Scene 1: The Hunt
Location: The Outskirts of Stoney Sept.
Time: Dawn.
[Perspective: Jon Connington]
He was close. He could taste it.
Jon Connington kicked his horse over a fallen fence, ignoring the animal's exhaustion. The rain was falling in sheets now, a cold, miserable deluge that turned the world grey, but to Jon, the world was bright red.
"There!" Jon shouted, pointing his sword at a patch of brambles near the creek.
A squad of Griffin knights dismounted and hacked through the thorns. They found nothing but trampled mud and a piece of velvet torn from a tunic.
"He was here," Jon hissed, staring at the fabric. It was yellow gold—Baratheon colors. And it was stained with fresh blood.
"My Lord," his lieutenant panted, riding up. "We have swept the riverbank. The tracks vanish at the water."
"He didn't vanish!" Jon snapped, his voice tight with the manic energy of a hunter who has cornered a wolf. "He is bleeding. He is alone. He is six feet six inches of stag-helmed traitor! A man like that does not dissolve!"
Jon looked at the town looming ahead. Stoney Sept.
It was a sprawling, ugly maze of stone cottages and septrys built on the hills. Smoke rose from a thousand chimneys.
"He went to the town," Jon realized. "He thinks he can hide in the rat's nest."
Jon felt a surge of triumph so potent it almost made him dizzy. Tywin Lannister was sitting on his rock. Mace Tyrell was besieging an empty castle. But he, Jon Connington, had run the Usurper to ground.
He imagined the look on Rhaegar's face when he dropped Robert Baratheon's head at the foot of the Iron Throne. I did this for you, he would say. I saved your kingdom.
"Seal it," Jon ordered, his eyes burning. "Seal the town. Every gate. Every sewer grate. Every goat path."
"My Lord, it is a large town," the lieutenant warned. "We have three thousand men. To search every house..."
"Then we search every house!" Jon screamed, the stress finally cracking his composure. "I don't care if you have to tear the stones apart with your fingernails! He is in there! And he is mine!"
He spurred his horse toward the main gate. He wasn't tired. He wasn't cold. He was electric with the terrifying certainty that history was waiting for him just up the road.
[Perspective: Robert Baratheon]
Location: A Cellar beneath "The Peach" Brothel, Stoney Sept.
The world was pain.
Robert sat in the darkness, his back pressed against a cold stone barrel of ale. His breath came in ragged, shallow hitches.
He pressed a rag against his side. The lance graze from the ambush hadn't gone deep, but it had bled. And bleeding left a trail.
He had spent the last four hours running.
Without the
When the Griffin knights closed in on the ridge, he hadn't used a map to find the exit. He had listened to the frogs. (Frogs go quiet when horses are near). He had crawled through three hundred yards of drainage ditch, submerged in filth, to mask his scent.
He had entered Stoney Sept not as a conquering King, but as a beggar, slipping over the wall in the pre-dawn gloom and breaking into this cellar.
Robert closed his eyes. The migraine had faded to a dull throb, leaving behind a terrifying clarity.
I almost died, he thought.
It wasn't the first time he had faced death. But it was the first time he had faced it without the interface. There had been no red warning markers. No health bars. Just the cold, chaotic reality of steel and mud.
He looked at his hands. They were covered in dirt and dried blood. They were the hands of Robert Baratheon. But the mind behind them...
Who am I?
The thought bubbled up from the exhaustion.
I was a man from Earth. A man who read books and played games. Then I was a voice in a void. Now I am a King in a cellar.
For months, he had treated this world like a problem to be solved. A logistical puzzle. Fix the supply lines. Cure the flux. Snipe the commander.
He had relied on the System like a crutch. He had let the Eagle Vision do the seeing for him.
And the moment I went blind, I almost lost everything.
He heard heavy boots thumping on the floorboards above him. The sounds of men shouting in the street.
"Open up! By order of the Hand!"
Connington was here.
Robert gripped his warhammer. It lay heavy and cold across his lap.
He realized then that the System hadn't made him a hero. It had just made him efficient. But efficiency wouldn't save him now.
If they come down those stairs, Robert thought, a grim calmness settling over him, I won't get a combat prompt. I won't get a reload.
He touched the wound on his side. The pain was sharp. It was real.
Good, Robert thought. Pain means I'm still here.
He wasn't a gamer anymore. He wasn't a transmigrator. He was a cornered animal in the dark, waiting for the hunter to open the door.
And for the first time since he woke up in this body, Robert Baratheon didn't plan. He didn't calculate.
