Lord Jason Lee himself? Ah, quite the dashing gentleman of a rogue. What's there to be said about him? Well, quite a lot, actually. After all, that man – that sorcerer – changed the course of history forever and he did it by himself – a legion of reanimated corpses helped him, alongside a dragon, but that's irrelevant. His name, now, is whispered with the same awe as the legends of old, like Bran the Builder himself. One could say, however, that his legend did not quite begin until he reached the Starks of Winterfell from Bear Island, where he was first recorded, and brought with him his knowledge of sorcery and magic. Although, there are some who would argue that the act that truly made him legendary was the Burning of Braavos, when Lord Jason Lee rode upon his fearsome Black Dragon, Nightfury, and brought fire and death to the shores of Essos.
~ The History of House Lee, Page 3, by Maester Horeth
"Hmm... it's entirely possible that I might've gone a little too far with this," Staring at a literal mountain of smoking corpses would probably do that to anyone, especially when this was entirely my doing. After all, I was the one who pretty much told Nightfury that he could kill and eat all the Wildlings on the entire island. I guess I did underestimate just how deadly Nightfury actually was, because the little black lizard went and did just that; he killed every single Wildling, burned them all to a crisp and then went on to eat as many of them as he could, which was also a lot.
And now, about a thousand or so of them were dead, piled high. There wasn't even a grand battle. As soon as I set Nightfury loose, it was like death itself descended upon Bear Island and came for every single Wildling, because the little black shit was a war crime on legs and wings. This, of course, came with the added bonus of filling the land with Necrotic Energy, making me feel like I was on top of the world – not quite sure how that translated to actual power, but it probably meant something. I could kind of play with it as though it was a tangible thing, a physical existence, but – like a caveman with a laptop – I had no idea what to actually do with it.
The fact that I could only gather this much energy from a thousand corpses also meant I couldn't probably play around with it as much as I'd like. But, then again, this was Planetos, and a lot of people died here all the time. I could probably walk into another battlefield and practice with the energies of death there. For now, this seemed like a novelty more than anything else.
Eat. Eat. Munch. Much. This one not taste good. This one taste good.
And that was the other thing that kind of worried me, honestly, because Nightfury was eating the corpses with a ravenous fervor and was growing stronger with every single little bite. At the moment, my cute little Black Dragon was now larger than a damn car. The Fatalis didn't care about physics or biology, apparently, because the mass of whatever it ate just became a part of itself, making it bigger and bigger with – quite literally – every single bite. It was worrying, because I had no real control over Nightfury beyond a vague sense of kinship, which was pretty flimsy in itself because my baby Fatalis just thought I was his mother, which was funny to think about, honestly.
"This... isn't how I imagined things would go," Halga said. The woman sat right by my side. Like me, she was frozen in horror. We both hated the Wildlings with a burning passion. But, maybe, just maybe, it's entirely possible that siccing Nightfury on them might've been a step too far in the wrong direction. Why? Because the little shit burned them all and now I have no corpses left to do my Necromancy on. That wasn't even including the fact that Nightfury also ate their bones, which leaves me with absolute jackshit.
Though, I'd imagine that Halga was horrified for an entirely different reason, but I don't know.
The forest around us lay in smolders, trees burnt down to husks and ashes, and the blackened remnants of once-corpses on the soil. Next time, I'm not setting Nightfury loose until I absolutely had to, because this was just a lot of waste. Well, not quite, since the baby Fatalis was having an absolute blast with his feast, but it was a waste for me, since burnt out corpses were not really useful for me.
"Yeah, now I kinda feel useless," I said, pouting. I looked ahead and, at the very least, Mormont Keep was still in one piece.
Sure, Nightfury's fire melted a portion of its outer wall, but this wasn't a movie castle; it actually was designed like an actual medieval castle, which meant there wasn't just one defensive wall, but three, including a moat around the structure. There were probably still a few Wildlings within Mormont Keep itself, since I was reasonably certain that not all of them rushed out to meet us. I'd use my undead forces to root them out in a moment, I just kind of needed to breathe and take in all this death.
"I can't imagine what it must've been like in the Dance," Halga said. Before us, Nightfury grew larger than a car. This growth spurt would end soon, though, as I don't remember the Fatalis being stupidly large in any of the Monster Hunter Games it was in; in fact, compared to other Elder Dragons, its size wasn't particularly impressive, unlike something the Dalamadur or Fatalis' bigger, waterbound cousin, the Dire Miralis. "So many dragons flying around. So many people dead."
"All for a crown that's going to sit on the head of an inbred little shit," I finished, shaking my head. The Dance of Dragons was, perhaps, the biggest showcase as to why the Targaryens weren't fit to govern anything larger than a playground. The number of good kings could be counted on one hand, while the horny mad dogs were all over the place. They ruined their own dynasty, because they could seem to agree on who the king should be. Not that it was an easy decision, to be entirely fair as both Rhaenyra and Aegon were... terrible people, but at least one of them should've conceded before they unleashed the flying nuke lizards.
