The Logistics of Good Living (ASOIAF, Brandon Stark SI)

Interlude: The Seventy-Seven Theses

Karmic Acumen

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The Seventy-Seven Theses

By yearning of the righteous truth and the desire to bring it into the light so long denied, the following profferances will be discussed at Maidenpool, under the auspice of the Revered High Sparrow, Foremost Wandering Minister, Great Shepherd of the Faithful True, Master of Scripture. Wherefore he requests that those who cannot be present to debate in person, may do so by letter.

By the Mother's mercy, let these tenets be ushered into the Smith's light, that the Maiden's purity be once again the drive behind the Warrior's arm, that the Crone's deepest truth be anew the only guide behind the Father's justice, that the Stranger need no more claim the righteous faithful as forbearance to the wicked, may it be so.

  1. Our lord and Father, when he said "Repent", willed that the faithful spend their entire life in Repentance.
  2. This word cannot be understood to mean murder in the Warrior's name, much less so than it can be satisfied by mere confession to the septons.
  3. There is no inward repentance that does not work outward mortification of the flesh, but the Smith's call has always been to hone one's own self, not to tarnish the self of another.
  4. The penalty of sin, therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues, for the Chrone's wisdom is ever self-revealing, and should remain so until our entrance to the Seven Heavens.
  5. Still so, the Maiden, in her innocence, remits guilt to none who she does not, at the same time, humble in all ways and bring in subjection to her grace.
  6. Yet all those who are not doomed to damnation have already received the Mother's mercy; Thus, the Canons of penitence can be imposed only on the living, and any attempts to impose them on the dying is and infringement of Her charity.
  7. Therefore, the High Septon in all his decrees makes exception of the article of necessity and death, and ignorant and wicked are the doings of those septons who reserve canonical penances for Hell or, worse, use and misuse the Seven's Canons in order to absolve the living of their debt of Repentance.
  8. The High Septon cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by the Seven and by assenting to Their remission; Though he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment, if his right to grant remission in such cases is despised, the guilt remains entirely unforgiven.
  9. The exclusion of certain septons from the canonical penalties is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown by the very septons in question while the High Septon slept.
  10. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.
  11. At the same time, it is true that the dying are freed by death from all canonical penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and any claims to the contrary can only be the hubris of man attempting to infringe upon the Father's justice.
  12. On this basis, certain preachers claim this is why the Stranger cares not if he meets the aggrieved before the sinner, for death is his gift that allows the Father to grant eternal bliss or torment as deserved by all parties;
  13. However, as man is only freed in death from all man-begotten canons, then "full remission of all penalties" cannot actually mean "of all," but only of those imposed by the High Septon.
  14. More so, if we accept that justice is the sole providence of the Father, then Trial by Battle under the Warrior's eyes can at most be considered a stay of execution, not ever absolution.
  15. Therefore, these preachers who claim that remissions or Trial by Battle under the Warrior's Eyes beget absolution are in error, for indeed, by their own words absolution can only be achieved in death.
  16. It is most difficult, then, even for the very keenest theologians, at one and the same time to commend to the faithful the abundance of pardons that have been granted to certain septons without the need for true contrition.
  17. The unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the High Septon from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity.
  18. Let the people open eyes and attend with all their ears, lest these men and women preach their own dreams instead of the commission of the Seven.
  19. The septas, lay brothers, and septons who encourage such thought to be spread among the people, will have an account to render.
  20. We say, on the contrary, that no sort of pardon is able to remove even the very least of venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned.
  21. If we accept that absolution can only be achieved through the Stranger, then neither remissions nor Trial by Battle can be compared in any way to works of justice.
  22. Love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does not grow better, only more free from penalty.
  23. True contrition seeks and loves penalties, but liberal pardons only relax penalties and cause them to be hated, and furnish an occasion for hating their recipients.
  24. To repress these arguments and scruples by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Faith and the High Septon to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make the faithful unhappy.
  25. Therefore, the faithful are to be taught that if the High Septon knew the infractions and exactions of his clergy, he would rather that Hugor's church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of its flock.
Extract from "The Seventy-Seven Theses", found on the third week of the fourth month of the year 278 AC, stabbed in the High Septon's heart.
 
Chapter II.5: The Stranger's Many Faces See Differently (I)

Karmic Acumen

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Chapter II.5: The Stranger's Many Faces See Differently

(I)


"-. Week 4, Month 3, Year 7976 ALN / 278 AC .-"
They'd left Winterfell on the first day of the first week of the third moon of the year. The sky was sunny, the realm's affairs in order, the right deputies instated, and their bonded ravens half-way to Oldtown on Wyman's ship and therefore out of their hands. There was every reason to hope the world wouldn't burn down without the two of them sitting on it. Not in what little time the King of Winter had set aside to personally ensure his son took time off during his convalescence. Real time off.

