Song of A Northern Sorcerer

Standing on the edge of the stone pier overlooking their boats, Prince Oberyn idly cleaned the blood off his newly acquired spear as he watched the man he'd just killed bob in the water for a moment before the weight of the steel plate he'd been wearing beneath his tunic dragged him below the surface of the water. Turning aside, he saw the Mormont girl cleaning a man's brain off her mace while Asha retrieved one of her new throwing axes from the back of another man. Hearing a growl, Oberyn turned his attention to Small Jon Umber, who was returning from down the dock with Eddard Karstark and two other north men that'd stayed true to their cause.

"Fucking bastards disappeared into the damned wilds," Small Jon spat. "Couldn't even bloody my new sword….lucky bastards."

The mutiny, for that was exactly what they'd faced, had been poorly thought out and even more poorly executed. A group of ten sailors had apparently decided they wanted the treasure for themselves and had concocted a half-crazed scheme to take the women hostage before jumping on the boats and sailing off into the distance. Apparently, they'd thought that his daughter, the Mormont girl, and the Greyjoy would be easy for the taking. Or perhaps they thought that the Greyjoy would join them considering her family history. Stupid, but the plan did have an inkling of sense in that they at least waited until most of the men, with the exclusion of Oberyn himself, had left the docks to make one last run at the vault before making their move. Of course, their plan had gone tits up the moment they pulled their poorly hidden daggers and tried to grab hold of the women. His daughter had gelded the man who grabbed her before slitting his throat nearly to the bone. The Mormont girl had simply thrown her head back, breaking the nose of the one that tried to grab her before swinging around with her mace and braining the poor sod.

'Pathetic, stupid…ill conceived, and costly,' Oberyn thought as he observed the bodies littered across the ground. They'd started out with forty strong, eight men to a boat. They lost three on the trek up the river. Now, ten more had mutinied. Of the ten, six were dead and four had scattered to the wind. But before that, they managed to kill two others that'd stayed loyal to the expedition. Bringing their number down to thirty. 'Thankfully, they waited until the boats were mostly loaded before launching this hairbrained scheme of theirs.'

The looting of the vaults had not been an easy task, just as the sorcerer had predicted. The first problem had been locating anything that would be able to carry the valuables. Thankfully, there were lower levels within the palace and other homesteads in their immediate vicinity that were still moderately intact, and they were able to find the chests and crates to load the valuables. The second obstacle came to transport them out of the city. Despite the three losses on their voyage, they were still numbering fifty strong. And the boats simply couldn't hold much in the way of valuables and men and stay afloat. Which was why, if he'd been a pious man, he would've thanked the Seven and the Old Gods when one of the sailors stumbled upon a small building that had several small skiffs located inside. None of which by themselves were seaworthy. But with a bit of rearranging, they were able to tie two of the skiffs together and create a large enough raft that, while definitely not useable on the open sea, would be able to float down river easily enough and hopefully out to the Sea Wolf. And best of all, they had been able to load it with over a dozen extra chests of loot.

The last issue present came about exactly as the sorcerer had predicted. And that was with what to take. The smallfolk of the crew had wanted to take all the gold coins they could find, while the Lords wanted to horde as much Valyrian steel as they could hold. Even his own daughter was not immune as she had eyed several Valyrian weapons she wanted to bring. Surprisingly, only the Greyjoy and the Mormont had shown the slightest bit of foresight. Coins were good, as was Valyrian steel. But gold was heavy. And if you could learn the secrets of Valyria, particularly how to reproduce their steel, then they could easily recoup the loss of leaving behind most of the weapons. So, it was with no small amount of moaning and groaning that the expedition began filling the first several chests with scrolls and books. After filling five to the point where they could hold no more, he had them move on to the strange crystals that the sorcerer had been admiring, which had filled another three chests before he decided they had enough. And while Oberyn himself could not see any value in the things, as they were obviously crafted crystals from a forge, he had learnt to trust the sorcerer to a degree where if the man said they were valuable, he would take his word for it.

