Everything changed in an instant.
Jaime knew it would be so. Geralt had all but bludgeoned the details into their heads across the countless hours spent planning, foreseeing what stirring the curse would do. The sudden gusts of the storm spun about the hall in unnatural ways, cracks of thunder with nary a cloud in the sky, the castle itself quivering beneath their feet like a freezing child. He did not allow himself to falter amidst such things: his feet remained sure, his will resolute and heart steadfast, even whilst things grew even more bizarre.
The torchlights burned with a peculiar and uncomfortable intensity, casting shapes along the floor, pillars, and walls. These changed from moment to moment, sometimes resembling normal humans only to change into figures fit for one's nightmares within the next breath. Strange lights bloomed and died amidst the darkness like stars in the night sky, or perhaps more accurately, as if the winds had been given shape and color.
Pay no heed to what may happen tonight, tomorrow.
Jaime recalled Ser Arthur's words, trying to quiet the quickening thumping of his own heart. Another piece of wisdom from Geralt. If one could not shut themselves off from the strangeness, they should find comfort or strength to bear the trails of the hour. Whether words, prayers, or even doggerel, it mattered not so long as it kept them focused.
We are the company of Harrenhal, and victory will be ours. It will be ours.
The words ran through his head a thousand times, drowning out the cracks of thunder traveling through the hall and the chilling Elder Speech behind him. It eased the tightness in his chest, making the strange sights around them less frightening. The sound of footfalls signified Geralt was on the move, the dragon skull finally exposed. Jaime tightened his grip on his sword, body tense and ready to fight. The hall itself seemed to do the same, the strange sights quickening and strengthening.
Come, then. The pride of House Lannister is ready.
"Cáemm... dhu bhrenin... Harren!"
The flash came so swiftly, with such overwhelming, searing brightness, Jaime could not help but flinch. He tried in vain to shield his already burning eyes but blackness littered with white spots consumed his sight, and for an uncomfortable time, refused to abate. It took no small measure of restraint for Jaime to hold back the panicked, childish fright building in his throat.
It mattered not, for when his sight returned, the cry died at once.
No matter where he looked, a raging inferno unlike any he had ever seen before roared through the vast hall of Harrenhal. Some flames were fit only for candles while others grew to such towering heights the hall's pillars seemed insignificant. With the light from the flames, he could even see the ceiling for the first time. Only the circles, the no man's land around them, and from the weirwood beam and rafters and the godswood trail, were spared.
Like waves, they shifted and weaved in, out, and around one another. Orange, red, blue, and even purple were but a few of their ever-changing colors. Pitch black plumes of smoke rose from them, dwarfing the pillars and seeping through the countless cracks running along the ceiling.
We should be choking to death, Jaime thought with no small measure of growing fear and bewilderment. We should be cooking in our armors. There's not even any bloody heat in the air-
"Gods, it burns!"
"Kill me!"
"Make it stop!"
Voices.
Strange, broken, and frightened but voices, all the same, shouted from the fires. Nay, they were the fires. Grimly horrified, Jaime stared as their deathly choir of misery grew louder, transforming mere flames into the shapes of agonized men, women, and children. The ghosts of the Conqueror's wrath. No matter where he turned, they were there, calling out to him, to anyone there for help, to save them from something centuries past.
I can't help you. None of us can! He wanted to scream at them, fear and indignation almost but not quite bursting forth. Why are we even here? Madness, all of this is madness-
"Jaime."
An unmistakable voice cut through the haze clouding his mind, easing the suffocating tightness in his chest at once.
Allowing himself to breathe, Jaime looked away from the fire, northward toward where Geralt stood. The witcher did not turn to look at him but kept his gaze ahead, right hand gripping the silver elf blade and the other hooking the dragon's skull onto the side of his belt.
Otherwise, he stood still, as if he were lazy or overconfident. It could not be further from the truth. Jaime had witnessed this before, a stance relaxed in appearance only, masking the intent and capacity to spring in for a killing blow. Like the biting strike of a viper given human form.
