Chapter 28: The Burning Shadow and the Wolf's Redoubt
The arrival of Vhagar was not merely a sight, but a cataclysm. The colossal bronze dragon, her scales reflecting the weak winter sun with a baleful, metallic gleam, descended upon Harrenhal like a falling mountain. Her roars were the sound of mountains splitting, of the sky itself tearing open, and each beat of her immense, leathery wings was a thunderclap that shook the ancient, cursed stones of the fortress to their foundations. Astride her neck, a black silhouette against the fiery aura that seemed to cling to the great beast, was Prince Aemond Targaryen, his single sapphire eye a burning coal of vengeful fury.
"CREGAN STARK!" Aemond's voice, amplified by rage and perhaps some Targaryen artifice, boomed across the vast, desolate courtyards, a challenge that echoed from Harrenhal's five shattered towers. "You burrowed into my castle like a Northern rat! You dared to lay hands on a Prince of the Blood! You injured my Vhagar! Today, Stark, you and your vermin will burn! Harrenhal will be your funeral pyre!"
Ciel Phantomhive, Lord Cregan Stark, stood atop the somewhat repaired battlements of the Kingspyre Tower, the highest defensible point they held. Sarx, his direwolf, stood beside him, hackles raised, a low, continuous growl rumbling in his chest, a sound almost drowned out by Vhagar's earth-shattering pronouncements. Sebastian Michaelis was a pace behind, a figure of unnerving calm in the face of impending annihilation, his crimson eyes fixed on the approaching dragon with an expression that might have been clinical interest, or perhaps, a predator's sizing up of formidable prey.
"He seems… displeased, my Lord," Sebastian observed, his voice a silken murmur that Ciel barely heard above the wind and Vhagar's roars.
"His displeasure is his weakness," Ciel replied, his own voice cold and steady, though his heart hammered against his ribs. He raised his hand, a signal to his hidden archers, a gesture more of defiance than any real hope of harming the beast. "He will be reckless."
Aemond did not wait for a reply to his challenge. He urged Vhagar into a devastating attack. The dragon, as if sensing her rider's burning hatred, unleashed a torrent of molten bronze flame that washed over the curtain wall connecting the Kingspyre Tower to the Widow's Tower. Ancient stone, already weakened by centuries of neglect and previous battles, exploded, vaporized, or melted like wax, showering the courtyard below with incandescent rain. The screams of Northmen caught in the deluge were abruptly silenced.
"Hold your positions!" Ciel's voice cut through the terror. "To the inner defenses! She cannot burn all of Harrenhal at once!"
The Northern defenders, though shaken to their core by the sheer destructive power of Vhagar, largely held. They had been drilled relentlessly by Ciel, their fear of their young lord and their trust in his uncanny ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat warring with their primal terror of the dragon. They fell back from the crumbling outer walls, retreating into the labyrinthine network of ruined halls, choked courtyards, and fortified strongpoints that Ciel and Sebastian had prepared.
Vhagar's assault was relentless. Aemond, with a vindictive precision, directed her fire at any section of the castle where he glimpsed movement or Stark banners. The Kingspyre Tower itself was subjected to a furious bombardment, its upper levels wreathed in flame, stone groaning and cracking under the intense heat. Ciel was forced to order a withdrawal to its lower, more heavily reinforced levels, using the narrow, winding staircases and hidden passages that Sebastian had meticulously mapped and, in some cases, "improved."
"She is testing our defenses, my Lord," Lord Manderly observed, his face grim, as he joined Ciel in a vaulted chamber deep within the Kingspyre. The portly lord, leaning heavily on his weirwood cane, had refused to remain in the relative safety of the cellars. "Looking for a weakness, a way to incinerate us all."
"Then we must ensure she finds none," Ciel replied, his gaze fixed on a crudely drawn map of Harrenhal spread on a makeshift table. "Or rather, we ensure she finds only the weaknesses we wish her to find."
His plan was audacious, almost suicidal. He could not defeat Vhagar in the open. He could not outlast a determined siege by dragonfire. His only hope was to lure Aemond and Vhagar into a trap so devastating that it would either kill them, cripple them, or force them to retreat. And Harrenhal itself, with its cursed reputation, its unstable ruins, and its hidden secrets, was to be that trap.
As Vhagar continued her fiery rampage outside, Ciel dispatched orders through runners and, more directly, through his warg-bond with Sarx, who moved like a grey phantom through the castle's shadowed underbelly, guiding units, warning of collapsing structures, and even leading small, desperate counter-attacks against any Green soldiers Aemond might have landed. (Though for now, Aemond seemed content to rely solely on Vhagar's overwhelming power).