Three weeks. What would normally be a week and a half by horse was stretched to three whole sennights, never mind the days that would have been cut down by taking a river ship. Three weeks. Three whole weeks where he was not allowed to strain himself in any way. No undue effort, no planning, no letters, no reports, no stress, no worrying about anything, no recreating his and Luwin's very fiery experiment, no diving into the ice dragon's corpse to check if it was getting cold again, no magic. Just a son and his father out in nature.

It was, reasonably speaking, the best time Brandon Stark had had in years.

Then Rickard Stark lurched out of skinchanging with a mental swear so loud that Brandon felt it despite deliberately shutting out anything beyond a human's senses. Even more alarming, his father looked fit to murder someone and actually asked him to join Hugo's eyes to Alban's, instead of needing to be argued around like Brandon would have expected. That's how Brandon Stark found out that people would forever exceed his ability to fathom just how much insanity they could pack into same span of days. All but one of the heart trees had been claimed for father's use in the North, a smattering of them down in the south, a score informants throughout Westeros ports, their bonded ravens down in Oldtown, and terrible news from all of them at once. Trade guilds were colluding on a petition of censure against the North over the Inventory, landowners were doing everything up to murder to steal their neighbour's land, the realm was fracturing at every echelon except the very highest, the church was literally rioting, and Steffon Baratheon was in a coma from some manner of poison just in time for the mountain clans of the Vale to go terminally insane.

"They abducted Ned and Robert." Brandon said, unable to constrain his disbelief. "Ned. And Robert. Abducted." He thought he was used to his ridiculous life driving the world to ever greater heights of madness, but he hadn't seen this coming at all.

Spiritual convalescence was, it turned out, indistinguishable from depression. The sort that only healed with time, didn't mend any faster no matter what you did to keep busy, but still got infinitely worse if you wallowed. Before his father took over his schedule and kept him constantly distracted, the most 'success' he'd had in emerging from his torpor were those short periods when he suffered some sudden shock or anxiety. He could now testify to incandescent rage being magnitudes more effective and then some.

They didn't need to light a fire in the samovar that evening. Or the days after that that they used to reach White Harbor at the greatest speed that wouldn't kill their mounts.

Naysayer was thankfully used to how intense his moods could get, but Brandon still had to consciously draw himself inward lest he spook Nightmane into a fit of panic. With his father in the saddle. Mid-gallop. Wouldn't that be something?

When they arrived, Wylis and Wendel Manderly were ready and eager to play guide for the pre-arranged city inspection. They didn't waste their time with the lavish feasts four times a day that Wyman had once promised, back when he hadn't yet learned the full depth of Brandon's contempt towards unnecessary pageantry. It was good that the man had done such a fair job of passing that on to his sons. It was the only reason the two men didn't wash out of the army, and it was the only reason father didn't burst a vein when the two knights presented The Seventy-Seven Theses as if they expected it to be the best joke in the world.

I have caused the Protestant Reformation, Brandon thought as he scanned the two with his second sight. No new injuries or diseases of any sort since he last saw either of them.

To say the poor men were confused when his father abruptly cancelled the tour of White Harbor's businesses and ports was an understatement. Brandon was able to enlighten them about the terminal mistake that the Vale Clans had just committed, but their earnest outrage barely had time to manifest before father was barking orders. They rode straight to New Castle, where the Starks retired right after a short meal. The Stark men spent the rest of the day jumping from raven to raven, and then flying from one end of Oldtown to the other, and up and down the Hightower as the Crownsmen and Oldtown guard finally moved to subdue the bloody riots that had spread from the Mansions of the Pious across half the city. It had been hours since Septon Urizen denounced the heretics as the High Septon's murderers, but priests, monks, nuns and everyone else in range of the blood splatter were still killing each other in the streets. Even though the few actual reformists present had long since been lynched in the middle of the public square. Though the assembled clerics were almost all foreigners to Oldtown and the Reach, the depravities run out of the Mansions had been perpetrated mainly upon Oldtown citizens. Now those same locals saw foreigners from all over Westeros inflicting themselves on their husbands, brothers, wives and children and themselves.

Distracted with providing the fallen Hand of the King with protection, it took precious time for the Crown's men, Hightower men, and every knight still in residence to finally start making headway against the chaos. Even that reprieve was doubtlessly temporary. Of all the atrocities Brandon Stark had witnessed since being born into this world, this was the worst.

The Stark men only returned to themselves after evenfall, and only then did Rickard summon Wyman's sons back to his presence. Wylis and Wendel somehow had a lavish dinner prepared in just the short time it took the Starks to reach the solar. Brandon's theory that the Manderlys were hereditary stress eaters was once again confirmed upon his father giving them the bad news. Not just the one they weren't personally close to, but also the one they very much were.

