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123 AC, Frostfangs, Beyond the Wall
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?"
With the excitement of the battle fading away, Cregan Stark couldn't help but stare at the creature before him, mankind's greatest enemy. He had heard stories of them, mostly when he had been younger, and he had thought to have seen one in the Corpse Queen, or perhaps by seeing them from afar back in Hardhome. However, it was different to truly see one so closely; perhaps he was one of the few people in history to have done so, for he imagined that most perished before having the time to take their form.
Still, he understood now why they had been named 'The Others', for he could feel that there was something fundamentally wrong with the creature who stared back impassively at them, something that he did not feel when he spoke to the Corpse Queen, something that made Cregan's skin crawl.
Yet, here it was, imprisoned in its own ice walls, somehow. Cregan did not know how Harry did it, only that his medallion stopped shaking. His ancestor's relic had proven itself to be a very reliable tool so far, and he would continue to trust its judgment.
There was a sick sense of irony for the Other to be trapped alongside the creatures it imprisoned. Though after a while, when it stopped trying to escape, it continued staring at them in silence with intense hatred in its eyes, which alternated between Leaf, Harry, and sometimes even Cregan's sword. It did not answer Harry's question, something that didn't seem to bother the sorcerer at all.
Nevertheless, after minutes of silence, Cregan couldn't help but ask, "Couldn't it break through the ice?"
Harry snorted in amusement, "Our guest here is not inside the ice. You could cut through it and turn it into pieces, and he still wouldn't escape. No, I trapped him within the ice's reflection."
Cregan did not understand what that meant, but the sorcerer seemed more amused by his confusion than anything, "It's a little trick I picked up. Reflections are rather interesting, aren't they? Windows into something that is and isn't there. Mirrors hold echoes, impressions, pieces of a thing that even the thing itself cannot always reach." Harry tapped the ice lightly with his finger. The surface rippled, the Other's form warping and then settling again. "They make for rather creative and effective prisons, especially against things that are… unusual."
The sorcerer turned towards the Other's strapped form, "And you are unusual, aren't you? I mean, not just your origin, since it's a mess for everyone. I'm not even sure that even humans come from this place, and not some foreign realm that brought them here, like your kind, during the War in Heaven. They call you Others, but they have no idea how right they are. I can almost hear it inside you, a small spark beyond the unending layers of ice, of pure chaos, of something so irrevocably alien that it shouldn't belong here, something corrosive enough to dissolve most forms of magic."
The Other stilled. Cregan was sure that, to a creature such as this, the act was akin to a human gasping in shock. He turned towards Harry with interest, and the sorcerer smirked in reply, "Oh, don't look so surprised. You're not the only ones who study your enemies before facing them. Well, I mostly did it because I thought you were interesting, and that necromancy on the sheer scale that your people manage it is rather impressive. But imagine my surprise when I started to uncover your history, of a people who found themselves in hostile foreign lands, who picked a fight with everyone when they tried to create a suitable land to live in, who were wiped out in return, for just trying to survive. You must have been desperate enough to do something that you couldn't take back. I suppose that I can understand that, the sheer desperation to survive, even if it came at the cost of turning you into something monstrous, of using something that should have never existed in this realm."
Cregan could see the creature's eyes widen in shock, and he couldn't help but ask, "What did they do?"
The young Stark knew much of the Other's origin thanks to the Corpse Queen's tale, followed by that of the Children of the Forest; however, what they had turned themselves into still eluded him to no end.
Harry turned towards him and answered, "The universe exists in a balance, one that allows the realms within it to flourish, for life to exist. And by that, I don't even mean mortal lives, but that of gods, demons, and creatures that you would likely never meet. However, there are… existences that exist beyond this balance, or in spite of it, would be more accurate. Creatures that could unravel everything by their existence, Outsiders to everything that is known and unknown. Something that every creature, mortal or not, instinctively feels to be… unnatural."
Cregan thought back at the feeling the Other incited in him, the wrongness that he couldn't help but feel, and agreed that their connection to these Outsiders might make sense, though he would admit that his beliefs meant very little when it came to magic. Even then, it was a theory at best, though that didn't explain the surety in the sorcerer's voice, "You are certain about this?"
"Do you remember the medallion that you gave us from your family's crypts?" the man said without answering Cregan's question.
"Yes," Cregan immediately answered. He had not been enthused to gift the Potters with one of his family's artefacts, but it was a small price to pay for what they had done for him.
"Well, the material, like the one that your sword is made of, seems to be able to contain pretty much any form of energy, even if it really shouldn't. I'm still trying to figure that out, myself. Magical metallurgy was never an expertise of mine, even if I dabbled in Alchemy a bit. I'm sure that I'll figure it out eventually, when I have more free time, more like. Anyway, the medallion's magic is rather simple in nature; it reacts with proximity to the energy stored within, specifically that of the Others."
