Chapter 7: A Trial of Gods and Kings
The day of the King's festival dawned not with the sun, but with a pall of unnatural silence that hung over King's Landing. It was a city holding its breath. From the opulent manors atop Visenya's Hill to the stinking hovels of Flea Bottom, a current of dread and anticipation flowed through the streets. The King had commanded a spectacle, and the city, like a nervous courtier, braced for the monarch's mad whim.
In the grand plaza before the Great Sept of Baelor, the heart of the Faith of the Seven, a monstrous effrontery had been erected. It was a pyre, but it was built with the perverse artistry that only a pyromancer could conceive. The wood was dry, oil-soaked, and stacked with a geometric precision that was both beautiful and obscene. At its center stood two thick, iron-bound posts, stark and black against the pale marble of the Sept's facade. The morning sun glinted off the dome of the Sept, a silent, golden rebuke to the pagan savagery being prepared in its shadow.
The plaza was a sea of faces. The smallfolk, drawn by a mixture of royal command and morbid curiosity, filled every available space, their expressions a mixture of fear and a strange, desperate hope. They were a flock of sheep gathered to watch a wolf judge a lion. Above them, on a specially constructed dais draped in the black and red of House Targaryen, sat the royal court.
King Aerys II was a study in feverish anticipation. He sat upon a temporary throne, a lesser seat than the Iron Throne but no less menacing, his body thrumming with a visible, nervous energy. His long, yellowed fingernails tapped a frantic rhythm on the armrest. He was dressed in his finest silks, a jarring contrast to his wild hair and the manic, hungry look in his lilac eyes. Beside him, Lord Varys stood like a soft, impassive statue, his powdered face a mask of placid neutrality, though his eyes missed nothing. Grand Maester Pycelle dozed lightly, his chins wobbling with each gentle snore, while other lords and ladies of the court whispered nervously behind their hands. A young Ser Jaime Lannister, resplendent in the white cloak and golden armour of the Kingsguard, stood behind the King, his handsome face a mask of bored contempt, though his emerald eyes were sharp and watchful. The High Septon himself was present, his face a thunderous mask of pious outrage, forced by royal decree to bear witness to this blasphemous pageant.
Then, a new sound began to ripple through the crowd, a low murmur that started at the edge of the plaza and swelled into a wave of hushed awe. It was not the sound of a herald's trumpet, but the heavy, rhythmic tread of a single man.
From the direction of the Street of Steel, Thor appeared.
He walked alone, but the space around him was a void. The crowd parted before him as the sea before a prophet, the people falling silent, many dropping to their knees as he passed. He had not asked them to follow, but behind him, trailing like the tail of a grim comet, were the people of Flea Bottom. The whores, the smiths, the orphans, the beggars—they walked in a silent, grim procession, their faces etched with a fierce, protective loyalty. They were his people, whether he wanted them or not, and they had come to witness the trial of their god.
Thor wore the same stained leather and drab tunic as always. His hair and beard were an untamed wilderness. He looked not like a god, but like a vagrant who had wandered into a festival by mistake. But his eyes, when he finally lifted them to survey the scene, were clear and cold as the void between stars. He held no weapon in his hands, but Stormbreaker was slung across his back, its dark, gnarled head a promise of violence held in reserve.
He walked to the center of the plaza, stopping before the royal dais, the great pyre looming between him and the King. He did not bow. He did not speak. He simply stood there, a mountain of silent, weary contempt, and waited.
Aerys leaned forward, his grin a rictus of delight. The main actor had arrived. "Behold!" he shrieked, his voice cracking with excitement. "Your god has answered his King's summons! Let the trial begin!"
On his signal, a side door of the Sept opened, and the two sacrifices were brought forth. The first was a man, a hulking, brutish creature with a matted beard and dead, soulless eyes. This was Vargo, a known murderer and cutthroat from the docks, a man who had killed for a handful of copper pennies. He was clad in rags, his body tense, but he showed no fear, only a feral, animalistic cunning.
The second was a woman. She was young, barely more than a girl, with wide, terrified brown eyes and a simple, clean dress. In her arms, she clutched a swaddled infant, her own child, who slept peacefully, oblivious to its fate. The crowd gasped. This was Ellyn, a baker's wife from the Street of Flour, known for her kindness and the sweet smile she offered every customer. Her presence on the pyre was an act of calculated, theatrical cruelty.
