Chapter 24: Piracy, Whoring and Quarantine

13th day of the 3rd moon, 293 AC. Dol Guldur.

Harry was making one last trip through his tower, checking that all the doors were shut and sealed. The last group of Thenns had just recently passed through, taking with them the last of the supplies that had been readied for them. There was no more reason to put it off.

The tower sure did feel rather empty and forlorn now, though. He'd gotten so used to the controlled chaos at the edges of his awareness that the silence had become unpalatable. He'd already commandeered some space in Sunspear to use as a headquarters, but he would always be a guest there and nothing more. It was not his territory.

That once again brought him to the nagging puzzle of the Others. Their ability to make a joint territory when Territory Creation was a very personalized thing he could somewhat understand. A hive mind or something similar. Cool, whatever.

But how were they moving their territory south with them? It takes years, decades to establish a magical territory and it was bound to a location. What the Others were doing flew in the face of everything he knew, and his best theory so far was that they had somehow bound up their identity with winter itself. How that was possible he had no idea but it would explain a lot about this world's seasons. Unfortunately, it was also very problematic to deal with.

As in, it neatly undercut all his plans to deal with the Others. Those plans had relied on him having access to his full power once they left the Lands of Always Winter. There was a good reason he had never taken the initiative against them despite his curiosity. If he couldn't bring his own magic to bear then he was little better than an exceptionally strong warrior. And he didn't dare rely on aerial superiority either, as the risk that they could render even the Disc's flying ability non-functional was far too high. Even if they just did something as basic as chuck ice spears at him en masse things would get dicey, considering the power and accuracy the single one they'd tossed so far.

No, despite how much it annoyed him to run, they needed the Wall, its strategic bottleneck position, its size, its ancient spells and perhaps most importantly, the sheer weight of meaning packed behind its purpose of 'stopping the Others'.

He was banking on that being enough to halt their advance, stop them from spreading their territory south and create a favorable – or at least even – battleground, because if it couldn't….

Well, they would all be in for a bad time.

With one last glance at his home, Harry made his way to the Hall of Mirrors, which was essentially the hub room for the network of portals that linked all the places he'd wanted to have a permanent connection to.

Within minutes, he was back down in Dorne. Not being in the mood to talk to anyone, he made himself invisible and stalked over to the room he had renovated into being his study. Unlike the one in Dol Guldur, this one was far more of a war room than a workshop. Its primary feature was a massive map of the world plastered across most of an entire wall.

Looking at it, he could almost see the movement of men and resources heading towards the Wall. The amount of both might seem excessive, but Harry was willing to err on the side of caution. The Wall could not be allowed to fall. The Gift and New Gift were already swarming with activity to make sure it didn't happen, with magic being used egregiously to speed and streamline the process.

But that was one fight that would have to be done without him. Even discounting the dubious effectiveness of his magic against the Others, there was simply too much going on elsewhere.

The Ironborn continued to worry him. Rodrik Greyjoy showed ever increasing signs of mental pollution and it was no longer possible to enter his mind via the Glass Candles. Hell, he might just sink their fleet himself if they turned out to be a big enough issue. For the moment, he was still hoping to glean some hint about the nature of the current crisis from that developing situation.

The toad mutants and the city of Yeen still seemed contained, but it was something to watch out for nonetheless.

As for Asshai….well, nothing he had done so far seemed to have accomplished anything. The Shadow avoided the sun, but was spreading through every crack and crevice in the Shadow Lands. How do you fight something so amorphous? How do you fight something you couldn't even approach properly?

What a mess. Harry longed for the days when he could spend his time tinkering in his workshop or researching some new magic or even just teaching one of his kids.

With a sigh, he took off his boots and his shirt and just about everything else except his pants. Then he walked out onto the balcony and simply stared at the slowly setting sun. If there was one upside to being in Dorne it was this. He'd discovered a fondness for sunlight since his return and could even stare directly at it without fear of damaging his eyes. Well, 'discovered' may be too strong a term. He couldn't recall ever not liking the sun, but both Adrastia and Luna had assured him that his favorite type of days used to be overcast.

Weird, but he'd take their word for it.

Harry was able to connect the dots just fine. The sudden increase of supernatural activity was definitely connected to his return to the mortal world. The question was how. Had R'hllor been acting like some kind of metaphysical plug in an equally metaphysical hole? And if so, what could he do about it?

Even if he was willing to sacrifice himself to take up the role the fiery cunt had played (which he wasn't), there was no guarantee that he could. He and R'hllor had vastly different domains. And that was all presupposing that he was even right about this. For all he knew, this was some kind of general backlash for disturbing the natural order and it would blow over after X amount of years or casualties or on the seven thousand six hundred and fifth time that a squirrel took a shit on someone's farm. The gods of the Summer Isles certainly seemed to think so(minus the end conditions), but he wasn't willing to take those oversexed hippies on their word.

Not knowing exactly what kind of rules the world ran on sure was inconvenient.

The door opening interrupted his thoughts, but he didn't bother turning around.

"Soaking up some rays?" Adrastia asked humorously.

"You could say that." Harry agreed. "Did you need something?"

"Need is a strong word." She demurred, walking up behind him and digging her knuckles into the small of his back. "I just wanted to ask if you had enough free time on your hands to remove these feline appendages."

"Hmmm, I don't know, that's pretty non-essential."

"So was applying them."

