The Game of Crusading Thrones, Self-Insert Edition (GoT CK2)

(Not Quite Declining: 1d100+19 +10 (Favored by the Gods) = 58.)

"Your offer is gracious and kindly meant, my lady, but I fear that it would be unwise to enter any such arrangement on such short notice. I would pray a while before saying yea or nay," you say, giving the Lady a short bow. You remember the rules of dealing with the fey well enough, although you do not think that means you can handle them.

Still, you will always be courteous, not eat or drink, make no bargains, and never offer thanks. And hopefully, you will get out of here alive.

You make your way through the crowd, aiming for the heart tree. Your steps are careful at first, but you hear someone playing a melody as bright as sunrise on pipes and you find yourself stepping lighter and faster, almost dancing as you dodge whirling revelers. Many times you are forced to avert your eyes and look at the ground, for such is the beauty around you that you fear you will lose yourself in the hypnotic movement if you watch. Also, it would feel rather shameless, considering what some of them are wearing.

Still, there are no real obstacles in your path, no clever traps or hidden daggers, and as you step before the heart tree you feel yourself relax. You drop down to one knee, Fenrir laying on one side, the shadowcat on another, your raven perching on a bent branch above your head.

For a moment, you open your third eye and see all that is around you. It is too much, it is too bright. The whole glade blazes with magic and power, burning you. You can see nothing through the glare, you cannot distinguish between the fey workings and the power of the heart tree, you cannot see your own flesh. You shut your eyes and the burning ceases, leaving you panting as you study the heart tree with your mundane senses instead.

The face is more finely carved than any you have seen. It seems alive, so alive you almost think it is breathing. The air is silent and still around you, the sounds of revelry muted and distant. You feel your heart slow as the peace of the heart tree spreads over you like a warm blanket.

The face is solemn, looking out at you with the weight of ages. Sorrowful red tears pour from its eyes.

The face is smiling, young and fresh.

The face is screaming, the wrath in its gaze making you tear at your own flesh to escape the sight.

The face is gone, torn away by ax and fire, leaving a gaping hole that all the world could not fill.

You are falling, the heart tree drawing you forth. You are helpless to resist as a million voices begin babbling in your ear. You can make out a few words, but they vanish in the chaos as colors flash before your eyes, green and red and white and gray, all swirling into each other.

You are alone. Fenrir is gone, your other beasts as well. You cannot even sense them. You stand on a vast, lonely plain. Piled beneath your feet are bones. Bones of men and women, bones of beasts, bones of things you do not recognize. They crunch under your feet as you run. You don't know where you are going but you know it is important.

You are in a forest. Bones crunch under your feet, but now they rise from the ground as well, towering pillars that rip at the black sky, tearing it asunder even as they raise it up. There are great rents in them and blood drips out.

You are at a temple. There is no transition, the bone trees are gone, and so are the bones. Instead, there is only hard-packed dust and a towering pyramid of oily black stone. Looking at it makes you queasy, but nevertheless you walk forwards. Carved into the stone steps are beasts. Wolf, lion, shadowcat, griffon, falcon, kraken, serpent. A thousand beasts and one. You take a step onto the stone and you stand before the altar.

The altar is a foul thing, slick with corruption, tainted by poison. Looking at it makes something ache in your head and in your bones. You hate it. You want to ruin it, to smash it, but you cannot move. Your eyes close and open.

A great white serpent coils around it now, slowly rising into the air, its head splitting into three. The altar stops hurting you. "Child of ice and stone and sky, child of distant lands, remember the pact. Music to bind, iron to break. Courage to strengthen. Remember and seek He Who Bent." The heads wind among themselves, three becoming one, and you are before the temple once more.

But it is different now. The stone is still oily, but the carved beasts seem grander and prouder. They are made of something else now. You reach forwards and touch the wolf. It's dragonglass. And growing over the temple are vines, thousands of vines. Some are of white with red leaves, some are red with white leaves. They twine and weave until you cannot tell which is which, and wherever they touch the temple changes, the oily stone crumbling away.

Something is changing, but you cannot see what. You are gone, and instead of the temple, you stand at a crossroads. There is a hag there, wearing a blindfold. No, there are three. No, there is one. "Choose," she whispers, pointing at each direction in turn.

Down one direction is broken ice and the shards of a long shadow. Down another is a face of red sap and a bloody sword. Down a third is fire and fang. Down the last is the way you came. "Choose!" they cry, wailing and gnashing their long teeth. They begin to surround you, three becoming one becoming three as they tear at their ragged robes and ragged flesh with yellow nails, peeling themselves away in strips, leaving them as nothing but dancing bones. "Choose!"

A voice echoes around you, a familiar one as a storm rages and weirwood roots grow around the hags, trapping them in wooden cages. "BEGONE TWISTED CHILDREN! BEGONE FROM THE DREAM!!" The echo stops and the hags are gone, the only sign of their presence the wind blowing a few strips of torn cloth away from you.

Another voice, this one cracked and ancient speaks again, and you hear other voices within it. "Be wary, favored. For though great is the knowledge within the Greendream, all things have their price. Be wary…" the voices trail off, leaving only a hushed, expectant silence.

Where do you go?

[] Forth to broken ice and a long shadow

[] Left to red sap and a bloody sword

[] Right to fire and fang

[] Back and back to your flesh