Kapitel 151: Arthur 51
293AC
The hoofbeats of out horses were drowned out by the Neverending sounds of the pouring rain as our mounts trotted through the shrubby wastelands of the Island's central plateau.
We were well above the mountain valleys now, as they stretched out behind us like pine-painted canvases of deep green forests and grey granite spires rising above them, and I could feel the air getting thinner, even in the torrential downpour.
Our goal lay still ahead, silhouetted against the clouds in my eyes, it's sharp slopes singing with the eternal drumbeat of the storm's fury.
I had first heard the song when the storm had begun, thousands of feet below, and forty miles to our south. A whisper on the edge of the wind I thought I could hear at the very edge of my hearing, a song like those I had heard in my dreams in that great city beneath the sea.
The music did not want me here. I could tell. Whether it was the mountain itself, or some hidden temple held within it, or perhaps some great beast nested atop it, I did not know.
Whatever it was, it called itself the king here, the ruler of this island, and I could hear its song in the thunder, a challenge to my own, a questioning of my right to usurpation.
All I could for say for certain of the booming voice that I heard on the winds, whispering in its inscrutable tongues was that it was old, old and powerful besides.
That and that it heard me as well. Heard my laughter, and expressed its raging fury in response.
Jaerys, I could tell, was growing weaker as we ascended, the storm was hard riding, and the lack of air was taking its toll.
I would have to leave him, regardless of his protestations, when I began the true climb. When the horses could answer no more and I had to climb to the summit with my own two hands and find what awaited me there.
He protested of course, when I told him of my decision, even as we made camp at the bottom of the wall of rock that guarded the ascent to the heavens.
I could hear the music clearly now, a drumbeat of war, a warning of the trial yet to come, it filled my ears, and allowed me little patience for his objections.
Whatever strength his sword arm gave him to protect me in civilized lands would be of no use in this final ascent.
Still, for the first time in the journey, I chose to sleep, to rest in camp, and to only push on when I felt my best.
In the sound of the rains and of the music, I could barely hear myself think as I spoke to my bodyguard, my sworn sword. I tried in vain to talk him down from following me up.
He refused to leave my side three times before I decided to simply ignore his protestations, and in earnest began my climb.
He could not make the ascent, struggling against the wet rocks that gave him no grip.
I had no such issue, as water and rain washed off of me, drenching my ruined clothes even further as the climb continued, their form saturated in water that didn't seem to weigh me down at all.
Hand over hand, foot over foot, finding holds on the cliff face, squeezing my way up through the crags. It wasn't tiring, rather invigorating, the music, my foe, the one who challenged my right to be here, they waited just ahead, and the heat of the lightning in my veins rose in turn, a smile splitting my face even as I continued the great ascent. Even temporary waterfall's brought on by the storm falling on the plateau above failing to impede my advance in the slightest.
Even as my hand clasped the boundary of the next plateau, the horns began. Lightning striking down in tempo with the drumbeat of the rain, thunder joining the symphony of war that sought to challenge my right to rule.
The plateau was a barren place, beheld in the rain. Ruined stone structures covered its surface, rocks piled atop each other in what had once surely been houses.
I wondered when I saw them, what purpose they had once held. Had this been a stronghold of the first men, crossing the Arm into Westeros? A temple? Perhaps a bastion of some older race?
I could not say, for nothing was left but the stone. Old streets weaving through the circular structures with a winding and sinuous pattern that seemed to channel the rain in rivulets across its course. A pattern of construction that seemed to suit the symphony of weather that continued to shake the very world around my ears.
Still, this was not my destination, only a stop on that great highway which rose to meet it.
The Symphony grew louder yet in my ears as I passed through the ancient circles, split and broken stone fountains pouring forth nothing at all in the face of the tide of water that flowed around my boots, as I continued my relentless march.
By the time I reached the silent, long carved stairs that led up towards the next plateau, the Symphony had reached a thunderous crescendo, shaking the very mountain with its fury, and yet it still had further to grow.
With each footfall on the snaking stairway, lightning struck at its sides, filling the air with the scent of ozone and almost blinding me with its radiance. The path followed a towering ridge that grew and shrank like the scales of a Dragon's back. The ancient stones were long worn by wind and rain, and in its latter half, snow.
The drumbeat only grew as the rain turned to hail, battering at my clothes. Pelting me with a thousand tiny bullets of ice.
They stung at my eyes and blasted my skin, far from the rejuvenating water below, even as I felt the water in my clothes begin to freeze.
I paused for a moment, to consider my options.
The mountain king, whatever or whoever it might be, though to stop me?
Arthur Baratheon?
I felt my pride rise up within me. I had to batter it down for decency when I dealt with men, but here, facing the elements themselves?
I let it surge, my fury its guide, and lightning crackled forth, burning from my form in angry white bolts that joined and merged with the thunderous symphony that still continued, striking back up at the sky in defiance, the well of power within me rising to meet my need.