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

"Yes, Harry. Yes they do."

"So, how are things across the continent? Anything to watch out for?"

Adrastia sighed at the blatant subject change, but didn't stop her massage. "Most of the minor lords think Rickard has gone senile and is jumping at shadows. Among the big players, only Tywin Lannister outright refuses to believe that the Others are really coming and is sending as few men and supplies as he can get away with."

"Alas, poor Tywin, for he is of feeble mind." Harry shook his head mock sorrowfully. The Old Lion was on quite a bad decision streak.

Granted, it wasn't entirely his own fault that he had no heirs and was about to take a hit to his prestige for refusing to commit to the defense of all life, but it mostly was. Funny how a clever man could also be incredibly blind to things he didn't want to see.

"He is, at least, taking the potential threat of the Ironborn seriously." Adrastia continued. "In fact, he is using it as an excuse to stay at Casterly Rock while sending his youngest brother, Gerion, to the Wall."

"Not his right-hand man." Harry mused, knowing that it was meant as a rather unsubtle statement on what he thought of the threat of the Others. "Is Gerion any good at logistics?"

"I do not believe he has ever had the opportunity to find out." Adrastia admitted. "Being a fourth son, he was used as little more than dumb muscle his whole life"

"Might as well send him to Tyrion at the Nightfort, then. Those two got along if I recall correctly."

"The only other thing is that pirates have begun to take note of the gold you are throwing around. Some of them will inevitably be tempted to raid the ships carrying supplies to the North."

"Maybe it's time to do something about that, then." Harry mused. Usually he wouldn't bother himself with a little piracy perpetrated against people he didn't know or care about, but keeping the supply chain secure was the single most critical thing to do in a war of logistics. Or any kind of war, actually. Failure to act now could cause him exponentially more problems in the future.

"There is one other thing I wanted to talk to you about." Adrastia spoke up, digging her fingers into his back slightly harder.

"Oh?"

"Have you set up an escape plan for us in case the situation deteriorates past salvaging?"

Ah, of course. The Black Widow's notoriously overdeveloped self-preservation instinct.

"The Dimension Jump ritual isn't perfected yet." Harry replied honestly. With how dangerous that kind of magic could be, he had taken things very slowly. When he'd been meddling with time magic, he had at least had the research of the Unspeakables to start off with, but for this he had nothing but educated guesses and cautious assumptions.

"But is it functional?" She pressed.

"I could probably hurl us into the in-between without devastating the immediate area, but it would be the same kind of uncontrolled freefall that landed us in this world to begin with." He admitted.

"Well, that is hardly ideal, but it will have to do." Adrastia sighed.

"We're not doing that."

"What?!" She squawked in shock. "Why not?"

Harry turned around and smiled down at her. "Because I caused this mess…or at least made it a lot worse than it should be. I'm not going to run and let everyone else suffer the consequences for it."

She stared at him without comprehension for several long seconds before a horrified realization crept into her eyes. "No…please don't tell me that you've become infected by any idiotic notions of honor or sentimentality."

"You can't seriously expect me to abandon all my kids just because things are getting genuinely dangerous." He raised an eyebrow at her. "If anything, that's even more reason to stay."

"They're going to die anyway!" She pleaded. "What does it matter if it happens a few decades earlier?"

Harry couldn't help but chuckle and pat her on the head as if she was an actual cat. "Immortality suits you well, Adrastia. A heartless woman like you won't ever be burdened with regret. Unfortunately, I have to keep the weight on my soul as light as possible. We're staying and fighting, to whatever end."

She ground her teeth together in frustration before smoothing out her expression and pressing herself up against him. "Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?"

Harry could only deadpan down at her, unable to believe she had actually tried that. "No, but now you get to take care of the boner you just caused."

"Will you at least get rid of these stupid cat ears and tail?" She asked huffily, giving up the seductive act.

Ah, so she was trying to see if she could squeeze out a minor concession as a consolation prize and wrapping it in a sexual framework to make him more mellow about it. Typical Adrastia.

"I'll think about it." He allowed, going along with it. The catgirl joke was getting a bit old anyway. "Now get to it."

She sank down to her knees with no further comment, quickly undoing his belt and pulling down his pants and underwear. A few strokes to get him to full hardness and she wrapped her lips around the head while looking upwards sultrily, slowly sliding down along the shaft.

Harry put a hand on her head encouragingly and started rubbing her cat ears, knowing that the sensation would go straight to her libido. She settled into a rhythm of slowly taking him in to the hilt, working her throat to stimulate and then sliding back equally slowly. It was obviously a technique designed to be as erotic as possible while at the same time not bringing him over the edge too quickly. Yeah, she was definitely angling for a reward.

He repositioned his feet into a more stable position, honestly curious to see how long she would keep it up.

A good forty-five minutes later, there was a significant amount of tension building up in his loins and Adrastia was still working at her previous slow pace. He had been hovering close to the edge of release for a while now and was sorely tempted to forcibly speed up the pace to get it, but somewhere along the way it had become a competition and he wasn't going to crack first. He could practically smell the arousal dripping from between her legs, so it wasn't like he was the only one facing a test of willpower.

A competition that got interrupted by the door opening and Elia sticking her head inside.

"Harry,are…oh!" She obviously hadn't been expecting to find them in such a compromising position. "My apologies, I didn't mean to interrupt."

