Chapter 19: False Gods and True Power
The voice from the other side of the door was steeped in the absolute, unshakeable certainty of the devout. It was the voice of Ser Theodan Wells, one of the two Warrior's Sons in the delegation, a man whose stern, righteous face they could picture without seeing. "In the name of the Seven who are One, I charge you, Eddard Stark, with high heresy! You have brought a creature of blasphemy into this holy city and sheltered it against the will of the gods and their chosen King. Open this door and submit to the justice of the Faith."
Beside him, the cruel, bullying tones of Ser Meryn Trant added a more temporal threat. "The Queen gives you one last chance to save your children from your own treason, Stark. Open the door, or we will burn it down and take you."
The threat was hollow, and everyone knew it. They would not dare try to burn a door behind which Thor waited. This was not a military assault; it was a moral one. They were pinning Ned to a cross of his own making, forcing him to choose between surrendering to a sham trial or unleashing his monster on holy men, an act that would condemn him in the eyes of the entire continent.
Inside the solar, the air was thick enough to choke on. Ned's few remaining guardsmen gripped their swords, their faces pale. They would fight and die for their lord, but the thought of fighting men who claimed to speak for the gods had shaken them to their core. Sansa had let out a small, terrified whimper and was being comforted by her Septa, while Arya stood ramrod straight, her hand on her wooden sword, her eyes blazing with defiance.
"This is their masterstroke," Ned breathed, his gaze locked on the barricaded door. "They have made it impossible. If I surrender, we lose. If we fight, we lose."
"You are thinking like a wolf in a snare," Thor's voice rumbled from beside him. He was preternaturally calm, his presence a pool of absolute stillness in the frantic, terrified room. "You see only the teeth of the trap. You are not thinking about the hunter who laid it."
"What does that matter?" Ned asked, his voice raw with despair. "The trap is sprung."
"It matters because the hunter believes his trap is the strongest thing in the forest," Thor explained, his gaze intense. "He believes his authority, the authority of his Seven Gods, is absolute. We do not need to break the trap. We need to break the hunter's belief in it. We need to show him that there is a bigger predator in this forest than he could have ever imagined."
Ned stared at him, understanding dawning in his weary eyes. "You want to… to answer their faith with your own."
"I want to answer their faith with fact," Thor corrected him. "They serve gods they have never seen, who speak only in whispers and shadows. They are about to meet one who speaks in thunder." He placed a hand on Ned's shoulder, a gesture of immense weight. "But I will not do it without your command. This is your realm, Lord Protector. Your battle. I am your weapon. You must choose to wield me. You must give the order. Sanction my power with your law. Otherwise, I am just the monster they claim I am."
The choice was laid bare before Eddard Stark, as sharp and as terrible as the edge of an axe. All his life, he had followed the laws of gods and men. He had revered the Septons, respected the traditions, and put his faith in oaths and decrees. Thor was asking him to cast all of it aside. To sanction an act of what this world would call supreme blasphemy. To use a power he did not understand to save a life he no longer valued as much as his own honor.
He looked at Arya's fierce, hopeful face. He thought of Sansa's terror. He thought of his boys in the North, of Catelyn, of the promise he'd made to his dying king. What was honor if it meant the death of everyone he loved? What was law if it served only the wicked?
"They have left me no choice," Ned whispered, as much to himself as to Thor. He straightened up, the despair in his eyes hardening into a cold, unfamiliar resolve. He was no longer just the honorable wolf of Winterfell. He was a cornered predator, and his children were threatened. He looked at Thor, the man, the god, the storm that had become his only shield.
"Unbar the door," Ned Stark commanded his men. Then he looked at Thor, his voice dropping to a low, firm command that echoed with the weight of history. "Show them."
A grim smile touched Thor's lips. "As my lord commands."
He did not wait for the Stark men to fumble with the barricade. He simply placed his hand on the heavy oak door and pushed. Not with the furious strength of a battering ram, but with a quiet, irresistible pressure. The wood groaned, the iron hinges screamed, and the thick timbers of the barricade behind it cracked and splintered. The entire doorway seemed to warp, and then the door flew from its hinges, exploding outwards into the corridor with a deafening boom.
The delegation on the other side stumbled back in shock. Ser Meryn Trant, his hand half-drawing his sword, froze. The two Warrior's Sons, their faces masks of pious certainty a moment before, now stared with wide, unnerved eyes.
Thor stepped through the ruined doorway into the corridor, Stormbreaker held loosely in one hand. Ned and his guards followed, forming a line behind him.
"You have made a grave error," Thor said, his voice calm, but carrying a resonance that made the torches on the walls flicker.
"Blasphemer! Demon!" Ser Theodan of the Faith shouted, his courage returning, fueled by fanaticism. He drew his longsword, its polished steel gleaming. "You will be cast back into the seven hells from which you spawned! In the name of the Warrior, I will strike you down!"
He and the other Warrior's Son raised their swords. Ser Meryn, seeing his chance, drew his own blade. "Kill the monster! Take the traitor!" he shrieked.
They charged.
