Forty fire sprites, carrying the magical power and divine soul force of two giant dragons, self-detonated. The sheer terror of their power had already filled Dany with anticipation before the explosion even occurred.
But she was not naive enough to believe that a single move of fire-element annihilation could eliminate a true god.
The theme of the Battle of Winterfell had never changed: do everything possible to eliminate the Night King.
Yes, the Night King was the real target.
As for the Cold God, driving him away would count as success.
However, once the black vortex disappeared and the Cold God withdrew, the Night King would certainly stop stubbornly clashing with Winterfell.
It would flee as well.
Hiding among a million wights, beyond even the reach of the Three-Eyed Raven.
Therefore, before striking at the dark vortex, Dany first located the Night King, then detonated forty-eight fire sprites simultaneously.
If she could kill it in one blow, all the better. Even if she could not, between the sun-piercing strike, the crushing tower, and the explosion of the fire sprites, it would at least be half-crippled.
If she could not kill it, she would capture it alive.
In short, everyone in the Battle of Winterfell had suffered grievous losses. The mastermind absolutely could not be allowed to escape.
Arya discovered something extremely terrifying: when she circulated the Death Scripture, the wights ignored her completely.
They treated her as one of their own.
Bran was right. The Death Scripture had a massive flaw.
However, she was not worried. First, in the state of the Death God's mindset, there were no negative emotions such as anxiety or fear. Second, the Dragon Queen had promised to help her resolve the problem of turning into a wight.
She did not trust the Dragon Queen, but she trusted Bran.
Bran had said that the Dragon Queen would certainly be able to help her resolve the side effects of the meditation method.
Finally, if the wights treated her as one of their own, would that not make it easier to assassinate the Night King?
Yes, Arya also harbored the ambition to slay a king.
Helping her sister Sansa fight for the Iron Throne was only a small part of the reason. She wanted even more to help Winterfell resolve its crisis. And besides, assassinating the Night King would make her a legend.
Who would not want to become the great hero in Old Nan's legendary tales?
She concealed herself in the darkness, pretending to be a wight as well.
Stannis's move, "Heaven and Earth Perish Together," had deeply moved her. Of course, she was also itching to move in and deliver the finishing blow.
Later, she witnessed something terrifying: the Dragon Queen actually took the initiative to shatter the Hero's Red Sword.
Why?
Arya's heart was filled with confusion.
For a moment, she even suspected that the chairman of the Anti-Other unified front had defected to the Others.
But then she remembered the Dragon Queen's identity as the Pope of the Seven.
The Seven would never be deceived by a believer, nor would they side with the Cold God.
Very quickly, she stopped dwelling on that question. The conversation between the Dragon Queen and the Night King revealed a shocking secret: her own aunt had not been abducted by Rhaegar at all. That pair of adulterous lovers had eloped!
What did that mean?
The legitimacy of the Usurper's War was gone.
It was already troubling enough that the Night King who sought to destroy Westeros was a Stark. If the Starks were also saddled with the blame of being the culprits behind the Usurper's War, how would Winterfell and House Stark stand before the people of the Seven Kingdoms in the future?
What would everyone think?
Would there be a great reckoning?
As she was lost in wild thoughts, Arya was shocked once again.
The Dragon Queen had been playing weak while hiding her strength. She suddenly erupted and captured the Night King.
Well, compared to the series of upheavals that followed, that small matter was nothing.
In the end, opportunity favors the prepared. After a world-shaking explosion, Arya encountered the Night King lying motionless on the ground.
In truth, it was not mere luck.
She had personally seen the Night King rescued from the rubble by a wight giant, and had witnessed it baring its teeth and howling as it pulled the longsword out from behind its buttocks. The Night King did not dare destroy the counterfeit Red Sword, because once the blade was frozen and shattered by the power of ice, the fragments would remain in place and become even harder to remove.
It was from that moment that Arya resolved to stop regarding it as Uncle Benjen.
It was too horrifying to behold, too devastating to her worldview.
Her wise and valiant uncle of the Night's Watch should never have been like that.
Even the Night King's persona as the "great demon king who would destroy the world" gradually collapsed in her mind.
Watching the Night King limp forward, watching the ice-blue liquid flow down along the crystalline greaves of its legs, Arya even began to look down on it.
Aside from the wight giant, more than a dozen Others guarded the Night King. Therefore, Arya had no chance to launch a sneak attack at that time.
But the opportunity came quickly.
The Night King actually concealed its aura, donned a gray cloak, disguised itself as an ordinary wight, and hid among a group of wights.
Had she not witnessed the entire process with her own eyes, she would never have believed that the Night King could be so… so wretched.
Yes, she did not think it clever. She only thought it despicable.
You are the Night King!
The demon king destined to destroy the world, the final boss in all of Old Nan's legendary stories. Could you not show a little more backbone?
However, with no Others protecting it at its side, it was indeed a good opportunity.
Just as Arya quietly approached, another sudden change occurred. A massive explosion hurled her small body seven or eight meters away, her head plunging straight into the snow.
After staggering back to her feet, she realized the opportunity had become even better.
The Night King rose from the snow pit at the center of the explosion and struggled to crawl to its edge. Its entire suit of ice armor was shattered, its pale flesh ulcerated. Ice-blue blood flowed down its thighs onto the ground, leaving shallow blue footprints in the snow.
At that moment, it resembled a suckling pig roasted alive to half-cooked, then skinned and hacked apart.
Yet Arya also noticed that as wisps of gray-white cold mist surged in from all directions, those terrifying wounds were rapidly healing.
