Chapter Text
Lightning crashed against The Great Keep's stone walls, and a flash of blindly bright light cast the world in a dozen shades of blued greyscale.
Balon jolted upward in bed, eyes wide, heart pounding, momentarily deafened by sudden explosion of sound and noise as the rain pounded at the stone around him like a million slung stones and the Storm God rumbled his displeasure in the distance in the form of echoing thunder. He could hear the waves crashing against Pyke's base, and the foam from the clash rose up in front of him high up enough to reach his window at the very height of the keep.
The night was dark, the sky bereft of the star's light, and the lightning in the distance illuminated the waves below in scant flashes that made them appear as grasping fingers, coiling and squeezing and wrapping around the stone cliffs bearing his castle's weight as the wind and tides pushed them forward.
There's a sudden pounding at his door, a knock that feels somehow louder than the storm outside.
"Who is it?" Balon demanded, wincing as he straightened upward to rest his against his headboard. The wound at his side throbs again. It had mostly healed by now, but four stubborn stitches remained, picked at by a rather recently and annoyingly minor infection his Maester had assured him would disappear in due time with plenty of rest and hearty meals, but he was not to lift an axe again for perhaps another fortnight or two, nor was he to strain himself braving the twisted hep and twine bridges that led to Pyke's lesser islands and towers or climb the league of steps that led to his regular chambers inside The Sea Tower.
"Helya, My Lord. Your Steward." The old crone at his door murmured. Balon could scarcely hear her over the roaring of the storm outside.
Balon raised a brow, mildly perturbed. "What have you woken me for?" It was highly unlike her to bother him at this hour, let alone so...impersonally. She'd been Pyke's caretaker for almost a decade now.
"I have a letter from Lord Edmure Tully, about the state of your brother after the battle of Riverrun."
Balon shot up out of bed. "Riverrun?" What? Lord Tywin shouldn't be anywhere near there. How had things gone so wrong, so quickly?
He shivered as his feet touched the cold stone floor bare, only a thin robe, tunic, and small clothes to keep him warm, his pilfered sword and belt with dagger dumped to the floor unceremoniously. He stepped over them both to reach his door-latch, so cramped the guestroom he was staying in was, and-
The world exploded again as lightning struck his windowsill.
Glass shattered as the window broke apart. Shrapnel flew throughout the room, little silver shards fraying his bed and sheets, ricocheting off the walls and carving little lines into his back, arms, and legs. His ears were ringing, ringing, ringing, and Balon could see the wooden door in front of him rock like someone was trying to push through.
The Storm God just tried to murder me. Balon thought in a sort of terror-filled bewilderment. He patted himself down as the ringing in his ears began to subside and thanked the He Who Dwells that his robe had protected him.
Rainwater soaked his feet, and Balon looked down to see that his dagger was already floating in the water and that the room, itself only a little bit larger than the small bed inside, was already an inch and a half or more flooded after only a few moments exposed to the storm outside, and it wouldn't quit rising anytime soon.
The door rocked as Helya pounded at it again, and she said-
"Helya, My Lord. Your Steward. I have a letter from Lord Edmure Tully, about the state of your brother after the battle of Riverrun." The words were more insistent, the vowels stretched oddly. Irritated.
Balon knew then and there that something was very, very wrong.
Thunder rumbled again in delayed sequence, The Storm God's mocking laughter.
The door jolted as 'Helya' kicked at it with all 'her' might. The latch strained against its rivet, fit to break off at the next push.
Balon dove for his dagger just as it burst open.
It nearly slid out of his hand as he fought to keep his grip on the slick hilt, and he whirled around up off his knees just in time to feel the blade sink into his side, and he didn't feel the pain, not yet, as he looked up at the face of his attacker.
