Chapter 36: The Magic Solution
Early 279 Fall
The transition that the crew of the Great Sea Bear undertook when they passed through the Shadow Tower startled Brandon Stark. One minute the men were laughing from someone's joke about the Lord of Bear Island trying to figure out how to use the pair of grizzly paws he sports below his wrists to manipulate a guitar into turning out a tune to win him the heart of his princess, and the next you'd think they were Starks at a funeral.
It made no sense. These great raids into the lands beyond the wall are what these men based the majority of their ego around, and when the time came to get to it they lost all that vital passion they lived their lives at sea and at home with. No one called out to each other in good cheer as they rode through the Haunted Forest, just condition call outs, orders, and acknowledgement. Everyone kept their head on a swivel, and maintained the strictest discipline. It did not matter if they brought down incredible game, or slew some great savage Wildling, or captured a beautiful woman, everything was done at brisk pace and businesslike demeanor. As if all of this was a normal day of work and toil for a farmer in his field rather than the greatest display of power and drive in the world.
What's more they didn't even rape the women they captured, instead they shaved off their hair and scrubbed them red and raw then put them in roughest wool and corralled them. Each day they made them do inane tasks, or work on their skills with the Old Tongue. It was all so bizarre, and very unlike the men he'd come to know over the last year.
Despite the strangeness of their comportment, Brandon felt incredible working with the men on this raid. The Wildlings were the frequent feature of scary stories him and his friends would tell around bonfires when they wanted to get girls hearts racing, and now here he was putting those terrors to the sword, burning down their homes, and capturing their women and children in some wonderous role reversal.
As mounted warriors of good training and equipment, Brandon and his friends were in the thick of the action, apart of Jorah Mormont's hunting party. Guided by huge hounds and golden eagles, they killed and captured everyone and everything within many miles each day, always moving in the direction of weirwood trees.
He'd heard that Jorah personally cut down a hundred weirwoods, maybe more, and didn't know how to feel about that. The Old Gods judge the men who come before a Heart Tree, and the ground beneath them is sacred. According to the stories he'd picked up in the last year, the man was cursed by the gods for cutting down weirwood trees here in the lands beyond the Wall, and he broke that curse by cutting down more weirwood trees and asking the Heart Tree at Bear Island whether it still felt like a god when he pressed his axe to its bark. No more curse after that.
Brandon didn't understand what lit such a fire under Jorah Mormont's ass when the days started shortening during their great raid beyond the Wall. He'd left behind the army of the western shore, traveling only with his personal companions of two hundred sworn warriors mounted atop the finest horses bred by the Ryswells, horses rode hard as their commander led them north to the fist of the first Men, then east towards the Antler River, covering many miles of rough forest and deep snow.
When they arrived at a wooded hillside of no particular note, Jorah dismounted and began ascending on foot followed by Brandon, his gang of friends, and his sworn warriors, but before they ascended a quarter of the way up a figure appeared from a cleft in the hill between two weirwoods, small and cloaked with leaves. The huge man stopped and all those traveling with him winced as he swept open his fur cloak and hovered his hand over the blood red felling axe he kept at his hip.
"Turn back, invader." the small female figure ordered.
"Now why'd we do a thing like that, Child?" Jorah inquired in an even tone, "We've come a long way. It'd be a shame to turn back now."
The Northman took the axe in hand, but paused again when the figure on the hill withdrew a horn from within her cloak.
"Oh," Jorah chuckled at the sight of the horn, "That old thing? I will give you this, dealing with precogs is a pain in the ass. They always seem to see you coming."
Without any hint of the coming attack in his tone or posture, the sudden throw that sent the blood red felling axe spinning through the air surprised Brandon, but far more surprising was the way the blade cleaved the figure in twain rather than bury itself in the chest of its victim. The big man ran up the hill after the axe, starting as soon as it left his hand, and when another of the leaf clad figures emerged and reached for the horn he threw his famous sword spear like a ballista bolt pinning the figure to the hillside.
