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poorquentyn · 7 years

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Have you entertained the possibility that Euron may not end up being a significant part of the story? No dragon binding, no wall breaking, no confirmed connection to Bloodraven, etc. Just a minor-ish (yet very interesting) character.

Everything about how GRRM has written Euron “Crow’s Eye” Greyjoy suggests that he is a very significant character indeed, someone to fear and take seriously. This is true whether you’re talking about the setup before we meet him...

“Euron Crowseye has no lack of cunning, though. I’ve heard men say terrible things of that one.”

Theon shifted his seat. “My uncle Euron has not been seen in the islands for close on two years. He may be dead.” If so, it might be for the best. Lord Balon’s eldest brother had never given up the Old Way, even for a day. His Silence, with its black sails and dark red hull, was infamous in every port from Ibben to Asshai, it was said.

“Euron Greyjoy is no man’s notion of a king, if half of what Theon said of him was true.”

Aeron was almost at the door when the maester cleared his throat, and said, “Euron Crow’s Eye sits the Seastone Chair.”

The Damphair turned. The hall had suddenly grown colder. The Crow’s Eye is half a world away. Balon sent him off two years ago, and swore that it would be his life if he returned. “Tell me,” he said hoarsely.

…the way he’s presented when we do meet him…

“We shall have no king but from the kingsmoot.” The Damphair stood. “No godless man—”

“—may sit the Seastone Chair, aye.” Euron glanced about the tent. “As it happens I have oft sat upon the Seastone Chair of late. It raises no objections.” His smiling eye was glittering. “Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air…I know them all. I have seen their peoples garland them with flowers, and shed the blood of goats and bulls and children in their names. And I have heard the prayers, in half a hundred tongues. Cure my withered leg, make the maiden love me, grant me a healthy son. Save me, succor me, make me wealthy…protect me! Protect me from mine enemies, protect me from the darkness, protect me from the crabs inside my belly, from the horselords, from the slavers, from the sellswords at my door. Protect me from the Silence.” He laughed. “Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray.”

The priest raised a bony finger. “They pray to trees and golden idols and goat-headed abominations. False gods…”

“Just so,” said Euron, “and for that sin I kill them all. I spill their blood upon the sea and sow their screaming women with my seed. Their little gods cannot stop me, so plainly they are false gods. I am more devout than even you, Aeron. Perhaps it should be you who kneels to me for blessing.”

The Red Oarsman laughed loudly at that, and the others took their lead from him.

[Here’s GRRM’s pre-emptive strike against Euron skeptics] “Fools,” said the priest, “fools and thralls and blind men, that is what you are. Do you not see what stands before you?”

“A king,” said Quellon Humble.

The Damphair spat, and strode out into the night.

Sharp as a swordthrust, the sound of a horn split the air.

Bright and baneful was its voice, a shivering hot scream that made a man’s bones seem to thrum within him. The cry lingered in the damp sea air: aaaaRREEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

All eyes turned toward the sound. It was one of Euron’s mongrels winding the call, a monstrous man with a shaved head. Rings of gold and jade and jet glistened on his arms, and on his broad chest was tattooed some bird of prey, talons dripping blood.

aaaaRRREEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

The horn he blew was shiny, black, and twisted, and taller than a man as he held it with both hands. It was bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly as the sound swelled.

aaaaaaaRRREEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

It was a terrible sound, a wail of pain and fury that seemed to burn the ears. Aeron Damphair covered his, and prayed for the Drowned God to raise a mighty wave and smash the horn to silence, yet still the shriek went on and on. It is the horn of hell, he wanted to scream, though no man would have heard him. The cheeks of the tattooed man were so puffed out they looked about to burst, and the muscles in his chest twitched in a way that it made it seem as if the bird were about to rip free of his flesh and take wing. And now the glyphs were burning brightly, every line and letter shimmering with white fire. On and on and on the sound went, echoing amongst the howling hills behind them and across the waters of Nagga’s Cradle to ring against the mountains of Great Wyk, on and on and on until it filled the whole wet world.

