[Chapter Size: 3900 Words.]
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Third Person POV
Twins, 300 AC.
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It could be said that Edmure's response was pathetic, to the point that everyone imagined that, when openly facing Jon's questions and challenges, the man fell silent because he was probably pissing himself at that moment, being stared down by the king while expecting him to pick up a sword and fight him to the death.
No one could blame him for feeling that way, but at the same time, he himself had spoken ancient words about seeking to restore his sister's honor by dealing with Jon, who had only been a child of 8 namedays and later 11 namedays. The man did not even have the dignity to stand by his words now.
Pathetic.
Jon merely shook his head.
"Take all three of them to rooms in the undamaged part of the tower. I want you to keep them under watch as well, I'll decide what to do with them later. Bring food to them, I believe they need to eat," Jon spoke calmly after Edmure's silence.
He himself was not very willing to eat with those people.
Jon could even see himself keeping them there and trying to talk, but he felt a bit of resentment. Those people had spat on his uncle's last words, Grandjon had spoken badly of him and used low words to say that we hid in the North while we were fighting in the war that protected humanity. He did not expect gratitude for that, he had been aware of it since the beginning of the kingdom's construction, that he was not expecting help from the South, but he hated low words like those of that Umber.
Jon would never give any of them a place at his table.
Even if Maege Mormont and the other two were important, only Maege had remained silent, but there was still the weight of her actions.
"Jorelle, you may accompany your mother, Maege. To the room." Jon added.
Jorelle nodded before looking at her mother, who seemed somewhat distressed, while the men began carrying the three away. Grandjon Umber seemed to have a look of disgust and a bit of shame, while Edmure did not even know where to hide his face, wearing an expression of fear and defeat.
"My lord, what should we do with the other Northern soldiers?" one of the soldiers spoke about the other Northmen who had been taken from the dungeons.
"Keep them somewhere in the castle. Just place them under watch and feed them as well. These men have no loyalty to Arctic, but they do not deserve to die either," the king said.
His men nodded, moving to carry out the orders. There were at least another forty Northern men found in the dungeon.
Jon looked at his cousin. "Are you still angry with those lords?"
"And why wouldn't I be, Jon?" she murmured, not harshly.
"People are foolish, Arya. Umber is just a reflection of what the North has become in these times. Your mother also filled many people's heads the moment they chose your brother to be king. Even him... Not that I'm avoiding placing blame on them, but the greedy listened to words full of promises about a future that would only happen in their minds, and the North paid for it. They themselves paid for it. They are defeated and broken men and women. They will spend the rest of their lives with those memories."
"What do you plan to do with them?" Arya asked.
"They do not deserve to die for it, but perhaps leaving them unpunished is not a choice either. I will be harsher with the Northern lords than I am being with the Riverlands lords. I may even forgive Maege, but I will never forget where those lords trampled upon my uncle's death... your father's," Jon looked at her. "That Umber and Edmure will be sent to the Wall."
"Edmure will never become lord of the Riverlands, but perhaps I can make the son Roslin Frey carries into one," Jon pondered.
He had to plan what to do with them. In any case, they spent some time talking while wine was brought from Arctic's cellars. After all, the Freys had no stocks of Arbor Gold wine, and the wine they had there was garbage. Arctic wine was a thousand times better than any other.
Dinner was first brought to the main table, while the men themselves continued filling the tables in that hall. Soon, the interior had become a grand banquet, very different from the Freys', more lively, with music, with men from the army who knew how to play instruments and sing. The destroyed upper part of the tower now looked as though there had never been a ruined section or even an invasion just a few hours earlier.
The lords and the men of the North also received food, as did the Frey prisoners placed outside the tower in the camp, with only stale bread and water taken from the Freys' supplies, since no one wanted to waste Arctic's provisions.
"Thank you," Jorelle thanked the Arctican soldier who had come to bring food to the room where her mother had been assigned to stay until the king's further orders.
While Jon was drinking wine and talking with Arya and his men, Maege had a rather serious conversation with her daughter to update her on the events in the North.
And she could not say it was easy to learn that Bear Island was under siege, when only her little Lyanna could command the house, while the entire kingdom was dominated, Jorelle dying and people being hunted like animals, living through hell in that world with the ironborn pursuing them and committing every kind of vile crime.
