nycdaug Chapter 409 – Pyke 02.
Chapter 409 – Pyke 02.
[Chapter Size: 3300 Words.]
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Third Person POV
Pyke, 300 AC.
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Jon was walking out onto the front of the ship in his full armor, while Arya was at his side. They moved along the busy deck as men prepared for what was to come.
The storage areas, which were more protected and isolated within the ships, were open, with wildfire being carefully carried to the deck and handled without the use of torches, maintaining greater safety.
They used light crystals to illuminate the corridors. Thus, barrel after barrel was brought up and carried along. Men took the cylinders made of glass in Ártica and began filling the containers, which were sealed with a lid fitted with a ready wick. Then, they were placed beside the scorpions, while the giants were already performing maintenance to prepare for launching.
Not only that ship, but all one hundred and twenty ships were preparing, with their scorpions ready to fire.
The pulleys strained as the giants applied force to stretch the steel string, turning a crank at the side, pulling the cord to its limit before launching the projectile.
"We are almost in position, my king. We just need to align the fleet," said the ship's captain.
"Good. Wait until all the other ships are ready. We will launch the attack together," he said, as more scorpions were prepared for firing.
Jon watched the other ships preparing as well before turning to the giant. "Good luck, Iker. Aim well at the base. I would like to see that fortress collapsing into the sea. It will be a spectacle worth noting," Jon declared.
After all, it had been built upon firm natural rock. It was almost impossible to climb up from there. That was why the Greyjoy fortress became something extremely difficult to conquer—but they had never faced the arctican fleet as an enemy.
"I will, my king!" the giant said, his voice as thick as steel dragging over another.
"Jon Arctic! I curse you, you bastard!" Asha's voice rang out as everyone looked up, seeing her bound, staring toward the area beside the giant.
"Why is that damned woman talking? Someone shut her up!" a dwarf exclaimed angrily while carrying more barrels of wildfire.
"Leave her. There is no need. She has already lost everything. Let her be angry and think she can curse us," Jon said.
"If you want, I'll go up there myself and punch her in the face," Jorelle said, approaching, looking with irritation at Asha, more than ten meters above the deck.
Jon merely shook his head and looked back at the other ships as they began to align. He had to look up at the sky to see the number of birds waiting for his command.
"Prepare yourselves. When you are done, give me the signal. We are getting closer," Jon said.
They were at least eight hundred meters from the fortress. They could see the entire harbor preparing—men grabbing weapons, shouting orders. The eagles were watching.
Jon took one of the fleet's ravens, one of those waiting for his orders. It was a trained raven, capable of repeating some human words. He lifted it and released it into the air, as the bird moved forward, leaving the main ship toward the fortress of Pyke.
The bird took a few minutes to arrive, finding Balon, who seemed quite nervous at that moment, while his men argued and complained around him.
"Balon Greyjoy! Balon Greyjoy!" the raven landed on the parapet of that balcony, as everyone immediately looked at it, unable to help but find it bizarre—a talking raven saying the king's name.
"You are going to die, and your fortress will fall! You are going to die, and your fortress will fall!" the raven began repeating, as it moved from side to side.
"Seize that damned raven!" Balon shouted, furious at hearing such audacity.
But the raven, before anyone could reach it, took flight.
"You are going to die! Your fortress will fall!" the raven continued a few meters away, while some archers prepared their bows. However, the bird was already moving away, flying downward before anyone could truly hit it with an arrow.
"My lord, do you think we should prepare for battle at the harbor?" one of the men said.
But Balon immediately denied it. "No. We will bring most of the men inside the fortress. We will lock our walls. The fleet cannot attack us from the sea—we have the advantage, do we not?" Balon shouted.
It was clear that his voice was no longer as confident as before.
'Why am I afraid? It is only one hundred and twenty ships… we have more…' he murmured internally.
His eyes soon returned to the fleet. The main ship was still distant, and he could not see who was hanging from the mast without a spyglass, but it was his own daughter.