Thor did not move to meet them. He did not raise his axe to block. He simply looked up at the stone ceiling of the corridor, and raised his free hand.
And outside, the sky went dark.
It was not the natural darkening of a storm. The sun was still shining on the rest of King's Landing. But directly above the Tower of the Hand, the sky flash-boiled into a bruised, churning cauldron of black and purple clouds. A sudden, unnatural wind howled through the corridors of the Red Keep, extinguishing the torches and plunging the hallway into a terrifying gloom, lit only by the faint, ethereal blue glow now emanating from the runes on Stormbreaker.
The charging men skidded to a halt, their fanaticism faltering in the face of this immediate, impossible reality. They looked up in terror at the swirling vortex of darkness visible through the high windows.
"What sorcery is this?" Ser Meryn stammered, his bravado gone, replaced by a raw, animal fear.
"It is not sorcery," Thor's voice boomed, now filled with an ancient, echoing power. He pointed Stormbreaker towards the sky. "It is a sermon."
He called its name in his mind, a single, sharp thought of command, and the sky answered. A bolt of pure, white-hot lightning, thicker than a man's waist, erupted from the heart of the unnatural storm. It did not strike the tower. It struck the center of the courtyard below with a deafening, cataclysmic CRACK that was louder than any thunder any man there had ever heard. The ground of the entire Red Keep shook as if from an earthquake. The sound was so immense, so violent, that it was felt as a physical blow, knocking men to their knees, their ears ringing, their eyes blinded by the flash.
The bolt vaporized the stone flagstones where it struck, leaving a glassy, smoking crater ten feet across. The smell of ozone was thick and suffocating, the smell of a world momentarily rent asunder.
In the corridor, now lit by the eerie afterglow from the courtyard, the three assailants were on the floor, trembling. Ser Meryn Trant was curled in a ball, whimpering like a beaten dog. The two Warrior's Sons were staring at Thor, their faces utterly broken. Their swords lay forgotten on the floor. Their faith, their absolute certainty in their Seven gods, had been shattered by a single, undeniable act of a different god. They had come to cast out a demon and had come face-to-face with a power that dwarfed their own conception of divinity.
"I am the storm," Thor said, his voice now a quiet, menacing whisper that was more terrifying than his earlier boom. "And I am the thunder. I am the protector of this man, the lawful Hand of your dead King. If you wish to take him, you must come through me." He lowered his axe. "I will not ask you again. Leave. Now."
Ser Theodan, his face a mess of tears and shattered belief, scrambled to his feet. He did not look at Thor. He could not. He simply turned and fled, his fellow holy warrior stumbling after him. Ser Meryn Trant, seeing his protectors abandon him, crawled backwards before finding his feet and running, his own panicked screams echoing down the hall.
They were broken. Not their bodies, but their certainty. And in this city, certainty was the only true armor they had.
From the windows of the royal apartments, the Lannisters had witnessed the entire event. Jaime had instinctively drawn his sword, a useless gesture against a storm. Cersei had let out a small, strangled gasp, her hand flying to her mouth. The sky turning dark, the impossible bolt of lightning, the sheer, raw, elemental power… this was not a trick. This was not a charlatan.
"What is he?" she whispered, her voice trembling, her rage finally, completely, extinguished by pure, unadulterated terror.
Tyrion Lannister, for the first time in his life, was speechless. He simply stared at the smoking crater in the courtyard, his wine forgotten, his mind, for once, unable to process what it had just seen. He was a man who believed in a world of knowable things, of predictable appetites and logical conclusions. He had just witnessed an event that defied all logic, all reason. He had tried to understand the game, and one of the pieces had just overturned the entire board and set it on fire. The world was bigger, stranger, and infinitely more terrifying than he had ever believed.
In the tower, the Stark girls had been thrown to the floor by the shockwave. Arya scrambled back to her feet, her eyes shining with a wild, exhilarating light. She ran to the window and saw the fleeing delegation, saw the smoking crater, saw Thor standing in the corridor, a figure of absolute, victorious power. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Sansa, however, was curled beneath a table, sobbing. The stories were all wrong. This wasn't a song. It was a nightmare. The knights were cowards, the queen was a monster, and their protector was a terrifying, sky-breaking god who had just declared war on the heavens themselves.
When Thor and Ned returned to the solar, the unnatural storm outside had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, the sky a placid, indifferent blue once more. The silence they left behind was one of absolute victory.
Ned looked at Thor, his mind struggling to reconcile the man he knew with the being he had just seen command the heavens. He was no longer just a friend, a guest, a protector. He was a force of nature that he, Eddard Stark, had just unleashed upon the world. He had made his choice. He had sanctioned the miracle. He had used the storm.
"The siege is broken," Thor said quietly, the power receding from his voice, leaving behind the familiar, weary rumble.
"Yes," Ned agreed, his voice hollow. "But the war… the war has just begun."
He looked out the window at the city of King's Landing, a city that was now not just afraid, but utterly terrified. They had come to the capital to play a political game of thrones. But the rules had changed. It was no longer a game of lions and wolves. It was now a game of mortals and a god. And no one, least of all the mortals, knew how it was going to end.