KING'S LANDINGWESTEROS

Varys could not tear his eyes from the sky. He had ascended to the top of the Red Keep early in the morning and remained on the open courtyard inside the turret, facing North-West. As the sun rose, the black began to divide itself with what could only be described as malice.

To the South – where the shimmer of distant Dornish dunes capped their ranges – and East – where the steel tides of the Narrow Sea thrashed in chaos – lay open sky. Stars were busy fading into an orange hue, muddied by a now permanent trail of smoke drifting off the Dragonmont. Its stink was in the air, rotting the day before it had begun. Any minute now the sun was set to rise out of the waves and burn off the low-lying mist that hugged the Westerosi foreshore leaving its famous sprawl of buildings and cliffs, pink and blushing like a maid before her master.

Varys was struck by the filthy beauty. Westeros was spoilt goods, right on the turn of decay.

In the North, a terrible disk of thick cloud embraced the horizon. It was blue underneath and white on top with dark grey veins forking out through its curved front. Light pulsed through it. Thunder occasionally roared loud enough for Varys to feel it in the air. There was no doubt that it was moving towards King's Landing at great speed. Varys could see winds tearing the storm's leading edge, which churned against the forces that were propelling it forwards, stirring up violence. He had seen smaller versions in his time. Northern storms were not uncommon when blown out of their normal hunting grounds to terrorise the South with unseasonable snow.

...but this, this was Winter – just as Ned Stark had promised. His head was smiling on a pike somewhere in the city and his bones rattling in their box in the Winterfell crypts.

Varys had heard enough drunken Northern tales in his time to sober him to the threat. For all their nagging, Northerners were not liars. Winter was always coming and within the week, it would hit King's Landing with deadly force. Gales. Snow. Ice. Death. All of which the city was ill equipped to handle.

The Queen and her armies were already lost in the thick of it. Their attempts to stop the Night King and his army had obviously failed. The South would have to find a way to defend itself. Varys paused, shifting his attention to the ocean. Or leave. Mankind wasn't ready to fight an existential fight. The wars of men had left them weak and what did they have to show for all the blood? A queen that had never been crowned and a pretender warming a crumbling throne – soft as the flowers in his shield.

It was there, from the highest vantage point in King's Landing, that Varys spotted a dot on the water – a ship – about to make its way around the headland but was currently unsighted by the fleet. He watched it for a while before the rumble of thunder shook him back to sense.


"A week is not enough time, Varys." Loras presented in full battle dress, despite the early hour. "The city walls are mostly intact. We have restored two thirds of the defence systems and recruited enough men to cover them. There's food for a five month siege and another few months on the way from Tyrell farm lands. What more what you have me do? This city is bleeding my family fortune dry."

"An admirable effort, your grace," Varys followed Loras around as servants tied ribbons and weapons to him, in equal measure. "But Winters do not last months. They endure for years. And while you have the men to man the weapons on your city walls, they are green men – your Grace – boys with no experience of war. You are asking them to hold back an enemy that would have Bolton shit his breeches. I doubt seasoned commanders, the few that are left in the realm, could manage it. Our armies are not what they used to be. If the dead take the Capital, what then? You will have added a million corpses to their ranks and doomed the whole realm, in perpetuity. I have seen the supernatural horrors of the East… It never ends."

"I hear you, Varys – but what can I do? If the dead are as persistent and real as you claim then they will hunt us down no matter where we go. We could be in Dorne and it would make no difference. Death strides sand as easily as snow."

"They cannot swim, your Grace. The dead cannot pass over bodies of water without air in their lungs. Their corpses sink."

Loras scoffed. "We're hardly going to survive on the Stepstones. Those rocks are death traps. Not even the ravens stay there."

"But the Summer Isles are not. Wait," Varys darted in front of Loras, "it can be done. Have the people moved to Dragonstone as a precaution – as many as you can. Then begin ferrying them down to the Summer Isles. You have a large fleet at your disposal and by your own admission – provisions. Merchants, the Lannister army and of course, the Golden Company. Some people would have to endure here for months on the small island but the withdrawal is possible."

"And what – cede Westeros – without a fight?"

"Oh, there will be a fight," Varys assured him. "There are huge armies in the North ready to do exactly that. Dragons that can hunt safely from the air. We have little time." Varys was now begging with genuine emotion. "At least send the women and children over. The fishermen and the farmers."