The eyes were a strange shade of honeyed gold, bloodshot, speckled with dots of green and black and blue. Half of Helya's upper face stared back at him, the top of her mouth stretched open in voiceless horror, sewn into skin darker than the sky outside, a snoutlike nose and distended, sloping, brow bursting through the stolen skin in patches, and he could see several sores and scabs and wounds weeping pus of all sorts of colors dotting the skull of the creature. They were as tall as Helya had been with a straight back, bald, teeth massive, flat, yellowed molars, like that of a Zorse's.
In its right hand was a dagger the same size, jammed right into the wound Daven Lannister had left him, coated in blue liquid that was turning purple at the tip where it lay inside him.
It made no sound as Balon thrust his own dagger up through the bottom of its jaw, through the roof of its mouth, curving slightly to come up outside its disgusting nose, the tip of his dagger coated in blood-stained green pus. Half the stolen face peeled away to reveal yet more skinless muscle below. Balon watched it take one last deep breath in, saw its facial muscles, exposed to the raw air and rain move and twitch before the hand around the dagger inside him went lax and it toppled over dead with a great splash.
Thunder rumbled again. Blue light flashed, it's hideous skull visible through its thin skin a moment in the light.
Balon looked down at the dagger inside him, wrapped his offhand around it, and tugged it free with nary a hiss, for the lump in his throat was too great for any sound to escape past it.
Poison, he knew, glancing down at the blue liquid dripping out of his side and down the blade.
I'm dead, was Balon's first thought, as a bizarre tingling sensation spread out from the small wound channel, itself only an inch wide and an inch long, so narrow was the blade. This way? So pitifully?
He looked back at the corpse, the water streaming in and around and soon above his toes, water then ran red in places his blood dripped down. A disgusting, mutilated, tortured creature that had been Ibbenese once, he knew.
Water lapped at the wrinkles of Helya's rotting cheeks, chunks of skin carried off away by the tide.
Even Lord Tywin surely could not afford-
Balon strangled that thought in its crib.
No faceless man would have been so sloppy. Insistent. Disgusting.
And, Balon admitted wearily, I would have seen no faceless man coming. Had no time to react.
A parody then, a grotesque, pale imitation.
He prodded the stab wound experimentally. There was no feeling, and his fingertip came back up to his face tinged purple and blue, numb.
Balon dimly realized he couldn't feel the water soaking his feet, the water that was now just past his ankles.
Thunder rumbled.
The Storm God laughed.
Balon knew right then and there he would not let the demon have him.
My Maester, he thought desperately. My guards, what few elected to stay at Pyke. Lordsport, a horse, Drowned Men and Wise Men. I can survive this.
For what is Dead May Never Die.
His vision swam as bent over to fumble for his swordbelt, and though he watched his fingers tighten over the waterlogged sword and sheath, the leather of the belt holding them, he could not feel them in his hands.
He clumsily stumbled forward, bare fleet dredging and sloshing through the water brought on by the deluge outside as he made it into the hallway leading to his throne room.
His vision blurred and his temple began to throb as he slammed the door shut behind him. Water spilled out beneath the crack at its base, and then blood, far more than there should have been, began pooling out as well.
"Guards!" He shouted in vain. He already knew deep down there would be no answer.
Balon took a single step forward, and blinked when he heard another splash, the sound echoing and echoing and echoing unnaturally.
He looked down and saw his foot half-sunken into the oily black stone beneath his feet like it was mud. He pressed his foot further down experimentally, and it sank in that much further. The stone, impossibly, was now liquid, liquid that seemed to be perpetually moving, across the floor, up and across the walls, and over the ceiling ahead.
This isn't real, Balon knew. I am hallucinating. None of this is possible. The poison does its deadly work quickly, that is all.
But the oil beneath his feet was viscous and odd smelling, and when he raised his foot back up, he could feel the resistance, tendrils and chunks of it attached to his feet, trying to pull him back down like tar.
The ceiling rippled ominously, and when the first droplet of oil fell from it and struck his cheek, and Balon felt it begin seeping through his skin, he took another step forward.
His foot sank deeper this time.
Thunder rumbled again. Something scratched at the door behind him, slowly.
