Game Of Thrones Joffrey Baratheon Purple Days

-25 days since Expedition departure-

"Just tell me damnit…" Joffrey whispered, hands on his command tent's table.

"Sir!" The bloodied Half Sun had a bandage over his right eye and another one on his shoulder, both red. "We lost a total of 26 men, with another 5 wounded, 3 of which are not expected to survive the night… Regarding officers, Lieutenant Gu-Ya died in the melee, and Captain Han from a javelin…"

And they were already understrength…

"The 11th has now been reduced to 12 combat capable soldiers… sir!" Half Sun Dong sounded like he was going to break for a second before he finished with the 'sir', ramrod straight and trying to find comfort in the familiar discipline.

Joffrey took a deep breath.

Not now…

"You did well Lieutenant, you're now in command of the 11th Patrol until further notice…" Joffrey commanded him, his voice trailing off at the end.

"Sir!" Saluted Dong, swaying lightly. "Go get some rest Lieutenant, and see the Body Scribes after that…" Joffrey told him.

Dong saluted again, still overdoing the discipline as if the familiar routine would help him cope with the fact that his unit had been practically annihilated and most of his friends and comrades had been slaughtered. He shuffled out of the hastily deployed tent, holding his head with one hand.

"Captain Sabu, report" He then ordered the commander of the 4th Rangers.

Sabu was sitting on a half opened crate, grimly cleaning his battleaxe. "9 killed, another 23 wounded, 6 of which will probably not survive the week. Our heavier armor gives us a lot more durability compared to a regular patrol and that means that most of the wounded suffered non-fatal wounds… We'll be a bit short handed for a while, but nothing we can't handle" he said, still as calm as if they'd just played a dice game.

"Captain Xon-Mi?" Joffrey asked the Wood-and-Iron Sun.

He was standing beside him, grim but otherwise functional. "Just the one sir. One of the Fire Lance's back end gave out…" he said, resigned. For all his talk about magic being a sword without a hilt, the Architect's combat formations were not all that much better.

Joffrey nodded as he looked back at Jhos, Hu and Shah, "Any casualties back at camp?" he asked.

"None sir, we took out a few of the stragglers but my force remains fully combat effective" said the Captain of the 1st Long Scouts.

Jhos nodded and Hu as well, "Same for us sir" said the commander of his old 17th.

"Very well… I'll go report to General Yu… Shah, you're in command until I get back" Joffrey told them, not waiting for acknowledgment as he quickly strode out.

He walked rapidly and with his head down, as fast as he could without running to the General's tent.

The main camp was a mess. Teams of soldiers carrying stretchers were constantly moving back and forth, shuttling the wounded… or the dead… in and out of the hospital carts, making room for the critically injured. Great bonfires were alight all over the camp where both the enemy and the legionnaires burned, and piles of looted weapons and armor were being handed over to whoever needed them… there would be no regular resupply this far from the Dawn Fort.

Joffrey scratched the bandage over his cheek, somehow feeling as the greatest hypocrite in the known world.

Han got his head cut off like a fucking chicken… his former second in command, Dong… he lost an eye… and here I am walking about with a much needed bandage on my fucking scratched cheek.

I knew this was going to happen… I FUCKING KNEW IT!

He suddenly stopped, giving a muffled scream because he was unwilling to open his mouth and distract the brave soldiers actually doing their duty.

He grabbed the bandage and tore it out, stamping it on the floor. He despaired when he felt barely any pain coming from the wound.

WHY DOESENT IT HURT?!

He was just about to jut his hand into the wound when he remembered where he was going.

Right, final duty first. I've got to get something right…

He kept walking, avoiding the wounded and the bonfires.

He entered the tent and found the assembled officers of the formation there. All of them had varying amounts of blood on their armors, though most of it did not seem theirs.

"General!" he saluted.

"Major… You're bleeding" said Yu as he turned back from the map, for once the Greatbeam not at his side.

Joffrey looked down and saw a small sliver of blood trailing down his chest, pouring slowly from his cheek.

"Just a flesh wound, sir" he said.

"Get it looked at later. Report?" Yu asked quickly.

"The 11th has 12 soldiers combat capable right now, and the 4th Rangers lost 9 men while about half of the unit is wounded in some form or another. Additionally, the 12th lost one man to a malfunction with their weaponry" Joffrey reported, before taking a deep breath.

"I take full responsibility for our losses and present my immediate resignation from the officer corps, sir!" he added.

"Denied. Major Xu, what's the situation with the refugees" the General said quickly.

"A bit over two thousand woman and children sir. Most of them looked starved and thirsty, they were most likely going to Shiz, same as us. They looked ready to drop dead… I don't think they would have made it, and now that we slaughtered all their men and the entire group dispersed…" Xu trailed off, looked uncomfortable for once.

"With all the Horse Chieftains we spotted on the frontlines, plus the one Major Joffrey got… that makes what? Six? Seven?" asked Major Wuhan.

"Eight" said the General, looking worriedly at the map.

"Sir, I must insist on that resignation. My actions led to the direct death of more t-" Joffrey started.

"Denied" interrupted the General.

"Eight Horsechief Maghars… And their combined families sum up two thousand people? That can't be right, eight Maghars should mean around fourteen to twenty thousand men, woman and children…" Said Major Pigu, nonplussed.

"Eight Maghars?! Impossible, that'd be a whole fifth of the estimated entire Horsechief's population!" exclaimed Major Yham.

"General I--"

General Yu turned to face Joffrey, face stern and red.

"MAJOR JOFFREY!" he snapped.

"SIR!" Joffrey straightened.

"That flanking force could have reaped five times the casualties if you'd let them pass. You led a perfectly adequate flank defense, using the terrain to your advantage. Good men die in war, Major, and there's nothing you can do to stop it, NOTHING!... only mitigate it. Now shut it and give me my officer back" Yu snapped.

"YES SIR!" Joffrey said, denying the whole thing entirely inside his head but frightened at seeing the General loose his composure like that.

"Good…" he said, taking a deep breath. "Now, where were we?" he asked the officers who had somehow found the tent's sides very interesting all of a sudden.

"The refugees sir" said Xu as he looked back to the General.

"Yes… nothing we can do for them except hope they somehow manage to survive out there and not turn into sorcerer fodder. We lost a lot of good men today, but we can't afford to delay… we depart tomorrow at midday for Shiz. We should reach the Shryke city in five days or so…" he said.

"As for what few prisoners we managed to get, did they say anything useful Major Pigu?" he asked.

"They were vaguely coherent General, they kept talking about the Kransna and how the gods had sent them again to purge them of their sins… Most of the few I spoke to where completely inured to death and only asked for their bodies to be burned. Many seemed grateful to have fallen in battle and not to the elements…" Major Pigu said.

"My Meherz is a bit rusty, what does that mean?" Asked Major Yham.

"It means 'Demons of the End'…" Said the General with a faraway look.

"They must have been lying though" said Major Pigu, as I trying to convince himself.

"Why?" asked Wuhan.

"They kept insisting that they'd started out with twelve Maghars…" he said.

There was silence after that statement.

"Eight or twelve, our mission remains the same. Get back to your duties, we have a lot of work to do…" Yu said as he raised an arm to his side as if to receive something, but quickly lowered it as he seemed to remember something.

He sighted as he sat on his chair, "Go, Still We Stand" he muttered.

"Still We Stand" muttered the officers as they saluted, thinking about the last words of a wounded, dying Horsechief.

-.PD.-

"Hey Shah… want one?" Joffrey asked as he sat beside the Long Scout, jiggling a bottle Siwine.

The Captain thought for a moment before nodding as Joffrey opened the bottle again, this time filling a cup.

"Here" he said as he passed Shah the cup, who nodded thanks as he took a small sip.

They were sitting atop one of the small sturdy carts from the 12th Flying Artillery, looking at the dark horizon. Groups of scouts frequently patrolled the perimeter, and a few Sections were forming up throughout the Expedition's encampment, getting ready for another day of hard marching.

Joffrey was drinking directly from the bottle as if it were water, eyes fixed on the dark horizon.

"You know… this bottle was part of Han's stash… he really did love his Siwine…" he muttered, drinking again from the cool bottle but barely feeling its smoky, wood like flavor.

He spent twenty minutes there, just staring at the horizon and drinking the Siwine. He thought Shah had fallen asleep when he spoke all of a sudden. "Some of the men say that when we die, we rise to the heavens and become one with our ancestors… maybe Captain Han is with them right now… cursing you for stealing his stash…" he mused halfheartedly.

Joffrey drunk from his bottle in silence, still as he looked up at the stars.

"Tell me Shah… do you really believe that?" he asked him.

The Long Scout lowered his cup, leaving it on top of one of his crossed legs.

"… No… not really…" he muttered thoughtfully.

He spent a while with his eyebrows creased, clearly in thought. "After all this time riding out in the Beyond with nothing but a few companions… the endless plains below and the eternal sky above… our affairs and heroes, our Gods and Ancestors… " Shah trailed off as he joined Joffrey in his stargazing.

"They seem… small don't they?" Joffrey mused, "Tiny even…" he added as he took another sip.

"'Gods and Emperors thought themselves the pinnacle of creation, but every time they looked up at the black starred sky they would lower their heads in shame at the boast. Powerful beings and ancient heroes, all were laid low under the eternal expanse…'" he quoted.

"What sage said that?" Joffrey asked him after a few minutes, thinking.

A rare smile grazed the Long Scout, "Meh-Shin, my predecessor as leader of the 1st Long Patrol…" he said wistfully.

