold him while the other jabbed a horizontal palm for his throat. Joffrey twirled his legs together and spun out of her grasp, his fingers striking like needles at the Cyan Mask in front of him. He was savage, delivering a flurry of stinging strikes backed up by the full force of his legs and torso, coiled muscles giving enough strength for his blows to tear flesh and purple her skin past the bandages that made her garb.

Her technique was superb though, and she'd probably been honing her style of Khai for decades, whereas Joffrey had spent barely seven getting to know five different styles. Her blocks quickly adjusted, and Joffrey snarled when she locked both his arms with one hand and struck with her palm directly into his chest. He could feel the rib cracking, but he bulled through the pain and grabbed both her hands with his.

He pivoted quickly and used her as a shield from the other Cyan Mask, her attack landing squarely on her own kidney. Both Cyan Masks recoiled in pain, the one that just attacked now holding her back in agony as the one Joffrey had in his grip bucked and twisted, moaning through clenched teeth. "Met this bastard once, Liosh, he really loved that trick," he said as he turned towards the window into the other place, "But I reckoned all those fragments of self must share a mind right?" he said before placing a leg behind her own and body slamming her just like the Hound had taught him once in a cool morning somewhere near the Ruby Fork… straight against the shimmering window.

Cyan Mask screamed as she touched the otherworldly window, the whole act somehow anathema to her existence as she disintegrated to nothing in a spectacular flash of eldritch light and the window shimmered strangely.

"No," said Meheesa as she made to stand up, tearing her eyes from the great bowl of blood.

"Sorry Meheesa," said Joffrey as he reached her before she could do more than stand, grabbing her neck from behind in a vise grip. "No one will stop us. Certainly not you," he whispered in her ear before he broke her neck in one brutal snap.

Her body jerked wildly for a second, her legs buckling and kicking the great bowl filled with the blood she'd been using to fuel her efforts against Sansa.

"Oh fuck," he muttered as the bowl tipped over, the blood scurrying slowly over the floor until it stood still.

"Fuckfuckfuckfuck-" he shouted as he ran, getting a length of rope from his small backpack as a lot of light seemed to erupt from behind him. He didn't look back as he jumped out the window, throwing the tied rope at one of the jade stones and roaring in pain as his thin gloves heated under the friction of the rope. He fell from the tower as more and more towers emerged into the skyline of Stygai, sharp needle like constructs of blackened bricks and opened wings. He managed to slow his descent enough that he merely tumbled the last few meters, landing on the street with a heavy oomph, only scarcely ahead of the scurrying blood from above that seemed to be distorting reality itself.

He stood up to a world that didn't make any sense. There were crowds of bronze masked people running everywhere, a few of them carrying the speaker he'd seen before in their arms as the man held his head in despair, wailing in an indecipherable tongue that had more in common with chirping that anything Joffrey had ever heard. He ran for the south, back to the road as the shadows kept growing. He felt his feet go out from under him when he fell through the shadow of one of the tall towers, his legs swinging wildly in the midst of an eternal void as his hands barely grabbed the ground.

He roared as he tried to climb the ledge back into reality, but his tired and battered arms couldn't lift his whole weight. He took his obsidian boot dagger and cut both of his backpack's straps, and watched it fall downwards… down and down and down into an eternal abyss.

Joffrey realized the tiny pinpricks of light below him were stars, and his breath hitched when he felt the thought drowning thrum of pure might making its way towards him. He saw it a second later, the Red Comet sailing towards Stygai in all its glory, its tail a maelstrom of pure red large enough to fit the Crownlands themselves and more as it roared at the cosmos behind it, keep sized tendrils of power emerging from its depth and snaking for the world. Its surface was a work of crystal art only a madman could truly comprehend; swirls of crystal that refracted amongst themselves and curved inwards, its whole surface infinitely faceted as it propelled itself to him.

"Ah… ah… ah…" Joffrey grunted in near panic, swaying his legs left and right like a pendulum, building enough force until he screamed, pure strength and force of will managing to raise him back to ground level. He stumbled upright to the sight of one of the figures on its knees, looking up at the night sky and the true direction of the Red Comet, the bronze mask lying by its side.

It was not human.

Its eyes were beady, almost hidden within the flurry of feathers that adorned its head. It's beak like mouth was whispering something unintelligible as groups of other figures ritually sacrificed themselves by the hundreds, by the thousands as whatever ritual they'd concocted backfired, the sheer backlash from the repository of power known as the Red Comet distorting reality itself.

It was then Joffrey realized the cold, the all encroaching shiver that seemed to settle in his bones. He ran as he watched what was perhaps the final battle of the previous Cycle, thrumming mortal power lashing out against the Long Night and finding itself thoroughly overwhelmed; the clash so mighty it still echoed in time.

Joffrey screamed as he ran and ran and ran until he glimpsed just a tiny bit of sunlight beyond the road, groups of people running with him in fear and despair as clusters of ice seemed to shimmer into being everywhere, cold automatons surveying the area as they emerged into reality wielding long blades of ice, cutting down everyone in their path.

Joffrey emerged through the mist and into the sunlight past the small valley's limits, finding the four entourages already preparing for the journey south. Curiously enough, the House of the West was standing apart from the other three, almost shunned.

Joffrey's sprint gradually gave way to a jog, and then to a walk as he finally collapsed on his knees, breathing harshly. "By the Gods, you people weren't joking around!" he said in between breaths, looking behind him and seeing only thick mist.

"You… you walked through living Stygai and lived to tell the tale?" said Jiia, as if the act itself were impossible. He could spy Lady behind her, wagging her tail animatedly as she looked at him.

"You people are… good to fear it…" he said in between breaths, "Yeah, definitively, the most… no, second most fucked up thing I've ever seen," he rasped, collapsing on his back.

"… No one has ever set foot within Stygai an hour past noon and lived to tell what's inside it…" she said.

"Joff! I was getting worried," said Sansa as she emerged into his field of vision, hugging him fiercely. She was bandaged almost from head to toe, but she was alive.

"I take it… you showed that thing… a thing or two…" he rasped in between breaths.

"I manage to unravel it once you took care of its backers. We left the clearing soon after…" she said before tilting her head, "Just what did you see in there?"

"Gods I'd kill for a drink. Remember me never to bother Robert about that again. He's wiser than I knew…" he managed.

"… Just who are you two?" said Matriarch Kijima.

Lady barked an answer, then promptly trotted towards Joffrey and licked him silly.

-: PD :-

Last edited: Nov 9, 2018

Purple Days (ASOIAF): From one day to the other, Joffrey Baratheon wakes up a changed man. Far from the spoiled boy-child known to the court of King's Landing, the Joffrey that comes out of his room three days after the death of John Arryn walks with the stride of a veteran commander and leader of men. A scholar, a sea-captain, a general, a lover. This is the story of how he became that man, and how he came to know his purpose through a cycle of endless death and rebirth that saw him explore his self and the known world from Braavos to Sothoryios and from Old Town to Yi-Ti... and beyond. (Character Development, Adventure, Worldbuilding, Mystery & Suspense, Romance, Action). (Turtledove 2017 winner!).

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Nov 8, 2018

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Nov 15, 2018

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Chapter 56: Yellow.

It seemed that whatever concessions Calinnia had extracted from the House of the West had left her in a giddy mood, as she'd even let Joffrey enter the sanctum proper, the House itself within the confines of Asshai. "My Sansa, you were magnificent!" she said in uncharacteristic, good natured glee.

"Thank you, my Matriarch," said Sansa. She now sported a green mask of her own, a sad necessity of their damned traditions.

"And you too boy," she added almost as an afterthought, "Well done gutting those bitches Tahsia and Meheesa. Now Wylla is down two veteran Callers and broke tradition by interfering in a Calling… the blood price we exacted upon them after the ceremony is…" she trailed off, sighing in pleasure. "Sansa dear, you haven't even started your service to me and you're already delivering…"

Shame those twenty years of service will never happen, thought Joffrey. The Houses usually kept vases with the blood of their Callers as deterrents to treason, but Joffrey doubted they would even get the chance to get such a tactic before they were all dead. There were already credible reports filtering from the far north that the Five Forts had been overrun… despite his letter warning them about all he'd seen there years ago.

It seemed his absence from that whole series of events, from his participation in the expedition to his last stand at the Dawn Fort, had accelerated the White Walker's progress by at least a year or two; Legions of 'hungering dead' were said to be devastating the northern reaches of the Empire, while news from the west were even more fragmented; distorted retellings carried by chains of merchants that spoke of great monsters and plagues hollowing out the heartlands of the Sunset Lands.

When confronted with the information, Calinnia had shrugged, much as he suspected the other Matriarchs must have done when informed of the 'curse of undeath' spreading in those faraway lands: Asshai had endured worst in the past, and stood all the prouder for it.

Joffrey eyed Calinnia as she sat down on the luxurious carpet, leaning back on the cushions. Callers could only take off their masks when alone with other full members of their House, and so even now the old Matriarch was hiding her own… though that didn't prevent her from opening a small hole in her mask, just the right size so she could take a sip of what Joffrey hoped was wine but knew it probably wasn't.

He tapped his fingers absentmindedly, thinking about their options. Sansa had told him she knew everything she needed to carry out further studies on her own, so further instruction here was no longer necessary… though staying certainly wouldn't hurt either. The mysteries of magic were deep and complex, and he'd seen everything from reanimation to outright weather manipulation back in the Five Forts… or at least the halting of such manipulation by the Walkers, thanks to the efforts of the Jade Scribes.

He was interrupted from his musings as a Caller with a similar mask as Sansa entered the room, bowing thrice. "Forgive me Matriarch-"

"Fiqua, I assume you have a pressing reason for interrupting?" said Calinnia, still somehow relaxed after the heavy blow to the House of the West's prestige and assets. The concessions extracted from them had been heavy, according to Sansa.

"Matriarch! I came as fast as he could but he-"

"What is the meaning of this?!" she said as she stood up, the shadows around the room trembling as she straightened into a variant of Khai Joffrey had trouble recognizing. He stood up as well, hand near his sheathed Brightroar as Sansa stood up smoothly with her knees slightly bent, ready.

Fiqua stood aside and kneeled in deep respect, and Joffrey watched the intruder in confusion as he strode into the room like he owned the place.

"Hallowed Matriarch, I apologize for the inconvenience," said the Winged Man in Ancient Yitish, bowing lightly as his long wings touched the floor. He was clad in light cloth armor made of hideously expensive and resistant Asshai Silk, the middle of the armor painted a deep yellow of a color with the hanging rectangular medallion by his chest.

Curiously enough, instead of turning him into blood pudding, Calinnia seemed to be looking at the Winged Man in something akin to stunned disbelief. He looked at Sansa, but she seemed as lost as Joffrey himself.

"The Yellow Sorcerer, Lord of Carcosa, and sixty-ninth Emperor of Yi-Ti, calls on the Houses of Asshai for aid," said the Flying Man.

"… Is the Emperor calling on the Compact of the Morn?" asked Calinnia, her voice almost shaky.

"He is, Hallowed Matriarch," said the Winged Man, his long teeth peaking from his wide mouth.

Calinnia nodded deeply, twice, "Then the House of the South shall answer," she said.

"Thank you, Hallowed Matriarch," said the Winged Man before turning on his heels and walking away from where he came.

-: PD :-

"Sure, Carcosa, why not?" said Joffrey as he gazed at the night sky and the Red Comet above. Sansa rolled her eyes as the ship swayed lightly beneath her, the black galley making a poor river boat as it sailed up the Ghost River.

Joffrey was counting with his fingers as he rambled, "Bonetown, Stygai, K'Dath, Carcosa… maybe we could ask the Yellow Emperor for a yacht and take a cruise around the Hidden Sea, visit the City of the Winged Men. It's about the only place of nightmare I'm missing," he said.

"I take it you're less than enthused with this," said Sansa, following the same conversation again.

"We might find something interesting there. Which doesn't take away the fact that I've filled my quota of bullshit in this life."

Sansa chuckled, shaking her head once more. "What happened to your sense of awe Joff?"

"My sense of awe is so distorted I'm starting to find leaves breathtaking. Dear, I think I might be going crazy again."

"You've always found leaves fascinating… Can you aim for broody instead? You're cuter like that," said Sansa, hiding an impish smile.

"Wife, I swear," he said as he stopped leaning on the ship's railing and caught her from behind instead, "If I see reality melting like putty in my hands one more time this life…" he said quickly before slowing down, smile growing, "I'll kidnap you from Winterfell and lock ourselves in some nice, comfy hut in the middle of the Summer Islands," he promised.

"Hm, I like the sound of that," she said as she stretched back, luxuriating in the embrace.

"Six years and change of nice weather and tropical fruits, how's that sound?" he said.

"Really good."

"Major Yham used to tell me they did all sorts of holy rituals back in his homeland," he whispered in her ear as she turned red, "Very religious people they are, those deviant Summer Islanders," he said before biting her ear lightly.

"Sure," said Sansa as she elbowed him back, "We can have a feast with that 'Goddess of Tits and Wines' Tyrion always talks about," she said as she turned and smirked at the sight of Joffrey massaging his sternum.

"We could have a nice time," he said as he raised an eyebrow.

"A nice time with me or with a few lusty locals?"

"… Can't it be both?"

"Oh, if that's the way you want it," she said as she gave him her backside again.

"… Come on Sansa, I was just joking!" he said as he reached her side and she turned her head away, looking at the veritable sea of Ghost Grass that marked both sides of the river basin.

"I'm so very', very' sorry with the offence given, m'lady," he said in Westerosi, rubbing it in with a vaguely peasant accent.

"I should have your tongue cut, to say such things about a lady…" she said, still looking at the Ghost Grass.

"I'll take tha' Black if ya' come with me m'lady," he rasped with a nasal tone, now thoroughly into the territory of stereotypes and Tyroshi plays.

"The insolence! The impudence! I shall call my loyal knight and see you cut down where you stand, you vile wretch!" She said loudly.

"Then I raaather dieeeee than-see-my-heart plucked out! For it-is-hmmm-" Joffrey struggled to continue the song as Sansa jammed her hand against his mouth.

"Joffrey, no."

"Bhumt Smamsa!"

"Joff, listening to a Tyroshi Opera is a fate worse than death, and smothering one's husband is a justified course of action to avoid such fate," she said.

He grumbled as she withdrew her hand, crossing his arms. "Then you wouldn't like to hear my adaptation of our adventures?"

"… Oh Joff, tell me you didn't."

"I'm calling it 'A Speck of Purple'," he confessed his sin, "I'm still trying to work out the songs, but besides that Act One is almost ready."

"There's no way I'm going to avoid this, is there?"

"None. In fact, you're going to help me out with Act Two."

"In your dreams Joff."

He chuckled, "We'll see… unless you have some other pressing task to attend to while we rot aboard this tub?"

Sansa snorted, looking behind her at the upper deck where the doors to the ship's sanctum lay. "Don't let Calinnia hear you say that, she's pretty proud of the Yikeyin."

"That just shows how little she knows about ships. This thing does the one thing it was designed for, and that is sitting at harbor and reminding all the merchants that the House of the South is always home. Actually sailing this thing…" he trailed off, looking below at the beautifully staggered yet horribly inefficient banks of oars. The whole ship was a floating palace, adorned with gold and silver trimmings as well as black sails of Asshai Silk. The latter of which, admittedly, Joffrey would have killed for the Royal Fleet.

Sansa hummed in reluctant agreement. Perhaps if she aided him the result would be less monstrous? "What about the other ones?" she asked in the meanwhile.

"The House of the East is the only one above the rest; they have a proper warship… probably because they actually use it from time to time. They've got something going with the Faith of R'hllor… or most likely a splinter sect or some such. They'd actually need to use ships on a regular basis, for communication purposes if nothing else," he said as he leaned on the railing and watched ahead. "At least they had the sense to put them first."

Sansa did too, and spotted the red painted hull of the Sunchaser, the big war galley of the House of the East. Following close behind was the Promise, of the House of the North. Behind their own ship and last in line was the Juk, the House of the West's double decked galley.

Tellingly enough, it was the only ship manned by all four houses, and not only its original benefactors.

"This 'Compact of the Morn'… how many times has it ever been activated?" Joffrey asked her after he'd grown bored watching the ships again.

"Only twice, according to Calinnia," said Sansa, "Both of them by the Four Houses of Asshai. The last one was six centuries ago when the 'Poisoned Men' of Ulthos invaded from across the seas and even the Houses got scared."

"So this is the first time the Lord of Carcosa has activated Asshai as a co-belligerent?" he said.

"Yes, though technically it's the Four Houses and not the city proper."

"… Ten red notes says it's the Cycle calling on his doorstep," he said as he waved a handful of bills from the Golden Bank of Yi-Ti.

"That's a sucker's bet," said Sansa as she shook her head.

"It'll be dangerous getting close to the Walkers… you sure it'll be worth it?"

"We can only hope Joff. The more we know about how they operate, the better," she said.

"I know that, still don't like it. Getting near the critters is about as close to courting true death as we can get," he said, looking at the Mountains of the Morn in the distance. In less than a week they should be arriving at the end of the river, where they'd swap the galleys for carriages and take the hidden passages across the mountains, right up to the Hidden Lake and Carcosa itself… and hopefully not into a faceful of wights, though Joffrey was pessimistic.

The messenger from Carcosa had been sparse with the details, but Joffrey wouldn't be surprised if the Walkers were as far south as the Cities of the Bloodless Men by now. They did know that the Cycle had been making tremendous inroads to the west of the great mountains, however. The imbecilic pretenders to the imperial throne of Yi-Ti were just now stopping their internecine civil war, agreeing to meet up in Yin to asses 'The True Needs of the Empire and the Divine Will of the Gods' now that the literal dead were ravaging the northeastern third of the nation. Notably, General Pol-Qo, self-proclaimed 'Orange Emperor', Hammer of the Jogos Nhai, and arguably the most credible contender to the throne as far as pure military strength was concerned, would not be going to the summit. He had reportedly left his interim capital of Trader Town and set out to the northwest, following the Steel Road to the northern Bone Mountains and western Essos, marching away from the Empire as fast as he could.

The fact that several Congregations of Jogos Nhai were following his lead, apparently of their own free will, told Joffrey all he needed to know about who -or perhaps more accurately what- was on their tails. The zorze-riding Jogos Nhai were said to be the Horsechiefs slightly less fierce but much more technologically advanced cousins, and if they were half as capable of holding a grudge as a Horsechief then the mere fact that they were following someone widely acclaimed as 'The Hammer of the Jogos Nhai' said all Joffrey needed to know about the numbers of the likely horde of wights trailing after them.

Fucking Walkers, he thought, once again scanning the horizon. Sansa thought him paranoid, watching for wights so far south, but that just showed how she'd never actually lived through the actual Long Night.

"Is that…" Joffrey muttered, placing a hand over his forehead and peering at the horizon. Please prove me wrong, please prove me wrong… he thought.

"I know that sound…" he said as strained to hear a low thrumming buzz.

Sansa was straining to hear it when Brightroar leapt into Joffrey's hand, and he turned to her with an expression he felt all too familiar. "Tell Calinnia we're under attack from the air!" he said before running for the main deck.

"We're under attack! Ready those bows!" he roared in Yi-Tish, and surprisingly enough the blackguards seemed to heed his words. He didn't know if it was because the Matriarch had taken him and Sansa into her confidence, or because they'd just been trained to obey that tone of voice, but they moved.

One of them starting banging an oval-like, shrilly bell not so different to what the Aeromancers used to call their members to the dining table. It let out a pattern of two's and three's as the other blackguards took recurve bows from the warchests secured along the main deck, putting on their quivers as others readied katanas.

