◉◉◉◉◉
A great fire burned on the forked island in the river. Tormund crouched beside it, roasting venison while the hardened fat slowly melted and the smell of it drifted through the cold air.
"Jimmy, it's nearly nightfall. Eat something first, then go back to killing," Tormund called from behind the shelter of a large boulder, sticking his head out cautiously.
"You lot go ahead. I'm killing a little longer."
Chances like this to rack up experience didn't come often. Jimmy kept cutting down wights with all the strength he had.
Only wights.
The White Walkers and the Night King had hidden themselves away. Aside from the occasional ice spear flying out of nowhere, there was almost no sign they were still watching.
No one really knew how many people had died beyond the Wall over all those years, or how many animal bones lay buried under the snow. But the number had to be beyond counting.
To strip away the Wall's lingering magic, the Night King had clearly spent enormous effort dragging every last corpse out into the open.
White Walkers were out across the land, leading the dead and digging up remains wherever they could find them. Just think about it. Even the far northern reaches, places buried beneath ancient snow that never melted, had been stripped clean of the dead.
That alone showed how much the Night King had been rattled by the Stark family surviving.
…
With one final leap, Jimmy crossed back to the island and dropped down behind a boulder, breathing hard. He picked up a bowl of hot broth and took a long, satisfied drink.
"That's better. Finally feel alive again."
"You know, you could just stay here with us," Jon said. "Once Horus comes back, we leave. We already got what we came for. Though now that I think about it… where is Horus?"
Jimmy followed Jon's gaze upward toward the pale white haze of falling snow overhead.
In weather like this, even if Horus could power through it, could the rest of them? They'd freeze solid the instant he tried carrying them up into the sky.
"Let's wait a little longer. For now, this place is safe enough."
The island sat between two fast, icy channels. Both banks were packed with watching wights. Luckily, several large boulders offered cover on both sides. After throwing a couple of spears and seeing they could barely hit anyone, the Night King and his Walkers had stopped wasting them.
Which suggested those lethal ice spears weren't something he could make endlessly at will.
Snow lashed the island all through the night. By morning, when the light finally bled into the sky, Jimmy looked out and saw nothing but wights.
They stood shoulder to shoulder across both banks, packed so tightly they looked like a wall of corpses. The distant hills were blanketed with them as well, and even farther off he could make out thousands of massive shapes. Giants, most likely. Mixed among them were the corpses of countless animals.
It looked as though everything north of the Wall had been emptied out completely. Not just the land. Life itself.
No living ecosystem remained. Nothing.
Still, what Jimmy saw next made his expression darken.
The storm through the night had changed the river. The current had slowed, and thin slush had begun to form across the surface. At this point, it would only take a little obstruction for the entire thing to freeze over.
Then it happened.
A roar from across the bank.
One of the White Walkers had seen him.
The moment Jimmy showed himself, the wights began shrieking and lifting their weapons, clearly ready to attack at a moment's notice.
By now they had learned his habits. Every time he showed himself, he would leap across and start cutting through them.
One shove in the crowd sent a wight tumbling into the river.
But instead of being swept away, it grabbed hold of another corpse standing at the bank and held fast.
And behind that body, where the current was blocked, ice began to spread almost instantly.
Jimmy's eyes narrowed.
"Damn it."
The words had barely left his mouth before countless wights rushed into the river, hurling themselves into the water to block the flow. Behind them, broad sheets of ice began forming at terrifying speed.
"Everyone, ready yourselves. The dead are crossing."
Jimmy didn't even get the chance to say it before Sandor had already drawn his sword and shouted the warning himself.
"Watch for ice spears," Jimmy added, then leapt straight back into the fight.
"Kill!"
Jimmy bounded across the forming ice, using each brief leap to scan for the Night King.
Nothing.
No Night King.
Not even a single White Walker is directing the dead.
Every time this happened, Jimmy wanted to curse whoever had once told the story. What happened to that version of the Night King who strolled around out in the open with four lieutenants behind him?
"Rhaaa!"
A dragon's roar suddenly ripped through the sky.
And then Horus answered it with a fierce screech of his own.
Just as the wights crossed the river and slammed into Jon's group, Jimmy was about to turn back to support them when the reinforcements finally arrived overhead.
Three dragons and one eagle.
Fire rained down in great sweeping torrents, blasting the frozen river open and restoring the rushing current around the forked island.
In a one-on-one fight, Jimmy could kill any one of the dragons.
But when it came to clearing huge numbers of enemies at once, he had to admit they were better than him.
He had been cutting down wights for what felt like forever with barely any visible effect. Then the three dragons and Horus arrived and tore the river open in moments.
The island was still crawling with wights, but no more could follow behind them now.
That gave Jon and the others breathing room.
Given enough time, they could wipe out the ones already there.
With every one of them carrying Valyrian steel, killing wights was no longer particularly difficult. The dead were dangerous because normal weapons could not finish them properly, and because there were always so many of them.
Take away those two advantages, and they were no match for fighters like Jon and the rest.
But Jimmy did not rush back to help.
Instead, he scanned the battlefield with sharp, wary eyes.
He knew exactly what the Night King wanted.
He had been eyeing the dragons all along.
Sure enough, on one of Jimmy's leaps, he spotted him at last.
Far off near the bend of a snow-covered ridge, the Night King stepped into view with an ice spear in hand.
Then he threw.
The spear shot through the air toward one of the dragons.
"Look out!"
Jimmy ripped Cloudsplitter free and hurled it without hesitation.
A thunderous crack rang out.
The ice spear shattered on impact, exploding into fragments. Some of those icy shards still struck the dragon, slicing one of its horns and shearing a piece clean away.
The beast let out an indignant howl and climbed frantically into the sky.
Cloudsplitter, meanwhile, vanished into the distance like a streak of light.
"Horus, go get my blade."
Jimmy barked the order, then launched himself toward the Night King.
Now that he had finally seen him, there was no way he was letting him slip off again.
The Night King was already drawing back another spear.
Jimmy, not wanting to give him the chance, reached into his storage space and yanked out a massive iron anvil.
"Catch this."
He hurled it with all his strength.
The thing screamed through the air with murderous force.
The Night King had no choice but to deal with it. He cast his spear at once.
The result was immediate.
The ice spear smashed the anvil to glittering fragments and kept coming straight for Jimmy.
The Night King's expression did not change.
Jimmy's did.
So that only works on special materials, huh.
Somewhere in another universe, the anvil itself might have been cursing its fate, wishing it had stayed buried under the Lonely Mountain.
Jimmy dug through his storage again and came up with a dark, jagged chunk.
"Then take this instead."
He threw it.
Again?
The Night King clearly assumed it was just another lump of ordinary metal. He raised a hand to break it apart on contact.
That was when it hit him.
A chunk of obsidian.
There were very few things he could not simply shatter.
That was one of them.
The black stone slammed into him full force and sent him tumbling across the snow like a rag doll.
◉◉◉◉◉
~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
◉◉◉◉◉
For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:
P-atreon/iamxeno
(Just remove the - hyphen to access normally)
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!