Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Will the White Walkers flee before Lightbringer similar to this?


Potential Spoilers Below

I keep telling everyone that similarities between The Wheel of Time (TWOT) and A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) are vast even if there are those out there that say otherwise.

What happened when Callandor was first wielded:

He stumbled suddenly, not seeing the dead man at his feet until he was lying on his back atop his flute case on the stone floor.

Be’lal raised his blade of black fire, snarling. “Take it! Take Callandor and defend yourself! Take it, or I will kill you now! If you will not take it, I will slay you!”

“No!”

Even Be’lal gave a start at the command in that woman’s voice. The Forsaken stepped back out of the arc of Rand’s sword and turned his head to frown at Moiraine as she came striding through the battle, her eyes fixed on him, ignoring the screaming deaths around her. “I thought you were neatly out of the way, woman. No matter. You are only an annoyance. A stinging fly. A biteme. I will cage you with the others, and teach you to serve the Shadow with your puny powers,” he finished with a contemptuous laugh, and raised his free hand.

Moiraine had not stopped or slowed while he spoke. She was no more than thirty paces from him when he moved his hand, and she raised both of hers as well.

There was an instant of surprise on the Forsaken’s face, and he had time to scream “No!” Then a bar of white fire hotter than the sun shot from the Aes Sedai’s hands, a glaring rod that banished all shadows. Before it, Be’lal became a shape of shimmering motes, specks dancing in the light for less than a heartbeat, flecks consumed before his cry faded.

There was silence in the chamber as that bar of light vanished, silence except for the moans of the wounded. The fighting had stopped dead, veiled men and men in breastplates alike standing as if stunned.

“He was right concerning one thing,” Moiraine said, as coolly serene as if she were standing in a meadow. “You must take Callandor. He meant to slay you for it, but it is your birthright. Better by far that you knew more before your hand held that hilt, yet you have come to the point now, and there is no further time for learning. Take it, Rand.”

Whips of black lightning curled around her; she screamed as they lifted her, hurled her to slide along the floor like a sack until she came up against one of the columns.

Rand stared up at where the lightning had come from. There was a deeper shadow up there, near the top of the columns, a blackness that made all other shadows look like noonday, and from it, two eyes of fire stared back at him.

Slowly the shadow descended, resolving into Ba’alzamon, clothed in dead black, like a Myrddraal’s black. Yet even that was not so dark as the shadow that clung to him. He hung in the air, two spans above the floor, glaring at Rand with a rage as fierce as his eyes. “Twice in this life I have offered you the chance to serve me living.” Flames leaped in his mouth as he spoke, and every word roared like a furnace. “Twice you have refused, and wounded me. Now you will serve the Lord of the Grave in death. Die, Lews Therin Kinslayer. Die, Rand al’Thor. It is time for you to die! I take your soul!”

As Ba’alzamon put forth his hand, Rand pushed himself up, threw himself desperately toward Callandor, still glittering and flashing in midair. He did not know whether he could reach it, or touch it if he did, but he was sure it was his only chance.

Ba’alzamon’s blow struck him as he leapt, struck inside him, a ripping and crumpling, tearing something loose, trying to pull a part of him away. Rand screamed. He felt as if he were collapsing like an empty sack, as if he were being turned inside out. The pain in his side, the wound taken at Falme, was almost welcome, something to hang on to, a reminder of life. His hand closed convulsively. On Callandor’s hilt.

The One Power surged through him, a torrent greater than he could believe, from saidin into the sword. The crystal blade shone brighter than even Moiraine’s fire had. It was impossible to look at, impossible any longer to see that it was a sword, only that light blazed in his fist. He fought the flow, wrestled with the implacable tide that threatened to carry him, all that was really him, into the sword with it. For a heartbeat that took centuries he hung, wavering, balanced on the brink of being scoured away like sand before a flash flood. With infinite slowness the balance firmed. It was still as though he stood barefoot on a razor’s edge above a bottomless drop, yet something told him this was the best that could be expected. To channel this much of the Power, he must dance on that sharpness as he had danced the forms of the sword.

He turned to face Ba’alzamon. The tearing within him had ceased as soon as his hand touched Callandor. Only an instant had passed, yet it seemed to have lasted forever. “You will not take my soul,” he shouted. “This time, I mean to finish it once and for all! I mean to finish it now!”

Ba’alzamon fled, man and shadow vanishing.

For a moment Rand stared, frowning. There had been a sense of—folding—as Ba’alzamon left. A twisting, as if Ba’alzamon had in some way bent what was. Ignoring the men staring at him, ignoring Moiraine crumpled at the column base, Rand reached out, through Callandor, and twisted reality to make a door to somewhere else. He did not know to where, except that it was where Ba’alzamon had gone.

“I am the hunter now,” he said, and stepped through.




With a jerk, he came awake, lying there shivering in the dark heat. Sweat soaked his smallclothes, and the linen sheets beneath his back. His side burned, where an old wound had never healed properly. He traced the rough scar, a circle nearly an inch across, still tender after all this time. Even Moiraine’s Aes Sedai Healing could not mend it completely. But I’m not rotting yet. And I’m not mad, either. Not yet. Not yet. That said it all. He wanted to laugh, and wondered if that meant he was a little mad already.


