Chapter 21: A Man’s Wisdom

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123 AC, Skagos

She was ready to fight. But then she stopped. She stared at Lord Harry with wide, trembling eyes, and her lips parted as if the words had been torn from her. "What… are you?" she whispered, voice cracking like old leaves underfoot.

Rhaena knew that she would never forget the look on the creature's face, the mixture of awe and terror, as it looked at Lord Harry. It was very similar to how most people looked at their dragons, creatures that could kill them in seconds.

She understood, deep down, that Lord Harry was dangerous; he had scared off the Cannibal after all. But to see a living, breathing creature stare at him like this seemed to hammer down the point. And yet, the man did not look like a monster; he simply looked at the creature with curiosity, mixed with amusement, "Me? I'm just a man."

The child of the forest scoffed, "I do not know what you are, but you are no man."

"I wouldn't say that I am normal," he replied with his wife snorting in amusement in the background, "And yet, I was born of the union of a man and a woman, forged in destiny and magic, tempered with experience and war. What would you call this but humanity?"

"Your song is not ours, and neither is hers," she replied while motioning at the Lady Daphne, before her eyes settled on Rhaena, "and yet the child is one of fire and darkness. Why have you come here, Strangers?"

"Curiosity, I suppose. I've heard of you, the Children of the Forest, the emissaries of the Old Gods."

The Child of the Forest glared at him, "We are not the children here!"

"You are not. You are old, I can see it in your eyes. You're a fascinating creature, like a mixture between a watered-down nymph and a fae, connected deeply with the network of the Weirwood Trees, dependent on their strength. How did the first of your kind come to be? It wasn't natural, that I can tell."

For the first time, the Child of the Forest seemed completely taken aback, "The first of my kind was born of the first Heart Tree. More followed as we planted more trees."

Lord Harry hummed, "How interesting… It definitely wasn't on purpose. A tree… No, a remnant of an old world, the end of a battle, death and suffering together, mixed with nature, to bring life to wood and shape it to flesh. Nature spirit indeed. I was closer than I thought. And that should also explain why you went to war with the First Men for cutting down Weirwood Trees. They were messing with the birth of your young…"

"What do you want, Stranger?"

"I want to understand!" Lord Harry answered with excitement in his voice, "You don't get it, not knowing, the mystery before me. This world is broken. It has been broken for a long time, and yet it keeps on going. It is a remnant of something, and I wish to uncover it. You've been very helpful in that regard. I didn't expect to get these answers here, of all places, or even see any of your kind south of the Wall."

"The Wall?" The creature asked with pure hope and desperation in its voice, "I am not the last?"

"Not as far as I can tell. And yes, there was quite a large wall of ice sometimes after the battle for the Dawn. I assume you were trapped since before that."

Rhaena froze at that. The creature had been there for so long?

"And the Cold Ones?" the Child of the Forest replied, "What happened to them?"

"I have no idea," Lord Harry answered while shrugging, "There are some prophecies that they'll come back or something. What's your name, if you don't mind me asking?"

The creature answered with a sound that Rhaena simply didn't understand, and then she smirked and continued, "That is what I am called, but you can call me Root."

Lord Harry, on the other hand, seemed delighted, "How wonderful, a name woven in the song of the world, a concept not just some word. Here, let me try it."

He cleared his throat and released the same exact sound as the creature, who stood there, completely taken aback by what he had just accomplished, "How?"

"It's a wonderful name. It's a shame to just simplify it to Root. Now, let's see the reason we came here, the egg. The one in Dragonstone was a lot larger. It was all hot, melty, with a few elemental creatures guarding it. This one looks…"

"Dead," the creature replied, "It is dead, and it is because of my failure. I was meant to be its protector, to safeguard the Egg, in exchange for using their energy to forge weapons for the battle for the Dawn. They found us, the Cold Ones. We fought, but there were hundreds of thousands of wights, dozens of Walkers. My allies had fallen and began to join the enemy's ranks. I couldn't let them take the Egg."

"You killed the egg, used the power within to trap them inside. That petrification spell of yours was interesting."

"I killed them all, but I have failed my charge, and the world is lesser for it."

"Then why not leave?" Rhaena asked suddenly, "Why didn't you go join the others?"

"She couldn't," Lady Daphne answered instead.

Root showed them her arm, where a dark, charred palm print marred the bark-like skin. "They marked me," she whispered. "One of the Cold Ones. A prince, perhaps. A creature of cold and command. The mark binds me to him, like a beacon across the weave of the world."

Rhaena stepped closer, watching the faint shimmer of magic pulse from the mark, like a bruise that never healed.

"I could not let him see me. Not when I took the egg's fire and shattered his army into stillness. So, I wove protections, old things, forgotten things. Songs not sung since before your First Men came. I buried myself behind layers of silence and shadow, cloaked from his gaze."

"And now you can't leave," Lady Daphne spoke up, "You were marked and just as the White Walkers can't get here, you can't get out, trapped by your own attack.

Root looked away, seemingly in shame, "Perhaps it was for the best. I could not face my kin with the weight of my failures, not anymore."

"So, what are the Others? Where did they come from?" Lord Harry asked.

"We do not know. I was not born when the first signs appeared. My people were still at war with the First Men at that time. They were cutting down our trees, burning down our forests, and our young, and then the Lands of Always Winter disappeared from our sight. We did not care for it at the time, focused on our war. It wasn't until the war ended, until the Pact of the Isle of Faces. A few of my kind and the First Men ventured North, but they never returned. It was slow at first. Weirwood trees started to die, small villages of men disappeared without a trace, leaving no bodies behind."

