Forcing himself not to think on his present circumstances, Tyrion settled most inexplicably on Mord, the gaoler of the Eyrie. You want free? Go be free. A thick, heavy hand capped with fat white fingers gesturing out into empty blue oblivion… The impregnable Eyrie, Tyrion thought. Give me a few ice spiders, maybe a cadre of hungry brutes and the odd bone dragon, I might have something to say to the contrary. All the while the dragon pulled up through hundreds of feet of cold night air, Tyrion feeling frost form in his hair and on his face. He dared not hug the bone in front of him and huddle from the wind. It was bloody everywhere for a start, and ugly as he was he did not relish the prospect of losing half his face when he made to peel it away from the cold black surface before him. Another memory came to him, half-forgotten. All bones contain iron, he'd read when still a boy, but only in dragons is the metal prevalent enough to color their bones black as night. He'd gone beneath the Red Keep to see the Targaryen dragons' skulls for himself. They'd been black alright, and even dead centuries seemed to drink the flame of his torch. Bones of iron, he'd thought as the Red Keep filled with guests looking to behold the newly-minted King Robert and his beautiful lioness-turned-queen. Bones of iron, and men sought to bring them down with scorpions. Tyrion doubted a boulder flung from a catapult would do much more than make an ungodly noise flung against what remained of the older dragons.The Black Dread's skull had looked nearly large enough to swallow a mammoth, if a mundane one. The bones before him now were full of moonlight, lightning, and the gods only knew what else though, and so the iron in it peppered his tongue and perfumed the air until it smelled metal. Tyrion took a breath, coughed it out when freezing air coated his lungs, and looked up. There was a mountain of ribs between him and the bone dragon's skull, not to mention the massive backbone that writhed and snaked without fatigue, but the head was visible anyway, if only due to its size. Even Balerion went into the Dragonpit eventually, Tyrion reflected. Whatever had looked out from the massive hollows before blue stars had filled them had never seen the inside of a cage, perhaps had never seen a single man in all its unimaginably long life. Tales of the First Men did not mention dragons, and so it seemed to Tyrion the individual whose skull capped the abomination the king rode had lived before the coming of men to Westeros. I'd have gotten mightily bored of snow and mountains long before then, Tyrion thought, but then, all that matters to a dragon is food and freedom.
He began to climb, as quickly as he dared. I haven't got all night to sit here. He may realize I'm here and blast me off or gods save me, dive, and I'll surely lose my grip. Thoughts of inchworms and caterpillars filled his mind then, shuffling along unhurriedly on their way to the next leaf on the branch. There was still a lot of leg to worm up, but Tyrion found himself wondering if the cover the tangle of ribs whole and broken would provide was worth the trouble. I'd move even more slowly and anything might go wrong. Better to hug the backbone and pray. Surely the gods were with him, how else would he have made it this far? And they even deigned to have Ghost drop Littlefinger's corpse at my feet. Lucky Viserion didn't eat it for as long as it was floating in his pool… Tyrion thought, feeling for the shape of the dagger for the hundredth time. He would have preferred to ascend with it in hand, but no good would come of falling and both hands were needed for the climb. Here and there he felt himself looking up, going dizzy at the sight of the stars, but it was better than looking down and seeing the heights to which he'd risen. The heights from which I have to fall, should I fall. Curious that it little bothered him. What betting man would wager on me making it back to earth alive? Compared to Cersei, compared to Lord Tywin…who wouldn't take meeting death on an icy throne a thousand feet high and more? Though, no throne has room for two asses at once, Tyrion noted. At last he reached the massive hip bone, using the dagger as a climbing spike to straddle the backbone. The bone dragon's dizzying ascent finally began to peter out, the wind dying enough for Tyrion to catch a breath as quietly as he could manage. No doubt the king heard me anyway, he thought ruefully. Save for their dire weakness to dragonglass, what ground did they cede to men? A race older than our own, into which the gods put a deal more thought, a deal more favor. The Other-king posed perhaps the greatest challenge to ever come against the world they lived in, and fate had seen fit to put Tyrion Lannister of all people behind him on the dead dragon. Then again, the gods have ever loved to toss me on the wind and see me plummet- or at best, descend with a modicum of grace. He doubted, given his circumstances, a graceful descent was in his future.
