The Dragon of Starfall

by Primarch Amaranth

The words of House Dayne are simple: "We Bring the Dawn". A long-lost son returns home, the beginning of the storm to come. Hell comes to Westeros, and it's up to the scattered Forces of Order to stand against the darkness once more. Will they stand alone? Will the Archenemy? Corruption spreads, and light dwindles. But rejoice, for we the Knights of Bretonnia, shall be your shield.

7. The Crying Moon and the Lady's Light

Sparks fly through the air, as a portal, an ugly crimson tear in reality opens up. The Writer, in battered silver armor, comes through it, cleaning blood from his hands.

"Apologies folks." He smiles a bit. "Been kind of busy these last days, I'm afraid. You´ll get a bit of a better explanation at the end of chapter, but I do not want to keep you waiting anymore! Hope you folks enjoy it! But before that, let's answer a comment by a Guest! He said:"

There are over 300 Noble houses in Westeros alone.

Saying there were only about 100 means that that's about 10 houses from each of the nine kingdoms because there are nine in westeros. Adding in Noble houses from other parts of the world means west rose is even less represented.

Maybe you might want to up the numbers a little bit.

"You are completely right my good sir. I probably lowballed the number there, I will correct in further instances to make it more realistic lore-wise. Thank you!"

"And now. Here. We. Go."

{DRAGON OF STARFALL}

Norscans were fierce beast hunters, born and bred in unforgiven climates, pitiless gods, and brutal neighbors. To survive, was to thrive in slaughter and debauchery, to kill until there was no living soul around and until your blade could not kill more, to sate the hunger of thirsting gods. They were wolves under the skin of men, and sometimes, out too.

But wolves, like most things, are shit when confronted with a dragon.

Sirius rolled under the two-handed mace, blade sneaking under the knee of the Norscan, taking his leg over the ankle. He did not stop, rising with another blow that deflected an axe strike to his temple, taking his opponent´s throat in the process with a flick of his wrist, before dancing under a third blow. He killed two more men in twice as many blows.

What dregs he left behind in his onslaught, Girlin tore apart, daggers flashing. What enemies sought to outflank or maneuver around him, her arrows slew. He was the hammer, she the stiletto hidden beneath. Like a hurricane, he plowed through the second band of rooming norscans, killing left and right. He bisected the calf of a warrior, in time to deflect the axes of a blood-crazed horned marauder, his imposing helmet covered in blood. It took Sirius a moment to realize that it was in fact not a helmet at all.

It mattered little in the end. His blade, as borrowed as the last, cut flesh and bone when wielded by strong and pious hands. He was not found wanting in either of those matters.

"That's the second group we kill. How many of these brutes are here? Just how bad are your guards?" Gilrin´s tone was laced with dark happiness that the shadow-walker only let see during battle. Sirius had learned a long time ago that the Shadowfolk were all slightly crazy for revenge. Gilrin, less than her father, but then again, Sirius had never met a being so obsessed with vengeance as his friend´s father.

"You are asking me? Please, if this was Avalon, they wouldn´t have walked past the gates of Tintagel without ending like bloody porcupines." He spoke back, checking the bodies, and cleaning his blade. It was true enough, the Houseguard would not have allowed barbarians like these to slip undetected, although, in the defense of the City Watch, Sirius had had three different mages at his disposal to detect such incursions.

The through made him frown. He missed the Sisters and their otherworldly presence of peace and cheer they brought, and he missed his oldest friend in the worlds. How he ached now for council of those pink eyes and that mischievous smile.

"Well, we have to remedy that. I'll go up, by the rafters, and see if I can herd them to the open. These corridors are a pain to deal with Where am I headed?"

"If memory serves right, there are gardens beyond these halls. If they are preparing for an incursion, that will be where they will gather. We will meet there. If anyone asks, you are here by the grace of the Lady of Starfall." The elf nodded, but hesitated for a brief moment, her jaw set in a grim line. She wanted to say something, to tell him an important tale. But then she changed to her sardonic smile and bowed to him in a half-respectful, half-mocking gesture.

Sirius did not mind. Gilrin and he had known each other for longer than most men dream to be remembered, since the day they had laid eyes upon each other, on the shores of the Island of Asuryan. The elf was a guarded woman, scornful, hateful, and vindictive. And yet, beholden to nobility, determination, and righteousness that made most of her ulthuani acquaintances look like pampered children. She was loyal, fierce, and caring in the way of her people, which generally means a slow and painful death for those who dare lay a finger upon their dear friends.

He had always considered himself lucky to call her just that. So he did not force her or ask what she was hiding. For was not one of the Seven Ideals Ilvatar, the Ideal of Faith? So, he kept to his faith on her with a small smile.

"Good hunting, Sarathai." She said, stepping back into the shadows of the balcony, and disappearing from sight. Sirius shook his head with the same small smile, before resuming his determined run down the corridors of the Red Keep, whispering out loud.

"Always, my dear Shadow."

{DRAGON OF STARFALL}

"Oh, stop screaming you southern bitch." Growled Jarl Bloodfeast, pulling along the shattered gardens a blonde servant girl as she screamed and begged. It bothered him. His head was still ringing from the travel through the Warp, and her screaming was not helping in the slightest. He wanted to kill her, but then, he would have to go get another woman for the shaman, and he was fairly certain that one would also scream and bitch all her way to those goat-fucking magicians.

"Please! Please! I beg you, please! I have three children! I…!" The woman was pretty, with golden hair and green light eyes, marred by tears and the slap he had delivered that now swelled his left cheek. The jarl growled and cut her plea.

"Yes, yes, and one is crippled, and the other is blind, and the three of them are good nice and kind. By Khorne´s cock, woman, I have heard you southerners say anything to remain alive. It's pathetic. This reminds me of that imperial count I found while raiding at seas." Grumbled the Norscan warlord gesticulating with his axe. "Ah, the Sea of Claws, that is a proper place for a raid, not this weak, stinking shit pile of a city, with its warm sea and that bright fucking sun. I have been to battlefields that smelled better than this. Where was I?"

He asked frowning. He had lost his line of thought.

"The Imperial count, Jarl." Pointed Sigjard helpfully, with a wide grin.

"Ah, yes! He begged for the life of his four children. We had killed the wife when she tried to run. Stupid, fat woman. Who killed her?" Mused the beast of a man.

"You did, Jarl, axe to the back of her skull." Sigjard pointed once more, stepping on a broken corpse as he walked. The sound of crunching bones made the woman twitch.

"Ah, yes, it was a good throw, wasn't it?" Asked Bloodfeast. Sigjard shrugged slightly. The Jarl stopped, looking at his half-brother with a frown.

"No?" He seemed almost offended at the comment.

"I have seen you throw better." Sigjard retorted, planting his sword into eh ground, and leaning on it, almost bored.

"Like what?" Asked the Jarl, crossing his arms in front of him with a grunt, the servant girl too terrified to even move. Sigjard brought his hand to his jawline, thinking for a moment, before snapping his fingers at the answer.

"When you killed that elven griffin raider. Axe to the face in between the stilts of the helmet." The Jarl laughed, clapping his massive hands together, and nodded, smiling wide.

"Oh yes! That was a very good throw! And an even better fight. Those knife-eared princesses can fight when you rape enough of their daughters." Both Norscans nodded sagely as if it was common knowledge between soldiers.

"Where was I? Ah, the noble. Well, you see little southling, he told me he would give me everything he owned if he let his children live. It was a good bargain, so I accepted. Do you know what I told him to give him?" The beast of a man kneeled until he was looking at the girl in her terrified eyes.

"His… his riches?" She tried, clutching her skirt until her knuckles turned white.

"Nah. You are not very… what´s the word in this accursed language?" He growled. "Grakin!" A man that had approached, shriven and thin like a corpse, skin ashen and filled with tattoos spoke up.

"Imaginative, Jarl?" He provided.

"Your whore mother first, you cowardly tzeenchian wench!" Growled the Jarl back, until he looked at his shaman´s confused face. "Oh, I thought it was a strange southling insult. Yes, yes, you are not very imaginative."

"His.. lands?" She tried again. The Jarl laughed a bombastic laughter that had a pint of shattered iron on it.

"HA HA HA, no little southling. His skin."

"What?" Asked the girl blinking in surprise in the slow manner of a person who has just heard something they wished they had not heard. The norscan warrior smiled voraciously.

"Oh, yes, I told him if he managed to not scream as we skinned him alive, we would let his children live! See, this is his face." He tapped a flap of skinned flesh on his torso that somewhat resembled a face until the girl realized it was in fact, a face. "Fat man had a lot of skin, but a lot of balls too. Small cock, though. He did not scream. So I fulfilled my part. His daughters were kept as slaves for my men, and the sons too, for when my men desire something a bit different. I kept the father tied to the mast until he died, weeks later. The children were sold later to the knife-ears of the ice land for some decent steel. There wasn't much left of them, so it wasn't much of a loss."

"So, as you see, little southling, the more children, the more family you have, the better for us. More meat, slaves, and steel to pillage. I kill and burn your little Seven Kingdoms to ash, salt the earth and then feed it the blood of every lord, noble, knight, and bloody priest you have. I will rape everything with holes from here to the end of your pathetic world, kill anything else that moves, and piss from the highest peak you have before I tear it asunder and build myself a throne worth of the Chosen of the Four." His voice became an unnatural dark growl that touched the strings of her very heart.