"Wyman Manderly has been arrested."

Wylis froze. Wendel collapsed in his chair. Both of them were aghast. "What? My lords, why!?"

"Because this is Westeros," Brandon said darkly, walking over to stand near the fireplace. The flames grew brighter and hotter with his every step as the fire raged so he didn't have to. Also, this made sure no one else was peeking through. "So instead of the Theses being nailed to the Starry Sept's doors, the pamphlet was instead stuck with a knife right in the High Septon's chest." Wendel choked on his meat pie. It stirred no levity. "Just in time for Steffon Baratheon to be the first to see it and suffer the last shock he needed to succumb to whatever poison had been secretly sapping his strength, likely for days if not weeks. Except his last act prior to that had been to wine and dine with your father."

Wylis looked like he might explode with indignation. "This is absurd!"

"No," father ruthlessly disagreed. "It is par for the course."

Wylis fell into his own chair and dropped his face in his hands. Brandon turned to watch him, but hardly needed eyes to know how he felt. Wendel either. Their emotions practically roiled at the outskirts of his mind. Shock, distress, indignation, self-recrimination. Wyman had left before his sons had come back from the army, and the two had been looking forward to seeing the man's look at their reunion. Wendel especially, it wasn't often that a Manderly had more brawn than fat, and Wylis at least had a wife to impress in the meantime. Both had been looking forward to gloating in the man's face. To pretend with all their might that they weren't just sons seeking their father's approval.

"It is also unacceptable."

Father's words made the men look up sharply, naked hope written over their faces before Wylis noticed Brandon watching. The knight belatedly tried to summon whatever discipline he still kept from training. He elbowed his younger brother and the two stood back up, looking at Brandon in apologetic embarrassment, then to the Lord Stark in their midst. "Begging pardon for our unsightly conduct, my lords. It won't happen again."

Yes it will, Brandon thought wryly. Manderlys were nothing if not extroverted. And unlike their father, these two hadn't figured out how to channel it into a persona. There are ways around that though.

Brandon looked at his father. The man didn't bother looking back, already helping himself to the stationery. Magic was useful for many things, among them communicating entire conversations in an instant if the other was acceptive enough. For this, though, it was hardly necessary. The King of Winter had already made up his mind. Whether or not Wyman Manderly was enough of a justification by himself, the abduction of Eddard Stark was an act of war three times over.

The fireplace burned brighter.

"Call up the army. It's time our troops were blooded."

"-. .-"
Sending ravens took hours, even with the handful of the birds that Brandon could write or speak through. The time allowed his anger to finally simmer down, but it also tired him. Not for the first time, Brandon wished he could just give everyone their orders through dream visitation. Maybe weave one big dream together to have a roundtable with all his retainers. Unfortunately, dreams were meandering, lengthy affairs that could stretch single moments to decades. He could do literally anything in them, but he'd yet to find a way to control what others could squeeze into those measly ten minutes that the brain's short-term memory retained on awakening. Not without catching people right when they were already on the cusp of waking up.

It was the sort of subversion of will he viewed as a rather slippery slope in any case, barring explicit requests from people who understood what they were asking. Free will wasn't easy to compromise, especially long-term, but emotional and sensory manipulation could do a lot at the right moment, and dreams could do even more. Dreams could change a man. Back on the Old World he craved being able to fly as a child. Then he had a long, intense lucid dream of spending a lifetime flying, complete with the unforgettable but indescribable sensation of being his own center of gravity. He never yearned for it after that. He had the memory of flying until he was sated, and so even awake he remained sated.

As with everything, though, there were exceptions. Other people who could retain self-awareness while asleep. Their number had grown fast this past year, but only three had high enough standing to help here. He skipped Luwin since he'd already been given the news alongside mother through Volo's chicken scrawls. Marwyn he could reach both asleep and awake, but he had his hands full containing the Wolf Den's increasingly malignant unnaturalness, so Brandon was loath to distract him with something he had no way to assist remotely. That still left one man though.

After checking mentally with his father, Brandon excused himself from the talk about naval assets, claimed one of the chairs near the window and cast his mind out of his body. This would be infinitely easier if the Ancestors didn't insist on keeping him out of the weirwoods, but he was less angry about that than he used to be. He was willing to wait until father completed his grand ritual before revisiting the issue. Besides, magi had long since come up with alternatives.

He crossed the North in the blink of an eye, swift as he could only be through his permanent tethers. Lodestar. Naysayer. His main ravens, Hugo and Volo. Marwyn, who'd almost destroyed him and settled for no lesser way to make amends than offering himself up for the same. And then there was the conveniently unplanned.

"Possessing humans shouldn't have been this Brandon Stark's defining trait," he thought wryly as he stopped just short of overshadowing the bird, and with it the human mind at the other end. "But I picked up so many of the others that it slipped on like well-worn coat."

