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The Grind (Book 2) Ch.31
🕑 Added 2025-08-21 23:56:48 +0000 UTC[AN: Just some Heather/Hermione/Luna refresher pics to start us off. They have aged, after all (~20-21 now).]
— Hermione —
It was the morning of their second day in Oldtown. The Hightower had hosted them quite comfortably, much better than being stuck in the city with… everything else going on. Nights in Oldtown these days, it seemed, were dark and full of terrors. Hermione was torn between the familiar thrill of curiosity and a visceral shudder at the idea of learning more…
The days in Oldtown were… theoretically better. They were less eldritch and unknowable, at least, if perhaps not much less dangerous. Arriving to find the city engulfed in a magical gang war between learned men was certainly an unpleasant development. And now, with the Hightower ‘illuminating’ the whole city from above, they were likely stuck there until the matter was addressed and resolved.
Ideas for doing just that had already been vaguely suggested last night. And Hermione had taken the rest of the night to personally work through the situation in Occlumency dreams. The Mind Art made lucid, controlled dreams a breeze, and for Hermione, that just meant more time to think, theorize, and muse most thoroughly.
She’d never be able to thank Atlas enough for teaching her how to put her mind in magical order. Merlin and Morgana, her thought processes were so inefficient before! The difference was like night and day, like discovering Magic all over again! And if it did or did not greatly enhance her, erhm… fantasies… well, that was just a pleasant bonus to go with the more traditionally productive benefits.
Last night, she came to the conclusion that the Citadel’s internal conflict needed to be resolved first and foremost. Despite somehow not being the most worrisome thing they’d seen in Oldtown, it was already well out of hand. She could see that much easily. Anyone with eyes could.
The feuding ‘schools’ of thought were detrimental to the city, its people, and the general state of affairs. Fights between maesters couldn’t continue to spill onto the streets if they wanted to get anything done. Even beyond the direct harm they did, the maester business also distracted from… other issues in Oldtown.
The Citadel as a whole was too self-absorbed to up and stop when asked nicely or even ordered firmly, however. Too focused on their own power games and their leaders’ ambitions. If the (much more pressing) eldritch madness infecting the city was to be addressed, the Citadel needed to get itself in order.
Thankfully, Hermione had also come up with a few plans in her dreams to propose in the morning’s meeting. Their not-so-little group had gathered with fresh minds to discuss the situation. Some of them, however, had been worryingly quiet as they broke their fasts.
“I think…” Atlas began, speaking for the first time that morning. “We need to go back to the drawing board.”
“What? Why?” Hermione asked. “I’d hate to have to discard all of my ideas so quickly.”
“Don’t discard them just yet,” He said. “But for some of us, a night sleeping in the Hightower was… illuminating.”
“Horrifying, yes,” Willas nodded. “What he said.”
“Is this a divination thing?” Ron frowned. “It sounds like a divination thing.”
Atlas sighed, “Unfortunately…?”
“I had the most fascinating dream last night, and I don’t believe I was alone. Young Bran and Willas, Atlas and Luna, Marwyn and another joined me in that astral realm,” Dumbledore said carefreely. “Such seamless shared dreaming is a rather rare and beautiful thing. Yet these hallowed walls made it as simple as lassoing a horny dragon.”
“Is… Is that a simple feat…?” Renly asked, audibly bewildered.
“Oh, yes,” Dumbledore simply nodded. “They get so utterly focused on getting their proverbial rocks off that any skilled handler should be able to wrangle them. From a distance, of course. Draconic heat is a beautifully primal thing, but also a phenomenon best appreciated from afar if one wishes to avoid being made into sticky, scalded collateral. A ‘splash zone’ to note, if you would.”
Renly’s face took on an almost green hue, “N-No… No, I don’t think I will. ‘Would’ rather have never heard that information at all, I’d say.”
Atlas sighed, “Albus, please don’t overly traumatize our allies so early in the morning. At least wait until breakfast has settled in our stomachs.”
“While fascinating,” Marwyn grunted. “We currently have bigger things to worry about.”
Surprisingly, little Bran was the one to nod along to that statement, “Yeah, like the scary starbeast thing under the Hightower!”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good,” Dora cringed.
Willas nodded along matter-of-factly (and rather traumatically), “Not good at all.”
“I think we need a more coherent retelling of your shared dream last night,” Hermione said.
“I’m assuming it wasn’t the sexy, fun kind?” Heather joked.