"So, little southling, I would suggest you pity your little whelps." He then shrugged, a rattling thing in such heavy armor as the plates lacked together. "But they will probably die a lot quicker than you are about to, so, pity yourself, for all the good it will do to you." The woman's eyes shone with a broken light, and the Jarl laughed, dragging her towards where his shamans awaited. He had brought eight, for that was the Blood God's holy number, and seven of them were already deep at work with another seven women, skinning, butchering, and draining every inch of pain and blood from them. Their screams were muffled by the magic field around them.

No sense in revealing these southlings where they were conducting the last steps of their annihilation.

"At last Jarl Bloodfeast. We need to be quick." The head shaman´s voice was broken glass and shattered ice, unnatural and broken, dark and contemptuous.

The leader of his shamans glided toward him, blood dripping from him in a slow and steady flow, hands glowing with the runes inscribed in them eyes bleeding constantly, the hair in his head alight with flames that never went out. Bloodfeast fought back the desire to spit at the magic user.

"Spare me your cowardice, Huron. I will take my time with my despoiling, after all, what do they have to stand against us?" He pointed at the broken bodies of the pitiful wretches that had tried to stop them. The eyes of the head shaman glowed with crimson, pulsating light.

"I saw something in the blood… Something that made my blood sing, Jarl." That piqued the interest of the warrior, who frowning took a step closer.

"A worthy fight?" He asked hopefully to break his boredom with something worth his axe.

"Better. A worthy death." At the word death, the lips of the blood-soaked shaman pulsated with crimson mist.

"Here, shaman? You must jest! These southerners barely know how to wield a sword properly!" Growled the warrior, hopeful, yet distrustful.

"He is not from this land. Jarl." The head shaman smiled, and his sharp teeth, like that of a shark, shone with his smile. "The Lord of Ash and Cinder is here."

There is a pause when a powerful man realizes just what he is facing, which creates a monumental silence. The Jarl made that silence then.

"Now that is a skull worth reaping. Are you certain?" He asked, cautious.

"I saw a knight, morning-clad, riding atop an amber dragon, wielding a shard of pure starlight. Who else could it be?" The shaman lifted his arms as if the answer was obvious.

"Oh, that makes my heart beat. But what is the rush then, shaman? Let Shadow´s Bane come. I will meet him in battle." The priest frowned.

"And you may win, Jarl… But our mission could fail if he slays you. The work of the Gods must be finished. Recall your warriors! Buy us time for the ritual to succeed!" Commanded the priest. The Jarl did not take it lightly.

"Do not order me around, you goat-fucking lunatic!" Roared the Jarl at the back of the shaman as he pulled the woman towards the circle of sacrifices, spitting at the ground and making a rude gesture, even by Norscan standards, behind the back of the shaman, he turned towards Sigjard. "Recall the raiding parties. I want our strength here." His half-brother´s eyes shone as he chose the warriors to order the withdrawal.

"The Ashbringer is here. That is a fight that even Father would be hard-pressed to win." There was a relish in his tone the Jarl enjoyed.

"Lucky us, I am not Father." He told him, smiling. Then, he tapped one of the skulls above his right shoulder. "Wouldn´t you agree, old man?"

The skull remained there, mouth held open, baked in blood that never cleaned. Then, slowly, the jaw closed in a grin.

"See, he is smiling!" Both men laughed a hearty and dark laugh, before the Jarl small his foot down and roared orders.

"Come back here, you whoresons! We have a lizard to kill, and a world to conquer afterwards!"

All around him, his marauders roared excitedly for new blood. Behind them, the ritual reached its zenith. Red light, baleful and alive with hateful glee, reached to engulf the moon, as reality was torn asunder fragment by fragment and things with no right to exist sook to devour all that reached its light.

The moon was bleeding.

And from its life-blood that fell around the city, dark, evil things rose, waiting for the moment the ritual was completed and they may finally feast.

And so the moon cried.

{DRAGON OF STARFALL}

Sirius realized something quite interesting when the norscan threw him out of the balcony under the glow of the crimson Bloodmoon. He wasn't nearly as fast and as strong as he had been barely a week before. But those were things he could manage without. There was something of a much greater importance at play here.

He was not healing as fast.

'Art would chew me up if she saw me be this careless.' Sirius mused to himself all the way to the floor.

In a duel of attrition, he would hold against almost any foe by sheer prowess in regeneration. But without Her Gift, while his wounds mended and closed, the speed had declined massively. And now, with an axe blow to the leg, he found standing such a hard concept to maintain. He could almost hear Lesolei telling him that his greatest skill was suffering wounds that would kill most mortals as a man dealing with a stubbed toe and then delivering retribution ten times as grievous.

He tumbled through the floor, tumbling through the floor because of the throw, and barely realized the Norscan barbarian had jumped after him, landing with a roll. Sirius tried to rise to his feet, but the brute kicked him to the dirt and slammed his foot on his blade arm.

"I know of you." Said the Norcan with a thick accent. He was an ugly bastard, nose missing, bitten off a long time ago, and his checks were marred with so much self-scarring that they almost reached the bone. "And now, I know what name to give your skull."

"Fuck you." Sirius growled back, before curling up, and slamming his right foot with his full might into the groin of the barbarian and hitting something with a wet crunch that sent shivers up his back. The barbarian didn't even tremble and just looked at him with an amused, and quite aroused look. Sirius growled.

"Fucking slanneshi depraves." The norscan lifted his weapon again to take his skull. But Sirius moved like a cornered wolf, thrusting his feet into the face of the norscan, which also didn't seem to faze him. But he wasn't trying to. As he fell back down, the barbarian laughed, until his left foot gave out underneath him. In that second as he stumbled back, the barbarian saw that Amaranth had taken the skinning knife from his belt and cut the tendon on his leg in one swift movement. The marauder took a step back and then threw himself at Sirius who was still trying to get up.

At that moment, a Morningstar hit him in the face, breaking the maw and sending teeth scattering around like shattered marbles. The norscan stumbled back, maw handing loose, and attempted to scream… until a sword took his head.

"Got one." Spoke the wielder of the Morningstar. The swan on his robes was all indication he needed when joined by the spiked mace he carried. Balon Swann had been an honest and charismatic boy and, a good friend.

"I got that one, Balon." Said the beheader, his stormy grey eyes shining with grim satisfaction as he twirled his blade. Sirius saw the symbol on his chest and barely recognized the man himself from his childhood. Not many had been close to age with him, but the Bastard of Nightsong was. Rolland Storm has fostered at Dragonstone, and had been one of the few friends Sirius had had.

"I broke his skull, I had him, Rolland." Balon counterpointed with an arched eyebrow. Rolland shrugged. But before any of them could say a thing, the other norscan that had ambushed Sirius fell from the upper ground onto his back and did not move, a pair of bleeding marks scarring his neck and abdomen, letting his life waters spill and stain the tiles in the ground.

"Then we are all tied for one intruder, my friends." Spoke another chirpier voice, which carried a never-ending hum of amusement. The other two men scoffed.

"Andrew, get your arse down here and help us with Lord Baratheon." Rolland growled at the man

"Dayne." Sirius managed to growl, as he managed to get on his knees. He had broken a rib or two on the fall, of that he was sure of. "Only Lord Baratheon I know… is my father."

The two men rushed to him and tried to help him to his feet, but he stopped them with a gesture, before examining both of them, reorganizing memories and faces, events and occurrences.

"Rolland?" He asked the Bastard of Nightsong, not fully sure if he was actually talking to the same man. Rolland had always had the look of a hedge knight, an air of tattered chivalry to him. His face had marks of smallpox, but he was stout, of a similar build to him, sporting an air of quiet ferocity.

"You remember me, you un-killable bastard?" Rolland asked, before lifting him with a hug. It was strange to see the ferocious man be so physically affectionate, at least for those who did not know him. Sirius hugged back at the man that had been older than him, and now was of his same height, and similarly looking in age.

"Pot, meet the kettle." Sirius chuckled, pulling the man close before taking a step back. "Balon?"

"Every Baratheon needs a good Swan beside him, my lord. Good to have you back, sire." Not as handsome as his older brother, Balon had been decent with the sword, better with the mace, and a natural bowman. His auburn hair was short, and he was thick with muscle and a powerful chest made for bellowing warcires, even if Balon was not one to cry to the winds. Sirius offered his hand, and Balon took it at the wrist in a warrior salute

"Estermoont! Still alive you absolute swine?!" Sirius bellowed to the man on the rafters. A man of handsome features, a long pointy beard, and bushy brown eyebrows strode down the stairs to the lower floor. His father´s former squire, Andres Estermoont was taller than any of them, wearing green and brown, the image of the turtle shell of his house proud on his chest. Sirius extended his hands without hesitation. The oldest of their little gang, he had always taken it upon himself to watch over the young Dayne as he squired for the lord of Dragonstone.

"Something has yet to break my shell, my liege." He patted Sirius on the back and smiled. "It is truly good to have you back, Sirius."

