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Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
ASOIAF and all of its characters belong to GRRM
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 91: The Sorcerer Might
The silence in the great hall was absolute.
No one dared to move or even breathe.
The guards stood frozen, their swords half-drawn, their faces pale as milk.
The green light had faded from Joffrey's fingertip, but its afterimage still burned in their eyes, a memory of death that would haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives.
Melisandre's words died in her throat. For the first time since she had come to Westeros, the red priestess had nothing to say. Her certainty, her faith, her unshakeable conviction...all of it had been shattered in an instant, replaced by a doubt that gnawed at her soul like a rat in the walls.
Ser Davos Seaworth stared at the body of his king, his mouth open, his eyes wide with disbelief.
He had seen Stannis Baratheon survive storms and sieges, had watched him endure defeats that would have broken lesser men. He had believed, despite everything, that Stannis would prevail.
That the king would sit on the Iron Throne, that justice would be done, that the world would be set right.
Now that belief lay dead at his feet, its eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
Joffrey lowered his hand.
"Stannis Baratheon is dead," he said, his voice carrying across the hall. "His claim to the throne is ended. His war is over."
He turned to face the guards, his green eyes glowing with an inner fire.
"Now," he said, his voice cold as steel. "Who else wants to die?"
The guards hesitated.
They looked at the body of their king, then at the man who had killed him.
Joffrey was young, his face smooth and unlined, his long golden hair loose about his shoulders. He should have looked like a boy playing at being a man, a princeling who had stumbled into a situation far beyond his understanding.
Instead, he looked like something ancient and dreadful. Something that had walked the world for centuries and had seen empires rise and fall like waves upon the shore. There was a weight to him that had nothing to do with his physical form, a gravity that pressed down on the souls of all who looked upon him.
One of the guards took a step forward, his sword raised, his voice trembling with rage. "You killed the king!"
Joffrey raised an eyebrow, his expression one of mild amusement. "I did."
Another guard stepped forward, his face red with fury. "You will burn for this!"
Melisandre stepped forward, her hands trembling. She looked at Joffrey with a mixture of fear and fascination, her red eyes searching his face for answers that she could not find. "You killed him," she whispered, her voice barely audible above the crackling of the torches. "The prince that was promised. You killed him."
Joffrey turned to face her. He knew what Stannis had planned for him, for the Starks, for his two siblings in King's Landing. He knew how stubborn the man had been, how convinced of his own righteousness, how willing he was to sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve his goals.
Stannis Baratheon was not a man who compromised. He was not a man who could be swayed by reason or mercy. He believed, with every fiber of his being, that the Iron Throne belonged to him by right, and he would have stopped at nothing to claim it.
Death was the only way to stop him.
"The Prince that was Promised," Joffrey repeated, the title rolling off his tongue like a bitter wine. "I have to say, Lady Melisandre, that your colleagues at the Red Temple would disagree with that assessment." He gestured dismissively at Stannis's corpse, his metal hand catching the torchlight. "If Stannis Baratheon was truly who you thought he was... he would still be alive. You misread the flames. Or perhaps you only saw what you wanted to see. He was just a desperate man."
Melisandre's lips parted, but no words came out. For the first time since she had come to Westeros, doubt flickered in those burning red eyes. She had seen Stannis in the flames, had believed him to be Azor Ahai reborn, the hero who would lead the world against the darkness. She had staked everything on that belief.
And now he was dead, killed by a boy who wielded powers she could not understand.
The soldiers had had enough talking. Their hearts were thirsty for revenge.
"FOR THE KING!" One of them roared, charging forward with his sword raised high.
Then another.
And another.
Dozens of soldiers and knights surged forward, their weapons gleaming in the dim light of the hall, their faces twisted with rage and grief.
They came at Joffrey from all sides, a tide of steel and fury, hoping to avenge their fallen king, to wash away the stain of his murder with the blood of his killer.
Joffrey did not move. He did not need to.
He raised his metal hand, and fire erupted from his palm...wild, hungry fire that consumed everything in its path. "Incendium!"
The first wave of soldiers was thrown back, their cloaks ablaze, their screams filling the hall.
The fire clung to them, feeding on their flesh and their armor, reducing men to ash in the span of a heartbeat.
The smell of burning hair and melted steel filled the air, thick and choking.
More men came, and Joffrey raised his other hand.
"Glacius!"