“Crow’s Eye, you call me. Well, who has a keener eye than the crow? After every battle the crows come in their hundreds and their thousands to feast upon the fallen. A crow can espy death from afar. And I say that all of Westeros is dying. Those who follow me will feast until the end of their days.

“We are the ironborn, and once we were conquerors. Our writ ran everywhere the sound of the waves was heard. My brother would have you be content with the cold and dismal north, my niece with even less…but I shall give you Lannisport. Highgarden. The Arbor. Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all! I say, we take Westeros.”

Euron seated himself and gave his cloak a twitch, so it covered his private parts. “I had forgotten what a small and noisy folk they are, my ironborn. I would bring them dragons, and they shout out for grapes.”

“Grapes are real. A man can gorge himself on grapes. Their juice is sweet, and they make wine. What do dragons make?”

“Woe.” The Crow’s Eye sipped from his silver cup.

“What do you want?”

“The world.” Firelight glimmered in Euron’s eye.

…or perhaps above all, the visions GRRM grants us of Euron’s eldritch soul he keeps hidden behind that eyepatch.

“Have you seen these others in your fires?” he asked, warily.

“Only their shadows,” Moqorro said. “One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.”

Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her…but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice.

Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered around his feet and a forest burned behind him.

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”

Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

“Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”

“Why would I want that hard black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.”

Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood.

Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith…even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath.

And there, swollen and green, half-devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the rest, seawater still dripping from his hair.

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed…

Of course, I get that not everyone is gonna love this stuff like I do; creeping cosmic horror is very much my wheelhouse. But looking at all of the above, I cannot see how anyone can come to the conclusion that Euron is unimportant to the plot and themes of ASOIAF. I think part of the problem is that Euron is keeping his true intentions hidden from the Ironborn (besides Damphair, of course), and so some readers were fooled along with the captains and kings. But the truth was always out there, and it became undeniable after “The Forsaken,” in which the monster wearing the pirate suit emerges, fangs glistening, for his closeup.

Urri shook his head. “Worms… worms await you, Aeron.”

When he laughed, his face sloughed off, and the priest saw that it was not Urri but Euron, the smiling eye hidden. He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible.

#euron greyjoy #is a monster wearing a pirate suit #you don't write an apocalyptic sorcerer-king with such lush vivid imagery if he's not going to matter #'the forsaken' really should've ended this argument #asoiaf meta

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tusouthafrica · 7 years

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For some Plot Triple One residents, life feels worse since the end of Apartheid

A car struck Anna Van Wyk in July 2016, worsening her life that was already teetering on an edge.

Van Wyk was walking along the side of the road near her home in a ramshackle settlement called Plot Triple One when she heard two cars crash behind her.

“When I turned to look, I saw one coming straight at me,” Van Wyk said.

The accident took a toll on Van Wyk’s health. She suffered injuries to her head, spleen and hip. She was in a wheelchair for three months and she still doesn’t have feeling in some parts of her leg.

Anna Van Wyk has lived in Plot Triple One, a majority-Afrikaans settlement outside Pretoria, for more than 20 years.

But after a few months, Van Wyk forced herself out of the chair and back on her feet. She needed to walk to make a 4.5-mile trek to visit her children and the two-mile hike to the nearest shop with food and clean water.

Van Wyk is no stranger to the challenges of life in Plot Triple One.

She’s been living in the desolate settlement, located outside Pretoria, for nearly 20-years.

Wretched living conditions like found in Triple One are not unusual in South Africa where shantytowns abound. What is unusual about Plot Triple One is that it is one of the shantytowns occupied almost entirely by white Afrikaners, members of the white ethnic group that ruled South Africa during the racist Apartheid era.

Most South Africans know nothing about the presence of Afrikaner shantytowns like Plot Triple One or the fact that some Afrikaners are deeply impoverished. For most South Africans and persons outside the nation, poverty-ridden shantytowns are places where persons of color live not whites.

The challenges that plague Van Wyk are common for many of the impoverished settlements in South Africa: a lack of employment, medical care and access to food and water.