"Han's not really looking down with his ancestors, is he?" Joffrey suddenly asked him.

Shah let out a long breath, turning back from the stars to the horizon.

"That I can't say… but I like to think that his memory is carried by the men who knew him, thus, his immortality is assured. Regardless of the whims of Emperors and Gods, Captain Han lives through the people that knew him…" Shah muttered.

They sat there for a while longer, contemplating the horizon.

"They say that Long Scouts see reality in a different way because of the beyond… Except it's not the physical part of it, is it?" Joffrey asked him.

Shah kept quiet as Joffrey continued. "It's just the whole… grandness of the place, its emptiness so to speak, it forces one to look within instead of outside… It's strange… sights such as the Beyond forces one to reconsider the place one inhabits within the order of things… when faced by such expanses, it makes some of our struggles, some of our problems seem so-- "

"Irrelevant" Shah said suddenly.

"Yeah… but not in an uncaring way. It's almost paradoxical. For me at least they really serve to underscore how small and insignificant we are… but somehow that makes people, all of us, all the more-"

"Precious" said Shah, eyes steady on the horizon.

"… Precious… yes… and then when you look back down and see so much bloodshed, such chaos and intrigue all around us, it's all… all that life squandered and destroyed… it's all quite pointless, isn't it?" he asked the Scout suddenly, feeling some kind of deep wariness, a void at his core.

Shah was silent for a while, looking at the slowly brightening horizon.

"Not pointless" the man said all of a sudden, startling Joffrey.

Shah seemed to focus on the horizon even more, as if reading the answer straight from it.

He spoke slowly, intently. "Those who realize that truth, those who look at the horizon and see themselves in it… those who have realized that the vast Beyond is not some physical frontier, but merely a sign of our reality, merely a mirror which we give meaning… Those who understand and see the bigger canvass beyond the chaos and the madness…" Shah trailed off.

He looked at Joffrey, serene as the sun rose from the east.

"They know what's really at stake after each long patrol, after every skirmish and battle… They understand the preciousness of each life, of each person. They understand that the spark of life is but a small candle in the night, and that every single ember is worth protecting from extinction… Those who understand… they know that they have a duty to the others, a duty to protect the flame and even prune it, kill if needed those that would seek to snuff it out… "

He turned his head back to the horizon, the sun not bothering his eyes. "Han, like all those who die protecting that flame receive no praise, no recognition. They carry that recognition within themselves, they have transcended the need for it… 'They are the masters of their fate, they are the watchers of stars, they are the ones who stand in vigil…'" Shah said.

Joffrey swallowed something heavy, blinking and lowering his gaze from the strong sun.

"Did Meh-Shin say that too?" Joffrey asked after coughing a bit.

"Yes… His last words to me… he wasn't as great an arrow dodger as he was a sage…" Shah said with a slight chuckle.

Joffrey was so startled by the sudden joke he had to chuckle with Shah. It was short, bittersweet chuckle, a small thing that accompanied them as the sun kept rising and their duties demanded their presence back to the land of the small flames.

-.PD.-

Supposedly, Shiz had once been a great city of stepped pyramids. Its remains however were torn apart and vaguely unrecognizable after thousands of years of erosion and salvage. The once great, legendary capital of what the Shrykes called their ancestor's kingdom looked like one long, flat ruin. Barely a building was still standing, and the grey brickstones looked battered and weathered.

Supposedly the city had been home to the Shryke's 'Fathers' many, many thousands of years ago: The Shaurs, great and powerful builders, able with both claw and hammer… or so the Shryke shamans said…

If such beings had ever existed, thought Joffrey, they had long left the world… Only their ruins remained.

The Shrykes refused to live within them, preferring instead to build their great shantytowns around the ruined cities. And Shiz as the greatest of the old cities had the biggest population settled around it, a city of shacks and grey stoned buildings that surrounded it completely.

A great, empty city.

The silence was deafening as the Expedition entered the city, following the gestures of the 3rd and 4th Long Patrols who'd arrived there the day before. Some parts of the city were burned to the ground, while others looked pristine as if its inhabitants had suddenly decided to stop what they were doing and had just walked out.

"I don't like this one bit…" Joffrey muttered as he rode beside Captain's Hu and Jhos, his hand never leaving his saber's pommel.

"I think no one does" Jhos said as he looked around warily.

The Expedition finally settled into one of the ruined city's great stone plazas, erecting their own camp right there.

"Alright, the Gorilla's Long Patrols were clear, there's plenty of food and supplies just strewn about the place in houses and granaries. Captain Shah, take Captain Hu and his men with you and pillage our assigned sector… which would beeee…" Joffrey trailed off as he stared at the small makeshift map on his hands.

"East, that direction. Priorities are food and water, all else is secondary" he commanded as he pointed.

Both subordinates acknowledged the order as they got back to their units.

"What does our formation have scheduled for tonight, Lho?" he asked his aide and personal standard bearer.

"Saber practice with Major Yham sir" he said, vaguely trying to hide a smirk.

"Oh joy…" Joffrey muttered.

-.PD.-

Joffrey and Yham stared at each other intently, as if trying to read each other's thoughts. All around them members of the support formation fought against the members of the 6th and 9th Heavy Camelry. Most of Joffrey's men were getting their asses handed to them by the far more experienced members of what was already referred to within the Expedition as the 'Rhinos's Hammer'.

But they were getting their asses handed to them with dignity.

There's a difference… thought Joffrey as his saber kept feinting.

There!

He tried to deliver a heavy strike upon Yham, but it was unsurprisingly parried.

Unsurprising too was the counter that left a tingling pain in Joffrey's arm.

"Your style is evolving in quite the different manner from the norm…" Yham mused as he helped Joffrey up.

"What do you mean?" Joffrey asked him.

"Its like you're absorbing the moves into your own strange fighting style, instead of learning them as a separate technique… I feel like I'm not really teaching you saber fighting but merely expanding your repertory of moves…" he said with a slight chuckle.

"That's good or bad?" Joffrey asked

If Joffrey was honest with himself, all the different style had started to mesh inside his head after a while. It's not as if he had forgotten them, they had just kind of… gradually become instinctual. He thought his fighting style must be one of the ugliest and strangest in the world by now, a mesh of influences and moves that sometimes were even paradoxical to each other.

Well, it has served well enough until now… kind of… he thought.

"Neither, merely interesting… I know you've received water dancing instruction before, but some of those lounges and stabs have an interesting style I've never seen before" Yham said as he lowered his saber, allowing for a bit of conversation before the next bout as they always did.

"Ah, I know a bit of Ibbenese spear fighting. Some of those powerful blows are not too dissimilar to your own style in fact… The pressure behind a Chanak for example…" Joffrey explained as he showed him an angled stab, "Puts the weight in the spear's pommel for--"

A sudden, gurgling scream stopped his imminent reminiscing, and both Twosuns turned in unison towards the camp's northern perimeter. Everyone on saber drill stopped as they too strained to listen.

The clashing of swords and the screams of dying men were unmistakable. They were under attack.

"MEN! TO ARMS NOW!" Yham bellowed as Joffrey turned back to his men.

I've only got what's left of the 11th and the 17th here…

I'm going to finish what I started and get them killed.

I'LL GET THEM KILLED!!!

Joffrey started breathing hard, hands trembling as he gazed at his men.

A huge palm slapped him in the back and he stumbled forward, barely managing not to fall on his face.

"LEGONARIES ARE DYING! COME ON MAJOR!" Yham shouted as he got his real saber out and bellowed at his men to follow him.

Fight now, doubts later, he thought as he took out a real saber.

Die now, doubts later.

"Scouts! On me!" he shouted as both him and Yham dashed to the camp's northern perimeter.

No time to sort anything out. If an attacker breaches the outer perimeter they'll wreak havoc… he thought as he ran, his scouts switching their own weapons and following him.

…

The Shrykes have come to kill those who dared trespass, he thought as he gazed at the dying scouts of the 13th Patrol. A veritable swarm of reanimated Shrykes were flooding over the stakes and the ditch, clawing and tearing into the defending scouts. Their blue-grey, demented eyes almost glowed in the dark, intent on closing in on the defenders and tearing them apart.

They had already pushed through the outer defenses when Joffrey and Yham reached them.

Yham seemed to take in a breath of both horror and determination before bellowing as he raised his saber to the air.

"SABERS HIGH!" Bellowed Yham as he charged.

"SABERS DOWN!" roared his men as they followed him. Both their units were thoroughly mixed by now, so Joffrey decided to just follow Yham and make sure a corpse didn't stab him from behind.

Yham was a force of nature as he crashed against the surging corpses, his broad slashes frequently cutting corpses apart or pummeling them to the ground. Even so, the flood of corpses seemed to have no end in sight as more and more kept scaling over the ditch and assaulting the living.

Joffrey stayed on Yham's side, cutting and dismembering corpses. The Major seemed spooked by them as were the rest of his men but the steadiness of Joffrey and his own scouts, veterans and survivors of a similar attack, provided some much needed calm. They were living evidence that the otherworldly monsters could be fought and killed… again.

Joffrey fought desperately, adapting his style as he remembered the particularities of his enemy. Attacks on the vitals were useless, but disabling hits on limbs were practical and crushing their chests sometimes seemed to drop them like a puppet with its strings cut, so that's what he did. Fortunately, the survivors of the 'Grey Ambush' had spread the lessons to anyone who would hear them, and Yham's men had certainly listened.

