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Post by oznerol on Aug 3, 2020 9:52:01 GMT -5
"Can you fly?"The voice asked, dry and slow, like the man had forgotten about how to speak. He was talking from above and from within, the red eye staring at him from a mangled throne of roots. Brandon sit at his feet, his hand like a claw grabbing a white bone-like root, his eyes blank, seeing inside his skull and beyond his skull. The Three-Eyed Crow was sitting over him, but he was also standing before him and his voice was everywhere, including inside his mind. The voice of something that should be long dead. "I can. I have wings. Feathered"The wind played with the feathers and he had to look for a hot current of wind. He was carried upwards and he flew, going over a dark forest covered in snow, ice and thick shadows. It was exhilarating, he could fly. "What do you see?""I see the Dead, walking, covering all and everything."Countless, they dragged their feet, their hands clinging to the weapons they once bore, they clothes tattered around their decaying flesh or rotten bodies; some were little more than meatless skeletons, blue eyes deep of malice on their empty skulls. Beyond them there was something veiled, like hidden behind a thousand storms, clouded, terrible to even glance. "Don’t look into the shadow. There’s nothing but Death. Can you walk?""I can. I have four legs"The smell of pinetrees and blood was strong. The snow he felt in his paws. "Who do you see now?"
"My litter brother""Where is he?""Nowhere. Everywhere. Snow. Snow. Snow. Silent pale shadow. I see a wall of ice. The Wall"Red eyes in a mantle of snowy fur. "What do you smell?""Blue roses. Blood"
A man dressed in dark somber colors. He sensed for a moment a stab through the chest, once and twice and thrice. He gasped. The pain had been momentaneous but hard to bear. "Why?""I feel the sun on my skin"It was different now. It was affair away. As far away from the Wall as one could be. "Where are you?""A bleached tower, red. A mountain made of sandstone"Merely a watchtower, not even a keep. Too small, too insignificant, yet... "Who are you?""A bird, a rat, a snake, a tree. Myself. My father. All and none"
A young plain and long-faced man was fighting one who danced more than fighting, wielding a sword cream white, pale under the scorching sun. "None you are. You are the Three-Eyed Crow. You will be, you are, you were. What do you hear?"They were both standing were and they were not. Brynden was a tree and a man and both at once. Brandon was a wolf, was a man and a crow. The sun covered everything, the rock was hot like a furnace and there was nothing in there save men killing each other.
"The sound of steel clashing. I hear cries. I see them, white on white. I can smell the death of men and hear their agony. I hear cries, they’re not of battle"A man with a bull for a helmet fell on his knees, vomiting blood, his own sword lodged in the body of a man with axes on the surcoat. Their death was painful, he could feel it on his flesh, on his bones. There were only three men standing, one was soon dead, his eyes stared at nothing from an sliced head, laying far from the body it once crowned. The man with a long face was pressed by the last man in white. But a small one, daringly stabbed the man in white, the one who danced more than he fought, and the pale-armored man's eyes clouded and he was soon dead, the sword slipping from his fingers, blood painting the white red and darkening the soil. The dirt drinking the liquid with unquenched thirst. A tower. Red. A long-faced man and a man smelling of water and swamps, frogs and lizards. And old magic too. "Raise the steps"Said the Crow. Thousand Eyes and One. A chamber, almost empty, the maids had flied away. A woman in the bed, pale and languishing. "Arya. No, not Arya. Older, fairer""Who is she?""Lyanna""My father said it or was I?""Does it matter?""No"
"I can see more, a bed of blood and the smell of a dying breath. The waters of her body spilled all over""Lyanna""Who said it?"
