If you want to support check out my patréon at spatréon/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
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123 AC, Skagos
The other burned red, like a coal left too long in the hearth. His skin was stretched thin over sharp bones, hair like milk spilt in ink. He looked at Lord Harry with a completely fearful and hateful expression, "You! What have you done?"
Rhaena did her best not to gape at the apparition of the man before her. She could feel Solarys' unease at his presence as well, and she had to ask herself just how she got herself into this. The world had been so simple just a few days ago. She was the daughter of a prince, likely the future wife of the next Lord of Driftmark. Her sister was a Dragonrider, and the Hightowers wished to usurp her stepmother as the next ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.
It wasn't exactly a happy world, but it made sense.
So far, after just a few days with the Potters, she had seen a bolt of lightning summoned from the cloudless sky and strike the Cannibal. She had seen creatures of living fla and wind in the depths of the Dragonmont. She had seen the heart of Dragonstone, a dragon egg that was as large as a mountain. And today, she had seen the living bodies of the Others, the infamous White Walkers – because why wouldn't they be real as well – and spoken with one of the Children of the Forest.
And now, there was a ghost of a man glaring hatefully at them, the creature who seed to be responsible for Root's death. Was he a ghost? He certainly looked dead, with his stretched skin as pale as a corpse, and his single glowing red eye.
Rhaena should have been afraid. She knew that. But instead, she felt anger, sothing that had simred for years, ever since her mother's death, all of it coming back. This creature had killed Root, and she would know why. She would make him pay.
Lord Harry and Lady Daphne also seed angry, glaring at the ghost of a man, until Lord Harry put up a smile on his face, one that made her shiver despite herself, "Hello there. That was quite rude, interrupting our conversation like that."
"You! Stranger! What have you done?"
"Oh, don't be like that," the sorcerer spoke up casually, "You're so uncomposed for a man your age, or can one call you even a man?"
The ghost glared at Lord Harry hatefully, and the sorcerer just continued, "Oh, co on, everyone knows that astral projection is a very dangerous thing to do against soone who actually knows what they're doing. You will not be leaving here without my saying, believe that, and given that you killed soone I was in the middle of such a lovely conversation with, you'll have to take responsibility for that, at the very least."
And yet, the ghost seed unwilling to talk, glaring at Lord Harry resolutely.
The sorcerer's smile did not change, but Rhaena could feel the tension in the room increase, "Oh, co on. Don't be like that. I can be very persuasive, you see."
Suddenly, the ghost-man began to shake, with what seed to be golden veins glowing all over his body. The man let out a hoarse, pained gasp as the glow spread, crawling like fire beneath parchnt-thin skin.
Rhaena didn't understand any of it, but she watched the man writhe and hiss as the golden veins pulsed brighter. He looked like he was being burned from within, like sothing sacred and angry had taken hold of him. Maybe it had.
Then he scread out, "Stop! Stop it, please!"
And just like that, the trembling stopped. "What was that?"
Lord Harry still had the exact sa smile on his face, as if nothing had happened. "That was Ti catching up to you. You didn't seriously think that your little actions would have no consequences, did you?"
"I don't understand," The ghost-man replied, "How is this possible?"
"Alright," Lord Harry spoke up, rolling his eyes, "You obviously don't understand what Ti is, or how it works, so, which actually explains a lot about what works here. You're of this ti, that I can easily tell, I want to say you're around a couple of centuries in advance, if I had to guess. It's through a form of scrying with your soul, enough to affect subtle changes at the cost of your own life force."
The man's lone red eye widened. Lord Harry's predictions were on the spot, if Rhaena had to guess. There was a lot that she didn't understand, but she knew that Lord Harry said that the man was from the future. Was that true? Was that even possible?
How would the world even be after such a long ti? It made her feel small, just a speck in front of the man who could walk through ti unscathed.
