Dragons of Ice and Fire

by Diablo Snowblind

There are things hidden in the far north, secrets buried under ice. Jon Snow faces the white walkers early, and stumbles upon a power that could change the world. It forges a new path for him and everyone around him - and a new journey south, a journey as a dragon. The world begins to change - with steel and snow, fire and blood…

5. Learning how to swing a sword

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; she didn't simply move with an elite swordswoman's grace, she flowed around him like the wind itself. She was on another level entirely.

In Jon's hand, Dark Sister slashed outwards, cutting low and then high with wicked speed, yet Acorn flowed between his slashes with inhuman ease. Jon stepped in and forward, following her path with a backslash, but she simply slid away from his blade as if she had seen it coming all along.

I can't catch her. Dark Sister was easily the finest blade that Jon had ever held - an almost weirdly long and thin sword, as light and fluid in the hand as Arya's Needle, but somehow stronger than it had any right to be. A normal blade so thin and light should have shattered at the first impact of a badly angled block - but Jon doubted he could have broken Dark Sister even if he'd tried his best with a warhammer. But it's not helping me against this child of the forest.

Dark Sister, the greenseer had said the blade's name was. Jon knew the name. He remembered his histories. Dark Sister. 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. He had asked, once, but the greenseer had only chuckled softly, before returning to his dreaming.

The blade was all Valyrian steel, swirling grey and black metal, with fine red folds all through the 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, panting for breath as he slashed downwards in a long arc. Acorn might have 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 remotely able to catch her. It might have been less frustrating to duel with the wind.

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 defense.

They might be no bigger than children, but they're still predators, he thought, struggling for breath as he tried to keep up. He eyed Acorn's grip on her spear, and was suddenly reminded that the children of the forest had claws instead of proper fingers.

"Keep legs apart, shoulders down," said Acorn. "Focus on your roots. Your trunk still too weak. You topple too easily if you try stand up straight."

Jon grimaced, parsing her words. She wasn't as skilled in the Common as Leaf had been. Sweat was pouring down his brow. Keep your center low, he told himself, facing off against her. His left leg was better than it had been, but still sore and limp. He was going to have trouble riding a horse, let alone fighting. He still needed a walking stick even to move on his own, sometimes. And he could feel from the throbbing in his leg that he would need that stick again, soon.

Jon slashed down, but he overreached himself. She slid around his cut so easily she could have had her eyes closed. 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 quirked her head, as if examining him from a better angle - but she still lowered her spear, after a moment. "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 for 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 everything they did.

Whenever he tried talking to them, it was never long before the conversation turned to them talking everything they had lost - it was like their state of being was to live in sadness. Men wouldn't be sad, not like this, Jon thought to himself, men would be angry. Men would hate and take up arms, swear vengeance and someday rebuild, while the children only mourned. The children sang for their losses, while men would fight and kill for them.

Then again, Jon mused sadly, perhaps that's the reason the First Men won Westeros.

Jon took a deep breath, limping as he returned to the throne room. The greenseer was in one of his sleeps, as still as the dead.

Jon waited for a time by the roots, listening to the greenseer's quiet breathing, inspecting the ripples in Dark Sister's Valyrian steel - like tiny red waves of a black sea, frozen in motion - rather than something forged by a blacksmith's labours of folding steel. How could such a weapon have been created?

"You return," the greenseer muttered, his eye slowly opening fifteen or so minutes later. "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 asked again. "Where did you get this sword?"

"I had a life before I came here, once," the greenseer smiled softly, his voice a dry rasp. "Dark Sister was entrusted to me long ago."

Jon hesitated, recalling his history lessons, the lessons that lay behind them. "Dark Sister is an ancestral sword of House Targaryen. The same one that Queen Visenya wielded. One of the three great blades of Aegon's Conquest."

"Aye," The gaunt corpse of a man gave Jon slight a nod, and his voice was quiet. "Dark Sister has a long history, and her tale did not begin with the Conqueror or his wives. That blade was passed down in House Targaryen even before they left Valyria of old, and Visenya was just one of her many inheritors. She has long been a bloodthirsty blade, and truthfully, I have neglected her for far too long."

A blade that dated back to before 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 still walked among men, 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 swore my vows."

Vows. Jon had suspected from first glance that this greenseer might have once had ties to the Night's Watch, judging from his faded black clothing, the title by which the children referred to him, certain mannerisms in his speech. There were so many things that Jon wanted to ask, but he had to focus on the most important question of all. 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 Targaryen's Great Bastards. "…You're Bloodraven."

"Once," the greenseer's voice was soft.

Jon's head spun with the implications, staring at the greenseer grown into the roots of a weirwood tree. "Then you must be over a hundred years old. You were Lord Commander." The blood-red eye just looked at him impassively. 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 answer. "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 too little time for it."

"The ice dragon," Jon said.

"The Frostfangs are wracked by storms," the greenseer rasped, nodding faintly. 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 had never been comfortable with it. Because he couldn't understand it, certainly not at the time. He had known 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.

But now, the three-eyed crow could explain it to him. He called it skinchanging, the third eye - the power to wear the bodies of other creatures, to see through their eyes, to live their lives. It was a strange, almost forgotten power - a backcountry rumour in the north, an old legend, a power that maester Luwin hadn't even believed to exist anymore. Jon had... suspected, for a long time, that he might be one - but he had resisted it, hesitant to fully accept what it meant. For him. Jon was hesitant to accept this power, but he knew he had no choice.

Jon took a deep breath, but truly, there was no choice. Whatever methods the Valyrian Freehold had once used to bind dragons, those methods were long gone. The dragon had to be saved, and there was no one but Jon to do it.

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?" Jon asked, his voice low.

"Close your eyes," the greenseer said softly. "Breathe deep… take in the scent of the roots. Listen to the river… listen to the wind, 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. Find that connection, the one you know is there. The distance is meaningless, focus…"

Jon spent all day sitting cross-legged before the greenseer, trying to reach out, to stretch his consciousness beyond himself. The greenseer called it a form of meditation. Apparently the power of this heart of all the caves - so thick with the weirwood's roots - made skinchanging easier, but it still took hours of concentration for Jon to find…

Jon had to search within himself to connect with Ghost. He had to find the edge of all that he was, and reach beyond. It was like trying to grasp smoke. Skinchanging was the power to form connections to other bodies outside of your own, the greenseer had explained. He struggled to find the edge of his own awareness, that place where he could cross over, slip from his own body into another. Finally, after what felt like a lifetime of concentration, something shifted.

At first, Jon thought he was simply falling asleep. His mind felt heavy, drowsy, like he was drifting into darkness, feeling himself fall… and he felt himself step over a sort of invisible barrier, or threshold.

And then, suddenly, he was not Jon Snow at all. He was Ghost. He could feel the cold beneath his paws, the wind rustling through his fur. He could smell the fresh snow on the ground, the faint scent of prey lingering in the distance. Everything was sharper, clearer, more alive. The world pulsed with vivid sensations as Ghost sniffed through the cold. Elk. Close. Ghost started salivating.

The feeling was overwhelming - the sounds and smells of a direwolf's world were so much more vivid than his own, so much more potent. He felt it all overpowering his human mind. The wolf dreams had never been so vivid - it was like he was in control of Ghost'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. Ghost was aware of him, and welcomed his presence. The direwolf was happy, to be joined by his brother on the hunt—

If it hadn't been for the greenseer next to him, pulling Jon out and returning him to his body, then Jon might have lost himself to Ghost's hunting, forgotten himself in his second skin.

Jon gasped, falling back into his own skin with a sharp breath. The transition was jarring. And then he was back in the cave, the cavern's air somehow colder and more claustrophobic than it had been before.

A child of the forest brought him fresh goat's milk and pale fish and onions baked in butter - as if he'd known to be ready, here and now, to help Jon.

"Careful," the greenseer instructed, as Jon murmured his thanks to the child of the forest and began to eat. "It is a dangerous power, even when moving into a comfortable skin. Go too deep, too long, and you may never return."

Jon nodded, his mind still swirling with the strange, exhilarating sensation of being inside Ghost. "Then how can I use it?"

"With practice, and with time. Connections deepen over time, and are formed more easily as you hone your will. Rest and eat, Jon. Grow. Practice. You have much and more to learn, and far too little time."

