A/N: Enjoy the chapter!
King of Winter
Jon stood in the fresh layer of morning snow and watched Queen Daenerys Targaryen soar away on her great black dragon. Drogon, he recalled her saying, named after the Queen's deceased husband.
The Mother of Dragons had most definitely not been a disappointment. Bran's parting advice when he had been leaving Winterfell was most instrumental in dealing with her. Without his brother's forwarnings defeating the Targaryen queen would not have gone as smoothly as it had. The twinge of pain that ran through his limbs quickly reminded him that it could have gone better. The woman herself was a marvel, he'd rarely met a member of the fairer sex with such sheer force of personality. Ygritte and Val, perhaps, but they barely counted. Free Folk women were a breed apart.
Indeed, the rumors did not lie about Queen Daenerys. She had all the fire she claimed, and was a great Valyrian beauty to boot. Jon shook off the distracting thoughts.
He thought back to their parting words.
"What will you tell your councilors when you return to Dragonstone?" he asked, keeping pace with the diminutive queen as he escorted outside the castle to her dragon.
"The truth. They shall know all that has happened here, my graceless capture included. My duty as their ruler overrules whatever Queenly pride is worth." she replied, a sarcastic twist set in her lips. "Besides, they must know all that I know if they are to offer me accurate council after all."
"Aye, there is great wisdom in your humility, Daenerys Targaryen."
She stopped walking and turned to look at him, her face unreadable.
"I still cannot tell if you're poking fun at me, Jon Snow, or if you are simply the most forthright man I have ever met."
"I meant no disrespect-" he rushed to correct his mistake.
The Queen laughed him off. "A jape. Although I stand by the words, you are singularly unequivocal." She grew more serious. "I will relay to my advisers what we spoke of. And of what you are capable of- I will not make the mistake of underestimating you a second time, King Snow."
Her massive black-scaled mount approached them, lowering itself before it's rider and allowing her to climb up onto a wing. Jon swore the great beast glared at him, though it made no aggressive motions.
Daenerys Targaryen finally clambered up to where she sat astride the dragon, and grinned down at him from her perch. Jon was suddenly struck by how young she was, how young they both were, to command powers out of storybooks and to be planning out the fates of a Realm.
"Farewell and good fortune, King Jon Snow, and if all goes well perhaps we shall speak again soon."
Indeed. If all went well. Jon turned and strode towards the castle, he had a more immediate issue to deal with. He stood stock still, eyes closed, and focused.
Come.
They appeared at his bidding, both pale figures striding out of the gates and the castle proper to approach him in the snow. They were inhuman in their grace, eerie in the way the seemed to glide over the snowfall, and leave no prints. The Others stopped before him, unmoving. As always, the winter cold intensified with their presence, though he felt no discomfort. The effect of cold had been greatly lessened since his change.
Jon took a moment to study the creatures. They were equally tall, pale and gaunt. They both wore the strange, slim, shifting armor crafted from crystalline ice- of the same make as their weapons. The Others were all nearly identical to each other, though he could pick our minor differences between the two before him. Small features in the face, differences in the length of their white hair.
Were these ones made from sons of Craster? Or could they be of an older time, babes taken in winters past?
Jon did not ask. He didn't want to know.
"The pain I felt after waking. The weakness I am feeling now. You know the cause?"
The White Walkers turned to face him, the movement synchronized, blue eyes glowing.
Summoned too much ice.
The cold voice touched upon his mind.
Jon felt the one to his right answer him, the instinctual understanding of which Other had 'spoken' stemming from a source beyond him. The one standing to his left offered its input next.
You needed only to shield your singular body. The expenditure of power to cover a larger area was unnecessary.
Jon grit his teeth. His fingers itched for the handle of Longclaw. The lack of the sword's weight at his side had been unsettling these past months. "I had to defend my men. They'd have burnt to death in the dragonfire without my ice to cover them. The two of you would've burnt to death had I only shielded myself."
The bodies of Men and Giants can be reanimated. The loss of combat power is minimal.
They began to reply in tandem. Jon was getting nowhere with this. He needed the answer to his question.
"You claim I overdrew myself, this is false. I can feel the power of Winter within me, I know what it is capable of. The creation of that dome should've been a drop in the bucket. Tell me the reason it drained me so."
The source of the power is capable. You are not. You channel ice inefficiently. It is not the same as commanding the reanimated ones.
