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[---]
123 AC, Lands of Always Winter
The crimson beam swelled, thickened, and split into jagged veins of darkness that lashed out at the Stranger's realm, seeking to devour it whole. As both forces met, they collided in a wound of pure white, and the world held its breath as all was swallowed by silence and light.
Harry opened his eyes and took in the bright existence around him. He couldn't suppress the smug smirk that grew on his face. Fighting the Night King was a very frustrating affair. They were technically in a realm of his own design, where he had been at his strongest, and even holding a weapon that should not have ever existed.
Honestly, it wasn't the fighting that was annoying; Harry had easily had better battles and rather enjoyed the more intellectual ones. No, it was the fact that the creature was all but half-Outsider, using the energies of the void to heal himself.
At first, he had not known why the Night King decided to go to such extremes. Sure, he needed to be somewhat unnatural to be able to command the weapon that the God wielded, the fragment of Night and Death, but the rest of his people did not need to have the chaos of the void within them.
After all, he could have set up the Heart of Winter as a hub of some sort, maintaining the corpses of the dead under his control, without corrupting the rest of his people. There was no need for them to stay in the Heart of Winter, the corruption slowly affecting them despite it all.
Harry had a few theories as to why the Night King chose what he did. He likely did not truly understand the nature of what he had found, and, in his desperation, doomed his people, or he relished in the control that this structure gave him.
After all, every single one of his kind held their power through him, and not directly to the literal Hand of God. If he could guess, it would have been a mixture of two, and the fact that he had been using his very people as cattle, all to continue spreading his doomed realm, supported that fact.
Speaking of whom, the Night King finally materialised before him. It took him a lot more time than Harry expected to finally pull that off, and even then, he didn't manifest his weapon yet. "What is this place?"
Harry's smile widened, for the creature's words were not as reality-shattering as they once were. The Night King noticed as well, "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything; we did," Harry answered, being vague on purpose, "For all of your strength, you've never been in a battle quite like this one, have you?"
The Night King simply glared at him, as if preparing to attack, only to realise he could not. The creature seemed so completely out of place that Harry snickered, "It's a surprisingly common phenomenon in the wider universe. Realms collide far more than most people think. Usually, it ends up with one of the realms swallowing the other. But in very rare cases, when the realms are compatible in some way, they resonate, creating a fragment in time and space, one completely isolated from the void. Neat, huh?"
It was a bit tricky to channel the Deathly Hallows' magic to arrange for this effect. He would admit that the Children of the Forest helped a lot more than he expected, for the attack was a bit more dangerous than he expected, though it made the control required somewhat tricky to pull off.
The Night King turned to Harry with pure hatred in his eyes, "You think that this will stop me? You truly do know nothing, Harry Potter."
The creature raised its hands, and from him, a deep darkness emerged which spread out, as if it were staining the world around him. The ground rumbled and pulsed, as if it took a life of its own. The sky turned dark, and Harry could see faint stars in the sky twinkling above him.
The Night King leapt towards him, his hands filled with pure darkness, ready to slay him. Harry slowed down his perception of time and casually dodged the attack from the side, warping space beneath him to jump further up than what was possible.
The creature was not to be stopped in its rage and bellowed, "YOU KILLED MY PEOPLE!"
Shadows started to envelop Harry with the fragments of the Night itself, and the Night King ran there at blinding speeds, ready to kill Harry, only for the man to turn into a flock of ravens, which the creature annihilated in its rage.
"YOU SHATTERED THEIR HOPE!" The Night King bellowed, creating a ball of condensed darkness, which turned itself into a miniature Black Hole, that he sent barrelling towards Harry, who unravelled the enchantments in a hurry, and used a transmutation shield to unravel it into dust.
However, the creature's rage was not quelled, for it jumped into the air and fell down like a star while bellowing, "YOU STOLE THEIR DESTINY!"
Yet, he never touched Harry, and instead, the very world around him rippled as if he had fallen in the middle of the ocean, almost swallowing him, which prompted Harry to throw himself forward at impossible speeds and touch the ground, freezing it in time, trapping the Night King beneath it.
