For Advance/Early chapters :p
atreon.com/ScoldeyJod
We left the gilded cage of Xaro's palace on foot. There was no fanfare. We were two shadows slipping through the opulent, perfumed streets of Qarth, a queen and her monster, bound on a hunt.
Jorah's face, as we left him, was a mask of such profound, agonizing conflict that it would have been pitiful if it wasn't so infuriating. He was a man forced to obey a command that went against every instinct, left behind to guard the living while his queen walked toward the dead.
The city, usually alive with the whispers of merchants and the soft shuffle of silk, felt hollow. The pale, ghost-like Qartheen watched us from their high, barred windows and ornate balconies. They did not speak. They did not wave. They simply stared, their faces blank. News of the gala, of the warlock's public threat, had clearly spread. We were taboo. We were already dead.
Daenerys walked with a stiff, furious purpose. Her hand was on the hilt of her arakh, her lilac eyes fixed forward, burning with a cold fire that seemed to ward off the cloying humidity of the Qartheen night. She was no longer a girl. She was a weapon.
My own senses were stretched to their limit. My Seidr, my magic, was a low, thrumming ache beneath my skin, drained but aware. I could feel the city's magic, or lack thereof. It was a place of surface-level illusions, of weak, parasitic glamours. A city of paper tigers, just as I had thought.
Except for the one, single column of cold, dead, wrongness that rose from the city like a blackened, skeletal finger. The House of the Undying.
Xaro had called it a ruin, and he had not lied. It was a tower, but not like the slender, graceful spires of Qarth. This was an ancient, crumbling stump of black, oil-slick stone, pockmarked with age, looking more like a diseased tooth than a building. It had no windows, no doors, only a single, gaping, black maw at its base, a perfect archway that seemed to drink the starlight.
The air around it was cold. A dry, unnatural chill that had nothing to do with my Asgardian frost-giant heritage. This was the cold of the grave. It smelled of dust, of spoiled, millennia-old spices, and of something else… a faint, chemical tang, like ozone and dried blood.
Daenerys stopped at the threshold, her breathing suddenly audible in the silence. Drogon, who she had brought clutched in her arms, hissed weakly, his head darting back and forth.
She was afraid. I felt her fear, a tremor against the hand I placed on the small of her back.
"He is in there," she whispered, her voice a low vibration.
"He is," I confirmed. "And he is waiting for us. He wants us to be afraid. He wants us to be weak."
I looked down at her. Her face was pale in the starlight, but her eyes were pure fire. "Are you weak, Daenerys?"
She met my gaze, a slow, dangerous smile touching her lips. "He murdered my people. He stole my children. Let him see what a weak, little girl can do."
"Together," I murmured, and the word was a vow, a pact sealed in blood and vengeance. My hand, still on her back, slid to her waist, a possessive, grounding grip.
We stepped through the archway, out of the balmy night and into the absolute, crushing darkness.
The blackness was total, a physical weight. Then, a blue flame ignited in a sconce on the wall. And another. And another. They flared to life as we walked, illuminating a narrow, twisting corridor of the same black, oily stone.
"A parlor trick," I muttered, my voice echoing unnaturally. My magical dagger was in my hand, its green-gold light a healthy, living contrast to the sick, blue glow of the warlock's fire.
The corridor opened into a vast, circular room. The blue flames revealed doorways, dozens of them, all identical.
"A maze," Daenerys breathed, her grip tightening on the hilt of her own magical blade. "He plays with us."
"He's stalling," I said, my senses tingling. The magic here was thick, disorienting. "He's trying to separate us. Stay close."
I didn't wait. I chose a door at random and pushed it open.
We stepped through, and the black stone vanished.
We were in a vast hall, the roof shattered, open to a winter sky. Snow—or was it ash?—drifted down, coating the floor, coating the melted, monstrous high-backed chair that sat at the end of the room. The Iron Throne.
"This is... my home," Daenerys whispered, her voice aching. She let go of my hand, drifting forward like a sleepwalker, her hand outstretched toward the throne. "The Red Keep."
"Daenerys," I said, my voice sharp. "It's an illusion. A lie. It's a cage, just like Xaro's, but built from your own hopes. It's meant to hold you. To feed on your longing."
She tore her eyes from the throne, her face a mask of conflict. She hated that I was right. "Burn it," she whispered.
I raised my glowing dagger, but I didn't need to. The room dissolved, melting like wax.
We were in a Dothraki tent, the air warm, smelling of horses and woodsmoke. In the center, a man sat, his back to us. He was tall, powerfully built, his long, dark braid adorned with bells.
Khal Drogo.
He turned, and he smiled. And in his arms, he held a beautiful, copper-skinned baby boy.
Daenerys made a sound. A terrible, broken, inhuman sound, a sob that was ripped from her very soul.
"Rhaego," she breathed, the name a prayer.
She tore her arm from my grasp and stumbled forward. "My sun and stars... my son..."
Drogo looked at her, his dark eyes soft. "My moon," he said, his voice a perfect memory. "You are here. He is waiting for you."
Daenerys's hand, trembling so hard she could barely control it, reached out to touch the baby's face.
