The kicking continued, a full-body spasm that sent mud flying all around and threatened to tear off the man’s own shoulders as he kept going at it. It was almost impressive.
Or, at least it would have been if it wasn’t so fucking terrying.
Like watching a fish reject dry land, there was nothing human about seeing a man’s spine bow upward until his spine sounded out with a crack. The thick ropes bit deep welts into his wrists, more skin only falling off in lines of red to show more shiny blue-green beneath them.
If he would at least act like he felt it, that would have been enough but the man didn’t even give them that much. No, he just kept arching his back, jaw open just a few inches too wide as a bubbling shriek tore free of his throat.
The soldier didn’t bother to stare at the men holding him, going so far as to ignore even Greg aiming a sword his way. The fish-man’s head just swiveled straight toward the rushing brown of the tributary, desperation clear in those black eyes.
“Aye, that’s a demon then.” Lobb backed up a step, only eleven more needed to match Sansa’s dozen by this point as she held her hands to her mouth. The squire held a white-knuckled grip on his sword, the magic weapon all he had. “That’s a demon, ain’t it?”When nobody bothered to answer him, the squire could only keep talking. “Must be a demon, m’lord. Lookit the eyes.”
"No. No demon, lad." Harwin’s rasp matched Lobb’s as the White Harbor man wiped a thick hand over his mouth, a smear of briny wetness dark across his jawline. "Just… It's just Ary. Was Ary, leastways."
Greg stared down at the bloated face, still peeling skin onto the mud the more he thrashed; blown-out pitch-black pupils above a neckful of blue-green scales visibly shining their way through torn skin.
"Is he?" Harwin blinked. “Is he what, m’lord?”“Just Ary?” Greg fought the urge to say it, well aware it was harsh and maybe even wrong. But the longer he looked… well, the more obvious it was. “Can you really call this ‘just Ary?’ Whoever Ary was, he’s not a man anymore.”"We are all men still, m’lord." Harwin’s whisper barely carried over the rush of the river.
Greg blinked up, grip tightening around the leather hilt of his sword. "All?"
Harwin’s flinch was as obvious as Ary’s thrashing all of a sudden, the man too still for all of a second as the gray light of the sun caught the rust on his chainmail.
“Harwin?” Greg’s fingers flexed, the leather wrapped around the hilt creaking. "Harwin?"
By the time he repeated the man’s name, the captain found motion again; hand reaching down slow to grab the cuff of his sodden sleeve. With closed eyes, he pulled it up; the wet wool peeled back for Greg to finally see.
Gasps rang out through the line, Sansa’s voice alone enough to drown out those of all the Northern men at Greg’s back. He wasn’t annoyed, though. Fuck… After all, if his teeth weren’t clenched tight enough to crack molars, he’d probably be gasping right along with them.
The sighed of tiny hard scales — the same shiny blue and sickly sea-green — creeping up Harwin’s forearm kept his mouth shut and his eyes open. Jagged and overlapping, they weren’t resting on top of pale skin.
No, these were buried deep into it, pushing outward like badly grown wisdom teeth; the edges a sick-looking color, raw and weeping fluid darker than river mud.
"We're becomin'... them, m’lord." Blue eyes tore themselves from the infection to stare at the man speaking with hitching breath and raspy words laced with simple fear. The sleeve dropped back down.
"Can you do somethin'? Anythin’?"
Greg opened his mouth, words unheard as Ary thrashed in the mud, another shriek gurgling free with too much depth to it. He threw his weight to the side, strength in his scaled limbs enough to drag one of the waterlogged soldiers halfway into the muck with him.
"Hold his arm out.”
The command came loud, one of the men doing exactly that without hesitation as Greg walked forward into the embankment alongside them. Without another word, he dropped to his knees right in the rotting brine-stench of the mud. He pushed past the smell of dead fish, crabs and old blood, the palm of his gauntlet pressed up flat against the soldier’s scaled thrashing forearm.
"Pin him." Greg snapped at the two restraining guards. "Harder."
The guards threw their weight down, grunting with the effort but managing to hold him still for the single moment it took for Greg to focus as he pulled on his magic.
There was no need to think; the use of it as much instinct as anything else. Stars spun to life in the core of his soul, the reservoir flush with clean power as it surged at his call. Blue-white light flared to life around his fingers, illuminating the space all around them. “Boil the black and burn the stain…”
It was basic.“Scour the wound through holy pain…”It was effective. “Let no worm or rot remain…”A disease-focused healing spell he made for when the rot had gotten deeper than simple healing magic could handle, it usually ripped through infections and physical trauma like bleach through mildew.