"Form two lines! Archers at the front, swords behind!" He shouted as he pointed with Brightroar, the blackguards already notching as he turned to the helmsman. "Rudder dead ahead, slow down those oars!"

He could already see the Flying Wights tilting to his left, huge swarms of them falling like stones from the sky, their blue eyes betraying their masters as they wielded broken swords or just their clawed hands. The Sunchaser loosed its mounted artillery of mangonels; incendiary charges exploding in midair and burning the Flying Wights, making others lose their trajectories and crash against the ground or the water. The rest braved the volley of crossbow bolts and crashed against the ship, reducing the range to melee.

The flight of wights had already divided before that though, four different sections spreading out to encompass all four ships.

"They'll land behind the archers and try to gut them! Swords ready! Swords ready!" he roared as he raised Brightroar. The archers didn't wait for his command though, loosing as one and nailing scores of the wights with incredible accuracy. The wounds were far from fatal though, and only one in three wights hit actually tumbled down from the skies.

There were two more fast volleys before they landed on their midst, and then Joffrey was busy with Brightroar and his spare mace, cutting wights in half and smashing their skulls like the old days.

Flying Wights were structurally weaker than wights made out of the other races of men, and they served as fast but brittle shock infantry to the Cycle. The Yikeyin was resisting the assault effectively though, blackguards forming circles and reacting with discipline. More and more Shadowbinders were joining the fray too, long lances of darkness arcing from their outstretched hands and striking wights from the skies.

The tide was relentless though, and the deck started to get crowded when another flock of wights struck from the other side of the ship. The blackguards trying to form up by the other side were smashed apart, their katanas flying away as they tumbled through the deck, the claws of the Flying Wights close behind and finishing them off.

Joffrey retreated upwards through an open aired staircase, batting a wight overboard with his hammer before he spotted Sansa defending the double doors that lead into the ship's inner sanctum. Another Shadowbinder lay dead by her feat, slashed to ribbons as the gaggle of Flying Wights struggled to kill her too. Their steadily arriving reinforcements were already crowding the wooden balcony.

He ran as fast as he could through the stairs that connected both sections, shouldering aside another wight as he tried to reach her. Sansa was stepping back, trying to work some sort of ritual with one hand while she used the other to fend off her attackers, her long smoky blade of darkness cutting down wights in half like pure steel.

It was not enough though, and one of the wights struck her with a light saber. She recoiled as she reached her, a whirlwind of death as he cut them apart and smashed their rib cages with furious blows.

"Joff!" said Sansa, jamming her black blade through one of the thing's skulls in the confusion.

"I'll guard you! Do your thing!" he shouted. It turned into a roar as he hefted Brightroar in a brutal cut that severed two wights at once. The blade somehow stuck in the second wight, and he used his hammer as leverage to pry open the wight like a packed basket. He kept changing his grip and reach constantly, keeping the snarling wights on their toes as Sansa inhaled deeply. She extended a hand to her left, a torrent of smoke emerging from it and choking half a dozen wights. Joffrey covered her right side as she grunted in pain, slashing apart the two lightly armored foes trying to flank her.

Sansa twisted her hand as she bellowed through gritted teeth, the chain of smoke around the wights throats crunching sickeningly as it coiled around their spines, their necks snapping apart as one of her eyes turned white.

Lady had grown massive over the years, rivaling a small horse in size. She emerged from the melee carrying a wight by the neck, her raised fur making her seem twice as big as she slammed the wight against the deck and broke it in two. She swiftly let it go as she reached her mistress, bowling wights aside as she jumped from the lower deck right towards the balcony, smashing the gold and silver enameled railing apart. Between the three of them they managed to defend the double doors, and soon a prodigious amount of black smoke was emerging from the other side.

"I think she's ready!" shouted Sansa.

"What?" said Joffrey before Calinnia glided through the doors, dozens of shadowy tendril emerging from her back as she swept the deck with one of her arms.

"Die," she whispered, the tendrils bolting like spears and piercing the wights to the deck by the dozens. They screamed as Calinnia raised her arms to the skies and the wind picked up impossibly fast, bursts of airspeed that made the dead tumble out of the ship, catching those who'd extended their wings off guard.

There were too many though, more and more of the cursed wretches flying in from the skies and landing on the ships while others crawled out of the water, climbing the decks with their talons. Joffrey soon realized the wights were seeking to exhaust the Shadowbinders through sheer attrition, because as soon as they ran out of blood the storm of darkness keeping them at bay would abate and they would all be overwhelmed.

The Shadowbinders themselves had formed into small groups of two or three, and their ways of dispatching the wights were as many as were their numbers. Some seemed more like Sansa, conjuring tendrils of darkness that whipped around or through wights, while others joined hands and did strange things to the winds and the shadows around the ship, deep gashes of darkness that swallowed up wights with nary a sound.

Joffrey was constantly scanning his surroundings as he rented the dead apart with hammer and sword, and that was the reason he saw them first. "More Flying Wights! Coming from the north east at high altitude!" he shouted, but he immediately noticed there was something radically different about that group of flyers.

They flew like war galleys would sail just before battle, organized in several formations which filled the skies with triangles or boxes. There were dozens of flights of around fifty or a hundred each, keeping station with other flights at both lower and higher altitudes, most of them flying in arrowhead formations. Joffrey could see the lead figures of the first eight groups slowly tilting their wings to their right, losing altitude quickly as they plummeted to the earth. They carried flags of different colors and variable number of black marks, and others of the same groups followed the lead figures sequentially, a carefully choreographed dance that unfolded as they reached some invisible point in the sky.

Their shrill battlecry sent shivers up Joffrey's spine, so eerily familiar to the shrieking of the Flying Wights but not. It had been made right, high pitched and ululating; it was the battlecry of the Winged Men. They fell from the sky with long sabers like a storm upon the gaggle of disorganized Flying Wights mobbing around the ships, cutting their wings apart with precise but brutal strikes that sent their victims tumbling downwards in a rain of true death.

The Winged Men did not reach the ships though, they angled their wings before reaching the deck, gliding back up as they started reclaiming altitude. Another group of saber wielders repeated the maneuver, clearing the skies before dispersing back to where they came as a heavy cavalry unit would do after a successful charge.

Joffrey tripped a wight on top of another, piercing both their rib cages with Brightroar before parrying a katana with his mace, Westerosi steel blunting aside the blow and swiftly putting an end to his attacker's skull. Sansa was painting a line of blood with her hand, standing back as the wights crossed it and promptly started to shiver wildly on the deck, giving Lady the opportunity to stomp them with impunity.

Another battlecry -this one still high pitched but flat instead of ululating- made Joffrey stare at the sky once more .The Winged Men in the box formations were falling directly over the ships, wings folded at their backs as they aimed long two handed lances. They slowed down to half their speed just seconds before the impact, opening up their wings and raining upon the deck in a staccato of steel on bone and wood. They jammed their lances straight into chests and skulls, landing on top of the wights in concentrated groups before shoving their backs to one another, leaving space for the formations behind them to carry out the very same maneuver. Once they had all landed they twirled their lances as if they were long spears and advanced into the melee over the wrecked corpses of their former brethren, discipline grinding the enemy's superior numbers to dust.

They looked somewhat bulkier than their saber wielding compatriots, wearing iron lamellar instead of cloth armor. They looked stronger too, piercing wights and smashing them against the ground so the soldier behind them could finish them off. They relieved the beleaguered blackguards quickly enough, and soon one of them was climbing the stairs to the balcony.

A soldier through and through, thought Joffrey as he nodded at the man. His lamellar armor had an upright yellow rectangle painted right in the middle, chipped away by the ravages of war. On its center was a single black line, representing one in classical Yi-Tish. "Honored Matriarch," he said as he half bowed, half nodded, "I am Suul; Greatborn, Wing Commander of the First Lancers, and by the divine grace of the Yellow Emperor, Mahil of Carcosa."

Calinnia returned the half bow respectfully, not a hint of her usual disdain, "The House of the South thanks you, Mahil Suul. Our struggle here would have been a long one without the aid of the Yellow Emperor's Wings," she said. Joffrey noted she said long and not doomed.

Proud till the end, he thought, amused.

"And you two must be Joffrey Baratheon and Sansa Stark," he said as he turned towards them abruptly, banging his lance on the floor. "My liege has been looking forward to meeting you both," he said with a pleased smile, showing long fangs.

-: PD :-

Last edited: Nov 16, 2018

Purple Days (ASOIAF): From one day to the other, Joffrey Baratheon wakes up a changed man. Far from the spoiled boy-child known to the court of King's Landing, the Joffrey that comes out of his room three days after the death of John Arryn walks with the stride of a veteran commander and leader of men. A scholar, a sea-captain, a general, a lover. This is the story of how he became that man, and how he came to know his purpose through a cycle of endless death and rebirth that saw him explore his self and the known world from Braavos to Sothoryios and from Old Town to Yi-Ti... and beyond. (Character Development, Adventure, Worldbuilding, Mystery & Suspense, Romance, Action). (Turtledove 2017 winner!).

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Threadmarks Chapter 57: Shriek. New

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Dec 26, 2018

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Chapter 57: Shriek.

The blackguards proved disciplined and organized, but they had not withstood the carnage of the previous battle all too well. Lacking armor and a robust chain of command, it was clear to Joffrey that they had not been created as a field formation. Line infantry they were not, thought the Matriarchs hadn't seem too concerned by their decimation during the furious melee.

It was clear that what truly made the Four Houses a near peer of Carcosa was not the strength of their indoctrinated bodyguards or the dubious worth of their ships, but rather the power and numbers of their Shadowbinders. The lances of darkness and shadow that had sought to strike the Flying Wights from the skies had been but the most obvious of their powers; behind their cover, strange rituals and incantations had resounded from the ship's hold, making the living dead stutter or crumble to ash with but a whisper of wind.

Joffrey counted a combined number of around a hundred and fifty Shadowbinders all told. A bit less than twenty for the South, thirty for the North, forty or fifty for the East and a bit over sixty for the West… before they had been 'humbled' at least. When combined and duly prepared, the Shadowbinders of Asshai made up a force capable of leveling small armies, and they were treated as such by their escort of Flying Men as they continued their journey upriver.

The Yellow Wings were a sort of household guard to the Lord of Carcosa, though Joffrey assumed they were more of a small army. About five hundred of their numbers escorted the ships along the rest of the river. He often found himself watching them on patrol, as the development of their tactics to account for the air itself was fascinating, from a military point of view.

He'd likened them to ships at first, but even that had betrayed his Westerosi origins. Dragon warfare, either during the Dance of Dragons or the rare Valyrian Civil Wars, had been more akin to that; ponderous, often massive dragons covering the blind spots of their brethren as they angled for fire-breathing runs.

The Winged Men accounted for the art of aerial war in a very different manner, at least as far as Joffrey could see. Good individual mobility meant that the men must have been trained religiously in maneuver warfare to be so effective, including a respectable proportion of serjeant equivalents with good initiative.

He'd had the pleasure of seeing them in action two more times. Once during an ambush from regular wights when the fleet stopped at an abandoned fishing town, and the other when they were jumped crossing the Mountains of the Morn. The vast majority of the Yellow Wings were made up of Slash Wings; fast, lightly armored, saber wielding flying infantry that specialized in air-to-air combat. They struck the wings of other aerial combatants, and served as light foot when the situation demanded it; though their effectiveness there compared poorly to other decent light infantry options.

One in five made up the elite core of the host; Lancer Wings. Medium armor, fierce discipline, and wielding long lances; these shock formations excelled at striking down foes on the ground with both steel and terror. After landfall, they could also serve as decent heavy infantry in a pinch, as the ambushers around the Mountains of the Morn had discovered to their detriment later on.

Still they soldiered on, the shimmer of the Red Comet above sending shivers of awe and suspicion through the Shadowbinders. By then even the lowliest of Callers knew something great and horrible was afoot, and the Matriarchs could all but smell the raw power in the air. A working with such a colossal amount of leakage was ominous, or so they said… He'd told Sansa that the reports of ravaging hordes consuming the continent would have been enough to see to that, but apparently 'that is not the way they think'… or so she told him.

The Hidden Sea was not what Joffrey had expected. The valley and sea were nestled within the Mountains of The Morn, and the Hidden Sea itself was a deep chasm not unlike the Dry Deep, but filled halfway up with tempestuous waters. The sea roiled in permanent storms; great titan waves emerging from the depths and hulking above sea level like krakens on a regular basis, scouring the cliffs off climbing wights.

Carcosa itself stood near the entrance to the river delta that left the Hidden Sea from the southeast, leading to the small but fertile plain of Ulan and then to Shatterpoint; the place where the Saffron Straits met the Furious Sea… at least according to Mahil Suul. The capital of the Sorcerer Lord stood atop a tall island that emerged from the chasm of the Hidden Sea, a black patch of land no bigger than Tyrosh connected by two great stone bridges to both sides of the delta.

It was in effect the biggest moat Joffrey had ever seen, though the nature of the region's local inhabitants made that less of a strategic advantage, he supposed. The city was one great spire of black bedrock, its wide base steadily giving way to a sharp tip of pure topaz from where the Yellow Emperor was said to rule supreme, always gazing over his dominion.

Their entrance into the city was uncontested as they marched swiftly under the city's great gatehouse, though Joffrey had been able to see flocks of Flying Wights in the distance when they did. He was impressed when the bridge was revealed to be a draw bridge in truth, a big section of it rising into the air as massive counterweights dropped from the other side of the great spire.

They walked their way up the spire in circles, and the great avenues that made up the main arteries of the city seemed a bit crowded to Sansa, who asked about it to Mahil Suul.

"Many people from the north have taken refuge under the hospitality of the Yellow Emperor, to escape the blight that crawls from beyond," said Suul, "His generosity has seen all who dwell here fed, as long as they do their part for the continued survival of the city."

Well, that doesn't sound sinister at all, thought Joffrey.

"There haven't been any food riots?" Sansa asked him.

"Only a few panics, all quickly contained. The Yellow Emperor, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to fully restock the city's reserves months before the first wights arrived."

"And tell me, esteemed Mahil, how has the war been progressing for the Emperor?" Joffrey asked him. If anyone was to know, it would be Suul. If he'd understood things correctly, the Mahil was a sort of castellan and lord commander of all forces under the oath of loyalty to the Yellow Emperor.

He seemed to think over his words as they kept marching up the great road, the people giving them and the palanquins behind a wide berth. Joffrey could see everything from Bloodless Men to Winged to Yi-Tish to the pale denizens of the Beyond, all intermingling within the city with a wary, uncertain rhythm. "It has been slow," he said at last, "The Yellow Wings have managed to keep the land bound, eastern approaches clear, but the Enemy have been making gains by the other side of the sea during these past few months, seeking to cut us off from the west entire," he said, watching as the lancers clearing the way ahead had to forcefully move a wagon off the sloped road.

"So the City of the Winged Men has fallen?" said Joffrey.

Suul chuckled, "What a strange name. I assume you are talking about Zennibir?" he said.

Joffrey gave him a self-conscious smile, "The maps of my homeland turn quite sketchy around these parts I'm afraid," he said.

"Then your homeland must be quite the ways away, Joffrey Baratheon," he said as he frowned, showing his fangs again. "Zennibir fell a month ago, and the final outcome of that siege has been a constant thorn on our side."

Joffrey thought it was remarkable how, in the end, all species of men shared variations of the same core emotions, be they winged, brindled, tall, pale, it really didn't seem to matter in the end.

"I have a hard time believing that, having watched the Yellow Wings in action," he said as he watched the soldiers practice around the citadel, moving through the air in formations.

"Stop drooling dear," Sansa told him with a lopsided grin.

"Just two of those Lancer Wings, Sansa. Only two," he said as his heart ached with bitter envy. "With them, the Raiders, and the better half of the Crownlands's chivalry I could bleed out Renly in a week," he said in Westerosi.

"The Emperor is honored by your words, but the Yellow Wings only number around seven thousand. The rest of our current war strength is composed of Irregular Wings from fallen Zennibir and the Cliff Towns around the northern ends of the Hidden Sea. They are as likely to run as to charge the enemy," he said before scowling. "It's often better when they fly away, at least then they don't add bodies to our foe," he said before walking ahead of them.

"Excused me, honored ones. My presence is required," he said before taking off into the air with two powerful flaps of his muscled wings, making speed for the altercation with the fallen wagon at the front.

"Damnit, I wanted to ask him about the Emperor again," said Joffrey.

"Me too Joff, though I doubt he would have answered anything else than a tired old retread of 'he has been expecting you'." Sansa was still wearing her green mask, a fact that marked her as a Shadowbinder to the people of the city; they gave her a wide berth, even more so than to the escorting Yellow Wings.

Calinnia had been equal parts intrigued and wary, and she'd all but ordered them to proceed with utmost caution. The line of the Yellow Sorcerers was a long one, and he was not a figure to be trifled with lightly, least of all east of the Mountains of the Morn.

They kept walking up the spiral as the houses turned more and more elegant, though trying to make a distinction between the tower itself and the houses sometimes seemed futile. They appeared to be melded with it, part of one great structure that was the city itself… almost as if the houses themselves had been chiseled out of it. The architecture itself varied wildly the further one climbed the spire, with the upper houses showing a distinct disregard for common sense; things such as main doors at second story levels, wider windows, and even great holes around the sides for the bigger residences.

"Most of the Winged Men live near the top of the Spire," Sansa noted. "Living closer to the ruler of the city is usually a sign of greater prestige and social status."

Joffrey grunted, "You think he uses the Winged Men to oppress the masses of common human stock around the lower districts?" he asked her.

"Perhaps… most likely he leans on them to man his bureaucracy and elite military units," she said.

"That makes more sense. It also fits with what we saw down below… No one in the Hidden Watch seemed to have wings, and they seemed decently drilled and armed for a major city guard. I doubt the Emperor would have gone to such an effort to train and arm a mob that would like to see him dead."

Sansa nodded, looking behind at the lead palanquin. They would soon be reaching the Topaz Palace, ruling place of the Yellow Sorcerer and now Yellow Emperor. "Do you still think he wants to use us as fuel?"

"I don't know Sansa, but if there's anything I learned when dealing with Shadowbinders, present company excluded of course"- he added with a sly smile -"is that they are unpredictable. If he looks hungry for some high power blood we're downing the pouches immediately. Are we clear?" he said, brooking no disagreement.

"I know I know," she said as she held her hands up. Ever since their first encounter with the Matriarch of the West, Joffrey had been adamant that they carry small pouches as pendants, pouches which held tiny crystals of Niamba. Joffrey had turned the raw plant into a highly potent and fast acting poison after subjecting it to a complicated alchemical treatment. They should be dead even faster than it would take to bleed out from the heart.

"Seems we're here," he said as he gazed up. The road ended in a great plaza which surrounded the entrance into the top of the Spire proper; a golden arc of glittering topaz and emeralds surrounded the entrance itself while the spire continued upwards now like a proper tower, a great balcony just peeking high above.

-: PD :-

"Honored Guests, I am pleased to present the Matriarchs of Asshai and their retinues, blessed be they in blood," said a Winged Man in elegant yellow finery as he bowed almost to the floor, holding one hand near his chest and the other wide open, signaling the newcomers.

They walked into the hall of the Yellow Emperor in a hush of whispering voices, a multitude of different kinds of men turning to see them. The hall seemed to have more in common with a reception at a Braavosi evening than a royal court hearing in Westeros; the guests of the Yellow Emperor formed groups around the ground floor, while the second held a massive throne filled with topaz from which a shadowed figure watched them all. He wore a topaz encrusted tunic which fell from his shoulders in wide pieces of fabric, all of them intermingling as they seemed to fuse into a vest by his chest. His head was almost completely hidden by a hood though, the angle of lighting around the place making it hard for Joffrey to define any features at a distance.