"Me, my father, both"The long-faced man approached the bed while the red-haired one remained at the door, watchful. The first knelt by the bedside, holding a bloodied hand, almost lifeless. "Ned, promise me, Ned"Muttered bloodless lips, purple. She reached in desperation for him, grabbing his clothes as he cried. Lyanna reached for him, wasting the last of her strenght to hand him a babe, naked and bloody, screaming like only the newborn can do. "Who are you seeing?""I feel a warm body. Small. Eyes, eyes looking at me and I’m looking back. It is infinite. I see within, I see beyond, I see between""You do. You are, you were, you will be me and you both. Three-Eyed Crow. You see now"The hand. She smelled of blue roses. Winter. "Promise me, Ned""How do you call him? How is he called?"He said, holding his sister as she died, life abandoning her limbs and her face, but she struggled to live, moving her lips before they went silent, the fire extinguished. "Jon""How is he called?""Aemon, Aemon Targaryen""You see now. He is the Song of Ice and Fire. What is a song?""A story. In music""What are you?""The storykeeper, the storyteller. I will be, I am, I always were""You are. Sing the song of Ice and Fire. Keep it alive. There is a purpose to all this. What do you see now?""Winter. All is dead"He felt cold, cold. Colder than the dead hands of the man riding an elk. "That might not yet happen. What do you see?""Death""Don’t look"
There was it. A black abyss that nothing could avoid, bottomless. A pit of despair, inexorably he leaned closer. "I-I-I can’t""Don’t, it is like a flame... it will consume us both... Ah, it does not matter""I see a man. Pale like a ghost. His body is of ice""You’re dooming us both, you’re not ready yet, you were not, you won’t be. But this is wont to happen. There is no other way...""His eyes, blue. I see, I see now. The Children, they make it, unholy and cursed! Their magic is his"A rite that shook the roots of the earth and displaced its axis. "They did. Now we know. You have still time, will have, did have"Said the crow, his voice dry and slow. He had forgotten to talk. "No, I want to know""You did, I did. You will. You do"He acknowledged. He granted. The man that was impossible to describe reached forward, a hand that looked like made of ice. And it grabbed the boy's wrist and looked at him with eyes that were the greatest horror that had ever existed, a nightmare, a shapeless many-angled terror. The lad gasped, again, terrified. "A hand reached me… it’s so cold...""Run. Fly. He’s coming"The earth rumbled and dirt fell from above.
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Post by oznerol on Aug 5, 2020 9:15:53 GMT -5
"What was that? Come on, Hodor, come on! Wake up!"
"Hodor, Hodor, Hoooooooooooooodooooooooooor!"
Said Meera, who had languished for months and months in the cave, deprived of even her brother, who she know knew was long dead. How, why and where she didn't know, but she had come to suspect the Children, who were treating him before he vanished without a trace. The willowy girl leaped from her bed of leaves and grabbed her arms, lacing her sleeveless jerkin with bronze scales. The half-giant and dumb-witted man grabbed his things and he followed her like a dog. She glanced the fast shadows of the ancient beings dwelling under the large godswood as she walked through the thick maze of hallways and passages, lined with roots.
"You, girl, you should come"
The Children they called Leaf appeared through a hole in the wall. Hodor yelled his name several times, he was scared.
"The Three-Eyed Crow will need you. Come, there's little time left"
The rumbling rose in intensity and the chant of the Children grew in power, the very roots in the walls moved and twisted and changed shapes, many allowing Meera and Leaf entrace to later close behind, forming a thick wall of roots. Wall upon wall was woven by the song, pure and sad, a chant like none other had heard or would heard afterwards. As Meera went into the heart of the cave crows took flight from the branches of the colossal weirdwood atop of it. The bids cawed and flew in every direction.
---
"Now, you must know"
"What do I must know?"
Asked the child, moving his lips faintly, his eyes looking inwards, to his own mind and beyond.
"Everything"
Time froze and there was no end or beginning, now or before. Everything was fluid, the walls of reality and perception slipping away like made of water. And a thousand times thousand hands started painting the fresco of time and history. Images flying back and forth, taking shape and vanishing, like smoke on the water. There he was, Brandon the Builder, clad in a shirt of bronze and furs, crude tools in his hands as he sculpted stone and chanted in a tongue long dead, singers and giants shaping and carving the very rock around him, crows perched on his shoulders. He saw the Children woving their spells on the walls as the Builder led them, raising it high and strong, the ice growing around it in a single block, taller than anything anyone had ever built.
Brandon then witnessed a shapeless, formless thing, many tentacled, a thing whose nature was not for any men to ascertain, spawning a race of misshapen half-human things. They sang as well, but their chant was dark and dense, like tar floating over seawater. And they erected walls of black stone and ruled from a carved throne. And their king was more a human than a thing, bedecked in the garments of his watery horrific lord that dwelled under the seas. And the Grey King sung as he carved out the heart of a leviathan, felling the beast amidst thunders and waves, its body shaped into an isle and his bones turning pillars of stone, weathered as they fosilized through eons of time. The king consorted with the spawn of the deep, women half to describe, part fish and part human, covered in scales: and they fathered generations of men who mingled with more men and they carried the salt on their veins.
A man, black of hair, was laughing to the raging storm, as he had intercourse a woman on his halls of stone, her nails clawing the skin as the rain and the wind lashed violently against a castle. And she was like a goddess, her hair were the clouds on the sky and her skin was the color of water, scales running through her limbs. The woman's eyes were bright blue. And Brandon saw many men, with the same eyes and the hair of the man who defied the storms, everyone looking like the previous, spawned from the loins of a woman of the sea and the sky. An old man, much later, whispering as he laid dying that the seed was strong... And Brandon saw a man of golden hair doing the most henious acts, rape, thievery and murder to gain what he wanted, bedding the maidens of a lord and killing him and his kindred to rule over carved rock with golden foundations. He saw the first dragons consorting in Valyria, spawning winged serpents and a race of men that did the unholiest and used black magic to make themselves only a tad inferior to the divine and nothing else. And so on, and so on.