It was a terrifying skill to behold once the deadliness of its simplicity became clear. Most times, Jaime found it unnerving, but not then. Seeing Geralt stand amidst this chaos as if it were nothing at all was baffling...and reassuring.
"The rest of you, you're right to be frightened by this. Any normal person would be."
Turning to gaze at the others, Jaime was astounded to see even the knights of the Kingsguard staring at Geralt as well. It floundered the momentary comfort he'd just found. "But if you want this madness to stop, then you must focus. Remember what Arthur said before we began."
"We are the company of Harrenhal, and victory will be ours. It will be ours."
Jaime blinked, wondering whose voice it was until he realized it was his own.
"Yes," Geralt replied. "And if you can't find strength from one another, then find it from them."
He pointed his sword to the flames, where the moaning dead continued their pained cries.
"These people, trapped and miserable, have spent centuries here, never able to find even a shred of peace. They endlessly relive the last moments of their lives with no end in sight."
A cold fury entered Geralt's voice unlike any Jaime had heard before.
"All because one man couldn't yield, couldn't let go of his power. And he'll never stop, not unless we do something about it, here and now."
Jaime looked back to the shapes, their fiery forms moving to and between one another. Figures of women ran to children only to never reach them. Men raced in circles, vainly trying to escape the Black Dread's fires coming after them. Some even reached out towards their defensive position. Fiery arms shaking, waiting, begging for someone to pull them out.
"Help us!"
"Addam, where are you?! Son!"
"Get the women and children out! Quickly!"
The countless cries of the ghosts persisted through the hall for a while longer. Jaime watched and listened, his sword lowered. He did not know how long he stood this way, willingly subjecting himself to witnessing the torment of those who should've left this world behind, a familiar feeling of pity swelling in his chest. The kind Jaime most strongly felt whenever he lamented Tyrion's state and his own inability to fix his brother's ailment.
But I can help fix this...
Geralt had just said so and made it known thousands of times before. If they could be of no aid to him, the witcher wouldn't have minced words in making that clear. He wouldn't have trusted them to remain here, with him, amidst this storm of madness.
"Good," Geralt spoke again. "You've all calmed down, so now hold on to that focus. The guests of the hour are just arriving."
Geralt saw their approach on the circle's position long before the others did and hoped their renewed focus would withstand the sight of the wraiths. Some materialized inside the raging inferno, taking their time to arrive, their black and solid shapes unmistakable amongst the shifting waves of fire.
The others came closer to the no-man's-land separating the flames and outermost circles, appearing first as puddles of dense and pitch-black, oozing water through the cracks along the ground. From there, they clawed their way out like men climbing onto a boat, revealing the full grotesquery of their appearance for all to see. Charred and sickly green skin, dangling wet hair, sunken holes where their eyes should be, their weapons and armor so melted it seemed to fuse into their very flesh. Hilts and hands were indiscernible while chest cavities and chainmail were inexorably linked. Like the wraiths of his world, the seven gathered around them had no feet, just upper bodies hovering off the ground.
"Seven fucking hells..." Geralt heard Oswell mutter, the clanking of his and the other armors as they readied themselves. Pycelle, still in the very center, whispered a prayer to the Seven.
The witcher looked ahead, sensing his medallion shaking with even greater intensity. Suddenly, deep within the flames burning ahead of him, the largest of the solid shapes came to life from the spectral ooze, the crown atop his head unmistakable. A smaller followed just behind it. At once, the moans and cries of the dead fell suddenly and deafeningly silent. The shades parted as the wraiths drew near, what passed as their faces locked in expressions of barely contained horror. And for good reason.
Harren the Black stood a head taller than Geralt, his black armor, broad shoulders, and malevolent visage sparking memories of the Smiling Knight. Unlike his sons, the only steel conjoined to his flesh was the crown embedded around his skull. His mace was four feet long and his shield was akin to a black, metal door ripped off its hinges. Neither his arms nor his armament suffered the poor quality of his sons'.
