The Dread Lord of Essos (Ch. 75)

The Dread Lord of Essos 

Chapter 75

The air around them suddenly turned bitter … almost paralyzing. Every inhalation stabbed their lungs with icy barbs, and every step made Harry’s boots stick to the frozen ground. Even the shadows had gone still, as if watching their progress toward the fortress with murderous intent. Melisandre’s teeth rattled with each breath, and every exposed inch of her skin erupted in goosebumps. Kinvara’s hands had gone white at the knuckles from clutching her sides, and her lips were already blue.

Harry felt the predatory chill as well. It sank into his skin, froze his bones, and kept the blood from moving, but he was not like the others. When Melisandre stumbled, he caught her arm and drew heat from the world around them. The warmth billowed out from his skin and wrapped his companions in a cushion of summery air. The effect was instantaneous. Melisandre gasped and nearly collapsed again, this time from relief. Kinvara closed her eyes and tilted her face toward his hand, basking in the heat.

“Thank you, My Lord,” Melisandre whispered, voice weak but steady. The chill had exhausted her body.

“Yes, thank you,” Kinvara echoed. She looked up at the fortress, and her voice was uneven. “This chill is unnatural.”

She wasn’t wrong. Even through the thick sensation of maleficence, Harry could sense the origin of the cold. The castle above them was a tangle of greasy black stone and spiked towers, all of it perched on the edge of a cliff that rose vertically into the gray sky. Its windows were empty dark holes. The doors were each carved from a single slab of petrified wood and stood three times the height of a man, and twice as wide. It was a perfectly placed fortress, and yet, it was nothing when faced by a man like Harry. 

Harry squinted, studying the weathered battlements and ancient ironwork. “Whatever’s inside doesn’t want us here,” he said. His own voice carried further than it should have in the emptiness, echoing back to him with an unnatural quality.

The wind increased to a shrieking gust that hurled debris at their faces. Melisandre flinched, and Kinvara shielded her eyes with a sleeve. Harry flicked his wrist. A bubble of magic sprang up, and the wind parted around them like moving water around a stone. Kinvara gave him a sidelong look. “Then, perhaps, we should heed its warning and …” she began, but was cut off by Harry’s calm chuckling. 

Harry grinned at her, and she immediately looked away, blushing. She was slightly embarrassed by her cowardice. It wasn’t entirely her fault. She had heard many stories of this haunted, cursed city, and none of them were pleasant. “I’m not about to be scared off by a little wind,” he smirked. 

Kinvara blushed harder and nodded her head. She then drew herself up, found her dignity, and squared her shoulders. Melisandre placed her hand on Kinvara’s arm, and the two women walked in step beside Harry as they approached the doors.

The city was silent now, save for their footsteps and the women’s labored breathing. The fortress loomed closer, towering high above them. Its presence gnawed on their minds, and every instinct was telling them to flee. Harry easily ignored this feeling as he continued to trek forward. The old stories were at the forefront of both women’s minds. Kinvara had told them herself, often to scare younger acolytes, and Melisandre had listened as a child. None of the tales involved walking away from Stygai in one piece.

The fortress was close enough now to blot out most of the sky. Harry stopped at the threshold, and for a moment, all three of them stared up in awe. The doors were carved with runes, ancient Valyrian and something older. The runes pulsed with power. It was barely perceptible, but Harry could easily feel it. Melisandre pressed her fingers to the markings, and her eyes flashed red.

“There’s power in these walls,” she said. “A warning, maybe. Perhaps a curse.”

Harry traced a symbol with his fingertip. The stone throbbed under his touch. “It won’t hold us for long,” he said with the confidence that few men could muster.

He placed his palm flat against the center of the door, and the surface chilled instantly, frosting over. He pushed, and the door didn’t budge. Harry called on his godly powers and forced it open with his full strength. The door groaned in protest, but slowly, it began to swing open. The sound it made was horrid. The squeal of seized hinges and the shuddering hiss of trapped air wasn’t pleasant to hear. From within, a second rush of wind blasted out, carrying the stench of what lay further. It was foul and rotten, and it made Melisandre’s stomach turn and Kinvara gag. The mist within the fortress was dense, rolling across the flagstones in a tumbling cloud. For a moment, it looked as though the mist itself would rise up and attack.

Then, just as the mist rolled over their feet, a howl split the air. The sound wasn’t canine, at least not entirely, but it was close enough to trigger the women’s fear. Melisandre went rigid, and Kinvara’s mouth dropped open in horror. Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. More howls joined the first in a chorus of rage and hunger.