As he spoke, Cregan noticed that the Other seemed to be still more so than it had before. Even Leaf looked interested as Harry continued, "I tracked it down. Of course, I couldn't find anything past the Wall, but I curiously found similar energies coming from Old Valyria. Long story short, there was a bit of an infestation through the Outsider's corruption, precipitated by some idiotic blood magic with more pride than sense. Curious, isn't it? For two civilisations so far away from one another, to have something like this in common. I don't even think that Valyria even existed during the Long Night, which makes it a lot more interesting that the fact that I cleared the corruption, that I let magic flow freely once more, affects the Others so clearly."
Cregan believed that it made sense, in a way. Potter had told him that the Wall had been weakening since the Doom of Valyria, that it was being starved of magic, and that its resurgence after the Second Doom of Valyria was allowing the magnificent structure to regain its former might, which was what caused the Others to mobilise so quickly.
Still, he could not imagine that something of the Others would have found itself in Valyria, though this quickly became a small curiosity when the trapped Other suddenly stiffened and turned to Harry with hatred in its eyes.
For the first time, the creature spoke, "THIS WAS YOUR DOING!"
The words were not exactly spoken, for to Cregan's ears, they sounded more akin to a harsh ice cracking on a lake, and he felt unbalanced, as if he had been one breath away from freezing to death. And yet, something inside him made sense of the noise, understood the words almost shouted at him and his companions.
He compared it to the words that the Corpse Queen spoke in her language, for even if they sounded similar, the feelings that they evoked were very different, the unnaturalness of the Other being evident even in his words.
Still, this all took a second priority to the fact that the Other had just spoken to them. Harry released a smug smirk as he returned the Other's glowering gaze, "So, he speaks at last."
The Other strained against its prison once more, frost bursting outward in thin fractures along the surface of the ice, yet its reflection remained perfectly still, untouched by the violent motion. The chamber shuddered, and Cregan could hear ice crackling in the distance, only for it to disappear after a few seconds.
Harry raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the act, which seemed to enrage the creature even further, "THEY WILL COME FOR YOU. THEY WILL CARVE YOUR NAME FROM THE WORLD. THEY WILL BREAK YOUR FLESH, UNMAKE YOUR FIRE, SHATTER YOUR SOUL, AND SCATTER WHAT REMAINS INTO THE VOID YOU HAVE AWAKENED."
Cregan felt his medallion pulse once, sharply, as if reacting to the creature's words. Ghost growled low in his throat. Even Leaf seemed to hold herself more rigidly than she used to, reacting to her sworn enemy's spoken threats. He was unsettled. He would admit to that fact without hesitation. There was a difference between hearing a spoken threat and feeling its intent. He could feel the sheer hatred that the Other had towards them, that he would relish seeing them perish, that he could almost imagine their fates, their utter destruction.
Yet, the sorcerer did not seem perturbed in the slightest. Instead, he simply released a loud sigh.
"Well," he said lightly, "threats already. I was hoping we'd ease into that."
The Other snarled wordlessly, continuing to strain against the reflection that bound it, but the prison didn't shift an inch. Harry, on the other hand, walked casually before the reflection, staring at the creature straight in the eyes, and spoke softly, "Yes, yes, you'll kill me. You'll hunt me. You'll drag me into some horrible fate. I understand. Truly, I do. But since you're stuck here for the moment…" He gestured at the ice. "We might as well have that conversation."
The creature did not answer. It simply stared at Harry with something between curiosity and surprise. Of course, the hatred was there, but it was obvious that the creature had not expected the sorcerer to simply ignore its threats without consideration.
However, it did not speak a word, making Harry smile widely, "Well, since you've kindly let me speak first, let me tell you about what I've gathered so far. This is some kind of laboratory, a workshop for you to work in. You've been gathering the corpses of creatures and changing them on a fundamental level to resemble you. But how? Now, I'm not exactly an expert on flesh crafting, but I suppose that it would theoretically be possible. The issue that I have is that the creatures that you create have souls, twisted they may be, but it's still something that is supposed to be impossible."
The creature's rage seemed to shift into an amused smirk, as if relishing in its superiority, or perhaps a victory over Harry. Then again, it did not know the sorcerer. It hadn't taken long for Cregan to realise that the man often liked to use words as weapons, something that he was about to witness once more, given the small smile that grew on Harry's face.
"Twisted… I see now. You're not creating souls. You're repurposing other ones, twisting them, shaping them, until they fit in your living weapons. That level of soul magic is monstrous, but even then, connotation aside, shaping foreign souls isn't something that one could just do. You'd have… You'd have to rewrite everything from scratch, unravel reality enough for it to believe that it was meant for the body you gave it. And you can do that, can't you? With the spark of an Outsider inside you. Is that how you shape their flesh as well? You unravel reality around them for just a moment, enough to shift their past, body and soul, into becoming what you wish, your weapons."