In the meantime, he released his Patronus Charm, one that was larger than a small castle, which slowly started to push back the Night King's influence over this new realm that they found themselves in, which still shielded him from the attack.
Still, winning in this place wasn't exactly Harry's plan. He would admit that he had come up with it on a bit of a whim, but it should be effective, in theory, at least.
In the meantime, he turned towards the ground, knowing that the creature could hear his voice, "You enslaved your people, turned them into monsters. Those who did not, you treated as if they were no better than cattle. I gave you a choice. I want you to remember that. You could have saved them all, but you were too proud then, just as you are too weak now."
That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back, as the ground pretty much shattered from the sheer rage of the Night King, the creature rising in the air, while thrusting both arms upward, dragging a screaming fissure through the sky as if trying to rip it open with his bare hands. Stars burst like dying embers and rained down to annihilate Harry, only for the sorcerer's form to flicker and appear behind him, making him fly back with a casual push.
While the Night King was in the air, Harry created a golden lasso which grabbed him and pulled him to the ground. The impact shook the earth around it, creating an explosion of golden light and darkness. Before he could retaliate, Harry saw a jagged spear of condensed Night, flying towards him. He stopped it by raising his hand, bending space and time beneath them to create small fractals that sent the attack outside of their little battlefield.
The fractals moved towards the Night King, who blasted them with a ball of Darkness, which shattered them into pieces. Unfortunately for Harry's opponent, the fractals were made up of folded space-time, and the creature's attack unfolded them, releasing threads of golden light that surprised the Night King enough to bind him, the threads slowly solidifying into golden chains of Light magic.
The Night King attempted to overpower them, only for Harry to conjure two black holes, whose gravity alone pinned the creature's limbs, stopping its thrashing.
He gave the bound King of the Others an unimpressed look, "Is this really the best that you could do, even in the face of your people's destruction?"
The Night King glared at him as he spoke, "The Night does not bow, Harry Potter. And you have not yet understood what you stand against. You will, for you shall witness true horror."
The creature was not exaggerating its words.
The Black Holes suddenly shattered like glass, falling down despite their very nature being space-time anomalies, not physical things. The golden chains rotted away and dissolved, overwhelmed by the very Night that seemed to spread to their surroundings.
The very sky warped, the starry night overwhelming Harry's dawn, and almost moving as if it was part of an impossible, large creature, the very stars making up its features, looking as if it was a lion mid-roar.
In the meantime, the Night King leapt towards Harry, his crimson weapon in his hand. It seemed like he had finally figured out that he could summon it, which actually suited Harry's purpose despite how it all looked. After all, he had achieved exactly what he needed.
Harry slowed down his perception of time and dodged the attack before conjuring his scythe, the very manifestation of the Deathly Hallows, and using it to parry the conceptual Death that the Night King wielded. Harry activated the Hallows' strength, and just as he expected, the two manifestations of Death found themselves in a paradox of some sort, which resulted in what was essentially a conceptual form of Priori Incantatem.
Given the surprised and confused look on the creature's face, it had no idea what was happening, and Harry used this to turn it into what amounted to a battle of wills. The Night King seemed to understand that concept well enough, channelling everything he had into it, his eyes gaining a glint of victory as he seemingly overpowered Harry.
Unfortunately for him, this was what he expected, and with a sudden movement, Harry used the blade of his scythe to hook the creature's weapon and stab it into the ground.
Harry guided the battle in a way that both forms of Death resonated in such a precise way that it created a rupture in their small slice of space-time beneath them, which swallowed them both, returning them to the Materium.
Well, not exactly; there was one small detail missing, specifically the fragment of Night that the Night King had completely released within their space-time anomaly. It would all remain there, drifting away in the void between worlds, eventually undone by its mere presence, and returning into the chaos that it spawned from.
After all, the fragment of Night was, by far, the most troublesome aspect of the Night King, the thing that allowed him to propagate his domain, one that warped reality, and could even cause its collapse. And now, if things went according to plan, Harry had tricked him into sealing it away.
