"Time is short. You two, stop arguing. I am willing to yield my honor to Ser Song," said Rhaegar Celtigar, his face twisted in visible pain.
Before the Dragon Queen could speak, Ser Song stepped forward, grabbed the Little Crab's hand, and said with heartfelt sincerity, "Thank you, Ser Celtigar. Truly, thank you. When we reach heaven, I will pray to the Mother every day, asking her to bless you with health and longevity, so you may live until the Long Summer arrives."
"The Mother? Don't you worship the Lord of Light?" the Little Crab asked in confusion, staring at the flaming red heart on his chest.
"You can still go to heaven if you worship the Lord of Light. Fight the Others, go to heaven," Song replied matter-of-factly.
The pockmarked knight studied his companion uncertainly. Seeing that he looked serious and not suddenly deranged, he asked curiously, "You were just scolding me for betraying the faith and even refused to carry indulgences. Why have you changed your mind now?"
Ser Song glanced up at the sky and said quickly, "His Majesty Stannis Baratheon and Lady Melisandre are both dead, and the sun has been swallowed by darkness.
I think the Lord of Light may not be very reliable. The Mother of the Seven Kingdoms feels more real and more powerful.
You've been to the Seven's heaven and even came back to life wearing holy robes. But who has ever gone to the Red God's heaven? Who knows what it's like there? What if you really get forged into chains? That would be miserable."
The words were too practical for Richard to refute.
Under the Dragon Queen's expressionless gaze, the Little Crab tried to slip away in embarrassment, only to be grabbed by the stout knight.
"Wait, Count Celtigar. I don't have an indulgence. Lend me your universal red-glow version."
"I still have to fight the wights outside the city later," the Little Crab said awkwardly.
Richard turned to the Dragon Queen. "Do you have any extra indulgences?"
"I didn't bring any, but don't worry. I'll stay right here. When you die, I will immediately summon the Stranger and send you to heaven," Daenerys promised.
In truth, while they were chatting, the others were not standing around foolishly listening.
After confirming that the suicide squad would be the Little Crab and Richard, Old Barristan, Jaime, and the rest had already raised their shields and withdrawn into the gate tunnel.
Now, only about a dozen Valyrian steel Unsullied, along with Daenerys, the Flame-Red-Heart Knight, and the Little Crab, were pinning down the Night King.
"You two, hold it tight!"
Daenerys directed the two Flame-Red-Heart knights to press the Night King firmly in place. Then her figure flashed and she moved ten meters away.
The next instant—
Screech!
The spatial gate beneath Drogon suddenly expanded. The tower that had previously been only half severed was now cleanly sliced in half by a pale red mirror-like plane.
"Boom!"
The chimney-shaped stone tower immediately sank into the pale red mirror and dropped from another mirror outside the city gate.
"Mother, bless us~~" Watching the "hollow" stone tower fall from above, Song could not help shouting, "Make sure it crushes me to death!"
Well, the tower was not solid, of course.
The spatial gate had cut along the road by the city wall. The bottom of the falling tower was actually the first-floor hall, over twenty square meters in size and more than four meters high, like a large bowl covering the Flame-Red-Heart knights and the Night King beneath it.
If the tower had been sturdy enough, the two men and the Other would have been like Bai Suzhen beneath the Leifeng Pagoda, trapped under the base of the tower rather than crushed into meat paste. After all, there was still four meters of space above their heads.
Fortunately, the spatial gate had opened rather high. Falling from over twenty meters in the air, the hundred-ton stone tower had no steel framework. When it hit the ground, it shook a few times and then collapsed.
"BOOOM!" The earth trembled. Dust filled the air, and a heap of rubble seven or eight meters high now stood at the city gate.
The hail from the sky ceased. After the thunderous explosion, the entirety of Winterfell fell into silence.
It was utterly quiet. Apart from the howling northern wind, everyone craned their necks and stared at the pile of stones below the city.
"Is the Night King dead?" Barristan asked expectantly.
"Definitely not. The wights outside the city haven't fallen, and the torches on the wall still won't light," Jon said with a frown.