"Daenerys!" I roared, lunging. I tackled her, grabbing her around the waist, pulling her back from the illusion. She fought me, screaming, her fists pounding on my armor.
"Let me go! Let me hold him! Loki, please!" she sobbed, her fury gone, replaced by a devastating, all-consuming grief.
"It is not real!" I yelled, shaking her, my own heart breaking at the sound of her pain. "He is using your grief! He is feeding on it! Look at me! Look at me!"
I grabbed her face, forcing her to look away from the phantom husband and child. Her lilac eyes were blurred with tears, her face a wreck of agony.
"He isn't real," I said, my voice softening, my rage giving way to a pained intimacy. "But I am. We are. What we have is real. What we will create... that will be real."
Her sobs quieted, her breathing still ragged. She stared into my eyes, finding her anchor. "You," she whispered. "Real."
"I am real," I promised. "And I will not let him trap you in a shadow."
She nodded, a single, sharp movement. The fight returned to her eyes. "Kill it," she hissed.
I turned and hurled my magical dagger. It flew through the air and struck the illusion of Khal Drogo directly in the chest. There was no blood. Only a shriek, a sound of frustrated magic, and the tent, the fire, and the family she craved, exploded into dust.
We were in the black corridor again. She was leaning against me, her body shaking, but she was free.
"He's using our hearts against us," she said, her voice rough.
"He's used yours," I growled, my grip on her hand tightening. "Now it's my turn."
The next doorway opened onto a scene that made my blood run cold. A mortal street. The smell of asphalt and exhaust. The frantic, pounding screech of tires.
"Loki, what is this?" Daenerys whispered, clutching my arm.
"My... my death," I said, my voice flat.
I watched the scene. The kid. The red ball. The truck. I saw myself—David—lunge and push the child. But the illusion twisted. The child stumbled and fell, and the truck hit him. A small, terrible sound. And David—I—stood there, untouched. A failure. A coward.
"You failed," a voice whispered. It was Frigga. My mother. She was standing beside me, her beautiful face a mask of crushing disappointment. "You failed the child, David. And you failed Asgard, Loki. You always fail. You are a creature of failure."
"Loki?" Daenerys said, her voice tight with worry. She felt me tense, but it was not with shame.
It was with a fury so cold, so absolute, it burned.
I did not stagger. I did not look away. I stared at the illusion of my mother, my expression turning to one of pure, divine contempt.
"You..." I whispered, my voice a low, lethal hiss directed not at the phantoms, but at Pyat Pree himself, at the very air in the room. "You dare."
The illusion of Frigga recoiled, as if struck.
"You dig in my mind," I snarled, taking a step toward the phantoms, "and you pull out my past. My pain. My memory. And you think you can wound me with it? You think you can use her face against me?"
My voice dropped to a growl. "I have lived with this failure, with all my failures, for an eternity. They are mine. They are the stones I am built from." I raised my hand, not with magic, but in a gesture of pure, dismissive arrogance. "You are an insect, warlock. A parasite. And you have just made the mistake of touching a god."
The illusion shattered. Not with a blast, but with the force of my contempt. The street, my mother, the truck—it all dissolved into dust, unable to hold itself together in the face of my cold, absolute rage.
Daenerys was staring at me, her mouth slightly open. She hadn't seen a man break. She had seen a god pass judgment.
"He is angry," I said, my voice tight. "He is lashing out. He's desperate. We're close."
I kicked open the next door.
This was it. The final room. It was vast, circular, and pulsed with a sick, blue light that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. In the center, on a raised dais, sat the Undying.
They were a collection of nightmares. Dozens of withered, desiccated, corpse-like figures, their bodies ancient, their lips stained blue. They were dead, all of them. All except one.
Pyat Pree.
He stood in the center, his arms raised, his face ecstatic. The three dragons were in a cage of blue, magical energy above his head, screeching, terrified, beating their small wings against their prison.
"You came," Pyat Pree hissed, but his voice was an echo, a chorus. It was coming from all of the Undying at once. "The godling and his pet. We have waited so long for new life. New magic. Your fire, little queen, and your... different blood, shadow-walker."
"Let them go!" Daenerys commanded, her voice raw, her arakh in her hand.
"They are ours," the collective voice boomed. "They are the key. They will restore us. They will be our nourishment. And you, godling... you will be our feast. You will join us. You will be... Undying."
Chains of the same blue, magical energy lashed out from the shadows, from the walls, from the floor. They were impossibly fast.
"Daenerys, move!" I yelled, shoving her hard to the side.
But they weren't for her. They were for me.
They wrapped around my arms, my legs, my torso, pinning me, lifting me into the air. It was a cold, burning agony, and I felt my Seidr, my precious, limited magic, being drained. It was a violation, an intimate, horrifying theft, pulling my very essence from my body.
I cried out, a sound of pain and rage. The green dagger in my hand sputtered and died.
"Loki!" Daenerys screamed, her face a mask of terror.
"Yes, my Queen," Pyat Pree's voice echoed, his face alight with a horrifying, orgasmic pleasure as he drank in my power. "Watch your monster die. Watch your godling become... one of us."
I was trapped. I was being drained. And Daenerys was alone, facing an army of the dead.