"Yes, but how about you don't give us any extra duties keeping you alive? You have been back three days, and we are already drowning in troubles." Rolland mused, kicking the body of the dead marauder.

"They are tough bastards. I saw them kill a score of guards not an hour ago. Savages." Balon grimaced at the memory of slaughter.

"Norscan raiders." Sirius explained, pulling his blade back to his hand. "Killers, murderers, and faithless heathens that only wish to drown their axes in blood and rape what´s left standing."

"Good to see even in other faraway lands," Andrew said with fake cheeriness "There are fellows that must, too, suffer Ironborn."

"No." Sirius grimaced. "These are worst. Much, much worse."

"Understood. We will be careful then. Baring Balon, he is careful even when he is taking a shit." The Bastard of Nightsong said, elbowing his friend.

"We need one of us with manners." Shrugged the Swan "Some of us have to watch where the shit splashes." Sirius almost laughed at that. It felt so similar to the bickering of his knights, that for a moment he almost lost himself in it.

"A plan, sire?" Andrew spoke, redirecting the conversation to the matter at hand of the bleeding sky and the crimson moon. So Sirius drew himself back to the moment.

"Did Arthur find you, or did you engage the marauders on your own?"

"We were walking around the castle when this madness began. We have not heard a word of your brother." Andrew answered.

"Could not sleep on good conscience." Rollad mused. "Having you looking like the Stranger's next acquaintance."

"Then it's the four of us for now." Sirius nodded to himself, forming a plan in his mind. With four knights, he could pull a small miracle. It was just Norscan filth after all. If anyone else had gotten to the gardens… If Gilrin could link with them, they might have a chance. "We need to get to the gardens."

"I gather the whole 'moon turning the color of blood' and the 'city basked in crimson light' situation at our doors, is quite the problem?" Andrew pipped up, hiding his fears under his cheerful manners.

"They are performing a ritual. If they succeed…" Sirius shivered at the idea. He had seen cities fall to the Archenemy. There were few worse sights. "They will be the least of your problems." The three knights looked at each other grimly, before nodding and drawing their weapon at the ready. Sirius felt the shuddering of his heart at the realization he once more fought beside brave knights. It was a reassuring feeling.

"To the gardens then. Do you still remember the way?" Balon asked.

"I do. But we are going to need reinforcements." Sirius grumbled. He had long learned to not rely on miracles, and his faith in his own skill had diminished greatly in the last hour. "I can deal with their shamans, but it's the rest of the bastards who worry me."

"I do not believe that will be a problem," Rolland said, looking behind Sirius with a growing smile. "Poor fuckers stuck their cock on the bee nest."

Behind them, a sea of men-at-arms, knights, soldiers, and lords swamped the inner courtyard, a hundred sigils shining under the torchlight. Sirius recognized a few of them. Men in the color of his house, in Lannister red, Martell gold, Tyrell green, Stark grey, with a speck of others. Bolton, Kartak, Forrester, Manderly, Royce, Frey, Fowler and more.

He recognized some, and others were lost to memory and Bretonnian heraldry. At that moment, Sirius found a distaste for Westerosi heraldry, equal parts he being used to Bretonnian imagery and their meanings, and he did not recognize many or their history.

"Watch the mouth, Rolland. We have a King coming." Andre mused out loud, standing to attention. A man, taller than Sirius and twice in mass stepped forth, not wearing armor but hefting around a thick-headed hammer. He was wearing a golden crown on his dark-haired head, with penetrating blue eyes filled with mirth. Sirius got the fleeting sensation he knew the man.

"Fuck me and call me a dornish whore!" He roared, advanced forth, covered in sweat, slapping him hard on the back, smiling wide. "You just can't be killed, can you lad?"

"My lord?" Sirius asked confused, trying to hide the fact he had absolutely no idea who this massive… man… 'Wait…. It can´t be… can it?'

"My lord he says! My lord! HA HA HA!" Thundered the king, laughing like he was in some feast hall, and not eh blood-covered halls of his own invaded castle. "It's bloody good to see you up lad, bloody good. And you brought skulls to bash with you! A proper fight! I do not know that goddess of yours, lad, but you can tell her she has my thanks for this." He kicked one of the corpses to enunciate his point.

"Uncle Robert?" Sirius asked in utter disbelief. The man smiled, identified now.

"You didn't recognize me, nephew?" asked the king, patting him on the shoulder.

"You? Yes. Whoever you ate? No." Sirius spoke in shock, as every man around him cringed at the crudeness of the comment. "Guess all that ruling did not suit your soul much." Sirius examined his uncle, a half smile on his face. His uncle remained stone-faced.

"Suit my soul, he says! Fat he says!" The more powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms burst into bellowing laughs, shaking his head at the brash honesty. "Ah, you haven't changed one bit, have you?" Sirius shrugged unapologetically.

"I do not know about that Uncle. I have a lot of more scars. And a lot more of people that want me dead."

"That´s good. If no one wants you dead, then you haven´t done a worthwhile thing in your life." Robert tapped his chest with the stained head of his hammer before the King and uncle let the way for the warrior. "So, my dear nephew, what are we dealing with here?"

Before Sirius could answer a man in white armor and flowing cape of the same tone stepped forth, golden hair shimmering under torchlight and green eyes equal pride and amusement. Sirius had no problem in recognizing the man. He had been there the first time he had picked a sword.

"Those savages have been causing havoc for the last hour, and now they have all retreated. They do not have the stockman for a fair fight." His tone was filled with disdain and curiosity. His interest, as well as his thirst for battle, if his stained sword was anything to go by, had been picked.

"On the contrary Sir Jaime." Sirius answered. "This is a trap. They will herd us where their fury will beat our numbers."

"I did not expect tactic from what looks like the hybrid of wildings and ironborn." The Kingsguard mused, interested. "I did not expect anything but their stink, and I was not disappointed there."

"They do smell like shit." Growled Sandor as he stepped from the ranks of armored soldiers, winking at Sirius, who returned the gesture.

"I don't smell any different Clegane." Sirius took a second to place the one-eyed man beside Sandor, but he wasn't sure who he was, even if his mind let out a calming and almost warm echo around him. The man held awe and some sort of relief in his eye as he looked at him. "I have gotten used to your smell, so this is nothing new."

"Fuck you." Sandor answered, sounding bored, but barely hiding his smile.

"So, lad, any plans?" Asked the king, bringing Sirius back to the situation at hand, eager for the blood and combat he had been denied for almost a decade. Sirius eyes his uncle for a moment, analyzing, trying to find the man his memories told about. He found it. Under the fat, the bad breath and the unkempt beard, there laid the man with the heart of a storm.

He could make a miracle with that man. He would have preferred for his knights, for his wife, for his older friend and the men and women tha had fought and died for him, with him and because of him for so many years. It saddened him, to not go to battle with them once more, and he could only pray that they would find their way to his father, back in Corounne, where their skill would be still serve their home and King.

He smiled at the thought, drawing some curious looks.

'But knowing you, my knight, you will find your way to whatever hell I end up in, won´t you? You gaggle of stubborn bastards.' Sirius felt a strange pain on his chest. He missed his people. He might have the family he lost, but he had made a new one, and nothing would make the possibility of losing any of them any less painful.

So ruling over his dread and nostalgia, he let out the Dragon.

"It is still a trap if you know you are walking into one, Uncle?" Robert´s smile grew a few sizes.

"Now I got my blood burning. Come on lads! We got fuckers to kill!"

{DRAGON OF STARFALL}

It took a moment for Arthur to find his brother among all the men and steel around them. He was at the base of the stairs that led to the last level of the garden, the closest man to the invaders, blade held against the ground point first, eyes on the fur and iron-clad bastards, like a statue he had missed every time he had come to the Red Keep.

For a moment, there was stillness as both sides eyed each other, some scared, some bloodthirsty, some filled with anger, others, with happiness for the fight. Arthur was not sure what he was feeling, or how should he be feeling. Everything was a churning mass inside of him, roaring to get out, roaring for a release. He had lost sight of his mother and was surrounded by Stormlanders, his age and older.

Sirius had a personal guard of sorts it seemed. Roland Storm stood to his left, blade held at the ready, while Balon´s morning star covered his right, and behind him, towering and smiling, remained Andrew Estermoont. In the rolling tempest of emotion and the strange silence that preceded the storm, Arthur found himself amazed by the calm smile on his brother's face. He seemed so at peace, so calm and collected for a moment, as if he was about to simply stare into the moon. Not even the crimson light that stained it all managed to rob his brother of that calm peace.

"The Laws of Chivalry demand of me," Spoke Sirius, tone neutral, almost soft. "That I offer you a chance to surrender. I would elaborate, but you are Skaelings are you not?"

He smiled an almost sardonic smile. "Surrendering is not something you do, am I wrong?"

The answer was the hammering of weapons against shields, the rattling of armor, and the baying of men half-lost to the bloodlust. The sound was as unholy as it was terrifying to Arthur, men howling worse than starving dogs, their armor thundering with each roar and gesture they made. Some knights took a step back, others, one forward. The younger Dayne simply remained where he was.

Beside his brother, the sea of men opened and let his Uncle Robert march forth, hammer held tightly, smiling an ugly smile. White capes flowed behind him like precious pages of some old manuscript on the winds.