Sebastian, meanwhile, was Ciel's most potent and unpredictable weapon. He moved through the besieged castle with an almost casual disregard for the dragonfire and collapsing masonry. At one point, as Aemond directed Vhagar to blast open the main gate of the Flowstone Bailey, hoping to create an entry point for future ground troops or simply to terrorize the defenders, Sebastian, under Ciel's laconic instruction to "discourage that particular endeavor," appeared atop the crumbling gatehouse. As Vhagar's flames approached, he did not flee. Instead, with a speed that blurred the eye, he hurled a series of heavy, iron-bound beams – remnants of the gatehouse's own structure – directly into the path of the fire, then, impossibly, into Vhagar's open maw as she drew breath for another blast.
The great dragon choked, roared in surprise and pain, and reared back, her fire diverted harmlessly into the sky. Aemond, atop her, was clearly seen cursing and striking at her neck, trying to regain control. For a precious few moments, Vhagar's assault faltered.
"A most… temperamental beast, my Lord," Sebastian commented later, rejoining Ciel in the smoky gloom of a fortified cellar, without a speck of soot on his person. "And her rider is remarkably unimaginative in his application of overwhelming force."
Aemond, his initial fury perhaps giving way to a more calculated approach, or simply realizing that burning Harrenhal to the ground indiscriminately might also bury any chance of recovering… something (perhaps he believed Ciel held some valuable prisoner or artifact from his previous capture), changed tactics. He began to use Vhagar to systematically target the known strongpoints Ciel had established: the Tower of Dread, the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, and now the Kingspyre. He seemed to be trying to drive the defenders into the open, or to bury them within their own fortifications.
It was during a furious assault on the Hall of a Hundred Hearths – which Ciel had ordered lightly defended as a deliberate lure – that the first part of Ciel's grand trap was sprung. Aemond, seeing the Stark banners still flying defiantly from the hall's shattered roofline, directed Vhagar to land in the vast, rubble-strewn courtyard before it. He clearly intended to lead a ground assault himself, perhaps believing the main Northern force was concentrated there.
As Vhagar landed, her immense weight shaking the ground, her claws tearing up ancient flagstones, the earth beneath her gave way.
Sebastian, anticipating this exact maneuver based on Ciel's greensight-influenced predictions and his own subtle weakening of the courtyard's ancient, vaulted underpinnings over the preceding days, had ensured that a vast, forgotten cistern directly beneath that section of the courtyard was now little more than a fragile crust.
Vhagar, with a roar of surprise and terror, plunged partially into the collapsing cistern, her massive hind legs and tail disappearing into the dark, muddy water, her great wings beating frantically as she struggled to keep her forequarters from sinking. Aemond was nearly unseated, clinging desperately to Vhagar's neck spikes.
"Now!" Ciel's voice echoed from the Kingspyre. "Manderly! Karstark! Your archers! Aim for her eyes, her exposed underbelly! All units with wildfire arrows, target her trapped limbs!"
A desperate, almost suicidal volley of arrows, many tipped with burning pitch or small charges of wildfire, rained down on the struggling Vhagar. The great dragon shrieked in agony as flames licked at her vulnerable underscales and arrows pierced the softer membranes of her wings. She thrashed wildly, her struggles only causing the ground around the cistern to collapse further, trapping her more securely.
Aemond, his face a mask of incandescent rage, screamed curses at the Northmen, trying to urge Vhagar to unleash her fire, but the dragon was too panicked, too consumed by her own predicament, her flames lashing out wildly and ineffectually.
"He will try to free her on foot!" Ciel predicted, his gaze fixed on the chaotic scene. "Sebastian! Ensure Prince Aemond does not… interfere… with Vhagar's current… predicament."
Sebastian smiled, a slow, chilling unfolding of his lips. "Consider it done, my Lord." He vanished into the smoky chaos of the courtyard.
Aemond, indeed, had slid from Vhagar's neck and was desperately trying to rally his escort of Green knights (who must have entered Harrenhal during Vhagar's earlier breaches) to try and dig Vhagar out or drive off the Northern archers. But as he moved towards the edge of the cistern, a black shadow detached itself from the ruins of the Hall of a Hundred Hearths.