Kinvara spun around, pointing. Down the slope, moving with impossible speed, came a pack of wolves. Their bodies were unnaturally stretched, and their bones showed through fur that fell away in clumps. Their eyes glowed with a sickly green light. Some of them ran on three legs, dragging the fourth like a club. Others had their jaws fused open, strings of black saliva dangling from ruined teeth. They moved with purpose, and they were headed straight for the three of them.

Harry acted first. He flung his hand outward, sending the first wave of the undead wolves rocketing through the air until they collided with the side of an old guard house. Their bones snapped, and matted fur burst into a disgusting cloud. Melisandre gathered her wits and hurled a ball of fire, which struck one wolf in the chest and sent it spinning. The fur ignited, but the wolf kept coming, shrieking and trailing embers.

Kinvara also sent a wave of fire, but it was relatively weak and didn’t do much damage. Harry shot a look at her, then shifted sideways and put himself between the women and the oncoming monsters. Harry closed his hand into a fist and concentrated. A thick, magical shield radiated out in every direction. The wolves hit the shield with a force that rattled Harry’s teeth. The closest one, a massive beast with a jaw that hung by a strip of muscle, slammed itself against the magical barrier again and again, shattering bone and spraying rot across the transparent surface. Melisandre, who was heavily sweating, tried to attack from within the shield, but her flames barely dented the undead mass. The cursed chill had sapped most of their strength. 

Harry looked at the two women. Kinvara seemed to think that they were all doomed. Melisandre looked exhausted, but she stared back at him. He could see nothing but confidence in her gorgeous eyes. She knew her lord would keep them safe. Harry couldn’t help but smile at the beautiful priestess. He would reward her loyalty later. 

Harry locked his jaw and narrowed his eyes as the undead wolves slammed again and again against the magical shield. The air vibrated with their shrieks. Each impact spattered the barrier with rotten flesh and black mucus. The sound was horrendous, and the stench wormed through the magical barrier. Melisandre covered her mouth, fighting the urge to vomit, while Kinvara just stared in horror.

He knew there was no time to hesitate. The wolves were mutating as they attacked the sphere, becoming more grotesque by the second. One massive beast that was bigger than the rest grew additional legs right in front of them, the new appendages sprouting from bloody holes with sickening pops. Its skull lengthened, and the jaw unhinged even farther until the mouth was one endless maw filled with splintered teeth. The others followed suit. Some of them swelled to twice their size while others split into smaller, more agile horrors that battered the shield in relentless droves.

Harry closed his emerald green eyes and fed more magic into the protective shell. The shimmering magic thickened, then burst into a solid orange glow. Melisandre and Kinvara both fell to their knees at the sudden heat, perhaps thinking that R’hllor himself had come to save them. For a moment, their entire world was fire. Harry’s shield was no longer just a spherical wall. It was an all-consuming inferno that ignited the air around it. The necrotic wolves threw themselves at the flames without hesitation. Their fur caught instantly, their skin melted off in sheets, and their howls turned to warped, agonized wails.

Harry’s magic warped the shield, ballooning it outward in a violent, expanding sphere. The stone at their feet cracked from the sudden heat, and nearby buildings exploded in a rain of glowing embers. The blast flung burning wolves in every direction. Some hit the far walls with bone-snapping cracks, and others were launched over the edge of the cliff entirely. The city, silent before, was now filled with the roaring of fire and the tortured screams of the unnatural pack.

He kept the pressure up, refusing to let a single wolf escape. A few managed to leap free of the pack, their bodies already blackened and crisping, but they lasted less than a step before collapsing. Melisandre watched as one wolf flailed on the ground, its limbs burning down to stumps. It crawled toward her, jaws snapping, then dissolved into ash inches from her boots. Harry ignored the bizarre spectacle. He was busy with the largest of the beasts, which had taken the brunt of the blast and somehow survived.

The alpha stood in the center of the devastation, flames licking its sides and one eye drooping from the heat. It was a monster … part wolf, part nightmare. Its spine jutted through the back in razor-sharp ridges, and the front paws had become claws, each talon as long as a dagger. Its face was a ruined, blistered mask, but the eyes still burned with that sickly green light.

Harry dropped the fire shield and drew his sword, the Valyrian steel gleaming in the chaos. The wolf charged, ignoring the fact that most of its body was already ruined. Its jaws snapped, and it let loose a roar that shook the stones beneath them. Harry sidestepped, but the thing was faster than he expected. It clipped his armored leg with a claw and sent sparks shooting out. Before he could react, it twisted and barreled into him, its jaws seeking his throat.