Plot Triple One is different than some other settlements in South Africa. Unlike Johannesburg’s Alexandra township or Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township — which, despite the presence of deep poverty, have become close-knit, active communities — Plot Triple One is desolate. Plot Triple One’s dirt roads are usually empty and there are no small businesses like stores near by.

But for many people living in Plot Triple One, these problems feel worse now than ever before. For some Afrikaners and other impoverished members of South Africa’s minority-white community, it feels like life was better before Apartheid ended in 1994, when centuries-old practices of racial segregation became illegal in South Africa.

“South Africa is declining,” said Jorrie Jordaan, a retired journalist who’s provided volunteer relief aid and other assistance to Triple One residents for a decade.

“It’s getting worse. Discrimination is too high. It’s just too harsh,” said Jordaan, who works with Solidariteit Helpende Hand, an organization founded in 1949 to alleviate and prevent poverty primarily among whites in South Africa.

Jorrie Jordaan walks through an Afrikaans settlement in Pretoria called Plot Triple One.

Jordaan started working with Solidariteit Helpende Hand — which translates to “solidarity helping hand” — in 2007 to provide resources to poor Afrikaans communities like Plot Triple One. He thinks inequality has actually worsened since the end of Apartheid, and life has gotten disproportionately more challenging for white people.

Jordaan said he can’t think of one aspect of life that has gotten better since Apartheid ended — not the economy, not the politics, not anything.

Jenny Fortune agrees that quality of life has worsened since the end of Apartheid. Fortune is one of a few Coloured people — an official term used to identify mixed-race South Africans — living in Plot Triple One. Both she and her husband are unemployed, and she struggles to feed her family of four on her monthly pension of R1500 – about $112 U.S. dollars. Over half of Fortune’s pension is used to pay the monthly rent for the decrepit dwelling her family occupies in Triple One.

Jenny Fortune struggles to feed her husband, daughter and granddaughter on her meager monthly pension.

“It’s always been a problem, getting a job,” Fortune said. “But it’s worse. There’s no job creation. Even if you go for a job, you need five or 10 years of experience.”

René Du Preez, a project manager at Solidariteit Helpende Hand, said the organization provides aid to mostly white Afrikaners because those are the people who’ve become excluded from other forms of aid. Du Preez cites South Africa’s affirmative action laws, which require businesses to hire racially diverse staff members, as a roadblock for Afrikaners getting jobs.

René Du Preez, a project manager at Solidariteit Helpende Hand, believes quality of life has worsened for Afrikaans people since the end of Apartheid.

Solidariteit Helpende Hand operates several programs in Plot Triple One to help alleviate the effects of poverty among Afrikaners. Solidariteit programs include job-creation strategies, therapy for children with disabilities and free lunches for kindergarteners.

“We’re trying to teach people to be self-sufficient so they can help themselves in the future,” Du Preez said. “So we’re not in the business of giving food packets. We’re in the businesses of helping you from a place where you are despondent and dependent to a place where you can be self-sufficient to find a job.”

Contrary to contentions by many Triple One residents attributing their impoverishment to the end of Apartheid, less than one percent of whites in South Africa live in poverty. The white poverty figure contrasts sharply with poverty levels for other racial groups: 63.2 percent of blacks, 37 percent of Colored people and 6.9 percent of Indian/Asian according to a 2016 report issued by the fact checking organization Africa Check that cited census statistics compiled by the governmental Statistics South Africa.

“Poverty is extremely high in South Africa. But proportionately, very few white people live in poverty compared to other race groups,” that Africa Check report stated. That report listed impoverished whites totalling over 42,000 while 25-million+ black South Africans live in poverty.

Despite the challenges in her life, Van Wyk doesn’t feel that life is entirely worse since 1994. She said she understands that Apartheid’s end was a huge stride for racial equality in South Africa.

“I’m not a racist,” Van Wyk said. “I think everybody needs that place in the sun. I just think everybody needs a chance in life.”

Writting and photos by Michaela Winberg

#social #economic #economics #culture #2017 #michaela #michaela winberg #written news

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krakensofpyke · 7 years

Text

Terror At Castle Pyke

The Damphair gets closer to the Drowned God.