He just waited, listening to the bells of the Sept begin to ring, signaling the morning prayer—or perhaps, his funeral.
[End of Scene]
Chapter 17: The Search
Scene 2: The Hiding
Location: A Tanner's Hovel, Weaver's Lane.
Time: Mid-morning.
Robert lay on a straw pallet that smelled of sour milk and old sweat. He was covered in three layers of rough wool blankets.
He smelled worse than the bed.
The sewer filth from his escape was caked into his hair and skin. He hadn't washed it off. Instead, he had smeared more muck onto his face.
"They are coming down the lane," the old tanner whispered, peeking through a crack in the shutter. His hands were shaking. "Three of them. Red Griffins."
Robert looked at the man. He saw the terror.
"Easy, Wat," Robert rasped. He didn't use his 'Lord's voice.' He used the soft, rumbling tone he kept for his drinking companions. "You aren't hiding a King. You're hiding your sick son. Just tell them the truth: I'm dying and I shit myself."
"If they find you..." Wat stammered.
"They won't," Robert promised. He reached out and squeezed the old man's wrist. "You gave me bread when I was starving, Wat. I won't let them touch you. Just hold the door."
Suddenly, a chime rang in Robert's skull. Soft. Clear.
The headache vanished. The world sharpened. Through the cracks in the wood, the blue outlines of three soldiers appeared, glowing against the grey morning light. He could see their heart rates. He could see the tension in their muscles.
They are tired, the System analyzed. They are disgusted. They don't want to be here.
BANG.
The door flew open. It wasn't unlatched; it was kicked off its leather hinges.
A knight in Griffin livery ducked to enter the low room. He held a sword in one hand and a scented handkerchief to his nose with the other.
"Search it!" the knight ordered the two men behind him.
Wat stepped forward, bowing low, trembling. "My Lords! Please! There is sickness here!"
"We look for a traitor," the knight spat, scanning the dark room. "Big man. Black hair. Bleeding."
"Only my son, ser," Wat wept, pointing to the pile of rags in the corner. "He has the flux! The bad flux! He's been dying for three days!"
The knight stepped closer.
Robert didn't move. He lay perfectly still, curling his massive frame into a fetal ball to hide his height.
Robert forced his body to go limp. He let out a low, gurgling moan—a sound of pure misery.
The smell hit the knight. It was the stench of the sewer, thick and cloying, indistinguishable from the rot of advanced dysentery.
The knight gagged. He took a step back, covering his mouth.
"Gods," the knight swore. "It smells like a corpse already."
"Please, ser," Wat begged, wringing his hands. "Don't take him! He's all I have!"
The knight looked at the lump under the blankets. He saw the filth-smeared hair. He smelled the disease. He looked at the old tanner, whose terror felt genuine (because it was).
The knight didn't want to touch a man dying of the flux. He didn't want to catch it.
"Clear," the knight shouted to his men, turning on his heel. "Just another dying peasant. Let's move to the next one."
He hurried out into the fresh air, desperate to get the smell out of his nose.
The door swung shut.
Wat collapsed against the wall, sliding down to the dirt floor, gasping for air.
"They're gone," Wat whispered. "Mother have mercy, they're gone."
Robert sat up slowly. The blue overlay showed the soldiers moving away, their threat indicators turning from Red to Yellow.
"You did well, Wat," Robert said, his voice calm and steady. "You looked them in the eye and you beat them."
Outside - The Market Square
Jon Connington watched the knight emerge from the hovel.
"Nothing?" Connington demanded, riding up.
"Just a sick boy, my Lord. Flux," the knight reported, wiping his nose.
Connington gripped his reins until his knuckles cracked.
"Nothing," Connington hissed. "Five hundred houses. And nothing."
He looked around the square. The townsfolk were watching him. They stood in doorways, on balconies, behind windows. They weren't cowering anymore. They were staring.
There was a sullen, silent defiance in their eyes.
Connington realized with a jolt of cold fury that they knew.
They knew where Robert was. The baker knew. The smith knew. The whore knew. The entire town had formed a conspiracy of silence against him.
"He is here," Connington whispered, his voice trembling with rage. "They are mocking us. They are laughing at us."
He looked up at the great Sept of the town. The bells were beginning to ring again—a loud, rhythmic clanging that sounded like a taunt.
"They think they can hide him in their rat holes," Connington said, drawing his sword. "They think this town is a sanctuary."
He turned to his lieutenant, his eyes wild.
"If they love the Usurper so much... let them burn with him."