A part of me kind of wished that I was sent here during the Dance of Dragons, because it'd be really funny to watch their dragons try to take on a Fatalis and get absolutely shredded into oblivion. The image of Daemon Targaryen on Caraxes getting burnt to a crisp by Nightfury's infinite fire glitch brought a smile to my face.
I breathed in and stood up, turning towards Mormont Keep. My undead army gathered behind me, marching forward. "Let's finish this. I'm fired up and ready for some action."
The Necrotic Energies really did their thing. It felt good, but I didn't like the implication that I'd be at my happiest when I was surrounded by a thousand corpses. Once more, I called upon the Necrotic Energies, which coalesced around my right arm and took on the form of a ghostly blue-green fire. Now... what could I actually do with this?
"Oooh, there's a lot of them, over there," Halga said, pointing at a window, where the silhouettes of what must've been hundreds of Wildlings could be seen. They cowered behind the walls. Good. That'd make it easier to flush them out. Halga's eyes narrowed. "They're hiding inside the castle."
I nodded. "And they were smart enough to actually close the gate."
The portion of the wall that was melted down by Nightfury's fire lay directly above the moat, which meant I'd have to wade through sewage water just to get there. I could get my undead to form something of a skeletal bridge for me, but I didn't think it was necessary. The one weakness of Mormont Keep, I figured, was the lack of a drawbridge, which meant I could technically just walk up to the main gate, which I did. Of course, knowing this weakness, the Mormonts compensated for it by erecting numerous gates, each one made of thick hardwood and further reinforced by what seemed to be iron bars and plates. A frontal assault by enemy soldiers meant it'd be easier to try and scale the walls instead of breaking down the gate. And those were pipes and holes right above the gate, which I figured were used to pour down boiling water or oil. Nasty things.
It was a good thing, then, that the Wildlings abandoned the walls, in fear of Nightfury.
With my right hand blazing with Necrotic Energies, I reached out and cast a simple [Chill Touch], just as a test. And then, I felt a surge of power as the Necrotic Energies I'd gathered were siphoned right into the spell, like filling up a bunny-rabbit full of meth.
The first reinforced door splintered and cracked apart as it bent inward from the spot I aimed for with [Chill Touch], sending a shower of shrapnel and warped metal flying and crashing into the second reinforced gate. My eyes widened as a cascade of frost and ice bloomed all across the walls, the gates, and ground, covering just about everything in a thin layer of frozen fractals. Even the second gate was not entirely unharmed as the shrapnel jammed themselves through solid wood and even dented the metal reinforcements.
My eyes widened. Halga walked up to the ruined door and picked up one of the splinters, a shard of hard wood, sturdy and firm, frozen solid. "By the look on your face, Jason, I'm assuming this wasn't the intended outcome?"
I shook my head. "Nope, it most definitely was not."
Based on everything that happened, I inferred that the role of the Necrotic Energy was to enhance my spells. That was very good to know. I wondered if it'd effect the more powerful spells, like the ninth tier ones. Hmm, ya know, I could just test that right now. Breathing in, I pulled as much Necrotic Energy as I could, but the density was lesser here than it was near that pile of corpses Nightfury built. My theory was that fresh cadavers projected a small amount of Necrotic Energy that I could potentially make use of, depending on the density; if there were too few dead people, then the density would be much lower and I wouldn't be able to do anything with the energies. If there were a thousand corpses, however, then the density is much higher and I'd be able to do some crazy shit with my spells.
Despite the lower density, I was still able to gather enough Necrotic Energy from my surroundings, which – once again – took on the guise of a pale, ghostly, blue-green flame around my right arm. Grinning, I decided to test – for the first time – one of my more destructive spells. Good thing my law-school brain made it easy for me to memorize every single Necromancy spell and their tier; otherwise, this shit would be impossible. So, I promptly assigned [Danse Macabre], a fifth tier spell, and placed it on a ninth tier spell slot.
I think I've held myself back from the more powerful spells for long enough. It was time to get a little more serious with this Necromancy shit.
If I recall its function correctly, [Danse Macabre] should allow me to raise quite a lot of corpses into undead minions. And there were, quite literally, hundreds of burnt out corpses around me; so, raising them should give me skeletal minions, which was nice, since casting [Decompose] on every single one of them was inefficient and incredibly tedious. The Necrotic Energies, once more, got siphoned into the spell as soon as I cast it.
A storm of Necrotic Energies exploded from me, ribbons of sickly, blue-green energies expanding rapidly from my form and jumping into every single corpse around me – a bloom of death and darkness, spreading outwards and causing the very soil at my feet to dry up and killing every single blade of grass in a ten-meter radius. Halga huffed, her skin rapidly paling as she fell to a knee beside me.
I knelt down and held her close. Her skin had turned as white as snow and her lips gray and ashen. What the fuck. My blood ran cold and my eyes widened. "Halga!"
"I think I'll be fine," She rasped. "I just feel really... sleepy."
And so, I watched as nearly three hundred skeletons pushed themselves off of the ground and marched towards me, pale balls of ghostly flames ablaze where their eyes should've been.