Chapter 9: Rituals 1/2
Author's note: Hi guys, I am sorry for the delay!
I had to do a lot of research for these rituals, and the slight changes I had to make since some of them would have been shitty for what I needed them to do.
It might feel slightly filler-ish, but it is necessary for his power building. He will after all, have to fight an immortal god-ish character who can raise people and animals from the dead and throw spears of ice through a dragon. He can't do that with the power of Nakama... Unfortunately.
I've also been researching more of the female characters to make the list as good as the one I made on males. It will thus be uploaded soon!
Bad news: I had to split this chapter in two, because it turned way longer than I had expected. 2.8k for this one, and even longer for part 2.
Good news: I will upload part 2 tomorrow instead of Monday, which means I will upload more than 15k words this week.
Enjoy!
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Shadow Tower, The North - 287 AC
POV | Aegon Targaryen
Aegon had been at the wall for almost a moon now, and he was not amused. He had assumed that he would meet people who could help him on his path, like Aemon Targaryen, Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander Qorgyle, and Ser Alliser Thorne.
Well, he was not that lucky. Those four were all stationed at Castle Black, whilst Aegon was forced to spend his first three moons at The Shadow Tower, because his Uncle Benjen was supposed to go on a ranging starting from the Western part of The Wall.
'To think that Jon Snow decided to come here himself. The crazier part is that he decided to take the vow and stay. Had I met some of these bastards anywhere else, I would have killed them without remorse. Rapers and murderers. Often both, at the same time. The number of squids make it even worse. Slavers and freaking predators.'
He was definitely not amused, and he finally realized exactly why The South looked upon The Night's Watch as a jape, or a prison at best. He still thought that the punishment was too light, but he could see the necessity. The Wall was enormous, and they did not have enough men to man and maintain it.
The Shadow Tower had about three decent people, out of the 200 who were manning it. Ser Denys Mallister, The Commander of The Shadow Tower, Mance Rayder, the soon to be King-Beyond-The-Wall, and Maester Mullin.
'Ser Denys has already been an incredible resource. His lessons on Siege Tactics, attacking and defending, have been invaluable. The fact that he joined The Watch voluntarily makes it even better, he is a good and noble man. A rarity in truth.'
When he thought about the opportunity of creating a good relationship with Mance Rayder, and the possibilities that would give him, he became almost giddy with happiness.
'I am also incredibly lucky that I have my companions with me. Without the deterrent of Hel and Fenris, the true criminals among the watchers, would have been much worse to deal with. No one is going to mess with a guy who has a massive Shadowcat and an unknown Hybrid the size of a Bloodhound. He is only 2 moons, too! I am so looking forward to his continued growth.'
Aegon had asked Hugin and Munin to scout the nearby area, in order to find a place where he could do his rituals. That was one of the great things with being a warg and staying at a place that could potentially house thousands of men. There were countless rooms with enough space etc. to do all the rituals without getting caught.
Though, if Aegon was entirely honest with himself, he could probably do it in The Mess Hall, as long as he asked Fenris and Hel to guard the entrance. No one dared to step within 15 yards of them, when he was out of sight.
Alas, he was not foolhardy enough to try that, and he also did not feel like cleaning the Hall after the mess he would have ended up creating. Especially since he did not have servants here.
Another thing he would never take for granted, he had always treated the ones at Winterfell with dignity and respect, and seeing how useful they were, now that he did not have access to them, he knew that he would treat them so, for the rest of his life.
'Besides, why are lords dumb enough to mistreat the people who literally do everything for them? They clean, cook, and maintain our possessions. I am definitely never taking them for granted again. Their work saves me so much time!'
He had quickly realized that his servants saved him from more than 3 hours of work a day. With 10 for 1 that was extremely valuable time, time he was not willing to lose now that he was at The Wall. To optimize his stay, he had even decided to be almost as disgusting as the people he was here with.
He bathed with a wet cloth. 'It is absolutely disgusting, but at least I don't sweat much because of the weather, and I do not wear heavy clothing to make the smell worse.' Aegon had started wearing the skin and fur of the wolves he had killed, and not much else. With his resistance to cold he did not need it, but it at least looked warm enough for people not to question him about it.
He had also dropped giving a shit for how he looked. He had time for it, when the servants helped him, but there were literally no one to impress here, and so he did not have to care. He trained his swordsmanship with Ser Denys, who was glad for the challenge, the old man enjoyed fighting a much faster and nimbler opponent than he was used to, despite the large gap in physical strength and experience.