[End of Scene]
Chapter 17: The Search
Scene 3: The Arson
Location: The Market Square, facing the Sept.
Time: High Noon.
[Perspective: Jon Connington]
The bells wouldn't stop.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
They echoed off the cobblestones, hammering into Jon Connington's skull. Every peal felt like a laugh. Every ring felt like a code being tapped out to the enemy he knew was watching him.
Jon sat on his warhorse in the center of the square. His men had kicked down three hundred doors. They had dragged men from their beds and emptied cellars.
Nothing.
"He is here," Jon muttered, his eyes darting to the windows where the townsfolk watched him. The fear in their eyes was gone, replaced by a sullen, silent hate. "I know he is here. I can smell him."
He looked up at the Sept. It was a modest structure of timber and stone, but its bell tower dominated the town. The ringing was deafening now, drowning out his orders.
"The priests," Jon whispered, his hands trembling on the reins. "They are mocking me. They are signaling him."
"My Lord?" his lieutenant asked, looking uneasy. "The search teams are reporting negative contact in the North district. Should we—"
"Burn it," Jon ordered.
The lieutenant froze. "My Lord? That is the Sept. It is holy ground."
"It is a traitor's nest!" Jon screamed, his voice cracking. He pointed his sword at the tower with a shaking hand. "The Usurper is inside! I know it! He is laughing at us from that tower! Burn it down!"
"Sir, the people..."
"BURN IT!" Connington roared, his face twisted into a mask of paranoid fury. "Silence those bells!"
The archers hesitated, then notched fire arrows. The torches were thrown.
The dry timber of the Sept porch caught instantly. The flames licked up the wooden siding, climbing toward the bell tower. Smoke began to billow into the square, black and oily.
For a moment, the town was silent, stunned by the sacrilege.
Then, the scream rose.
"Shame!" a woman yelled from a balcony.
"Gods curse you!" a man shouted from a rooftop.
A clay pot flew from an alleyway, shattering against a Griffin knight's helmet. Then a brick. Then a storm of cobblestones.
"Hold the line!" Jon roared as the crowd surged forward.
This wasn't an army. It was a mob of washerwomen, smiths, and beggars. But there were thousands of them. They swarmed the knights, stabbing with sewing shears, swinging heavy iron skillets, dragging men off their horses.
"Kill them!" Connington shrieked, slashing his sword at a peasant who tried to grab his reins. "Put them down!"
The square dissolved into chaos. The fire roared, the bells chimed their dying notes, and the streets filled with blood.
Connington spun his horse, looking wildly at the burning tower, waiting for Robert to run out.
"Come out!" Connington screamed at the flames. "Face me!"
But the tower burned. The bells fell silent as the ropes snapped. And still, Robert Baratheon did not appear.
[Perspective: Robert Baratheon]
Location: The Tanner's Attic, overlooking the Square.
Robert watched the Sept burn through a crack in the roof tiles.
He felt the heat on his face. He saw the hatred in the eyes of the townsfolk as they tore a Griffin knight from his saddle and beat him with stones.
He stayed perfectly still.
A younger Robert would have kicked the door down and charged in to save them. A younger Robert would have died in that square, overwhelmed by numbers.
But this Robert watched the blue text scrolling across his vision.
A grim, terrifying smile touched Robert's lips beneath the layer of sewer muck.
Connington had made the ultimate mistake. He had turned the terrain into a weapon against himself. His knights were trapped in the narrow streets, surrounded by fire and a hostile populace. Their lances were useless in the crush. Their horses were panicking.
Robert looked down at the tactical map overlay.
The red dots of Connington's men were clustered in the center, fighting for their lives against the grey dots of the civilians.
And from the outside, a massive wave of blue dots—Robert's reformed army—was silently encircling the town walls.
You wanted to find me, Jon, Robert thought, gripping the handle of his warhammer. You burned the gods' house to smoke me out.
He stood up in the shadows. He didn't blow the horn yet. He would wait until the Griffin was tired. Until the smoke had blinded them completely.
He turned to old Wat, who was cowering in the corner, clutching a knife.
"Stay here, Wat," Robert said, his voice deep and calm, the voice of a man who has already won the game.
"My Lord?" Wat whispered. "The fire... they are burning the town."
"Let them burn," Robert said coldly, watching Connington scream orders at a breaking line. "He is digging his own grave."
Robert checked the time on the overlay.
"Ten minutes," Robert whispered to the darkness. "And then I ring the bells."
[End of Chapter 17]