The High Sparrow clamped Aegon's shoulder with his left hand and slapped the crown of his head with his right. A blaze of dazzling white light burst from his palm.
The white flame spread downward from the top of Aegon's head, burning all the way through him. His spirit twisted within the holy fire, wavering between solid and illusory. His face contorted in agony, his mouth gaping as he let out a howl, though no one else could understand the sound that came from his soul.
Yet the effect of the white flame was indeed formidable. Those shadowy tendrils, whether they burrowed into Aegon's body or clung to his surface, none escaped the searing flames. With crackling pops, they exploded one by one into black mist and vanished within the white fire.
"Damn it!" Stannis cursed, pressing a hand to his sword hilt as he asked the red-robed woman beside him, "Can only Valyrian steel weapons attack these phantoms?"
"The Red Sword was born before Valyrian steel was invented. It is extremely effective against the Others, but…" Melisandre hesitated, then said uncertainly, "Why don't you go up and try?"
Stannis truly was fearless. With a clang, he drew Lightbringer, which flickered with an eerie red glow. His gaze hardened as he strode toward the High Sparrow.
"Ahhh!" The knights of the Vale were driven into a frenzy of rage. "Blasphemy! Blasphemy! Heretic, cultist of a false god!"
"Protect the holy High Sparrow!" an elderly monk from Snakewood shouted and rushed forward.Uh, just as he was about to charge into the defensive line of the Knights of the Fiery Heart, Richard the Pockmarked smacked him on the forehead with the flat of his blade, knocking him unconscious.
In truth, the faithful did not need to protect them. After receiving King Aegon's soul, the stairway formed of golden beams of light automatically rose upward, shooting skyward at nearly a fleeing pace.Uh, an illusion. It had to be an illusion. How could the Stairway to Heaven possibly run away?
However, by the time Stannis arrived at the bonfire, grinding his teeth in fury, the High Sparrow had already led the bewildered King Aegon through the great gate of Heaven Mountain. Stannis could no longer reach them.
Moreover, the High Sparrow and Aegon did not linger. After their figures vanished, the milky-white gate of Heaven Mountain slowly closed. The archway that looked as though it were carved from stone gradually grew illusory, on the verge of disappearing.
"Daenerys, I know this is your doing. Come out! Come out!"
Stannis swung his flaming sword, scanning his surroundings as he roared.
Come out and let you chop me down? After showing off, failing to flee immediately only leads to disaster. Dany had already learned that lesson. She had no desire to pit her spirit body against his magic sword again.
"Has he gone mad? It was clearly the Seven Gods. Why is he calling the Dragon Queen?"
"He's trying to twist right and wrong and shirk responsibility!"
"Blasphemy!"
Stannis's bold and fearless actions deeply enraged the people of the Vale.
"Don't go, Holy Mother, High Sparrow. Come back down and fight the Red God's king!"
Well, only the Vale worshiped the Seven Gods. The Northerners stood to the side watching the spectacle, and even complained that the melon they were eating was not ripe enough.
They were extremely dissatisfied with Heaven Mountain's somewhat timid reaction. The entrance of "Great Mighty Heavenly Dragon plus Tathagata Palm" had been so flashy and sudden. Heaven Mountain's light-and-shadow effects were magnificent, complete with background music. Everyone had been expecting the Seven Gods to teach the blasphemous King of the Fiery Heart a lesson, yet it simply withdrew in silence?
Dany herself was also very dissatisfied with this divine descent. A mere thought of the Seven Gods had been injured by a single dagger. Was that not utterly humiliating?
At this moment, there should have been thunder from the heavens, a chain of lightning striking down the sword-wielding, shouty Stannis below and blasting him to a crisp.
Unfortunately, she could not do that.
That single palm strike upon appearing had already consumed so much faith power that it would have sufficed for the High Sparrow to pray devoutly for ten years.
"The Father has said that faith belongs to the Seven Gods, while kingship and worldly strife belong to the believers themselves. He only delivers the final judgment."
Fortunately, every castle in Westeros had a godswood. Every family that believed in the Seven built a sept, and every sept had septons.