"We can't delay any longer."
Arya silently moved toward the back of the Night King.
She had almost no body temperature, no breath, no trace of a living person's presence. She seemed no different from the wights around her.
Cut off its head? Pierce its heart from behind?
After a brief hesitation, Arya decided to ambush the Night King's back, because she only had a Valyrian steel dagger in her hand. A dagger, unlike a sword, was not well suited for cutting off a head.
"Shhk—" The thrusting dagger should have made no sound, but Arya missed. As she lost her balance, the blade sliced through the air with a sharp screech.
The Night King pivoted on his right foot, spinning one hundred and eighty degrees to evade the strike to his back. His ferocious, cold face now confronted Arya directly.
His right hand shot out like lightning, clamping around her throat and lifting her half a meter into the air like a rag doll. His left hand twisted her dagger-wielding right arm into a V shape as though snapping a reed.
"Crack—" Pain forced beads of sweat the size of peas onto Arya's forehead. A muffled groan escaped her lips, yet she did not release the dagger in her right hand.
"Fool. In my eyes, your life force is more conspicuous than a bonfire in the darkness. Unless you can completely abandon those inferior human emotions," the Night King mocked in a shrill, piercing voice.
Arya's neck was locked in his grip, her long face flushed red. She could not utter a single word.
"But you are special. Our souls once fused. Perhaps I should break my rule of not transforming women before the coming of the Eternal Night.
Why not become my queen? I need an heir!" The Night King's blue eyes were cold and merciless, yet his expression was strangely serious.
His iron-like right hand loosened slightly, as if waiting to hear a positive answer from his intended "Queen of the Others."
Arya's face turned pale. A queen of the Others? As if she deserved such a fate.
She forced her most pitiful expression and wailed in a tearful voice, "Uncle Benjen, it's me! I'm Arya. Wake up, Uncle Benjen. Uncle Benjen, I'm Arya, 'Arya the Troublemaker.' When I was little, you taught me archery and horse riding. You said I would become a lady knight."
A look of struggle appeared on the Night King's gaunt, grayish-white face. The blue light reflecting in his eyes could no longer maintain its former cold indifference.
"Arya…" he murmured the name with nostalgia.
Benjen Stark was awakened once more.
"No!" A crow fluttered over unsteadily, crying out in alarm.
It was Bran's voice.
But Arya had already released her right hand. The dagger fell in free descent. Her drooping left hand caught it in one smooth motion and drove it into the hollow in his chest left by the Lightbringer.
"Shhh—" The Valyrian steel dagger pierced straight through his heart.
The entire sequence was seamless, swift as lightning.
"You—" The complex emotions and light in the Night King Benjen's eyes vanished together.
"You killed your uncle." Only coldness remained in the dimming gaze of the Night King.
"Shhk, shhk, shhk!" Her only reply was a flurry of stabs. The heart was shredded.
"Fool…" The Night King suddenly smiled at Arya's hardened little face, then turned his head to look at the sky.
"Buzz—" A spatial portal flashed into existence fifty meters above. A black dragon leapt out, carrying a Dragon Queen whose eyes blazed with brilliant red light.
"Caw, caw, caw—" Three thousand crows followed behind the giant dragon, densely packed like a swarm of locusts crossing the land.
"I'll be back!"
Leaving those words behind, the Night King collapsed with a thud, the blue light in his eyes gradually dimming.
Thud, thud, thud. Centered on the Night King's rapidly melting body, which dissolved into icy blue liquid, the wights and the Others fell one after another from far to near, like puppet toys with their power cut off.
"Ah! The Night King has been slain! The Long Night is over!" The arriving warriors erupted in thunderous cheers.
"Demon, where do you think you're going!" The Dragon Queen's reaction, however, was strangely different. With a furious shout, she leapt into the air, while the dragon beneath her fell like a stalled aircraft, its eyes dimming as it crashed into the snow.
It plowed a trench one hundred meters long and three meters deep through the snowfield.
From the soul's perspective, invisible to ordinary people:
A beam of blue light shot from the Night King's brow. At its core was the figure of a man. Like a meteor, it flew northward.
Then a black dragon emerged from the Dragon Queen's brow. Formed entirely of flames, she rode it in pursuit of the blue light.
She had once used this method to chase the six-skinchanger Varamyr and to intercept the red dragon and the ram-horned dragon spirit.
In truth, she had not caught up with Varamyr that time. She arrived only after the six-skinchanger's remnant soul had begun a second life within a wolf's body.
What she killed was a wolf, not the human Varamyr.
This time was no different. Having lost the initiative, she could not catch the Night King after he had begun his second life.
But she was not alone.
"Caw, caw, caw—"
Crows surged in from all directions, surrounding both the fleeing Night King ahead and the Dragon Queen behind.
"Boom!" The Night King's blue light shot forward like a spear, piercing through the formation of crows ahead.
Yet its speed dropped significantly.
"Hiss...boom!" The giant dragon caught up, biting down on the beam of blue light. Divine dragonfire poured forth as the empowerment was activated.
"Ahhh… Mother!" The blue light rapidly melted within the dragonfire, transforming into spiritual essence and divinity that flowed into the faith-space of the Seven.
Then Dany saw a pair of cold, shadowy eyes.
Her soul's perspective, along with that of Great Black and the Three-Eyed Crow, was filled by a massive eyeball. Frost began to condense over their souls, and all ability to think or act vanished.
"Whoosh" The blue light enveloping the Night King's soul disappeared in an instant.
(End of Chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09