A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Twentieth Day of the Fourth Month 294 AC

"Evacuating Old Wyk is not a solution," you muse. "It's just managing the scale of our defeat." You try not to hold Asha's look of relief against her. She has not had the chance to see you rule that closely and one could easily mistake practicality in the face of foes with callousness towards one's subjects from a distance and you do count the Ironborn your subjects already, formalities be damned. A flash of anger passes through your thoughts, not extinguished but set aside for now. The Deep Ones will pay dearly for this one way or another. "Vee, I need you to prepare to hold the island together by the power of the Old Gods if need be, not a heart tree but..."

"A net of roots," she finishes, thoughts obviously running along the same path. "There aren't enough sacrifices in the Blood Larder to pay for something like that." Alas, not wholly the same path. You wince at the the Reader's troubled expression. Generally speaking when introducing someone to the notion of blood sacrifice the word 'larder' does not help, accurate as it may be.

In the meantime you, Ser Richard, Lya, Qyburn, Aife and the Twins will seek the power of the sundering at its heart. Knowledge of the arcane, the divine and even the mind arts of the Far Realm in equal measure. Hopefully it will be enough.

"One wonders why we are risking so much so readily?" Qyburn's thoughts reach out towards you with what you judge to be no more that genuine curiosity. "There are not yet so many Ironborn in peril here as to impact even the Seven Kingdoms, much less your own grander realm, and the less said of their lords the better..." he glances towards the Reader, amending himself. "Most of their lords. Still, any exceptional individuals could be preserved in good time thanks to Wisdom Vee's prescience."

"Asha was not wrong about the loss of legitimacy if the Island is destroyed even if the others are spared," You reply, knowing which of your reasons would resonate best. "How many cultists of the Deep Ones are too many?"

"Would you like an actual number? They provide a fascinating look into our enemies capabilities in more limited settings than outright war."

It takes you a moment to find the thread of humor among the alien patterns of his message, which you suppose is part of the jest. You do not feel like answering in kind, "The time for more limited settings is almost at an end."


There is no convenient tunnel or cavern beneath Nagga's Hill, no steps leading into the cold dark below, only bands of rust red and ash-black chert. The gifts of a sea long vanished, a memory as old as any you have ever reached for whispers in your mind's ear. There is no sight, no sound, no smell and only the grinding textures of the stone to touch as you swim through the bedrock in strange and arcane kinship with the xorn. The weirwood staff shines like a pale lantern held delicately in your claws, for there is no reason not to show yourself a dragon down here where beasts older and more terrible still lurk.

You are perhaps nine hundred feet beneath the crest of the hill above, roughly at sea level, when Qyburn's thoughts reach for yours yet again, this time far more urgently. "Time is twisted before us, I can feel/see/hear it." You shake your head from the confusing notion of the flesh-smith not fully translating what his sense of the world to concepts that can fit within the bounds of the Spheres. "The deeper we go the further back we travel into the days past and forgotten. The working we seek is not here, it is not now, but ripples forward from the time of its casting. The leylines twisted and snarled against themselves."

"He was stronger then. I grow stronger." Aife's voice comes soft and oddly dreamlike, confirming Qyburn's words if they required any such. Fuck, you preferred time twisting when it was fey illusion, not some dreadful truth that defies the order of the world.

What do you do?

[] Press on through the temporal effect
-[] Leave arcane markers in your wake invested with your power like breadcrumbs in the tale
-[] Thread your cloak across the path, one coin at a time, more 'real' than any common magic it is more likely to stay in place but there is a risk of losing it
-[] Write in

[] Turn back, better for the Old Gods to spend some of their strength than risk a passage through eldritch chronomancy

[] Write in

OOC: Not quite twenty four hours from when the vote was made but close enough I'd say.