It almost sounded somewhat fantastical when she said that the Arcticans had come out of nowhere to help them, slaughtering all the ironborn in a brutal manner while barely losing any men, with armor that could not be pierced by the raiders' weapons, along with battle formations that crushed any attempt at defense against their advance.
For Maege, it was somewhat difficult to believe.
Jorelle did not stop there, but also spoke about the animals. All the animals in every forest and body of water had begun massacring the ironborn, hunting them down.
She had heard about it, but believing that a man could control thousands of animals... And make them slaughter men...
'He received the gifts of the Old Gods, mother. He is the chosen one of the gods, of our gods,' Jorelle had informed Maege vehemently. She remembered it while receiving the plate placed before her, with Jorelle sitting beside her to eat at that moment.
Maege still thought about what she had heard...
'He saved me. I was dying. Lya said his hands glowed with a magical light, I was dying, but I felt it, felt something special touching me, it was comforting, I thought I had died and was finding myself in the afterlife, but it was the king reversing my condition while I was in bed dying. I don't remember much after that, but when I woke up, Lya told me everything.'
'Tell me, mother... do you think this power is evil? Do you think Jon Arctic is as some people said? Some kind of evil sorcerer? I disagree with that. I saw them being ruthless, but I did not see him being that way with Northerners or with people who did not deserve it,' Jorelle had said to her.
'Do you believe in the war they fought in the North against the dead, as they said they would?'
'After I saw him simply summon krakens in the middle of the sea and massacre the ironborn with the creatures they controlled... I no longer doubt anything coming from those people. And the low temperatures that remained for months and only began rising again in the last moons, along with the return of the sun.'
'That only represents one thing: the Long Night truly happened, and Arctic truly was attacked by the White Walkers. None of them are lying when they all describe what the war against the legends was like.'
Jorelle was certainly curious ever since she joined the Arcticans. She had exchanged words with hundreds of Arctican men whenever she had the chance. She began asking different people every day about the war in the North, and all of them said the same thing: an army of the dead trying to invade Arctic, while the kingdom's army stood firm against hordes of dead coming from a great snowstorm that was prevented from crossing the gates due to the protection of the Old Gods.
But even the protection against the storm did not stop the dead from climbing the walls and entering the kingdom, fighting against hundreds of thousands of blue-eyed men, animals, and mystical creatures, all with blue eyes. Not to mention the aerial assaults they launched against them through thousands of undead animals.
She merely shuddered imagining thousands of birds trying to attack from the sky. She had already seen Jon make living animals attack enemies and saw the terror that caused, so imagining undead creatures doing that was somewhat horrifying.
Maege could not stop thinking about the war. They celebrated their small victories on the battlefield and gained a bit of ground over the moons, it seemed they were winning, only for the army to gradually begin fragmenting in the end. The faction supporting Robb suddenly started collapsing. Everyone felt their forces weakening, while the enemy forces grew increasingly stronger.
And then came Stannis's defeat after the union of the Lannisters and Tyrells in the capital... how could that not be discussed with concern among the Northern and Riverlands army? Even Lady Catelyn Tully/Stark, who had appeared full of vitality at the beginning, proud of her son wearing the crown, suddenly began growing desperate and paranoid.
Maege knew that, in the end, the crown was a mistake. They were leading everyone to ruin. The Northern lands were suffering while they were there in the South, fighting a meaningless war... Robb's crown no longer seemed to have a just cause.
'We should never have placed a crown on Robb. We were fools,' Maege had to conclude the obvious internally. The North had become vulnerable. The ironborn attacked. Perhaps the North was unrecognizable now and would take dozens of years to recover what it had been before Robb marched south with the army.
But there was no use crying over a mistake they had all made.
"Are you still thinking about the war?" her daughter suddenly asked, looking at Maege, who merely sighed before beginning to eat.
"Yes."
"Did you know the king told me that the most foolish thing Robb did was become king? The situation of the war here in the Riverlands could have changed if Lysa Arryn had gathered the army and knights of the Vale. If united, they could even have created a powerful coalition. But the North and Riverlands alone... it was a huge mistake."
"Are you going to tell me that he also knows why Lysa Arryn did not involve herself in the war? I heard rumors that she was mad, no wonder she abandoned her own family," Maege raised an eyebrow. Her daughter now seemed full of theories.
"Of course. He told me that too," she replied confidently. "Did you know that it was Lysa herself who killed Jon Arryn by poisoning him? But she also had help from the Lannisters, more specifically the queen and Maester Pycelle..." she replied while eating and speaking casually.