Her thoughts were interrupted as Lord Harry continued, "You see Ti as a story, a book whose pages you can read. It's not. Every ti you get involved, every action you take in the past changes things, as long as it doesn't affect your present. Curiously, everything you see actually restricts your actions, because in your tiline, you can't see it."
"The ink is dry," the ghost-man simply replied.
"That's not quite it. Ti can be rewritten if one knows what they're doing and has the power to do so. It's a very strong force of nature, one that tries to nd itself on its own. It seems like the world itself would resist your change, and it does, because you cannot change what you know is a fact, what could change the present. Even then, you'd need a lot of power to change things, sothing like perhaps, a network of life force, a tree, channelled through a soul, tied to it so completely that it could use the energy of the Weirwood Trees as if it were its own life force. You have paid a very steep price for this indeed."
"How do you know?" The ghost man rasped.
The sorcerer shrugged, "I can hear it on you, but that's not the right question to ask. What if you could change a fixed point in ti? What if you had the power to change sothing fundantally, sothing that you know is an absolute fact? What if soone fought against Ti and won? Well then, you end up with a Paradox, either the world splits, a tiline becos two, or Ti tries to erase what's wrong, like, for example, killing the soul acting as the bridge between the two points of ti. And believe , no matter how much power is in the network of Weirwood trees, it's barely more than a drop in the ocean of Ti."
"You seek to erase ?"
"Oh, no. I just made a decision to make a few changes, and then I changed my mind. Your soul is trapped here, and it will remain stuck here without my say-so, and believe , being unmade, your very soul destroyed, is a far worse fate than Death. Oh, look at rambling, I have always been excited when I talk about magic."
The ghost's expression turned neutral, and he asked, "What do you want?"
"Oh, I want many things: to uncover the mysteries of this world, to glimpse eternity and beyond, to understand the world. But let's start with your na… I want to say… Brynden. Oh, your connection to the Weirwood tree occluded it well enough, but you still have your sense of identity, and with it your na. A bastard, a kinslayer, an advisor, a crow, they're all identities you've taken over the years. Now, you only killed Root when she was about to answer a certain question. I would like to know why?"
"You know why," the man, Brynden, rasped back, "So knowledge is too dangerous to be revealed. The Earthsingers are old creatures, and so things are better left forgotten."
"Perhaps, but I would make my judgnt. If a god created the White Walkers, with the sole purpose to destroy every living thing on Planetos, then I would like to know more."
"Why do you care, Stranger? Why do you ddle in the affairs that do not concern you?"
"Curiosity, I suppose," Lord Harry answered without any hesitation.
"Curiosity?" the ghost-man, Brynden, repeated with a stunned look on his face, "You would jeopardise centuries of careful planning, on the desperate hope to stop the end of all things. This is a responsibility that I have shouldered, a burden that I suffer through, a purpose that I sacrificed everything for. And you have decided to destroy it all for sothing as banal as curiosity."
The sorcerer, though, snorted in amusent, "Plans… This is really funny. That plan of yours must be a very flimsy thing that you need to kill soone two centuries in the past, just to make sure things don't spiral out of control. You're not used to being denied, are you, little Raven? Of things not working out. You'll have to grow out of that little habit if you stand a chance at saving humanity."
"You don't understand," he finally said, voice raw. "You ddle in a tapestry you cannot unravel. Root was a thread. A frayed one, but vital. Her death was necessary."
"But why?" the sorcerer asked, "Why was it necessary? Why did you not want her to speak with ?"
The one-eyed man remained silent, and Lord Harry shook his head bitterly, "You don't know, do you? I should have seen it. You're the puppet, but not the will. You paid a very steep price indeed. Was it fear, I wonder, that drove you to accept such a fate?"
"What do you know of fear, stranger?" the ghost-man exclaid with anger and frustration in his voice, "I have seen the end! I have lived through it! I saw the world enveloped in an endless winter. I have bargained with the gods. I have sacrificed my own blood to hold the tide for one more generation. You think yourself wiser because you wear no crown, carry no title. But you…"
"I never claid to be wise," Harry interrupted softly, "just curious. But I am not the one who built a prison of ti and filled it with corpses."