"Well, at least they aren't a bunch of craven cowards." Robert said, still smiling, eyes on the sea of raiders. Sirius chuckled.

"They are about to wish they were." Mused Arthur's brother, as he lifted his blade, and kissing the quillions, advanced forward.

He did not run, nor charge, nor roar his assault. He simply marched towards the barbarians, face calm, blade held on guard. There was a sobering air to Sirius then, the air of a man moving by duty and not the anger of fury or thirst for honor and glory. It reminded him much of their father, and yet devoid of the ferrous grit Stannis had. Sirius had the air of a predator, not the walking tower Stannis was.

The lords and knights of Westeros, followed with a thunderous roar and the echoing of words, curses, and oaths. The barbarians bayed in their tongue and countercharged, and all around the garden, the tempest ate at them under the clamor of flesh, blood, pain, and metal.

It took Arthur almost half a minute to find his way to the melee, so choked full of men were the stairs that led down to the gardens, but once he did, he found himself right next to his older brother, as the wrath of battle swallowed him inside a strange, and yet somewhat familiar environment, at first so similar to the tournaments he had partaken in, and yet so nightmarishly different.

And for the first time in his life, Arthur could say his brother terrified him.

Sirius unleashed, was death. Not the death he had seen the other day at the arena, shining, bright and mythical. Here, in the courtyard, his brother was death in steel and blood, mortal and brutal like most violence is. He cut, slashed, punched, and stabbed, each moment bearing equal parts grace and savagery. He parried a blow and pulled the weapon of his opponent to the side; giving Rolland Storm the chance to cut the marauder's guts out of his belly, before pivoting out of the path of an axe and hacking the offending arm to the bone. And he was moving again. He never stopped, an unrelenting typhoon of motion and steel, that drove deep into the barbarians, as they all tried and failed to keep up pace with him, baring the Kingslayer and Sandor.

The three of them were the tip of the spear in the brutal melee that Arthur was having a hard time not getting swallowed by. He had never witnessed such violence, such desire to kill each other. He swung his hammer at a horned face, and he was then fighting to not get hacked in two by a broadsword-wielding marauder with one crimson eye. Something, or someone, slammed into his side and threw him to the ground, and before he could get up a foot found his face, and pain exploded along his lower jaw. He fought to get up, only to freeze at the sight of a man he no longer recognized, but who was wearing Karstark colors, and was missing half his face, still attempting to breathe his last seconds of life with a shuddering, wet sound born from a missing jaw. There was so much blood, that Arthur failed to help to pull him out of the melee.

A shadow dawned over him as another invader threw himself at him axe first. The young Baratheon was too slow to raise his hammer, and the axe struck his armor, sending him to the ground once more. A different monster slammed a foot on his chest to keep him pinned, as he hefted his maul to turn his head into gore and mist. Arthur was so filled with adrenaline and training, that fear was but a distant echo in his mind as he sought to do anything to stop his head from turning to powder.

Then, a sword flashed, and the maul-wielding norscan lost his throat. Arthur blinked under the flutter of purple ribbons as his mother strode past him, blade in hand, killing with a precision and speed Arthur had never seen, and rarely seen emulated. His mother was swift, precise, and elegant in her strikes, never matching strength against strength, only skill and speed. She danced under the guard of a brute with a goat-headed hammer, before taking his neck with a swift move.

Arthur smiled, and threw himself back into the fray, following his mother, hammer swinging. The sensation of bones breaking under his arms made his hair stand on edge, and his stomach gurgle, but he kept going, fear, adrenaline, and anger fueling him beyond simple morals, descending the moral ladle to become a killer, even if for only a few more minutes, even if for only once on his life.

Then, it was over.

Arthur blinked, shocked to see no more brutes around him, only fellow Westerosi, knights all around him, his mother covered in the blood of a dozen different people but hers. Arthur eyed the ground, but only saw faces he did not recognize and faces he made an effort in not recognizing. There were bodies of marauders strewn about, but for every dead of them, there were two dead household soldiers or knights. It chilled him to see that an enemy outnumbered and cornered, devoid of actual armor and with inferior weapons, had made them bleed so many good men.

Arthur felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to look at his uncle Beric. The Dondarrion´s only eye looked at him in something akin to reassurance. The Baratheon nodded back, before walking a bit numb towards his mother, to see why had everyone stopped killing each other, and wished the invaders had either fled or were all dead under his brother´s blade.

Sirius had a more than impressive pile of bodies lying around and beneath him, his hair and face sleek from blood and sweat. Some was his. Most was not. The Kingslayer, even covered in guts and entrails, managed to look magnificent in pink-colored white robes and armor, beaming next to Arthur´s brother. He seemed to be enjoying this.

'His last decent fight was Pyke, and before that, killing a madman by stabbing him in the back.' Arthur thought. 'First fight he has had in years actually worth his skill, I guess.'

Sandor, was another thing entirely. His face was a savage growl, covered in red and a few new cuts. His nose was broken and his lips bleeding, but his snarl was closer to a smile than a grimace. He stood, chest heaving in deep breaths, as he stared daggers into the barbarians. The only reason he had stopped, Arthur noted, was because Sirius´s free hand was on his chest, gently holding him back. Sandor composed himself and stood protectively behind Sirius, although Arthur almost laughed at that. His brother did not need to be shielded from danger.

He was the danger today.

He looked equal parts savage killer and regal knight, a dystopic image of nobility and brutality of war mashed into one man, eyes glimmering in amber light, face calm and collected, blade held with its point on the floor, putting his weight on it.

'He has an injury on his leg.' Arthur realized once he saw the blood seeping unending from his brother's left thigh. 'Not enough to slow him down, but enough to be very uncomfortable.'

No one was fighting, and no one was killing, even as injured men were pulled back and lines formed, the eerie silence broken by the dripping of blood, the tired breathing of men, and the moans and cries of the injured and dying. Uncle Robert surged from the crowd behind his blonde Kingsguard. If the king was upset that the Lannister had preferred to watch his nephew's back than his, he showed no sign of it, smiling an eager grin, brain matter logged on his beard from a few skulls he had cracked. He also seemed confused as to why everyone had stopped fighting.

As if he had noted Arthur's eyes, Robert turned to him and gave him a wink. Arthur could not hold back a small smile. Even In the middle of all of this, his uncle managed to bring a bit of levity to it all.

"No pretty helmet." A guttural voice spoke from the ranks of the invading raiders, as they parted like a sea, and a beast of a man steeped forth. "No dawn armor."

He was a walking mountain covered in spikes and armor painted with marks that made Arthur´s eyes hurt. Two broad axes, covered in blood, rested in filthy hands, and entrails were hanging on his neck like a disgusting decoration. His crimson eyes shone from a face covered in dark brown hair and a thick beard sleek now with blood. His tone was like stones hitting each other, almost as if speaking the words hurt him.

He seemed to be enjoying the pain.

"No bright blade." He drawled on, pointing his left axe at Sirius, which prompted both Jaime and Sandor to step forward at the threatening move, but Sirius stopped them with a gesture, before descending from the small hill of corpses, and gently taking a discarded sword from the ground.

"No mighty beast." That seemed to really sadden him. "No blonde who.."

Arthur did not see the throw, only the barbarian lord raised his other axe to deflect the thrown blade, which danced up into the night sky like a second silver moon, before landing in the garden point fist, sticking into the ground like some malevolent sign. He looked at his brother, but Sirius was once again standing calm like a spring sea at Dorne, baring his eyes, which shone like the wrath of some forgotten flaming mountain at the edge of the world. The barbarian leader laughed at the attack.

"Is that your honor?" He mocked in a terrible parody of an accent. "I thought you horse lords liked to be… knightly."

"We are." Sirius acquiesced, his voice a tone of controled rage that made Arthur look twice. Arthur was the one who lacked self-control, while Sirius had lacked the spine. And yet, now his brother seemed the wrathful one. "And that is as much honor as I am willing to give to a man cowardly enough to insult my wife from twelve meters away."

Those words made dozens eye the Bretonnian knight in surprise, curiosity, or even, like his uncle Gerold, mockery. Robert even laughed eagerly at the fact his nephew had married, while others began to calculate. Arthur found his Uncle Oberyn´s eyes for a moment, and a shiver went up his back. There was something there that troubled his uncle deeply.

"Ah. No armor, no sword, no colors, no lioness… but those eyes. I know those eyes." Spoke the northerner, still pointing the head of his axe at Sirius. There was an eagerness in them that made Arthur´s skin crawl and pushed him to stand in between his brother, and the monster of a man. His uncle Berric pulled him back. His eye spoke a truth he did not like. It was his brother's fight, not his, as much as he was accustomed to take the fights of his family upon his own two shoulders and the head of his hammer

"Did I send you scurrying back to your frozen wasteland in the last century? Or the one before that?" It was said with a casualness that made many look at him again and wonder when madness had taken him. Robert simply smirked at the boy as if he was his own.

"Nah. You killed my brother, drove your bright sword through his neck, and tore his arms off. Bare hands." He made a gesture with his arms that gave Arthur a bloody mental picture of his brother actually tearing a man´s arm from their sockets. It was not a pretty picture.