'We lost contact with the entire north… they came from the north…' he began to think, feeling a tightness in his chest.
All the ironborn were being annihilated, and their communication was being cut off... If they had captured Asha, then Victarion was probably captured as well or perhaps already dead.
He could already consider his brother dead, his daughter captured and humiliated in front of Pyke, and his son… a strange case. According to what Asha had written about him, he had been found in Winterfell, bound to the Bolton bastard, and was no longer worthy of being called a son.
His rebellions were destroying his own family, like a pit that loses water until it dries out.
Balon frowned, frustrated.
'No… I am the king. I am the kraken,' he repeated to himself, unable to accept any other reality.
He then turned to the priest of the Drowned God.
"You saw the prophecy. You said that tentacles would rise from the water. You were right," he began, as his men exchanged uncertain glances.
"But the tentacles attacked our own men… the captains we sent…" someone murmured.
"Do you dare doubt the kraken?!" Balon shouted at him, never allowing doubt in his court. And despite his arrogance, many could see the desperation behind it.
"Take this man to the cells! There is no place for those who doubt the visions of the Drowned God!" he announced.
The guards immediately grabbed the man. "Wait!" he tried to shout, but was soon taken away, left alone.
"My lord, they are preparing weapons against us," said one of his men, as he continued looking through the spyglass.
Balon could not help but feel a chill upon seeing the giants, now even more visible, preparing a massive launching device. A steel bolt with a green sphere—impossible to identify exactly what it was, but it looked like glass containing a strange liquid, wildfire in a more advanced version—was being prepared for firing.
"I have the impression that they are aiming at the fortress, my king… not the harbor," said another man.
Balon looked more carefully—and it was true. All the ships were pointed exclusively at the fortress as they began to align side by side. No ship was left behind the main one.
They began to slow as they approached five hundred meters from the fortress.
The harbor was still in turmoil: men shouting, ships preparing, archers with flaming arrows positioning themselves to attack the enemy fleet. At the same time, most of the ironborn forces were being brought inside the fortress, behind the gates, preparing for a possible siege.
The ships continued aligning, one beside the other, until all of them pointed at a single point—and it was not the harbor.
Those in the fortress began to realize. A crescent was forming with one hundred and twenty ships, all aiming directly at the structure.
"What are they doing?" the ironborn in the harbor asked, while inside the fortress, a bad feeling began to grow.
"Today, my warriors!" Jon's voice roared like thunder, without any warning. All heads in the fleet, as well as those on the island, turned toward it.
The sound echoed all the way to the harbor and the fortress. He had shouted to more than one hundred thousand men in the war against the dead, and that distance was nothing for his voice—amplified by magic.
"Today will be the end of an era. A response to the way of life of this people, which has existed for hundreds and hundreds of years, since the beginning of their history!" Jon spoke from the rear of the ship, facing directly toward the fortress, while all the ships beside him heard clearly, and his voice reached the entire coastline of the island.
"From this day forward, the ironborn will change. They will learn that, in the end, they are nothing—and that this rebellion was their last chance to commit the crimes they have been carrying out until this very day!" he continued.
Balon could not help but tremble, overtaken by anger upon hearing those words.
"Balon Greyjoy will die today! And we will kill every ironborn on this island! We will leave no one alive, because these people are a plague!" Jon declared.
"Simple order: any ironborn who appears before you… kill without mercy!"
He paused briefly.
"And now… let's begin." Jon brought his hand to his sword, removing Blackfyre from its sheath.
"First… destroying Pyke." He pointed the blade forward.
"The man who calls himself the kraken king… is actually just a man. The real krakens are in the water right now. And look… they fight for us, not for that scum," Jon said.
Meanwhile, the krakens began to raise their tentacles in front of the fleet. There were not just three, like those Jon had dominated in the northern waters near Bear Island. He had discovered that there were many krakens. Three had turned into a full dozen, emerging from the depths.
Each of them aligned themselves in front of the fleet.
