Chapter 12: Ripples in the Vale and the Chains of Grief
The god's rebuke had sent the prince running, but it had left the god standing still, mired in the toxic sludge of his own memories. Rhaegar's talk of prophecy had been a key turning a lock in Thor's mind, opening a Pandora's Box of failures he had been trying to keep sealed with alcohol. The ghosts of Asgard, once hazy spectres at the edge of his vision, were now sharp, clear, and accusatory. He saw Odin's weary disappointment, Frigga's gentle, knowing smile that he had failed to protect, Loki's final, desperate act of defiance. He saw the faces of Heimdall, of the Warriors Three, of countless nameless Asgardians whose trust he had carried and then fumbled, letting it shatter on the cold floor of reality.
He drank with a renewed, desperate intensity. He no longer sought the gentle buzz of oblivion; he sought total, annihilating blackout. He wanted the world, both the one outside his window and the one inside his head, to simply cease to exist. But the drink no longer worked as it once had. His Asgardian physiology, a curse in this primitive world, was beginning to adapt, to process the crude alcohol with infuriating efficiency. All it gave him now was a searing headache and a clarity of grief that was agonizing.
The worship, too, had become a more potent form of torture. Before, it had been a faceless, irritating hum. Now, in the wake of his encounter with the prince, his senses felt raw, exposed. He started to notice things. He started to see the individuals in the crowd of supplicants who gathered daily outside The Grinning Pig.
There was the old woman, her back bent into a permanent question mark, who came every morning to light the cheap incense. He learned her name was Anya. He didn't ask; he simply heard it in the whispers of the crowd. He learned she had lost her two sons in the War of the Ninepenny Kings and now prayed to him to protect the city from another war. Her faith was a hot coal of shame in his gut. He, who had failed to stop a universal war, was being asked to prevent a skirmish between mortal factions.
There was the young boy, barely ten years old, with a lame leg. His name was Finn. He didn't pray or chant. He would simply sit for hours on the steps of the building opposite, sketching in the dirt with a stick. Thor, with his enhanced vision, could see the drawings. They were crude, childish things, but they were always of him. Thor with lightning in his fists. Thor with a hammer made of stars. Thor standing over a defeated dragon. The boy saw a hero, a figure of impossible power and nobility. He saw everything Thor was not. The contrast was a quiet, constant torment.
Even Olyvar, the barkeep, had become more than just a terrified functionary. Thor saw the man's exhaustion, the desperation in his eyes as he tried to manage the endless stream of pilgrims who now treated his tavern as a holy site. He saw Olyvar carefully setting aside the best offerings of food and wine, not for Thor, who never touched them, but to secretly distribute to the starving children of Flea Bottom in the god's name. The man was performing acts of charity in the shadow of a god who had none to give.
These small, sharp details of their lives, their hopes, and their pains were like tiny fishhooks embedding themselves in his soul. He had wanted them to be a faceless mass, an abstract annoyance. But they were stubbornly, infuriatingly real. Their faith was not just an irritation; it was a responsibility he had never asked for and did not want. Rhaegar had asked him what he would do when they were threatened. The question now echoed in the quiet moments between bottles. He didn't have an answer. He just knew that the thought of the King's pyromancers, or some lord's soldiers, cutting down Anya or Finn or Olyvar stirred a protective rage in him that was deeply, horribly familiar. It was the rage of a king. It was the rage he had tried to drown.
He was chained. Not by iron, but by their belief. Each prayer was a link, each offering a shackle. He had shattered a pyre only to find himself bound to a new one, built of their hopes and his own failures. And the fire this time was a cold one, burning from the inside out.
Lord Varys's web had been violently shaken, but not broken. He sat in his shadowy chambers, a cup of cooled herbal tea resting untouched beside him. His little birds had reported every detail of the Prince's secret visit. They had described his disguised entry, his rooftop observation, his confrontation with Thor, and his hasty, panicked departure from the city.
Varys felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of his tea. Rhaegar, the scholar, the gentle prince, had always been the most predictable member of the royal family. His obsession with prophecy was a known quantity, a weakness the Spider had long understood. But this… this was new. This was reckless. The Prince had acted alone, without counsel, driven by his messianic delusions. He had sought out the most powerful and unstable entity in the world and had, by all accounts, been verbally flayed for his efforts.