Loras found it hard to envision an army of corpses, but the Tyrell's were ruthless, calculating people. He had seen dragons and heard enough first hand accounts of the horrors in the North to convince him to take Varys' pleas seriously. "Do it, then. But for fuck's sake, don't cause a panic – and make sure those bloody pirates behave themselves. The last thing we need is a blood bath on Dragonstone. Any word from Tarth?"

"Soon. There is a ship entering the harbour. I suspect-"

Varys did not get to finish his reply as the bells of the city rang. The metallic thumping dislodged ash from the walls and sent a fluster of alarm through the Red Keep. Varys and Loras raced out to the nearest balcony, searching the city and the water for the cause of the bells that only ever stirred themselves for dread.

"Is that your ship?" Loras asked, pointing at the vessel making its way through the grey waters. Instead of attacking it, the Golden Company were parting, creating a river of dark water between the fleet. "What the hell are the doing?"

They soon found out. Down at the docks, the rogue ship was lashed with ropes and dragged toward the pylons. It was the ship that Varys had sent to Tarth but its wooden framework had been painted in blood and disguised with the corpses of nearly a thousand men whose weight made it sit low in the water. It was a ghost ship, lumbering on the waves without a man to tug its ropes.

"By all the fucking gods and their mothers…" Loras whispered, as a crowd gathered behind them in the city.

The ship was now hemmed in on all sides by the Golden Company and a few merchants caught up in the chaos. Despite the thick nest of boats, the only sound came from the snap of sails pulling against their ropes. Seagulls smothered the deck, perched on the bodies which they picked at as if the whole horrific hell were a buffet.

At the front were the bodies of the pirates, hacked to pieces and lashed together – transforming the prow into an elegant, bloody wave which dripped excrement into the water. The only female pirate had been stripped naked, left whole, and tied on as a figurehead with her silver hair caught in the wind. Her legs were stitched together and feet flayed into a tail-like mimic, as though she were a mermaid.

In the centre of the ship sat a sickening artwork.

The women and children of Tarth had been piled up into what appeared to be the crude crest of a giant squid with severed heads serving as eyes, while the men were put into lines and draped around the deck, up and over the edge of the ship on all sides so that at a distance it looked as if the ship was being devoured by the Greyjoy House sigil. It was, without question, the most arresting visual disaster that anyone had ever seen. They were struck dumb. Even Varys could do nothing but open and close his mouth without a sound. How did one conceive of such horror? He had come across cursed beings in his life, practitioners of dark magic from the cracks at the corners of the world, but this was pure filth.

Victarion's mind had painted a flicker of its depravity on the world. If men were capable of such darkness, where was the limit of vengeful gods?

It was Loras who eventually found the courage to speak. "Victarion is coming for us." The bells were still ringing, but down at the docks, they were reduced to a hollow echo. "Ready the fleet. At once!" He shouted, when no one moved.

"W-what about the ship?" Varys asked, unable to tear his eyes away from Victarion's offering.

"Have it towed out into the bay and burned before the gods seek their vengeance on us for having beheld such a thing."

"The city will run…" Varys whispered. "Those idiots will run straight out into the arms of the dead."

"Then have the gates locked, Lord Varys."


The storm building in the North was forgotten as the sky filled with smoke from the burning ship. Varys sensibly had the merchant vessels moved around to the protection of Dragonstone's macabre harbour. They would need them after the battle. Meanwhile, the city streets brimmed with the people of King's Landing who, trained or not, sought out weapons to defend their home. Others crowded the city gates, begging and scratching to get out. A few managed to form human ladders and scramble over the walls, only to slip and fall to their deaths, creating sad piles of rags.

Even though the city was currently serving as a port brimming with migrants from other parts of the realm, Varys had never felt the streets so full of steel-eyes. They were cornered animals with no choice but to fight to the death. If Victarion made it ashore he'd be pulled apart by their bare hands. King's Landing would fight Victarion street by street – house by house.

And so they waited.

For hours.

All day and into the night.

Nothing. No more ships came from the South. Boats crept around the headland to see if there was an army hiding close to the rocks, but all they found was empty water and the sad outline of Tarth's lifeless shores. The bells fell still as night came. The army kept to their posts, but the residents were forced to return to their lives, twitching nervously as they hunted through the overcrowded streets.

"Maybe he has no intention of attacking?" Loras mused. "We outnumber him. Victarion is a lunatic, but he's not stupid enough to launch a suicide mission."

"That's where you're wrong," Varys replied, with great reluctance. "Victarion is one of those rare men who believes that his will is that of the gods. That piece of theatre out there on the water was not to scare us – it was an offering, an effigy to please his sea spirits. If he thinks that his mission is blessed by the blind and deranged gods beneath our feet, he will do anything. That is what makes him so dangerous. The rules of war do not apply to a man like him."

