Learning how to swing a sword.
Jon
"You move slow," the child said in her strangely singsong voice. "Too slow."
You are too fast, Jon almost replied, but it was taking all of his concentration just to follow her movements. The child of the forest, Acorn, moved so fluidly that Jon could scarcely believe she was a creature of flesh and blood. Her footwork was beyond perfect, it was like she was flowing through the air.
In Jon's hand, Dark Sister slashed outwards, cutting low and then high with wicked grace, yet Acorn flowed between his slashes with inhuman ease. Dark Sister was easily the best blade that Jon had ever held. It was a weirdly long and thin sword, as light and as fluid as Arya's Needle, but somehow stronger than it had any right to be. A normal blade that size should have shattered at the first impact, but somehow Jon didn't think he could have broken Dark Sister even if he tried.
Dark Sister, the greenseer had said. Jon knew the name - Dark Sister was a blade that had shaped Westeros. The blade of Visenya Targaryen herself, the sister-wife and right hand of Aegon the Conqueror. From her it had passed to Maegor the Cruel, then Daemon Targaryen, and from him to Aemon Targaryen, the Dragonknight himself. No sword save for Blackfyre itself had done more to build the Seven Kingdoms.
For days, Jon had been left wondering on how the greenseer could have such a weapon.
The blade was all Valyrian steel, swirling grey and black metal and a leather-wrapped grip that seemed strangely unadorned despite the sword's grace. It was an ancient, formidable blade, with an edge sharper and more bloodthirsty than any he'd known - something about the sword sang for blood.
Despite his sword though, Jon was still horribly outmatched.
At first, he thought the child of the forest had been jesting when she had offered him a duel. As it happened, Acorn was easily the best fighter Jon had ever seen.
She might be over a thousand years old, Jon thought, as he slashed downwards in a long arc. Acorn could have had more battle experience than every man in the Night's Watch combined.
The children of the forest were short, scrawny and skinny, long of limb with a strangely deerlike aspect to their features, but they were most certainly not weak. They moved with a cat-like grace that no human could match, and their reflexes easily put Jon's to shame. Acorn's natural speed, combined with a flawless style and talent, meant that Jon was not even able to catch her.
Jon had no doubt he could have beaten easily her in an arm wrestle. Still, he knew as well that Acorn could have sliced open his guts just as easily if she had really tried.
The child of the forest wielded a long spear instead of a sword. A weirwood spear tipped with an obsidian blade. It was a brittle weapon, but sharp enough to cleave through any armour. Right now, Acorn was barely using it as she dodged around Jon's sword. When she did attack, she used the butt of her spear, and her jabs would always hit despite his defence.
They might be no bigger than children, but they're still predators, he thought. He was suddenly reminded that the children of the forest had claws instead of fingers.
"Keep your legs apart, and your shoulders down," said Acorn. "Your trunk is still too weak. You topple too easily if you try to stand up straight."
Jon grimaced. Keep your centre low, he told himself, facing off against her. His left leg was better, but still sore and limp. He was going to have trouble riding a horse, let alone fighting. He had needed a walking stick even to move around recently.
Jon slashed down, but he overreached himself. Almost chidingly, the blunt end of Acorn's spear tapped against his thigh. "You slow as giant, but with none of the strength."
Jon gasped before lowering his weapon. He felt exhausted. The last time anybody had beaten him so soundly in a duel, he had been seven. "Enough. I yield."
"Yield?" Acorn shook her head, but she still lowered her spear. "We practice fighting, you shouldn't practice yielding. Yield against the cold and the cold will take you. Nature doesn't fight until yield, King Snow."
King Snow, Jon noted. All of the children of the forest called him that. Jon still hadn't figured out why.
Jon sighed, trying to catch his breath. "Where did you learn to fight like that?"
"We call it the wood dance. Once we used it to hunt, then we had use it to fight. I practiced my dance fighting men centuries ago, but it still was never enough."
"I can't imagine anybody could have beaten you in a battle."