“It wasn’t,” Atlas deadpanned right back. “Considering the company, that was something of a relief, but no, it very much wasn’t. There wasn’t much ‘fun’ to speak of.”
“I saw Grandfather, at least,” Willas said.
“Grandfather? How would you have seen Grandfather in a magical dream?” Loras asked in confusion.
“Oh, he was there, and he was burning, and he was having a great time~!” Luna chimed ‘helpfully’.
“Burning…?” Margaery didn’t seem to like the sound of that. Hermione couldn’t blame her.
“Let’s start from the beginning,” Willas sighed. “The Hightower is magical.”
Renly nodded, “I expected as much, what with the eerie green flame, but it’s good to have confirmation.”
“It’s a purpose-built, man-made Weirwood Heart Tree!” Bran excitedly interjected.
Those who had a place in the dream nodded. Everyone else blinked. Ginny was the one to articulate their reaction to that information, “… Huh. Neat.”
Immediately, Hermione’s mind was working up a storm, “A manmade Weirwood…? Of course… Bone-white walls and burning leaves…! And a Heart Tree’s face in the sept! It must’ve been built long ago, while magic still suffused these lands! Still, a very impressive feat! The ancient Hightowers must’ve been something special, indeed!”
“My namesake helped!” Bran exclaimed.
“Aye, I can hardly believe it, still,” Willas nodded. “In a vision from the Hightower, we were shown Bran the Builder and Uthor Hightower. Seemingly at the end of the First Long Night in the Dawn that followed.”
Sarella focused on Willas with a snap, “Bran. The. Builder…?! And King Uthor Hightower to boot! In the Dawn?! Crone’s Blessing, that’s amazing! What were they like? Could you tell their identities instantly? Did they speak of the Long Night? Were they the ones to raise the Hightower?”
Hermione could certainly sympathize with the Dornish bastard princess. It would’ve been like seeing a moment from the lives of Merlin and the Founders as they established Hogwarts. More so, considering the often nonsensical scale of time in Westeros. She wouldn’t have been able to control her questions either.
“Bran the Builder was still recognizably a Stark, and Uthor was still recognizably a Hightower,” Atlas mused aloud. “Which should be impossible, considering the many, many generations between you and your namesake, Bran. Or your uncle and the first Hightower King, Willas.”
“Genetics don’t work the same here, silly~,” Luna giggled. “I thought we’d already established that. The magic at work is more heavily felt in the names and legacies that are passed down than in just ‘blood’.”
“We figured that there was something strange at work in the local genetics, but having a lead on the actual cause is rather game-changing,” Hermione considered. “If it’s in the name, the legacy, the line… That would explain so much…”
“I’ll put it to study when we’re in a position to do so,” Marwyn grunted. “For now, we don’t have the leisure, however. Lord Leyton showed us all of that for a reason. It needs to be addressed first.”
“Grandfather again!” Loras exclaimed. “How did he come into this ‘shared dream’?!”
He sounded frazzled. Hermione could hardly blame him for that, what with all the talk of magic, and his own brother joining it.
“The Lord of the Hightower is burning, burning, burning~…” Luna sang.
“Grandfather… He’s… merged with the Hightower, would you say?” Willas posed, asking Atlas, Dumbledore, and Marwyn for clarification.
“He’s tied himself into the wards at work,” Dumbledore nodded. “I believe his physical body would be somewhere within the burning beacon above us.”
Loras violently flinched at that, “What?!”
Margaery reached over to lay a soothing hand on his arm, “I’m sure it’s not as it sounds, with how calm Willas is about the subject, Brother.”
“He seemed of sound mind and good health,” Willas confirmed. “He spoke freely with us and recognized me. But you have to remember that Grandfather was steeped in the mystical even before Magic’s Return, Brother. He called it ‘proper’ that a Hightower continued to tend the beacon. Said he was taking up the old ways with Magic’s Return. He lights all of Oldtown now. That is his duty, and it’s never been more important than now. He was quite firm on that subject.”
“Wild…” Ginny shook her head in quiet awe. “Did he say why it was so important right now?”
Atlas nodded somberly, “He showed us.”
Dumbledore nodded as well, “Yes, that fascinating, fascinating Remnant-…”
“Scary starbeast!” Bran interrupted.
“Quite,” Dumbledore just chuckled and continued. “A rather writhing, wriggling, raging thing from beyond the stars has become restless beneath the Hightower. It’s an awesome phenomenon. In the most biblical sense of the word.”
