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123 AC, Frostfangs, Beyond the Wall
The cold recoil forced the creature to take a step back; its flame flickered and dimmed under the pressure. Then two figures stepped from the flames, the Stranger and his mate, looking at the creature with a mixture of interest and exasperation, "We couldn't even leave you for five minutes, could we?"
Cregan had felt that he would not like what he found from the moment Leaf was able to open the secret passageway into the cavern in the depths of the Frostfangs. As much as he would have liked to say that it had been some kind of supernatural feeling, it was more akin to the wolf medallion that he wore, which had started humming faintly on his skin from the moment that it was opened.
Even without its magical nature, Cregan would have treasured it immensely as the legacy of the very founder of House Stark, of Bran the Builder himself. Now, he understood its true usefulness, for the ability to predict the possibility of danger, especially given that its source was that of the Others, was proving itself to be exceedingly invaluable. Then again, the moment he had walked past the Frostfangs, the medallion did hum occasionally, though the Potters seemed to expertly move whenever the danger faded away, as if they could sense it themselves as well. He would not be surprised if they had.
Once more, the medallion proved its worth a thousand times over when he was barely able to warn Leaf, as one of the Others' dreaded Ice Spiders almost took her by surprise. He likely should have warned her off from the start, but she had a look in her eyes, one that he had seen many times in Sara's own. Nothing would have stopped her from moving inside, Child of the Forest or not. She had felt betrayed and frustrated by the secrets kept from her, starting with her very kin, the Greenseer, and now, the Potters, who had left them behind while they did Gods knew what.
He felt a strange urge to accompany her into the cavern, and he could almost feel the approval from his medallion and ancestral weapon as he followed that instinct. Of course, this ended up with them having to battle an entire horde of giant Ice Spiders and strange stone giants that seemed to radiate a freezing cold with every step they took.
And yet, he felt like they could have come out victorious, Brandon's legendary sword sharpening his skills into something that would have been more appropriate in the age of heroes. He could feel the medallion subtly improving his instincts, though he knew not how to describe it. While the sword granted him power far above that of a normal man, he felt as if he had known how to use this power all of his life.
For a few moments, he had felt almost invincible.
However, that did not last long, for his strength was barely more than a small spark compared to the sheer presence of the demonic creature that faced them in the end. He called the monster a demon, for it was the only description he could find of it, a giant, horned being which radiated Darkness and wielded a strange, cold fire, which was imbued into its immense whip glowing whip.
He had bravely stood to fight the creature alongside Leaf, though knowing that they did not stand a true chance against their enemy, and then the Potters came in the last moment, just like they often did, with a wall of fire that protected them.
Potter stared at the creature, who had reeled back in shock at their interjection. The demon's surprise did not last for long, as he moved his hand suddenly, making the whip that he had been holding move faster than Cregan could see, though he saw the blue glow make its way towards Harry.
Instead of attempting to dodge the attack, the sorcerer chose not to move and grabbed the end of the whip, completely unconcerned for the freezing fire that enveloped it. The creature's glowing eyes barely widened as Harry snorted, "Seriously? Using Ice magic against me, of all people?"
A pulse of light seemed to start at where Potter held the whip and traversed it towards the demon's hand, which seemed to have frozen by the attack, though Cregan could see its effects fading away. Before he could question what Harry's plan was, the sorcerer pulled.
It was a comical show; a thin, wiry sorcerer who looked like he had never set foot in a training yard, somehow physically overpowering a giant demon, though he was sure there was some kind of magic involved. The demon seemed to have recollected himself, summoning a blade of darkness in his other hand, which made Cregan's medallion almost start shaking from the sheer intensity it radiated.
Before the young Stark could warn the sorcerer of the danger, the sword passed through him as if he were never there. Cregan could swear that he could see genuine confusion in the monster's eyes, before Harry casually walked forward and touched the creature's chest with the palm of his hand.