Jon could see the panic in the harbor. He could see the uncertainty and shock on the faces of those on the fortress balcony.
"Prepare to fire!" Jon shouted immediately.
The giants began making noise as they moved the scorpions, adjusting their aim before locking them completely, ensuring they would not move after being aligned with the castle.
The metal groaned. The strings were stretched to their limit on each of the scorpions spread across the one hundred and twenty ships. The candle wicks began to be lit with flames—they would have three minutes before reaching the liquid.
"Father! Stop this!" Asha's cry echoed in the silence.
Everyone looked up on the ship, some laughing at her, others mocking and showing indifference.
The atmosphere in the harbor was pure tension, as if something inevitable was about to happen—something that would shock everyone.
Inside the castle, everyone stood still, looking at it, knowing it was a warning that something terrible would happen...
"My king, we cannot stay here! They are preparing those wildfire weapons!" one of the men shouted, frightened as he looked through the spyglass.
Even the priest of the Drowned God looked at the krakens, all aligned before the fleet, obeying the ships—the Arcticans and their king, not the Greyjoys.
Balon looked at his daughter, who was still pleading from the mast.
Asha was already broken.
If Theon had been broken through physical torture, Jon had achieved it through psychological torture. In recent days, he had made a point of bringing the heads of Lord Blacktyde, Lord Harlaw, and his son to her cell, leaving them displayed before her—a clear demonstration that there would be no mercy for the ironborn.
The woman, once vile, fierce, and relentless, now seemed like nothing more than a desperate girl.
Jon heard her crying from the back of the ship as he walked toward the bow... "Calm yourself… you haven't even seen the greatest spectacle of all yet," he murmured in a low voice, keeping his sword raised.
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he approached the scorpion on the main ship... for a brief moment, before opening them again.
There was cruelty in his green eyes.
"Bring down the castle." His voice came out calm, but it was amplified and echoed throughout the entire fleet.
In the next moment, the explosive sound of the shots echoed.
All the scorpions, spread across the one hundred and twenty ships, fired at the same time.
The castle, the harbor, and the city watched in horror as dozens of projectiles were launched into the air, advancing even from five hundred meters away before beginning to descend.
Balon and his men watched in terror.
The weapons cut across the sky—and all of them carried flames, with their wicks already burning.
In the next moment, they advanced, descending below the castle and beginning to bombard the rocks with force, embedding themselves into them. Others missed, striking only the water, where the flames were extinguished. However, most of the harpoons hit the base, burying themselves deeply, while some broke upon colliding near each other, shattering the rock and causing some that were embedded to come loose and fall into the sea. Even so, more and more struck the target, until the rocks beneath Pyke were completely perforated.
Balon felt the castle tremble, the rocks being pierced one after another.
Silence took over for a moment.
Some harpoons failed, jamming in the mechanism, while the giants quickly tried to unjam them for new shots. Others were already being put into place, and once again the cranks turned, stretching the steel strings to prepare another launch.
Jon watched everything in silence, hearing only Asha's crying as the scorpions were armed again. But he did not need to give another order.
The last harpoons flew from the fleet and embedded themselves into the rock. Some cylinders broke, scattering glass, and the blue liquid began to spill, reaching other charges that were still lit.
That was enough, because in the next moment, the liquid ignited with the flames from the lit wicks of the other cylinders.
An initial explosion shattered another cylinder, which also came into contact with the flames, creating a chain reaction. The fire spread from one point to another, connecting all the cylinders. Even those that had fallen into the water were reached by the subsequent explosions.
Then came the flash.
It looked like a sun in the middle of the day.
Asha, bound to the mast, watched with wide eyes as the green glow of the explosion reflected in her eyes, consuming the rocks that supported the fortress of Pyke.
In the harbor, everyone watched, frozen.
On the arctican ships, the men watched as if it were a spectacle, seeing the explosion consume everything.
The rocks began to crumble, and the castle lost its foundation. The entire structure began to tilt… and then, to collapse.