Maege widened her eyes. "How do you know that?"
"Jon, I mean, Your Majesty, saw it," she simply answered.
"He can see these things?" she asked, strange thoughts crossing her mind about it.
"He did not explain it well, but I believe he can see it through animals. Look, he can control several of them. Maybe he sees their memories or something like that..." she simply said, eating the meat, which was delicious.
She loved the king's cooks. She had never eaten so much good food as she had in the last moons of her life. They made seasonings unlike anything she had ever tasted before...
While she ate, Jorelle could not have been more certain about her own theory. After all, Jon saw memories, and could even connect animals through other animals. As his sight sharpened across the kingdoms, he could simply look through other animals and expand his mental reach from one to another, managing to retrieve memories.
That was how he began seeing many things that had happened during those moons while they were at war against the White Walkers, even things from before that. Jon spent weeks inside his room organizing all the memories while sailing directly toward the ironborn islands a few weeks ago...
"Returning to the subject of the war... there was no way for the North to protect the Riverlands. Having Tully blood ended up being a danger for the Starks, since they had a moral obligation to help their own blood and House Tully. But doing that would also lead them to ruin. It would have been easier to leave the Riverlands, which could be attacked from all sides, and retreat to the North, where they could simply repel the enemies. Without dragons to attack, the North has a history of knowing how to defend itself very well from the South."
Maege could not help but shrink slightly as she thought again about the North and the betrayals.
"And Robb Stark was right to come to the Twins. If he had not discovered the betrayal of the Boltons and the Freys, you all would have been slaughtered in the middle of the wedding." She said, taking another drink of the wine they had brought for them as well, before continuing.
"It must have been rather bizarre for Edmure to be forced to marry Roslin after what happened," Jorelle could not help but laugh at that.
"I don't know. We were in the dungeon after the chaos and entering this damned tower. He appeared later and was taken away several times, perhaps to impregnate the Frey woman. In the first moons after that, he said he was going to be a father. He seemed rather happy," she commented.
To Maege, Edmure seemed pathetic in her eyes. The king's challenge had only confirmed what everyone already thought.
Jorelle merely laughed while taking another drink of the delicious Arctican wine.
"Drink a little more. At least you're having a good meal, and this is the best wine I've ever tasted in my life, it's addictive. You're lucky to be eating food worthy of a king, mother. As for the others... that foolish Umber, who took such pride in speaking badly of the king, is probably eating only scraps," she said with a malicious smile.
"You seem quite defensive of Lyanna Stark's son," Maege murmured, without moving as her daughter poured that wine into her cup. "You are not sleeping with him, are you?" She had to ask.
"And what if I am?" she said with a shrug, though at the same time seeming dreamy.
"Jorelle Mormont!" Maege spoke in dissatisfaction. "You have no idea what you are getting yourself into. As much as he may be favoring you, as far as I know he has two or three wives, some even kidnapped."
"Stories from the South, mother. Baseless stories. He actually has six wives, and that bastard daughter of House Martell was not kidnapped. She was already pregnant with his child and Doran Martell wanted to use her at the time. They married at sea. And, truth be told, she is Rhaegar's daughter, Rhaenys Targaryen who survived the attack on King's Landing and was secretly in Dorne. She is the king's half-sister."
Maege froze. She did not know what to think about that as she remained there in silence.
"And you think you want to get involved in this mess?" was all she managed to say, while her mind was still filled with chaotic thoughts.
"It's not like I would become a queen anyway. I mean, I don't think I have a chance, but maybe I could become the mother of his children. You had all of us and never married. Still, I would have powerful children with the king. A bear mixed with a wolf, or a dragon? Would it still be a Bear?" She began squirming as if she were amused.
Her mother merely sighed while looking at her daughter, who seemed foolish, but eager.
She started laughing at her mother's strange reaction. "Do not worry, Lady Mormont." She joked. "I never managed to sleep with him. I mean... I tried a few times, I admit it. The idea of having an heir for Bear Island is something that might even please you. I heard his children are all special as well. He already even has dragons."
She did not hide that fact either. Dragons... Jon would not care if Jorelle told someone that fact, honestly, no one would believe it until they truly saw a real dragon.
But Maege no longer knew whether she should continue eating or simply grow dizzy while trying not to hear any more from her daughter, who was now her heir. The only living girl, while her daughters Dacey and Alysane were dead. Lyra had disappeared a few years ago, so she was probably dead as well.
