And many fanverses away from the Battle of Winterfell, the plots of another fantasyverse were also growing dark and full of terrors...

The Lady Galadriel was looking into her moon-pool and seeing the purple flames for herself, licking high into the night sky around Ground Zero in the Winterfell Godswood, and burning with a fury hot enough to melt the very barriers that existed between fictional worlds.

She pointed at the watery image of the fire, just in case Gandalf and Elrond couldn't see from their vantage points beside her, and shook her head.

"The world is changed, gentlemen. I see it in the water, and I can feel it in the earth. Much that once worked, has gone for good. For the terrible writing of Benioff and Weiss has unleashed forces strong enough to tear a hole through our shared fictional fantasyverse, and I fear none may now stop what we all know is coming."

Beside her, the grey wizard looked up sharply.

Lord Elrond flinched, and tried to style it out by pretending to wipe his face.

Gandalf took another glance into the glowing purple water, and shook his head in disbelief.

"But Galadriel – surely you don't mean it?"

The graceful elf queen could only nod sadly.

"Yes, Gandalf. I'm afraid it's true. Winter is coming."

Lord Elrond snorted, unwilling to even listen to this overblown and overhyped boast from the recesses of past HBO seasons.

"The Night King is dead, Galadriel. Haven't you been reading the books? He was taken down by Azor Ahai in the ancient seat of the Starks, at Winterfell, after the reforging of Lightbringer, and the Nissa-nissa-ing of the true love of – "

Gandalf cleared his throat, trying to signal to Elrond to stop digging.

"I'm afraid you are mistaken, Lord Elrond. Those GRR Martin books remain unwritten. And on the tv series, the plot deviated from the unwritten canon, and now the whole world of Planetos is in complete and utter disarray. The scenes we have all seen in the moon-pool confirm it. Winter is indeed coming – it is coming for all of us, even if our fanverses have nothing to do with a Song of Ice and Fire."

But the Lord of Rivendell was unmoved.

"Middle Earth is a separate fanverse, Gandalf. Everyone knows that! The Night King cannot harm us over here. We have plot armour that can match that of Jon Snow himself – because we're as equally disconnected from the politics of King's Landing as he has been up on the Wall!"

But as always, Galadriel was the voice of reason among the bickering men.

"The Song of Ice and Fire is based on an underlying trope that connects it to Middle Earth, Lord Elrond. If the Night King has managed to channel real world fan fury at the fantasy genre in general, then our world will suffer too. He shall be able to travel through this portal with his army of the dead, turning our well known fictional heroes into mindless ice zombies – and chasing us all with his frozen horses and ice spiders big as hounds."

Lord Elrond shook his head.

"We've got bigger spiders these days in Mirkwood. And we've got better armies than he does – my elves never miss a shot, particularly when they are fighting interchangeable faceless hordes and ridiculous CGI monsters."

He shared a glance at his two companions, seeking to reassure himself as much as the pair of them.

"We'll be fine, guys. If the Night King comes here, we'll just use our magic powers against him, or send the eagles in – that always works."

Gandalf withdrew his pipe from his robes, lighting it with a click of his fingers and taking a slow, thoughtful draw of the dangerously addictive and poisonous weed.

"The Deus Ex Eagles, of course. Is it not so, Galadriel? Maybe there is no cause at all for alarm."

But the elf queen closed her eyes, and the image in the waters began to change.

And in that limpid pool of psychism they could see the breach between worlds in real time. And already, minor and major characters alike were staring through the void in unthinking curiosity and preparing to crossover into the wrong fictional fanverses – and yet in all the mayhem, the Night King was nowhere to be seen.

"He is hiding from us, gentlemen. He is consorting with our Enemy as we speak. They shall join forces – the Night King and his ice zombies, allied with the evil fires of Mount Doom – and they shall try to take over all known fantasy fanverses, and kill off all the heroic characters they can find."

Gandalf spluttered on his toxic smoke, and Lord Elrond went quite pale.

"But... how?"

Galadriel's face was grim, and her voice was bitter.

"By the wholesale alienation of the real world fantasy fandoms, of course. It is only the interest of earthly people that keeps our own fictional world alive – you know this. And now the Night King has met his ignoble end at the hands of two talentless big-budget fanfic writers, he is hellbent on the mindless destruction of everything we all hold dear."

She shook her head in despair.

"Our fate is tied to Game of Thrones now, whether we like it or not."

A dejected silence descended over the three wise guardians of Middle Earth, until Gandalf's smoker's cough flared nastily, shattering their thoughts and causing both Galadriel and Elrond to politely back away from the hacking old wizard.

Regaining his composure at last, the old pipe smoker waved a hand, spreading the tobacco fumes further around Galadriel's sacred moon-pool.

"I'm alright now, just went down the wrong way is all."

The wizard looked into the waters, eager to say something smart to redeem his poise in front of the beautiful elf queen.

He'd been giving her the eye for six whole movies now, and he still hadn't even got to first base.

"Say, where is it that the breach has occurred? It's too dark for me to see in the moon-pool without my reading glasses."

Lord Elrond wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"It looks like somewhere around the Lonely Mountain to me. Isn't that huge expanse of water the Long Lake, by Escaroth?"

His companions nodded in silence, watching the violet flames reflecting on the waters of the Laketown crannogs, seeing the men and women coming out of their homes and pointing over at the glowing purple portal by the lake shore.

"It appears that way, Gandalf – but the breach will grow, and the tear will spread further, the more our fanverses come to overlap. Who knows then what will happen? Our canon offers no guidelines for misadventures of this kind."

She fixed him with a questioning stare.

"We must warn what remains of the elves, my friends. And the menfolk. And the dwarves. We must tell them all about the evil that is coming."

Lord Elrond rolled his eyes, and scowled.

"If you say so, my lady. I shall ride to Rivendell right away, and consult with my people."

He threw the grey wizard an icy glance full of unspoken meaning.

"You, my friend, are better placed to deal with the others. You should go to them at once, and warn them."

The grey wizard stared into the frigid eyes of the elf lord, and shivered.

If the armies of the dead really did attack Middle Earth, would the elves really stand with the other races, or would they retreat to their foreign continent over the sea, abandoning everyone else to spend the rest of eternity as undead ice zombies under the control of the evil Night King?

Who did they have that could truly unite the disparate peoples of Middle Earth, with their history of suspicion, betrayal, and grudge-bearing – now that Aragorn was happily shacked up with Arwen, and had lost interest in war and politics?

Maybe it was not just the Seven Kingdoms that needed Jon Snow.

Gandalf only prayed his story arc would survive the coming episodes, and he would not be forcibly undone as a hero in order to service some contrived plot tension or serve up empty shock value to his restless audience, now that Benioff and Weiss were both writing the scripts and directing the episodes.

For with the horrors of Season Eight in full swing, even the seers of Middle Earth were crossing their fingers and praying... to the Old Gods and the New.