---
A gust of wind lashed against the hill, making the leaves fall like droplets of blood. The song of the Children grew in power, coming through every hole in the rock, but it was almost silenced by a chant, dark, twisted and cold like death itself and winter. Like steel clanging against steel, the voice raised in power and the very soil shaked as the combined singers replied in might. And wights started to pour into the valley, like wolves seeking a prey. But they vaporized as they reached the circle around the hill and the cave, turning to dust. The voice that led them raised and the wights advanced few feet more before being halted. And the Children sung of sun and morning, summer and spring, life everlasting, the blossoming of flowers and the heat of the sun, and fire bursted from the soil, ravaging the ground and breaking the surface like a platter, the wights incinerated as the might of the flames grew.
A discordant note, breaking all noise, arose in a point, the furthest from the cave, where the flames were licking the charred bones of the dead. A terrible figure walked through the fire, as it avoided to even touch it, the flames dying as he ventured forth. His skin was pale as fallen snow, the armor he wore reflected everything like a polished mirror -the shape of it like nothing known to man- and the being wielded a sword made of ice. The eyes were cold blue, burning as ice. The king of winter was beautiful and terrible and his visage was clouded by mists and snow. His voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake and when he chanted the fire was driven away. He walked treading lightly, leaving no prints. The fire he fought with word and everytime he raised his voice it weakened, even as it tried to reach the ice-armored figure. And the dead covered the field like a dense mantle.
---
"Bran! Bran!"
Meera crossed the chasm and arrived to the Three-Eyed Crow, both seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, inane as they were dead or deep in sleep. The tree-man opens a single red eye.
"Meera of house Reed, you have a role to play. Your own verse in this song"
The thing that once had been Brynden Rivers raised a twisted hand.
"There's a door, three miles North, through that passage. Take the kid and go beyond the Wall, to Brandon's halls"
"What happens to him?"
"Hodor? Hodor, Hodor, Hooodor!"
Said Meera, kneeling next to the thin red-haired lad, laying dormant or so it looked like, on the throne of roots.
"He's learning. He's becoming me, us. But go, there's no time. A sledge has been prepared at the end of the tunnel. Ready for him as I foresaw long ago"
A wide crack appeared on the ceiling and a howl released by scores of throats filled the air alongside a cruel song.
"Now. And take that with you. Every sword will be needed, even mine"
Few roots retreated into the trunk, revealing a sword in a rotten scabbard, but the pommel and hilt were something to behold. Meera reached it with her hand as everything trembled.
---
The singers died out, one by one, their magic not being as potent as it once was. The mummified ones, corpses sitting on thrones of weirdwood, stopped singing as their rotten skulls broke, releasing streams of blue fire, the cave collapsing on them as it was wrecked by old and unholy magic. And wights poured into the entrance as the defenses waned and disappeared. The king of all dead walked through the threshold straight to where Brynden and Brandon laid. Roots rose from every point in defiance and many many wights died and were torn to shreds, but the lord of them all cut through them with his blade and he kept walking and slicing his way into the hill...
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Post by oznerol on Aug 5, 2020 12:49:14 GMT -5
"Ah, you... I waited you... for so long"
Said Brynden, seated in the root throne, with a chuckle that sounded broken and wet. A pale ice shadow crossed the chasm, surrounded by scores of armored beings, tall, fair and terrible like the faeric folk of tale. The silent king said nothing, just stared with burning eyes across the cave, to where the royal bastard and last greenseer sat. Slowly wights started to pour into the round chamber, climbing the chasm, using each others' bodies to walk across. The lord of the Dead said nothing still but dead limbs hurried for the man that once was almost a King. But with a small gesture of his hand the Crow raised a myriad roots and branches, that impaled and pushed away every of the Night King's undead servants.
"You'll have to do... better"
A chorus of hisses heralded the coming of a score of none but the White Walkers themselves, clad in the iced armors, intricate and queer things to behold, unholy and inhuman, they walked surrounded in mist, their breath a blizzard in movement, covering everything in frost. Silent shadows closing at Brynden from all sides. But the man chuckled, a horrible thing to hear, and he raised a hand and spoke a word of power, like those carved in runes in the very foundations of the Wall itself. The primal letters that spoke of higher and mighty things, the moon and the sun, the stars and the trees. The first to be ever adored by the wide-eyed First Men when they were birthed and came unto the world with woe in their hearts and flowering ideas on their minds. The Old Gods. The Ever Burning whose name is forgotten, his mirrored bride, the Pale Queen, whom the women worshipped in times of yore. Their many children: the trees made of their blood and bones, and their daughters, Princesses of the Nightly Sky. The words were woven and breathed, they came to life and became one and the Others shattered like glass with a screeching noise that ripped open the ceiling, the moonlight bathing everything.