A green light lit the room, and the giant demon remained frozen in the air, completely unmoving, like a floating statue, with a faint green glow surrounding it. Then Cregan heard a screeching, followed by a few thuds. He turned and noticed that the horde of Ice Spiders had all perished, being restrained by roots, while also being impaled by the Dragonglass weapons that he had seen all over the cave. Even the stone giants were not spared, being skewered by the black glass from impossible angles.
He turned towards Daphne and shivered at the casual look on her face as she essentially committed a small massacre of legendary creatures which had fuelled the nightmares of the First Men for thousands of years. Instead, the golden-haired woman seemed to be focused on her husband, who waved his hand, a few green glowing circles of magic, with strange symbols, floating before him, which he seemed to understand somehow.
The symbols turned, and somehow, the demon changed with them, though he remained completely and utterly frozen in the air. His form altered with every second, the blue shroud fire slowly dimming. Its skin became darker, and its appearance almost more feral, though wounds started to appear all over its body.
Until slowly, the blue light faded, being replaced by a crimson one instead, though it was very faint, being overtaken by some strange darkness, before being suddenly snuffed out, and all that remained was a floating, large corpse.
Harry then snapped his finger, and a small black flame appeared in his hand, whose presence alone made Leaf flinch away in fear. He pressed the flame into the creature, which immediately decayed away until nothing more than ashes remained of it.
How strange. The dreaded creature was dead, and yet the atmosphere was somehow more oppressive with the sorcerer's appearance. Perhaps it was how easy they made it look to destroy a demon with nothing but a touch, and slay an army of dangerous creatures in the blink of an eye. Cregan imagined facing the Potters in battle, and the mere prospect was extremely unsettling, to say the least.
Potter knelt down and grabbed Cregan's fallen torch, and its glow somehow increased, illuminating the cave. He turned towards him and Leaf with a raised eyebrow, "You didn't answer my question."
Cregan couldn't help but look away, feeling slightly embarrassed at the man's words, and the sorcerer shook his head amusedly, "I swear, one of the first rules I tell anyone that comes with us is not to wander off. "
"You left us alone," Leaf answered, not quite accusingly, but not calmly either, "You chose this cave for a reason, and you did not share it with us."
"We weren't sure how dangerous this place was," Daphne answered on her husband's behalf, "We left you under enough wards to protect you in case you were attacked and decided to investigate something that we had sensed while you rested."
Cregan could see Leaf wishing to argue once more, and quickly changed the subject, "What was that creature? Some kind of demon?"
Harry snorted, "Demon… No, it's not a demon. It's a physical creature in nature, some kind of elemental being of fire and darkness. If I had to guess, it was something that the Children of the Forest fought in the past, likely before their reign over Westeros. This entire place is a battlefield, littered with remnants of creatures lost to the world, preserved in startlingly great conditions since time immemorial by very subtle enchantments woven into the stone that make up this very mountain."
Whatever anger Leaf felt towards the Potters quickly deflated at that question, as she did her best to look away, likely out of shame of her kind's history, or perhaps simply the memory of the reveal was too fresh.
Still, something irked him, "It did not look like a creature of fire to me."
"It was… once, yet it was changed. Curious, isn't it? The Ice Spiders are the same. At first, I thought them to be some kind of elemental variant of the giant spiders, but this paints a far more different picture about their origin."
"The White Walkers raised them as wights, then?" he answered.
It would make sense. He had never truly heard of animals and humans being turned to wights, but it would make sense if there were powerful creatures in the Lands of Always Winter to rise in service of the Others.
To his surprise, Harry shook his head, "Not quite. Wights are products of necromancy. It's not exactly an extremely difficult thing to do. I think there are a few magic users in Essos who are sick in the head and are obsessed with the practice in a vain hope of cheating death. Wights are not individually noteworthy. No, what is impressive is the sheer scale of the Others' control, the number of wights that they seem to command and the ease the bodies rise, but that's it. No, what's happening here is a lot more involved than anything as pedestrian as raising wights."