He projected his astral form inside Ben Umber's bedroom instead.

The giant man was laid out on his bed, half-way out of his tangled covers and snoring loud enough to shake the windows. Certainly enough to keep sleep well away from the woman sharing his bed. She paused the game she'd made of pushing Ben's mouth closed every third second to look right at him, even though Brandon hadn't manifested to regular eyes.

He brought a finger to his lips and had Slacker fly down to rip out one of Ben's nose hairs on the way off.

SLAP.

"SON OF A WHORE!" SMASH went the end table as Ben Umber flailed out of his bed, and what kind of tricks did the Umber men even play on each other for this to- "WHO WAS IT!? WHICH SORRY FUCKER'S GONNA DECORATE MY WEIRWOOD? I'LL RIP YOUR GUTS OUT, SPREAD YOUR ENTRAILS ALL OVER MY TRUNK LIKE A WHORE'S CUNT IN THE BOLTON'S COURT, I'M GONNA -" Ben saw him and froze mid-way through throwing a chair, open-mouthed, his hirsute frame steaming with sweat, and completely naked.

Ah, the risks of the job, Brandon thought dryly, but he was set at ease by the sight. For all his berserker strength, Bennard Umber had been prematurely going to seed by the time they figured out how to buttress his memory. He had completely recovered in the years since and then some, outbulking everyone in his family save his own son. It was good to see. "You're holding up well, Ben."

Ben dropped the chair as if burned – because ribald men see ribald words in everything, never mind that Brandon was literally his healer – groped blindly behind him and yanked the duvet off the bed to cover himself. He promptly jerked in surprise at the feminine grunt. His head snapped around as if he'd forgotten she was there. The huge man then looked between Brandon and the woman and his face went red and white at the same time, in that way that was only achieved by people who completely misunderstood the situation. "My pr-rincipled lord, my Lord, take my head if I lie, she swore you'd cut her off. I'd never steal your woman, I'd never steal anything of yours, I swear on my son's manhood!"

Dirty move to put up his favorite retainer as collateral. "Rozen," he addressed the woman instead. "You've moved up in the world."

The woman rose from the bed. "Boons of the job, as you well know my lord." With how surprised Ben belatedly was at realising she could also see his astral projection, one could almost be forgiven for believing she was only talking about her soothsaying. "Rest assured, I did not take advantage."

I should hope not. Brandon waited for the witch to dress and leave.

"Shame the rest of us, why don't you." Ben muttered as he pulled on his tunic, having also pulled some breeches on in the meantime. "Didn't believe that you rode her, how'd she end up in your bed? When? She only came here after you were already gone."

"Winterfell." Wintertown, to be exact. "She was a prostitute."

"Say what? She was honest about that too?" Ben's face slackened in surprise. "I guess she's enough of a looker, but she's set up so richly for commoners, that was you? How'd she become a witch?"

"Crossover skills." And that was all the hint he was going to give without spoiling their fun. "But that's not why I'm here."

Ben stepped forward and bent the knee. "My Prince, I'm at your command."

"Where's Greatjon?"

"Westwatch-by-the-Bridge, overseeing the western regiment's dispersal along the Wall as House Stark commanded. I sent a raven just today, he's done scouring Greyjoy's trail." Ben grimaced. "Far as we reckon, the squid fucker did get a compass. Thankfully none of the longbow repeaters, though I reckon it was close. Half the shipyards in the Bay of Ice are done in."

"Cancel all deployments. The full army is to reconvene in the Lonely Hills and head south to Winterfell post haste."

They adjourned to the Last Hearth solar to go over the rest. Ben didn't even try to hide his glee at the religious troubles of the south, but he knew better than to rejoice at Steffon Baratheon's plight, and was gratifyingly outraged on Ned's behalf. That just left the matter of the wildlings, and the news from the Night's Watch on that front was confounding at best. Where the Thenn and Gianstbane had been in something of a standoff in the haunted forest, the former had recently abandoned what seemed, after two years, a near unassailable position to take his clans east towards Hardhome instead. Checking the dates and best estimates on the messages, it was looking like that happened around the time of Brandon's soul surgery.

That wolf really is my familiar, Brandon thought as he returned to his body, disquieted at the answer to that long-standing question. Was it Bloodraven attacking me after all? Blinking awake, he looked around to find that father was the only person with any semblance of calm left in that room. Wylis and Wendel paced back and forth, too anxious to stand still, never mind sleep. Which was fair enough, Brandon was jittery for the first time in quite a while too.