"They couldn't." Despite her delicate features, Acorn's eyes were hard. "But they killed my brother when he slept. They couldn't kill me, so they poisoned the ground against us instead. They couldn't fight us, so they burned our forests. They killed babes, my children, and then killed fighters before they ever had a chance to fight. You men don't fight fair; you lack the giant's strength, but you could always make up for it with cunning and viciousness."
Jon blinked. "Um… I see." There was a moment of silence. Jon felt the need to say something. "I am sorry about your loss."
"Don't be," Acorn said simply. "That song is over. I dance the wood dance now in tribute to cycles long past, as I will be soon."
She turned and walked away without another word. Jon blinked. They were queer creatures, the children of the forest. They hadn't treated Jon with anything other than kindness, but there was a strange sadness to them as well.
They talked about everything they had lost, and they lived in sadness. Men wouldn't be sad, Jon thought to himself, men would be angry. Men would hate and swear vengeance, while the children only mourned. The children sang for their losses, while men would fight and kill for them.
Then again, Jon mused, perhaps that's the reason the men won.
Jon took a deep breath, limping as he returned to the throne room. The greenseer was in one of his sleeps, still as the dead.
"You return," he muttered, his eye slowly opening as Jon approached. "How goes your practice?"
"Sorely. The children are strong fighters," Jon said with a quiet grimace.
"No," the greenseer said sadly. "The children of the forest were never fighters. There were some that were forced to fight, some that even became consumed by the fighting, but in their hearts the children were never meant to wield a weapon."
Jon's eyes narrowed. He paused, holding out his blade. "Dark Sister," he said. "Where did you get this sword?"
"I had a life before I came here, once. Dark Sister was entrusted to me long ago."
Jon hesitated, struggling to recall his history lessons. "Dark Sister is the ancestral sword of House Targaryen. The same one that Queen Visenya wielded."
The gaunt man gave a slight nod. "She has a history too. She has long been a bloodthirsty blade, and truthfully I have neglected her for too long."
A blade that dated back to Aegon the Conqueror. How did he ever get such a thing? "Are you a Targaryen?" Jon demanded.
There was the faintest wisp of a smile. "No. I was never a Targaryen."
"Then who were you?"
"I wore many names when I was quick, but name my mother gave me was Brynden," the greenseer said in a quiet voice. "But that name is dead now. I gave up the name when I gave my vows."
There were so many things that Jon wanted to ask. Brynden, he thought, struggling to remember Maester Luwin's lessons. There was something nagging at him in the back of his mind. "You were a sworn brother?"
"Once."
Realisation clicked. "Bloodraven," Jon said, breathlessly. Brynden Rivers. Bastard son of Aegon the Unworthy. Former Hand of the King. A former Lord Commander. One of the Great Targaryen Bastards. "… You're Bloodraven."
"Once." That was all he said.
Jon's head spun, staring at the greenseer in the weirwood tree. "Then you must be over a hundred years old. You were Lord Commander." The blood red eye just looked at him passively. Bloodraven was the bastard son of Aegon the Fourth, he recalled. A legitimised bastard. Jon averted his gaze, staring down at Dark Sister. So many questions spun through Jon's head, but there was one above all others that demanded answers. "Why did you give this sword to me?"
"Because I hope you can use it." The voice was so quiet Jon had to strain to listen. "I swore to return it to my family when my watch was ended, but now, my watch will never end. Enough questions for now. We have much to do and little time."
"The ice dragon," he said.
"The Frostfangs are wracked by storms," the greenseer rasped. Jon didn't know how Bloodraven knew, but he didn't doubt the greenseer's words. "As soon as they clear you will have to move out, and quickly. You have less than a week here, and much to learn in that time."
Jon shook his head. "I can barely walk, I'm not strong enough…"
"This place will heal you quickly. The children sing their songs well."
"And when I find the dragon?" Jon demanded. "It's a dragon. How am I ever supposed to control it?"
"In centuries past, the Valyrians used their magics of blood and fire to bind dragons to their will. Those arts have been lost, but perhaps they can be relearnt." There was a pause. "I know little of the ancient Valyrian sorceries, but I can teach what I do know. I must teach you how to open your third eye, Jon."
"… You want me to warg with the dragon?"
"Yes. That is one word for it."