With the books, scrolls and crystals loaded, Oberyn then directed their attention to the Valyrian steel. While most of the blades were too big to be placed into chests, they were easy to load onto the skiff once they were rolled up in whatever cloth they could find. The last four chests that went onto the skiff were loaded with gold and jewels. As a compromise, Oberyn had agreed that each man present could find a satchel and load it with whatever they wanted from the Vault and keep it as payment for their services. He'd hoped that would've been enough to satisfy the men, but he should've known better. Greed was a powerful motivator, after all.

"They can't have gotten far," his daughter stated, a hard look in her eyes. "If you lumbering fools can't track them, give me five men and I'll track them down and end them."

"Let them go," Oberyn ordered, surprising his daughter and several others. "We've all seen what is out there. Those four won't last but a few hours. And neither would we if we pursued them. Best just to leave them to their fate and let the land itself take care of them."

His daughter, nor the Northmen, seemed particularly pleased with his orders, but as the sorcerer had made it known that in his absence Oberyn was in charge, they wisely kept their opinions to themselves. Walking slowly back towards the others, he made certain to keep a close eye on each of the fallen, just to make sure they didn't have any sleepers waiting to strike when his back was turned.

"Fucking fools," Dacey Mormont spat as he approached the young she-bear and the Greyjoy girl. "What the fuck were they thinking?"

"In short, they weren't," Oberyn sighed, not for the death of the men, but rather for the inconvenience it was creating. "Their greed blinded them to the cost. And now their short-sightedness is going to cost us more than it already has."

"Aye," Asha nodded, throwing the rag away that she'd been using to clean the blood off one of her axes. "We've lost a quarter of those we set out with. It will be difficult rowing back downstream, especially given what it took to get us here. And now we got the skiff to consider as well. We'll have the current to help take us downstream, but it won't be enough to offset what we've lost."

She was right. The voyage upriver had been anything but easy. All of them, himself included, were nearing the point of exhaustion, he could feel it in his very bones. The current downstream would help. But as Asha correctly pointed out, losing a quarter of their number meant they had a quarter fewer to row. Which meant they would either have risk rowing to the point of near exhaustion, or risk staying in this accursed land longer than necessary, or they could leave behind some of their loot. None of which sounded particularly appealing to Oberyn.

"Perhaps we should wake up the Lannister." Dacey muttered. "The lions might not have much in the way of honor and he might be half out of his mind, but at least he'd be one more pair of hands to man the oars."

The idea was not without merit, as much as he loathed to admit it. And, granted, Gerion was not his brother nor the Mountain. But still, the idea of having to rely on a Lannister for anything was not something he was willing to entertain. 'Nox has seemed to have had a counter plan for any potential issues that arose so far this voyage,' he thought, his eyes flickering to the boat where the Lannister man remained asleep. 'I wouldn't be surprised if he even suspected a potential mutiny before we left. Let's just hope he has plans for how to get all of us out of here in a timely manner.'

The shifting of rubble away from a wall brought all of them around, their weapons leveled and ready to fight. Only to hold themselves in check as Jon Snow appeared on the other side of the rubble and stopped dead, his hands held out in a nonthreatening manner while his eyes took in the scene with the several dead men scattered across the pier. "What in the name of the gods happened?"

"A slight dispute on the proper distribution of pay," Oberyn replied almost on reflex as he raised his spear. "A few of our number thought they were entitled to all of what we found and fully intended on leaving the rest of us behind. The rest of us had issue with that idea and, well, they lost the argument."

"Oh," the bastard of the Warden of the North replied elegantly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Alright, well, what do we do now?"

"Now?" Oberyn replied, hefting his spear over his shoulder. "Now, we wait for the sorcerer to return from whatever fight he's hogging all to himself. And then we figure out how to man our boats plus an extra skiff with less than a quarter of the manpower we started with. Either that, or we begin sorting what we have and start leaving things behind. Something that I'm sure no one wants to have happen."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the boy frown in thought before turning northwards and staring off into the distance. Oberyn considered himself a master of reading people, one had to be if you were to survive the games of nobles and the games in the fighting pits. In a fight, the slightest twitching of a hand or shifting of the eyes or even the shifting of one's weight could tell the opposition exactly what their next move would be. And in the game of the nobles, one's eyes or twitching or one of a hundred slight tells could give away a lie or the truth. So, when Oberyn saw the bastard of the North go stone still as he faced the north when he was relaxed but a moment before, a hundred warning bells started sounding in his head.