Cregan stared at the man in shock. He had never thought that he would see the day when raising wights was considered commonplace. He opened his mouth in protest, yet no words left them. He truly did not know how to answer the man, not that Harry cared, as he seemed to get lost in his own head.
Daphne thankfully clarified things slightly, "What he means to say is that we have been trying to answer this question from the moment we realised what this place was."
Cregan frowned as he thought about it. This cavern was a remnant of a battlefield, which the Others had obviously claimed as their own, given the Ice Spider and the strange Ice Demon. He did not care about Potter's theory; it looked like a demon and acted like a demon, and so he would call it so.
Still, naming schemes aside, there was a possibility that he couldn't help but entertain, "This is a trap for the Children of the Forest if they ever returned to this place."
Harry shook his head, "No, it isn't. They wouldn't have left so much Dragonglass around if they had planned on ambushing anyone. Look at the Ice Spiders. I mean, really look at them. They seem quite different from one another, don't they?"
It was only then that Cregan realised what the sorcerer meant. Looking at the corpses around him, he noticed that the spiders' legs looked somewhat different. A few looked as if they were made of ice, others more akin to frozen flesh of some sort. Even their colours were different, ranging from white to almost glass-like.
The sorcerer continued his explanation, seemingly enjoying the young man's confusion, "This is where the Others work on creating their army, their real army. Sure, wights are great in large numbers, but this is where they take the bodies of powerful creatures and make them their own, changing their very flesh into something very different, to use the very enemies of the Children of the Forest in their war against everything that they stood for. Quite petty, if you think about it, though I'm sure that there's more to it than that."
Cregan pointedly refused to look at Leaf, knowing that she would likely not take this comment well. Instead, he found out, "What now?"
"Well, we were planning on subtly looking around this place. Though I guess you inadvertently saved us some time; the Others wouldn't have left a creature as unique or as strong as that fire-horned giant thing behind, unless there was something to guard. Which means that adventure awaits."
Without saying another word, the sorcerer turned and walked towards the depths of the cave, specifically from where the Ice Demon came from. He was so caught off guard that he stared at the man's retreating form, and his wife commented, "Just come along."
Leaf hesitantly walked behind them, with Cregan quickly following along, the sorcerer's torch unnaturally illuminating the entire cave. As they walked forward, he noticed Harry walking towards a discreet passageway, which had been blocked by a small mountain of snow.
He shivered slightly as he approached and ducked to follow Harry into the narrow passage. The air shifted immediately, becoming far colder than it had even outside the mountains. The sorcerer put his hands on them, staving off the biting cold, and he gave the man a thankful look.
The tunnel curved downward, the walls gradually turning from rough stone to something smoother, clearer. Until, finally, they exited the passageway, and Cregan couldn't help but freeze at the sight that met him, for he realised that they stood in a structure that, a massive one at that.
It rose around them in perfect symmetry, its walls formed from clear, impossibly thick ice. Sharp ridges branched outward like the arms of a snowflake, each "spike" extending into its own corridor or tower. There was no mistaking it for something natural. The angles were too precise, the lines too deliberate.
The Potters walked forward, with obvious interest in their eyes, and Cregan followed behind them, keeping his hand on Brandon's sword, the medallion's humming making him feel far more alert with every step he took in this place.
The torchlight spread across the corridor ahead, reflecting strangely in the ice. It took Cregan a heartbeat to understand why.
Shapes were inside it.
No, it was worse than this. These were bodies.
He saw the familiar sight of the Ice Spiders, partially turned to ice instead of anything else. He noticed the familiar sight of a giant with almost glowing blue eyes and patches of crystal-like skin on his face. And it was nought but the beginning, for hundreds of other creatures, from giant wingless reptiles to strange monstrous creatures with many arms, even a few of the strange demon he had almost battled, all of whom were encased in ice.
The entire place reminded him eerily of a Maester's chambers, and he recognised that these creatures were being studied, all to turn them into the Others' undead weapons.