Warging, the free folk had called it. Tormund had placed the title on him, but Jon hadn't been comfortable with it. He hadn't accepted that power easily. He knew that he could dream through Ghost's eyes, and he knew that he sometimes it felt like he and Ghost were bonded in a way he couldn't explain.
The three-eyed crow could explain it to him. He called it skinchanging, the power to wear the bodies of other creatures and see through their eyes. It was a weird power that Jon was hesitant to accept, but he had no choice.
Jon took a deep breath, but there was no choice. The world needed a dragon, and Jon needed to provide one.
Whatever it takes, Jon thought. He thought of his family, his brothers, his sisters, his friends. His sworn brothers, the men he fought with. Ygritte. Tormund. Even Mance. For the living.
"How do I learn?"
"Close your eyes," the greenseer said softly. "Breathe deep… Take in the scent of the roots… Listen to the river… Listen to the trees…. It is less a matter of learning, and more a matter of feeling…"
The three-eyed crow was a patient teacher. He spent hours sitting over Jon, slowly instructing him how to focus. "Your wolf," the three-eyed crow instructed. "Think of your wolf - focus on him. The distance is meaningless, focus…"
Jon spent all day in their trying to mediate. Jon had to meditate to connect with Ghost. Apparently the power of the weirwoods made skinchanging easier in the cave, but it had still taken nearly a full day of concentration. Then, Jon felt his vision fade. At first he thought he was falling asleep from exhaustion, feeling himself fall…
And then he felt himself fall into another skin. Suddenly, Jon was running over snowy outcrops, sniffing through the cold. He saw wolf's paws underfoot. Ghost. Staring through Ghost's eyes, feeling the cold frost on Ghost's fur.
The feeling was overwhelming. The wolf dreams had never been so vivid - it was like he was in control of the wolf's body.
No, it was more like direwolf and man were sharing the same body, side by side. His mind blurred, overwhelmed by the sharps scents and feelings of a wolf.
If it hadn't been for the greenseer next to him, pulling Jon out and returning him to his body, then Jon might have forgotten himself in his second skin.
Jon gasped, dropping back to the cave. The children of the forest brought him fresh goat's milk and pale fish baked in butter. "Careful," the greenseer instructed. "It is a dangerous power, even when moving to a comfortable skin. Go too long and you lose yourself."
"Then how can I use it?" Jon gasped.
"With practice. Rest and eat, Jon, you have much to learn."
There was nothing else for it. He had to use whatever time he had in this place. The three-eyed crow said that normally it would take years to learn the skills Jon needed. He had a week.
The greenseer taught him how to focus himself - a chant that he could repeat to keep himself grounded. Jon could repeat the names of his brothers and sisters, even the vows of the Night's Watch, to keep himself focused.
Go too deep into the mind of another and you may lose yourself, the three-eyed crow had warned, but he had to press on anyways.
"Ghost is your familiar. You are bonded. Your wolf will accept you, and you will accept him. That helps greatly," the greenseer said. "With other creatures, it will not be so easy."
"You mean… possessing them?" Jon asked. Possessing a dragon.
"You can dominate another skin. if you choose. If you are strong enough can forcefully bend another body to your will," he replied. "But that is a crude and dangerous power. The best partnerships are forged when the two minds can come to terms, to a share a body." His voice became hard. "Not every creature will accept a partner willingly. If you cannot share, you will need to overpower with brute will."
… I really don't like the idea of trying to fight a dragon in a battle of wills, Jon thought with a gulp.
The next day, the three-eyed crow instructed him to shift into the body of a raven. It was a raven that was well-used to taking passengers and been warged into many times - like a well-worn shoe, the crow had even said. Still, it had been one of the hardest things that Jon ever had to do.
The bird's mind was totally different from a wolf's. A wolf was focused and intense, a predator with a mind not so dissimilar from a man's. The raven's mind felt fluttery and fleeting. It felt like prey. Even when Jon finally managed to feel its presence, he still couldn't slip into its body. It was like trying to balance on a coin, or squeeze his entire body into a hand glove.
He could feel the three-eyed crow's disappointment, but the lessons continued nevertheless. Jon's progress was slow.