He could not have been more than four or five, and yet he could read well as most anyone at Casterly Rock. Of course, what the boy who would grow to one day ride a bone dragon did was little and less a concern of Lord Tywin's. His elder son was not having nearly so easy a time dancing with words as he was with swords, the rumor being the ink on the paper had a habit of jumbling up, reversing, and whirling into nonsense in the mind of the heir to Casterly Rock. And an idiot for an heir will never suit Lord Tywin Lannister, he thought. It was the last thing on earth Jaime wanted to do after four hours of browbeating by their lord father, but Tyrion had come to him with hope. On the paper, Lord Tywin's handwriting was as neat as it was small, disciplined as it was undifferentiated. The way Jaime had told it, every round letter merged to become circles with random lines poking out of them, the slanted ones or lines jumbling into ten-legged spiders on the page.
"If one stood Father among a hundred of his guardsmen and bid the lot stand a hundred feet off, there'd be no telling him from the rest." Tyrion heard his younger self say. Rather than cover a page in uniformly curt script, he tried writing something bigger, in a loopier hand. Then smaller, slanted, the letters thinner. The letters were less apt to run together when different sizes and shapes, it was less for Jaime to do to keep what he was reading straight. "A sentence at a time rather than the whole page rushing off the page to pinch your nose." Tyrion had explained. It had taken the rest of the winter for Jaime to perform to Lord Tywin's lofty expectations, but Tyrion's trick managed to free his elder brother. Jaime had hugged him then, one of the few times he'd sounded close to tears.
"You know I'll owe you forever for this."
"Ah, well. One day you'll marry some highborn girl no doubt, you can name a son after me." But there had been no girl for Jaime but Cersei, and illicit as their couplings had been, no son could have been named for Tyrion. Not that Cersei would accede to such, regardless of circumstances. Not for the first time, even as the bone dragon began to dip, he wondered what might have been had Cersei been married off, Jaime matched with Elia Martell as the Red Viper had once alluded to, or even Lysa Tully. Tyrion couldn't help shutting his eyes and shuddering. Knowing what time and loss had made of Cersei and Lysa both, he dared guess Jaime would be better served using the Moon Door. It would not have gone so ill had he married Catelyn Tully, though. The soft certainty he felt at that fact helped to buoy him against the mounting terror that built as the dragon leaned forward, his legs hugging the massive backbone as well as he was able. After all, she's managed to return from death, if only after a fashion. That must count for something.
The bone dragon had neither felt Littlefinger's knife picking Tyrion's way up its hipbone nor the dwarf straddling its backbone. If only I had a nice jar of wildfire, Tyrion mused, I might make an end to this here and now, and in rather dramatic fashion. The wind began to whip into his face, Tyrion inching over the beads of the great backbone even as the ground rose up to him. Ah yes, the wind. Somewhere below (or even about him, who could say?), Sansa was trying to hold the winds at bay, keep them tied up long enough for the dragons to tear away whatever else they could of the Other-king's mount. Thinking on her hurt him more than any insult he'd ever had hurled his way. Part of him wished he might have been the one to staunch the flow of self that had afflicted her, work that Joffrey had started and Littlefinger and Ramsay Snow had enthusiastically continued. To keep her Sansa Stark, instead of letting a bloody Other fill what had once been innocence and tenderness with cold purpose. Then again, would the girl Sansa had been grown to womanhood be of any use whatsoever now the end had come? Whereas walking corpses are nothing more to her than suits of armor are to a master-at-arms. What would proud, honorable Lord Eddard have made of the Others' coming, of what their proximity had done to Sansa? For Sansa? After all, he was the one to kill Lady in the first place. He'd have done better to tell Cersei to get stuffed, Robert would never have taken her side. It was the same pickle as before, though. A meek and mild Lady of flesh and blood, tame as a sporting dog…or what had been freed from the hereafter? It was no contest. After all, it's a deal easier to rip out a giant's throat when one has no flesh to rend or tear. It was just like Cersei, too, to expect her birth to give her power over life and death for all else that lived. Well, dear sweet sister, it was Lady who came back, not you. No doubt Lord Tywin would have words aplenty for him when they next met. Then again, choosing a Stark's direwolf and gladly over mine own kin may ride the back of the wagon next to me planting a quarrel in his belly. What good might Lord Tywin have been, anyway? At least a young raider or hedge knight had youth on his side. Still, it would have been something to see your past-fifty hide running from corpses, my lord.