"You make Victarion sound like the Dragon Queen."

Varys half lofted an eyebrow. "There is a point in that," he was forced to admit, "except that the gods actually listen to the young Queen. I have seen her bend the world to her will – the truth of her power, unadorned by poets and the scaled eyes of her lovers."

"Who is to say that there aren't other gods – darker gods – that listen to Victarion? After all, the man is still alive."

He had no defence for that. The darkness was thickening but the harbour shone with a thousand lights from the fleet. The drips of gold on the water were intoxicatingly beautiful, bobbing in such a way that they appeared to flicker like an ocean of stars. They were prepared. If Victarion was going to -

Varys' arm flew out to the side in alarm, swiping his goblet of wine off the table with a loud crash as he was struck by a thought. He shouted incoherently, leaving the table at speed to find the guards without waiting for Loras' order.


Victarion and his army were already inside the city walls. They had disguised themselves as merchants, quietly killing a convoy at one of the tower crossing. The river entrance was well guarded, but after the Queen's accidental destruction of the city months ago, there was still too much damage from mud and fire for the residents to return leaving empty buildings for Victarion's men to shelter in and regroup.

They were not attacking like an army. Instead, they moved as a plague. Camouflaged as foreigners, they slipped into houses containing various people of importance in the city. Commanders. Minor lords. Ship captains. All had their throats slit before anyone knew they were even there. Whomever Victarion's spies were, they had been accurate. The chain of command inside of the city was shattered in the hope of creating chaos later. It was done under the cloak of night while the city endured a restless sleep. The dead would not be missed until morning, and by then it would be too late.

Victarion insisted on killing many of them himself, perusing their possessions and taking whatever he fancied. His nose turned at the stink in the city. It was not the King's Landing he remembered from his youth with its pristine waters and spiced streets.

He had set foot in plenty of shit holes in his time and this ranked among the worst. Victarion could not suppress a sense of delight at the destruction. The gods played madly with the wheel of fortune and by gods he loved to watch it spin. He wanted to help it – thrusting his knife in deeper into the flesh of innocent men. Victarion looked into their eyes as they died, bequeathing their blood to the gods. He smiled at their deaths.

When Victarion came out of the last house, his clothes were so thick with blood that he was spotted by a group of peasants who started screaming. His face was nearly black, making his one good eye as bright as the full moon which had struggled to drag itself out of the sea.


Fighting broke out all over the city as Victarion's men appeared like spectres – slaughtering by the dozen before folding back into the crowd leaving confusion and blood. They wore different colours every time, causing strangers in the city to attack each other in the manic violence that followed.

Loras was beside himself with frustration, watching as Victarion created panic and fear, rendering the men unresponsive to command or even basic sense. Soldiers attacked each other and slaughtered innocent bystanders until all anyone could hear were mothers wailing.

"It is witchcraft!" Loras shouted at Varys.

"No, your grace, this is fear. He's turning the city into a pack of wild animals. They're going to tear each other apart if we don't get more soldiers out there. What the hell is that?"

Varys leaned out the shattered window to see, to his dismay, one of the pirate ships from Dragonstone moored near the beach beneath the Red Keep and a pack of pirates fighting with the King's Guard. Gold capes were falling, bloodied, into the sand as pirates picked their way up the rocks towards the Keep.

"Fucking pirates. Varys! I thought you said you had them under control?"

Varys did not get a chance to reply for Loras had taken flight, rallying castle guards around him. The Spider was powerless, left to watch as the caretaker of the throne vanished onto the spiral steps that twisted through the innards of the Keep, heading down to the bones of the building and beyond that, the shore where he would slaughter the pirates and finish whatever tatters remained of Varys' treaty with their king. If they hoped to see the Queen's treasure again, it would have to be pried from their fists.

The streets were full of shouting. Victarion's men were everywhere and nowhere. The Golden Company's sails were out into the wind and then the thunder that had been a distant growl suddenly struck the city so hard that the Keep's walls shuddered and shed bricks into the water.

Varys cowered as a column dislodged itself from the ceiling of the throne room, snapping off its ornate top with a diagonal crack. In a slow, lumbering motion, the eight-foot wide monolith felled itself across the floor, shattering into jagged pieces of red marble. He stared at it, shocked that a distant storm could wield such power … until Varys caught sight of a canon ball rolling along the wall on the far side of the room.