After Holy Mother Dany finished showing off and logged off, there were still underlings to patch things up for her behavior by providing a perfect explanation that conformed to doctrine.
The old septon, who had been knocked unconscious earlier by Richard, slowly came to. Hearing the Northerners' blasphemous words against the Seven Gods, he sternly began to lecture them.
"The soul of Saint Aegon has already been saved by the Holy Mother from the clutches of a false god. She has fulfilled her promise to the faithful. Faith belongs to the Seven Gods.
The struggle against the blasphemer Stannis belongs to us, to all believers of the Seven Gods in Westeros.
We must form a church militia, call upon all the nobles of the Seven Kingdoms, and launch a holy war to defend the glory of the Seven Gods!"
Clang, clang, clang. A great chorus of swords being drawn rang out.
Uh, it was not that the people of the Vale were stirred by the old septon and ready to rebel against Stannis. Rather, the Knights of the Fiery Heart were furious and drew their swords, intending to cut down the old man.
"You threaten me? I am not afraid!" the old man declared, lifting his head and chest, his expression resolute as he spoke each word clearly.
Melisandre lifted her chin slightly and said coolly, "Perfect timing. The dragon egg is still lacking a bit of heat. A priest of a foreign god can also please the great Lord of Light."
Immediately, two Knights of the Fiery Heart stepped forward, dragged the old septon's frail body, and threw him into the raging flames.
"Ahh! Holy Mother, reveal your miracle!" The old septon was engulfed in fire, yet he spread his arms wide, embracing death as he loudly cried out the Holy Mother's name.
Even as shadowy tendrils slithered toward him like serpents, wrapping around his body and extracting his soul, his eyes remained steadfast and fearless. He firmly believed that the Holy Mother would not betray him. If even the fake prince Aegon could ascend to heaven, then he must surely be more devout and more favored by the Holy Mother.
Such a steadfastly faithful soul delighted R'hllor all the more. The shell of the egg in Melisandre's hands rapidly fell away, revealing a creature about the size of a kitten.
Heaven Mountain never appeared again.
Very sorry, Holy Mother Dany had gone offline.She could neither hear nor see.
Even if she could hear and see, she would not save him, because his soul was not worth her intervention.
Saving Aegon was not because Aegon was particularly devout, but because he had a connection to the Seven Gods. In other words, he had used the back door.
Many times, faith that places all hope entirely in the gods is just this tragic.
Therefore, heaven moves with vigor; the gentleman should strive unceasingly to strengthen himself.
Relying on people or relying on gods is inferior to relying on oneself.
"A demon dragon, a demon dragon really hatched?!"
The old septon was a nobody without backing. His soul falling into the hell of a false god in despair only shocked and saddened others for a brief moment.
Very soon, the birth of the demon dragon drew everyone's attention away.
"A demon dragon! This is the gift the great Lord of Light has bestowed upon the Child of Prophecy!"
Having finally realized her long-cherished wish of hatching a demon dragon, Melisandre held the hatchling high, beside herself with excitement.
"A demon dragon!" Stannis's eyes burned with fanaticism. He took several steps forward and gently reached out to stroke the black dragon's head, its eyes still unopened.
Feeling the scorching heat beneath his hand, Stannis excitedly proclaimed, "It is the reborn Black Dread, Balerion the Black Dread!"
Uh, in Westeros, Balerion was just that deeply ingrained in people's hearts.
"Bang!"
"Ah!"
In the rush of excitement, Stannis suddenly felt a hot, wet stab of pain in his palm. When he looked again, he was horrified to see that the newly born demon dragon's head had already burst apart.
It was as if a firecracker had been stuffed inside its skull.
"T-This… what is going on?"
Then something even more horrifying happened. The small dragon with black and red scales visibly decayed before their eyes. Its scales sloughed off, its flesh rotted, and finger-thick maggots burrowed out of its entrails.
Before they could even crawl all the way out, the white maggots twitched and died.
Under the stunned gazes of everyone present, the newborn dragon dissolved into a pool of foul-smelling, pitch-black blood.