Thoughts of Cersei and Lord Tywin fell away as Tyrion stared into the maelstrom of chaos that was well underway in consuming Winterfell. He was no stranger to feeling small, but who wouldn't facing their own mortality? We are all dwarves in the end, he reflected, the characteristic calm that always came when normalcy shredded into mayhem around him bubbling up from its secret hiding place. No man or woman stands taller than the rest. Lord Tywin and Cersei had viewed the world from atop the lofty peaks of high birth, but how might Lady Joanna? I doubt she much had her name or riches on mind after I'd taken my leave of her womb. They were diving then, but the battle had faded into the background for Tyrion. What would his mother have made of all this? What would she have made of him? They passed through the haze hiding what still stood of Winterfell. Forgive me, lady mother, but never mind you and your thoughts just now. If the gods are good, we may meet soon. He began to inch forward on the great backbone, feeling like an ant crawling across a giant's necklace. Either he was beneath the king's notice or the noise had grown so great Tyrion was beyond even an Other's hearing, because he did not turn around. Good, Tyrion thought. If I can kill mine own father, I can bloody well kill you, you star-clad whoreson. There was only the doing of it to see to. All the rest, well, cut it off and feed it to the goats. Another bead, another. He stopped perhaps twenty paces away, legs knotted 'round the bone beneath him. Dare I get closer? I'll only get the one chance, it'd be just like me to get greedy for a chance at glory. I've more to lose than a nose here. There was no mob of gold cloaks ready to follow him to folly, either. He reached for Littlefinger's dagger, felt his stubby fingers wrap around it, took a breath. Then something slammed into the bone dragon from beneath- no, from the side, they'd just been diving, and shot Tyrion from his seat as if he were coming out of a Tarly toy. If nothing else, at least I managed to hold onto the dagger. Upside down, Tyrion watched Drogon tear at the bones of the dead dragon's neck. Daenerys was still on his back despite all odds, her silver hair unmistakable against his black scales. The fall that awaited him was nothing, the sure death the ground would give further from his mind than the stars were from his body. They were pulling away, the bone dragon diving far faster than a dwarf might fall, even a Lannister dwarf. Tyrion managed to catch himself on a rib, knocking half the wits and all the wind out of him. A blood-red blot far beneath told him they were above Winterfell's godswood. Then the bone dragon's remaining leg crushed around Drogon, the living dragon's roar's lost utterly in the sanity-splitting cacophony of the dead dragon's scream. Tyrion spotted sparks jut and jag out from the abomination's black teeth. Without a second thought he pulled himself forward, his hands searing on the bones with the heat coursing through them even as he watched a finger turn black with frostbite. He jumped at the king before the chance could pass, swinging wildly with the dragonglass dagger. The black blade managed to snip away a white tendril of hair, the beaded strand boiling away even as it fell. Then the king caught him by the wrist. Caught, and squeezed. By then the cold had sunk bone-deep, and even as the king crushed his forearm into warm mist freezing into red snow in the king's cold presence, Tyrion felt not a lick of pain. He watched the dagger flip up, sure it would be lost to the storm, only for the queen to catch it in his stead. Yet it was the handle that jutted from her hand, not the blade, and Tyrion watched the three middle fingers on the queen's hand tumble up and away. She slid down Drogon's back in a faint, slumped, tumbled, and it was Daenerys Targaryen's turn to fall.
Tyrion reared all that remained to him, drew back with his foot, and planted his boot directly into the back of the Other-king's head as hard as he could. Fast as they were falling, even he could not stop himself tipping forward from the extra momentum, and in a flash he was following Daenerys down. Though sure to land with more grace, Tyrion thought ruefully. Then he realized he was alone upon the bone dragon's back. I wonder if it understands Valyrian? Even if it did, he reasoned, there'd be no hearing him in the tempest. The dagger was gone, he had no way of stopping it from shredding Drogon with lightning-breath…and then someone was behind him, looping an arm around him, screaming into his ear. The bone dragon's leg clattered away from Drogon, the black dragon flying off to find his rider as Tyrion's own mount's descent slowed. He shut his eyes tight, braced for the impact, felt a dozen more bones snap, the great skeleton beneath him shuddering and clattering. When he turned around, he beheld Sansa Stark, nose bloody and face flushed.