Aegon had not beaten him even once, but like with Ser Rodrick, he did not really expect to. They were larger, more experienced and they had literally lived with their swords for decades.
Even at Winterfell he had only managed to actually beat some of the guardsmen and land a few hits on Jory Cassel. People with actual experience from wars or as knights… They whooped his arse. Then again, he was only 7 name days, 7 moons and 7 days old. He had time.
Now though, it was time for his rituals.
He had just finished up the last pentagram, and he was absolutely pumped for his sense enhancements.
He was starting with the ritual for skin hardening. According to the information he had been given, it would allow him to defend better against blunt damage and reduce damage from sharp objects considerably.
He would still die to a crossbow or a longbow, or even a damn compound bow, but the average bow used by smallfolk and bandits, would be stopped by his skin. The best thing was that poisonous animals like scorpions, spiders, and weaker snakes, would be unable to inject their poisons and venoms into him.
Whilst those would not necessarily kill him with his healing factor, they would still leave him vulnerable and hurting. Basically, it increased his survivability by a few points.
He had drawn the ritual circle that touched all three points of a triangle. Those points were then used as a centre for three circles where his gathered material was. A Turtle. Antlers from a stag he killed, and of course a square foot of his own skin, freshly cut off. He almost cried tears of blood when he did it, and he had bitten into a small strap of leather, so he could prevent himself from screaming.
'This better be fucking worth it.'
He sat down in the middle and created a cut in each hand to allow his blood to pour while he made a short Valyrian chant in monotone. This particular ritual happened to be of Valyrian descent.
The ritualistic circle lit up, and to his great surprise, the materials he had gathered started decomposing and merging into a weird mass that floated above his head. It soon approached him as all the materials joined the mass, and as soon as it touched him, pain unlike anything he had ever felt, coursed through him.
The skin he had peeled off before, seemed to be a blessing, since it was the only part of his largest organ that was not affected. The rest of it was peeled off to allow for new and more durable skin to grow in its place.
He suffered for what felt like hours and he would have screamed himself hoarse if he had not been using his leather strap to bite into again. He knew that he could not afford to scream, he needed to embrace the pain as much as possible. He needed to overcome it, so anything an enemy could do to him in battle would seem less painful.
Whilst he could probably use a ritual to improve his pain tolerance, he preferred to learn this one manually. 'I can't do rituals for everything. A body can only handle so many rituals, and for me to make way for other rituals, I need to prioritize anything that improves my strength and skills. The pain tolerance will come. I just need to push through.'
As soon as the ritual finished, Aegon could feel a remarkable difference in his own skin. He tried to use his knife to make a cut, and he quickly realized that he needed to use quite a vast amount of force, to penetrate his now elephant-like hide. He was satisfied with the result, despite the surprise he felt when he realised how it worked.
It was not as simple as just giving him a stronger layer of skin. He had changed. Permanently. This was not just a one-time change. If he ever lost part of his skin, the enhanced version would be the one growing back.
'I think I just genetically enhanced myself. Maybe that is why Valyrians look so different from regular humans? They enhanced several aspects of themselves. If that is the truth though, I have just changed my DNA, forever.'
He took a time to mull it over. 'I am messing with human evolution. My kids will literally inherit genetically enhanced specs. I am somewhat creating a new species, at least if I survive long enough for kids. That is kind of epic to know. Homo Superior…'
He took a deep breath to see if he could feel a difference in any more ways. He had a working theory on how his powers worked, but he was not a hundred percent sure just yet. He needed to truly figure out whether he had some sort of mana pool, or if his magic just tapped into his endurance.
He knew that he felt tired whenever he used his magic for a long time, but he was unsure of what exactly caused him to exhaust himself. He really hoped that it was because of some sort of mana pool that only certain humans could tap into, but he had a feeling that it was his endurance.
If it was something that used his endurance then he would have to improve it and his magical abilities drastically, because it would make this planet infinitely more dangerous than he thought it was. If any, Tom, Dick, and Harry could learn magic as long as they had the knowledge, he would need to know a lot more and become even more powerful.
Aegon took a wet cloth to clean his tears from his face and proceeded to drink some water and eat a bit of food to prepare his mental state. He knew that his next two rituals would be excruciatingly painful. They were changing his eyes permanently.
His next ritual would have been the Hawk-Eye ritual, but he had made a last-minute change, as he caught and killed a bald eagle close to The Shadow Tower. They had travelled close enough to water, for one to live nearby, and he had aksed Hugin and Munin to accost it and flee. As soon as it was close to catching and killing Munin, he had shot it down.