The guards roughly shoved them towards the pyre, tying them to the posts. Vargo the murderer on the left, Ellyn the mother and her child on the right. The woman was sobbing now, quiet, helpless tears tracing paths through the dust on her cheeks, her body trembling as she tried to shield her baby from the sight of the crowd.
Aerys stood, his arms spread wide as if to embrace the entire city. "Behold your choice, Thor of the Storms!" he bellowed, his voice echoing across the silent plaza. "A sinner and a saint! A life of wickedness, and a life of innocence! My pyromancers stand ready. Their flames will cleanse these two souls from my city. But you, in your divine wisdom, may intervene!"
He pointed a long, claw-like finger at Thor. "You may save one. Only one! Choose, god of justice! Show us your quality! Is it the wicked you favor, or the righteous? Let your lightning fall! Quench the flames of your chosen! But know this: the other will burn! The fire will claim its due! Choose now, and let all of King's Landing see the judgment of a god!"
The trap was laid. The silence was absolute, broken only by the mother's soft weeping and the mad King's ragged breathing. All eyes were on Thor. The lords on the dais, the smallfolk in the plaza, the silent Spider, the disgusted Kingsguard, the furious High Septon—all waited.
Thor's face was a mask of granite. His gaze moved from the terrified mother to the snarling murderer, and then finally, it settled on the grinning, expectant face of the King. He saw the whole pathetic game laid bare. The false choice. The manufactured drama. The petty cruelty of a mortal tyrant trying to measure a god with his own twisted yardstick.
He had been pushed. He had been prodded. He had been commanded. And in that moment, something inside him, something that had been dormant for years, finally broke its chains. It was not the righteous fury of an Avenger. It was the cold, absolute wrath of a king who had been shown an intolerable level of disrespect.
He would not play the King's game. He would shatter the board.
He closed his eyes. For a moment, he did nothing. The King began to giggle, thinking he had won, that the god was a fraud who would do nothing.
Then, Thor took a breath. A single, deep inhalation. And the world changed.
The sky above King's Landing, which had been a clear, brilliant blue, began to darken. Not with clouds, but as if a celestial hand was dimming the sun itself. A deep, sub-audible hum filled the air, a vibration that resonated not in the ears, but in the bones, in the teeth. The temperature dropped precipitously. A cold, clean wind, smelling of ozone and the vast emptiness of space, swept through the plaza, whipping at the King's banners and causing the crowd to cry out in alarm.
Aerys's grin faltered. This was not the simple lightning strike he had anticipated. This was something else. Something far more terrifying.
Thor opened his eyes. They were no longer the weary blue of a drunkard. They were blazing pools of pure, white energy, crackling with the power of a thousand storms. He raised his right hand, palm open, towards the sky.
"You wish for a judgment, mortal king?" his voice boomed, no longer the low rumble of a man, but the resonant, echoing crash of thunder itself. The sound did not just enter the ears; it hammered against the chest, shaking the very foundations of the Great Sept. "You are unworthy to ask it."
From the darkened sky, a single, massive bolt of lightning descended. It was not the jagged, fleeting fork of a natural storm. It was a thick, solid column of incandescent blue-white energy, a spear of pure power hurled from the heavens. It did not strike the pyre. It struck Thor.
He did not flinch. He did not burn. He absorbed it. The energy washed over him, his body a conduit for cosmic fury. His drab clothes seemed to burn away, not with fire, but with light, replaced by the ethereal, glowing armour of an Asgardian king. His hair and beard, once matted and filthy, now flowed with an inner light, clean and shot through with crackling sparks. He seemed to grow in stature, no longer a slumped giant but a towering colossus of divine rage. And in his hand, coalescing from the raw energy of the storm, was Mjolnir. Not Stormbreaker, which remained on his back, but the ghost of his old hammer, a phantom forged from memory and pure will.
The crowd screamed, a collective wail of terror and awe. Many fainted. The lords on the dais scrambled back in panic. The pyromancers fell to their knees, their own petty flames utterly humbled by the celestial fire they were witnessing. King Aerys had stumbled backwards, falling against his throne, his face a mask of disbelief and abject terror. He had wanted to test a god. He had not realized he was an ant trying to test the sun.