Ice shot from his fingers, freezing the stone floor beneath their feet. Soldiers slipped and fell, their armor cracking against the frozen ground, their limbs snapping as they crashed down.
A knight in full plate lunged at him, his sword aimed at Joffrey's heart.
Joffrey stepped aside with an almost lazy grace, his body moving with a fluidity that seemed impossible for a man of his size.
He flicked his wrist, and a cutting charm sliced through the knight's sword arm, sending it flying across the hall in a spray of blood. "Diffindo!"
Another soldier came from behind, his sword swinging in a wide arc.
Joffrey spun, his metal arm catching the blade with a screech of tortured steel. He twisted, and the sword shattered into a dozen pieces. A confusion charm sent the man stumbling away, his eyes glassy, his mind lost in a fog of bewilderment. "Confundo!"
The scene in the hall became one of pure disarray.
Men were cut down by invisible blades. Others were frozen solid where they stood, their bodies turned to ice in the space of a breath. Some turned on their own comrades, their minds twisted by dark magic, their eyes empty of recognition.
The air was filled with screams and the stench of fresh blood, the clash of steel, and the crackle of fire.
Joffrey stood in the center of it all, untouched.
A sword thrust at his back. He waved his hand, and the blade turned to ash, crumbling away like dry parchment.
A spear flew at his head. He caught it with magic and sent it back through the chest of its thrower, pinning him to the stone wall behind him.
"Imperio!"
The controlled soldier turned and began cutting down his own companions, his face slack, his eyes empty.
Joffrey watched with cold detachment, his expression unchanged. These men were nothing to him. They were obstacles, nothing more, and obstacles could be removed.
One of the knights, a burly man with a scar across his face, managed to close the distance. His sword was raised, his teeth bared in a snarl of rage. But before he could strike, Joffrey raised his metal arm and grabbed the blade. The steel shattered in his grip, and Joffrey drove his fist through the man's chest.
The knight fell, blood pouring from the gaping wound, his eyes wide with shock.
And still, Joffrey stood unharmed.
Melisandre watched with fascination.
Her eyes never left Joffrey's figure. She had seen power before...she had wielded it herself, had commanded flames and shadows, had bent men to her will with the force of her faith. But this... this was something else entirely. This was not the magic of the Lord of Light. This was something more primal, more direct. It was the magic of raw creation and destruction.
She had seen glimpses of it before, in the flames. Images of a figure shrouded in darkness, wielding powers that defied understanding. She had always assumed it was the Great Other, the enemy of her god, the darkness that would consume the world.
But now she understood.
The figure in her visions had not been the Great Other.
It had been him.
Joffrey Baratheon. The Runaway Heir. The Sorcerer Prince. The Monster.
And he was magnificent.
"Imperio!"
Another soldier turned on his fellows, his sword cutting through their ranks like a scythe through wheat.
The confusion spread like a plague, infecting the minds of the defenders. Men who had come to kill Joffrey were now killing each other, their minds broken by the sheer force of his magic.
"Avada Kedavra!"
Another green light streaked across the hall, swift and silent as a serpent. A knight fell, his eyes still wide with rage, his body already dead before it hit the floor.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
A half dozen soldiers froze mid-stride, their bodies rigid, their eyes wide with terror. They toppled like statues, crashing to the ground in an ungainly heap, their armor clanking against the stone.
The survivors began to understand.
They were not fighting a man.
They were fighting something much more terrible. An overwhelming force of nature that could not be stopped by their might alone. A storm that would not be weathered, a fire that would not be quenched, a death that could not be escaped.
One of the knights finally broke. He threw down his sword and ran for the doors, his armor clanking as he fled, his sobs echoing off the stone walls.
Then another. And another. Within moments, the rout was complete.
Men scrambled over each other, desperate to escape the horror in the great hall.
They abandoned their weapons, their shields, their honor...everything that had made them soldiers. Horses were mounted in panic, their riders kicking them into a gallop before they had even cleared the gates.
The gates were thrown open, and thousands of men fled Castle Black, their king's corpse still warm, their faith shattered, their courage broken.
Joffrey watched them go, but did not try to stop them.
His clothes were barely disturbed. His hair was still perfect, not a strand out of place. Not a single drop of blood had touched him, his body protected by a layer of magic that no normal weapon could penetrate.
He had stood in the center of a maelstrom of violence and death, and he had not even broken a sweat.
Those poor warriors had never had a chance.