The Golden Company were firing at the city. Whether by accident, panic, or the result of ships seized by Victarion – they were attacking. Varys was standing in the heart of the city with the Red Keep drawing all the fire power to itself. If he wanted to live, he had to get out.

First, he retreated to his rooms. They were one level down and tucked away on the side facing away from the water. His quarters smelled of sulphur but otherwise, the room held solid. Through his window, Varys could see ice-blue clouds gathering in the moonlight.

Varys ratted through his desk, pulling drawers out and emptying their contents into the fire which churned up, consuming the paper and wax in a frenzy. Next, his hands pawed at his bookshelf, tearing volumes out until he revealed a concealed hole containing bags of gold which Varys stashed in concealed pockets in his robes, weighing himself down. Finally, he opened the cage doors for his ravens, tying the same message to each of their legs.

'King's Landing under attack.'

He shooed the birds out into the wind.

Varys covered his silk robes with a filthy cloak and took leave of his life. All of his possessions were left in their place upon his shelves and tables. Trinkets. Gifts from the king. Adored treasures left behind by his friends. They were all a sacrifice to war. To survive Varys knew that he had to be prepared to lose everything. He treasured the breath in his lungs and the survival of the realm.

There was no way out of the Red Keep through its normal doors. They were barricaded closed with their halls filled with crying women and children who had sought sanctuary. Varys kept heading down, moving into the crypts where he took one of the torches from its place on the wall and scurried through the tunnels as if he were little more than a common rat. Somewhere, deeper, he could hear the occupants of the Black Cells banging on their doors and smashing themselves against the bars that held them in darkness. They shrieked in joy to hear the destruction of the city. They were the screams of people who had nothing to live for but the revelling of death in others. The lowest form of life, Varys thought.

Varys cried out in fright.

Dropped his torch.

He gripped his chest, feeling his heart pound through the layers of fabric. Inches from his face stood the remains of a dragon. Its ancient bone flickered in and out of focus in the struggling firelight. The sea wind coming from deeper in the crypts whistled through the hollows between its sculpted bones, singing the song of the dead.

Varys knelt, his robes clinking with coin as he picked up his torch and held the flame closer to the dragon skull. I fit inside its jaws, Varys thought to himself, realising that half a step would take him between the monstrous thing's teeth.

...which is what Varys did, stepping up to the curved teeth that were taller than he was. He let the bone brush against his shoulders in a sort of morbid fancy. Gazing up into the centre of the skull, Varys marvelled at a set of jaws which had clamped down around thousands of men. There were dents in some of the magnificent teeth, cracks and chips from crunching into armour.

He proceeded through the head and into the rib cage which had been placed there, not quite accurately, by the slaves of a forgotten Targaryen king. There were more dragon bodies stored in the corridors, but none as large as the first. It was a sad evolution from compete political domination to a realm divided into warring fragments. Man had become little more than powerless lords rather than kings. Varys had always hated power consolidated into a single throne, but now that he had seen true danger on the horizon, he realised that he'd trade his weak nobles for a Targaryen tyrant every time.

Varys had been in these tunnels many times. He had made a habit of conducting secret meetings and whispering to traitors in the dark, but never had he stopped to marvel at the creatures who had built the realm with their terror. The power of the dragons was older than Westeros itself. These skeletons – they were only ghosts of the true dragon lords from Asshai. It was there, picking his way through their ruin, that the future became clear to Varys. He remembered what he had started, so long ago. What he had dreamed for the realm… His cold, dead friends lay in their graves – all for this.

Another attack fell upon the Keep. This time it was so ferocious that Varys was knocked off his feet, covering his head as bone and rock rained down around him. The ground kept shaking. And shaking. Then it started tossing him around like a rag as blocks of rock filled the air with dirt. He slammed his eyes shut and cried out as a roar filled the air, more powerful than any dragon. Rocks struck him. The dragon's skeleton shattered into dust. A terrible booming sound thumped in his lungs so hard that he could not catch his breath. Varys curled his limbs up, turning himself into a ball as all of hell and its fury set itself upon him.

A vague remnant of his conscious wondered if the whole Keep was collapsing on top of him. Varys thought death would be silent but this was a rage.

Darkness.

The screaming air fell still in an instant. Rocks continued to fall from the ceiling but they were dull, distant thuds in comparison. Varys coughed out his lungs, unable to open his eyes for the muck. He moaned pitifully as he rolled against a wall, curling up against the cold rock like an insect protecting itself from a child's curiosity.