Tightening his grip on his new spear, he moved to stand side by side with the boy. Jon's eyes were pointedly facing northwards and had an almost…detached look to them. As if he were seeing without seeing, if that even made sense. "Master Nox is still fighting…something dark. Something strong, but…wrong. So very wrong. It's as if the Force itself is rejecting the thing's very existence," Jon said almost emotionlessly as if he were describing the weather.

Looking at the boy out of the corner of his eye, he kept his attention northwards. "Is he winning?"

Jon shook his head. "I…I can't tell from this distance but… Wait. What – What is that?"

The sense of dread increased tenfold as he watched Jon turn whiter than the snow of his homeland. "What is what boy?"

Jon's answer came in a single word as his eyes grew large and went skywards. "Run!"

Not a moment later, an ear splitting, chest rumbling roar came from the sky, chilling the very blood in Oberyn's veins as he looked skywards. What he saw was impossible. Yet, it was there. Dropping from the clouds and flying low enough to scrap the tops of the buildings was the very creature that allowed the Targaryen's to conquer almost all of Westeros. A dragon. "Scatter! Now!" he yelled, running off to his left and, on instinct, grabbing Jon by the waist and putting himself between the dragon's path and the young boy.

The heat was the worst. Even though Oberyn was well clear of the dragon's path, he could still feel the heat of the dragon fire down to his very bones as the beast of legend passed them by, scorching everything in its path. Which included two more of their number who were too awestruck to move. The only saving grace he could think of was that the flames of the dragon killed the two hapless sailors so quickly that they didn't even have time to scream nor, he hoped, to truly feel the pain of the fire turning them to little more than piles of ash.

"Someone better tell me I'm fucking sleeping on a pile of gold back in the fucking vault!" the young Umber yelled. "Because there is no damn way that a dragon just passed us by and tried to fucking cook us!"

"This isn't a fucking dream, Umber! It's a fucking nightmare! And one we're all sharing!" a second voice, the Karstark boy he believed, shouted back.

"We need to get into the buildings!" Dacey Mormont shouted. Her mace held tightly in her hands as her gaze remained skywards. "The thing can't burn us if it can't find us!"

"No!" Oberyn blinked, the voice hadn't come from him, but rather from the young bastard boy he'd been protecting, who'd suddenly shrugged him off and marched out into the open. "Dragonfire can melt stone, even this stone here in Valyria. We go in between the buildings or in them, and that dragon will turn them into ovens. And we can't stay here, if one of those flames hits the boats, we lose our only way of getting out of here in any timely manner."

He was reasonably impressed with the boy's logic. Between the buildings would give them the option to hide, but it would limit their mobility and if the dragon hit them with a burst of fire, those stone homes would turn into ovens to cook them alive. Out in the open had its risks, but it was the better option. But regardless of out in the open or into the city, they had to get away from the boats to prevent the dragon from targeting them. Hopefully.

"Listen to Snow! Get your asses towards the outskirts of the city or I'll kill you myself and save the dragon the trouble!" he shouted, motioning with his spear in the direction they were to go before turning and speaking quietly to Jon, "I hope whatever task the sorcerer sent you on, boy, gave you some kind of trick to deal with the dragon."

"I just might have a 'trick up my sleeve', Prince Oberyn!" Jon Snow shouted as the two ran towards the outskirts of the city.

The movement was brief, but out of the corner of his eye Oberyn noticed Jon touching the sleeve of his tunic on his right arm. 'I see, he meant that quite literally. I'm interested to see just what the sorcerer sent him after.' "Careful with that cavalier attitude, boy! I might just start taking a real liking to you! And, if not me, then Ellaria certainly will. She likes witty young men af-"

"Shut the fuck up!" Asha shouted from just ahead of the two of them. "Think with your cock later, Prince! Dragon first! Fucking after!"

