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SLW Chapter 85 : Lion's Pride
🕑 Added 2025-06-11 21:49:12 +0000 UTCAeron’s lips curved into a slow, foreboding smile. “True enough. You are cunning. Powerful. But at the end of the day…” His voice dropped sharp as a blade.
“Still a fool.”
With a crackle that echoed through the chamber, Drakaryzor manifested in his right handa greatsword wrought of black flame. Its blade pulsed, alive, as if it breathed beneath his grip.
Tyrion’s eyes widened, hidden behind a mask only loosely maintained. Jaime stumbled backward, his breath catching as the sword’s ember-light danced over his face. Even the torchlight dimmed, as though the darkness acknowledged a greater shadow now.
Aeron’s voice rang out again. “Now: kneel, or die. And it won’t end with this chamber. You’ll be claimed by the shadows and I will see your house eradicated.”
A chill silence followed. Tywin’s gaze shifted to the burning sword, then back to Aeron. His pride held firm, unmoved.
“I am the Lion of Casterly Rock,” he said quietly, voice straight as a spear. “I kneel to no one.”
Jaime gasped, stepping forward. “Father...”
Aeron’s eyes flicked to Jaime, twin fires against shadow. With a crease of thought, Jaime stiffened, ready to shield his father. But Aeron’s voice was calm and final.
“Don't.”
With a gesture, Jaime was frozen in place, gripped by Ruler’s Authority an invisible leash of power that bent his will. He could move his eyes, but his body would not obey.
Aeron turned back to Tywin, stepping forward until the sword’s black glow was inches from the old lion’s throat. His words were ice on coal.
“You say you care for your house more than anything. But your pride has carried you here. And by your own hand… you have damned them all.”
Tywin stared at the blade, the man, the room. His last breath came slow no apology, no fear, only the rigid dignity of a fallen lord.
Then Aeron’s Drakaryzor fell.
A single sweep. The blade came down in an instant, a quiet thump rather than a scream. Where Tywin Lannister once stood, only darkened robes and silence remained. His head on the floor. His throat already still.
Jaime’s hands clenched into fists, the tension on the spell snapping him free. He lurched forward, voice raw.
“No... Father. No!”
He knelt at the body, pressed a trembling hand upon Tywin’s chest. Eyes wide, life gone but honor still there in memory.
Aeron sheathed the black blade with a hiss. He turned, stepping over the body without another glance.
“You do well to do the right thing now in his stead,” he said softly, not to Jaime, not even to the body. The words carried, final an echo of fire and shadow, decree and doom.
Then
“Arise.”
The word did not echo it commanded. It was not meant for the living.
From Tywin Lannister’s body, now black and bloated beneath the hearth’s failing light, a figure began to pull free. A silhouette of a man in lordly garb took shape its details growing clearer with every heartbeat. The strong jaw, the furrowed brow, the proud shoulders it was him. It was Tywin.
Only, wrong.
Now a shadow soldier, kneeling before Aeron Grim. Its eyes glowed faint violet, a mockery of life. The figure bowed its head low, obedient. Silent.
Jaime recoiled, scrambling back onto the stone floor. “You’re a plague on this land,” he said hoarsely, eyes locked on the thing that wore his father’s shape. “Seven hells… you’re a bloody monster.”
Aeron didn’t blink.
“No.”
His voice was soft. Too soft.
“But I can be.”
The Shadow Monarch bent, slowly, and took up Tywin Lannister’s severed head by the hair. He held it up as though it were just a crownless relic, his violet gaze not once straying from Jaime’s own.
“Casterly Rock is next and There won’t be no Rains of Castamere sung for you,” Aeron murmured, his tone colder than the Wall. “Only silence. Only dust. Forgotten from history.”
And then he vanished.
No great burst of magic. No thunder. One heartbeat he was there, violet-eyed and terrible, holding the head of Westeros’ most feared lion and the next…
A shadow cat stood in his place, black smoke curled from its back like steam rising from a grave. Its eyes impossibly bright locked on Jaime.
The Kingslayer froze.
The shadow cat growled low, a sound born of another world. Then it lunged.
Jaime flinched, throwing his hand up, lips parting for a final cry but no sound came. His heart pounded like war drums in his ears, but no claws struck, no fangs tore into him.
He opened his eyes.
The shadow was gone.
Only his father’s cooling body remained. And the sound of the fire, cracking quietly in the dark, as if nothing had happened at all.