"As a warg, you are fairly powerful," the crow murmured one day. "But you are no greenseer. You will never fly, you will not feel the greensight, or embrace the trees. I had hoped to introduce you to the weirwood paste, but I fear that power would consume you."
Jon gasped. Somehow, the lessons meditating with greenseer were more exhausting than any spar. "Then what can I do?"
"Keep practicing. Learn. Learn how to use your gifts."
It gave his body time to heal, though. Between the lessons sitting at the weirwood throne, Jon found time to exercise and spar. He practiced with Acorn as regularly as he could, forcing himself to recover. He tried to learn how to mimic her movements, desperately trying to keep up with her speed.
The Others moved that fast too, Jon recalled. The thought drove him harder and harder to heal and train.
The children of the forest sustained themselves on mushrooms, nuts and berries, milk and cheese from the goats they kept in their caverns, even blind white fish from the underground river. It was a healthy diet that gave him strength.
One time, Jon woke to find a child of the forest standing over him, singing a slow, tender song to nurse his wounds. Jon's leg would never be the same, but it had been getting better every day. The songs of children seemed to help heal, they give him strength.
The dreams were stronger too. Down here, by the roots of the weirwood, the dreams felt stronger than they had ever been. Ever since the greenseer had started the lessons, Jon's dreams had fully become warg-dreams, visions from other bodies.
Sometimes, Jon dreamt he was a direwolf. Those dreams were cool, focused and reassuring, like dreaming of an old friend. He dreamt of running through the woods, of hunting, of pacing over worlds of snow and ice.
Other times, the dreams were chaotic and intense. Dreams of fury - dreams of fire and ice, dreams of flight and storms. They were dreams that caused him to wake up panting and sweating. The dreams were so blurred and ferocious that he could remember nothing but shadows and chaos.
The wolf dreams were calm and sound. The dragon dreams felt like a force of nature.
After one such dream, Jon panted as he shot awake. He had been clutching Dark Sister as he slept on the uncomfortable roots near the throne. The greenseer was looking down at him, almost curiously. Jon rubbed his eyes, trying to focus. Jon kept on clutching Dark Sister, the sword just felt so comfortable in his grasp.
Jon hesitated, staring at the ruby on the pommel. There had been something that had been nagging at him for a while. "You believe that I am a Targaryen, don't you?" Jon said suddenly, his voice quiet in the constant gloom.
The three-eyed crow just nodded. "I believe you have Targaryen blood."
Jon took a deep breath, trying to process it. He gave me a priceless Targaryen sword, Jon thought to himself. Jon's hand instinctively went to his overgrown hair - now shoulder length. He was growing a white beard too. White was not his natural hair colour, but still, just that colour…
"How's that possible?" Jon said. "That means that Ned Stark must have birthed me on a Targaryen - he was at war with the Targaryens when I was born."
"I do not know," the old man replied in his low voice, but strangely Jon didn't quite believe him. Sometimes, it seemed like the greenseer knew everything.
Jon was quiet as he thought of his mother. There was no Targaryen blood in the Starks, that meant his mother must have given him it.
Could my father really have had an affair with some Targaryen princess? How many Targaryen women were even alive during the Rebellion?
Jon spent the rest of the day practicing with Acorn, trying to distract himself from those infuriating thoughts of his parentage. Acorn was a good teacher. Jon could feel his movements getting sharper, learning how to follow the wood dance.
"It is time," the three-eyed crow said after the seventh day, when he awoke from one of his many slumbers. His voice was grim. "You are not ready, but there is no choice. A darkness approaches. The dragon does not have long left."
Jon's hands clenched. "And the storm?"
"It is waning, but the journey will still be perilous."
"I will need a mount."
"That has been arranged. There is a great elk in the forest waiting for you. I will direct it for as long as I can. My ravens will join you also," the three-eyed crow said in his dry, laboured voice.
The thought of going back out there scared him. He still remembered the feeling of the icy blade cutting through his chest.
Fear cuts deeper than swords, Jon tried to tell himself, but it was hard to imagine anything cutting deeper than the White Walker's sword had.
"Am I to go alone?" Jon asked after a pause.