Everything fell silent. And the king raised a sword of glass and moved, walked amidst falling shards.
"No"
He said, in the True Tongue. The sword hissed as it pierced the air and the flesh and the putrid heart laying underneath. The Three-Eyed Crow vomited half-dried blood, the single red eye fixed on the Enemy.
"I'm... not the last..."
He chuckled as one hand faintly grabbed the ice-like blade, breaking it in half. The silent king made an elegant gesture sideways and slices Brynden's neck giving him a bloody smile, from ear to ear, from skin to bone. And he who was son of a king, brother to another, uncle to a few, sister-lover, sorcerer and Hand, kinslayer and black brother of the Watch, died a much belated death, one hundred and twenty seven years after his mother had delivered him. But he was not the last of the greenseers, neither had the Three-Eyed Crow died... In rage the king of the night blew open what remained of the cave and sent his minions forward, through the tunnel...
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"I know where we are"
"Of course"
They were both standing in a courtyard, like one wasn't half-a-tree and the other a cripple.
"That's my father. And his brother. My aunt"
"Aye"
Brynden looked decades younger, his birthmark covering neck and face, inquisitevely looking at the young Stark. And Ned's son looked before himself, to where an aged woman appeared with a pair of heavy buckets.
"Oh, Walder, you good-for-nothing, won't you help your grandmother with this?"
"Is that... Old Nan?"
"She wasn't always that old. I knew her once"
"You?"
"I was a man, before being a Crow. But watch"
"Why is this important? Wait... isn't that Hodor..."
He asked, looking at his mentor.
"What do we do here? Is this the past?"
"Everyone has a purpose. And... what's the difference?"
He said, with a faint smile, devilish, and suddenly, he was gone, like he never stood there and left Bran on his own, in the middle of what would be his house, in the courtyard of Winterfell.
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"Gods! Run"
Summer growled, leaping over some branches. They could hear the dead coming, racing on their limbs, pushed forward by an ill will and dark purpose. The sledge could barely move with the roots and the branches and they moved slowly. Bran laid on it, eyes turned, barely breathing, while Hodor struggled to move forward, incresingly terrified, while Meera and Leaf openned the way. The air was increasingly cold and they heared screams and shrieks coming closer.
"They're coming"
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"Hodor! Hodor!"
He tried to catch his breath as they crossed the tunnel, distantly they could glance a door, made of pale wood.
"We're close"
"We won't make it..."
"What're you doing?"
"Meera, of House Reed, remember the Children, like your father does. Sing about us, keep the memory of the First Born alive"
And she stood and Meera, Hodor, Summer and Bran kept going, pushing forward strenously. While they did so, Leaf, of the Children of the Forest, that was born when the stars themselves were young and the world made anew, sung a last song, a sad chant that spoke of the death of her people, of the beauty of the first sunray of spring, the color of leaves and the smell of wet soil and the sweet scent of sacrifices in stone altars under the night sky. And fire ravaged the passage like a small sun, taking with it a vast number of the dead. But afterwards she was gone.
Thus died the last of the first-spawned, the first who walked the earth, when nothing had a name and everything was new.
---
The Death was coming, unforgiving and merciless and Meera could already glance their rotting bodies behind them, coming, ever coming. But the door, the door was at hand and she openned it and crossed the threshold with the sledge and the wolf, just as the dead were on their heels and Hodor pressed his body against it.
"Hold the door, Hodor!"
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Hold the door!
"Walder, what's happening? I'll beat you senseless, lad!"
The man stood quiet, looking to an empty place and Brandon uttered the words.
"Hold the door"
And he went into his mind, like he had done before, and Walder rebelled against it, but the mind was broken like a thing made of glass and the man collapsed to the floor, with a seizure, the eyes blank, spit and foam on his lips.
"Hold the doooooooooooooor, hold the dooooooooooooooor!"
"Walder, please, somebody help me!"
"Hold the dooooooooooor, hold the dooor!"
---
And the gentle giant pressed his body against the pale wood as the dead slammed against it, clawing through the surface with iron and bronze weapons and their own tooth and nails.
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"Hold the door, hold the door, hold'the'door, ho'th'door, ho't'door, HODOR, HODOR, HOOODOR!"
Yelled a man, many years prior, as his grandmother sobbed and craddled his head.
---
And the very same man stood and fulfilled a purpose long due as the dead tore his flesh. Yet, he didn't move and held it against the greater evil of this world and not even Death could defeat him...
The Three-Eyed Crow disappeared in the night, pulled forward by a young woman as a direwolf howled.
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