Chapter 20: Wake Up and Choose Violence
Mid 272 Fall
I did not feel the usual relief when Bear Island came into view, for each night as we drew closer to home my dreams became more and more intense and the subject matter was always the same, an invader landing on my home shore, slaying men and beasts, capturing women and children, subjecting them to brutal conditioning. Over and over.
I'd almost feared that I'd grown a conscience until my son told me I had something green in my eye. A green that spread each night until both of my blue eyes turned an unnaturally deep green.
Magic fuckery abound.
Magic in a world of ice and fire is a curse. All of it fueled by fire, ice, blood, and sacrifice. The Valyrians and the Others reached the pinnacle of their respective magics and both are horrors of the worst kind hidden behind supernatural beauty (I hope I'm dealing with the wrinkled blue ballsack others and not the ice fey). I knew my sudden bout of magic wasn't some Harry Potter experience waiting to happen, even if it hadn't taken the form of nightly torture. If the Old Gods thought to break me with these dreams they failed.
I spent little time in port at Far Harbor, only getting my ship unloaded and reloaded with a full crew of warriors and supplies before sailing off again across the Bay of Ice. When I landed I took with me only fifty of the most cruel and godless men. The night we needed to make camp on route to the nearest trio of face carve weirwoods was the worst night of my life as I felt all the pain of the people harmed in my dreams.
Fatigue dragged me into sleep and agony forced me awake in a terrible cycle capable of reducing a man to a gibbering sack of flesh and madness. In waking my mind felt like I was thinking two lines of thought, one to fast to understand and the other to slow to react to the world around me. It began taking longer and longer to focus my vision and more and more difficult to keep my balance.
In this state I looked within myself, within my heart, for a source of strength to keep me driving on. I did not have to look hard, for I found a foundation of bedrock with which to hold up my efforts. The black hatred in my heart for magic and all its fuckery. For people like Blood Raven and Euron, Melisandre and Jaqen H'ghar, dragons and children and others. Eldritch gods and oily black stone. It's all so fun to read about until your in the world itself getting chewed up by it.
I resolved myself that since something magical cursed me, that I would not allow myself to leave this world without harming something magical in return. Even if I could not reach what ever sought my end, I had a map with magical trees marked on it and a felling axe with which to take some small vengeance.
When I finally saw the red leaves of the three weirwoods in the first location I marked on my map I leapt off my horse felling ax in hand, screaming like a wild animal as I charged across the snow at my enemy and hacked into the tree with the full power of my body.
The Children of the Forest believe that the weirwood trees are the gods, so it was a god's screams I heard as I cut that tree down. My axe should have dulled with that action, but when its blade stained in red sap struck the next of the three massive trees, it bit even deeper than when the blade was fresh and the screams were even louder.
When I toppled the last tree, the screaming finally ended and I sat atop a stump while my men went to work preparing them for transport. Gazing at my red stained axe in exhaustion, I slipped into sleep and dreamt of falling, falling onto a floor of spikes and below me a thousand skulls littered the spiked earth. When a three eyed crow came to tell me to fly I snatched it out of the air and as its eyes bulged as I wrung its neck I gave it my answer.
"No." I told the crow as I twisted its head off and awakened from the dream.
I sighed as I opened my eyes and went to wipe the cold sweat from my face. On my sword hand a wine colored raven in flight stained my palm, and no amount of rubbing it on the snow washed away the mark.
"When it rains, it pours." I growled in anger.
Pushing thoughts of the mark down in my mind, I helped haul the final processed tree to the beach before we boarded The Thunderer and sailed to the next location. We traveled for weeks clearing out the weirwoods, in this wasteland of stumps left in the wake of my prior passing, and each night after I'd slain more of the Old Gods my dreams became slightly less intense. Just one little step at a time and soon enough I no longer felt the pain and desperation of those in my dreams.
We returned to Bear Island several times to drop off loads of felled weirwoods, and despite the obvious chilling effect it had on the people, I persisted. On and on I went, rarely encountering anything living except the red leafed trees, until our final haul. As we took the felled weirwoods to the shore, a bear emerged from behind a hill, so large I wondered how that hill could have possibly hidden it.