"Where? When?" Were Sirius only answers, and it sent chills down Arthur´s back among the barking laughs of several knights and foot soldiers. He could guess many others shared his unease, by the fact that he had been accused of such a brutal way of killing, and he simply wished a clarification of which particular time and place his foe was talking about.

The burly marauder laughed, as if the answer was obvious to them all, and mocking a reverence with his axes, answered.

"On the city of Gargoyles, of course." Sirius´s face did not alter, but Arthur saw the way his mother's features changed. She had seen something as only a mother could, and that meant that place meant something bad for Sirius. His brother´s eyes hardened even more, and a frown began to form as he looked at the barbarian as a man might look over another man who is laughing at the death of a cherished friend.

"You were at Praag." Sirius almost spat the word. There was something that approached respect and yet felt distant from it in his voice. "You must be almost as old as I am."

"I was old by the time the Everchosen asked for your skull. Almost took it." Said the barbarian nodding to himself. Sirius let out a soft chuckle at that.

"Lies." His brother smiled a voracious smile.

"You call me liar?" The barbarian asked, fury tinting his face the color of is stained axes, under the howling of the indignant barbarians. Arthur felt fury. They dared to feel insulted after attacking the Keep under the cover of the night and unholy means?

"I fought for the first three days at Praag´s wall. All I killed were unworthy wretches and sword fodder that the Betrayer sent our way. By the time the real backbone of his host hit our walls, I was out of the fight. You might have fought me at Praag, but you were a disposable berserker, not some mighty champion." Sirius stated matter-of-factly, looking down at the marauder, figuratively and literally. The barbarian leader smiled and laughed

"So you do remember. Ay, I was death-marked with my brother. Almost killed you, twice. Broke many bones. You southerners have them brittle." He pointed out as if that brought him indescribable joy and pride. Sandor let out a growl and took a menacing step forward, which was mirrored by Berric, whose single eye shone balefully at the idea that his sweet nephew had been attacked by a monster like that. He was not alone.

Rolland twirled the blade, frowning in an angry scowl, as Balon drew back an arrow and aimed it at the marauder leader, eager to let it fly into his eye socket. Andrew Stermont towered angrily above the other two men by his side, his normal jovial disposition gone to righteous anger. Garlan Tyrell edged forth, murder clear in his eyes, his thorned armor reflecting the bloody thoughts he was having.

King Robert Baratheon might as well have heard someone had killed his son, for his face became a scowl of furious and indignant anger. His nephew? Who dared touch his nephew? The boy he had played with on his knee? Who had heard every song and tale he had told him, who had never judged him as a king but always as an uncle? His grip on his hammer was white, and his eyes were wild as a storm from his homeland. Eddard Stark´s face was a dark promise of ice and steel, and even the Kingslayer seemed to have lost his smile. Why, Arthur could only guess.

Arthur felt fire burn inside his chest. This wretch had dared try to kill his brother?! He would tear him apart limb by l….

Arthurs had looked at his mother to ask for permission for the kill. It was a mistake. The moment he looked into those tempestuous eyes of pure amethyst, Arthur understood why they always said that the Seven Hells had no fury like that of a scorned woman. What would they say about a furious mother who had lost almost all her family, had her son taken away, and now shortly returned only to learn he had endured misery after misery? What words would describe that?

Perhaps, wrath, I am thee?

It would surely feel proper, by the trembling of his mother´s hands and the sheer hatred on her eyes. Arthur suddenly found that he pitied them more now than he feared for his brother´s life.

"East side ramparts." Sirius suddenly said, smiling in recognition. "You were the one with that thick goat-faced hammer."

The marauder let out a booming, almost happy laugh. "So he does remember still!"

Sirius shook his head in surprisingly good humor. "Broke half my ribs, almost took my head clean off. Your brother… Two swords?" He said tentatively.

"He was not very skilled. Lacked…stamina." Said the man, smiling.

"And a head in height when I was done." Sirius mused out loud, another voracious smile on his face

"Yes! Yes!" Cheer the barbarian, under the jeer and laughter of his men, who were saying things to his brother no one among them understood. "I made blood oath to kill you."

Suddenly, his smile was gone, replaced by a look of maddening bloodlust that Arthur would have thought he had imagined. Then the smile reappeared, painted with pure madness, hatred, and fresh blood, his eyes pools of fire and death that threatened to take Arthur´s soul. He realized the man was not wholly a man. There was something else with him in there, something that stole the warmth from his body and that swam like a snake in the fire of his eyes.

Sirius did not seem impressed in the slightest, the only indication he had seen what Arthur had seen, was the disgust on his eyes and the change in tone from an almost good natured voice to iron made steel.

"I seem to have a lot of blood oaths on my name. And I have the nasty little habit of forcing men like you to break them." Sirius said, lifting his blade to look at his dirty reflection on the edge. His next words were dark, his tone death in calm words of ice, his eyes, tempests of fire. "Then again, I also seem to have the nasty little habit of breaking… things like you."

"So I have heard." Said the thing in the skin of a man, or maybe, the man filled by something unholy and not sane. "Dragon of the Morningstar. Blade of the Lady. The Lion´s Choler. The Dragon´s Wrath. Shadow´s Bane. Lord of Ash and Cinder." Sirius grunted at that last one.

"Never liked that one much myself. I'm afraid I do not know your name, and I find I care for your titles even less than I care for mine."

"Oh, but I know what you care for." The marauder said, smiling predatorily. "Weaklings, unworthy skulls and souls. That, you care for." That elected a reaction from his brother. Disgust and righteous indignation came to life in pools of amber fire.

"Your definition of weakness is as perverse as is misguided. Your strength is hollow, your superiority, an illusion, your might, easily broken." Almost spat the Baratheon. Then calming himself a little, he continued. "But yes. I suppose I do care."

"Then… Duel. Honor. One on one. I win, I take your skull. I lose, you take mine. Fair?" asked the norscan, almost hopefully. Arthur moved to speak against it, to call it foolish, to let his brother choose a champion.

"And your band?" Sirius asked, his tone already letting them all he was more than considering it.

"I lose, they follow me to death." It sounded as if he was explaining a child that fire burned for the hundredth time. Sirius frowned, but not at the insulting tone

"I'm guessing they will not jump on their blades? Fight to the death?" He guessed.

"Nah. Kill each other, honor the Blood God. Not all. Some, don't listen well." Spoke the norscan almost apologetically, or as apologetically as a blood-starved psychopath with delusions of godhood in heavy-plated spiked armor could be.

"Worth a try." Sirius said with a shrug and a "Very well, Norscan mara…"

"Jarl Kradag Bloodfeast, Champion of the Coliseums of…"

"I distinctly remember saying I do not care." Sirius said, frowning. "If your skill with weapons is similar to your compression skills, this will be a swift duel indeed." That made the norscan smile viciously. He wanted this fight badly. It was then, that the chieftain translated what was about to happen to his warriors, who began to throw up their hands in gratitude to their Gods, praising the darkness between the stars for giving them this gift of battle. Arthur realized they all knew his brother, by face at least.

Sirius was a celebrity. A star fallen from the sky in blood and steel, and for the marauders, having their leader fight an opponent of such magnitude was rapture. Sirius did not look impressed in the slightest. Then, it was the turn of the Westerosi to fight for the honor of the kill.

"Let me have it lad. I´ll open him from head to nut, and empty him like rotten fucking fish!" Sandor seemed more than poised and ready for this, his sense of honor, simple as it was, had been tarnished the day he had failed to get to his oldest charge and protect him. Sirius smiled at him. Then, the Kingslayer stepped forth, his smile arrogant, and yet, he had been one of the few to keep up with Sirius.

"Clegane is a killer brute, lad, good, but not skilled. Let me kill him for you this time. He deserves a good last show, after all."

"I´ll have him for you, Lord Baratheon." Garlan´s eyes were fixed on the brutal barbarian, like hunting dogs, righteous furies still cursing through him. He wanted death as a flower thirsted for water and sunlight.

"This meat-headed son of a whore isn't worth the steel lad! I´ll open him up so Bolton here can skin him like a blood sausage!" Barked Greatjon from behind Lord Stark hefting his massive greatsword, eager for battle.

"Fuck you all. Mind letting me have this one, nephew? It's been a long time since I had this much fun!" If anyone was surprised the king wanted to get the honor of the kill, no one showed it. But still, Arthur remained silent. He wanted to kill that bastard. But he understood what was going to happen.

"Let me kill him Sarathai. He is not worth the effort." The final person to speak was the strange woman who had saved them in Sirius´s room, and she alone, Arthurs guessed, would have been able to sway his brother's judgment of a champion. Her eyes shone with a promise that he found unsettling, and several of the closest nobles to her looked unsettled as well.

Sirius seemed to ponder for a moment as if gathering his thoughts. Bringing the cross guard of his sword to his lips, the Lion´s Choler met the not-mortal man´s red-glazed eyes through the quillons of his blade.

"My father once told me," Sirius said, his voice ringing true. "That for a commander to have the loyalty of his men, he must be ready to do no less than what he asks of them."

"He also told me, that a Lord leads by example. That, was the true essence of ruling, to give your followers something to aspire to, a challenge to their people." He seemed pensive for a moment. "And that to fail to keep them challenged was the greatest mistake one could make."