“Beneath us…?” Renly asked, glancing at the floor.
“Comforting, Headmaster,” Ron remarked dryly.
“According to the vision we saw,” Atlas recounted. “It arrived at the end of the Long Night, crashing down from the sky. Battle Isle and its blackstone are the Remnant’s star-spawned creation. But Uthor Hightower and his kin successfully suppressed the… thing… long enough to contact Bran the Builder and raise the Hightower atop it.”
“The Hightower is as much a prison as it is a beacon,” Willas chuckled awkwardly. “And this might not be particularly relevant, but I believe the younger brother King Uthor referenced in the dream went on to found House Dayne.”
“I’ve long theorized that House Hightower and House Dayne shared a similar origin…” Sarella muttered.
Bran nodded with childish enthusiasm and a surprisingly canny observation (almost but not quite fully prophetic, by Hermione’s reckoning), “We’ll need Dawn to slay the scary starbeast for good! I’m sure! Only starmetal can kill a beast from the stars!”
“With the current troubles in Dayne holdings, that aid won’t be quick to come,” Sarella said warily.
“… Wonderful,” Renly’s voice came out strained. “Just. Wonderful… And you say this… thing… is now restless? As in, waking? Right beneath us, right at this moment…?”
Luna waved so-so, “It’s mostly just stirring right now. It could wake up, certainly. But it likely needs outside help to do so fully.”
“Well, I don’t think any of us will rush to be its alarm clock,” Dora sighed with the slightest bit of relief.
“Then, all we can do is keep pushing things forward and marching ahead. It stirs but doesn’t wake. Meanwhile, we unfortunately have more mortal matters to see to,” Margaery reminded.
Hermione nodded, “The most obvious problem in Oldtown is still the internal struggle within the Citadel. No progress will be made anywhere without that mess being resolved. To even potentially contact House Dayne, we’ll need to free the city from itself first.”
“Sooooo… Smack the maesters until they see some sense, break the quarantine, try not to wake the scary starbeast, and call on the special starmetal sword to put it down for good?” Heather summarized.
Loras laughed, “When you put it like that, it sounds almost simple, my lady!”
“It’s a start,” Atlas nodded firmly. “The beginnings of a plan. Hermione, you had suggestions for dealing with the Citadel? We’ll need to do so quickly and decisively.”
Hermione bit her lower lip, “That does change some things… But I can adapt. I still think we need a decapitating strike. Take away the existing leadership, offer an alternative, and most will naturally fall in line. Archmaester Marwyn and his school are our alternative. Obviously. Now, we just need to get them into a leading position and eliminate the opposition.”
“Are the Citadel Games still a go, then?” Luna asked, tilting her head in a cute contrast to the forced gladiatorial combat she was suggesting.
Hermione didn’t quite sigh, but it was a near thing as she crossed now untenable plans from her mental list, “It’ll be quicker than a siege… Less damaging than an outright raid… If we limit the ‘arena’ to the leaders and worst offenders, it’ll almost be efficient…”
“And it’ll certainly set one hell of an example,” Heather smirked.
“I suppose extraordinary times must call for extraordinary solutions,” Renly drawled.
“If it works, it bloody well works,” Marwyn grunted. “I’ll shed no tears for my bastardly peers.”
A smile stretched across Luna’s face — wide, gleeful, and very, very excited, “Tha~at sounds like per~mis~sion~! Let the Citadel Games commence!”
The Westerosi looked somewhat wary of what was about to be unleashed upon the Citadel, but Hermione was well used to Luna’s… well, just Luna. She’d get her way and somehow end up more successful than Hermione could’ve ever anticipated. It was the usual way of things. Honestly, with Luna, it was best to just sit back and watch the fireworks. They were sure to be spectacular.
IIIII
“I know I said ‘extraordinary’… But I don’t think even that word does… this… justice,” Renly muttered.
“Do not engage her,” Hermione warned.
“It’s a rather simple bit of theory, isn’t it? We have naughty maesters up to no good. No good at all,” Luna nodded matter-of-factly.
“But where does the giant butterfly net come in…?!” Renly asked, his voice strained.
“I warned him,” Hermione stepped back and wiped her hands of the matter. “He brought this on himself.”
Of course, Luna just giggled, “Well, we have to capture them somehow to enter them into the Citadel Games. Some might do it voluntarily, but I don’t think that’s something we can rely on.”