Finally, Varys opened his eyes and had to squint at his surrounds. His torch had been smothered, but there were others, further down the corridor, which put just enough light in the filthy air for him to see that the passageways had only been lightly damaged.

Deciding that he'd rather die out in the open, Varys scrambled over the rubble – scratching his hands badly on the sharp rocks. Though he could not see, he had left bloody paw prints all through the tunnel until finally he managed to snatch a torch and hold it to the dark.

Ahead, somewhere at the end of the tunnel, he cold hear the whole city screaming.


Varys was forced to discard his torch and slither blindly out of the rubble at the end of the tunnel where the structure had collapsed, filled in by even more debris that had fallen off the outside of the Keep.

He was by no means the small boy of his youth. Varys' girth had expanded through years of wine and bread, sitting at the tables of rich men. He resented the handicap, sucking in the soft flesh of his stomach as he grabbed onto a rock and heaved himself out into the open. Odd-shaped blocks of rock gripped at his body, desperate to bury him, but Varys gasped and hauled until his nails pulled away with grunts of pain and blood.

The force of his escape left him sliding down a few more flat-faced boulders until finally, Varys felt wet sand beneath him and the cool press of the moonlight. He lay there for a moment, relishing the lapping of nearby waves until the sound of men and women screeching brought him back to his senses.

His first fear was for the state of the Red Keep. Varys rolled onto his knees and looked up at the shadow of the Keep. Immediately, he backed away from the tunnel entrance. In the dim, grey light, he saw that it was almost entirely covered with pink granite that had fallen from the structure above. There were more blocks tumbling down, bouncing unpredictably off the building. He quickly realised that it was a miracle that he had not been crushed by one of these monstrous items skipping over the ruins.

Nearly half of the Red Keep had been sheered off on one side, as though struck by a giant leaving the innards of the building spilling out. Tables, columns, beds, people – they were all falling into nowhere. Huge cracks wrapped around what was left. Varys watched in awe as the whole structure – the monolith that had kept watch over the Capital for hundreds of years – swayed on its foundations. The building moaned in agony. If the creations of men had souls, the Red Keep was struggling to keep hold of hers.

Varys knew that if it collapsed now, he'd surely be crushed by its corpse.

It was then, when he turned towards the water to scope out his escape, that Varys finally saw why the city was in tears.

A column of churning black smoke had erupted from the top of the Dragonmont where a storm of fire coated its lips. Dwarfing Dragonstone island, the smoke stretched into the clouds like a twisted pillar of Asshai before fanning out into a rapidly expanding funnel that suffocated the stars. It was an unnatural storm, foreign to the realm of the great Storm God. Lightning flickered angrily through it, occasionally striking the water around the island. Fire appeared from its depths, setting the sky itself aflame.

Serene in the terror, Dragonstone castle clung to the edge of the cliffs with a resolute stubbornness only found in the ancient world. The island swarmed with pirates who, like ants, were running everywhere in a disordered panic. Varys could see them only via their torches which littered the foreshore in every direction.

The Red Keep forgotten, Varys found that he could not tear his eyes away from the Dragonmont. It was holy in the most primal sense. Nature clearing its throat to laugh at the achievements of men. He saw fire, redder than rubies, fanning into the air before falling onto the mountain like one of Dorne's great fountains. It burned so hot that even the rock was set alight at its softest touch.

"Varys! VARYS!" Loras stumbled along the shore, sword in hand with a few soldiers in tow. His clothes were torn and stained with other people's blood. He had been in the sea and out again so many times that he could not tell what was mud and what was sand. "Victarion is here! Varys!" But Loras could not raise the man staring across the water.

Swords slashed together and Loras was forced to turn, cutting at another swarm of Victarion's men who had come up over the rocks, fresh from murdering a merchant's family.

It was all noise to Varys.

"Don't you see it?" Varys asked, no one in particular. He lifted his arms to the rush of hot air making its way from the burning island. "Is this what the Valyrians saw in the first breath of the Doom? Could they feel it? The dragons stirring beneath the world?" This whispers in the flames returned. Varys could hear them thick on the air. A Stark boy hissing at the flames.

'You'll outlive them all.'

Varys remembered what the gods had said to him as his cock withered into ash.

'They're coming! They're coming with the Winter. Dead men and their king. Burn it all.'

Rivers of fire adorned the black silhouette of the mountain. Where they touched the edge of the forest, fires erupted – scorching the swamp interior with steam geysers that hissed at the darkness.