"Elia." Harry said, voice a few octaves lower than normal thanks to the prolonged edging he was being subjected to. "Come inside."

"But…" She tried to protest, a blush forming on her cheeks.

So cute. Though Dornish, she had been raised with the intention of marriage to Rhaegar Targaryen, which meant that she was quite a bit more reserved than a Dornish woman would normally be. Certainly a lot more than Arianne or Tyene were. Getting her flustered was always fun.

"Come inside." He repeated, smiling slightly when she obeyed. "Close the door."

She'd given birth not long ago, so her figure was back to being slender, but her breasts were full of milk and had gone up a size or two.

Elia fidgeted under his stare, obviously trying not to look at what Adrastia was doing and just as obviously failing.

"Harry…" She tried to say, squirming uncomfortably under his stare.

"Take off your clothes." He interrupted.

Her blush intensified and she bit her lip for a second before obeying and slipping the burnt orange dress she was wearing off her shoulders. It was of Dornish make and thus easily removed.

"All of your clothes." He prompted further, nodding towards her red silk thong. He'd made those for her and all his women, particularly Arianne, loved them.

The tiny garment fell to the floor almost soundlessly, save for a faint wet 'splat'.

"Looks like someone likes what they're seeing." Harry teased, making Elia put a hand in front of her crotch in embarrassment. "Touch yourself for me."

With another lip bite, she obeyed and began rubbing herself. It was halting and hesitant at first and every minor 'squelch' sound from her soaked nethers made her look away in embarrassment, but the visual and tactile stimulation quickly got the better of her and she started getting into it.

Her mouth parted slightly as her breathing became heavy with arousal and somewhat glassy eyes were locked on the back of Adrastia's bobbing head. Almost by itself, her other hand went to her breasts and pinched a nipple, causing a drop of milk to bead out and trickle down her nude body.

Harry knew that he was just making things harder on himself by getting her to do this, but, much like a child who knew he shouldn't eat those cookies right before dinner, he found his judgement to be compromised.

Elia's breathing deepened, her rubbing intensified and the trickles of milk from her nipples became spurts as she brought herself ever closer to orgasm. Egged on by the visual stimulation, he felt his own climax approaching and had no interest in stopping it even if it would mean 'losing' the game to Adrastia.

When Elia's legs started shaking from the incoming climax, Harry put his hand on Adrastia's head and started thrusting into her mouth instead of letting her have control. He came with a grunt and hilted himself into her throat, letting loose the torrent of cum her efforts had stockpiled.

Being an old hand at this, the immortal man-eater had taken a deep breath when she sensed the change and now simply kept herself relaxed as he discharged right into her stomach. The only thing she did was work her throat and fondle his balls to squeeze it all out of him and fondle his.

The sight was obviously also quite erotic to Elia, as she kept her eyes fixed on the spectacle and began rubbing herself almost frantically, reaching her own climax with a restrained cry of pleasure.

Legs shaking in the aftermath, she placed a hand against the wall to brace herself and stared at him with dark eyes that were still hungry. If she was a more aggressive woman, she would have approached and initiated. As it was, she was giving every possible signal that she was ready and eager for more.

Harry kept his eyes on her even as he gave Adrastia's cat ears another rub. The kneeling woman was anything but slow on the uptake and had already started bringing him back to full hardness. With his enhanced refractory period, it didn't even take a minute before he was ready to go again.

Adrastia pulled herself off his member once it was ready, wiped her mouth and left the room without a word, no doubt to find someone to scratch her own itch. Probably Oberyn.

Harry stepped out of his pants and slowly stalked towards a Elia, enjoying her wide-eyed look and the way she was glancing at his shaft.

"You've made quite a mess of yourself." He purred, looking down at her milk-stained body.

"My apologieeeeeEEs!" Her shy response trailed into a cute little squeal when he reached over to give her sensitive breasts a squeeze, making more milk spurt out of them.

"I didn't say it was a bad thing." And it really wasn't. After the little miscommunication regarding the purpose of Luna's lactating boobies, milk play had become a staple of their sex life.

"Ha-Harry." Elia moaned, pressing her breasts further into her hands. "I need…"

He understood exactly what she needed. Bending down slightly so that her could hook his arms under her knees, he easily picked her up and brought her to eye-level.

Gasping at the feel of his shaft probing her soaked entrance, Elia wrapped her hands around his neck and gave him a ravenous kiss, wiggling against him the whole time impatiently.

Harry slowly lowered her onto it, incidentally breaking the kiss. Not that she was in any state to complain.

Head thrown backwards and gasping as she was filled inch by slow inch, Elia was a vision of rapture. She shuddered and clung to him desperately when he hilted himself completely inside her, a perfect fit. As it should be, since he had designed her body to be that way. Her old one had been a little on the small side.

"H-Ha-Haaarryyy." She moaned helplessly, looking up with dazed eyes.

Harry smiled at her, then lifted her up and slammed her back down, grinning at the cry that tore itself out of her throat. Before she could get her wits about her he did it again, and again, and again.

Elia quickly gave up on staying coherent and focused on clinging to him and trying to stifle her sweet cries.

Despite his earlier climax, it didn't take him long to build back up to another one. He held back from finishing it until he got her there as well, despite the enchanted nature of his altered semen rendering that kind of consideration unnecessary. It was still more enjoyable that way.

Only when he felt her clenching in preparation did he pick up the pace to bring himself over, finishing with one final thrust and letting loose.