“There has to be a middle ground that’s even somewhat sane and reasonable,” Renly said.
Heather smirked, “No one tell him about stunning spells.”
“As amusing as this is,” Margaery cut in, stifling her laughter. “We do have work to do. And quite a lot of it if we want to resolve the situation in the Citadel quickly. Prince Renly, please leave Luna to her methods. I’m sure, somehow, she’ll manage to be just as effective as the rest of our Hogwarts friends.”
Renly groaned, “Yes, and that’s part of the problem…”
Ignoring the interactions Luna spawned by merely existing, Atlas took charge, “We’re splitting up from here. Stunners first, and extreme prejudice to follow if you believe a target is too dangerous to be brought back alive. We’re making a show of this. Setting an example. But that doesn’t mean we need to put ourselves in harm’s way for it. The Citadel will get the message one way or another.”
“Just…” Renly visibly and audibly gave up his completely reasonable resistance. “Fine… This is fine, I suppose. Just fine. I shan’t think of the giant butterfly net for a single moment longer.”
Luna, of course, just shrugged, “‘Kaaa~aay~…”
They split into smaller groups as Atlas ordered from there. Renly and Loras got Ron and Ginny. Willas and Bran got Margaery and Dora. Sarella and (technically) Marwyn were with the rest of them: Atlas, Heather, Hermione, Luna, and (again, technically) Dumbledore. As the biggest group, they had the biggest task. The others would be scouring the streets for important maesters they missed, while Hermione’s group directly infiltrated the Citadel.
A place to bring the captured maesters was already decided upon. It was a decent-sized pontoon on the Honeywine River, maintained for their purposes by Marwyn and Dumbledore. It was deemed much harder for their soon-to-be prisoners (“Tributes!” Luna exclaimed) to escape when they were floating in the middle of the wide and deep river while their peer archmaester and the Headmaster watched over them.
The actual Citadel Games would be arranged after every ‘tribute’ was accounted for. Hermione had ideas to hold it on the same pontoon, while projecting a view of it all onto magical screens left throughout the Citadel and the rest of Oldtown. Let the fools watch their leaders kill each other without being able to do anything about it.
The Citadel itself rested on a series of islands in the Honeywine. It was an impressive, almost-castle, with bridges reaching between towers and domes and the usual Westerosi miracles of construction everywhere to be seen. It was a fortress of learning, a bastion of knowledge and prestige. A pair of towering sphinx statues guarded its gates.
Considering its fortifications, they found it rather easy to slip inside. They ferried themselves onto the islands via broom and flight, concealed themselves with notice-me-nots, and walked right in under less than watchful eyes. Anyone who should’ve been guarding the Citadel was either already absent or focusing their vigilance inward.
They found even less focused resistance within the Citadel’s walls. Every maester and acolyte they passed was… preoccupied. Partially with what Hermione had to imagine were their usual duties, but mostly with the tension in the air. It was like walking into an eerily still storm.
“Luna? What happened to your giant butterfly net?” Sarella curiously asked as they ventured deeper into the Citadel.
Luna waved absently, “Oh, that was just to tease the prince. Butterfly nets aren’t at all efficient for kidnapping and capturing people, actually. You need ropes and gags and bags over their heads for that.”
“I-I see…” Sarella stuttered, clearly doing nothing of the sort. Luna, of course, refused to elaborate further on the casually insane statement.
There were signs of strife everywhere. A hallway absolutely coated with ice. Burnt out rooms. Collapsed walls. Damaged reliefs, murals, and statues. In the darkest corners, bodies were left where they fell as the Citadel barely tried to maintain a veneer of ‘business as usual’. They even saw a few bodies already reduced to skeletons, picked clean by a thousand sharp beaks…
Marwyn had briefed them on the worst offenders in the Citadel’s civil war. Most keenly, they needed to keep their eyes out for the leading Archmaesters Ocley, Nymos, and Castos and their primary enforcers.
Ocley strived to wield and control all magic in his leaden fist. His was the most substantial faction after Marwyn’s, with several key enforcers and the ‘Grey Bull’ most prominent amongst them. Marwyn said to identify his supporters by the lead collars they wore; statements even more absolute than the usual maester’s chain.
