Nightmare Fuel / Song of a Northern Sorcerer

• The seizing of Castle Pyke in Chapter Six becomes a Mook Horror Show for Captain Hugo Pyke and his dozen Ironborn. As Nox rampages through the castle, Pyke orders the rope bridges be cut, only for it to be too late. Then one by one, the shutters slam shut, the last one decapitating an Ironborn that tries to brace it open, leaving the hall in nigh-complete darkness, save only for a lit torch.^note This takes place in mid-day. The three archers loose into the darkness, only to be felled by their returned arrows. After much toying with the dozen men, like sending shadow tendrils to snuff out the torch, Nox unsheathes his lightsaber, casting the hall in a familiar red glow.
  Nox: "Let me show you, Captain Hugo Pyke, what it truly means to fight against a Sith."
• The Valyria-Expedition! Although the whole endeavour ends up successful, the Smoking Sea proves the demonic legends of its terrifying inhabitants and landscape are no mere myths.
  • What looks like an island located in the river used by Nox & his volunteers reveals itself to be one of the Old Men by the River, gigantic draconic turtles once worshipped by the Rhoynar civilization. Thankfully, it devours only one unlucky sailor before it moves on.
  • When there's an attempt made to go on dry land and move further on, an unseen firewyrm roasts itself a hapless meal. Oh, and Oberyn Martell reveals them to be the culprit behind Aerea Targaryen's horrific demise: Their parasitic larvae infest other living beings, with the host eventually dying once the little firewyrms reach a specific size.
  • One sailor takes a nap, but when his friends try to wake him up, they find him dead, his back being covered and eaten through by giant, flesh-eating slugs.
  • Jon has to face off against a quite unnerving opponent: The dragon of the madman responsible for the Doom of Valyria, a titanic beast kept alive by the spirit of its master, a dreadnought outsizing the Black Dread himself. And driven thoroughly mad by its undead state.
• The fate of the conspirators, while absolutely deserved, doesn't make their deaths any less pretty:
  • After the failed coup in Winterfell, a Vale knight makes one too many remarks about Nox's wife & stillborn son. Nox's response? The knight gets pulverized by being forcefully pulled through the bars in his cell, until the knight is nothing but a bloody, limp heap! Oh & he's still alive by the end of it! How? Nox uses the Force to keep him so. Then Nox places his boot & crushes the knight's head slowly. As in, his skull cracks, his eyes pop out of them & blood pours from every orifice! Talk about Bullying a Dragon...
  • Oh, and just prior to & after the knight's death, Nox had these things to say. But the way he speaks of them is like casually discussing the weather. It's nothing short of chilling.
  Nox: "Trying to taunt me into making a mistake and quickly killing you. A move that would perhaps work on an amateur. But I am no amateur."
  • After having squeezed the knight through the cell bars.
  Nox: "As you can see, your definitions of pain and suffering are mere child's play when compared to mine. Unlike your pathetic excuse for tortures, I can twist and manipulate to keep an individual alive even after I've ruptured every organ and broken every bone in your body."
  • Lord Whitehill tries to offer information in exchange for exile, only for said information to be wrenched from his mind.
  • Roger Ryswell demands a Trial by Combat, leading to Ned pummeling his face until his head is demolished against the floor. His traumatized brothers are gelded and sent to the Wall.
  • Lords Bolton, Ryswell, Stout, Whitehill and Lady Dustin are tied to stakes, their limbs broken with a maul, which causes even Bolton to scream in pain. Their ears and tongues are removed, their eyes burned with a poker and they are disemboweled. And who ends up doing this? Why good ol' Ned Stark all by himself! The man who passes the sentence swings the sword indeed...
  • And Ser Lyn Corbray suffers even worse for killing Nox's son by being sentenced to eternity in a recreated Rakatan Mind Prison.
• Chapter 18. Nox sadistically informing Ebbert Whitehall in exquisite detail about his father's betrayal to save himself even at the expense of his own son, & how that said son did everything for nothing. By the end of it, Ebbert is left a sobbing wreck & Nox mighty pleased with himself.
  Nox: ''Ah, such a rush! I have missed this sensation! And now, Ebbert Whitehill, you have my permission to die."
  • The fate of the Order of the Guiding Hand in Oldtown. Every member is crucified upside down with a writ of their crimes & guilt nailed into their chests. And to ensure that they recieved the message, all of the surviving Maesters and Acolytes of the Citadel were not only forced to come out and watch alongside the road as their fellows were strung up, to also write out the writs of condemnation & prepare the posts and beams to which the Maesters would be executed upon.
• Chapter 19. Winter, Ned's direwolf tearing off Pycelle's leg after the old man tried to flee the throne room.
  • Cersei ordering Jaime to murder a innocent girl simply for the crime of looking like Myrcella. While she is unaware that it's her niece, if she had known that it was Tyrion's, one can easily imagine what she would've had done to her, given her hatred of her brother.