Arthur´s gut sank further and further as he realized that it had not been their father who had taught him those lessons. Her mother let a shuddering breath as they both understood what was going to happen next.

"And while all those excuses would justify me taking this fight." He gifted them all a smile, eyes scanning those who had spoken with true benevolence that shone in amber light. Arthur almost cried, at seeing that old spark of his brother, that same kindness and warmth there, free for all to see, to see that little ember of the boy he was. Then, the ember was fanned to a raging inferno as he turned to look back at the monster, the boy gone in the flames of duty his brother seemed to carry in his heart like a declaration of promised victory, a decree against fate itself. Wrath became the only sense of his visage. "I also distinctively remember you broke my wife´s leg on those thrice-dammed ramparts."

"I did." The man that was not a man, smiled. Sirius nodded slowly for a moment with a pensive look. Then, he took three steps forward, and widening his stance, lifted his blade to his forehead, kissed the quillons, and whispered words Arthur could barely hear.

"I stand amongst the honored fallen, beyond the reach of uncertainty and doubt, beyond the frailties of pride and flesh, where only duty remains." Then, his brother took a sword stance, blade held parallel to the ground next to his face, legs open, both hands on the blade, eyes flaring to life, body tensed for conflict. The barbarian took his own steps forward and laughed madly.

"Then come, Bloodfeast." Sirius Amaranth, the Dragonhearted, son of Louen Leoncoeur and favored child of the Lady spoke. "The crows are eager for your namesake."

The crash was brutal. The marauder, was iron, brutal strength, seeking to overtake his opponent with his mass, weight and sheer power, using his armor like a battering ram and his weapon to tear asunder anything from man to the ground itself. Arthur had never seen anyone that big, be so fast, so brutal, so ready to tear a dozen knights to piece in seconds. He was a butcher of men.

But his brother was fire.

They danced and weaved. Sirius parried a series of blows that Arthur could barely see and snaked his blade under the barbarian´s guard, but the bigger man moved impossibly fast for his mass and dogged. Then they were at it again, blade against axe, clashing, in a brutal symphony of tortured metal. A strange, gargling sound echoed with each strike, and it made Arthur´s back stiffen.

Sirius pivoted out of a flurry of strikes and did some fencing alchemy, where he changed the grip on his blade and swiftly hooked the crossguard behind the foot of his enemy, and pulled. The barbarian, caught mid-movement, stumbled back. Sirius pounced, blade going high in a beheading strike that was blocked, and counterattacked, sending his brother back to keep his ribcage whole. Still, blood now seeped from a shallow cut on his chest and his collarbone.

The grating sound increased in volume. And only then, did Arthur realize that the sound was the barbarian laughing madly.

"Yes! Yes! This is true fight. Blessed be Khorne!" Howled the barbarian. "Your heart is worth feasting on!"

Then, his axes erupted in black flames. For every Westerosi, that would have been terrifying enough. But both Gilrin and Sirius understood what the flames really meant.

'Demonweapons.' Sirius thought, a flare of panic dancing in his mind. If those things grazed him, his very soul could be forfeit. That spark started a fire of fear in his heart, a sensation that he had been immune for a long time while he was a knight of the Grail, but now, he was just another mortal, and that fear threatened to overwhelm him.

Then the monster was on him again, swinging with twice the speed and stronger than before. The blows rained and the fury of the storm inside both men was released outwards, each putting their whole being on the fight, a sonata of steel reaching its crescendo for the final release.

Then, in complete contrast with his situation, Sirius smiled.

He hated war. Always had. In war, innocent died, people suffered unnecessarily and the cruel and the devious reigned. But in combat, in battle, it mattered not riches, blood, or power. Only the strength of the arm, the skill of the mind, and the fury of the heart. War and death were great equalizers. Sirius liked and hated that equalizer, that great balance, where even the most decadent man found himself just a man, where the kindest of people found themselves tested. But in war, he could not control every variable, could not win them by himself, and could not protect everyone. That was the truth of mortal men, which no matter skill or power, one man, is still one man.

In war, evil men could escape judgment. In war, evil could go unpunished and could proliferate and grow. In war, innocents died and suffered the predation of things that had no right to walk reality.

But in battle?

In battle, Sirius could kill monsters. In battle, he could best evil. And in battle, those same things that thought they could take anything they wished, to tear and sunder innocent souls as they so fit, had to through him.

In battle, he had them a sword´s length.

And may all pity those that find themselves at such range of the Lady´s Choler.

He parried a dozen blows, arms hissing in pain at the brutal punishment they were subjected to. The barbarian was strong, and the weapons aided his brutal might to almost overpower him. So the marauder did that. He pulled every bit of strength and skill in trying to ram through the defense of steel he had erected around him. Two blows pulled Sirius to the right, and the Norscan moved to land a twin strike, with all his strength behind the blow, axes falling like ravenous maws of burning steel.

It would have broken through his defenses and cloven him in half, but Sirius had been parrying on purpose. To the raider, it had felt as though his opponent was too slow, or too overly dependent in blocking to move out of the way.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Swordsmanship was a complex thing, a beast many men claimed to have mastered, and to whose fangs many would perish. It was a hungering thing. But it was also a fair thing. All could attempt it, all could fail at it. And all could try to master it. Battle being its domain of testing, many died while at it.

But some lucky few, some stubborn souls, managed to learn enough, or survive enough, to understand the heart of the beast and the art in its beating pulse. Those men and women are what mortals call swordsmen, swordmasters, duelists, and fencers. They have not mastered the tempo. But they hear the song. And that is half the battle.

Sirius, unlike many others, hadn't just learned to hear the tempo. He, like so few creatures, had learned to shape it. It was a strange melody, a thing of violence and carnage, which held little beauty. But there was beauty in that song, in a sonata that echoed in the skill, ferocity, and determination of men trying to kill each other, on that will to win.

And he was a terrifying conductor of the blade´s song.

And, as those few conductors, his craft produced one thing of renown, worth showing and teaching, something coveted and many times feared. An incomplete thing yet, barely a child in the making, even after so many years of practice, more an idea than a fact, created after the many lessons, many unseen, some, still on his skin. But the teachings of many years had coalesced into something worth fearing, a battle flow unlike anything else a man might feel. When men flowed like water, they moved like forged iron or became the wind, Sirius was none of those things.

He was fire and flame, he was dawn itself, unrelenting, unstoppable, uncaring of what laid on its way. That was how he fought. Where Girlin was shadows and wind unleashed, like a volley of black arrows on the wind, where his father was chivalry and honor, the glittering wall that could not be broken, where his wife was light and fury, purity in form and essence, like unleashed lighting, Sirius had molded his skill with the sword against the one that had taken what he thought he knew and had shattered the illusion of skill.

He would forever be thankful to Tyrion, Heir of Aenarion, for that.

At the same moment the twin strike fell, Sirius moved. Both weapons carved the air, flames roaring for blood, but found nothing but air, as the knight became the Spiral once more. The blow missed and his blade became light unleashed by the Lady herself, nicking the neck of his foe, sending a splatter of blood through the air, and the warlord stumbling back, in surprise and anger. Sirius had been scant millimeters from nicking an important vein there, scant millimeters from a killing blow. With speed hidden throughout the entire fight, the Knight of the Dawning Dragon danced away from the almost panicked counterstrike, axes eating the air like the hungering demons inside them, into a different posture. Raising his blade to his face, he kissed once more the quillons of the sword, and widening his stance, placed the blade one-handed above and behind his head, pointed forward, the free hand extended for balance before him. He had a slight smile, one of calm understanding as the ragging barbarian came for his head.

And then he gestured to the man that was not a man to come.

Arthur had been afraid for his brother´s life; he had not expected Sirius to survive this encounter. And then, the entire paradigm flipped on its head. The barbarian struck, blow after blow, rage not of this world, not of this plane, fulling a body forged on war, conquest, destruction, and blood.

Only to find air, determined steel, and nothing else.

Sirius did not dance. A dance required an inner rhythm, a pattern to follow, but his brother followed none. He moved, like fire over a hearth, unpredictable, a staccato of blows that seemed to hunger for everywhere on his opponent, untouched and uncaring, blade flashing, from deflect to doge, from doge to counter, from jab to cut, from feint to alchemical maneuvers he could barely track.

Sirius, flowed. He was the Spiral, offense, defense, and offense once more to repeat the circle. And yet, there was no true pattern inside of the perceived view. There was no way to determine how many movements his brother would execute before changing between… what to Arthur seemed distinctive combat styles that his brother was mixing in a complex and strange manner.

The Dragon of the Morningstar back-stepped from a crushing overhead blow, to pivot out of the follow-up, his blade sneaking a cut under the shoulder armor of his opponent, the edge coming out bloodied. The barbarian was incredibly good, a maelstrom centuries old. But, Sirius had found his way to the eye of the storm. He pulled the axes out of the way and struck with precision, almost decapitating the warlord. And he moved out of the next, deflecting and flowing in and out, from calm sea to roaring torrent. The norscan came for his legs, and Sirius had to curb the desire to dance around the blow and take the head of the norscan, seeing the feint for what it was.