Nymos led the most obsessive camp when it came to magic. He wished to pick it apart until the world turned, until he could bend everything and anything to his will. It was a philosophy rather common to the Dark Lords Hogwarts already knew, Dumbledore said. Mad, mad men who placed themselves above Magic itself. Nymos was his own worst enforcer, wielding stone magicks for callous experimentation. His followers were signified by heavy rods of Nymos’s stone.
But, Hermione thought, Castos was the most worrying archmaester. He and his school were the ones most firmly against magic. They claimed it was a slight to the natural order of things and ruthlessly sought to slaughter all who wielded it. All while using their own magicks to do so…
Hypocrites. That much was clear to see and made them the smallest of the warring schools. But they had some of the most dangerous and fanatical enforcers within the Citadel to make up for their lack of numbers. Worst of all was the so-called ‘Ravenwright’ who puppeted the many, many ravens of the Citadel to his violent bidding. Seemingly, he kept a raven to watch each of Castos’s fanatics in his archmaester’s name, which hinted at a terrible level of power and fracturing madness from the Ravenwright.
They stumbled across a collar of lead first, and Atlas held up a hand to stop their progress short, whispering under the cover of their spells, “Ocley, right?”
“So Marwyn claimed,” Hermione nodded. “But I doubt this one is very important. Look, he’s just… sitting there…?”
“Itwillwakeitwillwakeitwillwake-…” The man muttered something constant and unintelligible under his breath.
“Yeah, giving off just the worst vibes,” Heather snorted.
“Always watch out for the quiet, unintelligibly murmuring ones~…” Luna sang softly.
“That…” Hermione considered. “Is a very good point.”
“I think I’ve seen this one before…” Sarella whispered. “Maester Tybolt. Dangerous, but not especially important.”
“Dangerous, why?” Hermione couldn’t help but ask.
“He’s a shadowseer,” Sarella answered. “That’s the magic he awakened, and Ocley’s school has been using him to scry their enemies. Peering so deeply into the darkness seems to have driven him quite mad.”
“Knowing what else is in this city, I pity the man,” Atlas half-snorted.
“Stun him just to put him out of his misery for a little bit?” Heather asked.
Atlas nodded and moved to do so. Tybolt, somehow, reacted. Blank, blank eyes snapped onto Atlas through their spells, and his mutters quickly grew to a frantic shout.
“ItwillwakeItWillWakeITWILLWAKE-!”
Thankfully, Atlas’s stunning spell still did its job. The man’s shout was cut off. Those same blank, blank eyes stayed eerily open, though, staring into the shadows of the hallway even after the red spellbolt hit him and he fell immobile.
Seeing that, Heather muttered, “Yeah, that bloke is not okay in the head.”
“Hmm~,” Luna hummed. “I believe the correct phrase for this would be ‘Fuck ALL of that noise’.”
“We don’t have time to try and fortify or recover his mind right now,” Hermione shook her head.
“It’s already long gone,” Luna said. “Taken, taken, taken away~… Impossible things dream in the shadows~…”
“How pleasant,” Sarella remarked dryly.
“All the more reason to quickly deal with the situation here in the Citadel so we can turn our attention to more pressing matters,” Atlas sighed.
They continued on like that, with Sarella identifying those they came across and Atlas making the call to take them or not. Mostly, they ran into collars of lead. Most were proverbially drained dry by all that their archmaester demanded from them, as much victims as they were offenders.
“Turns out, when some bastard wants to control all magic for himself, he doesn’t tend to do so in a responsible way,” Heather said sarcastically.
The stone rods of Nymos were a different situation. Hermione knew that as soon as they came across the first ‘experimental recruitments’. A pair of stone-rod maesters were coldly coercing a young acolyte to ‘follow along for your own good, boy’. He must’ve been 15 at the most, and he wasn’t given any other choice but to follow the pair into Merlin-knows-what magical experiments.
They reacted judiciously, of course. Heather, Hermione, and Luna snapped off stunners as quickly as they could. And while the young acolyte was still reeling, Atlas stepped up and slapped a portkey rope onto the pair. It activated with a swirl and whisked them away to keep Marwyn and Dumbledore company on the Honeywine.
Sarella, meanwhile, calmly approached the acolyte and soothed him, “Gently now, Samon. Don’t overreact. We’ve come to help. You’re safe with us.”
“B-Brother Alleras…?” The young boy, Samon, squeaked out. “O-Oh, thank the Seven! The Stone-rods wouldn’t take no for an answer!”
“Good thing they won’t be asking many more questions right about now, then,” Heather snorted.
