Nerd In the North: 3-18
III-18: The Weight of Power
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
The hall was unrecognizable.
The Dreadfort was gone.
Where there had been damp, crushing dark, walls heavy with shadow and the weight of something watching, there was now something pristine.
White stone stretched high, too smooth, too perfect, gleaming like untouched snow in the thin winter light. The ceiling arched above like the ribs of some great beast, vast windows with clear glass where none had been before—glass or window. Sunlight poured through them, flooding the hall, washing away every inch of the gloom that had once clung to these stones like dried blood. No rot, no drafts crawling through the cracks, no lingering cold pressed into the bones of the walls.
It felt lighter, as if it had never known blood.
The body of Roose cooling in his office in a pool of dark red said otherwise.
Greg hadn’t seen the outside yet, but he knew that it wasn’t just the main hall and it wasn’t just Bolton’s office..
The whole place had changed.
Greg sat at the far end of the hall, slouched in the chair that had once belonged to roose bolton, one elbow propped on the armrest, chin resting in his palm.
Except it wasn’t the same chair anymore.
No black wood. its edges were smooth, pale like the polished bone, reflecting the light instead of swallowing it, it’s cushion a vivid blue like the new blank banners on the walls that once had been Roose’s black and red ones.
His shoulder didn’t ache anymore. The poison had been burnt away by a quick heal and the twisted wrongness and black evil Roose had left in his blood had faded with the dark lord’s death, leaving Greg’s body with the man’s last breath.
But something else had settled in its place.
Eyes.
Too many of them.
The hall was packed, nearly two thousand people crammed into the space, their attention locked on him. Soldiers, smallfolk, Bolton’s guests and remnants.
Not all of them knelt the same way.
His men had fallen first. some eager, some slower, but they had fought for this, bled for it, their friends dying for it. They had all watched him drag them back from the brink with hands that should have left them crippled, if not dead.
They didn’t look at him like a boy, or even a man.
Hell, he might take a war hero or a lord, at this point. Any of those would be better than the starry-eyed gazes sent his way right now.
No, they looked at him like something else.
The smallfolk—the ones who had lived their lives under the Flayed Man, loyally and fearfully serving the Boltons for generations—stared his way cautiously, some averting their eyes entirely. They had all dropped to their knees in uneven but quick waves, some stiff, some hesitant, some as if expecting a blade at their throats. They were wary, bracing. not relieved, not reverent. Greg was pretty sure they couldn’t really decide if one monster hadn’t just simply killed another.
The last group knelt reluctantly. backs stiff, hands twitching at their sides. All of them were more well-dressed, at least well-fed, their faces pale and their eyes like pinpricks as if they had watched their own death sentence get carved into stone.
Greg let his gaze drift over them all, slow, deliberate.
He felt their eyes pressing in around him with the weight of what this meant.
He should be freezing. The doors were thrown open, the winter wind creeping in past the bodies packed into the hall. His clothes were still dark with blood, dried and flaking at the edges of his own blue sleeves.
But he wasn’t cold.
The space was warm, unnaturaly so, as the main doors still remained wide open.
He exhaled.
The sound carried in the silence.
His men — still calling them my men, huh — stirred at the front, shifting at the motion as if expecting him to do or say something.
The ones who had followed him from the start—Daeric, Eren, Brennor—stood closest, heads held high. Behind them, the ones who had joined later, the ones who had heard his name in rumors, in songs that he couldn’t deny were pretty much 99% true and even then that was just him being nitpicky.
They were waiting.
Greg wet his lips, jaw tight.
He had never wanted this.
Okay, he scoffed on the inside, Don’t lie to yourself.
He’d always wanted it.
Respect. Power. All of it.
Back home, he would’ve given anything for it. Thrown himself off a building by his seventeenth birthday just for the chance at triggering superpowers, if he hadn’t been such a pussy before.
His flat expression twisted into a frown.
Since when did not wanting to die make someone a pussy?
His arm lowered to the armrest, fingers curling, tightening around the polished wood. The grain felt strange beneath his touch, too smooth, too new, like it hadn’t been there long enough to have history. His grip turned white-knuckled.
Yeah, he’d always wanted it.
Just not like this.
His eyes drifted across the hall. The bright stone. The pillars that gleamed under the flood of sunlight streaming through windows that shouldn’t exist. The walls, once heavy with shadow and cruelty, were untouched now, unstained, unmarked by the weight of what had been.
