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Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
ASOIAF and all of its characters belong to GRRM
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 12: The Crypts
Later that day, Joffrey had finally had enough of shadows and watchful eyes. When the Hound stepped out to relieve himself, Joffrey slipped onto his balcony. The cold northern air was a sharp slap. He glanced down, then up. The roof of the guest house was a climb meant for cats or desperate boys. A thought, a whisper of power to his limbs for a burst of strength, and he pulled himself onto the slate tiles. For the first time in weeks, he was blessedly alone.
From the roof, the Godswood spread out below him like a dark green cloak. He dropped down into its shelter, the pine-needle floor muffling his steps. The air here was different. Thicker. It held a scent of damp earth and old stone, and beneath that… something else. A faint, whispering hum that prickled against his skin.
Could this be the power of the Old Gods? he wondered, moving deeper.
Ahead, the bone-white branches and blood-red leaves of the heart tree rose above the others, a sentinel in the gloom. As he neared the clearing, his senses twitched. Someone was already there.
He moved around the edge of the small, black pool, making his footsteps deliberately loud. The figure at the base of the weirwood jolted.
Sansa Stark gasped, her blue eyes flying open. "Who—? Joff— Your Grace?" She quickly adjusted herself.
"Were you praying? I didn't mean to bother you," he said, though his eyes were already on the tree. The strange energy pulsed from it, a slow, deep heartbeat in the earth. "I only wanted to see it."
"The heart tree?" Sansa asked, brushing moss from her skirts. "Don't you have one in King's Landing?"
"We do. It's dead. Like every weirwood south of the Neck, as far as I heard. I wanted to see a living one."
Sansa was looking past him, her gaze searching the shadows between the trees.
"Are you waiting for someone?" Joffrey asked.
"No, it's just… where are your guards?" She had never seen him without the Hound's grim silhouette at his back.
"Ah. Well." Joffrey gave her a small, conspiratorial smile. "I sort of… slipped out. Without telling anyone."
"You slipped out?" Her shock was genuine. The idea of the Prince sneaking around by himself sounded ridiculous.
"Climbed the roof and jumped down." He saw her flinch and winced inwardly. "Forgive me. That was thoughtless of me to say."
Her little brother lay broken from a fall. The words hung in the air between them.
"It's fine," she whispered, though her eyes said it wasn't.
"How is your brother? Any change?"
She shook her head, tears welling. "He is alive, but Maester Luwin doesn't know if he'll ever wake up again."
Joffrey reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder. A gesture meant to comfort, but also a subtle channel. He let a thread of warm, calm assurance seep into her, a psychic balm. "Your brother is going to be fine. I'm certain of it."
"How can you know?" The desperation in her voice was raw.
"I… know many things. More than people think. And this is one of them." He pulled his hand back.
"Thank you, Your Grace," she said, clearly believing he was only offering empty courtesies. She smoothed her dress again. "I should go. Septa Mordane will be looking for me. I didn't tell her I was coming here."
"Go on, Lady Sansa. I'll not keep you." He gave her a nod.
She hurried away, a flash of blue and auburn swallowed by the trees. Finally, he was alone with the ancient thing.
He circled the weirwood first, studying it. Its roots were great, twisted serpents burrowing into the earth, diving into the black water of the pool. The face carved into its trunk was old, so old the features were smoothed by time and weather into a mournful, knowing grimace. This tree had seen centuries come and go. Millennia, perhaps.
"Are you as old as they say?" he murmured to the silent face.
He raised a hand, hovering it just above the pale bark. He could feel the life in it, a deep, slow, vegetal power. Then his fingers touched the wood.
A dozen eyes snapped open in the darkness behind his own. Not physical eyes, but a sudden, overwhelming sense of being watched from a vast, cold distance. The gaze was ancient, alien, and utterly focused on him. It was not hostile, merely… observing. A spider at the center of a web feeling a new vibration.
Joffrey jerked his hand back as if burned. "What the fuck was that?"
He took a step back, heart hammering against his ribs. He stared at the weeping face. This is no mere tree. It's a lens. A window.
Someone, or something, was using the weirwood network to see. The motives were a mystery, but the feeling of that cold, distant scrutiny was enough. He would not touch it again. His power was returning, but this was not the time for a duel with some unseen entity rooted in the bones of the world.
But one truth was now undeniable. Maester Luwin, with his chain and his skepticism, was wrong. Magic was not dead. It was here, living in the wood and stone of Winterfell, and it was being used.
Joffrey clenched his fists, the chill of the gaze slowly fading. A slow smile touched his lips. "Interesting," he breathed. "That makes it all… interesting."
He had meant to leave the Godswood by the main gate, but a new thought struck him. He had studied Winterfell's rough layout. If he went this way, over the inner wall…
It was harder than it looked, a double wall, and he had to move like a shadow to avoid the increased comings and goings in the yard below. But the entrance to the crypts, when he found it, was utterly unguarded. No treasures lay within, only the silent, stony dead.
Yet, he had felt a pull towards this place since arriving. A different kind of whisper than the Godswood's hum. A colder call.