The Four Matriarchs stepped forward as one, bowing in deep respect. "Hail, Emperor of Yi-Ti and hallowed Lord of Carcosa," said Calinnia.

"We come forth by your call," said Kijima.

"To honor our word solemnly given," said Jiia.

"To give mutual aid, in the name of the Compact," said Wylla.

The Emperor seemed immobile, and only after a minute of silence did his make a small gesture with his hand.

Then came the gifts. Wylla presented a topaz encrusted short sword of extraordinary craftsmanship, its hilt adorned by a replica of the Spire so detailed that even at a distance -standing with Sansa by the side of the hall with the rest of the Shadowbinders- he could see the various roads and gates of the great city.

Jiia laid down a small chest on the floor before opening it smoothly; it revealed a single, bent, bronze studded mask that left many of the Shadowbinders by Joffrey's side shuffling lightly. It seemed so old it was one wrong breeze away from crumbling to ash, but that only seemed to add to its allure.

He'd seen the mask before; Calinnia had two in the House of the South and proudly presented them as ancient artifacts of their ancestors… salvaged from the ruins of Stygai centuries ago. After his brief, nightmarish visit to the City of Night itself though, Joffrey was pretty confident that the creators of said masks had nothing to do with any of humanity's branches. They'd likely been extinct for tens of thousands of years before even the First Men looked up at the sky in wonder.

Kijima brought forth a multi-faceted ruby the size of Joffrey's fist, a thousand cuts bending the light within so it shone with an inner brightness which mesmerized many of the onlookers around the hall.

And then it was their patron's turn. Calinnia did something with her robes, and from one moment to the other held the Valyrian Glass Candle in her hand, the one they had stolen from the warlocks and given to her as a sort of down payment for Sansa's training. The Shadowbinders gasped ever so slightly, shuffling in mild shock as the Yellow Emperor extended a hand by an inch or two.

Sihua -the finely dressed herald which had announced them- sprang forth immediately. He held the Glass Candle reverently, carrying it forth through the oval shaped steps towards the topaz throne.

He prostrated himself, holding out the Candle without looking as the Emperor grabbed it. He held it in his hands for a few seconds, turning it slowly before his yellow hood turned towards Calinnia. "The House of the South is generous," he said, his voice thick and barely audible.

Calinnia nodded gracefully, and then the Emperor made another gesture. The Herald was back at ground level quickly, clapping twice as servants emerged from side doors carrying all manner of dishes and beverages.

"His divine majesty, the Yellow Emperor, wishes to celebrate the arrival of our old allies. Let all guests under his roof make merry and celebrate with him, lifting our dreams to higher ends," said the herald. Calinnia was already by their side, talking quickly with Fiqua and another of the green masks before turning to them.

"Mingle with the guests, find out as much as you can about them and the state of the city. Be careful," she said, pausing to look at the Yellow Emperor from the corner of her mask. He stood unperturbed, as unmoving as he'd been when they'd first arrived.

"I take it he has a different definition of 'mingling'?" said Joffrey.

"Do not be impertinent," she snapped, "He could end half this room with a flick of a finger, including you and your disappearing sword."

"He'll behave, Matriarch," said Sansa.

"See that he does," she said before walking back to the other Matriarchs, which were being catered lavishly by groups of servants carrying twisting glass cups filled with red liquid.

Joffrey doubted it was Arbor Red.

"Quite the presence the man has," said Sansa as they locked elbows together and walked away from the Matriarchs in search for an interesting group to settle for a while. They were old hands at this game, and Joffrey could already see her cycling through guests. He was more interested in the Emperor's decorations though, gazing at the great sheets of parchment hanging from the second story; great and intricate designs of a wholly abstract nature that tickled Joffrey's curiosity.

"… Yeah, has the sorcerer king vibe down pat," he said absentmindedly.

There's something awfully familiar about those sketches, he thought.

"Any priorities you have in mind?" said Sansa.

"Hmm… you know me."

She sighed theatrically as she guided him between groups, nodding at the common men that served as servants. "Those soldiers over there then?" she asked him, looking at a group of ten or so armored men of distinct Yi-Tish stock.

"Yeah I… wait, I know that sign," he said as he gazed at the trio of crossed bones tied to their iron lamellar breastplates. "I've definitively met these guys before…" he said as they approached.

"Dangerous?" Sana asked as she brought one hand next to the other. The group was armed, most of them carrying sheathed heavy sabers though one or two had bamboo sticks slung from their backs.

Primitive Fire Lances, thought Joffrey, the flotsam of recognition floating closer.

"I don't think so," he said as they reached them. They all looked pretty sunburnt, toasted almost by harsh winds and long days. One of them turned and bowed as they joined the circle, the one with the longest bones nailed to his chest piece.

"Let me extend the Guild's gratitude for your arrival in person," he said as he faced Sansa, "With Whisperers fighting by our side the advance of the Returned should be slowed down significantly." He seemed polite enough, though he kept eying Sansa warily despite his words, scars bulging by the right side of his face.

Slowed down… not stopped? Joffrey asked himself silently, still looking at the three crossed bones.

"… The Soldier's Guild," he said, nodding at the man in recognition, "You are a long way from Bonetown, Guildmaster…" he said before trailing off.

"Guoyin. Guildmaster Guoyin," he said, smiling for a bit when Joffrey offered his arm and they clasped.

"Joffrey," he said before looking at Sansa, "And my wife Sansa." If Guoyin seemed curious at his apparent marriage to a Shadowbinder, he didn't show it.

"Do you know of these fine warriors, dear?" Sansa asked him.

"They were a common sight when I made it as far east as Bonetown, selling my wares," he said.

"A bone trader then? Did you depart the city before the caravans?" asked Guoyin, the other members inching closer with interested looks.

"Not quite, though I heard about what happened there after you left," he said, unable to keep the slight disapproval from his tone.

Guoyin frowned, though Joffrey thought he could see the slightest glint of shame in his eyes before they hardened once more.

"There was no way to hold the city… You would have run too if you'd seen them…" said one of the younger looking members, his voice vaguely hollow before his companions shut him up with disapproving looks.

But I didn't… I didn't run, he thought as he felt an abrupt pang of loss before putting the memories away.

"My apologies," said Sansa, "My husband did not mean to cause offense. Having seen the Reanimated with my own eyes I struggle to think what else you could have done."

Guoyin tilted his head down, "Thank you. I'm sorry if we've all been a bit wary around you, previous experience with Whisperers have left us… on edge," he confessed.

"Rest assured, the madness of those cultists couldn't be farther away from the discipline of the Four Houses," said Sansa.

"Indeed, though having slain more than one Grey Whisperer in my time, I can thoroughly empathize with you Guildmaster," Joffrey added.

One of the men scoffed, but Guoyin was watching at him with a knowing look. "High risk trader?"

"Straight to K'Dath," he said with a smile.

"Quite the story your life must make…" said Guoyin, looking at Sansa and then at Joffrey with appraising eyes.

"Perhaps we could trade tales about our journeys? His Yellow Eminence doesn't seem to be in a hurry," Joffrey said as he gazed at the statue-like ruler of Carcosa. Some of the men recoiled in fear at the blasphemy, but Guoyin -if anything- seemed more at ease.

"Perhaps we can," he said as he chuckled. One of the servants came close, and all but Sansa took the opportunity to help themselves with the small, boiled fish lanced by small wooden rods.

"So how did you end up here?" he asked him, relishing the spicy seasoning which was so scarce back in Westeros.

Guoyin scowled immediately, "We went east around the Dry Deep; hardly anywhere else to run to. To reach the Cities of the Bloodless Men we had to cross the Cannibal Sands through the southeast…" he trailed off, several of the men shaking themselves off discreetly, "We had experienced traders with us, people who'd been born tracing the same route over the sand just as their fathers had done… and yet the sandstorms still blinded us, made us lose our direction no less than four times… Easy pickings for the cannibals; sometimes scores of them would fling up from the dunes and rush us before we could circle the wagons, it was a bloody slaughter… and then the dead cannibals…" he trailed off with a fierce shake of the head, "Barley half of us made it to Blhadahar."

Joffrey nodded in sympathy. He could imagine the harrowing journey all too well… "Bloodless Men let you in?" he asked, as relieved as him at leaving that part of the tale behind.

"Hm. For the better half of our bones; decades of building up our warchest only to lose them to a jumped up border lord… didn't do 'em much good when the dead arrived though," he said with careless shrug.

"Weren't the Bloodless Men prepared for the advance of the dead?" Sansa asked him.

"They thought they were prepared alright," scoffed the younger one again.

Guoyim snorted as he looked at the young man, his trio of bones the smallest of all the company, "Captain Zenim has strong opinions on the subject," he said, motioning him to continue.

"We just kept running south," said Zenim, "By the time we heard vaunted Blhadahar had fallen we were around Bol-Qobam, and Bloodless from almost all the city states were there with weapons and armor. Fools thought they could stop the dead in a field battle."

"Didn't work out, I presume," said Joffrey. He certainly wouldn't take the walkers in open battle unless he was well prepared for the occasion… or incredibly desperate.

"Not for a lack of trying, they managed to assemble a mighty host, after all…" said the Guildmaster. "High Warlord Ka-Jan almost conscripted us too, but we marched away before he could add more numbers to his 'arguments'."

"Seems that didn't work out for them either," Joffrey told the young man before looking behind him.

Far from 'freely intermingling', Joffrey thought the groups were pretty clear cut. Most of the Winged Men stayed in their own groups, keeping the distance with the Bloodless and the newly arrived Shadowbinders. Another curious difference was between the Winged Men themselves; those of greater stature and physical bulk didn't really interact much with those who were not as well endowed. The 'Greatborn' which composed the ranks of the Lancers and most senior military positions of the Yellow Court formed a distinct social class all of their own.

"We were a month's worth of hard marching from Zennibir when we found out what eventually happened. They had three big field battles trying to relieve Bol-Kalayak before they were enveloped and overrun. High Warlord Ka-Jan preferred riding to his death than facing 'dishonor' though, leaving his realm without a Warlord while it crumbled on top of their people. Shows what a lack of blood can do to man," said Guoyin before shaking his head.

"Idiots still hate us for that," said Captain Zenim.

"How so?" Sansa asked him.

"Everyone needs a scapegoat, and we were the easiest targets," said Guoyin.

"Three thousand foot and a handful of armored sandrakes wouldn't have made any difference. They say the horde sieging Bol-Kalayak numbered over two hundred thousand for the Night Lion's sake!" growled one of the officers.

"We barely even stopped at Zennibir, kept going straight down the Cliff Road to Carcosa," said Guoyin.

"And now they're refugees, just as you," said Joffrey as he gazed over the hall once more. The Bloodless Men made up a substantial presence, the core of them concentrated around a young, pale man of great girth. He was armored in a sort of iron-plate reinforced chainmail hauberk, the same as half of his companions. Unlike the others though, the young man's turban was bright red, and it barely wobbled as he gesticulated wildly with great, sweeping gestures. He was arguing about something with Mahil Suul, whose wing's were swaying in what seemed mild consternation.

"Here we go again…" muttered Guoyin as he chomped on his fish stick like a veteran campaigner, watching the Bloodless warily.

"So why stop at Carcosa?" Sansa asked the officer which had spoken up.

"There's no other strongpoint to hold them off further south. The Mountain passes to the west are full of Returned freshly carved out of the Yi-Tish heartlands, as I'm sure you found out. Taking a small host south through the Shadowlands would be suicide… and that only leaves the Ulan Plains to the south east."

"The Yellow Emperor's demesne," said Sansa.

"The one thing keeping Carcosa fed," said Guoyin, looking back from the gesticulating Bloodless. "There'd be no point though. Only Shatterpoint has any walls there and by all accounts they aren't very impressive. We'd have to build ships to either force passage through the Furious Sea and probably drown in uncharted waters, sail south to Ulthos and choke to death, or sail west and hope we don't die of scurvy before reaching Asshai. No, the Yellow Emperor's walls are good and his coin too, this is where we'll make our stand," he said with a decisive nod, though Joffrey could see some of his officers were less than enthused, especially young Zenim.

"Please excuse us," said Joffrey, subtly pulling Sansa's elbow as he inched away from the group.

"We hope to see you later Guildmaster, captains," said Sansa, nodding apologetically at the group.

"With your story, I'm sure," said the bemused Guildmaster, holding up his cup.

"Of course," she said, the group of Guildmen disappearing behind the shuffling of the guests. "That was incredibly rude Joffrey, they won't open up so easy next time."

Her husband didn't respond, practically pulling her towards the left side of the great hall. He stopped in front of one of the hanging sheets of wide parchment, extending a trembling hand as he traced the twisting lines that bent over themselves, circling recursively.

"Sansa… this is…" he trailed off, swallowing drily as he looked at the other parchments. "It's a diagram of my soul…" he whispered.

"I- Like the bone tablet?" she asked him.

"Yeah… they're incomplete, and some parts make no sense, but… " he trailed off again, feeling the texture of the rough parchment, "I think it depicts another module…"

"Do you like it?" asked a voice behind them. Joffrey whirled in a half second, hand over Brightroar's hilt as he felt Sansa's arm increase in temperature, her own blood singing within her body.

The man was dressed in the simple yellow tunic of the servants, only a small black mark by the center of the doublet signaling a higher rank than them.

"The design is truly beautiful," Sansa said as Joffrey regained control over his heart.

"They're depictions of the ancient art held by the great obelisks that once dotted the Ulan Plains, thousands of years ago. The first of the Yellow Sorcerers sought to copy the artwork… or what was left of them, at least," he said.

"Then he was wise beyond measure," said Sansa, "Excuse me, I didn't quite get your name…"

"Call me Vajul," he said. The man's bow was so pronounced that his forehead almost touched the ground.

"Do you have anything to do with the other servants here?" Joffrey asked him, hand still over Brightroar.

"Yes, I make sure all guests here have as amenable a stay as possible… I hope that has been the case for the both of you?" he asked, before looking at Sansa in slight shock, "Please, forgive the oversight," he said quickly, signaling a servant.

The servant arrived with a cup of twisted glass, holding it to Sansa a he lowered his head.

"I- thank you," she said, accepting the beverage. She gazed at the deep red fluid, twirling lazily around the cup.

"It is to your liking, is it not?" asked Vajul. He looked at the servant and frowned, the man almost shrinking into himself.

"No, no. It's quite alright," she said, her mask still as the cup trembled lightly.

Joffrey squeezed her hand gently, and she took a deep sigh before opening a small clasp in her mask's lower side. Joffrey couldn't help but notice how the blood was already springing forward without the aid of gravity when it reached Sansa's lips, crawling up as if by its own volition into her mouth and leaving not a stain behind.

"It's… ah…" she whispered, looking down for a moment before recomposing herself, "Your liege has a… fine vintage," she finally managed.

"He has," said Vajul, looking pleased.

Sansa was of the line of First Men Houses that existed since the Age of Heroes, Starks and Tullys and Blackwoods, all shrouded in great and terrible workings of sorcery if one gave the ancient stories more than a perfunctory glance. That made her a potent Shadowbinder, because unlike the vast majority of them she could actually use her own blood as fuel worth the name… though that didn't mean that a little extra was useless.

Joffrey had been about to ask Vajul about the obelisks when he heard a commotion coming from the center of the hall: The young Bloodless was now shouting, walking away from Suul and back to him again as he raved. "Enough is enough, Mahil! The hospitality of Carcosa has been without equal, but the time for action is now!"

His armored companions all grunted fiercely, banging their armored gauntlets against the shields strapped to their backs, while the unarmored ones nodded in approval.

"For the Bloodless they might as well be cheering like madmen. They're usually very reserved," said Vajul, somewhat amused.

"Tell me Vajul, who is the young one in the middle? The one with the red turban," said Sansa.

"That is High Warlord Ka-Mil. He has been leading the hosts of the Bloodless since his late father fell in battle… what's left of them, at least," he said.

"If you wish to assault the wights on your own, then you and your army are more than welcome to sally out the gates," said Suul, growing irritated.

"And be defeated piecemeal?!" he scoffed, "We have done nothing but skirmish with the Damned since we arrived here! A change of strategy is needed if we are to survive this invasion!"

"You must be patient, young Warlord," said Suul, "The Emperor knows-"

"Patient? Mahil, I have been patient," he said, "Bol-Kalayak dead and in ruins, Jehmk reduced to nothing but ashes and dust, Holy Bol-Qobam overrun with the Damned! Nine in ten of my people lie dead or worse!" he shouted, "The time to wait is over!"

Suul banged the butt of his lance against the floor, "Once the Houses of Asshai have recomposed themselves from their harsh journey, then the -"

"I spit on the Blood Drinkers!" he interrupted the Mahil, swiftly following his words with action as he spat in the direction of the Four Matriarchs -to the sudden gasps of pretty much everyone present but the Bloodless, who if anything seemed even more exalted- "Some of the Sacred City's westernmost holds might still be alive, awaiting relief! Now that we have the strength we should march north at once; keep the wights off fresh bodies!" he snarled.

"Little more than mining towns and lookout posts hugging the Mountains of the Morn. They all fell within weeks of Bol-Qobam," said Vajul.

"How do you know that?" Joffrey asked him.

Vajul just gave them a wan smile, "I saw it. Ka-Mil didn't, but he knows that the likelihood of even a single one of those population centers surviving by now are as near to zero as can be."

"So this is all just theater," said Sansa, considering the High Warlord. "At least some of that anger is real though."

"Indeed," said Vajul, "He has felt the loss of his people most keenly, but the young warlord is not nearly as useless at politics as many think him to be. He inherited his father's girth but his mother's wits," he said approvingly.

"I see…" said Joffrey, more focused on Vajul than on Ka-Mil.

"He's shoring up his position with this," Sansa realized.

"He is. His leadership has been polarizing, especially since he all but abandoned the southernmost cities to fend for themselves. After the disaster at Bol-Kalayak, it was the only sensible course of action."

"You were there then, with the Bloodless," Sansa asked him.

"No, not in person," he said.

She looked back at Joffrey, who stared at her for a moment before returning his gaze to the young warlord. He'd missed Mahil Suul's response, but one of the Matriarchs had pushed him slightly to one side, interrupting the exchange.

Kijima was twirling her cup of blood, flanked by her two red-masked Shadowbinders as they stood in front of the king. "Resorting to insult already?" she said, seemingly disappointed. She was looking at the High Warlord as if he were some sort of abomination, scanning him from head to toe as she twirled her cup. "Here, I think you need this more than I," she said as she tilted her glass, emptying the blood on the floor.

"… You dare…" he rumbled almost quietly. Different from his earlier anger, this undercurrent of rage seemed a thousand times more real to Joffrey. The armored Bloodless were shuffling too, placing hands over the pommels of the long, ball-like maces they carried by the waist. They formed a line around their warlords, exchanging silent glances and positioning themselves for battle as the two Shadowbinders with Kijima stopped clasping their hands and stood on the tip of their toes.

"… How bad was that insult?" asked Joffrey.

Vajul tilted his head lightly, still looking at the group, "Bloodless Oral tradition holds that their ancestors ripped the blood and sinew from their own bodies in fell rituals and sacrifice, the screams of the willing victims still audible to this day in the city they now call Bol-Qobam. After the War in the Morn and their subsequent exile from Asshai, the descendants of those who would eventually call themselves the Bloodless swore to never again be used as food by the Shadowbinders."