"Yes. I have no more aid to give you," the three-eyed crow said with a gentle sigh.
"What about the stranger - the dead man that works for you?" He tried to stop himself from sounding craven, but the thought of travelling to such lands without any company…
"He has gone south to the Wall. There is an urgent errand he must see to there."
"And the children?"
"They cannot leave the caverns. The lingering magic that protects this place relies on it." He sounded sad.
Jon took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. He knew that Ghost was getting closer to him every day; they would probably meet up again during the journey.
Still, only one man and a direwolf, off to face a dragon.
"Then there is something that I want of you," Jon said. "I left a woman behind. Her name is Ygritte - she has red hair, round face, blue grey eyes. She's around eighteen years of age. I… I don't know what happened to her when I left her." His eyes were hard. "I want you to find her for me. I want you to look after her, guide her south."
The greenseer sounded disapproving. "You cannot afford to distract yourself with such things, Jon," he warned. "The journey you are on leaves no space for love - you have a duty ."
"I have a duty to her too. Protect her."
He paused. "Then I would take a vow from you too, Jon," the three-eyed crow said, keeping his voice slow. "You must do anything and everything in your power to fight against the Long Night. No matter how distasteful, no matter the cost - you will do what you must to fight for the dawn. I want you to swear it, Jon Snow. In return for my aid, you must swear it."
Jon took a deep breath. "Yes," he said. "I promise it."
"Good. You are a warg," the three-eyed crow said softly. "Use that power. You must embrace it. Embrace who you are and use it."
Jon's face twitched slightly. "I was once told that that sorcery is like a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it."
"Would you rather have no sword at all?" the greenseer replied. "Yes, it will hurt. Men like us must endure the pain so that nobody else will have to. And if you don't swing it, if you don't feel its grip, then it becomes all the more painful when you finally have to."
The single red eye focused on him. "Swing the sword, Jon Snow," he whispered. "Swing the sword and swing it true."
Jon left very early morning. The sun was barely a reddish sliver over the horizon. He wanted a full day of travelling before nightfall.
When he limped out of the cave, he saw the sun for the first time in a week. He felt almost like a different person to the one that had staggered into there.
The children stitched up his ruined leathers with earthy fibres woven from trees. They gave him furs made from a hide that Jon could not place, but he half-suspected it was giant hide. He wore riding leathers, leather boots and belt that still had the musky smell of the cave, with saddle bags filled with rations and supplies for a long journey. Everything from his leathers to his furs felt strange and alien - well-built and sturdy, but also queer and inhuman, crafted in a way he hadn't seen before, from materials that men rarely used.
Jon spent a long time staring at his cloak. They gave him a black cloak that might have belonged to a ranger of the Night's Watch, once, but it had been patched and stitched up with brown threads made from roots. Black with motley brown patches.
He carried a wooden staff in one arm, to help him walk with his bad leg. Jon kept Dark Sister on his hip. The children of the forest had also provided a small weirwood short bow, more a hunting bow than a longbow, as well as twenty arrows fletched with dragonglass tips.
"Use dragonglass or dragonsteel on the Others," he remembered three eyed crow had instructed. "And fire on the wights. Follow the ravens for as long as you can - I will guide you through them."
True to the greenseer's word, there was a great elk grazing in the snow at the foot of the hill when Jon left. The elk stared at him with black eyes, and a knowing gaze. As he approached, the elk even lowered its body to help Jon pull himself onto its broad back, lifting him two metres off the ground. There was something of the greenseer in the elk, Jon realised. The greenseer used his own warg to guide the creature.
The sound of cawing burst from the dead weirwood tree. A flock of ravens flew into the air, circling around in the sky. Some of them stopped to perch on the elk's antlers, while the others flew off into the distance.
It took two weeks for the stranger to carry me to the cave from the northern wastes, he thought with a sigh. This time, I'm going to have to make better time.
He kicked in his heels gently, and the elk set off in a quick trot. Back towards the mountains, and beyond.
Jon met up with Ghost on the second day. Watching the giant direwolf lumber towards him from over the horizon was like seeing his best friend again. Ghost was a powerful predator, but for a moment he panted and whined and jumped towards Jon like he was a pup again.