Harry shook his head in disappointment, "I have seen much in my life. Horrible rituals which twisted people into monsters, which caused deaths on a scale that most could not even imagine. I have seen impossible things that would have had even your kind succumb to madness. It is not often that I feel genuine disgust for a people. It is not often that I feel genuine rage against someone. Yet, this is by far one of the most dreadful things I have seen in my life. What right did you have to do this? What right did you have to defy the sheer sanctity of their souls for your benefit?"
Cregan had never seen Harry be fully enraged. Even when they battled the Greenseer, Bloodraven, who had shaped history in the vain hope of defeating the sorcerer, the sorcerer had seemed more irritated, perhaps slightly angry. It paled to the quiet and cold rage that he seemed to show the Other.
As for the Other, his gaze shifted from Harry to Leaf, then to Cregan, almost as if weighing the worth of each of them before returning to Harry with something that almost resembled contempt.
"RIGHT?" it finally answered, its voice like grinding frost against bone. "WE TOOK WHAT WE NEEDED. THAT IS OUR RIGHT. THE FOREST-BEASTS LEFT US NO LAND. THE FIRE-BEASTS LEFT US NO SKY. WE ONLY DO THE SAME TO THE MORTALS. WE REMADE THEM. WE PERFECTED THEM. WE IMPROVED THEM. "
"You've created weapons. You've defied the sanctity of their souls, of their Death, for your benefit," Harry argued, "Despite the fact that you didn't need to. The Children of the Forest are barely more than a handful of survivors waiting for their inevitable demise. Men have forgotten you and how to fight you. Sure, I destroyed your weapon to bring down the Wall, but you probably have other plans. You did not need to twist your enemies' souls to animate your beasts; your wights should be more than enough to bring this continent to heel, through sheer numbers, shouldn't they?"
The silence that followed Harry's proclamation was deafening. Even the Other was completely and utterly still by this. It had never occurred to Cregan why the Others would ever need to create demons of ice, take creatures and turn them into monsters. Should the Wall be breached with an army of thousands of wights, it would not take long for most of the North to fall. Perhaps if he had time to make preparations, to utilise the wights' weakness to fire and Dragonglass, if Potter was to be believed, then he could manage a suitable resistance. Even then, he did not know if he could defeat the Others.
There was no true reason to use powerful monsters. Perhaps it was to battle the Targaryens' dragons, but they could be taken by surprise or overwhelmed as well.
Suddenly, realisation dawned on Harry's face, as he looked at the blank face of their prisoner, "Unless… You did not make them to fight the living. You made them to protect yourself. Or maybe you made them wage war in your stead."
Harry turned towards the frozen human corpses within the walls of ice, "You're trying to do something different with them. The other subjects, you mostly focused on creating viable weapons, but with humans… It's like you're trying to copy your very nature into them, including the spark of the Outsider's power." The sorcerer suddenly turned towards the prisoner and asked, "How many of your kind are left?"
The Other did not answer at first. It just stayed utterly still, as if it had turned into a statue, before speaking a single word, "ENOUGH!"
Harry raised a brow. "That isn't an answer. Come on, you obviously can't procreate. No soul could even be formed in a body that reeks of chaos and the void. It's why you have been trying to stuff souls into your creatures. You fought a war where you had the ultimate advantage. Hell, you waited for thousands of years until the population of men was large enough that you could sweep settlements in a matter of hours. You had the element of surprise. You had a virtually endless army. And yet, you lost. Maybe your defeat was destined, but you retreated into the Lands of Always Winter and let the Wall be built, negating one of your greatest advantages. That should have lasted for centuries. The most likely reason is that your numbers dropped under what was acceptable, something that you're trying to mitigate this time around. Tell me, am I wrong?"
The reaction was instantaneous.
The Other's form twisted inside the reflection, its features distorting into an almost feral rage. The ice around it vibrated in thin pulses that made Cregan's teeth ache. Frost split outward in jagged lines before knitting back together, Harry's magic refusing to let the creature break free.
"YOU KNOW NOTHING," it spoke. "YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM US. YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND WHAT WE WILL TAKE IN RETURN. WE WILL RECLAIM WHAT IS OURS AND CREATE A WORLD OF ICE AND ORDER, A WORLD WITHOUT WAR, WITHOUT PAIN, WITHOUT DEATH. OUR WORLD. "
For the first time, Leaf spoke up, "I know that my kin have wronged you in the past, but the old world is gone now. You have faded away into legend. You have your kingdom in the Freezing North, where no one will ever pose a threat to you. We need not fight anymore."