The blow´s trajectory was altered at the last moment, and the weapon aimed for his torso, a feint very well executed. The knight pulled the weapon away with a swift deflection before shifting postures into something else, the core of that battle flow. He pulled blow right and left, before entering a harrowing barrage of blows. Some crashed against the armor, others broke on the weapons, and a precious few drew blood. They were like falling stars, fast, blinding, and devastating.

Arthur then saw. It was like seeing the first brushes on a canvas, the indication of greatness in the painting to come, carrying a hundred wondrous interpretations of what would and could be, but holding nothing more than a feeble glimpse of the future. That was what his brother´s fighting style made him think of. Elements were missing, of course. Sirius´s movements were still imprecise in their execution as if his brother was not content with the way they flowed in two-handed strikes. There was also the fact that barring valyrian steel, no blade was going to endure that brutal punishment long, nor would any knight trying to fight like that in full plate armor. His brother was swimming in sweat now, the fabric of his clothes darkened by the sweat than the blood, and his arms were now trembling lightly, even if he seemed to refuse to show it. The movements were not polished, the band had yet to find all its members.

But the conductor was more than ready and willing.

Then, with a sonorous crack, the borrowed elven blade shattered in a brutal parry of the Norscan warlord, metal fragments raining around them like discarded scrap of hope. Sirius stepped back, frowning, yet not surprised. Not many blades, barring his, could survive this level of punishment, nor the Winds he poured in the blade to match the speed and dexterity needed for this. The battle-flow had been magnificent, but there was still lacking elements to it. He whirled the broken blade, adapting to the old Bretonnian style, and took a deep breath, preparing for the volley of attacks, which incredibly, did not come. He arced an eyebrow

The barbarian stopped for a moment.

Arthur felt his mouth dry. That beast of a man had never relented in combat. Sirius had come close to killing him half a dozen times, and yet he had seemed undaunted… And now, he hesitated?

Why?

"I did not know that pose." Rumbled the man, eying Sirius with wary eyes. "You did not have it at Praag."

"I did not need it there, nor did I have it." Answered his brother. The warlord squinted at him for a few moments, before walking slowly in a circle, like a wolf around a hare.

"You killed Ashinox with it?" The name made Arthur´s teeth hurt as if he had heard a mirror shatter next to his ear. His brother furrowed his brow but nodded reluctantly.

"Yes." Sirius said, grimacing at the memory of the Greater Demon.

"They say the battle lasted a full day." Spoke the barbarian, more a question than a statement. Sirius shook his head.

"It did not. The Defiler of Corunne fell during the eleventh hour. His minions refused to quit the field."

"You think some fancy footwork and pretty moves will be enough to save you?" Growled the barbarian, sniffing the air.

"I think my faith, wrath, and skill will be enough to save me." Sirius shrugged. "But I'll use the fancy footwork and pretty moves if you feel safer."

The laugh that escaped the barbarian was like shattered iron.

"Wrath? I´ll show you wrath little man. I will show you the fury of a Blessed one bound to skin, flesh, and soul. I shall grind your bones and eat your heart, and murder, torture, and fuck my way through this entire continent, all of this, with your skull mounted on my armor." The Warlord slammed his foot on a body next to him, turning the head into bloody mist and enjoying the scent of fresh blood with a rapturous face. "What do you say to that, little knight?"

"That I have heard better threats." Sighed Sirius, scratching a cut on his check in a laconic fashion. "And much better speeches."

The barbarian growled at his brother´s seeming disinterested attitude.

"You think I can´t smell your fear? Theirs? That I can't see your Whore Goddess's light is not there anymore? You are forsaken, little knight, a dragon without his tyranny. You stand alone. I will kill you alone."

That seemed to give the Bretonnian some pause, before.

"No." Sirius answered, smiling and shaking his head "I do not think so." That only seemed to enrage the barbarian more.

"I will make it slow, I will make it painful. I will make it into such a thing that the Dark Prince himself will shudder in pleasure at it. I will erect a monument out of your death, and I shall take everything that makes you a man, a warrior, and feed it to the Gods, and then this whole city! You die here, Dragon of the Morningstar." The man that was not a man was frowning now, and his eyes shone blood red and fiery as the thing hidden under his skin beckoned its fury forward.

"Maybe." Sirius mused, extending a hand and catching gently something from the air. He regarded with a smile, a true, sincere smile. "We all die in the end." A sigh, a content sigh, escaped his lips as he looked at the sky for a moment, and brought what he had caught to his chest, closing his eyes for a moment.

Only then, did Arthur realize, his brother was crying. Tears, clear and shining bright under the moonlight, fell down his cheeks.

And they were not tinted red by the Bloodmoon. But what shocked Arthur more than anything, was that they were not tears of sadness. Something primordial, an instinctual connection, mayhap something that siblings share, perhaps a bond warriors feel between themselves, told Arthur that those were not sad tears. They were tears of joy.

"I do not believe there are expressions in any tongue in the world that will convey it enough, so I will use the words I know. You have always had my loyalty and my faith, so now I add my thanks, Mother of All, my eternal gratitude for this."

"What are you saying?" Barked the Norscan.

"He is not talking to you, barbarian." Thoros seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, but he was stained in blood and his blade seemed to have drowned in some poor bastard´s innards. He regarded the barbarian with utmost contempt before his eyes turned warmed at the boy he had treated like a nephew. "Lad?"

"A long time ago, I swore an oath to a goddess that cared when no one else did. She promised little and demanded much. I delivered as best as I could, even as lacking as I might find myself. But, there was one thing she promised to me." Sirius said, nodding to himself. "You will never fight your battles alone, my child." His smile turned victorious.

Then, it happened.

It hit them all at the same time, and the trepidation for a fight stopped for a moment. A sweeping sensation that spread from their heart and soul, like a wave of… something, something deeper than words and the ocean depths, lighter than air, stronger than iron, gentler than a mother´s caress.

And only then, came the golden lights.

Dancing around them, Ashara saw it. Small motes of golden light that looked like leaves to the wind, like candles given life. They all flew towards the bay as if a titanic current Ashara could not feel was sweeping them in its embrace. And suddenly, they were not leaves on the wind, but birds flying with true purpose. The motes accelerated, coming over the battlements and into the sky, lighting the darkness around them in a shower of gold glow as they trailed towers and minarets, glass windows, and wooden doors, sharing their light with it all. But when they passed by plants and trees, these seemed to shimmer brightly and stand straighter and prouder, and their leaves glowed greener and fresher than before. Where they passed men, their armor glistened as if had been freshly polished and their wounds felt less dire.

"Where did those things come from?" Arthur whispered beside his mother in a low, awed tone. The golden lights were increasing in number. Then, Ashara saw what was, possibly, the strangest thing of the day.

The motes of light… were coming from them, inside them.

She saw them come from the Kingslayer and Arthur, from Sandor, who seemed terrified at the prospect of golden fire exiting his body, and Robert. Some men let barely a trickled of it, like many of the brutes around them, but others, streamed light, fulgurating beacons of essence that swirled in clouds, like Jon and Oberyn.

"By the Seven." Someone whispered beside Ashara in a tone of pure awe. The Lady of Dragonstone turned towards who had spoken. She never knew who had said that, because she was now seeing the same thing.

King´s Landing.

Covered in clouds of golden lights.

There had to be millions of them, maybe more, dancing in the wind, streaming rivers of pure molten gold that spread all over the city, from Fleabottom to the Street of Steel, from the Grand Sept of Baelor to each of the seven gates of the city, flowing like the mane of a damsel of myth. And it all joined towards the sea, much like the lights beside them, flying true and with purpose toward the open night and the calm sea, and there, they were lost from sight beneath the waves of the bay, hundreds of trails that were born from every street corner and house, converging again and again, like a gigantic river formed by a thousand streams that carried light, hope, determination and something else, that cleared the blood-tinged air of its malevolent and tainted color, like water cleaning stone. Under their gentle light, Ashara saw dark shapes prowling above the roofs and streets of the city, dark, unnatural shapes that made her skin crawl, but filled her with certainty as they fled from the lights. Those things were predators of souls, and faced with light, they fled for darkness.

Someone was laughing. Ashara had not noticed until now, but there was a harrowing dark sound in the air. She turned towards the sound, and to her surprise, found her son´s strange companion laughing almost madly, head thrown back… and the barbarians were panicking.

"No, no, no, NO!" Roared the marauder leader. "SHE IS HERE?!"

"Jarl… It that light is…?" Asked the wide-eyed warrior that seemed to be his second in command.

"Silence!" Roared the Jarl at his second and to all of his warriors too. "It can't be her. The Master told us she would not be here."

"He told you right." Thoros said, eyes still fixed on the mesmerizing dancing lights. "The Lioness is not here. It is not her light you should have feared."

Ashara looked at the Red Priest and saw something in his eyes, a strange thing that she did not recognize for a moment. It was vindication. Vindication at faith finally answered. After decades of preaching a god that had not done a thing, the first instance his new goddess was required, she brought deliverance to them all. Ashara had not believed in gods after Elia, after her parent and brother perished, after the Rebellion, and losing his last brother and nephew.