There's nothing else for it, Jon thought later, as he tried to sleep. He's right. I have to learn how to be a skinchanger.

He had to use whatever time he had in this place to learn all he could. The three-eyed crow said that normally it would take years to learn the skills Jon needed. He had a week. Still…

To think I would ever learn magic, even a little of it.

After Jon woke, 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 Jon had to press on anyways. He had to learn how to abandon most sense of... himself, and then learn to reach out beyond.

"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, Jon awoke to the greenseer's new lesson. He was to warg into 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 three-eyed crow had even said. Still, it had been one of the hardest things that Jon ever had to do. After Jon failed once, then twice, the greenseer spoke, shifting on his throne of roots to look down at Jon.

"This is no wild bird," the greenseer said, "This raven has been ridden countless times - ones of my oldest and most reliable. The children oft use this one to communicate in the caverns."

Jon eyed the raven. It eyed him back with beady black eyes, head tilted.

"…But this will be harder," the greenseer warned. "Not every mind is as welcoming as your wolf's. Try again."

The bird's mind was totally different from a direwolf'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 entirely slip into its body. It was like trying to balance on a coin, or squeeze his entire body into a hand glove. He could only maintain the connection for seconds before being pushed out.

"I don't understand," Jon gasped, as he pulled himself out from the bird's skin. It quorked, tilting its head, eyeing Jon with its beady black eyes - and then it fluttered away into the higher dark, clearly losing patience with him. "Why is this so hard?"

"You lack the flexibility that comes with practice, perhaps," the greenseer murmured, sounding disappointed. "Your will remains mostly unformed. Even a warg child, as the free folk or the children reckon these things, could have easily shared in that bird's skin."

"Then why is it so much easier to warg with my wolf?"

"Resonance cuts both ways," the greenseer explained, his voice dry. "Your dreams have long shaped your direwolf's will, and so it goes in the other direction as well, from wolf to man. At this point, the two of you are almost opposite sides of the same coin; you have been linked for years, and direwolves possess a certain power of their own. A wisp of natural magic runs in their blood. It is a part of why they are such rare, such highly sought-after creatures." The greenseer took a breath, and sighed.

"The difficulties of training in the ways of skinchanging are… conceptual, as much as they are a thing of vigor and practise. Certain personalities are more capable than others of finding concordance with a type of animal, and the same can be said for individuals. It may well be that you will struggle with ravens and other prey animals; I have seen such difficulties before, but rarely so strongly. But as you train your will, this difficulty too shall pass." The root threading through the greenseer's dead eye snaked in and out a little. The greenseer looked down the direction of the tunnel where the bored bird had flown off to, and sighed softly. "Hm. Perhaps a different bird, then. Again."

Jon tried again, with a different bird the greenseer brought over from the higher caverns, but it was like trying to pick up a tiny stone when your hands were too large, your fingers too clumsy. This bird's mind too was jittery, small, foreign, nothing like Ghost's. The attempt left Jon disoriented and frustrated, and complaining.

"Your will is unformed," the greenseer insisted, watching him closely. "You lack flexibility. But this too will come with practice. Again."

Finally, after what felt like hours of struggle, Jon made something in the way of progress. But this was an uncomfortable shift, nothing like Ghost's skin. The raven's senses were - entirely different. Through the raven's eyes, the caverns looked strange, bathed in a glow of sharp edges and sharper colors, and a weird sensitivity to rapid movements. The bird's field of vision was far, far larger than a man's or a wolf's, and yet also capable of focusing to an immensely greater degree. As if he could count the individual roots on an expanse of wall hundreds of feet distant, the bird's eyes could focus on and notice the finest details of things his own eyes wouldn't have even noticed existed. But Jon felt whoozy, for lack of a better way to describe it; out of sync, struggling to process the countless impressions of his senses. He was dimly aware of how the bird was stumbling drunkenly, as if it had lost its own sense of balance on its feet.

"What you will eventually come to know is that sight is the weakest form of touch, and knowledge is the least kind of knowing," the greenseer said dryly, almost amusedly, watching his efforts. "To truly walk in another being's skin, you must acclimatize yourself to everything about the manner in which they walk through the world. It can be a… disorienting process."

Jon tried to fly, but only ended up flapping awkwardly, his first flight ending in a crash into the wall. The raven was unhurt, and flew back to his arm.

"I don't know how the children use these birds to relay messages," Jon muttered. "A raven makes for a strange skin."

The greenseer chuckled softly. "They have decades, centuries to practise, that is all. Their own senses are closest to a deer's, or perhaps a hare's, from what they tell me. It is not so bad for them."

"There are wargs among them?" Jon asked, startled.

"They're all natural wargs, Jon," the greenseer snorted softly. "How do you think they relay messages, write letters? Magic comes naturally to the children of the forest, and by their reckoning, skinchanging is a petty magic indeed."

"But... I've seen so few animals." Sure, the caves had goats, ravens, chickens and so on - but those were clearly chattel, portage, food. Not bonded partners.

The greenseer sighed, a dry, wheezy rasp. "Unfortunately, the children have largely abandoned skinchanging, except for the briefest, most fleeting of times."

Using ravens to communicate, Jon supposed. "Why?

Bloodraven's pale red eye fixed on him. "By and large, the singers tend to far outlive their second skins, so they choose not to take partners at all, to spare themselves of grief," the greenseer said sadly. "They live for centuries, Jon. Think of what that means, how a life such as that would be led. Any animal companion they might take can live but a fraction of that time. It is no easy thing to outlive a bonded creature by generations. They choose not to take partners to spare themselves the grief of loss."

Jon considered that. "I see."

"Or, looking at it another way," the greenseer mused, "perhaps you might say that few beasts remain in the modern who are worthy of being taken by the children - beasts that can also live for centuries."

Jon's curiosity must have been evident, because the greenseer smiled softly, and continued. "The preferred companions of the children of the forest are gone from these lands, largely hunted to the last by men. The glacier lions of the Frostfangs are slain. What few griffins remain have fled to cold lands far beyond the reach of man, and the mammoths have been reduced to only a few thousands, carefully tended to by the remaining giant clans - who are themselves reduced to only a shadow of what they were. Only a few of the unicorns remain, and none on these shores. As for direwolves, their numbers are also faded, and in any case, they've never cared much for the children of the forest."

Jon sighed, for the first time considering it from the children's perspective. First, they had lost Westeros to the First Men. And then the wilderness of Westeros - even in the lands Beyond the Wall - had slowly faded, lost to the march of time and men. Their entire way of life is being crushed by men, millennia by millennia, and the men don't even realise it. "A sad tale."

The greenseer nodded gravely. "The old world is dying, Jon Snow. But some of it still lingers, in the lesser creatures that remain, in the memories of the land, and in you. You must learn what you can, with the time you have left to you."

Later in the day, after Jon had enough of meditating and warging into birds - he eventually got the hang of it, even a little of how to speak through them, but it was never a comfortable experience - Acorn returned and beat him soundly, beat him embarrassingly and thoroughly for several hours until Jon collapsed into sleep, exhausted and aching, and above all, frustrated.

---

On the third day, the greenseer tried to teach him to warg into the weirwoods. For this, Jon had to focus harder than ever before - the greenseer hadn't been certain if it was even a risk worth taking, until Jon insisted. Bloodraven's own tree was unsuitable for this, the greenseer had claimed, so instead Jon found soon himself in a lower cavern, contemplating the tangled roots of one tree in particular.

The tree might have once held another child of the forest, enthroned like Bloodraven in a nest of weirwood roots. But if so, this one was unreckonably further into the process than the living greenseer - the weirwood had not only devoured this singer in particular, but most of his weirwood throne, to the point that little remained but a carved face in the bark, a remnant of the greenseer that had once been.

The three-eyed crow, through one of his ravens, lectured as Jon considered the weirwood, in his calm, dispassionate voice. Almost a background chant, murmured words that helped Jon concentrate in the cavern's echoing silence, as droplets of water fell softly, from many teeth of stone.