They rode hard through the forests and they were already heading through the mountain pass - in what used to be Thenn territory. Jon rode constantly through the first night, but on the second night he had to stop to give the elk time to rest.
He camped at an old ruin half-buried into the mountain. The stones looked ancient, slabs of rock that had been smoothed by age, similar to the structures he had seen at the Fist of the First Men. An old ruin from the Dawn Age, Jon eventually decided, although it was hard to imagine any structure ever being built this far north.
There is much history Beyond-The-Wall, Jon thought with something almost approaching sorrow. It was a hard land, but rich in its own ways. There was a history here going back thousands of years, history that that the rest of the world had never known.
And, if the Others had their way, all these lands would be lost, and their people forgotten.
The evening was a time of quiet. The sky was obscured by thin, icy clouds, but he could still see the glimmer of the northern lights, bright and translucent in the darkness. Jon cradled into the ruins, staring out over the mountains as he kept watch. He knew that he needed to sleep, but it was hard to even close his eyes. His mind, his body, it all felt so tense. Alone in a forsaken, abandoned wilderness that only the dead now walked.
Ghost slumbered quietly, draped across his legs. Jon was half an hour into his watch when he felt the hairs on the back of his head prickle. Above him, one of the ravens cawed in the sky.
His hand instinctively went to Dark Sister, but it was a different type of threat. Not the Others. Ghost woke quickly, the direwolf growling as he paced in the snows.
Another growl answered the direwolf. A deep, low, throaty growl, almost a snarl that cut through the air.
Jon stared upwards at the rocks above him. There were yellow eyes in the dark, reflecting in the black. Unblinkingly, they stared at him from the darkness.
The shadowcat prowled on the rocks above him. It must have been trying to ambush them before the ravens cawed in alarm. It moved without a sound, flowing down the mountainside like liquid smoke.
The cat was lean, dark and muscled. Its fur was pitch-black, with white stripes that seemed to blend into the shadows easily. Its bright yellow eyes stared at Jon, and they hungered.
Most shadowcats tended to avoid men, but Jon supposed that a lone human and an elk must have seemed a tempting prize. Ghost snarled at the cat, which paused its descent from the rocks. Perhaps the shadowcat was starving, Jon wondered, or maybe it was just braver than most.
Jon stared at the beast for a few heartbeats, slowly moving his hand away from Dark Sister.
Swing the sword, the three-eyed crow had said.
Jon needed to learn how to use that power. He had seen the army of the undead, and he knew that he would need every weapon he could find to beat them. With barely a moment of doubt, Jon closed his eyes, focused on the shadowcat, and extended his mind.
He felt himself touch the shadowcat's presence. At once, it recoiled and yelped.
Pain hit Jon, shooting through his head. Like he had just tried grab a cat and the cat had clawed him. Jon grunted, but he tried to focus and kept pushing.
The shadowcat yowled in pain and shock, its eyes suddenly crazed. It was back on its haunches, twitching and yowling. It took all of Jon's concentration while it protested, thrashed and snarled.
The shadowcat felt so different than Ghost. It felt sharp and barbed like a wicked dagger. It felt cruel, proud and vain. It felt angry. Hateful.
It felt like Jon was stepping on the cat's most precious territory. The shadowcat didn't want to share its body, it felt too fiercely independent. Instead, it scratched and it fought with every fibre of its being.
Jon grimaced. Maybe he should have retreated, but instead he needed to push onwards. It was like sparring; it hurt, but he needed to overcome it. If I can't warg with a cat, then how am I ever supposed to handle a dragon?
The shadowcat almost howled with rage. It body tensed and it was about to lunge at Jon physically, but then suddenly the ravens darted from the sky. The birds pecked at its eyes, disorientating it enough that Jon could push just a bit harder.
Jon felt the shadowcat's will snap. Suddenly, his world changed.
He was inside the shadowcat's skin, looking down at himself through the cat's eyes. Through its night vision, there was no colour, but the shadows were gone and everything was a distinct, sharply contrasting white and black. Jon could feel the pain on its face as the ravens pecked at him, but then, as Jon's control strengthened, they scattered. The ravens flew away, retreating to the nearby trees.
