129: The Son of Ice and Fire, The Long Night pt.2

“Let’s see if ice can stand against fire,” Maekar said, his voice steady as he lowered his helm. He’d had the helm specially forged in Myr so he could fly Neferion through snowstorms and still see clearly.

He strode across the frozen surface of the Wall toward Neferion, ignoring calls from Robb and others. Neferion waited, emerald eyes tracking his rider’s approach. Steam rose from the dragon’s nostrils in great plumes, and the heat radiating from his scales made the ice beneath him thaw and crack.

Maekar reached up, gripped the rough, obsidian-like scales, and climbed into the saddle. His hands found the reins, and he commanded Neferion mentally.

Fly.

Neferion roared a sound that shook the very foundation of the Wall. Men stumbled, clapping hands over their ears. Chunks of ice cracked and fell away, tumbling hundreds of feet to shatter below.

With a single beat of his wings, Neferion launched skyward.

Maekar’s stomach lurched as they climbed, his eyes locked forward.

There.

The ice dragon.

It hovered in the sky, waiting—its body carved from glacial blue ice, translucent in places where pale light pierced through. Its wings were jagged shards, crystalline and razor-edged, refracting what little sunlight broke through the storm. Frost trailed from its body in spiraling tendrils, and each beat of its wings sent gusts of freezing wind that turned falling snow into horizontal knives.

And atop it sat the Night King.

Even from this distance, Maekar could see him clearly: tall, impossibly still, clad in armor of ice plates layered one over another, etched with runes that pulsed faintly blue. His hair was long and white, and he held a blade of pure ice that grew in size, turning it into a spear.

Their eyes met.

Grey and blue.

Living and dead.

The Night King’s face was monstrous, angular, inhuman, the skin pulled taut over sharp bones and tinged the pale blue of a frozen corpse. His mouth was a lipless gash, teeth like shards of bone.

And then he grinned.

The sight of it sent ice down Maekar’s spine.

You think you can win, that smile seemed to say.

“Fuck you,” Maekar muttered.

The Night King raised his spear.

The ice dragon dove.

It folded its wings and plummeted toward them, its body sleek and deadly. The temperature dropped so sharply that Maekar’s breath turned to ice in his lungs, only the warmth from Neferion and his own Targaryen blood keeping him alive.

“Up!” Maekar roared. “UP!”

Neferion answered with a bellow of his own and surged skyward.

They were on a collision course.

Two titans hurtling toward each other of fire and ice, of life and death.

The distance closed with terrifying speed.

Five hundred feet.

Three hundred.

One hundred.

Maekar could see the individual scales of ice now, the way they overlapped like frozen feathers. He could see the Night King’s eyes, burning with that unnatural blue light. He could feel the cold radiating from the creature, a cold that had nothing to do with winter and everything to do with the absence of life itself.

Fifty feet.

“NOW!”

Fire.

Neferion opened his jaws.

Green fire erupted a roaring torrent of flame. The ice dragon answered with its own. Its maw opened wide, and from its depths came a blast of cold so absolute it defied description not merely frozen air, but the negation of heat, a void that drank in warmth and light and left only emptiness.

The two forces met.

The explosion was blinding.

Green fire and blue ice collided in a sphere of roiling chaos. The shockwave slammed into Maekar, threatening to tear him from the saddle. He squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head, throwing up an arm to shield his face even through the helm.

Neferion screamed in pain or fury, Maekar couldn’t tell and banked hard to the left.

The world spun as Neferion did a barrel roll, and Maekar fought hard to stay on.

When Maekar’s vision cleared, he saw the ice dragon streak past on their right, close enough that he could have reached out and touched its wing. Both dragons pulled up, wings beating frantically to arrest their dives, circling away from each other like duelists taking new positions.

Maekar looked back. The Night King had already turned his mount. The ice dragon’s wings carved through the storm, and it was coming about, building speed in pursuit of him.

“Higher,” Maekar hissed through clenched teeth. “Get above the clouds. I can’t see shit in this storm.”

Neferion needed no further urging. The dragon angled upward once more, clawing for altitude. His wings beat in a steady, powerful rhythm, each stroke carrying them higher. Snow and wind lashed at them, the storm thickening as they climbed, visibility dropping to almost nothing.