“Only blood made clean again.”
The light poured into the man's arm…And Ary screamed.
Nothing human about it, the noise was a high-pitched drill bit behind Greg's eyes. Beneath Greg’s palm, the scales didn't do anything like dissolve or burn away. If anything, the patches of blue-green only thickened, reacting to the ‘holy’ magic like he’d spilled a bucketful of cooking grease on a campfire.
The rash spread upward and outward under Greg’s eyes, crawling a full two inches up the man's bicep before he could even blink. The webbing between the man’s fingers engorged and thickened, turning a sickly purple as new veins formed and blacked almost instantly under the skin.
Then came the neck.
Three lines slit and split themselves wide, flesh tearing itself apart to reveal — Gills? — sucking greedily at damp riverside air with desperate spasms. “Fu-!” Greg’s hand yanked back, the spell immediately cut short as he scrambled away, boots sliding in the mud until he stopped in a crouch. Ignoring all the eyes still on him, he wiped a hand hard and rough against an armored thigh, doing his best to scrape off a feeling that wasn't physically there.
"Right.”The single word left him in a hiss, eye twitching at the feel of phantom slime crawling its way back up his soul. "Okay. Great. Healing magic feeds it. Wonderful.”
"M'lord?"
One of Greg’s own Stark guards stepped forward, the man’s eyes wide with an escalating panic somehow more intense than all the condemned men in front of them. “They say you can fix anything. There has to be somethin'. You brought the Tully lord back from the grave!"
"...I mean, I didn't do that." For one, Hoster still had at least a good few months before he kicked it on his own, no matter what he did. Wouldn’t exactly call that pulling the man out of his grave or anything. “Second… I’m not done.”Sighing, he turned back to the men still gripping their comrade into the ground. “Hold him steady.”
Greg raised a single finger. Igni. A tiny tongue of flame flicked to life atop his index, blue in color and hot enough to shift the temperature just a bit lower.
He brought it down on Ary’s arm, the skin instantly blackening and popping with the smell of cooking fish in the air. Ary thrashed wildly, a fresh gurgle tearing out of his throat as his black eyes rolled back in his skull.
Greg leaned in, staring directly into the burn as his stomach dropped. Shit…
It wasn't skin-deep.
It was way past skin-deep, blue-green scales woven directly into the muscle beneath the soldier’s skin. It wasn't a mold growing on top of a man.
It was the man.
Emphasis on was.
"...he’s done." Greg stood up slowly, taking a deliberate step back from the writhing thing in the mud. “I can't burn it out. Not without burning the whole man." And that might be the only way to deal with what I think is gonna happen here. Blue eyes went skyward, searching for black wings the size of entire tents. …no, I can’t ask him to do that.
Not that Ash even would, anwyway.
"There's gotta be a way!" A younger Winterfell spearman broke rank, the man’s eyes sunken so deep his cheeks looked bruised. Greg doubted that what was under the blood vessels there were normal. "Ye pulled Lord Tully from the grave! Ye can fix a bit of bad skin!"Again with this?
"This isn't a bit of bad skin!" Greg yelled back, turning on the guard. "It’s literally in you!” The words DNA didn’t mean a damn thing to these people and even he barely understood how magic could rewrite that but it was what it was. “If I heal you, I just give the scales more fuel to grow, okay? I make it happen faster."
The White Harbor captain paled as he turned to look at Greg. "...m’lord?” When Greg just looked back at him, mouth in a hard line, the man turned to the girl with the red hair with eyes sunken and desperate; pleading to the only other authority figure he could reach for.
"Your Grace... please." Harwin begged Sansa, voice dropping into a ragged whisper. "You must tell him to heal this rot. We fought. We held the lines for your brother. We beg of you.”
"My lord," Sansa stepped forward, Greg biting a sigh as she pushed past Lobb with hands clasped tight in front of her. “Lord Veder!”“...what?”“You… you must try something else.” Her voice trembled again, the sound of the thrashing man at his feet drawing her attention even as she pleaded. “You must. These are good men. Men of White Harbor and Winterfell.”“Winterfell.” A man behind Harwin let out a harsh bark of a laugh, the sound ending almost as quickly as it started in a wet rattle of a cough; gobs of black brine hitting the dirt. “What of Winterfell?”“Shut your mouth!”Sansa blinked back at him, eyes wide as Harwin grabbed the man by the collar. “What? What is he saying?”“Winterfell is no more, princess!” The man laughed, mouth open to show gums as black as his spit. “It’s all Iron now. No seat of the North no more."
