Disclaimer: I don't own Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire
Alyssa I Targaryen
Book : The Long Night
Chapter 8: Hero of Man
Beta:
Hours later and unaware of the events near Last Hearth, Alyssa was going through her correspondence after a long day that had included helping to fend off an attack on Icemark.
"Alys!" Elia scolded as she marched into Alyssa's solar. "Come to bed! You need rest!"
"It can wait a few hours. I still ha-" Alyssa tried to say before her body betrayed her but cutting her off with a yawn.
Elia laughed at the lapse in Alyssa's self-control even as the Queen herself blushed.
"Come on you," her lover said as she pulled Alyssa out of her seat and began leading her towards the door. "You can come back to your correspondence in the morning."
"I suppose I can use a few hours of sleep." Alyssa allowed as she stifled another yawn.
They were still only halfway across the small room in the King's Tower that functioned as Alyssa's solar when suddenly Barneby, the Maester that was sent to temporarily serve at Castle Black by the Citadel and one of the few Maesters willing to learn magic, a fact he demonstrated by having mastered the Message spell, burst into the room with an uneasy look on his face.
"What is it?" Alyssa asked, all thoughts of sleep gone from her mind at the look on the man's face.
"An urgent Message from Queen Daenerys' Advisor, Lady Missandei, your grace." The middle aged man said after a moment of hesitation.
"What is it?" Alyssa asked, too tired for pleasantries.
Barneby bit his lip nervously and refused to answer. Alyssa was getting impatient when he at last blurted out the message.
"She's dead, your grace. Queen Daenerys was killed by the Night King."
Alyssa's world spun and she would have fallen to her knees if Elia had not caught her. Her Aunt was dead? Her last link to her sire's family, to her family, was gone? The sweet young woman that at once contested her right to the Iron Throne whilst simultaneously treating her as family was dead?
Anger and sadness flooded her veins but she was too tired for fire, so instead ice answered her unconscious call and a sheen of frost began to form over everything in the room as the temperature dropped dramatically. The Maester flinched back and even her Queensguard shifted uneasily but Elia just pulled her close and began whispering words of comfort.
Alyssa could not hear them clearly however as the sudden uncontrolled burst of magic had drained her of the last of her strength and her mind drifted into blessed unconsciousness.
Even as her body rested however, Alyssa's mind had no such respite and she found herself in the featureless void that Lord Nameless favored so and as expected her god stood across from her.
"My lord," Alyssa greeted as respectfully as her anger would allow.
"You are right to be angry." The featureless humanoid that her god took as his form said with a nod. "But not at me."
"I am not, my lord."
"Do not lie to me, Alyssa." Lord Nameless said with a shake of his head. "In this moment, you are angry at everyone and everything. All you feel is anger at the injustice of taking your Aunt's away from you. I forgive you for it, for it is an irrational anger. But you should direct it, my faithful follower, at those who deserve it?"
"Who then, my lord?" Alyssa snapped. "Myself? I was the one who sent Aunt Dany to Last Hearth with too little men."
"Partially. Though your reasons for doing so were sound and you should not hold yourself at fault for having made the decision." Lord Nameless agreed. "And in so doing you have for the second time caused the death of Daenerys Targaryen."
"Second time? What do you mean, my lord?"
"Alyssa I Targaryen is the third life of the soul of Jon Snow." The god explained. "The first ended in Castle Black when his Brothers mutinied and killed him. A fate that was followed by him being raised back to life by R'hllor and Melisandre."
Alyssa nodded. While she did not recall the resurrection, she could imagine the scenario playing out as such. She had not seen evidence of it but she had heard, from the Priests of R'hllor themselves, of how they could with the help of their god supposedly bring the dead back to life.
"This second life ended in the land Beyond the Wall where he'd been exiled after killing his Queen and lover, Daenerys Targaryen who had gone mad due to the manipulations of the Three-eyed Raven and became the Queen of Ashes after mercilessly burning down King's Landing and massacring hundreds of thousands." Lord Nameless continued as he conjured a projection of King's Landing being torched by a version of Aunt Dany riding Drogon.
"Despite having played a pivotal role in winning the Long Night and being hailed a hero a hundred times over, he died a broken man. Broken because he had to watch helplessly as the Three-eyed Raven possessing the body of his brother Brandon Stark, used his position as King to sow the seeds that tore the Seven Kingdoms apart after his early death and plunged it into an unending war. Just like the Children of the Forest who created the spirit, a twisted amalgamation of all the poor greenseers the Children had duped into offering their souls to their cause, had wanted. A final post-extinction revenge against their hated human foes."