"Not just the Night King. Even Ser Richard and Ser Song aren't dead," Daenerys said awkwardly.
She had kept her promise, waiting for their souls so she could send them to heaven. Since no souls had appeared, it meant they were still alive.
With eight thousand years of history, Winterfell's building stone was naturally of excellent quality. Even the tower floors were carved from single massive slabs of stone, extremely sturdy. Several long stone beams had fallen together at an angle, forming a triangular space that allowed the two Flame-Red-Heart knights to survive.
But just as Ser Song had shouted, he would rather have been crushed into meat paste.
To suffer slowly in pain and bleeding was too tormenting.
"Without the hero's red sword, can the Night King truly not be killed?" the Great Bear muttered, frowning.
"It's covered in a thick layer of ice armor. Even blades can't cut through it. Withstanding falling boulders is only natural.
But at least the Night King is trapped inside. We can wipe out all the wights first and deal with it slowly afterward," Jaime said excitedly.
"Your Grace, you could use the spatial gate to slice its body," Jon suggested quietly.
Daenerys pointed to the sky and said gravely, "We can try, but first we have to drive away the one above."
"Gods… what is that?" Jon cried out as soon as he looked up.
"Rumble—crack—!"
Above Winterfell, the black clouds began to rotate slowly, forming a massive counterclockwise vortex. Chains of purple-black lightning circled its center.
At first, the dark clouds covered only about a hundred meters near the King's Gate. But like cotton candy being wound tighter and tighter, each rotation of the vortex dragged the surrounding curtain of darkness along with it.
Round after round.
Under everyone's stunned gaze, a black vortex spanning ten kilometers covered the sky.
"Ah! Look into the distance—there's light!" Ygritte suddenly shouted from the city wall.
In fact, she need not have reminded them. Everyone had already noticed that the once uniformly dark sky had split into inner and outer rings.
With each turn of the massive vortex, the darkness within grew denser, while the sky outside the vortex lightened by a fraction.
If darkness were materialized velvet, and the total amount of velvet were fixed, evenly spread across the northern sky
Now, under the control of a god, that velvet of darkness was beginning to gather above Winterfell.
Winterfell grew even darker, while the sky in other places revealed a pale gray-white glow. From afar, it looked as if light had appeared beyond the black vortex.
In truth, there was no sunlight at all. The light existed only because the darkness set it off.
R'hllor had already retreated, and even the shattered sun had exhausted its energy and vanished completely.
"Be careful. This is a large-scale ice storm spell. Everyone, immediately enter the crypts and take shelter." A flock of ravens descended from the sky, cawing in unison above Winterfell.
Bran had been too anxious and appeared before everyone without concealment, causing the defenders of Winterfell to be both shocked and suspicious.
Great Black immediately followed up, "By order of the command, all officers along every section of the wall are to lead their men into the crypts at once."
Winterfell possessed a bug-like structure: crypts that extended dozens of meters underground.
All Kings in the North and official members of House Stark, excluding bastards and married daughters, were buried in the underground crypts of Winterfell after death.
For example, Lyanna, Eddard, Rickard, and Brandon were all interred there.
Each deceased had a space the size of a parking spot to hold a stone coffin, a statue, and a direwolf.
In front of each stone coffin stood a statue carved in the likeness of the deceased, with a roaring direwolf at its feet.
Every time Robert went to Winterfell, the first thing he did was descend into the crypt to see Lyanna's statue.
For eight thousand years, the Stark line had endured. How many had died?
Yet they were all placed in the crypts, which showed how vast the area must be.
In fact, the enormous cavern of the crypts was even larger than the castle above ground.
At Great Black's command, the soldiers in the city began to withdraw in an orderly manner.
Dany sent a mental transmission: "How powerful is the Cold God's large-scale spell?"
"It can destroy cities and wipe out nations. It is weaker than the breaking of the Arm of Dorne and the flooding of the Neck, but certainly stronger than the great flood launched by the Rhoynar water wizards that drowned the Valyrian cities." Bran's mental fluctuations carried exhaustion and helplessness.