“I hope you have not taken me from my sacred duties that you might read to me.”

Rodrik Harlaw glanced up from the scroll before him long enough to cast a wry look his way. “I would not have requested you here if I did not think my reading would interest you, Damphair,” he replied politely. Aeron remained unconvinced, yet he sat down opposite the Reader nonetheless.

He did not oft visit Ten Towers; the people of the area, large and small, seemed to have little interest in the Drowned God. The castle’s lord was the worst of them in his opinion, a man who would squint over dusty papers while his Sea Song gathered barnacles and algae. Still, he felt a certain obligation to answer the Reader’s call, if only to press the weight of his judgment upon the man.

“I found an interesting treatise from Archmaester Haereg from before he reversed his stance in his History of the Ironborn,” he continued, speaking as though the priest was as familiar with the text as he. “He had theorized that our people came of adventurers from across the Sunset Sea, even before the First Men crossed the arm of Dorne.”

Aeron frowned. “He sounds as mad as the Farwynd of Lonely Light,” he replied flatly. “We came from the sea, by the grace of God.” What did this man hope to accomplish, repeating the words of some long-dead green land scholar? My faith is not so fragile as that. Your words will not stir me.

Lord Harlaw seemed to ignore the comment. “I found a rare scroll in our libraries, where Haereg once expounded on this. He lent credence to old Maester Theron’s writings, saying that these men from the west found an old race of beings living on the Isles, who were scaly like fish, hewed their homes from chunks of black stone, and worshiped titanic creatures from the sea.

“He disputed Theron’s account of this interaction, however. Haereg seemed to believe that the men from the Sunset Sea had put these so-called Deep Ones to the sword, slaughtering the men and taking their women as concubines. They even tore down their stone houses and cast the rubble into the sea. Afterward, their dispositions seemed to change, and they began to revere what little was left of the Deep Ones’ culture.”

Aeron was losing patience quickly. “The theories of milk-veined men from the Citadel are as nothing to me,” he interjected bluntly, picking at a splinter on the desk before him. “If there is nothing else, Reader, I will be leaving.”

“Both men were Ironborn by birth,” the Harlaw replied, placid as ever, “but that is neither here or there.” He unrolled another scroll, this one drier than the rest, and indicated a passage near the center. “Haereg cites the Seastone Chair as evidence for this theory. He said it was found on Old Wyk, but was later brought to Pyke, where a castle was built in its honor.

“’A task in the name of the Deep Ones’ God,’ he called it, ‘to rest the Chair above a holy site deep within the grottoes of the isle.’ It is not clear where this idea came from, but he did propose a thorough excavation of Castle Pyke, to determine the veracity of his research. These fell through, however, due to lack of funding from the Citadel and writ of refusal from Talon Greyjoy, the Lord of Pyke at the time. Haereg later gave up on these notions and returned to the popular belief of First Men ancestry.”

The older man met Aeron’s eyes, raising his brows expectantly. He offered a grimace in return. “What is it you want of me, Reader? Your facts are at odds. Old Wyk is the holiest site of the Isles, and where the Seastone Chair remained until the Grey King’s eldest son took it to Pyke for his own seat. Even the simplest child knows this. I wish to hear no more of your nonsense; it draws near to sacrilege.” He gave the lord a cold look, one he had used to chastise thrall and captain alike.

Yet Rodrik stared back at him, unaffected. “I simply wanted to tell you of it,” he replied calmly, “and to hear what your thoughts were on the matter. I am sorry to have wasted your time, Damphair. You are welcome to take supper in my hall this night if you wish, and there are beds available should you want to depart by morning.”

He has reverence enough to be courteous, Aeron decided and he accepted the offer with hollow gratitude. He thought no more of Deep Ones or seafarers from the west that night, nor the next day when he departed the castle to return to the work of a Drowned Priest.

As the days passed, however, some of the words they exchanged in the Book Tower came back to him. They resonated in some of his litanies by day and framed his dreams by night. What started as a chill in the air of his mind grew to a howling gale by a moon’s turn. It was then that he found himself boarding a ship to return him to the Lordsport of Pyke.