Rickard Stark glanced at him. Brandon's silent request was just as quietly granted. Wholeheartedly too. The man had been worried that his son had lost his former passions permanently. Seemed like they could finally put that to rest. "Men." The two knights were suddenly giving him their rapt attention. Brandon stood from his chair and stretched. His body felt revitalised after its short nap. "I suddenly feel the craving for a night on the town. Come with me." Brandon led them to his chamber and produced a pair of leathers. He told them to put them on, then used them to cast a glamor that would change their appearance to that of two Wintertown guardsmen who died on duty. Doing the same on himself, he then led the way out of New Castle.

For people of such appetite, the two Manderlys proved remarkably unenthusiastic about carousing after such grim news. It was fortunate, then, that Brandon intended something completely different. The moment they were out on the streets, he cast about for the strongest negative emotions and proceeded to lead his soldiers on a merry crusade against crime. They stopped half a dozen robberies, a couple of rapes, four murders, one attempted assassination against a glass trader, and caused a ruinous brawl in the establishment of the 'reformed' Myrish slaver that had hired the now very late murderer. Brandon stuck one of his spirits to that one. It would only last a week at most before it dispersed, with how starved the world was of power because of the Doom, but that should be long enough to lead them to whoever he was in cahoots with unless the man was really patient.

Their righteous rampage ended with Wylis and Wendel snoring on either side of him, backs against the railing of the Lore Thief. Brandon's personal flagship, apparently, courtesy of Wyman just before leaving south. Because the man liked to be cheeky and on the nose. It wasn't just a vanity project though, this ship actually had a wheel. Years back when they'd first put together the Inventory, Brandon had been under the very embarrassing misconception that a wheel and rudder were the same thing. Now, it seemed, the first wheel-steered galley in the world had been made just for him.

I love these people, he thought fondly. Hopefully the wheel won't snap on the first foray.

Wylis and Wendel Manderly were good, sturdy men, the both of them. Their father would be proud of them both, even if it would be bittersweet. Wyman had wanted to join the rest of them in the military tour, but Brandon denied him on the all too real grounds that he would die of a heart attack within days. Had he been a bit younger or a lot leaner, Brandon might have allowed it, but alas neither was true, so he took his sons instead. Making Wyman their head representative down south wasn't meant as appeasement, but his secondary task there was, and the man had been all too eager to spend as much extra time as he needed raking the Citadel for anything useful about financial busywork. Wyman put a bombastic front, but he didn't really like how easily he persuaded others that he was nothing but a craven glutton.

Brandon was suddenly alerted to Hugo's mounting hunger being appeased. Casting his mind across the tether, he was surprised to find his raven back inside Wyman's assigned quarters in the Hightower. Moreover, the man was once more there instead of whatever dark cell he'd been tossed into. His clothes were dirty and rumpled, he had bags under his eyes, but no obvious torture signs were in evidence, at least to a raven's limited sight.

The man was not alone.

"It has been impressed upon me that any misconduct on your part will be on my head," said Stannis Baratheon. "Please do not leave these quarters until otherwise directed by myself or one of the Kingsguard."

"I understand of course," Wyman said with a put-upon sigh, noticing the change in Hugo's self-awareness and cooing as he held out more corn for Brandon to eat, the insolence of the man had no end. "I am grateful for your intercession, Lord Stannis. My best wishes for your father's recovery. If any further insight occurs to me, I will convey at the soonest opportunity."

"Very well," Stannis said stiffly. "Your raven will need to be caged for the duration."

Wyman looked at Hugo apologetically, but it wasn't his fault the raven sought him out on its own. Father would just have to make the most of Alban's eyes from here onwards. "As you say."

Wyman locked Hugo in his cage. Stannis checked the lock and took the key with him. "Good day."

The door echoed dully behind him.

Wyman brought the cage over to the desk and took a paper sheet to write. Spies (?). Hand collapsed. Obvious suspect. King apoplectic. Was waterboarded. Stannis prevailed upon king before worse was done. Under house arrest. Rest of party spread among floors. Cannot leave."

"I've gone and made you trouble, my lord," Wyman murmured very, very quietly. "You and your father both."

-No- Brandon croaked, then began to peck on the cage bars. Under orders. Told to linger after wedding. Prioritised bank research. Underestimated risk. Will figure out solution.

Was that not what he'd been doing his whole life?

Wyman smiled weakly. Crown quarters uproar precedes Hand plight.

Brandon waved his wings and pecked more angrily. Rest. Heal. Insolent minion.

That finally got a laugh out of the man, before Wyman went to throw the paper into the fire.

Brandon decided not to reveal any information Wyman didn't know, just in case. Right now, the most important thing was to avoid suspicion.

Back on the Lore Thief, Brandon Stark gazed southward across the sea. Somewhere down there, Ned was lost on mountain paths in the keeping of raiders.

He kicked Wylis and Wendel awake and gave them the good news. The two were overcome. Positively jubilant all the way back to New Castle, where they all were finally ready to turn in for the rest of the night. Father was relieved to hear of Wyman's new situation, but was less enthused about the matters more northward. He didn't change any plans though.

