Head of House Magnar/ PoV Argon magnar

Argon Magnar was born in midsummer, grew up an only child, married when he was six and ten, With a wildling girl he took as his spear wife when he lead an expedition to hardhome and thought the Gods were good. Though there is no summer in Skagos, just little bit warmer that's all.

Then his mother and father both died of consumption within a year of his wedding, along with the old grandfather and half the servants. The things he had to do to stem the spread were only less bitter than the vitriol he threw at the Elders for the incompetence they'd foisted on his line. It was a terrible trial to overcome. A normal man it might have slain. Another lord it may have broken. For a sudden accessor to Lord barely into adulthood, it was as gruesome a test of lordship as they came and carved his face in stone.

But the fault of their death can not be blamed at others because only a rear occasion they have a feast. Thus time passed away.

A year later he had new servants, And a firstborn son. He'd thought it a sign. A new start. Perhaps with a little more life than death this time, to fill the damned silence that now weighed down Kingshouse halls. He should have known not to trust so soon a hope. Not after such a blatant lesson in how the brightest of his days would bring on darkest night. But Sygerrik was as healthy, strong and active as a baby could be, sometimes fussy, sometimes quiet, rarely crying, and possessed of an astonishing appetite. Especially after that odd day when he up and refused to be nursed anymore and never accepted a teat again.

Everyone from the wetnurse to his wife had been confounded, and Argon was no better himself. But the boy was fine and showed an even greater appetite after, increasingly so after his teething came and went. Without any cries or tears. At all.

He should have listened to Bael ( Bael is a elderly family healer) when he wondered at Sygerrik not putting on the plumpness he should have from all the unicorn and goat milk in his diet, never mind everything else. But he'd thought the Gods had tested him enough, and the failure of Bael' predecessor was still too fresh a wound for him to have an open mind. Doubly so when the implications were so dreadful.

So he blinded and deafened himself to whatever might have been a sign. Watched and listened instead as Sygerrik took his first steps at nine moons. Rejoiced when he started talking the day after. His first word was papa. His first word! Of course, then his boy immediately asked for more food. Argon had laughed himself sick all day but really, what else was a father to do but watch and laugh and delight in it all? So that's what he did. He watched and delighted in his firstborn's life. His firstborn, and then his second a year later. Then both of them right up until Artos second nameday, when Bael judged Art strong enough for the brothers to finally start playing together. Argon would have allowed it sooner, but while Sygerrik hadn't shown himself to be particularly brash, he did have a strong and persistent toddler grip.

Usually on his beard. Anything to make his father spend more time with him. It was part of why it grew so thick so quickly, Argon was sure of it.

Sitting with his wife and watching the two children play together for the first time in the Godswood should have been the best day of his life.

Then Sygerrik toddled into sight of the Heart Tree, looked at it and froze like a green boy borne down on by a boar.

Then collapsed like deadwood.

And that was how Argon magnar finally, finally learned what should truly have been his first life lesson.

The Gods were cruel.

Why else would they strike down his son? He was barely more than an infant!

Sygerrik didn't die, but it might have been more merciful if he had. He didn't wake for over a moonturn. Instead he was laid out in bed, weak and sweaty and his brow burning hotter than the most blistering summer sun. Argon tried to hope, tried to focus on what his son wasn't going through. He wasn't coughing, he wasn't wailing in pain, he wasn't coughing blood. But it was useless! What was the point in hope when his boy tossed, turned, moaned unintelligibly and grew more and more emaciated after sweating himself almost to death every damned night? He couldn't even take any of Baels' useless 'remedies' without puking out what little soup Daela could get him to swallow down!

It was all Argon could do to wear his stone-cold silence and be strong for his wife, instead of cursing and screaming and hurling everything at hand against the walls. It wasn't enough it took his parents so early on, the wasting sickness just had to have his son? Curse this fate, curse the Gods, and curse every last, useless man and woman in my Hall!

And curse him for still letting hope kindle in his heart when Bael came to him hesitantly one morning and told him the fever had passed and Sygerrik had woken at some point in the night. He should have waited. He should have let the elder finish. Instead, the father rushed to his son's bedside and got to see the horrible truth for himself.

Sygerrik was weak. He couldn't walk. He couldn't stand. He couldn't feed himself anymore and he could barely hold down food half the time. If that was it, Argon might have let it pass as after-sickness. But it wasn't. It was worse than that. Sygerrik could barely focus on anything, barely even noticed them in the room, and when he did bring himself together, he couldn't hold a train of thought for more than ten breaths without suffering severe moodswings. And when he tried to talk, oh Gods, that was the worst. No matter how hard and steadily and slowly he tried – and Gods he tried – all but one in ten words came out as total gibberish.