Maekar glanced back.

The ice dragon was gaining.

It moved through the storm as if it were part of it, as if the wind itself carried it forward.

Faster, Maekar urged. Faster!

A blast of freezing air slammed into Neferion’s tail.

The black dragon roared, jerking to the side, nearly throwing Maekar from the saddle.

The ice dragon pulled alongside them.

Twenty feet away.

Then ten.

The Night King turned his head, those burning blue eyes fixing on Maekar once more.

He raised his ice spear.

“Fuck!”

Neferion twisted, snapping his jaws at the ice dragon, forcing it to veer away. But the ice dragon was agile—impossibly so—its crystalline wings adjusting with unnatural precision. It slipped beneath Neferion’s bite, came up on the other side, and unleashed another blast of cold.

This one caught Neferion’s wing.

Ice spread across the membrane in a web of white, crackling and spreading, stiffening the flesh. Neferion bellowed in pain and fury, his flight faltering for a moment.

They began to fall.

“No, no, NO!” Maekar roared.

Neferion’s wings beat harder, the frozen one cracking and shedding ice with each desperate stroke. Slowly agonizingly they stabilized, but they’d lost altitude, dropping back into the thick of the storm.

“All right,” Maekar muttered, mind racing. “All right. You want to dance? Let’s fucking dance.”

He pulled hard on the reins, and Neferion responded instantly, banking into a tight spiral. The world became a whirl of white and grey, sky and snow indistinguishable.

The ice dragon dove.

Maekar saw it coming, and at the last second he yanked the reins to the right.

Neferion rolled.

The ice dragon’s claws raked through empty air where they’d been a moment before.

Maekar didn’t give it time to recover. “NOW!”

Neferion twisted mid-roll, jaws snapping, and caught the ice dragon’s tail between his teeth.

The crunch of breaking ice echoed even over the howling wind.

The ice dragon shrieked and thrashed wildly. The Night King was thrown forward, barely keeping his seat, one hand clutching his mount’s neck.

“Hold it!” Maekar commanded. “HOLD!”

Neferion’s jaws clamped down harder, teeth grinding through ice and whatever passed for flesh beneath. Neferion’s muscles bunched, wings beating furiously, and then—

He spun.

Using the momentum using his larger size Neferion swung the ice dragon around.

Once.

Twice.

On the third rotation, he released.

The ice dragon went hurtling through the air, tumbling end over end, completely out of control. Chunks of ice broke away from its tail, spinning off into the storm.

The Night King nearly lost his grip entirely. Maekar saw him lurch to the side, one hand flailing, his spear falling from his grasp and disappearing into the white void below.

For one glorious moment, Maekar thought he would fall.

But the Night King recovered impossibly, inhumanly fast. His hand clamped back onto the ice dragon’s neck, and he hauled himself upright as his mount finally managed to stabilize, wings spreading to catch the air.

They were a hundred feet lower now.

“Not so invincible after all, are you, you fucker?”

The Night King turned to face him across the distance.

And even through the storm, even with the snow whipping between them, Maekar could see his expression.

No longer grinning.

Now, the Night King looked angry.

His eyes burned brighter, the blue light intensifying. The ice dragon beneath him began to glow as well, frost spreading across its body in intricate, pulsing patterns.

“Oh,” Maekar said. “Oh, shit.”

The Night King raised one hand.

The storm answered.

The wind howled louder; it got colder. Snow began to whirl around the ice dragon in a vortex, faster and faster, until it became a cyclone of white that obscured the creature entirely, only the silhouette visible through the pulsing blue light as it charged at him once more.

“That’s just not fair,” Maekar muttered as he looked up.

“Higher!” Maekar roared at Neferion. “Break for the clouds! NOW!”

The black dragon didn’t hesitate. He surged upward with every ounce of strength, wings beating so hard the air thundered with each stroke. They climbed and climbed, the storm growing thicker, darker, colder—

And then—

They burst through.

Suddenly, the world was silent.

Maekar gasped.

Above the clouds, the sun was setting on the western horizon, a band of sky red and orange; stars were beginning to emerge in the darkening east.

It was beautiful.