His visage was no improvement of theirs, however. Harren's lipless face revealed rows of blackened or burst teeth. He had no nose or ears, with only faint shreds of melted flesh remaining around his cheeks and brow. The black gaze came from two milky white eyeballs impossibly floating in otherwise empty sockets. Their sight was transfixed on Geralt.
The witcher stared back without so much as a blink. It might have been intimidating if he wasn't giving their circle the widest berth out of all of them.
"A foreigner with cat eyes," Harren's voice rang from the ruined remains of his throat. Old, gravelly, and unpleasant enough to make Geralt's sound worthy of a bard's. It reverberated through the hall, sounding distant all the same, as though coming from the bottom of a well.
"A little lion cub, so far from his Rock," cackled one of the wraiths, still with Harren's voice, near Jaime. Geralt saw the momentary quiver of the Lannister's arm before the lad steeled himself.
"A Sword of the Morning," another of Harren's sons hissed, respect present in the wraith's voice nonetheless as it beheld the Dornish knight and his milk-pale greatsword.
"A winged rat!" the next laughed with scorn, its unearthly gaze fixed on Oswell.
"And a maester." The last of their group was mentioned with disinterest.
The undead speaking about the hall fell silent, neither daring nor caring enough to make a sound.
I doubt they'd be able to speak even if they wanted to, Geralt noted with a pang of pity for their plight, remembering Lady Whent's words of how they perished enthralled. Their very ability to desire anything beyond release from their suffering likely doesn't exist anymore.
"Truly," Harren spoke from his wraith form, the barest hint of mirth to his voice, "I cannot recall ever having the honor of entertaining such a group of... honored guests within my halls."
"Nor have we ever had the... the privilege of enjoying such a host's welcome," Geralt countered.
"Indeed?" Harren said with an approximation of laughter. "Oh, I do not believe that to be true. At least not for you, cat-eyes."
"I am Geralt, a witcher from Rivia."
"Oh, I know."
Harren inclined his head in greeting. "It is a pleasure to speak with you, at last, witcher from faraway lands. After so many weeks of listening to hushed whispers and faint dreams and nightmares. It is not often I find myself so... in the dark about one who prowls about my castle and lands."
Geralt heard the faintest of growls from Oswell about that last part.
"Yes," the wraith drawled on. "It is rarer still to encounter one who so obviously shares my fondness for the practices of magic. In mere hours, you realized the true nature of Harrenhal in ways none have dared or suspected to try."
"...hmm, guess there's no point in denying it. You were right before, Your Grace," Geralt admitted with a bow of his head. "This isn't the first time I've encountered a curse."
"Curse? A curse?!" Instead of indignation, Harren and the other wraiths all burst into bellowing fits of laughter, the voice reverberating through each of them in some macabre chorus. "This is no curse, master witcher, merely a king holding to what is rightfully his. That the fruits of his toils remain ever within the grasp of the one who planted the seeds."
"Your toils?" Arthur replied with shock and disgust, addressing the wraith facing him. "You sacrificed thousands of men, women, and children. Mercilessly ground the very life from them, tossing their remains into whatever pit was nearby. Even your own kin were naught but more bloody sacrifices."
"Such righteous indignation, O Sword of the Morning," the wraith answered back with another howl of merriment. "Yet, whom do you serve? What is the newest fancy of the Targaryens? Fathering children under my roof only to fuck them once they flowered? No, that was the fat one. Drinking wildfire? No, that one wasn't even a king, if I recall correctly. My apologies, after so many centuries of witnessing and listening to their stupidity, it all begins to blur."
"Their failings and atrocities do not absolve you of yours," Arthur answered, steel in his voice.
"Why then am I the only king threatened by you? Or, do you merely mean to make me the first of horrible rulers to face justice?"
The wraith would've smiled had it a jaw or muscles left. "From Kingsguard to Kingslayer, quite a tale for the great Ser Arthur Dayne. Would you still be worthy of bearing that famed sword of your family?"
"Is prattling on all you can do?" Oswell spoke with the force of a bear's shout. "Mayhaps it is when you're too afeared of mere dirt to approach us."