"You bid it slow, and it obeyed." Tyrion said.
"Dead is dead," she replied, "but bidding a man's corpse stand and walk is nothing to this." He touched his forehead to hers.
"All the same, all my thanks, my princess."
"You're hurt, my lord." Sansa replied, her eyes going wide. Tyrion looked at his ruined arm. "Nothing more than a missing hand. The poor smallfolk, they'll not be able to tell Jaime and I apart now." She gripped his mangled arm, grit her teeth, and the blood that had frozen around it extended. Tyrion shuddered something fierce as a new hand sprouted from where the king had taken his old one. Instead of flesh, it was frozen blood. Instead of stubby fingers, it ended in five long icicle-sharp claws, but otherwise felt utterly normal.
"Ice is easier than flesh, all those threads-"
"It will serve." Tyrion said, trying to cling to whatever might be even generously considered sanity. He looked past the hell-claw to what remained of the silk that had held the bone dragon aloft. "This thing's flying days are done. Meantime, the jaws still work. The head." The breath. Sansa got his meaning, hissing with the effort it took just to nudge the dragon's massive skull in a given direction. One of the cold giants had gotten their mammoth under control and was bulling his way through some poor patch of Winterfell's defenders. Sansa opened her mouth, but the skull beneath them did the screaming. Tyrion smelled the furs he wore charring as the heat built in the bones, heard the crackle of lightning building in the mouth as the bone dragon reared up. He slid his bloody hand into Sansa's and squeezed. Though it felt like he had a granite statue by the hand, his meaning she did not miss. The bone dragon's scream became a cone of lightning, blue-white forks frying the wights they touched to less than ash, searing off limbs of lanky brutes, giants and their mammoths alike. A fair hand over his shoulder pointed to one of the dragon's horns, sparks splitting it from the inside. On its last legs, Tyrion realized. But will the limitless power crashing through it merely consume it eventually…or something more incendiary?
From his vantage point, Tyrion squinted into the snows of the godswood, alternating between blindingly bright and pitch black as the fires allowed. The queen was nowhere to be seen. Either queen, he remembered. The Other-queen had been smashed off the dragon's back, where had she gone? By then the game had been given away. Bolts of lightning had begun to arc down into the godswood, the cold giants evidently aware the bone dragon's devastating power had been turned against them. Sansa gave the bones a spurring of her own, a vein throbbing in her face. Slowly, the bones reared up, the great wings splaying. Tyrion saw holes one of the living dragons could have squeezed through in the vast canopies of white-blue silk. We'll fly nowhere on ruined wings. Then he felt something thrum through his seat. Slowly, quite independently of its useless wings, the skeleton began to rise. As if suspended from great ropes or chains, it hovered away from the godswood. A sob, a gasp, a breath from Sansa.
"The weight is too great-"
"I know." she hissed through gritted teeth. They began to dip, the dragon's leg knocking over an already half-collapsed tower. She took another deep breath, letting it out in a long exhale as an ice-spider leaped up onto one of the wing-bones. It was soon joined by another, and another, some becoming more becoming many. For a moment Tyrion thought he and Sansa were were dead, then he watched the spiders begin to weave through the gaps in the bones. Shrinking them, where they might, closing them where they could. Sansa's breathing calmed a bit. "It won't last forever-"
"No more than the bones themselves. The lightning in them is going to get out, one way or another." At least we're awing without Sansa having to hold us up. But what should happen if the Other-king thought to reclaim his seat, blasting Tyrion out of it with another volley of falling stars? "I can see nothing. No trace of king nor queen, for either side." Tyrion said, squinting out over the battle. I might as well cup my hands and pretend they're a Myrish eye for all I'll see. "I'm of a mind to redden a few rears among the giants, see if we can't finally get them to shove off. Their mammoths are all I can reasonably make out in this mess, anyway."
"Best hold on then, my lord." Sansa replied, the bone dragon's wings snapping taut as they sailed toward the nearest of the behemoths.