"… They did it to themselves?! Surely there must have been another way to…" Sansa trailed off, her hand grasping air as she shook her head. The people around the High Warlord and the Matriarch were stepping back as they kept trading insults, while Mahil Suul slammed his lance against the floor to no effect.

"The ones who fled south instead of north certainly thought so," said Vajul, "Sadly, those who would later be called the Poisoned Men lost their minds as well as their blood," he said as the Warchief took his hammer from his belt.

"This isn't looking good," said Joffrey.

"Indeed," said Vajul, looking at the Yellow Emperor in his throne of topaz. The Lord of Carcosa raised a palm into the air, and suddenly all sound seemed to die within the room. Warchief Ka-Mil's mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out of it. He turned around in incomprehension, his mute companions flailing amongst themselves as Kijima turned towards the Emperor and swiftly prostrated herself on the floor. Not a single voice could be heard in the hall.

"The evening is over. We give thanks to his divine majesty for his generosity," proclaimed the herald, his voice loud and clear. High Warlord Ka-Mil gave the Emperor a shaky bow before turning on his heels and storming out of the hall, his followers close behind.

"That's-" Sansa cut herself off, her voice sounding painfully loud in the midst of the silence.

"Effective," ended Joffrey, his own voice similarly unimpeded as the mute guildsmen by the other side of the hall turned and looked at him.

"Would you mind walking with me? I've been waiting for this conversation for quite some time," said Vajul, odd lights glinting beneath his eyes.

-: PD :-

Spoiler: Music

They were led through old tunnels and staircases that had been carved out of the Spire's black rock foundation itself, a triangular pattern that carried them to the top of the city. They emerged into a light rain, and Joffrey couldn't help but find the terrace somewhat familiar. He walked to one of its edges as he traced it with his hand, Sansa squeezed the other.

Joffrey squeezed back, and she took a deep breath before they both turned. Vajul had a wan smile on his lips as he gazed downwards, looking at the city as the sun hid almost completely past the Mountains of the Morn.

"I hope you liked the candle… getting a hold of it wasn't easy," Sansa said almost whimsically.

Vajul held out a hand, and a shimmer of smoke and light hovered above his palm before the shape of the Valyrian Candle resolved itself. It wasn't there though, it was more of a mirage, a shifting reflection of the real thing. The light around the top of the tower echoed strangely, colors turning warped as the image acquired definition.

"It's little more than a focusing devise for what should come naturally to the Self, an aid for those who are blind to the currents under the sun and moon," he said as he gazed at the candle thoughtfully, "And a damaged one at that," he added as the wan smiled disappeared.

"How do you know of us, and why do you care?" Joffrey asked the Yellow Emperor, holding a hand on Brightroar's pommel.

Vajul nodded lightly, as if conceding a point. "I've often liked to watch my surroundings. One can lose the track of time gazing at all the wonders of this world," he said, letting his hand fall. The warping smoke and shimmer didn't abate though, but expanded. The shimmer surrounded all three of them in a sort of dome or torus, the image of the Valyrian Candle atop the desk losing clarity until it was no more. Color lost all bearing as blues turned to reds and yellows to greens, black turning as dark as the void between the stars as a slight thrum reverberated throughout the terrace. Joffrey could see the City of Asshai around them, viewed from several locations above it as if from a thousand impossibly-high flying seagulls. He could see the ships of the merchantmen docking at harbor, the quick walking of the local Shadowmen with their red masks, even the Temple of the Aeromancers growing in size until Joffrey could see Master Wo-Ti sitting in silent meditation. The Master opened his eyes, frowning as he gazed around him slowly before looking almost at the point of view itself.

"You've been watching us," said Sansa, her voice almost drowned by the otherworldly thrum.

"Since you arrived at Asshai," he said.

"Why?" Joffrey asked him.

The thrum reached a fever pitch of intensity, a high whined noise that tattered around the edges as the shimmer surrounding them retreated abruptly, collapsing on the original point from where it had first expanded.

The Yellow Emperor gave a small sigh as he gazed beyond the railing, down at the titanic waves periodically sweeping the climbing wights off the base of the island, far below. From up here Joffrey could make out the original symmetry of the structure, beyond the additions carved into it or otherwise constructed on its sides. It was a straight, massive triangle projected downwards, its edges frayed by the passage of time.

"I'd stop the storm, but then the legions of undead would swarm us within the hour," he said with a sad shake of the head. "The Hidden Sea is usually quite beautiful at this time of the day too," he said while gazing below.

But Joffrey could the base of the tower, its original shape and form, its architecture unmistakable.

"You've seen me before. A carving."

"Yes," said Vajul.

"Show it to me," he said.

Vajul nodded, and he led them down the original set of stairs constructed by the Deep Ones; right and down the stairs, right and down the stairs, right and down the stairs as the murals around them depicted great masses of stick figures, periodically swarming the whole tunnel and the lone figure guarding it, only to disappear once more.

"Death and destruction on an unparalleled scale, a cycle repeating with no end… by the time I realized this ancient prophesy was coming true, it was already too late," said the Emperor.

Sansa felt the carvings with her hand, tracing the figures that swarmed the tunnel periodically before the three reached a great hall of oily black stone. Joffrey could feel the great waves of the storm surging above them, the whole of Carcosa hanging atop them as the stairs carried them below the Hidden Sea and his eyes were drawn upwards.

"Sansa, its-" Joffrey swallowed drily, feeling dizzy as he shook his head, "Its- one of the waypoints," he whispered.

Sansa took off her mask as she looked up and saw her husband's first death.

He was in so much pain, she thought, thrashing as he clawed his throat and the eldritch twists of the Purple expanded from his throat, surging like lightning bolts across the walls and forming the eternal recursion of fractals she'd seen so many times before. She could see the carved, weathered figure of Jaime Lannister shaking him as Cercei despaired, guests standing up in panic as the Kingsguard hefted their swords.

She saw herself, almost at the edge of the grand carving, running with some sort of court fool who was incomplete, bisected by the sudden ending of the mural. Her eyes were looking back at the choking Joffrey, carrying a multitude of meanings tied and twisted with one another; Surprise and shock and fear and triumph and joy and horror, so many of them lovingly crafted into her chipped frame. Most of all was the sheer, undiluted terror that entranced her so, the sort of heart clenching despair that arose from the powerless. I was an echo that she felt deeply within the bottom of her soul, old memories coming to the forefront of her mind.

"I think I forgot to breathe when I saw the two of you in Asshai," said the Yellow Emperor with a touch of humor, gazing at the choking Joffrey before his eyes cycled around the guests of the wedding, settling on the scared Sansa above. "So many of my predecessors devoted their lives to unearthing the true meaning of this mural, of this structure, left behind by beings which by rights should have gone extinct eons before the first man killed his brother with a sharpened stone…" he trailed off, an unwilling smile starting to dominate his features.

It suited him badly, distorting his face in ways it was not meant to be. "A most exquisite irony," he chuckled, "The keys to the puzzle that had plagued half of the Yellow Sorcerers of eras past, walking around the Endless City just as the world draws to an end."

"We… we are the reason why you activated the Golden Compact?" asked Sansa, though it had more the air of a statement.

"You don't think you can win this," Joffrey realized.

"Mahil Suul was quite impressed with your knowledge of warcraft, Joffrey Baratheon. So tell me, what are the prospects of Carcosa and the assembled might… or should I say the remaining dredge of southeastern Essos?" said Vajul as he turned to look at them. "Two thousand Lancer Wings, five thousand Slash Wings, ten thousand Carcosan ground militia, and over fifteen thousand Irregular Wings," he said, closing his eyes. "Eight hundred Bloodless Immortals and over twelve thousand regulars from the Holy Cities. A bit less than three thousand veteran guildsmen and twenty-two armored sandrakes," he said as the room thrummed strangely, blacks turning deeper as the oil lamps fluttered. "Over four hundred blackguards, less than a hundred and fifty Shadowbinders, and Four Matriarchs…" he said as the thrum increased in intensity and strange distortions of air and smoke began to open windows into reality, showing an eternal column of marching wights. They stretched over the horizon; the skies the color of dead grey as legions of flying wights covered the setting sun itself.

"Tell me, how will they fare?" said the Yellow Emperor, staring at the hundreds of Walkers leading the eternal, marching column of dead beings along the edges of the Hidden Sea. There were Shrykes and Legionaries, Westerosi and Yi-Tish, Bloodless Dead and Flying Wights, undead sandrakes and a hundred and one monsters of twisting bone and sinew marching tirelessly south.

"Gods…" Joffrey muttered. Sansa was holding her mouth with both hands, her mask discarded by the floor as she gazed at their dead blue eyes and their slack, hungering jaws.

Joffrey stared at the marching wights again before shaking his head, "There's too many of them. They'll swarm us until the defenders can't lift their arms from exertion, and then they'll keep coming," he said.

"I thought as much," said the Emperor, the grey vision distorting itself until it dissipated in smoke. "Even if we could somehow resist it would be of no use. That red Thing up in the sky is still channeling essence to the north, power never-ending the likes of which no living being could even comprehend. So much power mortals and Gods would scream and burst were they to receive it… So much power…" he whispered.

It was not awe or lust in his voice, but sheer mind-breaking terror. Here stood a man who could silence a room with a flick of a finger, who could peer beyond continents and oceans, who could summon storms to shake seas… and he was terrified.

Joffrey felt a strange kinship to the man, for he was a fellow witness. A witness to the reality that most were so blind about.

He seemed to recompose himself, blinking slowly as if to burn an afterimage off his eyes before walking around the carvings and stopping around the central circle below the choking Joffrey. He kneeled, pressing a hand around the half faded constellations and eroded letters of the common tongue, "I would like to know the meaning of this message before I died, if you would be so kind. Your possible futures were nothing but nonsense, and your past incoherent with the dilemma at hand," he whispered.

Joffrey looked down at the constellations, barely making out the Longship and the Bannermen, the others all but illegible under the harsh passage of time. "It led me to a Structure far to the west, similar to Carcosa's original shape but much thinner and longer. It reached down to the bowels of the earth, holding a message addressed to me… a message from eons past," he said.

Vajul craned his neck, gazing at Joffrey with a serene expression, "What did it say?" he asked.

"It had answers," he said as he sat down next to him, "Answers that I'd been searching for a long while. That my wife and I were but the latest incarnations of a long line of weapons designed to destroy The Long Night, a cyclical phenomenon that exterminates all sentient life on our planet every eon."

Vajul turned back to the carvings, nodding slowly, "I see… you've failed then? Like your predecessors?"

Joffrey looked at Sansa. She held him for two full seconds before giving him a single nod.

"Yes… in this life," he said.

"We've died many times, trying to stop the Cycle," said Sansa, "When we die, our minds return to a summer morning about eight years ago, and we try to either stop it or search the knowledge that will help us do it."

Vajul was -for the first time since Joffrey had met him- speechless. He was still gazing at the carved letters, but his eyes were unmoving, unfocused.

"I sense truth in your words… but the sheer power to reverse the world… to carry two minds through time itself… yes…" he said, blinking slowly, "Yes… such power befits those who would dare oppose such a mighty thing as this Cycle, this scourge which has ended all life in the Cities of the Bloodless Men, in the Winged Principalities, in half of Yi-Ti and the Sunset Lands and beyond…" he said before trailing off, standing up and smoothing his yellow robes.

"We will all be dead before morning, when the combined dead of half a hundred cities slams into Carcosa like the Night Lion reborn… but you two…" he said before shaking his head, "I would say I envy you, but in truth you are the bearers of the cruelest curse imaginable by mortal minds."

"We can help you," said Sansa, "If we could contact you somehow, we could warn you every life. You could prepare southeastern Essos for the arrival of the Long Night, keep them contained between the Five Forts and the Dry Deep."

He seemed almost amused at the notion of fighting the Cycle, considering the notion as he walked around the carvings with his hands behind his back, "I could reinforce Blhadahar with the Yellow Wings and perhaps aid the Five Legions with sorcery… but I suspect it wouldn't be enough, in the end…"

"It wouldn't, not on its own," said Joffrey, shaking his head. "But it would help our own efforts in the Sunset Lands. Every wight bogged down here would be another wight not assaulting the Seven Kingdoms. By presenting a harder front here, you'd deprive the western front of reinforcements through the land bridge north east of K'Dath… at least before the Cycle loses patience and escalates its power," he said.

The Yellow Emperor closed his eyes, tilting his head slowly as he thought, "You think you can end it somehow, before it 'escalates' as you say."

Joffrey sighed, looking at Sansa before returning his gaze to him, "We don't know exactly how, but every wight standing in our way is bound to make our task more difficult. Trying to fulfill our purpose will be hard enough without half of the Yi-Tish heartlands swarming in from the north," he said.

Vajul seemed to lose himself in deep concentration, standing still for a minute before he suddenly opened his eyes. They almost seemed to glow as he walked down the hall in a hurried stride, "A letter would be too unreliable a method of communication, I'll need to see the both of you to believe your words," he said.

"But Carcosa is too far away," said Sansa as they hurried after him, catching up with his quick strides, "We wouldn't be able to make the trip here and keep the Sunset Lands from falling into chaos before the Long Night even starts."

"That is why you won't come here. There are ways to see beyond eyesight… ways to make your mind reach across oceans and continents," he said as he reached a door seemingly made of pure topaz. He placed his hand over it, pushing it aside gently as if it weighted less than a feather.

They entered a place very different from the opulent grandiosity of the Topaz Throne; a great study room filled with bookshelves and scrolls, wide pieces of paper hanging from the wall and bearing indecipherable runes. "This way of looking and feeling the world is not something which can be taught, not if you wish to achieve true mastery," he said as he reached a small table.

"I thought you said the Candle was not needed to… see what is beyond eyesight," she said as Vajul took it from the desk and showed it to her.

"It's not, and most of those that use it never learn to see beyond its limitations... But you have seen time reverse, you have seen the inner skein of our reality, have you not?" he said.

Sansa seemed physically stunned by the question, her mouth pantomiming the start of a dozen explanations before settling on a simple "Yes."

"Then use it as a blind man would use a stick. And when you've gotten your bearings, open your eyes," he said, passing her the black candle.

Sansa held it uneasily. Even though she'd held it before -back in the House of the Undying- this time the thing felt full of portents and frightful news. "But… how do I use it? How can I…" she trailed off, thinking about that uneasy, string-like tension and frowning as she turned her attention to it. She delved into it as she'd done before with her own blood, and stumbled as her vision turned blurry.

A corner of Vajul's mouth had risen ever so slightly, "Not a second of hesitation… you've really seen it, felt it… that whisper…"

"My husband calls it 'the Song'... he… Joffrey?" she said as she turned.

Joffrey was staring up at the great, hanging sheets of paper. He was tracing his hands over the twisting lines, following the intricate patterns of fractals and recursions. "How many of these replicas do you have?" he asked urgently.

"Many more… I take it you know they are more than art?" said Vajul.

"Aye… they're… instruction sets… clues left behind by a previous civilization which was extinguished by the Cycle. They are diagrams of my own soul, sketches so I can guide my awareness towards sections of it and discover… parts of me. Parts of the weapon," he said.

"The Archive holds hundreds of them," he said, and Joffrey almost fell on his knees.

"Take me there. Please."

Vajul did, leading them up a flight of stairs and past strangely colored wooden door. There were scores of wooden tubes held in racks all throughout the Archive, and Joffrey immediately took one and opened it, spreading the parchment held within all over the floor.

The light of the lanterns had sparked to life as if with a will of their own, the silhouette of the Yellow Emperor shading the fractals as he stood behind Joffrey. "I've known for quite some time that they had something to do with this tower and the prophecy… the patterns seem to whisper deeper truths to those who care enough to look beyond, and many of my predecessors lost themselves trying to understand them."

"Do you know of any more?" Sansa asked him.

"None," said Vajul, "I've made my interest known to others who possess old lore, but alas they had nothing but lies and greed…"

"They're incomplete, sections of it all are wrong… The obelisks must have been massively deteriorated…" Joffrey said as he kept examining the parchment. He cursed, "There have been embellishments placed on the parchments themselves, probably to make the missing parts flow smoothly to the eye…"

"How many of the modules are there?" Sansa asked him as she opened another tube, placing the parchment on the ground next to another one Joffrey had pulled from the racks.

"… I think only one…" Joffrey said as he examined yet another scroll. "They knew the obelisks would likely end up destroyed or missing, so they repeated the same pattern instead of trying for many and likely failing completely… the same pattern over all the obelisks in… where did the first Yellow Sorcerers find them?" he asked Vajul.

"The Plains of Ulan, to the southeast of here. There were hundreds of them, according to the records; most of them barely more than smoothed blackstone. None remain to this day."

"I… I can make use of this. How long do we have?" he said.

"Hours. The thing's puppets are still marshaling their forces fifteen leagues from here… they'll likely attack after midnight," he said.

"Joffrey, no," said Sansa, "It's too dangerous, we can come back here during our next life."

"But Sansa it's right here! A component of the Purple!" he said.

She looked at the sheer hope in his eyes, a sort of almost childish wonder as he held the frayed parchment. "Sansa… this… they're part of us," he said slowly.

She sighed explosively, shaking her head, "Lady will keep an eye outside the room. We drink the poison the second I tell you, alright Joff?"

"Yes," he said immediately.

"How easy you talk of death," said Vajul, shaking his head in amusement. "I had been thinking about offering tutelage for the both of you, after you've reversed the flow of time within this world … but in truth, you already understand," he said.

Sansa looked shocked, "But that couldn't be farther from the truth! There are countless things I can't even-"

"Knowledge is easy," he interrupted her, his voice deep and powerful, the wind inside the room picking up and almost blowing the parchments away as the Yellow Sorcerer spoke. His words were slow and harsh, their weight inside the Archive palpable to all senses, "Insight is paramount. Those worthless fools to the west could drink gallons of Shade of the Evening, sacrifice a thousand Vessels and drown in their blood, and still they would understand nothing," he said, eyes boring upon them.

"Nothing but Silence," he added after a moment, amused.

Joffrey thought he could understand his vehemence, as the sorcerer's eyes met his own. That disbelief that others would be so blind to the greater reality of the Cosmos. How petty their ambitions seemed under that grandeur.

"The Song…" muttered Sansa.

Vajul nodded, "You're already halfway there," he said. "Seek my mind after you've mastered the candle. Carcosa's Spire glints strangely through the Second Sight, use its distortions of light as a beacon," he said before he turned, walking towards the door. "And try to find a Candle that is not half broken, it will help." he said almost negligently.

"How will I know? Will the shadows turn differently? Will the Song sound distorted?" she called out.

"No," he said as he reached the door and looked back at them. "It'll be green instead of black," he added, and Joffrey thought that was the first time he'd seen him smile. Truly smile.

"You didn't really want to be Emperor," Joffrey ventured.

Vajul's smile grew, as if he found his impertinence endearing or perhaps simply refreshing, "I thought I was being deposed, when I heard the First Lancers barging through the windows," he said almost fondly, "I wouldn't have been the first Yellow Sorcerer to be slain by the Greatborn… Alas, imagine my surprise when they carried me down the roads of Carcosa on a bed of crossed lances. 'Emperor', cried the commons. 'Emperor' roared my Yellow Wings…"

He seemed lost in the memory for a second, before gazing back at them with the hard face of the Lord of Carcossa.

"End this 'Cycle'. Destroy it," he said before walking away, the stones themselves trembling as Sansa shivered, feeling the coming outburst of power as the storm above them snarled.