The tale was no match for the reality though, and still the legionaries were unprepared for the actual experience of fighting the undead. Soldiers fell from behind as they failed to check their kill, while others got their sabers stuck on corpses and fell easily as they were ravaged from the sides. Joffrey fought in a haze, somehow hoping for that strange chest pain… but no pain and no strange lion came to his aide as his comrades died and the dead kept coming.

The heavy sabers did their jobs adequately, their bigger heft an advantage against the nature of their enemy, but Joffrey was uncertain about their odds when the flood suddenly diminished and only the living remained.

"… That can't be all of them…" Joffrey muttered as he looked over the ditch and saw only dark streets beyond.

"I don't think so either…" Yham said as he clutched a small wound on his right rib. He looked dazed as the adrenaline started to fade.

"That… They… how…" he muttered. For once Yham was at a loss for words, staring in horror at a gnashing shryke skull on the ground.

"…That's what we are here to find out Major" Joffrey said as he crushed the skull with his boot a half dozen times, making sure the damned thing stayed dead this time.

They stayed there guarding the perimeter for a few seconds before Joffrey voiced the obvious.

"Where are our reinforcements?" he asked.

The sound of battle coming from their backs said it all.

-.PD.-

When dawn was finally upon them, the Expedition had lost more than 250 men, almost a quarter of their remaining strength. The attack had come from every direction in the midst of the night and the flood of dead shrykes had not stopped till the early morning. Most of the death toll came from the collapse of the eastern perimeter and the resulting rampage as the dead let loose on the soft innards of the camp.

And this time the officers had not escaped unscathed. Several soldiers saw Major Xu, the Red Gorilla himself go down fighting a score of the reanimated, a saber on each hand and bellowing like a madman as the remains of his unit broke under the repeated pounding on the eastern perimeter… though his corpse was not found afterwards.

The bastards behind it didn't even leave a corpse to bury. A legend within the Scouts was now just another chunk of sorcerer fodder…

There were whispers about a possible retreat to the Greytower after the savage beating they had taken, but the General put a swift stop to those. Their objectives had not been accomplished yet, and so the Expedition was to continue further out into the Beyond.

Further out in search of answers.

-.PD.-

As the Expedition ventured further and further into the Beyond, grey consumed green and hills became dunes. The Land of the Shrykes became the Grey Waste as fewer and fewer deserted settlements and groups of refugees came across the expedition.

Three months they zigzagged throughout the Beyond, occasionally skirmishing with bands of corpses which emerged from the dunes with no warning, tracing a path from oasis to oasis and from settlement to settlement when supplies ran low.

Nearer to the source of whatever madness was stirring, a somewhat clearer picture had begun to emerge from hushed tales and abandoned notes. Terrified refugees and fanatical pilgrims all told variations of the same story and the same man.

No matter which version one believed, one thing was certain.

It was bad news for the legion.

"This… Vahram fellow, do the Jade Scribes know anything about him?" Joffrey asked as Captain Jhos sat on the small carpet inside his tent with a kettle of tea.

Jhos looked thoughtful as he refilled Joffrey's cup. "Only that he's the latest of a long line of Grand Whispers… but like anything else related to that damned cult, there's not much information to go around…" he said.

The Grey Word Whisperers were one of the most secretive and dangerous cults out in the Beyond… And the rumors amongst the few settlements, refugees and traders the Expedition had bumped with all agreed on something… He was the man responsible for the growing legions of the undead, and his Grey Whisperers roamed the Beyond preaching to all that would listen about the celestial purge that was to come, a great cleansing…

They spent a while in heavy silence as Joffrey looked around the tent a bit, eying the curious knickknacks and arcane devices hanging or just laying around. "You mind if…?" He pseudo asked, gesturing at the stuff.

Jhos nodded simply as he took another drink from his cup and Joffrey stood up, stretching and walking to the hanging artifacts.

"What's this?" Joffrey asked as he tilted the small bracelet. It had two rubies on each side, both sets surrounding a single jade stone.

Jhos smiled wistfully at the sight, "A keepsake from an old love…" he said.

Joffrey was a bit surprised, he guessed there was no reason why the Jade Moon couldn't have had a life before the Legion, but it was hard to imagine all the same...

"And this? Components for a ritual of some sort..?" he asked as he gestured to a bunch of small multicolored sea shells.

Jhos snorted as he looked at them. "Not at all. I liked collecting them" he said with a small smile.

"You know Jhos, this is all awfully normal for the tent of a deadly magi…" Joffrey suddenly said.

Jhos just shrugged as he looked up "Magic takes for everything it gives… there are precious few physical instruments which help with that simple equation…" he said, looking at a silver medallion which hanged from the ceiling.

"That one?" Joffrey asked, gesturing at the small, round silver plate filled with scribbles.

Jhos did not look down as he shook his head slightly and spoke, "A symbol of duty and humility… every officer in the Jade Scribes receives one when he finishes his training alive" he said.

"… wait, alive?" Joffrey asked as he processed that.

Jhos looked back down as he nodded, "Yes… we can't let anyone into the secrets of our branch just like that… there are enough cultists as it is…" he said. "There is a final test before you can become a Jade Quarter Moon. Suffice it to say that dreams and temptations are presented in a very special way… and those who succumb to them never make it out alive…" he trailed off as he gazed back at the medallion. "This simple piece of inscribed silver helps us remember that episode, and our victory over it… " he said.

Joffrey wanted to ask what exactly had happened to Jhos, but he restrained himself.

Everyone has their secrets…

Joffrey thought about his own peculiar 'medallion'…

Even now he felt it if he strained to listen. Feeling the whalebone tablet had become a bit of a relaxation exercise for Joffrey, and sometimes he spent the night just feeling it get gradually farther away and wondering if it was still in the Jade Sea or farther still. It certainly felt a long way from here…

He wondered if the tablet was feeling as lost as he was right now.

"More tea?" asked Jhos.

"Please" Joffrey said as he sat again, deciding to simply let his mind enjoy the simple moment.

-.PD.-

Five months had passed since departing from the Greytower when another disaster struck the Expedition.

"Who the fuck poisons an oasis out in the Beyond!?" roared Major Yham as he struggled against the impulse to draw his saber and hack the small table.

"It's unprecedented. Absolutely everybody out here would unite and destroy whoever did that… Water is not tampered with, not here…" Said Major Pigu, dumbstruck. He was the only Major to have come from the Long Scouts and he knew just how precious the network of oasis and wells were to literally everyone out here.

Everyone living, that is… Joffrey thought in anger.

"It just doesn't make any sense. If these 'Grey Word Whisperers' poison the wells, then they're at the mercy of the sand too. Unlike their reanimated soldiers, they actually need water!" Yham said, enraged at the mystery.

"We don't even know if they were the ones behind this. For all we know they aren't even behind the reanimated. All we have is guesswork and rumors, we need something more…" Joffrey said as he adjusted his coat. Even though they were inside the General's tent, the falling temperatures were still felt. Some of the old hands said the winter would only get worse with time… Joffrey shivered again as he thought about how it must have felt in Winterfell if the cold was this strong so far from the pole.

"That we do…" Yu said. The General looked somehow diminished, his demeanor had been steadily eroding with the rest of the men as they spent weeks marching through sand storms and met nothing but grey, grey and grey. Morale was low, and with not even a smidgen of a clue in sight and now facing the possibility of poisoned wells, the mission and heck, even the expedition itself was in dire straits.

"Have there been any recoveries?" Asked the Night Hawk, turning back as if to receive something and then immediately turning towards the officers again with a sight. The death of Greatbeam Leng at the hand of the Horsechiefs had gouged a deep wound on the man, but still he soldiered on.

As long as the General stands, the rest of the men will, Joffrey thought.

"None sir. The central formation was the most affected, it looks like we will be losing most of the 12th and the 14th Patrols…" said the newly promoted Major Lhij, the Long Scout which had taken over the forward formation after the death of the Red Gorilla.

"And Major Wuhan?" asked Joffrey.

"He's… he's still… not quite himself yet…" Lhij muttered, uncomfortable.

"They say he only took a sip…" Pigu whispered.

The Stout Eagle was dependable no more. Major Wuhan, former commanding officer of the central formation was restrained inside his tent, ranting and raving of death and doom, urging anyone who would listen to run for their lives. That sight had served to wreck the Expedition's morale harder than a hundred poisoned scouts.

Yu nodded warily. "Captain Biju will be taking his place as commander of the central formation… but this cannot go on, not much longer" he said as a bit of his old zeal returned.

"Something huge is stirring, something grander than sorcerer lords and powerful cults… I can feel it…" he said as he stood up from his stool. "We must find something better than rumors… something concrete before we return to the Greytower…" he said, staring at the map as if trying to extract the answers from it.

"We have no choice… if the answers are anywhere else than damned K'Dath, they will be in Bonetown" he sentenced.

"That's prime cultist territory! And that's if there's anyone alive left!" Pigu said immediately, and Joffrey didn't blame him. Having faced mere cultist aspirants, he shivered to think what an actual Grey Word Whisperer could do.

"We will have to risk it, we have no choice. Everyone here knows time is running out and we need to know what's coming for the Five Forts…" Yu said, determined once again. It was an all or nothing gamble, and the prospect of resolving the uncertainty that had plagued them since departure for good or ill had a riveting appeal amongst the weary officers the more they thought about it.

"But sir, how can we continue without water? There's no way we'd make it to the city…" said Major Lhij, shaken.

"That would be true if all of us were to go… We will split our water reserves between the main body and the supporting formation" he said as he suddenly gazed at Joffrey.

He can't be -

"Major Joffrey, your formation is both the least depleted and the best suited to meet whatever surprises await for you there. Get to Bonetown as fast as you can find the answers we need" The Night Hawk commanded.

