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Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
ASOIAF and all of its characters belong to GRRM
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 71: The Journey into Shadow
The docks of Asshai were quiet at this hour, and the masked sailors gave the small party plenty of space to walk around.
Captain Xho stood at the water's edge, his dark skin gleaming with moisture, his eyes fixed on the small boat that bobbed in the black water like a corpse waiting to be claimed.
"The boat is ready to sail, Prince," the captain said. "It is small, but sturdy. She will take you up the river as far as you need to go."
Joffrey glanced at the vessel. It was fit for no more than six men, with a single mast and a shallow draft that would allow it to navigate the river's narrow channels. It would require a great deal of rowing to get it moving against the sluggish current. "That will have to do."
"We are traveling on that thing?" The Hound pointed at the boat, his scarred face twisted with disgust. "It is going to sink."
"It will not sink, but..." The captain's face was troubled, his eyes darting to the dark water as if expecting something to rise from its depths. "You need to be wary. The Ash River becomes treacherous beyond the city walls. The currents will not be a problem, but there are many large rocks hard to see beneath the surface, and fog, and... I have heard of strange creatures lurking in the deeps of the Ash River." He shook his head slowly. "I cannot say more. I have never sailed as far as you intend to go."
"That is good enough." Joffrey gestured to the Hound and the Dothraki. "Load the supplies. We leave within the hour."
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The boat was indeed small...perhaps twenty feet from bow to stern, with a single mast and a shallow draft that would allow it to navigate the river's narrow channels.
The Hound took his place at the back, his massive hands gripping the wooden tiller.
Aggo and the other two Dothraki handled the sails and the oars, their movements efficient but their eyes wary.
Joffrey stood at the front of the boat, his eyes fixed on the dark water ahead, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.
The Ash River was black as ink, its surface slick and oily, reflecting nothing but the grey twilight above. No fish broke the surface. No birds flew overhead. The water was as still and lifeless as a tomb.
The walls of Asshai rose on either side as they departed, their fused black stone slick with moisture, their tops lost in the perpetual grey twilight. The fog pressed close, muffling most sounds and swallowing whatever light remained.
The Hound's breathing was the loudest thing on the boat...a slow, rhythmic rasp that seemed to measure the passing of time.
"How far is this cursed city?" Aggo asked.
"Very far," Joffrey replied.
"I miss riding a horse," Aggo said, his voice heavy with longing.
"That is unfortunate. There are no horses in the Shadow Lands. The beasts cannot survive here, apparently. So it was either this boat or traveling on foot."
The Dothraki said nothing more. The silence returned, thick and oppressive.
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As soon as they went beyond the city walls, the layer of grey that covered the sun finally broke. But the thick mist still prevented much light from getting through. So in the end, not much had changed on that front.
For the next four days, they continued to move through the oily water of the Ash River. The landscape changed slowly, the fused black stone of Asshai giving way to natural rock, then to ash-choked wastes. The fog never lifted, and the silence never broke.
It was a good thing they had brought plenty of supplies, for Joffrey saw no fish in these waters. The river was dead, its depths empty, its surface unbroken by any sign of life.
And even if they had found fish, they would have been poisonous. The Ash River was not a place where living things thrived.
They had seen none of the dangers the Captain had spoken of, except for an occasional rock they had to avoid. Perhaps whatever lurked beneath the surface was smart enough to recognize they were on easy prey.
At the end of the fourth day, Joffrey began to notice a change in the air.
The mist was still there, as thick as ever, but something else had joined it...a strange and profound magical energy, far more potent than what he had felt upon first arriving in Asshai.
It was a similar feeling, but deeper, older, and more intense. It pressed against his skin like a physical weight, and his own magic hummed in response. He knew what this meant. They were drawing close to Stygai.
The Corpse City.
In the early morning of the fifth day, Joffrey saw them: towers of black stone, climbing spires piercing through the grey fog of the shadow mountains.
The ruins of a city that had died before Valyria was even a thought, before the rise of the Freehold, before the first dragons were tamed.
The boat drifted closer, and the silence pressed in around them.
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The towers did not stand out from the landscape so much as they merged with it, as if the city had been there since before the mountains themselves, sleeping beneath the earth until something called it forth.
The black stone was the same as that used in Asshai, but there was a difference that Joffrey noted immediately. The towers of Stygai were not built from blocks of fused stone; they were formed as single, seamless pieces, as if the rock had been poured into molds or shaped by hands that were not quite human.
If Joffrey did not know any better, he would have suggested that these structures were made using transfiguration...the same kind of magic he had used to create his wizard tower in another world, another life.
The realization sent a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the cold.
Beyond the smaller towers, at what appeared to be the end of the Ash River, a massive structure rose against the grey sky. It was a pitch-black pyramid, its peak lost in the mist, its base so wide that it seemed to hold up the mountains themselves.
Stygai.
No walls surrounded the city. None were needed. The approach alone was enough to deter all but the most determined...or the most foolish.
A baleful aura covered several miles around Stygai, pushing down on the landscape like the weight of deep water. The feeling was one of immense pressure, an invisible hand pressing against the skin, the lungs, the very soul.
Joffrey did not doubt that the origin of this aura was magical in nature, but it was also affecting the air itself, making it thick and hard to breathe.
He noticed his companions struggling, their faces pale, their breath coming in short, ragged gasps. The Hound's scarred features were strained, his breathing labored. Aggo's knuckles were white on his arakh. The other Dothraki looked as if they were drowning on dry land, their eyes wide, their mouths open.
Joffrey raised his hand and whispered. One by one, bubble charms formed around their heads...spheres of clean, cool air that separated them from the oppressive atmosphere. Their breathing eased, and soon enough, their color returned.
