Chapitre 60: Lost Lore, The Long Night Part III
Lost Lore, The Long Night Part III.
Excerpt from the diaries of Prince Doran Nymeros Martell:
The Long Night always fascinated me, an event so catastrophic and full of mysteries that every culture has a different version; what they all have in common is the presence of the dead that devour the living.
That is why when I became friends with the heir to the North, I took the opportunity to ask him about this subject. Rickard wrote me the different stories that his nannies and elders told him, he also sent me some books about it.
Of all the tales the one that comes closest to the truth is the one told by one of Rickard's nannies:
"Thousands of years ago, there came a night that lasted a generation. Kings froze to death in their castles, same as the shepherds in their huts; and women smothered their babies rather than see them starve, and wept, and felt the tears freeze on their cheeks... In that darkness the White Walkers came for the first time. They swept through cities and kingdoms, riding their dead horses, hunting with their packs of pale spiders big as hounds."
In the year 4006 of the First Men's calendar (after leaving Novii they stopped using the calendar of their homeland, instead they use the calendar of the Dawn Empire that consists of 11 months of 33 days each) the fall ended and the winter began; which was strange to many because autumn had just started not a month ago but considering how unstable the seasons are on Planetos, nobody gave it too much importance.
That tranquility disappeared immediately when the inhabitants of Last Land quickly realized how rare and unnatural that winter was. The winter didn't start in all the continents at the same time, it started in the northern part of the continent first and slowly moved south.
Another thing that raised many suspicions is the dark and gloomy energy that accompanied the snowfalls. Some wizards thought that winter was the work of some god's tantrum (they were not wrong).
But when they realized that where the snow fell the light did no reach, panic arose.
The Lion of Night and his wife created a kind of magical snowstorm that gradually expanded, the magical storm prevented light or heat from filtering through. That is, the places that were engulfed by the magical storm of the gods were submerged in absolute darkness, not even the light of the stars, the moon or the sun could reach them.
Hence the name Long NIGHT.
Something that covered the sky and prevented light or heat from reaching the planet makes much more sense than some northerners' theories (basically many believe that the sun, moon and stars went out, like a lightbulb, during that generation) .
Humans caught in the storm had to rely on torches and magical light-producing artifacts to see.
Only the lack of light and heat caused a big problem. They could no longer harvest food, they depended only on fishing and hunting, which was much more difficult because hunting in the dark is tremendously difficult and also the animals were scarce (Many died from the cold, others from lack of food. The herbivores died from the lack of grass and the carnivores died due to the lack of prey, it was a vicious circle of death and despair). In the end the survivors depended mostly on fishing to survive, many species of fish became extinct due to the cold but many others adapted (of all the animals the fish were the ones that suffered the least losses during this era).
This alone caused countless deaths but what was the worst of this hellish winter were the creatures of the cold and the night.
At first nobody noticed their existence, people died from winter cold every year so they didn't see anything weird about it. It was when entire towns began to disappear overnight that the kings sent soldiers to investigate.
It was not until the year 4009 that the existence of the Others and wights became known. Three years seems like a long time for people to find out about the demons that were literally hunting them, so at first glance it sounds very strange but after thinking about it for a bit it makes a lot of sense.
There are a few factors that made it take so long for the existence of ice demons to become known:
1-When humans realized that winter was magical, many fled from it, they took their belongings and went south. As a good part of the population moved to warmer lands, the demons had more difficulty finding prey.
2-The advance of the magical storm, and therefore of the White Walkers, was slow; it took years to reach what we know today as the Long Lake.
3-In winter, horror stories were and still are very popular. If someone survived the Others and went to talk about them to other humans, they were not taken seriously. People thought he was kidding or that he was nuts.
4-The size of the continent. Westeros is huge, it's almost as big as Europe and that's just counting from the Wall to Dorne, back then the lands north of the Wall (the Wall didn't even exist at the time) were part of the continent. Given the size of the continent the population density was very low.
The existence of the Others was discovered after they destroyed the capital of the northernmost kingdom of the continent. The kingdom was called the Snowlands, the capital only had a little over 2000 inhabitants but being a capital its destruction was noted. A neighboring kingdom sent soldiers to investigate because their neighbors stopped trading, those soldiers never came back.