Mel held the sticky, icy corpse fluid in her hands, her expression blank and at a complete loss.
Stannis's face was deathly pale, despair and pain flashing through his eyes.
"No, no, this shouldn't be happening!" the woman in red muttered to herself. Then she raised the black, red, and yellow putrid corpse fluid to her lips and drank it down.
No, not in one gulp. She held it in her mouth, using her pink tongue to lick, suck, and savor it.
"Gulp." At last, she swallowed the liquid and said with a bitter smile, "It died long ago, hundreds of years ago."
This was a dead egg. It had lost all vitality more than a century earlier and was therefore forgotten by the Targaryens in the dragonpit.
R'hllor answered the prayers of His followers by hatching a stone egg. He succeeded, but what He brought into the world was a corpse that had been dead for a hundred years.
And precisely because it had been dead for so long, it rotted so quickly in Melisandre's palm.
But Stannis was unwilling to accept this result.
"You said a demon dragon could hatch from stone, not a decayed dragon corpse that's been dead for a hundred years."
Mel could give no answer. She could only seek revelation from R'hllor in the flames.
And R'hllor truly did respond to her.
By the hearth, Mel said dejectedly, "Other than Daenerys, no one can bring a dead giant dragon back into the world."
"Why? Is the great Lord of Light not even as capable as a mere mortal?!" Stannis's eyes were bloodshot.
"Daenerys is not a mortal. She has usurped the position of the Seven Gods and is herself a demigod, with a special gift. Her ability to hatch dragons was no accident, but a mission bestowed upon her by the heavens, to bring dragons back into the world."
"Then choose her as the savior!" Stannis's voice was thick with resentment. "You kept saying that only with the help of demon dragons could the Long Night be ended. Now I am fated to have no dragon at all. What kind of chosen one of prophecy does that make me?"
Two more days passed after the day of sacrifice. Sansa and Jon at the Eyrie received the news and hurried back.
When Sansa learned of Aegon's tragic death, she fainted on the spot. After she awoke, the look in her eyes when she gazed at Stannis made even him, whose will was usually ironclad, feel his heart tremble a few times as he avoided that gaze, venomous to the extreme.
Jon's reaction was also unexpectedly intense.
If it had not been repeatedly confirmed that Aegon's soul had returned to the Seven Gods' Heavenly Mountain, giving him what could be considered a fairly good ending, Jon would have led the Northmen away from Stannis's camp then and there. In truth, the two of them were already little more than allies in name. If not for Cersei as their common enemy, they would have gone their separate ways long ago.
If a demon dragon had been successfully hatched, all these costs would have been worth it. But after offending both Jon and Sansa and ending up empty-handed, gaining nothing but boundless resentment and curses, Stannis was deeply frustrated.
Mel hesitated, then said, "Actually, there is still one method, one that could directly obtain a demigod-level adult demon dragon."
"An adult demon dragon, and demigod-level at that?" Stannis gaped in disbelief. "Does such a dragon really exist in this world?"
"Yes, and it is in your hands," Mel said in a low, eerie voice.
"Explain yourself," Stannis said with a frown.
A flash of excited red light passed through Mel's eyes as her red lips parted. "The Dragonbinder."
"The Dragonbinder?" Stannis frowned. "Isn't that a horn?"
"There is a dragon soul within the horn, Vhagar!" Mel said emphatically. "Not the Targaryen Vhagar, but Vhagar, one of the three most ancient progenitor dragons of this era!"
"What use is a single dragon soul?"
"A soul plus a corpse, Your Grace. What does that make you think of?" Mel asked with a sinister smile.
Resurrection.
That was how Jon had been resurrected.
Stannis's gaze grew deep as he recalled the Dragon Queen's mockery of him that day in the wolfswood: Jon, resurrected by R'hllor, was the true chosen one of prophecy. You are nothing more than cannon fodder paving the way for the king. Perhaps all your efforts will ultimately benefit him.
"Jon Snow. Is he the chosen one of prophecy?"
(End of chapter)
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