~ Maegor Stark POV ~
~ The Wall ~
It is truly a magical view; a barely disturbed expanse of animals, snow, forests, mountains, frozen rivers, and hundreds of Wildling tribes scattered across the land. And then there is all the land beyond that, the Lands of Always Winter filled with the Others, the Night's King, the Corpse Queen, and wights-animal and human undead-waiting for the pacts of the past Long Night to be broken. To bring death, silence, and snow to the rest of the world.
Not that you could blame them. If the Elder race's were dwindling, as they had been since humans started populating the world, I would also seek out a Outer God to put an end to their expansions for civilization. To the Others, and many of the now lost Elder Races, humanity is a cancers tumor feasting upon the lifeblood of the planet. Rarely giving back to the world after mining, chopping down, or worse yet completely contaminating the world that they inhabit with every other creature in the world.
Yet many of those Elder Races actually have intermingled with humanity throughout its rise into the predominant civilization. Even going as far as to inter-breed with humanity, like the Starks with the blood of the Others and even the Children of the Forest. Those that were mixed blood were heads and shoulders more powerful than the rest of mankind, often times becoming leaders and/or heroes of old and even living longer than an average human lifespan thanks to the Elder Races blood.
Garth Greenhand was said to have been part Green-man, creatures resembling those of Fauns and Satyrs from Greek and Roman mythology, or the Celtic Horned God-Cernunnos-Lord of Wild Things. Antler horned, green skinned, covered in foliage, and said to ride upon elks and to be protectors of nature. Often times those legends included the changing of the seasons, which is a major theme G.R.R.Martin uses in the Asoiaf books.
'Thoughts for later.' I thought to myself shaking my raven head, scattering the accumulated snow that had gathered atop of my black feathered bird body.
For now I turn my raven head left, looking towards east of Castle Black, towards the the Nightfort, the oldest and largest of the castle's along the Wall and its many mysteries. Built before the foundation of the Wall was even put into place and expanded.
To my magic sight, the fort is a nexus of the magic of the Wall, something that I'd like to explore extensively but I'll have to put it off for another time.
I turned back to the north; looking down to the treeline of the Haunted Forest, spotting the grove with the weirwood tree where the recruits of the Night's Watch swear their vows, at least the one's who worship the Old Gods. The grove stands about half a league (one and a half miles) from the Wall, my target for my first test of my vampiric physique.
First, speed. Alucard was known for his impossible speed; able, in short bursts, to travel as fast as a bullet, which is roughly five hundred to seven hundred miles per hour. Compound that with the fact that I am far more powerful than Alucard ever was, I think I'll be able to get to subsonic speed, about seven to nine hundred miles per hour, and that's without ramping up the magic used to fuel the bursts of speed.
It would have taken regular ravens roughly about two minutes to fly from the Wall to the weirwood grove a mile and a half away.
So when I spread my wings and took off from the top of the Wall and arrived in the grove within two seconds, I was elated. Not only because of the speed, but because of the fact that I perceived the speed as a regular flight. Other than that the snow falling seeming to freeze in the air as I flew by, my perception was not hindered at all. So not only am I fast, nearly Mach 1, my reaction is top notch. I'll definitely won't be able to get anywhere near Flashs, from the DC universes, speed for awhile, but I'm not lacking in my speed for now.
Instead of reveling in it though, I shifted back into my human form to move on to testing my other dhampir abilities.
Walking up to an old oak tree within the grove; I transformed my hands into claws. My nails sharpened and took on dark shadowy color covering the tips of my right hands fingers. Swiping my claws through the oak lazily and slashing through the trunk like a knife through butter. I could probably topple the oak tree over with a regular shove and that is a trunk that four people with their arms out could barely encircle. I'm going to need to create a more precise means of testing the limits of my strength, but I estimate that it is around the same as the gods of the Marvel universe, twenty to thirty tons of strength hidden in this fledgling gods body of mine.
Next shapeshifting.
Alucards ability to shapeshift overlaps with Amatsu-Mikaboshi's, as does his ability for dark magic with the exception of their power, origins, and the structures of the spells.
Alucard, or Adrian Tepes, learned dark magic from his father, Vlad 'Dracula' Tepes, in the fifteenth century and relies on the magic of the vampiric bloodline and grows with the age of the vampire.
Amatsu-Mikaboshi, on the other hand, is the God of Evil, Chaos and the Stars to the followers of the Shinto religion in Japan. He is not actually an Amatsu-Kami, but a primordial being who was imprisoned in Yomi, the Shinto Underworld, for all eternity.
The entity known as Amatsu-Mikaboshi originated as an aspect of Oblivion, the cosmic entity embodying the void that existed before the universe even began. An incarnation of the primordial darkness and chaos that existed before the universe, the Chaos King exists as a dark counterpart to Eternity, whose genesis stripped the Chaos King of much of its power and led to it being integrated into the Shinto cosmology as "Amatsu-Mikaboshi".
So comparing Alucard and the Chaos Kings power in dark magic is like comparing a wizard to the primordial God. There's no comparison.
Other than devouring and supplanting the weirwood network, assimilating with the Old Gods of the Forest and Rivers, and creating shadow copies, I have not used more than a fraction of Amatsu-Mikaboshi's true power so far. Besides when I confront the gods of the rest of the world of Planetos and beyond, I don't think I'll be using the Chaos Kings power for anything other than exploring the omniverse.
Last thing I wanted to test was my super senses, which again fails to compare with the senses of a primordial chaos God. But Alucards sensing abilities do not disappoint at all either.
While boosted by my almost endless spring of power within my soul, I can sense everything happening miles around me; the intrepid men of the Night's Watch atop the Wall chattering teath in the cold, the noises animals and human settlements of the Haunted Forest, even my parents steady heart beats within the Kings Tower. I can even smell that they just had finished having sex just half an hour ago, which is going to be something I have to get used to. The ability to smell sex on people and that's not even including my other senses.
Enough of that for now though. I still have a Direwolves to hunt in the snow and Children of the Forest to check up on.