Chapter 21: The Unchained Storm
On the high red mesa, under the indifferent Dornish sun, the god of sorrow finally broke.
It was not a conscious decision. It was not a thought. It was a physical sensation, a psychic assault that shattered his self-imposed catatonia. He had been trying to un-exist, to dissolve into the silence of the stone and the sky. But the world of men, in its infinite capacity for cruelty, would not allow it. The sound came to him, not on the wind, but through the very bedrock of the planet, a vibration in the soul of the world. It was the sound of a city screaming.
It was a chorus of agony, a symphony of terror composed of a thousand distinct, horrifying notes: the sharp, final shriek of a woman dragged from her home, the terrified cry of a child seeing its father cut down, the gurgling gasp of a man drowning in his own blood. It was the sound of a promise being broken, the promise of safety within walls. It was the sound of a sack.
For Thor, this sound was horribly, intimately familiar. It was the sound of Xandar as the Sanctuary II descended. It was the sound of the Asgardian transport as the Black Order came aboard. It was the sound of failure. It was the sound of his own inaction bearing its bloody fruit.
He had told himself it was not his concern. He had rationalized that they had to make their own choices. But as the collective death-scream of King's Landing wormed its way into his mind, all philosophy burned away. All logic, all weariness, all grief were incinerated in a sudden, volcanic eruption of pure, unadulterated rage. He was not a king debating the nuances of intervention. He was a warrior hearing the slaughter of the innocent. And every fibre of his being, every ounce of his fifteen-hundred-year-old soul, screamed one, simple, absolute word: No.
His eyes, which had been dull and unfocused for weeks, snapped open. They were no longer blue. They were white, featureless orbs of pure, crackling energy. The sky above, which had been a clear, perfect azure, instantly darkened. Not with clouds, but with a swirling, bruised-purple vortex of impossible energy that seemed to be centered directly over his head. The wind, once a gentle breeze, became a shrieking banshee, tearing at the rocks of the mesa. A low, guttural rumble began to echo, not from the sky, but from Thor himself.
He rose to his feet, no longer a slumped figure of sorrow, but a pillar of incandescent fury. He reached out his hand, and Stormbreaker flew into his grip, the weapon thrumming with a joy that was terrifying, a glee at finally being unleashed.
He held the axe aloft, and a bolt of lightning, black as the void and shot through with veins of purple energy, erupted from the vortex above and struck the axehead. The impact did not make a sound. It created a wave of absolute silence that expanded outwards, a bubble of pure null-energy that momentarily deafened the world.
Then, with a roar that was not of a man but of a dying star, Thor launched himself from the mesa. He did not fly. He became the storm. He shot across the sky of Westeros, a living thunderbolt, a streak of vengeful energy moving with impossible speed, leaving a trail of ozone and the scent of burnt air in his wake. His destination was King's Landing. And his purpose was not justice. It was extermination.
In the streets of King's Landing, the methodical sack had devolved into a full-blown orgy of violence. The Lannister army, the disciplined force of Casterly Rock, had shown its true face. They were lions, yes, but lions gorging themselves on a carcass. The sounds of breaking doors, of shattering glass, and of screaming filled the air, a constant, hellish cacophony punctuated by the drunken laughter of the perpetrators.
A young Lannister spearman, his name Willam, barely seventeen, his cheeks still soft with a farm boy's innocence, found himself swept up in the madness. He had joined Lord Tywin's army for the promise of steady pay and a bit of glory. He had never expected this. His captain had pointed to a merchant's house and said, "Take what you will. The Lion has fed you. Now it is your turn to feast."
Willam and his squad had kicked in the door. The merchant and his wife had begged, offering them their coin box. The captain had laughed, run the merchant through with his sword, and had handed the weeping wife to the other men. Willam had stood frozen in the doorway, the sounds from within the house making him sick to his stomach. This wasn't war. This was monstrous.
He was about to turn, to run, to flee this horror, when the sky went dark.
