When Stannis had already taken a strike from the "Xuanming Divine Palm," and his armor, long scored with countless cuts from ice swords, shattered and fell away, the people on and below the city walls who were cheering for the savior had yet to react.
The Dragon Queen had already unleashed a rapid chain of Soul-Extinguishing Blows, knocking down the Fiery Redheart Knight who had been arguing with her.
Then came the fivefold Dragon Spirit layered with the divinity of the Sword God.
"Begone, demons and monsters! All under heaven may strike you down!"
Each syllable in the Dragon Queen's thunderous shout carried a Soul-Extinguishing sword slash empowered by the fivefold Dragon Spirit.
Ah, so this was turning into a siege.
"Caw, caw, caw—" The sky was suddenly blanketed by a mass of crows like a rolling black cloud. A colossal will solidified, like Sun Wukong's golden cudgel descending from the heavens, smashing down upon the Night King's head.
"Roar! I've been waiting for you!" The Night King withdrew the hand pressing on Stannis and howled at the sky. His shriek was like a storm of hidden pear-blossom needles, piercing the human souls in every direction full of holes.
"I am ice. I am darkness. I am order and eternity!" the Night King roared.
Ice spread beneath his feet, freezing everything it touched. Darkness pressed down over Winterfell like the lid of a coffin. The sun above wavered and dimmed, drained of light.
Torches and braziers, even wildfire, were abruptly extinguished.
This seemed to be more than a mere anti-fire domain. The laws of darkness and ice manifested freely, forming a small world where light and flame were forbidden to exist.
The Dragon Queen, who had been gathering dragonflame into a fireball in preparation for a powerful finishing move, felt it most keenly.
The great black dragon and the little green dragon beat their wings and hovered midair. The white dragon leapt onto the wall and stretched its neck. The dragonflame of the three great dragons converged above the Dragon Queen's head, and a massive fireball was about to take shape. Yet with every passing second, the dragonflame in the air rapidly lost heat and fire-magic power, and the art of fire control nearly failed.
Dragonflame could condense into a fireball only because Daenerys was using fire control, kneading it like dough, rolling long strands into a round ball.
In essence, fire control was still fire sorcery.
The Night King's domain of ice and darkness altered the rules. Fire sorcery was like a high-precision machine operating under the world's laws. Change a physical constant, and the machine malfunctioned.
All the more so when the altered laws specifically targeted fire and light.
Thus, fire control failed.
The spherical dragonflame sagged one moment, turned oval the next, then twisted into a triangle. The Dragon Queen now seemed the most inept of fire sorceresses.
What was Melisandre doing? Why was she no longer maintaining the surrounding "Flame Domain"?
Daenerys turned her head and saw the red-robed woman's face twisted in agony, her cries filled with pain. Wrinkles crept across her features like frost on a winter windowpane.
Her bronze-red, silky hair visibly withered and turned white. The exposed skin on her body shriveled like plucked chicken skin.
She was aging.
Her large red eyes had grown dull, and the ruby at her throat flickered like the breathing light on Ultraman's chest. Cracks were already clearly visible.
Melisandre's vanishing life, magic, and divine soul power were all being poured into Stannis. To her astonishment, Daenerys saw that the Stannis she had assumed dead was moving again.
"Crack—boom!" Stannis's wrist and neck radiated dazzling red light, and the ice encasing him exploded apart.
The red sword still burned hot. Stannis thrust it toward the Night King, who was howling skyward. Three thousand crows had formed a strange reverse-spiral formation and continued circling above its head. Daenerys's Soul-Extinguishing slash had never ceased. The clash of wills among the three sides continued without pause.
Just as Stannis seemed about to strike while the enemy was weakened and stage a desperate reversal, the Night King spoke.
"Mother Goddess!" it shrieked, calling upon its great patron.
"Rumble—"
In the next instant, thunder roared and lightning flashed. Above the clouds, the sun was engulfed in purple-black lightning. Below the clouds, the flock of crows seemed to have been blasted by a shotgun. The great crows' red eyes dimmed, blood streamed from their beaks, and they scattered with mournful cries.
"Cold… God…" High above the sky, the sun let out a wail that shook heaven and earth and rattled the city walls.
That was R'hllor.
The red priests had always preached a dualistic doctrine: the Lord of Light was the god of heat and life; the Cold God was the god of darkness, ice, and death. They were the two primal origins of the world, good and evil, light and darkness. Their struggle was endless, and the outcome of their struggle determined the fate of mankind.
Now, the Lord of Light and the Cold God collided once more.
The sky resembled a pot of boiling stew: icy water stewing the sun, darkness stewing the light.
Thick black clouds like a quilt wrapped around the shattered sun. Thunder, lightning, and rampaging divine power intertwined with countless sounds and colors, dizzying those who looked up and shaking the souls of those who listened.
Ordinary people could not hear the voices of R'hllor and the Cold God. Those were the cries of will.
From the moment Stannis was struck in the chest, to Melisandre using her life to help him break free of the icy seal, to the Night King summoning the Cold God in the face of Stannis's killing blow, the entire process might sound long in the telling, but it lasted only two or three breaths.
With the Cold God's descent, Stannis's red sword immediately lost most of its divine support. His thrusting charge also lost its certainty of a killing blow, as the Three-Eyed Raven was restrained by the Cold God.
"As you say, I am a servant of the Mother Goddess. You may be many, but I am not without allies."
The Night King's airy voice drifted in and out upon the wind, indistinct, yet anyone with ears could hear the smugness within it.