Elia threw her head back again and cried out and would have fallen to the ground if not for his grip on her lower back. She shuddered in his arms like a leaf in a storm, clenching around his shaft like a silken vice as it throbbed and fired thick ropes of cum against the entrance to her womb.

A couple of minutes later, she raised her head from his chest, staring up at him with a face plastered with sweaty hair. Instead of saying anything she just smiled and then went back to resting against his pectoral.

"Maybe a girl this time?" She murmured sleepily.

"Maybe." Harry agreed. The notion of actively preventing conception was rather strange to him these days and he wondered why he had ever bothered with it. With an internal shrug, he started walking towards their bedroom.

A few of the servants squawked quietly in shock at seeing him walk through the halls with their sleeping princess still impaled on his cock, their mixed discharge slowly leaking out of her. It was pretty hilarious seeing them try to take it in stride for the sake of their Dornish pride, but obviously unused to seeing anything quite that shameless.

Good times.

XXXXX

16th day of the 4th moon, 293 AC. The Stepstones, Bloodstone.

Salladhor Saan could only marvel at how quickly a man's fortunes could turn.

Just earlier today he had styled himself as the Prince of the Narrow Sea, a pirate powerful enough that nobody dared challenge openly. Though, if he was being honest with himself, he knew that that was only true for as long as he didn't make too much of a nuisance of himself.

Now here he was, hiding in Bloodstone's old keep and hoping that the doors of its great hall would somehow hold back their foe.

Perhaps he should have been suspicious when so many other notable pirate captains decided to make port in Bloodstone at the same time as him. It was a very unusual thing to happen, after all, especially when nobody had planned it.

Alas, the first sign of trouble had been their ships burning in the harbor. Then it had been fire and lightning and blood and darkness, until they fled to huddle in this final shelter.

A knock sounded upon the barred doors, implausibly loud. Salladhor exchanged baffled looks with his fellow captains.

"Knock knock!" The invader said cheerfully, punctuating his words with actual knocks.

Even more baffled, Salladhor decided to respond. "Who is it?"

"A wizard with an offer you can't refuse." He replied and the door began withering, the thick wood shriveling until it collapsed into dust.

Now they all finally got a good look at their attacker and were intimidated. His massive height and strong frame they would not be put off by, but his piercing emerald eyes and the eldritch glow in the sockets of the skull-topped bone staff were far more imposing.

Some of the men panicked and launched arrows from nocked bows or loosed bolts from crossbows. As had happened outside, the projectiles simply stopped in mid-air. A twirling gesture of the wizard's hand made them rotate and then…

"Return." The whispered word was heard as clearly as a shout, and sent bolts and arrows flying back at the men who had shot them.

"Now that we have that out of the way…." The wizard spoke over the screams of pain. "Which one of you speaks for the group?"

The answer was, of course, nobody. Salladhor may consider himself the best pirate in the world, but that was an opinion hotly contested by his fellow pirates and none of them would allow another to speak for them.

Not usually, at least. Pirates were not lords and their stance on such matters was rather more malleable. Faced with the prospect of having to speak to the supremely powerful sorcerer that had driven them into hiding all by himself, every single one of them took a step backwards and left Salladhor standing at the front.

"Ah, good." The wizard nodded in satisfaction. "You can call me Harry, And you are…?"

"Salladhor Saan." He introduced himself, leaving out his usually more ostentatious introduction. He had a feeling that the wizard would not care for it.

"Saan?" Harry repeated curiously. "Any relation to Samara Saan?"

Salladhor blinked, not expecting to hear that name. "She was my aunt. How do you know her?" After all, the woman was long dead.

"Oh, she tried to enslave one of my women about…humm, almost sixty years ago now. It was a rather poor decision on her part."

Salladhor's mind flashed back to what he knew of his aunt's death and the rumors he had heard.

"Indeed." He agreed, banishing the gruesome details from his thoughts.

"Well, hopefully you're smarter than she was." The wizard said, smiling widely.

"I like to think that I am the smartest of my family." He certainly had no plans to die in such a horrible fashion. In fact, he'd prefer not to die at all for quite some time yet.

"Good, then you should have no problem understanding the benefits of my offer." Harry nodded. "You see, there are momentous events happening all around the world. Events that will have all of Westeros too busy to play with you. My offer to you is that you stop engaging in piracy for the foreseeable future and I don't kill you. Pretty fair, isn't it? You get to live and I get to go about my plans without having to waste time hunting you down like the vermin you are."

"Yes, very fair." Salladhor replied tightly, feeling sweat bead on his forehead. The wizard's presence suddenly loomed over them like a mountain, terrible in its vastness.

Never had he felt more vindicated in his decision to avoid raiding Angmari ships. Always he had feared to do so because he didn't know what would provoke the Sorcerer or which ship might carry one of his family. And the stories of pirate ships simply disappearing without a trace in the Shivering Sea had also encouraged that decision.

"Excellent, I'm glad we could come to an agreement so quickly." Harry smiled, but the feeling of being in the presence of something beyond mortal ken lingered. "Oh, and if any of you have any slaves, you should release them. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine, you see, and I will feel compelled to hunt you down if you don't. Good bye for now, Salladhor. And remember, if I get any reports of piracy in the Narrow Sea, I'll be holding you responsible."