The only ones who remained, other than the corpses that littered the floor like broken dolls, were Ser Davos Seaworth, who had refused to leave his king's side, and Melisandre, who now seemed more interested in Joffrey than anyone else.
The brothers of the Night's Watch were still there as well, huddled against the walls, their faces pale with shock.
They had seen many horrors in their time on the Wall...wildlings, wights, the cold itself. They had watched men freeze to death, starve to death, die in battle against enemies that could not be killed. But nothing had prepared them for this.
Nothing had prepared them for Joffrey Baratheon.
The prince turned to address them.
"Burn the corpses," he ordered, his voice flat. "All of them. I have seen what happens to bodies left unburied in the cold. I will not allow it to happen here."
The men of the Night's Watch did not question his authority.
Not after what they had just witnessed. Not even Alliser Thorne dared to say a word. The old knight simply nodded, his face ashen, and began directing his men to drag the bodies out of the hall.
But Ser Davos did not move.
He stood over Stannis's body, his face a mask of grief and defiance. His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, his jaw tight, his eyes blazing with hatred. He glared at Joffrey with all the fury he could muster, his voice low and trembling with emotion.
"I will not allow you to burn him," Davos said. His voice was quiet, but it carried across the hall like a thunderclap. "I will not allow you to defile his body."
Joffrey studied the old smuggler. He could see the man's pain, his loyalty, his desperate need to honor the king he had served. He could have killed Davos in an instant...one simple spell, and it would be over. The Onion Knight was no threat to him, nothing more than a nuisance.
Instead, he offered him a choice.
"Take him south, Ser Davos," Joffrey said. "Take his body as far away from the Wall as possible. Give him a proper burial in the south. Bury him where the ground does not freeze, where the dead do not rise. That is my offer."
Davos blinked, caught off guard. He had expected death, or worse. He had expected to be burned alongside his king, to feed the flames of the sorcerer's dark rituals. Instead, he had been offered mercy.
"You... you would allow that?" Davos asked, his voice filled with disbelief.
"I would," Joffrey replied. "I have no quarrel with dead men, only with the living who make foolish choices. Stannis chose his path, and he paid the price for it. But I will not dishonor his corpse."
Davos's eyes searched Joffrey's face, looking for the lie, the trick, the hidden cruelty. But he found only cold, honest truth. With a heavy sigh, he nodded.
"I will do as you ask," he said. "But know this...I will never forgive you for what you have done. Never."
"I don't expect you to," Joffrey said. "Now go. Take whatever men you can find and leave this place. This war is over."
But he knew there would be many more in the future.
Davos did not respond. He simply bent down, lifted Stannis's body in his arms, and walked out of the hall. His footsteps echoed off the stone walls, slow and steady, carrying the weight of his grief and his duty.
Joffrey watched him go.
Then he turned his attention to Melisandre, who was staring at him with a great deal of intensity, her red eyes burning with a mixture of fear, fascination, and something else that he could not quite identify.
"You can leave too, Priestess," Joffrey said. "Just be warned...the Red Temple of Asshai is no more."
Melisandre flinched, her composure cracking for just a moment. "The Temple is no more?"
"Burned," Joffrey said, pausing for effect. "But not by me. Dragon fire."
For once, it had not been him who left destruction in his path. He was not going to take credit for that particular piece of work.
Melisandre stood there, frozen in shock.
Joffrey ignored her and turned to the remaining black brothers still huddled against the walls.
"By the way," he said, his voice casual, "where is Jon Snow? I would like to speak with him."
He already knew that Ned Stark was no longer in Castle Black. He had escaped last night, along with his son Bran, two direwolves, a wildling woman, and her baby.
The information had come directly from the minds of Stannis's men, so there was no reason to doubt its veracity.
Apparently, the leader of the wildlings had also escaped the same night, likely together with Lord Stark's group.
He had promised Robb that he would find his father and brother. But the only thing that Stannis's men had been sure of was that Stark had fled north of the Wall, since the southern path had been heavily guarded.
The only one who would know the specifics was Jon Snow. He needed to speak with him.
But something was wrong.
Joffrey noticed the expressions on the faces of the Night's Watch brothers. Some of them looked troubled, their eyes darting away from his gaze. Others looked... guilty.
Joffrey's eyes narrowed into a deep frown.
"Where is he?" he demanded, his voice sharp as a blade.
The silence that followed was answer enough.
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