Just as he expected, the world regained its colour as everything shifted back to normal, though the impact sent him and the Night King flying back. To any other observer, not a single moment would have passed since the burst of white light.
Harry rolled away and groaned slightly. That little trick was a lot more exhausting than he'd have liked. He could have probably found a better way, but he was curious to prove his theorem about conceptual resonance in the multiverse.
The Night King, on the other hand, stood up woodenly, having immediately realised what had happened. His gaze snapped toward Harry, and for the first time since their clash began, the creature looked truly uncertain.
Harry wiped a smear of frost from his cheek and smirked, "Didn't expect that, did you?"
The Night King did not answer and instead stared at his weapon. Only Death's crimson light remained, ominous, but not something unnatural to the world. Don't get him wrong, the guy was still dangerous, his soul being chaotic enough that Harry would have mistaken it with that of a creature lost in the void between worlds. And the fact that, despite it all, he still wielded the very concept of Death to his advantage made things very difficult.
The last Other finally seemed to have come to a conclusion and ran at Harry at blinding speeds, with his weapon drawn. Harry was barely able to slow his perception of time, to dodge it, and parried his attack with his scythe.
When both blades touched, the sorcerer's eyes widened as he felt the Night King attempt to re-create the energy signature earlier and reopen the wound in space-time to regain access to the fragment of Night. It was clever. He almost forgot just how intelligent his opponent was; despite his questionable decisions, not many beings could have tamed Night to their purpose.
Unfortunately for the creature, Harry hadn't activated the Deathly Hallows' power, nor did he plan on doing so precisely because of this exact possibility. He even avoided using any significant form of reality distortion or space-time manipulation; it could accidentally open a path to the space-time anomaly and allow the Night King to regain its greatest weapon once more. Now that he thought about it, Harry found it wild that Death itself was the creature's lesser weapons. Still, this was troublesome, since it rendered much of Harry's arsenal unusable, which was pretty annoying, but not the end of the world.
In response, the sorcerer raised his hand, summoning Cregan's ancestral sword, Ice, to himself, and parried the Night King's incoming attack, creating a shockwave of white power that staggered the Night King enough for the sorcerer to create a vacuum of wind that hurled the creature backwards.
Harry pressed the advantage, stepping forward with a burst of speed thanks to the sword's enchantments, but the ground was suddenly taken up with a giant burst of frost, which made Harry yield and transmute into golden petals. The petals gathered together into a larger glowing ball, creating a beam of golden plasma that the Night King shielded against by parrying it with his blade, Death undoing the attack outright.
He really should have expected that, but the Other hadn't really used Death properly, at least not in the way that Harry would have. It was mostly used as a stabiliser, an interface to command the Night, which the Other seemed to vastly prefer. Or maybe he simply didn't wish to risk the Night spilling out of control inside the realm that he wished to forge for his people. The reason mattered very little in the end, only the possibility of a weakness that he could exploit.
And so, he could barely react as the Night King moved at blinding speed, ready to skewer him, and while he managed to parry the attack with Ice, the blade flew away from his hands from the unsuspected force of the impact, as well as the unexpected angle of the attack.
He didn't think that anyone who was actually skilled with a sword would have fallen for this trap, and unfortunately, while he could fake it pretty well, Harry wasn't a swordsman. He usually relied on subtle manipulation of space and time to give the illusion that he knew what he was doing, mostly because he found sword fights cool.
Smirking, Harry noticed a small detail in the corner of his eyes and subtly changed the weapon's trajectory.
Just as he had done so, he dematerialised his scythe and turned into a raven to avoid the incoming swing, flying very quickly to the Night King's back, and turned back into a human, with his scythe deployed in hand, ready to swing down at him.
Unfortunately, the Night King did not parry like Harry wanted him to, and instead, impaled his weapon into the icy ground. A small sea of crimson flames appeared around him, which Harry was barely able to dispel by grabbing a sample of the flames and feeding them into a transmutation circle, which would release a magical signature which was its complete opposite, negating it completely.