"A wonderful jest from the vermin cowering behind it. Not that I expected much from the little Whent who pissed himself at night-"
"If you're trying to provoke us into a fight, you'll have to do better than that," Geralt said, forestalling any more interruptions from the others. There was no point to this, for Harren's love for the sound of his own voice would give them all the openings they needed. "I, however, get the sense there's more to this conversation than that. Am I right, Your Grace?"
"Very true, master witcher," Harren replied with such admiration that it made bile rise in Geralt's throat.
He smiled politely instead. "If we're going to discuss business, Your Grace, I'm not doing it with a dry throat."
"By all means, Rivian. I would do the same if I had any use for such things anymore."
Putting his sword down mere inches from his right foot, Geralt reached into a pouch at the center of his bandolier, taking out the Blizzard bottle.
"Geralt!" Oswell shouted with apparent indignation. It was worthy of the best mummers' performance. "You cannot mean to listen to anything he... It has to-"
"As I told you all before," the witcher said, uncorking the bottle and deciding to play along with the Kingsguard's improvisation, "if we can sort this out without a single sword swing, I'll consider it."
"I'm most glad to hear this, witcher. You cannot imagine how refreshing it is to converse with a sensible man."
Geralt smirked, bottle mere inches from his lips. "You'd be surprised."
The potion, expectedly, overwhelmed him with a few moments of dizziness he didn't allow to show. It would only take a short time for it to begin working, and they'd just made sure Harren gave them more than enough of it.
"Now then, what is this offer you mentioned?"
"It is quite simple, Geralt of Rivia. I desire your knowledge of magic, all of it." Harren's son floated closer to the circle, staying to his father's left, the side he favored his mace. "In all the centuries I have ruled over this place, never has my will achieved such manifestation..."
The wraith took a moment to inspect its form while his nearest thrall watched for an attack.
"You will tell me what else you can do and the means to accomplish it. With such knowledge and this new form?" He looked back to Geralt, fingers curling about the mace. "All those unwanted will stay away, and those who wish to take from me what is mine will perish. No one will so much as set foot in this place and return alive after you.."
"Gods be good..." Pycelle whispered, his teeth chattering.
"After us?" Geralt said, feeling the beating of his heart slow down more with each passing moment. Just a minute or two longer.
"You will be the last to leave this place, witcher, you and all of your company. You've already done me many services by removing most of the unwanted scum from the castle and bringing all of this forth."
The last Hoare gestured across the fiery hall, his momentary fury replaced by elation. "I will even spare you all from the influence of my will, a honor I've not bestowed upon anyone else in all these centuries."
"With negotiation skills like that, it's no wonder Aegon Targaryen burned you to ashes," Geralt said, his voice thick with contempt.
Harren fell silent at once and, in turn, so did the rest of the hall. The flames dancing about them slowed down in Geralt's eyes, the tiniest flickers of them almost hanging frozen in the air.
Just a bit longer.
"... You dare, witcher?" Harren broke the silence, his featureless white gaze reflecting the fires. "You dare stand in my hall and speak such-"
"I just did, and I'm not finished, not even close. As I told you before, this isn't the first time I've dealt with a curse, and while you are a formidable one, you aren't even close to the most dangerous being I've had the pleasure of banishing," Geralt put as much derision into his voice as possible, even as the company knew he was lying through his teeth. "
I've seen the bounds of reason and beyond, Harren. I've witnessed the limits of what's possible pushed time and again." Geralt's voice grew colder than his companions had ever heard it. "My very presence here is proof of that. If you think empty threats from a dead reaver of a line long bereft of name, lordship, and kingship will cow me, you're far more stupid and arrogant than I ever dared to imagine."
There was no hush that time. A hearty laugh from Oswell saw to that. The wraith king merely stood in place, silent like all the other spirits until their Kingsguard companion could laugh no more. It lasted a long while.
"...I am arrogant...?" Harren eventually said, his voice disquieting in how low and icy it was. "A stupid reaver...?!"
The shades moaned again in full agonized force, their fiery forms recoiling further still from Harren whilst his wraith kin hovered closer to the circle. Right where the companions wanted them to go.