But even she felt some old remains, some dead embers, echo at the miracle all around them. A faith dead with his parent and brother, dead with the murder of her best friend.

"Thoros? What is that light?" She finally asked. The priest´s eyes twinkled.

"Defiance, my lady. The defiance in the heart of men, answering the call to battle, answering the summons." He said, now smiling openly.

"Defiance?" Ashara asked, blinking in confusion.

"What keeps the dark away my lady, but the defiance in our hearts? That light shines with the dreams, loyalty, honor, and defiance of those gone, still here and still to be. Their light, their courage, bids us to remain steadfast. And what a mighty light that is." Thoros laughed eagerly, and he looked two decades and a thousand drinks younger, arms spread, eyes shining brighter than the light that surrounded him.

"Lecai Menlui has come for your lives, dark ones." Was cackling the elf almost madly, laughing at the sky, her voice ivory and iron. "And you are all going to die here!"

Ashara stared into the Bloodmoon, and for the first time saw beyond the light, beyond the material, into the thing veil. Behind it, things that had no name and no purpose but blood and death, fear and despair, danced inside her moon, tainting its glow with the essence of terror and hopelessness.

The light cast it all away, and Ashara felt a gentle hand on her shoulder whispering something she barely understood.

'Pity them, for they seek in the dark what only in the light can be found.'

"What is that?" She whispered back, mesmerized by the possible knowledge this presence would bestow upon her. The presence laughed kindly in her ears and spoke a word with the might of a crumbling mountain.

'Hope.'

Then, the air changed density. Ashara felt for a brief instance a sweeping sensation of calmness and stillness, as suddenly her heart felt stronger than ever before. Fear deserted her. Every worry and tribulation of the last days felt as light as a feather, and farther than the moon. She tried to grasp the light coming from her, but if phased through her skin as if it was a mirage of the desert, yet left behind a tingling, warm sensation, leaving her smiling. Whatever was happening, wasn't stealing her determination, her hopes and valor.

It merely shone in its light.

At that moment, the water of the harbor began to shine, light coming from the depths like a beacon, bathing the ships and buildings around it in almost blinding light. There was so much light that the water was churning and mobbing and almost bubbling with the millions of golden motes that swirled beneath the surface, making the harbor turn into a small maelstrom that pulled at the ships anchored and sucked anything not held tightly.

"I might have died here." Ashara looked at her son. His face was a calm island in the sea of madness that thundered around them, tinged red by the bleeding moon. He was the defiant rock that the water sought to erode. Where Stannis was iron, unbending until it broke, Renly was cooper, pretty to look and easy to mold, and Robert was steel, true strength drowned in the fire and wine of another time and a life robbed, her son was something else, something deadly when the light died, yet gentle under its glow.

Only on the moment her son smiled a challenging smile, did she see what metal it reminded her of mythical in its glow, a remnant of a forgotten times of magic and heroes, a half-myth brought to them from the hand of a Goddess of Light and Honor. A long time ago, her father had told her that Dawn was special because it had been forged from the heart of a fallen star.

Her son was the heart of that star, that pale white steel of a legend made flesh, of fairy tale brought for deliverance, legend forged into reality.

"But not anymore. I am not alone, and never have been. No knight of Bretonnia is ever truly alone." Sirius brought his clenched fist to his heart. "Our warrior hearts are bound by honor, by tradition, by battle waged in the name of the many, the brave, who generation after generation, choose the mantle of certain death and suffering to be the shield of those that came before and will come after." The blood in the very air around them burned to nothingness, sizzling as the light of the motes increased a thousand fold to scatter and vanquish the bloody darkness.

Something in the sky shone silver and blue, a blur that moved toward them.

"We are the Knights of Bretonnia." Sirius intoned, extending his hand toward the lights, like a general giving command for an army to act. "And in this new world, we shall be their shield."

Thump-thump.

Thump-thump.

There it was.

That heartbeat once more, sounding like his own, clearing his senses and ears, waking him from the slumber of the mind and fear and doubt that were still clogging it. For a moment, Sirius closed his eyes to take it all in and then he opened his eyes and smiled at the fear in the norscan warlord's.

"I am not forsaken, betrayer." The things in the light of the moon screamed in horror and fled to no avail. "You, are the forsaken one. You are the one alone. You, are the one to die here today."

The motes formed a dome on the water of the docks, swirling like the maelstrom they had brought forth, bathing the entire city in their light. Where the abominations of the norscans were struck by it, they died screeching and howling, by its purity and its power. The shuddering dome spun, faster and faster, the light increasing like a star close to exploding

"This is the end, here and now, I take your skull and your blood!" Roared the Norcan warlord, spiting as he fumed furiously, fear, rage, and desperation mixing with impotence at the fate that seemed to close faster and faster on him, jaws opened to tear him out of the tapestry of fate, and he could not do a thing to escape it.

The light died for a moment and bathed all in a calm dark that seemed so soothing, so pure for a moment, like the eye of a storm, taking every mote of light and fire, everything that glowed, even the light of the moon itself.

Only her son´s eyes, gleaming amber jewels in the dark, shone light that enveloped him and framed him as the only thing in the dark, the only beacon in the night. That, and the blue-silver specks on their horizon.

"No. This is just a new beginning." Sirius said shaking his head with another earnest, hopeful smile. "My new beginning."

And so bloomed a second dawn.

Light streamed up, like a spear cast by a god´s hand, the clouds in the sky vanishing under the wrath released. The night sky was illuminated by the pillar of holiness that streaked up, millions of motes of light given form in a furious liberation of accumulated power that sundered unreality and lit fire in the hearts of the righteous, that spread warm light for miles and could be seen from the Vale to Dorne, returning sight to the world, light to the dark and shine to the night.

It burnt fear, it burnt doubt, it burnt temptation, and for a brief moment it left three dangerous things in the hearts of those who saw it.

Hope.

Courage.

Fury.

The spear flew up, traversing the boundaries of reality and existence, of simple wind, sky, and air, to deliver a blow of unsurmountable power to the abominations that preyed behind the thin veil, under their false security, and the light sundered their essences and cast them back into the void they had spawned from. It scoured the blood and the fear from the moon, and it lit it on fire, brandishing its light all over the city like a rain of blessed waters.

Under the clear sky, the world illuminated by the shining moon and a golden pillar of hope given form by a goddess that cared, Sirius Amaranth smiled a predator´s smile. His right hand was still free, so he flicked the wrist. Under the dawning light the blur, fast, dark, precise, and deadly, bounded his way. Something closed in them, a dark shadow in the night sky, shining.

Sirius laughed, for his goddess had not abandoned him, for she had not broken her promise as he had not broken his, for his mission remained and his duties were standing because he knew what moved in the night sky.

And because he knew preternaturally the origin of that light, and that mattered more than anything else had, and ever would.

The blue mot danced, and Sirius caught it mid-movement, like an old leather glove ending in the hand of a man who had worn it for decades. Perfectly fitting, perfect weight, a second skin made of dark steel and inner blue flames, starlight coming alive with the fury of a slighted soul. Arondight felt superb to his arms, as he grasped the blade and held it forward and at the ready, its fire reflected on the ponds of the garden, and the armors around him, making even the traces of the pillar of light that had carved the sky in two pale in magnificence.

Because the pillar had looked like the work of a god. The blade did not, and that made it infinitely more terrifying to behold.

Arondight shone with the promise of penance and the wrath of a kind goddess, reflecting the light of the Lady´s Fury like a mirror of the sunlight of a new day. Sirius felt complete, and moving to a combat stance, his face set to a defiant shine, he spoke like the heart of a storm.

"I am Sirius Amaranth, son to the Lionhearted, husband to the Lioness Knight of the Dawning Dragon, Duke of Avalon." The inner flames of the sword came to life, silver flames roaring to life, eating the air around the blade, and making Thoros´s eyes shine with something that terrified Arthur for half a second. "These lands are under my protection, these people, under my care, and on my soul, you shall be vanquished, today, tomorrow, and every day since, till the day your Gods lay broken, or the day I forsake my honor. I would tell you to pity your wretched deities, little barbarians, but you will not leave this place alive, so, pity yourselves. I will not."

Sirius, charged.

The warlord, charged.

The norscan marauders, charged.

Knights and lords from all the Seven Kingdoms, their foot soldiers and men-at-arms charged.

And so, the battle for King´s Landing reached its highest point, as a small raven-haired figure eyed from the magnificent vessel that now floated placidly on the docks, looking to where Arondight's light shone bright, holding her pendant tightly to her chest, and smiling a special kind of smile. The ship slid forward, pennants flying to the winds. Metal thundered as the deck came alive. Behind her, the sails of the ship fluttered to life above a rank of furious eyes, tightly held blades, and thundering hearts.

"I found you, Ada." She breathed. "We are coming. Hold one. We are coming."

An instant before the clash, Sirius smiled.

And death took him as her dancing partner once more.

{DRAGON OF STARFALL}

I´M ALIVE!

Sorry folks, I started to work as a lawyer and I found myself starved for time and filled with work, but I finally managed to finish this one. The next one is getting started and I hope to be able to give it work during Christmas break.

As always, suggestions, comments, and the like are more than welcome!

May the Lady watch over you, and have a great ending to 2023, and a better beginning for 2024!