…

Fuck it.

"Yes sir!" he said with a salute. He was sure it would be the last one the General would see him make… it was a suicide mission, even more so with him in command…

But he didn't care any longer. If he woke up again in the Red Keep without answers… he didn't know what he'd do, probably go crazy again, but the prospect of ridding himself of the eternal grey expanse was an alluring thought.

He was suddenly assaulted by a memory from long ago, not even a memory really. A smell, a taste, a color. A white chilly wind which tasted of raw meat and victory.

He took a deep breath, flexing his hands.

"The rest of us will turn north towards Kohl's Refuge. The oasis there is regularly replenished by water currents below the earth, and faster than most. If its poisoned it won't be by the time we get there" said the General.

The General ended the meeting there, but he stopped Joffrey when the officers were moving out.

"Major Joffrey, a word" he said.

"Sir?" Joffrey asked.

"We'll be waiting for you at Khol's Refuge" he said.

"I know sir, you just said so" Joffrey told him, confused.

"We will keep waiting until you come, no matter what. Do you understand?" he said, determined.

Until you come or we die, Joffrey translated inside his head.

He nodded slowly, "I do" he told him. The General walked him out with a strange look and this time he was the one who saluted first.

"You'll depart tomorrow Major… Dawn!" he said.

Joffrey just stood there for a second before he snapped, "Dawn!" he said.

He shook his head as the General entered back inside his tent. He had a long night in front of him.

-.PD.-

The journey towards Bonetown was eerily uneventful, a fact which left absolutely everyone on edge. Detached from the Expedition itself, Joffrey and his men made quick time throughout the Beyond.

What had been left of the 11th Patrol had been disbanded after the ambush at Shiz. The remaining scouts merged with Hu's 17th which barely brought it back to fifty men. That and the 1st Long Patrol, the 4th Rangers, the 12th Flying Artillery and the Leaping Frog Constellation were the only forces Joffrey had in his hands to face whatever awaited for him at Bonetown.

"So you decided to run away?" Xon-Mi asked, shifting again as his cart rode over a small stone the driver didn't dodge as he guided the horses up the next dune.

"I realized there was nothing left there for me… only death and suffering" Joffrey said from atop his horse, riding next to Xon-Mi's cart. He'd been riding with one of his subordinates every day, exchanging stories and tales to pass the time. Getting to know them better was certainly preferable than perpetually staring at the Grey Horizon.

"I don't know if I would have been capable of doing that… power over everyone else, riches beyond counting… gods think about all the beautiful women…" Xon-Mi mused.

"All the riches in the world mean nothing if you're surrounded by the dishonest and the power hungry… believe me I know" Joffrey said as both his horse and the wagon crested another dune. He could see the head of the formation from here and the small lines of horsemen at his flanks, screening incessantly under the punishing sun.

"Surely it was not that bad…" Xon-Mi asked, lifting one of his bushy eyebrows. Joffrey sighted as he looked up at the blue sky, thinking as he trusted his horse to watch the ground, "…maybe. It's just that… more than the danger and the intrigue… it was… seeing everyone juggling a dozen different masks each. It was so… fake. At some point I realized that if I stayed I'd get lost with a dozen masks of my own… I'd lose myself and turn into them… it's not worth it. Staying there meant turning back into what I once was, I'll never do that. Never" He sentenced with all his will.

Xon-Mi was startled by the sudden determination, nodding as he looked back to the front.

"And you Captain?" he asked back, "Where do you come from?"

Xon-Mi didn't look back at him as he smiled slightly, "Ren-shi, it's a small town in the middle of nowhere" he said.

"A quiet life?" Joffrey asked.

"Indeed, our town has nothing of value for the squabbling princes to fight for, and it sits upon rugged terrain perfectly suited for defense" he said.

"Why did you leave then?" Joffrey asked as he looked back and made sure his rear was where it was supposed to be.

"I'd like to say it was because of boredom at the idyllic country life, but the truth is the same rugged hills that secured our de facto independence from the neighboring princes had other, less beneficial effects…" Xon-Mi said with a sight.

Joffrey had never added a mental pewter link to his chain, but his time with Archmaester Casto had taught him the basics of agriculture all the same.

"It was the soil, wasn't it?" he guessed.

"Damn right it was. Hardly anything grew on it and everyone knew another drought was approaching… So I left, met a few people, got mixed up on a princely takeover, poached a few estates… eventually I arrived here and I never looked back" he said.

Joffrey let the silence stretch as he leaned a bit back and to his side.

"Sunbeam Jehi, tell Captain Shah to send another team to the left, I don't like those dunes" he ordered one of his signalmen.

"Yes sir" the man said as he spurred his horse forward.

"You don't regret your choice… but do you still miss them? Your family, your friends…?" Joffrey asked after pondering the question inside his head for a while.

"Always" Said Xon-Mi with not a shred of doubt.

Joffrey leaned back once again, thinking about all the people he'd left behind in Westeros.

Such certainty… I think I've never experienced that kind of…

…

With a start, he suddenly realized he was missing them right now. Clegane, Tyrion, Jon, Sansa…

They brought a strange, bittersweet longing deep within his chest. A strange mixture of muted sadness and distant happiness.

Is this how it feels to miss one's… friends?

Friends that couldn't remember him, friends that now despised him.

Joffrey sighted sadly as he shook his head, returning to the present as Jehi returned.

"Captain Shah reports that scouts are on the way sir" he said before taking over his left flank again.

"Very good…" Joffrey muttered, looking once more at the steadily sinking sun.

-.PD.-

When they finally arrived they had only three days left of water, counting what little they had managed to scavenge on the way. The city itself had no walls, more similar to a great Shryke shantytown than a proper city.

It was, however, still inhabited.

Joffrey felt as if a thousand eyes were staring at him as they marched through the main road. The people of Bonetown looked small and quiet, scurrying from here to there in restrained haste. Their buildings were unsurprisingly made of bone, but knowing that fact beforehand didn't detract from the awe Joffrey felt as his column marched through the streets looking for clear ground.

Pillars made of enormous ribs rose to the air, jagged and weathered but still somehow standing. Skeleton remains of strange beasts filled every corner of the city as if the houses themselves had once been great animals, laid to waste by the unforgiving desert sun.

The cramped alleyways and streets looked badly maintained and full of malnourished, staring eyes which kept gazing at the men as they marched. As disturbing as they were, Joffrey would have been fearful of an ambush if they haven't been there… For at least they were alive.

They made camp in a cleared area, a deserted plaza which judging by the waste and the wrecked wooden stalls had been in use as some kind of marketplace not too long ago.

They fortified their little encampment as best as they could and spent the night awaiting an ambush that never came. And so it was on the early hours of the morning that Joffrey decided to sneak around the city, trying to find out what was going on the way he knew best. Not with a unit of soldiers around him but as simply another traveller.

Bonetown was a city that had been built with one purpose, to support the extraction of bones found in the Dry Deep, a former sea that had dried out thousands of years ago or more. Nobody remembered the traders that had first founded it, but the city had grown organically with each merchant and trader since, seeking to support the extraction of the strange and precious bones.

Joffrey wandered from street to street, loosing himself and his grey cloak amongst a sea of similar ones. Every few minutes he could see a caravan leaving the city, armed guards and carts full of colored bones departing in all haste to the east. He came across a couple of thugs robbing and beating a man in plain daylight in the middle of the street, but no one even looked. The city had been gradually falling into anarchy for a while it seemed, and the process was accelerating, Joffrey thought, given the amount of abandoned houses and empty streets.

He wandered between the crowds, looking and listening. It appeared that the undead had not yet reached Bonetown, but the threat was readily apparent to every inhabitant of the city. Beyond caravan guards and a few of the wealthier merchant's personal retinues, it appeared that the city was defenseless. The sudden arrival of a cohort of 'suns' had not changed that assessment it seemed, it had merely seeded more doubts into the cauldron of fear and uncertainty that permeated the settlement like a thick fog.

A fog which was reinforced by the presence of the Grey Whisperers…

Joffrey saw them at every small plaza or main road intersection. Anywhere a vaguely sizable crowd formed, they were there, preaching.

"The wait is finally over! At last! At long last!" shouted one from a street corner as Joffrey walked behind a loaded cart pulled by tired looking camels. "They come again to finish their holy mission! To grant us eternal life!" the man screeched in genuine joy, gazing at the crowd in pure exaltation.

Who comes?! And to finish what exactly?! Joffrey thought angrily. The mystics never made any sense.

"Prepare yourselves! The time is at hand, a time of renewal, a time of destruction, a time of rebirth!!!" screamed the grey robed man.

I give him 4 out of 10 Burning Benerros… Joffrey thought, unimpressed and slightly unnerved.

Eternal life… does he mean the wights? I guess you could say that if you squinted hard enough… if you squinted so hard you couldn't even see that is…

But would he refer to his boss, high priest, whatever as 'they'? It sounds as if the force behind the wights is something… superior, beyond them. Not something to be understood but something to stand in awe of…

He suddenly realized the man had gone quiet.

He also realized the man was staring at him along with the few people who had stopped to listen.

Joffrey turned back and hurriedly walked away, quickly using a moving cart as a sight breaker before ducking through an alleyway.

He ran for a while before he convinced himself that no one was following him, repeatedly palping both of his hidden daggers and regretting the fact that he didn't bring his saber.

I can't risk much more time in this city, I'll have to do a bit more than skulking about if I want to find something useful, he thought as he crossed a street and joined another crowd as just another traveller.