The neighboring kingdom at first thought that the Snowlands men killed their soldiers, that the silence of that kingdom was because they were preparing to invade them to steal their resources (something very common in winter, if you lack food, steal it from your neighbor) . The king sent for his soldiers and marched with an army.
The march in winter was hard, the snow made it difficult for the soldiers (and even more so the carts with supplies) to move. The army entered the Snowlands in the middle of the year 4009 and a few days after advancing into enemy territory they saw a group in the distance, thinking it was the enemy army, they prepared their weapons and advanced to meet them.
As they approached they realized several strange things, the enemies were not dressed in armor nor were they armed, even more strange is that they were not dressed in appropriate clothing for that cold weather.
By the time they realized that those beings were not human it was too late, being less than twenty meters away, the wights launched themselves at them like rabid animals, they were fast and moved in a frenzy. The men were terrified, they understood that these beings were demons, the men in the front rows of the army were massacred.
The soldiers in the middle and rear could not see the wights, they only heard the screams and growls, so they drew their weapons and prepared for combat. As the demons approached them they cut them down with their swords and axes, crushed them with their maces and hammers, and stabbed them with their spears. But to their horror the dismembered corpses kept moving.
A soldier dropped his torch and it set fire to a wright, which in a few seconds was reduced to ashes. The soldier realized the weakness of the demons and yelled at his brothers-in-arms not to use their weapons but their torches.
Forming circles, pressing back to back, with a torch in each hand, the soldiers were able to destroy the wights.
The tables turned in favor of the living for the first time in that war, the soldiers were able to kill most of the wights. But luck didn't last long. The king sent several squads, each with a dismembered but still "alive" wright, to neighboring kingdoms to warn them of the threat. He himself continued to advance further into the territory of the demons to investigate, to find out if there are any survivors left.
The king's party had the misfortune to encounter several White Walkers. The power of a wright and an Other are on completely different levels. With the right tools an average man can destroy several wights but even with tools designed to kill an Other an ordinary human has very little chance of being victorious in a battle against an ice demon.
The White Walkers have the physical strength of ten men, they are much faster and their reflexes are completely inhuman. They also have a powerful magic called Frost Magic that allows them to control ice, snow, and even wind to some extent.
A White Walker could easily take down a score of professional soldiers at the same time.
The humans didn't stand a chance, they were completely slaughtered. A soldier, a skinchanger, managed to escape by transforming into a raven and flying away in the midst of the chaos of battle. That soldier spread the news about the existence of the White Walkers.
By the end of the year, the existence of these beings was known even in places as remote as Arbor Island (then called the Lonely Kingdom).
Many armies were raised to destroy the demons, Robb Royce amassed 10,000 soldiers, Durran Strombreaker amassed nearly 20,000 soldiers, and so on.
But even if the armies could destroy the wights no one could even hurt the White Walkers. The Others slaughtered them army by army, adding the dead to their hordes. It wasn't until an intrepid hero known as the Last Hero found out, with the help of the Children of the Forest, that obsidian could kill Others that hope was restored.
The Last Hero was none other than the High King Lysander, the ruler of all the First Men. He went to the home of his ancestors to ask for their help in the war against the ice demons, the Others must have sensed something because they sent horde after horde to prevent the High King's quest from succeeding.
Of all the soldiers who accompanied him none survived. The king of the Others, the Night King, personally went after the High King. The Night King brought with him two dozen White Walkers and thousands of wights. Lysander knew that they could not defeat them in combat so he used evasive tactics to escape from them, he managed to evade the horde for almost two years but a couple of kilometers from their objective they were cornered.
On the ground they were surrounded by wights and White Walkers and in the air there were all kinds of dead beasts, from eagles to ice dragons.
There was no escape, the king resigned himself to his fate but he was not willing for his corpse to become another soldier of the horde of the dead so he lit a large fire pit and just when he was about to walk into the fire he heard someone calling his name.
The Children of the Forest knew of his quest and sent their own people to meet High King Lysander, along the way they met the survivors of Frank the Beast's army and they joined the search for the High King.