"Helya, My Lord. I have a letter from Lord Edmure Tully, about the state of your brother after the battle of Riverrun."
Balon thought about turning back around and facing the source of the stolen voice.
Balon chose to run instead.
He ran and ran and ran down a hallway that resembled a horizontal, evershifting waterfall as the oil got slicker and his feet sank deeper and the clawing and scratching at the door behind became more insistent, feral.
By the time he made it to the throne room and he couldn't hear the scratching anymore, he was spitting out mouthfuls of oil by the cupful and wiping his nose free of tar so as to keep breathing every few seconds.
Balon's throne room was as empty of petitioners and vassals and guardsmen as it had ever been since its siege those years ago, and The Seastone Chair at the height of its steps was not still like it should have been. It moved like a living thing, tentacles waving lazily throughout the air, as liquid as everything else, yet still impossibly held into shape like everything else around them. Balon could see through the window behind it the storm, clouds impossibly low to the castle's height.
One of the tentacles turned and 'faced' him, and it wriggled excitedly. The entire throne seemed to lose cohesion as more tentacles unfurled themselves from its liquid surface and shot forward to dig into the 'stone' at his feet.
When it began dragging itself forward, Balon ran past it as fast as he could, toward the stone bridge that led to the gatehouse and the mainland.
When he tore through the last door in his way and breathed in the sea air, he shivered as rain utterly drenched his body, the deluge so intense he couldn't see his hand in front of him when he brought it to his face, nor could not feel the chill of the wind, or the wetness of the rain even as it washed the tar off of his body and drenched his hair.
I'd be frozen in an hour, trying to brave this storm to Lordsport, Balon knew, but he could see a silhouette at the end of the stone bridge, illuminated by the lantern in its left hand.
"You there!" Balon cried out. He could scarcely hear his own voice shouting at the very top of his lungs. "Come, your King commands it. I've been attacked and poisoned in mine own-"
The lantern exploded into an open, burning flame that covered the entire silhouette's frame. Steam wafted around it, and it was taller than him by three whole heads, not even counting the horns of flame atop its height, familiar, dreadful, purposeful horns.
Balon acted the craven again for the third time in a row as he whirled around to run back into the throne room, narrowly dodging the flaming hammer that sailed just above his head, thundering burning steps wracking the entire bridge hard enough to make it shake below him as Robert Baratheon's revenant chased him back inside.
It stopped and bellowed its fury at the door slammed shut behind Balon as he arrived back in the throne room and saw that The Seastone chair was waiting for him.
It was back on its dais, and there was a creature sitting atop it, face featureless, shimmering and slick, covered in moss and lichen, mouth a beak that was long enough to touch its chest, wearing rotten, waterlogged leathers and rusted plate, ribs and bones visible in the periodic gaps and holes peppering the armor. Balon could see hundreds of fish all crammed together inside it in a parody of human musculature and organs, Eels spilling out its side like intestines, a Carp in place of a lung. Its hair was composed of the same type of tentacles that made up The Seastone chair, and they wriggled in place furiously. The very top of its head revealed a polished, gleaming skull that had been cracked open to reveal the brain inside.
A tentacle from the throne was buried inside inside it, feasting.
The creature spoke to him, leering at him without eyes or a face. "Nine sons born of my loins, and the only one to not disappoint was the one born without a brain."
Balon recoiled. "Father?"
"Balon." Old Quellon said. "The lowest of my progeny."
The barb could not sink deeply, thrown by a dead man like it was. "The greatest." He corrected. "I've done what no other Greyjoy has since our most ancient of days. I have been crowned a King."
"And you never think to wonder why no Greyjoy has since, Nor any Volmark or Harlaw or Goodbrother. You are a foolish boy who ignored every lesson I could ever find the time to try and teach you. More stubborn than Victarion, as mad as Euron, as foolish as Aeron. I failed each and every one of you, but you the most, o child of mine."