Spoiler: Music

They manhandled the wooden tubes, ripping the priceless sheets of parchment as they tried to join them together like a jigsaw puzzle. Joffrey took feather and blotter from the great desk at the end of the Archive, drawing great sweeping lines which connected sections and scratched errors. The hours passed like minutes as they rearranged the patterns on the floor, Joffrey's concentrated voice guiding Sansa's hands as she replaced sheets or added marks of her own.

The outbursts of power from above made the hair on Sansa's arm tickle, standing and ducking as moments of stillness gave way to breathtaking might that saw the Spire tremble, the assembled might of a hundred and fifty Shadowbinders, four Matriarchs, and a single Yellow Sorcerer going out in a blaze of glory enough to make her dizzy and lose focus. The warp and weft of power fueled by what must have been thousands of sacrifices was so mighty that at times they couldn't breathe, dizzy like children in a cog pummeling through the Sunset Seas. They lost consciousness two times, the tower groaning like a gasping old man as they woke up slowly and tried to finish their task.

"They want me to bend it… to bend the Purple? Spread it outwards… over me? How…" Joffrey whispered as he crawled over three pieces of parchment mashed together, eyes clouded as he gazed at the pattern. "Would it afford protection? Or would it attack the Cycle somehow..? Sansa, I think I'm close… just a few more matching scrolls… I… Sansa?"

Sansa was not paying attention though, blinking slowly as something above changed. Joffrey swayed as he leaned on his knees, dizzy again.

She realized that they were on the onset of another loss of consciousness, the defenders of Carcosa channeling another great ritual… but something was different this time. Joffrey suddenly grabbed her arm like a lifeline, panic writ clear on his face. "It's escalating," he groaned in bone deep certainty.

Sansa could feel it as she gasped, the eye of the Red Comet shifting its gaze from the far north and blinking at Carcosa. She screamed as reality seemed to fray, the walls wobbling strangely as the weight of the Repository asserted itself within this world. With the city. Within the room.

She slammed her arms against the floor, willing the Archive to resist the onslaught of red enveloping their existence, but her power was a puny thing compared to the repository of the Cycle's might. All the power of her bloodline, all the blood she'd mercilessly stolen from prisoners, from the House of the South's Blood Harem, all the essence she'd stored inside her, it was nothing under the escalation.

The world screamed as whirlwinds of shrieking snow began drawing themselves throughout the walls, red tendrils of light coalescing as the long hand of the Red Comet grasped the Archive. She trembled when she realized this was but one of the many places within Carcosa which was now being torn apart, the Red Comet's energy flooding it like a tidal wave as jagged edges began to appear within the whirlwinds of incredibly cold air.

It's not enough, she thought as the drowning sound of the Comet's stare made blood leak out of her ears, dripping down and touching her shaking palms. Blood is not enough, she thought as Lady disappeared from the awareness of her mind in a heartbeat. She gazed at Joffrey as he clawed through the floor towards her, his nails leaving bloody trails on the floor as deformed Walkers gazed from within the jagged tears in the walls, freshly created hands grasping for the edges of reality as more and more holes tore reality open like knives in the dark, letting in gashes of red light throughout the room.

The sight was enough to make her remember.

'Autonomous Defense Administrator' the Deep Ones had called her, and though she didn't understand half of what that meant, she had the gist of it.

She would protect her husband.

She screamed as she reached beyond the power of blood, staring at the contours of her soul and bringing it out into the physical world, seeking to weave part of herself between them and the Comet. Purple fractals erupted from her hands in all directions as they carved themselves into the floor, crawling up the walls and multiplying exponentially over the ceiling. She sought the discordant tune and smoothed the Song as the Red comet thrummed in recognition.

Joffrey had told her many times, but it was then when she realized emotionally, that the Purple was them.

-: PD :-

From one moment to the next the pressure was gone, and only silence remained. The windows into the Red Comet were no more, only piles of snow dotting the floor as Joffrey stared at the pattern on the black walls, the floor, the ceiling. It was Sansa's soul writ clearly over stone; the afterimage of it having triumphed over the might of the Cycle, fractals and twists drawing the contours of it over solid stone.

His wife was still kneeling over the floor, gasping for air. "Joff, now," she managed in between breaths.

"Just... one… second…" he mumbled as he stared at the parchments.

"Joffrey! The poison! Now!" she screamed, holding her own pouch with one hand as she stood up.

He stared at the parchments one more time, searing the half completed pattern into his retina. It would have to do.

"Joff!" screamed Sansa as the now carved door bent and exploded in a shower of splinters, revealing an oddly tilted hallway that was filled with frost; even the black stone lay cracked and torn. What immediately caught Joffrey's attention was not the hallway though, but what lain within it.

The White Walker seemed deformed somehow, bloated. It's misshapen head laid bent and hanging sideways from its neck, one of its eyes staring at them as two enormous, misshapen limbs tore a bigger hole through the stones. It ripped them apart after a second's worth of effort, revealing more of its hulking brethren standing by its sides. They stood taller than normal Walkers: trunk like legs made of snow supported their weight, and their sword arms had lost all definition and seemed barely more than long blades protruding from their forearms. Red veins fresh with the power of the Red Comet thrummed through them, their eyes twin orbs of light which seemed to stare into their very souls.

Sansa ran to his side she emptied the pouch over her mouth, and Joffrey swiftly did the same. The bitter poison went down quickly, and he materialized Brightroar and Stars as bladed shadows emerged from Sansa's wrists. The walls to their sides bent and cracked, revealing more of the Red Walkers as they tore the stone apart. Some had weathered the infusion of power better than others; heads lay encrusted in ice deep within chests, eyes still moving, while others had seen one or two of their legs vaporized. Those crawled using their long arms as canes, ripping apart the tower's structure as they slipped from holes in the Archive's ceiling. Their presence seemed to not only freeze the stones themselves, but Joffrey swore he could hear the shrieking of the Red Comet emanating from them as they got close.

"Watch out!" Joffrey roared as he leapt and slammed Brightroar into the chest of one of the Walkers trying to force open the wall right beside them, cracking its outer layer and piercing the skull held within. It vaporized into scalding hot snow as Sansa and Stars tried to hold off the ones by the entrance. They only needed a few seconds until the poison killed them cleanly and abruptly.

She cut her wrist shallowly as she slashed down with it, spraying blood over the enlarged door frame and forming a sort of invisible wall that made the Red Walker smoke and partly dissolve as it tried to cross it. It stood back before all three charged in unison, Sansa grunting and biting her lip bloody as they were barely slowed, surging through the breach in a shower of steam. She and Stars were a whirlwind of motion then as the Silver Lion grasped hands and legs with its huge maw just in time for Sansa to cut them apart with her blades of smoke. Joffrey slew another of the struggling abominations as it tried to emerge from the ceiling, ripping its chest apart as he pulled Brightroar sideways… but there were too many of them, far too many as Stars was stabbed and slashed into dust and pain, Sansa screaming in agony as one of them parried her blow and another cut her arm in perfect synchronization, freezing the stump immediately.

"Joff it's too slow," she gasped in between breaths as she retreated back towards him, swaying as the Walkers strode behind her. He ran towards her and held her tightly, seeing the Purple crawl into the room.

Too slow, he despaired as he blinked slowly, his awareness dissipating far too slowly. He decided to run through his wife's heart with Brightroar as the Purple seeped from the edges of his vision, but before he could even lift his it a Walker's thick arm emerged from below the floor and crushed his leg within its icy grip. He screamed in pain as blood trickled down Sansa's nose, her eyes closing slowly as the press of bodies was too great and scores of hulking Walkers flooded the room, grabbing them from all sides. None of them said anything as their freezing hands tore flesh and froze blood, their bottomless red eyes peering into the depths of their souls as they loomed over them in dreadful silence.

Why is it not working? Why is it so slow? He despaired as the Others pummeled them into the floor side by side, each Walker holding a limb as he convulsed weakly and finally, finally breathed his last, his head leaning to one side and meeting Sansa's eyes.

"Joff…" she whispered before a blade of harsh white light slammed into her.

No, he thought, feeling an indescribable agony at the core of his being even as another blade slammed into him, the Purple's advance slowing down to a crawl as it slithered to the center of his being, each second slower than the last.

He couldn't even scream as he felt the blade somehow reach the core of him, time turning slow as he felt his very soul start to unravel, watching Sansa's dead eyes as the blades turned red. He felt the floor go out from under him, the Purple Pillars creaking and fracturing as something reached from behind. The Cold Wind flaying his soul was but the wake of something far grander approaching at immense speed; he could feel its incomprehensible presence roaring towards him, a mind-breaking shriek that grew and grew and grew until Joffrey blinked and realized he was staring at the crystal face of the Red Comet.

-: PD :-

Purple Days (ASOIAF): From one day to the other, Joffrey Baratheon wakes up a changed man. Far from the spoiled boy-child known to the court of King's Landing, the Joffrey that comes out of his room three days after the death of John Arryn walks with the stride of a veteran commander and leader of men. A scholar, a sea-captain, a general, a lover. This is the story of how he became that man, and how he came to know his purpose through a cycle of endless death and rebirth that saw him explore his self and the known world from Braavos to Sothoryios and from Old Town to Yi-Ti... and beyond. (Character Development, Adventure, Worldbuilding, Mystery & Suspense, Romance, Action). (Turtledove 2017 winner!).

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Jan 22, 2019

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Chapter 58: Absence.

Spoiler: Music

Joffrey blinked his eyes open.

He swallowed sluggishly, feeling a deep source of distress within him, a slow unraveling of the self as he breathed in slowly.

It got me, he thought in dawning despair, blinking again and again as the image didn't go away and his chest twisted.

He gasped for air, looking around himself. He could barely move his head, gazing at the winter frostland which had once been his chambers inside the Red Keep. Furniture had been cracked apart under the sudden onslaught of winter; the sudden, massive drop in temperature had twisted and buckled materials as if he were still inside the Purple, as if reality itself had started to melt.

He could barely hear anything; shuffling steps and distant voices. He blinked and saw the Hound trundling over the snow which now covered the floor, carrying a stack of wet wood and slamming it down next to his bed. Heavy furs wrapped his armor, and he was shivering wildly as he turned and stuttered something to a group of servants and armsmen wielding puttering torches, many of them wrapped up in torn curtains or bed sheets.

"G-G-grandm-master's… dead… Ser…" said one of the servants as he reached the Hound.

"Set the f-fire going," rasped Sandor.

They tried to light a fire next to him, but the cold was pervasive. One of the blue-faced servants fainted, falling to the floor with barely a sound as another one took over. Joffrey could see snow by the other side of the opened door, a few men moving every now and then carrying stretchers with people in them.

"D-Don't w-worry," the Hound said as he appeared within Joffrey's field of vision again. "S-Soon as we m-melt the ice, we'll g-get y-y-you out," he managed despite rattling teeth, one of the servants almost jutting a torch into Joffrey's shoulder. He had somehow been frozen to the bed itself, the ice forming a whole between him and the sheets.

"I-I-It g-g-got m-m-me," stuttered Joffrey, trying to make him understand. He had troubled breathing, his whole body oddly still as he felt the Cold Wind still ravaging his soul, the silhouette of the Red Comet still closing upon him as he blinked repeatedly and it remained there; seared into his retina, an afterimage of crystal slowly twisting along its own axis as plumes of red erupted from its back.

Every second it came nearer. Each second saw it just a tiny bit closer than before. It was massive, by far the biggest thing Joffrey had ever seen, a crystal landscape that filled the ghostly afterimage of his eyes.

His lungs sought air once more, and then realized they did not have the strength to do so. Joffrey suffocated slowly, the pain a distant nuisance as he gazed at the gently twisting construct of unknowable origin and pure purpose. The panicking voices lost definition as he gazed at the face of eternity, its red arms reaching for him and seeking to make them one as the Purple fractals melted away under its onslaught.

No, it can't end like this, he thought, watching the slowly tumbling sea of crystal, its chiseled edges so similar to the landscape of his own soul. He screamed at the void, holding unto the creaking Purple Pillars as he tried to wake up again, to feel the edge of reality once more, to rewind time and live.

He took a shuddering breath as the Pillars shattered, opening his eyes to life once more. The air was so cold it burnt his lungs. Great piles of snow covered his room, and a part of the ceiling had caved in and deposited shards of ice next to the window. He waited for Sandor to burst into his room, but he never came.

He heard the blizzard before he saw it; it howled like a caged demon, periodically gaining in strength only to grow quiet again a few seconds later. He could see it past his room's window; a harrowing gale of ice and snow blanketing the horizon and everything beyond it. He couldn't see nor hear anything else, not the hammers of the smithies, not the training armsmen of the Red Keep, not Robert shouting for his horse.

King's Landing was quiet.

He didn't feel any pain, though he seemed unable to blink anymore. He breathed his last as the Pillars squirmed inside his mind, their shattering forms giving way to the Red Comet as it moved past them like a whaler past flotsam, its form unperturbed, still spinning on its own axis in a beautiful kaleidoscope of red mirrors. He stood in awe of its silhouette, trying to comprehend the sheer magnitude of its essence, the weight it had in the present moment.

It was the most peaceful thing Joffrey had ever seen.

"What is it sweetling? Is the Hound frightening you? Go away with you dog, you're scaring my lady. I don't like to see you upset," he said as he acted like the charming prince his mother had commanded.

The brief breath of reality was over in an instant, his awareness buckling under the pressure of the Red Comet as the Purple howled with him.

"Ow!" he gasped.

"Please, its nearly healed," said his mother.

"It's ugly," he said.

"A king should have scars. You've fought off a direwolf, you're a warrior, like your Father."

"I'm not like him, I didn't fight off anything. It bit me and all I did was scream… and the two Stark girls saw it; both of them."

"That's not true, you killed the beast"- the image trembled, the smell of summer dissolving to nothing as his mother's voice became intermittent –"someday you will sit on the throne and the truth will be what you make it."

Joffrey squirmed against the approaching weight of his end, the end of his iteration and his self. The end of the Purple and the world and all the races of man.

Ser Barristan looked perplexed, "Your Grace the Kingsguard is a sworn brotherhood-"

"You let my father die, you're too old to protect anyone," Joffrey spoke over him, the condescending tone a slap on the old knight's face. A great part of the court was in attendance, standing around the throne room as they witnessed the end of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. His mother was gazing at the knight with a gentle expression that hid her satisfaction, and Baelish was all but smirking as Janos Slynt shuffled nervously. Even worms knew enough to fear old falcons.

He could feel Sana's presence as he looked at her, slowly diminishing as the Comet approached. She was terrified, struggling against the monstrous weight with all her might as she tried to reach him. He tried to hold onto her, trying to resist the pressure of the Cycle before it ground them to dreams and echoes.

Varys was talking now, nodding along with his words as he delivered them regretfully, "We have nothing but gratitude for your long-"

Joffrey squeezed his eyes shut, a low squirm sneaking out of his mouth. He opened them in an instant, breathing harshly as Varys started and turned to look at him.

Joffrey turned his head towards his wife, "Sansa," he said loudly.

She was dressed in a simple, bluish dress as she gazed at him. "Joff," she said, her face squeezing in pain, "It's not stopping!" she cried.

Joffrey screamed in agony, the weight too great as the Pillars tumbled and the Face of the Red Comet stared at them, the crystals glittering inside the throne room.

His mangled soul kept falling, his awareness of the outside diminishing.

This is it, he realized, the weight of his own mortality settling within him, a different pressure than the Red Comet; a certainty, a decree.

"So long as I'm king, treason shall never go unpunished," he proclaimed, pride and savage joy bursting within him as he gazed at Sansa and then Ned, "Ser Illyn, bring me his head," he shouted, the crowds of King's Landing taking up the cry as Sansa screamed and his own court tried to stop him, to no avail. He fought against the pull, his soul feeling like a sailor who briefly manages to break the waterline, hungering for that tiny breath of fresh air as the storm seeks to pull him under again.

He could somehow feel her presence as they managed to lock gazes. "I'm so sorry," he told her as he turned towards her. There was a knight holding her as she looked back, her screams and struggles stopping abruptly as she let out a long breath of air.

"It can't end like this," she whispered as her head swayed, trying to look at him through a veil of titanic exertion, and he somehow heard her despite the roar of the crowd.

"It won't. I won't let it," he said through gritted teeth, the Red Comet emerging above them in a whirlwind of distorted color and nonexistence.

It's presence was a muffle on the Song, a dampening of the subtle melody of existence as it pulsed and its arms extended towards them.

He could feel Sansa holding on to him, and they fought desperately against the red worming towards their souls, the Pillars still collapsing under the strain as the Comet lurked behind them and he tried to extend his awareness towards the fleeting gasp of reality, the fleeting wisp of existence sounding like an almost forgotten song of childhood; Sansa added her will to his own as they tried to remember.

They tried to remember what it sounded like.

"No please no!" she shouted.

"This one's your Father's, look at him and see what happens to traitors!" said Joffrey, holding a hand out towards Traitor's Walk and the heads that now adorned the pikes.

"You promised to be merciful!" said Sansa, Ser Meryn holding her by the shoulders.

"I was. I gave him a clean death. Look at him," he said, his smirk growing as he strutted over the small wooden bridge, looking at the impaled heads.

"Please let me go home, I won't do any treason I swea-" she cut off abruptly, taking in a harrowing breath of air.

The smirk felt strange on his lips, a fading echo dispersing with the wind. "Sansa," he muttered as he felt dizzy, holding his head with one hand, "We died before it grabbed us completely I think, but the Purple… we… we aren't stopping it." Massive pain assaulted his head, the swift emergence into reality almost too much for his senses. He rested a knee over the small wooden bridge, trying not to fall by the side of it and down the abyss where the Red Comet lurked.

"Watch your step, it's a long way down," said the Hound as he shoved Meryn Trant aside, reaching Joffrey and holding him up. "Are you alright?" he asked after a moment of hesitation.

"Joff, we have to keep fighting it. I, I-I think we might be slowing it down," said Sansa, her voice thick with fleeting hope. Ser Meryn was still holding her, looking at her and then at him with a puzzled expression.

"Sansa, what will happen if- if we reach my wedding? My original death?" he said as he stumbled towards her.

"We can't let that happen, we-" she cut herself off, tears slipping down her cheeks as the heard the thrum, "Joff, it's coming again."

No.

He pushed Ser Meryn away from her before hugging Sansa fiercely. "Don't let go," she said as she embraced him, holding tightly into each other as reality trembled.

"I won't," he said as the thrum reached a crescendo, "Search for me in the Song."

"We'll pool out strength. Together," she said as the thrum reached a peak and they gazed up.

The Red Comet was relentless as it tore reality wide open, fractals multiplying everywhere Joffrey looked, turning everything into itself. He struggled to maintain his existence, even a single train of thought as the Red Comet thrummed once more and he screamed in torment, bursts of Cold Wind ripping him apart even as the Comet's advance slowed.

He could hear the Song as he fell eternally; he reached for it, extending his awareness to that subtle constant that permeated everything. He concentrated on the song of existence as he pulled it, seeking to align himself with it. He felt Sansa adding her will to his, the Red Comet sinking into the distance as its red tendrils kept up their advance, the Song reaching a crescendo as reality passed by like lightening and he grasped for it and he-

Blinked.

The clear break was so sudden Joffrey almost fainted. In but a moment he was assaulted by reality; smells and noises and textures vying for his attention as the Song bloomed so strongly it turned into white noise.

He was standing, the remains of a smirk and an unfinished sentence echoing within him as he swayed, focusing on the frantic beat of his heart as adrenaline flooded his body from one moment to the next, his hair standing on edge as his body caught up to his state of mind and he wondered if the Red Comet was still reaching for him.

He realized he was staring at Sansa. She was kneeling on the floor; streaks of tears marred her cheeks, and her dress had been torn from behind.