With hatchet and dagger in hand, Jorah engaged with the small people coming out of the cave, fighting with a foot on top of the horn which looked so old and worn that it should have collapsed under the enormous man's weight, yet still it held its shape by some magic. He parried and sundered obsidian tipped spears as the small people within the hill tried to drive him off, but even when they succeeded in getting past his incredibly fast hands, the black stone tipped spears shattered upon his steel plate armor.
Soon the host arrived at Jorah's side and men charged fearlessly into the dark cave in the hillside, torches in one hand axes and swords in the other. What they invaded was not a cave, but a tomb, a great underhill barrow full of cramped tunnels riddled with weirwood roots. The bones of thousands of creatures littered the floor and skulls adorned stone niches in the walls. Every man needed to watch his step lest he walk himself into a black shaft straight into the bowels of the earth.
The company was attacked by murders of ravens and over three score of those small leaf clad beings. The last of whom broke down at the coming of Jorah Mormont and his fell axe, falling to its knees screaming until that red blade cleaved it from top to crotch, causing a sudden chill to pervade the barrow, and a feeling of unease to spread in the hearts of men.
Jorah stood still after slaying the last of those little leafy things, staring at the blades of his axe as those around it did so as well, unable to look away as glowing green runes etched themselves into the blade connected to each other like the spokes of a carriage wheel as they spread across both sides of his weapon and flaring out to the beveled edges.
"I bet they didn't see that coming." the man chuckled darkly as his eyes glowed the same fell green as the runes on his axe.
Brandon Stark had heard tales of Jorah Mormont's magic, but a dissonance in his mind prevented him from truly understanding the depths of the man's immersion into the lore of this world before now. Like scales falling away from his eyes, Brandon saw, and Brandon believed. A deep part of him wanted to flee, but instead he followed the man deeper into the earth, to see what other mysteries they uncovered.
Down a steep path they descended into the inky blackness until they came upon great cavern with a bridge spanning a dark abyss with the sound of a river flowing in this underground place. The Lord of Bear Island led them across the bridge and to a sight that burnt itself into Brandon's mind. A man seated on a throne of twisted weirwood roots, but not just seated, impaled. The roots penetrated through his body - even his skull - and yet the man lived.
"Come to see me freed, brother?" the gnarled man spoke in a voice that sent shivers down Brandon's spine, "Remember the prophecy. The Song must play."
Jorah let out a tired breath then exclaimed, "I'm going to cut off your head now."
With a brutal swing of his axe, he severed the head of the enthroned man and cut deeply into the roots behind it like a phantom scythe sweeping over them. Jorah lifted the head by the hair and after considering it for a time, tied it to his belt.
"Collect the bodies." Jorah commanded the disturbed men around him, "It's not every day we get to finally win a war from the Dawn of Days. I imagine the skulls and hands of Children of the Forest will make fine trophies."
The identity of the small leafy beings shouldn't have surprised Brandon, not after all of this, but it did anyways.
"And pull the feathers from the ravens." he continued, "Least I can get out of this trip is a cloak or three to make the Blackwoods jealous."
He chuckled and reached his hand out to the axe he put down when he handled the head. It seemed to leap back into his hand, and the glowing runes on it faded when he returned it to his belt, his eyes fading with it back to their normal unnatural green.
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As I led the men back out of this horror show of a location I kept expecting to encounter an undead horde led by the Others, but when I emerged from the underground no shambling corpses nor ice fey came to do battle with me. It felt like a let down as I wanted to test the new limits of my axe against them, to see if it performs against them the way it performs against things linked to the Old Gods. It gained significant power after slaying the last of the Children and the 'Last Greenseer', power beyond its increased potency against 'holy' targets.
I can tell that the men are shaken by this event, but we won a great victory today by removing an obviously malignant force from this world. Everything about Bran's storyline is edgy darkness, and while I didn't do this to spare a little boy this path of horrors, it felt good to derail that evil plotline long before it could start.
Saved a little boy and upped the magic in my axe. Two incredibly satisfying birds with one stone.
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Jorah is forging his Lightbringer. Any resemblance to the Leviathan Axe and its functions is purely coincidental.
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