"You were a soft old man who would have seen our culture, our traditions destroyed! I spit upon you, your 'reforms', and your 'lessons', you who would bow before those on the mainland, you who lashed yourself to a sinking ship at The Manderford!"
"As you have now, child." Quellon whispered. "Fighting a war you cannot win, bleeding to death because of a wound you shouldn't have taken, arguing with a ghost that's not haunted you for a decade. I pity you as I always have. You read the wrong tomes, learned the wrong lessons, and it was all my fault." His voice was more somber now. The tentacle devouring his mind receded back into the throne. "I wish you'd never sat this cursed thing."
"Spare me your pity." Balon huffed quietly. "You're not even here." He glanced down at his robe a moment and noticed its entire left side coated in red and purple. The bleeding hadn't stopped yet. Balon idly wondered if it ever would.
"No." Lord Quellon agreed. The skeletonized arms resting on the thrones began to sink into it. "But these are words you've spoken to yourself. Your most private doubts, your most secret despairs. and they will forever haunt you every time you walk past your son's rooms and re-read letters from your brothers and vassals and fret about the progress of the war and wars to come, as you grey and grey and wither and wither as I had from the stress of it all. You and the rest of your Kingdom were forever damned the day you let me spill beneath the waves."
Tentacles wrapped around his father's throat, his legs, his waist, and he merged with the throne slowly, ever so slowly, so slowly that for a moment, Balon almost ran forward to pull him free.
But his legs never moved.
And he watched slowly, ever so slowly, as his father disappeared before his eyes.
(X)
Balon blinked more oil out of his eyes. His left eyelid dragged a bit, and he had to wipe away more tar with the back of his hand so he could open it again.
He walked past the guestroom he was staying in. The entire hallway was flooded to the calf, and the door was open.
The corpse that had been there before was nowhere to be seen, and his bed was floating up off its risers and had moved to become almost a sort of dam as it blocked the doorway.
What is happening? Balon wondered. Have I gone mad? Did I open it? Did someone else? Is it even open?
He didn't know. He didn't know if any of this was even 'real' to his eyes, and ears, and nose, for he couldn't trust touch anymore.
Mayhaps I'll wake up in bed soon. He thought. And all of this shall be some terrible nightmare.
He coughed to clear his throat. Blue phlegm burbled up into his mouth, and he swallowed it back down.
Balon chuckled cynically.
"Maester Titus!" He tried, walking past moving doors and whispering sea serpents and dead seagulls towards the man's room.
"Guards!" He yelled again as he waded past bloated corpses with familiar faces, dead men from the rebellion who grasped and pulled and yanked at his clothes as he trudged past, trying to drag him down into the mucky mixture of liquids as the oil began to float on the water.
There was not an answer.
Balon cracked open the door that led to the edge of the islet, the bridges of twisted hemp and crumbling stone that led to Pyke's dozen and a half keeps and towers and islands and granaries.
Seaspray raced upward to pelt his face, and welcomed it like he did the rainwater, embracing it as it wiped him clean. His small clothes were so waterlogged he slipped them off. Balon tried his best his ignore the small red and purple stains where the tip of his manhood had been resting, and tossed them into the depths.
Below, as lightning flashed, Balon saw the sea foam and steam as a whirlpool devoured the cloth.
His sacrifice appeased The Demon Above, for it harried him no further as he crossed the stone walkway leading to The Bloody Keep.
"Welcome to The Bloody Keep, King Qhored." The headless Justman triplets greeted him at the door when he'd crossed it and arrived.
"Thank you." Balon demured tiredly. Arterial spray from one of their severed jugulars splashed his cheek and he made his way inside.
He prodded his wound again as rare torchlight illuminated it for the first time inside. There was a mild stinging sensation he felt when he brushed his hand against it.
Balon couldn't tell if that was good or bad.
It's not fatal. He reasoned. Not by itself. if I can manage the poison, the poison...
He stopped to glance at the staircase that led to the rooms where his Household Guard stayed and hiked up them. He felt an odd pulling sensation, and feeling so clearly and easily for the first time gave him pause. He looked down to see the last stitch that hadn't been shorn through had become dangerously loose from all the rain and movement.
