Chapter 15 - An Age of Fire

The tower was dark, and the sky stormy as he climbed up the stonework.

It felt like forever as he climbed up, and up, and up. Finally, as the thunder rolled in the distance and he felt the drops from the black sky begin to fall on his face, his hand reached the enclave.

As he climbed up into the enclave of the tower and rested there, he heard more drops of red rainfall all around him, falling on the tower.

As he sat there, resting after the climb, he lifted his eyes and looked out over the landscape.

It was plains of green and gold, but they were burning. Red and gold and black they burned, and he felt the heat, even so far above them. Below him, the wind began to pick up, and on them, he heard faint screams and cries.

A few at. First, a couple, then a few more. Then a dozen. A hundred. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

Some screamed in pain, others in mercy, some in the western tongue, and some in strange, unknowable languages.

The fire quickly began to engulf everything around him, and to his horror, he saw that below it began to engulf the base of the tower, and then it began to creep it's way up along the tower wall.

He had to go, to climb higher.

Ignoring the rain, he abandoned the Windowless alcove and began to climb the tower once more.

As he climbed, he was engulfed in black smoke from the fire, and he coughed and coughed, and coughed.

It felt like his lungs would burn to ashes, but he kept climbing, his every grab a struggle, every hold a pain to do.

Then, suddenly and without warning, he climbed up, and out of the cloud of black, stinging, hot smoke.

He gasped, as his hands reached another alcove, and with a struggle, he forced himself to climb up and into it.

Once more, he sat down, his back against the wall, and rested there. His eyes looked out towards the land below, now covered by a cloud of smoke.

As he coughed, the layer of cloud beneath him began to part, revealing what lay below.

The plains had vanished utterly, and completely.

Now a different sight greeted him.

There, in the distance, he saw islands, islands sticking up from a shallow, shallow sea.

Once more, the wind began to pick up. Once more, screams carried on the air.

Ships burned, battles between men in steel and men in cloth. Fire. Fire everywhere.

A bleeding, burning star fell from the sky, in brilliant light going out.

Then, screams began to pick up in earnest, a cacophony that made the earlier screams sound dull and weak by comparison.

These screams were not distant though. Not by any stretch.

He got up on his feet, and hesitantly, looked down.

There, far below, a city, built on two sides of a mighty river was burning. A fire, of pure black, was spreading and screams and begging carried up, up and up to him.

A sea of smoke carried up and engulfed him, and the tower completely, so though roughly he couldn't even see his hand in front of him.

Once more, his lungs burned like ash.

Then, behind him, a door in the tower opened. The light was blinding, but he staggered into. It nonetheless.

Anything to escape the smoke.

He staggered into a room, filled with light, and he had to take a moment to adjust his eyes to sheer brightness of it all.

Once he had done that, he saw the sight that had blinded him.

In front of him was a massive pool, and a dragon burned the water with a fire of silver that made the black one from before seem dull.

Beneath the water was a lizard lion, and it laughed at the dragon.

The dragon swept over the water, again, and again and again, fire searing the water, yet no bubbles of boiling water or steam rose from the depths.

The lizard lion laughed. Then it spoke.

"And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low? Only a lizard of a different coat, that's all the truth I know. In a coat of white, a coat of green, a lizard still has teeth, and mine are long and sharp my lord, long as sharp as yours."

Then the lizard lion cackled and looked at him. It bowed, and motioned towards a door, that he had just realized was there.

He hastily walked away towards that door, leaving behind the dragon and lizard Lion as the fire once again fell against the water.

As he passed through the door, he came into a new room, this time, he walked on a bridge, old and withered and broken. The bridge, with a gate on each side, was filled with dead corpses. Men and women, children, and the old. All had slit necks and stared up at him in a mute appeal. As if he could save them.

Beyond the river, he saw the broken remains of other castles. Some large, some small, all were burning in the night, with a fire so bright he had at first thought it was the dawn greeting him.

As he walked, he finally reached the other side of the bridge, and it's gate.

With a mighty push, he opened them up. And there, greeted another sight, that brought great disgust into his heart.

It was the inside of a sept.

All around, the imagery of the new gods painted the windows, styled after the seven who were one adorned the stained windows. Each of the Seven was represented there, in all their glory. At the opposite end, was a huge glass window, with the Seven pointed star on it.

Then, behind the windows, he saw fire. Fire in black, white, green, and blue. They licked the building from the other side, engulfing the windows completely

The glass cracked from the heat, then shattered to the ground in countless pieces.

The fires, suddenly went out, like a blown-out candle.

Everything beyond the windows was darkness. Then… Blood began to flow from the top of the windows, and dripped, dripped down into the air, where they formed a pattern like they were melted steel being lowered into a casting piece. The cast in question being septagons, with interconnected patterns, began to form there in the air, as blood flowed from the top.

Blood red, with the black of the void behind it, emphasizing the red like a fire in a moonless night.

Then… that too began to crack. The blood, the septagons, the very black void began to crack like shattered ice, revealing a red sky behind it.

As everything around began to crack and crumble into nothingness, leaving only the red sky, and black floor, he realized that he, was once more outside, at the top of the tower.

He ran to the edge, panicked.

Once more, he saw a city, on two sides of a river.

Far, far in the east, he heard screams and begging, that was suddenly snuffed out.

He stared in that direction.

Over the horizon, he saw a dark silhouette come flying from the mountains.

It soared, a black shadow on this sky of red.

Larger than any bird, and without quill or fur or feather, there was one only thing it could be.

A dragon.

And what a dragon it was. The last dragon of Valyria.

A huge, black, behemoth, and as it flew by him, he saw that from it's eye flowed only boiling searing blood.

Atop it, sat a skeleton in armor, black as sin.

Death had come to the east. And now it had come home again.

And they burned.

He saw it far and wide. They burned. Farmers in their fields burned. Castles burned. Fields burned, cities burned, lords burned, septs burned, they ALL BURNED!

Burned, burned, BURNED!

The fire took it all.

Everything burned.

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Walton Stark, heir to the north, Woke with a start, heaving, and harking from shock and horror.