He entered a building which sported a sign of three crossed bones, some kind of mix between a tavern and a small market. The architecture of the place looked sturdy, using long rib like bones as pillars and smaller ones for everything else, including chairs.

Inside he saw a few tables and the universal long table which seemed to adorn every serving place on the world, half of which were filled with peoples of differing garments. The other side of the room sported several small stands that were filled with bones of every color and size imaginable, and different densities too he imagined.

He sat on the stool by the long table, keeping to himself until the man on the bar came to him.

"The usual" Joffrey grunted in heavily accented Yi-Tish before the man could speak, slipping a brown note.

It really says a lot that they take the Golden Bank's notes here of all places…

The man nodded as he crouched below the bar, getting a tankard which he filled with some strange, green liquid. He took a couple of small, compact bone knuckles which he tossed inside the tankard.

Joffrey watched them descend with a fizzle, twirling down until they rested on the bottom.

He grunted thanks at the man as he took the cup and drank a swill with no hesitation. The foul liquid seemed to bubble inside his mouth, purging it of everything, even bits of his flesh.

Joffrey struggled to keep his face composed as he took another swill. The bar keep looked vaguely at ease after seeing that, relaxing a bit to the back where he could rest leaning on the wall.

"Place's gone to shit since last time…" he commented in the same mangled Yi-Tish. The barkeep nodded agreement as he leaned slightly forward this time. Conversation seemed a rarity around Bonetown… Fear did that to a city.

"You could say that…" the barkeep agreed cautiously as he looked at the door.

Joffrey was in the interesting predicament of having to extract information about absolutely everything without actually knowing anything to start with. So far out in the Beyond, the Legion had scant information about the city itself.

"All this stupidity, it's bad for business… everybody should see that…" he fished again, talking almost to himself.

The barkeep nodded to himself, a vague scowl adorning his features. "Don't tell me about it… if the damned Guild would have stuck around then everybody else would have too, then we'd have a functioning city and not a carcass waiting to be devoured by the Returned…" he said.

A Guild?

Joffrey snorted, "The Guild couldn't find its ass with both hands, much less stop em…" he trailed off.

Maybe it's even true…

The barkeep looked thoughtful as Joffrey took another sip. His mouth felt a bit swollen, but he was feeling incredibly less thirsty than he was when he entered. "You know, some people would kill you around these parts for saying something like that…" the barkeep trailed off ominously as lifted his sleeve and showed Joffrey three crossed slashes on his forearm, kind of like the sign out front.

Joffrey internally tensed, but did nothing else as he took another ardent swill. To react was to show weakness, and to show weakness was to court death.

The barkeep snorted as he lowered it back, "Then again maybe you're right, if the bastards would have just stayed then everyone else would have too… we would have had a city ready for a fight and not a race east seeing who can kiss the bloodless harder… for two hundred years the Soldier's Guild kept order in this shithole for a fair price… and at the first sign of the Returned they packed their shit and made for Blhadhahar like a dog with its tail rammed up its ass… may the cannibals eat them whole…" he said.

"Not sure about the cannibal part, must be few of em left. I reckon' its hard to survive in the sands when your meal fights back after you killed it…" Joffrey said with a snort.

The barkeep chuckled at that, "Ha! You could say that! I like you stranger… Call me Tak…" he said as he took out another tankard and cleaned it with a rug.

Joffrey reciprocated the man's trust without hesitation, "I'm Jhei, I used to sell pretty bones to the greens… but after Shiz…" he trailed off. His shiver was entirely unfeigned.

The barkeep looked interested, "They have plenty of bones now huh? They say it was bad, did the whole city just… die?" he asked in hushed whispers.

"Dead and raised again, I'm never going back there again while I still breathe…" Joffrey said as he shook his head.

The conversation was interrupted when two short, clean shaved men entered. Joffrey almost drew his sword out, but they didn't look like Grey Whisperers. Their heads looked vaguely shrunken, and their eyes were red.

They had some similarities to the cultist aspirants Joffrey had bumped with when he'd still been a Half Sun, but only in the sense that they were pale, very pale. There was something almost alien to them that the aspirants never had…

The pair calmly walked to the bar quite a few stools away from Joffrey, and the barkeep excused himself in a hurry. Both ordered the same as Joffrey, but drank them in one single swill. After they were done they took the bone knuckles that had been inside and tossed them inside their mouths, chewing them softly.

When in doubt, mimic, Joffrey thought as he finished his tankard and chewed the knuckles. They had a peculiar almost-flavor, but the vaguely pleasant sensation they elicited after each small chew came from a whole different source. He could feel his mouth gradually losing some of the swelling, bits of the green liquid filling his mouth again after each chew.

Joffrey tapped his tankard twice when Tak returned, leaving another brown note. They kept talking as he was refilled.

"So, I take it that you're out of a job now? What with the clientele having more bones than they could spare right now…" the barkeep fished.

"You could say that, been thinking of emulating the Guild and getting out of here. Blhadhahar sound nice right now, hell anywhere else sounds nice right now" said Joffrey as he shrugged.

"Well if you want to do that I suggest befriending the two gentlemen right there before they too flee east to their homeland…" he said as he looked discretely at his two pale costumers before shaking his head. "Not that it would do you much good, word is the bloodless are stopping anyone who's not sufficiently loaded with enough silver, gold or yish… or even blood some whisper. So unless you want to rot beneath the walls of Blhadhahar until the Returned come roaring from the north, what I'd really suggest would be to earn some Yishs for that toll…" he said as he lowered his voice, leaning on the bar.

In for a stag, in for a dragon…

"I'm able in trade and can handle myself in a fight, I think I can earn them just fine…" Joffrey agreed as he too leaned closer to the bar.

"A mercenary as well as a trader huh… What do you say if we check a few of the more interesting bones I have for sale out the back, a good deal is worth a bit of time eh?" Tak suggested.

Joffrey rocked his head slightly as if he was pondering the matter inside his head. "I'm always willing to listen to a serious proposal, as long as I have something to drink and pass the time of course… " he said as he spat the knuckles, making them tumble over the floor like he'd seen the rest of the costumers do.

"Please" said the barkeep as he refilled Joffrey's cup, showing that 'Jhei's time was at least worth the price of a drink. "This one's on the house" he said before gesturing slightly with his head.

Joffrey took the cup with him as he followed Tak through a back door, his other hand never too far away from his dagger.

They passed through two corridors before they entered a small storeroom full of crates. Tak opened one and showed him a few of his wares, all of them bones of different kinds. Hard but brittle, long and green, short but full of small lumps.

More than looking for a deal, Joffrey realized Tak was testing him. His knowledge of trade and economics was put to the limit as they discussed possibilities and prices, speculation and possible trends. In another strange merge, Joffrey found his knowledge of bone carving incredibly useful too. His cover was of a gritty, down on his luck bone merchant and adventurer after all, so it only made sense that he should know something about his wares.

After Tak closed the third crate with a satisfied nod, he turned to Joffrey. "It seems you are who you claim to be Master Jhei, one can never be too careful these days… but one last question, if you would?" he asked.

He's planning something… and he's giving me one last chance to back out before this turns serious…

Joffrey thought for a few seconds.

What the hells, I'm already on the edge of the world, what's one last leap?

He nodded at Tak, who nodded back as he walked a bit back and called out to another door. "Gish, if you would" he said.

The wooden door opened and a Shryke clad in light armor came out, wielding a bamboo fire lance. He was pointing it right at Joffrey, holding it from the upper part with his right, clawed hand, at the height of his hip. Gish's other hand was crossed over his chest, holding a string that was attached to the fire lance's back end.

Its spear was plain but sharp, and Joffrey carefully thought about which direction to jump if the Shryke pulled that string.

The primitive fire lance was identical to the one used by the Wooden Iron's flying artillery units more than two century ago, a one shot spear designed to give a small edge in a melee. One could find them in certain Garrison keeps and outposts, or rarely out in the Beyond when a Garrison Iron sold his brothers for a bag of silver or a red note. Its accuracy was even worse than the modern bronze ones used by Xon-Mi's men, but with a target four meters in front… it would be hard to miss.

"Do you understand anything about what I'm saying or should I just ram this through your chest?" Gish said in Shryk, all hisses and vowels.

"I'd like to see you try, greene" Joffrey answered back in Shryk, ready to twirl to the left at a moment.

Gish gazed at him for what seemed an eternity, before he nodded back at Tak, lowering the fire lance.

"I'm sorry for that but what we are doing here, while certainly lucrative… has attracted some attention from some of Bonetown's most recent arrivals" Tak said as Gish brought two stools.

Both Joffrey and the barkeep sat around one of the crates, it was all business now.

"You mean the suns?" Joffrey asked, keenly aware of his luck if he'd just discovered a plot to take out his own formation.

Tak shook his head quickly, "No, I don't know what possessed them to stray so far from their forts but they're not a part of this, in fact they may even prove to be a useful distraction. I'm referring to the Grey Whisperers, you've seen them surely? Preaching about arrivals and cycles out in the streets?" he said.

"I've seen them, they're the bastards behind all my former costumers walking around with no heads right?" Joffrey asked.

"Oh I wouldn't say that, I've lived my whole life in this shithole and believe me I've seen some stuff… ain't nobody human who could reanimate whole cities just like that… no, I guess there's a connection, but I wouldn't say its them" he said as Joffrey took another drink from his tankard.

"So what's your problem with them?" Joffrey asked, visibly interested.

"With them? Nothing. With what they've done..?" he shook his head. "Were you here when they found the Carved Hall about half a year ago?" he asked.