After his army was torn apart by the dead Frank rounded up his surviving soldiers, mostly skinchangers, and waged guerrilla warfare on the horde of the dead.
Frank, transformed into an Ice Dragon five times larger than any other Ice Dragon ever seen, destroyed all the flying beasts of the horde.
Between Frank's men, the Children of the Forest, and Lysander's soldiers (who regained their spirits upon seeing the reinforcements) the living put up a great fight but they knew they couldn't win as they still had no way to kill the White Walkers. The survival of the living depended on the High King's quest, everyone knew that, so in the middle of the battle they prepared an escape route for Lysander.
Unfortunately the Night King noticed their intentions and went personally to kill the High King. Frank watched as the Night King, who until then had only watched the battle, moved and realized his plan. The brave Skinchanger got in his way and distracted him long enough for Lysander to escape.
Frank himself did not survive, he was stabed with a cursed spear by the Night King, he knew he would never return home, he would never see his wife or children again. The last act of the brave king was to transform into a falcon and fly to the fire pit that Lysander had previously lit.
The other soldiers and Children of the Forest who participated in that desperate fight perished, only the High King survived.
Lysander reached the heart of the Last Land, a hidden cavern where the largest Heart Tree in the world is located; the most sacred place of the Children of the Forest and home of the Great Elder (their leader).
Between both of them they managed to find the weakness of the Others: Obsidian.
After twenty-four years the Dark Winter reached the southern coast of Dorne, practically the entire continent was plunged into cold and darkness. In what would have been the Dusk of the Living if Lysander had failed his quest the most important battle of the war took place.
The High King ordered all the survivors to go to the nearest volcanoes and collect all the obsidian they could, with it they created a large number of weapons, from daggers to arrows.
The Battle for the Dawn took place in the year 4030.
The living was led by Lysander and his closest commanders were Durran Strombreaker and a warrior who made a great name for himself during the war, a warrior that Durran recognized as the child (now man) who helped him so long ago; them man who would later be called Brandon the Builder.
The story of Brandon the Builder is more mysterious than any other, not even these books had much information about this legendary man. His origins and powers were a mystery even to his contemporaries. We know that as a child he helped Durran and that he was a great hero in the war against the dead. He built Storms End, The Wall and Winterfell. But that's it, Brandon is surrounded by more mysteries than any other hero of the Long Night.
No one knows where he was born, if he was fully human or if he had blood of another race. Some say that Brandon was a descendant of Children of the Forest, others say that he married someone of that race. The first thing I can neither deny nor affirm, although many human descendants of the Children Forest have notable features (the complexion and hair of High King Lysander for example) the distant descendants do not show those features (the First Men had been in Westeros for more than four millennia, Brandon may have had an ancestor a millennium or two ago belonging to that race, but that's just speculation). The second I can deny, because these books mention Brandon's children as apparently human (as I said before, the closest descendants of the Children of the Forest have striking features).
One of the things that raised the most questions in his contemporaries (and in me) was the closeness of High King Lysander with Brandon.
The High King was a charismatic and friendly man but he was known for keeping a certain distance with his subjects, he did not like being touched or being close to someone for too long (something not so rare as many nobles and especially monarchs do not allow their subjects to touch them).
With Brandon the High King behaved in a way that raised many eyebrows, things not very rare among friends or family but never seen with the High King (pats on the back, playful pushes, hugs,...).
Some suspected that they were lovers, something that greatly amused the High King but proved to be false.
I hope I can find the answer to those mysteries at some point.
Going back to the Battle for the Dawn, the living side had 40,000 soldiers while the dead side had millions of soldiers; most of them were wights with a thousand White Walkers leading them.
At first it seemed that Lysander's army would lose but when Brandon killed the first White Walker tens of thousands of wights were reduced to ashes. The mysterious hero realized that if you kill an Other all the dead that the demon controls dies with it.
This discovery was the second great discovery that tilted the balance towards the side of the living (the first being how to kill the Others).
The men targeted the White Walkers, killing them was very difficult, in fact only a couple of heroes from the army of the living managed such a feat.