Sebastian Michaelis, moving with the silent grace of a hunting panther, intercepted Aemond and his knights. The ensuing "battle" was less a fight and more a methodical, terrifying dismantling. Sebastian, armed only with what appeared to be his standard set of silver tableware (which Ciel knew, from long experience, were as deadly as any Valyrian steel in his butler's hands), carved a path through Aemond's elite guard. Knights in full plate armor were disarmed, disabled, or dispatched with an effortless precision that was both beautiful and horrifying to behold. Forks became eye-gougers, knives found unseen gaps in armor, and a silver serving spoon, wielded with impossible force, caved in a Baratheon captain's helm.
Aemond, seeing his guard melt away before this inexplicable, black-clad terror, hesitated, his sapphire eye wide with a mixture of fury and dawning, superstitious dread. He had faced down dragons, had killed his own nephew, had bathed in the fires of war, but this… this was something else. This was a creature that moved like no human, that killed with a smile, that seemed impervious to fear or pain.
He lunged at Sebastian with Dark Sister (his own, not the one Ciel carried), but Sebastian sidestepped the blow with contemptuous ease, then, with a movement too swift to follow, relieved Aemond of his sword and sent him sprawling into the muddy edge of the cistern with a well-placed kick.
"Such… predictable aggression, Prince Aemond," Sebastian purred, towering over the fallen prince. "One would think a dragonrider would possess a more… elevated sense of strategy." He made no move to kill Aemond, merely ensuring he remained… contained.
Vhagar, meanwhile, with a desperate, earth-shattering roar, finally managed to heave her massive forequarters from the collapsing cistern, her wings beating the air into a maelstrom of mud, water, and dragonish fury. She was grievously wounded now, her underbelly scorched, arrows protruding from her limbs and wings, one eye seemingly blinded by a lucky (or Sebastian-guided?) wildfire arrow. She was a creature of pure, unadulterated agony and rage.
She ignored the Northmen, ignored even Aemond. Her one good eye fixed on the structure that had been the source of her torment when the tower collapsed on her before: the Tower of Dread. With a terrifying, final surge of strength, she launched herself at it, her claws tearing at its ancient stones, her flames engulfing its already ruined battlements.
Ciel, watching from the Kingspyre, felt a cold premonition. This was not a strategic attack. This was a death throe, a final act of defiance from a dying queen of dragons.
"She means to bring it down entirely!" Ciel realized. "And Aemond… Sebastian!"
Sebastian, who had been calmly observing Vhagar's final, terrible assault on the Tower of Dread, turned his gaze towards Ciel, a silent question in his crimson eyes.
"Get Aemond clear!" Ciel commanded. "If that tower falls, it could destabilize this entire section of the castle!"
The Tower of Dread, already grievously wounded, battered by dragonfire, and undermined by its own cursed history, could not withstand Vhagar's final, suicidal onslaught. With a series of horrifying groans and cracks, the ancient tower began to tilt, to lean, then to collapse inwards, a slow-motion avalanche of black stone and despair. Vhagar, still clinging to its upper reaches, roaring her defiance to the last, was carried down with it, disappearing into a colossal cloud of dust, smoke, and screaming echoes.
A profound, echoing silence fell over Harrenhal, broken only by the crackle of distant fires and the suddenly very loud sound of men gasping for breath. The dust cloud slowly began to settle, revealing a new, even more profound ruin where the Tower of Dread had once stood.
Of Vhagar, there was no sign. Only a vast tomb of shattered stone.
And of Prince Aemond Targaryen…
Sebastian Michaelis emerged from the edge of the dust cloud, carrying the unconscious, or perhaps dead, form of Aemond Targaryen slung over his shoulder. His black attire was, as always, remarkably pristine.
"Prince Aemond is… indisposed, my Lord," Sebastian reported, his voice calm. "And it appears the Queen of All Dragons has… abdicated her throne. A most dramatic exit, if I may say so."
Ciel stared at the smoking ruin, then at the form of Aemond, then at his demon butler. He had done it. Against all odds, against the realm's most feared dragon and its most ruthless rider, he had held Harrenhal. Vhagar was dead. Aemond was, once again, his captive.
The cost had been catastrophic. Harrenhal was little more than a smoking shell. His Northern army was a pale shadow of its former strength. But he had survived. He had won.
A ragged cheer went up from the surviving Northmen, a sound of disbelief, exhaustion, and fierce, terrible pride in their young, terrifying lord.
Ciel Phantomhive, Cregan Stark, the Wolf of Winterfell, stood amidst the ruins of Harrenhal, the dust of ages and the smoke of dragonfire settling around him. He felt nothing. Only a vast, empty coldness. The game continued. And he, it seemed, was destined to play it until its bitter, bloody end.