"… Sansa?" he said.

"Joff?" she said as she blinked slowly.

"That's your King you're talking to!" said a man to her right, slamming the flat side of his sword against her back and eliciting a pained, surprised grunt from his wife.

Joffrey was by her side in an instant, delivering an extended Ho-Qing straight into the man's throat. He gasped for air as he stumbled back, but Joffrey's initial trajectory made him close the distance in a half second; his fists blurred as he followed up with two Joint Palm strikes that broke the armored man's jaw and then his nose. He seemed out of the fight as he collapsed backwards, so Joffrey abandoned the incipient killing blow and instead opted to retreat backwards to Sansa, trying to cover her right as he made ready to summon Brightroar.

He was breathing harshly, trying to control the flow of adrenaline through his body as his tunnel vision expanded slowly, surveying the area for his next assailant and his next strike.

He was very disorientated when he realized he was staring at the throne room, courtiers standing back in shock as both him and Sansa twisted by instinct, cycling constantly so as to disorient the next foe to attack, their backs covering each other. "Joff, what…" Sansa stammered, still shaking from the experience.

Joffrey frowned as he looked at Sandor, a hand over the pommel of his sword but otherwise standing still as he stared at him. He thought it was one of the few times he'd seen him so confused, though he was not the only one. Joffrey was surprised to see him sporting a white cloak of all things, standing by the dais before the throne.

"What's the meaning of this?!" shouted someone as he made way between the crowds.

"Uncle Tyrion!" Joffrey realized as he turned, his voice thick with relief and vaguely hysterical. He kept listening for the thrum of the Red Comet, but the Song remained the same, reality stable as his eyes kept scanning the throne room. He eyed the armed man walking behind his uncle as he walked past the audience with a decisive stride, his face grim.

A sellsword of some sort? He thought, already plotting the trajectory of the kick that would leave him on the floor, a summoned Brightroar ending his life with a quick stab to the neck. The adrenaline burst was deserting his body, and a strange sort of unreality was settling his mind instead.

"Somebody get the girl something to cover herself… with…" Tyrion trailed of, his walk slowing down as he stared at the armored knight shuffling weakly on the floor and the couple at the center of the throne room.

"Joff, what's going on?" Sansa whispered as she abandoned the First Stance of Khai and put her hands over her tattered dress instead, covering her breasts as she looked around her.

"I don't know," Joffrey whispered back, still trying to make sense of the situation. It was clear something horrible had just happened… but they'd escaped the Red Comet, he couldn't feel its presence any more, closing in with the calm patience of a thousand stars and the power to boot. Sansa seemed equally confused, though rapidly assuming a courtly demeanor that only served to make her look… uncanny in that torn dress.

"What happened here?" said Tyrion, confusion warring with anger as his eyes cycled from Joffrey to the mewling knight to Sansa's torn dress.

"Tyrion," Sansa nodded politely, "My husband was just having a bad day and, well, hence all this show," she said with apologetic smile, dismissing the matter with a precise wave of the hand. She sniffled, and frowned when she touched her face and realized there were tears there.

Tyrion looked at her as if she'd grown a second head, "… I fear Ser Meryn's blows might have left you… confused, Lady Sansa," he said, "… You are not yet married to my nephew."

"Oh…" she said with an easy smile, as if it had been a simple slip of the mind. "Thanks Sandor," she said as the Hound walked in from behind her, putting a white cloak over her. He was looking at her as one might watch a Leviathan slowly emerge from the waves.

Tyrion gazed at her in incomprehension before turning to Joffrey, "Joffrey… were you punishing her?"

"I…" he hesitated, looking at the throne room again. The courtiers were murmuring between them, and he could see Lancel swaying one way and the other. He was white faced, a hand over the pommel of his sword as he seemed to struggle between striding towards them or running away… and settling on doing neither.

This… This has happened before… he thought as he blinked slowly, his gaze returning to Tyrion and the anger behind his eyes.

Has it? Had it?

Sansa exhaled, holding the white cloak tightly as her other hand held Joffrey's. "It's been a long day, we'll be adjourning the royal court until tomorrow," she said loudly.

No one seemed to move, the courtiers looking between themselves as Lancel took a step forward and then thought better of it.

Tyrion nodded slowly, "Please, my lady. Come with me," he said as he extended a hand towards her. Sansa demurred, turning her hack on him as she smiled and squeezed Joffrey's hand.

"Joffrey, snap out of it!" she whispered in his ear.

He shook his head again, feeling an alien weight over his it. He felt the ornate crown with one hand, tracing the gold lines with his fingers.

"Leave us, court is over for today," he said, his voice rebounding cleanly within the throne room.

That seemed to do the trick. The courtiers bowed quickly, leaving the room through the main doors as a gaggle of minor Lannister handmaidens approached Sansa warily. They seemed to flutter around them indecisively before Joffrey frowned.

"…What are you doing?" he asked them, fighting off another massive headache.

"Your Grace, well, we are waiting for, ah," one of them half stuttered as she looked at Sansa.

"Go," he said as gestured at the doors. The handmaidens all but scrammed towards it, curtsying and murmuring apologies. "And fetch the Grandmaester!" Sansa called out before they closed the doors, looking at Ser Meryn Trant as he tried to stem the bleeding from his nose, still squirming on the floor.

"Uncle, would you walk with us?" said Joffrey.

-: PD :-

"Yes, there was a battle a few days ago… that's the reason you've been… in a mood, Your Grace," said Tyrion, still not quite getting his bearings as he accompanied Joffrey and Sansa throughout the corridors of the Red Keep.

Joffrey had been visiting several rooms, growing more frustrated by the second before he'd finally asked for the way towards Lady Sansa's current chambers.

Under normal circumstances, Tyrion would have urgently tried to channel his nephew's attentions towards other things, fearing for Lady Sansa's very life and dignity… alas, these were no normal circumstances.

Sansa herself was walking with her torn dress as if it were but the latest fashion in King's Landing, her dignified stride a strange counterpoint to Joffrey's prowl. As the lady nodded and smiled at the frequent passerby's, Joffrey stalked through the halls like a caged lion, his body holding an easy tension which seemed a second away from a sort of violence leagues away from his usual tantrums.

"Yes, the battle, of course," said his nephew, "What was the name again? I seem to have forgotten it," he said.

"Oxcross, Your Grace. Robb Stark shattered Ser Stafford's host around Oxcross, three days' away from Lannisport itself," he said, as if explaining to a simpleton.

"Oxcross…" Joffrey muttered, "Oxcross… Oxcross…" he said as he frowned.

"Yes, the battle was fought around Oxcross," said Tyrion, studying his nephew.

"… Tyrion, how long ago was Jon Aryn's death?" Sansa asked him.

"More than a year ago… I take it you forgot about the date too?" he said as he watched the composed woman, her eyes still puffed and red even though she gazed at the corridors as if she owned them.

"Oh… Well, it's been a tough few days," she said as she smiled apologetically, raising her eyebrows as if to say 'what can you do about that?'

"Is this it?" Joffrey asked as he opened the door.

"Yes, that's where Lady Sansa has been staying these past few months…"

He heard Joffrey scoff after he'd entered the room. "You, out," he said, and Tyrion stood aside to let another of Sansa's forced handmaidens shuffle away from the room, holding her dress tightly and looking only at the floor.

"Room's clear," Joffrey said as he held the door open.

"Thank you Tyrion, you've been a wonderful aid," Sansa said as she entered the room. Tyrion's last efforts to save his future goodsister tried and failed to emerge from his throat. Instead, he hummed acknowledgment.

"Yeah, thanks uncle," said Joffrey, before looking behind him. "Hey Sandor!" he called out.

The kingsguard had been following at a prudent distance, and blinked at the Prince's unusual form of address.

"Yes, Your Grace?" he said warily.

"Mind the door, would you? We are not to be disturbed," he commanded before closing it with a thud.

Tyrion looked up at the burnt half of the Hound's face.

"What the Seven Hells was that about?" he asked, mostly to himself.

That was definitively the strangest conversation I've ever had…

"Fuck if I know," he said with a massive shrug. He stared at the door for a few more seconds, as if trying to extract secrets from it, before walking towards it and leaning on the wall. "I'll…" he seemed to hesitate for a second, looking away from Tyrion, "Interrupt if…" he couldn't finish the sentence, looking uncomfortable before he shuffled within his plate and turned to stare blankly at the other end of the hallway.

Tyrion shook his head, deciding to go back to the throne room and to interrogate a few witnesses.

-: PD :-

Joffrey closed the door with a thud, allowing himself a second of respite from the constant battle awareness. "Sansa," he whispered as he hugged her.

"I thought we were going to die… to truly die," she said as she seemed to melt within his grasp, letting out a long breath of air.

"Me too, me too, dear… Wine?"

"Anything," she said with a weary sigh, kissing him before letting him go. Joffrey went to the nearby cabinet as she took a moment to survey the room, fingers tracing the hanged clothing and various other knickknacks ordered around the cupboards.

"This… these dresses are mine," she said as she held one against her shoulders, looking at the bright green cascading over her chest.

"This has all happened before… the Red Comet must have… Gods…" Joffrey muttered before taking a long sniff from a jug by the cabinet at the other side of the room.

Sansa ripped apart what was left of her torn dress, leaving the broken rags on the floor as Joffrey returned with the pitcher and two cups. "It's more water than wine, but it's something," he said as he placed it over the small table by the front of the bed. He trailed off when he looked at her bare body. "Oh… Sansa… I'm so sorry," he whispered as he looked at the bruises around her belly.

Those must have come from 'yesterday'… because of me…

"I'm fine," she said as she shook her head, her elaborate braids half collapsing because of the sudden movement. She took one of the served cups from his hand, taking a long sip before frowning.

"It's something at least," she said with a self-depreciating smile before downing the cup in one gulp.

"Indeed," he said, his voice far away as he gazed at the watered wine swirling inside the cup. Sansa took a deep breath before leaving it on the table and walking back to the side of the bed, where she'd left the green dress.

"Ugh… It's one of those," she said as she held it on front of her. "Help me out?"

"Sure," he said after downing another cup. He walked behind her, helping her don the fine dress which Sansa distantly remembered had been one of her favorites about twenty-five years ago.

"Hrm," she grunted as Joffrey tied the lace at her back, "Tight in all the wrong places too," she said.

"I think the last time I saw you wear one of these was before you greeted the Purple," he said as he finished the knot. "Ser Meryn left a pretty nasty bruise back here; sure you don't want me to treat it?"

"I'll be fine, it didn't even draw blood," she said as she turned. "And you? You holding up okay?"

She caressed his cheek, examining the younger visage of her husband. Far from the hard, taut rope of muscles he became mere months after wake up, this Joffrey's physique looked almost indolent.

"I'm fine… looking forward to meeting the Red Comet again in my nightmares," he said as he closed his eyes and leaned on Sansa's hand. She smiled, but found out she couldn't keep it going. She sniffed as she hugged him again, and Joffrey returned the embrace wholeheartedly. They stayed like that for what felt like hours, clasping each other tightly and shivering ever so lightly.

They could still feel the cold.

"I can't seem to stop sniffling," Sansa complained as they sat by the table, Joffrey serving himself another cup of watered wine. He raised an eyebrow when she shook her head, leaving her own cup empty. "Feels like I've been crying for a whole week," she said as she massaged her face.

"You probably were," said Joffrey, looking at the red puffs around her cheekbones. He nursed his cup of wine close to his forehead as he shut his eyes.

"Your doing?" she asked him gently.

"At my command." He was filled with shame, his eyes still closed. "'A King should never strike his lady'," he quoted in disgust.

"Never saw that side to Ser Meryn… or, well, never remembered it at least," she said with a warped smile.

"… Joff," she called out to him.

He opened his eyes almost against his will, gazing back at her with a tired expression.

"We're past our time then?" she said.

"By little more than a year, I think."

"And we're… we're in our original lives, before the Purple took us for the first time."

"Seems so," said Joffrey. "Seven Hells… what a fucking mess this is."

Sansa stayed silent for a while. That just about summed up the situation.

"The Red Comet almost got us… I could feel the tendrils of its might reaching for us," she whispered after a moment, "Forever grasping, even as the shockwaves left by its movement flayed our souls…"

"The Cold Wind a mere wake left by that thing…" said Joffrey. He didn't even want to think about what would have happened if they'd not already been in the throes of death when the Walkers impaled them. The red tendrils had not caught them, but it had been a near enough thing.

"Joff… what if the Purple… what if we got damaged?" she said, a horrible vision clogging her throat, "What if this is as back as we'll ever go again?"

"It would be bad. Really bad," he said, eyes glazing over as he thought about the implications.

"We must be smack in the middle of the War of the Five Kings… that means… Oh…" she trailed off as the implications set in.

"Lady is long gone and I… I executed your father already. And Robb… Oxcross… I don't remember that battle, but Oxcross is right in the middle of the Westerlands. This must be the high point of his campaign against the west," he said, flinching at every word.

"Lady… Father… no…" she stuttered before shaking her head and staring at him like a hawk. "What about Arya? Bran and Rickon? Jon?" she asked urgently.

"Arya had not been seen since the day Robert died… as for Bran… He's crippled, can't walk. I remember…" he trailed off, shaking his head.

"Remember what Joff?"

"… Theon killed him, after he took Winterfell. Rickon too I think... I'm not sure if that's already happened."

Sansa cupped her mouth between her hands, blinking slowly as her eyes swelled again.

"Jon must have already sworn himself into the Night's Watch…" he whispered.

Each lone tear that fell from her cheeks was a fresh wound on Joffrey's heart, and he didn't have the moral fortitude to stand up and hug her. How could he, when all that was happening right now was his fault? His original actions that ended up seeing half her family dead. His idiotic choice back in Carcosa when he could have been patient and killed himself right away, biding the time for the trip there again.

This whole life was a nightmare to Joffrey, every stare from every servant and courtier and old friend serving to carry him back to a past he'd though ground to dust long ago.

Sansa sighed, massaging her temples. "This body seems all too willing to cry at the slightest prodding," she complained after a few sniffles, standing up angrily and ripping another chunk out of the tattered dress over the floor. She used it as a makeshift handkerchief as she sat back down, cleaning her face.

"I'm sorry," said Joffrey, feeling hollow.

"That was more than a century ago Joff. You might as well have been another man," she said.

The air he breathed in felt poisoned, heavy. "And back in Carcosa?"

"That was utter stupidity… you headstrong idiot," she said as she slapped the handkerchief down on the table. "I told you, but you just wouldn't listen! You'd think over a century of life would install some Gods-be-damned patience on you!" she screamed, breathing harshly as she settled back on the chair, her angry expression melting away into wariness.

Joffrey closed his eyes, unable to look at her.

They stayed like that for another while, and the sun had moved meaningfully when Joffrey managed to open his eyes again. Sansa was leaning on the table, fiddling absentmindedly with the makeshift handkerchief.

He moved his hand towards hers, but they retreated below the table.

"Do you think the realm can be saved, at this point?" she said after a moment.

He sighed. "I don't know… there's too much animosity against the Lannisters. Large sections of the Riverlands have been razed, and the North and West have bled a lot of manpower. Stannis, Renly if he's still alive, and Balon are all in open rebellion…. And there's still Aegon and Daenerys unaccounted for…"

"The Crownlands should still be mostly intact," she said.

Joffrey massaged his face, trying to get his mind back to the game of supplies and mathematics, troops and lords, loyalty and betrayal; the Game of Thrones. "Hmm… Around seven thousand men plus whatever Lannister forces remain around Harrenhall… Yeah, I could stop Stannis when he comes knocking, and the Reach…" He grimaced, "We'll hold, but it'll be bloody… there'll be widows from Maidenpool to Highgarden…"

"You could marry Margeary," she said, her eyes hooded, "I'll be your Mistress of Whispers. With the Reach and a hundred thousand men we can take care of Balon, the Vale, Aegon, maybe keep Dorne in check. Give Robb the North, it won't matter in a few years."

"Sansa, no," he said as he shook his head. "We don't even know if this is permanent, we're building castles over clouds."

"The Purple's raw Joff, tell me you don't feel it."

He shuffled, looking away from her.

"It feels wounded," she whispered.

"Wounds can be mended."

"You don't know that Joffrey."

"The Red Comet didn't subsume us, it didn't make contact with our souls," he said, slamming his hand against the table. "We're still alive, and until we know if this is the new normal I won't stand for… insane plans."

Sansa looked away. "Insane was delaying our deaths back in Carcosa… this… this is just controlling the damage," she whispered.

Joffrey worked his jaw as he leaned back on his chair, letting out a mighty sigh. "We'll have to wait a few days, weeks maybe. See how the Purple looks then…"

"And what if we can't go back? What then Joff?"

"I… I don't know. I don't know Sansa," he said, feeling ice in his belly.

-: PD :-

Purple Days (ASOIAF): From one day to the other, Joffrey Baratheon wakes up a changed man. Far from the spoiled boy-child known to the court of King's Landing, the Joffrey that comes out of his room three days after the death of John Arryn walks with the stride of a veteran commander and leader of men. A scholar, a sea-captain, a general, a lover. This is the story of how he became that man, and how he came to know his purpose through a cycle of endless death and rebirth that saw him explore his self and the known world from Braavos to Sothoryios and from Old Town to Yi-Ti... and beyond. (Character Development, Adventure, Worldbuilding, Mystery & Suspense, Romance, Action). (Turtledove 2017 winner!).

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Threadmarks Chapter 59: The Red. New

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Jan 26, 2019

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Chapter 59: The Red.

"What about Stokeworth?" Cercei asked Bernadette. The handmaiden looked troubled as they walked down the stairs, grimacing at the bad news to come.

"Lady Tanda was thoroughly unreceptive Your Grace. She gracefully implied that Castle Stokeworth would not be up to Prince Tommen's needs… "

"That idiotic sow of a woman is already thinking about jumping ship." She scowled, rounding the last set of stairs and reaching the small tower's doors. "Rosby could be another option. We have to get my son out of the capital before Stannis reaches the walls, do you understand?" she asked the Lannister handmaiden.

"Yes Your Grace, I shall coordinate with the Grandmaester and send a letter for Rosby this very evening," she said quickly.

Cercei nodded, pressing her lips and hiding another scowl. Between the unruly mob and the approaching specter of Stannis the city could no longer be considered truly safe for her children. If the capital were to fall then at least they would be safe and out of the hands of the traitor, perhaps able to link up with her father further north…

The couple walked through the outer courtyard at a sedate pace, as Cercei knew that the essence of rule was to project control at all times... and she needed every ounce of it. Her imp of a brother had been steadily chipping away at her power within the Red Keep ever since he'd arrived from the Riverlands, reassigning guards and servants and changing the days Joffrey held court.

Lysa Arryn had him right in front of her, surrounded by a hundred loyal swords ready to do anything for her … and she botched it. The depths of the woman's ineptitude never ceased to amaze her.

She was distracted by the sound of constant drill, an accelerating cadence of steel on steel.

Strange, Tyrion rescheduled yard drills yet again the other day. It should be empty right now. She altered her walk slightly so she could see what was going on, and almost had a heart attack when she saw Joffrey standing in the middle of the yard, no armor at all and barefoot, only breeches and an arming sword on his person.

Surrounding him were men of the Red Cloak garrison and, while they seemed rightfully afraid of her boy, that didn't take away from the fact that they were wielding swords against him.