The projection had shifted as her god spoke and showed as the Realm was devastated.
"On his deathbed in exile in that second life Jon Snow called out to any god who would hear him to give him the chance to change things."
Alyssa watched with a surge of pity as the man she could have become - A broken, world weary man living in poverty and obscurity in the lands Beyond the Wall - cried out desperately with his dying breath for a chance to change destiny.
"I heard him." Nameless said with a grin. "And I also heard the original Alyssa Targaryen begging for someone to give her the power to change the terrible future for her family that she foresaw with her greensight. I answered that call too. And at the price of her death, I killed two birds with one stone and here you are being given the chance that they both wished for."
"Why take me from Castle Black then? Why not the version of me from after the Long Night?"
"Because I felt it would be more interesting."
"And entertaining yourself is your primary motivation." Alyssa shot back bitterly, knowing her god's motivations well enough.
"Yes it is," her god admitted unabashedly.
"What is your purpose in telling me this now, my lord? If there even is one beyond gloating?"
"Oh yes, there is actually." Lord Nameless said, acting as if he'd been reminded of his true intent in visiting her dreams. "One was to tell you that this is how you fulfilled the prophecy of the Lightbringer, but that's secondary. Mainly, I'm here to tell you to go kill the Three-eyed Raven and the last of the Children."
"Why?" Alyssa asked, not that she needed any extra incentive. She would do her god's will regardless but more importantly she remembered well her god mentioning this Raven spirit being part of the reason why she had almost been raped as a child and she strongly suspected had set up the death of her Father.
"Yes it was," Lord Nameless said, the edges of his form writhing in his anger. "The Raven either seeks out the broken for its potential hosts or directly breaks them before it lures them in. Some like your brother in his past life this break can physically or-"
"It can be mental like the trauma it tried to inflict upon me?"
"Yes," Lord Nameless said with a disgusted snort. "It makes it easier to sink its roots into its hosts. It cares not whether it sees it as friend or foe, once it has a grip on a victim it will dig deep and take over. However, because its plans were foiled by my intervention in the timeline and your brother's unfortunate death, they seek another means to fulfill their revenge."
"The Others!?" Alyssa guessed. "They plan to ally themselves with the Others?"
"Plan? No. How did you think the Others knew where to go to ambush your Red Priests or knew where Daenerys Targaryen would be? Or much of the magic that they have been employing? The Others' magic is limited south of the Wall, the Children's is not." Lord Nameless said as the dream began to fade away and Alyssa blanched. It did explain things.
"So do what you must."
"I will." Alyssa assured him as his figure began to become indistinct. "I will avenge my Aunt and destroy another of the enemies of mankind. Be prepared to be entertained."
Her god laughed uproariously at her parting jab even as the dream finally ended and Alyssa jerked awake filled with the determination to render a race of humanity's enemies extinct.
The next day over the objections of Elia and her commanders, Alyssa had flown towards the cave in the middle of the Haunted Forest where the Three-eyed Raven resided accompanied by only Loras, Ser Wendel, Ygritte, and Brienne of her Queensguard. Considering that unlike the Night King there was no protections to prevent her Scrying this Three-eyed Raven, she was sure it was a trap of some kind but she was too angry at the death of her Aunt to resist.
"Looks like you were right, your grace." Loras noticed as they caught sight of the cave and more importantly the army of wights and a handful of White Walkers that stood guard around its entrance, a cleft in a wooded hillside, halfway up and between some weirwood trees. "Wherever this place is, home of the Children of the Forest or not, if the Others are protecting it then-"
"Destroying it is to our advantage." Alyssa finished for him.
"They've seen us!" Ygritte shouted, her sharp eyes spotting movement before anyone else. "Ice spears!"
A volley of ice spears were sent hurtling their way by the Walkers but Ghost flew through it unafraid, the Mage Armor she'd cast on him protecting him from the projectiles.
"Ghost, destroy the wights." Alyssa ordered as they closed. "Queensguard, kill those Walkers.