The Reader is a fool and I am more a fool in heeding him, the man thought sourly. He waved away a Drowned Man who offered him a horse and walked to the castle of his birth. Gulls screeched, rocks bit into his bare feet, and the melange of salt and rotting seaweed filled the air, but the Damphair was lost in his thoughts. I do this only to prove that he has grown mad and soft in his tower, Aeron promised, the Drowned God has shown me the truth one thousand times over.

Helya, the wizened steward, found him not long after entering the Great Keep. “What an honor to have a Drowned Priest in our halls again,” she called upon seeing him, her voice as creaky as the planks of an old ship. “Shall I escort you to m’lord’s solar?”

“No,” Aeron said swiftly, waving her away. Before she could hobble out of the antechamber, however, he called, “I would... I would rather you not let the Lord Reaper know that I am here.” The last thing he wanted was for Balon to chide him as though he were still the young lout he had been in another life.

The Great Keep’s basements yielded little other than mildew and crabs. They were as dark and wet and empty as he expected. Aeron permitted himself a smile as he imagined an army of maesters crawling through the dark like the grey rats they were. “Nothing is here,” he called mockingly into the unused halls. Nothing answered.

From there, Aeron crossed the stone walkway that led into the Bloody Keep, scowling thralls and guards alike into silence. The corridors of this section were lit as poorly as the Great Keep’s underchambers and the walls were padded with grey-green lichen. Its very existence had puzzled him as a boy. He had once asked his father why the greatest and richest of their island keeps was left unused. “The Hoares broke guest right in this keep,” his father had replied, “and the foulness hangs over its halls like sea-fog.” It was hardly an answer, and certainly not something their ancestors would have cared about.

The Damphair took a torch from a sconce and descended a staircase into the depths of the keep. The damned thing had nearly guttered out twice has he caught it on the layers of damp cobweb that festooned the ceiling, and he had stopped as many times, wondering why he continued. Nothing will be there, he told himself, why do I press on? Yet down he descended until it seemed that light and sound alike were swallowed by the darkness. There he found an oaken door fixed with a rusted iron handle.

Though the door was almost white with rot, he could discern impressions of what had once ben intricate carving. The full design had been lost to time, but elements of it still remained: stretching arms of a Kraken, the long legs of a spider crab, a face twisted half in agony and half in ecstasy. He opened the door slowly and was startled despite himself at the closeness of the wall on the other side. Beyond the doorway stretched a mere five feet of hallway before it turned right sharply into the next corridor.

Aeron entered the hall and turned, allowing the door to close on its own. Its hinges protested with a sound that made him feel nauseous with recollection. His pace quickened as he walked down the short passage and turned right again.

Another short corridor, another sharp right turn.

He kept walking and turning, turning and walking, until his senses caught up with him. Why have I continued to follow this path, the prophet wondered again, angry at himself. Why have I entertained this madness for even this long? How many times have I rounded a corner: three, or thirty?

Aeron’s sense told him to abandon this folly and never give it life again, and yet he found himself peeking around the corner all the same. Instead of yet another hall, a door terminated the path. This one was well kept, dark with many layers of varnish. The carvings were clear-cut and exquisite here, depicting a scene out of a nightmare.

A giant crab, a Kraken, and two beasts that the Damphair could not identify stood around a man. One of the unknown appeared as a sickening mass of fins and flippers, while the other was a sort of serpent with the rubbery wings of a ray and a brutal, serrated tail. Each of them had a limb of the man in their grasp, seeming to pull him apart. The man was naked and covered in scales, and his face was the grotesque mask he had seen previously. This time, however, the features were better-defined and far more unsettling. The sea monsters had faces of their own, though they looked neither human nor bestial.

“I must turn back,” the Greyjoy said loudly to himself, but his hand was on the door handle and he was pulling it back. A blast of cold, wet, salty air invigorated him as he faced yet another deep staircase. This one spiraled on and on, but a dull roar and a dim green glow lay waiting at the foot. The sea, he thought with relief, I have found the sea again.

