Game of Thrones: StormBorn

The air sat heavy in King's landing, thick with pressure dragged in by the clouds above as if they were simply waiting to drown the world for some unseen signal.

It hadn't bothered him before, but as he made his way down into the gardens he could swear that there was something unnatural to it all, some presence above it.

The raven sat amongst the branches, it's eyes staring down at him, almost petrified save for small movements in its neck.

He stood before the heart tree, looking up at the creature, barely visible in the reflected light of the Torches across the garden.

It gazed back as if it was waiting for him to speak, to do or…

He felt something call to him, not from the crow, but the tree itself, and his gaze turned to the face.

The eyes and mouth bled a thick red sap, smelling sweetly and bitterly both as if it was a man injured.

As he beheld the eerie sight, the Raven spoke once more, it's words echoing in his ears, taking on a strange tenor, as if a hundred voices and more were woven into its word.

"Sleep, Learn." 

He stared at the creature, then towards the tree once again.

There was something odd to it as if he was being drawn down into a pit of mud, a sort of tugging at what might have been his soul.

He nodded, laying down so that his head rested against the tree on the soft grass of the garden. It felt the right thing to do, and, as he closed his eyes, he felt the tug grow, pulling him down into the soil, into the roots of the tree, and beneath the earth.

Suddenly, a great shaking took his mind, and he felt at once as if men with great smith's hammers were driving nails into his skull, images flashing by, concepts tearing themselves into the flesh of his being, or perhaps the unflesh.

And then it was cold, cold and dark, and yet somehow more free than he had been in King's landing.

He felt a presence with him, some tired thing that at once tried to rise against him, and then collapsed beneath it's own weight once again, unable to combat him. It felt harsh and feral, but proud as well, too proud to coexist with him.

He heard the dry and withered voice of an old man through ears that were at once too sharp and uncannily alien to his mind.

"You must subdue her, Lord Stark, and quickly, there is no time to waste."

He tried to turn, to look around for a voice but found none. Almost unable to move.

Tentatively, he tried to… subdue? The creature, throwing his mass of, well, whatever he was against her, feeling her recoil, a yip like a dog.

She knelt.

Suddenly his eyes were open, though they were not his own, and he found himself large and harry, not a man at all, curled in a ball on the floor of a great cave, strewn with roots, and with men suspended amongst them. Roots crawling through their bodies like soil, holding them in the air even as they sat, frail and broken corpses.

No, not all men, many of the forms were too small to be men, even shriveled as they were, and the eyes, the ears were wrong. Most must have been of the children of the forest, ancient and shrunken as they were.

He felt a chill run down his spine, he had never thought to see them, even deceased.

"They are not dead lord Stark, no more than I am. They are simply part of the world now, as I will be, in time."

He stepped up onto his paws, wobbling for a moment, and turning to see another man, fresher than the rest, his crinkled lips moved subtly when he spoke, though he too was impaled in the roots, his hair bright white and his sole natural eye a bitter purple, save for a red light that sat upon his forehead in the shape of an eye, perhaps the one that lay blind.

Some primordial instinct told hit to run, that he should fear this ghost of a Targaryen, but he was a Stark, and no coward besides.

"Hmm, you are sharp-minded, even in the body of a dire-wolf." The man spoke a tiny smile crossing his withered lips. "It is no wonder your blood runs so strong through your children."

He tried to speak, to ask who the man was, but he couldn't, barking instead. He felt a twinge of embarrassment at the display, something he wasn't used to.

But then, nothing about this was normal. His mind still reeled at being a warg or being warged at least, into a she-wolf.

"Ah, but I dawdle, and there is much to speak of. We're that your own blood was strong enough to bear the Greensight, but I suppose that will have to wait for your children." The man shifted slightly in the roots. "Still, I cannot wait so long, not when the Prince of Storms risks the doom of the world."

Eddard refocused on the man at the mention of his children, and of the man who must be Prince Arthur.