The Spider knew, with a certainty that settled like a stone in his gut, that Rhaegar would not have been dissuaded by the god's rebuke. He would be emboldened. The god's words about a "pyre of his own making" would be twisted by the Prince's fatalism into a confirmation of his own tragic importance. He would now move faster, more desperately. The timeline for the great, bloody folly that Varys foresaw was accelerating.
He had to work faster. His primary goal remained the stability of the realm—a stability he believed could only be achieved by managing the Targaryen succession in his own, carefully controlled way. Thor was a wrecking ball swung at the delicate architecture of his plans. The god's very presence was an accelerant, a catalyst for the ambitions and madness of others.
He penned two letters. The first was a report to one of his most powerful, and most hidden, patrons across the Narrow Sea. It was written in a complex cypher, detailing the events with cool, analytical precision. It ended with a simple, chilling summary: The storm has broken. The dragon prince dances in the rain, believing it falls only for him. The lions and wolves are watching. The board is in chaos. Counsel is required.
The second letter was more subtle. It was addressed to Lord Jon Arryn in the Vale. It was, on its surface, a simple missive of state, a report from the Small Council on grain shipments and trade disputes. But woven into the dry, bureaucratic language were carefully chosen phrases. He wrote of the 'King's continued pious meditations' and the 'peaceful disposition of the city's newest and most revered resident.' He described the smallfolk of Flea Bottom as 'unfailingly loyal to the crown, their new-found faith a bulwark against unrest.'
It was a lie, of course, but it was a lie with a purpose. He knew Jon Arryn was the steady hand guiding the two most volatile young lords in the realm: Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark. He also knew that Lord Tywin would be stoking the fires of rebellion with his own whispers. Varys's letter was a counter-move, an attempt to paint Thor not as a threat or a humiliation to the crown, but as a strange, self-contained phenomenon that was, if anything, promoting stability among the commons. He was trying to calm the honorable, cautious Lord of the Eyrie, to prevent him from being swayed by the more hot-headed lords he fostered.
He handed the letters to two different agents. One would travel by swift ship to Pentos. The other would go by raven to the Eyrie. He had cast his threads. Now he had to wait and see which ones would hold, and which would snap. He looked at the map of Westeros on his wall. It seemed smaller now, more fragile. A single, grieving god had washed up on its shores, and the whole continent was beginning to tilt on its axis.
High in the Eyrie, perched among the clouds like a raptor's nest, the air was thin and cold. The sky was a vast, unforgiving blue, and the wind carried a constant, lonely cry. It was a place of isolation and stark beauty, a world away from the festering intrigues of the south. But even here, the ripples had reached.
Robert Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End, was a force of nature in his own right. He was a young giant, broad of shoulder and thick with muscle, his black hair a wild mess, his blue eyes alight with a fierce, restless energy. He was rage and laughter and appetite, all bound together in a package of devastating charisma. He stood in the high training yard of the Eyrie, a massive warhammer resting on his shoulder, his chest heaving as he stared out at the dizzying drop.
"A god?" he roared, his voice echoing off the pale stone. He turned to face his companion, a laugh booming from his chest. "Seven Hells, Ned, you Northerners and your grey moods. It's a mummer's trick! A bloody great one, I'll grant you, but a trick all the same. Probably some bravo from Myr with a satchel full of wildfire and smoke powder."
Ned Stark stood leaning against a crenellation, his expression as sober and grey as the stone itself. He was watching Robert, not the view. He was used to his friend's storms of emotion. "The report said a weirwood tree, Robert. A living one. And it said the King's mind is gone. That is no trick."
"The King's mind was gone long ago!" Robert spat, his good humour vanishing in an instant, replaced by a flash of contempt. "Aerys has been mad for years. This… this trickster just gave him the final push." He began to pace the yard, his energy too great to be contained. "But that's not what galls me. It's him. Rhaegar." He said the name as if it were a curse. "Sneaking back into the city like a thief. For what? To have a chat with a charlatan? While his father shrieks at the walls and the realm goes to shit?"