"You think my threats empty, merely hollow? When you feel preyed upon, stalked and watched in every waking and sleeping moment, it is my gaze set eternally upon you."
He next spoke from all wraiths. "When every joy you should feel rings hollow and all your fears and worries more insurmountable, it is my voice breaking down the walls of your very sanity!"
His mace struck the ground, cracking the stone with the sound of a battering ram, daring to hover closer. "When your children are born stunted and dead, it is my fist that breaks their bones and chokes the very life from them-"
Geralt had heard enough, and the Blizzard was at its full strength. The time was right. With a swiftness further bolstered by the potion, the witcher removed the crossbow dangling from his belt and loosed bolts on both of the wraiths closest to him in a single, seamless motion.
Harren, already moving to strike the floor again, snarled and positioned the shield just in time for it to absorb the bolt with an ear-piercing shriek of silver meeting steel. For a moment, the spirit seemed frozen in place, no doubt surprised by the fact something managed to touch him. In the next moment, the wraiths snarled and halted when Geralt's second bolt lodged itself into one of their throats. The wraith shook from the silver and oil cutting into its suddenly corporeal form, its visage vibrating, flickering in and out of existence itself.
The witcher kicked his seemingly discarded sword into the air, snatching it, and bent his body into a pirouette mid-leap. By the time the wraith recovered from the shock to even begun to counter-attack, he'd already closed the distance. The grating noise of blade carving through failing armor echoed through the hall like a woman's shriek, Geralt's silver blade slicing down from the wraith's skull and through its shoulder, shield arm, and lower body.
By the time Harren moved to strike, his thrall already began to disintegrate into a crumbling mess of bone, metal, and black ooze, a dying howl the last noise it ever made in this world. The wail of the remaining Hoares overcame the shade's moans and cries, their pain apparent from the simple recoil visible on Harren himself. The king wraith halted at once, convulsing and struggling to move.
"Now!" the witcher shouted, moving in for the kill. "Attack now!"
The others were all too eager to oblige.
"Our Hour Will Come!" Oswell Whent roared the words of his house from the circle's west end, descending upon the nearest convulsing wraiths like the bats on his family's banners. His sword cut into the shoulder of one monster while his shield bashed the other away with the force of a war hammer.
Though he did not voice it, only the faintest bit of worry had plagued Oswell, that Geralt and his oils would fail them somehow and that their swords would be of no avail He was not so great a man that he denied himself the satisfaction of knowing it was not so. The fate that had befallen the other families that had held Harrenhall since the Conquest would not happen to his, he had sworn, and so he took great pleasure in rending those that threatened House Whent.
To the south, Arthur Dayne shouted no cries of war, no boasts of strength and valor. He fought as if he were his own sword, silent, deadly, and inevitable.
The Sword of the Morning struck out at his enemies with a swiftness matched by only one another far away and surpassed by the witcher himself. Dawn had begun to emit a faint glow since the wraiths had appeared, a light no less strange than all the others around them but a thousandfold less frightening. Well...to him, at least.
When the greatsword cut across them, the wraiths shrieked and recoiled, their stupor ended by overwhelming pain. Their shields were marred with a burning scar that never cooled and their unliving flesh bubbled with scalding heat from where Dawn had cut through.
Jaime stepped forward from his place in the circle and thrust with a swiftness nearly unrivaled, seemingly fearless. The wraith merely howled as the blade cut into the black void of its eye socket and began swinging its ax at him even with the sword still embedded. Another rushed at him with a spear.
They never touched him. Jaime's countless hours of practice with Geralt and the others saw to that when his body leaped with a dancer's grace out of harm's way, leaving the wraiths to strike at nothing. Jaime even dared to smile ere returning to the fray.
Pycelle witnessed all of this and more from the central circle, clutching his bottles of godswood soil tightly, the words of the Elder Tongue now scattered and mumbled in his shaking mouth. No matter where he looked, the living fought the undead. No matter how he tried to block out the sounds, the whistling of blades and shouts of men plagued him. Neither Ser Oswell's loud shouts proclaiming strength and valor nor Geralt's righteous indignation lifted his spirits. All the maester could do was bear witness in fear and hope that they could succeed.