The wizard turned around and left, leaving the Lyseny staring at his back in horror.

Salladhor had not been lying when he claimed himself to be a smart man and understood exactly what kind of position he had been put in. Even if every pirate captain in this room agreed to stop raiding, it would only take so long before someone started doing it again. By placing him into a position of responsibility, the Sorcerer had forced him start hunting pirates instead of being one.

He closed his eyes and wondered if he would be able to convince any Free City magisters or Westerosi lordlings to hire him and his fleet as protection against piracy.

XXXXX

28th day of the 4th moon, 293 AC. The North, Brandon's Gift.

Aegon pulled the cowl of his cloak lower over his head, more in an effort to hide than to stave off the cold. His presence here was supposed to be secret after all.

"Lady Adrastia, why did you bring me here?" He asked, looking at the woman that was hooded and cloaked just like him.

"To learn." She answered shortly. "Harry has been too busy lately and asked me to take over for him. Look around you, what do you see?"

Aegon did as she asked and really looked at what was going on. There were men everywhere, shouting, sparring, building, digging, hauling, and more. There was even a giant with a mammoth, dragging along a sleigh loaded with felled trees.

"I see men working hard, preparing for the fight to come." He answered. "Northmen, southrons, Angmari, all working together."

"Mmm." She hummed. "Harry is worried. He won't admit it, but he is. There are practically entire cities being built along the Wall, and Harry has located hot springs and other resources in the ground for them so that they may be viable. He and Luna are helping to erect glass houses for food production with their magic. Alchemists are hard at work creating fuel to feed the fires needed to keep people warm."

"He fears the strength of the Others." Aegon realized with a degree of shock. He had never known his foster father to fear anything.

"He fears losing control of the situation and is choosing to err on the side of caution. If the Wall is lost, then the Others became an urgent problem that he must personally intervene in and he does not know if he will have time for that. If they can be held at the Wall, then he can leave it in mundane hands. By over-preparing now, he is doing his best to contain at least one problem. However, having this many men gathered in one place creates a slew of different problems, can you spot them?"

Aegon took another pensive look around and thought back to what he had learned previously. It was inspiring to see the people of Westeros working together against a common foe, but that common foe was not yet here.

"The men here, they are all too different." He said.

"Mmm, that is another reason to keep them busy, idle hands are the Devil's plaything. Even having them dig holes and then fill them back up would be better than letting them just sit around. But this leads to yet another problem."

This time the answer came easily. "If they work, then they must be paid, or else it would be slavery."

"Indeed, and they must be paid well enough that they will work happily. However, money needs to circulate or it is worthless, so there must be services. "

Aegon noticed that they were heading towards a rather large and elegant building made of wood and stone. The doors were guarded by two burly men that wore neither House colors nor guard uniforms. Mirrored carvings of two naked women decorated the heavy mantle over the door, seemingly holding up a sign that proclaimed the establishment as 'The Hot Pocket'.

It was, unmistakably, a brothel. And an incongruously high class one, considering the location.

"Lady Adrastia, why are we going there?" He asked with a blush.

"Why, to visit one of the most important services in the region." She smirked. "I have set up a chain of these all along the Wall, can you guess why?"

Aegon blushed harder, too embarrassed to give the obvious answer.

"Still shy even after dealing with Luna's shenanigans for all these years?" Adrastia teased. "To put it crudely, if men are too busy fucking then they will not be fighting."

He still could not answer and tried to hide further inside his cowl as he was led through the doors. The guards simply stepped aside for Adrastia after she allowed them to glimpse her face beneath her hood.

A blast of warm, faintly sweet-scented air hit his face as they entered. To his relief he was not immediately beset by visions of naked flesh. Instead, what he saw was a pretty woman behind a desk with a ledger in front of her and another guard standing in a corner.

Her eyes widened slightly at the sight of them and she quickly stood in greeting.

"My lady." She said, turning her gaze on Aegon and frowning in confusion. "Did you not say that we would not be training new girls yet?"

"Oh, he is not a new girl." Adrastia smirked, pulling down his hood. "Meet Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of His Name."

"Your Grace." The other woman stuttered in shock. Even the silent guard visibly stiffened in surprise.

"My lady?" Aegon honestly had no idea how to address a whore, so he defaulted to maximum politeness even though a questioning tone at his own choice snuck into it.

"What a polite young man! The other girls will love you." The whore giggled, making him blush again.

"I brought him here to teach him about the less glamorous parts of his kingdom." Adrastia continued as if neither of them had spoken. "We will be in the common room."

"Of course." The other woman acknowledged and turned back to Aegon with a smile, composure restored. "We hope you enjoy your stay in the Hot Pocket, Your Grace."

"Err, thank you." He replied awkwardly, still blushing.

Adrastia led them deeper into the building and he followed silently. There was a central staircase that went both up and down, which let Aegon know that the brothel had at least one level of basement on top of its already large space above ground. A rather impressive construction, especially considering its intended purpose.

They went all the way up to the third, and top, floor, where Aegon once more found himself surprised. The entire floor was a large and rather well-appointed sitting room. It would not have been out of place in a castle.

Did all whores live this well, or was it just Lady Adrastia's?

"Happy whores means happy clients, and happy clients means plenty of money." She explained, apparently seeing the question on his face.

"But how could you afford to pay for all this?" He asked in confusion. "In fact, where did you even get all this furniture?"

