The wind was blinding.
It was an insulting fact to Arlan Stormcrown, who had long since prided himself on a mastery of the world around him, an unflinching control of what reality could and could not be. But the man who had been king had long since lost control of his environs and longer still lost control of himself. The world he inhabited was primitive and unworthy, possessing little of import save that which he himself had made his mark. So it made sense then, that he would keep on in that regard, that he would keep calm and carry on when all seemed different and strange.
And so he Spoke and with his speech the world around him was cleansed and cleared of the blinding snows. All around him what wasonce unseen became seen, and as it turned so the pale crystalline eyes of the Giants around him became painfully clear. The amassed bone-soldiers that lingered at the base of their heels did not go unnoticed either, lingering as they were as if carrion hounds.
A memory of the Soul Cairn flickered in his mind, the faintest recollection of Serana returned to him: She had always loved dogs.
The giants flexed in challenge, and as they did the wights underneath charged. The old Dragonborn was worldless in response, rushing forward with equal speed. He pushed through the corpse warriors with an effortless speed, his mere fists crushing skulls into dusts and breaking enough bones that even his supernaturally raised opponents could not follow in his wake. He raced and raced ever onwards, his attention set solely on the giants.
He had fought his share of them in Skyrim, distant kin to the elves who had lingered in barbarism and primitivity when all others had advanced. The Thalmor had been fond of using them as mercenary auxiliaries to their Justicars, providing them mediocre payments of cloth or metals in exchange for their strength of arms.
The Skyrim Giants were thusly thinned out prior to the Second Great War, cut down in such numbers that they could no longer countenance accepting the gifts of the Aldmeri Dominion. Those who had survived were shepherded to the Reach with all their possessions, made to swear oaths of loyalty to Madanach, lord of Markarth and the ruling Jarl there by the Moot's accounting (and Arlan's making). The Tall Folk of Skyrim were hearty, but little came of their migration to the Reach, and year by year their numbers had thinned for various reasons. In the end, they proved but a footnote in the history of Arlan Stormcrown's rule.
But these Other-bound titans had had kings, from what he could understand. Lords of their own, a language beyond primeval, even something halfway resembling a civilization. And yet they had fallen into the service of others, however unwillingly it might have been.
It was distasteful, enough so to dull any sense of satisfaction in fighting these corpse-slaves of petty gods and sorcerer-kings. But then, was he himself not a corpse-slave in his own right, bound to another sorcerer-king?
But that thought came and left quickly, passing through him in a breath's span as he ducked under the low swinging fist of a giant. As the fist was pulled back for a second round, Arlan leapt on. His gauntlets clenched into the greyed and pulpy flesh of the beast, and with every grasping motion he made more seemed to fall away. But he persevered and climbed on, crawling his way upwards the giant's arm as it attempted to shake and swat him off.
The creatures were too large to cut down by hand, and the Thu'um was too finite for his purposes. If he was to see these grave-disturbed automatons given peace, then he would need to employ the same tactics he had at Hardhome, the same had used even earlier at Markarth, when High Rock necromancers schemed to force the city away from Skyrim during one of his many absences. After all, if one could suborn the dead to their willing… then so could another-
Ah, he'd finally reached the damnable thing's shoulder. Now all he had to do was climb into its ear, as he'd witnessed of the Yeerkish mind-worms that Hermaeus Mora had so loved to cultivate.
Climb in, and speak the words to assume direct control.
VOPRAAN DINOK SOVAAR
----
Elsewhere, a younger dragon fought a battle of its own, roaring with great irritation as he clawed through yet another batch of wights. Grumpy indeed was the Doom of King's Landing, for the cold of the land was little endearing and since his arrival had found himself longing for his tower-topped home at Harrenhal.
But he was a dragon, a creature of primal and primordial might. For his was the strength of armies whole, a strength that could sunder nations whole and terrify even the doughtiest of knights. To grumble would be beneath him, and to openly complain would mark him as weak-willed among his elders.
And that thought burned in his chest more than the dozen bleeding cuts across his body, itched and scratched at his heart more than any clawing undead. He was the youngest by far, and certainly the weakest. But he would not show himself any less than their equal in fortitude.
Even if the fierce winds and high snows were determined to chip away at his resolve.
So again he roared out of irritation, an arcing wave of orange-red flames following soon after to set alight the biting gnats about him.
