Chapter 74: The Pyre
Early 299 Me
"You've done your work well, Leyton." I told the elderly Lord Hightower while his first daughter, Malora the Mad Maid, anointed my body with the sacred oils of the Seven.
"This is madness, father!" Ulfric shouted with his hand gripping his sheathed sword.
"Madness?" I grinned and considered hitting him with a 'This is Westeros!", but relented, "Only if it fails."
We stood atop the Hightower, the beacon fire unlit as the sky reddened with the arrival of the comet. I put a hand on Ulfric's face, and turned my head to look out at the other members of my family important enough to be here. Galmar, Lord of Pyke, Skjor Lord of Old Wyk, the second wife, Lythene and her seven children, Rhaella and her six, with Daenerys. Most important of all, Jorah junior dressed in a silk robe, and ninety nine virgins similarly robed led by Malora.
Bound to a multi tier pyre of oiled weirwood atop a crushed stone base of idols, the vegetable forms of the sorcerers, sorceresses, priests, and priestesses of Westeros and Essos including the High Priestess of R'hllor and the Most Devout of the Seven. Between them sacred and mystic texts, and the heads of various Valyrian monstrosities. I climbed over them all, and took my place amidst twenty one dragon eggs.
I took one final look and considered anything I had left to say to those assembled.
"Needs more fire." I said, then laid down to burn.
Leyton brought the lit torch to the pyre, which ignited fast enough that he needed to hop back or loose his eyebrows. It was a time of weeping, wailing, and for some dark fascination, but for me, I couldn't even tell when the blaze touched me. The fire within burned hotter than the fire without. Eventually, it just felt like sweet release.
The virgins disrobed, joining hands they danced around the pyre and sang together in perfect harmony, almost loud enough for people to miss Rhaella's scream as Jorah Junior disrobed and began to climb the burning pyre. Ulfric tried to help her stop him, but I commanded them to stop and they did. Jorah II Mormont climbed through the blaze and held my charring body to his chest.
Finally, the comet came into view and I died.
The dancing virgins slowed as their bellies swelled, and all around them witnessed them stop and give birth to ninety nine sons who transitioned from fully First Men features in the first, to fully Valyrian features in the last, born of the Old and the New. Leyton took up his grandson, a boy of pure Valyrian purple and silver gold and kissed him on the head.
Around me, the cracking of dragon eggs sounded as my new body changed, the flesh of the thirteen year old Jorah absorbing the power of the ritual, the raw magic of the comet and sacrifice. His skin split as the new man within burst out, seven feet tall and built like a god, flawless skin and vivacious hair silky smooth. With a gesture my naked form was garbed in robes of fire and I pulled seven stars from the night sky, setting them into a blazing crown that cooled into celestial gold, bands of which adorned my fingers and arms, and formed a torc around my neck of a roaring bear and a snarling dragon. Descending the pyre, in one hand I held Dawn, and in the other I snatched up the most beautiful of the dragons, Sunfyre reborn to grow into all the dreadful power of Balerion and more still.
"Madness was it?" I asked Ulfric as I emerged from the conflagration.
"Father?" my first born gasped.
"You all thought you were finally rid of me." I chuckled, for the first time in months not feeling like pressing hot coals to my ribs, "Finally free, cut loose from my strings. It only ends when I say it ends, and if I could withstand years of agony for this perfect moment. None in this world will never be free of me."
"Monster!" Rhaella screamed as she crept towards the edge of the Hightower with our youngest in her arms.
"Oh no. Don't do it." I sounded out with fullness of my sincerity obvious in every word, "Don't ruin my awesome murder suicide with your lame murder suicide."
"For all his cruelty, Aerys never murdered our children!" she shrieked, making my big moment all about her.
"He had the Maesters for that." I quipped back then pointed in front of me, "Bitch, get your ass away from that ledge."
Rhaella wanted to jump, she wanted to get away from this evil world and make it as tragic as possible, but I didn't let her. She tried, and she failed, her will incapable of resisting me even before I ate Lord Farwynd's brain, she stood no chance post super version of Denaerys's ritual.
Thus sayeth the Lord.
"What now?" Ulfric asked, completely torn up about my kinslaying ascension.
He'd get over it. I rate fathering half siblings on his childhood crush higher on the emotional damage scale than body snatching a brother he hardly knew. He overcame the first and grew into a fine man. This will just make him finer.
"What changes for any of you?" I asked in reply, "If not for the constant torturous pain, I was basically living the life of a god already. My leap in power means nothing, because I was already at the top of this world. Cities burned at my command, monsters fell under my blade, the gods themselves failed to stop me. I had all the wine and women a man could ever dream of, and then I had them again. I live in a palatial fortress, attended by hundreds of concubines with over a thousand children. My sons have grown into men I admire, and my daughters are married to good husbands. Endless might can give me nothing more than what I already have. The whole world is mine, as it already has been. Flying around on fire breathing dragons will be sweet, though, and I am looking forward to that."
I breathed in deeply and let out a sigh. My ascension is quite the quality of life improvement, but like I told Ned.
I already won.
Thus sayeth Jorah.
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I'm proud of this work. During it I achieved a major breakthrough in writing. Over the course of this story I managed to almost fully wean myself off referential humor and irreverent lead men, and write a serious hardboiled masculine protagonist. It's funny that I then after did an almost flawless run through Naruto in 'Zabuza's Waifu Adventures' in which the protagonist grapples with his masculinity through the use of that humor played straight by the character.
This is the finest ending I've ever crafted, though I am deeply partial to the ending of 'It's Me, Dio!' where the character concluded that no amount of distraction would ever fix what's wrong with him, he'll never get back what he has lost, and he will never be happy.
Jorah's final ritual is a climax of his character arc as the man who takes what other people do and does it better, as well as the dark climax of his inverted archetype the Messiah, in which he, as a dark version of the Trinity satanically inverts the Passion of the Christ.
Path of the Hungry Bear is one of a three part disconnected series in which reincarnators give over all that is good about them (referred to as positive carma in the first and second stories) to the Devil in order to live again in a fictional setting with a bonus power. All three characters have the Messianic Archetype, darkly, and I play in these with the idea of saving humanity by hurting it.
Mark in 'Actually Invincible' Attempts to save humanity from its own nature, but I hadn't committed to breaking with reference humor and irreverent characters so Mark's struggle was lost in the sauce and the spectacle until he flat out explained himself, which is not the kind of subtle maturity in my writing I wanted even at the time, let alone now.
Big Juan in the ironically titled, 'In Cyberpunk with Fallout System' was the most likeable of the three protagonists because in tone with his setting he only ever set out to save himself and the small world of people he cared about.
Jorah was the character I dedicated the full plunge to, the one I said no more to his dialogue and monologues being full of jokes, but instead focus the humor around the absurdity of his chud-ness with everything played straight instead of for laughs. Jorah was the protagonist with the most straightforward version of the save humanity conflict, with the White Walkers, Wildlings, and the dick heads competing for the Iron Throne as his rivals. My trepid heart said 'Hey, all these bad guys really suck, so I can just play a barbaric mid intelligence bastard straight from start to finish and no one will object to what he's doing because the people he's doing deserve it and everyone's going to like it.'
Everyone did not in fact 'like it'.
But I did. I liked it a lot. I wrote a saga two novels in length and I've added a novel and a half to the sequel and that one still has gas in the tank. I've even got a bit of the third installment done and I'm planning a fourth for my grand finale as a fan fiction writer. If you liked it too and you want to become a patron of my art, as well as support me and my family, you can do so at
ko-fi.com/jmanm