Despite the situation, Oberyn felt his face split in a smile under his mask as he stared at the Greyjoy woman's backside. "Is that an offer, Lady Asha?"

"Here it comes! Scatter!"

At Snow's warning, everyone scattered off to their left or right, taking whatever cover they could find. 'Shit,' Oberyn cursed, tucking himself behind a building's corner just as he could hear the dragon's roar and the beating of the beast's wings. 'We're not out in the open yet! That thing lets loose a blast like last time, and we're all cooked!'

Just as he could start making out the form of the dragon through the mist, he noticed something that had slipped his attention when he ducked for cover. And that was the fact that Jon Snow was no longer beside him. In fact, that boy was standing out in the middle of the street, staring down the dragon that was on a direct path for him. 'Fucking fool!' Obery cursed, ready to burst out from his hiding place and tackle the boy out of the path of the dragon. 'I don't fancy taking a swim in these waters, but if I go fast enough I should have enough to take the both of us into the water and – Whatis he doing?'

Any action he was about to take halted as he watched Jon casually raise his arm. This action allowed his right sleeve to roll back and revealed some sort of golden armlet on the boy's right forearm with a ruby gem in the center. A gem that started glowing brightly just as the dragon's maw opened and flames leapt forth, consuming the boy and everything around him.

Ducking back, Oberyn closed his eyes. 'Fuck…I got distracted! I couldn't save the boy! Damn it! What was he fucking thin—' His thoughts were cut off as a torrent of wind rustled his clothes. The flames from the dragon weren't dissipating. If anything, they were gathering, right above where Jon had been standing.

The Prince of Dorne had seen and experienced a lot in his life, more than almost any could ever hope to see or experience. But the sight of the Bastard of Winterfell, standing amongst a raging vortex of flames with his hand held above his head, his face twisted into one of great concentration? That was something else. Something new, even for him. With a yell rivaling any war cry he'd ever head, Jon turned, the vortex of flame following his movements as if a slave to his will. The flames formed into a ball and, launched like it was a stone out of a trebuchet right into the back end of the dragon. The beast of legend gave of a cry as it flailed in the air before crashing through several buildings.

After picking his jaw up off the ground, Oberyn was the first to react. Eyes bouncing continuously between the downed dragon and the boy, he slowly and cautiously approached the Bastard of Winterfell. "Alright, I'll bite. What in the Seven Hells did the sorcerer send you after that allowed you to do…that?"

"It's this talisman," Snow answered, his face looking more than slightly drained, but his eyes remaining in the direction where the dragon had fallen. "I'm not sure how, but it almost…enhances my Force powers to manipulate fire. But only fire. Master Nox never spoke of anything like it before."

"Well, that's convenient," Dacey Mormont remarked, her mace at the ready as she took kept her eyes in the direction of the fallen dragon. "But please tell me you weren't dumb enough to use that thing on a dragon without knowing it would work."

"Well, I wasn't sure that it would work that well against dragonfire," the boy said before hastily adding. "But I did use it to kill a firewyrm with its own fire. At least I think I did. So, I just assumed that it would work as well against a dragon."

The ease with which he said drew many up short, no doubt as they remembered their first and only encounter with one of the most dangerous creatures in perhaps the entirety of the known world, now that dragons were extinct… Well, maybe not completely extinct seeing as they were now facing one. But as Oberyn drew close enough to touch the boy, he had to reassess his original thoughts on him looking drained. Drained would be an understatement. He looked as if he'd just sprinted from Sun Spear to the Water Gardens during midday. 'Not surprising. While I might not know about this brand of magic the sorcerer and the boy use, there has always been one rule that all magic abides by. It's taxing. Those two have been using their magic nonstop for days to guide us and keep us safe. And Jon, by his own admission, has already finished fighting off firewyrm and now he just used his power to deflect dragon fire. A feat thought to be impossible!'

"The boy has given us a chance," Oberyn called out, forcing himself out of his thoughts and back to the matter at hand. "He's brought the dragon to the ground, which gives us a chance to kill it."

"Wait, you want us to go on foot and hunt that fucking thing?" The Karstark lad all but shouted. "Did you see how fucking big that monster was!?"