I smirked my own power and will was shielding me from the cold, if not the impact of the hail. I continued on marching through the snow.
At the final plateau, I could see the peak, rising up above me into the clouds. The Symphony had by now grown into an indistinguishable roar of anger. It's malicious hatred striking like a battering ram against my every step. I had no doubt that the whole front of my body was covered in tiny welts and bruises as hail the size of golf balls battered my advance.
I advanced still, calling upon every reserve of my energy, every power in my body to take me to that final spire of icy stone.
The ascent was far harder than my first climb. Hail filled the few handholds I could find, trying to suborn my desires, to force me to fall to my doom rather than challenge the master of the roaring thunderous symphony that now surrounded me.
What's more, scarce feet after I began, I had to enter the inky black clouds above, choking out icy water that my lightning melted in my throat as the energy of my foe clashed with my own. The bright clashes of force were all I could use to illuminate my shadowed path, feeling along for handhold with outstretched arms, hands feeling for any crag, anything to support the weight of my body. The sinews of my shoulders and calves burned at the stress, and at the hail and lightning which buffeted me still.
Up and Up I went, upwards for what seemed like forever, up out of the black fog into the grey, and at last into the white, the light of the sun shining down atop the endless sea of thick clouds through which I had come.
Finally, my hand clasped the edge of the true summit, of the long-awaited peak. I lifted myself out of that endless thunder, at last, curling up on the ground like a child in the exhaustion that claimed me, both internal and external. Laying still on that final rocky pinnacle, the whole area perhaps ten feet across.
I sat there for a long moment, just breathing in and out in the wonderful pain of the direct sunlight, my clothes were ruined, burned by lightning, mine and my foes, dampened and frozen, and torn in a hundred places, but still, I staggered to my feet, my foe to face.
At the sight before me, I collapsed to my knees once again.
For atop that great mountain, at the highest peak above the clouds, the source of the storm that had taken my all, and the king of the island that had challenged my claim?
All I found was a shattered Deus, the remnants of an old statue that had snapped at the ankle, and an old wind-worn marble hand, clutching the hilt of a broken stone sword. The fallen remnants of a God I had never heard of, for whom nobody even cared.
I had spent my all, came all of this way, thinking I was some great champion.
I had been fighting the wretched magical remains of some long-dead minor god.
No, not even a god itself, only the collapsed statue of one.
All of my power, my effort, my work, was a match for whatever magic remained within an old and broken statue.
There was no power here for me to gain, no glory, even as my triumph was assured, as the sea of solid cloud that stretched around me began to fade away into a new clear sky, and afforded me a spectacular view of my realm, it was little victory.
I staggered to my feet once again, glaring down at the island which was my kingdom, I was hazily aware of my tattered riding cape flapping in the wind which now seemed to return to this once sacred place in the absence of the furious storm that had almost beaten me down to the end.
No, there was a lesson to be learned here.
What power I had was not enough. Not nearly enough.
Never enough.
If I wanted to change the world, if I wanted to challenge the powers that made it spin, I would need more than my guns and my limited machines, more than telephones and sailing ships. Those things had power true, a power that I could not abandon, but if I wanted to battle gods then my weapons had to grow beyond the tools of mortals.
The Children of the forest had shattered this ancient land into an archipelago with their magic, and yet even they had been no match for the cold elves in the north.
What match was I for those Others then? What match was I for the power of true Gods? R'hllor and his monstrous torturous ilk? Those Lovecraftian demons who sought the whole of mankind as livestock?
It was all so clear to me now, I could stand atop the peak of the world, and still not see the heavens.
What was I in the face of the doom that had shattered Valyria?
Still, at least there was some comfort, for even in the face of that question, I was not nothing.
I was the king of this small mountain, of these small islands, and that meant something, even if it was as insignificant as a flea to a raging bull.
I looked down over this island, my Island. It had long been called Grey-Gallows, a dreary and overcast Island of drab rocks and pine forest.
That was under the kind I had slain now.
I could change that, change the very nature of my realm, I could feel it in the air. A gift afforded to me in this small victory. A shift in the breeze and a chance to choose for myself a new symphony.
'I always did like Dvorak'
I grit my teeth, calling upon my own powers a proclamation coming to my lips with all the magic that remained in me. Lightning crackled from my mouth as I spoke, and in this small place, this pillar above my land, it seemed the world itself listened.
"I name this Island Storm-Sky, for it is here that my empire is born. Here that my first triumph was won." I turned to the broken statue, now devoid of whatever magic it had possessed, then my eyes wandered to the stone beneath my feet, the summit which I had taken such effort to climb. "And I name this mountain Storm-Peak, and I shall build my capital at its foot, where the river of its blood meets the bay to the north, and at this summit, of this very rock, I shall build my castle."
I turned to the sky above as if daring it to challenge me.
No challenge was forthcoming, and I collapsed to the ground in something vaguely resembling a heap as my exhaustion finally caught up to me. My reserves for once running just as dry as my body.
"This… I…. Pro...claim….
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein