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Chapter Text

"Flann! Flann! Come see! Jos caught a real neat frog!"

I frowned at the ten-year-old urchin disturbing my work. Making a proper cage out of sticks, reeds and green, sticky rope was a difficult, painfully slow proposition if you wanted the cage to both close properly and have sufficient strength to trap my intended quarry. In any other place, under any other circumstances, proper wood, hemp rope and maybe even nails would have been available, but we lived in a swampy hell; we had to make do. So to be interrupted by childish idiocy was annoying, especially since herding the munchkins was not my responsibility for the day. Problem was, none of the nearby marshy paths had what could be classified as "real neat" frogs.

"May I assume Jos caught said frog in the black bog?" I asked and suddenly the little miscreant became a lot less vocal. I did not even need to ask; his guilty expression said it all. "How many times have you been told not to sneak out beyond the lake?" I told the boy with an exasperated sigh, ignoring the too-wide, too-wet, brown eyes suddenly begging me not to tell an adult. "Let's go get your brother before he falls in a tar pit - again." I set the half-finished cage aside, stored the green rubbery rope in a jar of brine so it would not harden and made sure both my knife and pointy stick were ready for use. Going beyond the crannog unarmed was the kind of monumental stupidity only engaged in by little boys and dead men.

"'tis not fair!" Kellen whined, narrow, dark-skinned face forming as much of a pout as he could as I dragged him after me over his protests. I needed him to lead me to Jos; in the hellish green-black labyrinth of the bog, giving directions was useless. Besides, if I left him behind he'd just sneak away again and the so-called adults might not even care. "Why can't we go beyond the lake? We're grown up now!"

"Because every time you do you go to the black bog like idiots," I shot back testily as we left the crannog behind. A rickety bridge of reeds and thatch connected the tiny artificial island that was our family home to the lakeshore, serving as access point, drawbridge and anchor. Because hey, if you had to live in a swamp and you had to build a house out of sticks, spit and prayers, you might as well make it mobile, right? That's how all the Crannogmen thought and that was why it took a good twenty years in the swamps to learn how to find your closest neighbor - unless you cheated.

"You go to the black bog! Why can't we go, too?" Kellen whined some more and I shot him my most critical, unimpressed glare.

"Because I'm twelve. That's a lot more than ten," I told him with all the superiority of an older sister. It worked, even though we were not related. "And because I actually know both how to navigate the swamp and how to use these," I concluded, brandishing my crude spear and patting the knife at my belt. It was the responsibility of every parent in the swamps to teach their kids the basics and make sure the lesson stuck. Unfortunately our father, a baseborn bastard of the Blackmyre clan, was not very good at being a parent. He wasn't neglectful or cruel, it was just a skill issue. A young fisherman that somehow found himself responsible for three kids he had never expected, just feeding the family was all he could do.

"I know how to nav-... navi-... walk around the swamp, too!" the dark-haired, dusky-skinned boy insisted half-heartedly in what we both knew was a lie. No mention about weapons either; at their age the twins should have been taught to use the short hunting bows common among the Crannogmen and be well on their way to become capable swamp Rangers. Unfortunately, Father's bow was an ill-maintained, rickety thing that had not been used in years, not since Mother's disappearance and Father's single-minded focus into fishing. Aunt Keera had her own problems maintaining the crannog and my skills with a bow could be summarized as "how to miss your target every single time".

"Maybe, maybe not. But you are not me, little imp." This was not just a sisterly dig at a younger sibling, and even a boy like Kellen knew it. How could he not, when our differences were as night to day? Where he was short, I was tall for my age. Where he had the wildness and wiry agility of the Crannogmen, my own form was striking and regal. Where he was brown-haired and dusky-skinned I was pale and my silver tresses had never belonged to Father's people. The differences between me and everyone else in the swamp had been obvious as far back as I could remember, which wasn't much for this life; I had no memories from before the age of seven.

According to Father's half-hearted rumblings the one time I'd asked about it, Mother had found me wandering the swamp as a kid and the two of them had decided to raise me as their own. Beyond the difference in looks and bearing that anyone could see or the memories of a past life that nobody knew anything about, it had become clear early on that I was a bit stronger, faster, even healthier than the other kids. That along with my inexplicable - to them - maturity had me being treated in many ways as an adult earlier than usual. A tiny bit of luck for a family that had been in dire straits for years, even though we did not look it. Well, there were reasons for that.

As we walked further and further away from the lake our crannog rested in, the marsh grew deeper, the trees older and gnarlier, most of the muddy, overgrown paths swallowed by the bog. Far from the river feeding the lake the water became stagnant, turning from a healthy if poisonous green to a reeking, motionless black. Vibrant undergrowth gave way to old roots, frogs, fish, worms and other life gave way to emptiness and silence. Because in the marshes of what Westerosi called "the Neck", the man-swallowing, piranha-filled, lousy with mutant gators parts were the least dangerous ones.

Kellen led on as the silence became oppressive, unnatural. Every Crannogman would tell you the places where the swamp itself seemed to die were bad news; a good third of them had nightmares about it, dreams that were not purely dreams. And maybe one man in a thousand would feel the stares, hear the whispers, see the signs of ancient deaths; a stone there a bit too pale and bleached to be a stone, a chalk stick crunching underfoot that was no chalk at all, a shadow at the edges of one's sight that looked too much like a person. The boy, of course, saw nothing, heard nothing, was entirely at ease as we walked deeper and deeper into the gloom.

"Kel! You brought Flann!"

The voice shattered the silence, staved off the whispers for a time as another boy of ten, one just as short and brown and wiry as Kellen hopped from bleached rock to bleached rock through a pool of bubbling, sticky black mud with far too much tar in it. The stench of rot had grown heavier, sharper, with a hint of crude oil and flammable things that had once walked.

"Jos! Show her the frog!" the eager idiot said, forgetting our prior argument. His just as idiotic brother smiled widely and witlessly, then opened his right hand to show me the aforementioned "real neat" frog. I stopped dead and stared; the tiny amphibian sitting in the boy's palm without a care in the world was bright fucking orange. Well, it was pretty neat from one point of view. From another, Jos was in mortal peril and he hadn't even noticed. The boy's hand was red, even a bit black at places, but he did not even feel anything wrong because of course he didn't; not being noticed was a great quality for a deadly poison to have.

"Put it in," I told the walking dead idiot in a no-nonsense tone, opening one of my leather pouches for dangerous samples. Crannogmen might not be as famous as the Dornish for our poisons but that was mostly because we weren't stupid enough to harvest the really strong ones, present company excluded. Pouting exactly like his twin brother, Jos did as he was told; an idiot he might be but even he knew not to gainsay an older sister. Once he'd done so, I took a tiny vial of a sweetly smelling herbal concoction from another one of my pouches and emptied the whole thing on the boy's arm. A week's worth down the drain; well spent if it would only delay his death for an hour.

"Hey, my hand is all red!" the boy complained, finally being able to notice some of the poison's effects. With it being pointed out Kellen noticed as well, looking from his brother's hand to my pouches with the confused expression of a child trying to think through some complex mystery. The twins weren't entirely useless; given enough time and with the toxin partially countered they might realize what was going on and panic, so I did not give them the opportunity.

"Never mind that now." I shot both of them a scowl. "Return to the crannog."

"But-"

"Immediately!" I shouted, not having to fake some of my anger. "If you're not there when I get back I'm convincing Aunt Keera to lock you up in the cupboard!" Fortunately they were only ten, and I'd entertained them with stories of bad kids getting locked up before; they ran before they could realize what was off about that order. Sighing, I started the annoyingly lengthy chore of finding enough dry twigs for what would follow while hoping Jos would not keel over before I was done.

It took nearly half an hour to get the tinder and by then the deadly frog in the pouch had become annoyingly jumpy. Unfortunately for it, I did not need to abide its existence for much longer. With a decisive swing, I slammed the pouch hard enough against a nearby boulder to at least cripple and certainly stun its occupant. Then I upended the pouch, the feebly twitching orange frog landing on my pile of gathered tinder. Next, I pricked my thumb with my knife and squeezed seven drops of blood on the frog itself, then another seven in a circle around the pile of frog and twigs. Finally I delved inside myself in what both was and wasn't meditation.

There I was greeted by what had dwelled in the back of my mind ever since I'd come into the world of Planetos as a child of seven; fourteen little lights that at first glance might seem like a circle of stars. It was because most of them were little more than sparks, but four stood out. Three were tiny tongues of flame no larger than candleflames; one was twice that size. Gold, green, orange, red; there was more to them than their colors but I was in a hurry; it would have to suffice. I reached for the orange flame, grasped it, then opened my eyes. Out in the world a candleflame was dancing on my finger. It was the most I could do without preparation but it was enough; with the flick of a finger the pile of tinder caught fire and with it the poisonous frog. It sizzled, it twitched, it quickly died. And with its death a wave of potential came.

Tiny in the grand scheme of things, with the source of the poison right there as the ritual sacrifice, reaching out and undoing the poison's effects over the past hour proved within my power, if barely. The little idiot would live and the test of both the extent of my blood magic and its limitatons I'd been procrastinating about was done. I scowled at the tiny blackened corpse.

This... would not be nearly enough.

Chapter Text

Even movements of the brush spread a uniform greenish paint over the bars of the third cage. Made of brine, ghostskin moss and paste of the same fleshy reeds that served as our air-hardening ropes, the mixture was no paint at all but a form of insulation. After left to harden over the reeds making the bars of the cage, it would form a thin, resin-like layer that resisted corrosion, rot and bug infestation similar to but superior than the coating of tar used in medieval shipbuilding. Along with the dark green ropes that bound the bars together and would harden to the consistency of boiled leather, it would ensure a strong and long-lasting cage - especially in the swamps of the Neck.

The green hell of Westeros was probably the one place on the continent that any sort of normal construction techniques were useless. Here any clay or stone buildings were swallowed by the swamp, wood rotted, iron quickly rusted to dust and even castle-forged steel withered and wore down abnormally quickly. And by 'abnormally quickly' I did not mean just the usual exposure to the saltwater marsh. The smiths of Westeros could forge arms and armor that endured frequent, violent use for generations, something 21st century engineering could only do with metamaterials... and yet a few years in the Neck ruined them. And weapons were one thing; the lack of nails, knives, farming and craftsman's tools was exceedingly annoying.

Yet the Crannogmen had long since adapted. The fifty-foot-wide house of thatch and reeds floating in the bog beneath my feet was another display of such adaptation. Standing on a hundred and sixty-eight hollow pillars reaching into the small lake, the building swayed almost imperceptibly at all times, both to natural elements and the moves of its inhabitants. Five years living in the place had made me used to it, though the first couple of weeks after my arrival I had been plagued by nausea and I'd never really grown to like it. The thing was ancient, older than any of the crannogs of Ireland that had been built back in the early Iron Age, yet it stubbornly resisted decay just to spite anyone with modern Earth education that insisted it should have long since been reduced to an overgrown rotten ruin. It disliked me as much as I disliked it, I was certain.

I replaced the vial of herbal remedy I'd used on the idiot, then added two vials of poison paste to my belt for the coming outing. No antidote though; there was no point. Crannogmen poisoners had perfected their craft over the millennia to the point their creations had no known antidotes after the fact, similar to batrachotoxin. So with a scowl of annoyance I downed an entire vial of a hideously smelly black concoction that insulted everyone's noses and taste buds like a mixture of crude oil and raw sewage. I did not gag; unfortunately, I'd drunk the thing often enough to get used to it because it would neutralize many local poisons and venoms as long as it was taken in advance. The foul brew was the only reason, along with an almost religious practice of Mithridatism, that Crannogmen could hunt in the swamps without insane risk to life and limb.

Thus done with my preparations, I lifted the trio of now-hardened cages over my shoulder and walked towards the bridge. Halfway through it, I saw a slender figure of middle height coming in from the swamps. She wore a hooded green camouflage cloak over lambskin breeches and a sleeveless jerkin with bronze scales and was armed with a shortbow of horn and a bronze-tipped three-pronged spear. Behind her she drew a bog-sled of reed and rope heavy with over a dozen eels and snakes and a small mountain of freshly cut herbs.

"Going out again, Flann?" the woman that was the unholy offspring of a Marine and a Ranger straight out of Tolkien's works asked in lieu of greeting.

"You know me, Auntie," I shot back with a shrug. "I'd stay out all day and night if I didn't have my share of the housework."

"So would the Twins and not to their benefit," the older brunette responded just as nonchalantly. "But you youngsters should get to make your own mistakes. Old Gods know I did at your age." And with that she disappeared into the crannog, pausing only to shoot one last remark over her shoulder. "I'll save you some fried snake. Milk or banded?"

"Either is fine but no sauce," I shot back because yuck. Only Crannogmen could invent a sauce out of frog paste.

As the Twins earlier accused me of, I crossed overgrown waterways, went around small lakes and trawled through muddy paths until I was at the edges of the black bog once more. The geography of the Neck shifted with the seasons as variable but ever-present currents brought the sea into the land, but the dead areas remained the same. From halfway between the causeway and Greywater Watch up to Moat Cailin to the North, an unseen, unheard shadow fell upon the swamp, its influence spreading for a hundred and fifty miles. Of the travelers crossing the Neck almost none could feel it, but there were those among the Crannogmen that did - and so did I. Here, the swamp was at its most dire and least habitable, its unnatural aspects more pronounced. It was a dangerous place best avoided... but it did have its uses.

Sitting on a half-sunken boulder of black basalt too straight to be natural, I set down my three cages and looked around. Far to the North the ancient wall of Moat Cailin was made of the same seamlessly worked stone, so what equally ancient, forgotten castle did this boulder belong to? None still lived who remembered, I reckoned then huffed. It was not like me to lose myself in ancient history when there was work to be done so I set aside speculation and reached out. Even in the foulest black pools around life stirred; a catfish here, a slick black snake there, another exceedingly poisonous frog the next pool over. The frog would do.

I closed my eyes and reached out with more than mundane senses. Even here, the fourteen flames in my mind cast their eerie light into a world of shadows and in those shadows things stirred; the same things as in the real world. Life had a weight that left echoes, a presence into the Unseen World and it was with my presence that I reached for the presence of the frog. Navigation was hard, the paths slippery and ever-shifting but the animal was only a few dozen yards away physically; my shadow fell upon its own before much longer. That same shadow lifted the impression of a booted foot and stomped on the frog with extreme prejudice. Now that it had been found interaction was a matter of will, and animals had so very little of it compared to people. The frog's shadow was crushed, dwindling into a paltry thing, and my shadow reached to fill out the difference.

One moment I was meditating with my eyes closed, the next I was seeing the world through the disjointed, too-wide but nearsighted perspective of the tiny amphibian. The first time I'd ever done this was by accident, back when I'd been seven. A tiny river snake had somehow found its way into my room and I'd lashed out in a panic with far more than just my arms. Beneath the veneer of a seven-year-old platinum-haired girl I'd had a grown woman's mind; I might have gotten a migraine but the snake's mind had been left a hollowed out, broken thing. From then on it would not do anything at all unless directly controlled until it had died from starvation. Riding in the frog's skin was far less invasive; a few nudges were enough to guide the deadly little beastie straight into the cage until it was left stunned while I closed the cage's door.

Warging; that's what the people of the North called it, but it was just one ability in the broader magical field of Greensight. Meetings with animals behaving oddly intelligently over the years had left me convinced I was far from the only one capable of such in the Neck, though of course I had no idea who the people behind the animals had been. Much like my pyromancy and blood magic my skill with warging was limited; even taking over one nearby animal for a short time was a struggle... but it was just good enough for my needs.

Half an hour later I was locking up a pink mutated lizard in the last cage and was ready for the next step. Crannogmen ate frogs and fish, snakes and eels, bugs and lizards; all the swamp had to offer. My purpose for the day's catch was a bit different; using the butt of my spear, I struck the three animals through the bars until they were knocked out, then threw them on a pile of previously gathered tinder. A flex of my pyromancy and the tinder caught fire; less than a minute later the offerings died and fed their lifeforce to the ritual. The temporary boost of magic I practically inhaled, not using it for anything except a minor, spread-out healing. Suddenly, I felt like I'd spent several days at the best spa on Earth, all my stress and worries draining away as I got full of renewed vitality. The sensation was something I'd almost gotten used to, ever since my hunting skills and magic had grown sharp enough to repeat it regularly. It was how I stayed in perfect health despite sub-par nutrition. How I'd never gotten sick in the past few years. How I'd ensured no zits, spots or pimples would never turn up.

The second part of the ritual was far more subtle and esoteric; just a tiny, almost infinitesimal addition to a mental weight, a certain significance. It was something that had happened with every ritual, all of them adding a little something to that weight in my mind. So far, those additions had never had tangible benefits but I instinctively felt they were building up to something, something important. And after two years I was a good two thirds of the way to finding what it was...

The only thing that saved me when I opened my eyes was how slippery the boulder I'd chosen as my seat was. An enormous fanged maw had burst out of the surface of the bog and was even then approaching me in slow motion. Clawed feet thicker than my legs propelled said maw and the body it was attached to but they failed to find purshase on the sheer basalt. I backpedaled and reached for my spear even as the deadly jaws full of knife-like teeth snapped closed but inches from my nose.

The speartip glanced off the mutant alligator's scales, failing to do anything of significance. One of the monster's legs stomped on one of my cages, shattering the harderend, bound reeds like so much kindling and finally finding purchase. The monster dragged itself out of the bog, revealing all of its eighteen-foot, thousand-pound horror. Unlike the bronze tridents of adult Crannogmen, my only reach weapon was meant for fish, frogs and similar light game and maybe scaring off a snake or two. Dealing with a freaking Lizard-lion was beyond it.

I jumped to the next boulder and the next, but the lizard-lion easily followed. Back on Earth, 'gators were capable of outrunning any Olympic sprinter when sufficiently motivated and lizard-lions were Westeros' dire, half-dragon version of the Florida natives. I frantically rolled away from a clawed foot and instead of being horribly eviscerated I only felt my boiled leathers being torn apart before the same happening to several inches of my left hip. It hurt like being cut by three or four daggers at the same time. Had this happened back on Earth I'd have frozen up and died, but after five years in the Neck, this wasn't even among my worst five experiences.

I turned around and stabbed my pursuer in the face. Instead of just my spear I also fed my terror and desperation into my Pyromancy, a tiny but bright flame igniting at the speartip. Through sheer luck, the burning spear stabbed straight into the monster's right eye. Its panicked thrashing shattered my spear, knocked me on my ass and probably cracked a rib or three but also gave me just enough time to reach towards my belt. Not bothering to even check what I'd pulled out, I threw whatever-it-was at the mutant alligator's mouth. The tiny clay jar broke against a huge fang... then its contents splashed all over the monster's mouth.

The effect wasn't immediate but with the lizard-lion already injured and lashing out in panic, I barely managed to slip away before collapsing on a boulder a few jumps over. The lizard-lion did not follow. Instead it became increasingly erratic until it started convulsing, rolling and bashing its snout and head against the black rock until it finally perished.

Then a wave of warmth and sheer life-force like dozens of rituals almost knocked me insensate...

Chapter Text

I lay on a boulder, the stinging ache of cracked ribs coming with every breath even as blood slowly oozed from the slices to my side and hip. The blows had been glancing yet the lizard-lion's claws had sliced through the hardened leather of my jerkin and leggings like so much paper. The cuts were shallow yet still burned; I did not even want to think about what foulness the swamp water might carry into them. As every Crannogman knew, a single untended scrape could kill you in the swamps as surely as a spear through the heart. Greywater fever they called it; a disease endemic in the Neck that most readily affected the young and those that hadn't developed a tolerace for and made frequent use of certain local poisons.

So as much as I felt like resting for at least a few hours, I ignored my body's protests and fumbled at my belt even as I set a painfully slow course for the nearest stream. I opened the second vial of poison I'd brought along with my teeth, the arm that had held my spear stiff from just a push from the enormous lizard and refusing to work properly. Not having anything else to work with, I took off my oiled cloak and tied it up in a crude sack. By the time I went through the knotwork with one arm I'd crawled out of the black bog and reached one of the streams feeding the lake a couple miles further down the path. The crude sack was filled with relatively clear water into which I poured half my remaining poison and counted to a hundred. Then I used the resulting low-strength poison - which would have still killed any human not under a serious antivenom or magical protection - to wash and disinfect my wounds. Had such local remedies been merely mundane the treatment would have been woefully insufficient, but the Crannogmen had survived through their use for millennia; I had to trust they knew what they were doing.

Utterly spent at least physically, I collapsed by the small stream and finally looked into what had been blaring for my attention for the past half hour; fourteen flames, visions of them like tiny stars in my mind. Except they were not mere visions, not anymore. Fourteen plinths of black basalt, tongues of colored flame sprouting from each, were now etched into my senses not just in dreams and meditation but the waking world. Where before I'd needed to be either asleep or deep in meditation to merely bring them up now I could see them before me, hear the crackling of their fire, breathe in the cloying stench of burned offerings hanging heavily in the air.

The flames had come to me in a dream only a few weeks after my new adopted parents had taken me in. Back then I had not made the connection, but in hindsight it had been the night after the first time I'd been given a frog to kill and butcher. Crannogmen being almost exclusively hunters, the dream had become clearer ever since, gaining almost imperceptibly in strength with every hunt. Foreknowledge had done the rest; it hadn't been hard for a Song of Ice and Fire fan to notice how important a dream of fourteen flames might be, or to throw a live frog into a fire just to see what would happen.

But all the rituals since paled in comparison to this day's offering; my first real struggle for life and limb, the first kill of significance as grown men would measure things. Some threshold had been met, some void filled and for the first time I felt pinned under the gaze of something otherworldly, something as great as it was terrible. An anticipatory silence fell on the small patch of muddy ground I lay on interrupted only by the crackle of fire. Fourteen flames... all different in color, a few different in intensity. The anticipation grew into expectation, the expectation into pressure; not a demand as people would make but the natural - or perhaps unnatural - course of things. Water flowed, life grew, shadows lingered, fire devoured. And these particular fires finally had something to devour now that enough offerings had been made.

Merely taking in the black basalt plinths, I instinctively knew there was not nearly enough for all the fires to be fed, not enough of an offering for even a single flame to be fed to its fullness for could a fire ever be full? With that dawned the realization of what all the anticipation and pressure was about; it was I that would choose where my offerings would be made, on which flame the accumulated life-force of my few years exploring magic would be spent, because the fourteen flames were far from identical.

The first flame was the color of molten gold and as bright as a small torch; the most intense of the fourteen. Looking into it I saw not a throne, but the idea of a throne; a thing as shapeless and immaterial as a spoken word that invoked glimpses of every throne I'd ever seen or imagined; from my adopted Father's seat in the crannog's dining area, to the Iron Throne from the television series, to the thrones of Zeus in both historical representations and fiction. The idea of the thrones and those that sat upon them? Not quite; it was more the idea of inherent superiority, Nobility itself.

The second flame had once been just a barely glowing spark but now looked like the tiniest candle, except for its bronze color. Somehow it had grown on its own, if very little. Looking into it I saw the clang of blade against blade, the clash of shields, the struggle for one life and will over another. Echoes from every pre-industrial battle I'd ever seen or read about were in it, even a fleeting image of my own recent struggle to stab the lizard-lion. Strength, courage, skill, carnage; it contained all those things as far as they fell into the common theme of War.

The third flame was silver and it was little more than a spark. A glance into it showed men and women of beauty, from whores to princesses to kings, though beauty was not what the flame was about. It was not about some physical quality, but about using that quality among many other things; clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, art and performance, manners and body language, empathy and manipulation. Though the majority of the people shown were teenagers or young adults, there were also both kids and older people among their number, all sharing a common theme. Whether with silver adorned limbs, a silver harp or pen, silver crowns and medals, or a silver tongue, they exerted Influence on those around them.

The fourth flame was as faint as the third and the color of freshly minted copper. It was the easiest to understand, even easier than the one showing battle, for looking into it showed people, mostly middle-aged men and women, in the middle of some transaction. Coin of all sorts changed hands, goods were bartered, sheets were balanced, from solitary households to the largest empires it shared the gritty details of economics and Stewardship.

The fifth flame was somehow shedding light as the first but its size was tiny and its intensity lacking, giving the idea that the light was not its own. It was the color of liquid mercury, shiny and intriguing and in its depths it held countless students. Whether young children listening to stories at the feet of their grandparents or old scientists and researchers pushing the boundaries of knowledge in their labs or ivory towers, it was all about Learning.

The sixth flame was the color of iron, from the black of cast iron, to shiny steel, to a red-hot bar taken from the forge and a lump of hematite carved out from the ground. As small as the second, it was more than a spark but less than a candle. It was blacksmiths working their forges, stonemasons and workers raising a curtain wall, woodworkers carving tools and shipwrights laying down a new hull. Even jewelers and their arts, especially in the making of gears and lenses rather than works of art. All put together it was the very idea of Craftsmanship.

The seventh flame was dull, the color of lead and with its tiny size hard to see that it was lit at all unless you knew where to look. Looking into it, it was an arrow in the forest, a bullet in the dark, a dagger from behind. It was lead and tin and arsenic to slowly poison someone without a cure, it was snake and frog venom to give a painful death at a small scrape, it was innocuous-looking herbs in the wine. A camouflage cloak in the woods, a black hood in a dark alley in a moonless night, masks and disguises and wearing other peoples' faces. I saw countless people carrying out their business in utter secrecy and recognized none but myself when I snuck into the black bog or made sacrifices away from prying eyes. The ideas of stealth and subtlety, beffudlement and betrayal, all combined into Subterfuge.

The eight flame was white yet not, reflecting light and scattering it. In its size of the smallest candle over black basalt it was a window but also a mirror, yet also a tree. It showed me myself, but the more I looked the more images of Flann appeared, both younger and older. The greater the age difference, the further in the past or the future those Flanns were the more of them existed and the more different they grew. Those younger were unchanging and mostly unmoving, but the older ones moved around, their clothing, bearing and even features seemed to shift from moment to moment. It took me an embarassingly long time to understand what I was looking at, because all the previous flames had showed aspects of, well, human civilization. This one? Foresight and hindsight, pre and post cognition, essentially the magic of Divination.

The ninth flame burned between a candle and a small torch and its fire was emerald green. A glance into it showed all manner of birds, beasts and fish, all that lived and moved on land, in the air, or under the surface of the waters. It showed trees and their roots, and all that died and rotted to eventually feed them, even as they fed on the plants and others in turn fed upon them. It showed how life was shaped by the earth and it in turn shaped the earth as much as any element. And how all those things, all the life, the earth and their cycle could be seen from afar, read like letters on a page to see what was to come or moved like pawns on the battlefield to shape that future. Since this was Westeros and the flame was green, it obviously represented Greensight.

The tenth flame was but a tiny blue spark. Looking into it I saw the storm; clouds and winds, tides and waters, winter and ice, cracks of lightning. It had as many forms as there were natural phenomena, all said phenomena that were either about motion or cold things. There was a disproportionate focus on ice and it unnatural applications, but the same techniques applied to it would also work on water or wind, though they required either different predisposition or a much broader perspective. I wanted to call this ice magic for obvious reasons, but it really was more Elementalism.

The eleventh flame was the color of actual fire and the size of a small torch, the largest of all the flames except the golden one. Within it I saw just fire at first, indistinguishable from any mundane torch. But looking closer I saw more; flames that burned without fuel, men that appeared and disappeared in flashes of light, lizards that spewed fire, magma that spewed from the earth and flowed like great rivers. That same magma moved and shaped like clay, or falling from the sky to lay waste to great areas. The magic of fire, Pyromancy.

The twelfth flame was only a hair smaller than the eleventh and was the color of red rubies or freshly spilled blood. Instead of having to look into it I felt its power flowing in my veins; healing and blighting, shaping and enchanting, inheritance and transformation. It was life itself as it pertained to magic, its greatest use not by itself but grown or sacrificed to empower other forms of magic. An amateur with a smidgen of talent could perform entirely disproportionate acts with enough fuel, for such was the power of Sorcery.

The thirteenth flame was another of the tiny ones and grey in color. Pallid skin, growing rot, bleached bone, one did not have to look for it, for death was everpresent. Except that is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death might die. Whether freshly killed, rotten, or reduced to bones, whether man or woman, young or old, person or animal, the dead rose. And they walked. And they outnumbered the living. Given the world I was in, it was hardly a surprise to find Necromancy here.

The final flame did not appear to be lit at first look. There was nothing there, there was no reason to look, really, just an empty black plinth. Except I knew the flames were fourteen, had seen them in my dreams. So I checked again, despite the sudden desire to look away, the oily, sickly tang in my mouth that made me want to retch. And then I found it, but it had no color seen by human eyes. It looked black but was not, for it was the color of a blind man painting with the fluids of the eyes he used to have. The color of villagers mating with things crawling out from the blackest depths. That of a mother murdering her unborn children and using their tormented souls like puppets for their own gain. That of an emperor in yellow robes building black pyramids under the stars, the hearts and brains of men for mortar. It was the color behind stars and under hills, and empty caves none dared delve and no mapmaker dared record. Its name I neither uttered nor thought as I pried my aching eyes from the certainly empty plinth...

Chapter Text

The vision of fourteen plinths full of fire shook. For a split second I was seeing double, both the plinths filling the entirety of my field of view as well as my normal sight... and what I saw was not good. Beyond this... whatever it was, time still passed. I was still lying on a rock, nearly incapacitated. The sun, hidden behind the unbroken jungle canopy, had passed its peak in the sky and was well into the afternoon. And the crude bindings I'd managed after cleaning my wounds were still slowly oozing blood; enough of it that the rock beneath me had several splashes of crimson. Not good.

Normally, I would not be rushing into a decision here. What this vision offered was a great amount of potential with both depth and breadth. And because this setting was a medieval fantasy death world, whatever power was behind the offer was bound to have its own, almost certainly terrible agenda. Unfortunately, both time and choice were not luxuries I could afford; I needed some way to deal with my wounds, and quickly.

There were several options here. The simplest would be to cauterize the shallow cuts, stop the bleeding at the cost of a terrible amount of pain and some permanent scarring. It was not just possible but maybe even immediately doable with the magic I already had. Straightforward too; people had been cauterizing wounds for thousands of years and it worked. Problem was, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I knew how much burns hurt from my past life. Burn myself deliberately, as many as half a dozen times? Maybe if I hadn't been exhausted, drained from all the events today but not now.

So no Pyromancy. The second option was Elementalism, specifically ice magic. Not only could ice stop the bleeding as easily as fire could have, but its numbing effects would reduce the pain. The issue with this was frostbite. It was one of the nastier, harder to heal complications at the best of times. In a swamp with a bazillion infection sources that kind of thing could become life-threatening in its own right before you could say "necrosis".

I could feel both the second flame and the sixth offering an increase in resilience among their other effects because both warriors and smiths were tough. It was possible that feeding one or both those flames could make me tough enough to simply endure and recover from my wounds, if barely. Of course, if the boon turned out not to be enough then there wouldn't be anything else to be done. Other options I knew of from the books in my previous life were even less palatable, because they required me dying first.

No. The books were clear enough on what kind of magic could actually heal, and my magic agreed; I hesitated only for a moment longer before reaching for the twelfth plinth with the flames like spun rubies... or freshly spilled blood; Sorcery. Most people thought of it as the darkest, strongest magic. That opinion was not even half-right and came mostly from ignorance, but what blood magic was was quick. I fumbled with the power filling me to bursting, not knowing how to direct it. The moment the thought crossed my mind though, the power moved almost on its own, following my intent. It poured into the crimson flame and quickly the flame roared and swelled to twice its previous size and intensity. Then a tornado of images and sounds, smells and emotions, realizations and memories slammed into me with the force of a tornado.

A richly-dressed, silver-haired boy drawing out his own blood with leeches, then burning the fattened worms in a fire. Each bloated vermin bursting and sizzling upon red-hot coals powering one of his spells. A desperate man in hooded black robes, his magic a shattered, dried out thing, cutting choice bits off a slave and sacrificing them upon an altar to regain a shadow of his power. A young hedge witch sacrificing a newborn baby to save the mother after a C-section. The same hedge witch, now much older and cast out of her village, sacrificing animals to give out readings of the future. Those and a thousand other instances of low-end Sorcery gushed through my mind in a tide of bloody sacrifice, even as I felt my own pool of magic slightly deepening. It was not a direct power boost, for very few things in Sorcery are about personal power at all. No, they are about using outside forces, sacrifices, and efficiently applying the power they provided.

The vision actually broke, returning me to the swamp and my rocky bed. All the pains I had not felt in the vision momentarily returned. The cracked ribs, the sprained, probably damaged arm sending sharp jabs of pain down my nerves with every move and breath. The cuts at my side and hip having settled into a dull ache and an alarming level of numbness. A slight shaking in my good arm and the exhaustion having grown worse, if anything. I gasped, fumbled for a bit before rising to a sitting position, then took stock of my situation.

The new knowledge and instincts that came with Sorcery were almost bursting to be used, pushing as if they were alive. The sensation was either from just too much getting stuffed into my head too quickly, or I'd eventually need some exorcism spells. Either way, I put the magic to use. Curing a disease or even poison is very different from healing injuries. Initially, most poisons and diseases are tiny amounts of foreign material, affecting a similarly small amount of tissue. Neutralizing them is relatively easy. Injuries, especially extensive ones, are easily orders of magnitude more extensive as changes to the body go. Bruises, stings, small cuts; that was what my Sorcery could fix with my power alone. For more, it needed a sacrifice... and I was in no state to provide one.

Even as I worked, slowly fixing peripheral or surface damage little by little, I knew I was only delaying things. I reached for something, anything that would help and the fourteen plinths of flame reappeared at my call. Immediately I saw that only about half the accumulated power had been used up so a second flame could be fed, or the same flame once more. Yet before I could commit the rest of the power to Sorcery, I was stopped by the realization that it would not help. Even if it doubled my abilities again, going from healing small cuts and bruises to healing slightly larger cuts and maybe a sprain or two would not be enough. Had I not been the one wounded and had this not been the Neck, that level of healing could still fix such level of trauma... in a few days. It was still incredible compared to a normal recovery of many months and a risk of dying. Too bad that the swamp's predators would eat me in less than a day - maybe as soon as nightfall even. Without a sacrifice though, I'd still be dead.

Darkness flickered at the edges of my vision and my heart skipped a beat. Was it beating slower? Would it keep slowing down until I died on this rock? No, no! There had to be something I could do, something I had to be missing. I looked around in the real world, eyelids drooping. Maybe I could lure a sacrifice close with a bit of warging? Why was the damn swamp so empty and silent? It was supposed to be full of fucking animals! But I still had some power... maybe if...

I blinked. An empty plinth stood before me. It wanted to have a flame, it needed to have a flame. It was so cold and dark, so why didn't I pour all my remaining reserve into it? I needed to get a healing magic, right? It would give me that, if only I fed it just a little. My arm reached towards the plinth... and a stab of pain made me wince. I'd reached out with my broken arm... towards an empty plinth? But... there weren't any empty plinths...

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! I recoiled from the fourteenth plinth with the black flame both physically and mentally. I might be desperate and maybe, possibly dying, but no way would I feed any power into that thing especially after whatever this bullshit was. No, I would do something else, find a solution for my own, find a bloody sacrifice and... wait a minute...

I looked at the bloody gashes at my side, the blood slowly dripping out of them to pool on the rock. There was a hell of a lot of blood there, now. All of it was mine... and since my pale skin and silver hair indicated Valyrian ancestry while my own damn powers claimed a level of Nobility for me... that could work! And just to get back at the fourteenth plinth, I glared at it while reaching out to the first. The golden flame that symbolized, if I'd understood those visions correctly, the very idea of Nobility. There I fed my remaining power and the golden flames swelled to half again their prior size and intensity.

I braced for the rush of memories and experiences but none came. Instead my whole body burned for a moment, a sensation of heat so intense I might have been cast into Mt Doom, except there was no pain. And when the sizzling and roaring of the golden flame faded, I felt a little better. My wounds hurt a little less, moving my bruised body was easier, the weight of the world felt lighter, my surroundings clearer and sharper. Suddenly the swamp was full of sounds, and catfish swam in the muddy waters. Too bad I still couldn't catch one... not that it would matter.

I dipped the fingers of my good hand in the small pool of my own blood and painted a crude circle around myself as best I could. Well, less a circle and more misshapen doodling of a preschooler, but the main points were that it was somewhat round and unbroken. Then I sent my own magic, my will, into my own blood. Despite the dismal preparation and my exhaustion, it proved dead easy compared to every single other sacrifice I'd ever done. My own blood welcomed my power like a copper rod drew in lightning and lit with an otherworldly crimson glow. Magic flooded back into me, magnified beyond any I'd used before. It was not the untapped lifeforce of a slain animal and did not contribute to the stockpiled power, but it was more than enough to cast a mean healing spell. The cuts at my side and hip sewed up over the course of a minute, bruises vanished, cracks in bone filled in and anything that was completely broken realigned properly and started recovering too.

Neither my exhaustion nor my severe anaimia were fixed and the healing itself was far from complete, but it was enough for me to stand on my own two feet as the circle and pool of blood burned to ash and were carried away by the wind. I looked around, finding no more than the usual deadly threats; a banded snake that didn't feel like attacking the odd two-legs, a small school of piranha analogues circling the rock that had smelled the blood, some quicksand masquerading itself as a stable path. Thin fog had appeared and the forest was slowly growing darker and more sinister-looking - which was perfectly normal and not some weird presence playing mind tricks this time.

Exhausted, unarmed, and a least a mile from the lake and the crannog; not the worst situation I'd survived over the years. Scowling at every shadow and suspicious-looking patch of darkness, I set one foor in front of the other and forced myself to move...

Chapter Text

The dream was a jumbled mess of me walking in a field of burning snow as black rocks rained from the sky and twisted trees sprouted from the ground like grasping tentacles. A blind, three-headed raven was frantically clawing at the head and neck of a three-eyed dragon, trying to aim the beast's angry roars of flame towards the path ahead and the throng of undead football hooligans contributing to the mess with abandon under the gimlet stare of coaches in blue and white tutu dresses occasionally prodding them forth with whips made of human spines. Elsewhere, a red-haired girl in a prom dress was running after a different boy every so often while an ancient red-haired man that must have been her grandfather was staring at her antics and shaking his head in exasperation. Further away, a figure in yellow robes presided over a throng of naked men and women with fangs and claws like a tiger's and frog-like membranes between their fingers and toes as they were having an orgy while chanting the figure's name loudly enough to shatter glass and hurt my eardrums. Then a black moon shaped vaguely like a human skull fell from the sky, shattered the world and woke me up.

I woke up to a massive headache, feeling both sick and ravenous, my mouth and eyes dry and aching for a bit of moisture. The bed was too stiff and the room too large to be my own, and was cluttered with knives, spikes, drills and other weapons and tools of yellow-green metal, probably bronze, countless clay pots and vials filling up the shelves stretching across two of its walls, a workbench for wood and leather working, and countless herbs hanging from strings overhead as they dried. The bed took up only a small corner of a space as large as the crannog's main chamber, though all the clutter made it seem a lot smaller. The tang of the odd swamp remedies hung heavy in the air along with a hint of sickness that I suspected came from me.

"At least you did not die," said a familiar voice from behind, making me almost fall off the bed in a sudden jolt. The voice's owner walked out of a dark corner my eyes had glanced over without noticing a single hint the green-caped, leather-armored woman. She loomed over me like a bog wraith, lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line.

"Hey, Aunt Ke-"

"Don't you 'hey' me, you careless idiot," she interrupted then poked me in the forehead. "You're not yet three and ten, what business do ye have tussling with lizard-lions in the black bog?"

"What lizard-lion?" I tried to play ignorant, but she wouldn't have it.

"Ye're twenty namedays short of pulling the wool over my eyes, girl," she huffed, voice thick with exasperation. "We found you on the lakeshore unconscious and pale enough to be damn near bloodless, jerkin and leggings sliced up and drenched crimson, no weapon but a knife. Obvious signs of lizard-lion attack." She fell silent, then stalked across the room once, twice, thrice. "Yet beneath it all you were untouched by fang or claw and seemed to only be ill." She shook her head. "I followed your trail to a bloody rock but saw no signs of battle. What happened?"

"I..." The more I heard about what she'd found out, the more I scrambled for an explanation that would fit. Lying - or being caught at it - was a no-go because the Crannogmen took their security seriously and with a lizard-lion seemingly prowling nearby things that would have been overlooked on any other day would be checked and double-checked. The truth on the other hand would be dangerous and not just to me. The people of the Neck were far from the ignorant idiots of the South; they had at least some inkling of the truths and dangers of Sorcery. Worse, for all that they'd taken me in and raised me, they were not blood family and in Westeros this mattered. Maybe... a more limited version of the truth? What Aunt Keera didn't know wouldn't hurt her - and that included me being actually older if you counted my past life.

"Well?"

"There was a lizard-lion," I admitted. "It ambushed me when I was gathering ghostskin moss. My wooden spear broke against its scales, it clawed me and I ran." My breaths were coming faster and faster, my arms shaking just a bit. The fear and anger in my voice did not have to be exaggerated at all. "I was wounded and it was a lizard-lion; I knew there was no way to escape no matter how I tried. It caught up; another blow shattered my arm and I fell. I was about to die."

The physically older woman's face had settled into an angry scowl as she listened to the tale but the anger was not directed at me... and her dark eyes softened as they flicked to my arm and sides, where my wounds had been before the sorcerous healing. Where at least hints of what had happened must have remained, because my healing had not been complete; even after three days there were flickering aches deep in my flesh.

"I was bleeding out and must have lost consciousness, because things became... weird." I paused at the point my story, all my explanation, hinged and like every good listener Aunt Keera paid attention not just to what I said but how. "The next thing I knew, I was back in the bog and everything was green." My audience of one blinked. I didn't dare pause any longer or try to read her reactions too openly. Instead, I forced myself to shudder. "I don't mean like plants get in Spring; everything I could see was in verdant shades. The rocks, the water, the trees and roots, the clouds, even the mist."

Keera stared at me. I stared back. She gestured for me to continue.

"The lizard-lion was there, even larger and with bigger teeth than before. But there was also a shadowy figure, like black mist in a man's shape. It attacked the lizard-lion with its bare hands, ripped one of its eyes out with its fingers. Then it approached where I lay, bloody eye in hand." I paused, gulped audibly. "The figure crushed the eye, then let the fluid drip onto my forehead. The world broke and I woke up, realizing I'd been dreaming. My wounds were gone and the lizard-lion was nowhere to be found. I tried to get back to the crannog but I was still exhausted; I must have passed out."

"I see..." Keera trailed off pensively. She was no longer angry, at me or otherwise. That had been one purpose of the story; provide a distraction, an explanation for what happened and a target for any further questions that was not me. If it conveniently deflected any wrongdoing towards some unknown force even better. As for the green dream? The adults in the crannog had never mentioned it to us kids, but I knew the Crannogmen had people with Greensight of their own. It was not inconceivable that one of them had saved me, if not in nearly as dramatic a fashion as my fake dream implied.

"Very well, Flann. I've decided!" the other woman said and her tone was actually cheerful for a change. In fact, she was beaming like a proud parent whose kid had done good in some test.

"What have you decided Auntie?" I asked tiredly, eager to return to the land of dreams for real. It couldn't be to punish me; unlike some people Keera had never been cheerful about that, faked or otherwise.

"To take you as my apprentice, of course," she said as if it was obvious. What? "Eat a lot and rest well; we begin tomorrow at first light!"

...what?

Chapter Text

Dinner that evening was an awkward affair. As it had been the day before, and the day before that. The Old Man was even more taciturn than he'd ever been, eating his dried fish and wasabi-like swamp weeds in silence, idly piling more fermented fish sauce between contemplative looks at me and Aunt Keera. I had no idea how much the adults shared in their secret talks away from us kids but whatever she'd told him about the whole debacle had had an impact. He looked tired now, his hair more grey than black, his sun-tanned skin sporting a few more wrinkles, his slim frame a bit too thin for good health. Maybe the changes had nothing to do with me, maybe it was nearly half a century of living in a swamp finally catching up to the Old Man. But it did make one wonder.

How much of a burden was I, really, to this family? An aging fisherman and a huntress supporting three kids in the Neck couldn't have been easy... and now said Huntress had taken me as an apprentice. The past tenday had all been a long test of my basic survival skills, from rope-making and basket-weaving, to short forays into the swamp, to crab gathering and eel-hunting, to rudimentary herblore. All things I'd been doing for a couple of years now without adult supervision, most of which Crannog-children my age would be more than proficient in if only because the bogs would have swallowed the dumb and the careless. Useful things, if you didn't want to die horribly in the Neck, but ultimately... boring. Was it a waste of a hunter's time? I could not tell Keera's thoughts on the matter one way or the other.

The Twins were even more ambivalent about the whole thing than I was. Even during this meal they kept shooting me jealous glares when they thought I was not looking while every time I returned muddy, famished and exhausted from one of Keera's and my forays into the swamp they'd giggle and tell stupid jokes. What I knew about Crannogmen child-rearing I had only learned by osmosis so I was not sure what the two idiots should be learning at their age. Shouldn't their aunt and father focus more on disciplining them before they did something stupid again? That I had been there to save Jos from a lethal poisoning had been sheer dumb luck.

I chewed on my slightly larger serving of rubbery eel meat, washing it down with even more rubbery weeds and a bit of water. Unlike everyone else, I did not touch the fish-sauce with a five foot pole, nor did they offer me any. In all my years in this world that had once been just a series of books to me I'd only tried the thing once; two days of being violently ill had convinced my new family that it was bad for my health. Being on the receiving end of a 'minor' curse had been horrible... but more than worth it for never having to taste rotten anchovies again.

"We will be moving by the end of the week," the Old Man announced as soon as all of us had finished eating. "Rain season's coming. The Green Fork will have more traffic, maybe some traders to offload the goods to." By 'goods' he meant the many herbs, oils and more questionable substances Keera and I had been stockpiling over the past year. Unlike the vast majority of Westerosi, the Crannogmen did not trade in produce or most everyday goods. If you weren't self-sufficient in the Neck then you were probably dead. What little trade did exist revolved around specialty products; leather clothing and armor, bronze tools and weapons, remedies and poisons. Things that while not strictly necessary made the difference between survival and tolerable life. Every crannog made the trading trip every so often, gathering around the larger communities of floating villages. Last time I'd been too young to get out and around but maybe this time I'd meet some new faces.

"Make it next week," Keera suggested. "I want to make at least one more proper hunt." The Old Man just grunted affirmatively as excitement rose in me. I'd never been to a proper hunt before, and no, the lizard-lion did not count. Maybe it would be less boring than another question and answer session about traditional medicine.

​
The next morning, five miles and about as many hours away from the crannog, my excitement had been significantly downsized. The Neck was as soggy and annoyingly overgrown as ever and Aunt Keera set a quick but cautious pace through the muddy mess. We would stop often, even double-back to pick a different path if the situation warranted. There were no trails and the muddy ground shifted too much for long overland travel to be practical, so we'd brought a boat. It was made of a single piece of mottled green leather of a very familiar pattern, already mostly boat-shaped, with either end sewn together into narrow bow and stern and given extra stiffness with hardened resin. That the locals had used a young lizard-lion's hide as a vehicle wasn't much of a surprise; how well it fit that use was still amusing. Even the cutouts where the beast's legs used to be made near-perfect braces for the oars. The only drawback was the amount of work that must have been needed to scrape the pebbly outer surface into smoothness.

While the boat allowed us to use ponds, canals and bogs as pathways, the Neck still refused to offer a proper waterway. Every few hundred feet we had to travel over land - such as it was - or climb up some enormous tree's roots, or even leapfrog from rock to rock through ancient ruins half-buried in caustic tar. Here, the boat's odd construction proved invaluable since it made the twelve-foot craft far lighter than it had any right to be. Even a single normal person could have carried it upside-down on their shoulders; with two of us it was easy to carry it between us while still having one arm free and a clear field of view plus the ability to drop it at a moment's notice. Travellers outside the neck might not think such considerations particularly important, but they would have died to the first random encounter.

The more experienced huntress gestured me to get ready in the local sign language that looked suspiciously like modern special forces signals. We didn't stop walking, didn't even slow down, a common practice to lull the unseen visitor to a false sense of security. What burst out of a patch of reeds half a minute later was roughly the shape and size of a boar, if boars had hairless pebbly grey hide, four tusks and a weirdly conical snout. Whatever the animal was, it seemed just as belligerent as normal boars were and a hell of a lot uglier. Worse, it was already charging in my direction.

Both Keera and I dropped the boat and turned towards the threat. I set my new and improved spear with its butt firmly lodged into the muddy ground, the sharpened bronze point aimed not at the attacker's head but in the softer, wrinklier flesh between the head and the shoulder. Then two hundred plus pounds of monster slammed into my weapon, the shaft bending alarmingly under my hands. For a moment I panicked, thinking it would shatter, but the weapon endured. It was not made of wood but some sort of horn or bone and it straightened even as the impact pushed both me and the weapon back.

Unfortunately, instead of being skewered by the force of its own charge, the now screaming swamp-pig thrashed violently, trying to gore me with its tusks. The spear tip had only shallowly penetrated, the beast's thick hide absorbing most of the force. Then Aunt Keera came down from above, having leaped over the boat like a panther. A split-second before impact her arms thrust forth explosively, her spear tip seeking the hog's spine. The animal reacted a lot faster than anything its size should have been able to. It pulled back, something normal boars couldn't do quickly, turning what would have been a killing blow into a slice down the side of its head that Keera still managed to guide into its eye, somehow.

Then the hairless boar shoulder-checked her, knocking her back before turning around in a wild, frenetic attempt to trample me. If the older, larger, far more experienced swamp ranger had needed a leaping charge to seriously wound the monster, no twelve year old had a snowball's chance in still-burning Valyria to kill it in one blow and one blow was all I was going to get. Improvising, I made a hasty sacrifice of the beast's blood on my spear then pulled at my magic as hard as I ever had for a momentary but explosive burst of momentum. My spear thrust under the beast's touching inner tusks, straight between its eyes and so quickly it snapped through the air like a whip. There was a crack I more felt than heard as the impact rattled through my bones, then the boar toppled me into the mud and landed on top...

​
"Here, drink," the older woman said, offering me a cup of broth.

Arms still shaking in exhaustion, I sipped the still-steaming mix of water, herbs and chopped up fish. The warmth of a recently lit campfire chased away the lingering cold and aches I felt in my bones, but the broth still tasted like ashes in my mouth. Either whatever Keera had caught was not really edible, she had a shit taste for condiments, or my senses were still scrambled from casting that spell with zero preparation and not nearly enough focus.

"You could have died," my mentor in all things swampy growled. "Never attack a bog-pig head on. Always try to dodge its charges, flank it, sting it when you have an opening. Risking your life for a killing blow when bleeding the enemy dry is an option is dumb." She scowled at me. "In fact, never attack anything head-on. We're not big, shiny, stupid knights taking on all comers for fame and glory; we're Crannogmen. We stalk our prey, we ambush it, we fade back into the marshes if it survives only to stab it in the back when it is looking elsewhere."

"I'm a bit too tall for a Crannogwoman," I couldn't help but snark back even though I knew she was right. "Hair's shiny, too." In the heat of the moment I hadn't even thought about tactics, or evasion, or even just running away. I'd pulled at my magic and tried to use it like a hammer. On one hand, the boar had actually died. The older huntress had strewn it up by its back legs over a thick tree limb, letting the blood slowly drip out of its wounds. If anything, it would make the thing lighter, easier to carry. On the other hand, I felt like shit. Shaking arms, feet like lead, my head still pounding after a good few hours of unconsciousness and my stomach feeling like an empty pit, broth or no broth. Then, there was the other issue.

"Your spear is still stuck through the bog-pig's skull. How the fuck did you shove it in like that?"

"The pig did most of the work," I lied my ass off. "Got caught in the tusks too so it didn't deflect..."

"Sure..." the older woman muttered. Yeah, I wouldn't have believed it either. "Get some sleep. Maybe when your strength is back tomorrow, the both of us can dislodge it."

"What if we're attacked again?" This was still the swamp, after all.

"There's two of us, we got fire, we already killed something big," she said drily. "Unlike some people I could name, swamp predators are not stupid... except for lizard-lions." She chuckled. It was not exactly reassuring, but what other options did I have? "Go sleep, Flann. We got a lot of work ahead of us on the morrow."

Despite her instructions and my own exhaustion, sleep did not find me quickly; I was too busy thinking about the magic I'd used. My flash of inspiration - or perhaps insanity - had hinged on my knowledge of Valyrian steel. In addition to being conventionally unbreakable and rust-proof, weapons made of it were lighter, moved faster and struck harder. That had come up in the novels more than once, so why not try the same in a quick and dirty spell? There was even a blood sacrifice involved in reforging the things so a similar but short-lived Sorcery... well, it had obviously worked even if it knocked me out and left me weak as a kitten. But I was recovering and the spell was too great an advantage to avoid. Some experimentation was in order... but maybe start with a lot weaker effect and build it up?

The other bit about my magic that needed considerable thought was the gains from the kill. The power from it swirled inside me, the first noticeable increase since my killing the lizard-lion, but it was... small. Sure, the bog-pig was a lot weaker than a lizard lion and I'd had help but after years of sacrifices I felt I could judge the gains from a given sacrifice pretty accurately... and this one had given about half of what I'd expected. The life-force swirled lazily in my well of power, only a smallish step towards getting it full once more. Either my expectations had been seriously off... or the threshold towards the next gift from the Flames was now twice what it had originally been...

Chapter Text

Sleeping in the humid, overgrown swampland was anything but comfortable and after a whole night of it my whole body felt cramped and sluggish... or perhaps that was lingering strain from the battle with the bog-pig. Waking up, I found Aunt Keera already busy packing up our things in the skin-boat. The compulsive hoarder instincts of crannogmen had fought with our need to carry a couple hundred pounds of mutant boar and won, so there would be no gathered herbs, roots, reeds or other materials. She'd only collected most of the bog-pig's blood in a pot as it had too many uses to waste, then proceeded to dismantle our camp. By the time I was feeling more awake than not, there was only one thing left to do.

"The bastard's heavy," I said with a grunt, the wooden pole the boar hung from digging into my shoulder.

"You're a big girl, you can handle it," the older woman told me, showing no signs of strain herself. The two of us carried our load to the boat and slowly lowered it within before boarding it ourselves. "Now Flann, check the water. Can you find the biggest current and where it's flowing?"

"There, by that split tree," I pointed towards a moss-covered, slowly rotting old white oak. "I think it's flowing south-west, towards the Green Fork." Most of the bog around us was still but a good mass of waters were slowly drifting in that direction. "Why?"

"There's no way we can make a straight trip back home with the extra weight so we'll need to travel by water," she explained as the two of us fell into a slow but steady rhythm of rowing we could keep up for a long time. "The waters of the Neck always move, if very slowly. Mud islands and overgrowth might shift over the years but with a sharp eye and long practice one could read the currents and know when they lead to causeways, small lakes, dead ends, or dangerous mires. What plants grow where and whether there's fish, frogs, or other life can help guide you, but not always. Now pay attention to where I steer and why."

I did and from the start it was obvious the older woman's navigation skills were top notch. More often than not she could read the waters where I saw only stillness, discard causeways I thought would have cut our trip short just from the way the reeds bent, or from how fish swam, or a sweet-sour smell in the air I was told marked the lairs of lizard-lions. Those places I memorized for future use while keeping my eyes peeled and taking in the best ways to navigate the waterways.

Our trip was by no means straight but it was both easier and safer than going overland as long as we kept away from monster lairs, places where the swamp turned black and eerily silent, ancient ruins, or suspicious-looking logs moving against the current. Twice we were turned around by fog that made navigation slow and risky and once we had to struggle overland because the path wasn't navigable during low tide. In Keera's words, sometimes the only way around was through.

We reached the lake and the family home well after midday, but nobody was in. The Old Man's boat was missing so he must have taken the twins with him. It was time they finally did something useful beyond the chores of children; in only a few years they'd be considered grown men. As for us, we were both tired from the trip but the reward for work done well was more work.

"Shouldn't we gut the boar before skinning it?" I asked as we hung the carcass from the workshop's ceiling.

"No. Skinning is easier and faster if the animal is whole," Aunt Keera said, handing me a curved bronze knife with one edge straight and sharp, the other serrated. "Now, starting at the top, slice the skin down the center of the belly and the center of the legs to prepare in removing the hide. Bog pigs are hairless so they're easier to work with. Had this been a normal boar we would have to keep hair away from the meat as much as possible."

Following her directions, we stripped the skin, using the straight edge of our knives to cut through the white fat and hooks to pull at the thick, hard leather. Then we cut off the front legs at the joints and the neck at the top of the spine with the serrated edge. We then cut the chest open all the way to the throat, gutting the pig and removing the organs. Aunt Keera removed and threw away both the bladder and four glands at the legs and sides which, according to her, would make the meat taste odd if left.

"Shouldn't it have stiffened by now?" I asked some time later when we rinsed it down.

"It did for a bit while you slept. The paralytic mix on our spears reduces the effect considerably," she explained as she coated the carcass in a thin layer of oil and crushed herbs. "It makes handling kills easier, helps the meat be more tender, and can confuse Maesters trying to estimate time of death." Which, she did not have to say, was of more use against people than pigs. Let it not be said the rumors of crannogmen being poisoners was unfounded. "It also helps against spoilage a little, but not enough for lasting storage. That's what the mix of oil and herbs is for. Now we have to wait for four to six days for it to age properly before further processing."

Right, fridges were not a thing in Westeros and while I was sure ice boxes had to exist somewhere, the swamps of the Neck were not that place. Auntie and I chewed on dried meat and the flesh of large, doughty fruit that tasted a bit like flatbread after being cooked on a small fire. All those stories of hunters feasting on their kills? Meat of any large animal was nearly inedible right after the kill, and without the proper processing it had poor taste even after rigor passed.

But mentioning all the work would hardly make for a heroic story.

​
"They are late," the older woman muttered for the third time as the sun neared the horizon. The both of us were resting; after processing the boar and a hasty meal we still had to oil the boat and oars against humidity and rot, do the usual weapons maintenance, wash the blood off the workshop floor, store the organs, blood and fat properly, scrape away the pieces of skin and put them in a barrel full of salt water and hemlock bark. The bog-pig being hairless meant we could skip a great deal of the tanning process but not all of it. Those and other chores had left me closer to exhaustion than not and seriously reconsidering being Aunt Keera's apprentice.

"Should we go look for them?" The menfolk's continued absence was worrying. The Neck was probably the most dangerous place in the Seven Kingdoms, at least where everyday life was concerned, and the Old Man was getting on in years with only two boys of ten for help. Bandits were rare so deep in the swamps - the crannogmen hunted them down as they did all intruders - but people could die taking a stroll, let alone if something bad actually happened.

"You're not going anywhere, girl," Auntie said as she jumped to her feet with a grunt. "If anything serious is going on I do not need an untrained huntress stumbling into it."

"I could help!" I blurted before I could think better of it. "Like with the boar!" At least, that was my excuse. The real reason I wanted to tag along was, of course, magic. Wounds, poison, even active threats were things my magic could help with at least a little. Problem was, I could not actually say so. Keera was not actually my aunt and even without superstitions coloring her opinion revealing such a secret when her family might be in danger might make her react... poorly.

"You mean do something exceedingly rash and put your life at risk when there are simpler, safer solutions?" she said drily then shook her head. "You're tired too; tagging along would only slow me down. If you want to help stay here, prepare a soup or stew and ready the sewing kit in case of injury." Then she was off, rowing for all she was worth towards the Old Man's usual fishing grounds.

Realizing that, magic or no, Keera was right, I did as instructed. I made soup because it was faster and in the hope everyone would be back quickly, got more water boiling and sterilized the sewing kit, wasted some time considering how the crannogmen knew about sterilization. Then I remembered the first doctor to dip his tools in boiling water was a guy named Galen back in Roman times and in some ways Westeros was more advanced than Rome. Then I had nothing to think about or do except worry.

Several hours later, those worries validated when Aunt Keera and the twins dragged the Old Man's unconscious form through the door...

​
"What's wrong with him?" I asked well into the night, after I fed the twins and put them to bed.

"Go to sleep, Flann," the utterly exhausted older woman muttered with barely any strength in her voice. Her hair were dishevelled, her face was pale and she had dark circles under her eyes but her hand was steady as she wiped the Old Man's sweaty brow with a sponge dipped in water and herbs.

"Not until you tell me what's wrong with him," I insisted. Unlike our prior argument, there was no reason for me not to know. Children in the Neck were taught all about the threats in the area so that we'd know to avoid them after all. Though he looked more like he was sick than injured.

"It's wasting sickness," Keera told me, rooting me to the spot with a mere whisper. "Does it help, to know?"

I was struck by flashes of images, a kind smile, soft hands, gleaming green eyes in a dusk-skinned face. That same face withered down to skin and bones day after day until all life seeped away. Many of the illnesses on the world of Planetos were the same as on Earth; the common cold, pneumonia, tuberculosis, dysentery, appendicitis, cancer. Despite the medieval technology level, the Maesters had developed both preventive measures and treatments of abova average effectiveness, aided by unusually effective medicinal herbs. Then you had the other types of disease, those that turned you to stone or scales, that made your own muscles break your bones, that rotted you from the inside-out or turned your bones into worms. Wasting sickness was closer to the latter than the former. It was also what had killed my adopted mother back when I was a little kid.

"No, it doesn't." The sickness made you progressively weaker and more emaciated for no apparent reason, similar to but worse than muscular dystrophy. It wasn't transmissible and seemed to strike people at random, as far as people without modern medical knowledge could tell. It was also a guaranteed, slow and agonizing death as victims became increasingly unable to move, eat, even breathe.

I stormed out of Keera's room and towards my little workshop. A candleflame at the tip of a finger gave enough light to see in the darkness but even without it navigating the cramped space was easy after using it for years. Herbs, oils, potions and tinctures; none of those would help so I did not even spare them a glance. The few weapons and tools I spared only enough time to set aside and reach for the specimen jars and cages. Most of them were empty as I went through live specimens quickly, but one of them still had a little purple lizard like the other one I'd used before the lizard-lion attack. It would have to do.

I took out the docile, mostly brain-dead animal, my spare dagger and an old bronze cup. There was a bit of warmth lingering in the old, battered metal, a remnant of rituals past. Before, I could barely tell it was there. After my encounter with the lizard-lion I could feel it clearly and feel hints of the same in my spare dagger. But those would have to wait for another day.

A single strike decapitated the lizard and poured what blood it had into the cup. The air grew heavier as death was backed by intent, a pressure that grew stronger as I pricked a finger and added several drops of my blood to the lizard's. Instinct guided me in what to do as the chaotic magic shifted with every added drop, stopping the moment the power coiled into a tightly woven spring. Someone trying to do this by rote, follow directions they'd read in a book, would probably have even this small a spell explode in their face. I was beginning to see how each casting was more about improvisation than planning, shaping in the moment a power that could not be predicted... but that too was something to leave for another day.

When I went back to Keera's room, the older woman was deeply asleep. Good; that meant awkward explanations could be avoided. I poured a few drops of blood charged with magic on the Old Man's brow then placed my palm over it. The blood was the bridge, connecting the target to my magic in a way I wasn't powerful enough to do on my own. It made pouring power into him so much easier, at least for this kind of spell, and added the power of the lizard's death to my own efforts. What was left was to direct the power towards a purpose.

The first thing I attempted was to burn out the sickness... but my spell fumbled, with no sickness to purge. Eyes narrowing, I searched for a parasite, but aside from very minor infections there wasn't anything else. Scowling, I tried to remove any poisons and again the magic fumbled aimlessly. Had the wasting sickness been due to any of those causes I could have attempted to help, even if curing a lethal illness fully was beyond me. But as far as my magic was concerned there was nothing wrong, just a man wasting away for no apparent reason. Either what was wrong was completely beyond my power, or something about my understanding of the situation was wrong.

Wiping away bits of black ash from the Old Man's forehead, I walked off determined to find a solution.

Chapter Text

Dawn found me stumbling through mist-covered patches of barren wetland, black mud squishing beneath my boots. It had taken most of the night to get deep into the black swamp, leaving even the ruins I usually hunted in behind. Had I not been pressed for time I'd have waited for first light but I had no idea how long the old man would survive. The wasting sickness was said to be a slow death, but how slow was 'slow' when he was already bedridden? Thus I'd taken the boat and pressed on, stopping only to get some fish rations and the old man's spear for defense. Had I not spent more than two years venturing into exactly the places I'd been warned against going finding my way would have been impossible, but as in all things not doing as I had been told came with advantages.

The boat slid across the bog like oil across glass, its almost soundless passage not getting the kind of reaction from local wildlife it would have at any other place. This part of the swamps, a strip of land extending from Moat Cailin to the North to the narrowest part of the Neck to the South bordered the Causeway further East, the single permanent passage through these lands the Kingsroad was built upon. The swamp itself was as rotting and blackened as the Causeway's logs, what little vegetation existed twisted, leafless, almost unnatural. Patches of sickly yellow mud stretched between strips of stagnant water smelling of sulphur and little streams of algae-laden water flowed through ancient ruins that looked more like bleached, burned bone than carved rock. It was a bleak place, almost as impassable to most travellers as it was deadly. Yet it was also useful in more ways than one.

For one thing, none would eat the long-limbed lizards, scaleless worm-like snakes, or eyeless fish that lived here, which made it a perfect hunting ground for the enterprising and secretive blood witch. As I finally approached my destination, my mind's shadow reached out for the tenth time since my hasty departure from the crannog and snared a two-foot-long banded serpent as the boat passed it by, the grip of northern warging magic stilling it long enough for my spear to strike the moment my mind retreated. Its carcass pulled onboard, a quick cut from my bronze knife decapitated it and added its blood to that of my prior victims pooling in a large clay bowl as its life-force was added to the temporary stockpile.

The boat came to a stop against a tangle of roots on a thick, black, fibrous layer of not quite soil. Sparsely leafed mangrove trees grew into a twisted canopy above, their crooked boughs casting long, eerie shadows beneath the morning sun. I pulled the boat out of the water and hid it behind a tree trunk, ensuring it would neither be carried along by the current nor draw the attention of curious visitors. I had work to do and far too little time to spare either hunting down lost transportation or entertaining nosy adult guests. Beyond the thicket, most of the rest of the island was only sparsely covered by the occasional tree, most of the ground taken up by grass, moss, or little puddles of muddy water. Here, more than usual for this part of the swamps, there were also bird nests, snake holes, more mutant fish and worms. Twisted they might be, but they were still life. Normally, the place would be too far away from home to serve as a hunting ground but for my purposes it was perfect. Now all that was left was the hard part.

The bronze knife bit into the underside of my left arm with a sharp jab of pain I largely ignored as I focused on my magic, using sorcery to coax my blood to flow more freely than it otherwise would have even as I drew on the rest of my power for healing and recovery. Casting the knife aside, my right hand reached for the rations, stuffing dried strips of meat and fish into my mouth. I chewed not quickly but steadily, settling into a simple, mechanical rhythm. Minute by minute, blood dripped from the cut even as a warmth spread through my core and limbs. The old cliche that blood was life and life was power was very much true when it came to blood magic, especially if the blood was mystically powerful. In the lowest ebb of the era of low magic we lived in, most who wielded magic used blood sacrifices to make up for lack of power, training or knowledge. The greater the sacrifice the greater the power boost, but since humans couldn't lose more than a fraction of their blood and live, a human sacrifice would give a great deal more power than a simple bloodletting... unless you cheated.

Healing blood loss came more easily to my magic than any other ailment but as my knowledge of blood magic practices informed me this was not very useful in cheating around sacrifice limitations because every time others had tried what I was attempting to do the blood donor had perished in the attempt. For all their knowledge of magic though, the Valyrians knew nothing of modern medicine or biology. Like I had against the Old Man's wasting sickness, they had fumbled in the dark, shoving their magic into the victim and asking it to heal, or reshape, or whatever else they did. Thousands of years of trial and error meant they'd eventually gotten better at it, but it was no replacement for actually knowing what needed to be done. I'd suspected as much from how easily I could heal for my level of magic; either I was abnormally talented in that specific application or knowing what I was trying to do helped enormously.

So first, I kicked my own metabolism into high gear. I breathed faster, deeper, just a hair short of hyperventilation. I similarly pushed my bone marrow into ramping up blood production even as I forced my stomach and intestines to break down the iron, protein and fat rich food I was shoving down like I was in a food contest. Little by little my whole body warmed up until I started to sweat because my body thought it had to cool down before it burst. It had not yet become accustomed to the Pyromancy flowing through me making heat strokes a thing of the past. The whole process was slow; not a sprint or even a marathon, but more like half a dozen marathons one after the other. If not for the initial overcharge of life-force from the sacrifices I would already be flagging but after several adjustments and half an hour's worth of aches and the occasional cramp the process was fine-tuned enough that it felt merely like hard work rather than a crushing load.

By the time the sun was low on the horizon, my magic was flickering, my whole body was cramping, there was a deep-seated ache in my bones that warned of several days or even weeks to recover from this particular stunt. I was also sure I'd lost at least a few pounds beyond the blood itself and by my best estimate I'd downed over thirty thousand calories' worth of meat and fish. Some bodybuilders had done more back in my old world, but none had been thirteen-year-old girls. Feeling both light-headed and very constipated, I finally healed the cut in my arm and looked at the fruit of my labors.

The bowl was full and brimming with stored magical energy. More than half of the thick red liquid had come from me, about a third of a gallon or close to three weeks' normal blood production. Prodding the sloshing well of power and bracing for bad news, I was first surprised then started cackling gleefully. There was no apparent power loss and because the blood was mine whatever mechanism judged such things took the offering to be about a third as much power as I could have gained were I willing to sacrifice myself. That was straight-up cheating because sacrificing yourself gave a hell of a lot more power than sacrificing someone else... even if I could have found another virgin sorceress of an ancient noble House to sacrifice, or whatever metric made my own blood prime sacrifice material. Yeah, I'd be feeling like shit for probably a week or two, but I hadn't murdered innocents for this either. Of course, to most of the blood mages out there murdering half a dozen people they swept from the streets would be preferable to straining themselves so... and the less said about the ancient Valyrians the better.

Taking the bowl in both hands and trying to walk around with it sent me stumbling immediately and very nearly ruined the entire day's work. Stopping for ten minutes to catch my breath, get cramped limbs moving, and relieve myself in the swamp made the prospect of a few miles of walking at least possible if no less daunting. The sun was nearing the end of its daily voyage, the last light of day would soon be giving way to the eerie night of the Neck, dark and full of terrors. All my sorcerous instincts whispered it would be the perfect time for what I had in mind, so I forced my exhausted body to move.

Carefully tilting the bowl along the direction of my passage, I let the blood slosh around with my every step, the barest trickle dripping from the bowl's lip as I moved along the waterline and leaving bloody spots in the dark, mossy ground. Spots infused with as much of my power as I would normally put into the average spell, split between a small part that kept the blood from drying via sorcery and most of the power lying in wait. The sparsely treed, moss-covered island was two thirds of a mile across but though the ground squished under my boots it was a fibrous mass much steadier than mud. Keeping up to a proper cadence while mentally tallying up how much blood there still was to spill, I made good time across the whole thing. The sun was already half under the horizon by the time I returned to my arrival point, closing the circle with only a little blood left.

My magical instincts whispered half-glimpsed rituals of ages long past and I groaned before I pushed myself into a run, racing against the disappearing sun. Four minutes at most for two thirds of a mile on shitty terrain; drawing upon my magic I forced my metabolism into high gear, pushing my body to a self-damaging extent. On reaching the island's center, I shattered the bloody bowl on a patch of black, dried-out, fibrous earth to prime the ritual and sprinted even harder for the shore. Losing this particular race would be as monumentally bad as forming the ritual this way could be said to be monumentally stupid, but the stupid risk itself was another form of sacrifice and my magic rose in response - higher than it ever had before. I reached the shore when only a sliver of the daystar still peeked over the horizon. With literally seconds to spare, I splashed through the shallows and onto a rock a good thirty yards from the island proper. Then I fell on my backside, utterly spent.

The sun disappeared. The last light of day faded from the tallest tree. Then, from hundreds of spots all around the island, the shore exploded in a line of flame. Red, yellow, even green danced under the twilight, unnatural fires from hundreds of individual ignition spells spreading supernaturally quickly to form a closed ring around the entire island. A larger flame burst to the height of a good fifteen feet in the island's center and the ring started sweeping inwards as if pushed by a roaring wind.

Marshes are the wettest of natural lands so many people think they don't burn easy. Often that is indeed the case, especially in places less overgrown with vegetation. However, there are places in swampland that will not only ignite but keep burning for a very long time against any attempts to put them out. Where there's methane deposits, where there's a lot of rotting old growth... and when there is peat. Peat had been used as fuel during the Industrial Revolution and will burn very well. In fact, it will burn even when half its mass is water and swamp fires over pit deposits can burn for months. This particular island was mostly a large pit deposit, cut off from the surrounding areas by shallow waters. Not only would it burn, not only would the fire be contained in this area, but with enough supernatural help it had just become a funeral pyre for hundreds, possibly thousands of animals, trapping them with no way to escape. It was also one huge sacrifice, prepared in a major ritual with the maximum amount of magic I could personally bring to bear, in an area still blighted by one of the greatest uses of magic the world had ever seen, arranged properly for the exact moment day turned into night.

The influx of power from it struck me like a tidal wave. It filled the well of life-force in my soul into overflowing as the ring of flames formed, then kept pouring in the life and searing agony of the whole island's worth of burned offerings as the flames pushed inwards till it overflowed once more, then kept pushing in a constant stream for many minutes before ebbing. Little trickles still came in even as the well overflowed for the third time. In less than half an hour, it boosted my power by about as much as when my magic first awakened, several times more than the last time my powers had advanced. A howling tornado of magic forcibly turned my mind inward, the vision of the Fourteen Flames bursting into full clarity even as everything else fell away. Something deep inside me felt stuffed fit to burst, a deeper ache that had nothing to do with my body spreading rapidly. If I did not provide an outlet for the amassed power I would literally burn from within and, like Aerion Targaryen who drank Wildfire, die screaming. I had too much to do for that, so I acted immediately.

First I fed power into the eleventh flame, the orange-red of Pyromancy, not once but twice. It was far too useful in rituals not to invest in it even without counting its offensive potential. Memories of pyromancers past flowed through my mind, first how to conjure more flame than the single torch I could do unaided, enough for a small campfire. Then how to shape that flame, push it from shape to shape within five to ten feet. How to warm myself against the coldest weather, walk through a northern blizzard in a skimpy dress like a certain red-haired priestess. How that same warmth could burn out disease and even common poisons, though the worse ones were beyond my ability without either a focus item or a small sacrifice. How to ignite flammable objects or heat pieces of metal or stone at short distances unaided. Finally, how to condense that flame into a shape no larger in volume than an egg, but with tangible weight and solidity behind it and hot enough to be dangerous.

Two more motes of power I fed to the twelfth flame, the crimson of Sorcery. My limited healing doubled in potency, knife wounds and most diseases now manageable without aid or sacrifice. The bolstering of bodies I'd previously fumbled myself into solidified into a spell that would sustain a warrior without food or water for a day while bolstering both their strength and stamina by a fair margin. Repeated use could let someone survive potentially for weeks, the magic supplanting their need for sustenance. Other spells to shape spilled blood, curse a wound to keep bleeding freely, or cause the same extent of injury or disease as I could heal with either brief contact or from a distance with a drop of the victim's blood. Similarly tracking people better than any bloodhound with any bodily link to them, sense the mystical weight and nobility of people's blood with a look, or know their ancestry by tasting a single drop. To either aid a birth along or curse it with complications, and with a drop of powerful blood to either bolster or diminish a target's luck for days from a distance. How much power greater sacrifices brought was not increased, but what power they did bring I could handle more easily, wield more efficiently and from greater distances, and even store for a couple of days in specially prepared receptacles instead of having to race my way through time-limited rituals.

The last two motes I was more conflicted about. The first I put into the first flame, its golden light growing along with the innate potency of my blood. The power of my magic was not just dependent on knowledge but on metaphysical weight. Melissandre had decades, possibly centuries, of training yet her greatest spells could only be accomplished through another's king's blood, however diluted. Brynden Rivers on the other hand was the kind of mage that could manipulate half a continent from a cave in the wilds, his magic bolstered by Targaryen ancestry. It was the kind of power that I needed to survive and, let's not lie in our own mind, desired for myself. But magical power alone would leave me terribly exposed to more direct threats; even the Others who could freeze a man or shatter weapons with a look could still die to the right blade.

So the final mote I placed into the second flame, the bronze torch of Warfare. The moment I did a storm of memories flew through me, memories of exercises, harsh and repetitive training, being beaten down like nameless millions of other recruits in tiltyards since the depths of time. Infantry levies being beaten into a semblance of competence by hedge knights and veteran sergeants, fostered noble boys trained as pages, waiting for the day when if they were lucky, a knight would take them as squires. Even as memories burned through my mind, a similar strain burned through my already exhausted body, the magic forcing the changes years of conditioning and martial training would bring, along with the raw potential to use it.

The vision of the Fourteen Flames shattered as the power inside me was invested, just in time for the ritual on the island to flare. Following the path of a bit of blood and hair taken from its intended target, the magic bridged a distance of several miles to an old man lying sick and helpless in a crannog. For as long as the flames still burned a portion of their energy would become healing, new life pushed into the man's sick body and burning away the sickness. I might not have been able to heal him with a single spell but peat fires could burn for months; I was betting the sickness would be burned away before the fire burned out and if not I'd have time for a cleverer solution than quality over quantity.

As night fell and dangerous beasts were scared away by the flames, I lay back on the rock to rest, happy with my accomplishments. Then a nasty thought intruded and ruined my vainglory.

Fuck! I'd left the boat on the burning island!

Chapter Text

The night was dark and, this being the Neck, it was definitely full of terrors. The sky was overcast as usual, neither stars nor moon breaking the near-total darkness, but ever since the ritual that no longer was a major problem. In both the stories back on Earth and legends here there had been heroes who duelled villains and monsters in the darkest hours of the night. The old Kings of the North were famous for such, and though less storied so were several Houses among the crannogmen. I'd always wondered if those had been overblown accounts of the nobility not suffering from nyctalopia as the lower classes often did in medieval times due to vitamin deficiency, but recent experiences indicated this wasn't the case. I had impressive night-vision now, because apparently nobles in Westeros were built different. Just as some had the strength of several men, others could duel multiple veteran knights and win, or survive a dozen stab wounds and a dip to the sewers without modern medicine, some could see in the dark just fine. What ritual magic had granted me wasn't superhuman just yet, but it was a marked improvement. It was also a good reason to get going, now that I was fairly confident I would survive the attempt.

As I walked through the completely silent crannog to the workshop, it suddenly struck me that I didn't even know what hour it was. I was fairly confident it was the hour of the wolf - three in the morning back on Earth - but did not know for certain. Timekeeping was far less ubiquitous in a pre-industrial society and so was precision measurement but then that applied to all things. It had felt far more odd back when I was a kid and new at life on Planetos; nowadays it was just the way things were. People didn't even have names for their days or months and the calendar was hardly of any use to common people due to how borked and arbitrary the seasons were. This had been a serious source of anxiety early on; how could I use my foreknowledge if I didn't even know what year it was?

In a sturdy linen sack I threw package after package of travel rations, a couple water-skins, over a dozen vials of various substances from my personal collection, my wood and leather working tools, a pack of wax for waterproofing I'd saved over the years, a sewing kit, a small bag of animal bones collected from previous sacrifices, and the knife and bowl that echoed more strongly with the power of said sacrifices. I did not take flint or other fire-making supplies, antidotes or other medicines, or particularly warm clothes. With how my Pyromancy and Sorcery had improved I could do better with a spell than with tools, and expend less time and effort. I might not be copying Melisandre in walking Westeros wearing only revealing dresses any time soon, but I could have if I wanted to.

The sack felt lighter, easier to carry than it would have before. How much of it was experiencing the years - and bodily changes - of a noble kid's combat training and how much was it something more? I took up my spear, strapped my knife to my belt and made for the wooden drawbridge. With luck my departure would not be discovered till morning, by which time I'd be far too far to track.

"You haven't prepared nearly well enough," said the shadow suddenly detaching from the stairs leading down to where the boats were tied, making me freeze with a hand on the drawbridge's winch. Then it resolved into the willowy, annoyingly perceptive figure of my adopted aunt.

"Couldn't you have slept through the night like all normal people?" I asked Keera with a groan. Why did she have to turn up now?

"Among the advantages of my brother making a miraculous recovery is more time for me to keep my own hours," the huntress told me with a sharp smile. "Besides, haven't you heard the stories? We mudmen are sneaks, we won't fight like decent folks, we skulk and use poison arrows. You never see us, but we see you. We might be out there at any time, listening to everything you say."

"The Freys were probably butthurt they weren't the true Lords of the Crossing when they started those stories," I grumbled, suddenly able to understand where they were coming from, if not sympathise. Just because the stories were nasty did not make them any less true. "Are we really doing this now?"

"If we weren't you'd be lying dead in a ditch or filling a lizard-lion's belly by month's end, Flann," the older woman said, standing before the crannog's exit and holding her own spear by her side almost casually. She was not fooling anyone, of course. "You're three and ten - barely at that. You have no business traveling across the Neck on your lonesome. Less than a tenday ago you almost died to a bog-pig."

"Less than a tenday ago the Old Man wasn't scared to look me in the eye," I countered. The last few days had been... awkward wa an understatement. It wasn't about the lost boat even, though that probably didn't help. It Keera having to retrieve me with the spare boat, the smoke from the ritual being visible for miles, and as she said the 'miraculous' recovery. Crannogmen weren't fools and they knew more about magic than the average Westerosi.

"You think my brother is afraid of you?" The swamp ranger snorted and shook her head. "Not yet a woman grown and you got as swollen a head as any lordling boy with dreams of knighthood."

"Then how do you explain his avoiding me?" I challenged back, eyes narrowing as I tried to sniff out a lie. "I'll not live where I'm not wanted."

"I didn't stay up through the night to explain my brother's idiocy to you, just your own," she said with another derisive snort. "Think, lass. Would I be accosting you now if you were not wanted? Besides, you forget that the final decision does not rest with you."

"The hell it doesn't!" I shot back in a furious whisper, barely keeping back from shouting and waking everyone else up to join our little party. "What business is it of yours where and when I come and go?"

"You're not yet a woman grown and you are my apprentice," she hissed back with equal rancor. "You agreed to the apprenticeship-" conveniently forgetting she'd practically demanded it of me "-and until I say you're ready you're not going anywhere. Three students I've had, none yet have died in the bog. You will not be the first."

"As if you care for a foundling and a dragonspawn," I retorted angrily, my blood boiling.

I didn't even see the spear twist in the darkness, its butt burying itself in my midriff...

​

Spears are an awkward weapon. They're longer than a human's comfortable reach, too unwieldy to properly use one-handed or quickly maneuver with, can apply less leverage than shorter weapons, and can only really harm your opponent through a thrust. Those and similar misconceptions among the untrained masses contributed to the romantization of the sword in most stories, almost certainly because the vast majority of spearmen were and still are barely trained commoners while swords were seen as a sign of status by the nobility. The truth was quite different.

I adjusted my aim more through footwork than my arms before going for an explosive thrust at my opponent's torso. Had we been using actual weapons and not training mock-ups, such a blow would pierce through leather armor or chain mail with ease and only struggle with brigandine. Still useless against plate of course, but almost nobody wore plate in the Neck. Unfortunately, the above was only true if the blow landed. My opponent's spear went through a tight rotation, both foiling my aim and setting them up for a thrust of their own. Predictably, it struck me in the gut and padded stick or no it still hurt enough to bruise.

Gritting my teeth and guiding a flow of inner warmth to wash the minor injury away, I thrust twice in quick succession, taking advantage of my greater strength and reach. It didn't work; the willowy older woman dodged by simply turning her torso away from the first blow, carrying over the momentum from that into a thrust not at my torso or head but at my arms. The blow numbed my left arm and forced my second blow to miss even as she took advantage of the spear bouncing back to set up for a second thrust faster than I could have. That one took me at the throat with not nearly the force of a normal blow but still enough to make me gag.

"Your footwork is good but your fundamentals are shite," Keera commented critically then launched an explosive thrust of her own. The speed of the blow from the slighter woman caught me by surprise and I barely managed one of those silly-looking but very effective rotating parries. Naturally, she exploited the momentum of the parry to swing her spear around like a quarterstaff, painfully bouncing its butt off my ribs. I stumbled at almost folded over, even the padded training weapon risking a crack to a rib or two; in a real fight my ribs would be broken, the pieces probably digging into my right lung. Apparently, Auntie dearest had noticed mere bruises weren't slowing me down as they should have.

"You're strong and healthy but don't let that make you overconfident; in war you're but a novice still."

We went through several more exchanges, most of them just as one-sided. I only landed a blow once, ramming my spear's padded head into her thigh when she became a little more aggressive than an opponent of my smaller but still fair skill warranted. Had I been just Flann, a teenager with only a couple years of hunting under her belt, as opposed to a Valyrian of a strong bloodline with half a decade of sorcerously-granted experience, it still would have worked. It was a mistake she did not repeat again, falling into a more defensive stance where she almost effortlessly parried all my efforts aside, creating openings for her own attacks more often than not.

It was a frustrating thing to experience, even when it came with the realization that the memories and talent granted to me by the Fourteen Flames did not directly translate to skill. I had the instincts, the muscle-memory, the raw ability... but I hadn't used them before and when it came to active decision-making trying to think slowed me down. I was like a warrior that hadn't fought for a long time but was somehow still in good health; my skills felt both rusty and unpolished at the same time. Slight improvement came with each bruise, each critical comment, each exchange of blows but it felt too damn slow. In a mere six years the canon events would rear their ugly head and magic or no I was far from ready.

It struck me then that Aunt Keera was actually right, that trying to travel through the Neck and Westeros in general on my own was a bad idea for now. If a single crannogwoman, even an experienced swamp huntress, simply outclassed me, stumbling into a bandit ambush on the Kingsroad would spell death or worse. The realization made my blood boil with anger and I leaped back, grabbed my spear from one end with both hands and swung it like a greatsword. The older woman countered with a two-handed high-parry that sent my weapon bouncing off and vibrating strongly, then quick-stepped into my reach. She grabbed at my waist and pulled, pushed at my opposite shoulder and combined with the momentum of her prior parry managed to throw me into the muddy ground. Before I could blink she stood above me, training spear ready to thrust at my throat.

"That was a typical dumb mistake, done in anger. It's the third greatest cause of death among warriors," she informed me coldly, then pulled me up with a grunt. She stared into my eyes, dark amber orbs fixed on my own violet. "Do not repeat it in the future." Then she turned around and stomped towards our camp.

Wait, she'd frustrated me on purpose, hadn't she? Groaning at being played like a typical idiot teenager, I shuffled after her and fell on the log we'd been using for a seat like a sack of potatoes. Sorcery might take care of bruises and sprains, but I'd yet to find a cure for exhaustion without a minor sacrifice. At least I'd never scar from most things short of a maiming; the true secret of Valyrian beauty.

"Don't just sit there, get the fire going," Keera said as she stretched and took off her padded coat. She was breathing more heavily than I did and was actually sweaty - the only victory I was likely to get. "Then start a proper stew. There's a score of things for a warrior to do after a battle, be they hunter, sell-sword, or hedge knight, and survival sometimes hinges on being able to act, exhausted or not. Campaigns and adventures both have been won or lost on such countless times before."

"You speak as if you ever were a sell-sword," I said, getting up with a huff of complaint. I put a couple of logs into the fire-pit, no kindling, no dry branches, then ignited them with a flick of my fingers and a spark of magic.

"Gods, no. I wasn't patient enough to get on someone's payroll." She glanced at the burning logs and my mulish expression both and sighed. "You won't get either and that right there is not even the biggest reason why."

"Should I pretend not to be who I am when you already know?" I countered then went through the work my magic couldn't speed up. I vowed to get someone else to cook for me by the time I was a proper sorceress, it wasted so much time. Or maybe have a wight or similar servitor do it for me; I wouldn't have to pay those.

"You're set on being a mage, then?" It was a rhetorical question and we both knew it. "Flann, you have a gift but far too many people in Westeros will see it as a curse and a threat... especially if you keep throwing around fire like that. The last people with similar power are near two centuries dead and they did it through dragons, not their own hands.

"I am very far from wielding the power of even a young dragon," I shot back at my teacher with a scowl. "Besides, what should I do? Magic is, apparently, the only thing I'm good at."

"That will have changed by the time you are six and ten," the huntress said with one of her usual infuriating smirks. "Besides, have you ever considered becoming a healer?"

Chapter Text

Aunt Keera did not repeat her suggestion in the days to follow, neither did she voice any other concerns or demands. She was, like all the Crannogmen of The Neck, a woman of a few words and she had already said her piece. Instead she fully devoted both of our time into my apprenticeship.

We woke in the predawn gloom every day and broke our fast on fried eel, dried fish, and various linseed products. I was surprised to learn flax would even grow in a climate as humid and soil as wet as the endless bogs, but apparently Houses Reed, Fenn and Greengood had been cultivating a swamp flax variety as far back as the records go. Six thousand years of controlled breeding were more than enough to develop some pretty weird plant varieties even without magic, and the Crannogmen were one of only two populations on the entire continent to still make occasional use of Greensight.

The odd black linseeds tasted like soy beans. They made for an interesting break from the mostly meat and root based diet I've grown up on in this new life, but I could not claim their taste was good. Still much better than fried frogs or steamed slugs though; I could actually eat them just fine without puking my guts out. My mentor on the other hand downed the seeds with gusto and nibbled on the greenish hard crackers made of linseed meal appreciatively. I was ninety percent certain she was just screwing with me, and since I was literally a captive audience I couldn't do anything about it without problems. At least her brother had hated the things too, which was why we did not stock any such products back on the crannog... except maybe the their oil. The fried meals had always tasted oddly.

After the morning meal we worked on camp clean-up, equipment maintenance and supply check-ups till dawn. Our extended trips far from any permanent base made all of it necessary. Leaving behind campsites as travelers in other lands of the Seven Kingdoms might have when moving on would eventually reveal trails into the swamps of The Neck and damage the veil of obscurity that served as the Crannogmen's first and greatest line of defense. Equipment maintenance was a no-brainer for any trip in any salty swamp, let alone the green hell we lived in and skipping check-ups was a good way to find a full flesh-worm infestation in your rations or something lethally poisonous making a nest in your bedroll.

It was not a very labor-intensive morning, but it required both constant alertness and strict discipline that were more mentally demanding. Maintaining that mindset and eventually growing it into a habit and way of life was probably the hardest part of becoming a swamp ninja - not that the Crannogmen called themselves such, even if that was what they were.

With the sun risen above the green canopy overhead, the older Huntress and I spent several hours on combat training. Knife-fighting, staff and spear duels, wrestling, archery. We didn't do separate endurance or strength training as more modern boot camps did back on Earth. Instead she forced me into round after round of high-intensity fighting or exercises with only small breaks between. In this we took advantage of my magic more than any other time, a constant stream of bruises, scrapes, sprains and the occasional injury that needed healing leaving me wrung out at a deeper level than physical fatigue could have.

Keera beat me at knives with absurd ease, my flame-granted combat skills including very little in the way of knife-work. Improvement came at a decent pace, maybe even faster than most beginners, but it was only the use of magic that kept my arms from being already full of little scars. Things went more slowly with the staff and the spear. After the first few days I'd gotten real experience to go with vision-memories and muscle-memory and improvement came more slowly, like a trainee with at least a few years of practice under her belt. The older huntress still won, but not with the same ease she had at first and the gap was closing.

Wrestling was where my height, size, and abnormal physical prowess for said size and age really shone. The first day matches I'd all lost pitifully to the crannogwoman's viciously dirty fighting style but once I knew what to expect, years of memories of both knightly combat and street fighting made a difference. I was actually taller than Keera and - to her surprise but not my own - stronger too. I also had the near-endless energy and vitality of a teenager on my side, while she was in her thirties and had begun to slow down. At first the skill gulf was whittled down as we wrestled round after round, then we came even in matches early in each day's training while I started winning later on, until finally I was winning consistently.

Archery was still the bane of my life. I had negative natural talent in it and since I'd fed no life-force in the Seventh Flame, no granted vision-memories or muscle-memory to work off. My arrows kept going off-course, twisting in mid-air to miss even targets a mere twenty feet away seven times out of ten. Unfortunately, the elder huntress did not allow me to slack off or focus on those skills I was better. She had me work on making extra arrows every midday while she cooked and handled other camp activities, extras which I used up as quickly as I could make them in our training sessions, shooting them repeatedly until they shattered from successful hits against hard targets and my shoulder and back muscles ached from pulling the bow.

Our evenings were spent hunting. After two hours of rest and tidying up our temporary midday camp we ventured out in the bog where Keera taught me pathfinding and navigation, stealth and tracking, the herbs and beasts that lived in the Neck and everything else a crannogwoman needed not just to survive in the green hell but to make a profit.

Making said profit proved considerably easier when we combined Keera's expertise and knowledge of the swamp's every secret with my minor Greensight abilities. Quick, temporary "Warging" jumps into birds to get a literal birds' eye view on our surroundings made navigation not just easier but faster through the simple ability to look and plan ahead, but wasn't the only advantage. I discovered I had an affinity with plants, being able to instinctively get information out of them in subtle ways. Touch a tree, and I could tell whether any birds or other animals were nesting in its roots or canopy. Touch a bush, and I could harvest its berries efficiently, with no movements wasted on searching for them. Look at a herb and I could tell whether it was of particularly high or low quality without having been taught.

We found out about what I'd previously taken as mundane skill when Keera asked me how I'd known a bunch of mushrooms had had hallucinatory properties. I'd answered that I remembered being taught about them, but no. It turns out the crannogmen do not teach kids how to harvest poisonous plants and fungi until they are older, especially those with mind-altering properties for obvious reasons. Kids are just told to avoid them, not why, which was all I should have known about them. Two years of handling herbs and dangerous substances enough to fill an entire small workshop back in the crannog and I hadn't even noticed. No wonder Keera had always known something really odd was happening about me and to keep an eye out for further oddities.

The hunting itself was simple enough. Birds, snakes, fish, lizards, hogs; we never went up against really dangerous animals like swamp-pigs, let alone lizard-lions, but we caught something every day and as weeks passed the size of our kills was steadily growing. Not only did the older huntress seem to be building up to more challenging targets, but she also had me take point at every hunt. I was the one to bring down our quarry, to make the kill more often than not. Each time I did, a small amount of life-force, of magic, was added to my well, building up slowly towards the next milestone.

Thus nearly three months went by and the Seventh Flame saw decent growth that reflected my increasing skills. Half a decade of life and experiences in the Neck rapidly crystalized in actual competence under the tutelage of a skilled teacher. I was actually having fun outside magical practice for the first time in my new life, and the near-silent days of training and hunting in the wilderness with the older woman left me feeling better than the greater relative safety of the crannog or the twins' constant shenanigans. Night by night I relaxed, my occasional nightmares faded away, and I secretly hoped this state of affairs could last forever.

I did not realize Keera had been preparing me for the next stage of my life that was rapidly approaching.

​

It was well into the night and after the day's work and the evening meal were finished that a quartet of men appeared in our camp like ghosts out of the darkness. They were dressed in concealing robes of green, brown and grey over hardened leather with bronze studs, had hunting bows and a quiver of arrows strapped to their backs, and their leader carried a bronze-pointed trident and wore a still-new iron helmet that gleamed in the light of our fire.

I got up and reached for my own spear as quickly as I could, because strangers dropping in unannounced were rarely a good thing in medieval settings. Also, I'd neither seen nor heard them approach until they literally marched into our camp, not fifteen feet away. My whole body tensed, my heart pounded in my chest and adrenaline rushed in my veins. Had these strangers wanted us dead, they could have easily shot us from out of the darkness, outlined as we both were against the campfire... but they hadn't. That left only possibilities where they wanted us alive and I could think of at least two that were worse than being shot down before I'd noticed anything wrong.

A pit rapidly forming in my stomach and hands clenched so hard against my spear that my knuckles creaked, I reached for the flames behind me with my pyromancy. I didn't know what I'd do with fire manipulation that barely reached ten feet, but it was probably going to be something explosive. I shot a glance at the older woman beside me that was slow to react. Had she been more tired from the day's training than she'd been letting on? I raised my spear a bit higher before...

"Put the spear down before you poke someone's eye out, girl," Aunt Keera commanded in her usual sarcastic voice. If there was any tension or wariness in her voice I could not hear it. "These are guests, not bandits."

Guests? But... I lowered the spear as I'd been told but did not relax. Instead I looked at the unexpected visitors with a critical eye. If they showed any hostility I'd react appropriately but until then I tried to see why Keera called them "guests". They were dressed and armed in the style of the Neck but that did not make them friendly. On the other hand they were not making any hostile moves either. Only their leader had a weapon in hand, the other three staying a few steps behind and... were they leaning on each other? Yes... yes they were. The guy in the middle was having trouble just staying upright and had to lean on the man at his left. Meanwhile, the fourth guy was hovering over the pair... almost... protectively.

"So that's the girl," the leader said, drawing my attention back to him. From what I could see under that helmet of his, he was looking at me up and down like... The frank evaluation brought a scowl to my face with more than a little anger behind it. "She looks like a Dragonseed, all right," he stated as if confirming something of interest and getting me even more annoyed at him. Could I draw upon my magic for a burst of speed and send my spear through his torso before he could react?

"Don't rile up my apprentice, Cray," Aunt Keera warned, her tone amused. "She definitely bites."

I flushed in both anger and embarrassment and the campfire next to me grew a good three feet for a couple of seconds.

"So I see," this 'Cray' guy said and set his spear aside. "What more can she do?" he asked the older huntress while still staring at me. "Your message was rather vague."

"You can ask 'her' yourself," I told the guy, thoroughly fed up with being talked over as if I weren't present. "And what is it to you?"

"When word of a dragonseed witchling in our lands reached me I did not know what to think," he said, addressing me for the first time. His dark, expressionless gaze was pretty intimidating for a guy that barely reached my height and was probably a few pounds lighter to boot. "But then Albert got himself injured in a hunt-"

"Again?!" Aunt Keera interjected, half incredulous, half amused. "That's the third time, isn't it?"

"-and an opportunity to see what's what arose," Cray talked on as if the huntress hadn't interrupted. "So what say you, girl?" he asked me in the same no-nonsense tone he'd said everything else in.

"Will you heal my man as your... aunt says you can?"

Chapter Text

"Lay your man on the ground and reveal the wound," I told the helmeted man leading the small team of Crannogmen. "I cannot make any promises until after I've seen what the problem is."

"Reasonable," he agreed laconically, then ordered his people to do as I'd asked with some silent gesturing. Seeing him up close, the injured 'Albert' guy couldn't be much older than twenty, probably closer to sixteen from how scrawny his beard was - or six and ten as people said here. He was quite well-muscled though, despite his lacking height, built short as most Crannogmen were but wider than their usual wiry builds. The boots came off first, then his tough leather trousers, until from the waist down he was in his smallclothes. Nobody protested about someone getting stripped in the presence of women, because Crannogmen weren't as asinine prudish as most of the people south of The Neck had become under the Faith of the Seven.

The man's right leg had a serious-looking scar from above the knee to halfway around his hip, a sign of a major injury from at least three or four years before. Just by looking at it, I could tell the leg had not regained a hundred percent functionality despite having healed well enough given the circumstances. His left leg on the other hand was wrapped up in linen gauze and a pungent greenish ointment several inches under the knee but above and below the medical wrap the flesh was an angry, inflamed red with a few purple and black veins snaking through it. Even before the wraps came off I suspected what I'd see beneath them.

Sure enough, there was a deep gouge into his shin, two inches wide and with the angry, torn lips of the wound not just infected but already blackening. Yellow pus oozed up from below, hinting at a deeper infection and an imminent turn for the worse. Aunt Keera had come closer and looked on with interest as the wound was revealed but now she grimaced and looked away; it neither looked nor smelled salvageable, not with conventional medical practices. I kneeled by the man's side and touched his leg lightly but firmly just below the injury then delved it with my Sorcery.

My magic responded easily, almost eagerly. Over the past months of my training with the older huntress I'd been using the smallest and easiest of healing spells almost constantly to fix bruises, small cuts and sprains, allowing us to maintain a training intensity that would have been self-destructive under other circumstances. As a result, while I hadn't seen any improvements in power, and no improvement at all for the bigger and flashier effects, the speed and ease of delving another human had improved greatly at the experience. When I'd healed the Old Man months before finding what was wrong had been a struggle. Now, it was all too simple. What it showed me was... Albert was not a fortunate man.

"The infection has not merely reached bone, it began there," I told the four onlookers. "This was a dirty arrow injury. Normally, the leg would be as good as lost and I'd give him even odds of surviving at all, even with amputation."

"We know," the helmeted Cray said with a helpless shrug. Dirty arrows were a crannogman specialty for when lethal poisons were unavailable or you wanted the target to suffer. The arrowheads would be coated in a mix of blood and oil, then exposed to the rotting food remains found in the teeth of carnivorous lizard species in the Neck and left to fester. That bacterial mix was so virulent that without immediate cleaning with an antibacterial herbal concoction followed by further medical treatment it was basically a guaranteed slow end from sepsis even from superficial injuries. Not that the people of the Neck knew about bacteria; they just knew that it caused a slow, agonising death. "Can you heal it?"

"It depends," I told them as I stood back up and away from the patient. "Had you brought him a week earlier, or even a few days it would have been a simple matter." Just kill the infection with Pyromancy, clean up the aftermath with a bit of Sorcery and kick up his natural recovery to the human maximum and he'd have been fine. About the same as I had done for my idiotic adopted brother and my power had grown by leaps and bounds since then. "Now? Now fixing it is going to be costly. It'll need sacrifices."

"Of course," one of the other swamp rangers grumbled behind my back. "Sorcery is a blade without a hilt."

"A lot of things are if you don't know what you're doing or act like a careless idiot," I retorted with a roll of my eyes and pointed at the man on the ground. "Case in point, shooting yourself in the foot with a dirty arrow."

"What is your price?" their leader demanded when it turned out the others did not have a response to that.

"It is not my price, it's a requirement. A fire cannot burn without fuel, a bow cannot shoot without arrows, a smith cannot forge without ore and coal. Just so, too, with magic," I only partially lied to them. Could I have healed the guy without? Maybe if I was willing to spend days and worked myself to exhaustion, but that wouldn't be the best option for anyone involved. Plus I didn't feel like wasting the time or feeling like shit for some guy I didn't know. "Catch three animals and bring them to me, the larger the better."

"That's it?" Cray asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously behind his helmet.

"They have to be alive so I can kill them but yes, that would suffice." The trio of men were giving me distrustful looks so I shrugged and explained further. "At its core the sacrifice should be a fair trade. Your man is not certain to die. Capturing three animals in this swamp is difficult and dangerous for a man alone but no certain death. That there's several of you to share the burden, making it easy enough, does not change the value of the act itself." It was not quite how things worked because both the mage's own power and skill and other circumstances mattered. But for a short explanation it would suffice.

"That's not what the stories say," the same guy as before muttered, again from behind my back. Not very brave, that one, what with being unwilling to accuse a thirteen-year-old in her face.

"That's because of greed, not magic. Most merchants will cheat you of everything they can get away with. Why would witches be different?" I sat back down next to the fire. These people had interrupted us in the middle of the night. If they didn't want to get their guy healed I'd rather go to sleep than argue. "Now get the animals, or do not. You came to me."

"And leave Albert here with you?" the fourth guy demanded. He didn't sound as judgemental as his fellow had been earlier but he wasn't about to trust me with their injured either.

"Enough," Aunt Keera interjected. "If we start with the trust arguments we'll be here all night and the boy won't be getting any better." Hearing her call a nearly grown man a 'boy' reminded me again that she was in her thirties and people in Westeros thought that was already middle age. "I'll go with you to the hunt so you can leave one of you with Flann if you so wish."

"They can leave they guy with the big mouth and not so big balls," I interjected and sure enough, the guy who'd been muttering behind my back immediately revealed himself by shooting me an angry glare.

"You'd be willing to let your apprentice stay on her own in the company of an armed man?" the helmeted leader looked from me then to the older huntress for confirmation.

"Children are dumb, what else is new?" Keera said as she put on her own armor and took up her spear and bow. "We should be back by dawn. Don't set the camp on fire while we're gone," she added, strapping two knives to her belt. "That means you, Flann." And with that glowing opinion about my judgement she disappeared into the swamp, followed by the other two swamp ninjas and leaving me behind with the sick man and Buckethead Cray.

"Ah," the old man exclaimed with new understanding. "So that's what happened to that peat field in the East."

"Some healings are far more difficult than others," I defended myself a bit more angrily than I'd meant to, before turning away to check on the sick guy again. He hadn't spoken since he'd been laid down and now he was sweaty and shivering. A touch at his wrist and then at his forehead gave me confusing results. Yes, he had the shakes, but why was he feeling so cold next to the fire? It was still summer. Unless... "Could you hold on to my hand for a moment?" I asked Buckethead, who still had not removed his helmet, or his armor, or any of his weapons. He was calm and willing to risk help from a witch, not blindly trusting.

"Why?"

"Your man is going in and out of consciousness, sweating heavily and might be going into shock soon, but his temperature feels all wrong. I need a second reference and you're healthy." He gave me his hand with no further argument and the moment our fingers touched I knew what the problem was. His hand was cold, as in "severe hypothermia" levels of cold. At least it felt like that to me, because the problem was my own temperature. Because of course I ran hotter than a normal girl, even an overactive teenager. I wielded fire magic; hadn't Melisandre felt the same in the books? I quickly scrapped my previous evaluations of the patient's temperature and using Cray as a reference point decided that Albert had a dangerously high fever. If it went for too long the heat would harm him. If I used magic to cool him too quickly on the other hand, his body might crash.

Making a note to invent a thermometer one of these days if only to annoy all the misogynist idiots in the Citadel, I focused a bit of Pyromancy to slowly leech heat out of the sick guy while pushing his own body's metabolic and recovery functions as high as they would go without causing lasting harm. For an otherwise healthy, well-fed person that would have been enough to fight off any normal infection but since this was GRR Martin's death world and super-diseases were a dime a dozen it would only serve as a temporary stabilising tactic so I wouldn't have to fix more extensive damage later.

"Where did you learn your magic?" the older crannogman asked about an hour later.

"The usual place," I told him as I carefully increased blood pressure in Albert's leg, using minor blood manipulation to push the accumulated pus and other icky fluids out of his injury without having to touch anything. "I saw it in a dream. Well, more of a vision but that's the same thing when both are magical. Why?"

"It's not just the magic. A girl of seven summers wouldn't have knowledge of normal healing either." Seven years old had been Keera's and the Old Man's best guess at my age when they found me, or so I'd been told. "Do you know who your parents were?"

"I don't remember anything from before I was found," I told the man tiredly. Both Aunt Keera and my adopted father had repeated similar questions many times when I'd been younger. And then there was the other issue. "My magic doesn't say anything on the matter either," I lied.

"Oh?"

"You're a scion of House Cray but your mother was from House Reed and your grandmother was a Blackmyre," I told him and he stilled. "Albert here is a Cray through and through and your nephew. I'd say he's a noble but you are not, though I can't be sure."

"Why not?"

"Because magic cares less about legalities than people do." Also, because I wasn't about to taste both men's blood, that would be icky. "Cray, Snow, if something could change at someone's word alone, how much did it really exist? To magic the difference would be small."

"A Septon would disagree, or most nobles," he mused pensively. With time and opportunity to examine him up close it was clear he was older than Keera, maybe in his forties. Through the eye-holes of his helmet could be seen black eyes with bushy eyebrows, surrounded by light brown skin that had begun to wrinkle with age and stress and hard living in the Neck. "You do realise the appearance of an unknown dragonseed would cause problems, yes?"

"I'd hardly be the first one," I told him with a smile I did not really feel. Dragonseed, nothing. I was far more worried about why my magic insisted I was related to the Amethyst Empress but revealed nothing else about my blood.

We sat by the campfire for hours, Albert's laboured breathing slowly calming down, his temperature dropping to what felt like hypothermia to me but was fairly normal for other people and his copious sweating being reduced considerably. He'd still die within hours if I stopped bolstering him, a day at most, and by this point there was nothing mundane medicine could do to help. As the night gave way to the predawn hours I started feeling the effort of keeping him stable through constant low-key healing and added to the usual hard day's training under Keera I was beginning to tire in earnest.

Fortunately, my adopted aunt and the two other swamp ninjas came into the camp not much longer. One of them held a basket that moved and hissed enough that I didn't need to be a Greenseer to know it was full of fairly large, very angry snake. The second hunter was carrying a turtle a good two feet across, with feet as thick as my arms and covered in angular scales, its shell looking as if it was made by little pyramids of bone stuck together. Its head was as large as a man's, with more than half of it taken up by a huge beak snapping at the air. The locals called it, rather appropriately, a bonesnapper. Back on Earth it would have been an alligator snapping turtle and it wouldn't have been nearly as aggressive. Also, that particular specimen would have been one of the largest instead of a runt; bonesnappers in the Neck didn't get nearly as large as the giants over in Essos but were still pretty sizable. Then again, there were river ships smaller than Essossi turtles. Aunt Keera was last in line, dragging an oversized, thirty-pound lizard by a thick rope around its neck. The little beast must have suspected we were up to no good, because it refused to take a step willingly and kept trying to bite at the rope it was dragged by.

"Bring them in by order of size, please," I asked the three of them as I readied my spear.

First was the snake, as thick as my wrist and closer to six feet long than five, with a round head and bright green scales. It wasn't venomous but it was very poisonous unless properly cooked; some people considered it a delicacy. I had to admit it had been pretty tasty, but not worth the mild allergic reaction I'd had back when I'd been ten. The Twins still brought "the day Flann turned red" up from time to time. The moment the basket was open it tried to flee but my spear took it through the head, killing it instantly. Its life rushed through me even as its blood spilled on the ground, leaving me feeling as if I'd drank a dozen bottles of chocolate milk.

Then it was the lizard's turn. Tied as it was, killing it was as easy as a single stab while it tried to pull back. If I felt even the smallest pang of guilt at killing a helpless animal after years of frequent hunts for both food and magical practice, it was washed away by the second stream of life and power to pour into me. It felt less like an energy drink and more like a full night's sleep, banishing my fatigue at keeping Albert alive in its entirety. I was once more fully awake, full of energy and ready, eager even, to go another dozen rounds with Aunt Keera before breakfast. Or perform a healing ritual, I guessed.

Last but definitely not least was the turtle. As soon as it was set down it started scrambling away faster than a turtle its size should have, almost at the speed of a brisk walk. When I tried to stab it though, its head disappeared into its shell, making me miss. I frowned, pulled back and waited for it to start moving before striking faster than before, only for the bronze tip of my spear to be deflected by its thick skull.

Someone behind me snickered. I suspected I knew which of our oh so esteemed visitors it was, and it annoyed me. Suddenly, all this felt like too much of a chore, saving a man's life or not. Why did I have to prove myself to these idiots again? Except if I gave up now after claiming I could heal their friend they'd blame me for his imminent death, no matter how little it had been my fault. Logical? No, but that's how people thought even back on Earth and they were far less educated and superstitious in this world. Thus I decided to show off. My next stab came with a burst of power that made the campfire hiss, my muscles hurt from the sudden overexertion, and the spear pierce straight through the turtle's shell with the crack of breaking bone.

As the largest wave of life-force yet left me feeling even better despite the sudden burst of magic, I enjoyed the shocked stares of the two younger hunters. I'd bet free healing against a fish caught in the bog a week before that neither of them could have cracked that shell with a stab, let alone gone all the way through. Brimming with vitality, I left them to reconsider the potential stabbing-related ramifications of bad-mouthing a real witch as I healed their friend in earnest.

First, to deal with the remaining infection. I was about to spike Albert's temperature the same way I did mine when I realized that would kill him. Other people did not have my own inherent heat resistance, so I first wove a spell to mimic it for him. It wouldn't quite let him walk into even a campfire but a dive into a boiling cauldron would be just fine. Then I spiked his temperature, frying all bacterial intruders that were not thus protected. That done, I pushed his already boosted metabolism and healing into supernatural overdrive, fixing in minutes what would have normally taken days. After about a quarter hour of that, the injury in his leg had been reduced to a fresh-looking scar, the inflammation was gone and the blackened veins had been fixed. That did not mean he was fully healed.

"It's done. We should leave him to his rest until he wakes up on his own and from then on he should only do light work for two weeks so the bone can mend properly." Could I have pushed him to recover faster than that? Maybe, but why put unnecessary strain on both him and myself? "Now let's start cooking. I'm famished and I haven't had lizard stew for months."

"...you want us to cook the sacrifices?" Mr Big Mouth asked as if I were crazy.

"Why wouldn't I? The animals' life was the sacrifice, the meat is perfectly edible." The men shot me dubious looks but Aunt Keera started gutting the lizard right away and they soon followed with the steady hands and practiced motions of the experienced hunters they were.

Speaking of sacrifices, while the temporary boost was gone, the longer-lasting gains from the three sacrifices added to my well of power. Hardly comparable to my two biggest, most dangerous kills but still far more than the smaller prey Keera and I had been going after in our daily hunts. Another twelfth of the way towards the next milestone perhaps, leaving my well four-fifths full in total. Not bad at all for a single night's gains, which left me re-evaluating the whole "healer" thing.

I'd resented Keera's revelation of my secrets to her fellow huntsmen but in retrospect the older huntress' plans were to my benefit. If the crannogmen came not only to accept my presence but to see my healing as reliable, I would have a lot to gain. They lived in a death swamp in a medieval world, there was no way they didn't suffer frequent casualties to injury or disease like all medieval populations had. They also lived almost exclusively off hunting, so they already had reasons of their own to go after animals. With sacrifices being edible, they lost almost nothing by paying me in captured animals for healing and I could gain power boosts from sacrifices without needing either to risk myself in the swamps or spend time that could be put on other things. Add to that the less concrete but just as useful gains of reputation and potential favours and it really was a no-brainer.

I'd still curse Keera with a persistent itch for not telling me about it first...

Chapter Text

I stabbed into the five-pound mottled frog, the undersized specimen dying with a disgusting squelch. The now-familiar rush of power tingled up my arm, through my torso and my other limbs and then deeper, settling into the well of power in the back of my mind. It was a sensation that had repeated often enough in recent times but instead of losing its novelty it had grown more alluring in repetition. What made the rush better than any drug in my mind was that as far as I could tell it did not cloud my thoughts, nor did it cause harmful side-effects. It was just a boost of power and vitality, straightforward and simple; just one little stab, a little death beneath my knife or at the tip of my spear and not only could I enjoy the rush for a time but I would become ever so slightly more than I had been - permanently. And therein lay its danger; if it did me no harm why would I ever stop?

Setting aside the feeling of overflowing pressure bursting through some barrier and the insistent, demanding whispers for attention that followed, I lowered my hand to the ten-year-old's leg and the infected bite upon it. Pushed on by the rush of overflowing power my magic erased the tiny injury in moments, returned the surrounding inflamed muscle and soft tissue to a much healthier rosy paleness than the angry red they had been, then burned out all traces of disease in the younger girl's body. Feeling a bit sorry for the rather scrawny kid, I further infused her body with magical warmth. For a week, maybe two, her body wouldn't need as much energy to maintain itself and her food needs would drop.

"It's done," I told the wide-eyed father that had just seen his daughter healed of an infection that would mean little to a grown man but might have killed a slightly malnourished child if given time to fester. "Her appetite will be reduced for a couple of weeks due to the infection," I lied. Such deception was coming easier lately; not all of Keera's lessons were about stabbing things with a pointy stick. "You must make sure she eats the same as before to recover her health." With her temporarily reduced needs, that would let the girl actually put on some weight and help against the malnourishment at least a little. It was the most I could do without a ritual to make the sustenance spell permanent and I had no idea what that would do on a growing kid. Probably something not good and maybe tentacled.

The grateful man thanked me profusely despite most crannogmen's laconic tendencies, then took the girl back to wherever their home was through the usual transportation methods of recent visitors to Flann's Free Healing; a rather fragile-looking canoe. Smiling at another job well done only slightly marred by the corpse of the frog, I deposited the squelchy, disgusting thing to the box set aside for such offers. The box and its contents were a result of my miscalculation; many of my patients and their escorts didn't understand that the healing was far from free and insisted on leaving behind little gifts. Some would leave behind the sacrifices. Others left small tools, bits of raw material, ornaments they thought a pretty young woman might fancy, even the occasional coin from those of greater means. None were useless per se - frogs and slugs excepted - but they paled in comparison to both the reputation and the magical gains. Keera was all too happy to take what I didn't need off my hands and sell them in villages down the Green Fork. She'd made the trip on her own, my increasing number of patients cutting into my available time.

Not just the sacrifices but the experience of working on people, testing out small magics beyond just healing like the sustenance spell, limited but significant bits of experimentation. Under more modern moral standards back on Earth such experiments would have seen me in prison probably for life but in this world life was cheap... and you couldn't test spells on bodies or animals. Not only did magic respond differently on live humans, but it had smaller but notable differences between individuals. Every single application on a person was ever so slightly unique that you basically had to wing it, trusting yourself and your instincts, instincts that didn't, couldn't have a basis in prior knowledge. It was still helping people; seeing those that might have been crippled or died without my aid walk away better if not always fully healed was very satisfying. Five weeks after Cray and his men had left, I'd had my first case. Two weeks after that, I'd helped close to a hundred people... and reached my next milestone of magical growth.

I sat back against a tree trunk, closed my eyes and delved into the vision of the Fourteen Flames. Fourteen plinths greeted me, colored flames of varying sizes dancing upon half of them. The gold of the first flame and the red of the twelfth were four times the dimensions and intensity of all others that burned brightly enough to be called candles, except for fiery orange of the eleventh that lagged slightly behind at three quarters that much growth. Nobility, Sorcery, Pyromancy; my choices had been oh so typically Valyrian but they seemed to have worked well. The bronze-colored second flame, the lead-colored seventh and the bright-green ninth followed, much smaller but no less important. Warfare, Subterfuge, Greensight; they were reflections of where I'd spent over half a decade growing and learning. One of them I'd even earned through personal effort rather than sacrifice or inborn talent.

The latest milestone had come with enough raw power to feed two of the flames once or one flame twice, as usual. The question was what to invest in, what to alter about myself? Should I become a better warrior, the equal of a hedge knight or veteran sell-sword? Get out of Aunt Keera's training and finally becoming adequate with a bow by investing more into subterfuge? Explore some new sphere of magic? Gain a deft hand at smithing and building through the experiences of craftsmen past? The possibilities and combinations were many, all of them promising. But what did I really need right now? What would serve my plans best?

After an hour's consideration, I reached the conclusion that I did not know. My budding attempts at gaining recognition and ingratiating myself to important individuals without also drawing too much heat were picking up speed but had yet to bear fruit. Similarly, my efforts to gain the right skills to survive moving out of the Neck on my own were progressing steadily under Keera's tutelage. Threats existed of course, no thanks to a certain writer, but which one I'd have to face first was up in the air. When in doubt, fall back to the basics. Without knowing which challenge would come next, my highest priorities needed to be overall capability and further growth. Looked from that angle, the choices became simple.

The idea of Nobility, being innately superior and more capable, gave the most overall passive benefits. It was also one of the areas I could not improve through training, study, or experience. I fed half the accumulated life-force from my overflowing well on the golden flame and felt the world grow lighter and clearer. It was not the world that had changed though; I was noticeable stronger so I felt lighter on my steps. I could see a hair better, hear a little further, kind of the opposite of an aging man losing sensory acuity. A sensation of pins and needles spread down my spine and limbs as my body ever so slightly shifted. But the change went deeper than the physical. I summoned a flame on the palm of my hand and though it remained only the size of a large torch it was brighter and holding on to it was less tiring; the difference between a dead sprint and trying to run a four-minute mile. Both absolutely sucked but you could do the latter for minutes while the former would see you collapsing in less than one.

Feeding the golden flame again was tempting, very much so. Who wouldn't want to get more power just by reaching out and seizing it, cost in blood or no? Feeling better, actually comfortable in my skin despite living in as bad a medieval hellhole as had ever existed back on Earth was also a powerful drug. Except power without the ability to apply it might as well not exist. With Sorcery I could apply my power for healing and gaining information on the human body or granting small temporary boosts to myself or others. With Pyromancy I could start and control fires better than anyone with mundane tools, protect myself from heat, cold, starvation and even poison and had a hold-out weapon that would neither be expected nor could be disarmed. I was prepared enough for living in the Neck but being paid for healing aside, I didn't have ways to pursue my immediate goals.

Time waited for neither serf nor sorceress. It was the first month of the two hundredth and ninety-third year after Aegon's Conquest. If I was lucky, the enormous dumpster fire of disasters that was canon would begin in half a decade. If I was unlucky, things would spiral into massive conflict even earlier or go worse. I needed to get out of the Neck and survive doing so, then prepare for the wars I knew were on the horizon. First and foremost I needed a way to make the month-long trip out of the Neck in relative safety without spending another year training to be a swamp ninja. I needed ways to get more resources quickly, ways to project power and influence, ways to gain information. For all that there was no better tool than Greensight as a certain Three-Eyed Raven had proven.

I fed the remaining stockpile of life-force to the green flame. It devoured the added fuel quickly, eagerly, and grew into double its previous size. Then the visions followed. An old man slipping behind the eyes of his dog in his sleep, as easily as wearing an old boot. A woman being hunted by a huge cat in a snow-laden forest until she cast her own shadow into her pursuer, a clash of wills until the cat submitted with an angry hiss while the woman took over the prickly personality of the cat. A boy befriending a wolf and forging a lasting bond, neither side tamed by the other. More memories, experiences of wargs forging connections with an animal rather than riding one for a few fleeting minutes or by accident. A foolhardy boy sending his mind out to a bear too eagerly and openly, then screaming as his emotions and thoughts mingled with the bear's until neither knew where the bear ended and the boy began. Connections that could last from years, be used from great distances, to the benefits of both if the bond was used well, to their detriment if it was mishandled. But there was more than just warging there. An instinctive awareness of the woods and its inhabitants, a sense for what life was around and what was its purpose. The ability to bolster that life, or weaken it. The ability to touch other people's minds and glean emotions, but not yet hear thoughts or delve deeper.

Slowly, the visions faded and I returned to the real world. Getting to my feet I stumbled, a lingering disorientation from years of added memories leaving me with a migraine on top of a hangover. It was very slowly fading but even so underscored that gaining magical ability was not entirely safe, let alone using it as the visions had shown. The swamp around me took on an ominous, oppressive atmosphere now that I could feel it in my bones just how many potential threats were within reach. Bonding with an animal would be riskier than anything I'd done before except facing a lizard-lion in melee, but it would come with all sorts of benefits; just look at the Starks in both the television series and books. And unlike people talented only in warging, my magic was stronger and would only grow. That didn't get rid of the innate risks but blunted some of them and removed a few of the limitations.

Night had fallen, so no more patients would be coming for the next few hours. With a smile, I took up my spear, knife and bow, then ventured into the bog to try out all my new abilities. The night air was chilly and crisp for a change, the swampland was silent, there were no people to accost me or duties that needed my immediate attention. The next few hours I'd have entirely to myself, to unwind and have fun hunting, and maybe get a nice, ambulatory tool to do things for me while I was otherwise occupied.

As my canoe slid across the still, black surface of the waters though, I couldn't dislodge the feeling that I was being watched...

Chapter Text

I carefully drew until the string almost kissed my ear, the bow's limbs creaking as they stretched. My target was a mere fifty feet away but I didn't take any chances, spending a good half minute to aim properly. Whereas the act of drawing had become easy enough that the hunting bow felt like a toy in my hands, hitting things with it remained an iffy proposition. I released, the arrow flying out into the darkness, and a second later a small rush of life-force confirmed the kill. At least I could still hit when aiming at a sleeping target at barely above point-blank range. Slight annoyance warring against the energizing rush of success, I jogged through the undergrowth, tangled plants giving way more easily than they should have, picked up the swamp rabbit, pushed the arrow all the way through the still twitching body then threw the latter into my open backpack while examining the former. The spine felt only slightly strained, no chips or cracks; still good to shoot a few times so I put it into the quiver for used arrows and ventured forth.

The swamps of the Neck were dark and full of terrors. This was especially true at night when most people could not see even their own hands, as the tree canopy and mists blocked the light of the stars and the moon. Some crannogmen had fewer problems seeing in the dark than medieval people back on Earth had had though, while I had fewer problems than most. I didn't know how the swamp ninjas did it but my night vision was simply better than it should have been; the world looked gloomy like Hollywood movie darkness instead of pitch black. Then came the strange familiarity with both plans and animals, an instinctive awareness of where to go, how to step, what to avoid and in which places my quarry was hiding that grew stronger the wilder the area and the less people and their works were around. Finally, periodic sacrifices to the mutant marsh owl perched on my shoulder kept the little hellion around to share its ridiculous night-vision and magnetoreception.

OK, she probably wasn't any more a mutant than any of the Neck's weird fauna, but twenty times better night-vision than mine was bullshit and being able to sense the local magnetic lines through her was trippy. And yes she was a hellion, barely flight-capable though she might be. It had been weeks and she still refused to form a permanent bond and the one time I'd been too busy healing to feed her she'd sulked, keeping those huge eyes of hers shut every time I tried to look through... for three whole nights.

The benefits still outweighed the fuss, as proven with the next radar scan. No, it wasn't actually radar. It still was a full visual search of our surroundings, the weird marsh owl I'd picked up slowly moving her head back and forth through a two hundred and seventy degree turn as soon as I was done collecting our latest kill. Two minutes later we already had our next target, a particularly large crab crawling in the shallows between two patches of mud and trees pretending to be islands. It had never taken more than ten minutes to reacquire targets in the two weeks we'd been hunting together.

Since the crab was slow, I just jogged up to it and stabbed it through the torso with my knife instead of bothering with another bow shot. Faster, easier, less wasteful. I pulled the bronze blade out, eyeing the edge critically. It was beginning to wear down from use so I made a note to either tell Keera to get me a new knife the next time she went to the market, or save the next one to be gifted from grateful patients. I added the crab to my backpack, shifting it around to balance the load better. Almost full; a couple more kills and it was back to camp to unload and secure them. Then I heard the click of bone next to my ear.

"It's hardly been an hour, you can't be hungry yet," I told the owl, sending the thoughts behind the words to her at the same time. More clicking was the answer, along with a flare of impatience.

"Yes, I'm sure, and you should be too," I shot back. Neither of us had a problem tracking the passage of time from the daily life cycle of the swamp itself. "You're just a glutton." The response to my stating the patently obvious was a sharp pain in my earlobe as the little shit bit me.

"Do that again and I'll make you go bald," I warned the hellion, sending her an image of a plucked chicken hatefully glaring at everyone and everything. The clicking turned from annoyed to reproachful. "Yes, because feeding you until you're too fat to fly will be any better," I retorted, sending an image of a New York pigeon waddling just outside a bakery. The owl hooted indignantly but no more beak clicking ensued, a clear signal that I'd won this argument.

I was just about to have her look for our next target when something big and with too many limbs burst out of a nearby thicket. The hellion gave a screech and flew off in a panic as a fanged maw twice the size of my head went for my flank. I scrambled to leap away, to bring my spear to bear but the monster was faster, its snapping jaws crossing several dozen feet in under a second and snapping shut... around my backpack. Teeth the size of a man's thumbs pierced through the leather before the beast started thrashing, throwing me around as if I weighed next to nothing. Leather tore at the seams and I flew at least twenty feet before slamming into a tree trunk with a grunt.

Ignoring the pain with a surge of adrenaline, I moved. To stay still was to die so I rolled away from my rough landing and tried to get my bearings. In the gloom, a huge, sinuous shape with twisted, four-toed limbs that looked almost like arms was wolfing down the catch of several hours' worth of hunting. My first thought was lizard-lion but it was wrong; too thin body, too-long snout, too small, and I was pretty sure the thing had hair. Sparse and short and thick but still hair, and reptiles didn't have those. But some dinosaurs had hair-like feathers, a rather useless thought occurred to me as I tried to find my dropped spear.

I saw a gleam of bronze on the other side of the small plateau we were on and frustration followed. That was my spear, all right, but it had been thrown on the other side of the beast, and said beast was already finished with my kills and looking in my direction. Apparently, thirty or so pounds of game were but an appetizer for... whatever it was and now considered me the main course. I drew my knife and prepared to disabuse the monster of that notion. How did I even get into those situations?

No answer was forthcoming except a charging mutant snake with clawed arms for feet. I rolled aside at the last moment, letting the thing be carried on by its own momentum as I stabbed the limb passing inches from my face. Bronze bit into scaly and hairy skin all of an inch, and the thing hissed like some furious giant snake. Droplets of too-dark blood dripped off my knife as I retreated and echoes of the beast's essence were reflected in my thoughts the moment the tang of iron caught in my nose.

The next thing I knew I was already charging, magic overcharging my every muscle until my joints ached, mud bursting around my feet as I accelerated. The world slowed down as my heart beat twice as fast as it ever had and I fell on my quarry from behind with a single, overwhelming thought; KILL!

A whip-like tail struck with rib-cracking force, knocking me back into an uncontrolled tumble but I had already stabbed my quarry a dozen times before it could react, spilling more of that juicy, delicious, red-black blood. I must have more! I forced my protesting body to get up, then the beast leaped all across the plateau at me. Laughing so loudly my throat hurt, I forced another magical surge through my whole body. The agony was nothing before the speed that followed, reaching the monster while it was still in mid-leap and slamming into its belly knife-first. Several somethings in my arm snapped from the impact but that too was nothing before our combined momentum gutting the monster from throat to tail.

Glorious red-black treasure rained down on my face and I roared in exultation, turning around to find my kill shaking and twitching as if trying to pull itself apart. It was mine and already dead, it just did not know it. I fell on it in its death throes, wrapping my limbs around it and plunging my face into the gaping wound. Its not-legs were too long, too uncoordinated, so I ignored them in favor of sucking more of its lifeblood until its power mingled with weeks of prior hunts and the offerings of supplicants and exploded inside me like a fire-mountain of young Valyria.

Then I finally passed out.

​
I was woken not by the stinging pain in my earlobe but the clacking of bones next to my ear. There was something familiar about them, but what? Groaning, I tried to get up but my muscles burned at the effort. That made me stop and the burn faded to a dull, full-body throb. My head pounded as if struck by Robert's own oversized, overcompensating hammer, my every breath sent a sting of pain across my lower ribs and my right arm burned and itched, signs of magically accelerated recovery. I opened my eyes then immediately closed them with a hiss of pain as sunlight stung them, even what little was managing to get through the canopy overhead. I must have gotten completely, overwhelmingly, stupidly drunk somehow, because I didn't even remember it.

"Must have been some party," I muttered then winced because even that sounded loud. More clacking bones followed way too close, each one sending another little sting of pain through my temples. "Whoever's doing that, stop it. Or you're off my contact list forever." Shit, what kind of cocktail did I drink to have left such a sticky, foul taste in my mouth? Grasping for memories that weren't there, I reached out for my magic and immediately a soothing warmth took away the worse of the party's aftermath. Magic was the good shit. Way better than aspirin, or even chocolate milk. Then the shape of that particular thought gave me a sorely needed reality check and my eyes went wide as I leaped off the ground, aching limbs or no.

I was not in my little suburban home back on Earth, nor in some hotel room after some really wild partying all night long. I was not even cooling off said night of drinking in some holding cell. No, I was in the middle of a blackened clearing, on a dinky patch of land that couldn't even be called a proper island, in the middle of the giant swamp that had been my home for the past six years. It was midday, the sun almost exactly overhead, shining down through the gap that had been burned through the canopy by what had probably been my own magic. I was also naked -because of course I was - and coated in a sticky, drying, flaking substance that superficially resembled tar but which I was pretty sure was blood. Just not the kind of blood a normal animal would have.

The little hellion of a marsh owl I'd been working on bonding with clicked her beak in annoyance and looked up at me demandingly. It was hungry again.

"We're out of owl treats. Your complaints to the monster," I told her waspishly. "The monster I barely survived fighting last night, no thanks to you."

The little shit clicked her beak again and flapped her feathers twice before doing the freaky all-around head turn owls were wont to do. She was looking at the borders of the blackened-out circle and the pieces of the monster there. Three clawed limbs palm-up in the West, three clawed limbs palm-down in the East, a smaller circle of gutted snake-like coils to the South, an eyeless, tongueless skull to the North.

"Yes, yes, I killed it," I told the owl, shoving every bit of my annoyance at her magically. "You still didn't help. You'll eat when we get back to camp, unless you wanna try some monster?" The owl hooted indignantly and flew off. Of course it didn't want to eat the monster. It probably stank. Also it was seriously, magically poisonous.

I glared at the circle of parts neatly arranged all around the round blackened area with me at its center. It was obviously a ritual, a ritual I had no memory of. The last thing I remembered was drinking the monster's blood in a storm of bloodlust and temporary insanity. That was the only bit that actually made sense, because the monster's blood was an insanity-causing poison. What did not make sense was how the fuck did a Basilisk get in the Neck, three and a half thousand miles from the Basilisk Isles. Not just how it had gotten here, but why did it happen to stumble upon me of all people? And where the fuck had the ritual come from?

Suddenly having a very, very, alarming suspicion, I delved into my mind and the vision of the Fourteen Flames waiting there. The well of power that had been a bit more than half-full was utterly, painfully empty now, as every bit of life-force had been sucked out of it and then whoever or whatever did it had kept on trying to drain more. It was also notably larger, signifying another milestone. Uneasy about what I would find I immediately checked the Flames, then exhaled in relief.

False alarm; the only flame that had grown at all was the eleventh, the orange fire of Pyromancy. Reaching at it mentally and fumbling for a good five or six minutes, I was pretty sure what the changes were. Beyond just maiking my previous spells a bit stronger, I could heat any stone I touched now, channeling my fire magic through them with the same effort I could conjure flame in mid-air. If I concentrated the heat enough it was even possible to outright melt stones - as long as they weren't any larger than my fist or so. And if the stones had any thematic or physical association with fire or heat, the ease of heating them and the amount I could heat increased with the strength of that association. It should work with all igneous rocks some, more with plutonic, even further with pyroclastic, and most of all with volcanic.

That was interesting and potentially useful. I wasn't going to be shaping molten rock into giant castles or miles-spanning bridges any time soon but even the very basics of Valyrian stone-shaping was... not cool, the opposite of cool. In fact, it was almost not-cool enough to make me miss that the orange Flame of Pyromancy was the same size as the red Flame of Sorcery. The Flame I'd fed four times in the past, while I'd fed Pyromancy three times. Every milestone so far had consisted of enough fuel, enough life-force to feed two Flames, or the same Flame twice. And if that trend had not changed, there was no combination of feedings that should have resulted in my Pyromancy as strong as my Sorcery and all other Flames unchanged... unless they were not unchanged. Scowling, I reached for the Fourteenth Flame. Up close, its seemingly empty plinth radiated an alien emptiness and silence if emptiness and silence had been colors... about as strong as Warfare which I'd fed once and used several times since. And no matter how I tried, the Fourteenth Flame gave no hints of what its magic could do beyond some indecipherable whispers in a language I'd never heard before.

Gods fucking damnit...

I returned back to camp late, my injuries from the battle slowly recovering with a steady but tiring application of healing. I was tired, I was worried about both the unknown ritual and the magic that had brought it forth, and my leathers were damaged either from the battle or from casting them aside in my post-battle madness. At least they'd simply been discarded just outside the ritual ground instead of being swallowed by the bog or worse, set on fire. That would have been pretty hard to explain to Keera and I'd never live it down. In short, I was in no mood to entertain visitors. I'd tell anyone that had come for healing to give me a couple hours to rest and freshen up. Maybe claim sanitation requirements or cite some bogus ritual preparations, unless the visitors were in critical condition.

That plan was immediately shot down by the presence of a significant group of armed people. Maybe a dozen men and women wouldn't be 'significant' for any other place in Westeros but for the sparsely populated Neck and the insular communities of Crannogmen they were very unusual. Especially since every single one of them was armed with both bow and polearm, whether spear, trident, or glaive. They wore lambskin breeches and jerkins coated in overlapping bronze scales, half of them had round leather shields strapped to their backs, the other half carried bundles of weighted nets. Two of them bore slightly rusty greathelms just like that Cray guy had. They had all come in their own boats and eleven of those boats also carried a sizable pig each. The twelfth carried two kids, a girl of maybe ten that looked all around my camp with interested but also worried eyes and a boy several years younger that was pale as a corpse and was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane.

"Flann of the Green Fork?" a man of maybe five and a half feet, with a wiry build and a soft voice asked. He stood with a slight crouch and with his face in the shadow of a low-hanging hood, both of which made him seem smaller but I was not fooled. His blood sang not just with a past that stretched back in the mists of time but with an invisible weight, a shadow of unseen power I'd only seen in some of the ancient ruins and the aftermath of my own rituals. Magic.

"I am she," I told him, because how many silver-haired, amethyst-eyed, five-foot-nine teenage girls were there in the Neck?

"We've heard stories you're a witch with healing magic," he said and I barely resisted snorting derisively. I'd bet they had heard stories, all right. "A child is dying of greywater fever. Could your magic save him?"

"That, no healer can promise with certainty," I told the man I suspected had his men watching over me for some time. "What I can promise is that I will try."

Chapter Text

"This... is not right..."

I'd barely muttered the words as I examined the boy I suspected was Jojen Reed but his father heard them all the same. The unassuming, thirty-something leader of the group of swamp ninjas was not quite hovering over my shoulder as I lay my hands on his son and worked spells he probably couldn't perceive, but he didn't stand back like the rest of his men either. His obvious worry was understandable; that he was even allowing a witch to work magic on his heir... they'd probably exhausted all other options to no effect and I was beginning to see why.

"When all this... sickness started, did he have reduced appetite? Was he complaining about feeling exhausted and had little interest in food and drink?"

"Yes," the guy who probably was Howland Reed said.

"Troubles focusing, complaining about feeling cold or being weaker than usual?"

"Yes," he agreed again with a frown. "He showed all the usual symptoms of Greywater Fever..."

"But did they start before or after the fever itself?" Because after delving the seven-year-old three times and trying to purge sickness from him twice, I was still having trouble finding what to heal. Having had similar issues when healing my adopted father I'd initially suspected a common cause, namely that the issue wasn't an actual disease but something with no foreign microorganisms to kill. Now however...

"...I could not say," the probable leader of the Crannogmen admitted after thinking about it. "He got feverish immediately, same day as the other symptoms."

"It didn't strike you as odd?" Just to confirm my suspicions, I narrowed my healing on just one of the twitching boy's hands. The twitching stopped and the clamminess went away, but as soon as I stopped pumping magic into the area, those symptoms returned.

"It was unusual, not unheard of." Because of course it wasn't. "What do you know? Did you find what is wrong?"

"I found what it is not," I told him then pushed as much magic into the boy as his weakened body could handle. His fever drained away, his pale skin flushed with a modicum of vitality, but any actual healing remained glacially slow and he kept twisting and turning in his unconsciousness... if it was unconsciousness. What I wouldn't give for a bit of skill with Divination... it would have meant less fumbling in the dark.

bthnknahor ot cahf turn'ghftor ronnyth ah geb

I ignored the incomprehensible whispers that seemed to be carried on the breeze and they faded away. Had they even been there at all? Shaking my head, I picked up my seven-year-old patient off the examination table. He barely weighed anything at all in my arms as I carried him over to the center of the cleared-out area and laid him down on a bed of soft brown soil with any twigs, leaves, rocks and roots removed. It would be comfortable enough and would ensure he couldn't fall over or injure himself on anything sharp. About more directly inflicted injuries... he probably didn't have anything to fear either.

"I'll be needing more space now," I told the twelve crannogmen and the ten year old watching the proceedings. Much like Howland Reed, the girl that had to be Meera, a cute, slim, freckled thing with long brown hair and green eyes, had her oval face and little button nose scrunched up in obvious worry. Her eyes shifted to follow my every move and her mouth had opened several times, unasked questions but a breath away. Her whole body was taut, ready to bolt at any moment, whether to go to her brother or father I did not know. "From this point on I'll be casting stronger magic, backed by the sacrifices you brought. Interrupting the proceedings would be dangerous."

"What will you be doing?" Howland Reed asked with an air of familiarity, if not understanding. It was not so surprising, given the magic I could feel about him or where he'd spent the winter before last according to the novels.

"You've studied in the Isle of Faces," I said instead of an answer and his men shifted and mutters rose among them. They'd known, of course, but now they also knew that I knew, of something that had happened during my first two years of life and kept a secret by most afterwards. Howland Reed did not react more than just giving me an impatient nod. "You've noticed how some of those with magic were sick at an early age, or had stunted growth?"

"What-" Meera started to say but a gesture from her father made her swallow her question - but not the looks he shot her baby brother. Instead of saying anything, the Reed patriatrch just nodded again.

"Magic can, though not necessarily does, use life as fuel." I pointed at the eleven pigs held behind the half-circle of armed crannogmen. "Animal sacrifices, for example. Anyone casting spells must always be careful not to overreach and sacrifice more than they intended, or could afford." Unless, of course, they forced those sacrifices on other people, in which case most people would be screwed. I started walking around Jojen Reed, marking a six-foot-radius circle in the soil with a stick as best as I was able. "Now, I tried to heal your son. Twice even. While it looked like Greywater Fever, they symptoms didn't quite fit... and they returned as soon as I stopped trying."

"You don't think he's sick," Lord Reed said.

"No, I don't. In fact, other than the convulsions his symptoms fit more intense starvation or general weakness rather than Greywater Fever." Which made no sense for the son of the most powerful man in the Neck. "Which brings us back to the magic issue. If magic were a sword," which was a terrible analogy but one everyone in Westeros could understand, "those born with it would be like kids born with a steel blade in hand. Even if they didn't rush to use it the moment they heard stories of how awesome swords were, accidents would inevitably happen. Accidents like burning their own health in spells they didn't mean to use."

"Can it be fixed?" he demanded.

"That is not in question." I told him and slowly and openly so everyone would see what I was doing, I reached into the soil with my left hand. Magic, as much as I would have put into a flame close to the maximum size I was capable of, poured into the soil with a loud hiss, a reddish glow, and the acrid stench of burning earth. Where my skin and the soil touched, the soil gave way as magically infused heat turned it into slag. The secret was to use a pull of fire magic to prevent the heat from spreading out and dissipating, limiting it to less than an inch from my fingers so that the temperature would spike sharply in that limited volume and start liquefying the ground.

It was a slow, tiring process even with keeping the layer of nearly-molten earth rather thin as I carved along the circle I'd previously marked. Cutting a thumb-wide, palm-deep trench into the ground would have been easier and faster through water-softened clay and had the physical part been the whole of it I'd have done that instead. Doing it by hand and with my own magic, a magic that altered and shaped earth through the transformative and purifying element of fire, I was laying claim to the area much like the Valyrian mages of old had built entire castles of fused stone. Dragonstone castle it was definitely not, but it still would help with what came next.

Howland Reed's men had taken several steps back and a few had even raised their weapons when the very obvious, very visible magic came out. Maybe they had expected the subtle powers of Greensight, or the simple spells of hedge witches, but this was not who I was. There was an opportunity here to cement my reputation as someone that could do real, blatant sorcery, sorcery that could be valuable to them. Beyond just being a powerful lord in his own right, Howland Reed had the ear of a Lord Paramount, and while my immediate plans did not focus on the North that connection would be needed in the future.

"Bring me the hogs one by one but do not cross the line," I told the men as I stepped out of the smoking, cooling circle of what looked now like black basalt. The first pig was brought and I grabbed the animal around the head, stretching out its neck over the lip of the circle. Then with a brutal mental thrust that made Howland Reed twitch I stunned it then cut its throat open with my knife. Blood gushed from the wound, splashing on the line of black, glassy rock and spreading around the circle with another hiss. The pig twitched in my grip but it was already stunned and its strength was pouring away before it could recover. Then it died, and a modest stream of power poured into me.

"Next!" I called out as I threw the dead animal back and took a couple of steps around the circle. The crannogmen brought forth the next sacrifice and I stunned and killed it in the same way, throwing it back and moving around Jojen Reed widdershins. More pigs followed as I called for them, more and more blood pouring forth, more and more life pouring into me. Beyond holding the animals down and preventing them from making a mess, both of which were simple with my magic and well above average strength, the process was simple. Soon the circular ditch was full of fresh blood, all eleven pigs were dead, and my well of power had been filled... less than a tenth the way to the next milestone. Closer to a twentieth, even. A dozen farm animals, even large and meaty ones, simply didn't give as much as the basilisk had. It was not just a matter of life, a simple addition of quantity. The circumstances mattered a lot, as well. Still, it was enough of a temporary boost for a sizable spell, at least a few times more than I could have done unaided.

"Because it bears repeating, I'll say it again; do not interrupt the ritual from this point on." Mostly because I had no idea what would happen if one of my bigger spells to day was interrupted, but just in case... "Neither you nor I would like the outcome." Honestly, saying nothing had been tempting. It was magic; I shouldn't have to explain shit. Except every time a witch did that, some idiot got curious or got the wrong idea and everything blew on everyone's faces while a squamous tentacled horror intruded into holes it had not been invited.

I kneeled just above Jojen Reed's head, my hands cradling his head as they pressed over his temples. With an effort of will and a spark of sorcery I set the blood in the circle afire, amethyst-colored flames rising a good three feet into the air. My magic rose further, into an invisible dome overhead, but there was some odd resistance preventing it from closing above me and the kid. There was no such resistance on the ground I'd claimed, my magic and the warmth of the flames pouring into it like water into dry sand. Honestly, most of the circle and ground claiming had been a spur-of-the-moment idea to spice up the ritual, give everyone else something obvious to be distracted by. That it seemed to help me to work my magic into the actual healing was a nice if unexpected bonus.

Then I reached out mentally to the kid, far, far more gently than I'd done with the pigs, let alone with the various animals I'd been warging into. I wanted to peer into his mind and see what was wrong with his magic, not hammer his thoughts into a stupor, or crush his psyche and puppet his body. That I was doing this at all was as a poor substitute to Divination. There was nothing wrong with his body beyond it being drained to near-death and my Sorcery was not advanced enough to give me a hint. The only magic I knew that could possibly find an answer was mental contact through Greensight.

What I did not expect was the world around us to seemingly shatter like a television hit by a sledgehammer and both me and Jojen to fall into a swirling vortex of black and green and purple. Then we were... elsewhere.

I struck the ground with incredible force, enough to crater the earth for a good six feet. There was no sound, no feeling of impact, no pain or dizziness. Then I was standing upright, with no memory of having climbed to my feet. I walked out of the crater to find myself in the middle of a forest, woods with ground too dry, with trees too great to have belonged anywhere in the Neck.

Everything was pitch-black but both me and the trees were still eerily visible as if edited in from elsewhere. The trees were tall and gnarled and ancient, with pale white wood like bleached bone and sparse, dark red leaves like spilled blood. Their roots and branches were so tangled I could not tell where one tree ended and another began and they seemed to be the only thing that existed in this pitch-black, utterly silent forest. There was no undergrowth. No animals. No wind. No stars or moon overhead. The only evidence that the ground existed at all was that it crunched underfoot, a sound I heard entirely through my body because the stale air carried it not at all.

I lit a bit of fire in the palm of one hand to see better and it came easily, almost effortlessly. Unlike everything else it was not silent, crackling merrily as it lit my way. And for all that it had broken the alien silence and the dark, I immediately wished it hadn't. Because now I could see before me what the silent dark had hidden before.

Jojen Reed was propped up not by his own power but by thick roots wrapping around his legs and snaking up his body. His eyes were white and pupiless, staring at nothing as he hung there in a trance and a faint green light pulsed out of his chest with the even cadence of a heartbeat. Each beat, each pulse of green was a little brighter, went a little further into the dark. And with every beat, the roots snaked millimeter by millimeter higher up his body. That, I immediately knew beyond doubt, was a bad thing. Not because of some arcane knowledge or mystical insight, but because several other people were tied up by roots in other trees. Said people had been reduced to bleached skeletons and their skulls had fallen off long ago. Some had even rolled close to Jojen's feet, a very strong argument that he should be taken out of those growing roots posthaste.

I was pretty sure that the giant raven perched on the kid's shoulder was going to object to that. It was darker than the darkness, and indeed tendrils of unlight stretched from it to the entire forest, covering everything in shadow. Its eyes - of which there were three, with one of them in the middle of its forehead - glowed a baleful red as they turned in my direction, the same color as the trees' leaves but far more radiant and menacing. And then the bird that was not a bird opened its beak and crowed;

"Interloper! Interloper! Interloper!"

Chapter Text

"Interloper! Interloper! Interloper!"

"Interloper?" I shot back at the strangely echoing voice of the giant crow, an eerie crackle and hiss reverberating in my own words. "I was not the one to reach out a thousand miles away to invade a child's mind." I walked closer to the boy and the crow and more hisses followed. I looked down to find myself barefoot, smoke rising from stone at my every step. Visions were weird.

"Not invasion," the booming voice came out of the bird's beak instead of a crow. "Succour. Schooling. Succession."

"Is it?" I asked dubiously and walked on. "In my experience, it is not succour if you tie them up but slavery. It is not tutoring that deals agony but torture. As for succession, does the child know what it will involve?" As I stepped closer to Jojen and the roots though, the forest between us seemed to stretch. The more I walked, the further he seemed to get as if something unseen and unfelt was pushing me back without even touching me. "Did you even ask?"

"Necessity," the crow said, "Obligation." The forest grew darker, colder, and faint screams were carried in the sudden, bone-chilling wind. "The guarding shield fails. The realms of men shatter. The Night grows long. Winter is coming."

"Are you some fancy bird from the Summer Isles to parrot the words of House Stark?" I demanded, feeling more than a little annoyed. Without foreknowledge, the bird's words would have sounded appropriately ominous and prophecy-like but to someone that knew what they referred to and who was speaking they were just proof that the speaker was being deliberately abstruse. "Yes, yes, the Night's Watch is a joke, Westeros is on the brink of civil war, the Long Night is but eight years away, and you need all the help you can get. If you spoke more clearly people might be more willing to help you." Then I scowled angrily and pointed at the boy wrapped up in the roots. "But none of that is an excuse to do what you're now doing. Not to a child."

"Necessity! Necessity! Necessity!" the three-eyed bastard crowed, its three eyes glowing brighter. "Urgency! Urgency! Urgency!" It lied.

"You still utter falsehoods as easily as you breathe when it suits you, Brynden Rivers." I growled and for a moment the green illumination of the forest flickered into purple. "You were seven and seventy when you were taken in by the Children of the Forest and look how well you took to your position. A child of seven with not a lick of magical training has no business taking the duties and burdens of an old man. Why not take someone else?"

No response was forthcoming. Not with words at least. But the trees in the dream seemed to writhe and move, a hundred hundred glowing spots appearing in their canopy. All red like the giant bird's though much smaller, all in pairs instead of a line of three. But they were still eyes and the pressure of that many stares fell on my shoulders like a giant's weight. It was obvious that Bloodraven had made up his mind and did not wish to speak with me any more. He was trying to cast me out of Jojen's ming. But I refused to bend, or be pushed back as the wind howled. He was older and far more experienced and the greater Greenseer by far between us. But he was also more than a thousand miles away, behind The Wall and beyond the realms of men, and Jojen and I were standing in the center of my place of power, in a circle of blood and fire, and Valyrian sorcery. With effort I stood tall.

"This is neither necessary nor the fastest way. The boy's father is with us tonight," I said as I forced my way closer against the feeling of pressure, of growing distance. "He is a grown man. A man trained in the ways of the Green Men in the Isle of Faces, with a spark of magic in him fed by wars. A man of duty, a keeper of secrets. Why not ask him to be your successor? You could hardly ask for a better candidate unless you went looking in the Isle of Faces itself." Now that I thought about it, it was odd that he hadn't asked a member of that order, or even someone else desperate to learn magic like a certain archmaester of the Citadel.
Goka n'ghauh'ee aimgr'luhh​
The skeletons bound in the roots of the other trees shifted, drawing both my and the giant bird's attention with their sudden movement.

"Successor," one of the skulls on the ground said in a voice coming from the deepest of caves, its empty eye sockets looming larger.
"Successor," the skull closest to me said, the voice echoing from where its jaw used to be making it shift like an unseen wind.
"Successor," a skull near Jojen's feet repeated, the sound of crunching leaves accompanying the words as they were blown away.

"Possessor," the first skull continued, the roots closest to it recoiling with a hiss as little flames gleamed in its eye sockets.
"Possessor," the second skull repeated accusingly, rivulets of fresh blood dripping from its every crack.
"Possessor," the last skull hissed like a curse, any roots within several inches blackening and falling into dust.

"Your own victims seem quick to accuse you," I told the bird, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. "What say you, Bloodraven? What is your real reason for going after a child?" I had not wanted to assume but the hints had been there. I had no idea how or why those skulls had spoken, but even if I discarded their words entirely, I could see no other explanation for why Brynded Rivers would not pick any of the superior student options. Even in the novels and television series there had been multiple Stark children, all with the same blood as Bran, except for Jon who had even stronger magical ancestry, yet he had only sent his agents to bring in the youngest who had shown magical ability. The most naive, the one who'd been crippled and would jump at any offer of something better. In fact, Bran would be in a pretty similar situation to what Jojen suffered now; in great danger, sick, with Bloodraven offering 'succor'. "Be persuasive, or I'm taking Jojen out of here right now."

It was not just the kid that had me threaten one of the few real mages in all of Westeros so. I despised deceivers, rapists and slavers who preyed on the innocent, and if the last living Blackfyre was doing what the skulls had accused him of then he was all three. I waited for his answer while mentally going through all ways I had to get Jojen free when the trees' roots writhed like snakes... and then they grew. In moments, a seemingly impassable barrier of tangled, many-thorned vines was barring my way.

"So be it, you thrice-blind featherbrain," I growled and raised both arms as if gripping something invisible and tapped into the power in my soul. My magic responded to my call far more easily in this forest of dreams than it ever had in the outside world and in moments I was holding a sphere of flames the size of a roaring campfire. This I hurled at Bloodraven's barrier; the orb flew through the air like a basketball and shattered upon impact into an equal amount of liquid flame akin to Wildfire. The trees screamed as their roots writhed like tentacles, wood and vine and thorns going up like so much kindling.

More roots charged at me from every tree, a bleached-white tide of grasping coils as fast as a galloping horse. But magic or otherwise they were but wood and I was the flame. I cast a second fireball and a third and a fourth, forming them as quickly as I could visualize the result, launching them as quickly as I could make throwing motions. My magic rose in song and instead of fatigued I felt empowered for not only were my spells stronger in the dream-vision, but I could for some reason cast them without the exhaustion that followed in the real world. In moments, the barrier was but kindling slowly turning to ash and cinders at my feet.

Then an invisible hammer swung by a giant struck me between the eyes and sent me reeling, the next fireball dying before I could throw it. The second unseen blow staggered me and pushed me back, the third threw me down to the ground. Then the largest murder of crows I'd ever seen rose from the trees like a black tide. Hundreds of little feathered menaces with glowing red eyes, thousands. The flap of their winds was hurricane. The clack of their beaks was thunder. Their weight and momentum was like a tidal wave, picking me up and carrying me along as countless claws and beaks scratched and bit at every bit of exposed skin.

With a scream that was mostly swallowed by the monstrous swarm, I conjured a pair of fireballs and detonated them point-blank. Expanding blasts of fire struck like twin grenades and every stupid magical bird within two dozen feet was instantly barbecued. I fell off the murder's grip, dropping and dropping through the air until I landed on a smooth, black, familiar surface. It was not the mud of the swamps, or the barely any harder earth of Westeros' dismal roads, or the root-covered ground of a forest. Its texture was both hard and slightly elastic with a hint of grease and a deep breath brought in the acrid tang of oil and rock and molten tar. It was a fresh-paved road; a modern one.

I got to my feet, my clothes in tatters. I ignored them for we were still in the dream and Bloodraven could spy on me at any time if he so wanted. It was another factor that added to his overall creepiness and my desire to punch him in the face up close and personal, but I set it aside in favor of taking a look at my surroundings. It was a city, a metropolis by even modern measures, but one in a style I'd never seen. There were stepped pyramids with rounder temples at the top, each more than the size of the entire Acropolis complex in Athens, taller and wider several times over than the largest pyramids back on Earth... and there were seven of them. Each was made of a different type of stone that gleamed under the twilight, glittering green or blue, yellow or pink, black or white or purple.

Between those titanic edifices towering above everything nearby stood countless more reasonable-sized buildings. Some were as large and thick as ten-floor residential blocks, others were thin elaborate spires shooting as far in the skies as the Empire State building. Unlike any modern city though, they were not cramped together in a near unbroken skyline but left vast spaces between them for parks and pools and more paved streets. Countless carriages with no sign of horses littered those streets, not in thousands or even tens or hundreds of thousands but in the millions for the city extended as far as the eye could see. But the streets were deserted and if the carriages were ever drawn by animal or beast and driven by men or other there was no sign of them whatsoever.

In the titanic city-scape, Bloodraven's murder of crows seemed tiny. Still a cloud and of impressive size for a flock of birds, but they spread across less than a tenth the distance between two of the pyramids, a mere half-mile. Below them, one of the empty, abandoned parks was rapidly growing into something wilder, the trees twisting and sprouting in moments the growth of centuries even as their trunks and limbs and roots were bleached of all color and their leaves turned red as if dipped in blood. Something hissed overhead, the sound both alien and strangely approving. Looking up I saw the moon but it was black and took up nearly a quarter of the sky. There was no sun or stars, merely a crown of red around the black moon's circumference, casting the entire city-scape into that reddish gloom. And in the rest of the sky lines of red and black and white radiance signaled the fall of meteors, some no further than the mountains beyond the city's limits fifty miles away, others so far they were merely sparks. And before the moon that looked more like a black hole than anything else flew a comet, a comet the color of spilled blood.

"Secrets! Secrets! Secrets!" a million crows spoke in surprise and glee as they approached. "Mine! Mine! Mine!" they declared.

"You know what, Brynden? Screw you!" I drew on my magic deeply, as deeply and strongly as I could in this land of visions. I was met not with a small campfire as in the outside world, or with a roaring wildfire as it had been before in the dream, but an endless torrent of power, an entire ocean seemingly pouring in from everywhere around us. "Screw you and the tree you rode on!"

"Successor! Successor! Successor!" the murder of crows spoke slyly with a million beaks. "Possessor! Possessor! Possessor!" Apparently, he had changed his mind about wanting Jojen as his new minion and possible meat-suit because he'd seen a far, far juicier target in me. And why wouldn't he? If he managed to take me over he'd not only gain a body with far more innate magic, not only know what secrets I was obviously keeping, but he'd also prevent me from spilling his own secrets to interested parties that might visit a certain cave beyond The Wall and give a hundred-and-twenty-year-old bastard (in all meanings of the word) exactly what he deserved.

As the enormous flock of killer-birds approached, I wished I could have done just that. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to find that particular cave in the far North. I did not know where it was, no road led to it, and I had all but confirmation that it was magically protected so only people led there by Bloodraven, the Children or their agents could find it. But Bloodraven did not know that yet... and he had made a mistake.

The same invisible giant's hammer as before struck my head... and bounced off. As the countless crows flew within a mere hundred feet it struck again and again, each time shrugged off by the power flowing through me. Unless I was completely mistaken, Brynden Rivers attemp to take me over had pushed us out of Jojen's mind into my own. Our surroundings were no longer a forest but a fusion of a modern city with what I imagined Valyria might have looked like at its height. The great magical disaster overhead was obviously the Doom, though why there weren't any volcanoes nearby, exploding or otherwise, I had no idea. But if we were in my mind then the vision had become my thoughts, so...

"I CAST ASIDE THIS VESSEL," I declared with a voice that shook every building within a mile and made the crows stagger and almost drop. Then every scrape and gouge, every bleeding wound they had dealt to me in this dreamscape expoded into amethyst fire. My torn clothes were incinerated in an instant as the magical fire spread, my injuries stopped hurting as they vanished and the flame became a conflagration of gigantic proportions even as the world around me grew smaller. Except it was not the world growing smaller but me growing greater and greater. Flesh and blood and bone went away for we were in my dream and all was but shadow, but the shadow still had my shape even as it towered over the abandoned carriages.

Asphalt hissed and boiled beneath my feet and the carriages melted into silver and gold and copper slag, reduced to puddles of electrum as the road became a river. The towering flames turned red even as they wreathed me like a weightless dress or perhaps an intangible suit of armor, and a halo of raw power formed around my head. My eyes became twin stars in the field of shadow that was my body, a body now taller than any Westerosi giant. More power flowed from my hand like a river, a river of fire that was also a giant whip, as from all around us shadows coalesced in the vague semblance of wings with which I took to the skies.

"ANCIENT COWARD! FLEER OF JUDGEMENT!" my voice boomed again like thunder but the crack of the whip was louder still, its strike killing every crow within a hundred feet from the shockwave alone, then setting them on fire. " YOU WHO STEAL FROM INNOCENTS TO ESCAPE YOUR FATE NOW WILL YOU ANSWER!"

More whip-strikes followed, shattering the giant murder of crows, burning tens of thousands with my every blow. Their remnants tried to flee but my mere proximity was already igniting their wings, the funeral pyre of Bloodraven's dream-minions spreading all over the swarm. Then I came down on the park where Brynden Rivers' influence had turned the plants into one giant weirwood tree larger than a redwood. Roots and branches as thick as siege rams twisted and moved to whip at my form or bar my passage, but the one whose image I'd modeled myself after had shaken a whole mountain and crashed through fortifications as thick as The Wall; the best they could do was slow me down.

Yet perhaps Bloodraven knew more about this dream-place than I did because slowing me down was not useless. Soon, I started to feel a rapidly increasing discomfort, a building pressure, an ache in my limbs and torso that slowly turned into searing spikes, that would soon become burning agony. Tapping into the seemingly inexhaustible aura of magic all around the deserted city, I was using far too much power, even for this vision in my mind. My mental equivalent of a body was already shaking under the strain and if the old bastard delayed me much longer I felt like something disastrous would happen.

I pulled at some of the magic forming my aura of fire, condensing it in the palm of my right hand while still striking out with the whip in my left. Denser and denser, from flame to an acetylene torch, to white-hot plasma that had a physical weight to it, or so it seemed in the vision. That I shaped into a sword, narrow and sharp and as long as I was tall. Where the whip had reach and its shockwave struck in a great area, the sword focused the same power to its edge alone. A broad swing sliced through the wall of roots and branches far more easily than the whip had, burning deeply into the barrier and setting it alight.

More strikes carved a path until I was standing before the giant weirwood tree itself, a face the size of a house scowling at me even as my proximity sent flames licking up its bark. The eyes glared even as they dripped blood and the mouth opened as if about to speak, but there was nothing that Bloodraven had to say that I wanted to hear. Grabbing my new sword with both hands I lunged, sinking its blade through the face and into the heart of the tree. For a few heartbeats nothing happened beyond a rapidly escalating sizzling and a soundless scream as the tree's mouth stretched wider and wider in apparent agony...

...then the tree exploded.

Chapter Text

The first Howland Reed heard of Flann of the Green Fork had been when the watchers of the southern First Men ruins in The Neck sent word they'd found a young girl of Targaryen features wandering the deadly place on her own. The incident had been very odd, and not just because a child had appeared in an area where even his best hunters only ever ventured in groups. It had happened a few short years after the siege of Dragonstone and the final ousting of the last Targaryen survivors from the continent... or so most people thought. Howland Reed knew better, and while the girl could have been a dragonseed, the weight of the secrets he bore made him suspicious of such a coincidence.

So he sent a group to investigate the old ruin in the black bog, a party of a dozen men. Nine returned with word about a rotting derelict half-sunk in the swamp, of their three missing fellows disappearing into the mists, of them being chased by the screams of vengeful spirits as soon as night fell. Unlike the followers of the Seven in the South, crannogmen knew when to leave well enough alone. The girl had been adopted by a retiring watcher, the warnings against venturing into the black bog had been redoubled and Howland had turned his attention to other matters - such as Balon Greyjoy's mad ambitions. Nothing had come of those events for years.

Then the second message came. The now twelve-year-old girl had started venturing into the black bog on her own and was having Green dreams. The majority of Howland's hunters did not know what those were, not truly, and yet the woman raising the girl had given him a very accurate description of one - a description he'd taken from the girl herself. The retired watcher had also decided to train the girl on her own initiative. An oddity of a situation was turning problematic; prophetic abilities always did as Howland knew quite well. He decided to deal with it in person as soon as he found some time away from more immediate duties... but he never did.

His son fell sick with greywater fever, that rare but deadly sickness that had plagued Reed lands since the Andal invasion. Few survived it, fewer still who were Jojen's age. The healers he brought, wise in the ways of the swamp, could only alleviate the symptoms. His own talents had never leaned towards healing, something he'd lamented since the Tower of Joy. Then, not a week after his son's sickness begun, word of the new healer reached them; the silver-haired, purple-eyed girl who could banish injury and sickness as if they'd never been with just the blood of live animals.

He'd gathered a war party and set out from Greywater Watch immediately, both his children in tow. A dozen men, four of them trained in the secret ways of the Neck, seven of them the better hunters and trappers in his employ, both forewarned of what they might be facing. Howland Reed had stopped believing in coincidences twelve years before; if a new mad witch was responsible for his son's condition he'd end the girl himself. But just in case it was the far rarer positive confluence and the girl had been sent his way to help, he'd also brought live sacrifices as the rumours claimed she wanted.

The actual meeting was the oddest Howland had ever had with another gifted individual. Not the girl walking up to them covered in blood and wearing torn leathers - that was even nostalgic of his time in the Isle of Faces - but how direct and grounded she'd sounded. Flann of the Green Fork did not talk like a witch or a prophet; she even explained what she was doing, something no gifted individual ever had. Even Howland who'd never been more than an apprentice kept his thoughts to himself and his tongue still unless necessary; some habits were hard to break. Was the girl gifted at all?

Then she'd scorched the ground with her bare hands, set blood alight in unnatural fire with a gesture. Sorcery, blatant and undeniable. It was all Howland could do not to jump into the burning circle to stand by Jojen's side, a resolve sorely tested when his son started screaming. Half his men were raising weapons to strike down the witch and he with them when the first bleeding cut appeared on the girl's skin. Then another and another and another, dozens of bleeding scrapes and gouges as she joined his son in screaming.

Howland's spear dropped from his hands as an unseen fist hammered into his head. He felt the magic in his bones, as if a circle of green men were calling the storm before him. Four of his men, the ones with the gift and some training, also recoiled though their reactions were more subdued. He forced himself to speak, telling everyone to stand down. If they interrupted a spell that powerful... he didn't know what would happen. He'd only studied in the Isle for a winter and such things were the work of a lifetime.

Jojen stopped screaming. The girl's scrapes stopped bleeding and started smoking. The purple flames in the circle dwindled, then guttered, the ominous presence he could feel from them ebbing away. Howland could wait no longer; he vaulted over the circle and reached for his son. His boy was unconscious but his skin was warm and flushed with health, though he remained as thin as a starved urchin. He did not have the shakes, he was not breathing shallowly, he was not moaning every so often. Howland tried to pull him into an embrace, but the girl's hands still held his head down. He made to pull them away but they wouldn't budge, as rigid and unmoving as old roots and twice as stubborn. Then the ebbing magic traveled up his arm and hammered into his brain.

Mud. Stone. Roots. Bones. A man older than anyone he'd ever seen, half-sunk into a root as thick as a tree trunk, screaming as he bled from both eyes and the center of his forehead. Then the image shattered, replaced by a roaring inferno. Two eyes, lidless, glowing with purple fire, surrounded by milky skin, with an ever brighter purple star between them. The second image lasted a single moment yet also forever, that glowing gaze burning itself indelibly in Howland Reed's memory. He felt as if his skull had been split, his memories and thoughts bared to that searching glare.

Then his hand finally left the girl's and the image vanished.

​
"Wake up Flann!" someone shouted in my ear, ending a very pleasant dream of bathing in molten rock with two other people and two sets of stones. The people's features shifted and blurred except for their crowns, one white-gold, the other iron black. The stones were three and seven and happily danced through the lava, but all other details slipped through my fingers as the dream faded.

I woke up with a pounding headache and hunger gnawing at my guts. That last bit surprised me. When was the last time I'd gone even a little hungry? I did not remember, and the insistent poking at my cheek stopped further attempts to remember. A one armed fumble proved it wasn't an annoying winged furball doing the poking as I'd half-expected, but a person. A suspiciously small person.

"Yay!" someone shouted way too loudly. "Look, Jos! Look! I woke up Flann! Even Auntie couldn't but I did it!"

"Kellen, is that you?" I groaned and tried to blink odd afterimages from my eyes. Ruins, a sunken boat, and a very young me stomping on a lizard-lion's tail? That did not make sense.

"Yep!" the too-loud voice admitted. "Now get up! You been sleeping for ages and ages!"

"Jos?" I asked.

"I'm here," the other boy said in a thankfully more normal tone.

"Kick your brother for me, will you?"

"Flann, no!" the aforementioned miscreant cried as if I'd deeply maligned him.

"Flann, yes!" I said. "Get him, Jos." Sounds of struggle followed and despite both the hunger and the magical hangover they brought a smile to my lips. Opening my eyes, I found myself in the swamp. Trying to get up had me almost faceplanting into mud because instead of a bedroll I'd been sleeping in a hammock. I never used hammocks for precisely that reason, so someone else must have put one up for me. Seeing Aunt Keera presiding over the Twins messily wrestling on the ground it wasn't hard to guess who.

"How are you feeling?" she asked when she saw me getting up.

"Hungry. Also, kinda bloated." My guts groaned in protest loudly enough to hear. "How long was I out?"

"Three days."

"Shit." No wonder she looked worried. "I hate rapist bastards."

"...WHAT?!"

"Not so loud!" I hissed, wincing at another spike of pain into my brain.

"Explain! Now!" Keera looked even more pissed now. A quick review of what exactly I'd said made me wince again. Poor choice of words, Flann.

"Bastard mage from beyond The Wall wanted to hollow out Jojen's mind, make the kid a puppet, or worse." I tried to reach for my magic to fix myself but my Pyromancy spell guttered and died. Gods, I felt even more spent than I had after the basilisk. "Then he saw me when I tried to heal the kid and decided to have me instead. Stronger magic, you see."

"...Flann, the Wall is fifteen hundred miles from here," the older huntress said with an air of incredulity.

"Really? I thought it was only a thousand." She glared at me. Why do people glare at poor Flann? I shook my head, more to clear away the cobwebs than anything else. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Brynden Rivers is many things but incompetent is not one of them. I had prepared the ground, raised the magic equivalent of a wall, was ready for an attack and he still nearly took over my body to wear like a coat." I wasn't sure how close the fight had been actually, and since I had no idea where that power boost had come from I felt like preparing for the worst interpretation was a good idea.

"You're talking about Bloodraven...rumours and old wives' tales," Keera muttered. "Plus he's been dead since I was a little girl. Maybe you should sit down and rest some more."

"He disappeared beyond the Wall but did not die," I told her tiredly. She would believe me or she wouldn't. I was too worn to make my case then and there. "And he was using one of the greatest works of magic in Westeros to boost his powers."

"Oooh! Magic!" Kellen interrupted by ramming my size and giving me a hug. "Tell us! Tell us more!"

"Are you a witch now?" Jos asked. "Can you show us?" he begged even as Aunt Keera shook her head in negation from behind their backs.

"Now, kids, Flann has to talk to Lord Reed," she said as she collared the two boys who were now protesting vehemently. They really wanted to see some magic.

"He's still here?" If I'd been out for three days.... Keera must have correctly interpreted my confusion because she explained.

"He really wanted to talk to you," she told me, then sighed. "Wouldn't tell me why."

"Well, we can't keep Lord Reed waiting," I said.

"Nooo!!!" the Twins shouted as one and tried to escape their jailor's grip; a futile endeavor if I ever saw one.

"But first..." I drew on my magic but it guttered before the spell could form properly and I swayed. Keera gave me a worried look but I wouldn't allow a bit of exhaustion to tell me what I could and couldn't do. I pressed through the momentary weakness, took hold of a bit of power and forced it into the proper shape. Then I was holding a torch-sized purple flame in the palm of my hand.

"Oooooh!" both boys looked on in awe. Their astonished yet happy expression was what I imagined my face would have shown if someone had shown me the same spell back on Earth.

And it was worth every bit of further strain and effort.

​
"...and that's pretty much what happened," I finished telling the whole story to a fiercely scowling Crannogman lord. And while it was a story, the details of the strange dream-city nowhere in it, the information it did give was the truth. "As far as I could tell of the bastard's intentions anyway."

"Is my son still at risk?" was his first question, as every father's should be. Unfortunately, it wasn't one I could answer for certain.

"I cannot predict future attacks, from Brynden or any other mage," I admitted. "What I am more sure of is that they'd need an opening. There was more than one reason the bastard went for a boy of seven and not someone older. Teach your boy to mistrust mental visitors, train him in discipline and what magic he does have and Brynden would go for some easier target."

"Could you protect him?" Could I? Another difficult question. I'd felt the rough weight behind Bloodraven's mental attacks. They'd been daunting but not insurmountable. But to make a defense he could not bypass for sure, not even when my attention was elsewhere, one that would last?

"Yes," I said, deciding on the truth. "But at a terrible cost neither of us would pay."

"I'd pay a lot for my son," he countered.

"Would you pay the lives of men? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?" I saw his expression curdle like week-old milk and nodded. "Training and discipline and a minder. Brynden has bigger problems than putting effort to take a child he knows won't be of use to him."

"Very well," he nodded back and he even sounded... relieved that I hadn't taken him up on his offer of payment? What was that about? "You healed my son, as I asked. You risked your life for him. What would you have of House Reed?"

"Three things," I replied without even having to think about it. I had been planning this bit for some time. "Ten golden dragons," or about double the price of a good horse or a knight's armor, "the lizard-lions in Moat Caillin's, well, moat," the use of which should be obvious "and a message to the Warden of the North that winter and war and darkness are coming in six years."

"Is the last a prophecy?" he asked seriously, with none of the doubts anyone else might have shown a thirteen-year-old girl.

"Yes. You will know the time has come by the death of Jon Arryn and the coming of the Red Comet." Those were not a sign they'd miss.

Howland Reed stared at me. I stared back at him. We both stared at each other in silence for a good five minutes.

"I see now why my teachers were vague," he muttered. "You're leaving the Neck, yes?"

"Yes. Too many things to do."

And so little time...

Chapter Text

The bowstring snapped through the air and slapped against my bracer, hard. Sixty feet away, the arrow struck the bog pig in the head, the bodkin point drilling through its thick skull and into its brain, killing it instantly. A small jolt of invigorating energy flowed through me at the kill as our boat moved up to the bank. An annoying owl hooted overhead but I ignored it, leaping off the two-man canoe and up to my kill. With no need to confirm its death, I lifted the hog by the legs and carried it to the boat. We'd be eating well tonight and for the rest of the week.

"You're getting better," Keera noted as we started rowing again. Despite the extra weight the canoe still slid silently across the bog like water across glass and we made better time than we would have on foot. The further we went from the area known as the black bog we passed thickets of trees half-drowned in various species of fungi, dozens of flowers and reeds that seemed almost tropical despite the cooler climate, and countless parasitic plants of all types. I was quite surprised by how green everything was; compared to where we'd lived for years this area was impossibly overgrown, almost choking in vegetation. "In fact, I'd say you're improving very quickly," my adopted Aunt continued. "Another year or two and you'd be as good as any crannogman twice your age, I'd say."

"And yet I still can't hit a log at a hundred yards," I grumbled, pulling at the rows hard enough that the boat's prow dipped dangerously low in the water. That made me stop, silently count to ten twice, then continue rowing at a more normal pace.

"Most archers start training as children and continue for life. You have been training for less than one," the older woman told me in an exasperated tone. "The same is true for Southron boys at tiltyards, if they want to be proper warriors. You shouldn't be leaving so soon. You aren't ready."

"Time waits for neither gods nor men, Auntie. Events are already moving towards their appointed end," I explained, adjusting my rowing to put the boat into a slow turn. We picked the smaller of three paths, a narrowing waterway that seemed to disappear into batches of reeds. Without Aunt Keera's knowledge of the area or the occasional bird's eye view courtesy of an annoying owl I would never have known of how that passage widened after a mile while the larger ones ended up in an enormous mire a couple miles later, one with a shallow layer of water over enough quicksand to swallow a much larger boat than ours. "Six years is all we have to derail it."

"...de-rail?" she asked curiously after another minute of silence. Of course. Railways were not a thing in this world.

"Change the course of events," I explained. "There are a lot of bad things coming up that I want to stop." Or at least ensure certain people could not take advantage of while I benefited.

"You're having those dreams again, aren't you?" The owl hooted and we stopped before the boat could pass under an archway of tangled tree branches. A spear throw dealt with the ten-foot-long snake waiting to drop on anyone passing under it and a minute later I'd retrieved the weapon and we were continuing on with another jolt of energy that made the constant rowing so much easier.

"The dreams come and go," I finally admitted when we stopped for the evening half an hour later. My muscles had settled into a pleasant burn, made even better by the knowledge we'd made excellent time for yet another day. Five miles a day was a struggle for most people in the swamps, even with boats. Experienced crannogmen often did three times as much and we'd done twice that in turn, for the fourth day in a row. Soon enough, we'd arrive at our destination.

"Do they always show you events to come?" Keera asked as we hung the boar from a tree branch overhead and got down to the usual business of making camp.

"Ha, no," I told her with a shake of my head. With a bit of mental effort I forced the somewhat damp wood in the fire-pit to catch fire anyway; no need to waste time searching for dry branches or tinder. "I can't even remember them most of the time. I just know they're odd because of the colors." Green lights, purple flames, a giant black disc in the sky with a red ring around. You know, the usual.

"Is that why you're so frustrated in the mornings?" she asked while she set up the first hammock. I left that to her while I started working on the pig; I'd never gotten the hang of anything but bedrolls. "How do you interpret them if you can't remember?"

"That's the problem; I don't!" I shot back and blood gushed out of the pig's severed throat, making a mess. Too much power on the bleeding spell; at least the meat had been drained quickly even if my boots would need a wash. My frustration wasn't with how I couldn't remember the dreams though; it was about having them in the first place.

Turns out that beating Bloodraven in the dream-world had marked another milestone. Instead of ending up with more power to feed the flames with though, the well had been drained completely dry and two of the flames had already benefited. The first flame I didn't mind getting stronger as its theme of "Nobility" was the best way I had to get all-around better, but the white eighth flame? Not only had I lost half the milestone to Divination of all things, but now I had to deal with jumbled, incomprehensible visions coming at random during my sleep. At least training with my adopted Aunt and months upon months of hunting meant the seventh flame of Subterfuge had also grown through those efforts.

"Maybe..." the older woman hesitated uncharacteristically before pushing on. "Maybe you should wait until you can read those visions of yours better? Better future knowledge can only help in what you're trying to do, right?"

"I can't, Auntie," I told the worried older huntress. A hard pull forced my knife through the pig's guts, the bronze no longer as sharp as it had once been. "Staying might seem safer now but when the great war starts we might all die if we aren't ready. My magic is mostly fire and blood; it wasn't meant for the swamps. It needs its proper environment to grow until the people who'd kill me for being a witch can no longer do so, let alone those who'd kill all of us for just being alive." And however full of life the Neck was, animal kills had started to give diminishing returns.

You'd know best, I suppose," the older woman said reluctantly. Overhead, an annoying owl hooted loudly.

"Nobody asked for your opinion, Featherball!" I shouted back at the winged menace.

In response, the damn owl dropped a dead snake on my head.

We hit the Causeway three days later. The stretch of the Kingsroad in the North and the only dry passage through the Neck that groups of any size could use was a raised log-and-plank road, crooked and rotting. East of the road was a bleak and barren shore and the cold salt sea of the Bite, while to the west were the swamps and bogs of the Neck, impassable and deadly. The air was damp and clammy and I'd bet anything the so-called road hadn't seen maintenance for decades, snaking crookedly through increasingly darkening bog.

The previously verdant vegetation gave way to peat and rot and unnaturally large expanses of quicksand that always shifted yet never dried, steadily fed by streams of brine from the sea and at least two sizable rivers. The further we went up towards the Saltspear and the Fever river at the narrowest point of the Neck, the worst the area became. Even with the dismal excuse of a road an army wouldn't be able to camp properly; even a smaller war party of a couple of hundred would be forced to camp on the rotting planks of the causeway every night for the two weeks a normal crossing took. It was as if everything here had been designed to impede the passage of armies as much as possible which, of course, it had been.

While otherwise useless, the jump-start of my Divination abilities showed me the truth of history in this place. Even after millennia, the barest traces of ancient magic were still there; I could hear them in the water with every stream we crossed. I could feel them in the earth with every piece of black basalt that had once been part of ancient buildings. I could smell them in the air as the northern chill mixed with the humidity of the nearby sea to make the heavy mists that cut off our visibility. Faint, barely perceptible lines of power converging dozens of miles to the North, so much weaker than even Keera's dim spark of life-force but still present and different enough from the background flora and fauna to be noted as artificial.

We discarded most of the pig's remains and only kept half dozen pounds of salted and campfire-seared meat each. The boat we pulled behind us with a rope for those parts of the causeway that had enough water for it next to them, while I carried it overhead for those that didn't. It wasn't heavy, merely awkward. So was our conversation, or lack thereof. We didn't hunt either, preferring to make as much speed as possible and stopping only for some wet, dismal hours of rest overnight. Making campfires on the wooden causeway would be a bad idea after all.

Two days later the three surviving towers of Moat Cailin peeked through the mists ahead. Once it had been a great stronghold of the First Men, with twenty towers, a wooden keep, and a great basalt curtain wall as high as that of Winterfell's. Nowadays only great blocks of black basalt lay scattered about, half sunk in the ground where the wall once stood, and the keep had long since rotted away. The remaining three towers which were covered with green moss and white ghostskin, commanded the causeway from all sides so that enemies must pass between them. Attackers would face constant fire by crannogmen archers from the other towers should they attempt to attack any one tower, wading through chest deep water and crossing a moat that was a ring-shaped quicksand pit under the thin layer of water. And then there were the moat's living occupants.

We were met by half-dozen of Moat Cailin's defenders, led by a short, grizzled man that nodded to Keera with familiarity and respect but gave me a critical once-over with narrowed eyes, wordlessly conveying the idea that he was not impressed. I rolled my eyes at the obvious snubbing. Maybe his attitude would have annoyed a real thirteen-year-old but I'd been over forty back on Earth and half a decade of harsh living plus magic in Westeros meant I was not so easily riled up. My tolerance for bullshit, on the other hand, had been considerably diminished.

"Well?" I demanded of our apparent host after more than five minutes of silence where he gave no sign of further action. Instead of speaking he made a gesture to one of his men, who provided two pieces of salted flatbread from his travel pack, one for Keera and one for me. We chewed the hard, dry, repurposed travel ration and swallowed.

"Moat Cailin welcomes you under its roof," the old man told us drily. "Such as it is. Its halls are drafty, the hearth only has peat to burn and there are no beds."

"We'll manage, old man." Surprisingly, Keera beat me to those words, though from the smiles she exchanged with the guy it was obvious they were both familiar and fond of each other. They made smalltalk in a near-whisper and I left them to it. I had no interest in getting to know some fifty-year-old semi-retired swamp ninja whose first act upon meeting us had been to get a rise out of me.

Our group of eight marched towards the squattest, widest, best-preserved of the three surviving towers. It was covered in green moss, and a gnarled tree grew sideways from the stones of its north side. There were fragments of broken wall still standing to the east and west and an only slightly crooked gate was attached to it. The main hall was indeed drafty, with high walls and ceiling of black basalt. A massive table of that same stone took up much of the hall's space, though the chairs around it were made of treated wood and hardened swamp weeds in the style of crannogman craftmanship. The hearth was lit and smoked with a heavy smell like old, cheap cigars so thick I had to use a lick of pyromancy to keep the smoke off my head to avoid it. Naturally, none of the others seemed nearly as annoyed bit it as I was.

"You, girl," our most gracious host called out gruffly after we'd all settled around the ancient stone table that must have served the tower's occupants for half a dozen millennia. Talk about being built to last. "There's some packages for you from Greywater Watch."

"They're already here?" All my annoyance at his attitude evaporated before a wave of excitement and I leaped off my seat. "Where?"

"We have them in the armory," he told me with another grunt. Seriously, man, if you were so old you kept grunting all the time what were you doing running the second most important keep in the Neck? Retire already and leave the post to someone with more energy! I did not say that, of course, but at least half of us must have been thinking it. "'cept I think they made a mistake."

"What mistake?" I asked, suspiciously. Neither Lord Reed's family nor their retainers would be that careless and my requests had been simple enough.

"Ye'll see," he told me and soon enough one of his men came in carrying a long bundle wrapped in green linen. At his commander's gesture he handed it over and I eagerly unwrapped it, revealing a thick but supple wooden stave. It was slightly longer than I was tall and it came in a lambskin leather case along with several coils of milkweed strings, a lambskin quiver and a thick pack of arrows with bodkin arrowheads of top-quality bronze.

"Yes, I see what you mean," I told him, examining the yew shaft. "They went overboard. This is far higher quality than I'd expected." When we'd gone to the nitty gritty details of my impending travels, it had become clear that finding the gear I wanted in the Neck on my own would take too long even with ten gold dragons to spend. It was not a matter of money but availability. Hearing what I wanted, Lord Reed and his daughter had immediately offered to get the gear for me at fair value from the stocks of Greywater Watch then send it ahead to Moat Cailin while I finished my preparations. But the bow and arrows they'd sent were far better than what I'd asked for.

"Lord Reed must think highly of you," the old man said in a very odd tone. "Well go ahead then. Such a gift deserves to be used properly."

He was... probably right. Returning it would be an insult, never mind the effort and time needed to take it back to wherever the floating, mobile seat of House Reed was hiding these days. Sighing in acceptance, I took out one of the pale white, fibrous strings. Not only was milkgrass fiber strong enough for bowstrings but the plant's natural latex made it water and rot resistant even more than oiling or waxing would have. Nocking it on one end of the bowstave, I bent it in my arms enough to string it in the other. Then I drew the newly strung bow fully, pulling the string back to my ear with a modicum of effort.

"Not too light but not too heavy," I muttered, mostly to myself. No risk of the bow breaking apart in my arms if I was careless, though I suspected I'd have to change to an even heavier version when I grew stronger in the future. Maybe weirwood or steel? Strider's people were known for steelbows. Then I noticed the old guy was shooting me a decidedly sour look. "What?" I challenged.

"Nothing, he's just strange like most old guys," Keera said with a chuckle. "Come on, I want to see the rest of the package." And showing more excitement than even I felt, she pulled me towards the tower's upper floors and some privacy. We couldn't try on the clothes with the men around after all.

"This is some sort of joke," I said, staring dubiously at what was supposed to have been a leather jerkin. It wasn't.

"Who did you pass on the order to?" my aunt asked as we looked at the offending bit of clothing... and the pieces missing from it.

"Meera," I told her, remembering the cheerful ten-year old who'd been entirely too friendly and not at all in awe of me like most of Lord Reed's men had been. Aunt Keera laughed.

"That was your mistake," she replied with a snort, trailing the leather suit's neckline with a finger. "Girls her age think a lot about boys and gallant knights and pretty dresses." She shot me a look. "Girls your age too, but noo, you have to be a player in the Great Game."

"Well what was I supposed to do?" I demanded, entirely ignoring her comment about my goals. "All the others were men. Was I supposed to let them take my measurements?"

"You should have asked me, was what you should have done," the older woman admonished. "But hey, we all make mistakes and live to learn from them... or not. Now don't be shy," she gave me a shit-eating grin that made me suspect the... modifications to my request had not been entirely Meera Reed's idea. "Put it on to see if it fits you."

"I'm not putting on a leather... dress. The guys below will laugh at me."

"I'm pretty sure they'll be too stunned to do so," she told me with saccharine sweetness. "Besides, what else can you do? Your hunting leathers were wrecked and what you are wearing now will burst if you move too much. You've grown, you need new things to wear."

"Stop being so reasonable, damn it," I growled in annoyance and snatched the offending half-dress half-hunting-leathers from her arms. "And get me a cloak so I can cover everything up."

​
The lizard-lions in the moat were rather disappointing. Yes, they were giant lizards strong enough to tear a man apart, with armored skin that could bounce a knight's sword or a hunter's arrows with ease, and fast enough to run down either in short distances even if the knight was on a horse. Anyone stupid enough to jump into the moat would die... but they were still in a moat and they couldn't bounce armor-piercing arrows from a heavy warbow from thirty feet away, especially with me being able to hold each of my targets still long enough to aim at them properly.

Each of the dozen kills was still a significant amount of power, in total getting me a good way towards the next milestone. Yet gone were the days where just one of the things would have been a deadly fight gotten thought with loads of luck and netting most of a milestone's power by itself. In less than a year I'd grown... not beyond them but still enough that they were no big deal. One of three things I asked Lord Reed for and the payoff was far less than my new gear, let alone the letter to Lord Stark.

We left Moat Cailin behind us along with Keera's boat and our camping gear. My Aunt would pick them up on the return trip, not that she would go too far. She'd just insisted on escorting me till the end of the swamps and the beginnings of the Barrowlands. We kept on the Kingsroad as the humidity became less and less, the fog thinned and stone and hard-packed earth replaced the mud and bog. Vegetation thinned out further and further, trees and ferns and almost tropical undergrowth replaced by hard, thorn-covered shrubbery and brown weeds.

The Neck was coming to an end. Beyond were flat and windswept plains, interrupted only by the occasional town and hundreds, even thousands of little hills, or what appeared to be hills. In reality, the mounds were artificial, the millennia-old barrow-tombs of the First Men that gave this area its name. Curiously, the couple of barrows we passed by were entirely blank areas to my magical sense, as if nothing whatsoever was there. Quite the opposite of what I'd expected from the ancient tombs and rather curious.

"Where will you go after this place?" Keera asked as we came to a slow turn of the Kingsroad around an almost castle-sized mound.

"I will probably explore for a bit, see if I can do anything with the area's resources." Because come on! Millennia-old tombs nobody had entered since before Winterfell was built; they were practically an invitation for the enterprising sorceress. "Then I'll probably go to White Harbor, once I've tested out a few things." Because as inviting as the ancient tombs were, the clock was still ticking.

"I see..." The older huntress trailed off and once again she looked and sounded uncharacteristically uncertain. "Look, Flann-"

"Wait," I told her, slowing to a stop and looking at the snowed-over ground suspiciously. Sleet, mud, ancient boulders leading to the half-buried entrance of the barrow, nothing seemed out of place. And yet... with a bit of mental effort I shared senses with Featherball who was flying half a mile overhead. A quick glance down from the owl's perspective showed me several figures huddling suspiciously in the ruined entrance, just behind the boulders closest to the road. "Five men," I whispered to the older woman. "They must have seen us coming earlier and hid." And they were very few reasons five men would hide from two women in the wilderness.

"You want to flank or avoid them?" she asked, immediately readying her own bow with none of her earlier hesitation.

"No," I said as I looked at the men closer through Featherball's eyes. "No, I don't feel like doing either." I readied my spear and mentally readied myself for what was about to happen. "Let me deal with them, OK?"

"You said they were five," Keera said.

"So I did." I got off the road and went around just enough that the closest guys couldn't jump me the moment I passed the ambush point. "Just keep that bow at the ready in case something goes wrong."

"Marching up to bandits is already wrong," she muttered but followed at a short distance. Soon we came to where the five of them were waiting and from above I saw them tense as they heard our approach. Their surprised reaction when we came into view a good thirty yards beyond the road and their immediate reach was hilarious.

"Ho there!" the small group's apparent leader greeted us with a cheeky grin, recovering from his surprise quite quickly. He was a blond man in his thirties, wearing what must have once been an expensive coat that had seen better days. Now it was worn and dirty and the black leather's luster had been eaten away or covered by grime. "What's a pair of ladies doing in the king's road?" He was still a pretty guy and maybe that corny approach and his grin had worked for him before... or maybe he was a shameless bastard. His leer was nasty either way, and so were those of his companions.

"I'm curious," I said as I walked closer, keeping an eye to the sword strapped to his belt and the knife in his left boot. "Has that line ever worked?"

"Ye'd be surprised," he said with a laugh, dropping the posh noble speech he'd been trying to affect. "Quims are stupid, ey? Especially to travel all alone." More laughter came from his friends.

"I dunno, the bandits don't seem that bad." I looked him up and down critically. "What now?"

"Pay up, Ned!" a fat guy with an axe and dressed in studded leather said with another laugh. "Told ya they were whores!"

"Shut up, Lum," the leader snapped before turning to us again. "Now lass, ye entertain us. If we're happy ye'll be happy too."

"Oh? Let's put that to the test." I walked up to the guy and he let me. What did he have to fear from a girl, even one several inches taller and a couple stone heavier? I grabbed his head with both palms as if I'd pull him in for a kiss... then I drew on my Pyromancy hard. Skin burned and blackened where I touched, fat sizzled and the man screamed. Reflexively he tried to pull my hands off but he'd probably have failed even if his face wasn't cooking off his skull. He screamed again then dropped to the ground, shaking and sobbing. "Huh, he was wrong. I'm happy and he definitely isn't."

"Witch!" one of the remaining four screamed, pulling the others out of their shock. The only archer among them, he shakily raised his bow and drew an arrow. I waved in his direction and sent a burst of power. The oiled string of his bow ignited like kindling and he dropped it with a fearful yell.

A shorter, leaner guy with a scruffy look charged me with a makeshift spear. Compared to Keera he was a total amateur; a simple deflection pushed his crude weapon out of place, a rap against his fingers forced him to drop it and probably cracked them, then a hard sweep of his legs ended in a scream of pain and a nasty crunch as something below his left knee shattered.

Then the axeman was upon me and unlike the rest he didn't suck. In fact, the fat guy was surprisingly fast, with economic, efficient blows aiming to either messily disarm me above the wrist or stick the axe-head in my torso. He knew to close the distance and engage where the spear was weakest and he was fast and skilled enough he'd overwhelm me before long. So I mentally punched him in the brain as hard as my limited Greensight abilities allowed.

Compared to an animal's malleable mental presence, his mind felt like striking rock, but even a boulder would crack if you hit it hard enough. I wasn't trying to possess him, I didn't care about information, all I wanted was to cause damage and for all my limited abilities I was doing this point-blank, with a form of attack he had never expected, one he didn't even know existed. The psychic blow sent him reeling, stumbling drunkenly for a few moments. That was more than enough time for a two-handed swing with as much power as I could put behind it. Bone cracked and he fell, where I swung twice more for good measure.

The fifth guy dropped his knives, turned around and fled at a dead sprint. For his troubles he got ten pounds of Featherball to the face, beak biting, talons rending. The damn owl wasn't even warged; it was attacking on its own volition and from what I could pick up of its feelings it was because only she was allowed to mess with me. Already too panicked to respond properly, the guy was soon blind and bloodied. And with that, the five-man bandit group was done.

"You've grown," Keera said as she approached, bow no longer ready to shoot. "At your age I'd have just avoided bandits entirely."

"It's the magic," I told her. Without sharing senses with Featherball I wouldn't have known they were even laying in wait. Without Pyromancy either the leader or the archer would have been trouble and without the mental assault I'd learned from Bloodraven of all people the axeman would have beaten me. And those guys were still the bottom of the barrel, basically scrubs.

"What do you want to do about them?" Keera asked in a serious tone as we both show the archer running away from Featherball in fear.

"What I would prefer is for vile men like these to have never existed, but since when do we get what we want?" I scowled. How many people had these guys attacked before? How many women had they raped? "The penalty for rape is still gelding or beheading and for outlawry hanging in the North, right?"

"It is," she confirmed.

"Then I'd like to give to you back a little of what you've given."

I dragged the bandits off the road and by the boulders marking the ruined entrance of the ancient barrow. The archer was the only one still able to resist, which he did with a lot of wailing and pleading until I slapped him insensate. I dropped the five of them into a rough circle then drew my bronze knife, the one with which I'd done every sacrifice in a proper ritual so far. The yellowish metal had a faint aura of magic into it already but soon it would be more.

"I dedicate these deaths to these scum's victims, past and intended," I declared and cut the archer's throat. More power than a lizard-lion flowed into my veins. "Let their strength serve a worthy goal." I cut the blind guy's throat next and the electrifying wave of power doubled. "Let their evil be destroyed and feed into protection." I slew the spearman and my blood felt like it would boil. "Let their death empower life." I killed the axeman then and my shadow grew, seemingly drinking in the light. "Let ignominy and failure of the wicked become success and fortune of the deserving." I cut the leader's throat last and the power of five human lives swirled around me like a whirlwind.

I turned to my Aunt, the person who'd helped and protected me the most in this new life, who'd saved me more than once and helped me learn how to take care of myself. With half of my power I layered a protection from fire around her wrist. With the other half I heated the bronze knife until it softened in my hands and easily bent around said wrist. I fused the metal into a handmade bracelet, crude and simple. It was not pretty, but then the most important things were not. Then I stopped heating it and as it slowly cooled I pushed all the temporary boost from the ritual into it, into something smaller but far more longer-lasting.

"There. Healing, good fortune and a bit of a physical boost," I told her. "Not as much as an active spell but it'll keep... as long as you don't lose the arm to some lizard-lion, I guess."

"Thank you, Flann," Aunt Keera said with a strange tone. Was she a bit... teary-eyed? "Safe travels to you, too."

"I'll write you letters," I told her, my own eyes a bit wet, too. It was all the damn dust in those wind-swept plains.

"The Neck doesn't have rookeries or Maesters, silly," she shot back.

"Then I'll learn how to visit you in your dreams," I promised.

We parted after a few more awkward minutes, neither of us very good at goodbyes or final words. And with that, the first part of my journey in Martin's death world was complete.

Chapter Text

I lay my palm over the ancient grey stone and called up heat. Enough to burn through flesh at a touch, reduce a torch to ash, or soften a handful of rock to sizzling slag. My normally pale skin flushed as the heat rose and smoke came from lichen blackening away as my fingers pressed over them and an acrid stench filled my nostrils. I pried to press the heat into the stone surface, direct and amplify it as with previous tests on large boulders and smaller rocks both, but there was... not quite resistance but rather as if there wasn't anywhere for the heat to go.

Frowning, I tried to reach into the grey stone directly with my magic instead, the gigantic sheet of basalt that served as a door for the ancient tomb of the First Men. The fine grains of the igneous mineral sparkled mockingly. Basalt was volcanic; reaching into it with Pyromancy and pushing it into remembering its once-molten condition should have been a lot easier than melting normal rock. Except my attempts at doing so felt like fumbling in the dark, my magic subtly but firmly rebuffed. I tried harder, drawing deeply upon my power until the skin of my hand took on a bronze sheen, until the effort was like trying to lift more than twice my weight.

The rock softened just a little, enough for it to feel like a thin film of boiling-hot mud had splattered over the harder stone beneath. My fingers ached now but they were ever so slowly sinking into the material so I pressed on. One eighth of an inch in, rivulets of sweat started rolling down my forehead and into my eyes. A quarter of an inch in I was panting and my arm started to shake. Higher and higher the required effort rose until my whole body felt the strain, the painful warmth of trying to push my magic against its limits. I gasped and pulled my hand back as if burned before the tips of my fingers could sink more than half an inch into the rock's face.

Smacking my fist into the stone door's face didn't accomplish anything physically except to leave my other hand hurting too, but I instantly felt better as I took out my frustration on the barrier as much as I was able. Bloody First Men and their fucking magic-repelling construction! This was a tomb damn it, not the freaking Wall or some great stronghold. Why was it warded against magical intrusion? Worse still, it was the third ancient barrow in a row that had such protections built into it... out of a total of three I'd checked. I was beginning to think that all of them would prove so protected because apparently, builders back then had nothing better to do than add magical defenses to all their creations just to annoy wandering sorceresses half a dozen millennia later!

I stumbled back and fell on my backside, feeling way too tired for this shit. Trying to open the tombs via non-magical means was not going to work. Not only were the stones making up the barrow so large it seemed the work of giants, but they had been fitted so well together not even a hair would fit between them. They reminded me both of the barrows of the Atreides in my father's homeland and the interior of the pyramids of Giza for their craftsmanship. Moving even one such rock would take a small army, and they'd have to start from the topmost one since they had been arrayed in interlocking, gravity-assisted pattern without mortar. For a single individual, even one mildly superhuman in some ways, it was completely impossible.

Taking in lungfuls of air as my body slowly cooled down, I started second-guessing my decision to spend half the gains of the last milestone on the bronze flame of War. It had given me glimpses of the lives of countless levies and sell-swords, men-at-arms and guardsmen. More than the first time I'd invested into it, it didn't show so much training as life both on the march and at guardposts, long hours of great boredom often in harsh conditions, maintenance of arms and the duties of the camping ground occasionally sprinkled with the terror and butchery of battle... and all absolutely useless in getting into the ancient tombs.

Yet despite how easy the clash with the bandits had been, being pushed back by that fat axeman despite being stronger and faster had been a rude awakening. As soon as Keera was gone I'd reached for the quickest way of getting more of the combat skill I had found myself lacking. Five dead from my first-ever victory over other humans which had also been my first human sacrifices had been more than enough to provide a little safety with one more little jump in power. Perhaps the decision had been too hasty, but it had felt right. When the next warrior who was just better than me came there would be no time for visions.

The other half of that milestone was still untapped and my fingers itched to invest it into the orange flame and assault that stupid door with stronger Pyromancy... but that would be me rushing into things again. Moreover, it wouldn't work. With my current magical ability I'd barely left a dent before being exhausted; a single investment wasn't going to make me an order of magnitude stronger.

I bit into a strip of smoked meat and chased it down with some hard cheese. Both the bandit leader and the fat axeman had had traveling supplies of surprising quality that would last me at least a week or two. With abundant water in the form of snow and the magic to boil it I was good for food till White Harbor and beyond even with hunting being far less lucrative in the Barrowlands than in the Neck. The problem was money. All five bandits had had a paltry seventeen copper stars and two dozen pennies between them, not a hint of silver or gold. Most of my reward from Howland Reed had been paid in goods, leaving me with not enough coin for passage on a ship. Relatively safe passage at least, which meant a cabin with a door that locked while I slept.

I finished the last bit of cheese and got to my feet. The fatigue from pushing my magic would linger for hours still and the tingling aches might last for days but I was not going to wait to recover around a barrow. Featherball was already on the lookout for our next objective and I didn't want to be late.

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We followed the Kingsroad north through the barrowlands, with Featherball hunting winter hares and the occasional fox while I dined on cheese and smoked meat and the occasional berry. Twice we had to get off the road to avoid people of dubious intentions and once we had to flee our camping site at the approach of a pale stripped feline the size of a small tiger I was pretty sure was a shadowcat. After a two-mile run in the dark with Featherball risking her life to distract the dangerous predator twice, I finally knew why everyone used sacrifices for their big spells.

Magical backlash sucked. Three whole, dismal days and nights of avoiding any magic bigger than sharing Featherball's senses or producing a candle-sized flame while my body recovered at a snail's pace. Anything bigger would have pushed back recovery even further and actual combat magic would have made my condition worse. It could have been worse; mages without a storied bloodline would probably be suffering for weeks. That did not mean I had to like it, just find a way to avoid it in the future.

On the fourth day, circumstances took yet another annoying turn. The clouds that had been growing thicker overhead for days finally burst into a torrential downpour that was more sleet than not. Soon enough both of us were soaked, something Featherball kept hooting and clacking her beak at me about as she rode on my shoulder with an air of supreme disdain. What was I supposed to do about the storm? Tear the clouds from the skies? Summon a wind to push them away? I had as much ability in Elementalism as Featherball did in juggling. At least with me mostly recovered I could keep both of us warm enough.

By that evening, the sleet storm had subsided to a cold drizzle. With visibility clearing, we saw the crossroads coming up miles before we reached it. While the kingsroad went on to castle Cerwyn in the North and eventually Winterfell, a smaller, muddier road extended to the East and West. Barrowton and Goldgrass lay to the West, the White Knife river and the city of White Harbor to the East. None of those destination was closer than two hundred miles still, but next to the crossroads itself there was an inn.

The inn's main building had long, low wings that stretched out along the kingsroad. The lower story was made of granite, the upper one of whitewashed brick, and the roof was slate. It had thick, diamond-shaped windowpanes and from the large trapdoor on one side there was also a cellar. It was surrounded by outbuildings, including stables. Behind it was an apples tree orchand and a fairly extensive garden, with a decent-sized area fenced in by a wooden wall where a large barn and what I was fairly sure had to be a chicken coop were in. Swinging from a bronze post at the end of the inn's wooden dock is a flaking shingle painted to depict a tall, hooded traveler leaning heavily on a staff, with a bow strapped to their back and a raven sitting on one shoulder.

That was a sign if I ever saw one. My spear was rather staff-like and Featherball could pass for a raven if you squinted. And you were half-blind. And you'd never seen a raven before. OK, she really couldn't pass for a raven but the rest of the image was close and I felt like eating a hearty warm stew while sitting next to the roaring fire in the inn's hearth, for a change.

Walking through the door, we were greeted by a homey, clean, warm common room, only half-filled by a crowd of suspicious travelers. A pair of tired serving wenches in their early thirties were busy dispensing ale and getting pawed at while a younger woman plucked half-heartedly at the strings of what was probably a lute and sung off-key some stupid song about a bear and a girl dancing. There was also licking involved, but that was the point I stopped listening to protect my brain cells from an early death.

I took a seat with its back to the wall at the empty table farthest from the so-called singing, pulled my hood down and started wringing the rainwater out of my hair. A subtle pull shifted the flames at the hearth a little towards mine and Featherball's direction, and an invisible tap into said flames poured energy into my fatigued body like injecting liquid caffeine directly to my veins. My mind cleared enough to notice the not so subtle stares coming from... everyone, really. Some of them were only wide in surprise, or momentarily shifting to take me in from head to toe with some interest before reluctantly returning to their own affairs. Others were less benign.

Quite a few people noted my spear and bow and the leathers half-hidden by my cloak, an older man even gave me a nod in... acknowledgement? Wariness? I wasn't quite sure. Others' stares lingered, some to my face, more quite a bit lower. But the sizable group that had been sitting way too close to the singer only gave my equipment casual, almost disdaintful glances, then several of their party of a dozen slowly took me in from toe to head and leered. Those guys were going to be trouble.

One of the maids approached not much later. There was no menu, obviously, not with most of the inn's patrons being illiterate, but they had an uncommonly large selection of foodstuffs on offer. Barley bread, hardbread and bisquits, white cheese and yellow cheese in both soft and hard varieties, barley soup, lentil soup, pork-and-onions stew, beef-and-barley stew, bacon, sausages and salted mutton. Their vegetables I ignored except for the mushrooms; I'd never been particularly fond of greens back on Earth and after half a decade of protein-heavy diet in the Neck I'd become even less so, but mushrooms had always been a favorite of mine.

In the end I got the beef-and-barley stew, two sausages, a plate of fresh mushrooms and some soft cheese for dinner, with a wheel of hard cheese and five pounds of salted mutton to replenish my travel rations. The total came to forty-five pennies, which I paid for with five stars and five pennies. Compared to food prices in the Neck the mushrooms and mutton came a bit above average but everything else was not even at half price, with the cheese at under a quarter. I gave one of the sausages to Featherball before she could fly off with the whole pack mutton then tucked in to enjoy some proper food for the first time since my arrival to Westeros.

It was nice, in fact the beef and sausages were better than anything I remember from back on Earth, and leeching heat from the hearth let me recover more in a couple of hours than I had in a couple of days but all good things must come to an end. The intrusive stares had been fixed on me for some time and more than half the group of scruffy-looking, lightly armed, aggressively odious men had gotten restless. Clubs, knives, even an axe left their sheaths more than once or were loosened in preparation. Those among the remaining patrons that noticed either looked on warily or got up and left.

Having no interest in a bar fight, I finished my stew quickly than I would have liked and followed the example of the latter. Just as I'd been expecting, the group of men followed not half a minute after my exit then cursed and walked faster to catch up with my quick, steady march. They carried their weapons a bit more openly now, and though none of them had anything more dangerous than an axe, their arms rested easy enough in their hands to make me wary. Even a club could be deadly if wielded with skill.

"Ho, lass!" one of them shouted to whistling from the rest. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" Laughter followed. Instead of answering, I bolted. The men cursed and followed after to warcries of "After her!" or "Get the bitch!" or the ever-popular "Wait for me!"

Featherball flew off my shoulder, allowing me to run unburdened by weight equivalent to a really fat cat (or several normal ones) while also letting me keep an eye on my pursuers without having to turn back. Unlike my earlier escape from the shadowcat I didn't try for any four-minute miles but kept at a slow run perfect for long distances that kept me not far beyond arms' reach of my pursuers. That continued for a good ten minutes while the cursing from behind multiplied and the would-be rapists started huffing and puffing while they were still far too dressed for their liking. Not much later they inevitably gave up.

"Not worth it," I heard one of them saying as their rag-tag group came to a stop and tried to catch their breath. I kept running of course... until I was a good hundred yards from them. Then I stopped too, pulled my bow from its sheath over my shoulder and strung it in one quick motion. Turned away from them as I was, the men didn't really notice... until one of them fell to the ground screaming with an arrow through his right hip. He'd gotten lucky; I'd been aiming for his center of mass.

"The fuck?" someone shouted in shock, before eleven men started running at me with more murder and less lust in their eyes than before. I missed my next shot and the one after it; shooting moving targets was way harder than stationary ones. But the distance between us dwindled and one more of them dropped screaming. The next one died near instantly, my shot taking him through the head as he tried to duck it.

"We got you bitch!" the fastest of them to come within fifteen yards roared, axe raised.

"Nope!" I threw back over my shoulder as I turned around and ran once more... at nearly twice the speed the tired, untrained runners could manage. They pushed themselves to catch up but failed dismally. I might not be quite Usain Bolt fast yet, but they could barely manage eight or nine miles an hour at a dead run and soon they couldn't do even that. Again, I stopped far enough to manage four shots before they could get to me and started shooting. After two more of them fell, one of them dying not to the arrow but to a broken neck from the fall, the others broke and bolted.

From then on it was all over but the screaming. With Featherball giving me a bird's eye view there was nowhere for them to hide in a place as wide open as the barrowlands, and being already exhausted while I could manage four-minute miles with every death being an energy boost, running meant that they died tired. Even scattering couldn't help when they stopped running as soon as they thought they'd broken line of sight.

"Mercy!" the first guy I'd shot down pleaded, his britches soiled with blood and other things. "I got a family!"

"And if you'd stayed with them, kept drinking at the inn, or done anything other than charging after a girl your group outnumbered twelve to one, you wouldn't be dying after seeing your rapist friends being put down one by one," I told him before stabbing him with the spear. Then I started looting.

Enough bandits and I'd have the coin for passage across the Narrow Sea in no time.

Chapter Text

A hundred miles east of the crossroads, the White Knife set the border between the Barrowlands and the sparsely forested lowlands ruled by House Manderly. At half the size of the Danube back on Earth, the White Knife was not a small river and until the rapids near the same latitude as Winterfell it was passable by even the largest medieval ships. From what I remembered of the books, the Manderlys had once hidden a fleet of warships in it during the War of Five Kings. This would have complicated overland passage for a medieval civilization... were we back on Earth and not a very different world.

The bridge linking the Barrowlands to Manderly lands had been built on a fairly narrow part of the river where the White Knife had worn a path between two hills. There the Northmen had built a bridge of stone elevated high enough for ships to pass underneath. That wasn't very unusual in and of itself, if not for two things. The least surprising was that the bridge was in excellent condition close to a thousand years after its construction. It was also wide enough and seemed strong enough for an army to march over it - or several modern trucks. The actual surprising part was its stone arc, which spanned well over four hundred feet. That might not seem very long at first glance... until one realized pre-industrial masonry on Earth only ever built arches a bit over half that length. Modern Chinese masonry could certainly match it, but that was with a modern understanding of physics, mathematics, materials science and computers to crunch numbers for you, not some medieval guys with picks, abacuses and mason lines.

I walked across the exceptional architectural feat, running my fingers across the parapet and prodding the structure with my magic. Unlike the tombs of the First Men, the structure was surprisingly receptive to the examination. The grey-white stone that made the bridge look cleaner and shinier than it actually was echoed the ancient fire that made it, a shadow of volcanic heat stirring under my fingertips. It was neither limestone nor marble but grey granite, which would have made it a bitch to work with medieval tools but partially explained the bridge's durability. The real secret however was in the mortar fusing the well-cut stones together. Translating the vague impressions I got from my magic through the lens of modern geology, I was fairly sure that one part of the mixture was lime with some gypsum and three parts felt far more fiery in nature, almost like volcanic glass ground to dust and ashes.

Huh... weren't those the components of Roman cement? I wondered if the Northmen even remembered how to make it these days. Beyond the obvious benefits in large-scale construction, I was pretty sure that this type of cement had limited regenerative capabilities that let it last for millennia while more modern construction materials would collapse much sooner from cumulative microfractures. Of more immediate use, a construction material that was seventy-five percent ground volcanic glass might have interesting interactions with the Others and their magic. Given the Long Night was less than a decade away, this needed further testing. I made a mental note to capture an Other when my magic had grown enough attempting it would not be an elaborate form of suicide.

Still twenty miles away from White Harbor to the south, I got off the road and marched down the riverbank. By the time I was far enough away from the road that a campfire would not be seen by any travelers, Featherball had come back with her third catch for the night, a decently sized squirrel. I gave the small hare and chicken she'd caught previously back to her and she tore into all three with gusto while I started a decent campfire and dug into my own meal of mutton, cheese and flatbread. The mutant swamp owl stared once at my food, hooted derisively, then decapitated the squirrel and swallowed its head whole.

I sighed in relief at the continued evidence that Featherball could find her own food out there, and not just because the still-growing ten-pound bird ate more than I did every day. I'd had no idea what constituted proper food for an owl, let alone the mass of mutant weirdness that was Featherball. I'd been prepared to put a ritual sustenance spell together if I saw her losing weight outside the Neck, but I'd also had no idea how that would work on a growing animal. Would the magic generate new mass for Featherball's growth? Would she remain an eternally juvenile raptor? Would she become the world's first ever winged wight?

Instead of mentally wrestling with those questions and no answer in sight, I sat back against the trunk of the enormous pine providing cover for our little camp and reached out with magic towards the campfire. Not the flames themselves though, this was not another attempt at Pyromancy. No, my magic sought out the tiny little motes dancing close to the flames and suddenly my view of the world broke into a thousand thousand reflections I could make neither head nor tails of. Normally, sharing senses with an animal through a Greenseer's abilities was easy, the magic itself providing some sort of mental buffer or perhaps a translation that allowed the person warging said animal to instinctively adapt to wildly different senses without being overwhelmed. This was not so, here.

Taking over insects was incredibly easy; they had so little resistance to outside intrusion they might as well not be resisting at all and the only issue was using a light enough touch to not break them into useless wrecks. Even doing it to dozens, hundreds of insects at once did not need more than a small fraction of the effort to take a squirrel or rat and the insects being killed had no impact on my mind like an animal would have... probably because a human mind couldn't actually fit into them at all. But sharing the insects' senses? Even when trying to narrow my focus to a single insect it left me with a jumbled, incomprehensible mess and trying it with many insects at once had given me a headache each and every time.

Trying to control the moths drawn to the campfire worked only as long as I gave them simple, general orders, using the slightest of touches to shift their interest and attention. It was enough for rough movement, even general targeting of simple actions - land there, bite that - but sharing senses did not work and left both me and them disoriented for minutes. Trying to assume direct control made the little bugs sizzle and pop as if they'd flown into a fire. No wonder there hadn't been any insect wargs in the books.

I wondered whether it was truly impossible or it just required far more ability in Greensight than I possessed...

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Featherball woke me up before dawn by hooting next to my head. As alarm clocks went she left much to be desired, but made up for it by being more dangerous than a guard dog and a hell of a lot more perceptive. Having her around made sleeping in relative safety easier; whether it was worth getting laughed at by a bird several times a day was anybody's guess.

After burying the remains of our campfire and erasing most traces of our presence in the area, I stripped down to my smallclothes and jumped into the river. The waters of the White Knife were cold enough to make a Northman blanch at the idea of a bath but once again magic saved the day, allowing me to wash off many days' worth of dirt, sweat and oil off my hair, skin and undergarments. Hygiene wasn't the issue, what with magic capable of killing any bug or microbe on contact far more easily than it could men, but I refused to enter the city caked in grime like some savage.

I got off the river's freezing waters and drew on my pyromancy - hard. In moments my skin, hair and smallclothes were steaming. In about a minute I was clean, dry and warm, with my undergarments having that pleasant smell of freshly ironed linen. My hair remained perfectly straight instead of frizzing out horribly due to all my sorcerous physical enhancement from the flames, as was right and proper. I wondered whether Melisandre used similar means to maintain her looks or relied on glamour spells instead and made a mental note to ask when we eventually met.

Four hours later, Featherball gave me a bird's eye view of White Harbor, the only true city in the North. It was built on a pair of hills where the White Knife met the sea, a cluster of bright white buildings two miles across and enclosed by walls of stone forty feet high and fifteen thick. Two keeps dominated the cityscape, built on the city's two hills; one bright and grand and palatial with flags depicting a trident-wielding merman flying over its battlements, the other black and dour and beginning to crumble, with houses stuck to its outer walls like barnacles as it presided over the harbor. A wide, slightly elevated, paved avenue linked the two keeps, two dozen roads branching out from it and through the rest of the city, while a so-called godswood with an enormous weirwood sprouted within the crumbling keep's walls.

The city's harbor was more than a mile wide and split in two, a thirty-foot wall with sixteen towers separating the inner harbor from the outer. Hundreds of ships and boats of all sizes made their home in the two harbors, several of them under construction in the integrated shipyards. The harbor was incredibly busy, an entire market district attached to it providing space for merchants, traders and artisans of all types not merely to exchange goods and commodities but to make them. Through Featherball's superhumanly sharp eyes I could see wood and wool, hides and cheese, crab, fish, clams, cod, eels, herring, lampreys, lobster, mussels, salmon, whitefish, and winkles traded by the bushels and tons. Beer barrels were loaded onto ships to make the journey to distant shores while spices, lace and silk, pottery and porcelain and Myrish glasswork were unloaded in much smaller quantities and escorted to tradehouses under guard. Silverwork was prevalent too, in unusually large quantities for any medieval city let alone one in the North.

It struck me then that White Harbor was probably one of the richest places in all of Westeros. At less than half the size of King's Landing, it seemed to have a disproportionately large trade traffic, much of it in goods of higher quality than I'd expected. While this was good and well for the North in general and the Manderlys in particular, it wasn't good for my goals. The price of simple passage to Essos would almost certainly be higher here than in King's Landing because not only would the number of travelers crossing over would be fewer, but also most ships would be exclusively merchant vessels rather than transports.

On the other hand, a woman of Valyrian looks would be less conspicuous here than in the capital; several people on the ship Featherball was flying over that very moment had the same pale skin and white hair as I did, if not in quite as intensely exotic shade as mine. It was the same ship that had unloaded decorative glassware to the local merchants, as well as several crates full of glass panes that were currently being inspected by city guardsmen and a fat guy with golden curls, a very official-looking robe... and a chain hanging from his neck. Hmm...

The scene gave me an idea and as I walked closer to the city's northern gates I examined its feasibility from various angles. If it panned out it would solve my cash problem not just for the trip but for the foreseeable future. Before I could second-guess myself into choice paralysis, I closed my eyes and brought up the vision of the Fourteen Flames. There had only been a single bandit in the hundred miles since the crossroad, a robber knight Featherball had caught extorting money from passing merchants. He'd died a quiet death in his sleep when his campfire had gone out, and along with his warhorse and some hunting through the past week I'd finally reached the next milestone.

I'd been saving the accumulated life-force for almost a week now, unable to make a decision. Putting it all into War to get the experiences of a seasoned knight had been inviting... but so had been half a dozen more options, including the all-around boost of Nobility, becoming good enough in Greensight to finally bond Featherball properly, or finally getting to speak Valyrian through Learning. None of those options would solve my immediate cash problem though, so I'd been procrastinating on making the investment. But now? If what I had in mind worked, the golden Dragon and two dozen silver Moons I'd gotten from the robber knight would pale in comparison.

Two flames burned brighter, one a fiery orange-red, the other the dull gleam of cast iron...

Chapter Text

Finding a proper, unoccupied beach for my purposes did not take long. Much of the coastline directly next to White Harbor was taken up by the harbour itself of course and there was enough ship and boat traffic close to the city that trying anything magical there would draw too much attention, but with a pair of pigeons to serve as scouts while Featherball was busy I found a likely place before my annoying companion was back from business.

Said 'beach' was a few hundred yards of sand and pebbles below a thirty-foot cliff, with no land access, no nearby roads and no reason for anyone to come by boat. It being over ten miles on the east of White Harbor helped; even smugglers wouldn't use the place with far more approachable locations closer to the city proper. In short it was perfect, so without further ado I conjured a ladder and climbed down to it with nobody the wiser.

Conjuring objects of solid flame was one area where my Pyromancy had grown the most after the last milestone. Where once I'd been able to shape fire into simple, small, handheld objects, I could now extend my flames a significant distance and volume and give them more useful shapes. They weren't truly solid objects, of course. My magic held the flames together, giving them a semblance of solidity. A thirty-foot ladder I could actually climb was about the upper limit for both how far such magic could reach and the solidity it would allow; condensing and simplifying the shape would let me make the equivalent of a spear while making the construct as weak as cardboard would allow for a ten-foot wall but in both those cases there was a strain and the spell was quite tiring. Proper battle-magic was still beyond reach, if only just.

Letting the ladder vanish behind me, I conjured a small bucket and started filling it with beach sand via a conjured spade. Having tools on demand was so much easier than trying to do everything by hand, or having to carry a whole backpack of stuff I might only ever use once in a blue moon. Visions of apprentice Pyromancers from Old Valyria had revealed such conjured equipment to be a staple of basic stone-shaping, which made sense. Those people had worked with volcanic glass, and obsidian's melting point was higher than iron's. Nobody would waste Valyrian Steel on mere tools and apprentices wouldn't be able to afford it in any case, so they had to use something else that would not melt to shape the molten stone until they got skilled enough to shape it by magic alone.

I sat down on a boulder, letting the spade fade while having the bucket of sand float before me. Another advantage of conjured items was that the same magic that held them together could hold them in place. The ladder I'd used to climb down earlier could just as easily have let me climb into thin air, standing upright with nothing to lean against because hey, it was made of fire. Making it solid at all meant holding it in place with magic to begin with. Beyond the obvious applications in everyday life, the floating also had an advantage in my current project. Touching nothing but air and being solid flame to begin with, the bucket was an excellent insulator.

Using magic, at least when it came to Pyromancy, felt as fatiguing as physical exercise. Drawing upon my magic at about half my maximum output was the equivalent of a steady jog. Not just in tiredness but also in heat, my own body steadily warming up as I kept casting. The sand in the bucket began to sizzle and smoke, its water content rapidly evaporating... but rapidly was a relative term. Most spells didn't last very long at least when it came to casting them. Burning someone in a fight? A second of effort. Starting a campfire? Maybe a couple of seconds until the wood caught. Melting a handful of stone or metal? The work of a minute. Healing most injuries? Didn't take much longer. It was... not exactly easy to handle that kind of effort, but not particularly hard either.

Heating a dozen pounds of sand to their melting point was a longer-term effort. It was less about a burst of power and more about a constant moderate effort. Not a ritual - it wasn't anything that complex - but a steady, controlled output as the sand first sizzled and steamed, then started to smoke with tiny organic bits in it blackening and burning to ash and an acrid stench fouling everything, then a subtle reddish glow as the grains started to gleam and glitter brighter and brighter and began to melt.

The hotter the sand became the faster it lost heat to the environment even with how insulating the conjured bucket was. The speed its temperature increased quickly tapered off after the ten-minute mark, slowly inching upwards as I used magic not to heat it faster but to limit the heat loss. By the time it started to melt and bubble into a glowing orange sludge I was both sweaty and panting as if I'd been jogging the whole time, and my body felt uncomfortably warm as it channeled that level of magic for so long. A memory from the books came to me, of Melisandre maintaining multiple glamours at once when she disguised Mance Rayder into Rattleshirt and Rattleshirt into Mance Rayder to fake Mance's execution. After hours of keeping that up she'd felt almost like burning from within even with a focus crystal to help.

I wondered how I compared to the Red Priestess magic-wise. What I was doing was a hell of a lot simpler than glamour, but it probably required more overt power. Or perhaps not; I wasn't casting magic on other people, one of whom would be certainly fighting against it, screaming that he wasn't Mance Rayder as he was being executed with nobody able to hear his screams. And the rocks were within my reach rather than being manhandled by others, or in the middle of a normal pyre some distance away. On second thought, maybe I'd go through multiple further milestones before challenging the centuries-old mage to any magical contest.

After making sure the sand had been thoroughly melted to the consistency of warm honey, I conjured a ladle and started stirring slowly. This helped air bubbles move to the surface as the material slowly cooled into a mostly transparent, glowing orange mass. Once I was certain all of the trapped air had been removed, leaving a uniform mass behind, I started slowly leeching away heat while maintaining as even a temperature as possible while the mass cooled. According to my visions as both a pyromancer and a craftswoman, as even cooling as possible would prevent the formation of cracks. The experience of how to do just that was there thanks to the visions but the muscle memory was missing, leading to several mistakes I had to fix by reheating the mixture and starting the cooling process from the beginning.

In the end, my first attempt at glassworking took well over an hour for nothing more complex than a glass disc a bit over a foot wide and nearly six inches thick. Thanks to beginner glassworking skills from Craftsmanship and judicious application of Pyromancy, the whole thing ended with neither cracks nor bubbles nor an uneven mess, but it came with the understanding that complex shapes would be harder to manage.

Before trying for anything complex though, I would need a glass that wasn't a barely transparent brown mess.

My second attempt was barely better than the first. On the thought that trace amounts of organic material, dust and other additives were the cause of the brown glass, I spent half an hour picking the cleanest patches of sand on the beach and putting them through a conjured sieve to boot before using them to make more glass. The result was a clear, dark yellow material almost like amber in coloration that in no way was of competitive quality compared to the goods Featherball had seen in White Harbor's market.

Speaking of the winged menace herself, she turned up that evening with a pair of giant crabs, one hanging from each talon. They looked fresh and juicy but not alive, which meant her finding them on a nearby beach or the White Knife's banks was highly unlikely.

"Let me guess," I asked her with a scowl. "You stole these from the fish market? You do realise we're trying to keep a low profile?"

She hooted derisively.

"No, stealing is worse than killing bandits. There's money involved." She hooted some more. "Right, I'm sure nobody noticed the owl with the five-foot wingspan raiding the largest market in the city." She clicked her beak and puffed up, obviously annoyed. "Yes, you were very stealthy in the swamps. A city of bright white buildings and streets full of people is not a swamp though."

She flicked her tail feathers and turned her back on me, then cracked the first crab's shell open and started to feast.

"Fine, you can jut stay away from me while I'm in the city. Nobody should know we're travelling together just yet." Though that was bound to change if Featherball kept raiding food markets in the future. But hey, that was future-Flann's problem. Current-Flann was too busy trying to make proper glass.

My third, fourth and fifth attempts recycled the dark yellow glass from the second attempt. I was pretty sure by now that the beach sand in the area just didn't have a high enough silica content to make clear glass. My first attempt to rectify that involved flattening the molten glass into a thinner disc and then spinning it rapidly for a good ten minutes; an ad-hoc attempt at centrifugal separation. It was partially successful, allowing the removal of dark brown slag and leaving behind a much clearer pale yellow glass. The other two attempts leaned more on magic, relying on Valyrian stone-shaping to tinker with the glass mixture and extract unwanted material.

This is where the difference between vision-experiences and actual skill were made clear. In theory, I should have been capable of pulling quartz, the primary component of volcanic glass, out of any mixture of molten stone with my level of Pyromancy. The reality was that the process was more of a trial and error, me mostly fumbling while trying to copy what I'd seen in the visions without any practice to back my theoretical abilities. There was still improvement, repeated efforts removing more and more impurities until a transparent pale yellow glass was the final result. It was good enough for artwork - slightly better than some of the glass statuettes and decorative cups sold in White Harbor's markets and far better than the yellow or light green panes of forest glass meant for the glass houses - but still fell well short of the few examples of Myrish glass Featherball had found, elaborate statuettes and clear mirrors that were as clear as Bohemian Crystal had been back on Earth.

More than a little frustrated at the sub-par results despite my access to bloody magic, I decided to tuck in for the night and keep working in the morning. I was too tired to pull off a strong heating spell by that point, in any event...

​
"I'm a fucking idiot," I told nobody in particular as I held the grey-white lump of stone up to the sun.

For three days I'd been working with sand, repeatedly going through impurity extraction processes via both mechanics and magic, falling short of the clarity of Myrish glass time and again. Without access to lead oxide or raw materials of far superior quality than common beach sand, the best I'd managed was a pale yellow crystal that might catch a middling price for its high transparency but would not be anything exceptional.

"I should have never started with sand at all," I muttered and quickly gathered more of the greyish pebbles. From her perch on one of the rare trees sprouting so close to the waterline, Featherball lazily opened one eye, stared at me for a second or two, then went back to sleep. Ignoring the winged menace just as it ignored me, I filled my conjured bowl with similar stones and started heating them.

Lacking water content of any significance, they warmed up a lot faster than the sand had. Then they started to crack and splinter as they got hotter and hotter, spitting sparks as they did so. The more the heating continued the more the stones shattered, a few times even violently, much like glass objects would have when heated unevenly. That was only to be expected. After all, flint and glass had several things in common.

The sedimentary cryptocrystalline mineral that had once been used as both a weapons material and a way to start fires in the early stone age was a stone almost every traveller in Westeros was familiar with. Cheap and fairly common, it was still used for starting fires more often than any other method. What those people didn't know about flint was that it was almost pure quartz, well over ninety percent silica. The only significant impurities were water and calcium oxide, at less than three percent each. The heating process got rid of the small amount of water first, leaving behind a slightly translucent rock of tiny quartz crystals. Then, just as with the sand before, said crystals started to melt.

Unlike before, there was no other significant component in the mixture, just molten silicon dioxide. The melting point of quicklime was about a thousand degrees higher than that of quartz and while it was somewhat soluble to molten silicon dioxide I found drawing out a single impurity in limited amounts far easier than doing the same to half a dozen different materials making about half of the glass mixture. With the bits of pure white dust falling away, what was left was a brightly glowing transparent fluid; almost pure molten quartz.

It responded to my limited stone-shaping magic far better than anything else I'd tried it on before, letting me shape the stone almost as easily as I could my constructs of solid flame. Ancient Valyrian mages had made statues and other elaborate decorations out of fused stone; while the amounts of molten quartz I could manipulate were laughable compared to what they'd shaped into entire castles, bridges and other titanic edifices, my control of its shapes was just as good. At my mental command it stretched into a disc three feet wide and a quarter-inch thick, squeezed itself into a sphere, grew sharp angles and became a pyramid, then under the course of a minute assumed the crude facsimile of a dragon in flight.

Small details still eluded me and the process of magical shaping was not very quick, but there I had two advantages any glassblower would kill for; conjured tools that would remain undamaged by the heat, and a heat immunity that let me shape the softened material like clay with my bare fingers. Almost giddy at the breakthrough, I drained the heat off the molten material via magic, cooling it down in well under a minute.

Normal glass would have shattered. Fused quartz, having a much lower coefficient of thermal expansion, simply solidified in the shape it had been given with no issues. The result was a crystal clear solid, with better clarity than even Bohemian Crystal back on Earth, or the Myrish glass examples in White Harbor's markets. But those were not the only advantages. Grabbing the dozen-pound sphere, I slammed it against an equally-sized rock. The sandstone shattered under the blow, but the orb of fused quart weathered it intact. Compared to the glasses available in this tech level, fused quartz was about an order of magnitude stronger and tougher. Things made of it would not be nearly as fragile, which was always a plus but especially in the more dangerous environment of Westeros.

Having gotten my first great success after days of work, I took a break to rest, eat and plot. Now, what would be the most impressive thing to do with the best glass Westeros had ever seen?

Chapter Text

White Harbor was even more full of people when seen from a ground level than from Featherball eye view. Behind its forty-foot walls of white stone, broad avenues with narrow side streets cut though rows of whitewashed buildings in a familiar style. If the ancient tombs and other ruins of the Barrowlands were reminiscent of ancient Mycenaean architecture, then the building style of the North's sole chartered city was closer to Classical Ionian Greek style than anything I'd ever seen outside my homeland. Statues and decorations that would not have been out of place in the Aegean lined the avenues and plazas, all depicting sea life both mundane and fantastic. The mermaid statues lining the Castle Stair, the city's main avenue linking the New Castle with the Wolf's Den, held stone bowls in their arms, ready to be filled with whale oil to light the street overnight. If that extravagant expense wasn't a sign of House Manderly's prosperity, nothing would be.

Before the Seal Gate in the inner walls linking the marketplace with the harbor proper, was a cobbled square with a fountain at its center. The fountain had a twenty-foot-tall statue of whom the locals knew as the symbol of House Manderly but in ancient Greece would have been Triton, son of Poseidon and god of the sea. The stone statue was ancient and weathered, its beard covered in lichen that coloured it a dark green, and one of the tines of its trident had broken long ago. Unlike the mermaid statues of white marble, it was a pale grey granite that must once have looked magnificent but after more than a millennium in the open it was slowly ground away. Restoring it to its old glory, fixing its cracks, filling the missing bits and making it even more resistant to further wear and tear would be the work of hours, maybe a day or two at most. Perhaps I'd offer my services to the Manderlys after I gained some renown. Nobody was going to trust a random, no-name girl without such recognition.

To that end, I walked towards the massive, boxy stone edifice with the iron-bound oaken doors that was the Old Mint. The building was currently sealed as the Manderlys and the North had no need to cut new coins. It wasn't my target; that would be the much smaller customs office between it and the wool and sheep factors guildhouse. The place was ever crowded, with lines of merchants and other foreigners waiting their turn to be heard by House Manderly's customs men. It turns out that medieval death world or no, bureaucracy was thriving; licensing, guild fees, taxes and other such complications had to be dealt with before anyone could sell anything in the city's markets - at least to any significant amounts.

The line moved at a crawl and though I'd entered the city early in the morning, it was almost midday by the time my turn came. Where elsewhere my presence and height alone had sufficed to open a path through the crowds, here even my openly carried weapons and unusual features did not draw more than passing glances. The linen sack loaded with the fruit of my craftsmanship grew heavier with the time as even peak human stamina didn't let me easily carry two hundred pounds of art for hours on end. I carefully let it down only when necessary, all too aware of the fragility of glass even with tougher materials available. Not that breakage was the only problem; I became the target of thieves twice while waiting. The urchin attempting to snatch my purse I threw aside with a light slap. The man that tried to cut my backpack open with a knife I disarmed by breaking his arm; no other thieves targeted the unescorted foreign girl after that.

Once inside the customs office things moved faster and soon I stood before a bored customs officer asking me questions. Unfortunately, that soon devolved into an argument.

"You expect me to believe you came to White Harbor on foot?" The middle-aged, slightly portly man demanded. "Someone with your hair and eyes?"

"Yes? I came through the North Gate just this morning." What was his problem with my looks anyway?

"Don't waste my time, girl," he scoffed. "You have Valyrian looks and want to sell glasswork, you're obviously Myrish." He crossed his arms and scowled. "Now, which ship did you come in? The Bride in Azure or the Bountiful Harvest."

"Neither. I came from the south via the Kingsroad, stopped at the Barrowlands crossroad before coming here on foot."

"Really? Do you expect me to believe you also carried your merchandise on foot?" he growled. "This is the worst attempt of tariff evasion I've seen in twenty years."

"You can check with those ships' captains. I did not travel with them, or any other ship." Because claiming to have made two hundred pounds of glasswork art just outside the city over the past few days would be, admittedly, even less believable that bringing them overland.

"No. I'm not entertaining your amateur tax evasion any longer. Pay the tariff now!" he raised his voice angrily.

"You're not even going to check? Confirming where the goods come from is your job!" We were both shouting now, me more in frustration than anything else. The other merchants and workers were giving us a wide berth, slowly stepping back as the stubborn idiot refused to believe me. "Enough of this. If that's how White Harbor treats new merchants, I'll take my business elsewhere." And with that, I lifted my bag and turned around to leave.

"Guards!" the customs man shouted and the quartet of men in chainmail and armed with swords and cudgels that had been standing at the building's entrance came our way. "Arrest this woman for tariff evasion, attempted smuggling, and insulting House Manderly!"

Well, shit.

​
The pair of huge black rats moved silently through the narrow stone corridor, passing door after barred door in the gloom until they reached the guardpost. Three men were in the small room, all of them too busy playing dice and eating bread and salted fish to stand watch properly. After all, what danger could find them in the depths of the Wolf Den in the heart of House Manderly's power?

Suddenly, both torches and hearth were snuffed out as if by an unseen wind, leaving the underground chamber in total darkness. The guards cursed and tried to scramble for something to do, but humans could not see in the dark and none of them had a way to light a fire quickly. Giant rats on the other hand were far more accustomed to such conditions. The dog-sized rodents assaulted the guardpost with unnatural speed and coordination. One of them bit into the pot of salted fish and carried it away, the other did the same with a roll of cheese. By the time the guards managed to get some light to see by, the rats were long gone.

​
A quartet of huge black rats moved silently through the narrow stone corridor, passing door after barred door in the gloom until they reached the guardpost once more. The three men were far more alert than they'd been hours before and they had twice the number of lit torches. It hardly made a difference, the torches all being snuffed out in a handful of seconds. The men yelled and blindly fumbled in the dark, shouting of shades and ghosts. The rats largely ignored the panicking defenders of the Wolf's Den and ran straight for the pantry.

The darkness was no hindrance to them; even mundane rat species had vastly superior low-light vision to humans and the mutant breed living in the Wolf Den's forgotten tunnels could see well into the infrared. They ripped the pantry's wooden cover with absurd ease and pilfered its contents. Bread, salted fish, beer, even smoked ham; it was amazing how much rats the size of dogs could carry when coordinated and guided by a human mind.

​
Three guards had turned into a dozen as alerts of the two prior attacks went out. All of them stood by their own lit torch as well as a supply of pitch and flint to relight them in case the odd attacks were repeated. All of the men were nervous now, sending furtive glances at the ancient keep's dark passages. The Wolf's Den had once been the seat of House Manderly in exile before the New Castle had been built and in more recent times had been turned into both barracks and prison. Like all ancient castles built by the First Men and most prisons, the Den was a dark place but unlike other such places in the North it had surprisingly few rumours and superstitions associated with it. Or at least that had been the case until tonight.

The men didn't know how they were being attacked or who was responsible, but that the attacks were as deliberate as they were inhuman was clear enough. Nobody could have sneaked up to them in the bare stone corridors, nobody could have come through the prison's sealed gates undetected, nothing they could think of could have snuffed out their lights. The old veteran Bartimus, a crippled knight that had saved Lord Manderly's life in the Rebellion and been awarded the Keep as a reward, had everyone on high alert. They would get to the bottom of this. They had to.

"Not again!" one of the younger guards shouted when the torches started going out one by one. As the light dwindled, the men scrambled for some enemy to fight, for the source of their distress... and found nothing.

"Relight them!" an older sergeant shouted. "Quickly now!"

"FUCK!" the guard that had reached for the flint quickly let the stone fall with a curse, cradling his hand. "It burned me!" Another guard picked up a flintstone with gauntlets instead of his bare hands but the moment he tried to use it the little stone broke and crumbled to bits in his grasp. By then it was too late to try again, the whole place falling into darkness.

"I don't wanna die!" someone cried as many somethings could be heard scurrying in, closer an closer. "I am too young to- URGH!"

"Jed!" another guard shouted amid the yells and blind fumbling. "What happened to Jed?!"

"AAAAGH! HELP! Help! Help!" Another soldier's panicked screams faded, their source further and further away until it fell silent. Fled, taken, or slain, none of them could say.

"Retreat!" the sergeant shouted. "Back to the ground level!"

The panicked guards scrambled up the stairs the best they could in the darkness...

​
I was through my fifth attempt at frying cheese with magic when a large group of heavily armed guards marched through the corridor and stopped outside my cell. Unlike the prison's standard guards, these were heavily armored in plate and armed with hammers, spears, shields and crossbows, men meant for open war or defense of very important people rather than mere guardsmen. They came to a stop with practiced coordination, but though they stood perfectly still their nervousness was obvious. The rats hiding in the corners could smell their fear.

A fat, rose-cheeked man, with thick lips, and a head of golden curls walked through them until he was standing before th door of my cell, staring at me and my two... visitors through the bars. He was dressed in elaborate robes of white and red with stripes of gold, a chain of many different metals hanging from his neck. He stood there for a good five minutes, his blue eyes taking in every detail available to him in the gloom.

"Why are these two guardsmen in the cell with you?" he demanded after it became obvious I would not be opening the conversation myself. Said men did not answer him of course; they just stood there in silence, as good guards should.

"They expressed their interest in getting to know me better," I said and took a bite of fried cheese. It was good without either being partially burned or tasting like congealed blood. Fifth time was the charm, it would seem. "Since they were so enthusiastic and... hands-on while I was stripped of my possessions and thrown in here I thought I'd invite them." I looked at the two men that still shook in fear and smelled of piss and worse. "The visit doesn't seem to be to their liking... and neither is it to mine; they stink."

"I see..." the fat maybe-Maester nodded. "The men spoke of witchcraft. Over a dozen of them, loyal people with a good head on their shoulders, started spreading crazy rumours within hours of yours arrest."

"Such things happen when corrupt officials don't do their jobs and confiscate goods without good reason," I told him with a shrug and took a sip of beer from a gleaming crystal goblet.

"I looked into the matter," the fat man informed me with a frown. "The customs officer was overly hasty, yes, but not corrupt. You must admit your story was rather unbelievable."

"The truth often is," I shot back and kept on with my meal. "Why did you come here? I doubt my complaints about the Keep's hospitality were the only reason." Though they certainly helped, for a high official to arrive so soon.

"Do you claim to be a witch?" he demanded instead of answering my question.

"I came to White Harbor to sell my glasswork," I told him drily. "That's what caused problems, not whether I'm a witch. Which I made no claims about." My abilities in witchcraft were basically nonexistent.

"Ya can't believe her, Maester Theomore!" one of the guards interrupted. "She's a witch! A witch I tell ya!"

"Don't be an idiot," I told the scared man. "Witches are mostly amateurs with some mundane skills and maybe a hint of the higher mysteries. You think one of them could have a dozen men fearfully fumbling in the dark from inside a locked cell?"

"No, I-"

"Silence!" the fat Theomore guy ordered, before turning back to me. "I checked your story personally. None of the ships from Myr admitted to carrying you and your glasswork, and they would have." He searched in one of his robe's very deep pockets and came out with an orb of perfectly clear crystal with a red rose caught in it. "No Myrish glassworker made this. None of their works I've seen in all my years had this level of clarity, not to mention its contents. Then you, a complete unknown, came into White Harbor with forty of them."

"Two and forty, actually. Plus twenty mirrors." And I'd better get all of them back along with the rest of my belongings or a few tricks with rats and torches would be the least of these peoples' problems.

"Yes, them," the Maester said, almost eagerly. "What are they made of? How did you even make something like that?"

"I'm not discussing the secrets of glassworking from inside a prison cell," I told him then chased down the last of my fried cheese with some beer. It really was very good beer, nine out of ten, I'd steal it again. "Get me out of here, return my property and then we could talk."

And that marked the end of my first time in prison...

Chapter Text

The broad street of the Castle Stair was pebbled with white stones and had steps that lead up from the Wolf's Den by the harbors to the New Castle on top of the city's hill. Marble mermaids lit the way, bowls of burning whale oil cradled in their arms. From the top there was a view down to both the inner and outer harbor. An escort of a dozen guards in Manderly colors surrounded me and Maester Theomore, all of them in armor of chain and scale and wielding varied weapons, from a flanged mace to a longspear. Not city guards then; individually armed and trained armsmen. Since we were in White Harbor, the only place in the North where the faith of the Seven was prevalent, a couple of them might even be knights.

My traveling leathers had been returned to me but after a brief stint in the unwashed rags they had for prisoners my skin itched for a good bath. There was no lice or other bugs - attempts to control such via Greensight had deliberately fried them across most of the Wolf's Den - but the grime had still been there and I felt dirty even though I was much less so than I'd been in the Neck at times. My weapons hadn't been returned, not even my knife; the pair of guards bringing up the rear were carrying them instead. It was as insulting as it was useless; at this close range I could burn Theomore with a touch then escape in the darkness faster than the guards could run me down but why would I do so? Maybe they didn't know? Oh well. If they hadn't considered the implications of torches and hearths being smothered, it wasn't my job to educate them.

Sending out my awareness as we walked closer to New Castle up the hill, I found Featherball very well fed and feeling smug about it. Remnants of the spoils from her most recent raid lay strewn on the rooftop she was perched on, fishbones and clams and bits of tentacle from what must have been an octopus. The barest glimpses of daring raids and angry merchants came to me, but that was the limit of my skill with Greensight; sharing memories with animals in addition to senses was still a distant goal, at least outside dreaming.

I prodded the winged glutton with a question and she turned her head towards New Castle, her superhuman vision cutting through the hundreds of yards of distance to a tower with larger than normal windows behind which cages could be seen. Within the cages there were ravens, the ones Maester Theomore must have been keeping as messenger birds. Very slowly at first due to the distance and second-hand line of sight, but increasingly faster as we got closer to New Castle, I started working on establishing a mental link to the ravens. Featherball sent back her annoyance and disdain through our link and a mental image of her intercepting the tiny and nearly blind (according to her) ravens and tearing them apart with her claws. I sent back an image of the ravens catching small animals and delivering them to Featherball as tribute instead. She blinked and hooted disdainfully but her annoyance subsided.

Now... how did I find which raven was trained to fly to which destination?

New Castle was built of pale stone, mostly grey granite, and sat atop a hill rising above White Harbor's white walls, the merman sigil of House Manderly flying from its towers. There was a clear view of both of the city's harbors from the hilltop as we came upon the iron-bound oak gate, a sign of great city planning even a millennium before. The rulers of King's Landing could get lessons from this place; the city had a functional sewer system even.

The large and airy interior of the castle was finely furnished; lath and plaster to make the walls smooth, Myrish carpets and Northern tapestries to decorate them, faded banners, broken shields and rusted swords from ancient victories, and wooden figures from the prows of ships to commemorate House Manderly's triumphs. One of the rooms we passed by was their strategy room, with a great oaken table with beeswax candles and a very detailed sheepskin map of the North hanging on the back wall. I marked its location and not just because of the map, but what hid behind it.

Theomore led us to a grand hall whose floor was made of wooden planks notched cunningly together and decorated with all the creatures of the sea. At one end was the entrance, and at the other stood a dais with a large cushioned throne. The floor had painted crabs and clams and starfish, half-hidden amongst twisting black fronds of seaweed and the bones of drowned sailors. On the walls were pale sharks prowling painted blue-green depths, whilst eels and octopods slithered amongst rocks and sunken ships. Shoals of herring and great codfish swam between the tall, arched windows. Higher up, near where the old fishing nets drooped down from the rafters, the surface of the sea was depicted. To the right a war galley rested serenely against the rising sun; to the left, a battered old cog raced before a storm, her sails in rags. Behind the dais a kraken and a grey leviathan were locked in battle beneath the painted waves. Everything combined into a grand work of art like the most elaborate rooms of palaces I'd seen in Rome and Paris, great skill paired with good taste, both of which had been sorely lacking from the modern world of my past life.

No less grand was the throne's occupant, a man nearly sixty years old, with a massive belly and fingers the size of sausages. He had pale blue eyes and a silvery beard which only partly hid his four chins. He was so fat I doubted he could ride a horse and probably had to be carried in a litter everywhere he went. He wore rich clothing, including a velvet blue-green doublet embroidered with golden thread, and a fur-trimmed grey-blue mantle. A golden trident pinned said mantle to his shoulders, which were still broad and strong despite his age and weight. His face sported an easy smile and laugh lines and a mirthful gleam in his eyes made him seem approachable and easygoing. If I did not know better I might have been deceived by his appearance and the mockery it inspired in the city's populace into thinking him a fool.

"You stand before Wyman Manderly, Lord of White Harbor and Warden of the White Knife, Shield of the Faith, Defender of the Dispossessed, Lord Marshal of the Mander, a Knight of the Order of the Green Hand!" Maester Theomore thundered. Then, in a more even tone, he continued. "In the Merman's Court, it is customary for vassals and petitioners to kneel."

"Oh, let the girl stand, Theomore," Lord Manderly said, his smile widening genially. "I daresay we've bothered her enough already." He picked a piece of pie from a disc full of foodstuffs at his side and took a large bite before washing it down with wine.

"As you wish sire," the Maester said and at his signal most of the guards retreated to unobtrusive positions. Since at least four of them that I could see now held loaded crossbows, they had just become a great deal more dangerous. At the same time, servants brought in a table and chairs and set it before Lord Manderly's throne. I noted how the table was just wide enough to make lunging across it impossible and also somewhat blocked direct approaches to the throne. The guards that carried my weapons brought them up to the dais for Lord Manderly to examine while the food was being brought in.

"Remarkable craftsmanship," the over-sized lord noted as he handled my spear with ease belying his bulk then took an arrow out of the quiver and examined it closely. "Of Crannogman make and of the highest quality, do they sell these to outsiders, Theomore?"

"No, sire," the Maester confirmed what his lord obviously already knew. "They do bear a mark but of what artisan or House only a Crannogman could tell you. They keep their secrets well."

"So either our guest did come from the Neck or she slew one of their nobles and claimed their arms," the older man said and nodded. "There is a good way to check. If you would get this back to the lady," he told the guard, handing over my bow to him. The man did and the aging but shrewd lord smiled at me. "If you would string this bow for me, my dear? I do so dislike misunderstandings."

I smiled back. He did, didn't he? I bent the bowstave in my arms and strung it, looked it over for flaws or tampering then lifted and drew it fully before relaxing the tension slowly and unstringing it. Wyman Manderly nodded, his eyes having taken in my familiarity with the weapon, the ease with which I went through the maneuver, the length and size of the warbow being made for someone with my height and reach or a bit larger.

"And with that nasty business cleared up, let's feast!" he proposed with an easy laugh. "Sit, sit! Accept this as my apologies for your mistreatment."

I did and so did Theomore and the next half-hour passed almost wordlessly as we enjoyed boiled eggs, cheeses of various kinds, fried eels and lampreys, pork pies, porridge, and sausages. My plate was more heavy with sausages, cheeses and pie than seafood for beyond its great quality pork was one of the many foods I'd missed in my years in the Neck. Salad was mostly absent but to my surprise they did have tomatoes.

"We import these from the Summer Isles," Lord Manderly told me with the air of a grandfather educating his young granddaughter as he noted my interest. "The Summer Islanders call them love-apples even though they aren't nearly as sweet and don't grow on trees."

"Yes, I know, they are a type of berry," I said and Theomore stared at me with a frown. "They are part of the Nightshade family, same as Dragon Peppers." And that got me wondering. Westeros had corn and rice in general, Dorne had chilli peppers, the Summer Islands had sugarcane and tomatoes. Did potatoes exist as well and they simply hadn't been discovered, or were they entirely absent?

"Oho. Better not share that with Dorne then, or they'll corner yet another market," the older man chortled.

"Sire, maybe we should turn this discussion to more important matters?" Theomore asked with a bit of annoyance.

"Ah yes, the glass," Wyman Manderly's face got serious as he presented another one of my decorative glass spheres, this one with a pink Camellia blossom at its heart. "When Theomore showed the confiscated goods to me I was surprised by their clarity as much as he was. I daresay only the highest quality Myrish crystal comes close. The double mirrors were exquisite but this..." he lifted the orb of fused quartz in his thick fingers before lowering his voice to a mock whisper. "Theomore was embarassed. He couldn't explain how flowers were caught in glass as if it were amber, see."

Wyman Manderly was a very easy man to take at face value; fat and possibly craven from how he avoided battle or even travel, genial and naive from the way he was friendly to most, maybe even stupid. But with the benefit of foreknowledge I could see how he was trying to endear himself to a young woman by treating her well and praising her skills while subtly disparaging the Maester he did not like and could not trust with the pretense of a funny anekdote told to said young guest. There was not a single hint of duplicity or falseness in his mannerisms and expressions.

"I made it using pure flint," I said, deciding on honesty and openness. In the end, I had little reason to hide things from the Starks' most reliable ally.

"Flint is grey and opaque," the blond Maester interrupted with a scowl. "I don't see how it could be made into..." he waved at the sphere, "...this."

"It is and it isn't. Flint is actually almost pure quartz, rock crystal," I explained. "Its opacity comes from its crystals being very tiny, scattering and diffusing incoming light too many times as well as some impurities. But if you melt it and cool it slowly, it forms a non-crystalline form while the few impurities are dissolved and in the end you have a perfectly clear material. It is so clear it is actually not useful in glass houses."

"Oh?" Lord Manderly asked with interest. "Why not?"

"Glass houses function because common glass is transparent to light visible by humans but opaque to heat. Sunlight, however little there might be in winter, comes in through the glass, is absorbed by everything inside and turned to heat then the heat is slow to leave," I told them. "This particular glass though is not opaque to heat so it would not have this effect."

"I see, I see. A very well-stated explanation," the aging lord nodded happily while the Maester gave me a frown. "I suppose you know how to make both normal glass and this perfectly clear one then? You said it is just flint? I didn't know flint could melt."

"Melting it is pretty hard. To give you an idea we'd first need a thermometer." They both gave me a look of confusion.

"What is a... thermometer?" Theomore asked.

"It's a device that measures temperature and its variation," I told them with some surprise. "I guess you don't have one of those?"

"No..." the Maester's voice trailed off for a time. "Do the Myrish have them?"

"I wouldn't know but if you'd hand over that tall glass cup, a dish and a candle, I could show you."

Theomore did so with a dubious expression and I got to work. I cut an inch of the candle with a breadknife, stuck it upright in the middle of the plate, filled the plate with the wine in the glass and lit the candle nub with another, already lit candle. No giving the Maester an excuse to discount my efforts by using magic. Then I put the tall glass over the lit candle upside-down, forming an airtigh seal with the wine in the plate. Naturally, the candle nub consumed the oxygen trapped within, pulling in wine from the plate and converted it to denser carbon dioxide until the wine rose high enough to snuff it out.

"And thus we have some air trapped in a transparent container, with the wine serving as an easily visible marker," I told the two men much as I'd done to hundreds of students in my old life. "Now watch what happens as we heat that air up." I put the lit candle close to the upside-down class, close enough to heat it but not actually touching to avoid shattering. As the glass grew hotter, the air inside expanded, pushing the level of the wine down. "Almost all substances expand when heated and contract when cooled, but that is most evident in gases. By measuring how much the volume of a given gas expands one can tell how much the temperature changed but other materials can be used as well."

"That is ingenious," Wyman Manderly marveled at my crude efforts before glancing at his poleaxed Maester with a smirk the younger man missed. "Wouldn't you say so, Theomore?"

"Yes... yes! This could be..." he sighed and took on a dreamy look, "...revolutionary."

"To return to the matter of glass, once you have thermometers making a measuring scale for temperature is very useful for mathematically describing many natural processes. For ease of reference, the one I use sets the freezing temperature of water as zero and its boiling temperature as a hundred but the scale is arbitrary, you could use whatever you wanted." I sat back and ate another sausage. Teaching had always been hungry work to me. "If boiling water is a hundred, melting lead is around three hundred and thirty, most bronzes melt around nine hundred, pure iron melts at fifteen hundred and flint, like most quartz, melts at eighteen hundred."

"That sounds... exceedingly high," Theomore noted immediately, showing he'd been paying attention and had a working mind. "Forges can't melt pure iron, they use fluxes."

"Yes. Much as saltwater remains a fluid in lower temperatures than both salt and water, some additives can lower the melting temperature of a given mixture, including metals and stones," I explained for Lord Manderly's benefit who didn't have a metallurgy link like Maester Theomore. "In fact, such additions to quartz is how normal glass is produced at much lower temperatures than melting pure quartz."

"And what would those materials be?" Lord Manderly asked before Theomore or I could divert the discussion to more complex matters.

"You'd start with grey river sand as the base material as it is mostly ground quartz and presumably you wouldn't want to put the effort into crushing flint." He nodded. "Then you'd add wood ash, preferably from beech logs that grew in lime-heavy soil as flux, one measure of wood ash to three measures of river sand. Finally, you add ground limestone or marble in equal amounts to the wood ash. That mixture you heat to a temperature thirteen hundred to get the glass."

"Those materials do not seem rare at all," the aging lord noted. "In fact, you could find them in very large quantities all over the North!"

"Yes, that is one of the reasons I came to White Harbor with this." Bolstering the North's economy would help a lot in the long run. "Just don't expect to make glass of the same quality as Myr; they use the ash of specially bred plants that wouldn't grow anywhere in the North and there is a very long list of tricks of the glassmaking trade their skilled workers know that yours won't. Expect the resuts to be yellow or green, but for windows, glass houses and even mid-quality mirrors, they will do."

"I doubt the people will complain if it comes at half the price," Theomore noted and all of us laughed. "But how did you make the glass spheres if they're pure quartz? How did you capture flowers in them?"

"I thought that was obvious?" I snarked at the Maester. "I used magic."

Chapter Text

"Magic?" Maester Theomore scoffed. "A mummer's farce, for children to dream about and the uneducated to be deceived by."

"I suppose you've never been to the Wall then, or Dragonstone," I shot back as Lord Manderly watched our argument with that genial smile of his but refrained from speaking up. "Because one was built of ice piled up so high it can easily be proven it should have shattered under the weight immediately let alone lasted for millennia, while the other was made of molten stone shaped in exacting detail."

"And those are the only two examples you will find," the plump blond man immediately argued. "What signs and evidence of magic we have is all in the past. Even the last dragon died centuries before. Perhaps magic was once a mighty force in the world, but no longer. What little remains is no more than the wisp of smoke that lingers in the air after a great fire has burned out, and even that is fading. Valyria was the last ember, and Valyria is gone."

"That's odd... I've heard those words before," or rather read them in a book in another life and world. "Does the Citadel have a class on how magic does not exist from which you're now quoting?"

"Of course we do," he scoffed again. "The world the Citadel is building is one of learning and fact, of knowledge and its applications. It has no place for tall stories of glories long since faded, distorted in retelling to make them seem more wondrous and fantastical!" He was really picking up steam in his little tirade, safe behind his arrogance and self-righteousness. "That we leave to gullible laymen and the charlatans that exploit them while we explore the reality of the world with the light of Truth!"

"That is indeed a noble purpose," I nodded seriously in agreement. "But servants of Truth should hold no place for arrogance in their hearts. For arrogance leads to preconception and preconception leads to dogma. And dogma is nothing more than wilful ignorance," I cautioned him. I could have shattered his claims and denials with a demonstration but I wanted to see how calcified his beliefs were before doing so. "Take heed that light you shine in the darkness is turned on you as well lest knowledge turn to sophistry and the search for truth indoctrination."

"Arrogance?" Theomore demanded sharply. "For five thousand years the Citadel has stood for knowledge and Maesters have pursued its spread. We have been the Knights of the Mind, the sole bastion of learning in the Seven Kingdoms and instrumental for their continued existence. Every wise lord has had a Maester since before the Doom of Valyria and while all that remains of magic are children's stories our knowledge and understanding of the world has only grown." He scowled at me, trying to stare me down despite me being the taller between us even while sitting. "From what tradition of learning you come, to question us? It is your arrogance to question the wisdom of the Citadel with nonsense claims of magic."

"I see," I said and I did. Of the Maesters' many flaws Theomore had just displayed some of the worst but it was good that he had. Twice the pride, double the fall, to quote a certain space wizard. "Allow me to make a small contribution to that ancient, towering bastion of knowledge," I told him with a smirk. Then I lit a fire in the bare palm of my hand and to make it more obvious that it was unnatural I made the flames purple.

"What?!" Theomore stared. Wyman Manderly did as well, and so did the guards. But institutional arrogance is not so easily dispelled with a small light. "Powders and trickery!" the blond Maester hissed angrily. "You think the Citadel is so easily deceived? Such a simplistic deception is part of the very lecture of seeing magic for the mummer's farce it is."

I smiled wider and then shaped the flame into a miniature dragon. A little purple lizard all of a foot long, shedding purple radiance between that of a large torch and a small campfire as it stretched and preened on my upraised palm. It flapped its wings once, twice, and then it flew. It soared around the food-laden table at a leisury pace in near-total silence, the only sounds interrupting it the crackle of its flames and the awed gasps from some of the people watching.

"As you can see," I told all those transfixed by my little display, "the reports of magic's death were greatly exaggerated." The little dragon started going through somersaults and barrel rolls and other maneuvers that would have been utterly impossible for a physical being of its size, shape and speed, but as it was merely flame shaped by my will such things were hardly an obstacle. The complexity of the shape made manifesting it a considerable effort but as long as I limited the pyrotechnics to within fifteen feet it remained a small strain that could be handled for a long time.

"That's... impossible!" Theomore finally found his voice, but his first instinct was denial. "It's a trick! An illusion!"

"Even if it were an illusion, it would be no less real magic for its intangible nature," I told him as my construct kept up its aerial ballet. "But as it so happens, illusions are a form of magic I've yet to get to work." I shrugged. "They're supposedly easier than real fire but I think that's a trick of perspective. Those that rely on trickery and deception might find them simple, whereas I who've mostly been a practical individual find more tangible spells coming easier."

"Can it do anything more than just fly?" Lord Manderly asked, leaning forth with the eagerness of a little kid shown a new toy. Even with foreknowledge of his character and looking for it, I could not tell how much of his demeanor was real and how much of it was feigned.

"Appearances aside it's a spell, not a living creature." Making those, or facsimiles thereof, was another sphere of magic entirely. "It is me and my magic doing things, not someone else. But if you wish to see something different..." My mental commands to the flames changed and the little flame-dragon dived... straight towards Theomore. The blond Maester yelped and leaped back, his instincts far less convinced than his mind that this was just an illusion.

But the Maester had never been the construct's target. It dived at the man's dish like I'd seen dragons do in the TV series, tiny clawed feet of solid flame snatching at a silver fork. The extra complexity and power pressed down on my shoulders like an invisible weight and an uncomfortable warmth followed the exertion, but the flame-dragon lifted his prize off the dish and into the air, carrying it away from Theomore and closer to me.

As the distance diminished the demands of the spell eased, then cut down to no more than a trickle the moment the construct dropped the fork into the nearest empty plate and no longer had to be tangible. Now just another bit of shaped flame less than a yard away, it left me with the majority of my power to wield towards what would happen next. The dragon-shaped purple flames opened their imitation jaws and a stream of bright yellow flame came out and bathed the silver utensil and the plate it rested upon with heat and radiance.

Drawing the majority of said heat into the metal, melting that bit of silver was an easy trick after working with larger, much harder to melt pieces of quartz. Once it had turned into a small puddle of molten, silvery liquid, I had the dragon-construct's breath cut off as I extended the mineral-shaping aspect of Valyrian pyromancy. Silver, it turned out, was much harder to work with than quartz. Trying to shape it was like trying to work with clay while wearing a particularly thick pair of leather gloves. But the amount was very small, it was practically at touching distance and my audience did not interrupt. Shaping it into a vaguely humanoid statue while maintaining the dragon was a chore but as it slowly cooled and maintained details more easily I managed to turn it into a rough, hollow statue of Neptune two inches tall, complete with trident.

"Damn, I need to practice more," I muttered as I examined my latest creation. Its artistic value was dubious at best, its features akin to a wax statuette that had been left out overlong in the sun. I picked it up, and with direct contact making fine control so much easier I started making corrections until it became properly presentable as artwork and not as a little kid's mud cake. At that point I realized my hosts had been silent for quite some time, so I looked up to them only to find both them and the guards staring in awe or shock. Theomore and some of the guards were even gaping.

"That was very impressive, young lady," Lord Manderly told me. "To melt and shape metal without touching it... 'tis a wonder made real."

"Eh, it still needs work," I said, frowning at the two-inch statuette. Its features were more realistic now but though its body remained that of an Olympian, its face now looked suspiciously like Wyman Manderly. Maybe my subconscious or my magic were trying to tell me something. "Compared to the Old Valyrian stone-shapers that raised entire castles out of molten rock I'm still a little girl playing with toys."

"Be that as it may," the older man said with the sigh of someone tired of dealing with younger people, "I'd be willing to buy this piece at a considerable premium." Maybe with all my shenanigans I was close to overstaying his welcome? Eh, I could tone it down now that my shattering arrogant Maesters' entire worldview was done for the day.

"Sire, no! That's a work of sorcery!" Theomore protested before I could respond to Lord Manderly's generous offer. "We don't know what it could do! It could twist our minds, ensnare our senses."

"I thought that magic was dead and gone, according to you?" I snarked, satisfaction and vindication blooming at seeing the blonde man so shaken. Maybe he wouldn't discard the evidence staring him in the face from the safety of his arrogance any longer. "Haven't you been listening? I've little skill in trickery or illusion, all my magic is very real."

"That's what a witch seeking to ensnare a noble for her own purposes would say," he shot back angrily. From his furious demeanor and absurd accurations, I guessed he'd moved on to the next stage of grief at reality not catering to his beliefs? "This is all a plot to gain power in White Harbor!"

"May I remind you that it was you who brought me here?" I refuted his claims with the logic Maesters supposedly loved so much but apparently discarded when it did not fit their beliefs as much as any other man. "I just wanted enough coin for the trip to Essos but one of your men confiscated my goods, your guards confiscated my equipment and attire, and you wanted to confiscate my knowledge as much as you could."

"Hah, more of your tricks," he retorted angrily, illogically. "All a plot tailored to get a cursed item in my Lord's hands but we saw through you!" Theomore was obviously grasping at straws now. Because if he had been thinking clearly he'd have seen the glaring flaw in his theory. But far be it from me to leave him in ignorance, especially when the truth was so much fun to share.

"I suppose you think you were terribly clever for outfoxing little old me," I told him, smirking widely. "Of course, that discounts all the other objects of my make you already got your hands on. If merely touching one little piece of art worries you so," I mockingly waved the silver statuette in his direction, "How about the other five dozen? You know, like the one you've been carrying in your pocket for a day now?"

Maester Theomore blanched, recoiled, his hand reaching towards said pocket before freezing halfway. I could practically read the thoughts forming in his mind from his rapidly shifting expressions, the struggle of two diametrically opposite but equally powerful urges there. The first to discard the possibly enchanted item as soon as possible, the second to not touch it ever again.

"Why are you so worried about magical items anyway?" I asked when it became clear he could not decide between the two. "I know for a fact you people have several in that Citadel of yours."

"Because they never worked," the former Lannister man blurted almost reflexively.

"Of course they didn't," I told him with a roll of my eyes. "You just have initiates sit in the dark with them overnight with zero training in how to use them. Even if they had innate magic - which one man in a thousand does - they wouldn't be able to use them any more than giving a farmer a mechanical clock and asking them the time of day in Stygai would get you a correct answer." I smirked again. "Pro tip; there is no day in Stygai."

"I believe this argument is meaningless," Wyman Manderly silenced Theomore before the Maester could dig himself in deeper. "It is clear the young lady is a true sorceress," the overweight noble nodded in my direction. "It is also evident that she means us no harm. Your fervor in protecting me does you credit my friend, but I believe it is misplaced."

"As you say, my lord," the Maester sourly agreed.

"I also believe that collecting her works from wherever they were... misplaced and bringing them here would be the duty of any well-meaning host," Lord Manderly continued. "Would you see it done for me, Theomore?"

"We're giving all the... artwork back then?" the Maester asked in a tone I could not quite place.

"Nonsense, Theomore. Such exquisite art and mirrors! We will buy them all!" Wyman Manderly added with a loud laugh, confirming how subtly vindictive he could be. "Unless they are, indeed, magical?" he asked me, one thick grey eyebrow raised in question.

"They were made by magic but are not magical in themselves any more than a loaf of bread is a baker," I told them. "Baking machines are possible of course, and so are magical artifacts, but for now barely artistic statuettes are my limit," I added, putting the miniature silver Neptune down for emphasis.

"Excellent!" the aging noble chortled. "See it done, Theomore."

"As you wish, sire," he agreed with obvious reluctance then he stiffly rose from the table and walked away. The moment he was no longer in the throneroom, Wyman Manderly's genial face turned serious.

"Leave us," he ordered the guards around the chamber and the few servants loitering in the corners. "All of you. I wish to converse with my young guest in privacy." The guards did so with only a couple of suspicious looks thrown my way while the servants seemed almost as reluctant to be away as Theomore had been to search for my... misplaced glasswork. But they all did follow the obvious order just the same.

"Not afraid I'll put you under a spell while the guards are away, Lord Manderly?" I asked conversationally.

"Maybe if I were twenty years younger and ten stone lighter," he joked softly, his tone more serious than not. "Besides, you just gave us that wonderful little dragon display and none of my guards reacted despite my face being far more delicate than silver."

"You're just as shrewd as my visions foretold," I complimented him. "Your man Theomore is too blond for trust, I take it? It was very well done, sending him away like that."

"In a better world the noble ideas of the Citadel would hold more weight but alas, the world is what it is," he agreed as he set his winecup away. "I am curious. What did those visions show you of me?"

"That you're one of the Starks' most loyal banner lords. In a time of the North's greatest peril you would confund enemies both without and within to come to their help." The older man's face remained unreadable as I continued. "And when another House murdered men of the North under guest right, your own son included, you did not react thoughtlessly as many other lords at the time would do. You pretended to accept their lies when they came in strength, welcomed their people to your table. When you went to the betrayers' wedding you even brought them pies. The best pies they'd ever had. You feigned ignorance of the peoples' disappearance, had set everything up well enough that no evidence would lead to you. And while some of them did suspect you of their people's murders, none of them ever realized they'd just eaten their own people in the pies you'd brought."

"...yes," the overweight noble admitted with a thoughtful expression. "That does sound like something I would do under such circumstances." He took a good, long sip of wine, wiped his lips with a napkin, and sighed. "Which House?"

"The Freys," I revealed. "But that future should not come to pass if the Lord Stark of the time does not trust them, or the current Lord Stark prepares adequately for the war to come."

"I see we have much to speak of," Wyman Manderly acknowledged. "But why come to me in this way? What do you want?"

"To live," I told him. "The most likely outcome of that future is all of us being dead in less than twenty years."

Chapter Text

In its couple of square miles of area, the city of White Harbor had over fifty thousand inhabitants. It was not quite the size of late medieval London but it still was a significant city and despite being built in the cold of the North it was very active, with well-fed people, extensive markets and almost every type of good or service available to whoever had enough coin. As my purse hung heavy from the deal I'd made with Lord Manderly, I looked at the busy streets without really seeing them while internally cursing the customs man that had started this whole mess to begin with.

To make up for the difficulties I'd had to face and reward me for my information - his words, not mine - Wyman Manderly had made me several offers. First, he bought my entire stock of decorative glass spheres and mirrors then and there, at ten silver moons each. That had come at a bit over twenty golden dragons to begin with. Then he had offered me another hundred gold dragons, a fair ransom for a young noble, on top of that as "expenses"... and that was just his apology for my treatment by his men. It was a very large sum, far more than I'd need for passage across the Narrow Sea.

Unfortunately, the two ships that had been heading off to Tyrosh and Lys had departed while I was locked up in the Wolf's Den. Lys, with its primarily Valyrian population, open trade, great climate, and many sell-sword companies had been my destination, and while Tyrosh would have done as a second choice, other destinations were far less desirable. Myr was straight out for obvious reasons. Volantis had too strong a presence of Red Priests that I didn't want to get involved with so early in my plans. Pentos would be important in the future but I'd need more power and recognition to tackle the challenges there, and Braavos was lousy with Faceless Men and anti-Valyrian sentiment, not to mention too far from critical events I wanted to get involved in. More ships heading to Lys and Tyrosh would turn up, of course, but there weren't expecting one for at least another tenday, probably closer to two weeks.

Enter the bigger offers Wyman Manderly had proposed. One option was him offering another five hundred golden dragons and both his table and the guest quarters of the New Castle being open to me until another ship arrived. I wouldn't have to do anything else or offer any more of my time and effort, just enjoy his hospitality and comfortable castle life for all that time; it was the least he could offer for the services I'd given him so far. The other option was more like a business deal; he was willing to offer any resources needed for whatever projects I wanted to pursue for those two weeks of my stay, as long as the laws of the Seven Kingdoms were not broken or his honor and authority challenged by my actions. In addition, he would offer fair price for whatever marketable goods I produced in said projects. In either case he would also owe me a favor, something I could ask him of in the future, one significant enough to balance the scales between us.

Looking around at the busy city, the thousands of people hawking wares and plying trades in both the marketplace and the mile-long harbor, I was leaning strongly towards the business proposal. It was an unbelievably, stupidly open-ended deal by modern standards. Yes, what I had already offered these people was significant, yes, I'd dealt with Lord Manderly fairly despite my treatment by his vassals, but it was still far too generous. So generous I kept looking for that hidden clause, the not-so-obvious scam, the trick that would cheat me out of everything I had to my name. There was nothing, and that alone almost made me take the five hundred gold dragons and wash my hands off the whole mess.

An old woman stood behind an open stall heavy with little tarts smelling of fresh-baked fruit, that heady sweet tang of a Christmas bakery I'd never smelled in all my years in Westeros. Only three pennies each; I bought a dozen and dropped a silver stag at the old woman's palm, leaving before she could offer any change. What was overpaying by half when just the coins in my purse came at twenty-five thousand times that much money and represented less than a fifth of my minimum current worth?

I sat by the Seal Gate and enjoyed the morning light over the harbor, the tang of seawater and fish in the air, the glorious taste of apples and cinnamon on my tongue as my plans shifted yet again. If Wyman Manderly wanted to be generous I would take him up on his offer. Not to the point of abuse that would ruin our budding alliance, but with the kind of projects that would be far too expensive to do without the backing of a major lord. Projects that could potentially benefit House Manderly too in the long run, but should benefit me far more directly in the present. I could delay my trip to Essos in exchange for a head start in acquiring more personal power. The only questions were how much Lord Manderly and his people would be willing to accommodate me over the coming weeks, and how much effort I was willing to put into this.

Screw it. Being cooped up in the castle would have bored me to death anyway.

​
We set up shop in an old tannery in the city outskirts by the North Gate. It was the access point for anyone reaching White Harbor by land and also close to the White Knife river, perfect for our purposes. The old building stank but a bit of smell never hurt anyone and it had both the open space and the storage we'd need while also being away from the eyes of busybodies with no need to know of what we'd be doing. First order of business was to send the dozen men the Manderlys had assigned me down the riverbank to harvest flint stones and pretty flowers while I prepared the place.

For my basic works there was no need for tools or other aids beyond my Pyromancy but if I wanted to make something truly impressive there would be at least one thing needed; a level, smooth area to work on. The issue was one of materials. Glass, especially the fused quartz I worked with, had a high-temperature working point. While a fire-resistance spell might work with small projects, attempts at particularly impressive works would push the limits of my power, attention and stamina, leaving nothing to spare for the fire-resistance. Which left making a heat-resistant bench.

When most people think of common, relatively easy to get in a medieval setting heat-resistant materials, they usually think of Asbestos. Contrary to popular belief though, Asbestos melts at a lower temperature than many common rocks, granite included. Granite itself has the same melting point as normal glass or brick; many a world-hopping protagonist should have burned themselves when trying to make their own steel from their furnace literally melting. The fire-bricks Westerosi used in their forges could handle molten iron, if barely, but pure quartz melted at even higher temperatures than that so a more refractory material was needed. Options were limited further by the required level of smoothness, non-reactivity with the open air, and availability of materials. Thus I was left with only one option, really.

I sliced my palm with my new knife, splattering blood all over a stone bench the tannery had come with. The sacrifice was significant enough I used healing spells to avoid passing out, though not to the extent of the burning island ritual. Once the stone surface was covered sufficiently, I unloaded the contents of the cart I had brought with me; dozens, even hundreds of pounds of pottery. Not just any pottery though, but the gleaming glazed white of porcelain. Without caring about artistic quality, the size of individual pieces, or making a good bargain, it had taken a mere half-thousand silver stars and a couple hours of shopping to fill the cart with the material that was now forming a small mound over the bloody bench.

Unloading complete, a flick of my finger repeated Berric Dondarrion's old trick of using a sacrifice of blood like wildfire. The spell was a bit more involved than setting it alight, including a fire-resistance component that both prevented the blood from being burned away in seconds and what had been anointed with it from melting away in the heat. The pottery had no such protection and the potency of my blood was quite a bit higher than your typical fire-wight; in the blazing heat of the purple flames it first turned dull red, then a brighter orange, then a radiant yellow as it began to melt.

Shaping several hundred pounds of molten material was at the limits of my ability even without actively supporting any other spells. Fortunately, all I needed to do was prevent the melted porcelain from dripping off the stone bench until the flames burned themselves out and the glowing yellow liquid settled, before draining the heat away. Gravity acting on the liquid ensured an almost perfectly smooth surface in the same technique as used in float glass, and the resulting fused alumina-silica mix produced a translucent glassy surface with an even higher melting point than pure quartz for me to work with. Then, working with much smaller, individual pieces of porcelain, I added an one-inch rim all around the new table.

The perfect frame to make door-sized quartz panes in the future without needing more sacrifices or to strain myself to exhaustion.

​
The knife bit into flesh for the hundredth and twenty-seventh time, slicing all the way through a throat and letting warm blood spill freely into the basin. As with the previous four dozen times this was done, a small trickle of power ran up my arm like an electric current, energizing my body and adding the smallest sliver of lasting vitality to my inner well of power. The body under my arm kicked once, twice, thrice, then went still so it was set aside for other hands to collect.

I dipped the colorless, candle-sized bit of fused quartz into the basin with my off-hand, draining the heat and vitality from the blood with my magic and trying to push it into the glass rod. The blood immediately coagulated like week-old curdling milk, while the rod grew warmer and warmer under my fingers until it was glowing orange. For a moment there there was a faint echo, the dimmest shadow of something intangible yet present, but then it was gone and the glass started cooling like normal. Instead of settling into the glass material as it had done with the bronze on Keera's gift, the power of the sacrifice winked out and the glass cooled. Another failure.

"Bring in the next," I told the men waiting by in the sidelines.

"I beg your pardon, m'lady," a stocky, well-muscled man in a thick apron heavy with bloodstains almost stammered, "but that was the last one."

"Oh?" I looked up from the crystal and my fiftieth failure in a row to find the bloody chamber dim and several men working on rendering the latest addition to the pile of corpses. I was surprised to find it was late evening. Compared to my morning work in the glassworks, the ritual attempts felt like they'd gone by in the wink of an eye. "These were all of today's-" I stopped myself before talking about sacrifices; for some reason talking about it made the men very nervous. "-animals?"

"Yes, m'lady," the butcher nodded, eager to finish the job. Gathering all the animals that would have been killed around the city for either local consumption or trade in the same slaughterhouse for the express purpose of being killed by me personally had taken no small amount of both organization and physical labour. The whole point of the endeavor was for me to avoid all the time-consuming bits, to have other people bring the goats and pigs and sheep in one place so I could kill them as quickly and efficiently as possible. For me, it had been a bit over a hundred cuts and a few hours total of small rituals between kills. For everyone else the work must have been grueling.

"Very well. Throw away the blood but everything else can be used or eaten like normal," I repeated my instructions from earlier. The Manderlys would be far less willing to accommodate my experiments had they ruined hundreds of animals' worth of meat. "Rest and we'll meet again tomorrow."

As for me, I had more work to do.

​
The fire-resistance enchantment preserved the wildflower within the conjured flame but the conditions still sped up its drying considerably. It was like suspending it in a highly hygroscopic material such as silicon gel or even better; in only a few minutes the flower was completely dried out. Unlike many of my earlier attempts it didn't crumple as it dried, nor did it lose its color. This was partially due to the protection from the heat's effects but the species of flower played an even larger role; I'd learned that the hard way but now knowing what flowers could better handle the process sped everything up considerably.

Once it was completely dry, I used my Pyromancy to submerge it in molten quartz like dozens of others before. The glowing yellow translucent fluid surrounded the delicate flower completely and formed into a two-inch floating orb. The last bit of the process was draining the heat rapidly enough that the material would not crystallize. It was another thing I'd learned in my prior work with glass. Allow it to cool too slowly and quartz crystals would form, messing up the transparency. Cool it unevenly or anneal it incorrectly and the damn thing would devitrify, the glass metamorphosing into tiny crystals that formed a material very close to flint, sometimes within hours of solidifying, others after a day or two. I'd lost a third of my earlier attempts to this phenomenon but now I knew how to avoid it; rapid cooling. At least fused quartz had extremely low coefficient of thermal expansion and did not shatter in the process. It didn't really need to anneal either, not unless I was aiming for the best possible toughness and my magic could not guide its formation for some reason.

And with that last orb, another hundred were ready for transport.

​
The knife bit into flesh for the four hundredth time, slicing all the way through a throat and letting warm blood spill into the basin. As with the hundreds of previous sacrifices, a small trickle of power ran up my arm like an electric current, energizing my body and adding the smallest sliver of lasting vitality to my inner well of power. Said well was full by over a third now, despite farm animals contributing far, far less power to the total. Compared to lizard-lions or even bog-pigs even cows were mere trickles, just larger trickles than sheep or pigs. I suspected it was the animals' lack of importance to me. I had not hunted for them, they had been brought to the slaughter by others. I had put no effort into them at all besides that last stroke of the knife cutting their throats; maybe to someone that had personally raised them they'd offer greater benefits but I had no time to become a farmer.

I dipped another colorless, candle-sized quartz crystal into the basin with my off-hand, one made for this purpose earlier, right after my glass-making session. Making the single crystal into the desired shape and size rather than an amorphous bit of glass was a bit harder but as glass had failed before I wanted to try something new. I drained the power from the blood harder, faster. Instead of coagulating blood I left behind a nearly dry solid while the crystal glowed in my hand from the concentrated heat of several liters of warm blood. Instead of letting go I kept a hold of both the warmth and the vitality, keeping them inside the crystal for longer instead of letting them dissipate, in the hopes that this experiment would go differently from all the others that had come before.

Unfortunately, the heat started dissipating the moment I relinquished my hold on it. Once again there had been something missing from the process, but try as I might to think of what it was as the crystal cooled, I had no idea. I was about to discard the crystal as yet another failure when I finally noticed; it was still giving off very faint heat, barely above the temperature of a normal human body... but it was not cooling any further. Suddenly excited, I blew at it like trying to cool a bite of too-hot food but there was no change. Moving in almost unseemly haste while wary workers rendered the last few animal carcasses, I dropped it into a bucket full of water and waited with bated breath for the several minutes it took the water to become ever so slightly but noticeably warmer before taking out the crystal and examining it once more.

It was still warm - exactly as warm as when it had stopped cooling. Moreover, there was a faint, so faint you'd only find it if you were looking, hint of power in it. Not even close to the bronze wristband I'd made for Keera, it was still unmistakably supernatural. It was far weaker than what I'd been intending to make, hardly of any use with how faint the effect was, but it was a start.

​
The near-molten, thick as molasses quartz expanded into a thin disc a bit over a foot across as I used my Pyromancy to press it against the heat-resistant bench. Without letting it cool, I cut a sliver out of the silver stag coin I'd been using and dropped it into the disc's center. Silver having a much lower melting point than quartz, the sliver immediately melted. Splitting a fraction of my power and directing it to maintain the quartz disc's heat and shape, I used the majority to melt another handful of flint stones, burn away or extract the impurities then stretch the result into a second disc.

Something I'd found out with my very first mirror almost a week before now was that silver and quartz did not mix. The metal would not bond properly to the surface and could be scraped off the back of the mirror in strips with one's nails. A particularly jarring blow might not be enough to break quartz but it could make the layer of silver fall off in flakes. In both cases the mirror was easily ruined by everyday occurrences, an unacceptable flaw in its construction. Unfortunately, fixing it was not easy. Making the surface rougher ruined it as a reflective medium. Trying some sort of chemical treatment either messed with the surface as well or ran counter to the point of having a simple, quick method of making high quality mirrors. After several rounds of trial and error, there was only one solution I'd come up with.

I lowered the second disc into the first, pressing its carefully flattened surface into the one below it. Caught between two panes of fused quartz, the drop of molten silver expanded into a highly reflective disc but I'd measured the amounts properly and said disc was smaller than the two much thicker layers of quartz. The quartz discs came together in the inch or so of silver-free rim and fused seamlessly. The whole thing rapidly cooled as I drained the heat from it and soon turned solid.

Two buns of high-quality glass and one slice of silver made for a mean mirror sandwich.

​
I drew hard upon the basin of warm blood, draining its heat and vitality until I left nothing but dust behind as if the blood had been left to dry then be ground down by the elements for long months, maybe even years. That energy, both physical and magic, I concentrated into the handful of flint I held. The heat melted down the rock and with the aid of my Pyromancy burned away the impurities, leaving behind molten, glowing yellow quartz.

That I shaped while keeping the stolen power from the blood within, guiding it through the slow cooling process that would result in a crystal. The moment liquid became solid, the very instant the gleaming transparent facets took shape, the magic from the burnt offering of blood was locked into the crystal, separated by the environment and my own magic as if by some invisible door snapping shut. It became part of the crystal, its very structure, and when I opened my hand I was holding a crystal rod a few inches long that was clearly warm to the touch. Far more obviously, one of its ends gave off light like a small candle.

The spell was similar to the sustenance magic I could cast on a living being except instead of sustaining a body's functions without fuel it would sustain the heat trapped in the crystal despite the warmth and light it continually gave off. The magic worked because the heat itself came from an animal to begin with; it was merely focused into making the crystal glow. The whole ritual had been far too elaborate and power intensive for a result that was much, much simple than sustaining an entire body but the tradeoff was permanence. Yes, I could already put a lasting sustenance spell on a living being with a good enough ritual... but living beings eventually expired while the crystal would last far, far longer in comparison.

My first true magic item without human sacrifice was a mere glorified candle but Valyria was not built in a day and Wyman Manderly had many more farm animals to use as materials to try more things and improve on my skills...

​
Melting enough flint for a door-sized mirror took a temporary heat-maintaining spell on my fire-resistant workbench and two dozen batches of flint stones melted and refined into quartz before being dropped into the frame. The silver for the mirror's reflective surface took an entire silver star coin, then the second layer to seal it in also had to be added in two dozen batches. Then came the shaping which, due to the mirror's size, could not be done in mid-air and had to be slowly worked in while it rested half-molten on the surface.

After the mirror sandwich had been sealed properly and the reflective surface scratch-proofed, after the whole thing had cooled down and some few flaws - from bulges to air bubbles - fixed with stone-shaping, after the proper annealing to ensure durability, I actually had to get the new mirror off the bench. It had shrunk while cooling, obviously, but it hadn't shrunk nearly enough for tools to fit between it and the bench's rim, let alone fingers. Hell, there was barely enough gap for a hair. After several failed attempts at a clever solution and lots of whining about having to break the rim like some blacksmith doing mold-casting, I'd had the idea to use my fire-constructs. I'd never tried them for something so thin and precise and it took nearly half an hour to form the dozen or so tiny hooks through the gap and around the mirror.

And the mirror still wasn't done! I'd used my Pyromancy to melt down some basalt and build a thicker frame and legs of stone around the mirror. This allowed the thing to stand upright on its own and would somewhat protect it from incidental blows. Someone could still shatter it with a hammer but they would have to actually work at it. Compared to normal mirrors that could break if you looked at them funny, it was a huge improvement. Especially since the fused quartz and silver inlay made for better mirror quality than even the modern one I'd had back on Earth.

In the end, the entire process took four whole hours, forty times as long as a foot-wide oval mirror. Lord Manderly had been buying the small ones for ten silver moons each so for matching my profits for the same work hours the big one needed to go for at least thirteen and a half gold dragons. I'd ask for twenty just to see what happened; he had gold to spare.

​
The balding old man in the black leather and chain of a prison guard slowly took me through the Wolf Den's lightless corridors at a slow limp. I'd offered to let him lean on me - I'd even carry him just to make everything go faster - but like some crippled people I'd met back on Earth he was too proud to accept the help. To hear him tell it, he'd lost his leg and eye in Robert's Rebellion, fighting the good fight to save worthy people and put down tyrants and he'd never feel ashamed of his choices.

There was probably a great deal of bitterness and a good helping of anti-Valyrian sentiment under the pride, so I could not blame him for not wanting my help - but I could blame him for not assigning the task to a younger, sprier, faster-walking guard while he sat in his office in the Gaoler's Tower and drank his mulled wine. That would have saved him all the discomfort and me the extra half-hour of going through the prison at a crawl. Finally, after many a dark turn, splashing down corridors with at least an inch of saltwater pooling beneath our feet and descending too many narrow stairs we reached a line of ancient-looking underground cells with much newer, heavy iron gates.

"That's them, then?" I asked, my vision cutting through the gloom to peer at the slowly wasting men behind the bars.

"Aye, lass," old man Bartimus grunted. "Outlaws, slavers, traitors, worthless bags of flesh the lot of them."

"Everyone is worth something to someone," I muttered softly. "Were they offered the black?"

"Nay, that's too good for these scum," the one-legged castellan grunted. "The law says they get the noose or the axe."

"Very well," I said with a sigh, still not believing Lord Manderly had made the offer. It had come up after I'd presented him with the first magical candle and we'd discussed what other lasting magic was possible. Keera's wristband had come up and the overweight noble had been very excited despite me cautioning him I could not reliably produce such items. He'd insisted and thus, here we were.

I put my hand on the first cell's door and reached out into the metal of its lock and the echoes of the heat it had been cast with. A moment later it clicked open, confirming that after long days of constant practice forged metal was almost as easy to move as igneous rock. The prisoner within did not react beyond some feeble attempts to get up, but he'd been left without food or clean water for way too long. When my knife stabbed up his jaw and into the roof of his mouth there was almost relief in his eyes.

I drew out the power of the human sacrifice, more than a lizard-lion but less than the bandits I'd killed on the road. Still dozens of times more than the farm animals, even the cows, the more lasting weight of the kill pushed my already mostly-filled well closer to fullness. That done I moved on to the other cells. The next prisoner did not react at all; he was either sleeping with is eyes open or there was nothing behind those orbs that stared at nothing, not anymore. The power from him was still significant, but less than the first prisoner's had been.

The third prisoner was a small man, almost as slim as a child but no less fierce for it. He tried to stab me with a makeshift shiv, a sharpened piece of stone more than an actual weapon. He was fast and deadly accurate still, but either his stay in the cell had made him weak or he'd never been particularly strong. I caught his arm by the wrist and twisted, bringing him to his knees. Then I stabbed him in the base of his spine and warmth and energy coursed through me, very nearly sending the accumulating power in my mind overflowing.

The last prisoner was sleeping, like the second. He was also a meaty, overweight man that snored loudly, which meant he couldn't have been in those cells for more than a few days. I was about to stab him through the heart when he jolted upright and threw a rock at my face. I blocked it with my arm, which hurt, then he was falling on me, trying to ride me down with his bulk and choke me with meaty fingers while cursing in some foreign tongue. He was very surprised when it didn't work despite me not being a small woman. I was taller than him in fact and I suspected that under his bulk he actually had less muscle than I did. We wrestled but while he was by no means a novice, I had the experiences of ancient warriors and been trained by a swamp ninja. I soon had him locked face-down with an arm twisted behind his back and seconds later my knife put an end to all his struggles.

In my mind the vision of the Fourteen Flames burst to life for the first time since I'd last said goodbye to my adopted aunt, but I suppressed it, pushing it aside for later. I got to my feet, only to find old man Bartimus just inside the cell, the door closed behind him, his sword off its scabbard and already raised. Slow he might have been due to his injuries but neither stupid nor craven.

"No need to risk yourself on my account," I told him, pushing the corpse aside. "Letting down my guard was a mistake, but an unarmed prisoner wasn't much of a threat."

"Protecting people is my job, lass," the old Northman grunted, then fumbled with the keys after seeing the prisoner was dead.

"I'm curious," I asked him as I melted the quartz in my hand and started channeling the excess vitality and warmth from the sacrifices to it. "Does Lord Manderly have a lot of criminals killed?"

"The scum get what they deserve," Bartimus told me with a shrug. "Normally we off them before the prison's Heart Tree. That thing's enormous, it needs a lot of watering, doesn't it?"

Huh. Now that he mentioned it, the local weirwood was, indeed, large enough to extend past the keep's crumbling walls and overshadow the small godswood. Given what weirwoods were and how they grew... no wonder Lord Manderly had no problems with letting me kill his worst prisoners. Then again, this was the guy who had baked his enemies into pies and made their family eat them in canon.

The crystal solidified, locking much of the vitality of the sacrifices in itself. There was no light though there was a bit of warmth; similar to Keera's gift the main effect was rapid recovery. Not nearly as much as hers but still an entire extra person's worth of stamina and natural healing to whoever carried the crystal, maybe a bit more. It hadn't absorbed all the vitality of the dead men though, so I turned to Bartimus.

"Some people get what they deserve, old man. Most of us get what we can grasp with our own efforts but for tonight let's balance the scales a bit more."

"Eh?" he asked in confusion and almost recoiled when I grabbed his face with both hands. He could never have dislodged me though, not even back when he'd been young and hale. My power flooded his head and body, fixing tiny little injuries, but also dragging along the much stronger temporary boost remaining from the sacrifices. That I focused in the smaller of two gaping holes of Bartimus' presence in my awareness and through Sorcery forced old, scarred-over flesh to shift and be molded, pushing and pushing until my mind felt on fire and my every muscle threatened to lock up. Working with a wound so old was incredibly hard and exhausting but by the time I was done and barely standing the old guy had two eyes once again.

"There," I said with a gasp. "Now you can see as well as the rest of us." I gave him a tired smile which faded as soon as my gaze turned down. "Your missing leg, I'm afraid, is far beyond my ability to restore." And with that I left the speechless and crying old castellan behind.

I still needed to set the healing crystal in a chain and make a proper amulet out of it...

Chapter Text

The final tally of what Lord Manderly had paid for my work came up to another seven hundred gold dragons. At his request, I'd made another seven of the door-sized mirrors over the second week of my wait for a ship, working through the mornings at the workshop. Despite all assurances as to the sturdiness of fused quartz, Maester Theomore had kept fussing about the large mirrors' durability, wringing his hands as he ordered around the servants sent to carry them away as each one was completed. He even had them wrapped up in several layers of wool before strapping them securely in carts for the short trip through the city.

My patience with the guy had run out on the third repeat of the whole rigmarole and another half-hour lost to my workshop being crowded by far too many useless idiots. Thus I'd ripped a branch thicker than my thumb from the nearest tree and had proceeded, to the blonde Maester's horror, to rap it against the latest mirror so hard it broke. The branch that was, not the mirror; at a thickness of about an inch, I doubted most people could break it without a hammer or similar heavy blunt object. Unlike the brittle glassworks the locals were used to, mine were pretty safe from the occasional bump. The only real danger was dropping the larger mirrors on stone or other hard surfaces; they were heavy enough that lifting them by myself was a struggle. They had to weigh around three hundred pounds and that kind of weight dropping down would hit harder than a knight swinging a warhammer.

My work on the smaller, decorative orbs turned out better in some ways and weirder in others. It was halfway into my stay in White Harbor that I noticed the flowers in them were surprisingly lifelike. As in, more lifelike than before being covered in molten quartz. No matter how carefully or slowly it was done, the drying process to avoid rot always had the delicate bits of plant matter losing something of their natural beauty and vibrancy. Yet after the first couple hundred pieces, the flowers in the orbs were turning out more and more vibrant-looking, noticeably more so than just after the drying. It was an oddity I couldn't really explain, not at first.

If that had been the only change nothing would have come of it, but on the second week Wyman Manderly had asked me whether I was trying something new with my glassworks. When my response came back negative, the overweight lord had taken me up the stairs to the castle's treasury where all the works he'd bought from me were being kept. Once the two of us were inside, he had shooed the guards and the torch-bearing servant out... then closed the door. Instead of being left in the utter darkness of a windowless room though, we could still see from the light of my latest creations. Not the literal glass candles or the amulet of health; those were locked up in an actual vault along with most of the Manderly gold and their most important relics.

No, it was the four dozen glass orbs faintly glowing in the dark. Not by much; all of them put together didn't even match a single glass candle. Too faint to be noticeable in the day or even under torchlight but in the total darkness they stood out like sore thumbs. I did not know why they glowed in the dark, was completely embarrassed by my inability to provide an explanation when Lord Manderly asked. The genial man had laughed and waved it away by calling it "just a bonus" and was fully willing to keep buying them all the same, but the difference had first surprised, then disturbed me.

Thus the second week's evenings found me soaking in a self-heating bronze bathtub - as in, I was heating it myself - trying to find what was going on with my works. Examining multiple spheres both before and after the change had yielded no results; I was not doing anything differently, nothing about the creation process had changed. Same materials, same melting and refining through simple conjured heat, same drying of the flowers with heat and fire resistance, then the sealing in molten quartz. Everything was as it should be... except for the flowers looking too vibrant and the spheres glowing in the dark.

In the end, I had resorted to making several extra orbs that would not be sold, confirming the new differences, then melting them open and examining the interior. The flowers retrieved from them... did not feel dry. Oh, they were perfectly devoid of water content but instead of being brittle enough to crumble if handled indelicately, they were almost as flexible as they had been when alive. In addition they were quite a bit tougher, reminding me of the plastic flowers of my previous life. The effect was perishable though, as least once they were taken out of the glass orbs; within an hour they would not only grow stiff and brittle but start getting brown and only a few hours later they would fall apart into ash.

The phenomenon was obviously magical, but try as I might I could neither sense it, nor guess as to how or why it happened. The kind of magic I was used to involved melting rocks, starting fires, or taking over large animals. Minor effects on something as small as a flower was akin to warging into insects; too small for me to handle and probably disastrous if I tried to produce it deliberately. The whole thing was frustrating enough I thought of investing the gains of my latest milestone into the eleventh Flame... but in the end I decided against it. Not only would I need those investments elsewhere once I crossed over to Essos, but for all I knew such an investment would make my Pyromancy stronger but even less able to handle the small stuff.

By the time another ship from Lys finally arrived to White Harbor, my only answer was that tiny bits of magic were leaking into my works from the spells I used in their creation. Odd, but since the changes seemed benign not really alarming.

Shayala's Dance was a Lysene galley with a bronze figurehead, a weird amalgam of 17th century French galley and far more primitive ships of earlier times. It had two masts with a large triangular sail each, twenty-five pairs of oars for a hundred and fifty oarsmen total, and an aftercastle where both the Captain's cabin and a clay-tiled cooking area was. That was the only place where fire of any kind was allowed, and for good reason; with a third of their mass being hemp, sails and pitch, sailing ships were giant floating torches. Of the ship's total crew of a bit over two hundred, a hundred and fifty were slaves, all of them oarsmen. These demographics didn't result in very healthy conditions, even if one discounted the usually cramped accommodations in preindustrial sailing ships, or that all of that crew plus passengers had to make do with only two privies - and one of those was for the Captain's use alone.

All in all, just looking at the thing left a sour taste in my mouth, but it currently was the only way to cross the Narrow Sea. Frankly, life at the Neck had been cleaner, but the worst part was the cramped conditions. The voyage to Lys would take nearly a month assuming standard conditions at sea. A month during which I'd share with two hundred people a space barely larger than my adopted family's crannog in the Neck - and I'd spent more time outside the crannog over the years than inside. A month during which there wouldn't be anywhere for me to go, no hunting trips through exciting new places, no using pyromancy that could have disastrous results at the barest mistake or loss of control, nothing for me to really do.

This promised to be a very long trip...

The first week of the trip was every bit as bad as I'd expected and more. Not because of the smell, though the ship was smelly, not because of the crowds, though the sailors were annoyingly loud well into the night, not even because of the food, which I'd expected to be terrible but had been pleasantly surprised when both officers and honored guests dined on the best lamprey-based products White Harbor had to offer. In fact, such products made up a sizable portion of the ship's cargo upon departure because apparently Lyseni in general and the Captain of Shayala's Dance in particular loved very rich, very fatty seafood.

No, the problem had a rather more personal cause, namely that I kept spewing my guts every hour unless I stayed in bed and only nibbled on hardtack and some cheese. The seasickness that had plagued me in my previous life had returned with a vengeance and in Martin's death-world I had to deal with it for far longer than half-day trips on steel boats much larger and far sturdier than any galley.

The ship's only saving grace - as in, why I hadn't set the thing on fire an hour into the trip then swam back to Westeros - was Captain Sathmantes. Despite a bony, if quite young face and piercing pale blue eyes, long and wild black hair and a trimmed beard that made him look positively villainous, the man was both approachable and friendly. He'd been quick to offer me his own cabin when he saw I was sick and even before that had welcomed me in the one dinner with his officers I'd managed to attend despite me being some no-name orphan girl from Westeros. Even my obviously Valyrian looks couldn't explain the favorable treatment; Lys had more people of Valyrian descent and very strongly Valyrian features than any other place in the world except possibly Volantis. No, the man was just kind, which was a rarity in this world and something I would remember.

The only thing about him that was disagreeable - other than his use of slave labor - was probably his weird name. Who named their kid 'Khorane' anyway?

Most of the first week I passed in the Captain's quarters, trying and mostly failing not to feel miserable. I was nauseous more often than not but I was still hungry, the meager food I could stomach far from even the amounts I had been hunting by myself as a little kid, let alone the nightly feasts in Lord Manderly's table. In contrast, Featherball had really hit it with the crew after only a few hours of awkwardness. Avoiding me in my waking hours, the annoying bird perched in the open and often dived for fish in the surrounding waters, a behavior that somehow was counted as entertainment by the ship's crew. Her going into a hunting frenzy and catching way more than even her gluttony could consume probably had something to do with it as the fresh fish added to the crew's rations went hand in hand with the not-so-little miscreant's soaring popularity.

Meanwhile, I was reduced to going through my newly purchased books and spying on people through the ship's rats. The two activities proved surprisingly synergistic. Most of my studies focused on a primer on the Valyrian language I'd been given by Maester Theomore because looks aside, I no more knew Valyrian than did any other crannogwoman. The primer helped keep my mind off the nausea with its neat penmanship and frequent snide commentary by the former Lannister man and only a week into its study I was fairly sure I could get the gist of Valyrian texts. The rats on the other hand helped with learning to speak the language because much of the crew were Lyseni and spoke in a musical, flowing dialect of High Valyrian, but a few of them weren't from Lys, often leading to mixed discussions and at least one of the youngest, non-Lyseni officers being helped to learn as I spied on them.

While a month-long trip would not normally help as much, my ability to follow four or more conversations at the same time or hearing the same conversation multiple times by spreading my awareness across multiple rats let me make far more progress than should have normally been possible. The seasickness was a powerful motivator to keep practicing, because the rats did not feel seasick at all; as long as there was more of me sharing space with them than being miserable in my own body everything was good.

The seasickness went away during the second week and I finally found my "sea legs". I didn't know if I'd ever feel truly comfortable on one of the fragile, highly flammable, slow-as-molasses excuses for ships this world had, but at least I was functional. I kept on my language lessons via rat spies though, because as I slowly became more fluent, the information I got out of them became more interesting. The kindly Captain Khorane was actually a pirate in service to the Prince of the Narrow Sea, the great sellsail, merchant, smuggler, banker and pirate lord Salladhor Saan. He might be one of the least violent of his kind and according to the plans he discussed with his people he leaned more towards smuggling and privateering than actual piracy, but it was still a wake-up call that personalities more than just appearances could also be deceiving. He would not be the first kindly, honest smuggler in this world, after all.

From the third week on the trip became more pleasant. I joined the Captain and other officers more frequently in their dinners, practiced splitting my awareness between rats performing different tasks, and tried to make floatstone. Pumice and Scoria, the natural versions of such stones, were made by rapidly cooling volcanic glass that had a large amount of gasses diluted in the mixture, gasses that escaped as the pressure after the volcanic explosion rapidly dropped, forming bubbles in the solidifying stone. Having no way of providing such explosive conditions, especially on a ship, I instead used my Pyromancy on small pebbles to shape them as they melted and cooled. The bowl of water I kept at hand for testing their buoyancy also helped put out fires in the unlikely cases I made a mistake or lost control. Very, very unlikely; it only happened thrice.

The experiments showed limited success. Floatstone by itself would not be very useful as it eventually became waterlogged and sank, but I was hoping to work the same concepts with metals. Metal foam materials were almost as strong for the same size as solid metal when correctly made and if I could produce them in large quantities they would be useful in many projects down the line. By the time we'd passed the Stepstones and had turned towards Lys I'd just had my first success with a tiny bit of foamed silver.

Only an hour later, the barrelman shouted about a black sail on the horizon from his watch on the mainmast...

Chapter Text

"They will be upon us by midday," Captain Sathmantes said, lowering his Myrish Eye. "It's an Ironborn Longship, they fly no flags, they turned to follow when our bearing changed." His words visibly shook the men close enough to overhear but none of them said anything. Everyone had been busy for the past couple of hours, with weapons pulled out of chests, crossbows inspected and test-drawn, ammunition handed out, buckets of water and bags of sand placed in strategic places across the ship.

"The Black Goat take those Squid scum!" a burly, dark haired, dark-skinned man said and spat, his words echoing oddly. "Anything more we should know, Captain?"

"They're too far away to see gear or numbers," Sathmantes said with a shake of his head. "I'd have liked to know more about their rowers myself, but that's just wishful thinking."

"What if it wasn't?" I interjected, walking out from the shadow of the ship's mainmast. The young officer standing against it yelped and leaped away as, from his perspective, the six-foot Valyrian girl he'd probably been dreaming of half the nights had just appeared out of thin air less than a yard from him. Contrary to their intended purpose, my latest improvements could be very flashy.

"This is no business of yours, woman," the burly officer said in a long-suffering tone. "We have bloody work to do and no time to entertain flights of fancy."

"Funny you should mention flight," I shot back with a smile as Featherball flew in at that moment and landed on my shoulder, claws scraping against the steel scales now covering the leather at that point. "Because a bit of flight could bring information."

"Ye got a fancy bird, so what? Will it tell us how many squids are coming?" the same man challenged while the Captain remained silent. I just smiled but Featherball squawked and jumped down to the ship's deck. The same talons that had scraped against steel had little trouble gouging lines into wood. In but a few moments there was an arrow sign pointing at the guy and five letters across its length. IDIOT.

"Featherball could, but she doesn't have to," I half-lied. I did not know how much the still growing owl had been changed from hours of shared mind-space between us, but I doubted it truly extended to writing... at least not yet. "As I can see and hear what she does, I could relay any details immediately."

That gave the sailors pause, including the big guy. The right information could be worth their lives in a few hours and all of them knew it. I also saw how the way they looked at me changed, from desire mingled with various levels of condescension to something different. The desire was still there, but now there was also a hair of caution and unease in the sharpness of their gaze, the sudden tension in their stances.

"You're a warlock!" the youngest man among the decision-makers yelled. It was the same guy who'd jumped at my stealthy arrival, a blue-eyed platinum-blond with a bit richer clothes than anyone save the Captain. His inexperience showed by how nervous he was and if he was a day over twenty, I'd eat a lizard-lion raw.

"No, I'm a sorceress," I shot back with all the derision his accusation had deserved. "Warlocks are male." Also evil, though some Warlocks of Quarth might disagree on both counts.

"If you could give us more information it would be greatly appreciated," the Captain interjected before another argument could start. "Focus on their numbers, equipment and condition, both for their warriors and their rowers. Any sigils, too."
Featherball had already flown off after her letter-writing stunt and was speeding off towards the pirates under the power of a stamina boost. She was tiny and barely recognizable as a bird even to my eyes at over a mile away and was rapidly shrinking into a dot, soon to disappear. Captain Sathmantes and his two officers waited as another minute passed, then two, then three. Around us the crew went through their preparations with practiced ease, apparently old hands at naval combat. Then again, they were pirates.

"Shit," I swore with feeling, once Featherball had gotten within a mile and a half from the other ship and slowed down from her flying sprint to something more sedate.

"What is it?" Captain Sathmantes immediately asked, the other two men tensing.

"It's huge, for a Longship," I told them, half my attention in Featherball's superhumanly sharp eyesight. "Fifty yards from bow to stern, thirty-two pairs of oars... and the oarsmen are not sitting on benches," I added as Featherball flew steadily lower and closer, giving me more details. "They're sitting on chests and wearing leather or mail."

"They're all fighting men, not thralls," the Captain realized, tone grim. "A hundred and thirty Squids, at the minimum."

"A hundred and forty on the deck," I counted, Featherball gliding lazily a mere six hundred yards over the longship's deck. "There's no crossbows or longbows but I count at least forty smaller bows with their axes and spears and the team who's not rowing is setting up a ballista."

Nobody said it but we were all thinking it. Shayala's Dance might be a pirate vessel but its crew were more smugglers and merchants than warriors... and its rowmen were neither trained nor equipped for battle. I still didn't know how many of them were slaves but even if they all could and did fight they'd still be cut down by a hundred and thirty well armed, well-trained killers. And if our rowers couldn't fight, the remaining crew of fifty would be barely a speedbump.

"We c-could outrun t-them!" the young platinum blond piped up, voice shaking. That got him my most disdaintful glare for the magnitude of his stupidity.

"That longship can make eight more knots than this ship could on its best day," I told the clueless boy, because that should have been obvious to anyone that even casually learned about sailing ships, let alone an actual officer who would live and die on one. "The only reasons they're going that slowly is that they want our oarsmen to be tired when they catch up and everyone else to have had hours to stew in fear. Far easier to catch slaves if there is no fight at all."

"True," the burly guy agreed with a surprised grunt. "Ain't changing the fact we can't take those whoresons, or escape them."

"You'd be surprised," I said and lit a tongue of flame upon my palm.

My knife sliced into the shoulder of the last rower that could not, would not, or were not allowed to fight, the oldest of the two dozen slaves among the rowmen. The slave looked on fearfully as his blood was drawn away by sorcery, obviating the need for him, his benchmates and the men on the paired oar to stop rowing as ritual ingredients were collected. The thin crimson stream flew off and was collected in a bottle before a touch from me sealed the wound over the course of a minute. At the beginning I'd rushed through these 'donations', hoping to get more time to boost the crew, or something similar. Yet working with humans had proven a lot more tiring than working with glass and after fixing pre-existing injuries and sickness on the ship's fighting men, another hour of working through smaller rituals, plus another half-hour of collecting blood, I was beginning to slow down.

The blood sloshing in the bottle hummed with potential, but felt less... dense for lack of a better word. While the total amount of power collected from nearly fifty people was considerable, it felt closer to multiple animal sacrifices than a single human life in what it could do. There seemed to be an element of quality in the power from the sacrifice that quantity couldn't make up with numbers, similarly to how I got almost no permanent growth from animals now, while people were another matter entirely. Rather counterintuitively, as what I could accomplish without sacrifices and just with innate power increased, the worth of sacrifices became less... or perhaps the lesser sacrifices were no longer of worth and importance to who I had become. They still had some power in and of themselves though, which should be very useful shortly.

My first thought had been to burn the other ship from a distance, much like I'd started that great fire to heal the Old Man back in the Neck. The logistics of that ritual however had proven prohibitive. For one thing, I'd marked the whole island to be within the boundaries of my ritual, magically declaring it to be under my control. There was no way to replicate that with the enemy ship at all. For another, I couldn't just extend power through vast distances willy-nilly; my blood, serving as the vehicle of ignition through its connection to me, had been directly applied to the ignition points. Overcoming those limits was not a question of just power but also control; without such links I was limited to fifty, maybe sixty feet unless I wanted the spell to explode in my face. I would survive; the ship would not.

Climbing out of the rowing deck, I came face-to-face with a jittery, almost manic Captain Sathmanes. The long-haired, bony pirate's face was flushed with more energy that he'd ever had in his life, the result of several boosting spells working in tandem. That had been my other bright idea; a bit of Sorcery to accelerate and redirect metabolism akin to an adrenaline rush, a touch of Pyromancy to prevent overheating, a mix of both for sustenance and to prevent adrenaline crash, and finally another bit of Sorcery to prevent blood flowing from wounds. Someone with all four would not just be far more capable of fighting but also highly unlikely to die or pass out to less than immediately lethal injury. A crew of such men might even beat the more experienced, better-armed Ironborn in an otherwise even fight.

Then I'd noted that applying all that to one guy took a good five or six minutes even when the duration was cut down to mere hours. In the time we had till the Longship caught up, I'd manage to enhance maybe thirty men at the cost of everything else I could possibly do, not only because of time but because I'd be wrung out of every bit of power and need a long recovery. No small army of bootleg, cobbled-together, experimental fire-wights to crush the enemy with, but a small group to delay the inevitable. So at the Captain's urging I'd worked my spells on the ten best fighters among us, himself included, before moving on to other preparations.

"You look tired, my lady," he commented, taking in the now unhealthy paleness of my skin.

"Half of this," I waved the large bottle that must once have contained rum at him, "is mine. Let's see you lose two pints of blood and still stand."

"Two pints?! You... you should be bedridden, not walking about!" he cried, once again confirming my observations of his kindness.

"It will pass," I waved off his concern. "I'll be fit to fight again in an hour, which I might not need to if this works as intended." And with that non-explanation, I melted the bottle's neck sealed and started shaping it into a 'T' of solid glass by adding pieces from a second bottle. The Captain stood by my side, ready to catch me if I fell. Joke was on him; he should be trying to catch the bottle instead.

"Fascinating," he murmured, looking on transfixed along with several sailors who should have been doing their jobs. Then again, it wasn't every day they saw actual sorcery. "What does it do?"

"It's my little gift for the Iron Islands' finest," I said with a nasty smirk as Featherball flew in and perched on the bottle, her talons closing firmly against the T-shaped neck. Perfect. "And a warning that their reaving ways will not be tolerated forever. A lesson they should have been taught a long time ago."

Featherball flew off, her powerful wing-beats carrying the five-pound weight with not much of a drop in speed. I rode with her all the way, sharing mind-space with the irritable juvenile raptor and exerting more direct control than I usually did. She did not complain; she understood the threat on the other ship well enough and that we only had the one gift to give.

Crossing the intervening distance took long, drawn-out, stressful minutes even with the raiding ship only a few miles away now. I had Featherball fly lower until she was practically on top of the other ship, only six hundred yards above it, before turning around and carefully adjusting her velocity and flight angle while my brain struggled with basic physics due to sheer stress. This would be the first-ever bombing run in the history of this world; if we missed, all the future sorcerers running their own bombing squadrons would laugh at us. Assuming that we survived, that was. When I was fairly certain the bomb would be delivered smack in the middle of the ship, right behind the base of its single mast, I had Featherball's talons let go.

"Bombs away," my body back on Shayala's Dance muttered, though I doubted anyone would understand.

The bottle fell off like a rock, going faster and faster and faster... too fast. A little over ten seconds later it struck, not at the base of the mast as I'd calculated but several yards ahead. It fell on the sail and due to the impact angle and softer surface tumbled instead of breaking. It was deflected to the front and right, shattering amid the starboard line of oarsmen and splattering everything within a two-yard radius with its bloody payload. Said blood promptly exploded into roaring purple flames akin to wildfire.

The men struck directly and set on fire were screaming and jumping around haphazardly, some of them jumping overboard. Others further away looked on in shock and horror or leaped back to avoid the flames. But their immediate reactions were pushed aside by the question of what had gone wrong. I'd triple-checked everything, every mental calculation. There was very little wind and it was steady enough. With Featherball's instincts and sharp senses and my mind, there was no way we got the distance or flight angle wrong. Not by even close to enough to miss that badly. Had the bomb dropped at the intended spot behind the mast, the mast itself would have caught fire and with the blaze right at its middle the ship would have been doomed.

Now, half the blast radius had been wasted over the sea and the blast itself was in a far less critical location. The Ironborn were already throwing buckets of water at it and while that didn't put out the flames, it was conceivable that the ship could be saved if they found another way... and find it they did. An enormous Ironborn warrior, a guy head and shoulders taller than the rest, with limbs like tree trunks, lifted an entire water barrel and threw it twenty feet or more at the blaze's heart. Three hundred pounds of water washed over the conflagration. The magical flames refused to die but some of them were washed out at sea. Then he did it again and again, displaying a level of strength way beyond my own, clearly superhuman. When the barrels ran out, he started throwing sand and other Squids joined him. The remaining flames guttered and slowly died.

"It didn't work," I told the Captain glumly. "They lost twenty men and four oars, got slowed down and panicked a bit, but their ship is still seaworthy..."

We'd soon have a battle at our hands.

Chapter Text

"They're coming in faster," Captain Sathmantes said and lowered his Myrish eye before turning to me. "Your attack seems to have angered them, on top of causing significant damage."

"As I said it did," I responded, not looking up from my job of sifting through another box of arrows. Shayala's Dance had a significant supply of the things like any vessel that engaged in piracy and naval combat would have, but that did not ensure either the arrows' quality or size... especially with how few of the Captain's men were archers instead of crossbowmen. "You did not question my relayed information earlier, why now?"

"It is good to have... confirmation," the black haired man said with some discomfort. "Magic tricks and rumors are one thing. Magic that can decide battles..." he trailed off, looking away from me nervously. The other sailors were giving me a wide berth too, now, except for the burly guy that cursed too much. I wondered how much they knew of the monsters hiding away in Essos; a two-bit warg and a pyromancer with a flask of wildfire could have done much better than my improvised spell without even a sacrifice. And there were hundreds of those guys back in Westeros.

"Ugh, all of these are useless." I threw the last box of too-small arrows aside and stretched. At least sitting down for half an hour after receiving the life-force of several burned or drowned men had done wonders for my earlier fatigue.

"They ain't useless girlie, yer bow's too large," the burly guy chortled.

"Look who is talking. Can you even swing that anvil on a stick you call a weapon?" I shot back at the guy, because his bearded axe was as long as a halberd and its head was approaching anime territory.

"Better than a lass of eight and ten can shoot, I bet!" His retort came with an impressive one-handed twirl of his weapon, one I doubted he could have managed before my magic had given him a temporary boost.

"I'll take that bet!" I shot back and the Captain along with some of the other warriors finally set aside their new wariness of me and laughed. As pre-battle banter went, the lines were stupid but served their purpose of breaking tension and not letting us dwell on the entire shipload of professional raiders closing in inexorably. Plus the joke was on the big guy; I was only thirteen... and my archery had improved significantly since the Ironborn ship showed up.

The longship started shooting its small ballista at two hundred and fifty yards. Insignificant by the standards of the Game of Thrones TV show, a very long effective range for a shipboard ranged weapon of that size. Nearly three seconds later a dart only half as long as my own arrows but thicker than most people's thumbs flew across the deck of Shayala's Dance, narrowly missed two oarsmen's heads and several of the armed sailors on deck before going through an oar on the other side of the ship and maiming the oarsman behind it.

We ignored the man's screams and kept our eyes on the enemy ballista crew. The Ironborn knew what they were doing and not twenty seconds later another bolt came our way. With the range still long enough to see it coming, the burly axeman sidestepped and the bolt flew through where he'd been, but the rowers could neither see the projectiles coming nor move aside. Shot low across the deck as it had been and with that many stationary targets it was pretty hard for the bolt to miss everyone and another man died.

The third bolt flew high, missing the clump of warriors around Captain Sathmanes as they all ducked, scraping an inch-deep gouge in the mainmast before vanishing into the sea beyond. The actual damage of the shots mattered less than their impact on morale, however, because in theory the Ironborn could keep their distance and pound our ship with impunity for as long as their ammunition lasted. The only reason they were coming as quickly as they could - beyond their anger at my earlier attempts to burn their ship - was that they did not know whether we had another firebomb and how quickly we could prepare it. With its aerial delivery via Featherball they knew they could not outrun it if they fled, so their only option was overwhelming attack before we could hit them again.

"Two hundred yards!" someone behind me shouted but I was too busy preparing my next trick to notice who. I'd have preferred the raiding bastards all burned with their ship, or given me enough time to recover fully and bomb them again, but if a boarding was the only alternative I'd make do. I strung my bow, timed my breathing with the ship's sway, drew an arrow and aimed. At one extreme of the ship's pendulum-like motion when the speed of its sway fell to zero, I loosed. Then I drew again, aimed, waited for the other extreme, and loosed once more.

The Ironborn longship was still nearly twice as far as either the raiders or our own bowmen and crossbownmen could accurately shoot with the dinky hand crossbows and shortbows they had, to say nothing of how potential targets could take cover while projectiles were still in flight. But ballistae were larger than men and were stationary targets, the enemy ship's approach at a yard per second notwithstanding, and with my now four investments in the seventh Flame I had the equivalent of two decades of experience backing my shots.

Once, twice, three times did the heavy arrows launched by my warbow bite into the Ironborn's ballista before its crew could be ordered to return fire by that huge warrior on the other ship. For some reason the bastards seemed reluctant to risk themselves in the open and by the time the big guy could intimidate them more than my arrows it was too late. I closed my eyes, reached across the diminishing gap between the ships, and ignited the blood the arrowheads had been coated in with magical fire. Purple flames burst from three different spots in the ballista, where the blood had both scraped against and been shoved inches deep into the wood. Unlike before, the flames did not stop there. I'd hit the target personally and directly, within line of sight, from far, far closer than my prior efforts and had the lingering power of several kills to put into it; the Ironborn crew fell back in terror as the ballista's body went up like a giant torch.

While everyone else scrambled for water and sand, the seven-plus foot tall warrior ducked under the flames, grabbed the ballista by its still-unlit base... and with a mighty yell that could be heard clearly a hundred and sixty yards away threw the entire weapon overboard. Then he ducked under the shot I'd been lining up against anyone trying to put out the flames, my arrow barely scraping against the shield strapped to his back.

"That guy's a monster," I muttered with a scowl while lining up my next shot. Not at the same guy, or any of the ironborn free to move, this time. No, I was taking a page out of the damn raiders' book and shooting at the men still working the longship's intact oars. I didn't hit the man I'd been aiming at but I did hit the guy behind him, the man's chain shirt doing nothing to stop the arrow from drilling through his torso. He didn't die immediately but he was pretty much a goner all the same.

"Nah, I can take him," the burly axeman next to me boasted. "My axe is bigger than his!"

None of us laughed. I kept shooting as quickly as the situation allowed, my lethality dropping as the Ironborn raiders dropped their oars and took up axes and shields or bows now that the oversized longship was too close to stop. Five shots, ten, twelve, then the ships were close enough for the other ranged attackers from both sides to shoot accurately. Twelve of ours... agaist forty-one of theirs. And with most of Captain Sathmantes' men being crossbowmen, the rate of fire would favor the Squids even more.

A full third of the Ironborn archers fired at my position from the very first volley, fourteen shots aimed at the very obvious white-haired threat with the huge warbow standing in the middle of the ship with no cover in reach. Five of them still missed, the hundred yard distance and conditions reducing accuracy despite my becoming the easiest as well as the highest-value target. One of the archers died to my own shot a split-second before he could fire. The other eight were on-target.

That was when a rectangle of fire as wide as my shoulders and and as tall as I was flared into existence a foot in front of me. Eight arrows struck the door-shaped construct of solid flame and failed to penetrate. A second later the construct vanished, the arrows dropping to the ground even as I loosed my own follow-up shot. I couldn't see through the flames any more than the raiders could but four nearby rats had no such problems, allowing me to pick targets, draw and roughly aim without exposing myself. Only a last-second correction was needed and being able to see where the enemy was aiming and where they were ready to fire reduced the danger considerably.

Ninety yards, eighty five, eighty, seventy-five, the closer the ships came, the deadlier ranged fire became but with me both disrupting the Ironborn and picking their archers off one by one, Captain Sathmantes' men did a lot better than they would otherwise have. They still died, but crossbows didn't need that much skill and could be picked up by others if their wielder was shot; the same did not apply to the raiders' bowmen. We didn't need to kill them either; crippling injury took a man out of the fight all the same.

By the time distance fell to fifty yards, I dropped my shield and tapped into as much of the lingering power of my kills as I could handle. Warmth became fire, fire became agony, like boiling iron flowing through my veins as I drew five, ten, two dozen times more power than I could easily handle. Much of the power slipped through my mental grasp, thus the backlash, but the remainder I threw across the fifty-yard divide and every oiled string caught fire. The Squids yelled, dropped their bows and tried to stamp out the flames, but the damage was done. Even if the scorched weapons could have handled any more shots, none of our enemies would trust them while the obvious sorceress that had set them alight still lived.

Oars shattered and grappling hooks flew as the two ships came together in a deadly embrace. The unavoidable collision was what had thrown further plans to burn the enemy ship by the wayside after the torched ballista was thrown overboard; had they worked, the Squids would have both the time and the opportunity to take us with them out of spite. And Squids lived and breathed spite as much as any Lannister.

A hundred reavers jumped, climbed, or Tarzan-swung upon Shayala's Dance and were met by less than half their number of warriors and another sixty desperate sailors with neither armor nor weapons better than pointy sticks. Captain Sathmantes, the burly axeman with his enormous bearded axe, four experienced sellswords wielding Braavosi dueling blades, a Summer Islander with a greatclub and the ship's three most experienced spearmen threw themselves in the middle of the enemy lines. Those ten men being enhanced by my magic was the only reason our defense did not immediately shatter.

The clang of steel on steel, the yells of two hundred men, the screams of the injured and dying, they fell on me like a tide. Compared to the near-silent lethality of swamp monsters invading my personal space, the cacophony of my first serious fight felt... pretty mundane. I let it crash over me and pass me by as I continued shooting while keeping out of the way of the melee. Of the sixty arrows I'd started with I was down to thirty-four and I needed to make every shot count. Here, I nailed a reaver dual-wielding axes through the eye before he could overwhelm a pair of sailors. There, I shot a spearman through the shoulder, foiling his thrust and leaving him open for Captain Sathmantes to kill with a slash through the neck. On the other side of the ship, I pinned one of the bigger Ironborn through his shield, its oaken surface failing to stop a shot from my warbow at what was basically point-blank range.

The Squids were not idiots. A whole group of a dozen broke off the rapidly devolving melee to deal with me. The first to charge got a war-arrow through the guts, the second had his left knee destroyed by my next shot and the remaining ten opened the close-up fight with a volley of throwing axes. Another brief barrier of solid flame stopped those, then I was already stabbing their leader through the throat with my spear before falling back.

Unlike my fights with bandits, these guys proved actually competent fighters. Had they attacked the me that had just left the Neck they'd have overwhelmed me in seconds. Had they attacked the me of yesterday, even a pair of them would have given me serious trouble in melee. Now... now they just seemed slow and clumsy. The butt of my spear broke an axeman's fingers, forcing him to drop his weapon while a lightning-quick trust with its point took another out of the fight. A slice and two lunges came too slowly to stop me from rushing through the attackers' lines, tripping one with the butt of my spear, kicking a second one's knee from the side then dodging or parrying their retaliation.

The rest tried to mob me but I leaped straight up, small constructs forming footholds for me in mid-air. If I could not kite them across a plain, then I would leverage superior reach and levitation to negate their numbers. Taken by surprise via magic and unable to think of a solution mid-fight, the remaining attackers died to either my spear when they came close or my bow when they turned tail and ran.

A barrel came flying at my face and I reflexively formed a shield, but stopping arrows or thrown axes was one thing; stopping something that weighed more than I did thrown by a guy stronger than anyone back on Earth was another thing entirely. Both my construct and the barrel shattered, the pieces pushing me off my mid-air footholds and into a twelve-foot drop to the deck. Then that huge Ironborn warrior that had foiled my plans twice before charged at me while I was still trying to get my bearings.

The burly axeman that had made all those boasts earlier slew his opponent with a backstroke of his bearded axe and charged out of the melee to intercept what had to be the enemy leader. He was not a small man and he'd been enhanced with my magic to boot, but when his opponent leaned into his charge and bashed him with his shield he was thrown back, reeling. Then the seven-foot-tall Ironborn warrior started swinging his own weapon with precision and speed that proved he was no idiot relying on strength alone.

I forced myself up, nocked an arrow, and sent it flying at him. He turned faster than either me or the burly guy thought possible, his shield coming up and letting my arrow shatter against it. The skeletal hand painted over a blood-red background upon it seemed to wave mockingly even as its wielder took a step back and leaned away from a swing of the huge two-handed axe.

"The Black Goat take you!" the burly guy spat. "Stand still!"

Instead of replying verbally, the taller, leaner but more muscular reaver turned aside from the follow-up blow, ducked under my next shot, then bashed his opponent with his shield hard enough to knock him down. I reached out with a mental thrust, putting as much force as I could manage after my prior exertions, then immediately felt like I'd knocked my head against a castle's walls.

The giant swung his -relatively- much smaller axe at the burly guy, arm swinging down like a catapult's limb. The other axeman tried to block but his axe's haft was shattered then his ring mail was split by the remaining force of the blow. The injury would have been crippling, possibly even lethal in any other case, but refused to bleed thanks to my magic. Then the big bastard turned around and charged towards me shield-first, denying me an easy target.

I dropped my bow and tried to outflank him and stab him in the side his shield didn't cover but he proved a lot faster than his bulk had led me to believe. He was also a far better warrior than anyone I'd ever faced, casually parrying or dodging thrusts, leaping over attempts to trip him and delivering lightning-fast swings I only barely dived aside from. I tried to set his hair on fire and they started to smoke, then a lightning-fast shield bash knocked me bodily off my feet, through a good ten feet of air and slammed my back into the ship's railing.

I barely managed to conjure a shield of solid-flame against an overhead swing, his one-handed swing powerful enough to split my construct halfway through. Ribs aching, I took advantage of the split-second the disappearing barrier afforded me to roll under his weapon arm, into his reach, conjure a dagger of solid flame and stab him in the guts. The thick leather belt he wore over suspiciously Roman-style armor both resisted for another split-second, then the flaming construct dug deeply into flesh with a hiss.

Then a meaty fist the size of my head slammed into my jaw with the strength of a charging bull and threw me overboard...

Chapter Text

Cold. Darkness. Numbness.

Those were the only things I felt for some time. There was a mounting pressure, a crushing weight as first the cold grew, then the numbness. I struggled to make sense of things, awareness slipping through my mental fingers again and again. I heard a strange sizzling in the back of my mind, the hiss of a red-hot bar cooling rapidly as it was quenched. It was the only thought that made sense so I grasped for it, but my arms were sluggish and heavy and that impossible weight still lay above them as the endless darkness lay below.

I blinked at a spark of light at the edge of my vision and something clicked. My tired mind pulled at a thread of meaning, sluggishly following it towards wakefulness. Then the pain came. It bit at the right side of my head and all across my jaw at a dull throb. It stung at my lower ribs at my every move. It burned at my chest as my body chocked and heaved. With pain came clarity. The sluggishness was less mental and more physical as my thoughts churned towards coherence with reluctance. Even doing that much was exhausting, the sizzling in my thoughts slowly growing dimmer, drowned out by the dark and cold and numbness. Another blink as realisation struck.

Ah. I was drowning. I was sluggish and surrounded by cold because I was underwater. My body hurt both because of wounds and because I had not breathed for some time. The only reason I'd even woken up was the spell of sustenance I'd cast before the battle started but it was Pyromancy, fire magic, and being submerged was already smothering it like any other flame, if more slowly. And the heavy darkness overhead was not some abstract or metaphor for death but the bottom of a ship... a ship under which the currents had pulled me.

I tried to swim, but it was hard. On top of the pain, cold, numbness and lack of oxygen, the sea around me kept twisting, up becoming down, left becoming right, forwards becoming back. More metaphorical darkness started clawing at the edges of my vision and a strange detachment came over me. That... that actually helped. It now became less a panicked struggle of an injured, drowning girl and more like a video game whose controls had been inverted, like one of the effects of low sanity in Perfect Darkness or your ships being infected by Borg nanites in a Stark Trek game whose title escaped me at the moment.
n'ghft ng ya ah ehye​
It was nothing I hadn't dealt with before, nothing to be worried about. The controls were sluggish and inverted but with trial and error I adjusted, sent the opposite commands at just the right time and like a doll on strings my avatar in this Game of Thrones RPG moved to my will. It wasn't pretty but there was nobody to see it under the sea, except maybe the other players if they happened to be looking but so what? If it looked dumb but worked it was actually genius other people just failed to comprehend, right? The slightly used bag of blood and bones flipped and flopped and slowly crawled forth until it caught one of the oars. Then it pulled itself up and...

My head broke the surface and I tried to breathe but only choking noises and water came out. Terror almost broke through both detachment and reason but with an effort of will I remained in control; to panic now would be to die just as I'd reached safety. I gripped the slippery wooden beam of the oar with both arms and pulled as hard as I could, a spark of dwindling magic jolting aching muscles to produce explosive retraction. The oar was crushed into my chest even as I tried to exhale; it hurt but more water came out than before. So I did it again and a third time, ignoring the sharp stings of something probably broken in my ribcage until seawater vacated the premises and with a gasp of relief I breathed. It tasted of salt and blood and worse things yet was the sweetest breath I'd ever taken.

I sat there for a minute, enjoying the simple ability to breathe freely. My sizzling, failing magic was coaxed back to life at every breath, numbness and cold were chased away by the pain of injuries, the drum-like beat of my heart in my chest, the clang of metal and the screams of men in the air. I wanted to stay there forever and just feel the flow of life within and around me, but the violence of reality intruded once again. The battle was still going on above, but I had no idea which side was winning. How long had it been? Three minutes? Four? Longer?

That monster of a pirate had very nearly killed me. Cracked ribs, broken jaw, probably a concussion... if I hadn't fallen overboard the next blow would have been lethal. If I'd struck an oar while falling I would be dead. If any of the pirates had thrown a spear or axe at my back? Dead again. If I'd been even a hair heavier and sunk? Dead too. Had my magic failed a little earlier? Dead, dead, dead. Why had I tried to take him on in melee instead of trying more distractions? Sent the rats, or thrown a bit of blood at him and set it on fire, or tried to burn his weapon while he fought anyone else? Hindsight was twenty-twenty. At least I was sure he was if not dead too, then a dead man walking. It all depended on how deeply my conjured dagger had gone after burning through his belt and mail.

But that left the rest of the Ironborn scum. With both me and their leader out of the way, which way would their morale go? They had taken great losses but without magical interference they could still overwhelm the far less experienced, more lightly armed crew of Shayala's Dance. Unlike typical raiders and pirates, these Squids were trained warriors; their tactics, uniform weapons and discipline all screamed "elite unit" and so did their oversized longship. I lacked the experience to guess at the outcome and knowing what the Squids did to women captives I was not about to leave even the slightest doubt as to their total, crushing defeat.

The first pull at the oar with stiff arms got me nowhere. Those that followed were only slightly better but I forced myself through the motions over my body's protests and started to climb. Twice I slipped, until I used my last knife to dig into the wood as a makeshift handhold. It was the last of my weapons. My spear and bow were somewhere on the ships above, my quiver was empty, all arrows either shot or lost in the scuffle, my other knives swallowed by the sea. But as I pulled myself out of the water strength slowly returned to my limbs, my magic burning through dwindling stores of vitality to heal what it could. Getting back into the fight in my condition would be suicide. Good thing that was not my intention.

As carefully and silently as I could I climbed over the railing and onto the low deck not of Shayala's Dance but of the damaged longship. The Ironborn vessel was not empty, but a peek was all it took to confirm every able-bodied man was not here but on the battle on Captain Samanthes' ship beyond. The longship's deck was full of injured men, the dying, and corpses. Some were horribly burned. Others had arrows or crossbow bolts sprouting from their bodies. About half moaned or cursed or tried to staunch the flow of blood, the others standing all too still. The more lightly injured, the ones that could still move? They were all looking across the gap between their ships, all their attention on what little was visible of the ongoing battle.

Not being able to see how the fight was going was annoying but couldn't be helped with how Shayala's Dance had a higher deck than the longship, especially with how I needed to keep out of sight. Not that it mattered. If we were winning then my actions would just reduce losses. If we were losing they'd just make the difference between victory and a lifetime as a salt wife or death. So screw it, I was doing this either way.

The closest target was one of the horribly burned ones. As I snuck upon the shallowly breathing ruin of a man, the only way to tell he was still alive was my awareness of his vitality, the guttering flame of life in his chest, the sluggish, polluted flow of blood in his veins. His face was just a mass of charred flesh with bone peeking through in places. As my knife cut into his throat and his lifeblood dripped into the deck the only sign of his passing was that tiny flame of life being snuffed out and the weight of his death adding to my well of power.

The next two targets were still conscious, but agony clouded their thoughts enough for their terror to echo in my Greensight from so close. One was trying to breathe with a crossbow bolt through the chest, the was curled around the arrow in his stomach. Both were dead, they just didn't know it. As my knife ended their lives their last flash of emotion was not fear or agony but relief.

Sneaking down the length of the longship I took from the injured and the dying the last thing they had left. Every death filled me with energy, with power and magic, my steps becoming surer, my breaths more even, my limbs lighter and less stiff. By the time the four Squids in any condition to act against me noticed what was going on I was in a far better condition than they. My magic was still slow to respond but speed and surprise proved enough. The guy with one arm burned black from the elbow down died before he could awkwardly swing an axe with his off-hand. The one with the arrow through his right leg tried to stab me but I slipped around his awkward thrust, into his reach and slit his throat. The two axemen, one with two burned patches across his back and the other with a hole through the left shoulder, put up a brief fight, using their longer reach and well-timed swing to keep me at range as they shouted for help.

No help arrived. Maybe the pirates couldn't spare anyone. Perhaps nobody heard over the din of battle. Or maybe they did not care what happened to the injured. More loot for them if they died, right? I was eager to disabuse them of the notion so I used my greater strength to parry one axe with the dagger then smash my fist into the other Squid's throat before he could bring his own weapon to bear. Then I slammed my shoulder into the first guy, bringing us both down even as I forced stab after stab through his mail.

Even as they died, I was already in my mind, in the vision of the Fourteen Flames within. Power, stolen life, churned to overflowing. I'd hit another milestone halfway through the latest string of killing, but I'd decided to deal with all nearby threats before calling up the vision. It proved to be a good decision, because the vision was a jumbled mess. All fourteen flames were flickering and spitting sparks as waves of temporary vitality and permanent power twisted around them like a raging whirlwind. All the fear, the anger, the helplessness at my near-death that had been muted before struck me now like a tidal wave.

I wanted to incinerate the reaving bastards with a wave of fire. To reach out with mastery of blood and rip out every last drop of fluid from their bodies. To become so great a warrior that no raiding, raping monster could overpower me again. But it was just as clear that I could not, and not just because just one milestone would not be enough for that kind of power. Outside this vision in the real world my body was still battered, half-drowned and near-exhaustion. The boost from the kills had helped a little but I'd already been using spells to barely stave off a post-battle crash. Even within the vision, my magic was taxed to its limit. Could I keep casting like that?

No, screw caution and the Ironborn bastards. I was not becoming one of their toys no matter what. Decision made, I reached out to the thirteenth flame. It was a tiny, dark grey spark that had never been fed before but that changed as I rammed all the accumulated power into it. From a spark it became a candle then a torch, as large as the second flame of War. The vision of the Fourteen Flames shattered, replaced by a vision of a dark forest. Trees towered overhead, bereft of leaves or other greenery. The undergrowth between them was similarly dead, dry and blackened, while the sky overhead was lightless, without moon or stars. Yet I could still see, especially what else littered the forest ground. Squirrels, snakes, foxes, bats, birds, lions both lizardy and otherwise, hares and boars and all that walked or flew or crawled in the wild. All of them were grey and stiff, dead but not yet rotting.

The closest corpse was just a mouse. It stared at me with tiny sightless eyes. Then it twitched, a flicker of motion going through the body that would fit in the palm of my hand. It did so again and again, twitching in the ground but getting nowhere. Then something unseen, unheard, intangible but still present reached out. I saw a little boy in the woods reaching down to touch the mouse, a slip of a kid that couldn't have been older than twelve. It stared back at me without eyes, because it had no eyes, just empty sockets where they should have been. In those sockets a pale light gleamed, then the mouse stood on its legs properly at the boy's command, smaller lights of an identical hue cleaming in the mouse's eyes.

The vision changed once more, becoming a room as lightless and bereft of life as the forest had been. A long chamber stretching out in the darkness, a crypt with an endless line of tombs within. A tall, slim, brown-haired man with eyes like two chips of ice walked down the endless line of tombs in the darkness, a vaguely familiar greatsword of rippled metal heavy with magic held in one hand. Valyrian steel; I'd recognize the material anywhere. The man finally stopped before a tomb that lay open, a dead body clad in black only just laid to rest within. Then another person approached, a woman. She was taller than the man and paler, skin as white as the purest snow, long hair gleaming like icicles in the moonlight, face and limbs and body impossibly graceful for a human, even her tiniest move a dance or a flowing stream or winter's breeze across a field. She wore nothing but a coating of rime over her skin, gleaming like a layer of tiny gems on a Brazillian dancer. Her eyes were blue fire and yet clearly shone with mirth as she leaned down to whisper on the man's ear.

At her instruction the tall man gripped his Valyrian steel greatsword with both arms and touched the corpse with its tip first on the right shoulder then on the left. Like a king knighting a worthy warrior except done to a corpse... but then the corpse twitched like the mouse had in the forest. It twitched again and again and then its eyelids opened to reveal the milky pale eyes of a dead man now shining with the same pale gleam as the brown-haired man's. The corpse rose, got out of the tomb, then knelt on the man's feet. As the vision slowly faded, I saw the inhuman woman kiss the man deeply even as more and more corpses rose and knelt in a circle of black-clad warriors around them.

I opened my eyes back on the ship just as my last victim took its last breath. It had felt like hours but only a minute had passed... and now I knew the secrets of necromancy. How to raise not just minor animals but human corpses into unlife to make wights. How to command them. How to direct them from afar. How to sense other undead, even attempt to usurp the control of another, or use the same magic of death to banish life and slowly kill without a single sign of a wound. Into that knowledge other magical experiences slotted in. My spells of sustenance, empowerment and healing from Sorcery fit to the animation of Necromancy like pieces of the same puzzle, making the act of raising easier, the results stronger and a bit more life-like. The life-fire of Pyromancy did the same, stripping the wights of some of their vulnerability to fire; now they would not burn any faster than normal corpses. Finally my experiences with Greensight allowed me to share senses with the dead earlier than I would have with necromancy alone. I felt more secrets clamoring for attention, deeper synergies trying to form, but my new ability with Necromancy was still rudimentary and untested. More would come either with time and practice, or further investment. For now, I had a battle to win.

Filled to bursting with stolen vitality, I used my knife to slice into the palm of my hand. Blood oozed down the blade before the shallow wound sluggishly sealed, then I flicked the bloody knife in the air. Tiny droplets of my blood were pushed by a touch of Sorcery, directed at the corpses around me. It was with this knife I'd taken their lives. It was with the same knife that I linked to them through my blood. It was through this link that I filled the bodies with the same vitality I'd stolen from them. Not actual life, no life-fire like the living had, but enough for animation. This is what made necromancy so good for making armies; the life of any living being was more - a lot more - than the power required for mere animation. A necromancer could raise everything they killed as wights and still have a net gain in power.

Laughing out loud, I pushed more and more vitality through the link, ignoring the searing ache through my every nerve as more and more of the bodies around me rose and heeded my unspoken command; slay my enemies, see them driven before you, hear their screams of terror as they died. The corpses moved, not as shambling, clumsy things in some Hollywood movie, but with the speed and agility they once had in life. They started climbing across the gap between ships, several of them drawing weapons as they did.

Then an invisible string snapped, a glass ceiling broke, and agony flooded through my mind. Invisible knives stabbed into my thoughts, overwhelming force pulled at my brain, trying to tear it in two dozen directions at once. As I toppled onto the longship's deck as if that monster from earlier was repeatedly kicking me in the head, I realized my error. I could raise the dead as wights now, yes. I could empower this spell with all the vitality from my kills, adding to my Necromancy via Sorcery. But more power did not mean more control, and I'd never controlled more than four other beings at once. And I'd just raised and linked to me two dozen.

I struggled to keep the now fighting wights under control. I struggled to pull back the vitality that I had returned to them. But the more I struggled, the closer my thoughts felt to being ripped apart, torn to smaller bits that would then inhabit a wight each. Maybe it would only last until the wights were slain. Maybe the pieces would die with their new bodies instead. Either possibility would still leave me with a shattered mind, so with a last bit of effort I severed my link to the newly made wights.

Mental hooks turned to burning fire inside my head and I passed out...

Chapter Text

50 miles north of Lys, 13th day of the 3rd moon of the year 293

His mother had always been kind to him. Kinder than any Lysene nobility who valued the purity of their blood above all would ever treat a baseborn son, or so most would think. Kindness was strength, she always told him, for when cruelty was not a choice one had to think beyond the obviousness and expedience of force and find more intelligent means. It was also both shield and sword, for when the cruel thought you weak their preconceptions blinded them to your true skills and became a chip in their armor. It was that kindness that had given him the means to get his naval career started, the connections forged through it that had brought him the attention of sponsors. Thus he had endeavored to be kind in turn and had indeed found success through it.

But sometimes, Khorane thought as he parried the Squid's axe with his cutlass before stabbing him through the neck, the monsters of the world did not allow him to act as kind as he'd like. Did his mother ever have similar problems? As he sidestepped the thrust of a spear with the agility of his long misspent youth, then sliced through its wielder's chain shirt with the strength of a much larger man, he very much doubted it. Kindness was a better weapon in a woman's hands, his old Captain used to say, because it was accompanied by beauty and subtlety beyond the ken of man... though recent events might put the lie to that last one.

The axe of his next opponent swung across his midriff, the sudden burning pain indicating his dodging had been a hair too slow. His cutlass answered even as the pain winked away but the Ironborn raider retreated before he could gut him. Khorane might not tire or feel more than momentary agony at any injury, he might fight with agility and strength beyond his peak, but the sorcery made him neither invulnerable nor immune to error - much like both his fellow officers and the sorceress herself had found.

Their still being alive and fighting was a miracle - more than one, even. According to all his past experiences as a Captain and raider, Shayalla's Dance should have been doomed. Pursued by a faster, better-armed vessel with three times their number in trained warriors, they should be either dead or in chains. Probably the former, because the Ironborn vessel was not a raider but a warship that was, in all evidence, specifically targeting them. Not that they'd be alive much longer. Kho had been the first to die, the Summer Islander's size and strength and the toll of lives reaped by his greatclub making him a prime target for thrown axes and javelins. Locke, that big Qohorik bastard, was as good as dead. He was the third of them to be brought down by that monstrous Ironborn axeman and he'd been lying where he'd fallen ever since. Of the ten men enhanced by Lady Flann, only Khorane himself and his youngest charge still stood and both of them were wounded.

He'd known it would be so when they'd put themselves between the Ironborn scum and the rest of the crew, sorcery or no sorcery, but it had been the only way to prevent the crew from breaking. The rest had been simply too green compared to the raiders, too lacking in proper arms. They'd been smugglers, blockade runners, messengers and merchants, not warriors. And now... now the battle teetered on the edge of a knife. They had taken fewer losses than the Squids in total, but the losses they had taken were disproportionately concentrated on their combat-capable men. And Khorane Sathmantes... he felt tired. His arms felt too heavy to take more lives, not physically but in his soul.

Before he could make a decision, shout more orders that would lead to more lives lost, the battle shifted radically. Two dozen more Ironborn charged out of their crippled longship. For a moment the crewmen of Shayalla's Dance almost broke... then the newcomers fell on the other Ironborn with abandon. Unexpectedly beset by both sides, the raiders panicked but now they had nowhere to go... so they fought. Fought and died because incredibly, impossibly, the new attackers refused to die. Here one of them took a spear through the heart but ignored it. There another was stabbed multiple times but kept going. A few yards over, one was beheaded by the swing of an axe but his headless corpse fell on the terrified axeman and literally tore him limb from limb.

These... these were not men. They were monsters... nay, they were demons! If Khorane had not seen the sorceress fall overboard he'd swear she'd cast a spell far worse than any of her earlier tricks... but if not her then who? In under a minute he became witness to the brutal murder of near fifty men by half their number of unkillable terrors. Sathmantes' own men were screaming now, because who wouldn't in the face of such devilry? Some of the rowers were already throwing down their clubs and spears and crawling away.

The last of the Ironborn was reduced to a bloody smear under the axe wielded by one of those horrors... and then another charged into Khorane's own men. He did not see who started it, whether it was a terrified sailor stabbing out in reflex or a bloodthirsty monster reaching out for its next victim, but the result was the same. Three men stabbed the monster with their spears but it did not stop, its flailing arms slamming into the screaming spearment even as the men tried to pin it and failed. Then more unkillable monsters charged and the defenders' lines shattered.

Khorane Sathmantes saw one of the bigger ones raising its axe against him, a second smile at its throat grinning from ear to ear. He saw death coming with brutal violence and he gave up, his cutlass falling from his fingers. What was the point? Should he spend his last few moments futilely raging against the inevitable? No. He would die a gentle man. He didn't even look up at the demon that would be his end.

Then the axe paused, the demon passed him by, and Khorane Sathmantes still lived. He threw a bewildered look first at the monster that was now engaging another terrified crewmember that could barely raise a sword in his defense, then at the other monsters wading either through anyone attempting to resist... or over those dropping their weapons and fleeing or cowering flat on the deck.

"Drop your weapons!" he shouted frantically. "Drop your weapons now!"

It went against any warrior's instinct to stand against an obvious enemy unarmed. But most of his crew were not trained warriors. Most of them were just sailors, men scared to the Hells and back, men who'd do everything just to live another minute. They heard him, for he was the only one still saying anything coherent. And in their middle of abject terror, they fell back to old habits and obeyed... and the monsters let them live. In moments, the ongoing massacre came to a dead stop. The walking corpses - for what else could these demons be? - stood still as if their work had been done and there was nothing else to do. And his men... his men were still mostly alive.

Captain Sathmantes decided he'd take this small victory. Now he only had to think his way through the rest of this absolute fucking mess...

White Harbor, 17th day of the 3rd moon of the year 293

He took the stairs two at a time, going from the servant's entrance to the rookery a little faster than the time before, as that had been faster than the time before it. His legs burned, knees and feet both, but it was a good burn; he could feel it. So he persevered despite all the huffing and puffing and the ungodly hour, climbing up the floors like a man on a mission - or perhaps a total idiot. If his broad smile leaned closer to the latter, he did not care.

A maid was coming down from the guest wing, two chamber pots held as far from her face as she could place them and still carry them around. Fortunately the girl saw him coming early enough to avoid a collision, and she came to a dead stop. She stood there gaping as he passed her, winking and putting a finger at his lips for silence. She would not talk, at least for a time, but she was hardly the first servant to give such a reaction. Not that he blamed her, what with the absurdity of the situation. Then again, that absurdity was what he liked best about it... OK, maybe second or third best. The other benefits were incredible, after all. One would say even magical.

Chortling at his own joke, he finally reached the top of the staircase and the door he knew was almost always closed but never locked. Who would have the temerity to barge into the Maester's private study, after all? Singing a merry tune he did exactly that, walking in without even knocking.

"Good morning Theomore, how goes the planning?" he asked jovially, because what was there not to be jovial about?

"It's still the hour of the Nightingale my Lord," the sour blond man corrected without even turning around. "The sun is not even up yet."

"That badly, huh?" he verbally riposted then paused to wipe the many rivulets of sweat dripping off his brow. "The new glassworks still not working properly?"

"It's working just fine. Her recipe works just as she said she would," his Maester said in that ever so slightly angry tone that meant he was seriously offended by something. "I just cannot find why it works."

"Oh? I thought our young guest was very thorough in her instructions?" By now neither of them needed to mention which guest they were referring to; all their late night - or early morning - discussions only ever were about that one girl. "Did she not explain it to you?"

"Yes, but her explanation is... hard to believe." Theomore sounded frustrated once more. Then again, he almost always sounded so when talking about their mutual sorcerous acqaintance. "According to her, the different results are because beech ashes contain higher quantities of a metallic element the Citadel has yet to discover. That element collected in larger quantities by specific species of trees growing in specific soils is responsible for the increased clarity of the glass."

"That's pretty believable," he told the ornery man in a calm, placating tone as he went through his stretches. His limbs shrugged off their fatigue like water off a duck's feathers. It had only been five minutes and he wanted to take the stairs again just to see if he could. "It even explains why it had been so hard to discover the Myrish glassmakers' secrets if even the Citadel was not aware of this element."

"That's not the unbelievable part," Theomore almost spat, blonde curls framing a chubby face that was now red pepper crimson. "No, it's that this element is the fifth and twenty in a series of one and ninety when the Citadel knows of only two and twenty. Preposterous!"

"And yet everything else we've been told has been the truth as far as we can verify," he countered. This was the closest he would come to chastising Theomore's academic myopia because he could ill afford it. The truth was, had it been up to him, had he known the turn of events in advance, he would have sent Theomore away and talked to the young Lady Flann in private, no matter how it would have complicated things. Because he, Wyman Manderly, Lord of White Harbor, Warden of the White Knife, Shield of the Faith, Defender of the Dispossessed, Lord Marshal of the Mander could not trust his own Maester. "But that is neither here nor there, my friend." He'd already taken off his boots as well as his coat and shirt and was sitting on one of the many stools Theomore usually employed as a scroll repository. "I need you to examine me again."

"As you wish, my Lord," Theomore responded in the long-suffering tone that meant he believed Wyman was being foolish. What followed was an extensive and by now familiar series of examinations and tests as Theomore proceeded to pick, prod, stretch and measure him and meticulously note the results in one of his many, many scrolls. Finally, after a good half-hour and the first light of day beginning to gleam over the horizon, the blond man gave his verdict. "As before, you've lost no weight but continue to exchange it for muscle. Your legs, back and shoulders are straighter, your bones continue thickening like a man in his prime going through a grueling training regimen, your skin tone is healthier and there are fewer signs of burst blood vessels. Your reflexes are more responsive and given all your late night walks I'd say your endurance is approaching that of a warrior in his prime."

"It keeps amazing me, you know?" Wyman mused as he heard the verdict. He pulled at the chain around his neck and the large, gleaming gem at its end. "She hardly ever thought about giving this away for a few paltry gold crowns. Who even does that?"

"A few 'paltry' gold crowns for you my Lord is a decade's wages for smallfolk," Theomore but Wyman was already shaking his head. Because Theomore was wrong.

"No. Nobody thinks that good health has so low a price, especially not a learned individual with the power to both give and take it. Kings are just as vulnerable to sickness as anyone else but whoever wears this little glowing rock?" He let the artifact drop back to his chest before putting on his shirt. "They just aren't. Wars could be fought over it, whole fiefs burned down and armies routed and the winner would still call it cheap."

"A learned child remains a child, my Lord," Theomore insisted, but Wyman was not so sure. He'd already been wondering about the young witch's motives, but the longer he wore her gift the more worried he got. One did not hand over a miracle, sorcerous or otherwise, without ulterior motives. Such motives did not have to be malign, but even potential benevolence did not allay his worries. If this was a gift from an ally, and with the perspective he'd been given that Theomore lacked he no longer doubted it much, how great would House Manderly's need be in the future? How bad would the prophesied war be?

"What about her other gifts?" he asked. He'd been planning to lay low, build up in secret as much as possible, but what if the warnings he had been given did not cover the full scope of the war to come? The young sorceress struck him as clever and competent, but very clever and competent people could still make mistakes beyond their area of expertise. In fact, being cleverer than many, their mistakes were correspondingly grander. What had he not been told not as a means of manipulation but because a young person with little political experience might erroneously deem it too insignificant?

"Beyond the glassworks, we found a buyer for the first of the mirrors," Theomore said and for the first time in their conversation the Maester's tone was tinged with satisfaction. "We received three thousand gold dragons as advance payment, with another seven thousand when the mirror reaches its destination in safety."

"Lord Stark responded to our letters then?" Wyman asked. Did his Lord Paramount remember the old codes they'd used during the Rebellion? Had he sent a hidden reply of his own?

"Unfortunately, Lord Stark was unavailable. He left Winterfell for Bear Island over a moon before and he's yet to return, according to Maester Luwin," Theomore's response upended all of Wyman's expectations.

"What happened?" he immediately demanded, because if Lord Stark was missing for over a moon it had to be serious.

"Jorah Mormont happened," was Theomore's snide remark, his displeasure obvious. "The new Lord of Bear Island decided to try his hand at slavery."

"He WHAT?" Much like everyone else in Westeros that wasn't a Squid, Wyman Manderly thought slavery was an abomination and not just because the Faith of the Seven said so.

"Maester Luwin did not say how Lord Stark learned of it but he did and immediately set out to execute the traitor," the blond Maester said, then shook his head. "Only a couple of days before my own message reached him, a raven from Bear Island revealed that Jorah Mormont had already fled by the time Lord Stark got there."

"I see." It was... damn bad news, really. A confirmed slavery accusation against a major northern Lord would hurt the reputation of the North as a whole... and that was before all the other issues losing the new Lord of Bear Island so soon after the abdication of his father would cause. Honestly, what possessed that man to practice slavery of all things? Then a nasty thought entered Wyman's mind uninvited. If magic was returning... could it have been actual possession like in the old stories? No, better not to borrow more trouble than they already had. "But if Lord Stark was unavailable, who bought the first mirror?"

"Lord Stannis sent us a ship from Dragonstone," Theomore said, his disapproving expression smoothing back into satisfaction. "A gift for Queen Cersei, his man said. That new knight of his, Davos Seaworth."

"Really now? The Onion Knight?" Wyman had actually met the man before and unless he missed his guess Sir Davos was cut of the same cloth as Sahlador's man Sathmanes who he'd sent the young sorceress to Essos with. As for Lord Stannis, if his real intention was to get an extravagant gift for the Queen, Wyman would not eat another pie for a whole month. "What did you think of him?" he asked Theomore. "Could we use the man to sell our future glassworks?" Not that Wyman really cared about that now.

"He seemed very interested. Fascinated by the display pieces, too," Theomore said. "Kept insisting on meeting the artisan that created them."

"He did, didn't he?" And what was the real reason behind it, Wyman wondered.

The plot thickened and people beyond the North were already starting to react to the events...

Chapter Text

???

I was walking through a valley of blasted black rock, scoured of all life but tufts of pale grass glowing with a dead light like bleached bone. The sun overhead was black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole firmament turned blood red and torn asunder as if the stars in the sky fell to earth as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. Something of the alien landscape echoed familiarly in the turn of my thoughts, its description grating like the wails of the dying and the gnashing of teeth.

A river coursed through the valley, its waters red like blood yet with oily patches of steaming green iridescence. Its smell was a sharp tang of rusty iron and fresh mint, distilled spirits and anise, the cloying stench of rotting meat yet with a hint of lemon. As I walked barefoot across its banks, black rock melted and burned under my right foot, bloody water boiled under my left.

My destination was uncertain before following the unnatural river, walking through the valley ever towards the north and the icy mountains half-hidden behind a thick cover of hoarfrost howling in the polar wind. The black sun hung low over the horizon, less a star and more a giant hole in the sky around which crackling crimson aurorae revolved. Maybe... maybe it wasn't a sun at all but a true black hole, accretion disc and all.

There was a city upon the mountain overlooking the valley, spindly towers of granite extending over seamless walls of emery, both gleaming eerily in the unnatural gloom. They looked deceptively small in the distance, more like a castle on a hill than anything truly grand, but spans and distances were oddly twisted in this place, belying the true magnitude of an edifice half as tall as the mountain itself, tall enough for the tower's tops to scrape against the ink-black clouds. Each of those spindly spires would dwarf the greatest buildings ever shaped by human hands.

The fortress-city looked deserted from afar, but that too was a false seeming deflecting casual attention. More concerted observation revealed the black smoke rising from the fires of industry burning in the city's hidden heart, saw the tiny black specks flickering between the towers as the enormous winged monstrosities they were in truth. And as I saw the city, the city saw me. A thousand thousand eyes looked out of the Stygian darkness dwelling in these mountains, and the black sun stood still in the shattered sky as their gazes turned outwards for the first time in strange aeons, looking towards the West.

For while the river of blood and glowing ghost-light flowed from the North, I somehow still was in the West.

​
30 miles west of Lys, 19th day of the 3rd moon of the year 293

I jolted upright as the dream shattered, the overwhelming awareness of being seen vanishing with it. All around me the narrow walls and low ceiling of a ship's cabin closed in, one much smaller than either mine or the Captain's. Drenched in cold sweat and still in my leathers, leathers that had gone stiff from that dip in seawater, I'd probably be reeking if my nose had not long since grown dead to the usual stench of a galley at sea.

I climbed to my feet with difficulty, limbs and back nearly as stiff as my armor from what must have been at least a day of unconsciousness, perhaps more. Almost stumbling through the first few steps in near-darkness, I got to the cabin's door and pushed. It failed to even budge so I tried again and again, and when those attempts failed too I started kicking with my big stompy boots. At least two voices came from outside, one deep and shouty, the other shrill and weak.

Then wood creaked, something snapped, and the door opened to the late afternoon light, the sun already halfway below the horizon. Two sailors stood a fair distance from the now open door, a scarred, grey-haired man with only half his teeth still remaining, the other a beardless boy that was within a few months of my own age. The older sailor was giving me wary looks, but the boy stared once, went pale as a northern snowbank, then bolted.

A few moments looking out at the mess that was the ship's deck was enough to explain the boy's terror. A group of Ironborn pirates stood tall upon a deck still bloody and damaged, all of them covered in dried blood from head to toes, all of them sporting massive burns or gaping wounds, glowing purple eyes staring at nothing. All of them had been dead for several days if the brownish, dried-out blood was any indication, yet beyond some paleness and their obvious injuries they looked as fresh and vital as the hour they had been risen. Wights, near two dozen of them.

It had not been a dream; it had really happened. Drawing upon the kills of my first real battle, I'd taken my first steps down the path of Necromancy and called forth that horror upon this world several years ahead of schedule. Well, it had felt like a good idea at the time. No, it had felt like the only idea, the only one that was workable and wouldn't get everyone either dead or worse, enslaved. Had it been the only option, though? Had it been truly?

No, but hindsight was twenty-twenty and I'd challenge anyone to reason properly right after a near-death experience. Yet excuses and explanations and the good old tradition of rationalization was not going to fix the mess. Since the mess was half my doing and those responsible for the other half were either dead or had become part of it, I reached for the bits I could fix.

Compared to commanding an animal, reaching out to the nearest wight mentally felt like crawling through a lightless tunnel full of old, dry bones. There was no mind on the other end, no shadow of self to rise up against the intruder. Yet the former presence of a mind had shaped its repository, carved grooves in the empty mind-space, echoes of the mind that had once been. Throwing my own mind-shadow into it did not change those grooves, for the vessel was already dead and no longer very mutable. Necromancy ran along those grooves, forming a pale imitation of the dead mind that could think and act like the original to a limited extent. It could rekindle moments of the original's thoughts, forcing it to repeat actions it had once performed.

Absent this direction wights were still animate, still had a spark of life-fire granted to them by the spell that called them forth, but any driving intelligence would be fragmentary and far less than human. That was the impression I got from them now that I had time to examine them. Wights, it seemed, could act on their own but to control a wight the necromancer had to actively force order to their shattered, empty minds... and could only control so many at once. I winced. Everyone onboard was very lucky my fumbling exploration of dark magic had not gotten them horribly killed and eaten, not necessarily in that order.

But why was the ship still such a mess? No oars moving, no sails straining against the wind, no repairs underway. Even if the sailors were terrified of the wights, Captain Sathmanes had seemed neither scared nor that impressed by my sorcery. He should have whipped everyone into shape by now...

​
It took quite a bit of yelling and three separate conversations in the Lyseni dialect of Valyrian to finally be led to the ad-hoc infirmary set up in the aft cargo hold. Good news, the Captain was there along with two other surviving officers, his burly second in command that loved axes way too much, and the teenage blond idiot the crew must have been saddled with by some rich patron. The bad news? All three of them were dying.

According to the ship's cook who'd set up the infirmary, the burly bearded guy had never woken up after the battle. They did what they could for him, an old oarsman who'd once been a soldier had sewn his injuries even, but he remained pale, too warm and unconscious. Both the Captain and the blond dandy had still been standing after the battle, but both collapsed only hours after it. Trying to examine any of the three led to another hour of angry and/or fearful protests, the sailors who didn't speak much beyond broken Valyrian willing to bar the door to the infirmary with their bodies even when I conjured a blade of solid flame.

I didn't want to terrify them any further, but they really left me no other option. For some reason, they were convinced I'd sacrifice their beloved Captain to demons and they were willing to give their lives to stop me. The ship's cook was less convinced I was the Devil incarnate, but he lacked the authority or influence to command the scared sailors. In the end, I mentally reached out to the wights and had the two bigger ones force their way through the human barricade while two others watched my back.

Both Captain Sathmantes and the blond kid were suffering from serious infections, blood loss, dehydration, and severe metabolic issues in the aftermath of my crude enhancement spells. With proper medical care, or what passed for it in this death world, they had even chances of a slow recovery or dying in their sleep within a day or two. The axeman on the other hand? The moment I reached into him with my magic something pushed back, quickly and violently. It felt nothing so much as being slapped, followed by the feeling of not being welcome at all.

I didn't try to force the issue, which was probably my first act of common sense in a good long while. Whatever patron had a claim on the guy, let them deal with his injuries if they would. Instead, I concentrated my efforts on saving the other two dying men while terrified but determined sailors interrupted my work every so often. If it weren't for the wights and the crew's belief that all of them were under my control, they'd probably have thrown me overboard already.

Killing the infection came faster and easier than ever before, the combination of Fire and Death and Blood eradicating any microscopic intruders. Toxins were only slightly harder, but fixing the damage from the infection on top of blood loss and the side effects of my prior spells dragged on. Pushing their bodies any further would just make them crash and without a powerful source of vitality to replenish what they were missing they'd remain catatonic. I had the idea to draw upon the life-fires of the wights, consume their animating force to revive my patients much like Berric Dondarrion had done with his own life-fire and the long-dead Catelyn Stark.

Then my common sense took that idea in the back of my mind and nuked it until it croaked, and I settled with the same sacrifices, the same source of power as my very first spells as a kid; my own blood. It was a slog, it was exhausting, and fixing magical damage was not something I'd done before, but it worked. Hour after hour, cut after bloody cut, the more expensive and basic method resulted into stable improvement.

Halfway through the night Featherball dropped in, carrying a pack of salted beef stolen from the ship's stores on one leg, a freshly caught fish in the other. Suddenly feeling ravenous, I bit into the dried meat with abandon, forcing myself to chew every bite at least a few times before swallowing. Feahterball just hooted derisively at my choice of fare, then tore into the raw fish with gusto. One of these days I'd explain why humans didn't usually eat anything raw if I weren't sure I'd get snide remarks about human frailty and/or lack of taste in response.

The sky had just begun to lighten into predawn gloom when one of my patients began to stir, struggling for a good ten minutes before finally opening his eyes.

"Hey kid," I told the blond guy who had to be at least a few years older than I was. "Welcome back to the land of the living." The blond looked at me. Then he looked at Featherball. Featherball hooted loudly and flexed her multi-inch claws. The blond fell off the sickbed in his attempt to get away.

One of these days I'd teach the annoying mutant owl that not every interaction had to be a dominance display...

Chapter Text

Khorane Sathmantes' pale, bony face stirred, blue eyes blinking sightlessly for a few moments. He reached for his face with a shaking hand weakened by his ordeal, thin fingers first wiping salty crust off his eyes then pausing to pat a growing black beard in surprise.

"What... happened..." he croaked, coughed, then continued with more strength in his voice. "How long was I out?"

"I was told you collapsed nearly five days ago," I told him, gathering the spilled blood of the sacrifice in an orb before its rapid decay could touch anything else. "You were lingering at the edge of death since the day before yesterday." Or so the sailors had believed. He'd been in a bad shape but nothing modern medicine couldn't have dealt with. "Fortunately, a small transference of vitality took care of the worst issues."

"Transfe- you mean sacrifice?!" He sprung to his feet... and would have toppled head-first if not for my steadying hand.

"The price was mine alone," I preempted his tantrum. Not that I could have asked the surviving crew; they'd have jumped overboard if I'd tried. "So please don't ruin my job by slipping and breaking your neck."

"I... thank you, lady Flann." The idiot tried to bow and nearly fell again. "But... how? Why? I was fine after the battle."

"No you weren't," I corrected him with a derisive snort. "The candle that burns twice as bright lasts half as long. I warned you my spells would have a cost. Add the blood loss and infection from your injuries... why didn't you dress your wounds and rest immediately?"

"The men were too scared and there was work to be done." He took a few tentative steps across the makeshift infirmary and when he didn't immediately faceplant he assumed he was well enough. "What were those things? Walking... corpses? I thought..."

"You thought they were just stories to frighten children." I chuckled harshly as I cleaned more blood from the bed and the rest of the room. "Welcome to the reality of magic's rise, Captain. If you're very, very lucky you might avoid facing the undead in the field of battle in the future. Most of us won't have such a privilege."

"I... no... we have other problems right now. Could you get rid of them so the men can work?" He tilted his head as if trying to listen to something distant and his face hardened. "We're still in the open sea, it seems." Eyes narrowing, he took a decisive step towards the exit.

"Already dealt with. Threw most of them overboard except for a couple of guards." I sighed and helped the stubborn man up the stairs to the deck. "The crew wanted to save you from the evil sorceress using black magic on you, see."

We found said pair of wights at the top of the stairs. The two of them were the largest and most intact among the Ironborn I'd raised, though they had nothing on that beast of a Squid that had almost killed me. Sadly, the non-walking corpses had been thrown overboard long before I'd woken up. Still, two decent warriors turned wights could handle five times their number of typical foes, and having more would have taken too much of my attention.

The surviving crew had not been idle after the source of their fear had been removed. The deck had been scoured clean, a dozen minor repairs were underway, and the ship's cook was hard at work preparing a hearty stew. Those activities did not mollify the increasingly angry Captain however. In fact, the more he saw the stormier his scowl became until he finally burst into shouts.

"Why aren't we underway? Where is everyone?" he demanded sharply, making most of the crew wince. "We should have been in Lys days ago!" He pointed at one of the more grizzled sailors, a guy in his fifties that was still limping from a recent injury. "Tycho! Explain now!"

"There was... mutiny, Captain. Treason talk," the older man muttered tentatively, obviously ashamed. "It was the Squid's ship, see? When the men saw it was empty and seaworthy... most of the new hires wanted nothing to do with anything touched by sorcery..." he looked down. "Or anyone. Some of the old hands, too. We... there was no fight. Everyone who wanted to leave jumped ship."

"Of course they did," Sathmantes grumbled. "What did they take with them?"

"Just food, water, and a weapon each." And the Ironborn ship, though neither man pointed it that out. "They knew it'd be a fight if they tried to carry off anything more."

"We'll let the Prince deal with them," the Captain muttered, mostly to himself. "Any landmarks? How far have we drifted?"

"If you're looking for Lys, it's thirty miles due East," I interrupted before the old man and several other sailors could offer their best estimates. When they all stared at me I shrugged. "I have literal eyes in the sky, finding an island isn't hard."

Especially when Featherball was already raiding the place...

​
At a hundred and twenty miles long and forty at its widest point, Lys was only slightly smaller than Crete back on Earth. It was an island of rocky hills, fertile valleys, sandy beaches and green-blue waters. Palm and fruit trees of many kinds covered most of the island, all of them heavy with produce. The island's position near the equator had combined with the abnormal seasons of this world and the high humidity of the area at a near-perfect balance for both the most pleasant climate and high agricultural yields. Waters rich in sea life supplemented the locals' food production with both necessary protein and delicacies through a fleet of fishing boats. Last but definitely not least, the island's natural beauty and lack of dangerous fauna combined with all those elements to make the perfect resort.

The Valyrian Dragonlords had not missed the island's potential. Unlike Tyrosh and Dragonstone, where they had just built fortresses, or the Basilisk Islands where they'd built their great biomancy labs and flesh-pits, only temples, palaces, hostels and entertainment buildings had been build upon the island. Though there was a wall around the city and several smaller settlements, the usual gigantic fortifications of fused stone, massive bridges and broad streets of the same were absent. Marble of various colors, polished granite and mortar formed arches, domes, towers and other artistic edifices in a style that resembled both Rome at its height and Classical Greece. Countless gardens cover more of the city's area than its streets do, and elaborate fountains and shrines take up much of said streets as well as the waterfront.

But the true difference between Lys and Westeros lies neither in its idyllic climate nor in its beautiful architecture but in the island's people. More than anywhere else in the known world, the blood of Old Valyria still ran strong in the Lyseni. Even the smallfolk in Lys had the pale skin, silver-gold hair, and purple, lilac, and pale blue eyes of the dragonlords of old. Many of the nobility in Lys had produced infamous beauties, and the Lysene nobility values the purity of their blood above all. Targaryen kings and princes were known to have looked at Lys for wives and paramours, for their blood as well as their beauty.

It was one thing to know this academically, another to disembark Shayalla's Dance and find myself in a crowd where a good half had hair of silver or pale gold, where people did not stare at my arrival for even in the immediate area there were girls of similarly good looks that wore far too little. Every other corner had a pleasure house or a shrine to the Goddess of Beauty, men and women with curled and perfumed hair giving the place a pleasant smell with their presence alone, a smell from which the sewage and rot of most Westerosi cities and the majority of seafaring ships produced was entirely absent.

It was a place one would gladly get lost in and forget how or why to find themselves again, but no less dangerous for its appearance. Small groups of unobtrusive guards patrolled the streets, subtly and elegantly armored in chain mail fine enough to be hidden and armed with long daggers and fine swords. Sellswords and sell-sails filled the piers of the city's harbor, proudly strutting next to pirate ships with their hulls painted in blue stripes. Two people in three bore tasteful tattos or wore elaborate chokers except if one knew even basic Valyrian they'd realize they were brands and collars of slaves. Beautiful, healthy, happy - eager even, but still slaves. Having perfected both the breeding and training of their products, the Lyseni needed neither whips, nor chains, nor the brutal mutilation practiced in Astapor to control even greater numbers of bound servants, for those servants were willing.

Sighing, I walked away from the harbor, the two wights in my wake carrying a heavy iron-bound chest each. We had not come here to sightsee, nor confirm that even the paradise of Martin's death world was horrible by modern standards. For my help in repelling the Squids and healing him and his people, Captain Sathmantes had given me a full quarter of the loot from the Ironborn longship, a truly enormous share compared to anyone else. The share had been given in coin, gems and other highly portable treasures that would make for a good start for my plans. Sell-swords, arms and armor, special materials, favors and bribes; all promised to be very costly yet necessary for what I had in mind.

Before that though, I asked around for directions and soon found myself and two wights standing before an open building with hints of steam and tantalizing scents wafting out of its front door. I walked in decisively, handed ten golden dragons to the young, scantily-clad blonde playing greeter, then retreated to the provided room and started discarding pieces of armor. The now completely dry leather was even stiffer and would probably need an armorer's attention if it could be fixed at all, but that was future-Flann's problem.

Present-Flann had traveled hundreds of miles on foot, another couple thousand on a stinky galley, had fought multiple times, been shot at, punched, kicked, stabbed, thrown overboard and almost drowned. She thus stank, and after half a decade of living in a swamp she had perspective on just how bad the stench, grime and ickiness could get thus would avail herself of this opportunity posthaste and screw all the problems a delay would create.

Armor and undergarments discarded, I stood naked in the stall and gently pulled the elaborate, gold-plated chain. That action was rewarded with pure bliss as hot water dropped on my head in a small shower, carrying away months of stench and ugliness. The little windmill attached to the cistern on top of the building turned an Archimedes Screw, bringing in water from a nearby stream. Said water was heated by both the intense local sunlight and burning firewood, providing the miracle of hot showers at an extravagant expense - at least comparatively - a good three centuries earlier in the technological progression than showers had been invented back on Earth.

This. This had been exactly why I'd picked Lys as my destination after my first talk with educated Northmen. The only other reachable destination with hot-water plumbing had been Winterfell. I'd very nearly gone there, future plans be damned, and only reconsidered Lys after my encounter with Brynden Rivers. Quick shower done, I filled the bronze tub with more warm water, heated it up further with Pyromancy, then raided the bathing house's collection of soaps, scented oils, bath salts and other needful things. Finding it as extensive as any assorted Egyptian cosmetics from antiquity, I knew I'd made the right choice. Winterfell wouldn't have had even a tenth of these things - they didn't even know soapberries existed. Content with my choices, I soaked into the steamy, bubbly slice of heaven.

Somewhere in the palm tree forest a few miles to the north, Featherball was tearing apart a brightly colored parrot for fun...

Chapter Text

The days that followed confirmed Lys as by far the best choice of temporary base from which to set my greater plans in motion. The hot baths, subsequent massages by very talented and highly trained experts, the highest-quality cosmetics in the world and a very varied cuisine prepared on demand by experts "imported" from all over Essos and Westeros did play a part. After six years living in the wilderness, I would not say no to a slice of civilization even if it was built on the backs of slaves. But what all those recreational activities offered was the opportunity to engage in a more modern endeavor and work remotely.

When one was enjoying fried shrimp and a plate of cheeses in one of the more expensive eateries in the city, nobody suspected them to be gathering information on the many sellsword companies of the island through a network of winged spies. When relaxing under the hands of a skilled masseuse seconded from the Temple of Beauty, nobody knew you were building a mental list of merchants and their wares, artisans and the quality of their work, of visiting ships and their crew and cargo. And when one had reserved a private bath for the afternoon, they could be reasonably sure they would remain unobserved and undisturbed for hours in the least flammable environment to be found in a medieval city.

Lys being home to many tropical birds, singing or otherwise, made the work so much easier and almost completely eliminated suspicion. Every pleasure garden and most taverns had one or more of the things as decorations but furthermore, it was tradition among successful merchants and ship captains of renown to have them as pets. So taking a page out of Brynden Rivers' book, I went around either personally or, more often, using Featherball to piggyback a link and used the magic of Greensight to push at the minds of such birds. There were limits to how many such spies I could control at once or bind to me, but the secret was that I did not have to control them all the time or even bind them.

Once an animal was "broken in" by receiving a mental link, any warg could slip into it much more easily and I was more than just a warg. Returning to an animal I'd previously melded with was a simple matter of focus as long as they were within a few miles of me. Moreover, animals had memories and birds had better memories than most. The slight mental boost they got from melding with my mind-shadow added to that, and with my experience with Featherball plus some experimentation I was able to access some of their memories to roughly review either very recent events or very unusual ones. In short, I was slowly building up a network of living, breathing spy cameras across the city, points of view I could tap for information at far greater speed and reliability than human informants without anyone being the wiser.

I might not have a vast network across a continent or the ability to see in the past and future at will, but for my purposes it would suffice. Being armed with the right information, the following steps in my plans would be so much easier.

In contrast to the open stalls and loud shouts of other merchants, the building before me was built of solid stone, with windows too narrow for a man to go through even if they cut through the metal bars, and with a heavy, iron-bound oaken door flanked by no less than four guards on the inside. The interior was full of dozens, possibly hundreds, of displays, each no larger than a small shoebox with five sides of metal-bound wood with glass panes on their lids thick enough to visibly distort the contents at least a little.

Said contents were art pieces in gold, silver, gems and pearls of all types, amber and ivory, even weirwood. An extravagant collection for any common merchant... then again this place was owned by someone far richer, more powerful and, more importantly, vain than any mere peddler of goods. But not careless. I'd thought of robbing the place the moment one of my flying spies first noticed it, but couldn't come up with a plan that would work. The four guards by the gate and the dozen others hidden deeper in the building were no obstacle, of course, but the barracks for the owner's private army was just next door and their fortress-mansion not much further. The building itself was not flammable or easily breached and forcing the issue would only bring the city's authorities down on any attacker's heads. House Ormollen certainly bribed them enough for that.

The whole point of this... jewel dealership was not so much profit as to trumpet House Ormollen's prestige, power and influence in a way anyone could see by just walking through the open door, as well as a dare to their rivals to rob or raid it if they thought they were clever or tough enough. So far nobody had taken them up on it. Admitting that, for the time being, it was a too tough and too obvious a target, I decided on another approach; on the morning of my fifth day in Lys, I wore my newly bought silk dress of purple and black, my new red belt and purse with an elegant little dagger strapped to it, perfumed my hair and pampered myself with scented oils... then walked up to Ormollen's House of Jewels and walked in like any other visitor.

"Ah, a young lady of great beauty and exquisite taste," the proprietor greeted me in a tastefully flattering tone that somehow managed to sound neither patronizing nor oily like I'd half expected. He was a sharp-eyed, grey-haired, neatly coiffed man with a pointy beard and an easy smile, but while his leather suit was elegant and very well-cut, his hands were worn and calloused but very dextrous. Excellent. "What can the House of Jewels offer such a guest? May I suggest an amulet in amethysts over white gold? It would highlight your hair and eyes nicely."

"I'm afraid my usual endeavors are too rough for conventional finery," I demurred and the man's eyes flickered to my hands. For a split second his practiced smile was replaced by confusion, for unlike him I lacked callouses due to magical healing. On the other hand I was tall, broad of shoulder and not delicate by any measure, and my hands were more solidly built than most women's. Something seemed to click in the proprietor's mind and his entire demeanor shifted to become more professional.

"I see, I see," he hummed as he further took in my bearing, gait... and probably my slight awkwardness at wearing a dress for the first time in forever. "You have business with the House of Jewels, my lady?"

"Potential business," I told him with a smile before reaching into my purse. "One of my overseas endeavors recently produced an unusual find. Could you appraise this for me?" And with that, I set a vitreous, olive green gem as thick as my thumb before him.

"An unusual find indeed," he muttered, picking the stone up and running it along his fingers. "Are you by any chance Westerosi, my lady?" he asked. Then he started retrieving various tools from nearby drawers; a tiny set of brass scales, a jeweler's eyes, a set of spikes ranging from copper to bronze, to steel, to a series of crystals in white, green, brown, purple, black and transparent coloration, several tiny bottles of pungent liquid and a few other odds and ends.

"The accent gave me away, didn't it?" I nodded. While spying from multiple perspectives for weeks had let me pick up the corrupted Valyrian of the Free Cities with surprising ease, mimicking a proper accent was beyond me. "I am recently of Westeros, where I spent my formative years, but not originally Westerosi. Does that answer your question?"

"Well enough," he hummed, more interested in the gem than me now. "...its clarity is near-perfect and its color is pure, dark and intense despite being uncut. My first guess would be glass but..." he tried to scratch the gem with a bronze spike, then a steel one, failing both times. "No, not glass at all. Not quartz or emerald either. Perhaps..." he tried and set aside the white and green crystal spikes. Next he tried the brown crystal but that, too, failed to scratch the olive green stone. "Oh, now things are getting interesting; it's not some type of topaz or beryl either!"

He grew more and more excited as he worked. First managing a tiny scratch with the black crystal spike, then carefully weighing the gem in the tiny scales, next putting it in a graded glass cylinder filled with water to measure its volume. Then came exposure to those pungent fluids I was certain were solvents, to no effect. He carefully took notes and by the end he was looking at the pebble-sized gem I'd handed over with considerable reverence.

"My lady, what you have here is a rare green sapphire..." he trailed off for a moment. "With its clarity and color while uncut and given its size... it truly is a rare find."

"Indeed?" I said, feigning surprise but with very real excitement. Of course I knew it was a sapphire, I'd made the thing. Had nearly knocked myself out trying to make a larger one, refining corundum out of porcelain had been no easy feat. As for its color it was due to iron, the only "impurity" I had easy access to. I'd need Titanium for blue sapphires and Chromium to make rubies, which weren't going to be easy to get. Fortunately, the green stone had passed muster. "At what price would the House of Jewels be willing to buy it?"

"For a stone like this? For a lady like you?" the proprietor's eyes gleamed with greed mixed with mischief. "Two thousand golden ladies would be my offer," he said, referring the largest golden coin of Lys, the one stamped with a naked woman's image.

"Not bad. Not bad at all," I told him agreeably. I did not need Greensight and close proximity to notice he was obviously lowballing me here but the joke was on him; the gem had cost me maybe one silver in materials. "And if there are more such finds from my overseas endeavors?"

"The House of Jewels would be happy to buy them from you, my lady," he said eagerly. "Pending an honest appraisal, of course."

"Naturally," I agreed. "Should we put this into a contract then?"

He was happy to do that, too. Free of charge, even. He signed for House Ormollen, I signed as Flann of House Belaerys, and he had a local scribe copy that in triplicate for us and stamp it with several official-looking seals. One copy he kept, one copy I would keep, the third was delivered by runner to the Temple of Trade so it would be binding in the eyes of both gods and men - and there would be a third, independent party to weigh on disputes in case one of our copes was "lost" or "discrepancies" somehow appeared.

I busied myself looking over some nice rings and bracelets while said delivery was made while keeping the runner under Featherball surveillance. It took the runner only a quarter hour to get to the Temple that wasn't actually a temple and a tiny little parrot let me confirm the contract was delivered in the scribe's name and properly deposited. That done, it was time to complete my job here.

"Have you decided on further purchases, my lady?" the proprietor asked me as I approached him again. "We do have some very nice pieces."

"They are, indeed, very nice," I returned his wide smile with my own. "But first, I'd like you to evaluate a few more of my acquisitions."

"Oh?" he asked almost eagerly. "You have more odd finds from your trip to Westeros? The House of Jewels would be happy to purchase them at similar prices if they are of similar quality."

"Of that I am certain," I retorted with a smirk and emptied the rest of my purse on the counter. Nearly a hundred more stones in greens and yellows made a glittering pile on it, most every bit the equal of the one he'd just bought. "Similar prices, didn't you say?"

I laughed as the guy gaped at the pile. Those stones? They were the product of a few hours of stoneshaping practice every evening over the past few days. Now that we had a contract, I would be making more. That would teach him not to be so eager to swindle the next "obviously clueless" girl to come by.

Chapter Text

The last of the three men gave a wet gurgle, feebly tried to keep crawling, then became still. I stood up and glanced through the eyes of the sleepy songbird on the nearby palm tree, checking that nobody nearby was looking towards the alley with too much interest. Nobody was and since proper guard patrols would interfere with all the plotting between Lysene Houses and Merchant Prince business, the bodies shouldn't be found till dawn. No longer fretting about discovery, I started looting.

In a port city like Lys where slavery had been made into an art form, finding slavers was as easy as taking a stroll around the waterfront. Tracking their movements was even easier with my growing number of winged spies, and since any sailor was prone to drinking and carousing and wandering the streets of the island paradise at night, ambushing them was only a matter of timing and presentation. It wasn't as if beautiful Valyrian girls in dresses were suspicious in this place. I cut through the third money pouch with my knife, added its significant contents to my own, then frowned at the mouth of the alley again. The last slaver had been smart enough to run instead of thinking the pretty girl wasn't a threat. Another second or two and he'd have burst into the main street, and that would have been trouble.

The blood on my blade and dress blackened and flaked away at the barest touch of sorcery and I walked out to the main street, just another local enjoying a late night walk. I needed to find a better way to handle the slavers. This had only been my second hunt in as many nights and I'd very nearly botched it despite having all the advantages. The slavers had powerful backers I could not deal with, nobles and merchants that not just bankrolled but organized the slavery ring not just for profit but to get manual labor and new blood for their breeding experiments. Hunting slavers might be a quick, convenient and ethical way to build up power and wealth but it wasn't worth drawing that kind of attention.

Despite not having a good answer to the issue, I strolled down the waterfront with a jaunt in my step, the world feeling as light as a feather from all the stolen vitality. My well of power felt just a bit deeper, the power itself just a bit weightier in the grand scheme of things, but the next vision from the Flames was still distant. After the battle with the Ironborn, a few slavers here and there just weren't very significant in comparison. It'd take a shipload for meaningful progress.

I chuckled as I reached the alehouse I'd visited once before, a bawdy song and the laughter of both men and women coming through the door. When had progressing the equivalent of years become a frequent expectation? Most sorcerers, my visions had shown, mostly worked with animal offerings and the occasional blood donation as part of their deals. Burning the filth out of the human gene pool simply wasn't something they could afford and many of them might not even want to. Murder was still murder, and all that.

Within the alehouse the air was heavy with perfume, cheap booze and human sweat. Despite the lateness of the hour, over a dozen men in cheap, worn or dirty clothing attempted to drown their sorrows in what would have been average quality wine back in Westeros but was no more than swill by Lysene standards. A moderately pretty woman with golden hair, golden eyes and lots of freckles fiddled with a harp with middling skill as she soldiered on through the bawdy song while the men shot occasional glances at her Quartheen-style dress and what it didn't cover, but otherwise ignored the show. Not every tavern in Lys was a highly expensive place of exquisite quality. In fact, most of them weren't. They couldn't be, not when the rich remained the vast minority of the population even here.

I walked towards the table in the corner where a short, broad-shouldered, grey-haired man in his early thirties was staring at the wall, a carafe of beer held in one hand but half forgotten. He had been strong and fit once, iron-hard muscles still visible under his skin, but the fat was slowly creeping in as discipline and health were slowly worn away. I pulled back the chair across from him, sat down, and looked straight at those once-sharp black eyes of his.

"...told ya to go away," he muttered after a good five minutes of impromptu staring contest that was obviously ruining his brooding time.

"No, you proposed a tumble in the hay," I countered cheerfully. "Those were your exact words, in case too much of that swill you're drinking washed away the memory." I smirked, showing off perfectly white teeth. "Then when that oh so amazing pickup line fell flat you told me to stop wasting your time."

"Then why are ye still wassing it?" he slurred, tried to point at me, then noticed he was still holding the carafe of beer he'd totally forgotten. Awkward.

"Because I'm still looking for sell-swords to hire," I told the guy who only a few months back had been a pretty decent one from what my little birds had overheard.

"And me arm's still worth shit," he shot back, his face flushing with more than beer now. "Ye think it's easy to relearn the blade with me off-hand? I can't swing for shit so I'm worth shit. Save your coin, stupid girl."

"Who said anything about coin?" I asked, then leaned over the table and snatched at the arm he'd been hiding under it. A brief struggle followed but he was drunk and I was as strong as any woman could normally be so the twisted limb ended flat upon the table. The radius and ulna had been obviously broken and half-healed the wrong way, the wrist was a broken mess, the fingers stiff and halfway clenched into a fist. A warhammer or mace must have messed him up through his armor while on campaign a year, maybe a year and a half before. Too big to fix properly with just my own power after it healed wrong but with generously donated slaver life-force... "By the way, this is going to hurt."

"Wha-"

I interrupted his angry question by shoving a human sacrifice's worth of power through my grip in his arm, into his flesh and bone, then into a supercharged flesh-shaping. Messily fused bone came apart, twisted ligaments straightened, muscle and blood vessels were pulled around and rewoven. Scar tissue shifted like runny clay, its internal structure shifting into something more complex. Even without growing flesh anew the drain on the available vitality was enormous, magnified to both work faster and bridge the gap in skill.

It was nothing like working with stone and glass and metal. There I could visualize things, direct the material, fine-tune the results as I wished for I knew what I was doing. Here, working with the human body, the details were beyond any human mind, or even all the minds and analytical engines of humanity put together. The spell worked because it worked; it didn't seem to need information or pull it out of anywhere, it was just less efficient the less precisely I could tell it what to do. Much of the magic dispersed into the man's body in undirected pulses of healing but that was a useful side effect as it'd jump-start his return to fighting fitness... probably. On second thought, I should give him a couple of check-ups after a week or two to catch any unforeseen problems brewing down the line.

In only a minute and with the man only just coming out of his drunken funk, it was done. Just how much beer had he downed not to scream his lungs off? Bother... there went the free advertising.

"What..." he pulled his arm with greater strength and I let go his wrist so he could gape at what I'd wrought in wonder. He clenched and opened no longer stiff fingers, rotated a wrist no longer shattered, flexed an arm that was straight and strong and not a broken mess. "How is this possible?!"

"Magic, obviously," I quipped. "Let's start again, shall we?" I said and extended my hand for him to shake. "I am Flann of House Belaerys, and I'd like to recruit you into my new sellsword company." He stared at me in shock and fear and confusion and dawning hope, his hand reaching out to mine almost out of its own accord. "And if you have friends with injuries like yours, maybe I could help them too."

Around us, none of the patrons had enough clarity to grasp what had just occured, but the singer's harp had dropped from her now loose fingers as she stared. Amateurs, am I right?

​
The air was heavy with smoke, the tang of metal and almost as much sweat as the other shops had been. Walking in, the temperature went from tropical paradise to sweltering heat, not much of a problem for someone who could shape red-hot glass with her bare hands but probably uncomfortable for normal people. Deeper into the building several youths were hard at work under the instructions and curses of an older, pale-skinned man whose tangle of gold-white might have made a serious fire hazard by itself if I hadn't seen several errant sparks burning out against them without leaving a mark.

"Can we help you, lass?" an identical man grunted as he heaved a barrel full of freshly made spears aside so he could set pieces of silvery steel plate on display.

"Silver plated armor?" I asked, sidestepping his question to sate my curiosity. "Won't it flake off in two to four years?"

"Hah, the guy will be lucky if it lasts eight months," the smith snorted derisively. "Armor isn't jewelry, it sees actual work. But do the nobles ever listen?" He shook his head, his tangled white mop dancing. "Far be it for us to refuse repeat business. But what about you, my lady? Something in our smithy caught your eye? Your kind usually go for the more ladylike pieces sold on the waterfront."

"Those flimsy things they call daggers? They'd probably snap at first use." Well, probably not. Lysene smithies had as much quality as anything else on the island and the more expensive pieces I'd seen were some fine blades, but daggers and dueling swords weren't what I had in mind. "I'd rather have a proper weapon." The battle with the Ironborn had been hell on my equipment. Half my arrows were gone, thrown overboard along with the corpses by sailors who didn't know better. My leathers had not been proper armor to begin with and a dip in saltwater without immediate rinsing had left them stiff. My spare knife had been lost at sea when I'd been hurled overboard. That left me with a bow too large and powerful to use most normal arrows, a spear with too much sentimental value to risk damaging in a major battle, and my ritual knife.

"Proper weapons we have, but are you sure you want them, young lady?" the older man asked me with the air of an adult trying to steer a teenager away from an obviously dumb decision. "We at Florian and Florian usually cater to those who think themselves as warriors and knights." He waved his arm at the armors, shields, polearms and other serious instruments of war that looked more Westerosi in style than any product of the Free Cities.

"And fools, too?" I asked him with a smile, referring to the story of Florian the Fool, a famous knight of the Age of Heroes. "Maybe I'm feeling particularly foolish. It wouldn't be the first time."

"As you wish, my lady," he told me, meaning 'gods save me from teenage idiots'. "We have a nice collection of swords and daggers even if they're not as elaborate as young women usually go for. A dueling blade would be a good fit for you, I think."

"I'm sure it would," I countered before picking up one of the heftier spears. The shaft was narrow but dense and hard but flexible, a polished dark brown wood that looked expensive. The spearhead though... it was quite a bit wider than normal for a spear and solidly built, in a style halfway between an infantry weapon and a knight's lance. I'd had my eye on it ever since one of my birds had found this smithy far from the busy harbor, almost inside the forest at the city's South.

I twirled the almost seven-foot-long weapon with practiced ease, its greater length, weight and stiffness fitting in my hands as well as my own first spear had back during my training with Keera. I'd shot up quite a bit in both height and reach since then, not to mention weight and muscle mass, so the Crannogman's hunting spear felt a little too small and light... but this? I went through several quick jabs, a reverse block with the butt of the spear that flowed into a skewering thrust, a rotating sweep of an enemy polearm shifting into an upwards thrust as soon as it alinged with an imaginary helmet's eyehole, a low sweep of an enemy's legs turned around into a thrust at the base of his neck as he fell.

"You know your way around polearms, I see," the smith noted, taking in my practiced stance with a new eye.

"It's what I was trained in when I was younger," I replied to his unasked question. "Strange as it might seem now, I was not always as tall and against some enemies keeping your distance matters."

"Too true," he nodded in agreement. "This is your choice then? I can't say the weapon doesn't fit you, even if it doesn't go with your dress as well as a dueling sword might?"

"This painted on thing?" I dissed my too revealing dress, a low-necked green thing with too much thread of silver and embedded gems. "That's just social camouflage meant to deflect attention, rumours, and human idiocy. I need something more physically protective for actual battle."

"Why is a young lady planning to be anywhere near actual battles?" the kindly smith demanded a bit more intensely than a total stranger should have but I just shrugged.

"Because young ladies have enemies too." I crossed my arms and scowled. "In fact, we have more and fouler enemies than most." It wasn't quite the truth, not in the way that I meant the older man to take it, but my activities would certainly make me loads of enemies.

"...fair enough." He sighed tiredly. "I see that trying to dissuade you is not going to work and just denying service will see you going to some lesser smith that would take advantage."

"Do you always offer unsolicited advice to your customers?" I quipped again.

"...just tell me what you have in mind," he groaned, admitting defeat. "You seem to have put some thought into this."

"I was thinking a combination of scale and plate over chain mail over a gambeson for a balance of rigidity and ease of movement," I started explaining the ideas I'd come up with. "Weight is not an issue. In fact, I want to be wearing eighty to a hundred pounds of metal as I'm finding it harder to put all my strength behind my blows lately. Oh, and it'll need to account for future growth as much as possible. I'm only three and ten, what if I have another growth spurt?"

We went on in that tune for the rest of the evening...

Chapter Text

"Hey, stop that!"

Featherball gave me a glare and then made to bite the tightly wound roll of parchment strapped to her leg.

"If you tear it up I'll solder it with bronze and Keera will need to use a hacksaw to remove it," I told the recalcitrant mutant owl. "And then she might miss and hack your leg off. I don't think she's used a hacksaw before."

She squawked indignantly then clicked her beak in obvious threat.

"On second thought, better use a parrot," I mused out loud and Featherball bristled. "Yes, no need to write a letter at all, just speak it through the bird like the Greenseers of old." Except for the minor problem of the parrot having no knowledge of the world beyond the island. I'd probably need to puppet the thing all the way through the trip and my sense of aerial navigation was horrible compared to Featherball's - not that I was about to admit that. "We could even have conversations in real time... yes, a parrot would be the superio-OUCH!"

Featherball bit me and then gave me a look of murderous smugness, which meant her usual expression with maybe ten percent more intensity.

"Fine, fine! You can deliver the letter yourself," I feigned annoyance while throttling any of my true feelings out of our mutual bond. The little feathery miscreant preened and flapped her wings, already preparing to depart.

"Not so fast! I still need to cast the anti-fatigue spell," I told her. "It's a three-day flight. Even with all the stops it will be very tiring."

She turned her head to stare straight back at me - and upside down too. Then she clicked her beak derisively.

"Yes, yes, you're a mighty huntress, you don't get tired." I rolled my eyes at her. "Don't come back whining to me if you sprain something important."

She hooted in denial.

"And remember, if a fish is larger than a boat then it is too large for you to catch." Honestly, the little murder-bird behaved like a honey badger at times. Annoying a leviathan was definitely something she'd do. "Especially if it has tentacles!"

She flew off and I stood by the window to watch until she vanished from sight. I really needed a better way to send long-distance messages...