"Will we call the banners?" Brandon asked.

Rickard Stark shook his head. "Levies would be slaughtered on such an overwhelming home field advantage. That's why the Arryns never tried, as you know. Best keep to elite few." Not that 10,000 soldiers was a particularly small number when each of them was at least equal to the average knight. And then there were the group manoeuvers. "As for Oldtown, I'm willing to hold off now that Stannis Baratheon has proven himself his father's son."

Brandon looked at his father. "I'm going to fly tonight."

Rickard Stark bit back the first thing he wanted to say. Then the second. The third was a muttered "Will the world ever leave you be?" which was far too woebegone and coddling, especially since Brandon was technically older than the other man now that his brain development had caught up with him.

But he wasn't going to complain about having a good father.

"… Don't take unnecessary risks. Only-"

"-necessary ones."

Rickard smiled tightly and gripped his son's shoulders for a long moment before leaving the room.

Brandon didn't immediately go to sleep. He dragged a chair out on the balcony. He'd specifically requested a high room facing the southeast. He didn't really need it, but he wasn't one to miss out on convenient reference points. He settled in the chair and looked across the city and beyond, to the dour black keep standing sentry on the seaside in the far distance. Tomorrow they'd finally go to the Wolf's Den for Rickard Stark to complete his grand ritual. Given recent events, though, Brandon didn't feel inclined to wait until then to discuss his thoughts on certain matters. He followed his tether to Marwyn and this time didn't stop just outside.

Surprise. Openness. Disclosure.

The Wolf's Den was quiet. Nobody had come out to check in with Marwyn in days. A guardsman by the name of Bartimus chose to prove himself worthy of Wyman's trust by going inside to check on the meagre staff. Brandon had recommended Bartimus as Wyman's confidant based on his life path in a different future. The fact that he'd kept their confidence proved that judgment correct, as Wylis and Wendel remained unaware that the Starks even had the Wolf's Den as their real destination. Unfortunately, Bartimus hadn't come back out either.

The Mage was kneeling on the ground. Just outside a semicircle of rune sticks that he'd built to surround the entirety of the Wolf's Den's grounds that didn't open to the sea. It hadn't been there when either Brandon or his father had checked in last. Whatever was at work inside was pressing on the encirclement. Marwyn's hoard of spirits was reduced to dregs. The Manderlys' and everyone else's growing ignorance of the place was not entirely natural.

Brandon withdrew from Marwyn's mind and manifested his astral projection next to him.

"Young master, I'm glad you're here." Marwyn greeted him with relief. "I hate to say it, but your boon of power is on its last legs."

"We'll be here tomorrow." He might even stop by during tonight's flight, depending on how well or badly everything else went. "Marwyn, how good is bronze for storing beverages?"

"Terrible. Especially if you can't avoid the lead in the alloy."

"I guess things had to stop being easy eventually."

"Dare I ask?"

"I have an idea for long bronze bell pipes guaranteed to solve a lot of our strategic problems." Right up until they didn't. "But I'd much like it if I could pass them off as something else. There are two kingdoms here in Westeros alone, maybe three if you include the Stormlands, that could easily outpace our production for another decade at least, if they learn about it. I hoped they might pass off as drink dispensers, they'd even have holes on the side near the bottom, but apparently not. What about home decorating? Really long flowerpots maybe?"

"I believe the Sarnori might have used bronze for firewine decanters, but it sounds like you're talking about something larger."

"Much larger." Brandon sighed. "Well, there goes that idea." There would be no hiding what cannons where, if he ever decided the world had passed the rubicon.

He looked up at the sky, where the fiery hell of Valyria lurked unseen. He'd thought he might have been able to turn the Doom's less obvious but infinitely more sinister side effect to an advantage for once. The Doom constantly burned through the subtle matter of the astral plane, which was the same thing mankind's collective unconscious would normally propagate through.

Back on the old world, calculus was formulated independently by at least two different people in parallel, with half a continent between them. Same for the theory of evolution. The crossbow was invented independently all over the world at the same time. In this world, alchemists have had gunpowder for over a century, and the Yi Tish at least half a century before even then, but still nobody thought to use it for anything other than fireworks, never mind spontaneous reinvention. Don't even get him started on empathy. Or pattern recognition.

If the Doom also eats radio waves, I'm going to be pissed.

'Fortunately' that was one of many things he didn't know the ins and outs of, so he probably wouldn't get the chance to find out, for better or worse.

He returned to his body and got into bed for his night's flight. To see if the Vale was any less deadly to dreamers.

It wasn't.