"What is this thing?" Aggo asked, touching the shimmering bubble with a cautious finger.
"Do not poke it," Joffrey said. "The air here is nearly unbreathable. That charm will keep you alive during our, hopefully brief, visit."
The Dothraki exchanged uneasy glances. The Hound said nothing, but his hand tightened on the tiller.
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The Ash River widened as they neared the city, its waters spreading into a broad, still basin that reflected the main pyramid like a dark mirror. The glowing green phosphorescence that Joffrey had seen in Asshai was brighter here, pulsing beneath the surface like the slow heartbeat of some great sleeping beast.
The light cast sickly shadows on the ruins, making the towers seem to sway and shift, as if the city itself was breathing.
The air grew colder as they drifted closer. Not the cold of winter, nor the cold of the sea, but something else...something that whispered of death and decay, of things that had been buried too long and should never have been disturbed.
The Hound pulled his cloak tighter, though the gesture was futile against the chill. Aggo muttered a prayer to his horse gods, and even the other Dothraki looked at the city with terror in their eyes.
Joffrey could feel it too, of course. But it did not have a strong effect on him. His magic served as a passive protection against foreign dark energies, a shield forged by centuries of practice and the strange compatibility of his soul with this world.
"What is wrong with this place?" the Hound said, his voice low. "It smells like death."
"Well, perhaps that is why the locals call it the Corpse City," Joffrey replied, earning a glare from Sandor, who did not appreciate his attempt at humor.
They drifted into the shadow of the first tower.
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The docks of Stygai were crumbling, their stone worn smooth by millennia of wind and water. Great chunks of black rock had fallen into the river, creating a maze of narrow channels that threaded through the ruins like veins through a dying body.
Joffrey guided the boat toward a gap in the debris...a narrow passage that led into the heart of the city.
The Hound secured the boat to a broken pillar, and one by one, they stepped onto the black stone.
The silence was absolute.
No birds sang. No insects buzzed. The water did not lap against the stone. It was as if the city itself was holding its breath, waiting for something that had not come since before the Age of Heroes.
The space inside the pyramid's outer ring was vast, almost impossibly so. The tip of the structure was open, allowing a sliver of grey light to filter down into the streets below.
In any other land, it might have been enough to see clearly. But here, the light was weak, diffused by the perpetual mist, and it cast more shadows than it banished.
The first streets were narrow and steep, paved with the same seamless black stone that formed the towers. The buildings rose on either side, their windows dark and empty, their doors sealed shut as if hiding from something that had long since forgotten them. No signs of life. No signs of death. Nothing but stone and shadows.
Primitive markings covered every surfacem...carvings that predated Valyrian script, that predated the runes of the First Men, that predated language itself.
They spiraled across walls and doorways, along the edges of windows, down the sides of columns. Some were simple, little more than scratches. Others were elaborate, depicting scenes that Joffrey could not understand.
He recognized none of them. But he could feel the power embedded in the stone, dormant but not dead. It hummed against his magical senses, a low, constant vibration that made his teeth ache and his skin prickle.
"Stay close to me," he said. "Do not wander. And more importantly, do not touch anything."
The Hound grunted. Aggo and the other Dothraki formed a loose perimeter, their arakhs drawn, their eyes scanning the shadows.
Their footsteps echoed on the ancient stone, too loud in the silence, each step a violation of the city's slumber.
They walked deeper into Stygai.
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The architecture was unlike anything Joffrey had ever seen. The buildings were not rectangular but curved, their walls flowing into one another like the branches of a coral reef or the roots of some vast, petrified tree.
There were no sharp angles, no straight lines. Everything was smooth and organic, as if the city had grown from the earth rather than been built.
Some structures seemed to have grown from the ground, their surfaces smooth and unbroken save for the glowing glyphs. Others were jagged, shattered by some ancient cataclysm that had left the rest of the city untouched.
Broken columns lay across the streets, their surfaces covered in the same strange markings. Fallen statues of creatures that might have been dragons or might have been gods stared up at the grey sky with empty eyes.
The streets twisted and turned, doubling back on themselves in ways that defied logic.
They passed through archways that led nowhere, crossed bridges that spanned empty chasms, and climbed stairs that ended in blank walls. The city was a labyrinth, a maze designed to confuse and trap.
Joffrey kept his bearings through magic, extending his senses like invisible threads to mark their path. Without that, he suspected they would have been lost within minutes, wandering these dead streets until their supplies ran out and their strength failed.
At the center of Stygai, rising above the other ruins, stood the great ziggurat...a stepped pyramid of black stone, its peak lost in the mist, its base ringed by massive statues of unknown creatures that loosely resembled dragons.
The glyphs here were larger, more intricate, and they glowed with a faint, pulsing light that seemed to beat in time with Joffrey's heart.
He stopped at the base of the ziggurat and looked up.
"This has to be the main temple," he said. "The heart of the city. If there is anything of value left in these ruins, it will be in there."
Aggo's hand tightened on his arakh. "What lives there?"
"I do not know if anything still moves in this place." Joffrey's eyes glowed faintly, reflecting the light of the glyphs. "But I intend to find out."
He climbed the first step. The stone was cold beneath his boots, colder than it should have been, as if the chill of death had soaked into the very rock. The glyphs pulsed as he passed, as if acknowledging his presence, as if the city itself was watching him.
The Hound followed, his greatsword in his hand. The Dothraki came behind, their arakhs gleaming in the faint light.
They were about to venture into the heart of the Corpse City. A place where no living man had ever set foot and returned to tell the tale.
The shadows swallowed them as they passed through the great archway, and the silence closed in behind them like a tomb sealing shut.
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