He reached down and plucked it.
Blood began steadily trickling out.
That's fine, he reasoned. It's in my blood and must get out. By any means.
Torchlight still illuminated the upper stairwell. He climbed up the rest of it and saw the three doors to the three rooms his men should have been residing in. The first two looked as normal as ever, but the middle one had blood pooling beneath it.
Balon opened the first door and saw a dozen waterlogged corpses, sleeping peacefully in their beds. Seaweed and kelp and rust marred and covered the armor they were still wearing.
Balon shut the door.
He moved towards the next door, the bloodied one, pressed his ear to it, and heard a strange, wet chewing sound.
Balon moved past that door.
He reached towards the third, pushed it open-
-And he was inside Pyke's gatehouse during the siege, ten years ago. Men burst past him and brushed against him like he was invisible, carrying arrows and stones and pots of boiling sand and oil, men fell down left and right atop the ramparts trying to doge arrows and shove away ladders, and Balon saw a battering ram, taking aim at the base of one of the towers-
"-Father?"
Balon shut his eyes tight. This isn't real. This isn't happening.
Because it already had, a voice whispered to him. All those years ago.
"Father! Why are you not in your chambers?" Maron yelled. "I have done my best, but the gate shall be coming down any moment! We must flee to The Great Keep and make our final stand there!"
Balon forced himself to look. It isn't him. It isn't him. My son is dead.
But there he was, standing in front of him, a cut on his cheek half-scabbed courtesy of a graze an arrow gifted him that morning. His armor was wracked with dents and pockmarks and he had a quarrel half buried in his shoulder, his helm long gone. His eyes were wild, that Lorathi paint he was so fond of painting around his eyes smeared and smudged. What little hair he had on his shaved head was matted with blood, tangled with ash and soot. His right front tooth was chipped and half missing thanks to the armored fist a Red-Apple Fossoway. Maron had brought him the man's helm in the aftermath of their bout on the thirtieth day of the siege as proof of his hope that they could still whittle The Greenlanders down.
He'd died the morrow after.
"Father?!" Maron tried again, looking between him and the men pulling away from the gatehouse forty feet below. The men operating the battering ram pulled it back.
Balon put a hand on his shoulder and sniffed, fighting to keep his voice level. "I should have brought you back inside. You did not need to prove your manhood to me. You did not need to die like Rodrik had."
Maron sputtered. "Are you ill? We must-"
And the battering ram interrupted him. One final slam proved too much for Pyke's ancient construction.
Balon stepped back and shut the door in his son's face just as the ground below him gave out, wiping away a wetness from his eyes that was unfamiliar to him.
Men screamed from behind it, and his son's voice was the last to fade out as hundreds of tons of ancient stone came crashing down atop him.
Balon breathed in, breathed out, and the walls flexed and lurched time and time with his breaths.
There was only one place left to go, he realized with an exhausted sigh. His Maester's rookery inside The Sea Tower.
He was so, so tired.
The stairs, Balon rationalized. It's the climbing and the running. I will rest when I am better.
Yes, he thought sluggishly. When I am better.
Balon marched back down the stairs as pain began wracking his side where the assassin had struck him, blossoming like the world's worst flower up and down his right leg and upper right arm.
Good. It is wearing off soon.
When it did, he would find somewhere to lay to rest and wait till the hallucinations subsized or someone found him.
Balon walked the last of his journey southward, studiously ignoring all manner of unmentionable horror and creature and nightmare that beckoned and snarled and stalked towards him along the way, until he was back out inside the storm, Pyke’s oldest bridge in front of him leading to Pyke’s oldest tower.
It was a bridge over a hundred feet long, shaking violently in the breeze, its water-rotted planks weak and unsteady. Lightning flashed in the shape of what he would swear was a pair of curling horns, and he saw for a split second that many, many boards had been violently torn off their bindings.