“What…” The tremor in the girl’s voice vanished, Sansa suddenly still. "What do you mean?"
"The Ironborn…" Harwin swallowed, his gaze dropping to the mud as he let go of the still-laughing man. "Word on the river is... they took Winterfell, Princess. The Squid boy. Theon Greyjoy. He took it for his people.”“No…” Sansa remained unmoving as the whisper left her lips. "No, the castle is strong. Ser Rodrik is there. Bran and Rickon are there."
Harwin closed his eyes, water dripping from his matted hair enough to hide the salty tears that trailed down the man’s face. “They say... they say the little lords, Bran and Rickon... they say he put 'em to the sword. Hung 'em from the walls."
Sansa made a sound that Greg could barely track, a small gasp of air like her lungs refused to work. Her knees gave out from under her, but she didn’t fall; not with Stark men there to hold her as her mouth hung open and her eyes stayed wide.
"Winterfell is gone, Princess." Harwin finished. "We got nowhere left."
Greg felt the hollow drop in his own chest. Bran. Rickon. He hadn't known them well, but they were kids. Just kids.
"I think that was unkind.”
Greg jerked his head around.
The Lannister princess was standing exactly where he had left her, eyes on Harwin. "You should not have told her that while she is standing in mud. She could have ruined her dress."
Greg stared at the thirteen-year-old for all of a second before he shook his head. Not the time.“Right.” He looked back at Harwin, the infected Northern men staring back with their eyes on him. “So, here’s the thing…” He forced out a sigh, grip tight around his sword. “I can’t fix whatever this is. I can’t stop it…” Fingers of his free hand rose to his face, the bridge of his nose rubbed hard as the men began to murmur in front of him. “Which means there’s a timeline problem in front of us.”
Harwin’s mouth opened. “...m’lord.”“I don’t see how I’m gonna reverse something like this, Harwin.” He looked the captain in the eyes. “But I can make it quick.”“No!”
Greg winced at the shrill scream from the people behind him. He turned as Sansa gasped for air, the princess snapping out of her horror in time to turn her tears on him. “No! No, you cannot!"
"Sans—"
"They are still people!" Her fingers caught the edge of his silvery pauldron, digging into the leather straps beneath. "They fought for my family! They fought for the North!”“Sansa, you remember the fish-men we had to protect you from before.” Greg looked down at the crying girl as she held on tighter. “I… I’m pretty sure this is where they came from.”“They are men! Good men!” Her voice was almost hysterical, the metal digging into her palms as she gripped tighter. “You cannot just have them put down like hounds!"
"Sansa…" He didn't shout as he aimed a steel-gauntleted finger down at the mud. "Look at him. Look at ARY." The bound man was chewing on his own tongue, dark blood and seawater frothing at his lips as his gills flared on his neck. "That look like a person to you?”"We can tie them to the horses, Lord Veder!" Sansa insisted, voice pitching higher as she kept begging. "We can bring them to the Maesters at Riverrun! My uncle will have chains, he will have cells, he—"
"Your Grace." Harwin looked at her, posture slumped as he spoke the title simply. "He's right."Sansa spun to look at the White Harbor captain, the tear tracks clean lines through the dirt on her face. "No…"
"We watched it happen, Princess," Harwin looked past her even as he stared into the girl’s eyes without flinching. "Another boy was with us. Matthis. Good boy from the docks, but further along than even Ary there. He got loose from the ropes the day past and went straight into the river."
Harwin swallowed again, the skin at his jawline rippling. "He stayed under for an hour and we thought 'im dead. We prayed he was."
"But." Guts spoke the word simply.
"But he came back up.” Harwin whispered low. “And when he did, he tried to drag all the others in, pulling with strength no man ought to have. Took three men to hack him apart."
The captain raised his hands, tapping the sides of his own head. "But we could hear him till ‘e was finished. No words from his mouth but he was sayin’ our names all the same.” A tear of salty water cut through the grime on his face. "Promisin' the deep. Callin’ us to the water. Beggin’ us to drown with ‘im. Over and over.”
Harwin looked down at his scaled arm again, no longer trying to even hide it. "It doesn't kill, this thing. That's the worst part, I think."
On the ground, Ary let out another shriek, twisting harder as thickly-webbed hands clawed into the mud.
"Right." Greg spoke the word for what felt like the millionth time as his knuckles whitened around his sword to match. let his hand drop to his side. Just do it.
"Okay."