The bone dragon's breath proved as effective as before, the mammoths bellowing in agony and trampling off whenever so spurred. The cold giants, for their part, were by no means content to watch the dragon slaughter their mammoths, boulders and lightning bolts crashing against the half-shattered ribcage. It's fine, Tyrion thought as he heard the bones pop and sizzle, spiders leaping off to get quit of the sudden crucible of light and noise. If they're loosing at us, they aren't swinging at the men looking to fill their hairy hides with dragonglass. An altogether different sort of sound made his head snap to the left, a drake shooting past too quick to really see having peppered them with icicles. The bone dragon ascended after it, shrieking even as the drake pulled away. Tyrion could see an Other on its back, but they were too far away and too slow to make out any distinguishing features. And we're not like to catch up, either. A volley of crackling bolts did the chasing the failing bones could not, a sudden frigid gale unable to divert them from their course. And I was just beginning to miss the wind, Tyrion thought. He braced for the next gust- and watched as it shot around him, sculpted with a canny hand, knocking Sansa off the bone dragon's back and into thin air. Another rain of icicles across the skull's black snout had Tyrion ducking out of reflex, a dizzying contrast to the dragon's continued climb. Without Sansa, how am I to control this bloody thing? It was a moot point, of course, the drake continuing to rise up, away from the battle with the bone dragon in pursuit. Perhaps merely following the most recent thing to attack it. Storm clouds had begun to regather overhead, but more bad news was nothing to him now. What's another chamber pot's worth dumped on a pile of shit taller than I am? The drake disappeared into the clouds, Tyrion tearing the rags that remained of his right sleeve away to tie around his mouth. He managed to frighten himself near to filling his pants at the sight of his hand before he remembered what the Other-king had done. I say, if I manage to live, it will have been worth it just to tell the story and wave this horror in peoples' faces.
Tyrion found himself alone in the brewing tempest, looking around for all the good man's eyes would do him. I daresay I've left the world of men behind. Whenever what senses remained to his mount picked up movement, it was answered with a volley of lancing lightning. I may well be marooned up here, he thought, only for the battle to end one way or another below me. He pursed his lips. Should we win, I do hope someone will work out just how to get me down in a manner more graceful than simply jumping off. The drake's blue-white wings stood out against the gray, sailing into view some twenty feet overhead. Tyrion had precious little experience dealing with Others directly (and what he had he would gladly had gone without) but he dared to think the one above him was no elder among his cold race. Others may have been a mystery, but Tyrion had spent a lifetime of watching handsome lads earn their spurs, each bold young hero more eager than the last to make his mark. There was a bit of that in the Other's face, no doubt, but also something less familiar. Then again, who could look into an Other's eyes and expect familiarity? Excepting perhaps Sansa… It hit him like a herd of stampeding mammoths.
"You are this First Frost I've heard so much about." You told Sansa something the Children of the Forest would not repeat in a tongue she understood. "You might have learned not to tangle with Starks when you found Bran and Lady Reed beyond the Wall." Princess Naerys, he corrected himself, though even if First Frost could understand him, what would he care either way? Either the Other understood more than he let on or Tyrion's tone and expression were hint enough. First Frost's young face hardened and he sank lower. It isn't his father's mount he's taking issue with just now, Tyrion thought absurdly. Perhaps he's of the mind a cold hand is the only sort suited for holding as fair a winter rose as Sansa Stark. "No doubt you're a regular Florian, as brave and gentle and strong as any of those lackwit knights in the songs. Well, my cold fellow, there's no song without some terror to stand between the knight and the maiden fair. How does Lord Tywin's Bane sound to you?" Before more icicles could pepper his seat he simply leapt from it, again falling freely. Storms above and below converged on the bone dragon, shredding it in a dervish of lightning bolts and thunderclaps. Still, it was vastly larger than he, and so fell faster, Tyrion able to grab the leg for the way down just as he had for the ride up. The noise of the wind in his ears receded as he heard himself ask for a dragon once again. It wouldn't even have to be a big dragon. Meanwhile, the bone dragon's skull was big enough to have comfortably torn Balerion's head from his shoulders in life. The last dragon died a century ago. Well, the dragon whose skull was spearheading the plummet had lived untold ages before the coming of the First Men, what was a century to such a beast? Tyrion comforted himself with that thought even as they fell. There was no pretense of maneuver, no slowing the closer they got to earth. When this thing hits ground, it will not rise again.