For a moment Maekar simply stared. How long had it been since he’d seen a sunset? Weeks? The world below had been shrouded in grey for some time now.

Peace and warmth.

A memory of what they were fighting for.

Then the clouds below him exploded, and the ice dragon emerged, shrieking.

The Night King locked eyes with Maekar once more.

The dragons dove toward each other.

Neferion folded his wings and plummeted like an arrow, picking up speed with every second. The wind tore at Maekar, howling in his ears. The ice dragon ascended to meet them, its approach more controlled, almost lazy, a predator that knew its prey had nowhere to run.

Fire!

Green flames erupted from Neferion’s maw. The ice dragon twisted mid-dive, impossibly agile, and the flames passed harmlessly through the space where it had been a moment before.

It answered with its own breath.

Neferion banked hard left.

The frozen beam grazed his wing, and Maekar heard and felthis dragon’s bellow of pain. Ice crept across the membrane, spreading, hurting it more and more.

“Shake it off!” Maekar shouted. “Keep moving!”

They couldn’t match the ice dragon’s speed. The creature was faster, more maneuverable, able to dart and weave through the air like it was ten times smaller. Every time Neferion tried to bring his flames to bear, the ice dragon had already moved.

Think. Think!

The ice dragon came in from above, diving toward Neferion’s back. Maekar saw it coming—

“Drop!”

Neferion folded his wings entirely and fell like a stone.

The ice dragon shot past overhead, its claws missing by inches.

“NOW! UP AND AROUND!”

Neferion’s wings snapped open, and he pulled up hard, the G-forces pressing Maekar down into the saddle until his vision tunneled. They came up behind the ice dragon, inverting the positions.

“Dracarys!”

Green fire poured out, catching the ice dragon’s body. The creature shrieked, and a chunk of its tail shattered, falling away in fragments.

The Night King looked back, his almost expressionless face somehow conveying fury.

The ice dragon spun wings tucking, body corkscrewing through the air in a maneuver that should have been impossible. It came at them from below now, jaws open wide.

Neferion tried to dodge, but he was too large, too slow.

The blast of cold caught him square in the chest.

Ice spread across his scales, creeping toward his wings, his neck, trying to encase him entirely. Neferion roared in defiance and unleashed his own fire point-blank.

Green flames and blue cold met between the two dragons.

Steam exploded outward, creating a cloud of vapor that enveloped both creatures. Visibility dropped to nothing. Maekar could barely see Neferion’s neck in front of him, let alone—

A massive shape lunged out of the steam.

The ice dragon slammed into Neferion’s side with tremendous force.

Both dragons shrieked Neferion in rage, the ice dragon in that horrible, glassy wail. Their bodies locked together, claws sinking into each other, jaws snapping for throats and wings.

They began to fall.

Spinning, tumbling, locked in their death-embrace as they plummeted back toward the clouds below. Neferion’s jaws clamped down on the ice dragon’s shoulder, teeth grinding through crystalline armor. The ice dragon retaliated, its head snaking forward to bite at Neferion’s neck, its frost-breath washing over the black dragon’s face.

Maekar held on to the reins with all his strength as they fell, his vision returning as he wiped the snow from his helm. As it cleared, he realized with horror that the Night King was striding along the ice dragon’s spine, spear in hand, making his way toward him.

Maekar drew Blackfyre as he balanced himself on Neferion, only a strap connecting him to the saddle and his armor keeping him tethered to the dragon.

The Night King struck and so did Maekar, their weapons meeting. The impact sent shockwaves up Maekar’s arm, nearly jarring the sword from his grip. Frost raced along Blackfyre’s blade, and for a terrifying moment Maekar thought it might shatter.

But Valyrian steel held.

They pulled apart as the dragons spun again, then came together once more. Another strike—spear against sword, ice against steel. Again and again, faster and faster, each impact a thunderclap in the howling wind.

Blackfyre caught the spear and pushed, trying to drive it aside. For a moment they were locked together, blade against haft, Maekar’s muscles straining against the unnatural strength of the ancient king.

And then the Night King spoke.

“You fight well,” he said in the Old Tongue. “More fun than the last son of ice and fire.”

“Fuck off!” Maekar roared, wrenching Blackfyre free and slashing again.