"I cheated." She admitted shamelessly. "Of course, it would be impossible to build such a high class brothel in the frozen end of nowhere, furnish it and settle in the girls in the short amount of time I had available. The girls were moved in from further south, while the southern brothels were refilled with girls from Essos. Magic was used for the rest."

"But why go to all this effort for a brothel?" Aegon could not understand it at all.

Before answering, Adrastia gestured for him to sit while she threw off her cloak and sprawled across a chaise. She no longer sported the cat ears and tail that she had carried for so long. "Because, my dear boy, prostitution is a fact of life. It has always existed and it will always exist. Had I not set up this brothel, women would have sold themselves in the open. This is much better, wouldn't you say?"

Aegon frowned in thought. He had spent some time in King's Landing over the past few moons, learning about his realm's capitol and observing the functions of his Small Council.

"My Master of Laws does not think so. He has already petitioned me for permission to shut down all the brothels in King's Landing."

"Stannis Baratheon is a tool." Adrastia chuckled. "If you need something hammered into place, he is your man, but don't ask him to trim a rose bush, because he is going to try using a hammer to do it."

The man did come off as rather rigid.

"Besides, what would closing the brothels accomplish? The whores would still be there and they would still need to eat. Depriving them of a place to do business would mean that they would have to do so on street corners or in taverns, which is considerably worse than doing it in a brothel."

"So I should take care to support prostitution in the realm?" Aegon asked, frowning as he tried to make sense of it. No matter how he looked at it, that sounded wrong, but Adrastia's words made sense.

"Not openly, of course." She assured him. "Prostitution may be an unavoidable fact of life, but it must by necessity have a bad reputation."

"I do not understand." The young prince was even more confused now.

The dark woman gave him a cunning smile. "What is prostituion, Aegon?"

"It is….an exchange?" He said slowly and uncertainly. "The man pays in coin for use of the woman's body."

"Just so. Now what if that exchange was turned into a contract? What if the man agreed to take care of all the woman's worldly needs and in turn, she promises to lay with no other man?"

It only took him a few seconds to figure out the implication.

"You cannot possibly be equating marriage to prostitution!" He exclaimed in shock.

"Can't I?" Adrastia asked teasingly. "Do noble men not marry their daughters off for political advantage? Are women not taken care of as long as they remain faithful? Is your own prospective bride's family not grooming her so that they can benefit from your union?"

"But…marriage is a sacred union!" He protested, unable to really think of a good counter-argument.

"Indeed, it is the very foundation of a functional civilization, a social contract between men and women that assures long term cooperation, fosters a sense of community and gives children a stable environment to grow in and be inducted into their culture of birth." She agreed grandly, then abruptly switched to a tone as dry as the sands of Dorne. "But at the core it remains a simple exchange. Men have things that women want and women have things that men want."

Aegon had no idea what to say to that. How was he ever supposed to look at Margaery same way again?

"Don't fret over it." She waved off. "Like I said, prostitution needs to have a bad reputation while marriage is glorified. There will always be whores, either by choice or by circumstance, but it should never be encouraged. If the line between marriage and prostitution blurs in the minds of the people, civilization will collapse. Can you tell me why?"

It was a question that he was commonly asked, so Aegon knew that the answer was in something that had been said earlier. It took him a couple of minutes to go over everything Lady Adrastia had said before he noticed it.

"Children." He said. "Prostitution makes no consideration for the children born of such unions."

Adrastia made a show of clapping and gave him an approving smile. "Indeed so, but there is more. Marriage is a long term strategy that assures the woman's comfort and safety even after her youth and beauty are spent. Prostitution only works while young and most whores don't think to save up money for their later years, if such a thing is even possible, which leaves old whores impoverished and we have already gone over what poverty does to a kingdom if left unchecked. The children of whores are also born at a tremendous disadvantage and often end up becoming problematic elements within society. A well run brothel can mitigate the damage in its area by creating a system for aging whores and their children to be made useful. Furthermore, it can also take in street urchins and train them to be whores or brothel guards, to say nothing of how many secrets men carelessly blurt out after sex. For these reasons, it will be in your best interests to publicly espouse the virtues of marriage while at the same time secretly supporting brothels all across the continent."

"Perhaps I should make you a secret member of the Small Council, the Mistress of Whores." Aegon laughed weakly at his own jest, unsure if it was appropriate. "You seem to have things well in hand."

"You flatter me, darling." Lady Adrastia smiled brightly, dark eyes flashing with humor.

The sounds of conversation and female laughter were suddenly heard from outside, just a few seconds before the door opened and two women wandered inside.

Their laughter cut off abruptly as they stared at them. Aegon had to look away, embarrassed by the nearly transparent silk dresses they wore. Even after living in Angmar all his life and his recent experiences in Dorne, he was not used to grown women being effectively naked in front of him. Not enough to be completely comfortable with it at least.

"My lady?" One of them, a beautiful and full-figured dark-haired woman, asked in surprise.

"Girls." Adrastia greeted before gesturing to him. "Meet your future king, Aegon VI Targaryen."

"Your Grace!" They gasped, scampering closer.

"Ladies." Aegon greeted, keeping his voice even with some difficulty.

"Oh, he's so cute!" The younger of the two cooed, a girl with light brown hair and grey eyes. She could not yet be twenty.

Aegon regretted sitting on such a large couch, because it allowed the two women to sit on either side of him and squish him in between them.