"And in what way am I… inefficient?" Jon held out his hand, and called on the font of freezing energy at his command. Ice formed over his outstretched glove, the cold blue ice snapping into existence, formed out of thin air.
You still cling to warmth. You communicate as Men do. Your body has not embraced cold. Because you do not comprehend the nature of eternity.
One of them stepped forwards, holding its arm outstretched- mirroring Jon. It too, brought ice into existence within its palm. But the ice was very different from Jon's own. The same cold blue, yes, but shifting, changing in shape and hue, unlike the static crystals of his own. Alike to their armaments, the Other's ice was almost clear, and glowed a faint blue.
Eternity. Cold. Ice.
The Other summoned more freezing power into the shifting ice, and in a flash of cold it was holding a blade of crystalline ice, opaque and pale, glowing with power. It offered it to Jon to examine for a moment, and then dispelled it back into nothingness.
Jon grimaced. "I have no wish to become more like your kind. I will speak as man because while I still draw breath I am a man, on the side of the living. If the price of my humanity is the power of the Night King, then I will make do with just the Night King's army."
He moved to walk past the Others, but they shifted to face him again.
It is true you cannot yet match the ability of the First One.
"I killed him just fine despite that." Jon smiled grimly at the memory. The Others remained unperturbed.
With your current state you can still manage the crafting of true ice. A weapon of small scale.
This conversation was quickly putting Jon in a bad mood. Small scale his arse. Though, it would soon be necessary to wield a blade again- He felt the loss of Longclaw dearly, and no other sword seemed… right after the use of Valyrian steel. He needed to master this power, to protect his allies and strike at his enemies. Jon closed his eyes and focused deep, focused on the feeling of holding his sword, the comforting weight of the weapon in his hand.
Cold. He visualized the constantly changing ice in the palm of the Other. Cold. He thought of swinging his blade on the battlefield, the rush of combat. Cold. And then… a weight in his hand.
Jon's eyes snapped open and focused on what he had brought to reality, closed in his fist. The smooth handle of pure ice, extending up into a crystalline guard in the same shape as the one on Longclaw. The blade itself was much longer than the bastard sword he had once wielded, approaching the size of a greatsword, though the weight was the exact same as he remembered. The entire weapon was a single piece of that shifting, cold material the Other had called-
True ice.
Had Jon been delirious, he could've claimed that there was a hint of awe in the cold voice that whispered in his mind. "So the rumors of me wielding a great sword of pure ice are now true." he murmured.
He clenched both gloved hands around the hilt of his newly manifested sword of ice and looked at the Others staring at him. Suddenly, Jon no longer felt the exhaustion that had been plaguing him since his waking from unconsciousness. He bared his teeth in a direwolf's grin.
"Ready yourselves." said Jon. Then he launched himself at them.
The Others barely reacted in time, leaping back as one and quickly bringing forth their own blades of crystalline true ice. Jon was in their range in a heartbeat, a whirling dervish of freezing blade and cold fury. He struck out against one of the Walkers, forcing it back with a series of quick blows rained down from above. The assaulted creature barely held him off with it's own icy weapon. Their frozen swords clashed with a peculiar ringing noise.
Jon suddenly twisted around- some sixth sense born of a short lifetime in battles warning him- just in time to deflect a swing from second Other, letting the strike slide off the edge of his cold blade- like so much rainwater from a waxed cloak. He moved forward into the guard of his attacker, and the Other beat a hasty retreat, but not before Jon lashed out with the long blade of his sword to nick it's delicate breastplate, with the tell-tale ring of true ice on true ice.
His two adversaries regrouped, circling around him to meet up and face him from a single side. Jon focused on their presences in his mind, taking his left hand off his weapon to gesture them forth.
Come.
They charged as one.
The Others quickly stole back the momentum in the fight as the worked in tandem, icy implements swung with terrible grace. They moved inhumanly quick, leaning and ducking away from Jon's blows with elegant swiftness, striking back with lighting speed. Jon found himself beset on both sides, his frozen sword ringing counterpoint to their impacts as he fended off the duo of White Walkers.
Jon realized with a shock that despite their swiftness, despite their eldritch strength, he was keeping pace with the Others. They were unable to overwhelm him. Wielding his sword of ice had not just dispelled his weakness, it had infused him with the speed and might of the winter winds. Jon felt alike to a storm as a poured on the assault, loosing his counter-attack in the form of low strikes at the lightly armored legs of his opponents, then quickly switching targets to their unarmored heads, all delivered with dizzying quickness. A laugh ripped free from his throat.