The Dreadfort was gone.
This place—this thing—was his.
The name came to him unbidden. Unshaped, but whole and fully formed. Like it had been waiting this whole time for it to just drop in his mind. “The Brightfort.”
He didn’t realize he’d said it out loud until the words left his mouth, echoing in the almost eerie silence of a packed hall.
A ripple ran through the large room.
Quiet at first, mutters just beneath hearing, as smallfolk shifted, some blinking, some staring at the walls again like they were afraid they’d shift back, that the dark might bleed through the cracks.
His men nodded. Some with eagerness, some with pride.
The others—the ones who had belonged to the Dreadfort—were different.
The garrison, at least the ones who hadn’t kneeled or run, were locked up for now. That left the rest. The servants. The stewards. The men and women who had been trapped inside these walls when the world turned on its head. And then those that were dressed better, looked cleaner, eyes on him at least a bit more defiant than the servants.
He pretty much assumed they were nobles, or maybe knights, for some of the men.
Regardless of their place or power or whatever, they all knelt in the hall, eyes flicking between him and the impossible stone, watching as if the whole place might shatter or melt back into the nightmare they had always known.
Their whispers slithered through the silence.
“The boy’s got the power of the gods,” someone muttered.
“Or the Others,” came another, hushed but not hushed enough.
“Not natural, this. Not right.”
“Maybe he’s not a boy at all.”
“A trick, then? Some sorcery?”
“Why’s he sitting there like he belongs?”
“Maybe he does.”
Greg didn’t correct them.
Honestly, he didn’t care. His brain was too busy with it’s own shit at the moment as his fingers drummed against the armrest, in a slow, plodding rhythm.
I should leave.
The thought crawled up his spine like an itch. Get up. Walk out. You’re done here, right?
Being real, he was done. He had his sword. He’d killed the bad guy. Burned the fucking house down—not literally, but close enough.
This was the part where the hero rode off into the sunset. If I could ride.
But Roose’s words stuck in his head. “Kill me… and you’ll bring the entire north down on your head.”
That was bad enough, but if he left, he was pretty sure that he’d be fine. Hell, as long as he kept doing heroic things and completing quests or whatever, he was pretty sure he’d get more magic or whatever.
But the big fucking issue was that it wouldn’t just be his head…
His eyes flicked to them.
The men who had followed him. Bled for him. Fought for him. Believed in him.
Their faces were bright with something he didn’t like seeing.
Devotion.
His stomach twisted. No. Not on them. Not on anyone.
“What’s he waiting for?”
“Shouldn’t he say something?”
“Doesn’t feel real. None of it. Doesn’t smell right.”
“Lord Bolton—”
“Lord Bolton’s dead, you fucking dolt.”
“Aye, but what if the boy’s worse?”
Greg’s jaw twitched, not at the whispers, but at the thought of staying here and actually trying to be a lord. He knew what actually being in charge was, all the responsibility. It was probably a lot like being a dad but for thousands of people. Hell, his own had skipped out on his mom the first chance he got because he didn’t want to deal with all that. What… what if I just leave, though?
The thought was shot out of his mind as another one decided to stand tall and rap on his skull from the inside with metaphorical knuckles. What happens in peasant revolts, Greg?
The answer was there before he could shove it away. He already knew. You watched the History Channel, idiot. The peasants get slaughtered. If not by knights, then by the lord. If not by the lord, then by the king.
His jaw clenched. If he left, they were fucked.
If he stayed…
He slumped deeper into the too-bright throne, hands tightening on the carved wood to the point he could hear the brand-new wood strain.
Goddamn it.
Responsibility sucked.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle it. He could. He just didn’t want to.
Being in charge meant their problems became his problems. Their survival, his survival. And it wasn’t like he could just half-ass it. Either he protected them, or he left them to be torn apart.
He barely kept from groaning.
Ash shifted beside him, tail flicking over the polished floor, claws clicking against the stone. His glowing red eyes swept over the crowd, slow and unblinking. More than a few of them flinched. Greg didn’t know if they were more afraid of the bear-dragon or him.
Guts wasn’t helping.
The man stood like a fucking executioner off to the side, arms crossed, shoulders squared, face set in that unreadable way of his. He didn’t look at Greg, just at the crowd, scanning them like he was weighing the worth of every kneeling body in front of him.