"Let's see what secrets the dead are keeping," he muttered to the descending dark, and stepped inside.
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The narrow entrance gave way to a spiral of stairs that plunged into the earth. The darkness was absolute, a thick velvet black that swallowed sound.
"Lumos," he whispered. Three spheres of cool, white light blossomed from his fingertips. He sent two bobbing ahead into the abyss, keeping one by his side. Their glow revealed only more steps, winding down into the guts of the world.
"How deep does this go?"
The answer was: deep enough to make time stretch. After what felt like ten minutes of steady descent, the stairs finally ended. He stood in a vast, echoing cavern, the first level of the crypts.
The air was frigid and stale, heavy with the smell of damp stone and something else...a faint, metallic tang of old blood and older power. It seeped from the very flagstones, mingling with the dust of ages. Long rows of pillars marched into the gloom, and between them stood the statues. Life-sized figures of stern-faced men, some with stone wolves at their feet, each guarding a sealed stone coffin with sword in hand. Real steel, not stone.
"The resting place of every Stark Lord and Lady," Joffrey murmured, his voice small in the immense quiet. "How many centuries do you hold?"
He began to walk, the spheres of light floating beside him, casting long, dancing shadows. The plaques were legible even on the oldest tombs. He recognized names near the entrance: Rickard Stark, Lord Eddard's father. Next to him, Brandon. And then… Lyanna.
He paused. A stone statue of a slender girl with long hair, a hint of a smile on her carved lips. A single winter rose, now wilted, lay on the lid of her tomb. Robert's tribute. Odd, Joffrey thought. I thought only the lords were entombed here.
He moved on, the statues becoming older, their armor and styles shifting with forgotten centuries. The residual magic here was different from the weirwood's vital thrum. This was a cold magic. A silent magic. The magic of memory and final rest. It was unfamiliar, prickling against his own warmer, will-focused power.
"Could I use this?" he mused aloud, the sound swallowed by the crypt. "Empower a spell? It would have to be something of like nature… ice, or perhaps…"
A presence solidified in the air before him.
He stopped. A shimmering, translucent figure coalesced from the gloom beside a particularly grim-looking statue. It was a tall man with a long beard and worn leather armor, his image faint as mist.
"Leave," the apparition intoned, its voice a dry rustle of dead leaves. "You do not belong here."
Joffrey's eyebrows rose. "A ghost? Here?" He looked at the plaque: Lord Cregan Stark. "A pleasure, my lord. I mean no disrespect. I am—"
"Leave. You do not belong." The ghostly face was impassive, its eyes hollow.
"At least let me introduce myself. I am Joffrey Baratheon."
"You do not belong."
Joffrey frowned. "Is that all you can say?" He peered closer. This was no ghost as he knew them, no Nearly Headless Nick, no mournful Grey Lady. There was no personality, no lingering consciousness. This was a stain. A psychic echo of the man's will, imprinted on the charged stones of this place and given vaporous form by the crypt's strange energy. A recording, endlessly repeating.
"Leave. You do not belong."
"Yes, I heard you the first three times," Joffrey said, exasperated. He waved a hand, a gentle push of magical force. The misty figure shredded like smoke in a breeze, dissipating with a faint sigh.
"Disappointing," he muttered. "But there's more down here." Ahead, another, narrower staircase descended into a deeper black.
He didn't have all day to wander this necropolis. Placing his hands on his thighs, he focused. A crackle of blue-white energy, like captured lightning, raced along his limbs. "Fulmina."
The world blurred. He was a bolt shot down the stairs, the orbs of light streaking behind him like comets. He passed the second level in a heartbeat, a flash of older statues, titles shifting from "Lord" to "King." King Dorren Stark. King Brandon the Shipwright. Theon the Hungry Wolf. More spectral sentinels appeared, their warnings a meaningless buzz in his wake.
Another staircase. Deeper still.
The third level. The air was colder here, so cold it burned the lungs. The statues were archaic, their features stylized, their stone cloaks carved with runes he did not recognize. These Kings had ruled when the giants were still a memory, not a legend.
He skidded to a halt.
The passage ahead was blocked. A massive collapse of stone and earth blocked the way entirely, sealing the deeper crypts. Rubble was piled to the ceiling.
"That's… odd," Joffrey murmured, his breath frosting. Everything in these crypts was meticulously maintained, preserved by magic or sheer northern stubbornness. A collapse here made no sense. It felt… deliberate.
He approached the wall of debris. The cold here was intense, and the strange, silent magic of the place thrummed against his skin with a new, urgent frequency. He reached out, not with his hand, but with his senses, pushing them through the cracks between the stones.
There was something on the other side. Not just more tombs. Something that pulled. Something old, and powerful, and waiting in the dark.
He placed a palm against the cold, damp rock. The whisper from the other side was a siren's call, promising answers, promising...something. It resonated with the hunger in his own soul, the ambition that had survived the death of a universe.
He smiled, a hunter's smile in the dark. "Well now. What have you been hiding down here?"
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