Balon stepped forward onto the first one and nearly slipped, wrapped his off-hand alongside the hemp and twine rope to steady himself, and the entire bridge leaned precariously to the left as he shifted his weight. The rain was coming down so hard he couldn't see his own hands or feet in front of him.
There was no way to see where he was going. No way to know where to safety step. No way to count how many steps left.
He was one wrong move away from plummeting into the sea.
"So it goes," Balon murmured.
He stepped forward. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, striking the shore behind him. His foot tepidly landed upon another wood plank, one that groaned its displeasure and shifted uneasily at the added weight. They were unsteady even on a good and particularly sunny day, but No Lord Reaper had ever even bothered to repair them.
Balon took another step forward, put his weight forward, and almost slipped, the bridge rocking, a partially aggressive gust of wind shaking the entire thing from side to side to side.
Balon could do nothing but tighten his grip.
I pray to you now, my only lord. My God.
Balon took another step forward. The wind sheared through the narrow islet so violently that the rain blew horizontally across his face, forcing his eyes shut as his hair whipped through the air, almost torn from his scalp by the force. If the fall or poison didn't kill him, the cold he couldn't feel yet would if he didn't get inside and to a hearth quickly.
I Pray to you for my son in Casterly Rock, besieging that ancient place. I pray to you for his success, for his bounty, for his health. I pray to you that he comes to you last of my line, fat and old, a thousand squabbling children left behind him.
Two more steps, one almost into empty air, hands grinding against the frayed rope, hard enough he could feel a muted burning sensation even with the water reducing friction.
I pray to you my only daughter marries a man worthy of her, that she need not suffer an unwanted marriage in a frozen wasteland. I pray that she becomes and remains Lady of Fair Isle for the rest of her days, and that all her sons and daughters retain that style til the end of the world as we know it.
Ten more steps before he lost his footing entirely as the bride swung to the left. For a moment he was suspended in the air and his feet dangled helplessly without traction, his fast-fading grip on the bridge's twine the only thing keeping him from falling to a certain death.
He took a moment, only a moment, to compose himself after that, once the bridge settled.
I pray to you my brother rules here justly, fairly, and wisely. That he lead the men here to greatness in my absence.
Fifteen more steps, then something rocked the bridge violently enough that he had to freeze still in place so as not to fall again as the bridge rocked gently back and forth, trying to steady itself again.
The wind relaxed, and Balon could finally open his eyes, eyeing the ghost in front of him. All he could see of it was the outline of a poncho, a dark hood concealing its face.
"Let me pass." He shouted. A gust of wind rocked the bridge again, and Balon scrambled to steady himself.
The ghost did not move an inch as the bridge swayed, unnaturally still.
"Go on, move aside for your King." Balon grumbled. He reached down at his belt, the last of his garments, and patted himself down til he cut his finger on his dagger to see if it was still there.
"Haven't I always, brother?" The ghost queried, as it shrugged off the poncho and hood, and at last, Balon understood, and he relaxed for the first time, completely and utterly.
Ah. It all makes sense now. Who else? How else?
Another gust of wind. Balon had to fight harder to keep his place, and shifted to the side defensively.
Euron was as still as the island below, unmoving. Lightning flashed, and Balon caught of glimpse of his armor and its whirling glyphs that glowed a dim, smoky orange in the light, patterns spell forged into the steel crawling and whirling in patterns and shapes unnatural to the human eye.
"I thought you'd be rotting under some foreign sea by now."
Lightning struck the keep again, and Balon saw something crimson flash behind Euron's eyepatch, his dark eye.
"Why? What Is Dead May Never Die." Euron chuckled
Balon spat at him. He lost sight of the spittle as soon as it moved nary an inch from his lips in the storm.
Euron tilted his head and leaned forward, armor burning brightly enough that Balon could make out the smirk on his blue lips. "Has the custom changed since I've been gone, brother? I thought it customary to say the words back once they are heard."
"You can mock our God without my help." Balon rasped.