Jaime sat there, alone now, truly alone, for the first time in his life. And for the first time in years maybe in his lifetime, he trembled in true fear.
****
RED KEEP — THRONE ROOM
The fading light of day filtered through the tall stained-glass windows of the throne room. Tommen Baratheon sat quietly upon the Iron Throne, dwarfed by its twisted metal and jagged swords. Cersei stood beside him, arms crossed, lips tight with disapproval as Kevan Lannister addressed the small court gathered beneath the dais.
“Our grain stores from the Crownlands are strained, Your Grace,” Kevan was saying. “Too many mouths. With Hayford and Stokeworth burned, because of... you know.”
The doors groaned.
They all turned.
The golden lions embroidered on the crimson banners seemed to shudder as the great doors of the throne room creaked open. A single man entered slow steps, uneven, like the world itself had grown too heavy.
Jaime Lannister.
The Kingslayer.
He stood in full armor, dusty and blood-spattered, the lion of House Lannister dulled beneath a coat of road-worn grime. In his arms limp, lifeless, headless, unmistakable was Tywin Lannister.
Dead.
Gasps echoed off the cold stone walls. The court was struck silent. The only sound was the clink of Jaime’s armor as he crossed the floor.
Cersei’s eyes widened. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came.
“No…” she whispered finally, voice trembling like a cracked glass. “No…”
Her legs gave out. Ser Meryn Trant rushed to steady her, but she shrugged him off, stumbling down the steps.
“T-Tywin…?” Kevan stammered, blinking hard. “That can’t be...gods, that can’t be...”
Jaime said nothing at first. He simply laid his father’s body at the base of the Iron Throne, gently, reverently, as if Tywin could still feel the insult of cold stone beneath him.
Blood stained the polished floor.
Cersei collapsed beside the body, cradling Tywin’s corpse in her hands, her sobs uncontrolled now, shaking as she grieved. Tommen stared down from the throne in wide-eyed terror. The boy did not cry. He didn’t move at all.
Kevan stepped forward, face pale, mouth ajar. “Who...who did this? Tell me, Jaime. Who?”
Jaime’s voice was quiet. Hoarse. Empty.
“It was him.”
No name needed. No title spoken.
They all knew who he meant.
Kevan took a slow breath, hands balling into fists. “Aeron Grim.”
Jaime nodded once.
Cersei’s face twisted from grief into rage. “He dares!” she spat. “He dares to touch our father!”
“He warned us,” Jaime murmured. “Told us to yield. Gave us time.”
“You defend him?” she barked, rising, hair wild, cheeks wet with tears.
“No,” Jaime said bitterly, looking at Tywin’s body. “But I saw what you and father were blind to, that man was not jesting, I saw his brutality in battle.”
Kevan turned to the throne, to Tommen. “We need to send you somewhere safe your grace,” he said firmly, eyes darting between mother and son. “This cannot be the end of his killing attempts.”
Cersei wiped her tears, eyes burning. “He wants war, he’ll have it. I’ll see King’s Landing bathed in flame before I bend the knee, I will burn everything so he can rule a kingdom of ashes before he sits on the Iron throne!”
Jaime approached her quietly.
She didn’t look at him.
“Cersei,” he said softly, his voice low, rough. “Don’t be an idiot.”
Her eyes snapped to his, wide and burning.
He reached for her hand held it tight.
“If you stay here,” he said, “you’ll suffer Father’s fate. You saw what that thing did. You saw what he did.”
Cersei pulled her hand away, but Jaime stepped closer.
“There’s no fighting that. No plan. No wildfire. No gold. No throne worth it.”
She tried to look away, to hide the shaking in her shoulders, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Come with me,” he said. “Let’s leave this place. Let’s take our...”
He hesitated.
Cersei’s lips parted, but no sound came.
Jaime swallowed. “Let’s take your children. Tommen. Myrcella. Let’s keep them safe. The crown means nothing if it leads them to death.”
Her face twisted torn between pride and pain. Her teeth clenched as tears welled in her eyes.
“Go where?” she whispered, her voice trembling with disbelief. “Where would we run? To whom?”
Jaime’s reply was firm. Quiet, but resolute.
“Essos. Anywhere but here. Pentos. Lys. Even Volantis, gods be damned. I don’t care. We leave behind the name, the lion, the throne. And we live.”
Comments
firerock laser
He makes a valid point.