Without the suppressing will of the Three-Eyed Raven, it regained its swift mobility.
Enduring the Dragon Queen's soul slash, it spun lightly as if skating across ice and circled behind Stannis.
While evading Stannis's thrusting sword, it drove its own ice blade into Stannis's back, as easily as a fork piercing tofu.
But the Night King's triumphant sneer froze upon its pale, patterned face.
"Fool. I have seen it all—" These were Stannis's final words.
Before the sentence had fully left his lips, his red sword had already plunged into the Night King's chest.
"Arrgh!" the Night King wailed miserably.
Like an ice pop dropped into a vat of boiling oil, vast clouds of steam billowed around it. Sparks even seemed to spray from within its open mouth.
The sudden change happened very quickly, almost in the blink of an eye.
Only the Dragon Queen, who had drawn her sword and charged to the front of the Night King, saw the entire process clearly.
As the God of Cold descended and the flock of crows scattered, the Night King regained his ability to move. Amid the shocking turn of events, Second Stag seemed to know exactly what would happen next.
The motion of his straight thrust changed midway, or rather, he had never intended to use a direct thrust against the Night King.
It was a feint.
His wrist flipped, and the red sword reversed direction with the motion. The blade, flashing red and white light, turned toward himself. The strike was swift and resolute, as if he had rehearsed it countless times in his mind.
The red sword pierced through his chest as easily as a fork piercing tofu. The blade slid along his spine, passed through his back without touching a single bone, and effortlessly stabbed into the Night King, who had been thrusting at him from behind.
"Thud, thud!" Second Stag took two strikes; the Night King took one.
The Other stood behind Second Stag, a three-foot ice sword piercing through his back. Meanwhile, Lightbringer entered through the gap beneath his left ribs, passed through his body, and angled upward into the heart of the Night King behind him.
The two of them were like Jack and Rose at the bow of the Titanic, one in front and one behind, locked together in an embrace.
Second Stag also saw Dany charging toward him, but he could no longer speak.
When the red sword entered the Night King's body, it was as if a sun had been stuffed inside him, making him howl and steam. When the ice sword entered Second Stag's body, it was as if a black hole had been forced into him, instantly draining away his heat and vitality.
Yet the Night King was still struggling, while Second Stag was already on the verge of death.
Frost spread from his heart throughout his body, and his upper and lower lips froze together with ice crystals.
He could only face Dany with his blue eyes, rolling them to glance at the hilt of the red sword at his chest. A portion of the blade had not yet been pushed all the way in, and with its master losing strength, the red sword's glow was visibly dimming.
He blinked lightly at Dany twice: Come quickly. Push it in with all your strength. Don't let it escape.
For some reason, Dany immediately understood his intent.
Before she could react, Second Stag used his last bit of strength to shift his gaze toward the Red Woman in the distance. The ruby at her throat had completely shattered and fallen away. Her thick red hair had turned gray and brittle like dried straw, and her rosy, smooth cheeks had shriveled with wrinkles.
In an instant, the peerless priestess had become an old crone at the brink of death.
The light in Second Stag's weathered blue eyes gradually dimmed and finally went out.
Dany's heart pounded violently several times.
Looking again at the Night King behind him, howling and retreating, she gritted her teeth and strode forward. Grasping the hilt of the red sword, she summoned her magic and the power of her divine soul, activating the runes within the blade.
Pushing Second Stag's body, she drove it backward with all her strength.
Boom! The red sword, which had already grown dim and cold, once again radiated endless light and heat.
"Awooooooo!"
The Night King, who had just broken free from the blade, was pierced through the chest again and let out a piercing wail like steel teeth grinding glass.
Dany's expression changed drastically.
Her divinity, soul, and magic poured into the red sword like floodwaters released from a dam.
It was as if the red sword were a straw, and she had become a cup of milk tea, while an unseen greedy mouth sucked fiercely through it.
When Dany obeyed Second Stag's final wish and prepared to grip the red sword to deliver the final blow, she had already braced herself for the permanent loss of part of her soul and magic.
Just like the last time at the Black Castle, when merely swinging the sword twice had cost her about one-twentieth of her witch power and one percent of her soul permanently.
This time was even more terrifying. In less than a second, she lost five percent of her divinity, soul, and magic. Even the Song of Fire born within the flames seemed to be draining away.
This was not normal.
By now she had become a demigod, a dual-aspect demigod, ten times, a hundred times stronger than she had been at the Black Castle when she had just learned meditation less than a month earlier.
That meant the red sword's consumption now was hundreds of times greater than before.
She tried to stop pouring magic into it and even attempted to release her right hand from the hilt, but she could not.
The hilt was like it had been coated with superglue, stuck tightly to her palm.
Yet her struggle was not without effect. Without her active cooperation, the rate at which her essence, energy, and spirit drained slowed by tenfold.
Even at a tenth of the speed, she would wither and die in less than a minute.
"R'hllor, at a moment like this, you would betray me!"
Dany's soul let out an angry roar. The soul-destroying strike of her twin dragon spirits, Little Red and Little Gold, shifted from the Night King to the twisted, greedy evil spirit within the red sword.
"This is your destiny. Do not struggle. Look, the Night King is about to break free!"
From within the red sword came a grand, radiant, warm, and sacred voice, one that seemed capable of cleansing the soul.
This was not the shadow demon R'hllor, but the Lord of Light who represents heat and life.
Holier than the Holy Mother, a Holy Father.
And this Holy Father stabbed her fiercely in the lower back.
It hurt so much!
(End of Chapter)
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