She strode like bottled fury, dress fluttering behind her as Bernadette struggled to catch up and she took in a breath of air-

She didn't get to make a sound though. From one moment to the next Joffrey had leapt into one of the circling, terrified Redcloaks. He didn't say anything as he feinted two times, the third a real strike that sneaked past the man's desperate parry and caught him in the shoulder. He stumbled back, and Joffrey turned and deflected the blow to his back from another Redcloak, his palm flat as he slammed it against the man's face. He pivoted as the Redcloak fell to the ground, his sword a blur of grey as he tapped another half a dozen times in a single second, the last strike right in the sternum and depriving him of air. On and on her son danced, squeezing in between combatants and using them to block each other, his sword always in motion as his other hand slammed into arms and faces, disarming or bloodying mouths and noses. Soon, all six Redcloaks were on the ground, moaning or struggling to get up.

"… Joffrey?" she asked, hesitant. Sweat was evaporating from his bare back, his eyes closed as he breathed slowly.

He seemed disappointed. "Again," he said, and this time he threw his sword aside. The Redcloaks didn't want to, some looking away as others tried to crawl out of the yard.

"Your Grace… the men… perhaps some could use a replacement?" said Ser Collyn, the Red Keep's current Master at Arms and a loyal Lannister man. They hadn't even looked at her…

"See to it," said his son as he turned, his face inscrutable as he saw her. "Mother."

"Joffrey…" she said, uneasy. Ever since a month ago, something had happened to her boy. He hardly spoke to her, and he seemed to brood more and more often instead of holding court. He'd suddenly turned thick as thieves with the doe eyed Sansa Stark, and everything had been subtly different since then. The unseemly beatings had stopped, but every look between the two seemed to carry meanings she could not understand. There was a tension between them altogether different than the usual torment her son had inflicted upon the Stark girl, and she couldn't understand it.

That was not to be tolerated.

"Soon you'll be a swordsman as great as your uncle," she said in the meanwhile, and every bit of her admiration was genuine for all that it was mired in confusion.

"I'd like to fight him, one day," he said absentmindedly, hand tapping impatiently against his thigh as he waited for a few of the watching armsmen to replace their falling comrades. There was silence around the yard, most of the watch staring from the battlements and the walls where they thought no one could see them.

"That's a fight I'd like to see," whispered Tyrion, and Cercei belatedly realized the Imp had been watching all this time, his small stature hiding him from first sight as he gripped the wooden fence with white knuckles.

She ignored the little pest. Acting Hand of the King or not the people inside the Red Keep knew who they answered to.

Perhaps the first man to know of Joffrey's sudden change of mind held the key of the matter? "Joffrey… why did you hit Ser Mandon?" she asked after a moment.

"He struck Lady Sansa," he said.

Oddly enough, that simple sentence left very little room to move the conversation forward. Instead, she chose a different track.

"Who taught you how to fight like that?"

"Hounds and whalers," he said as he stretched his right wrist, "Wise men from the east whose white beards reached the floor. Hardy sailors and venture captains. Brave soldiers and generals who painted the grey sand with their own blood," he said as he craned his neck, ignoring the thick drops of sweat that crossed his face down from the hairline.

Cercei blinked, looking at the Imp. He was staring at his son though, not saying a word.

"Again," he said as he turned to the new batch of Redcloaks.

"But Joffrey, you're unnarmed-" Cercei started, but her son was already a blur. He grunted as he bent his knees lightly, one arm completely stretched as the other curled over his chest and stayed still over his heart. He advanced quickly, long sideways strides as the armed Redcloaks spread out and charged him. He bent right and left in quick succession, avoiding sword and spear thrusts, his left arm still straightened as if it were a sword. He scuttled forward like a spider, his hip lowered as his arm delivered two precise strikes on a man's throat and he fell on his knees clutching it. He roared as he rolled under a spear thrust, unbending his left arm and locking the spear in place while the other palm slammed into his attacker's nose.

"Reyk, Golland, take his flanks and move as one!" shouted one of the Redcloaks as he feinted back and forwards with his sword, but Joffrey didn't give the others time to get in place. He slammed into the man to his left, his forearms jerking both of Golland's arms aside and leaving his chest open. His fists were like whirlwinds as he delivered a flurry of punches unto it, the man convulsing backwards and going over the fence to land on the other side of it, splattering mud all around.

The two remaining Redcloaks seemed unwilling to initiate the next clash, keeping the distance as Joffrey struggled to control his breath, pacing around them like a caged tiger. He blinked slowly when he passed by her, looking down at the mud. "Do you remember that conversation we had a long while ago, about the nature of truth and thrones?" he asked her.

Cercei looked at the trembling Redcloaks, keeping their distance and using their swords as shields against her son. He'd stopped pacing, still staring at the mud by her side. "I remember," she said with a small smile.

"'One day, you'll sit on the throne and the truth will be what you make it'," Joffrey said slowly, considering every word. "What do you think of that, uncle?" he asked.

Tyrion just looked at him, not saying a word. He'd shared little of what he'd discussed with her son, but it was clear the little pest was just as confused as her with his sudden change in demeanor…

Cercei shook her head, "I remember what I told you sweetie, what of it?"

"You were wrong. Some truths can't change," he said, eyes faraway. "All of our actions have consequences, cause and effect." He scowled, his eyes returning to hers, "You forgot that, or else never knew it…. You…" he took a deep breath, holding the railing with one hand as if to steady himself. He opened his mouth two times, each time closing it shortly thereafter. When he finally found his voice, it came in a rush, "You act as if you're the only person in the world, mother. The only valid experience is yours. The only true feelings are your own."

Cercei reared back, stunned, "Joffrey, I don't know what-"

"That's why you failed!" he shouted at her, "That's why you caused all of this! That's why you made me," he spat, his breathing working up as the words tumbled out of his mouth.

She felt her face twisting into an inexplicable scowl as her son's words made her chest burn. "Joffrey-!"

"You are a world into itself Cercei! Whatever you feel for me or Tommen or Myrcella is because the only thing you truly love is you-"

She slapped him. From one moment to the next she slammed his face with everything she had, her palm tingling numb as Joffrey's head recoiled to the side. The entire Red Keep seemed to hold its breath at once, absolute silence descending upon the yard like a choking mist.

She held the trembling palm against her mouth, watching as her son took a long breath before he slowly brought his head back to bear on her. The entire right side of his face was turning red, three tiny pinpricks of blood marking where her nails had gotten him.

He grimaced, staring at her eyes. He felt his face with a hand, putting it where she'd struck him.

"You should've done that years ago," he said. With a single powerful roar he was upon one of the Redcloaks, already a step away from him before the man could react. He slashed horizontally with a two hander but Joffrey caught both his arms before it could connect, twisting them on their own axis and making him scream. One hit from his forehead and the scream cut off, the man collapsing like a torn puppet. Bernadette gave a startled scream at the force of the blow, but his son didn't seem to hear it.

"COME ON!" Joffrey roared at the last man, making him shout his own battlecry as he went for a lunge with a bastard sword. Joffrey pivoted out of the way sword's way three times and slammed the side of his palm against the man's arm, making him drop his weapon and grunt in pain. Two strikes to the head and another three to the chest saw him stumbling back, Joffrey adding his weight as he tackled him to the ground. He roared as his fists descended on the man's face, one after the other as his son let go with all his strength, her hand stopping a scream as blood splattered from the Redcloak's face.

"JOFF!" shouted a voice which should have sounded familiar, but had nothing of the skittish fear and curdled regret Cercei had learnt to expect.

His fist stopped in midair as his head whipped to the side, watching Sansa Stark as she leaned on the railing.

Joffrey was breathing harshly, the Redcloak moaning lowly beneath him. He stood up as if from a trance, shaking off blood and mud from his chest as he made to walk one way, then the other.

"Here," said Sansa, holding out his cloak.

He took it, using it to wipe his face.

Far from the scared doe, the Stark girl had changed as abruptly as her son, and all manner of silly rumors had started flying around the castle once Joffrey had foolishly removed the guards and handmaidens that served as Sansa's jailors in all but name.

"Deep breaths Joff," said the Stark girl.

He looked around, eyes settling on Cercei… which made her realize she'd forgotten to breathe too.

"… Thank you for listening," he told her.

He vaulted over the fence and had a quiet word with Sansa. Before she could reach them though the two of them walked away, towards the Southeastern Tower.

"Tyrion, you had something to do with this, I'm sure of it," said Cercei, still feeling as if her heart was about to burst.

"I know as much as you, dear sister," the Imp said after a long while, "Except for perhaps one thing… I know enough to tell he really needed to get that off his chest." He had taken to wearing armor these past few weeks as the preparations for Stannis' reception accelerated. According to her spies it gave him a martial air which aided in getting the smallfolk to do what they were supposed to be doing, though Cercei herself found the sight almost comical.

"It's just the strain of his rule," she said immediately, her jaw feeling heavy.

Tyrion merely hummed, tapping his fingers against the railing.

"What did Ser Meryn tell you?" she asked him. She'd interrogated the Kingsguard herself, but it was only prudent to check. The man seemed a shadow of his former self, shuffling around the Red Keep like a particularly clumsy catspaw and avoiding her son like a beaten dog.

"He said that Joffrey had been holding court after the news of Oxcross reached him, directing him to strike Sansa as 'punishment'… He was saying something about traitors and the need for just punishments when a tiny breath of air escaped his lips and he blinked in confusion."

"Had he been drinking something? Was he near Sansa?" she asked him.

"No. The next thing Ser Meryn remembers is Joffrey's face and blinding pain as he tried to stand up…"

"I don't like this one bit. We need to keep an eye on her," she told him, and she'd been doing just that.

"Somehow I don't think Sansa Stark is responsible for this." He looked almost haunted as he frowned, tapping his fingers against the training yard's fence yet again. "Wise men and whalers…" he muttered before shaking his head, "I believe something altogether… different may be at play…"

"Your fondness for the girl will be the doom of our House." She lowered her voice so only he could hear it, "We need to keep looking for Varys too, he must know about everyone linked to the Aegon Conspiracy..."

"You think Sansa Stark was embroiled in that?" said the Imp, looking at her like a simpleton.

"… I have people looking into it."

"I must say I have my doubts about their finding anything at all…"

Cercei smirked, "It was them who found the link to Littlefinger, not any of yours." To think the little bastard had been syphoning coin off the treasury for years, financing a Targeryen restoration of all things… it made her blood boil. Petyr Baelish would likely find a very different reception than he was expecting, when he completed his mission and returned to the capital. A pike would suit him quite well.

Assuming Renly didn't cut off his head first.

"That was pure luck," said Tyrion, as always trying to deny her triumphs. He smirked as he looked away from her and at the bruise covered sellsword that followed him everywhere. The man bit off a scowl as he emerged from the inner gatehouse, rubbing his arm. "Bronn! I see you've trained hard today," he said as the sellsword all but limped to his side.

The man grunted what could be charitably called assent. The Imp patted him in the back as they walked away, "Sister," he said with a nod as they passed her by. "Now, I want you to tell me everything," she heard him say as they walked towards the gatehouse, to see to the defenses of the city again… or most likely, the nearest brothel.

She turned to Bernadette, "Double the men on Sansa… and make sure that letter reaches Rosby," Cercei told her, all but storming off towards Maegor's Holdfast. She'll have to make a list of everyone who'd been there in the courtyard to witness her son's inane ramblings… her own handmaiden included.

-: PD :-

They'd been meditating together almost daily, sinking their awareness deep into their souls to survey the damaged left in the wake of the Red Comet. Sansa didn't know if it had been the Purple itself or their constant attention and will to make it so, but after their extensive sessions feeling and breathing the fabric of their souls in unison, she could feel it just a tiny bit sturdier than before. The fractals felt a bit more complex, whole. The pillars solid, grounded. It was almost impossible to put the feeling into a coherent explanation, but Joffrey had. Predictably enough, he'd gone on to build an elaborate analogy of a sailor shaking off his hangover after a night of heavy carousing. Sansa felt it was more like getting her bearings after a particularly hard hit with a spear butt to the head, but in the end the point was moot.

Mangled but not dead, that had been their diagnosis. What that meant for the coming lives though was not as easy to guess.

Sansa had been living an uncanny few weeks inside the Red Keep, seeing strange, dark versions of people she'd grown to care for. Sandor had a sort of shadow over his face every time she looked at him, something slowly eating him from within. He seemed lonelier than she knew him, broodier somehow. Lancel -Joffrey's fierce legate and brave commander- was but a mewling sycophant orbiting around her husband like a half starved fly. His frequent grandstanding and his bold demeanor did nothing to hide the hollowness behind his eyes though… Sansa could see the boy was absolutely lost within himself, desperately clinging to the court as his soul ached in apathy and emptiness… it was disconcerting how nobody else could see it.

Cercei had been by far the worst. She seemed to have been unleashed by Robert's death, and without the true Joffrey to hold her back she'd been ruling the Red Keep's staff like a tyrannical petty kingdom, her schemes extending beyond it and grasping the happenings within the capital in all the wrong ways. She'd not taken her own change very well, but Joffrey's had kept her off balance… for the moment.

Tyrion on the other hand had merely been… strange. He seemed to treat her as a delicate glass doll, and she couldn't feel anything but horror if that was the way everyone in the south and… perhaps even her own family truly regarded her as. Perhaps that had been changing as of late though… Tyrion had loaned his sellsword to her, and she'd been catching up on her spear drill as a way to focus and give some much needed hardness to this soft body. No doubt the man reported everything to him, but that didn't concern her much…

It had been a few long years in the East, and the change from being treated like a feared Shadowcaller to a helpless and ignorant little girl was eerie. Did her family treat her to a lesser but similar degree? Had they truly seen her as a sort of helpless invalid?"

Perhaps the more important question was if she'd ever see them again.

She let the thoughts fade away, concentrating on the task at hand as her eyes clouded white.

-: PD :-

Joffrey took a long drink from the wineskin, swallowing the thick vintage like a horse on water before tilting his head back down and taking in a big breath. He sat atop a small crate, looking around the small storage room indistinguishable from the scores of others which permeated the Red Keep. The trio of hummingbirds inside the room fluttered thro and fro, circling the room and landing to look through nooks and crannies. They chirped almost in unison before circling the room one more time and flying out the window in a hurry.

Sansa let out a sigh as her eyes returned to their usual blue, the white still clinging to the edges of her pupils as she tried to blink it away.

"Room's clear," she said.

"Tunnels?"

"Them too, though I doubt any metaphorical 'little birds' remain after you knifed Varys."

"Never can be too careful," he said.

"… If only you'd thought that sooner," muttered Sansa.

The words were like a stiletto past his ribs. "Yeah. If only."

She sighed again, looking at his face. "You've got…" Her hand hesitated.

He raised his own, touching his forehead. He felt the droplet of blood and scowled before wiping it clean with a sleeve.

"… I'm sorry, that was uncalled for," she said after a long moment.

"But not untruthful. Save the apologies," he muttered.

Sansa sat on another crate, looking as one of the hummingbirds came back and gently pried open a small crack in the wall. "It's been wearing on us, both of us…"

He grunted, "Bronn seemed like he could hardly walk. Been going too hard on him?"

"I remember I could hardly walk after our sessions too… You've always said it's the mark of a good spar." She blinked away the memories of Braavos, "Anyway, Bronn's pretty good; even taught me a few things. You could use him for the Raiders."

He grunted assent. They'd been distant, this life. The weight of their mistakes, the uncertainty, the atmosphere of the Red Keep…

"It's like a nightmare…" he said after a while.

"It'll pass Joffrey."

He gave her a whimsical smile before taking another swig of wine.

"Wanna know something funny?" he said after a while, leaning back on the crates stacked behind him.

Sansa leaned back as well, the hummingbird retrieving a small scroll and leaving it in her hand as she looked at Joffrey.

"This room. There's scores of em' peppered throughout the Red Keep… and they all look the same to me. Do you know what's the first thing I remember whenever we walk into one?"

Sansa tilted her head slightly, still looking at him.

"Even after all this time… It's still that fucking cat," he said after a while, lips pressed together as he shook his head slowly. "One of Tommen's… I was so curious, so entranced by it as I wielded the knife…" His voice started to peter out, his throat locked. "The kittens… they were born dead. Nature gave them that mercy at least."

"And then?" Sansa asked, her voice light to the ear.

Joffrey grunted, "I was so confused. Everyone in the Red Keep kept giving me these stares, from charcoal hauler to Kingsguard, even my own bloody father… both of them… but no one said anything. It was always a miasma of whispers and reproachful looks, but never did anyone bloody say anything. Not a single word of praise or condemnation. Robert drank, my mother scowled, Jaime redoubled his fake smiles, Tommen cried…" he trailed off, staring at his palms.

"But that's ancient history… it grew along with me throughout the long journey, maturing in its own twisted ways," he said, and Sansa didn't need to ask what he was talking about. "My… rage… I've spent decades thinking about it. Wondering," he said. "Sometimes, I was convinced it was part of my 'curse'. An incomprehensible component of the Purple. The Red."

Sansa folded her hands over her lap, the scroll by her side as she listened.

"Other times I was sure it was something rotten deep within me. An all too natural vine growing from the compost pit that was my true self beyond all the experiences I've had over the long journey… and you know what, Sansa? I know which one it is now," he said with a wan smile.

"I'd call it more of a flower than a vine. Granted, a carnivorous flower, like the one who took your pinky in Sothoryos," she said, mirroring his smile.

Joffrey snorted, looking away. "I saw the Comet's Red first hand, and it had nothing to do with me. It was pure purpose, law given ultimate form… my red is nothing but a petty lust for violence."

"I thought you'd given your red purpose as well."

"I have. It's shackled and only plays on the battlefield these days… or the training yard," he muttered.

Sansa looked at her hands, fiddling with them. "I think you're looking at it the wrong way… what you call the Red… it's you Joff," she said. "I think that as long as you keep it buried and 'chained' you'll never be able to truly understand it. Understand you."

"Now you're sounding like Master Gaharz," he grumbled.

"As little as I may think about the merits of meditating over the stumps of long dead trees, the man did have his ways," she said, unable to keep a small smile from her lips.

"It's been ages since I started seeing it as something other than… How to say it… separate but inextricably linked to me…" he said, voice trailing off. "A curse… Do you think I've been deceiving myself all this time, Sansa?"

"Have you?"

Joffrey was quiet, his eyes on her but seeing far, far past her, the wall, and the Keep. They spent a while like that, Sansa lost in thought as well as she fiddled with her fingers again. Joffrey let out a long breath as he leaned forward, elbows over his knees as he held his head.

"Joffrey," he said after a long, long silence. "That's what Gaharz always wanted me to say. That's the name of it..."

He lifted his head to look at her, stone faced as he nodded slowly. "Its true name is Joffrey…" he whispered, pondering that thought.

"It's not a curse. It's part of what makes you. One of the parts that make the man I love," she said, the corner of her mouth tilting up as she leaned back on the crates.

"I'm sorry about Carcosa, Sansa."

"We've all made mistakes. It's hard not to with never ending lives," she said after a moment. "Promise you'll listen to me next time Joffrey… or there may as well be no next life."

"I swear it," he said, his eyes hard as he nodded slowly.

He took another gulp from the wineskin before quickly bringing it down.

"Sorry, I forgot. There's still a tiny bit left though…" he said, offering the wineskin to Sansa. He trailed off when she shook her head lightly, a polite smile on her lips.

"Shit, the courtier's smile? This must really be serious…" he said half-jokingly, though he frowning when Sansa started on a shrug and then froze like a startled deer, slowly bring her shoulder down.

"Sansa… what's the matter?"

It was almost funny in a way, watching her cycle through a whole repertoire of polite, nonchalant dismissals. They were like her version of his battle instinct… shrugs, dismissing smiles, dignified eye flutters… she started on some variation of all of them in a second, she really couldn't help it, only to abort them all as she knew he'd never be deflected by the likes of it.