"Yes," he nodded. "And while it is in the air, that big fucker will be impossible to kill without a heavy scorpion or ballista. So, our best – our only – chance to survive this is to try and kill it once it's on the ground where we can reach it."

"But how are we supposed to kill it?" Umber growled. "We might hate those dragon fuckers, but we know of them well enough. Their skin is tougher than heavy plate armor. Not to mention, you ever try and hunt a bear? You corner them and they get ten-times as vicious, which this beast now is. And not to mention, you need to drive your spear damn far into the bear in order to kill it. How the fuck are we supposed to get in close enough to not only stab it, but I doubt even our new Valyrian steel weapons will be able to get past those scales."

"Master Nox's lightsaber," Jon spoke up, stopping the retort that was on the tip of Oberyn's tongue. "A lightsaber can cut through anything. I've seen him cut through steel, wood, even solid stone with little to no difficulty. If there is a weapon that can kill a dragon, it is that. Master Nox is far away but, I can sense he's returning."

"Then that's what we'll do," Oberyn decided, ending the discussion. "Snow will use his…magic to nullify the dragon fire. The rest of us will keep it occupied and once we get it to ground, we try and kill it. And if all else fails, we hold it off long enough for the sorcerer to get back and have him finish the job with—"

"Something's coming out of the mist!"

Turning, Oberyn squinted off into the distance of the mist clouding wall that was just barely visible that had once served to contain the city of Valyria. At first, he couldn't see anything through the mist. But that didn't last as he soon saw figures shaped oddly like men limping through the fog. Mishappen men with skin the color and texture of the very stone walls that surrounded them. And as if to truly make their situation any worse, he could hear the distinctive beating of heavy wings and the roaring of the dragon as it once again took to the sky.

"Fuck me," he muttered. "Just what we needed right now. Fucking stonemen."

The reaction from everyone was about what he'd expected as everyone, from noble to laymen and from man to woman, took a step back in fear and disgust. Grabbing the sleeves of his tunic and making sure they were fully covering his arms; he popped his collar up and then took a two-handed grip on his spear as he stepped forward. "Form lines! We fight in groups of ten to give others the chance to rest. Make sure every piece of exposed skin you have is covered in something before you step forward to fight."

No one moved to join him. No one save the one who couldn't as Snow proved to have the biggest set of balls as he rearranged his sleeves and drew the short Valyrian sword Nox had given him from the vault. "Not you, boy," he said, holding out his spear and blocking the boy's path. "You're the only one who can deal with that fucking dragon when it comes back around. The rest of us will keep the stonemen from reaching you."

The boy looked like he was about to protest, but a distant roar from the dragon still in the sky must've brought the situation they were now in around to the boy. And with little more than a nod, he moved back as his daughter, Asha Greyjoy, Dacey Mormont and the Small Jon all stepped forward with weapons held at the ready.

"Well, it appears you women have bigger balls than most," he smiled under his mask as the stonemen started picking up speed towards them as they advanced. "Let's just hope you are as skilled."

Lashing out with a high-spinning hook kick, Nox felt the attack find purchase against the face of the false-god, stunning the being as his Force-empowered limb sent him stumbling back. Capitalizing on the opening, Nox used a Force push to send the stumbling Balerion reeling head over heels down a small ravine. Reaching back, he grabbed hold of a boulder, easily lifting the nearly one-ton object over his head and sending it down the ravine. The false god had just barely managed to right itself in time to see the boulder approaching, and by then it was far too late to do anything but take the attack head on. Which resulted in the boulder passing almost effortlessly through him as it turned his body into a bloody red paste, forcing Balerion to once again expend the energy to create a new one rather than just repairing the old.

Knowing he had a moment, Nox let his sense of awareness expand. 'Almost there. Just a small distance further and this will end.'

Feeling a disturbance, Nox ducked in time for Balerion's sword to pass over his head. Switching to form four, Nox twisted and turned his body, becoming the very weapon he wielded as he danced and parried around Balerion's desperate attacks.