Greg sighed through his nose.
This was going to be a problem.
“This is weird,” Greg muttered under his breath.
Ash huffed beside him, a low, rolling sound that sent a curl of heat through the air. His breath always smelled faintly of burning meat, and Greg focused on that instead of the hundred or so people kneeling in front of him, their faces a mix of fear, uncertainty, and something worse.
Reverence.
Guts exhaled sharply. “Is it now?”
Greg shot him a look. “Yeah, no shit.”
He cleared his throat, ignoring the way his own voice felt thin in his chest, like he’d swallowed dust. He raised it anyway.
“You don’t have to kneel if you don’t want to.”
The words dropped into the silence like a stone into a still pond.
No one moved. No one even twitched.
A few of the former Dreadfort men—servants, stewards, guards who hadn’t tried to stab him yet—stole wary glances at each other, like they were waiting for someone else to be the first idiot to test the boy sorcerer’s patience.
Someone coughed.
His gaze darted to the side. Brennor.
The peasant turned soldier stood there. Tall, lanky, scarred, always smirking even when his face made it look like a bad idea.
“You’re not helping, m’lord,” Brennor said, grinning just enough to be annoying.
Greg shot him a look. “Yeah, thanks for the tip, Brennor.”
A few people in the crowd shifted uneasily, glancing at the exchange. Greg didn’t miss it.
He turned back to them, sucking in a deep breath. His chest still ached a little from where Roose had—whatever the hell that was—but it wasn’t the kind of pain that would stop him. Just another thing to push past.
“Look, I get it,” Greg started, his voice steadying. “Some of you are here because you want to be, and some of you are here because you don’t have a choice. I’m not gonna stand here and pretend like I didn’t kill your old boss.”
He scoffed.
“I did. And honestly?”
He let the pause stretch, let it sink in.
A few of the kneeling men glanced up, barely. The tension in the air pressed down, thick as the quiet before a storm.
“He deserved it.”
A murmur ran through the crowd, low and uncertain. No one argued.
Greg kept going.
“But here’s the thing—you don’t work for Roose Bolton anymore. You don’t work for anyone who’s gonna treat you like you’re disposable.”
He let that settle, watching as the words worked their way through the crowd. Some of them looked skeptical. Others looked lost. A few seemed like they wanted to believe it.
“This place, this castle, it’s not the Dreadfort anymore.”
His eyes flicked up to the high, gleaming walls, still too bright, still too new. The weight of what he’d done sat in his chest like a stone.
A few of the kneeling men exchanged glances.
“Not natural,” someone muttered.
“What’s it supposed to be, then?” another asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Greg turned his head in that direction, unsure who spoke.
“It’s the Brightfort,” he said, and the name tasted strange in his mouth, like something unfinished. “The Brightfort.”
He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling sharply as the pull on his soul flared again, familiar now, less foreign but no less intrusive. He caught himself before his expression could shift, masking the moment by letting the exhale roll into a sigh. He straightened slightly, adjusting his stance without thinking, then spoke.
“And it’s not gonna be a place for flayed skins and torture chambers.” His voice carried, steady and even, the natural cadence of command threading through it without effort. “It’s gonna be a real place, a place where people can actually live without looking over their shoulder every damn second.”
Greg let the words settle, his gaze sweeping over the gathered faces.
The fear hadn’t gone anywhere, not really. It had just… shifted. Bent into something more complicated. Curiosity. Doubt. Wariness.
Not trust. Not yet.
The former Bolton men—the ones who hadn’t already thrown themselves at his feet out of fear or cold pragmatism—still looked like they were waiting for the catch. Like they were waiting for him to snap, to prove them right. The moment where he revealed himself as just another monster wearing a different mask.
Greg rolled his shoulders, feeling the weight settle there.
Whatever.
He wasn’t doing this for them.
The chair beneath him was more solid than comfortable, more real than it had any right to be. A throne, technically, though he still wasn’t sure if he should be sitting in it. He wasn’t built for this. The speeches, the judgment, the weight of every eye in the hall on him, waiting for him to slip.
The Brightfort might have shed its past. Its people hadn’t.
Not yet.
Ash shifted beside him, the massive dracoursa lounging at the base of the throne like a living shadow. His molten eyes glowed in the dim light, half-lidded, his tail lazily curling across the polished stone. Occasionally, someone—usually a servant, sometimes a soldier—would glance at him, their fear flickering back to the surface.