Thor, now glowing with an otherworldly incandescence, turned his blazing eyes to the pyre. He did not choose.
He flicked his wrist. Mjolnir, the phantom hammer, flew from his hand. It did not fly towards the mother or the murderer. It flew straight at the iron-bound posts to which they were tied. The hammer struck the posts, and they did not break. They disintegrated. They turned to dust, the iron chains melting into slag that dripped harmlessly to the ground.
The mother, freed, collapsed to her knees, clutching her baby, sobbing with relief. The murderer, Vargo, blinked in confusion, then his feral instincts took over. He lunged, not at the mother, but towards the crowd, hoping to escape in the chaos.
Thor pointed a single, glowing finger at the fleeing murderer. A thin, precise arc of lightning, no thicker than a whip, leaped from his fingertip. It struck Vargo in the back. The man convulsed, his muscles locking, and he fell to the ground, not dead, but paralyzed, smoke rising from his smouldering clothes.
"Justice is not a spectacle," Thor's voice boomed, echoing with the power of the Nine Realms. "And innocence is not a commodity for a king's entertainment."
He then turned his full, terrifying attention to the royal dais. He raised his glowing hand, and the phantom Mjolnir flew back to it. He looked directly at King Aerys, who was now a trembling, pathetic heap on the floor.
"You wanted a show, little king," Thor thundered. "You wanted to see my quality."
He took a step forward, and the very cobblestones cracked under his feet. He raised Mjolnir high, the sky above roaring in response. The crowd thought he was going to strike the King down, to obliterate the entire royal dais. Jaime Lannister, his face pale but his expression grimly determined, drew his golden sword and stepped in front of the cowering King, a final, futile act of duty.
But Thor did not strike. That was a mortal king's solution. He had a different lesson to teach.
He brought the hammer down, not on the dais, but on the ground before him. The impact created not an explosion, but a wave of pure, concentrated energy that rippled outwards. It did not harm a single person. It did not touch the Great Sept. It flowed directly towards the pyre.
When the wave of energy hit the massive stack of wood, it did not burn. It changed. In an instant, the oil-soaked timbers transformed. The wood sprouted green leaves, then branches, which twisted and grew at an impossible rate. Within seconds, where the obscene pyre had stood, there was now a magnificent, fully grown weirwood tree. Its bark was as white as bone, its leaves the colour of blood, and from its trunk, a face with sad, weeping red eyes seemed to look out over the plaza, a silent, eternal judgment on the folly of the king.
The unnatural darkness in the sky receded. The sun shone once more. The wind died down. And Thor stood before the new Heart Tree, the divine light around him slowly fading, his armour receding, the phantom Mjolnir dissolving into motes of light. He was once again the giant in the drab, worn clothes, Stormbreaker on his back. But he was not the same. No one who saw him would ever see him that way again.
The plaza was silent as a tomb.
Then, the silence was broken by a single, piercing shriek of pure, unadulterated madness from the royal dais. King Aerys, his mind finally and irrevocably shattered by what he had witnessed, scrambled away from the edge of the dais, screaming about dragons and fire and gods who bled light.
Thor looked one last time at the scene: the weeping mother being helped to her feet by the people of Flea Bottom, the paralyzed murderer being surrounded by Gold Cloaks who now looked at Thor with absolute terror, the cowering lords, the stunned High Septon staring at the impossible weirwood tree, and the King, lost to his own personal hell.
He turned his back on it all. The show was over. He had given the King his test, and in doing so, had revealed a power far beyond their comprehension. He was no longer a myth of Flea Bottom. He was a fact, a miracle, a terror. He was a god who could command the lightning, a god who could give life as easily as he could take it.
As he began his solitary walk back towards the slums, the crowd parted for him in absolute, reverent silence. From the dais, Lord Varys watched him go, his placid mask firmly in place. But his mind was no longer a web of subtle calculations. It was a maelstrom. He had wanted to know the giant's nature. Now he knew. He was not dealing with a broken god. He was dealing with a sleeping one. And the Mad King, in his infinite folly, had just woken him up. The game of thrones had just been overturned. And no one, not even the Spider, knew what the new rules were.