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TWL Chapter - 66
🕑 Added 2025-01-24 16:14:18 +0000 UTCThe Night King watched the anomaly's retreat with something approaching curiosity. Such power, such raw potential - and yet it chose to run away?
The anomaly had done something unprecedented, not just rejecting his magic but seemingly growing stronger from what should have been a fatal blow.
Intriguing.
The method of escape proved even more fascinating than the retreat itself. The frozen ground had split open like a wound in reality, revealing a creature that it had never encountered before - a behemoth of flesh and bone that moved with impossible grace for its size. The beast carved through the earth as easily as a salmon through summer streams, its massive form disappearing into the depths with its precious cargo.
He could have pursued. Could have commanded his armies to give chase, to swarm and overwhelm through sheer numbers. But something gave him pause. The power that had awakened when the anomaly brushed death's door... it resonated with something old. Something that dwelled in the deep places of the world, where even his eternal winter feared to tread.
Let it run. All things would join his army eventually. Time was his greatest weapon, patience his eternal companion. Whether it took years or centuries, winter would claim everything.
He recalled the wights back to him and the anomaly's presence flared again, a lot farther than before. Had it truly recovered so quickly? Perhaps he had given it too much credit - to challenge him again so soon spoke more of desperation than wisdom.
The spear it launched seemingly in retaliation was almost insulting - slow, predictable, destined to fall short of any meaningful target. He watched its arc with cold amusement as it buried itself in the ice almost a league short of where he stood.
Such a waste of-
Click
The world turned to fire.
Not the simple flames of dragons or wildfire, but something fundamental - as if reality itself had been torn asunder and replaced with pure, unfiltered destruction. The blast caught him mid-thought, a wall of force and fury that made even his ancient power quaver. Heat beyond imagining turned his armies to vapor in less time than it took to form a thought.
For the first time in millennia, he felt pain.
The shockwave that followed wasn't just destructive - it was erasure given physical form.
The ground beneath him ceased to exist, transformed into a crater of molten rage.
His consciousness struggled to maintain cohesion through the inferno, desperately weaving layers of protective ice even as they melted away. When the heat finally began to fade, only a cracked cocoon of ice remained where he had stood, his form reduced to little more than a torso and half molten face.
The ground inside the crater still glowed with residual heat, slowly eating away at what remained of his form.
For the first time since the dawn of winter, the Night King threw back his head and screamed - not in fear or pain, but in pure, unadulterated rage.
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I woke up with only a mild headache - surprisingly manageable considering how close I'd come to melting my brain.
Paul mentally signalled to me that we had arrived.
Making my way to the main chamber, I found only Benjen waiting.
"Where'd everyone else go?"
"Paul dropped them at their camp hours ago," he replied, looking somewhat uncomfortable with the current accommodations.
"Oh shit, we're back at the Wall already?" I blinked, trying to orient myself. How long had I been out?
"...How would I know?" Benjen raised an eyebrow.
"Right, never mind." I rubbed my temples, thoughts still a bit scattered.
I'd missed my chance to properly discuss things with Mance, but hopefully Tormund or Ygritte would explain what had happened. They'd seen enough to understand the gravity of the situation.
I needed to figure out how to get the wildlings south of the Wall - wiping out the Night King's army would be pointless if he could just rebuild it with fresh corpses. But I couldn't make any promises without talking to Ned first.
I connected with Paul to figure out exactly where we were and discovered that we were under the forest right next to the Wall. Paul seemed quite uneasy about getting any closer to it.
I briefly had half a mind to see if he could take us under the Wall. But the Wall wasn't just ice and stone; it was old magic, the kind that had kept the Others at bay for millennia. Creating a tunnel felt like drilling a hole in a dam and hoping nothing bad would happen. Plus, leaving a convenient passage for the army of the dead seemed... counterproductive, to put it mildly.
Not wanting to freak out the Night's Watch with Paul's appearance, I had him surface in the forest briefly out of sight of Castle Black and then gave him instructions to take the long way around and meet me back at base.
Benjen and I walked through the trees toward Castle Black's gate. "You've been surprisingly quiet," I noted. "I'm sure you have questions."
"Many," he admitted. "But I imagine the Lord Commander will want to hear those answers as well."
"Fair enough."
The gates opened without fanfare, but the looks I got from the guards were different now - they were a lot more wary.
Seems like the mushroom cloud had been visible even from here.
Commander Mormont met us in the courtyard. "Lord El, glad to see you've returned. Though I gather things didn't go quite as planned?"
I let out a bitter laugh. "That would be an understatement."
"Perhaps we should discuss this somewhere private."
Minutes later, we were settled in his solar with Maester Aemon and Benjen. I let Benjen handle most of the retelling, only jumping in toward the end.
"And then I got skewered and almost died," I explained, keeping my tone light despite the memory. "Decided a tactical retreat was in order."
