GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 424 - Another Duel? — The Fight Begins
The mad flame in Euron Crow's Eye's single eye, the one that made grown men tremble, went out.
He stared at the man on the cliff. At the thing standing behind him. A shadow god built from pure darkness, consuming his prized "pets" one by one, casually, the way a man pops candies into his mouth.
His trump card. His lifeline. The divine power he had sailed to the shadow lands of Asshai to claim, the power he had paid for with his own eye , fragile as a joke before this opponent.
On the cliff, the terrifying shadow god finished devouring the last Shadow Assassin. Then it simply flowed back toward the ground, silent as melted ink, and vanished.
It became a shadow again. Lynn's shadow. Stretched long and thin by the dying light of the evening sun, indistinguishable from the shadow of any rock on the ice.
But every man on that battlefield , Northern soldier and surviving Ironborn alike , felt it. Their souls trembled. They couldn't make themselves look at a shadow anymore. Any shadow. Because who could say what might reach out of that darkness in the next heartbeat?
Lynn looked down at the face on the ice, drained of every drop of color, and smiled.
Pouring all that experience into magic upgrades had been worth it.
Every point.
"Pfft—"
Euron Greyjoy couldn't hold it together any longer. The backlash from his own magic punched a mouthful of blood out of him, and it splattered across the deck in a dark, spreading stain.
The ultimate humiliation.
He felt like a street performer , a monkey dressed up and dancing, burning through every trick he had, somersault after somersault , only for some passerby to stroll over and pin him to the ground without breaking stride. Pluck him bare.
"Ah... aaaah..."
The sound that came out of his throat wasn't a roar. It was something rawer than that. The final, cornered screech of a beast that has nowhere left to run.
He had lost. Completely. Utterly.
His shadow magic , the trump card he had staked everything on , hadn't even made the man blink. His army was being massacred by Northern madmen. His Iron Fleet was going the same way, chopped apart like kindling.
But he was Euron Crow's Eye.
The chosen of the Drowned God.
The king this world was made for.
He would not die here, broken and bleeding, in the dirt.
"Trial by combat!"
He dug for every scrap of strength he had left and put it into the words.
His magnificent black cloak came off in one ripping motion. He threw it to the deck and ground his boot into it, over and over, like something was burning in his chest that needed out.
Then he straightened. Raised his longsword , slick with his own blood , and leveled it at Lynn on the cliff.
"Lynn! King in the North!"
"Do you dare face me like a real man? A fair fight , just the two of us?!"
"Right here! On this ice!"
"No magic! No armies! You, me, and the swords in our hands!"
"Do you dare?!"
His voice rang across the silent battlefield. There was something in it , something desperate, and somehow still grand.
Some of the Northern soldiers mid-pursuit actually stopped. Looked toward the cliff.
Robb Stark's brow creased.
Trial by combat. The oldest tradition in Westeros. The most "honorable" way for nobles to settle what couldn't be settled otherwise.
Refusing meant cowardice.
Euron Greyjoy, that lunatic, was using the entire noble code of Westeros as a leash around Lynn's neck.
He'd calculated it perfectly. Lynn was King in the North. He couldn't refuse a seemingly fair challenge in front of an audience this size. And if Lynn agreed , if he set aside that sorcery he wielded like breathing,
Euron glanced down at his armor. Black as a starless sky, with that strange, eerie red glow running through the steel.
Valyrian steel armor.
The only known set in the world. Indestructible. Light as cloth.
Without magic in the equation, he was confident. Absolutely confident. He could wear that Northern boy down until there was nothing left. The armor alone would see to it.
This was his last move.
Every eye on the battlefield fixed on the cliff.
Waiting.
Lynn looked down at Euron, standing there on the ice, sword raised, striking a pose he clearly thought was devastating, and his expression was the one you'd give a very stupid child.
Trial by combat.
Fair.
He almost laughed.
Would a man with an automatic rifle put it down because a caveman challenged him to a fistfight?
And that Valyrian steel armor , against an ordinary blade, Euron was invincible before the fight even started.
You'd have to be brain-damaged to agree.
"You don't seem to understand your situation."
Lynn shook his head. Something close to pity crossed his face.
"You don't even have the standing to negotiate with me."
He didn't bother looking at Euron after that.
He raised his hand.
Euron's pupil snapped shut.
That gesture.
Lynn reached toward the sky, almost lazily, and closed his fist.
The moisture in the air for miles around answered. The mist still rising from the meteorite's craters. The warm breath steaming from the mouths and nostrils of soldiers across the battlefield. Every particle of water hanging in the cold evening air,
It all came screaming toward his open palm.
A spear took shape.
A spear built entirely from ice crystal, forming in his grip with a sound like the world exhaling. The shaft was flawless, clear as glass, radiating cold that bit at the air around it. The tip , razor-edged, perfect , caught the last light of the sunset and shattered it into a spray of cold color.
"No... you can't—"
The tragic defiance drained from Euron's face. What replaced it was pure, naked fear.
He wasn't playing fair. How could he not play fair,
"No—!"
Euron's scream went hysterical.
The only answer was a shriek of displaced air tearing across the battlefield.
WHOOSH,
The ice spear left Lynn's hand trailing a white streak that hung in the air like a scar. Euron's vision blurred. Then an irresistible force hit him square in the chest.
➤ Next: Valyrian Steel Armor