Aeron nearly skipped down the ancient stone steps, all but deaf to the door slamming shut behind him. The waters of Pyke were close enough to taste now, and he would rather swim to the shore than make his way through that hellish maze of stone. I will brand Rodrik Harlaw a dangerous madman for this, he promised.

His excitement twisted into confusion as he found the end of the staircase. Before him yawned an expansive grotto, with walls of black stone that seemed to melt into the darkness beyond. What he had thought was the reflection of sunlight off of the water was the water itself, casting a queer green light that came from nowhere and everywhere at once. It clung to the stones in such a way that they appeared oily and vile as if dripping with some dark humor.

The roar that Aeron had heard from the top of the stairs had grown into a whirlwind of sound at the grotto’s shore, but it was not the call of the sea. In fact, the glowing waters seemed as still as glass. The cacophony was punctuated with clicks and wet squelches and other sounds that he could not name. Everything about this place is wrong, he thought with disquiet, I should never have come. He turned to track back up the staircase...

But the staircase wasn’t there.

He glanced around frantically, but only glistening stone walls greeted him. The fear sunk in then; worse than it had in his youth and even worse than it had during his drowning. “The Drowned God is with me,” he called into the howling cavern, closing his eyes. “I am by His waters, below His isle, nothing can hurt me.” He opened his eyes anew. Still, no staircase.

Folded within the layers of noise was a slithering, soft and subtle. The priest whipped his head around to locate the source. The green pool had been disturbed, shallow ripples reaching out to the cave walls. He heard the slithering sound again, and a small crop of bubbles rose lazily from the lit depths.

It was more than he could take: Aeron began to sprint across the stone, groping the nearest jutting rock to climb. It was no easy feat, for the profane outcrops were as slippery as they looked. Bare hands and feet scrambled along the smooth surface as he tried to bring himself higher, away from the terrible unknown. He had almost reached a black cliff that hung above the rippling lake when his foot caught on something.

It was a hand.

The hand was an eldritch thing: black, cracked nails on spindly, webbed fingers covered in grey, squamous skin. It was attached to an arm, similarly grey and scaly, from which hung a loose membrane of leathery skin. The appendage was emaciated, yet it held fast to him with an uncanny strength that he could not shake off. It was hideous, yet human enough to appear all the more unnatural.

“Unhand me!” Aeron spat. “I am a servant of the Drowned God!” The hand and its owner took no heed of his words and pulled all the harder. He clung desperately to the rocks and begun to strike his captured limb against the wall in a last-ditch effort to escape. His flailing was savage enough to maim himself and the creature alike, and his own red blood trickled down to mingle with the matte grey life-fluid of his assailant.

Finally, with a final violent jerk, he managed to crush its fingers between his heel and the wall with a sound like the snapping of a soggy carrot. Agony shot up Aeron’s leg and he almost fell from his tenuous hold, but the hand had relinquished its vice grip and retreated into the murky glow. Without sparing another thought, the Damphair continued his climb, hands scrambling desperately for purchase until he had lifted himself enough to see over the cliff.

“Please, Drowned God, no...”

Nine of the manbeasts crouched in wait for him at the top of the cliff, dragging him up and casting a net over him. Their legs were as fishlike as their arms, and terminated in two meaty flippers, not unlike the hind parts of a seal. Their torsos were mottled and scaly, sexless and naked save for patches of slimy barnacles that waved their vermiform innards in the open air.

The worst of them was the faces. They were stretched over thin yet protruding skulls, with flat, glassy eyes and pouting, rubbery lips. They had no nose save for slits that seemed to run from just under the eyes all the way to their necks, where ruffly, blue exposed gills opened and closed with a gentle sucking sound. From the tops of their heads hung whiplike tendrils that ended in greasy bulbs that seemed to pulse and shimmer with the same green light that illuminated the waters below.

