Chapter 147: Something Went Wrong
Northwestern Area of the True North
POV of Domeric Bolton
A week after their first encounter with the White Walker, Domeric and his men finally came across another White Walker.
This time, they were lucky, and they were the ones to spot the White Walker and its small army of Wights before it could spot them.
Maybe this particular White Walker was young and inexperienced, but it had a far smaller army of Wights compared to the White Walker they had fought before. Only having around 100 Wights, while the one before easily had over 1000 Wights.
But it would be highly foolish of him to underestimate the White Walker, so Domeric was careful when he set up the trap for this White Walker.
By evening, his trap was set, and one of his men confronted and lured the Wights to their position.
It was a bit disconcerting to watch the White Walker seemingly vanish between the trees and snow with the help of his own magical armor.
By then, the wights had already arrived in their position, and he was not able to keep track of the White Walker anymore as his men sprung the trap, bringing out wooden stakes with dragonglass tips from the snowy ground that destroyed any Wights that so much as scraped them.
More Wights continued after the first ones, and more continued to die.
As the corpses piled up, the Wights behind the first ones climbed on top of the dead Wights and jumped over the stakes, running at them without any care for anything else.
He used this moment to 'accio' one of the wights and bind it with ropes.
The high amount of magic required to do this task told him that the White Walker was nearby. Using his magical sense, he was able to find that it was coming from their right. Trying to ambush their flank while they fight the Wights in front of them.
He did not turn to face the White Walker, but he used his magical sense to lock on its location, and as soon as it entered the range, he took out hundreds of balls filled with Wildfire and threw them at the White Walker.
The White Walker stopped in its place and pointed its sword forward, and a gust of cold wind blew at the balls, knocking many of them away from their intended path.
But the rest of the balls continued and soon fell in a circle around it, covering a whole 30-meter radius around it with nothing but wildfire.
Splotches of wildfire also fell upon it, but they were extinguished as soon as they came in contact with its armor.
He picked up the Wight at his feet and threw it in a magically expanded trunk and shouted, "Retreat."
His men immediately followed the order, making a beeline away from the White Walker surrounded by green Wildfire.
The wildfire was already beginning to subside as the White Walker channeled his own brand of magic to summon a small ice storm to extinguish the wildfire.
He reminded himself to tell the alchemists to start the construction of more wildfire. Those pyromaniacs would definitely like that.
As they ran, the few wights that were still alive followed after them. He raised a wall of ice from the ground to halt their progress and ran with the rest of his men until they were out of the range of the White Walker's field of distorted magic.
"Now." He said and took out a large rope and threw it on the ground.
Just as they had practiced hundreds of times before, all his men jumped at it and held onto the rope.
"Nightfort Castle Wall." He said, and all of them were pulled into the wormhole and were spat out on the ground a moment later.
The screams of pain he heard as soon as they landed were the first indication that something had gone wrong.
Looking around and finding no Wall anywhere in sight was the second and final nail in the coffin.
The portkey had not worked as it should have and had been deposited somewhere else, a dozen or so miles away from their destination, if the Wall he could see on the horizon was any indication.
The distorted magical field surrounding the White Walker had affected his spatial magic, altering the destination they were supposed to reach.
Worse, the distortion in spatial magic had caused his men to splinch.
He looked at his men and found that one of them was dead. Half of his face was missing; the spatial distortion had torn off all the enchantments on his helmet along with his face.
He felt like shit for being thankful that he was not that man. The others were in better condition, and all of them were alive.
One of his men had lost his right arm, which was lying a few feet away from him. He knew how to fix it, so it was not a problem.
Another had a deep gash on his thigh. Two others had minor cuts on their backs and shoulders.
Varko himself had a cut on his forehead, but it was not deep.
Ygritte, on the other hand, had lost all of the fingers on her left arm and was gritting her teeth in pain.
As much as he cared about the man who had lost his hand, he cast a few charms to keep him stable and moved on to heal Ygritte before the others… because he cared about her more than he cared about them.
It took him half an hour to heal everybody, with Raksa following him every step and making surprised noises whenever he healed someone.
By this point, he was just happy that the portkey had not dropped them in the middle of a freezing lake. He would still ensure that everybody made it out alive, but with the magical armor's enchantments torn off, the water would have definitely caused them hypothermia.
After he had healed everybody, he plopped down on the snow and told Raksa to bring the magical trunk to him.
If the Wight died from the spatial distortion or the distance from the White Walker, then this whole expedition would turn out to be a colossal failure.
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Next Chapters' Name:
Ch.148: Mission Accomplished
Ch.149: Indecisive