Well, this was a waste of time, Brandon thought testily as he hovered just outside the edges of the Doom's insatiable hunger. Even then he had to sacrifice a spirit every minute so he didn't get pulled in himself. For years he'd wondered why the Vale was more awash in the red rays than even King's Landing. Now that he knew Valyria's history, and that the Seven were just Valyrian dragonlords playing god, it made a lot more sense. Didn't help him get anywhere else now that he really needed to though. Didn't explain why the Mountains of the Moon were the worst of the lot either. Especially when the Eyrie was the total opposite. He actually could fly to the Eyrie, and only there. That was how he'd been visiting and teaching Ned all manner of things over the years.

He briefly considered flying Volo over, a full bond was at least firm enough not to succumb to the Valyrian magic, if he stayed low enough. But flying low would take weeks to find anything. And if he took breaks, he'd almost certainly lose Volo outright. Hugo's predecessor hadn't survived an hour past Brandon's intervention to save Ned from sleepwalking out of the Sky Cell that one time. He was just one of many too. The only reason Brandon could recall precisely how many ravens he lost keeping an eye on Ned was because magic let him cheat on the recall front. Brandon still hadn't found out what the deal with that episode was, and Ned had nothing to add either.

Probably the Children, Brandon thought as he flew back North. The enemies at least. They must hate father and I for no longer being able to puppet anything in our borders. In a different future, Bloodraven told a different Bran that all ravens were former Children, but he was lying. Even if that was once true, those ravens had long since died. The Children that Ned's Bran ran into while skinchanging could only be aware and coherent if they had died very recently, or if they were actually alive somewhere. Bran Stark didn't know how right he was when he compared the Children's apparent resignation against mankind's own response to impending extinction.

I'll need to come up with something new. Not easy for someone who copied all his achievements from more competent people, but there had to be something he could do. Probably something simple and obvious, as all the best solutions tended to be. He'd rest and wait for the epiphany to dawn on him in a day or three.

Brandon dropped by Marwyn to replenish his power stores, then flew back to White Harbor and let the wandering minds of everyone else carry him where they would. He spent the rest of the night enjoying pleasant dreams, changing bad dreams to good ones when the person didn't deserve them, filling in blanks for aspiring entrepreneurs, cursing domestic abusers with nightmares, and making mental notes about spies, saboteurs, and the city's social underpinnings that may or may not need addressing by father in the next Winds of Winter. There were also a couple of people who died, thankfully peacefully, and he saw them on their way. They thought he was the Stranger again.

This world held its gods to very low standards.

When he woke up, he still felt angry. But the anger meant he was no longer soul-weary, and it was a smouldering, steady thing. His mind was clear.

When they met for breakfast, Father concurred with him that the Wolf's Den matter could neither be postponed nor rightfully kept from the acting masters of White Harbor, especially with the worrying news Brandon had learned about the place. Wylis and Wendel were surprised but not offended, all the army was trained in the basics of operational security. They still insisted on personally accompanying them. For duty. Definitely not because they wanted to see more magic in action, surely not. Father never got around to telling them he would have ordered them along regardless.

For all that the Faith of White Harbor held itself separate from the rest, it still wasn't exactly welcoming to magicians. Or sorcerers. Or Brandon's…

Witches.

He leaned into the irony all the way to the Wolf's Den. They made good time, as the Castle Stair street extended all the way to the half-way point. The Manderlys had been saving up their treasury to finance an expansion of their city, and Wyman planned to extend the Castle Stair all the way to the Wolf's Den as part of it. Brandon knew it happened in the one future he knew, and Wyman even intended to dig a tunnel beneath the stepped path. Given what they were here to do, though, it was convenient that it hadn't happened yet.

The mood soured as quick as the lash of a whip, though, the same moment that father completed the border he'd cut with Ice into the ground, right inside Marwyn's ward.

"I am Rickard of House Stark. Lord of the North. King of Winter. Steward of Vows Ancient and New." His crown of swords was on his head. His voice was firm. Ice cut clean through stone and earth. "By ancestral claim, by the pledge of First Men and Green Men and the Children true, bound in blood and bronze and iron thrice over, in the God's Eye, Upon the Fist, in the place where Winter Fell at the end of the beginning, I claim this land for man."

The wind changed. The upward astral flow of the ravenous Doom was momentarily reversed. The will of man was roused. The gaze of all the heart trees in the North turned at once towards them. The rune sticks swayed inward and toppled at the sudden reverse in pressure. The Claim of the King descended upon the Wolf's Den ancient keep with none of the resistance of any time before.

But for the first time, it reached the Heart Tree deep within and found no purchase.

… Was Brandon sensing right? Perhaps father felt differently – no, no he did not.

Just wonderful.

"… My lords?" Wylis prodded. "What's wrong?"

"The ritual worked," Brandon said, though he made no secret of his disquiet.

"Too easily," father explained. "There should have been more resistance than for all other godswoods before, more than all combined perhaps. But there was nothing. I sensed the heart tree, or the place where I know it should be, briefly, but it was as if our claim ended just…" He paused, looking for the right word. When he found it, he was surprised at it. "Just beyond it. Like it… like how it felt before whenever the ritual reached the border of our claim."