Harry could feel every single thing that the flames touched, succumb to Entropy and perish. He couldn't help but inwardly groan. Of course, the Night King had to have figured that out now of all times.
Given the smirk which grew on the Night King's face, he knew it as well. He retrieved his weapon, swung it, creating an arc of crimson energy, which Harry halted with a wall of golden energy, which halted it momentarily, though likely not for long.
Harry would have normally used the Hallows in this position, but he was unwilling to risk another possible singularity effect. And so, he did something that he didn't like to do often and channelled into his own Arcane Hearing.
It was something that he experimented with when he was bored, and it often gave him a headache. He could hear something akin to a heartbeat, one within every spell, one that he could narrow down perfectly. Harry released a sharp whistle, and the attack dispelled itself, as if collapsing over its own weight, and he let go of the Hallow's power once more.
Right before the Night King could recover from his surprise, an impossibly quick figure appeared before him, Cregan, who was almost glowing pure white. Harry had guided Ice to its original owner, knowing that it would work best for him, and it seemed that it had worked.
The young Stark swung his ancestral weapon at his enemy, who was, unfortunately, too quick to be taken by surprise, and dodged the attack. Harry saw a ball of frost appear in the creature's empty hand, ready to take advantage of the Lord of Winterfell's position. And so, he created a local gravity well, which stopped his hand from momentarily moving.
This was followed by an arrow of Dragonglass piercing his hand. Harry turned towards its source and saw Leaf wielding a Weirwood bow, being responsible for it. The arrow did not kill the Night King, not like it had the rest of his kind, but then again, he was not like them, not even close.
Thankfully, Cregan took advantage of the attack with his speed and sliced the Night King's back with Ice, the blade cutting through the creature, but not even close to a mortal blow.
Harry wasn't even sure that a mortal blow was possible, not while the Night King wielded the very concept of Death in his hands, which meant that he would need to be disarmed first.
He could feel the Night King's other hand, the one wielding his sword, ready to retaliate, and he created another gravity well, stopping him. Harry felt the pressure increase as the creature tried to dispel it by channelling its power into it. The magic would inevitably fail, but Harry figured out how to battle it.
Thankfully, Leaf's timely distraction in the form of one of her exploding orbs into the creature's face allowed him to hold the enchantment's structure far more than he likely should have. Harry yelled out loudly at them, "The sword!"
Cregan's eyes widened in recognition, and he appeared with his white shroud, swinging Ice at the Other's hand, literally ready to disarm him. He could see the Night King's eyes widen with the coming danger, a very real risk of losing.
Suddenly, the Other's hands were enveloped by Death's crimson roots, the sword having likely instinctively reacted at the danger to its wielder. Harry was quickly able to shield Cregan and Leaf, though the latter was still sent flying back by the impact.
Cregan's white shroud seemed to enhance his protections, but the Night King's weapon was still poised to stab him. And so, Harry released a bolt of golden lightning at the Night King, which forced the Other to use his weapon to dispel it.
The young Stark prepared to use Ice to attack once more, only for a sudden burst of frost to disarm him, robbing him of his white shroud, which had enhanced him very significantly. However, the young man, instead of fleeing, removed his Valyrian Steel blade from its sheath and swung it towards the creature's throat.
The last of the Others simply raised his hand and caught the soul-forged blade. Harry saw Cregan's eyes widen before the blade exploded, in a burst of light, sending the boy flying back from the energy released, which also dispelled Harry's chain of lightning.
Honestly, Harry shouldn't have been surprised by that, and yet he was. Souls were part of Death's domain, and Valyrian Steel was, at its core, a material forged with a very crude form of soul magic.
And just like that, he was back right where he was just moments prior. He needed to end this stalemate and quickly, because the longer the Night King started to properly explore his control over Death, the more drastic things would end up being.
That said, Harry felt his ring shake a bit, getting a general impression of readiness from Daphne. He suppressed a grin from showing on his face.