"Sansa what's… it's just wine," he said, chewing on the last word as he frowned.

She seemed to give up with a mighty sigh, blinking repeatedly. "You're annoying sometimes," she said.

"I haven't done anything," he said, amused.

She stayed mum as he looked at her, "Really hit a nerve huh?" he said after a moment.

"It's just..." She shook her head, letting out another big breath before speaking quickly, "I don't like wine any more. Can't stand it," she said, voice clipped.

Joffrey kept looking at her.

"… it… reminds me of… the taste." She pressed her lips.

"The… taste?" he said. He frowned, looking at the wineskin in his hand. "Of blood… it reminds you of the taste of blood," he finished for her.

"Yes," she said, pursing her lips as she looked away. "Power to be had if I merely reach for it…"

"It taunts you, doesn't it?"

"I taunts me every time I see Ser Meryn Trant. A bloodless husk would make a better Kingsguard," she said with a wry smile.

Joffrey snorted, "It sure did make a better Master of Whispers though."

Sansa snorted explosively, coughing bits of saliva as she wheezed. She patted herself on the chest as she covered her mouth with the other, looking at Joffrey with an accusing expression as she tried to stop laughing. "Gods Joff… I suppose I rather agree with that assessment," she said in between coughs.

Joffrey chuckled lowly, "The heroes we make, eh?"

"The couple-that-was-promised indeed," she said, grabbing the scroll and waving it about like a proclamation. Joffrey kept chuckling, and delighted in the way a silly smile seemed to overtake Sansa's face.

They spent a little while savoring the levity, making time before they had to get back to finalizing the plan and then getting back into a broken world.

"Going to open that?" he asked as he gestured at the scroll. "I don't even know why you write it all down. We've got the plan all memorized anyway."

"It helps me think," she grumbled before she hid it behind her back.

Joffrey raised an eyebrow.

"Not yet, I want a kiss first," she said matter-of-factly.

"That's mighty forward of you," he said, smiling fully. Sansa said it was like night and day compared to his usual grimace; it felt different for him too, his whole face engaged and tingly. He hadn't known how much he'd needed it as of late…

"There's been too much negativity all around. I refuse to do anything until my demands are met," she said, leaning forward and letting her legs dangle petulantly from the crate.

"Your wish is my command, Your Grace," he said as he stood up and Sansa tilted her head away.

"Men," she scoffed as Joffrey gently grabbed the back of her head and as she turned to face him.

"Wife," he said, stressing the 'W'.

They kissed slowly, taking their time to taste each other's lips for a moment before joining again, their noses tickling each other's as they jostled for position ever so gently. They didn't make love then, but stayed in each other's embrace over Joffrey's discarded coat, kissing and caressing as the scroll lay by the side.

The plan could wait another day.

-: PD :-

"It's hard not to pay it any mind," Sansa said out loud. They were both lying on Joffrey's discarded coat, side by side. They should have been out and about around two hours ago, but Sansa just hadn't had it in her; to jump back into the fray of a broken world, a broken time. Joffrey hadn't said anything about it, and so they had lain in the storage room, uncaring of the outside.

"I know," whispered Joffrey. The Red Comet stared down at the earth with its gimlet eye, periodically pulsing in purpose at irregular intervals. He could feel it even from here; it lay far above, making for the north, its approach slowing down by the day. He shivered when he concentrated on that distant presence, a second sun dark on the horizon of his mind, an eerie absence of the Song. Its mute tendrils reached down, deep into the Lands of Always Winter…

Joffrey thought he'd always been able to see it, feel it. When he'd ridden Fallen Valyria's guardian far past the tallest mountain peak, far past the cloud line that sometimes messed with the Maester's far eyes; then he'd felt it, the pure purpose of the Red Comet and it's patient arms enveloping the world from north to south. Sansa had felt it too, when they approached Carcosa and the Matriarchs whispered about the strange dissonance high in the sky. For Sansa the experience had been far worse, for she'd felt it as keenly as him.

Now though, after so close a brush with their ancient enemy, it was impossible to ignore. Like a catchy limerick it stuck to their minds, a pattern seen that could not be forgotten for all that the link had been severed. It had not been a matter of infection or taint, but of simply knowing the face and presence of it. It was knowledge of the mind, impossible to forget.

"The key must be somewhere beyond the North, somewhere in the Land of Always Winter. It's where all the tendrils meet before spreading outwards…" Sansa whispered.

"Where the scouts were created in the first place. Where they retreated after the First War for Dawn… Gods, our plan is so insane…"

It was a topic they often talked about. They had been made to interact with the Red Comet somehow, getting in the way of the transfer of power between it and the Cycle's platforms, as the Deep Ones had put it. The problem was how to do so on their terms, and without getting swarmed by Walkers in the attempt.

"I know it is, but we need to get all those Walkers and wights away from the Far North Joff, get the Cycle's attention further south or else we'll never have a chance of actually reaching the place."

He breathed out. "It'll be a hell of a balancing act. Losing slowly enough that the Cycle won't escalate even as we thin their ranks, but not so quickly as to make Westeros collapse… and that's assuming Vajul can tie down a portion of the Walkers in the Grey Wastes."

Sansa turned to look at him, twisting within his arms. "It seems like such a long shot, doesn't it? So many things have to go right. The War of the Five Kings, Aegon, Daenerys, the Wildling Host, the East holding… and then the real war. Getting the lords behind us, managing the retreat south…"

"We need to be absolutely sure before we stake everything on it… all the more so given that we don't know how much more the Purple can hold," he said. It felt somewhat sturdier now, for the lack of a better word… though still a far cry from the cathedral of purple pillars it had once been. More a patched up Dragonpit than the Sept of Baelor.

Could it handle the strain of a new world a few more times? Could it two? One?

"We have to go at it with everything we've got Sansa. We have to get back to that late summer morning by all means possible. We have to do it at least one more time... And then we have to play every trick, every move, every magic at our disposal so we can get the Kingdoms ready…"

She stirred, "I've been practicing, following Vajul's advice. If I can follow the flow of power from the Comet to the ground, we'd know where to go. I still need a Glass Candle to get my bearings though; else it's like trying to find a needle in a continent…"

"We'll steal it from the Maesters, the green one. I know my way around the Citadel... and getting ahold of Archmaester Vaellyn's Key shouldn't be too difficult."

"Good." Sansa sighed, leaning on her back and staring at the ceiling. "I don't want to be here when Stannis arrives. The whole struggle will be pointless… all the more so if you get killed for the sake of a doomed world."

Joffrey nodded, "We could use somewhere quiet to study. You need to master far sight and I'm still searching around my soul for the module we learnt of in Carcosa. Giving the Purple more time would also be wise…"

"Somewhere quiet Joff. No intrigues, no Walkers, no battles…" Her smile turned wan as they felt the Red Comet blink in the distance like a gently flaring sun. "Somewhere peaceful," she whispered.

"Somewhere peaceful…" mused Joffrey.

-: PD :-

The morning was beautiful, the sun warming the onlookers as flocks of seagulls circled above, crying down for fish at the fishing boats moored around the docks and the sailors atop them.

"She's braver than she thinks," said Sansa.

"I know," said Joffrey, crossing his arms as he gazed at his crying sister, the barge taking her away from the harbor and towards the anchored cog past the breakwater. "I still have the urge to bellow at them to stop and come back."

"That would only give Doran more material to sway the Dornish lords… I may not agree with how Tyrion's been playing the Game, but he's already set the course."

"Doomed world or not, I hate seeing her go to that viper's nest," he whispered. He tried to shake off the guilt as he leaned on Sansa, "Our own ship should be ready the day after tomorrow."

She nodded grimly, "Oldtown… and then away. I'll be glad to leave this all behind," she said, looking down below where Tyrion and Cercei were quietly exchanging barbs, and the general state of the run downed harbor and the unemployed dockhands. Only the bravest or fastest merchant cogs still reached King's Landing, even though Stannis' fleet still had a ways to go before completely closing off the city by the sea.

By the time they'd realized about Tyrion's scheme to make Myrcella a ward of Prince Doran, it had been too late to stop it without serious repercussions. Still, Joffrey remembered she'd been okay at least up to his first death, and she'd be too valuable for someone as canny as Doran to simply dispose of…

He wondered why he cared so much about her fate, given that he'd all but condemned this world to die already. Was he a hypocrite? Was the specter of Myrcella freezing to death in less than ten years' time somehow better than letting her die to Melissandre's pyre? To Dornish poison?

He thought so, though he didn't know why. He'd been fighting against the inertia of fate for so long that to stop now, even in the privacy of his thoughts, seemed anathema. Even if their overall strategy spelled doom for everyone, he couldn't simply close himself off to the suffering in the here and now.

He snorted, adjusting one of the straps of his half plate. Wearing a little extra weight was a good way of rebuilding strength without devoting time specifically for it.

"What?" asked his wife.

"Brooding again," he told her with a wan smile, knowing she'd understand. He turned and walked up a few steps past the Great Septon still spouting off benedictions, and the gaggle of Redcloaks, Goldcloaks, and handmaidens waiting for the royals to get moving. "Let's round 'em up and get going Clegane," he said as he passed near the Hound.

He stopped when he reached his little brother though, and grabbed his shoulder. The sobbing boy started, looking at him in what could only be called fear.

"Goodbyes are always painful," he said, grabbing his chin and redirecting the boy's skittish eyes back to his. "It's like a raw wound somewhere you can't quite point to… do you feel it?"

He nodded jerkily.

"In time it'll feel lesser. It'll scab. Sometimes you'll pick at it and it'll bring forth pain and bitter tears…. But in time it'll heal and only a small scar will remain. Of that you can be certain, little brother."

Tommen stared at him, very still. "… Will I see her again?" he managed after a moment, swallowing snot and tears.

Joffrey grimaced, taking a handkerchief from the small pouch affixed to his half plate and using it to clean his cheeks. "You have to be strong during these next few days, whatever happens. Be strong for Myrcella," he said, shaking his shoulder lightly, "Can you do it?"

He nodded again, using the handkerchief to blow his nose. Joffrey smiled, "Good," he said before he walked up the long, open aired stairway, the Glodcloaks and Redcloaks quickly forming up around the group.

The procession walked through the streets of King's Landing, up through winding streets as they left the harbor and made for Baelor's Sept. The harbor district was an old acquaintance to Joffrey, and he knew its layout as well as he knew the Red Keep itself. He'd skulked in the shadows, shoving Littlefinger's patsies down rooftops. He'd bellowed and carried long pieces of timber, overseeing the reconstruction of the Royal Fleet after the War of the Three Stags. Here he'd often lost himself between the stalls so many years ago, just exploring the alleyways clogged with the scent of fresh fish and seasalt.

Most of all, he remembered how it burned. The Docks had been amongst the first parts of the city to feel the wrath of Daenerys Targeryen. He still remembered the image very vividly; the soaring grace of Drogon as it tilted its wings, the white-haired and carefree woman splaying her arms upwards as the dragon flew away. The pure orange-red emerging from the beast's mouth as it incinerated thatched roofs. The figures set ablaze as they fell to the ground, spinning.

"Joff, Joff," Sansa whispered urgently as she shook his arm. "Hm?" he grunted as he felt his hand reach for his pommel.

"Seven blessings upon ye Your Grace!" shouted someone from the roof of one of the houses.

"And to you, Goodman!" Joffrey shouted back, eyeing Sansa sideways. "Trouble?"

"Maybe. Look at their faces," she told him, and Joffrey realized the Goldcloaks leading the way had unwittingly led them through a crowded avenue, filled with the starving and the unemployed. He'd seen faces like that a thousand times. Hungry, angry, desperate. Some amongst the leering crowd were laughing, others just sat over low walls or abandoned merchant stalls, stone faced.

"Please Your Grace we're hungry!" shouted one.

Joffrey grimaced, "Let's pick up the pace," he said as he looked back, the Hound nodding as he relayed the order backwards. Tyrion was giving commands to Tommen's guards when the noise seemed to intensify, shouts of 'Stannis!' and 'Bastard!' coming to the fore.

"It'll blow before we reach the Sept. We should hole up in that townhouse up ahead," Sansa whispered quickly.

"Let's do it, and-" Joffrey was cut off when something brown and sticky impacted his cheek, dazing him for a second before he recovered his balance. The shouts and even a few screams increased in fervor as Redcloaks took out their swords in a chorus of singing steel.

"Sheath those swords!" Joffrey roared, turning back on the guards, "Sheath those swords!" he roared again, his voice cutting through the ambient noise and bringing down the overall racket.

"But Your Grace-" started one of the Redcloaks before Joffrey was upon him in an instant, his face a hair's breath away from his.

"Now soldier!" he said as he stared into his eyes and willed him to comply.

He did, and Joffrey nodded as he stood back, right wrist resting between the pommel of his hammer and his hip, the other ready to draw his arming sword. He surveyed the area as he scowled and forced his hands away from the weapons, looking at the crowd pressing against the Goldcloaks of the outer guard. If they made a run for it then today could end up a bloodbath.

"Stay with Tommen," he whispered to Sansa as he walked past her, his calm stride getting him past the Red Cloaks and up to the Goldlcoaks and the edges of the crowd. The smallfolk shuffled back as he kept walking, the Goldloaks too stunned to intervene as he entered the crowd.

Whatever the crowd had been expecting of their King, it wasn't this. His calm stride gave the people plenty of time to shuffle aside, though it was fast enough that he didn't become bogged down.

They looked gaunt, angry, even terrified. The foodstuffs from the Reach and the Riverlands had ground to a halt because of the war, and his past self's petty cruelty had deprived these men and woman of their only form of redress. Was it truly that surprising that the 'mob' of King's Landing was considered fickle and unreliable by the kings of the past?

The noise had died down considerably as Joffrey gazed at each of his subject's faces during his walk, the crowd parting from his path, unnerved by his steady walk. He committed their faces to memory; dirtied and sagging, sunken, holding that universal expression of pent up anguish. Joffrey reckoned that even half smeared with cow shit, his own face must have seemed like night and day compared to this sad gathering.

If he could remember even a single face of those present here and suffering, even if only for another life, then he'd count it time well spent. A few were slower to move aside than the rest, hard looking men with cudgels or rakes, bits of wood with a nail or two tacked on one end.

There must have been something in his stare, in the way he walked, for these men knew Joffrey felt no danger. One of them didn't budge, a big brute with a cobbler's hammer in his hands. He was leering when Joffrey came to a stop in front of him but a hand span away from his face, staring up at him.

Joffrey had waded through battlefields and wastelands, slaughtered his way past terrified levies and hardened armsmen, pummeled aside shrieking wights and chanting Brindled Men. He breathed deeply as he gazed at the man's eyes, not bottling the red whispers that begged him to smash the cobbler in two. He breathed them in, accepting them as he still did nothing.

Its name is Joffrey. I am Joffrey, he thought, breathing it out. Now was not the time.

The man stumbled away from him, white faced as he shoved people aside with trembling hands.

Joffrey sniffed slowly, cocking his head lightly before he kept walking at a different angle. The shit and grime smeared on the left side of his face was already crusting, but he didn't mind the feeling, nor the familiar smell… it seemed a rather small price to pay. These people were the first to die whenever ambitions clashed. Starved to death when the lords battened down the hatches and stopped the grain shipments; slain in battle when pressed into the Goldcloaks to defend the city; taxed to poverty to fuel the latest vision of the latest king.

The crowd kept parting as he reached a small half broken stall. Behind it hid a young man no older than perhaps fourteen namedays, pale faced and sweating like a pig as he frantically tried to clean his hands. He seemed petrified as Joffrey came to a stop in front of him, gazing at the dung by the ground before his eyes settled on him.

"Why did you do it?" he asked him, and the question seemed extremely loud to his ears. The crowd seemed all but silent, barely a hushed whisper floating atop the eerie silence.

"I-I- I'm sorry M'Gr-"

"I didn't ask you for an apology. I asked you why you did it."

"…. I… I was angry M'Grace," he finally stuttered, cringing.

"Why were you angry?" Joffrey asked him.

"I… my belly, M'Grace. It aches somethin' bad…" As Joffrey kept looking at him, he kept talking, "Lord expelled all the extra mouths from the keep, no work to be had in the country side with the war and all…"

"And so you came here…" Joffrey muttered. With their focus on the Red Keep and their lack of a spy network within the city itself, getting information from the capital had been hard… The situation seemed worse than they'd thought.

Joffrey leaned into the cringing man, pressing a copper star into his palm as he whispered, "It's not much given the soaring prices, but it'll get you through the week."

He seemed disbelieving as he stared at him, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. "Thank you M'Grace, thank you!" he cried, standing up and all but running away. The bewildered onlookers stood aside as he ran by, then looked back at Joffrey.

He turned around as he gazed at the crowd, looking up at the people perched on the rooftops. "I know you're all hungry, and I know how you all feel," he said.

Disbelieving cries immediately flew over the gathering, but Joffrey's voice cut through it like a blade. "I know of the painful, empty aches. The way you drink water so you can feel something inside your belly. The way your skin burns when it peels off. The way your flesh shrinks and your bones stick up like torn tent-poles."

There was deathly silence as Joffrey turned again, his armor jingling as his eyes swept up the people looking at him from low walls or alleyways, side ramps and market streets.

"I know of your suffering, and every time I see your faces it fills me with grief. You didn't start this war, but you bear the price of its creation…" The crowd rumbled agreement, still somewhat confused as they talked amongst themselves. Joffrey pitched his voice to carry further, cutting off the buildup yet again. "And yet, even the smallest child knows the old adage, 'words are wind'. Let it be known that redoubled effort shall be placed on the building of fishing ships, and that new work camps shall be created along the Kingswood to acquire the required timber. Good coin shall be given for honest work and such work will soon turn into sources of food. The Kingswood itself shall be temporarily opened to royal hunters that will spread their bounty every week from the Dragonpit for free, and…" He trailed off as he saw a skeletal-looking urchin picking through discarded, rotten fruit on the ground, not caring or perhaps not even aware of Joffrey's presence.

He shook his head, "Let it be known the Red Keep shall share part of its food stores tomorrow morning with those who need it the most. We highborn got you into this war, we should share its burden as well," he said.

The noise picked back up with a will; the previous vicious edge to it fading into the background. The mob seemed abuzz with budding excitement and disbelief, people arguing with themselves as those closest to Joffrey kept staring at him. He walked back to the group, the crowd making way for him until he reached the procession.

Sansa nodded at him from the middle of the group. She'd been distracting Tommen, but he didn't miss the way her back was braced against a nearby wall, a score or so seagulls eerily silent as they lay perched atop windowsills and roof beams around her, awaiting but the silent command of their new mistress to strike and confuse the crowd should it all had taken a turn for the worse…

"The Father's own light shines within you, Your Grace," said the High Septon, wide eyed.

Joffrey stopped and scanned from head to toes the man popularly known as 'the Fat One', opulently dressed and living every letter of that name. "Perhaps Baelor's Sept could also join in the Mother's charity then, Your Holyness," he said.

"I- ah-"

"For truly are the Seven compassion itself, and so are their earthly voices. Are they not, Your Holyness?" he said as he tilted his head lightly.

"Yes! O-of course!" he blabbered.

Joffrey nodded, but before he called out for Sandor to make them all move again, his uncle grabbed his hand.

Tyrion was looking strangely at him, ignoring the both the crowd and the dignified shrieks of Cercei as she dashed towards him. He passed Joffrey a handkerchief, staring as he cleaned his face.

"Who are you?" he asked.

He smiled wanly. "Joffrey. Just Joffrey," he said.