Mikhal hadn't felt so young and vigorous in years.
Certainly he'd enjoyed the citadel and learning all that it was possible for him to know under the elder maesters. And he'd felt such a sense of accomplishment as he grew beneath their tutelage. But of course, like all young men did, he'd also dreamed of grander things. Of discovering new truths of the world that changed everything. He'd thought that when his teachers granted him permission to study their tomes on unnatural things that it meant they were believing him worthy of studying those secrets.
In retrospect his first clue should've been the fact that though the citadel had shelf upon shelf of words written in respect to many areas of study, there was almost nothing on the arcane that came from before Aegon's conquest of Westeros and was not another Maester recounting his own study of the subject. And at last he should've picked up on their true lesson the moment he was told that his final test would be to ignite a dragonglass candle without using any outside materials. He was to be locked in the room with it and to use all his knowledge of magic to do so.
Needless to say, Mikhal failed the test.
And that was entirely the point they explained to him later. There were no real answers regarding superstitious mysticism that men of reason could find to be true. Magic was simply a thing of legend and curiosity. It may have been a small part of the world once. But the death of the last dragon and the fading of places that plied their wares and supposed connections to the world of the supernatural was proof enough that even had there been magic in the world before, it was giving way to the future of man that lay in their pursuit of knowledge.
Crestfallen but mature, Mikhal Luwin had accepted the wisdom of the Maesters to be true. For how could so many learned scholars all be universally wrong about such a thing?
As the notes he came to write whilst in service to the Stark family would later say: Easily.
Never had he suspected such a change in his view of the world would come from the most remote and desolate place of the seven kingdoms outside the vast deserts of Dorne. Though when one remembered most all the notable Northern houses had managed to hold onto their belief in the Old Gods to a degree that was frankly astonishing to consider when one remembered only two of the other seven kingdoms had any kind of religious history that deviated significantly from the Faith of the Seven brought over by the Andals.
The Rhoynish princess Nymeria as well as her warriors both Rhoynar and Summer Islander alike had brought the religions and cultures of their homelands across the Narrow Sea when they allied with Lord Mors Martell to conquer Dorne. And while many regarded their…liberal sexual practices with raised eyebrows and hushed whispers in the rest of Westeros, their houses of worship were primarily dedicated to the Seven. Even closer to the North, the Ironborn might've talked occasionally about the Drowned God. But from a historical perspective, it looked to be mere lip service meant to serve as an excuse to rebel against the crown and test whether they could declare their independence yet again.
So, in another way, it was perhaps not so surprising that this barely civilized land would be the one to tear down his ideas of a comfortably mundane world.
Ever since his lord's bastard Jon Snow had returned from a three-year sojourn across the Narrow Sea Mikhal had been given a firsthand glimpse of what magic looked like with his own eyes. Jon recounted everything he'd learned in Essos: his explanation as to how much of magic was the belief system one labored under to how much of the magic was passed from parent to child through shared blood had Mikhal taking notes as feverishly as he had back when he'd been a mere acolyte of the Citadel who'd yet to earn his first link.
He had witnessed firsthand how Jon could not only summon flames but increase the heat level in any part of his body, see the body heat of any person surrounding him even with his eyes closed, even peer into fires and use them to glimpse things that were happening around other nearby fires: that particular revelation had taken his informing Mikhal that the cooks were making fish for dinner that night after having been within the older Maester's sight all day and being proven right. That had all been without counting the visible increases in reflex and strength that Jon demonstrated on the training yard.
Mikhal had been meticulous in his transcribing his work, often returning to the notes once the rest of the Stark family had doused the candles and torches for the night to pore over the jots he'd made to wrack his brain for Jon's exact wording and gestures that he'd made to be sure that he was giving as complete a picture as the written word could to what he'd learned. As his notes coalesced, he found that he still had questions and theories bubbling up in a way that hadn't happened since he'd been forging his first link in bronze for his study of the stars and their movements.
Arya's involvement had only compounded his newly reawakened thirst to know: especially when Jon had mentioned that her brand of magic was similar to one known in the North, but it was only ever mentioned as being the domain of the White Walkers and the Long Night that they had attempted to bring back when the Children of the Forest and the First Men had made their last alliance with each other.
Her lowered body temperature, seeming immunity to cold and identical ability to see people by the heat they gave off would've made Mikhal wonder if she perhaps only a pale copy of Jon's power had he not seen her summon snow and later ice to her hand merely by concentrating. There was more to it, he just knew. But he couldn't get Jon and Arya to tell him fully what it was: only mentioning that there were mental aspects to it that were difficult for one who experienced them to understand, let alone share with one who could not do so for themselves.
So Mikhal had swallowed his pride and turned to the one person in Winterfell he never imagined he would ever seek knowledge from: the older woman known to Winterfell only as Old Nan.
She was near bald and close to toothless, her eyes nearly white from age induced blindness, the skin of her face wrinkled and sagging in places from the lean winters she'd seen without a youth's vitality and vigor.
But still she met him.
And when she did he thought he began to understand why Jon and Arya might be reluctant to share more of what they could do with him: especially in Arya's case.
The story of the Long Night, according to Old Nan, was one that began with the conflict between the Children of the Forest and the First Men.