“I need you for something, Samon,” Sarella said. “The time has come, and I’ll count on you to spread the word to the others. Archmaester Marwyn is making his move. This struggle is as good as over. Our people need to be ready to pick up the pieces in his name. But the rest? Leave that to us.”
Excitement bloomed on Samon’s face, “You can count on me, Brother! I’ll tell Rin, and he’ll tell Plat, and he’ll tell Old Man Yanos, and-!”
“Very good,” Sarella nodded with some amusement. “Just keep them lying low for now. The day will be won for sense and magic soon enough.”
Nodding frantically, the acolyte scampered off. Relief at being saved from callous experimentation had quickly melted into the thrill of being part of history, of helping his archmaester’s victory over the Citadel.
Sarella just sighed, “I think we should hurry from here. I doubt he’ll be as subtle about that as we would like him to be.”
Atlas agreed, and they were off to the races once more. Identify. Stun. Portkey if necessary. Move on and repeat. It became something of a blur to Hermione. Up until they ran into their first raven-marked maester, at least…
The bird noticed them through their concealing spells. It cawed loudly to alert its charge right before Luna outright popped the little beastie. It went up in a plume of black feathers, but the maester it was watching over still turned with a swirl of magically controlled water from a flask on his hip.
Before the rest of them could put him down hard, however, Sarella threw out a sharp snap of her fingers. Bloodline magic was called upon. The water under the other maester’s control went up in an instantaneous boil. Scalding steam splashed against every inch of exposed skin, and he screamed. Heather managed to stun him away from the pain a moment later.
In the jarring silence of the aftermath, they all turned to Sarella with questions in their eyes. She looked away somewhat sheepishly.
“Water from your father, salt and heat from your mother?” Atlas asked.
Slowly, Sarella nodded, “Marwyn’s taken to calling me ‘The Boiling Point’.”
“That’s fuckin’ wicked,” Heather nodded approvingly.
“You know, the human body is around 60% water, and plenty of salt as well~!” Luna helpfully noted.
Hermione groaned, “Thank you for that morbidly fascinating mental image, Luna.”
Sarella paled, “You mean I can-…?”
“Let’s not, for now,” Atlas quickly said. “We don’t particularly need to be that… thorough, here.”
“Thorough is… certainly one word for it,” Hermione almost laughed.
“Terrifying is another,” Heather did laugh. “You could certainly give this Ravenwright cunt a run for his money.”
Hermione gave a strained nod, “Some of the bloodline magicks we’ve discovered are very… thoroughly terrifying.”
“He certainly saw us, by the way,” Luna reminded. “All those ravens are him, and he’s all of them, too. It’s not a very safe expression of his gifts, but it doesn’t need to be for a fanatical weapon like him.”
Atlas sighed, “Yes, it’s just our luck that the most fanatic, magic-hating school in the Citadel has a magical hivemind flock of already dangerous and intelligent birds to call upon. I think the time for stealth has passed. We’ll be going loud from here, and even more quickly, too.”
“But what about the loot, the books-!” Hermione almost whined.
She was interrupted by a cacophony of angry bird calls quickly approaching their position. They reached through the walls and echoed through the halls. They built and built until it sounded like an actual storm was hitting the Citadel.
Hermione quickly reconsidered her complaint, “Never mind! The books can wait!”
Despite the situation, Heather still took an all-too-calm moment to smirk at her, “That must’ve been very hard for you to say, Hermione. I’m proud of you.”
“Not the time!” Hermione snapped back.
“We’re going straight for the archmaesters,” Atlas ordered. “Sarella, watch our backs. And I take back what I said. Just start popping ravens as they come. They’ve got more than enough water and salt in them for it, so don’t stop until the Citadel is a corvid cemetery.”
“Poor, poor ravens~… Poor, poor fanatical hivemind~… Nevermore, nevermore~…” Luna sighed with singsong sympathy.
“Point-me Castos!” Hermione called out. She let her wand drag her in the right direction and took the lead without a moment of hesitation.
Atlas nodded as he and the others kept up, “Best to take care of him before he can fortify himself.”
It was a mad dash through the Citadel, made even madder by the sheer volume of noise that followed them. Precious moments spared them from being immediately flocked by ravens. But those precious moments were never going to last forever.