ASOIAF: A little backstory

Burnt,” said Salladhor Saan, “and be glad of that, my friend. Do you know the tale of the forging of Lightbringer? I shall tell it to you. It was a time when darkness lay heavy on the world. To oppose it, the hero must have a hero’s blade, oh, like none that had ever been. And so for thirty days and thirty nights Azor Ahai labored sleepless in the temple, forging a blade in the sacred fires. Heat and hammer and fold, heat and hammer and fold, oh, yes, until the sword was done. Yet when he plunged it into water to temper the steel it burst asunder.

“Being a hero, it was not for him to shrug and go in search of excellent grapes such as these, so again he began. The second time it took him fifty days and fifty nights, and this sword seemed even finer than the first. Azor Ahai captured a lion, to temper the blade by plunging it through the beast’s red heart, but once more the steel shattered and split. Great was his woe and great was his sorrow then, for he knew what he must do.

“A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. ‘Nissa Nissa,’ he said to her, for that was her name, ‘bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.’ She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

“Now do you see my meaning? Be glad that it is just a burnt sword that His Grace pulled from that fire. Too much light can hurt the eyes, my friend, and fire burns.” Salladhor Saan finished the last grape and smacked his lips. “When do you think the king will bid us sail, good ser?”



“No,” the old man said. “It must be you. Tell them. The prophecy . . . my brother’s dream . . . Lady Melisandre has misread the signs. Stannis . . . Stannis has some of the dragon blood in him, yes. His brothers did as well. Rhaelle, Egg’s little girl, she was how they came by it . . . their father’s mother . . . she used to call me Uncle Maester when she was a little girl. I remembered that, so I allowed myself to hope . . . perhaps I wanted to . . . we all deceive ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong, she has to know that . . . light without heat . . . an empty glamor . . . the sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam. Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that, at the Citadel. Make them listen. They must send her a maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught, protected. For all these years I’ve lingered, waiting, watching, and now that the day has dawned I am too old. I am dying, Sam.” Tears ran from his blind white eyes at that admission. “Death should hold no fear for a man as old as me, but it does. Isn’t that silly? It is always dark where I am, so why should I fear the darkness? Yet I cannot help but wonder what will follow, when the last warmth leaves my body. Will I feast forever in the Father’s golden hall as the septons say? Will I talk with Egg again, find Dareon whole and happy, hear my sisters singing to their children? What if the horselords have the truth of it? Will I ride through the night sky forever on a stallion made of flame? Or must I return again to this vale of sorrow? Who can say, truly? Who has been beyond the wall of death to see? Only the wights, and we know what they are like. We know.”


ASOIAF - What I do know:

A lot of people think that Dany is Azor Ahai and her dragons are Lightbringer.  The problem I see with that is if the dragons were Lightbringer why didn’t the White Walkers flee before them?  As a matter of fact during their first encounter the Night King himself set a trap.  Click here to see how his trap relates directly back to TWOT.  I don’t see the Red Sword of Heroes being a weapon that could be so easily turned upon it’s master.


We saw neither the White Walkers nor the Wights flee from the dragon's fire.  This was a trap that the Night King planned and he got his prize. 

I also see if playing out more like TWOT.  A little disclaimer: I write my theories based upon what I think is going to happen in the books and not the TV show.  I use what I learn from the TV show and apply it towards my theory. 

How I see Lightbringer in action:

In the books I believe Lightbringer will be Dawn.  In the TV show as they haven’t had time to explain the significance of Dawn, they just may make it Longclaw.  After Jon Snow forges the sword it will then in the presence of the White Walkers and Wights burn bright enough to burn the eyes.  Click here to see my theory on the forging of Lightbringer.  Sure, the dragons are powerful weapons but from everything we have seen they aren’t enough to defeat the Army of the Dead alone.  I see the dragons more like balefire, although not as powerful, similar to the white bar of light Moraine used to defeat Be’lal.  If they are Lightbringer why do the living have to mark a line in the sand in an attempt to hold them back?  When it is forged, I don’t think it will immediately glow in Jon’s hands like Callandor.  I think when he brandishes it after they are defeated at Winterfell and are forced to fall back and encounters Melisandre one last time and kills her will it then and only then become the weapon it was meant to be.  I only hope their retreat is on par with the retreat that took place in TWOT in its epic storytelling.  Click here to see my blog on that.  It will most likely be Sam saving the day and blowing the Horn of Winter.  He has had the horn in his possession since Jon gave it to him hopefully, he still has it and awakens the Kings of Winter in the Winterfell crypts.  Maybe he passes it to Podrick Payne, in an attempt to get it to Jon, and he blows it as I have always thought he would.  Click here to see my theory on that.  Moirane searched 20 years for the Dragon Reborn and helped him claim Callandor in an effort to defeat the Dark One.  Melisandre has also been searching for the Prince that was Promised for years in an attempt to defeat the Great Other.  I think she has been led astray however as I believe R’hllor to be their true enemy.  Rand has a wound that never healed that Moiraine could never heal; likewise, Melisandre brought Jon Snow back but his wounds as of now have never fully healed either.  I see the White Walkers fleeing like Ba’alzamon before Callandor.  It is fitting that the Night King is Ba’alzamon in his Moridin form after the Dark One brings him back from death yet once again.  I see those wights caught up in the very presence of Lightbringer bursting into flames and those out of range retreating for the first time taking a cue from their masters; the White Walkers.  How do you see it playing out?

Comments encouraged.  Love to hear the idea’s of others.  Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth.  I simply look at the information presented and go from there.  If you can shine a light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.

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