He directed a silent plea for help to his minder and teacher, but she just grinned at him.

"Would you like to see my hot pocket, Your Grace?" The older whore asked throatily, pressing even closer.

"I'm sure His Grace would prefer a fresher one." The younger one interjected, also pressing herself closer.

Aegon now had his head trapped in between two pairs of breasts.

Why were these whores so bold?!

"Ladies!" He quickly said before things could get any more out of control. "While I appreciate your…generous offers, I must decline."

"So polite!" They giggled, backing off. "We are at your service if you change your mind, Your Grace."

"We are going to have to work on your composure around semi-naked women." Adrastia mused loudly. "While you held up admirably for your age, it will get more difficult once puberty begins properly."

The words inspired dread in Aegon's young heart. His stepfather had always warned him that Lady Adrastia was a demon of a woman.

XXXXX

1st day of the 5th moon. 293 AC. Outskirts of the Shadow Lands.

Harry squinted into the distance, seeing a speck of movement. Given the brownish color of it, he was guessing horsemen.

"Ah, Yi Ti finally dispatching a scouting party to see what I'm doing?" He mused to himself. "Slow. You'd think a man setting a line of fire across the land would merit a less lethargic response."

And that was indeed what he was doing. He had a space-expanded pouch with him, filled with a heavy powder that caught fire about thirty seconds after being exposed to light, which would then continue to burn.

For, oh, about twenty years or so.

He had been laying down said powder for several weeks now, spending most of his day just walking northwards while leaving behind a trail of bright white flame. Making the stuff was a chore and a half, forcing him to create another Hyperbolic Time Chamber in Sunspear and spend months at a time in there, refining the powder just so he had enough of it to spread.

What was the point of doing this? Well, after attempts to destroy the creepy sentient darkness that was spreading across the Shadow Lands like tentacles across a Japanese schoolgirl had failed, he had moved on to containment.

He was going to quarantine the area. With fire.

Unfortunately, this was an incredibly tedious task. Not only had creating the powder turned from an interesting challenge into monotonous drudgework, but he also had to manually walk all around the area that he wanted to quarantine.

Even if he and Luna had spent over a hundred years strolling across Earth, he was not looking forward to walking several thousand miles around the Mountains of the Morn. And he didn't even have Luna to keep him company, because she was just as busy as him.

"And now some officious twatwaffle that thinks he's important is coming to flap his gums at me." Harry grumbled to himself, already exasperated ahead of time. "I wonder if it's someone that actually reports to the governor of Jinqi or yet another local tax collector getting too big for his britches?"

Yi Ti was, quite honestly, a rather hilarious nation. Calling itself something as ostentatious as 'The Golden Empire of Yi Ti' and ruled by a 'god-emperor', yet so fractured that anyone with a pair of balls can declare his own fiefdom and the mighty god-emperor can't do anything about it except suck on his thumb and pout. Hell, the man can barely afford to maintain his oversized palace.

The only reason they hadn't been conquered yet was due to the sheer luck of being surrounded by equally ridiculous neighbors.

The three remaining cities of the largely defunct Patrimony of Hyrkoon to the west. A people that had somehow managed to convince themselves that only women, the physically inferior sex and the reproduction bottleneck, should be warriors for some asinine reason while the vast majority of men got gelded. Utterly baffling. Not the castration part – matriarchies were always incredibly vicious with their sexual selection, and it was a matriarchy despite the so-called Great Fathers ostensibly being in charge – but how they had managed to exist this long with such a self-destructive culture. Either way, they were certainly no threat to Yi Ti, or anyone for that matter.

The Jogos Nhai to the north, which were basically a slightly less brutal version of the Dothraki riding around on zebras. Zorses, to use the local lingo. Again, no real threat simply for the fact that they lacked the armaments that the Dothraki had in their heyday and couldn't form massive hordes because their religious beliefs forbade making war on each other.

And non-militant – and now destroyed – Asshai to the east.

Yes, Yi Ti was absurdly lucky in a geographical sense. Except for, you know, the slight danger of being swallowed by a gigantic living shadow if he failed to contain it.

Harry ignored the scouting party as they got close enough to be distinct. He ignored them when they got within a few hundred meters. He ignored the calls they made in their not-Chinese. It was only when they finally manned up and approached that he deigned to look at them.

As expected, most of the men there were guards, garbed in armor that wouldn't have been out of place in ancient China. Their leader was dressed rather more impractically, in voluminous robes and a silly hat. He had the look of a jumped up bureaucrat, an arrogant and smug expression but body language that screamed weakness.

"Sorcerer, I demand to know what you are doing!" The bureaucrat, Harry dubbed him Lee, said rather pompously.

Magic was much more common around these parts than in the west, so they weren't surprised by it. However, this idiot wasn't learned enough to realize that what he was seeing was much more powerful than the cheap tricks employed by Yi Ti's conjurers.

"Sealing off the Shadow Lands." Harry replied easily, not stopping his walk. Fortunately learning the language of Yi Ti wasn't hard when you already knew Mandarin and Cantonese beforehand.

Lee paused for a moment, looking south along the ever-burning line of white fire that stretched out towards the horizon. Then he looked north, to the long stretch of open land.

"You intend to walk from coast to coast? From the Jade Sea to the Thousand Islands?" He asked, somewhat incredulously.