"It is the way of greenseers to eventually become one with the weirwoods, and in so doing, become an undying warden of the earth. Flesh turns to weirwood, and weirwood turns to man," the greenseer's voice was soft. "Blood turns to sap, and sap turns to blood. Bone to wood, mind and soul to land spirit, or Old God, perhaps. And when that process is completed after centuries, all that remains to an untrained eye is something of the face of the greenseer that once was. That is why men began carving faces into their heart trees - in veneration of those few trees whose faces were never carved at all. Those are the only true heart trees - the trees in whom a living heart still beats, as one with the earth."

Jon sat cross-legged at the base the weirwood's roots - and as the greenseer had said, there was something different about this tree in particular, beyond just the appearance. Even with the most casual of touches, he could feel it.

Even though so many millennia had passed that little remained of the greenseer in question, just a lingering will that endured in the roots, Jon could feel something. The three-eyed crow had explained it as best he could, though much of the nuance was lost on Jon. A lingering will of gentleness, kindness. "...and for those reasons, I believe this is the best tree you can use to commune with what remains of our legacy - roots spread across the earth, filled with the will of countless greenseers of old. Focus, commune with the tree's lingering heart. His name was Braided Stream, once, at least in our tongue. When you make progress, if you do, tell me through a bird. I have other matters to attend to."

The greenseer ordered him away then, guiding him down to this place with a few ravens that lingered nearby.

And now, Jon was left alone, to consider the weirwood, the ancient face turned to bark and wood. He could feel... something beneath these roots. A slow pulse of life, somewhere beneath and behind the surface of weirwood. The tree had a face - not a man's. A child of the forest's, but old, old, with a skeletal face that reminded him of a raisin, too-large eyes, prominent ears like a bat's, and a kind smile. The greenseer's words echoed softly in his mind. A lingering will of gentleness. Braided Stream. He can protect you, if you can take the first of your own steps into the roots.

Hours passed, and Jon tried to commune with whatever presence remained within the weirwood. He sat before the ancient, gnarled roots with legs crossed, his breath steady as the world around him seemed to slow. The face carved into the ancient bark watched him, though its eyes were vacant, hollowed, and weathered by the endless march of time, even in the depths of this protected place.

The whispers of the cavern's wind were faint now, just a soft echo in the far distance, as droplets of water quietly fell around him from the higher, stony ceiling. All that was left in the stillness was the tree, its ancient face, and the distant sense of an ancient greenseer's presence, a greenseer who had been one of the children of the forest.

Jon closed his eyes, trying to focus, to reach out and connect with the will that lingered in the roots, as the three-eyed crow had instructed. But it felt distant, like trying to grasp smoke. Every time he thought he was getting closer, the sensation slipped away, leaving him with nothing but frustration and the ache of failure. His breathing grew heavier as the hours dragged on, the weirwood's silent, skeletal face watching him patiently.

At this point, warging into Ghost came as naturally as breathing, like holding a sword that had been made specifically for his hand. The ravens had been harder, small, fluttery, too-small existences that misliked carrying Jon's will, if he could even fit it into them - prey animals whose small minds would only reluctantly carry his own.

But this… this was different. The tree's presence was elusive, like the last whisper of a person who had long since passed. Jon could feel it, just beneath the surface—an ancient will, gentle and protective, but so old it barely clung to existence.

"Braided Stream," Jon whispered, trying to center himself. "Show me. Please."

That provoked… something. A few of the roots twisting around Jon shifted slightly, like the coils of some ancient serpent writhing slightly in its sleep, almost disturbing Jon from his meditations as he continued to sit cross-legged with his palms pressed against the rough, white bark.

But nothing more.

Then one of the greenseer's ravens perched nearby tilted its head.

"How goes it?" the raven quorked. Even using a borrowed tongue, the greenseer's voice sounded disappointed. "Your progress is… slow."

Jon opened his eyes, shifting his head slightly. "You said this used to be another greenseer?"

"Yes," the raven said, in a higher, harsher voice than the greenseer's own, almost a caw. "His name has been lost over time, even to himself. I had to find it by other means. But as you can surely feel, something of Braided Stream's will remains."

"Aye," Jon murmured. "I can feel him."

Bloodraven's raven quorked softly. "You can't approach this like you did the ravens, where you sought to control, overpower. You need to ask, give greeting, and even then, there are many dangers in walking the weirwood's roots, particularly for the unpractised, and especially for those who lack a true greenseer's power. For one such as you, this is the gentlest cradle I can give."

Jon had to parse the words carefully. The raven's voice was harsher than a man's - coherent, yes, but, far more terrible, but giving an impression of ire and umbrage that Jon didn't believe the greenseer truly felt.

"...Are you sure this is worth the risk?"

The greenseer's raven cawed. "You were the one who insisted that you have a chance to try. I have reservations - this is an old art, practised by almost none who live today. There are reasons for that. " The raven cawed again, but more gently. "That said, it is true that walking through the trees will be a better tutor than anything my words can provide, and there is no safer environment to try. There is no better, faster way to shape your will, and grow as a warg than by walking through the trees."

"What use is it to warg into the weirwoods, if I'm not a greenseer?" Jon had to ask, curious if this might ever actually be useful outside of training. "They can't move, they can't fight. They're... trees."

The raven clicked its tongue, in something almost akin to a tut. Was the greenseer amused? "True, you are no greenseer - if you had such potential in the third eye, the signs would be unmistakable. But there are many uses for this skill besides. In ancient days, when the sight was more common, not only greenseers, but even even stronger wargs - chieftains and the like - could see, even speak across vast distances, across the lands, to friend and foe alike through the weirwoods - wherever the roots lay buried, men could reach beyond themselves. That is why the First Men were so thorough about burning the south's weirwood groves when they first came to these lands."

Jon's mind caught up with the implications. A way for me to still reach out to the greenseer, even after leaving this place. Those words could mean nothing else. A way to see across the land. Real sorcery.

"That sounds… amazingly useful," Jon admitted. Then he paused, hesitating, before voicing a question that had been on his mind. "But if such a great power is within the reach of even wargs, then what can greenseers do with the trees?"

"…Everything else." The raven tilted its head and quorked. Multiple times, in a sort of harsh staccato. Is he… laughing? "If wargs can touch the land, then greenseers can become the land itself. We can see. Past and present, present and future, and all that lies in between with the eyes of gods. " The raven cawed harshly. "...Though even gods are not infallible. Now, it is time."

Jon sighed. "…I'm ready."

"Now, you must let go of your sight," the greenseer instructed through his raven - harshly, the bird couldn't carry his voice so well. "You must let go of hearing, taste, touch, all your senses. Keep only your mind, and the awareness of how to return."

Jon closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, trying to focus. As he had come to learn across the hours, if warging into Ghost was familiar, instinctive, if warging into ravens was uncomfortable and awkward, then this... this was different. Limitless. Ungraspable. As if the weirwood's very being stretched beyond anything he could grasp. Roots running deep under the earth, across the land.

"You cannot, you must not try to establish control. You must feel that hidden stream, the tides of memory. Swim with the currents, but with intention. Control your path. Release your mind, your body, but not utterly. The weirwoods hold an old power, the memories of countless living creatures. You can compare it to a sea of memory, perhaps, but if greenseers are the whales who can plumb that sea's depths, then you are only a man, paddling at the shallows where you must remain - and even then, you must swim with all the power and will you have in you. You must not lose yourself to the tides. Fortunately, you will have help. This tree in particular will guide you, if you trust in it."

Jon placed both of his palms against the weirwood, and centered himself as best he could. It was almost the opposite of trying to warg with the ravens - rather than entering something too small, now he was entering something vastly larger - rather than controlling his will, cradling it around something tiny, he had to bring all of it to bear just to hold on. It was exhausting. It was terrifying.

"If you fly too high without an anchor to bind you, you will burn," the raven warned harshly. "If you fall too low, you will be crushed. You paddle at the surface an ocean that only greenseers can delve into the depths of, and you lack the wings to truly fly. No matter where you go or what you see, always be aware of your body. You must lose much of your sense of self to warg at all, but you must not lose all of it. Remain aware of the contradiction, walk the narrow thread of balance, and never stray from the light."

Jon finally began to feel… something beneath the weirwood - a long, slow, deep pulse, almost like a heartbeat. A flowing sensation, like water, like air, running down into the earth's depths. He concentrated on that steady rhythm, and as the world faded around him, he let himself sink into it.

