Chereads / A Song of Titans / Chapter 4 - Chapter 3: Blood on the Grass

Chapter 4 - Chapter 3: Blood on the Grass

Eyes, some human, others not so much, turned to the Great Grass Sea. I could sense their grasping magical gaze reach out from every corner of the globe. The world had changed, the Song of Ice and Fire was no longer the same. Naturally, every metaphysical player of note wished to know who or what was responsible.

I was not having that. I was done being fucked with. These nosey fucks could all take a rusty, spiked mace up their collective bumholes.

The power of magic shone brighter within me now that I was piloting a 270 m tall, muscular, meat-mecha with skin harder than diamonds. As a human, I struggled to grasp certain metaphysical concepts and higher dimensional physics, but with the worm providing mental acceleration and boosting my abilities, countering scrying attempts became easier.

With the worm providing the necessary 'fuel', the trap took me only a few seconds to weave. Esoteric magic and the worm's weird time manipulation (I tried not to think too much about how bullshit that was) were structured into a multi-layered spell scheme.

The first layer would create an unseen and subtle, spherical, space-time warp boundary, welcoming the probe into its area of influence. The layer behind it would act on the probe itself, creating the illusion that something with promising magical power was right ahead. The next layer of the spell worked in two steps, the first would mimic the energy signature of the probe and latch onto it feeding on its caster's magical power without the caster realising it, refining it and then sending it my way. While the second part would synergise with the first and wipe any information and memory gained by the caster after it had passed the boundary. The boundary would loop the probe back to the start.

I watched on with diabolical glee as cruel warlocks, twisted witches, and eldritch parasites alike kept throwing their probes into the sphere, chasing an illusion that could never be grasped. Not realising that they were being sucked dry, and by the time they realised something was horribly wrong- if they even did- it would be too late to turn back.

With a time warping phenomenon in effect within the boundary, these nasty voyeurs would not notice that the world outside had moved on.

Once every voyeur was caught in the trap, Ymir and I moved out of the 50 m spell radius, our attention now drawn to the band of comically tiny men on horses. It was, truthfully speaking, quite strange seeing what would've been a group of scary killers looking so… insignificant and pathetic.

With every step we took, the earth shook and the sea of grass burst into flame, blowing streaks of grey smoke into the clear morning sky, darkening the land behind us just as we had done with our long shadows ahead. Some men lost their will and stared unblinking at their approaching doom, others turned their horses around and fled wildly. Some like Khal Jhogo laughed as if he had just heard the funniest joke of his life, tears freely flowing from his eyes. A weird reaction but who could blame him?

In those drawn out moments, I calmly observed the camp 200 m behind the band, my eyesight now able to see much further than I even knew was possible. The colours were bright and I didn't think it was possible to see some of the colours I was seeing. My ears picked up screams of terror and the thumping hearts of thousands. Unfortunately, my olfactory senses had received a similar amplification so I also smelt the free running piss and shit of thousands.

The Dothraki in the camp were panicking and scurrying about like aimless ants, some women were wailing and ripping their hair out, while their children wept clutching the legs of their mothers. Some savages were kneeling praying to their false gods who would not come. But it was not these people I cared about, but the slaves they kept in cages and the bed slaves who had found their chance to stab their masters in the back. Some died but most succeeded in the stampede, good for them.

I mentally nudged Ymir, reminding her of the Dothraki fleeing the camp. Her titan stilled before nodding and raising her bone-clawed hands and jerking them upwards. A long, stark white wall made of a hard, stone-like substance suddenly sprung up from the earth, sealing off a stretch of the eastern path. Another twist of her wrist had two more walls join it in the north and south-east, fully herding in the 'cattle'. Those that were unfortunate enough to reach the wall, got impaled by horizontal spikes that grew out of the wall.

I may not fully understand these newfound abilities of mine but I did know that these powers- especially the one that allowed us to become titans- were working off of our desires. Want and will were the key to accomplishing feats that straight up defied reason and common sense.

So I willed.

Deep inside my titan's nape, I shivered, feeling the energy gallop its way along paths that did not exist in realspace. Space and the molecular world bent over backwards to accommodate my wishes. Needle thin bone spikes rose and precisely impaled any and every Dothraki adult in the camp, regardless of their gender. Only pregnant women, children, animals, and slaves were spared.

Ymir raised a wall around the camp itself- it would suck if the people inside got trampled trying to run away, this should stop them. Then I saw some of them turn their fear into aggression against each other and I knew this wasn't at all a viable plan. I needed to keep everyone calm or else they'd all end up at each other's throats. The moment the thought occurred, a hundred different crowd control methods crossed my mind. Some were not quite what I needed, being too mind-rapey for my tastes. I settled on knocking them out for 10 minutes, that should be enough time for us to deal with the Khal's small army.

My right fist unclenched and I pulled my hand back, blue lightning crackling and charging the air around it. I shaped every detail of the weapon as it formed out of thin air- a long, metallic grey pole at the end of which sat a monstrous spiked hammer, more akin to a meat tenderizer. I took a few steps back and twisted my torso, the pole bent a little as I pulled it all the way back, keeping it balanced with both hands. Even if the Dothraki had seen what I was about to do, I doubt they could've done anything about it.

With a whoosh that blew patches of earth and grass into the air, I brought the war hammer down on the wretched barbarians. There was a thud and a wet squelch when fifty of them got pulped in the first sideways sweep. If there had been any less than that, I don't think I'd have felt any impact at all.

I shifted my grip, and spun the shaft in my palm, blood and guts were thrown up into the air like water off a wet dog. Another passover and sixty more Dothraki perished. Those whose had avoided being turned into paste, were thrown far away like ragdolls, breaking into bright red "candy" upon impact. A part of me was horrified with the casual ease I had murdered people in the triple digits. The other more vicious part of me wanted these rapists and slavers wiped off the face of the earth. After all that I had been through these past few hours, could you really blame me if I listened to the latter?

I turned my attention to the remaining Dothraki trying to bypass Ymir's outer wall. With a final strike of my hammer on the earth, bone spikes turned every fleeing Dothraki into a pincushion. They gurgled and twitched, then stilled.

Author Note: This story is now caught up with all the chapters posted. The next chapter is just a draft, hope to finish it up this week. Let me know if you liked the story so far and how it can be improved. While I've already decided on freeing slaves/conquering the slaver cities and then building a new Empire, do comment and suggest what else they could do in the world of Asoiaf.