In the meantime, the Night King looked up to Harry with rage in his eyes, "DEATH STANDS AT MY SIDE. FATE BOWS TO ME. YOU TOOK WHAT I WAS MADE TO BE, AND THIS WORLD SHALL PAY THE PRICE FOR IT."
Well, that was certainly dramatic, wasn't it? Still, it wasn't exactly an impossible threat to follow up on, sadly, given the Night King's control over the concept. Unfortunately, it seemed like Harry might have pushed the Night King too much, given how the sword was ominously pulsing away. Then again, just yesterday, his people were ready to break down the Wall and invade the material realm; to lose everything so quickly was bound to be unsettling at the very least.
The Night King slowly and surely prepared to impale his sword into the ground, all the while staring Harry in the eyes. The sorcerer could feel the power being ready to be released, and he quickly contacted Daphne using the ring, being ready to activate it.
Immediately, Daphne's giant Weirwood trees started to glow, and Harry felt as if almost every single drop of magic from the Wall had been sucked into it, and then this was followed by a familiar weighty pressure, one that he had felt back in Skagos. It seemed like the Old Gods had finally decided to make a move after all this time. It was a bit late, in Harry's opinion, but it would do.
Their appearance seemed to make the Night King pause, this time, almost shaking in rage. He readied his weapon, likely to personally attack the Weirwood, and to be fair, he had a fair chance at destroying the Weirwood network with his newfound control over Death.
Unfortunately for him, Harry wasn't about to let that happen. "Yeah, see… in my experience?"
He launched forward before the creature could finish gathering power, scythe hooking once again around the Other's crimson blade. "Fate's a bitch."
The clash rang out like a snapped cord, this time, Harry instead using the Hallows in a way that would not make both concepts resonate, but instead jam, locking the Night King's sword in a deadened state. For the first time, its light flickered and dimmed.
The Other's eyes widened as he realised what had happened. He barely had a moment to react before a small shape slipped into existence beside him, Leaf, showing herself once more, whose Dragonglass dagger was already descending towards his heart.
The Night King snapped his free hand upward, forming a spear of ice which he dove into the Child of the Forest's chest. The force of it lifted her slightly off the ground, but she did not release a sound, just holding the Other's gaze, her finger tightening around the shaft, her bloodied hand almost staining it.
Then slowly, peace morphed into her features, and she murmured in her language, that of the forest, though Harry understood it well enough, "Every flame needs its kindling."
The moment the words left her mouth, her blood started to glow. The Night King prepared to move, only for golden light to appear, almost petrifying him in his tracks, a courtesy of Daphne. It wasn't quite petrification, as most forms of magic would dispel given the chaotic nature of the Other.
Instead, the constant channelling of Light over the spell made him almost freeze in his tracks. Normally, he could have used his blade to dispel the magic completely, but Harry had prevented it with his earlier attack.
All that remained was the final nail in the coffin, the final attack, and it came in the form of Cregan Stark.
With a thundering roar, the young Lord of the North ran towards their enemy with a familiar dagger in hand.
It was the same dagger that Harry had given him.
The same one that Daphne had experimented on when she wanted to study the material's strange reaction to Rhaena's blood in Winterfell, having occasionally asked Helaena's help with it.
It was the same dagger that was now stained with Leaf's blood, likely serving as an anchor to the impromptu ritual that she had designed, one that she sacrificed her own life to empower. A weapon born of fire and forest, now wielded by Winter's heir, like a Song of Ice and Fire.
The dagger's glow had turned red, almost as if it was on fire, one that had enveloped Cregan, strengthening him even beyond what his ancestral sword ever had, and he lunged towards the Night King with a roar, and stabbed the Last Other in the heart.
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AN: Phew, I've been planning this chapter for a while, and I'm not sure if I gave it justice. The main idea was to make a sort of twist on various prophecies about the Long Night, from the legends of Azor Ahai to the Song of Ice and Fire. I wish I'd have written Leaf a bit differently to make her death stick out more. 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.