The shadowcat stared at Jon. He could see, even smell his own body through the cat's senses. He looked like a human - weak, pungent, vulnerable, and yet, dangerous.
Kill, attack, run . Jon could feel its instincts screaming orders - so intense that its body twitched - but Jon squashed those orders. Instead, almost hesitantly, Jon raised a paw, feeling his new body. He had to rule the shadowcat's body with an iron will - anything less than complete control and the cat would squirm free.
The shadowcat felt lean and strong. Smaller than Ghost, but so much faster. Sharp claws dug into the rock. Her, Jon realised suddenly. The shadowcat is female.
With an easy flex, the shadowcat jumped down to the ground. Ghost was still growling. The shadowcat wanted to run, to hide, but instead Jon ordered her body to sit. The shadowcat fought him every step of the way. He could feel her anger, her fear, all her emotions through the warg-sense. It was so intense that it hurt.
To be here - on the ground, exposed in front of a human and a wolf - it caused every instinct she had to scream. It was so totally against her nature that she was trembling, yellow eyes wide.
Slowly, gingerly, Jon pulled himself back into his own body. He nearly collapsed as he felt himself standing on two legs. Still, Jon couldn't afford to totally let go off the connection to the shadowcat. He wasn't staring directly through her eyes, but it was like he still had her on a leash. As if I'm in two bodies at the same time, Jon thought with a pained breath.
It was exhausting. Jon remembered Varamyr Sixskins, with his six different bodies. Damn, how did Varamyr ever manage them all?
Varamyr must have been very skilled and powerful enough to warg with six bodies at once. Still, from what Jon could tell, the three-eyed crow was capable of warging with at least two dozen creatures over a scale of distant miles. Jon was starting to realise that the three-eyed crow had a power on a totally different scale to anything he could imagine.
Ghost was still growling and snapping. "Down, Ghost," Jon soothed, all the while keeping his eyes firmly on the shadowcat. Her yellow eyes looked absolutely hateful.
Ghost backed down uncertainly. Jon approached the shadowcat, hand extended.
"Easy girl, easy," he muttered, reaching out to touch her fur. Instinctively, she wanted to bite, but Jon squashed that response. "I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not going to hurt you…"
Her whole body recoiled at the feel of her touch. It took all of Jon's strength to force her to stay still. The shadowcat's black and white fur was thick and soft.
For a while, Jon paused. The shadowcat was still trying to fight and snap back, but Jon was well and truly under her skin. The cat won't be as easy to control as the wolf, he decided. Ghost could accept him, but he knew instinctively that the shadowcat would always have to be forced.
Jon stared into the shining yellow eyes, wondering what to do next. For a long moment, he debated walking the cat away and releasing her. He had no doubt that she would flee as soon as she could.
No, Jon decided. That's useless.
He needed to learn control, and the shadowcat was good practice. She forced Jon to exert his powers, and Jon needed to learn more about warging. He needed to learn how long he could maintain his powers, how long the connection lasted. There was too much he needed to learn, and he could only learn through practice.
Jon wouldn't be able to practice like this on Ghost. The direwolf was a part of him, just as he was for Ghost; they were so close that there was no difficulty, no need for restraint or struggle.
Besides, Jon thought quietly, the shadowcat is useful . He couldn't think of any animal that could scout out the rocky mountain path half so well.
"I'm sorry, girl," he whispered. "I'm going to have to use you a bit longer…"
Slowly, Jon moved into position. He leaned down onto the ground, resting against the rocks, but he kept eye contact with the shadowcat at all times. He made sure to not break the link, as if there was an invisible, fragile connection running between them.
There was one thing that bugged him. The cat doesn't have a name, Jon thought. If I'm going to use her, she deserves a name.
He spent barely a moment thinking about it before one came to him. Black fur, nearly invisible in the night. "Ghost," Jon announced in a whisper. "… Meet Phantom."
With that, Jon's body slumped as he finally let himself sleep. Phantom pulled herself off the ground and quickly leapt away. Jon spent the rest of the night sleeping, while his mind roamed the mountainside in the body of a shadowcat.