Behind Varys, the Red Keep finally leaned too far and lost its balance. The thin skin of outer wall ripped, spewing blocks of granite like a gushing wound. It staggered – the building's sheer weight holding it in place for a moment.

A low rumble came with a snap of wind, and the whole thing collapsed sideways into the sea.


Loras was forced to throw himself into the alcove of a sea cave, pressing his body flush against the sharp rock. With water swirling up around his knees, he watched the contents of the Red Keep rain down over Blackwater Bay. The men he had been fighting with and against were all dead. He'd heard them shout as their limbs were crushed to bits. Ships too – they were being struck by debris and twisting to their swift demise beneath the waves. Varys must be dead too, Loras was sure of it. The fool had last been seen standing on the beach with his arms outstretched as if in prayer to Chaos.

The young Tyrell closed his eyes, terrified that the sheer weight of the Keep would bury him alive in the cave. Would he die there? Starving to death in a pre-built coffin? He could almost see his skeleton smiling back at him in the darkness. What was he? Not a king. Not even a prince. His grandmother's dreams had been for nothing after all. They had spent their lives chasing a dying empire. A hollow crown and a cursed throne. The Dragon Queen could have it, as far as he was concerned. If she was alive. There were many that proclaimed Daenerys to be a god, but Loras had heard how close she'd come to death. She was mortal, like everyone else.

"Gods!" Loras screeched, dropping his sword into the water so that he could cradle his head, pushing his hands against his ears to stop the noise of the crashing building. The foundation stones were falling now. Most, the size of houses. When they hit the sand, Loras felt it rumble through the cave's roots. No one knew how they'd been put into place but now everyone could see them thrown over the city.

He was struck in the knee by a small rock. It tore through leather and flesh, splattering part of him into the darkness. Loras felt no pain, but the shock of it collapsed him against the wall, howling and gasping at the filth in the air which was grating inside his lungs. He could still feel the water moving around his legs. That provided him with some hope that the cave entrance remained open.

It went on and on until finally silence descended. Thunder was replaced by the roll of the sea. Loras had the courage to open his eyes and see the moon splitting the night with enormous beams of white light, as if the lighthouse at the Hightower were somewhere in the sea. His cavern was completely open, but the landscape had changed. Pieces of the Red Keep littered the water like the severed limbs of the Seven Gods, prodding out from the harbour.

Pain clipped Loras behind his knee where the salt was washing into it. He untied a blue ribbon from his armour and wrapped it tightly around his wound, taking a moment to form a pretty sort of bow.

Outside the cave, Loras found the city oddly quiet. The screaming had been replaced by shock and the sound of nothing weighed down upon him. The ships in the harbour continued to fight – though who was attacking whom, he had no idea. There were other people on the beach, wandering around in the silver light. They were all too shocked by what had happened to raise a blade to each other. Above, Loras saw that the Red Keep was indeed gone. Part of its skeleton remained – a few pieces of wall and smouldering ruins poking out from the shore like an old pine stump.

"Son of a bitch…" Loras whispered, seeing a tall, rounded figure standing in ankle deep water.

Varys had not moved during the calamity, but had survived unharmed – still praying to whatever god it was that he'd managed to find listening beneath the darkness. His attention appeared to be entirely devoted to Dragonstone and the bizarre hell transpiring there. The top of the island now resembled an angry arsehole, leaking fire and smoke – especially down the Western flank which was lower and badly misshapen after the earlier explosion. Some of the merchant vessels were attempting rescues, while the smart ones had set their sales and were vanishing toward the North to make temporary harbour.

Loras did not get a chance to advance on Varys. The destruction of the Red Keep had also opened the Black Cells. Their contents were spreading into the night, emerging on the beach. Loras gripped his sword hard. He was alone.

'It is a nightmare,' Loras whispered to himself, denying his reality. 'These things – they will pass.'

The first few escaped prisoners ran for their lives, vanishing around the curve of the beach where they could make there way back into the city. Loras kept to the shadows, allowing them to go despite the violence they no doubt intended to inflict. It was then that Loras felt the eyes of death upon him. The lifeless, grey veneer of something that was already in the twilight of the next life.

Unlike the rest of the prisoners, the Mountain had not lost any of his physical condition. His size towered over the surrounds, so much so that when he picked up a sword from a severed arm, it looked awkwardly small in his hand. He swatted the air with it, as if considering whether to simply use his gigantic hands instead.