Balon had not left the fortress.
Even with his men begging, he remained. Something inside him told him there was no point in fleeing.
Everything he saw shook him deeply.
When the explosion came, it was as if the world itself had shattered. The entire fortress cracked, and in the next moment, it completely lost its support.
The rocks were destroyed.
The heat struck everyone. Balon and his men screamed as they felt their skin burn, the flames being pulled upward by the force of the explosion.
He only managed to raise his arms, trying to protect himself.
Then he felt it.
The fortress was falling.
Not even in his worst nightmares had he imagined such a thing.
The ground ceased to be firm. The entire structure began to collapse forward. For a brief moment, it seemed as if everything had stopped—as if time had frozen.
But in the next instant, the fortress fell.
Much faster than any human body could react.
And, suspended in the air, they began to plummet along with it.
For everyone—even for the ironborn in the harbor—it was unbelievable.
There were looks of awe mixed with horror as they watched the fortress, which everyone claimed was impenetrable, simply toppling into the sea.
Asha let out a scream of despair.
The water surged violently when the weight of the fortress collided with it. The impact created an explosion of water, sending massive waves in all directions.
Balon, who was falling while screaming in despair, was struck by the explosion that came after. His body was thrown upward again before falling at another point, hitting the water with brutal force. He felt several bones break due to the speed of the impact.
He simply lost consciousness, and he did not even realize when his body sank into the sea. The force of the wave that followed dragged him even further, pulling him away.
For the arcticans, however, it was still a fantastic—and satisfying—sight.
The massive wave advanced quickly toward the fleet. Everyone watched its approach, waiting for the impact.
The ships rose with the force of the water, but none of them lost balance.
They had a system beneath the hull that prevented them from capsizing, using the water itself as a counterweight—a water tank, as they called it. A technology created in Ártica to allow them to sail through violent seas and constant storms, since they constantly traveled to the other side of the known world, Yi-Ti.
The wave passed, but the sea remained turbulent.
People began to appear in the water, desperate.
Balon was nowhere to be seen.
Jon was already at the edge of the bow, observing everything alongside his men. Impressed by it all, while some whistled behind him, others made astonished remarks.
Jorelle began to laugh. "I will never forget this!" she said.
Arya simply watched, with a cold expression, turning toward Asha, who was still bound to the mast and now crying like a child.
And no one could blame her for that, after what she had seen.
Jon then gave an order through his connection. The krakens submerged again.
He had ordered them to find Balon. The man was still alive—sinking, with broken bones, on the verge of drowning.
Soon after, the krakens began bringing to the surface other men who had been with Balon in the castle. Some had managed to survive, while others were still trapped in the wreckage of the structure, being pulled down to the depths of the sea.
Many died drowned.
Others died on impact—when the entire fortress collided with the water, their bodies were crushed against rocks or structures. Some died instantly when they struck their heads.
Then, one of the krakens emerged. Its tentacle rose before the main ship, holding a body.
It was Balon.
The creature dropped him onto the deck, completely soaked, before returning to the depths. The man was unconscious, his body broken and deformed.
Asha looked at her father, still crying, but without even the strength to scream.
Jon approached. Balon had soiled himself in the middle of everything.
The smell was strong, immediate. "Well… someone take him somewhere before the smell gets worse," Jon said.
His men grumbled, but obeyed, dragging Balon's body away.
Jon turned his attention forward. He could see men from the castle in the water being pulled by the krakens, which threw them into the air before devouring them. Others were simply dragged to the bottom of the sea.
"Everyone, move the ships to the harbor!!" Jon shouted, looking at the other ships.
It was time to advance to the harbor. Now, there was no more resistance, and the ironborn clearly would not be as eager for a fight after what they had seen.
He knew that most of the forces had been in the castle—or what remained of it. Some survivors could still be seen, looking with pure terror at the scene, while the cliff itself began to crumble, taking some of them along. Screaming before falling into the water.
The fleet began to gain speed again, advancing toward the harbor.
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