"So the Others have truly returned," Mormont's face was grim.
"Oh yes," I nodded. "And they're far more terrifying than any of the stories suggest."
"And at what point during your tale did you summon the sun?" he asked wearily.
I smiled, but there was no humor in it. "Let's just say I was a bit pissed about almost dying. Decided to leave the Night King a parting gift - It wasn't the sun, just a weapon I'd built as a last resort. Didn't think I'd need to use it so soon."
“Do you have more?”
"No, I had built just one, which took me months mind you, and it was experimental."
"Did it achieve its purpose?"
"Kill the Others? Well, I definitely took out most of his army. But the Night King himself?" I shook my head. "After what I've seen, I doubt it. But we've bought ourselves time - he'll need to rebuild his forces from scratch."
"And the wight you meant to capture as proof?"
"Ah." I winced. "That... may have slipped my mind between almost dying and ensuring everyone's escape."
Mormont waved it off. "We've seen enough to know this threat is real. The question is: how do you plan to convince the rest of the realm?"
"First things first - Benjen needs to come to Winterfell. His word will help convince Ned and the Northern lords. The real challenge will be getting them to accept bringing the wildlings south of the Wall or at least let them settle close enough to the wall"
"That's going to be difficult," Mormont frowned. "There's too much bad blood."
"I know. But we need every living body we can get to defend the Wall when the time comes."
I stood up, stretching. "And by the way - no more ranging beyond the Wall, especially where you saw that mushroom cloud. That area's going to be poisoned for a few generations."
"What?" everyone asked, alarmed.
"Yeah, even beyond and the wildlings were slightly poisoned from the blast alone. Not to worry, I have healed you up now, but that doesn't mean you are immune to it."
Looking at their still wary faces, I added, "Don't worry about it, just make sure no one goes close. It's not really something that's visible or readily apparent or fast, but as long as no one goes close to it, you're good." I waved off their concern.
Anyway, I've got to head back - lots to do, plans to make, an apocalypse to prevent. Benjen, get to Winterfell as soon as you can. You know what, show me to your horse, I'll make it the fastest horse to ever exist."
As I made my way out, I remembered something.
'Oh fuck, I just realized I completely forgot about Hobbs. I hope he ran away in time.'
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I thought hard on what my next steps need to be as I was flying towards Winterfell. Dealing with the Game of Thrones was no longer a priority, just a nuisance at best.
That brought me to pause - I just realized the knowledge I had of this world was woefully lacking. Sadly, it made sense because I hadn't really made it past the first episode of the show and I hadn't read the books.
My entire knowledge of this world was based on fanfiction and memes, so I probably would need to stop depending on it.
I definitely needed to stop messing around and get stronger. My powers were capable of a lot more, but they seemed to be locked until some condition was met. It would be good to know what those conditions were, but life wasn't that fair.
I knew I had a few more years before the Night King had his entire undead horde ready to start marching towards the Wall.
I was going to need redundancies in place if there was some prophecy fuckery going on.
Arya needed to be trained if she was destined to kill the Night King.
Now, the training with the Faceless Men wasn't something I could give her, but that didn’t mean she couldn't start her water dancing lessons right away. Winterfell had enough visitors from Essos that I should be able to leverage some favors to get someone to teach her.
What about Jon? He was already quite strong. I could just upgrade him to peak human form now, but then he would become like me - someone who just overpowers his opponents. He wouldn't develop the instinct that comes with real battles. He was really skilled already at swordsmanship; I couldn't defeat him while relying solely on my base strength. He just needed real battle experience, which could be built up over time. I could take him on a journey to Essos.
And Bran? There was no way I was gonna let him become Bran the Broken.
That reminded me - I wanted to get my hands on one of the Children of the Forest to see what they were all about. I still wasn’t sure what to do about him.
Let's put a pin on that, I could just tell Ned that I had seen the future and divulge parts of it to signify the importance of training his kids.
Then there was Daenerys. The mother of dragons would be great to have, especially since I could make her dragons much more dangerous. Ensuring her loyalty shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Wait, if I timed it right it should be really easy. I should be somewhere in the beginning of the first episode as far as I can tell.
Wasn't she about to be married to that horse lord? Hmm, I don't think I will be able to make it in time for the wedding. After that, it would be much harder to convince her—Stockholm syndrome and all that.
It seems I'm stuck at logistics again. Ugh.
Wait a minute, I had access to magic!
Logistics should not be a problem.
"Valayra, I need your help with a spell."
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A/N: Hello everyone! Surprise chapter because I just got rejected from another job after getting to the final round after five fucking interviews, so now I am channeling all that rage in the only healthy way I know - by playing god on a Google doc. Expect a lot more chapters this week till that rage subsides.
Sincerely,
Elfon
Comments
Radiant Tiefling
Thank you for the chapter.
Matt
Surprised that it took this long to realize Dany was the key to stuff going good