"Perhaps the sea dispersed it?"

Brandon shook his head. For all that the Wolf's Den was a rare case of the godswood being bigger than the keep built on it, the place was actually completely encircled. The Ritual of the Fisher King had already extended Rickard Stark's claim across the Bite, half-way to the Three Sisters. So unless a massive sinkhole had swallowed up the godswood and its weirwood without any sign of it happening, like, say, an earthquake followed by a new lagoon, something else was going on.

"Guess we're entering enemy territory," Brandon concluded. He wasn't the sort to be excited by danger, but he was willing to make an exception. Especially if he was right about his suspicions about the cause.

Rickard Stark pulled Ice out of the ground and held it at the ready. Just looked at the Wolf's Den for a moment. Then he turned back around. "Wendel. Stay here. White Harbor cannot risk both its heirs, and if we do not return, the rest of Winterfell will need to be informed as well."

Wendel protested, of course he did, but there was no other outcome than compliance, and soon enough the rest of them were off to grab danger by the horns.

They entered by the tower entrance near the barracks. The walls were showing the effects of age and substandard maintenance, but the stone was solid and the doors were made of oak and iron. The castle was silent, almost haunted, feeling as downtrodden as they'd have expected of the dungeon in the cellars, with its oubliettes, torture chambers and rat pits. Looking with sight beyond sight, Brandon found no living souls in the keep proper, and all he could see below was a bizarrely spotty, dreary haze that seemed to run away from his attention the moment he looked at it. They still searched the place for signs of life, but nobody seemed to be in residence. Even stranger were the weirwood branches. The Wolf's Den Godswood had a heart tree so large that its limbs passed through walls and windows, but that wasn't the strange part. The strangeness lay in its coloration – black instead of white. Even that wasn't unexpected to the Starks. Rickard had seen black vein-like patterns on several of the heart trees before he claimed them, especially more recently. It had corroborated certain suspicions Brandon held about certain other magic trees around the world. But for all that this weirwood was wholly black-barked, it felt neither as heavy nor malicious as that much fainter corruption of past ritual.

Brandon broke off a branch. The inside was pale white, but run through with hollows, as if it had been eaten. Or maybe sucked dry so fast that it had thinned outwards instead of in. Father used Ice to hack a bigger piece. It was just as brittle and half-way hollowed out as if something had sucked all its sap out at once before leaving the tree to die. Brandon looked out the window to the godswood. The heart tree still had most of its leaves, but every gust of wind dislodged a few more, well beyond what they should.

They finally found the missing denizens when they descended into the dungeons themselves. The gaoler was in one of the rat pits, dead not of bites but of either thirst or starvation. The only rats they saw were dead ones. Half the guardsmen were locked up in the cells, along with the cook and the washerwoman. All of them were alive but insensate, their minds half-way spread through the weirwood roots that had grown through their spines and brains. The ten year-old turnkey snapped his eyes open and tried to speak, but only ended up mouthing at them in vain. The remaining three guards were dead in the corridor. Two had died in an apparent fight. The last one was further in, with a split skull but no signs of altercation. An ambush then. Or betrayal from an unexpected corner.

Marwyn was silent. Father was seething and grim all at once. Wylis's grip was white on his sword, and his other hand gripped at the silver-and-sapphire trident clasp of his cloak. Brandon should probably be in similar straights, but instead he just felt indignant.

It did seem like rather too many things were going wrong at once, didn't it?

Finally, they made it past the dungeons to a large, barrel-vaulted cellar. There was little light down there, but enough still made it through the top grate and the sea access to see by. The walls were covered with salt. Its floor sloshed with seawater. At the center, the roots of the weirwood tree above descended like a second crown. They twisted through earth and stone, closing off all other passages and holding up the roof. The heart tree at Winterfell had roots as thick around as a giant's legs, and these were very nearly as thick despite how much later the first Wolf's Den had been built. None of that commanded their attention.

Guardsman Bartimus was in the middle, sitting on the roots as if they were a throne. He rustled at their arrival. Twitched stolen hands that had weirwood roots running through them, stained with blood freshly dried. That was the least of the blood splattered all over the pale roots at his back. Extending his cloak of eyes throughout the room, Brandon saw that a root had forced its way straight through the back of the man's skull.

"Brandon Stark," Brynden Rivers spoke through a stolen mouth, opening stolen eyes. "We really need to talk about your habit of creating monsters."
 
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ATP

Well-known member
You know the more I read the more I wonder if the Valyrians didn't just punch a hole into the fucking WARP and now you have entities that think they are deities in Westeros just due to the power of belief.
You knew,it is logical explanation.To be honest,more logical then canon.
 

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