For a moment, there was peace. The world around him faded to almost nothing, and he felt as though he were floating in the void, timeless, weightless. For a moment, he sensed the remnant will of the ancient greenseer bound within this tree in particular. Smiling softly. Guiding him, protecting him.

Then, the visions came.

At first, they were fleeting, fragmented. Shadows of things he couldn't understand - flashes of faces, ancient battles, and places he didn't recognize. But slowly, the images sharpened, became more focused. Jon felt himself being pulled through the weirwood's vast network of roots, its tendrils spreading out across the lands beyond the Wall, connecting to places far and wide.

First, he saw the weirwoods directly above this cavern - a thick, ancient grove of hundreds, cradled in a deep vale of the hills of the haunted forest. Jon noted the look of it, for memory.

Then the vision… shifted eastwards, if he understood the direction right. He saw flashes of faces - long dead, twisted in agony or ecstasy, in death and glory. Battles fought centuries ago, swords clashing, bodies falling, blood splattering the snow. A wandering wood's witch trekking along a frozen shore, as she made her way to a port of bone, built by hairy men, whale hunters from across the sea. A pair of giants, straining as they carried a sleigh through the snows, a sleigh bearing an immense, runed horn, being led by a man in black. A people with green eyes, led by a king wearing a lion's pelt and a crown of fangs, leaving the mountains as the last of the lions they'd held precious died.

'You're too deep, Jon,' the greenseer's voice warned.

The visions pained him. It was like he was suffocating beneath the pressure. They were - too much - too thick, too darkened with the memory of countless lives and deaths, like a deep tide of souls. I shouldn't be here. Jon tried to flee to the shallows of memory, and struggled for a time before he became aware of a gentle force cradling him, guiding him to safety, to where the roots were gentlest and the flowing storm reduced to something calmer, something he could wade in. Wade in, and see.

Then the flashes of memory stopped, and the darkness and the pressure abated. Jon saw the world in something closer to the present.

He saw a strange stronghold of men, a landscape of barrow-dens buried beneath the hills by the banks of a wide, muddy river, their earthen mounds dotted with dozens of weirwoods. Part of the network of the children's tunnels, perhaps, but commandeered by men and turned into a settlement both below and aboveground. The land here felt thick with memories, and Jon could almost feel the bones of the free folk who had been buried beneath this land, for millennia beyond time. What was this place?

I'm in the weirwood, Jon realised, as a spearwife, fairer than most he'd seen, with long braided black hair, two spears and tightly-knit brown furs knelt in the snows before him, beneath his outstretched limbs of pale bark and red leaves.

She was kneeling before one of the heart trees, praying to the Old Gods. A common sight in the far north.

"…Can you hear me?" Jon asked, experimentally, though he had no mouth with which to speak.

The spearwife's eyes opened, and they were a vivid green. She stood with one of her spears resting casually in her hand, her eyes looking around the area. "Huh," she muttered. "What was… must be hearing things."

Before Jon could try again, the vision shifted, pulling him elsewhere. The pressure returned, deeper and darker.

The flashes of vision were stronger this time - he saw what could have only been a dragon, massive and red and terrible, roaring smoke and cinders, its red-blackened form smoking as it preyed on walrus and seal beyond count, and preyed just as ravenously on the men who cared followed their migrations across the northern sea. It fed until it vomited, but it never stopped eating, never stopped raging. He saw a wildling king, leading an army, with a crown of gold and a steel sword descend into the tunnels, and never return—

The vision grew darker, more violent, more suffocating. Jon groaned, aware of the distant racing of his heart as he struggled to hold on.

'Careful...' the greenseer warned.

…He saw no less than fifty children of the forest…? No, he was a child of the forest, one out of three score or more, riding a fox beside the other foxes and giant hares of this… warband? Jon - NO, Lahaiwima'kianor'ehlunanari'fenaha rode at the head of her vengeance singer's warband as she and the rest of her hunters of the kinbound oath hunted a murderer, a giant, a single giant that fled across the hills of a sandy red desert as she and her vengeance singers threw one obsidian-tipped spear after another. Lahaiwima'kianor'ehlunanari'fenaha felt her lips split apart into a savage grin as the roots of a weirwood rose to entrap the harried beast, the quarry of not her kinbound vengeance singers, but the greenseer whose daughter this giant had eaten. Her hot anger and hate for this giant rose up in her gut, her desire of blood taken for blood shed, a determination to slay this giant and water the weirwood with its heart's blood, and then—

"Kelah'shuran'taa," she screamed, knowing that soon, the song of vengeance would end. "Thrah'gunar ka'hira'ik nohr'vahl Sih'kael'shari! Kelah'te thrah'gunar, Kelah, KELAH—!"

In a way that didn't feel far off from swimming sideways against a current, Jon jerked himself from the tide of memories - he tore himself away from her perspective, and then he was only the weirwood again. He could feel his body, somewhere far away, desperately panting for breath.

What was that? That… was that their True Tongue? Is that why they call themselves singers?

It was all coming too fast - images, voices, lives that were not his. Jon tried to focus, to slow the rush, but the memories overwhelmed him. They weren't just visions - that child of the forest - she was real, they were real, a river of raw emotions that threatened to swallow him whole. This was the power of the weirwoods?

'Good...' the greenseer approved, but warningly. 'Don't lose yourself.'

Jon found himself pulled beneath the land again, but this path felt old, well-trod, safe. And then he found himself at - no, in - the weirwood tree near the Wall, the same tree where he had knelt and sworn his vows to the Night's Watch. Jon could sense now that this was no true heart tree - it lacked that warm presence, that slow internal pulse that came from a weirwood that had grown together with a greenseer of old. But still, Jon could sense through the weirwood. The wind howled through his many limbs, and despite himself, he felt the memory of his past decisions pressing down on him. Why had the trees brought him to this place, where he had first sworn his oaths?

Nothing happened. The vision moved on, as Jon felt himself gently pulled back into the roots. Going north and east, into the forest's hills.

He saw a circle of wildlings he recognised, meeting beneath a heart tree. He even recognised a few of them. Harma Dogshead, Val, her sister Dalla, Sigorn, son of Styr, and half a dozen other lesser chieftains, as hundreds of free folk milled about in the distance. What was this? Somewhere in the forest? Survivor's from Mance's host? What were they talking about? Jon tried to listen, but before he could focus, he lost his grip on control and was pulled back into the roots.

Damnit. Jon cursed and felt himself be pulled eastwards, on this tide of memory. Visions came hard and fast - it was like he had only moments of stability in the trees, moments to experience a muted version of the world, without touch or smell or feel. Only sight and hearing, and even then those senses were strange, distant.

Everything in Jon's vision spiraled. A kaleidoscope of images, locations and people flew past him - all too quickly to find any sort of comprehension, sickeningly fast. How can greenseers control this power? Jon felt like he was riding some wild, unbroken stallion, hanging on for dear life.

The swirling colors and cloudy phantoms started to focus in front of his eyes.

Now Jon found himself at the center of clan of giants, their towering forms huddled in a valley surrounded by snow-covered hills. A single particularly gnarled weirwood - Jon's perspective - stood at the heart of their camp, growing from atop an ancient, massive barrow, almost a small hill, its red leaves stark against the white landscape. He saw cave giants, hill giants, plains giants. Even mountain giants, and more. The giants were refugees, the survivors of many clans, who had all moved here with purpose. Why?

"Can you hear me?" Jon asked again, trying harder, more loudly.

One of the giants jerked. This one was blonder than the others, taller, sitting closer to the tree than the rest - but just as thick and shaggy as all the others, like a winter yak roughly carved in shape of a man. It stood, glancing around the clearing, before setting on the heart tree. His voice, low and guttural, rumbled through the air. "Go'rak tuh nok?" the giant muttered, beady eyes narrowing, his thick brow and bearded, inhumanly craggy features furrowed in confusion.

That's the Old Tongue, Jon realised. The giant's hand reached out, brushing the thick roots of the weirwood atop a barrow, as if searching for an answer from the earth itself. "Har'ron yul takk?" the giant murmured, his gaze shifting between the trees and the ancient face in the bark from which Jon stared. The giant's voice dropped to a wary whisper, "Druun har… ?" His fingers dug into the dirt, gripping the roots firmly. His expression grew darker, more ferocious as he the other giants drew away. "Noh, mak'loh malvern sygerrik… ?"