Loras' mouth went dry as the Mountain set his attention on him. He did not know if such a creature could feel proper human emotions, but there was a definite sense of revenge draped over him. Cersi was long dead and he was in possession of her throne. He would have to kill him. Loras realised. Whatever sick magic Qyburn had used on this monster, the world was better off without it stalking through the darkness.

"All right, then." Loras beckoned the man over, with a sardonic grin on his lips. Loras sheathed his sword and tried to lead the Mountain into maze of old sea rock and new castle debris. The labyrinth of shallow pools and uneven ground would be difficult for a man of his size to lumber through – especially as it was littered with the destroyed remains of human beings which formed layers of slop.

The gore painted Loras as he slid and clambered around the shore. He relished the moments when the waves curled up and crashed against his back, searing his wounds with fresh salt. Anything to be clean of the rank that came with violence. His moments were short lived. The Mountain's immense form allowed him to step over the boulders with dreadful speed.

How do you kill the dead?

Loras realised that he did not know. He had seen men fight the Mountain before. Their blades and blows meant nothing to the armoured corpse. Loras was not a fool. His skill was competent, not outstanding.

The world flickered in and out of view as smoke obscured the moon. When it was shining, the silver light was so bright that Loras could easily see the Mountain's rotting teeth in the gap between his gums where an old injury drew his lip up off to the side in a terrible curve. But when the smoke thickened, the night was brutally dark leaving Loras with only white-edged shadows and the sound of leather sliding against rock.

It was during one of these black moments that the Mountain finally caught up to Loras' position. The undead monster had the higher ground, standing on a slightly uneven, flat-topped piece of granite that had fallen from the Red Keep. He knew that the small Tyrell was somewhere nearby, but not even the sick magic inside him could see through the night.

Loras seized the moment of confusion, striking out with his sword. He aimed low, slicing through the flesh beneath the Mountain's knee. Loras felt the blade go through with the familiar weight of shredded muscle rattling along the steel. There was no spurt of blood or cry of pain, but all the same Loras saw the leather split and the skin beneath it hang oddly where it has been sliced open. The injury severed a tendon giving him an odd lean.

The reply was brutal. Loras felt the Mountain's sword swing down in front of him, whistling through the air until it smashed into the rock right next to his head. Green sparks flew in every direction, darting to their deaths. Pieces of rock plopped into the water which had once again crashed up against the shore. The ring of metal sang, but missed its mark. Loras did not try to fight again. Not yet. Instead he ran again in the hope of putting distance between himself and the monster long enough to scout out another opportunity to attack. That is how it was for a while – Loras swatting like a cat. It did not help that the ground around the remained unstable – with rocks falling from above without warning. He wished that one of them would fall down onto the Mountain's head and crush his skull, but the gods refused to oblige him.

The field of rocks started to thin and Loras realised that he was running out of room. The rest of the beach was a bare slither of sand that backed up to the high, unscaleable walls of market quarter. He would either have to swim or fight. Loras did not fancy a death at the mercy of Blackwater Bay's sharks. Imagine the pitiful stories they would tell about the flower lord who fled one battle only to be torn apart on the waves like common bait.

The Mountain became a shadow. A featureless mass of decayed flesh and savagery. He stood among the monstrous boulders, equal to them in cold violence. Loras noticed that the wound on the Mountain's leg glistened in the moonlight, but only with a slight wetness of congealed blood that never leaked onto the man's calf.

Loras swallowed, his injuries stirring in sympathy with the rest of his body which no doubt was about to be cut to pieces. What would it feel like to die? Loras wondered. He had heard the knights say that it was a glorious thing to die in battle, but here, in the filthy ruins of the Capitol, Loras found nothing but a writhing pit of human suffering. The dead were everywhere tonight.

"Alright, you bastard."

The Mountain did not move immediately. He did not follow Loras' commands. Instead, he seemed taken by the hellscape unwrapping around him. All those days in the Black Cells, he had existed in the shadows between life and death. Now, the realms of men were passing over into the slaughter house of the gods. Their king was the mountain behind – the Dragonmont will all its fire spilling into its crevices where it pooled into lakes of burning rock. From this distance, the molten pools looked like dragon tears. Its fires lit the sprawling cloud above, showing off its most frightening churning curves of smoke.

Beneath Loras' feet, the beach moved. The ground was being stretched and warped, as thought the Dragonmont were trying to break free and fly off like a dragon of its namesake, but it was chained down by millions of tonnes of rock.

The only grace afforded Loras, was that Gregor's corpse lacked armour. It has been stripped from him before he had been thrown in the Black Cells leaving filthy rags to cover his grey skin. His eyes were as white and blank as the moon.