It was High King Lysander who saved the day. Lysander was the most powerful warrior in the Last Land, a being whose power was comparable to some gods. The High King killed hundreds of White Walkers before facing the Night King.
The duel between the two was legendary and is said to have lasted eleven days, eleven days in which the other soldiers on both sides stopped fighting and watched their leaders fight.
That duel decided the fate of the world.
High King Lysander saved Westeros, and not in the way I expected.
During the duel the combatants shared more than blows, Lysander discovered the Night King's identity as one of the consorts of the Amethyst Empress, someone he considered a friend once.
Lysander realized that the Dark Winter and these demons were products of the Lion of Night and attempted to appeal to the god, telling him that not all humans are guilty of the Bloodstone Emperor's sins.
Since news of Lysander's deeds and power had reached the Celestial Realm and many admired him there, the Father God answered. The Lion of Night told him that humans are neither honorable nor noble, that they are cruel and selfish. Lysander asked him how he could show him otherwise, and the Father God replied by dying.
The Lion of Night thought that no mortal would give his own life for the sake of others, especially a mortal ruler (they proved to be more arrogant and proud than many gods), but Lysander proved him wrong.
Dropping his sword the High King impaled himself on the Night King's sword.
"If my death can save millions, I will gladly pay the price."
In the face of such an act of sacrifice, everyone became speechless, both in the mortal world and in the Celestial Realm.
Moved by the acts of Lysander, the Maiden Made of Light lifted the veil that had enveloped the world and the light of the sun was seen again after a generation of darkness. The other gods followed the example of the Mother Goddess, all but one; the Lion of Night.
The Father God was moved by High King Lysander's actions but justified in his mind that Lysander was capable of such selflessness due to his divine blood, he still thought that mortals are scum that deserve to be annihilated. His wife and children turned against him and forced the Lion of Night to destroy his armies of dead.
He refused and a battle broke out, in the end they managed to chain the Lion of Night and the God of Mortals sealed the gates of the Celestial Realm to prevent his father from escaping to the mortal world.
While the gods fought, the mortals watched as the clouds vanished and the sun illuminated the world once again.
Brandon didn't even look at the sun, his gaze was fixed on Lysander and after getting out of his shock he ran towards his king. Several soldiers followed his example.
The Night King, losing contact with his master, did not know what to do so when he saw that the mortals were approaching him, he gave the order to retreat. The Other drew his sword from Lysander's torse, mounted a horse and fled the battlefield. Many living soldiers chased after him, Brandon didn't.
Brandon caught Lysander before he fell to the ground and yelled for a healer. Lysander hushed him and said the following:
"The taste of Death is upon my lips, I feel it in my heart. Don't weep little wolf. Neither Kings nor farmers can escape Death, for us humans were born to die. I lived for two centuries, longer than most... My sacrifice is my own, do not follow my path child. You must live your own song, you must live. Dawn is here, life and death`s dance will go on-"
Lysander the Blessed died with a peaceful expression looking at the sun.
In the end the Dawn came thanks to a brave hero whose sacrifice redeemed humanity in the eyes of the gods.
Many ignored the High King's last words and pursued the horde of the dead to the end of the world.
Brandon knew that the war was not over, the Night King and his lieutenants still live, the Lion of Night still wants to annihilate humanity, but Brandon also knew that the last words of his king had a hidden message.
Life must go on but death will follow.
But it will not be his fight.
Brandon built the Wall to protect the world and founded the Night Watch to watch over the lands where the dead have fled.
He founded House Stark and created his own kingdom, which would be for many centuries the most prosperous and richest on the continent.
Even his life after the Long Night little is known, not even his death is clear. One day King Brandon told his heir the following:
"Live your own song, my child, so when your time comes to die, you will not be like those whose hearts are filled with fear, those who weep and pray for a little more time."
And then he left, no one ever saw him again.
Some say he returned to his true home, some say he ascended the Celestial Realm as a god. Nothing is certain.
***
NOTE: It took me two days to write this chapter. The last part was the most difficult to write and I had several moments where I was blocked, without being able to write anything. What do you think of the result, of the Long Night?
This is the final chapter of the Lost Lore saga.
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