"Can you really can hear me?" Jon asked, saying it as loud as he could - though he had no understanding of how he could speak at all. "Can you hear me?"

The giant paused, its eyes widening. Then it shouted, and other giants nearby roused and started gibbering. The giant's grip tightened on the weirwood, his broad toes pressing deep into the earth, gripping the bark and roots all at once as he strained to understand. "Dre'mar noh gar'ak drev norak," he whispered hoarsely, brow creasing further, "Dre'mar?" His voice seemed to waver between awe and doubt, his eyes fixed on the Jon - no, he realised, at the face carved in the weirwood, as though it might come to life and answer him.

"Mak'loh draak dre'mar!" he growled, frustrated, his voice echoing low through the clearing. The giant's voice rose, filling the silence around him, but only the leaves shifted in the soft breeze, giving no answer.

Finally, he leaned close to the weirwood, pressing his forehead against the rough bark, and whispered, "Har'gon dre'marak… ? Brokar nag dor gronnach rok? Dre'mar? Dre'mar?"

The giants waited, as their leader's question hung heavy in the air, waiting for a response only a man who knew their tongue might give.

"I…" Jon didn't know what to say. He was completely, absolutely lost. The Old Tongue was completely beyond him.

"Dre'mar!" The greenseer's voice thundered through the weirwood. The giants all jerked back as if they had been all struck an actual thunderclap, reeling in their hundreds. "Dre'mar og daracar. Daracar!"

The giants started shouting, falling to their knees, weeping. Why? What did the greenseer just…

Bloodraven's voice cut through the Jon's confusion sharply, commanding. 'Withdraw, Jon. This is enough.'

Jon felt the current pulling him beneath the roots again. He had to leave. He already felt sickened by this experience. He resisted only for long enough to mark this place into his memory. Was this a giant's barrow shrine, like the wildling's stories?

The barrow shrine disappeared.

'What did you tell them?' Jon asked.

'Later. Come back, Jon. Now.'

The visions were coming now, faster, darker, more chaotic than ever. Jon tried to swim against the current again, and return to his body—

He felt cold creeping in, no, not cold, the cold. Ice crawling up his spine. He felt himself begin to lose control. The currents were too strong—

He saw himself standing before the Wall, but it was not the Wall he knew. It was shattered, broken, breached. A graveyard of bones and black banners, great rents torn into the earth. An uncountable sea of wights poured through, wights beyond counting.

What is this? This can't—this hasn't ever happened.

'Jon. Return to your body.'

Jon tried to return. He reached for his senses, for the connection, for the anchor that was his body…

Something is wrong.

He couldn't return. The visions were coming too fast now, pulling him deeper. He felt himself be pulled across the land, pulled unwillingly, pulled far across the land, and then he was standing in a vast expanse of ice, alone, lost, and the cold was killing him. The wind screamed, the ice cracked, and the darkness closed in, the sensation of his mind flowing ever outwards, like roots stretching through the ground forever…

This time, however, this weirwood was…

Something was different. This was only the briefest of stopping points. A single, wind-bitten, scraggly weirwood high in the mountains, so high that this tree knew only goats and shadowcats for company. Jon lost his grip, before he could even find it.

The tides swallowed him.

He was pulled farther north, screaming, into lands even the free folk feared to tread. Over the Frostfangs, past the frozen wastes and into the Lands of Always Winter. And then… he kept getting pulled. Further than he would have ever imagined. So far north a new mountain range appeared and as it came into view, Jon saw it was vastly greater than the Frostfangs, and strange winged shapes, like flying lions with a hawk's wings flew among the peaks… until that too disappeared behind.

And then he was pulled higher, higher, over moonlit glaciers beyond counting, the ice rivers of the earth lit by the heaven's auroral rivers pouring over the night sky…

Into the heart of winter at what must have been the roof of the world.

'JON—!'

The cold deepened to something inhuman. This vision came to him with an eerie clarity, unlike anything he'd seen before.

Before him lay a vast, impossible expanse, stretching out in every direction, glowing under the light of a pale, eternal moon. It was a paradisical forest - if it could even be called that - but one wrought not of bark and leaf, not of wood or sap, but of living, enchanted ice. Here, glaciers had been somehow shaped into facsimiles of towering trunks, each standing crystalline and luminous, each a bastion of petrified frost stretching to distant, impossible heights of ice. A forest. A forest of living ice.

Is this real? The strange branches of a even stranger forest swayed gently, rustling in a breeze Jon couldn't feel. They shimmered in the moonlight, their branches made of crystalline frost, the leaves themselves delicate shards of frozen water. But it wasn't just the trees. The ground beneath was covered in strange flowers, flowers of ice, their translucent petals glittering like captured starlight, seemed to open and close in response to the moon's light.

And then he saw them - the creatures of ice. Animals Jon had never imagined, all made entirely of living ice. Great stags with antlers like shimmering glass, prowling wolves whose fur crackled and hissed as it brushed against the icy air, and birds with wings that glittered like shards of broken ice. They moved through the frozen forest like ghosts, their forms translucent and ethereal, leaving no footprints behind them.

Jon's eyes widened as he took it all in. It was a place so profoundly fantastical, a land wrought of such cold beauty, that it took his breath away. The forest stretched out across the land, he could sense something of the enormity of it - it was like a great domain, a kingdom unto its own. A vast, moonlit nation of ice, not just untouched but untouchable by the warmth of the sun. The trees stretched so high they pierced the sky, their tops lost in the swirling mists of frost. Mountains of frozen glass loomed in the distance, their jagged peaks sparkling like diamonds.

The animals of ice grabbed his attention above all else. He watched as a serpent made of ice slithered through the snow, its body shimmering as it wove between ferns like crystal. A brood of ice spiders moved in and out of a cavern, scuttling limbs moving easily through grass that flowed in the wind like crystalline water. Above him, enormous bats with wings like sheets of the thinnest ice, like a pond's surface on a cold spring morning soared through the sky, their translucent bodies catching the light of the moon.

Wherever this place was, it was beyond the farthest edges of any map Jon had ever seen of the Lands of Always Winter. Far beyond any map ever made of those lands, Jon suspected.

What is this place? How could such a place exist?

This - this was magic, all of it. Real magic, right out of the oldest stories. A place where magic flowed as freely as water in a river. A place where every leaf, every creature, every inch of the ground moved in sync with the power of the cold. What was this place? Was this the home of the white walkers? And was that a city, beyond the trees? He could see the spires of ice, towering towards the sky.

He knew, instantly, deep down, down to the pit of his soul that this place was not meant for him, not meant for any living man. And yet, he couldn't help but find it fascinating. This eerie beauty, the strange peace that seemed to pervade everything. What did it all mean? And how is a weirwood here, beyond even the Lands of Always Winter? Who planted it? When?

But there was something more beneath it all. Something darker. The cold grew sharper, biting at his skin even in the vision.

He could feel it.

Something was watching him.

'Jon. I'm sending help. Find your body. Retreat now.'

He could feel the cold seeping in, and then he saw something moving in the distance, almost blending against the snow, white on white. Something gliding over the snow, pale and beautiful. He saw a - a figure, graceful, shimmering and luminous, gliding through the forest. A woman, or something that wore the shape of one.

It was a woman. A woman, pale and cold, wearing robes of… Jon couldn't imagine it as anything but white liquid gemstone, diamond spun into fibers that flowed like silk. Her long white hair flowed behind her like a long banner of white, like liquid snow—

—until she stopped, and despite the distance of hundreds, thousands of feet—

The woman turned, her gaze locking onto his.

She was watching him. Watching him with glowing blue eyes. Eyes so like those that he remembered.

…She's a white walker, Jon realised, from somewhere beneath the sudden flood of horror.

Panic surged in his chest. A white walker, different from any he had ever seen or heard of; a white walker that was - terribly, frighteningly beautiful - somehow able to see him, was somehow prepared for him.

She was wrought into the same living ice as all else in this place, Jon slowly realised. Like art or imagination rather than something real. She wore a… not a crown. A circlet of ice. And finally, he noticed she was holding a… a candle? A candle of the palest blue ice, like the white walker's swords, but this one burned, burned with a cold fire.