Greg’s eye twitched at the latest flinch.
Okay.
He dragged a hand down his face, exhaling loudly, letting the sound fill the too-still air. “Alright. That’s enough of this.”
The tension in the room tightened.
Greg pushed himself up, stepping off the raised platform with measured ease. He adjusted the sleeves of his tunic as he moved, brushing off dust, dried blood, the lingering filth of a week’s march and too many fights. He could feel the grime stiffening the fabric, the weight of it sitting wrong on his skin.
I guess I have maids whose job that is now, huh.
He shoved the thought aside and kept walking.
“If you’re expecting some grand speech, you’re gonna be disappointed.”
The hall seemed to hold its breath as he moved forward, the silence pressing in, thick and waiting.
He stepped slowly, deliberately, letting his presence settle over the gathered crowd. The movement sent a ripple through them, the kneeling men shifting, tense, uncertain.
Greg let his hands rest loosely at his sides, fingers flexing slightly as he stopped in the center of the hall. His voice came quieter now, but no less firm.
“You want a lord?”
He laughed, short and sharp, the sound catching on something almost bitter.
His gaze swept over them, taking in the doubt, the hesitation, the ones who wanted to believe him but were too afraid to. The ones who would never believe him.
He clenched his fists briefly, then relaxed his hands, letting the words fall like an iron weight into the room.
“You’re looking in the wrong fucking place.”
A few of them were probably waiting for an excuse to kill him.
Fair.
Greg exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of his neck. He let his gaze sweep across the hall, taking in the faces—some wary, some resigned, a handful unreadable. He could feel the weight of expectation pressing in from all sides.
“I’m not gonna stand here and beg you to follow me,” he said, voice steady. “You’re grown-ass men…” His eyes landed on a particularly confused-looking servant woman on her knees. “And women. You know the score. Lord Bolton is dead. You all saw it. I took his life. I took his castle. And I’m keeping it.”
He met Brennor’s gaze for a half-second before shifting back to the rest of the room.
“And I don’t have the patience to waste time convincing you.”
Silence.
Then, a voice—quiet but clear, cutting through the heavy air.
“So what now?”
Greg turned his head toward the speaker. A younger man, barely in his twenties, still wearing the remnants of a Bolton uniform. His knuckles were white where they rested on his thighs, but his eyes weren’t afraid. Not entirely.
Greg let the words hang there for a moment, rolling them over in his mind. What now?
He shifted forward, stepping closer to the edge of the dais, closer to the people kneeling before him.
“Now, we move forward,” he said.
He let the words settle, measuring the way they landed, the way the air shifted just slightly.
“I don’t care where you came from. I don’t care who you served before. What I care about is what you do next. You want to leave? Fine. Walk out those gates, and you won’t be stopped.”
A few heads lifted at that, uncertainty flickering across faces that had been locked in place since he first spoke.
“But if you stay,” Greg continued, “you work. You fight. You make sure this place doesn’t fall before it’s even had a chance to stand.”
His voice carried, not raised but strong enough that there was no mistaking his meaning.
“I’ve no use for dead weight. No patience for cowards. But I won’t rule like the man who came before me. I won’t hold a blade to your throat and call it loyalty. If you fight for this place, it’s because you choose to. Not because someone else chose for you.”
A murmur rippled through the hall.
Greg could see it, the way the weight of his words pressed into them. Some were already shaking their heads, prepared to walk. Others stayed silent, considering.
One of the men near the front shifted first, rising slowly from his knees.
Then another.
And another.
Not all of them. Not even half. But enough.
Greg felt his shoulders loosen, just slightly.
But enough.
“Alright,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s a start.”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
10k Words (100 GP)
ROLL: Lore Mastery [The Witcher Novels] {Lore} (FREE) – You possess an adaptive understanding of most customs, with only the most obscure or alternative eluding your grasp without sufficient knowledge. While it’s not a big loss if you don’t take this, it would be all too sad for you to lose your head only because you forgot to bow to a king, or being burned at stake for asking a priest for a buff, or being beaten by local dryads for dirty jokes. Thankfully you now have a little bit of local common sense: knowledge of customs and traditions, an overview of history, and an understanding of how to act without provoking the locals.
Grimoire Points: 650