"As you command, your grace." Loras shouted enthusiastically as he drew his bow and loosed an arrow at one of the Others. The inhuman creatures had features that belied easy comprehension but if Alyssa was certain they seemed surprised and shocked at suddenly coming under attack. Strange since she was certain the Three-eyed Raven had sensed her Scrying its location.
It was a consideration for later however as while Ghost set the wights ablaze and her Queensguard felled their Other commanders with dragonglass arrows, Alyssa had her own opponents to fight.
Even as the area around it was turned into a sea of flames and a shower of dragonglass tipped arrows rained down upon it from her Queensguard, pouring out of the cave some of the last of the Children of the Forest. No more than a half dozen small humans, with the proportions of an adult shrunk down to the size of a child, with nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer with paler spots and hands with three fingers and a thumb that ended in sharp black claws instead of nails, large ears and large gold and green eyes slitted like those of a cat. In their own way they looked as alien as the Others with whom they had allied.
"Flame Strike!" Alyssa cast intent on burning them all alive in one blow.
But in an impressive display of agility they threw themselves out of the way of the pillar of flame seconds before it grew powerful enough to incinerate them and though badly burned, they retaliated by hurling green fireballs at her. At the same time she felt a powerful mind attempt to intrude into her own.
Come Alyssa Targaryen! Become one with us! The conglomerate entity forged from the souls of innumerable greenseers cried out temptingly. Let us in! Let us share our power, our knowledge with you!
Do you take me for a fool!? Alyssa scoffed. All you want is to use my body and my title to ruin Westeros! All you want is to enact the revenge of the Children. I will not fall for your tricks!
Lies! Who told you these lies!?
My god. Now I've heard enough of your prattle! Ghost! Show it out!
With a thunderous mental roar, Ghost made his protective presence known in her mind. In the face of which, the Three-eyed Raven retreated like the cowardly creature that it was.
With her mind secure, Alyssa simply cast a dozen Fire Bolts in quick succession using the motes of flame to intercept and dispel the Children's attack.
"You lot don't know what a real fireball is," Alyssa said with a bloodthirsty grin as she sighted a cluster of three Children standing just a little too close together for their own good. "Fireball!"
Where the Children's fireballs were little more than orbs half a metre across, Alyssa's version was at least ten times that as it leapt from her hands. Seeing it, the three Children she targeted scrambled to get away but were too slow and the Fireball slammed into their midst it exploding and consuming them. The three other Children let out cries of sadness and rage. Two pooled their power and sent a particularly large green fireball at her, which Alyssa countered with a Fireball of her own that blasted theirs apart and left them open to the follow up Firebolts Alyssa lobbed at them that reduced them to ash.
The last Child of the Forest was not idle as its brethren were slaughtered however and has been gathering its power that it poured into a lightning bolt it hurled at Alyssa.
"Wall of Ice!" Alyssa cast, conjuring a wall of magical ice seconds before the electricity leapt from its caster's fingers. The magical ice thus blocked the attack and shattered, burying the Child its eyes wide in shock at the move.
"Fireball." Alyssa cast to vaporize the mound of ice and the corpse underneath just in case.
"Stop!" Loras said from behind her on the howdah, an arrow nocked and pointing at her. All those of her Queensguard were. "Stop! Or I will have them kill you!"
"Frost Nova!" Alyssa cast, controlling the spell perfectly so as to restrain but not harm her Queensguard. It was not their fault that they had been taken over by the Three-eyed Raven.
"Please! Don't do this!" The entity begged through the voices of her Queensguard.
Alyssa ignored it. "Ghost, land."
Her dragon obeyed, landing just in front of the cave and amidst the ashes of the thoroughly destroyed wight army. Still ignoring the increasingly desperate pleas of the Three-eyed Raven, Alyssa unstrapped herself and used Levitate to dismount her dragon. She wanted to do this personally.
Out of the corner of her eye, an Other charged her but she still had Levitate active so it was child's play to float out of the way of its admittedly precise thrust, spin behind him and impale him with Dark Sister. The way he shattered into ice chunks brought a smile to her face.
So Valyrian steel does work against them. Alyssa thought as she turned away from the remains of the Walker to continue advancing on the cave. Good to know.
"I am the true face of the Old Gods of your ancestors!" The Three-eyed Raven shouted suddenly through the voices of her possessed men. "Would you destroy your gods!?"
"I renounced the Old Gods long ago," Alyssa spat unmoved. "I have no need for gods who betray their people. My only god is Lord Nameless."