The cold deepened with every step she took, and he could feel her focus entirely on him.

His vision cracked. The visions began to spiral out of control. The quiet whispers he had always heard through the weirwood began to twist, their whispers becoming screams. The serene garden of ice became a nightmare. And the white walker reached out her hand, beckoning.

The greenseer's voice boomed in his mind like thunder. 'Pull back, Jon! Now!'

Jon desperately fought to pull himself back, but the cold was everywhere, seeping into his bones, his mind unraveling under the weight of the visions. Despite the distance, the white walker's icy breath seemed to press against his neck, her pale face inches from his own, the sharp cold of her presence suffocating him. He had never felt more afraid. His heartbeat was roaring in his ears.

The greenseer's voice kept urging him to withdraw, but the whispers became screams, it was as if the vision filled first with faces, then the faces twisted into grotesque masks of skin and bone, and Jon felt himself being swallowed by the dark and the cold. He fought to pull back, his breath ragged, until—

Suddenly, a sharp pain jolted through his body. He gasped, eyes snapping open, and found himself back in the cave, the heart tree looming above him. It was twisting as if in pain, roots writhing like white snakes, its carved face open in a silent scream.

The world snapped back into focus around him. His breath was ragged. He was back in the caverns, his heart racing, his clothes drenched in sweat, his body shivering violently despite the cavern's warmth. The cold lingered, a deep, bone-chilling cold that left him trembling.

Then he noticed the child of the forest standing by him, looking at him concernedly. The child had pulled his hand from the weirwood's bark.

"…Thank you," Jon gasped. Then he groaned, collapsing over himself, his meditation stance forgotten. "What was that? Who - was that?"

This child of the forest - who looked so like a dark-skinned boy, with a mole's snout - couldn't speak the common. He shrugged and walked off.

Jon sat slumped against the roots, his hands trembling. Jon's heart was still racing. Despite the warmth of the caverns, something of the cold of the vision clung to him, his breath uneven in the stillness of the weirwood grove and his body shivering.

The figure of that white walker woman was practically branded into his mind. He was certain, absolutely certain that she had truly seen him. But how is that possible?

"Too far," one of the greenseer's crows cawed, as it fluttered down by him. "You caught a glimpse of something far, Jon. Too far, by far."

"What does that even mean?" Jon demanded, groaning as he sat back up.

That raven didn't answer. It only fluttered off, shakily, wobbling like it couldn't fly properly. Jon shouted off after it, but there was no response. Only silence and echoes answered him.

Another raven fluttered down by him. It screamed like any other crow, then, after… clearing its throat? spoke almost normally.

"That bird was at its limits. What you saw was one of the true white walkers, rather than the outriders who harry these forests. Return to my tree. You are done with skinchanging for today."

A few minutes later, Jon collapsed by the three-eyed crow's weirwood throne. When he finally found his voice, Jon was quiet, almost afraid to break the stillness. "Who... who was she?"

The greenseer opened his pale red eye. His expression was unreadable, and for a long moment, he didn't answer. A heavy silence lingered in the cavern. And just when Jon feared that perhaps the greenseer didn't intend to answer at all, the greenseer's voice came, soft, but grave, tired - as if the ancient lord in black was recalling a distant, bitter memory.

"What you saw, Jon Snow, was no ordinary white walker. She is far above the wights and the white walkers you've seen in the forest, faced on the mountains. She is… royalty, of a sort."

Jon blinked, his mind trying to make sense of the greenseer's words. "Royalty?"

"Yes," the greenseer murmured. "In the realm of the Others, there is a hierarchy, just as there is in the world of men. The ones you have fought before, the creatures of ice and death that hound the mountains and the forests, they are but foot soldiers. The equivalent of a lowborn vanguard, insignificant in whatever they have that passes for a society. Wraiths of the frost, immaterial creatures of the Great Dark, elementals incarnated in mortal flesh and bound to serve. But what you saw, Jon… she is something far older, far more powerful. A white walker born - a thing of cold like the other white walkers, yes, but cold unalloyed. A being that has never known mortality. You saw a princess of ice."

The words sent a shiver through Jon, despite the cave's warmth. "A princess?"

The greenseer nodded slowly, his gaze distant. "Perhaps there are better words, but not in the Common. The children's tongue is more suited for such things - it has a higher focus on the fundamental forces, and the ties that bind them." The greenseer sighed, shaking his head slightly.

Jon could only stare.

"Unfortunately, we lack the years necessary to teach you of the True Tongue," the greenseer murmured, nodding his head faintly. "What I can tell you, for a certainty, is that they have a king, and their king learned from men. They are… the legacy of a great mistake made in the Era of the Cold Spring, that came after the Long Night. Creatures forged by the intersection of a truly, truly foolish man, and the greater will that guides the forces of cold. She is a descendant of a betrayer of humanity. You could call her one of the Great Other's handmaidens, perhaps."

"Royal white walkers?" Jon muttered, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. The creatures he had fought were foot soldiers? "What does that—?"

"I do not know," What I can tell you is that she is kin to their king, as close to him as blood can be in their kind. As far above the white walkers you've fought as the highest of lords is above a peasant. The cold that animates them… it belongs to the royal white walkers by birthright."

The Great Other? What? Jon swallowed hard, the chill of the grove settling deeper into his bones. "She… she looked at me. She saw me. She knew I was coming."

The greenseer's eyes flickered, a shadow of concern passing through his pale gaze. "Yes. Their kind has a magic of their own, one not entirely dissimilar from that of the weirwoods - though they twist it for their own purposes. Death, rather than life. She would have sensed your presence the moment you entered the weirwood's sight, perhaps even predicted and manipulated your egress. But to what purpose, I do not know."

Jon's mind raced, replaying the moment that white walker had locked eyes with him. There had been nothing human in that gaze - only a distant curiosity, a cold will, power beyond anything he could understand.

"Can they find me through the weirwoods?" Jon asked, his voice low.

The greenseer shook his head. "Not through the weirwoods themselves. But their kind is powerful - they can naturally sense when all but the most discreet of eyes are upon them. Scrying is a potent tool, but it has many weaknesses. If sorcery is a sword without a hilt, then scrying is one of the most double-edged sorceries of all. Remember that."

Jon slowly nodded, though in truth, he had rarely felt more lost at sea.

In any case," the ancient lord sighed. "The nature of your enemy should be made apparent now, Jon. You must tread carefully. Never look so far again. Not until you have grown into your powers in full…" he breathed a soft sigh. "And if you ever do, even then, it would be a risk beyond all others. A royal white walker is a foe for gods and greenseers, not for men."

Jon's stomach twisted. The idea that such a creature - something far more dangerous than the white walkers he'd fought - was now aware of him, filled him with dread. A princess of ice. A creature high in an order, a hierarchy that he barely understood, where even the lowest soldiers were worth ten thousand mortal men.

And at the peak of that hierarchy was a king.

How did the last hero defeat these creatures?

When Jon staggered back to his sleeping mat, he felt brittle, weak, as he might have been if he had been forced to do battle for an entire day. The experience with the trees had exhausted him, well and true and utterly. He slept the entire night and well into the day after, and when he slept, he dreamt of dragons.

---

The next day, the greenseer refused to let Jon try again with the weirwoods.

"Do not," the greenseer warned, after Jon asked. "An uncommonly gifted warg you might be, Jon, but you lack the quality of power needed to truly walk through the trees. Just as blades can scar flesh, so too can magic scar the spirit. The weirwoods alone were trial enough, and would have exhausted any warg. A royal white walker?" The greenseer's lips thinned. "Not even I know how she drew you to that place. To their city." He grimaced, sighing quietly. "This place, and that tree in particular protected you from the worst that might have happened - and even then, it brought you to the brink."

It was true that the experience had changed him, Jon later reflected. But it didn't feel… harmful, not exactly. It felt like the exhaustion that came after a long day of sparring. Exhaustion, and then strength.

As Jon broke his fast, he tested himself on the cavern's ravens. He found it a little easier to fully grasp them, a bit faster to fully acclimatize to their strange, flittery senses. But, try as he might, he still couldn't speak through their tongue as the greenseer could.