The giant white monstrosity roared and the horses reared in fear. I chose to leap off mine as it reared so far back that it fell. With Longclaw in hand I charged the beast which also reared up on its hind legs standing so impossibly tall. It raised its claws to swipe at me, but like the bear itself I too am frighteningly quick for such a large specimen and I rammed the blade into its titanic chest, twisting it and wrenching it to destroy the monstrous animal's vital insides.
A terrible pain exploded in my chest, and I became disoriented. Both the bear and I collapsed, but Longclaw and its ironwood shaft bore the weight of the bear with the pommel on the ground briefly while I crawled away so the creature didn't land atop me.
I kept pawing at my chest wondering how I hadn't seen the claw strike happen and why my armor didn't stop it from rending me open. My confusion increased as I felt no blood despite my life slipping away from me.
After a few minutes I came to and realized I hadn't been hurt at all.
"FUCK!" I shouted suddenly, startling the men who came to check on me.
They rallied, getting the horses back under control, and together we sailed home that day with giant white logs and a giant white pelt. When I arrived that evening on the docks of Far Harbor, I made a trip to the heart tree of Bear Island, a weirwood with a snarling face not far from Mormont Keep. My whole life I ignored this place outside of the few times my father commanded me to be here. I never gave a damn what kind of calming effect the location may have, I will never worship a tree, a fire, or any of the other Chtuluu gods of this world.
For the first time in many years I stood in front of the heart tree, and I did so with my red stained felling axe in hand. I was so focused on the tree I hardly noticed the people crowding around me who gasped and screamed when I rubbed the edge of my axe up and down the white trunk of the tree.
"Do you feel like a god now?" I asked the tree and left.
That night, for the first time in a month, I slept in peace.
By the time I awoke the next afternoon, any spies on the island would have a shockingly accurate timeline of my magic induced psychotic tree murdering rampage , from my sons accounts of my first nightmares on the ship and the changing of my eyes, to my wife's announcement that I slept soundly, the people of Bear Island somehow put the whole story together start to finish without wild speculation and embellishment.
While a part of me hoped Varys would find it all very amusing, I had yet to find a single tongue mutilated child on my island. It felt rather insulting, after all I'm the second most powerful man in the North, yet I am beneath the interest of the man with the largest spy network currently known. He obviously could use other sources like the infrequent merchants that visit the island, but I feel I deserve the primo treatment, not rumors collected by traveling traders. The indignity of it, to be beneath the contempt of a man with no genitals.
Regardless I picked up the title 'Godsbane' for overcoming the curse of the Old Gods by bullying them into submission. Somehow, my reputation came out ahead in this situation that at I assumed would destroy me when it started. Apparently the idea of a man being cursed and overcoming it with just his felling axe and manly will is inspiring. The Old Gods are god of nature, and nature is a terrible thing out to kill everything it can. A man overcoming the gods, overcoming nature, that's the kind of story people want to tell themselves.
The old adage rang true once more. If violence isn't solving all your problems, you just aren't using enough of it.
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There is so much going on in this chapter.
Jorah gets cursed by the Old Gods with Green Sight who torture him with dreams of all the people he has hurt and destroyed.
Jorah choses violence.
The Old Gods remember that they are trees and Jorah is a pissed off lumber jack.
Jorah's axe drinks the blood of the Old Gods, and the nascent magic forced into Jorah, and the struggle of man vs gods births an occult weapon, The Godsbane Axe. +10 against gods and their devout followers.
The Old Gods send their puppet the Three Eyed Crow to seduce Jorah into becoming a tree man puppet.
Jorah choses violence.
Blood Raven passes his skin changing powers to Jorah.
Jorah encounters a bear
Jorah choses violence.
Choosing violence was a mistake as Jorah's untrained skin changing magic tries to bond with the bear while he kills it.
Jorah goes home and bullies a tree.
Tree choses to shelter Jorah so it doesn't get axed.
I could have drawn all this out for drama, but chose not too.
JManM chose violence.
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