He froze as he noticed the familiar sight of a man being encased in one of the ice structures as well, likely a wildling. His hair had become white, and he could see patches of blue skin all over the man's body. He looked around and found another human, this time a woman, though he couldn't help but tense as he saw a smaller shape next to her.
A child.
The child's eyes were open, wide and pale, frozen mid-scream or mid-dream, he could not tell. This was beyond sickening and monstrous. He felt the urge to break the ice and at least offer the child a measure of dignity in death.
Then, suddenly, Cregan felt his medallion start shaking erratically, and he instinctively ran towards its source, his ancestral weapon blaring, and to his surprise, he appeared quickly enough to stop a blade of ice from skewering Leaf. A loud ringing spread across the structure as his ancestral blade met it, which seemed to almost shake the world around them.
Finally, he looked up and saw the wielder of the weapon, freezing as he recognised it. It was a humanoid creature that looked almost as if it was encased in ice, though it could feel the burning hatred in its glowing blue eyes, and almost crystal-like hair.
It was the first time that he was so close to the creature, but he knew, without a doubt, that this was an Other. He had just crossed blades with mankind's greatest enemy, and the blink of an eye that this realisation took was enough for the creature to move at impossible speeds and overpower him, sending him flying back into one of the walls of ice.
He gasped as he fell, and he slowly rose forward, disoriented, yet strangely uninjured by the attack. He saw Daphne creating some strange glowing rope to pull Leaf to them, stopping the Other from killing her. Harry, on the other hand, summoned some strange black shield to protect them from an orb of glowing blue light that the Other had thrown at them.
The impact created an overwhelming layer of frost in the cavern, which thankfully did not affect Potter or Leaf. Cregan felt his sword warm up slightly, protecting him as well.
Following this attack, the creature took another step forward, and a glowing circle of strange symbols appeared, creating a wall around it, as it had when the Corpse Queen attacked them in the Fist of the First Men.
Cregan, for a moment, relaxed, thinking that Harry had tricked it, that he had been victorious, only for the Other to smirk and walk through it, somehow shattering the magic as if it were glass.
It then ran towards Harry at impossible speeds, taking advantage of the sorcerer's distracted state, and Cregan ran towards the sorcerer, hoping to stop their enemy. Alas, a burst of frost came at him, which he defended against by instinctively raising Brandon's sword to stop it in its tracks. Ice's glow increased, but his momentum had stopped, and he watched completely helpless as the Other impaled the sorcerer in the heart and couldn't help but yell out in anguish.
Potter stared down at his wound in surprise, and Cregan swore that he saw the sheer glee in the Other's eyes as he slayed his enemy, which quickly turned into surprise a second later, when his body, instead of falling, turned into a flock of ravens, flying around the cave, surrounding the Other.
The creature of Ice did not have the time to react as it found itself being pushed into one of the Ice walls, which had become, for some reason, clear enough to be mistaken for a mirror. Cregan expected some kind of impact, but to his surprise, the creature sank to it as if it were the surface of a lake.
The visage of Daphne, Harry, and Leaf appeared next to Cregan, making him stiffen in surprise for a few moments before relaxing slightly. He readied himself to attack the Other, only to realise that the creature was trapped in their very reflection.
The young man couldn't help but chuckle as he saw the Other try, in vain, to break through the strange prison that he found himself in, especially as Harry commented, "They never see the ravens coming."
The sorcerer then walked forward, the same smug smirk that he always wore on his face and turned towards the Other, "Hello there, I'm Harry Potter. I believe you and I are due for a lovely conversation. Don't you?"
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AN: I had a lot of fun writing this. I wanted to portray the Others as a bit more than murder machines with a knack for necromancy, and I don't know if I did a great job at showing it, but this place is more like a lab than a military base. The fight with the Ice Demon was a bit short, but I couldn't think of something that felt like it would merit Harry putting in an effort in fighting it. I think there might be some confusion about what happened in the end with the Other, but Harry essentially trapped him in his own reflection, not the ice wall itself, hence why it couldn't escape. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me, check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions on them, so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.