Miserable mites, the lot of them-
A spike of ice exploded upwards from beneath him, catching the sinews of his right wing before piercing on through. Valonqar bit back the pain to breath forth more flames, melting away the ice and cauterizing the wound. Furling his wings as close to his frame as he could, the dragon flattened to the earth, awaiting his new foes warily.
And soon they were upon him, cloaked by fog and mist though they were.. It had left their left their make and numbers difficult to discern, and it was only as they closed the distance that the sounds of clopping on hard ice and the vaguest flickers of light on greyish armour provided a target.
The dragon reared up in challenge, before charging forward. He rumbled forward, his speed limited by his injured and flattened wings as he did so. Ice rose up and thickened around him with his every step, only to be soon boiled away into steam by his fiery breath. On that pattern repeated, slightly slowing him down until he struggled to advance.
As he fought for his freedom of movements, the Other knights split and swung about on either side. Each wing arced about in a semi-circle, forming two halves of a whole as their ice-lances lowered and took aim. Both wings turned straight on as their charges began, the lances holding unerringly with a precision no human could hope to mimic.
And so they slammed into his sides, many of the lances breaking on his hardened hide while others found purchase. Valonqar's black blood seeped out of the fresh wounds, boiling and steaming as it burned through the lances. He bit back the pain once more, more difficult though it was than before.
The eyes of the Others shined bright through the mists, and as they did the melting lances took new shape as ice and snow spread across the whole of his form. Battered, bleeding and immobilized, his flames were slowly proving insufficient, even to clear away the hoarfrost that was slowly reaching up his neck…
The darkness was so very cold, thought Valonqar.
Too cold in fact, to suffice for a dragon's grave.
And so he breathed again, and so he struggled to free himself. His defiance was tepid but definite. His existence was fading, but yet present. He would not die in this barren cold place, as so many fleeting meat-things had before him. He was a dragon, a Dovah of a most ancient brotherhood and order. His was a race of beings as old as time, if the old one's whispered tales could be believed. Though the weakest and youngest, he was the bearer of a legacy stretching across eras and worlds.
He could not die here.
He would not die here.
As those thoughts came and went, his wounds began to glow with a faint white shimmer.
And a strange new understanding marked him, leaving him…
Stranger.
YOL TOR SHUUL
And so the world began to burn in proper earnest.
----
"You fight very well Dragon's Song," chittered the Child from atop your shoulders "Very well indeed!"
You can only grimace in response, as you look over yourself in disdain. Your hair is matted with worm ichor and your armour stinks of their pale-milk flesh that reminds you of nothing so much as fermented eggs. After you had worked to slay the first great worm, a dozen more had rose from the earth about you as new challengers.
They had been more difficult than their predecessor.
Frustratingly so, in fact.
You make to respond, but as you gasp instead as a wave of pain ripples through you. Not sharp, nor too painful. It's more of a dull gnawing from within, leaving you slightly emptier somehow.
"Dragon's Song? Are you alright?"
"Something's not right," you mutter "But it'll need to wait. How much longer until our reinforcements arrive?"
"Not long," chittered the Child happily, "I can smell their pollen on the winds. Soon their boughs will blanket the land, and the Cold Ones will soak the snows with their blood! This war will end today!"
"You keep thinking that," you offer with a half-smile of agreement "And we'll all make it happen soon enough. In the meantime, there's still tens if not hundreds of thousands of enemies out here."
"The wights will fall like kindling beneath your confederates," was the Child's response "And I will claim a great worm before nightfall! This day will be one of victory, Dragon's Song! Our names will be all the longer for it!"
-----
Though the host of the Haunted Forest had joined you at last, their arrival had coincided with fresh enemy reinforcements. Hundreds of thousands of wights seemed to march on your positions from beyond the sloping snowy hills, bulwarked by giants, great spiders and more of the white worms you had fought yourself. Between their ranks came many of the Others themselves, standing aside in such a way that their presence could not be ignored, that the realization that they themselves commanded this host was always hammered home.
And so you had stood your ground, you and yours. The Children of the Forest had seemed to have raised the very trees at your behest, who one by one made to grapple with the more monstrous of the force sent against you. More than once you saw one of their creatures overwhelm a giant or crush a spider underfoot, their great heights dwarfing even these creatures. Only against the ice-breathing dragons that came last did they falter, the diving runs they committed necessitating a different touch.