"I had already spoken to you of the Long Nights return yes? That long summer would bring with it the shadow of doom on the horizon?"

Eddard nodded, though the movement felt strange, his eyes still focused on what must be a Greenseer. 

"Well, there is more to it than simple winter. I cannot share the whole truth of the world with you tonight, at least as the children knew it, but I will speak to you of this. Magic begets magic."

Eddard turned his head slightly, as the man took a dry, rasping breath.

"The Prince of Storms, whatever his creed, drags the world back to an age primordial. For each wonder he makes, the next will be greater, and for whatever cause he takes the world with him. The ones who follow in his wake do the same, all feeding beasts they have never seen or heard of, things long dead to the world." 

The man gestured slightly with his finger, and Eddard turned, his eyes following the gesture to an area of roots, where a small figure now stood, though he had not seen it before.

It spoke in a voice like a child, but wiser, and he at once knew what it was by some instinct unheard of.

"The Long Night, as you call it, is the height of magic in the great cycle of the world, the time when the gates of the earth and of the sky, of the sea and of the stars open, and the stuff of existence flows into new being. A time of dying and of rebirth, when the old world is subdued by the world that will be."

"The Others, as you have heard of them." The Greenseer cut back in, "are but a symptom, an outcropping of winter in a night of terrors. Hunters and generals, they threaten to sweep the world beneath a blanket of frost, but they are still the least of the monsters the long winter brings."

"Things older and younger, deeper and worse stalked the world in the long nights of the far old." The child answered in its high voice. "But in these baren millennia, as the magic faded, they fell into sleep, unable to sustain themselves. Now the Storm wakes them with its thunder, as do those who follow it. The world of men will not be ready when they wake."

"Men will be ready." The old man spoke, half-shouted, from his perch. "You will make them, and others will as well. Leaders must be found, heroes to champion the world of men in the darkness. Already the Red God of heroes moves to protect that which is in the east, but Westeros must not be left wanting."

"There is not enough ti-"

"There is more than enough time, for men do not move so slowly as your people do." The old man cut off the child once again, his eye blazing with a bloody light. "Still, you must hurry, rally the men of Westeros, there is little hope otherwise."

The old man stared at him for a long moment, as if debating his next words within himself. "Don't challenge the storm though, it obscures the song of the earth, and there can be no guarantee of victory against it."

He stated at the old man, confused, had he not just said that Prince Arthur was-

"I see the confusion, but in truth, it is too late. To do battle with the storm on the eve of the damnation he wrought in his arrogance would do little more than shedding the blood of men who ought to be united. He may have brought this ruin upon the world of men, but he can be counted to fight it all the same, in his madness at least." The man laughed dryly. "Would that someone had choked the life from that brat a decade or more ago, perhaps this all could have been avoided."

"Such might also bring worse fates." The child said, plainly, tapping its heel impatiently. "We should have-"

"This debate I will not repeat." The man spoke, before turning his gaze back to him.

"Go then, Lord Stark, return to yourself a skin-changer now born, do as I have said and the world might yet survive." The man frowned grimly. "And ensure your charges are raised well, the fate of the world may rest upon their shoulders as well as upon your own."

He wanted to ask questions, to know more, but the tug came back with a vengeance, dragging him under the earth once again, until he found himself back in his own body, resting on the soft grass his eyes flickering open to see the dawning light.

Then his eyes turned skyward as an earthshaking roar of Thunder riled across the land, almost sending him staggering, his mind still reeling from the influx, from the news, the ideas.

From the fact that he was now a skin-changer, a warg.

As another peal of rainless Thunder shook the castle, he wondered what magic lay behind it, and what that storm of Prince Arthur's might bring.

His hand went to his side, the comforting feeling of Ice's grip at his palm as the enormity of his task weighed upon him.

It was all just overwhelming, the fate of the world, at least in the Greenseer's words, upon his shoulders.

What ought he do?

What could he do?

As his ears rang from yet another crash of thunder, he grumbled and stood himself up, brushing his clothes off.

First, he would find his children.