"You know not what kind of dark god you deal with!" The entity cried out in horror at the mention of her god's name.
"I know enough." Alyssa shot back. "Lord Nameless may be driven almost entirely by his callous desire for entertainment, but he has truly helped me. I cannot say the same for any other gods. So until such time as he betrays me, he is my god."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lord Nameless appear for a moment and nod in approval but as she turned to look at him, he'd disappeared.
Typical. She muses of her capricious god.
"If you will not listen than you leave us with no other choice! Coldhands! Defend me!"
At this fear tinged cry, a figure that Alyssa long thought dead exited the cave. Armed with a flaming morning star, her Uncle Benjen stood before her barring her way.
"Impossible." Alyssa breathed in shock, even as she danced away from her Uncle's swing with the help of the still active Levitate and reminded Ghost not to interfere even as it earned her a frustrated growl from her familiar.
She was too busy puzzling over her Uncle's fate however to pay it any mind. He was dead, his pale skin and lack of breathing made that clear. Yet, the magic that animated him was also clearly not the same as those of a wight. A fact made abundantly clear by what he said next or more precisely that he could speak at all.
"I'm sorry Alys!" Her Uncle shouted as he swung his flail at her and forcing her to float away once more.
I must get to the bottom of this.
"Frost Bolt!" Alyssa cast, freezing her Uncle mid swing in a thick block of ice.
"Uncle, do you have enough free will to explain what happened to you?" Alyssa asked as she kept a safe distance.
"It is a long story Alys." Her Uncle Benjen warned.
"I'm not going anywhere. Tell me."
"Very well," her undead Uncle said with a sigh. "I came across an Other during the ranging in which you must think I disappeared and was fatally wounded by its ice spear but the Children stopped me from raising as a wight. Instead, they turned him into the unwilling agent of the Three-eyed Raven. Conscious unlike a mindless wight but equally as enslaved to the will of my master. Please, sweet Niece, free me from this cursed existence."
Alyssa readied to do just that but paused.
"Are there any more Children in that cave?"
"There were three s-core Children living here." Uncle Benjen forced out. "Hurry, Alys, the Raven is trying to seize full control of me."
Alyssa nodded. "Speak quickly then. I need to know the details to know what to do."
"There are tunnels underneath. A w-whole web. Thrones of weirwood throughout, t-tombs for the R-Raven's victims."
"Those it absorbed into itself?"
Uncle Benjen nodded. "Please! I can't hold out much longer."
"I understand Uncle," Alyssa said with a sad look. While she was nowhere near as close to Uncle Benjen in this life than she had in her last, a product of having a much happier family life and thus less of a need for validation, she nevertheless loved him and always enjoyed his company. "Goodbye and rest in peace. Flame Strike!"
The pillar of flame she conjured consumed her Uncle's corpse whole and he let out a sigh of relief as he died.
"Fifty four surviving Children hiding inside a cave network of unknown complexity?" Alyssa pondered, pushing away her grief as she eyed the cave entrance with burning hatred. "How can we be sure we kill them all? Especially if any men I send down there are liable to being possessed by the blasted Three-eyed Raven."
A being that even now was still spitting desperate pleas from her possessed Queensguard to spare it and the Children.
Ghost sent her an image of her Tome of Magic and Alyssa smiled.
"Thank you Ghost," Alyssa told her friend who growled in happy acceptance of the gratitude even as she used Gate to retrieve the Tome of Magic from its current hiding place inside a hidden vault on Dragonstone.
As she stepped back out of the portal a page of the Tome was already glowing.
"Control earth?" Alyssa said out loud as she read the page. "This might work!"
Floating back onto Ghost's back and securing herself once more into her throne in the howdah, all whilst ignoring the increasingly panicked howling of the Three-eyed Raven, she had Ghost take to the air once more just in case.
"Control Earth!" Alyssa cast, referring to the Tome and pointing a hand palm forward towards the cave entrance.
The effect was immediate as suddenly the entire hillside began to collapse on itself. It was not alone. Whole tracts of the Haunted Forest began to disappear in clouds of dust as at her command, the earth that held it up rushed down to fill the caves below. More importantly with a howl of fearful agony that must have left her Queensguard's throats sore, Alyssa felt the magic of the Three-eyed Raven be torn from the world.
My Lord Nameless watch over you and give you peace. Alyssa prayed for the souls of all those who had been consumed by the Three-eyed Raven's foul magic.