He let go when the godswood's pool came into view, not a hundred feet from impact. The bone dragon crashed through the new-frozen surface of the pool, sending up a blinding flash and an ocean's worth of water as the lightning trapped within its black bones finally fought free. Something slapped Tyrion across the face, punched him in the gut, slammed against his chest so hard it knocked the wind out of him as well as the senses. Blinking himself back into consciousness, he pushed himself up, staring at some white surface. The world had gone blood-red, to match the patches oozing through his furs. He tasted more blood where he'd bitten through his tongue, felt trickles freezing down his cheeks as they left his ears. No matter how much he blinked, the world would not right itself. Grimacing, he pulled himself forward, feeling leaves brush against his face. Red leaves, he thought, unable to will any further words to mind. He spat a mouthful of blood out, pulled himself over it. I was over the godswood. It was fearsomely tiring, but he knew if he stopped that would be the end. I was over the godswood when I fell. Something glinted before him, black against the red and white. A shame, I was so looking forward to defending Sansa's honor. I only hope that princely prick had his tail singed as he shot clear of the storm. But princes went with princesses, that was the way of it, had been so since kings first had daughters to quarrel over. I still did better than a deal and more of them, he thought, grinning through a fresh mouthful of sludgy blood. Closer the mark than any bloody strutting knight. That wasn't what hurt, not really. What hurt was losing anyway, and to someone half a babe in the eyes of his own kind. At last the clouds in his eyes receded, enough for Tyrion to see he was in the branches of Winterfell's weirwood. The gods caught me, he thought. And I'm not all. Before him, the dragonglass dagger was sunk into the tree's white branch. A pity I could not find the queen's fingers so easily. Something moved beneath him, white then blue then grey. The Other-king was staggering, liquid glass oozing from his armor. Wounds taken from the fall, or the explosion. He caught himself against the tree's trunk, gurgling something in the True Tongue. He seemed utterly oblivious to Tyrion's presence not ten feet above him. Tyrion closed his hand around the hilt of the dagger, pulled it from the old gods' grasp. Once he might have quailed at the thought of leaping from a tree, but Tyrion Lannister had looked down from far greater heights with a distance much further to fall. Quick now, he told himself, lurching off the branch.
Part of him expected time to slow as he fell, as was its wont in his experience previously. Instead he was catching the Other-king in the shoulder with the dagger and punching through the ice and into the cold flesh beneath before he could blink. The Other collapsed onto his back, too agonized to scream, Tyrion blinking through a haze of vapor. He felt something punch clean through him and out the other side, so cold it numbed the pain he might otherwise have felt to nothing. No feeling does not mean no harm, he told himself, remembering of all things something a master-at-arms had told a younger Jaime once when he'd fallen off his horse and risen without a whimper. As for Tyrion, he could feel the Other-king trying to rise. The force of the blow had taken the dagger from his hand, but he picked it up again without issue. He raised it high, as high as his dwarf's arm could reach. He leaned back, as far back as his stunted spine would allow. With a wild cry, he brought his hand down as hard as he could, driving the dagger through the Other-king's left eye. At once the form beneath him began to melt away, mist and vapor swirling around him until it dripped from his hair and off the tip of the nose Sansa Stark had restored to him. He felt the arm gone through him likewise dissolve away, though the hole it left was considerable. Tyrion made to rise, made to call out to whoever might hear him. He could do neither. They are not so fearsome, he reflected. When they come calling, one lives, or one dies. I suppose that's winter for you. He gave a bitter chortle, the last vestiges of shock holding him upright departing from what the king had left of his gut. I suppose I'll be called "Kingslayer" after this. A small man with a big shadow, indeed. He gave a chuckle. Light was peeking through the branches of the trees then, or was that just his senses failing? Tyrion tried to blink away the haze, the fog rolling in to cloud his vision. Looking up, he spotted something peeking through the white-gray clouds. A dragon's eye was his first thought, his second the golden dragon he'd given Tysha.
"Gods, that's bright." His mouth moved, but no sound came out. The grays and greens and whites of the godswood were turning gold, lustrous and pure. He did not recall sliding off his knees onto his back, but he came to stare up into the sky nonetheless. The snows that fell to coat his cheeks were turning gold as well, thin and fine as powder. Gold and warm to his mind, though in truth Tyrion Lannister was past feeling. Gold and good.