They hit the ground hard. Harry rolled with it, holding its neck with one hand to keep it from biting down on his face. The animal thrashed wildly. Its claws sliced the air, and its tail lashed with enough force to crack the flagstones. Harry grunted as it pummeled his midsection with its hind legs, but he held on, forcing the wolf’s head away from his neck. He felt its breath on his cheek. It was hot with the stench of death.

Kinvara screamed. Melisandre tried to hurl a fireball, but her hands shook so badly that it fizzled out before leaving her fingers. Harry had no time for theatrics. He twisted, forcing the wolf’s head down and exposing the soft underside of its jaw. With a grunt, he brought the sword up in a vicious arc. The blade punched through the bottom of the wolf’s jaw and came out the top of its skull in a spray of bone shards and blackened brain matter.

The wolf went limp instantly. Harry shoved the corpse off him, but not before it managed a final, desperate snap of its jaws. They clamped down on the vambrace of his left arm. The teeth, some of them as long as a dagger, shattered against the Valyrian steel and scraped against metal with a hideous screech. Harry drove his boot into the wolf’s ruined face, breaking the grip, then stood and sheathed his sword. He looked down at his arm. The vambrace was disgusting and slimy, but otherwise undamaged. He exhaled, then cleaned himself with his magic. He then flexed his fingers to make sure nothing was broken. Kinvara stared at him, her face pale as the ash covering the ground. Melisandre had collapsed to all fours, panting, her eyes wild. Harry just smiled at them both.

“Are you alright?” he said, as if he’d just finished a brisk morning jog.

Kinvara nodded dumbly. Melisandre slowly pushed herself upright, face flushed with exhaustion and arousal. It always turned her on when she saw him flex his might.  “That was … impressive, My Lord,” she managed, bowing her head.

They looked around at the aftermath. The courtyard was demolished. Piles of charred bone and melted wolf flesh littered the stones, and the smell of burned hair and rotten meat hung heavy in the cold air. The mist had been blown away by the heat, revealing the full height of the fortress. The doors, which had been opened moments before, now hung crooked on broken hinges. Harry rolled his shoulders, the adrenaline already fading. He kicked the smoking wolf corpse away from him, sending its limp body tumbling across the ruined ground. Harry looked at the broken door and chuckled. “Is that the best you can do?” he asked the presence within. 

A roar suddenly cut through the air. It was as if a mountain had split in half. Even Harry felt the shock of it in his chest. The girls flinched, bracing themselves against the shockwave of the sound. The air vibrated, and the stones under their feet trembled. Melisandre was the first to recover. She raised her eyes skyward, her red hair whipping about her face. “By the Lord of Light,” she gasped.

Kinvara’s jaw went slack. “That can’t be …”

Above them was a dragon unlike anything they had ever seen. It was colossal, its wingspan dwarfing the ruined fortress beneath. Its scales were not the gunpowder black of Harry’s dragon, nor the deep red of the Targaryen beasts. They were the milky white color of fresh ghost grass. The weak sunlight caught each scale and made them shimmer like the surface of the Jade Sea. Beneath that spectral hide ran a network of black veins, pulsing with foul, greasy magic. The dragon’s head was a nightmare. Three horns jutted from its brow, twisted and stained. Its eyes glowed with a dead blue fire. When it opened its mouth to roar again, the sound alone was enough to send flocks of crows streaming from the walls.

Harry stared up at it, a slow smile spreading across his face. There was a challenge in that roar, and he’d never met a challenge he didn’t like. He looked back at the girls. “I guess I spoke too soon,” he said, almost gleeful.

The white dragon drew a vast circle over the fortress, then folded its wings and dropped into a dive. It was coming straight for them. The girls ducked instinctively, shielding themselves behind Harry. He planted his feet and waited, as if daring the beast to come nearer, but before the white dragon could close the distance, a shadow arrowed through the sky, moving far faster than any living thing should.

Daemon hit the white dragon in midair. The resulting shockwave blasted the city below with hurricane winds. Every loose stone, every fragment of rotten bone, and every single strand of Melisandre’s silky hair was whipped horizontal in a split second. The sound was like two mountains colliding. Melisandre and Kinvara both screamed, then clung to each other as the two dragons tumbled through the sky.

Daemon was every bit the white dragon’s equal, but he had the benefit of being hatched with Harry’s godlike power. He raked the white dragon’s side with his claws, tearing long, glistening gouges from scale and flesh. The white dragon retaliated, lashing out with a spiked tail. The blow caught Daemon’s wing, tearing the leathery membrane and sending a spray of dark blood into the air. The two dragons locked together, jaws and claws entangled, and spiraled downward. As they fell, their roars and bellows shook the fortress to its core.