Even just at first, the ravens came by the dozen. Sarella focused as they ran to call upon the magic in her blood. Hermione could barely describe the sound that accompanied a dozen ravens boiling from the inside, each in an awful instant. It was a terrible thing to experience. A pop, a poof, a splash, and so, so much splatter…
Yet the next wave of ravens still came, undeterred. Heather threw a bombarda behind them to help Sarella’s defensive efforts. Hermione purposefully didn’t look back. She couldn’t, not with the squawks and the caws and the Magic-damned splatter…
She ran through the Citadel with the others hot on her heels. But no matter how many Heather and Sarella popped, the ravens kept coming…
“How many birds do you think he has at his disposal?” Atlas asked almost casually.
“Hundreds, I have to imagine!” Hermione snapped back much less calmly. “And there’s a courtyard coming up, I think!”
“Hmm,” Atlas merely hummed.
Weirwood Glaive-Staff in hand, he began brewing a spell as they ran. One bolt of magic appeared. Then another. And another. A dozen. A score. More and more… Just over their heads, Atlas conjured hundreds of individual bolts of magic. And he did so without pausing at all.
When they emerged into an open-air courtyard, hundreds of ravens were waiting to cut them off. Only then did Atlas stop, and only for a moment. He let Heather and Sarella focus behind them. And the black-feathered beasts now in their way…? Atlas took them all in, holding an equal numbered volley of spellbolts above his head, and spoke just one word of power.
“[Splash]”
The new flock of ravens dived at them. Atlas’s spellbolts rose to meet them without hesitation. The air was a roiling storm of controlled magic and psychic hivemind fury. One for one, the bolts struck the birds into flaming, falling stone. They were petrified. They were set alight. They fell from the sky with new, terrible weight. And Hermione could only gape at the sheer amount of mental calculations Atlas must’ve been running to pair each raven with a spellbolt.
Thankfully, there were no more splatters… Stone ravens crashed to the ground. They shattered. But they didn’t drive Hermione half-mad with any more of that terrible, wet, stomach-turning sound.
Instead, the gruesome effect was replaced with a recoiling resonance. A raven flock in the hundreds, connected by that magical hivemind, ceased to be in an instant. The mind controlling them must’ve been caught up in Atlas’s petrifying spell. The psychic backlash was a palpable thing, a wave that led to a distant but shiver-inducing human shriek.
They all stopped for a moment, the pursuit going eerily silent. As if the very world was holding its breath. Sarella in particular stared at Atlas with awe and no small amount of fear in her eyes. After that feat of power and control, Hermione couldn’t blame her.
She’d been popping ravens with her bloodline magic, sure. But it’d been one by one, and each required focus and strain on her part to vaporize the water and sodium in their bodies. Heather had been taking out maybe a dozen at a time with her explosive spellbolts. But Atlas? He took on hundreds in the blink of an eye and emerged victorious without a hint of strain or exhaustion in his posture.
If anything was going to put the fear of Magic in their magical Westerosi allies, it’d be something like that. Honestly, it worked on Hermione, too. Only Dumbledore would’ve had such an easy time with a feat like that…
“Well,” Heather said. “That certainly makes things easier.”
Atlas got them moving again rather quickly, “Yes. Yes, it does. Luna? Could you follow the hivemind magic back to its source in the astral and check on our Ravenwright friend for me?”
“You’ll have to carry me as I do~…” Luna teased, but it was clear to see her heart was only half in it.
Atlas just nodded, scooped her into his arms, and motioned for Hermione to continue leading the way. Luna closed her eyes as they struck up a light jog. Hermione felt the barest hint of a shudder in the air as she focused on magically projecting herself. Mind preoccupied, however, Luna’s body still spoke.
“Nevermore, nevermore~… He’s been dead since his first raven fell. Or dying, more accurately. Piece by piece… Each connection took a sliver of himself. Only outside orders gave him direction. The man called ‘Ravenwright’ has been nevermore for a while now~…”
“The-… The dangers of skinchanging,” Sarella nodded warily. “I can’t imagine what they would do to a mind on such a scale.”
Luna blinked her eyes back open, “… I do believe he’s down for the count.”
“Just his master left, then,” Atlas said. “And the other leading archmaesters. I’d say he was the most prominent threat in the Citadel, though. Too, too many birds… Let’s wrap this up quickly.”
They did, at that. Castos had the most warning that they were coming, thanks to his former hold over the Ravenwright. The old, fanatical archmaester gathered his few, but still powerful, enforcers around him. All wielded magic. All were just as broken as the Ravenwright must’ve been. Castos made them into impure weapons to wield magic against Magic for his genocidal philosophy.