"Yes." Harry lied. In truth, he intended to curve around the Mountains of the Morn, but there was no need to confuse the over-evolved chimpanzee with something that complicated. Bureaucrats were notoriously linear thinkers.

"Why?"

"You must have heard of the living shadow that has consumed Asshai and much of the Shadow Lands. If it is not contained, it will spread and devour the world."

Lee sat pensively on his horse for a while, gently clopping along. For just a moment, Harry fancied that he might see a miracle – a bureaucrat capable of making a smart decision.

"I am sure my lord will understand your reasons, Sorcerer, if you compensate him for the land you are cutting off."

Alas, hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

"Your lord can go eat shit." Harry replied affably.

His tone was so incongruous that it took Lee a few seconds to register the words, upon which time he flushed lobster-red.

"You dare?!" Lee screamed. "Guards, seize him!"

"Boo." The spook spell was as effective against mounted units as ever and the horses quickly tossed their riders before running off. One of the men even got trampled.

A 'come hither' gesture brought Lee flying in front of him. The guards were still groaning from the rough landing.

"Now, listen here, Lee…" Harry began, not even having stopped his walk.

"My name-" The man tried to interrupt.

"Is Lee." Harry interrupted his interruption. "Keep up, will you? I don't really have time to play with you, so I would appreciate it if no armies were sent to kill me while I'm working to save the world. Could you go tell your lord to mind his own business so I don't have to kill him first?"

Lee swallowed and nodded fearfully.

"Thank you, Lee, I appreciate it." Harry patted the man on the cheek with his free hand and then sent him stumbling back towards his men.

After a short discussion, all of them ran off, leaving behind the one that got trampled by a horse.

Harry sighed. "He's definitely going to try sending an army after me."

After all, he was a bureaucrat, a sub-species of humanity with a racial passive that made them incapable of choosing to do the smart thing.

XXXXX

There was indeed an army sent after him. Several armies, actually. Small ones, but still.

None of them accomplished much of anything. Harry would either amuse himself by leading them around on a wild goose chase, taking pot shots at the officers or doing something especially flashy to scare them. One general thought he was particularly clever by hiding his men in a field of ghost grass.

Harry set the whole thing on fire. There was much screaming.

He also had some problems with raiders from Jogos Nhai, but they learned to keep their distance quick enough.

Aside from those distractions, time passed in monotonous fashion. With all the other things he had to do, as well as the time taken to make more fire powder, it took Harry nearly two years to walk the approximately three thousand miles of distance. From his subjective perspective, it took a lifetime. Although he had long since stopped keeping track, he knew that year eight hundred since his birth came and went at some point while he was working in his alchemical laboratory in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber.

Fortunately, it seemed to be worth it. The darkness spilling across the Shadow Lands avoided the line of fire, even during the night. Hopefully it would buy enough time for him to find a more permanent solution.

The preparations along the Wall continued apace during this time, leaving Brandon's Gift and the New Gift almost unrecognizable. The Starks, and the Northmen as a whole, were quietly (or not so quietly, in the case of the Umbers) gleeful at how much of a boon this would be to them in the future.

There were flare ups of trouble of course; belligerent (or simply bored) Angmari picking fights, young men crushing on the same girl and settling it with fisticuffs, faithful of the Seven freaking out over the many uses of magic going on, the occasional overly smug noble getting punched in the face, a mildly drunk Greatjon Umber trying to arrange a marriage between his heir and a female giant…. small stuff.

Fortunately, Luna kept a close eye on things and was generally able to defuse any conflicts before they got out of control. It helped that septons and septas had been strongly 'discouraged' from showing up. The faithful of the Seven complained about it, but as they were not forbidden from practicing their religion and had nobody to rile them up, it remained mostly a non-issue.

Mostly.

Adrastia also continued to funnel as many women as she could into the area, whores or otherwise. She recruited them from all over Westeros and from most of the Free Cities. Another fact that hadn't been advertised was that the lords sending men to the Wall had been advised to pick the young and unmarried ones first. These same lords were not told that the men they sent to war would likely not be coming back, on account of having become infatuated and deciding to settle down in the rapidly developing lands near the Wall.

In a medieval society, there was never a shortage of down-on-their-luck women willing to believe that there was a good husband and a better life waiting for them elsewhere. Cities were especially rife with them. Even a good chunk of the whores she sent there ended up getting married when they caught a man's eye.

Men fought harder if they knew their families were right behind them and with Harry's refusal to make an emergency escape plan, the Black Widow was determined to give them as many reasons to fight as possible. Plus, this wasn't the age of the internet and digital currency. You had to keep the money sinks local in order to sustain an economy.

Most of the maesters still scoffed at the idea that the Others were real, much less that they were invading, but they did write about how it was an occurrence of unmatched cooperation between the kingdoms.

Except for the Ironborn. They had been deliberately and blatantly told to stay home and not cause trouble. Nobody wanted them at the Wall. Nobody believed they would be able to get along with everyone else. Nobody even really believed that they were any good as fighters on dry land.

Rodrik Greyjoy fumed at the insult and plotted vengeance…but then, he'd been plotting vengeance before that too, so there wasn't much difference. Harry kept a close eye on his deteriorating mental state, hoping that the process would give him a hint as to the solution to the mess they were in.

It was about three years after the first encounter north of Thenn that the Others and their undead minions finally shambled to the Wall and the holding pattern came to an end.