Harry watched them tumble. To anyone else, it looked like the end of the world was near, but to Harry, it was the greatest thing he had ever seen. He grinned excitedly, then turned to the women. “You two wait here,” he told them. 

Kinvara blinked at him, dazed by the chaos above. “Where are you going?” she said, her voice muffled by the hand she’d thrown over her mouth. Melisandre just stared, her lips moving in silent prayer.

“Up there,” Harry calmly said, like he was about to go on a nice Sunday stroll through the garden. He snapped his fingers, and a protective bubble expanded around the girls. It kept them safe and secure but still allowed them to watch every second.

Without hesitation, Harry bent his knees and poured every ounce of magic into his muscles. He launched himself from the shattered courtyard. The pressure cratered the stones where he had stood. He shot upward like a cannonball, and the girls cried out again, but this time in awe.

Harry met the falling dragons at the apex of their spiral. The white dragon had locked its jaws on Daemon’s throat and was trying to wring the life out of him. Thankfully, Daemon’s hide was infused with Harry’s magic and thus was as hard as Valyrian steel. Harry didn’t hesitate. He reached out with his left hand and seized the nearest of the white dragon’s horns, digging his fingers into the bone with supernatural strength. The dragon jerked in surprise, releasing Daemon just long enough for Harry to vault onto the back of its neck. He landed just behind the bony ridge of its skull, wedging his knees tight to stay in position. The dragon twisted and bucked, but Harry was immovable..

“Let’s see who’s got the stronger will,” Harry said through clenched teeth.

He placed his palm against the back of the dragon’s skull and sent a torrent of magic into its mind. The world around him vanished, and suddenly, he was inside the dragon’s head. It was pure chaos. The mind of the beast was a frothing storm of pain, hunger, and hate. Harry could feel the curse that had bred it. It was something ancient, twisted, and deliberate. The curse fought back, raking at his soul with claws of darkness and teeth of ice. Harry laughed, because this was the part he liked best. He waded into the storm and met the curse head-on.

He saw flashes … images of the Shadowlands, of sorcerers in black-and-gold robes, of rituals performed in the lightless depths beneath the city. He saw the dragon as an egg, bathed in rivers of poison. As a hatchling, it was fed the flesh of the dead. He saw the curse take hold, worming into its mind and twisting it to serve only destruction.

Harry fought it, hammering at the curse with raw, unfiltered power. The curse tried to worm into his own mind and drag him down into madness. He saw the girls below, their faces twisted in terror. He saw Melisandre on her knees, praying. He saw Kinvara, too stunned to even scream. He ground his teeth, focused, and tore the curse out by its roots. The curse screamed out a soundless wail that echoed in Harry’s mind, then shattered into nothing. Harry cleared away the last tendrils, sweeping the dragon’s mind clean. He left only what was essential … the animalistic instincts, the will to live, and a loyalty to himself.

Suddenly, the beast’s body went limp, and the wings steadied. Harry opened his eyes and saw the world as it was. The wind whipped his long hair in all directions. The clouds dampened his face, and the sun beamed its warm light on his skin. They were miles above the ground, but now the dragon responded to him as if he had been its master from birth.

“Down,” Harry ordered, and the dragon obeyed.

They dove from the sky. The wind roared in Harry’s ears, but he relished the speed. He could see the fortress below, the corpse city beyond, and the two women huddled in his shimmering cocoon of magic. As he drew closer, Harry could see Daemon circling below, recovering from his wounds. He let out a roar of triumph, then banked aside to let them land. Harry reached out with his magic and healed his dragon’s injuries. He then did the same for the white dragon. He sent a mental ping to his drones to provide both dragons with plenty of fresh meat. 

The white dragon hit the ground with thunderous force. The impact shattered the stones of the courtyard and set the walls trembling. Harry guided the beast to a halt, then leapt lightly from its neck. He landed with a thud and walked over to where Melisandre and Kinvara were huddled together. He snapped his fingers and released their shield. The girls stared at him, eyes wide as dinner plates. Harry just smiled like an idiot.

He looked at his new dragon and patted its side. Its scales were cold and rough, and under his touch, the black veins seemed to fade a little. The dragon blinked at him, then dropped its head in submission.

Harry glanced at the two women. “See?” he said, “Nothing to worry about.”

Kinvara’s knees finally gave out, and she plopped down on her shapely bottom. Harry couldn’t help but chuckle. He could see that they had finally reached their limit. “Why don’t we go rest for a while?” Harry suggested. Both women gratefully nodded. 

“I believe that’s a good idea, My Lord,” Melisandre said. Her nipples were rock-hard, and it was obvious that only one thing was on her mind. Harry opened his arms, and both women rushed into his embrace. All three disappeared from the spot.