  Cersei: If she truly exists, and if she's still alive amongst those slavers, kill her. I won't stand for a peasant girl, a slave whore child at that, being passed off as Myrcella. Her very existence is an insult to us and our family. And a Lannister always repays those who insult them.
• Chapter 20: Nox slowly & painfully killing Janos Slynt for his near monumental screw up on a regicide level by crushing each vertebra in the man's neck while making sure his spinal column remains intact so as to not die too fast.
  • After the Maesters' conspiracy is exposed, revealing, among other things, that they deliberately ensured Joanna Lannister's death in childbirth, Tywin has both of Casterly Rock's maesters carved up and fed bit by bit to caged lions, with the butchers being specifically instructed by Tywin to keep them alive during the process for as long as possible. Sure they deserve it, but damn!
  Ignoring the cries of agony and pleas for mercy, Tywin Lannister watched dispassionately as the old Maester of Casterly Rock and his replacement were both slowly and methodically sliced by a team of butchers he'd brought up to the main keep. Tywin had given implicit instructions to the butchers that the men were to be carved up one piece at a time starting with their limbs and that they were to be kept alive as long as possible. And so far, the butchers had done exactly that. As he watched, one of the butchers finished severing what was left of the younger Maester's right leg from the rest of his body. The butcher then placed the portion of the severed limb onto a platter and handed it off to one of the guards, who then brought it over to a nearby cage where House Lannister had kept a pride of lions. The sigil of House Lannister eagerly licked the muzzles and fought against the bars of their cage as the guards threw the bloody pieces of the Maesters to them.
• Chapter 25. Pride, Joffrey's pet lion kills Tommen's pet fawn, Ser. Prance after Joffrey fed him to Pride. It's also mentioned that Pride isn't tamed in the slightest & is a fully grown lion, who has to be confined to Joffrey's chambers in a cage with a chain around its neck to ensure that it didn't harm anyone. Despite this, three servants have already been maimed & they mysteriously disappear afterwards. Anyone can easily deduce that Joffrey & to a lesser extent, Cersei, is responsible. Thankfully, Robert puts an end to Pride before it can do anymore damage.
  • Though it was well justified, Robert's anger is a frightening thing to behold. One can easily the fury if he ever learned the truth about Jon...
• Chapter 26. The White Walker's first appearance from Garlan Tyrell's perspective:
  As the figure moved out from the shadows and into the moonlight, Garlan felt his grip on his sword slacken as fear, fear unlike anything he had ever experienced, race through him like a rush of water breaking free from a dam. The man, if it even could be called that, was...withered. Withered like a corpse that'd been left to rot in the sun for days on end. Its skin was also a pale white that almost matched the snow, and the only clothes it had on were a pair of tattered pants and a tattered fur coat, yet it seemed completely unaffected by the cold surrounding them all. But the one thing he noticed the most about the figure was its eyes. They were bluer than any eyes than he had ever seen before. Blue almost to the point where they were glowing in the shadows.
  • The White Walker's scream, which is described as ungodly & causes pain & fear to its intended victims. Nox mentions that it's "sloppy, untrained and weak''.
  • The White Walker...just laughing, which is arguably more terrifying than anything else its done. Even composed characters like Oberyn & Nox are taken off guard.
  • Craster's last words, which started from a whimper & then becomes the ramblings of a madman as he rants on about the White Walkers.
  Craster: "You-You think you stand a chance against them!? I know! I know the truth! They are the old gods of the north! The gods of the First Men! I have not sacrificed my sons to them! I have given them my sons so that they may too become gods! And when my time comes! I shall stand at the right hand of the gods as they bring winter to all the land."
  • Nox laughing. Garlan describes it as far more frightening as his anger.
• Chapter 41. Not only has Joffrey seized the throne, which is bad enough, but Ramsay Snow is revealed to be alive and well and working in an official capacity as Joffrey's chief torturer. Joffrey then issues a proclamation reforming the Faith Militant, making worship of the Old Gods illegal and punishable by death and declaring House Stark and Nox as traitors to be executed. Ramsay is then ordered to lead a force into the Riverlands to "pacify" them by any means necessary, leaving little to wonder at what horrors await the innocent Riverlanders.
• Chapter 42 has an interlude from the point of view of Jaime, who is leading a march of 10,000 men alongside Ramsay Snow. They come across a small hamlet and discern that the Northern women stayed there, for which Ramsay orders the entire village punished. The villagers are herded into the sept they have almost finished building whilst the septon is put on a chair with a noose around his neck, following which Jaime (after some small reluctance) sets the sept on fire. All who try to escape the blazing inferno are forced back inside to die, apart from one child that a desperate adult tries to force through a gap in the walls to freedom only for one of the Faith Militant to bash the child's head in and plug the hole with their corpse so no one else can try. All the villagers did was offer them food and shelter for a single night.