"You've made a grave mistake, witcher!" Harren sneered, the swing of his mace another blur of motion against the backdrop of fire surrounding the circle and no-man's-land. "You should have given me what I wanted!"
Not even if you could get me back home.
Geralt leaped to the left, feeling the ground quiver upon the mace crashing into it, forming cracks in all directions. The witcher's body bent and snapped forward, intending to stab the wraith through the upper arm only for Harren's shield to once again intercept the blow. For every opportunity he saw to deliver more than a glancing strike, the last Hoare quickly shifted to being on the defense, forestalling any such attempts. The fact he had no legs to hinder his repositioning abilities made it only more troublesome.
"I will enjoy breaking you, tearing away every secret you hold until you beg me for death's embrace!" Harren snarled. "No one denies me and lives."
"No? Then I suppose Aegon Targaryen's overgrown pet lizard was only a figment of imagination and you burned to death by your own hand."
Just as expected, Harren's remorseless assault paused for the briefest of moments, shock, wonder, and pure rage clouding his good sense. Geralt wasn't about to let it go to waste. The witcher's free hand took hold of two godswood bottles secured within the bandolier while he charged forward, feigning another sword blow. By the time the Hoare realized returned to his senses and swing again, Geralt already bent his body for a pirouette, tossing the bottles at the shield mid-spin. The glass shattered, their contents spilling across its length.
The barely dented monstrosity warped and melted away, like acid eating through metal. Some stray clods even managed to hit Harren himself, and his roar was an assault on the senses. Even Geralt's balance couldn't withstand the sudden and overwhelming ground quake shaking through the entire hall, likely the whole castle. He fell, feeling pebbles and rocks fall from the ceiling onto and around him. He could hear cracks appearing along the length of nearby pillars and the floor.
It might have saved him, however. The wraith king didn't so much discard the melting shield as throwing it at Geralt like a spear. The massive hunk of metal whirled past mere inches from his ear, crashing and dissolving into nothing somewhere amongst the shades. He sprang back to his feet quickly, knowing their kind was capable of restoring their weaponry if lost or destroyed.
I have to cut him down now, anything less, and he could end up bringing the whole damn castle down on top of us-
"Thrice-damned whoreson!" Harren roared, and the castle shook again. Geralt was ready this time, not losing balance or much momentum. The wraith king swung his mace with even greater force, striking the ground and sending dozens of rocks the size of Geralt's head at him.
The witcher rolled out of the way and responded by throwing a pair of silver daggers of his own. Harren, overtaken by fury, made no effort to stop or evade them. One grazed the Hoare's cheek and another embedded itself into his right shoulder pad. Geralt leaped away from the next mace strike and focused on evasion. The Hoare swung with the ferocity afforded by only those who could not tire, each attack meant to brutalize and break.
Feigning fright, the witcher avoided each blow with side-steps, short leaps, and pirouettes, letting Harren's battle frenzy reach its zenith. The plan carried risks beyond simple bludgeoning to death, taking him dangerously close from the circles to the northern edge of the no man's land. On more than one occasion, he felt the whip of the wind from each swing that came, the brushing of spikes on the very edges of his armor.
It was all worth it, however, when Harren struck the weirwood support beams.
An overhead swing of his mace capable of decapitating a horse broke instantaneously on contact with the weirwood, splintering into dozens of tiny pieces. Barely over half of the weapon remained, and its dumbfounded owner was ripe for a killing blow. Switching to the Temerian Devil, Geralt leaped, letting the momentum carry the force of his one-handed strike. With a satisfying screech, his sword carved a thick cut running from the back of Harren's neck to the base of his spine.
The wraith shrieked and turned, swinging the remnants of its mace in a futile counterblow. Before he even threw it, Geralt had already moved back, taken his sword in both hands, and unleashing a roar of his own, jumped high into the air and put the full force of his entire body and the momentum of the fall once again into the cut. Just as with the Smiling Knight, the blade rent Harren almost in half, his left arm and torso dangling as ethereal lights and pure power seeped out of him.