"Die! Die! Die! Die already, you fucking slave!" the false god shouted as he continued chasing Nox, his blade finding nothing but air and the edge of his lightsaber as Nox stayed ahead of Balerion.

The once-man was powerful, there was no doubt about that. In fact, if the battle was to be decided by sheer power alone, Balerion would probably have been able to best him. But power was only part of the battle. To be a true warrior, one had to be skilled enough to wield both the power and one's self effectively. And while the man was decently skilled with a blade, he could not combine his power and skill and transform them into something greater. At best, he could be considered on par with a high-ranking Lord of the Sith. Not even a Darth, let alone a Dark Council Member. The only reason why the fight had not already ended was because of his more than slightly annoying regeneration capabilities.

Deactivating his lightsaber, Nox twisted into an aerial as Balerion overextended a down sweep with his sword at his legs. Before his feet touched the ground, Nox hit Balerion with a Force push and used the recoil of the attack to flip and twist himself over backwards so that he landed on his feet facing the false god, his lightsaber activating the moment he solidified his stance on the ground. Digging the point of his lightsaber into the ground, Nox channeled a rivulet of dark side energy though the blade and into the ground. Dragging the lightsaber through the ground, Nox sent a wave of dust and superheated debris towards his adversary, temporarily blinding the still recovering Balerion and allowing Nox to once again get a killing strike in. This time piercing the being's heart, or at least where his heart should've been, before wrenching the blade out through his chest and under his arm.

Not giving his enemy the chance to recover, Nox flicked his left middle finger off his thumb on the lightsaber hilt, sending a concentrated burst of Force energy the size of a fist into the unwounded side of Balerion's chest. The concentrated strike hit the false god with the force of several tons packed into a few square inches, throwing the man back through the air for nearly thirty meters before his back struck a wall. The wall collapsed from the force of impact, covering the immediate area in a shower of debris composed of stone, mortar and wood. Raising his left hand, the newly freed clump of debris rose into the air a good fifty feet. Closing his fist, he compacted the debris into a single sphere before throwing it down on the false god, the mass just barely reaching terminal velocity before it impacted the ground where the false god still lay.

Throwing up a Force Barrier, Nox defended himself against the falling stone and wood that was thrown up into the air in result of the makeshift asteroid he'd just hurled down on his opponent. Once the debris had stopped falling, Nox let his barrier drop and calmly walked towards the broken wall. 'I'm actually impressed that he managed to go through this wall without disintegrating in a 'splat'again,' he thought as he observed the hole that had created in the wall surrounding the ruined city of Valyria. 'Either he's durable, or this wall was not nearly as impressive as it looked. Although…considering they had dragons that could fly over any wall built, I'm sure they didn't really care if their constructs were structurally sound or not.'

Walking over the debris, he calmly observed the swirling mass of dark side energy as Balerion once again reformed his body. "Your regeneration is slowing considerably, 'Balerion'," he said the name mockingly, jumping down from the pile of debris so that he could watch the finalization of the reformation. "I suppose that I should welcome you home…But I know for a fact that the current tenants are not all that pleased with you, so I wouldn't really be expecting a warm reception here."

Once whole again, Balerion looked around wildly as he spun in the debris. Slowly, a low rumbling began in the creature's chest that quickly turned into a fully belly laugh. "Ahaha, so this was your great plan, slave? Bringing me to Valyria, my home, the place I have been unable to set foot into since my Ascension. And why? Did you think the Archon's spell would weaken me? Make me mortal? Ha! They are but toothless worms pretending to be dragons, when I am the only true dragon of Valyria!"

"Do you care to put that to the test?" Nox asked calmly. "The Archons gave their very lives to erect the barrier that has kept you barred from this place for nearly four hundred years. Are you so sure of your victory know that you are willing to put your will against not only mine, but of the lost Archons as well?"

The creature faltered. It was only for a split second, but Nox caught it. 'Good, all according to plan.'

"I do not fear those dead worms!" Balerion shouted, and in the distance Nox could hear the undead dragon howl in response to his master's cry. "They are dead and gone! And their magic has worn off such that I can step foot in this city once more! And now, slave! You shall die!"

'Jon. It's time.'

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