All the bells in King's Landing were ringing once again inside Joffrey's skull. He had to restrain himself lest he jump Tak and bodily shake the knowledge out of him.

"Carved Hall? I don't recall, must have been out of town…" He trailed off, leaving the silence to work for him.

"Well, thing is, one of the miners found something. He'd been spelunking for Rho bones way past the end of the Bonesteps when he found some hall full of carvings etched into the walls, deep within the Dry Deep. The real find however were the slabs of obsidian within, rows upon rows of the stuff stashed in small holes all around the hallway. Two months later the Grey Word Whisperers arrived in force, a full two dozen of em' and more than I've ever seen in one place at the same time… but the preaching was just a side job I suspect. They halted all further mining and exploration around the Dry Deep and closed off the Bonedocks with no warning" he almost whispered.

Joffrey had seen them patrolling in the early morning, grey robed men and woman that serenely waked the streets closest to the former sea. The last glimmers of the moon had illuminated the vast complex of abandoned cranes, pulleys and great warehouses that bordered in between the city and the Dry Deep.

"So, what's so special about these carvings, have you seen them?" Joffrey asked, feigning mild interest and only barely succeeding.

Tak shrugged, "Nobody really cares. The cultists were after the obsidian, you see? They confiscated what had already been taken… and the strange thing is they'd been content to just sit on it. No further mining carried out by themselves to get the rest out, no offers to sell them either. It's not that expensive really, a lot of the bones that are routinely mined from here are a lot more valuable… but it's the obsidian the mineral that drove them crazy for weeks, searching for every last remnant of the stuff and tossing it down the Dry Deep…"

He shook his head before continuing, "Minerals or carvings, whatever. What I'm much more interest about are the loads of abandoned shipments just strewn about the docks. Crates upon crates of packed bones of all types, many of them already stashed atop carts and only missing a couple of camels and a brave driver for a clean getaway and a rich life in Blhadhahar or whatever bloodless city you care to mention…" Tak said, the greed and the prospect of the huge payoff shining unabashedly through his eyes.

Joffrey had to bite his tongue. 'Jhei', trader and mercenary would have spat upon the carvings too and gone for the bones. He couldn't break cover, not now.

"That must be a lot of Yishs… and the merchants just gave it up?" Joffrey asked, suspicious.

"They didn't have much choice, not with the Guild gone. One day everyone was going about their honest business, the next over fifty grey assholes marched to the docks and told them they had five minutes to leave or else… Still, one of em tried his luck, one of the shifty ones from Nefer and his retinue… over five hundred people got to gaze at what exactly 'or else' meant… " Tak said with a shiver.

Joffrey swallowed. He tried to drink again but he realized his cup was empty.

"And you want me to rob these maniacs?" he asked, frowning.

"Look, just as we give a rats ass about the stupid obsidian, they too don't give a damn about a pile of bones, never mind their huge value. I'm assembling a team to go get them at night, a very simple task for which I'm willing to pay handsomely" he said as he raised an eyebrow.

An excellent opportunity to scout the opposition… but appearances must be maintained though…

'Jehi' corossed his arms, leaning back. "How do I know you've got the Yishs for this?" he asked.

"You didn't, but now you do" Tak said with a smile as he took out a wad of purple Yish bills for Joffrey to see, only to hide them again in a pouch that hanged from his neck at chest height.

For a rundown merchant, Tak was definitively sporting a lot of script…

"This isn't the first time you've sent people in for this job is it?" Joffrey asked suddenly.

Tak looked vaguely startled but quickly recovered. "It isn't, but as you see the payout is extreme--"

"What happened to the other team? Why aren't they doing this again?" Joffrey asked, a vague tingling setting his neck's hair on edge.

"There was a bit of trouble last time but I assure you--"

"What. Happened." Joffrey asked menacingly as he stood up and Gish aimed his fire lance again.

"I hope you have another one of those because you'll need more than one to stop me" he snarled at Gish in the Shryke's tongue.

Tak quickly stood up trying to calm everyone down, "Please, please it's no trouble… The last team that went in… it appears they may have wandered too close to the Bonesteps themselves and… incurred the wrath of the Whisperers…" he answered as he scratched his neck, uncomfortable.

"When was this?" Joffrey asked as Gish lowered his weapon again.

"Last night, but I assure you the route has been changed and--" Tak tried again but Joffrey was already taking a step backwards in bone chilling realization.

"Did any one of them know about this place?" Joffrey asked, fingering his hidden dagger.

Tak looked annoyed as he sighted, "Master Jhei, I thought you were a reasonable man, the-"

"I am, they're not! Did any man in that team know?!" Joffrey snarled.

"I have taken every pre-"

"DID THEY?!" Joffrey shouted.

"They did! They did alright?!" Tak snarled back, but Joffrey was already running through the corridor.

He bursted out of the corridor and back into the tavern proper, but both Tak and Gish bumped with his back due to his unexpected stop.

The whole room was oddly muted and strange wisps of darkness fluttered about in the edges of Joffrey's vision as he gazed upon the costumers of the place. All of them were slumped on their tables or on the bar, eyes closed and faces tranquil as if they'd just decided to take a nap. It wouldn't have been an uncommon scene given the beverages these kinds of places served but for one thing.

They were pale, almost white. All of them except for the two bloodless men who had sat on the long table… those had been dismembered.

Joffrey almost screamed when he saw movement to his left, taking out one of his daggers and quickly turning towards it.

He saw a slight man in simple grey robes, his shaved head a healthy pink and his brown eyes looking back at Joffrey, serene.

"sssssshhhhh" He whispered with his index finger close to his mouth, asking for silence as his other hand slowly lowered a costumers head.

He turned back to his victim, slowly easing his head down to rest on the table with both hands now. Like a mother carries a sleeping child to bed, so too the man settled the pale costumer, easing him into a comfortable position almost caringly, even combing a bit of his hair.

"And now, he knows the truth…" recited the man, nodding in respect at the pale body before turning to the three men on the door.

"W-who the f-fuck a-a-a-re you?!" stuttered Tak as he leaned to the door's side and grasped a hand axe, shaken.

"I am Liosh, a mere whisper, a carrier of the good news… But you, Tsajkin… you have travelled dangerously close to things best left alone… come, know the truth of our world…" the cultist said as he took a step towards them.

"GISH!!!" Shrieked Tak.

The Shryke bodyguard snarled as he pulled the string on the bamboo rod's back end.

ttttthhhhssssssTHHHUUUU—

A small tongue of fire erupted from the primitive fire lance's front end, propelling the spear forward. Liosh grabbed the spear in midair with both palms, stopping its great force and looking at it thoughtfully.

"A weapon of a dying age" he said as he looked at it. "Clever tricks and mechanism, an obsolete weapon after the gifts of the Red Comet…" he muttered as he dropped the spear.

The Shryke snarled again as he took a bronze short sword from his hip scabbard, but the Cultist moved.

There was no disappearance or darkness to cloak it. In one single step Liosh strolled from one end of the room to the other, right in front of Gish. The Shryke warrior had not yet unsheathed his sword completely when Liosh grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand and pierced the Shryke's chest with the other. The cultist's hand might as well been made of Valyrian Steel, piercing through leather, scales and flesh in one stroke.

"It's been some time since I'd tasted a Half-Scale's blood… murmurs and half whispers of clawed giants and shifting flesh… " whispered the cultist as Gish shrieked to the heavens, his blood whirling around Liosh's hand and somehow entering it. In two seconds the Shryke was a dry husk, his face frozen in a rictus of horror.

Joffrey used those two seconds to sidestep and brutally stab Liosh through the kidney, turning his dagger in a swift motion as he cut all the veins he knew about after his time under Archmaester Ebrose.

Liosh seemed to grunt as Joffrey took out his blade, but before he could stab him again the cultist whirled and intercepted Joffrey's arm. He delivered two strange strikes on his arm, hard enough to draw blood before he punched Joffrey right on the sternum and sent him flying back with incredible force. Joffrey saw how, for some reason, Liosh's hand fisted just before he punched him. The cultist could have pierced him in one blow but decided not to.

Joffrey crashed against a table, tumbling down and clamping down a scream of pain. When he struggled to get up he realized he couldn't move his right hand, it hung limp by his side, unable to grab the silver dagger.

Tak was frozen in fear, screaming as he tossed his axe down. "I'm sorry, please I'm so sorry!!! I've got script, a-a-and bones and--AUUGH" His hyperventilated pleading stopped abruptly as Liosh's hand pierced his sternum. Bits of bronze from the small armor he had been wearing discreetly below his shirt tumbled to the sides, mixing with the whirling, shredded fragments of purple bills.

"Boring and useless" said the cultist as if to himself as he drained Tak dry, the blood from his own wound flowing faster for a second before it tapered of completely and his fleshed mended. Liosh now looked as if he'd never been stabbed at all.

"But you…" he whispered as he turned back, walking towards Joffrey.

Joffrey stumbled to his feet and dashed to the exit, taking the dagger with his left hand.

He shouldered the door open, but he didn't find the street outside. He was again inside the tavern, but this time entering again from the back door. He could even see Gish and Tak's corpses to his sides… it was as if the whole room had duplicated.

He whipped his head back and saw Liosh walking sedately towards him, gazing thoughtfully at one of his arms, the one that had struck Joffrey. The arm still had a few drops of Joffrey's blood, but they were shrinking. Slowly, very slowly the drops disappeared into the cultists body.