He had wanted the Eagle-Eye ritual, but it had been absolutely impossible for him to find an Eagle, until now. Whilst hawks had better vision, The Bald Eagle had a peculiar ability he wanted, that made up for it manyfold. Eagles had the absolute best distance vision in the entire animal kingdom. They can focus on prey as small as mice from a distance of 3 miles.
'I'm going to be the best damn scout and marksman in the world. Period.'
The second Eye-ritual, and his third ritual would be for better night-vision. Something eagles did not have. He had considered using an Owl, since they had superior night-vision, but the side-effect looked too grotesque for him to use it. Yellow sclera and purple irises were not something he wanted. People would think him a monster and it was not a change he could just explain.
Saying: "It just happened." Is just not going to cut it, with something as unnatural as that, especially when they had been perfectly normal until then. The Wolf-Vision would change his sclera as well, but with that one, they would just become an extremely light purple colour, almost bordering on white. It would supposedly be a change that would be negligible in comparison.
"Here we go. I just know this is going to hurt, like bitch." He gritted his teeth and sat himself down in the middle of the ritual circle again. The earlier cuts already had clean scabs on them, so he swiftly opened them as he chanted in a tongue he did not know but believed to be Ghiscari since it talked about praising part of 'The Harpy'. It had eagle legs after all, so the animal was considered important in their culture.
As soon as the sacrificed parts touched his flowing blood, they turned into two weird blobs, and before he knew it, Aegon's world turned white as he felt like someone was clawing they eyes straight out of his skull. He cried blood as his nails broke when they clenched against the skin on his hands before his fingers dug into the two open cuts on his hands.
Again, the ritual felt like it took hours, but only a couple of minutes actually passed before it ended. He opened his eyes and panicked, when he spotted an enormous animal with 8 sharp legs and 8 beady eyes mounted on a thick hard looking body with a red back. 'Wait. That's the red back spider.'
He concentrated slightly and his vision shifted back to normal. 'Holy fuck, this is insane. My eyes can literally zoom in and out!'
He most certainly did not dance a little jig of happiness and victory. He would never do that…
'I was just stretching my arms and back, yes.'
He drank some more water and finished a pound of deer jerky before he did his third ritual.
He did not dally any longer now. These rituals were absolutely insane, and he wanted all the power they could provide him. 'I feel like I have done more for my survival with these two rituals than I have since I arrived.'
It was, of course, not true, but the improvement was almost intoxicating. He felt as his vision went from 480p to 8k. That was the differences in colours, range, and depth. It felt almost addicting. If he did not have to finish all his rituals as soon as possible, he would have left to explore his new vision immediately.
He cleansed his hands quickly and sat in the third circle. His hands had started bleeding again and he allowed it to flow. The same thing happened, and he quickly noticed that the pain, while bad, did not put him out of commission as it had done earlier. He could actually tough it out this time.
'10 for 1. I love you.' He, of course, knew that his wish had allowed him to adapt to the pain 10 times faster than what would be usual. 'It's good I did not use a ritual for this, it is much better to keep my feelings intact and use the ritual space for something else. Especially since removing the sense of pain might actually kill me.'
The ritual was over much sooner this time, according to his perception of time since the pain was bearable. He looked around the room he was in, and every dark corner and shadow of the room was clear to him now.
'What the fuck is that weird light?' He looked at all parts of the room and it became clear to him that all aspects that were a part of The Wall, had a slight glow to them.
'Is this… magic?' Tears started flowing slowly as he looked around in awe. It was a beautiful and humbling sight for him. The Wall was drenched in magic, and he could actually see it. He looked at his hands and realised that he had the same glow to him. The sheer beauty of it was mesmerizing.
He had no idea that magic could be so beautiful to look at.
'This was not supposed to happen. It must be a cumulative effect of the vision rituals. Eagles already have the ability to see UV-lights. With the extra enhancement from the Wolf-Vision ritual, I can see magic now.' He laughed loudly and freely as he realized the absolutely marvellous ability he had received. Mage sight.
'Another step in the right direction.'
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Author's note: Not much to say really.
Shout out to Great_Abby, ReNo, Nevermindthename, Not_so_pun, Alien_Space_Bat and
Sam_Smith_3441 for some really good ideas for rituals. It was greatly appreciated. Whilst not all of them will be used, the inspiration for improvements and future rituals were greatly appreciated!
See you tomorrow for the next part:)
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