The room fell quiet.
The sorcerer continued, "The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common - they don't change their views to fit the facts. They change the facts to fit their views, which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs changing."
"Who are you?" Brynden finally asked.
"Oh, I'm just a traveller, going about, seeing interesting things, eting interesting people, and maybe even right a few wrongs along the way."
"I don't believe that."
Lord Harry snickered, "Luckily, your opinion ans less than nothing to ."
Suddenly, the ghost-man started to twist in pain, his crimson eye glowed slightly, and he started to let out red tears. He spoke in a scratchy tone, unnatural, like it was spoken by thousands of voices at once. It wasn't the common tongue, or High Valyrian, Rhaena knew that, but she could understand it all the sa, "STRANGER!"
The entire cavern shook with the voice as it spoke. Rhaena felt herself shiver in fright. It was more than when she stared at the Cannibal's face, alone, knowing that she would likely die seconds later. It was sothing fundantal that she was facing sothing more than human, sothing so powerful that she couldn't even describe it.
She felt the urge to be pressed down, and was only held up by Lady Daphne, who finally looked at the arrival with seriousness in her eyes.
And yet, Lord Harry remained unperturbed, unconcerned by the pressure that the ghost now emanated, "Here you are," he spoke casually, "The power behind the man."
"LEAVE!"
"Oh, but we've just started to get to know one another. My na is Harry Potter. This is my lovely wife, Daphne. Oh, this is Rhaena, her little dragon is Solarys."
"INTERLOPER!" The voices answered, and Rhaena could feel the anger stemming from them.
"Now, that's just rude. Here I am making introductions, and you're being all judgy and pushy. And rude. I have to say rude twice."
"YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE."
Then Rhaena felt herself being pushed to the ground. It was just for a second, but she felt it, the stillness, a pressure older than oaths, the kind that made the bones ache and the mind falter. Rhaena stumbled back without aning to, as if sothing inside her scread to run. Solarys snarled, wings flaring in panic.
She felt like her breath was being taken from her, and in that endless second, she thought that she would die, in this cavern, halfway across the world, and yet just as quickly as it appeared, the feeling disappeared completely.
Lord Harry stepped in front of her, his face devoid of his previous amusent, devoid of the kindness and mischievousness he should have. He waved his hand, and a scythe appeared in his hand. Their blades looked like a rainbow in solid form. The weapon released a pressure of its own, eting that of the apparition dead on.
Both forces battled, the cavern shaking from the conflict, before it stopped. Lord Harry stepped forward and spoke up in a serious tone, "Your little raven asked who I am. There have been many attempts to kill , I've lost count. Gods, demons, mages, n, entities beyond them, all of them have tried. None of them succeeded. Not a single one. They all lost, and burned, and ran. That's who I am. So, tell , is this a fight you want to pick?"
And then, the ghost, no, the thing behind it, pulled away. The projection twisted once, like smoke unravelling in the wind, and then vanished, leaving behind only silence.
Rhaena released a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
Lord Harry turned back, brushing a speck of dust from his coat. "Well, that was dramatic," he said. "Now, I suppose that's enough excitent for today. Let's go ho."
In the blink of an eye, they disappeared, leaving a destroyed cavern and an empty nest of Weirwoods, devoid of the dead Dragon Egg that it previously held.
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AN: I wanted to add a bit more tension to the expedition. It's sothing I'm planning to tie to other expeditions as well, with a bit of a the. I'm not sure it ca out like I wanted it to. The main idea is to have Harry slowly discover the origins of the world and why it feels 'shattered', so to speak. I've never written a Mystery-based story before, so I'm pretty new at it, so please let know if sothing feels off. As usual, please let know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support check out my patréon at spatréon/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard tis.
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