He sighted in near ecstasy as he kept walking. "This… This is a pleasant surprise… you taste of power, stranger. Clever tricks and righteous anger, wielded determination and roaring pride…" he muttered as he kept walking.

Joffrey ran towards the door again, opening it and stumbling into the same room again.

"Why run? The rebirth is close at hand once again, as it has always been…" Liosh said as Joffrey kept running, breathing hard. He ran and ran and ran through the rooms before something suddenly changed. After opening the door one more time he spotted ten other Whisperers, hoods hiding their faces and hands clasped in front of them, covered by their long sleeves.

He whirled back and bumped against Liosh, right on his back. "You will be quite useful…" he muttered as Joffrey tried to stab him again. He leaned to his right and Joffrey missed the heart by a hair's breath. Liosh grabbed him by the back of his neck and Joffrey suddenly couldn't feel anything below it, as if his spine had been cut.

"We'll do it now" he said as he dragged Joffrey to the bar table and the other cultists cleared the area of bottles and everything else.

"They are outside" Joffrey heard another one whisper. He was now looking at the tavern's ceiling and Liosh's anticipating face, surrounded by countless black, shadowed cowls.

"No matter, it will be too late" said Liosh as he opened his arms wide and started muttering, whispering, swiftly followed by the rest of the cultists.

Joffrey's breathing hitched, and he could somehow feel his blood bubbling, sluggishly being redirected. He tried to scream but found he couldn't, his whole body was tingling in pain and foreboding.

He felt most of it concentrating on his neck, about to somehow burst out when a huge explosion rocked the building, the cultists stumbling as pieces of wood and stone rained upon them.

tttthhhhhssssssssssTHHHUUUUUU--

Liosh looked back up a millisecond before a blurry spear got him in the gut, sending him flying back.

"DAAAAAAAAWWN!!!" bellowed several voices before the sound of battle flooded the room, shrieks and cries and roars pounding Joffrey's ears.

Joffrey started to feel the rest of his body, very slowly as if he'd been waking up from a long nap. He rolled with all his strength to the side, falling on the other side of the bar table and covering under it.

A cultist suddenly appeared over the table, grabbing him and raising him back up. Joffrey head butted him in the nose as he grappled with the man, lifting him and crashing back to the floor. The space in between the wall and the long table was too constricted for the cultist to use any of its strange unarmed combat moves and Joffrey used that fact to full effect as he let slip his other hidden dagger, stabbing the man in the heart and twisting the blade brutally, severing his coronary artery before stabbing again and cutting through his right atrium.

The cultist convulsed for a second before he was suddenly still, and Joffrey grabbed the bar as he struggled to stand back up.

The tavern was a battlefield as a multitude of Jade Glimmers engaged the cultists in furious melee combat, silver short swords glinting as they parried arm strikes and gutted cultists. The cultists seemed to blur as they pivoted perfectly, engaging the soldiers with arm strikes and powerful kicks that were eerily similar to the martial style used by the Jade Scribes. Each cultist seemed to have two shadowy appendages growing from their backs, appendages that were used to parry and deliver horrifying strikes that seemed to bypass any and all armor. For every cultist that fell, four Jade Glimmers paid the price.

"MAJOR! OVER HERE!!!" Shouted Captain Shah as he loosed arrow after arrow, looking more like a repeater ballista than a man as he pierced eyes and mouths, dropping cultists to the ground.

The melee was a mess with no organization, but Joffrey could see he was isolated from his main force, about half a dozen cultists cutting his path.

He looked to the other side and saw Liosh snarling as the lance that had him pinned to the wall slowly extracted itself from his belly, seemingly guided as if by a force of its own.

"MAJOR JOFFREY! GET OUT OF THERE!" suddenly bellowed Captain Xon-Mi from the gaping hole that used to be the Tavern's front wall. He was directing two of his men as they set some sort of wooden rectangle on the floor.

Twirling red leaves surrounding a face…

He took a deep breath, emptying his mind before dashing through the assembled cultists, running faster than he'd ever had in his lives. His mind was in some sort of haze as he dodged to his right and then to his left, narrowly avoiding the black shadowy tendrils that tried to gut him like a pig. He rolled on the floor as he dodged another one but crashed against one of the cultists that moved to block his path. The bastard lifted him in the air with but a hand as if he were nothing, both tendrils forming to his sides and preparing to pounce.

Before Joffrey could even react an arrow emerged from the man's eye. Both of them fell to the floor, Joffrey bouncing into a water recovery as he leapt back to his feet. The cultist tried to do the same, arrow and all but his movements were awkward and constricted. He started to convulse, repeatedly crashing against the floor.

He eyed Shah as he got another poisoned arrow from his secondary quiver, clearing the way forward as he kept piercing hearts and heads with his arrows. "Sir!" shouted one of the Glimmers nearby as he tossed a saber at Joffrey, only to get promptly gutted from behind by one of the cultists.

Joffrey grabbed the saber in the air just in time to parry a cultist's arm which somehow didn't cut open with the strike. He delivered a devastating riposte on the man's neck with a bellow, severing his head entirely as he kept running. The legionaries retreated with him, all of them falling back to the tavern's entrance.

"No" rasped a voice than threated to split Joffrey's head in two as Liosh suddenly exploded in shadows, uncountable tendrils erupting from his every orifice and body part, killing and maiming every man it touched as he glided forwards towards Joffrey.

Xon-Mi hefted a heavy looking bronze contraption towards the abomination. It was made of three bronze Firelance tubes which had somehow been fused together, though only one tube still had a lance. He roared as he pulled the cord, filling the room with even more acrid smoke.

thhhhhhhhssssSSTHHHUUUUUU--- roared the lance at the same time as Shah loosed a spread of three arrows at the abomination, the close range making accuracy irrelevant. Liosh seemed to laugh, a hollow, muffled sound as he buffeted the arrows and lances to the sides with his many tendrils. As he kept gliding forward every surviving acolyte opened their arms wide and screamed as Liosh's tendrils reached them, draining their blood and leaving only dry husks behind him. Every time he did it the shadows grew longer and thicker, and when Joffrey and the surviving Glimmers finally reached the exit the man was two thirds of the way towards them.

"LETS GO! LETS GO!" Joffrey shouted as he saw one of Xon-Mi's men light a fuse, leaving the wooden box and running like a man possessed. The legionnaires tumbled out into the street, the last of them not quite making it as huge tendrils of darkness bursted out of their chests as they screamed in agony.

Right in front of Joffrey, in the middle of the street, stood Captain Jhos surrounded by a dozen Glimmers, all with their eyes closed as a heavy wind shifted the Jade Moon's robes. He was moving his hands in an almost sedately manner, reminiscent of the many times Joffrey had seen him training his strange moves with the rest of the men.

"DOWN!" Joffrey bellowed as he jumped to the hard street, followed closely by Xon-Mi, Shah and the rest of the men as they hugged the floor.

Jhos suddenly opened his eyes and gave a long step forward, his palm flat as he shoved it in front of him with all his force.

Liosh emerged from the tavern's hole, towering over the men for just a second before something slammed into him, driving him back as he shrieked in pain to the heavens, flailing helplessly.

Then an explosion so loud that Joffrey swore must have been heard at the Greytower picked him and the legionnaires up into the air and tossed them at a rapidly approaching wall.

-.PD.-

"I was inside that tavern for three days?! How's that even possible!?" Joffrey asked, exasperated.

"Not even Captain Jhos knows, he managed to find you a couple of hours ago and we went for a quick strike" said Captain Shah.

Joffrey winced as the Body Scribe put another bandage on his head, the pain and the heavy sun that was somehow not blunted in any way by the tarp only serving to worsen his mood.

"Three days well spent as the shadowy bastards attacked our camp again and again, we thought they'd gotten you for sure…" said Xon-Mi as he cleaned the bulky Threelance on the ground, caringly pouring over the impractical weapon.

"I find it harder to believe we got them all, you said they pulled all their men back towards the tavern as our forces kept advancing on it?" Joffrey asked Captain Hu.

Hu nodded as he took another seep of water from his canteen. "They kept rushing us, trying to delay us at the cost of their lives. Whatever they wanted to do with you must have been pretty important. They even left the Bonedocks deserted In favor of the tavern and according to the locals they had been guarding it ever since they arrived here…"

Joffrey nodded, wincing again at the tendrils of pain ran through his head at the sudden movement.

The camp seemed to be the only bastion of order within the city as the fear and the uncertainty reached a boiling point. The few cultists that survived the battle had fled the city, and apart from Joffrey's formation (which he was unwilling to use as a policing force) there was no central power figure left. Total anarchy had taken over the city as the people abandoned it in droves, many storming onto the now unguarded Bonedocks and carrying crates full of heavy bones in a desperate attempt to reach Blhadhahar and pay the fabled toll in exchange for safety. Joffrey doubted more than half would survive the journey east through the Cannibal Sands and then south through the Blood Plains. He guessed most of the precious bones would be left to rot under the desert sun.

"Your blood must be quite the price to have mustered such a defense… Are you sure you don't descend from a sorcerer's line, Joffrey?" Jhos asked, intrigued.

Joffrey thought about lions and Lannisters, ancient tales and first men Kings.

'You taste of power, stranger. Clever tricks and righteous anger, wielded determination and roaring pride'

It was not the most common interpretation of Lann the Clever, but Joffrey guessed it was close enough…

"I'm not sure about anything really, Jhos…" he said as he shook his head. "They had already taken what they'd wanted from the Bonedocks anyway, Tak, he was the barkeep that had been robbing them by the way, he said they'd tossed the obsidian down the Dry Deep. Did you find anything Sabu? Anything at all?" he asked the Ranger Captain.