"Fuck, that's a forbidden spell. Will hiding in the crypts even help?" Dany's face turned pale.
She began to consider whether she should immediately mount a dragon and flee.
"If you were not here, everyone here would undoubtedly die." A large raven landed on the city gate, cawing loudly.
"What use is individual strength against such a natural disaster?"
"You are the master of the Song of Wind. How could a Wind God be crushed by a storm?" Bran said in a low voice.
The words made perfect sense. Dany had no way to refute them.
Yet even if she could not refute them, she still had to argue. "I don't know a single wind-element spell. I can only communicate with the wind in the most primitive way.
Or perhaps in the Greenseer's memories there is some powerful wind sorcery you can teach me now?"
"You possess the One Realm Wind of the Mother Goddess. Find all the tornadoes, analyze their structure, and you will be able to research the sorcery to summon tornadoes yourself. Do you still need me to teach you?"
"Come tell me that in five hundred years. I've only had the One Realm Wind for half a month. And in this half month, how many things have I had to worry about?"
"We are not attacking the other side; we are defending against their attack. You don't need to use large-scale magic. You only need to disrupt the opponent's ice storm. Try it first." Bran's voice softened somewhat.
Dany sighed. Two fire crows flew out from her eyes and landed on her shoulders, transforming into a round shield of flaming wings. With a leap, she shot into the air like a great bird, leaving behind a fiery afterimage in the pitch-black sky as she arrived beneath the massive black vortex.
Wherever the Wind God went, the winds of nature were her friends. She could merge into them or borrow their power to fly.
Now, however, she felt winds beyond her control.
They were extremely cold, slowly condensing under the vortex's rotation. The embryonic form of a tornado had already taken shape. She was like a willow leaf, drifting uncontrollably with the wind.
Dividing her focus, she used the second soul within the Ring of Wind to enter the state of the Song of Wind and analyze the structure of the ice storm. At the same time, she chatted absentmindedly with the Three-Eyed Raven. "If the Cold God is so strong, how did Azor Ahai end the Long Night?"
"What did you do? Don't you know? R'hllor plotted against you. You could have simply resisted. Why tear things apart completely and fuse with the destiny of the Lady of Light?
Count for yourself how many Songs of Law you've stepped into.
The four great elements, death, and now light as well. Aren't you exhausted?" Bran complained.
Dany snapped, "From the moment he schemed against me, we had already torn things apart. Instead of blaming R'hllor for breaking the rules first, you come to reproach me, your diligent ally who was betrayed? Are you out of your mind? Do you know I lost twenty percent of my divine soul power?"
"Did I complain when you destroyed the Red Sword? If you had pretended to cooperate until we got through this crisis before fusing with the Lady of Light's destiny, I could even have helped you deal with R'hllor."
"A perfect situation was ruined because the two of you turned on each other."
"So that's how it is. Destruction really is far easier than creation."
Dany suddenly laughed. As her carefree laughter rang out, a pale cyan wind belt encircled her body.
The wind belt seemed alive, devouring every tornado descending from the massive vortex while simultaneously spreading waves of chaotic winds in all directions.
It was as if the wind had become a tangible substance like water. The Cold God's massive vortex was gathering a pool of wind, while beneath it Dany connected a conduit to siphon the water into her own pool, then opened the tap to let it flow back into nature.
Boom—crack—
In less than a quarter of an hour, the tornadoes beneath the massive black vortex completely collapsed.
Just as Bran had said, Dany was the true master of the Song of Wind.
Ordinary wind sorcery driven by magical or divine power was beyond Dany's control because that divine power belonged to the god-demon who wielded it.
But large-scale wind forbidden spells inevitably involved the natural wind elements. When it came to controlling the wind elements between heaven and earth, Dany might lack technique, yet she could disrupt the opponent's "ordered control."
"Be careful. The white frost is coming."
Just as Dany was feeling exhilarated, Bran shouted at the top of his lungs. His mental fluctuations were filled with terror.
(End of Chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09