Root's voice dropped to a whisper, as if saying the words aloud might bring those shadows back. "We didn't understand at first. We thought it was the remnants of war, that the land was sick. But it was them. The Cold Ones. They moved like frost creeping over still water, silent, patient, unstoppable. Wherever they went, life died. And not just the body. The Weirwoods, the trees that hold memory, that sing the songs of the world… they stopped singing."

She glanced toward the pale trees circling the dead egg, their carved faces worn and weeping frozen sap. "Our Gods do not hear this place. My protections did that. To sever their gaze. It was the only way to hide, but it cut me off as well. I am no longer seen, even by my gods."

There was no anger in her voice, just a hollow quiet, the kind that clung to forgotten places.

"I do not know what the Others truly are. We call them the Cold Ones, but calling them Others is fitting. They do not speak. They do not rest. But they remember. And they hate us all with a passion that couldn't help but unite us and our strength to fend them off. It gladdens me that we were victorious, that the world of the living remains, that I am not the last."

The cavern stayed silent at this proclamation, and Rhaena couldn't help but imagine how terrible it must have been to be alone. The Long Night must have been thousands of years ago, and Root had spent all this time thinking that she was alone, that she was the last. It would have driven Rhaena mad, that was for sure.

Lord Harry did give her a pitying look as well, but he asked another question, "So you don't know what the White Walkers are, and your petrification has turned them into nothing more than an ice sculpture. I don't blame you, of course. But I'm more interested in their seemingly invincibility being overwhelmed with Dragonglass. That's a conceptual weakness, not a physical one, that's for sure. I wonder… Tell me, where did Dragonglass come from? How is it created? There's an abundance of it, but not too much."

Root began to speak before stopping, "I do not know. Frozen fire was always there, whenever we needed it."

"Frozen fire, Dragonglass, it's so obvious, isn't it? There's a spark inside, a spark of power, that you channel with your magic. It's that spark that kills them, the concept of fire, of life. Frozen fire, what an apt name. And its origin, the eggs, perhaps. That would mean… That would mean that the Dragon Eggs are even older than you. But that's not important; what's important is that for such a conceptual damage to happen, your enemy has to be a creature with an opposite nature, Ice, and Death. No, it's Coldness and Unlife."

Root gave him an odd look. "We knew that."

"Sure, but you're not hearing me. Death is natural, but Necromancy is not. Sure, playing with souls can work and can enhance a lot of things. It isn't something that appears out of nature because it's directly opposed to it. At the scale of the Long Night, the sun going out, the endless cold, the millions of dead bodies, animal and human alike, being controlled, we can come to a very simple conclusion. No creature, no matter how magical, could do this. They were created; they were empowered by something… A god, if I had to guess."

 The Child of the Forest prepared to speak, only to freeze. Rhaena noticed that Lord Harry and Lady Daphne did as well: "Something broke the wards."

The creature child of the forest began to shiver, the mark on her hand slowly spreading over her body at an alarming speed. Root gasped, stumbling back, hand clutching her chest as the mark burned black and deep. Her eyes flared with ancient light and terror. "He saw me," she whispered, voice dry as dust. "Only for a moment… but it was enough."

Rhaena instinctively moved forward, only for Lady Daphne to stop her with a firm hand. Root was already dying.

"I held for so long," the ancient being said, voice growing faint. "But the veil is torn. He knows. He comes."

Lord Harry stepped closer, power humming faintly beneath his skin. "We can heal you," he said gently. "I can sever the mark, rebuild the wards…"

Root smiled, a tired, brittle thing. "No. I stayed because I thought I was the last… I stayed to bear witness, to remember, to protect. But I am not the last. That is a far greater gift than I could have ever imagined, Stranger."

She looked at Rhaena then, eyes soft with something like hope. "You bear the blood of fire, but your heart is still growing. Treasure your sun, child. For he truly is a wonder."

Her gaze turned back to Lord Harry. "Stranger… I ask of you a mercy. End this form. Let me return to the earth. Let me rejoin the trees, if the gods will still have me."

The sorcerer hesitated, jaw tight.

"Please. Take the egg. It is dead, but it is still powerful, a remnant of old fire. If they return, it may yet burn again. Find the others, I beg of you. Find them…"

The man nodded and reached forward, touching Root's head. Slowly, the child of the forest started to crumble, and Rhaena saw a true smile on her face for the first time. She didn't seem in pain, and she slowly turned to dust, blown away by a wind that she couldn't feel.

Lord Harry's expression darkened. He obviously wasn't happy with what happened, and he made a show of it. He raised his hand and made a fist. She heard a raven caw, followed by another and then another. She hadn't known there were ravens there in the first place, and yet, they seemed unsettled.

Then, like pulling back a curtain, the form of a man appeared. Pale, thin, draped in tattered red. One eye was dark, lifeless, and empty. The other burned red, like a coal left too long in the hearth. His skin was stretched thin over sharp bones, hair like milk spilt in ink.

He looked at Lord Harry with a completely fearful and hateful expression, "You! What have you done?"

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AN: That chapter was far harder to write than I expected. I had some trouble writing a Child of the Forest, and I'm not sure I pulled it off, to be honest. I wanted Root to be affected by not being connected to the Weirwoods for so long, essentially, making her more human by a lack of connection to the Old Gods. 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 of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.