"Only a small piece. Found it beneath the bed of some minor trader, must have been one of the first to buy one from the miner" said Sabu, showing them a block of jagged obsidian the size of his head.

"Why would anyone stash these so far below the Dry Deep?" asked Hu, confused.

"More questions" bitterly muttered Joffrey.

They had lost more than 60 men and no useful clues had yet been found. The only good news were that their food and water reserves had been replenished, with more than enough left to resupply the Expedition at Kohl's Refuge. And that they'd taken out a small group of powerful cultists…

Joffrey let out a deep breath as he leaned back, letting his subordinates coordinate the more immediate, pressing matters as he considered the only place he could think of that seemed to have more answers than questions.

The 'Carved Hall…' the obsidian the cultists found there is not the only secret that place holds.

"I'll need a climbing rope, a long one" he suddenly said, prompting every single one of his subordinates to look at him.

-.PD.-

The aptly named Bonesteps had formed organically, with time. As successive generations of miners had mined clear the levels nearer the surface, the need to go deeper into the Dry Deep had necessitated the creation of a great stairway miners could use to get at the precious bones that lay petrified on the walls of the former sea. The steps had been chiseled on the 'walls' of the former sea, similar to the great switchback stairs Joffrey had glimpsed during his brief stay at Castle Black, searching for climbing knowledge. The steps were reinforced by bones, though they seemed to get more rickety and half hazard the deeper Joffrey descended into the abyss. The great canyon was so deep that darkness clouded the lower reaches, where spirits were said to snatch those miners that got too greedy and descended too deep into the darkness.

Step-step-step-step

A sudden gust of wind forced Joffrey and the two men following him to duck to the side, hugging the 'wall' as hard as they could. To the other side, barely a few meters away, was a long, long fall…

A deep, low throttled humming started to pick up all around them, an eerily synchronized low note that seemed to get stronger the faster the wind blew, humming louder and louder until Joffrey could hardly hear his breathing.

The gust of wind perked up, shrieking without end as the 'appeasers' clanked and whistled, adding their shivering cacophony to the whirlwind of noise. The appeasers were strings that hanged from the 'ceiling' of the steps, holding pieces of hollowed out bone through which the air shifted, adding a lower tune to the sound the wind made as the bones clanked and clashed with themselves. The miners of the Dry Deep placed one of those after every empty 'dig site' the Bonesteps passed, a sort of apology and plead for the bones they had taken.

After centuries of mining, the whole upper canyon thrummed with the low tune of a thousand, a million appeasers all twisting madly from their strings and chanting as the wind blew.

HHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMmmmmmmsssssss….

The sound stopped with the wind, and Joffrey shook himself as he stood up. "Let's keep going, we've got no time to waste" he said, gesturing at the two men.

Jhos nodded silently as Sunbeam Loh nervously gripped the long piece of rope he held hanging from his shoulder.

The three of them kept going down, following the steps deeper and deeper into the abyss as the light from the sun seemed to get weaker and weaker. A while later the found the last level of the Bonesteps, a large rickety platform made of bone which was filled with cheap mining equipment and broken strings of rope. It was here the most destitute of miners tried their luck, risking their lives to their ropes and climbing down the dark abyss without a single step below them in search of a great find. If their ropes suddenly gave out there was nothing stopping them for the next half dozen kilometers or more…. beyond that, the abyss turned too dark to even measure distance… some said the hole had no end and that the people who fell were doomed to fall and fall and fall until the end of time…

Joffrey took a deep breath as he approached the correct platform, a beam of bone with a few steps nailed on top for a few meters until both tapered out, leaving only the edge.

He turned back, "Loh, the rope if you will" he asked his camp aid.

Sunbeam Loh looked determined but thoroughly spooked as he passed him the rope, "Good luck sir" he said before saluting, as if still not believing his commander's bravery.

Bravery… thought Joffrey, unamused. Is it bravery if you know you will come back? He asked himself.

The question was moot however, because was so scared he thought he might shit his pants.

"Are you sure of this, Joffrey?" asked Jhos as he warily gazed down the abyss.

"I'm the only one here who can make the climb, and I'd rather not risk anyone else" he said, cursing as his shivering hands struggled to secure the rope to the edge and to himself. He gritted his teeth into a silent snarl.

I will have answers.

The shaking lessened considerably, and Joffrey used the lull to secure it tightly before throwing the other end down.

"If I don't come back up in a day… well, everyone knows what to do…" he said as he stared into the abyss, gulping hard.

"I'll assume command, take the men to Khol's Refuge and report our failure to the General…" Jhos trailed off as Joffrey stared at the abyss once more. "Joff… are you sure?" Jhos asked intently, for once using his nickname. "We know that a group of powerful sorcerers are linked with mass resuscitations and mass killings… Killings that are only growing more prevalent… that's enough to mobilize the Five Garrisons…" Jhos almost pleaded.

Joffrey took another gulp, genuinely thinking it through.

…

Sansa had an uncharacteristically focused look, as if trying to decipher a deep meaning.

"But, Joffrey… What is a different song if not a sequence of changed keys?" she said.

…

We make our own songs… he thought, closing his eyes for a brief moment before opening them again.

"Dawn, Major" he said with a salute.

"Dawn" Jhos said as he placed his fist over his heart.

And then, he jumped into the Abyss.

-.PD.-

Darkness surrounded Joffrey as he let the rope free again, jumping from the wall once more as he descended another dozen meters with a single leap. Midway through a gust of wind seemed to pick him up like a crazed pendulum, driving him to his left with deceptive force as the wind roared.

"AUGH-!" Joffrey grunted as he slammed against the uneven 'wall', feeling blood ooze from the reopened wound in his cheek. The deep thrum from the millions of appeasers that hanged from the upper levels sounded distorted from here, an echo that seemed to multiply their sound while at the same time muffling it…

It sounds like…

It sounded like the sobs of the earth itself…

HHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...….

He let the rope loose again, descending deeper and deeper as the light from the dusk sun seemed to disappear altogether, leaving Joffrey coated in darkness.

They said it was right here… did I skip it without seeing it? He asked himself as he jumped again.

This time though he felt no wall when he landed, instead it was as if a hole on the earth had opened up and swallowed him as he kept going and crashed into the ground.

"Thank the gods" Joffrey muttered as he disentangled himself from the rope, trying to find the oil lantern inside his backpack.

The lazy glow from the lantern slowly illuminated Joffrey's surroundings, revealing some kind of cave that opened wide into the Dry Deep. Joffrey turned back and gazed at the crumbled and cracked stone arch that seemed to lead into a perfectly squared tunnel.

I'm here, he thought as he secured the rope to a nearby rock.

Why the hells would someone build this here?! Joffrey thought as he mustered every pitiful ounce of courage he thought he had and walked towards it. It was immediately apparent that the tunnel was long, a straight line of unending black, light absorbing black stone.

Just like Hightower's foundations and the black obelisk.

Oh gods…

He looked at the hallway's walls as he walked, trying to decipher drawings and scribbles that seemed all but destroyed with the passage of time. He briefly stopped as he discarded one of his gloves, feeling its contour with his fingers and bringing his head closer, frowning.

The erosion… it was not caused by wind… it was caused by water. Salted water.

They built this when the Dry Deep was an actual sea?!

He kept walking, trying to decipher what had been drawn. Everything was thoroughly eroded by time, air and water, but the hallway was so long that something vaguely comprehensible began to emerge as Joffrey compiled an eventual image inside his head with the help of a small fragment of charcoal and a smooth slate. He felt it was missing a lot, but after so much time… thousands of years… hundreds of thousands if it had been built at the same time as the Hightower's foundations and the black obelisk… a lot had been lost.

The mural depicted the same pattern over and over and over again. Some kind of army, all moving intently towards an opposing figure that wielded some kind of weapon in his hands.

Joffrey scribbled like a madman as he kept moving, frequently stopping to gaze at the hallway with his lantern and piecing in details that he'd previously missed, thanking the gods he had decided to take painting as a hobby in Tyrosh all those years ago…

The pattern was recurring, showing the army or mob as it advanced and tore apart the figure. When the figure was gone the army seemed to spread everywhere, flooding the entire section of the hallway, even the ceiling. After that though, there was an interruption. For several dozen meters the carvings stopped, only to then resume again in a very similar matter. Joffrey didn't know if the pattern recurred again exactly or if it showed some differences, as the passage of time had taken a heavy toll on it… but the central theme was the same.

Army appears, figure stands and pleads or maybe defies them, gets torn apart and then nothing… again and again and again…

He kept walking, checking the small holes that frequently appeared below the mural. According to the stories that had circulated through Bonetown the holes had been full of obsidian slabs.

There was none left though, the Grey Word Whisperers had seen to that.

Maybe the obsidian interferes with their magic or harms them? But if so how could they get rid of it themselves?

He kept walking until the hallway suddenly ended and opened up into a great dome the size of the Red Keep's throne room.

A hall filled with carvings.

Joffrey narrowed his lamp's beam as he inspected the walls and the ceiling. All across the room he could see one great carving, jagged and eroded but still somewhat understandable. The area around the entrance was taken by some kind of group, people in various states of dismay or alert, spreading and running all across the first third of the hall. To the sides he could see armored figures with swords drawn out, looking in every direction.

To the other side he spotted some kind of table filled with people of distinguished bearing, most of them standing, shouting or maybe screaming, looking at the center of the ceiling…

Joffrey walked to the center of the room and looked up, hands trembling slightly.

----