Valonqar's to be specific, for the young dragon had taken to the skies against his unholy counterparts with a fierceness and intelligence you had thought beyond him. Ten times had the enemy flight come across your ground-bound force, and ten times had Valonqar seen them off with no little effort. Your suspicions grew with every parry, and it was only confirmed when you came across Arlan climbing out of a crater dwarfing that which you had left in the Thenns.
"He can Speak? Truly?"
"I cannot explain it. Perhaps it was due to Euron's feeding on my own spirit, tainting the divine ties by which I had awakened his mind. You had taken my power by defeating him after all, linking you in turn to Valonqar. That's as close a theory as I can craft, I'm afraid."
And that was as much time as the two of you shared, before the Others fell upon you again. Again and again, they fell upon you, and more and more did the now twice dead pile at your feet. Slowly you were driven back into the boughs of your Children compatriots, fighting from what high ground they could provide you as best you could. Your Speech was said clear and well from atop more than one bark-hide titan, and their effects struck far and wide much to your enemies' misfortune.
And yet when night came the battle proved undecided, for you were left only a few of your confederates with whom to confer. The fighting had spread you, Arlan and Valonqar far and wide as the Others sought to direct your attentions elsewhere and as the day dragged on that had proved disastrous for the Children. Only three dozen or so had been left of the ancient folk before your march north, and the day's bloody work had seen only ten survive, with one of those being your then current companion.
Hollowed he seemed to you now, when before he had seemed so fiery and full of heart. In his eyes, you saw the same weariness you had espied in Arlan's on occasion, and though the Child had slain a worm and lengthened his name he seemed to find no succor in it.
"It was as the old songs said," he muttered over and over to himself "They are unceasing, unyielding. Unceasing, unyielding…"
His mutterings lingered a while before he could look away and onwards, joining your council with great effort. His small feet gingerly stepped over the field of corpses that separated you all from the snowy earth, and with each crunch or plop his steps made he seemed to retreat a little more into himself.
"We have won a victory here today," he said slowly, as if unsure of even that, "All have lost dearly here today, save you and yours. Were it not for that…"
He pauses briefly, before speaking again, "We must march onwards. We must seize Amaranthine."
"Amaranthine?"
"It is their home, insofar as anything could be called that. A city of glimmering ice and eternal winter from which they once openly reigned, in the time before the First Men crossed the sea. A home to the Others, a monument to what they could create and fathom. Since the Long Night's beginning however, no Child has so much as reached it, let alone glimpsed it."
"Hm. Amaranthine, you called it?"
"Yes. We named it so, for it seemed unlikely to ever melt away from a summer's gaze. It is not far from here, and is among the few things counted as precious by their ilk. We have bled them greatly here and now, and what little is left of their host will have retreated there. They will no doubt raise up their magics as best as they are able to ward us off, but it will be futile."
He pauses again.
"You truly are the stronger."
"And take heart in that," you say as gently as you can manage "This is a victory here today, as you said. As true a victory as any of the great battles your forefathers fought. Even we at our greatest heights never dreamed to be so near to a final victory."
The Child nods slowly.
"It is strange," he says, seemingly to himself "To see both final victory and end. My people will not survive this, and neither will theirs. In the end, all of us will perish."
"Come and make ready," you say with no small weariness "This night must be the end of it. To Amaranthine we must go."
The Child shudders.
"To the north, then. In a valley buried so deep that not even the faintest glimmer of the sun's light blesses it: Amaranthine, the City of Air and Darkness."
----
Compared to all that has come before, the march is short.
Yet the anticipation dulls your keen senses, warps your expectations as you inch ever closer.
This hidden city, this land of air and darkness as the Child called it…
It speaks to you in a way, providing answers to something you hadn't thought to question.
The Others were a people – a species – not unlike the Children of the Forest or the Giants. They weren't simply ethereal demons, in the make of the liturgies of the Faith of the Seven. They weren't the servants of the Lord of the Seven Hells, or the Great Other, or any other great mystical or supernatural force. They were real, the same way paying your taxes and taking a shit were real: Uncomfortable facets of life.
But could they be reasoned with? The greater part of you thought no, believed otherwise, weighed down by Arya's death and Bran's corruption. And certainly the wildlings had not lived in peace beyond the Wall, attempting to flee south as they had. At Hardhome you yourself had taken down the corpse of your supposed father Robert Baratheon, and how you had found him displayed no understanding of dignity, kindness or mercy.