It was not the darkness of nightfall. It was a sudden, unnatural plunge into a deep, purple-black twilight. The screaming in the city lessened, replaced by confused, fearful murmurs. The Lannister soldiers looked up from their looting and their raping, their faces slack with surprise. The very air grew cold, and a wind sharp with the promise of a terrible violence began to howl through the streets.
Then came the thunder. It was not the familiar rumble of a summer storm. It was a single, deafening, continuous roar that shook the city to its foundations. It was a sound of pure, cosmic rage.
From his vantage point on the walls of the Red Keep, Jaime Lannister watched the impossible storm coalesce over the city. He had been trying to rally a handful of loyal guards to fight their way to the Maidenvault, a futile, suicidal gesture against his father's entire army. Now, he stood frozen, his sword forgotten in his hand, as he watched the sky boil with a rage that made the Mad King's worst tantrums seem like a child's pique. He knew, with absolute certainty, what was coming. He had prayed for the storm to wake up. He had not anticipated the hurricane.
The first bolt of lightning struck. It did not hit a building. It hit a platoon of Lannister crossbowmen who were using commoners for target practice in a small square. The bolt was not a flicker of light. It was a solid, searing spear of white-hot energy that vaporized the entire platoon in an instant, leaving behind nothing but a scorched circle of melted cobblestones and the smell of ozone.
A second bolt struck a company of spearmen who were breaking down the doors of the Great Sept. A third hit a group of knights on horseback who were chasing down fleeing women in the Street of Sisters. There was no defense. There was no escape. The lightning was precise, intelligent, and utterly without mercy. It struck only those in the crimson and gold of House Lannister.
Panic erupted. The disciplined army became a terrified, scrambling mob. The hunters became the hunted. Soldiers dropped their loot, abandoned their victims, and began to run, screaming in terror, seeking shelter from a sky that had become their executioner.
Willam, the young spearman, saw the captain who had ordered the atrocity in the merchant's house get hit. One moment the man was laughing, his sword dripping with blood; the next he was a cloud of superheated steam and ash. Willam screamed, a thin, terrified sound, and ran. He ran blindly, tripping over bodies, slipping in pools of blood, the thunder a constant, deafening roar in his ears, the sky alive with a strobe-light display of divine retribution.
He ducked into an alleyway, pressing himself against the cold, grimy stone, his body shaking uncontrollably. He thought he was safe. He peeked out from the alley and saw him.
Thor had landed. He stood in the center of the plaza that led to the city gates, the place where the Lannister forces were now a panicked bottleneck, trying desperately to flee the city they had so eagerly entered. He was no longer the weary giant. He was an avatar of the storm, his eyes blazing with white light, his body crackling with raw power. Stormbreaker was in his hand, not as an axe, but as a conductor's baton for a symphony of slaughter.
He was not fighting. He was simply… erasing. He swung the axe, and a wave of pure force, a crescent of concussive energy, shot from it, bowling over a hundred men as if they were toys. He pointed his finger, and a chain of lightning leaped from man to man, turning a phalanx of shields into a row of smoking husks. He stomped his foot, and the very cobblestones erupted, impaling men on shards of rock.
It was not a battle. It was a harvest. And the reaper was a god.
From the Red Keep, Jaime watched the slaughter with a horrified, detached fascination. This was the true power of the being his father had dismissed, that Robert wanted to fight, that Rhaegar wanted to use. A single being, systematically, efficiently, and completely annihilating one of the most powerful armies in Westeros. He watched entire companies of men he had known his whole life, men he had trained with, simply cease to exist. They were not just killed; they were unmade.
He saw Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides, a man of monstrous size and cruelty, who had been at the forefront of the worst atrocities, charge at Thor, his massive greatsword held high. Thor didn't even look at him. He simply raised his free hand, and the Mountain, a man who could crush another man's skull with his bare hands, was lifted into the air, his armour crumpling inwards as if squeezed by an invisible giant. He made a faint popping sound, and then there was nothing but a rain of twisted metal and red mist.