No matter what it took, Loras decided that he was going to kill this monster of man.

The Mountain staggered forward. His bare feet sank into the blood-soaked sand where he left prints like a dog stalking its prey. Loras sheathed his sword and instead picked up a six-foot iron fishing hook that was laying on the sand. Its tip was sharpened with barbs meant for picking whales out of the cold waters in the North. Its weight was a burden, but Loras was glad of that as the Mountain's sword came down upon him. Loras turned the iron bar flat and waited with his knees braced as his whole body absorbed the sheer force of the blow.

The 'clang!' shook inside his soul, but Loras' refusal to break caused a moment of confusion – a moment that Loras used to slide out from the blade and stab at Gregor with the hook. He missed, but Gregor turned to avoid the strike, opening up his body to a second, rapid attack by Loras who hit Gregor hard under the ribs with the other end of the rod. Bones snapped. A rib pierced through.

The reply came as another heavy swipe of the sword that caught the end of Loras' iron rod and pushed the bar down deep into the sand, pinning Loras. Gregor's foot came up and kicked his chest, ripping Loras away from the bar and forcing him several feet through the air. He lay on the wet sand, mouth opening without air entering his lips, gulping. The iron bar was plucked from the sand, turned around so that its barbed end faced downwards, and then plunged into Loras' left leg.

Loras tried to howl, but his lungs were empty. His body writhed up, twitching up and down around the bar as if he were a worm struggling on a fisherman's hook or a priest of the East in rapturous worship of a cruel god.

Gregor enjoyed the silent agony of his victim, pacing from side to side – there was no hurry to kill with the world in collapse. Who would come to set him back in the cells? No one. The cells were broken and all of humanity's depraved were free to walk the realm.

Bare feet crossed Loras' vision. Pain blurred his view – or was it blood running into his eyes? Was the sea rising up the beach in a swell or was the dampness beneath him a tide of his own life spilling away? 'Blackwater Bay is named so for all the blood that stains her harbour,' his grandmother had said.

Frantically, Loras forced himself to stretch out and take his sword out. Its blade was red and dripping. Laid on his side, he lifted it as high as he could. A shadow crossed the moon. It was the mountain. Not the man, but the filth spewing from the island. There was a roar stuck in its throat. The whole world shuddered. Blue fires ignited and spilled down one flank in an instant and then vanished.

Then, the ground moved. It shifted several feet at once. A violent thrust that knocked Gregor clean onto his arse as if he were nothing. Rock snapped behind Loras. It must have been the foundation wall beneath the markets but, pinned down by the iron bar, he could not move to see.

There was no sound at all. The boats rocked in the harbour – their lights shifting from side to side – but it was as if every living thing in the world held its breath.

A moment later, the Dragonmont was gone.

For a fraction of a second, the top of the island dipped inwards. Loras saw its angles softening and the stone flowing into itself. Down and down, towards the centre and then whoosh! The whole mountain pulverised in an instant and flew into the air, forced out of the earth with such ferocity that Loras was sure that this was the end of everything.

Before the cloud could climb, a clear, almost invisible wave shot through the air – pushing away the previous smoke so that a halo of moonlight and stars embraced the Capital. This force was not only in the sky. It travelled over the water and smashed into the shore – kicking pieces of the Keep around on the beach with the strength of a gale. Parts of the city's outer wall buckled under the assault, collapsing inwards and taking more buildings with it. Gregor too, was picked up by the invisible hand of destruction and thrown so hard into the wall behind that his chest cavity split.

Loras would have met a similar, grisly fate if it were not for the iron rod staking him to the beach. His body pulled against it, tearing into his legs and his sword flew off, but it was not enough to free him.

It lasted only moments. The mountain, now pouring the entire mass of the island up into the sky, coughed again and exploded. This time fire replaced black rock and the whole North-East lit up like a second star rising. The island burned. The air burned. Molten rocks were ejected, fanning out at great height before falling down, plopping into the waters surrounding the island with hissing steam. Some struck boats, destroying them in balls of flame.

Loras had been passively watching until he realised that those burning rocks racing through the sky were skimming overhead, landing in the city and surrounding fields. If his hearing had not been ruined by the first eruption, he would have been able to hear the explosions as they hit the ground.

The Dragonmont was now a crater, sitting on the water like half an egg shell. In its centre was a vast pool of lava that now flowed out. This thick river of gold tore Dragonstone away from its foundations on the cliffs. It died, returned to the fire from which it was born, before being poured into the sea.