After hearing all of that, Maege began drinking that wine, trying to calm herself after everything.
At the same time, the Freys were in a very tense situation in the other tower.
Nightfall soon came, and the first tower, with its upper section destroyed, began growing brighter and brighter. The Arctican torches and banners were being put in place, with the sounds of a grand banquet beginning to stand out as the night grew increasingly silent and dark in that second tower.
The surviving Frey children merely watched the other tower through the window, their eyes filled with fear, hatred, and insecurity.
Walder Frey stood there at one of the windows, trembling, seeing his house not only destroyed, but now being used by those damned savages who had appeared out of nowhere and simply devastated them.
They had not even arrived for a siege and simply used enough firepower to annihilate stones that had stood for thousands of years.
How could that have happened?
They had lost one of the Twins in less than an hour.
The pride of House Frey had been devastated, while only a few days earlier they had been shouting in glory. They had been named Lords of the Riverlands. They held rights over Riverrun, even if the Lannisters would not allow them to take it so easily. But it was their right.
Before that, they had helped the Lannisters and taken revenge on Robb Stark for failing to honor his agreement, which had led him to openly disdain House Frey.
Roslin, his most beautiful daughter, was pregnant with Edmure's child. That gave him an almost guaranteed claim over Riverrun and the Riverlands, even though many were still furious over their actions alongside the Lannisters, Boltons, and Freys.
Still, suddenly, their situation had changed completely.
Now they were there, forced to retreat, watching their damned enemies simply enjoying the tower they had conquered. How could they not feel anger? Hatred? But there was also fear and insecurity.
They were lost.
Black Walder had simply been slaughtered after the fool broke the agreement of the peace banner when meeting with the Arcticans. Now the enemy would have no mercy on them.
Walder Frey was terrified, while most of his sons and the army were hundreds of kilometers away and would take at least fifteen days or even a moon to reach the Twins.
That had been the idea, to besiege Riverrun... but now they saw how destructive the attacks of those people could be with their weapons. They had simply vaporized part of that tower as if it were nothing.
Thousands of years of history had reached this point, where they could only see two-thirds of the tower, while smoke marks still formed across the place.
Which made them think: Why had they not destroyed this tower as well? Why not kill them all easily in the next attack? They still had those weapons, correct?
That left them terrified. If the weapons used on that tower were turned against them, how could they escape? Flee the Twins with only the river standing between the Arctican army and themselves?
They certainly would have no way out. They would simply lose their seat.
Walder Frey stood trembling. Pure fear was what dominated him at that moment. He did not want to accept reality.
"Father... we should leave. We should go to the capital and ask for help, the Lannister-Tyrell army is there..." one of his younger sons said.
"Silence!" Lord Frey merely muttered, staring into the darkness as though he might have an attack at any moment.
Walder Frey was dizzy, able only to watch the torches in the other tower illuminating everything, the sounds of banquets, laughter, and music... while they remained there in that heavy atmosphere.
He thought he would see only victories since the beginning of the war. He had tried to gain advantages in everything, but he had never imagined it would end like this.
Now they were threatened with complete destruction, just like that.
That gave the old man something to think about: What was stopping the Arcticans from simply destroying them now?
And what if they did it tomorrow?
That was what House Frey had been reduced to. They might still have a name, but would they still have a seat? Why were they being so cruel... Would they see no value in preserving the Twins? Why would they destroy them?
He was terrified.
At some point, he should have understood what the Arcticans represented. That they would come after so much silence. At some point, they would appear from the North, seeking to attack all those they considered enemies.
How could the Freys not be their enemies after what they had done?
Now they were cornered, while all they could do was endure the extreme psychological pressure being placed upon them, knowing they could die the next day. Their tower could simply be annihilated.
He wanted to blame someone. He wanted to blame Black Walder for being foolish enough to attack them during negotiations and bring their wrath upon his house.
Now everyone was paying for it.
Most of his soldiers had been slaughtered or had surrendered in the other tower.
What Walder did not imagine was that Jon could be quite cruel.
Walder Frey was afraid of losing his own life, of course, but Jon knew something that could be far crueler than simply taking the life of a Frey.
He wanted to see Walder Frey lose everything and leave him alive to witness what would come next, solely to torment him.
That was why he would find a way to make the Freys flee the tower.
As they ran, they would watch the great and famous Frey bridge cease to exist...
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