They were chattering in some obscene tongue, all popping lips and gurgling throats, as they carried him through a passage atop the cliff. Aeron thrashed and struggled, but his limbs were tangled in the wet, leathery ropes of the net. “You must be the Deep Ones!” he cried out to them. “Your God and my own are the same, it is said! I am his priest, we have no quarrel!.”

If they could understand him, they made no indication. The beings kept moving forward, down and down until they reached a capacious chamber. It was ringed with torches that burned blue and green, fixed to the walls in sconces made of pale coral, though one had no flame. Beside each torch were seats made of the same oily black stone that comprised the grotto, where more of the deep denizens had perched themselves. The thrones were carved in the likeness of malformed sea creatures; he could see a razor conch, a horned whale, and others too frightening to guess at. The unlit brand had no chair to accompany it, and the absence filled him with dreadful realization. At the center of the room was a well, simple and austere. “What are you doing?” the Damphair screeched. “What will you do to me?!”

They approached the well and unfurled the net. Four of them descended upon him, each grabbing a limb as they lifted him over the mouth of the well and chanted in their profane tongue. He continued to scream and thrash, ropes of his hair whipping against his captors. Aeron could feel the rim against his wrists and ankles; he knew what then these Deep Ones would do. “No! No! Noooo!” he pleaded. The well cast his supplications back up at him from its wet and hollow throat.

Suddenly, the chanting stopped, and his terror was the only sound. One of the observers came forth and stood over him. It was wearing a necklace of brown, fetid seaweed, and looked to be leader or priest to the others. It raked a single black talon along Aeron’s side, ripping the fabric of his robe, and then removed it. He was exposed, save for his breechclout, and he could feel the moist current from below him.

The leader whispered something to the others, and Aeron fell.

He was momentarily stunned by the impact of the water's surface, and it washed into his open mouth. His eyes stung and his stomach knotted from the bitter salinity. You are drowning, a voice somewhere deep within him called, but it brought him no comfort. He sunk like one chained to an anchor, even as he flailed his arms upward. Further and further he dropped until caliginosity became illumination, and sea became air.

The change shocked his senses, and it felt like an age before he had come to. The priest found himself suspended in liquid as viscous as jelly, yet his lungs took the medium in and out. There was no time to find comfort in this, however, for he discovered that he was not alone. Caught in the pulp with him were other men, other bodies. Some wore iron armor, others were as naked as he, and a few even had crowns of driftwood floating near them. All shared one thing in common: faces that were contorted into an abhorrent expression of dread and anguish and exultation. It was terribly familiar to Aeron.

In the brown haze of this man-trap, a shadow began to grow. Amorphous and distant at first, it began to take shape and grow until only his periphery remained uneclipsed. It was a monstrous shade, rippling with limbs that belonged to man and beast and beings unknowable. It glided forward with a gravity that jostled the Damphair like a fly in a web. He wanted to shut his eyes, to die quietly and avoid whatever fate had befallen the corpses around him, but he found his eyelids pinned open.

And then he saw its face.

It was to look into his brother’s black eye. To gaze into the center of a maelstrom. To peer into the abyssal depths even further than where Krakens and leviathans dwell. The thing wrapped one long tentacle around his legs and it was then that he knew. This is the Watery Hall. This is the Drowned God. He screamed, his face warping from the exertion, but no sound came out.

He was discovered by a group of Drowned Men, who were preparing to commune with their God on the shores of Iron Holt. It had been three days since anyone had seen the Damphair last, and most had assumed him dead, carried off by the high tide during one of his long reflections beyond the shore. He was half a corpse, as cold and blue as the sea, but he spat up water and seaweed and substances more unsavory after one of his own gave the Kiss of Life. His face had been a nightmare to look upon in that moment, but it suddenly slackened, and Aeron Greyjoy gazed cheerfully around him.

“Where were you, Damphair?” One among them asked. “We had looked for you for some time. No one knew-”

“Under the sea, the fish catch men in their nets,” he interrupted, turning the words into a sort of lilting song. “I know, I know! Oh, oh, oh!”

#The Damphair [Aeron POV]#aeron greyjoy #tw: cosmic horror #anyone who reads this deserves a cookie #but this was fun to write

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