When they found him, they also found those weapons. One seemed to be a Northman with a gift for ice magic. Half his body was replaced by that very ice, however, and not in a symbiotic way. Frostbite gripped his form in the height of Oldtown’s summer. What flesh remained was blackened and visibly cracking.
There was another ‘shadowseer’, as Sarella called the first one they’d encountered. He was even more haunted than that poor, broken Maester Tybolt. Everywhere he looked, his eyes projected shadows and something lurking deep within them.
Then, a third: a young man with a twisted and monstrous form made from the body parts of various creatures. Only his pained face remained human, while fangs sprouted from tentacle limbs and hooves stomped and horns twisted into terrible knots.
And a fourth: an impossibly, magically aged maester who seemed to be more dust than flesh. His eyes were gone. His ears as well. Hermione could see no tongue in his mouth… Just more dust.
It was harrowing to see how very wrong magic could go when driven by hatred and hypocrisy. They put the impure weapons out of their misery as quickly and painlessly as they could manage. All the while, Archmaester Castos raged. But he had no magic of his own. Just hatred. He could fight for ‘justice’ by himself in the Citadel Games.
Compared to his fanatical hatred, the other two archmaesters were almost breaths of fresh air. They were ambitious, sure, but not hellbent on exterminating Magic itself. No, they just wished to bend and break it to their mortal wills. It was almost impressive how Castos’s awfulness made that preferable.
Once the leaders and their key enforcers in the Citadel were subdued, Atlas portkeyed them to Marwyn and Dumbledore’s company on the pontoon. Then, they went around the rest of the Citadel, putting up magical screens so the other maesters could watch the ‘games’ to come.
The screens went up in all of the most traveled spaces, and soon enough, they had curious maesters and acolytes gathered around them. Curiosity was followed by disbelief, and then awe. Marwyn’s people on the inside were all but running the show, the only ones with some prior warning via Sarella and Samon.
Through them, it quickly became clear that Marwyn and his school of thought were, rather effectively, claiming victory over the Citadel’s internal struggle. The alternatives were, also rather effectively, being shown in untenable positions. Very quickly, the Citadel learned it would be Marwyn’s way or the highway from here.
And honestly? Hermione wanted nothing more to do with the situation. Castos had rattled her. She didn’t want to look at him after what he’d done, not even to watch Marwyn tear him a new one (both verbally and literally, as it seemed the mage archmaester was joining the ‘games’ to establish his dominance once and for all).
Instead, she turned her focus to something more enjoyable: the loot promised to them from the Citadel. Oh, there were glass candles and another dragon egg for Hagrid to try and hatch and various ancient artifacts of the Seven and the Old Gods, but really, Hermione’s interest did and always would lie in the library and archmaesters’ private book collections.
It was there that she ran into something dark. Something utterly sinister. An offense to the natural order of things greater than any of the three archmaesters’ ambitions or experimentation or hatred…
“What do you MEAN the Citadel ‘doesn’t really utilize’ a coherent cataloging and classification system for its library?! How even-?! WHAT-?! Oh, that just CANNOT stand! FINE THEN! It seems I need to introduce the supposedly premier institute of knowledge in Westeros to a little thing called the Dewey bloody Decimal system!”
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[AN: I just couldn’t stay away from this story. And I felt like I didn’t give it a fair shake this most recent time around. So… Here’s The Grind again. I think I’m going to finish out this Oldtown arc while I plan stuff for the return to KYBERPUNK, and then probably treat both stories how I’ve been treating Ser Ciaphas and the Dead End.
That does mean both of those stories (SC and DE) are going to be put on hold. The Dead End, I can and will come back to (I feel like it’s my infinity story lol). And Ser Ciaphas, while it’s a fun concept, I don’t think I have a clear enough picture of where that story is going to go.
I have much more defined visions in my mind for The Grind and KYBERPUNK, so I’ll be focusing on them. Expect two more chapters for this Oldtown arc (and maybe one aftermath chapter to get it wrapped up nice and clean) before I switch to KYBERPUNK, where Atom and his crew are well on their way to conquering Nar Shaddaa and expanding into the wider galaxy. After that, we’ll see how things go :]
IIIII
Bonus Pics (sauce below)
Comments
QuantumServer
Thanks for the chapter, Love the Grind
CkLance
Easy to imagine Hermione flipping out over an unorganized library 😂