For the first time in his life, Argon magnar could not be the pillar for his distraught wife.

And that was how, having secluded himself in his solar with and audiences and complaints and his bitterness, Argon magnar learned his second life lesson.

The Gods were fickle.

His son was broken.

If Daela hadn't clung to Art all those fraught weeks wherever she went, including the Godswood while she prayed, he might have decided then and there to never let any of his children within sight of the Gods again. But how could he? He is a stoneborn, and respect for the old Gods run deep in a Skagossis heart.

The thought would haunt him for a sennight and then some, every time Bael – the only member of the household who could dare bring up his son in his presence anymore, and even then only out of duty – would come to give his twice-daily report. Argon's young, gormless self might have still thought it encouraging: Sygerrik was adjusting, focusing ever so slightly better every day, putting meat back on his bones. He was even relearning to talk a bit more each day, thanks to Daela who barely ever left his bedside these days. She'd even moved Artos's crib in the same quarters. Once, Bael even dared imply his boy was embarrassed. And that he used it toward striving to go without help to and back from the pot.

But when Bael came to him one moon after his son woke up, the reality turned out to be as terrible as every time before.

"He survives, my Lord. With time and effort, it may be he will regain what he lost. Perhaps even catch up to where young Art is now, in time, but…"

"…But?"

"But I fear there is little hope for more than that. The family script has many records on child sicknesses. They might kill and they might not. They can be cruel. They can be kind. But what they all are is fleeting. This is not fleeting. This was no childhood sickness, and if the brainstorm hasn't cleared by now, I fear there is no natural way for it to ever do so. There are some scant entries of noble scions that survived some years after such an ordeal, but…"

"Speak¸ Elder."

"But all they did was survive. It was never more than that. And never without help, even for the base things."

Argon clenched his fists hard enough that his nails punctured the skin on his palms. Gods, he must be letting himself go if they had time to grow so sharp.

He didn't know how long he sat there in the darkness, watching dully as the specters of his bitterness and grief-clogged rage swept in and out of the shadows.

When he finally came back to himself, he realized with some distant listlessness that Bael was still there. The older man regarded him with that long, slanted, knowing look that always preceded Argon's latest and most humiliating defeat in cyvasse. And always a subsequent lecture that never failed to make him feel adrift and abandoned. By the times, by the Gods, by his father who had died well before he got around to teaching him so very, very much.

"Say what you want to say or leave me in peace."

"I will do the former, for the latter cannot be if there is no peace to begin with."

The younger, gormless him would have thought it mockery. The him of now just didn't care. "Say what you want to say."

"…Everything changes. The days. The years. The seasons. The world. But if there is one thing that can change quicker than all the rest, it is life. More than that, the men who live it."

"Speak plainly elder, I've no patience for your games today."

"Perhaps you should, seeing as we are dancing around the proof that the Skagos perhaps hasn't changed as much as it ought."

The stupefied outrage at this old man having the gall to even say such a thing… It barely sparked. Then it disappeared as if it had never been at all. "I should banish you for that."

"Now or never, My Lord."

Argon magnar blinked, then slowly gathered himself and focused on the man before him. "What did you say?" Did the man just issue an ultimatum?

"A man's conviction is only as strong as his most weighty decision," Bael said, calm and steady like Argon no longer seemed to manage to be for anyone. "We are what we are in the dark."

"… What am I, then?"

"I could not say."

"What can you say then?"

"That you have a decision to make."

Argon magnar turned his eyes away and looked blankly at the wall behind the man.

"The Gods of Earth, Stone, and Tree are nameless and voiceless, but they are not the Gods of Men ? Would They not help in my time of need ?"

The flickering flames of the candle barely reached the far wall, but they did enough to expose the doom and gloom and dark monsters shaped like eyes amidst white branches.

Then he went off to his son's sickroom, ordered Daela off to rest up, and went to give his precious son and heir his final bath.

And that was how Argon magnar learned his third life lesson.

The Gods could do without him, But still he prayed to them. Argon knows that he was a coward, and his son Sygerrik knew he was broken but his son was still trying to fix himself.

And fix himself he did ! In a shockingly horrible way. And maybe the God's actually listened to Argon's prayer And approximately 2 moons later his son became the energetic boy he one's was. And started run like horse.

The curse that the old Gods inflicted upon him. was not a curse at all ! It was a blessing instead.

And the knowledge that the Gods have given to his son, changed our lives and land forever.

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(AN: Give your opinion on the story guys ... And if possible a review .) just so you know that I have copy paste a lot of content of this chapter. because I don't have much time to write something original . And you should check out the original fanfiction name (The Logistics of good living) it's a really good Read . The next chapters will be original.