"Light it all on fire Ghost!" Alyssa ordered as behind her she heard her Queensguard come to their senses. She wasn't taking any chances however. "We must be sure not one of the Children or god forbid the Raven itself survived."
Roaring his agreement, Ghost flew over all the collapsed sections of earth and breathed dragonfire into the ruined earth. It took hours but when they were finally done, leagues of the Haunted Forest was ablaze. Only then did she free her Queensguard from the restraining ice she had trapped them in.
"Apologies for that, my loyal Queensguard." Alyssa said as they finally flew back towards Castle Black.
"It is fine, your grace." Loras said as he stretched his sore muscles as much as his harness allowed, glad Alyssa was sure that her carefully calibrated magical ice had not caused frostbite or other cold related harm. "We understand, right?"
Everyone expressed their agreements
"And thank your god that you killed that damned thing, your grace." Ygritte added. "If that thing was the Old Gods then I'm glad you killed it. When it was in my head I saw what it was, what it wanted. And that was nothing less than the death of all mankind! It was a monster just as much as the Others are."
"It truly was," Ser Wendel added. "I'm glad we Manderlys never converted to the Old Gods. To learn that they were in truth that abomination would break any true believer."
"That is why we must not tell them." Alyssa told them sternly as she used Scrying to confirm that none of the Children survived and was satisfied when none of her spells connected despite everything she tried. It wasn't confirmation, but it was good enough.
She was met with a chorus of agreement at that.
"You truly are a hero, your grace." Brienne complimented a moment later. "No enemy of man can stand before you."
"Not without paying a price in blood, no they will not." Alyssa said emphatically.
"Hero of man, huh?" Loras said suddenly, a mischievous air to his tone. "I must speak to Grandmother and Margey to see about having that added to your titles."
Alyssa spun around as much as her harness could allow to glare at her goodbrother. "You wouldn't dare! My titles are long enough as is!"
"And Margey is determined to make them longer." Loras told Alyssa with a smirk, causing the Queen to pale in horror. "To in her words 'reflect the true greatness of our Queen's deeds.'"
"She would say that," Alyssa said with a defeated sigh.
Loras couldn't help it, she was sure, he laughed at the look that must have been on her face. He was soon followed by the rest of her Queensguard. Even Ghost joined in. It was at her expense but in the end even she joined it. After what they had just done, they needed the dose of levity. If the price to pay for it was yet another silly title then Alyssa could live with it.
Done!
A short but necessary chapter that ties up quite a few loose ends. Hope everybody liked it despite its brevity.
And the Children and the Three-eyed Raven are evil!? Say what!? I can't claim that this is an overly original idea. But it is the most logical explanation, in my mind, for the way things played out in the last few episodes of Season 8 so I'm running with it. Basically, the Children have never forgiven humanity for defeating them during the Dawn Age, not even with the The Pact of the Isle of Faces and thus have been plotting revenge ever since. This might not have been the dominant movement among their people for most of that time but as their extinction drew nearer, the bitterness over all they had lost grew and it took over. Ever since they have been using the Three-eyed Raven as a tool for vengeance, and in some continuities where they created them the Others as well. In the world of Game of Thrones, they did so by making the Three-eyed Raven influence events to create an unstable Westeros such as things were at the end of Season 8 (the system they set up under Bran the Broken is so terrible that anybody with a casual understanding of politics or history will tell you the Realm will likely tear itself apart within years), take the throne and then continue to destabilize things even further. It might be a petty revenge but it was all they could manage. It's not like they were willing to let the Others, their other enemy win. In the Alyssaverse though with no chance of any victory unless they aligned with the Others, they have chosen exactly that.
Okay, what was the trap that the Raven was trying to spring? Simple. It was trying to take over Alyssa. I tried to allude to it in the chapter, but for those still unclear let me spell it out. It reasoned that sooner or later, Alyssa would come to it either to kill it for its many slights against her or siding with the Others or to seek its power against them. Whatever the reason, once she got there its plan was to take her over.
Having Alyssa destroy the whole cave complex like that was OP? Duh! She is OP, are you just noticing this now? As for why she could do that and the cleanup afterwards without the Others attacking her? Well, their army in the region got wiped when she first hit the cave out so they have nothing to respond to her with at the moment.
Sorry about that long AN. It's over now. So till next time hyvästi!