Chapter 191: Magical Dominance
Beyond the Wall, True North
POV of Domeric Bolton
"This… this is not the work of a human," Smalljon said and murmured a few more curses under his breath as he looked at the large pile of dead bodies piled in a ritualistic spiral circle around an old pine tree.
The body of a teenage girl was separated into dozens of parts and pinned to the center of the tree.
Even the most skeptical in his group, who didn't believe his claims about White Walkers, were looking at the scene in stunned silence.
"This was done just a few hours ago," Kalmyr said as he bent down and took a sniff once again. "This is… something is not right here."
More than 'something' was not right here. The magic in the area repulsed him.
Whatever kind of ritual the White Walker had performed changed the whole magic around the area to the point where he couldn't use any of it.
No. Unable to use it wouldn't be the right way to describe it. His magic was still there. Domeric could feel it.
But this ritual the White Walkers were performing was somehow changing the environment and creating dominance over his magic.
Because of this dominance, his magic seemed trapped within his body. Domeric was sure that if he cast a spell, it would quickly wear off before it could even leave his body.
At least, that's what the spells he cast with his wand would be like. He could probably cast more potent spells with his foci swords, but he doubted they would be as powerful as they were in normal times.
'Wait a minute. Dominance!' Domeric felt a flash of lightning in his mind.
He understood some things better now. The White Walkers' original magic was not superior to his. Essentially, both were magic, and while one might have an advantage over the other in certain situations, depending on the spell used, in general, no magic was superior to the other.
At least, that was the way it was in the world Domeric came from. A fire spell could overpower an ice spell, or one wizard might be more powerful than another, but one's magic was never considered superior to another's.
But that's precisely what the White Walkers were doing. They were altering the nature of magic. Through their rituals, they acquired a form of magic more potent than usual.
And it seemed that the magic the White Walkers were acquiring was hierarchically superior to Domeric's. Therefore, they were able to dominate Domeric's magic and quickly neutralize it.
'But how? How could they move up the hierarchy of magic they possessed?' Domeric thought, but the answer came to him faster than he had expected. In fact, the answer had always been right before his eyes and was now spread out all around him.
'The elements. They are giving characters to magic. Cold? Ice? And death?'
Domeric finally realized he had found the answer to his long-sought question.
Domeric's magic, or rather the magic possessed by all wizards and witches in his old world, lacked a specific character. It was instead... neutral.
That was likely why it could take on any form and perform a wide variety of spells, but it lost its effectiveness when confronted by magic above it in the hierarchy.
And the White Walkers seemed to achieve this by incorporating elemental character into their magic.
The magic here now belonged purely to the elements of death and cold. And the ritual was somehow still working, filling the area around it with the cold and death elemental magic.
He had finally found how the White Walkers changed the nature of magic… and now how they were elevating its hierarchy. It was thanks to this ritual.
But just because he found it didn't mean he understood it.
The whole ritual was unlike anything he had ever seen.
That was understandable, as the White Walkers were fundamentally different from humans in many ways. However, it still didn't make him feel any better about not understanding the inherently simple look ritual.
Because that was what it was. A simple and basic ritual.
He had read about the wizards of old, and even the first wizards who started using magic to perform rituals had made more complex rituals than these.
That was why it boggled him so much when the basic level ritual converted the magic fundamental level on such a large scale.
Cold and Death. That's all that he could feel around him.
In a sense, he could guess why the ritual would work so well.
This area was already filled with cold and death. The White Walkers used human sacrifices to turn that factor into reality somehow, altering the magic with their help.
There was something vital he was missing about this whole thing. But he didn't know what it was.
"We should burn the corpses." Ygritte's words brought him out of his thoughts, and he noticed that many people were now looking to him for guidance.
He took a deep breath and nodded.
He might not understand the White Walker ritual, and he didn't think he could easily grasp it unless he had a written source to study or spoke with someone knowledgeable about White Walker rituals.
But that didn't mean he hadn't gleaned any useful information from what he'd seen.
He now knew why the White Walkers' magic remained superior to his own.
And while he couldn't devise a way to prevent the White Walkers from increasing their magic's hierarchy by altering the nature of it, he could do the opposite.
Now that he knew the hierarchy of magic could be increased, nothing was stopping him from doing the same.
At the very least, it would put him on the same level of power as the White Walkers. And without their magical dominance, these fuckers wouldn't stand a chance against him.
Of course, as a magical character, he had no intention of using the same elements as the White Walkers. On the contrary, he preferred to use elements that would naturally overpower theirs, if possible.
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Ch.192: Falling into the Same Trap
Ch.193: Existential Crisis