Did they understand those concepts and if so, did they follow them? Or was there perhaps one rule for what the Others did amongst themselves, and what they did to those not of them? Did it matter to them, that they had raised again and again so many corpses into undeath, or were their lifeless puppets merely a means to an end?
"How do they think?" you mutter half to yourself, half to the Child seated atop your head "Why do they do what they do? The army of the dead, the taint of their weapons, the magics they practice… Are they all of one mind? Do they simply exist to haunt us?"
"They are as we have said before, Dragon's Song." Chattered the Child to you "They are the Children of Air and Darkness, and there is nothing that thrives on that alone. They do not and have never seen the worth of all living things as we have. Even before the First Men crossed the Narrow Sea and made landfall in the place you call Dorne, we knew this. Even ourselves and the Children of Stone were little loved, more akin to lichen than living creatures."
"So that's it then? The death of all living things and a lifeless realm with which to content themselves?"
"You see the land around us. Besides those that they have raised, and the primordial worms that they have cowed to their service and dwell far deep into the earth, what else lives here? The land is unmarked and untouched."
"And your forests are not?"
"To them, our forests might as well as be great bonfires of unwelcome life. Even the lowliest beetle colony would to them seem too much."
The Child sighs.
"We have always favored the preservation of all life, regardless of action. It was only the avarice and greed of the First Men and those who followed them that drove us to war. The Pact upon the God's Eye was meant to change that, to safeguard the beauty we saw fall to ruin. To them, beauty is to be found only in desolation, in the silence of all living things."
"I can't understand that," you admit "I meditate and reflect upon myself, yes. But a dead world, a silent world…"
"It is their sickness. Life is brutal, unceasing and often very short. It is chaotic and dangerous, and moreover it simply is. They do not accept this, this reign of chaos that defies their dream of an eternal order."
Your thoughts filter back to that fateful day at Winterfell.
"Everything that you've witnessed will be as if a leaf in the forest. Even King's Landing will seem but a candle's flicker if compared with what is to come. The wintry nights will come again Jon, and all will suffer for it. From the Wall to Dorne, they will freeze in their beds and by their fires. A thousand deaths and one will come, and a thousand deaths and one will be. Except for those they spare, those I spare. So bend the knee, Jon. I don't want to lose you. I don't want to lose anyone else."
"When I spoke to my cousin at Winterfell, corrupted and tainted as he was… he was sure that some would be spared, that some life would live on. Was he wrong, or did they simply lie in his visions?"
"There have been those who have worshipped them among the Free Folk, if that is what you refer to. The Others have always tolerated their existence so as to cultivate greater numbers of fodder for the war."
"But after the war's won? What then?"
"I can only speculate. Perhaps they've grown accustomed to being worshipped? If Westeros whole is made into what the Lands Beyond the Wall became, then perhaps some small fraction of the greater mass of humanity will be left to live. Broken and scared, knowing no other succor than what the Others bring them."
"So that's it, then? They want an empty and quiet land, orderly and settled. But only so much so, so as to allow for lickspittles and zealots?"
"Power corrupts all things great king, and the power to decide what may live and what must die is a power absolute. It would corrupt even the noblest soul, erode even the strongest ideal. Never mistake strength for infallibility, for only the foolish or mad know themselves to be correct in all dealings."
"Another lesson learned from your dealings with the First Men, I suppose."
The Child did not respond.
You sigh to yourself, thinking.
"Arlan," you say aloud "Did you ever care to understand the Thalmor?"
"Understand the Thalmor?" half-grumbled the elder Dovah in response "I didn't need to understand them, Jon. They stood across from me and against mine, and that was enough for me to know what needed to be done."
"Hmm."
"You have a kinder heart and a more curious heart, little brother. Do not let that lead you down unanswerable paths. Some monsters may have dark beginnings, but other monsters are simply just that: monsters."
"Beauty is to be found only in desolation and in the silence of all living things," you recount aloud "It's certainly a monstrous perspective to be sure. I can't begin to understand such an embrace to emptiness… and yet there's a part of me that wants to try."
"The human part, driven to answers? Or the other, disquieted by ignorance?"
"I don't know."
"But you know curiosity can be as deadly as mercy, don't you?"
"So what will you do?"
Faintly, you can hear a ringing bell's echoes.
"Close this matter out, with no further delay. My heart sickens of this."
"Gein laat tiid, ruz."