Euron chuckled. "And I hear you have made many a sacrifice to him, at Lannisport, at The Crag, in The Riverlands."
"I'd gladly make one more here to boot." Balon snarled, unsheathing his dagger. Defiance for the sake of defiance's sake.
Euron didn't reply a moment, just considered him, eyes scanning him in a way that made him nearly writhe in discomfort. "You've changed many things, brother. More events than you could ever hope to know. But not all will be for the better. For as many lives you've spared with your choice, you've doomed that many more as well. Some you know, many you don't." Euron looked away a moment, almost...vulnerable. "I will admit that I didn't expect it. Nor did they, I imagine."
"They?"
"There are forces in this world your small mind would destroy itself trying to gaze upon, let alone comprehend. Magics and legends from days before man still holding true and holding sway. I know this to be the truth. The world will change soon, and for the better of all. This world will be reshaped and in my image." He paused a moment as if thinking or listening. "Theirs as well."
"Arrogance," Balon growled, making to step forward, but when his foot touched the next board, it snapped into two with a loud crack. He desperately stumbled back, and Euron's amusement radiated outward, Glyphs smoking.
"Truth." Euron countered. "Nothing that happens now, here, In The North, or the South, Or Ibb or Asshai or Mereen or Braavos will matter. Not when They come."
Balon laughed. "And you are their servant?"
Euron's eyes smiled. "Apprentice. There is much to do, but I thought I would indulge in the last sentiments I have left before my journey begins. Asha bored me quite quickly, but you, brother? You could never."
Something flashed in Euron's left hand.
"Let us have one last talk, brother."
Euron stepped forward. His foot made no sound as it touched the next board, nor did the bridge shudder under his weight as it should have.
Euron clearly expected him to meet him halfway, so ponderous and slow were his steps. An old man's last stubborn duel was what he wished for.
Maybe it was what Balon had wished for too, once.
But he was tired. So tired now, for the first time in his life, of it all, everything.
Victarion would have charged forward by now. As would have his sons. Asha would no doubt do the smart thing and turn tail.
Balon reached out and cut the rope holding the left side of the bridge together in half instead.
As the bridge violently heeled to the left and the dagger flew free of his hand as Balon grasped the other rope and boards as tightly as he could, he saw Euron's smiling eye widen slightly, so slightly Balon was almost sure he was imagining it, except for what he heard as Euron fell.
A surprised, amused huff.
Balon didn't have time to watch him fall, to be sure he was dead. He was preoccupied holding onto the bridge as tightly as he could when the other twine rope finally snapped in half and Balon's side of the bridge began rapidly hurtling towards Pyke's cliffside.
God, My only God, please, please-
He and the bridge slammed into the ancient stone. The wood planks detonated on impact explosively. Balon's stomach lurched as he fell in freefall for a fraction of a second of a second before he caught the end of the rope still tied and nailed to Pyke's surface.
Please, he prayed, as his feet ground and uselessly slid against Pyke's slippery cliff face, as the numbness finally left him and the cold of the rain made his entire body shudder and freeze and draw in on itself the colder he got.
Please, he prayed to bloodied, skinless hands as he pulled himself upward inch by bloody inch.
Don't let me die like this, he begged as he hauled himself back up to the edge of The Great Keep's rear entrance. He crawled on hand and knee till he was at the edge and collapsed in on himself in exhaustion.
The moving walls finally stilled, and a face appeared out from the stone, black eyes shining.
"He came for you too, then," Harlon said.
"Yes." Balon wheezed. His vision was darkening, spotty, shrinking down to pinpricks.
"You look tired," Harlon said softly. "You should rest."
I can't, Balon almost said. Not here. I'll freeze.
But he didn't have the strength to move his lips anymore. Or his arms or his legs or even his eyes as they began to roll back into his head.
Just a moment, Balon conceded, eyelids dragging shut.
Just to regain my bearings. Just for a moment.
Yes, he sighed.
Just for a moment.