The Night King deflected the blow almost casually, his lipless mouth stretching into that terrible grin once more.

They plunged back into the storm clouds.

Suddenly they were blind again, surrounded by swirling grey. The dragons were still locked together, their combined weight dragging them down faster and faster.

The ice dragon’s tail whipped around, catching Neferion across the face. The black dragon’s grip loosened for just a second—

And the ice dragon twisted, throwing its full weight to the side.

Neferion was torn loose, sent spinning away through the clouds.

And Maekar—

The sudden shift in momentum tore him from his saddle, the tether breaking off from being weakened by one of the previous strikes from the night king.

He fell.

For one horrifying second, there was nothing beneath him but air. He fell and fell until he slammed onto something—something cold.

He had landed on the ice dragon.

He scrambled desperately, finding balance on the ridges of ice that ran along the creature’s spine.

The Night King turned, looking back at him.

They stared at each other for a moment.

Then the Night King drove his spear backward.

Maekar rolled, the ice blade missing his head by inches. He came up on the dragon’s flank, Blackfyre still somehow in his hand, and struck.

The blade bit into the ice dragon’s side, sinking deep. The creature shrieked and bucked like a maddened horse.

Maekar was nearly thrown off, but he held on, wrenching Blackfyre free and striking again. And again. Each blow sent cracks racing across the ice dragon’s crystalline scales.

The Night King stood in his saddle and walked along the ice dragon’s back toward Maekar as if he were strolling on stable ground.

“Motherfucker’s just showing off,” Maekar muttered.

The Night King swung his spear.

Maekar caught it on Blackfyre, the impact nearly breaking his wrist. He gave ground, scrambling backward along the dragon’s spine, trying to keep his footing on the slippery ice.

Another strike. Another desperate parry.

The ground was rushing up to meet them. Maekar could see it now through breaks in the clouds—white snow, dark trees, the Wall in the distance.

Neferion, he thought desperately. Where are you?

As if in answer, a massive black shape burst through the clouds below them.

Neferion, wings spread, descending to meet them.

“Thank the gods,” Maekar breathed.

The Night King struck again a thrust aimed at Maekar’s throat. Maekar deflected it, twisted, and jumped off the ice dragon, falling once more but this time Neferion maneuvered near enough for him to grab the reins of the saddle.

He hauled himself back onto Neferion only to see they were far too close to the ground. Both dragons were.

“Pull up!” Maekar screamed. “PULL UP!”

Neferion’s wings snapped open and the descent slowed, but it was too late.

They hit the ground.

Snow exploded outward in a wave. Trees shattered. The earth itself seemed to crack under the force of Neferion’s landing. The dragon’s momentum carried him forward skidding, rolling, tearing through the frozen earth.

The crash was too much for Maekar to hold on. He was thrown clear of the dragon, slamming into the ground. He was sure he only survived because of his Valyrian steel armor.

For a moment he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Everything hurt, and the taste of blood was strong in his mouth.

Get up. GET UP.

He forced himself to his hands and knees, spitting blood, his vision swimming. His ribs screamed in protest, definitely broken. His left arm hung from his shoulder, dislocated.

Blackfyre lay half-buried in the snow a few feet away. He stumbled to it and scooped it up.

Nearby, Neferion was struggling to rise. Blood dark red, almost black leaked from a dozen wounds. But the dragon’s eyes were still bright with fury.

And beyond him—

The ice dragon had crashed as well, carving its own terrible path through the forest. But unlike Neferion, it was already standing, shaking off the impact as if it were nothing. Ice reformed along its body where it had cracked, healing before Maekar’s eyes.

The Night King slid down from its neck, landing silently in the snow.

He began walking toward Maekar.

Maekar raised Blackfyre. He couldn’t properly breathe, his left arm hung useless, his head throbbed but the fire within him still blazed, urging him to fight on.

He raised Blackfyre higher.

“Come on, you fucker,” he rasped. “Let’s do this just you and me.”

The Night King didn’t respond. He simply continued forward, spear in hand.

Behind him, the ice dragon spread its wings and roared.

Behind Maekar, Neferion answered with a roar to match.

The two dragons lunged at each other and with them, so did their riders.

.

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