The Other's eyes gleamed in hatred as he looked down at Leaf, enough that Cregan's medallion started to hum, and he could feel his breath frost over, "THE FOREST-BEASTS DARE SPEAK OF PEACE AFTER THEY STOLE OUR HOME, SHATTERED OUR WORLD, AND HUNTED US TO THE BRINK OF NOTHING. A WORLD OF FOREST CLAIMED ITS RIGHT TO EXIST—SO WILL OURS. A WORLD OF ICE, OF ORDER, OF SILENCE, SAFE FROM YOUR KIND AND ALL WHO WOULD HARM IT. AND FOR THAT WORLD TO LIVE… YOU MUST NOT."
Cregan could see Leaf stare defiantly at the Other, a contrast to her silence for most of the time. He awaited her retort, only to freeze as Harry spoke up, "Where is the Heart of Winter?"
The sorcerer had asked the question so suddenly and without any sort of prompting that Cregan couldn't help but feel confused by it.
However, the Other's eyes widened in shock at the abrupt change in topic, only to freeze in its tracks, as it looked at its surroundings. Following the creature's gaze, Cregan noticed a faint stir passing through the reflection. It was barely more than a slight change in depth, in angle, in how the creature's image caught the light.
The creature's eyes snapped toward the distortion, its body jerking away, looking almost afraid for the first time since Cregan laid his eyes on it, "CEASE AT ONCE!"
Harry ignored the Other completely, seemingly focusing on the depth, while muttering to himself, "What a shame. I hoped that I would catch you off guard."
Then suddenly, the reflection started to distort itself completely, and Harry's eyes widened as he realised what was happening, with something… unnatural starting to form within it, like a darkness that was not quite there, slowly overwhelming it. The Other's form began to blur inside the reflection, edges breaking apart like shards drifting in water.
Cregan looked at the creature's eyes as they faded away, and they looked almost melancholic as it spoke, "MAY THE KING GUIDE US. MAY HE LEAD US TO THE WORLD OF ENDLESS NIGHT AND SNOW."
With these final words, the reflection imploded inwards, the Other having disappeared into nothingness. He turned to Harry, hoping for an explanation as to what occurred before them, only to almost flinch when he met the man's eyes, they being far colder than he had seen them before. For just a fraction of a second, the young man had seen the eyes of the man who had talked an Other to death, and he couldn't help but shiver at the thought.
Cregan suppressed his discomfort and asked, "What was that?"
"You cannot hide from your own reflection. I hoped to unbalance the Other enough so that it would reveal the answer to my question. He… He chose the only path to not reveal them."
"Did you find anything?" Daphne asked, speaking up for the first time since they entered the chamber.
"Not as much as I'd liked, but yes. For now, we should probably get out of here before this place collapses."
Cregan barely had enough time to digest the man's words when the cracking of the ice around them stopped for a single heartbeat, only to resume ten times more violently. Hairline fractures raced across the walls in ways that did not bode well for them.
Harry clicked his tongue in annoyance, raised his hand, and pressed his palm against one of the towering slabs of ice beside them. The entire structure shuddered. For a moment, Cregan thought the sorcerer had made things worse until one of the walls of ice shifted into some kind of archway, which led into a tunnel.
The sorcerer's wife quickly ran inside without question, and whatever hesitation Cregan had disappeared the moment the ice beneath them started to crack as well, and a spike of ice fell where he had been just moments prior.
They followed the newly shaped passage made almost entirely of ice until finally, they landed, and Cregan couldn't help but feel appreciative as sunlight splashed on his face. Finally, he looked at their surrounding and froze.
They were standing at the lip of something impossibly vast. A canyon of ice stretched on without end, its walls plunging so far downward that the blue beneath them deepened into near-black. The far side was lost entirely to distance, swallowed by a pale, drifting mist that made it impossible to tell where the land ended, and the sky began. Nothing lived here. Nothing moved. It was as if the land itself had been emptied out.
"What is this?" Cregan couldn't help but murmur.
Harry answered his question by turning to Leaf, "Your people really went overboard when they destroyed the Other's settlement, didn't they?"
Cregan gulped and nodded, unable to refute the sorcerer's claim. The Elder Child of the Forest had truly understated things when she said that the settlement had been destroyed.
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AN: That chapter really got away from me. It was supposed to be a shorter one, but I found out that I crammed a bit too much into it. The idea was to mostly combine a few things I hinted at in the past into a single chapter, as well as draw parallels with Valyria, given their use of souls, and that both are connected to Outsiders.
Anyway, if you didn't gather, Harry was using the reflection to essentially gain insight into the Other in the hopes that he could take it by surprise in the end to find the Heart of Winter, which is in the canyon. The canyon itself is a reference to the Hammer of Water (Breaking of the Arm of Dorne). More about the canyon and exactly what Harry managed to do/figure out should be in the next chapter. 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.