Jon let the bird go. He exhaled, steadying his breath. He could feel the three-eyed crow's disappointment, but the lessons continued nevertheless. Jon's progress was slow, mainly in learning from the ravens, and how to not lose himself, rather than improving in his ability to see through the weirwoods.

"As a warg, you are fairly powerful by this era's standards," the crow murmured later in the day, as Jon gasped with the end of another warg dream. "But you are no greenseer. You will never feel the greensight, or embrace the depths of what the trees might offer. You will never see. I had hoped to introduce you to the weirwood's paste, but I fear that power would consume you as you are."

Somehow, the lessons of meditating with the greenseer were more exhausting than any spar. Still, the glimpses of the greenseer's power he had seen... if he could take even a fraction of that power for his own, perhaps taming a dragon wouldn't be an entirely hopeless impossibility.

"Is it possible to get stronger?"

"For most, no. The foundation of one's powers is set from birth, but…" the greenseer hesitated. "For you alone, perhaps there is a path," he murmured quietly. "The Dragonlords of old were said to be able to control great magics - and the greater their bonded dragon, the deeper their connection, the greater that ability became. But for you, as you are now, this is as far as you can go."

"Then what can I do now?"

"Keep practicing. Learn. Learn how to use your gifts."

Two more days passed, much spent just sleeping, recovering from his wounds, from the exhaustion of the weirwood's terrible visions. Jon kept practicing warging - but on smaller scales, with animals. He dared not try to warg with the weirwoods again.

And after the two days, Jon felt that his recovery had come along… something had changed, not in muscle, but in something deeper. Warging was starting to come more easily to him. His attempts with the birds this morning had proven that much. Jon still wasn't sure what practical use the skill might ever be, but at least he could begin to talk through a raven, now, albeit at an embarrassingly childish level of competence.

The practise with warging, however much it exhausted him, only exhausted him in mind - it gave his body time to heal. Enough time that between the lessons sitting at the greenseer's 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.

She moves as fast as a white walker, Jon recalled, after yet another loss to her. The thought drove him harder and harder to heal and train. But as time passed, and as he lost to her, again and again, his frustrations kept mounting.

It was after another loss that Jon noticed the greenseer had been watching this time, his pale, ancient red eye following their movements with interest from his twisted throne of weirwood. With a groan of exhaustion, he let his exhausted body collapse by the throne's roots.

"You spar well for one your age, Jon Snow," the greenseer mused softly. "Even in my time, when I still walked - when the kingdoms were more at war - it was rare to see such swordsmanship in a boy of under twenty years."

"Not well enough," Jon grimaced, looking after the tunnel Acorn had disappeared in. Her lithe form had already disappeared into one of the many tunnels beneath the roots. She was quick, quicker than any fighter he'd ever even imagined, let alone faced, and she barely seemed winded by any of their bouts - it discouraged him. He had the impression she hadn't ever even broken a single sweat in any of these bouts against him.

Am I making progress? Or am I wasting my time by trying to train in the sword with her?

If he was making any progress - he couldn't see even see it yet. Every fight was still ending the same way, Acorn moving like a shadow, untouchable until the end, while he struggled to keep up. His losses were piling up, and no matter how hard he trained, no matter how fiercely he pushed himself - the gap between him and that child of the forest seemed insurmountable.

"How can I beat her?" Jon asked.

The greenseer said nothing, and the silence only added to Jon's frustrations. "Acorn... she feels impossible," Jon admitted, struggling for the words that felt right. "Sparring with her, it's almost like fighting the wind. I can't catch her, not even in a parry, not for minutes at a time - and then, just when I think I see an opening - I can't keep up, or I miss something in what she's doing - and then I'm dead. Dead, before I even noticed what I did wrong."

"You are too young, Jon Snow," the greenseer murmured quietly. "Acorn is not like the men and women you've fought before. She has trained in the martial dances of her people for centuries—she is one of the oldest and most skilled of the Children who still live."

"I can't train for centuries. I have days," Jon sighed, partially in frustration, partially in awe. "Her feints, her footwork... it's perfect. Her defense is flawless. I've never met a fighter like her."

"True," the greenseer murmured. "If you threw yourself into training for an entire decade, practising the sword day and night, all you could do is narrow some of a gap wider than you can know. But the same could be said for any man, including masters of the sword decades your senior. Do not be discouraged, and do not judge yourself by her standards."

He's trying to comfort me, but it's not helping. Jon rested his head back against the roots, eyes closing for a moment as the exhaustion of his aching body took hold of him.

Frustration gnawed at Jon's edges. He didn't need a reminder of his limitations, not here, not now - there was too much at stake to simply accept that Acorn's skill was out of reach. I fought a white walker, and if I don't want to die - again - I can't stay like this. I can't keep losing.

"Then how do I learn?" Jon asked, his voice sharper. "What am I missing?"

The greenseer said nothing, and the silence was even heavier this time.

"Please, you must know something," Jon said. "You were a famed sword in your time, weren't you?"

"...Men called me a master, but in truth, I preferred the bow," the greenseer said dryly, but slowly, as if considering. "Those days are long past. But, I wonder..." something shifted in the greenseer's expression, and his pale red eye drifted towards Jon.

"It occurs to me that, perhaps, you fight without understanding the nature of the dance you are being taught."

Jon frowned. "The dance? You mean Acorn's way of fighting?"

"The wood dance is a reactive style of swordsmanship," the greenseer explained, his voice deliberate now, sharper. "And in truth, one not entirely suited to humans. It is one of several of the children's ancient martial styles, each suited to a different... hm. A different philosophy of battle, perhaps. And the wood dance teaches that you will always lose if you allow your enemy to dictate the course of battle. True skill in the wood dance is not found in blind aggression. It is found in withdrawing your mind from the heat of the fight, stepping back, and observing."

What is he talking about? "But she's always pressuring me," Jon frowned. That explanation, it didn't fit with the crushing defeats he had experienced, for days now. "She's always moving. Always pressing the attack. She's... overwhelming."

"That is where you are wrong." The greenseer's voice had a real sharpness to it now, a hint of impatience. "Acorn does not press the attack. Think about your spars with her. She controls the flow of battle by allowing you to attack first, and reacts accordingly. She uses your own force against you, your own impatience. The wood dance is not about overpowering your enemy - it is about restraint. The true power of this martial form lies in its ability to observe, to let things pass, and act only when the moment is right. If you allow your enemy to set the pace, they control you."

Jon looked down at his sword, thinking over the greenseer's words. His exhaustion wasn't from defending, but from chasing a fight that was never his to lead?

Perhaps there was truth in that. Acorn's footwork had always seemed light, almost effortless, but now that he thought back on it, she hadn't always been the one pushing him. Am I overextending myself by always trying to catch her, trying to match her speed?

"You've adjusted your style to compensate for your injured leg," the greenseer continued, his eyes flickering toward Jon's bandaged limb. "But you're treating your lesser mobility as a disability, not as a pillar to base your style on. That is your mistake, I suspect. There is a reason why Acorn is trying to teach you the wood dance, when she could be teaching the storm dance or the water dance instead. She sees your potential, Jon Snow."

Jon hesitated, the realization sinking in. "I wish she'd mentioned that."

"She teaches through action, not words," The greenseer's thin lips curved into the faintest of smiles. "She is… not the most skilled in the Common. The lesson is not in what she says, but in what she does. If she is the wind, then you must learn to let wind come to you. Do not chase it. Let the wind pass, and when it does, strike."

Jon's mind raced, replaying every bout with Acorn in his head - and then he stood, cursing his own foolishness. He could see it now—the moments where he had pushed too hard, the openings he had left in his impatience to land a strike. The way Acorn had always been just out of reach, not because she was faster, but because she waited for him to move first. She had been teaching him to slow down, to observe, but he had been too focused on winning to realize it.

His legs were still shaking slightly from the strain of the fight, but there was a new determination in his heart. He couldn't beat Acorn by trying to overpower her—he would never match her speed, her agility, her experience. But perhaps, just perhaps, he could learn to move like her.

More days passed.

The children of the forest were never quite out of sight, Jon eventually came to realise; this place was some kind of center for them, a convergence of the paths they used within the earth. Jon came to learn a little of their lifestyle - they 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. But unlike him, they took no joy in the act of eating.