Robert's fists were clenched, his knuckles white. His hatred for the Dragon Prince was a living, breathing thing, an obsession that Ned had never fully understood. It went beyond mere rivalry. It was personal, visceral.
"He is the heir," Ned said quietly. "Perhaps he felt it was his duty to assess the situation."
"Duty?" Robert whirled on him. "His duty is to his wife, Elia Martell, the woman he ignores while he mopes around Dragonstone with his bloody harp and his dusty scrolls! His duty is to the realm his father is destroying! And what does he do? He chases after prophecies and mystery men. He is weak, Ned. A poet when the kingdom needs a warrior. A shadow when it needs a king."
Robert slammed his warhammer against the stone floor, the impact sending a jarring shock through the yard. "Gods, if I were king, I would have dragged this 'Thor' out of his tavern by his beard. If he's a god, prove it. Fight me. If he's a man, hang him for terrifying the King. But I wouldn't sneak and whisper and worry about what the scrolls say."
Ned sighed. Arguing with Robert when he was in this state was like arguing with a thunderstorm. "And what would fighting him prove? You saw the reports as well as I. He laid low a dozen Gold Cloaks without a weapon. He commands the lightning."
"Then I'd die with a hammer in my hand and a good curse on my lips!" Robert bellowed, a grin returning to his face. "Better than dying of boredom in this bloody castle, waiting for old Jon to tell us about taxes and treaties." He looked at Ned, his expression softening slightly. "You worry too much, old friend. You see shadows behind every door."
"And you see a fight," Ned countered. "Sometimes there is more to the world than what can be settled with a hammer."
"Is there?" Robert laughed. "I haven't found it yet."
Ned fell silent, his gaze turning to the distant peaks of the Mountains of the Moon. Robert saw a mummer's trick, an excuse for Rhaegar's weakness and an opportunity for a good fight. But Ned saw something more. He saw a pattern of decay. A mad king, a detached prince, a new god rising from the squalor of the capital. It felt unnatural. It felt… wrong. The North remembered the Long Night. It remembered that there were powers in the world older and stranger than kings, powers that did not care for the quarrels of men. This Storm God felt like one of those powers, a relic from a forgotten age that had stumbled into their own, and his presence was a harbinger of chaos.
"Jon Arryn is troubled," Ned said, his voice low. "He received a letter from Varys. The Spider claims this god is promoting peace."
Robert snorted in derision. "Varys. A eunuch who talks in riddles and plays with frightened children. Trusting the Spider is like trying to pet a scorpion. He's trying to placate us, Ned. He, and the rest of that pack of lickspittles on the Small Council, are terrified. They have a mad king in one room and a god in another. The Targaryen dynasty is rotting from the head down."
His eyes gleamed with a fierce, predatory light. "And when a tree rots, Ned, you don't just prune the branches. You take an axe to the trunk."
The words hung in the cold, thin air. It was the closest Robert had ever come to openly speaking of rebellion. It was a dangerous, treasonous thought. But here, high in the Eyrie, with the world spread out beneath them, it felt possible.
Ned looked at his friend, at his boundless confidence, his righteous fury. He knew Robert would make a better king than Aerys, and likely a better one than the melancholy Rhaegar. But he also knew the cost. He knew that the path Robert spoke of was a path of war, a path that would see the fields of Westeros watered with the blood of thousands.
And what of the god? Would he sit by and watch? Would he take a side? Or would his storm consume them all?
"Let us hope it does not come to that, Robert," Ned said quietly.
Robert just grinned, hefting his warhammer as if it weighed no more than a toy. "Hope is for septons and maids, Ned. A man makes his own future." He looked out over the edge of the world, his gaze fixed on the south, towards King's Landing. "And I promise you this. Sooner or later, I will meet this Rhaegar on a field of battle. And we will see whose song is stronger."
The ripples had reached the Vale. The fury of the Stag had been stirred, and the quiet disquiet of the Wolf had been deepened. While Thor sat in his tavern, chained by the grief of a world long dead, the men who would soon tear this one apart were now factoring his impossible existence into their plans for war. The storm was no longer just gathering. It was choosing sides. And the thunder was beginning to sound like a war drum.