Ser Amory Lorch, the knight who had been sent to murder the royal children, was trying to flee on his horse. A bolt of lightning struck the horse, and Lorch was thrown, his leg broken. He lay on the ground, screaming for mercy. Thor walked towards him, his steps slow, deliberate. He stood over the whimpering knight, raised his boot, and brought it down on the man's head. The sound was a dull, wet crunch.
There was no mercy this day. There was no quarter. There was only the storm.
Willam, still hiding in his alley, watched as Thor methodically worked his way through the fleeing soldiers. He saw men dissolve into ash, get thrown into buildings with bone-shattering force, or simply drop dead as their hearts were stopped by a wave of unseen energy. There was no rage on the god's face. There was no passion. There was only a cold, relentless, and terrible focus. The terrifying indifference was the worst part. This was not a fight for him. It was a chore.
Finally, there was only a handful left. Willam and a few others, pressed against the city gates, a pathetic, weeping cluster of terrified boys who had been promised glory and had found only apocalypse.
Thor turned his glowing eyes towards them. He began to walk forward. Willam closed his eyes, whispering a prayer to the Seven, to the Father, to anyone. He felt the ground tremble with the god's approach. He braced himself for the searing pain of the lightning, for the crushing force that would end his short, stupid life.
He waited. And waited.
He dared to open his eyes. Thor was standing before them, a towering silhouette against the storm-wracked sky. He was looking down at them, at their tear-streaked faces, their piss-stained trousers, their utter, broken terror.
And in the depths of those blazing white eyes, Willam saw something shift. He saw a flicker of the blue that had been there before. He saw a wave of immense, soul-crushing weariness wash over the god's features. He saw the cold fury being replaced by the familiar, agonizing sorrow.
Thor looked at these last few boys, boys no older than Finn, boys who should have been on a farm or apprenticing a trade, not dying in a gutter for a cruel lord's ambition. He looked at them, and he saw not enemy soldiers, but another symptom of the same disease. He saw more grist for the mill of mortal folly.
He had come here to exterminate the threat. He had come to end it. But as he looked at these last, pathetic remnants, he realized that killing them would solve nothing. It would not bring back the dead. It would not un-sack the city. It would just be one more act of violence in a world drowning in it.
He lowered his hand. The lightning in the sky ceased. The thunder faded to a low, distant rumble. The oppressive, unnatural darkness began to recede, allowing the first, tentative rays of the rising sun to pierce through.
"Go," Thor's voice was not a boom of thunder, but a raw, exhausted whisper. "Run back to your master. Run back to your Lion Lord." He pointed Stormbreaker at them, its axe-head seeming to absorb the morning light. "And give him a message from the god of this city. Tell him his army is gone. Tell him his ambitions are ash. And tell him that if he, or any of his spawn, ever set foot in King's Landing again, I will not send a storm. I will come for him myself. And I will finish the job."
Willam and the other boys didn't need to be told twice. They scrambled to open the postern gate, their fingers fumbling with the latch, and fled into the countryside, the sole, terrified survivors of Tywin Lannister's grand gambit.
Thor stood alone in the plaza, amidst a sea of bodies and the wreckage of an army. The sun was rising now, casting its light over a scene of absolute devastation. The city was silent, save for the distant, growing sound of weeping from the citizens who were beginning to emerge from their hiding places.
He had saved them from the sack. He had slaughtered their tormentors. But as he looked around at the ruin, at the blood running in the gutters, he did not feel like a saviour. He felt like the storm that had passed, leaving a terrible, unnatural calm in its wake. He had become engaged. He had acted. He had unchained his power. And the result was a massacre. He had proven to the world, and to himself, that he was still the God of Thunder. He was still a king. He was still a killer. And he was now the undisputed, terrifying, and utterly unwilling master of a silent, blood-soaked city.