Jon once again forced them back, advancing on them with his newly discovered vigor. He battled with the Others savagely, trying to pry an opening from them. When the moment arrived- one of the Others recovering from a dodge a mite too slow, the other leaning away at just the right angle- Jon leapt forward with all the ferocity of his House symbol, swinging his great sword around in a mighty blow, aiming to split both Walkers at the waist. The Others, in a feat of inhuman reaction, managed to bring their swords into position to intercept the swing.
Their frozen blades meet with a clear note that seemed to stretch out into eternity.
Then, all three swords shatter with an explosion of cold energy, launching the combatants back, clearing the snow in a radius around them.
Jon recovered his breath, suddenly feeling the tiredness catch up to him again, although no longer at the level it had been before he crafted the sword. He turned his right hand around, palm facing him, and called out to the power of ice. This time, it came almost eagerly, swirling fragments of ice on the ground combining with freshly generating cold, coalescing into the long and wickedly sharp sword.
Blizzard.
The name jumped to the forefront of his mind. It was fitting, fighting with it turned him into a force of nature. Jon once again felt the cold strength of the weapon flooding through his body.
He turned his attention to the Others, who were waiting patiently on the other side of newly created clearing in the field. He nodded at them, and they re-summoned their own swords of crystal ice.
"Again."
Lady Wolf
She paced in the solar of Winterfell keep, trying to figure out what in the name of the Seven and the Old Gods her brothers had gotten their family- and by extension the North, into. The little office was once the private workspace of her father, and she found that it was a good place to retreat from the rigors of ruling Winterfell to think. Probably why Ned Stark had treasured the place so much.
Sansa had been skeptical when Jon and Bran had first come to her to talk about their youngest brother's ability to peer into the past and see the goings on of present events, but after the revelation of Jon's powers she was ready to believe anything. So she had trusted that Bran spoke the truth when he reported on the happenings of her older brother meeting with the Targaryen queen at the Twins. He also brought words from Jon asking her advice on how to proceed.
Bran's greensight was devastating weapon. He was an undetectable spy, and could relay information over vast distances instantaneously. Sansa had him working on warging into specific ravens carrying Lannister messages so that they could intercept vital intelligence and break enemy communication lines.
Despite all their newfound power, the Starks still had a tenuous grip at best on the North. And Westeros as a whole was destabilizing. The Mad Queen Cersei in the crownlands, the Kingslayer in the Westerlands, and Baelish, that parasite, holed up in the Vale. They were ostensibly the largest power bloc, but she knew better to than to think Baelish served anyone but himself. The Riverlands were subdued under Lannister rule, the Stormlands embroiled in conflict with the Golden Company, who fought under the banner of a supposed Aegon Targaryen IV, son of Rhaegar. Theon and his sister Asha warred with their uncle Euron Greyjoy, both fleets nipping at each other up and down the coastlines.
The only semblance of calm anywhere in the Realm besides the North was far to the south, where both the Reach and Dorne united behind Daenerys Targaryen. But soon both armies would march forth, along with the Targaryen queen's dothraki riders and Unsullied legion.
War would tear the Seven Kingdoms into shreds, right before the onslaught of winter hit. Whoever finally ended up sitting on the bloody Throne might end up starving to death not a moment after.
Jon was ready to move south with an army of wights, but if he did he left the North open to intruders, especially if Sansa sent northern bannermen after their King to bolster his forces. They also needed those wights and those men to keep order between the unruly Lords and the myriad clans of Wildings that Jon had settled in the Gift.
Sansa thought long and hard about all the possible consequences of their actions. An alliance with the Dragon Queen could be a viable option to ending the war early and eliminating threats to the North in time to brace for Winter. Yet, she could not easily trust a Targaryen ruler, and the question of who would hold sovereignty over the North troubled her. As hard as she wracked her brain, Sansa could not find a way out of the situation where she guaranteed her family's safety. She couldn't possibly allow Jon to march into the madness of the south without a full army behind him!
Bran's words echoed in her mind. Trust in Jon, he had said. Our King Snow has greater power than you and I can possibly imagine, and it isn't all his ice magics.
Sansa heaved a sigh. She would trust in her older brother, and pray that the spirit of their father watch over him and keep him safe. She would see if working with the Mother of Dragons yielded any merit. Sansa set off to find Bran, and was already mentally composing multiple letters she would soon be sending on raven-wing.