One time, Jon woke to find a child of the forest standing over him, singing a slow, tender song to nurse his wounds. She told him that Jon's leg would never be the same, but it had been getting better every day. Something about the songs of the children, the patterns they sung seemed to help his body heal; they gave him strength, made his wounds mend faster. Jon tried to ask how it worked, but the answer had only baffled him - that the children were just motes of life that could give voice to the tiniest of notes in the silent orchestra of the earth - which is why they were called singers, from what he came to understand of them. When he asked how that 'orchestra' worked, Leaf, the most eloquent of the children, hadn't even answered - just walked off in grief.

His dreams were becoming stronger, too. More vidid, more clear. Down here, by the roots of the weirwood, ever since the greenseer had started his lessons... Jon's dreams had become full warg-dreams, visions from other bodies, visions akin to the legends he had heard whispered among the free folk.

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.

At other times, the dreams were... chaotic, beyond intense. Dreams of fury on great wings - dreams of fire and ice, dreams of far flight and high storms, and a heart that beat with the force of a mountain. And, most intense of all, there was battle - always, always, battle against the dead. Those were the dreams that caused him to wake up panting and sweating.

The wolf's dreams were calm and sound. Welcoming, comforting. The dragon's dreams felt like riding a force of nature.

After one such dream, Jon panted as he shot awake. It was the sixth day, now.

He had been clutching Dark Sister as he slept on the uncomfortable roots near the throne, on a pile of soft, woven fabric the children had provided. The greenseer was looking down at him, almost curiously. Jon rubbed at his eyes, trying to focus. As he found something resembling wakefulness, Jon clutched Dark Sister, still held in its faded black scabbard; the sword just felt so comfortable, a reassuring weight 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. He said he wanted to return the sword to family. Jon's hand instinctively went to his overgrown hair - now shoulder length. He was growing a white… he couldn't call it a beard, that would be too generous. Overgrown stubble, maybe. White was not his natural hair color, but still, that color…

"How is that even possible?" Jon asked. "That means that Eddard Stark must have birthed me on a Targaryen - he was at war with the Targaryens when I was born. How?"

"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 there was to know.

Jon was quiet as he thought of his mother, whoever she had been. Jon remembered the Stark's family tree. Despite a certain promised betrothal or two, possibilities that had been lost to the fires of old wars, there wasn't even a shred of known Targaryen blood in the entire Stark line.

Which meant that his mother must have given him the blood, this blood that could let him - perhaps, let him - try to command a dragon.

Could my father really have had an affair with some Targaryen princess? How many Targaryen women were even alive during the Rebellion?

Jon couldn't even say. He didn't know the Targaryen's family line as he did the Stark's. Just the broadest of generalities.

He spent the rest of the day practicing with Acorn, trying to really get a grip of the wood dance - but mostly, he was trying to distract himself from those infuriating thoughts of his parentage. It worked. Acorn was a good teacher. Jon could feel his movements getting sharper, as his body began to learn how to follow the wood dance, as his eyes began to see the things she had been trying to teach all along.

---

"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 - Bloodraven, Jon could still barely believe it - said in his dry, laboured voice.

The thought of going back out there, where the dead and worse waited, terrified him. Jon 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, sighing. "We have too little time."

"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 greenseer said, sounding sad. "The lingering magic that protects this place relies upon it."

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 and an army of the dead…

"Then there is something that I want of you," Jon said. "A final request. I left a woman behind. Her name is Ygritte - she has red hair, she is round of face, with 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 has 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 low. "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. Swear it by earth and water, by bronze and iron. By ice and fire, swear it."

Jon hesitated. That vow… it bothered him, greatly. But my choice is made. "Yes," he said. "I swear it. I swear it."

"Good. You are a warg trained, or close enough," 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 must."

Bloodraven's single, ancient red eye focused on him. "Swing the sword, Jon Snow," he whispered. "Swing the sword and swing it true."

Jon left not long after, very quickly after he woke. He wanted a full day of travelling before nightfall.

When he limped out of the cavens - from a different, more northern and western exit than the one he'd entered by - he saw the sun for the first time in a week. It was barely a reddish sliver over the horizon. Morning.

He felt almost like a different person to the one of a week before. Certainly, he was wearing changed clothes.

The children had stitched up his ruined leathers with earthy fibers woven from trees. They gave him furs made from a hide that Jon could not place, but he half-suspected it was made from giant's 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, made from materials that men rarely used.

Jon spent a long time staring at his cloak. They gave him a black wool 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, sheathed in its scabbard. 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. Finally, he had a small jar of the healing poultice the children had used before.

"Use dragonglass or dragonsteel on the Others," he remembered the three eyed crow's instructions. "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 almost seven entire feet off the ground. There was something of the greenseer in the elk, Jon realised. The greenseer used his own warging to guide the creature, but gently and finely.

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 was certain. He 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 over by age, by countless winters; 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 in these lands 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, passing in silence. 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. As if his very bones knew that he was 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's. A deep, low, throaty yowl, 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 perhaps this one 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 to spare for his doubts, 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 to grab a cat and gotten only the claws. Jon grunted, but he tried to focus and kept pushing.

The shadowcat yowled in pain and shock, its eyes suddenly rolling as if crazed. It fell 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 from Ghost. It felt cruel, proud and vain. Sharp and barbed like a wicked dagger. Angry. Hateful. Hungry.

Jon had the impression from the cat's mind that he was intruding into its most precious territory of all. The shadowcat didn't want to share its body, it felt too fiercely independent. Instead, it scratched and it fought with every fiber of its being. It wanted him out.

Jon grimaced. Perhaps it would have been wiser to retreat, but he needed to push onwards. It was like sparring; it hurt, but he needed to overcome the pain. If I can't warg with a cat, then how am I ever supposed to handle a dragon?

He pushed deeper. The shadowcat almost howled like a wolf in its rage, but the sound was too much like a human's agonized scream. It entire body tensed - 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 crack. Suddenly, his world changed.

He was inside the shadowcat's skin, looking down at himself through the cat's eyes. Through its uncanny 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, wide-eyed, pupils dilated with fear and hate. He could see, even smell his own body through the cat's senses. He looked and felt like any other human through its senses - weak, pungent, vulnerable, and yet, dangerous.

Kill, attack, run! Jon could feel its instincts screaming orders - subconscious patterns of action so intense that even now its body twitched, itching to obey - but Jon squashed those instincts with his will. 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 and follow its instincts. Not even Jon could say with certainty what exactly the shadowcat would do if he let slip the leash, but he suspected it wouldn't be healthy for him.

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, to kill - it could choose any of the three in half a heartbeat, with an almost shocking intensity of force of spirit - but Jon ordered her body to sit.

The shadowcat fought him every single step of the way. He could feel her anger, her fear, all her emotions through the warg-sense, though the connection between their spirits. The shadowcat's instincts, emotions - the two were much the same thing in the cat - were so intense that they 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. And he could, sympathetically, feel every single scrap of those instincts.

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.

As Jon fully returned to his own skin, he found himself panting. This was - exhausting. Jon remembered Varamyr Sixskins, with his six different skins. Seven, including his own body. Damn, how did Varamyr ever manage them all?

Varamyr must have been born very powerful, and was very skilled besides to warg with six bodies at once. Still, from the least of what Jon could tell, the greenseer was something else entirely; 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 hesitated, wondering if treating this creature like a dog or a wolf was really a wise decision. The shadowcat, its mind didn't feel... capable of affection in the same way that hounds - pack hunters, so similar to humans in that way - found instinctual. It was still trying to fight and snap back at him, but Jon was well and truly under her skin.

The cat won't be as easy to control as the direwolf, he decided.

Ghost would accept him easily, Jon knew. But he knew instinctively that this 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 for the hills as soon as he allowed it.

No, Jon decided. That's useless.

He needed to learn control, and he needed to practice his newly awakened power on a hostile will. And the shadowcat was good practice. She would force Jon to exert his powers, force him to regularly test his will against an unwilling victim, and Jon couldn't even think of a better, faster way 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 he dreamed he roamed the mountainside, climbing from one crag to the next in a shadowcat's skin.

...At some point during the night, Jon cursed to himself when he realised he had forgotten to ask the greenseer about what had happened to Uncle Benjen.