Too much power.
Before Geralt could destroy him utterly, the build-up of raw magical energy forced his hand. Crossing his arms, the witcher cast the Heliotrop Sign in the last possible moment before the discharge sent him hurtling through the air to the eastern side of the no man's land. The whole hall spun wildly, a numbness left his limbs feeling useless, and the stone pillar his back suddenly met knocked the air out of him.
"Geralt!" he dimly heard Oswell call out and then even the Whent's voice faltered next to the moans and shrieks of the undead, and both falling to insignificance once the companions noticed the whole bloody castle was shaking once more.
Five feet away, a chunk of the roof fell, large enough to crush a man whole. The ground rent open to the south of the outermost circles, but none of this worried him more than what Harren did next.
Instead of vanishing from his already crumbling form or retreating, the Hoare unleashed a shout worthy of a dragon. It wasn't a death cry or one of mere fury, but a call to return.
"Geralt!" Ere he could leave the circles to strike out against his foes again, Ser Oswell's shout halted Jaime. Knowing they could not attack him, the Lannister dared to look for Geralt northward only to find the glowing form of Harren the Black shrieking, his weapons gone and arm dangling at a strange angle. The cry was deafening, the ground quake so powerful Jaime's full attention was spent for a moment on simply keeping his balance.
Ahead, he saw a stone pillar crack and burst like glass. A wall half his size fell frighteningly close, and Grand Maester Pycelle cursed the whole bloody thing to the seven fucking hells. What happened to the wraiths, however, was what caught the brunt of his attention next.
The spear wielder suddenly and quickly retreated, running back into the fires, and the one carrying the ax... changed. A blinding glow came from it as its shape changed from a hovering corpse into pure light. The unnatural shape shrieked in a voice not entirely Harren's before it flew across the no man's land, joining three others into Harren himself. At once, his mace and shield returned as if they had never been destroyed and his body, such as it was, had been restored.
"You've failed, witcher!" Harren taunted for all to hear. "Now, this hall will be your tomb!"
"Jaime! Pycelle!" At once, he snapped to where Ser Arthur called and watched the great knight rush to the cowering maester just as the ground behind him began to split open like the maw of a great monster. Jaime ran to the heart of the circles as well and watched with no shortage of awe and wonder as Ser Arthur grabbed Pycelle with one arm and all but threw him into Jaime's arms.
"Go! Get out of here-!"
"Ser Arthur!"
The Sword of the Morning reacted in the last possible moment, bending his knees and leaping away just as the floor crumbled beneath his feet. Ser Oswell, left his post as well, using his shield to protect him from falling stones and grab Ser Arthur by the arm to safety. Jaime pushed Pycelle back as the widening gap encroached on them, revealing a chasm of pure darkness right underneath, sending large portions of their protective circle plummeting into it.
"Damn it all to seven hells! I told you to go, Jaime!" Arthur shouted from the other side. "Get to the godswood before it's too late!"
"Arthur! Oswell!" Geralt's pained shout came from afar, his shape but a vague shadow amidst fiery shades and debris. "Move, now, before the trail gets cut off!"
Whatever protest Jaime wished to voice died on his lips when a pillar suddenly snapped and threatened to fall and crush him and the maester both
"Move!" he shouted at the old man and pushed them both out of harm's way. The pillar sunk more of the ground, forcing Jaime to run faster, one arm around Pycelle's shoulder whilst the other kept his sword ready to swing. Following the intact godswood trail, they neared the west exit from the hall, avoiding falling stones and keeping watch on the shades about them as they ran.
Jaime dared to look back only once, seeing a white shape run in the opposite direction and growing smaller with every breath. To Kingspyre tower, where the danger was a hundredfold worse, where that undead bastard would try to kill some of the men he respected most in this world.
Not bloody likely, you will. The Lannister promised, pushing on to the godswood where he and his sole remaining companion would find some respite and a way to help end this madness. And he already had someone, or rather, something at their destination in mind.