So her story went that their conflict over the First Men chopping down the tress that comprised the Children's homes to make their own while the Children retaliated by striking at men from the shadows of the trees whenever possible went on for years: engendering hatred and rage on both sides. The First Men would set the tress to the torch out of spite, the Children would herd the giants to crush the screaming First Men beneath their feet.
And while they squabbled and bloodied each other a power of darkness and death bided its time and grew in a land where the air was so cold and dead that even when the sun rose in the sky it did not touch the ground: leaving everything beneath a beautiful blanket of frost and snow that never faded but held no spark of life.
When at last the Children and the Men realized that they would both die if they continued to war with each other and made their peace with each other's existence; that was when they came.
Their very presence brought the dark and the cold from that place where the daylight held no power: the winter storms and clouds blotting out star and sun alike so that babes were born, lived and died without ever seeing a sunrise. This war that the First Men called The Long Night was not so much a war as it was a systemic slaughter of every living thing that these creatures of ice came across.
Old Nan told Mikhal that while these things took the shape of men with two legs, two arms and a rough shape of their body, they were unfeeling and merciless as the deepest cold: the kind that chills to the bone before freezing the blood in your veins. They rode upon desiccated horses that had died long ago but whose bodies had been partially preserved by the air of death in that cold wasteland. With a touch they could raise the men who fell in battle to join their ranks as blue eyed wights that sought nothing more than the fulfillment of the greatest wish of their ice-cold masters: to extinguish the spark of light that existed in all living things.
She told him further that one man gathered together a group of disparate souls, riding upon a dark horse with a grey wolf at his side, hoping that the magic of the Children of the Forest could come to the aid of men. Even as his companions were lost to starvation and cold, his horse collapsed from under him and his wolf was torn apart by the cold hands of dead men, this man everyone only knew as the Last Hero journeyed on until at long last he discovered a hidden settlement of the Children.
His impassioned plea so moved them that they gifted him a sword of Dragonglass and marched forth with him to unite the scraps of mankind that still remained in the face of the encroaching darkness. Together, they drove the wights back to the Land of Always Winter. With the threat at last ended, the Children lost what little power remained to them and the First Men vowed to never allow the encroachment of the darkness to spread to their lands again. So they patrolled much of the land before Brandon the Builder unified them all by constructing The Wall: a final bastion of magic and architecture meant to stand vigil against the ever present darkness should it ever seek to return.
With his newfound knowledge of magic's reality, Luwin couldn't help the phantom chills that ran down his spine when Nan described how nothing could stand against the Others (as the First Men and the Children called these devils of ice magic) until the Children were brought to bear with their dragonglass weapons.
In desperation, he'd asked her if stories he'd heard about so-called 'Skinchangers' were also true.
She'd told him yes. That stories went that some were born with blood descended from the Children of the Forest and the First Men intermingling, that it allowed their minds to leave their bodies and command the flesh of the wild animals that bowed to them.
With so much more to process he'd retreated to his inner chamber to think.
"Are you alright Maester Luwin?" Came the young boy's voice from his bed.
He turned slightly in his chair to regard young Brandon Stark, whose legs were idly crossed on the bed in his chambers, whole and hale as he'd been before his tragic fall from the Burned Tower during the King's visit to Winterfell.
Another example of magic's truth staring him in the face, albeit one a bit more mysterious than he'd have liked.
Much like the night Jon Snow had stolen Arya from her chambers and brought her to the Sept, he'd crept into Brandon's sickroom and removed him to the godswood for a chance to wake him up and if possible, heal him. Had he not chosen to warn Mikhal what he was planning, no one would have been any the wiser as to his absence until he was knocking upon Maester Luwin's chambers with a wet-clothed and wide-eyed but awake and ambulatory Bran behind him. The lord and lady of Winterfell agreed that Catelyn should be the one to be there if Jon came back with Bran.
When he had, Luwin couldn't help but run his eyes over every detail of the young Stark's movements as though searching for hitches or hesitations in his movements: any sign of lingering damage that Jon's miraculous work had missed.
But of all things, Bran's direwolf had snarled angrily at Jon, seeming to drive him from the room even as Lady Catelyn clutched Bran to her as though intending to never again let him leave the safety of her skirts.
But then Jon had met with himself as well as Lord and Lady Stark in Lord Stark's solar. He explained that the Old Gods had an interest in seeing Bran recovered and so had agreed to help heal him for a price. Ned had sharply asked what they could possibly want from such a young boy. Jon's answer was only that they had said that they needed him conscious and able to call upon the magic of the forest that resided in the Stark bloodline, that when the time came, Bran would know what it was they wanted from him.
Luwin had thought Lady Catelyn might attack Jon when he explained that Bran's ties to her Seven had been severed by the process, but once again Lord Stark had prevented things from escalating too far.
It was then that Jon had revealed that he thought Bran should remain in Maester Luwin's chambers and Robb should be placed in Bran's sickroom while they still could switch them. When Lord Stark had asked why, Jon explained that though Bran had been healed, the forcefully awoken magic was going to leave his memories and senses altered, leaving him unable to remember for some time if he remembered at all what had happened atop the Burned Tower. So if someone had deliberately planned to attack Bran and thought they might finish the job, it might be best to have them believe that he was still bedridden and thus vulnerable. And when they sought to strike, they would not find a helpless boy but Lord Stark's vengeful firstborn waiting.
Lady Catelyn had of course objected at first, not wanting to put Robb at risk needlessly, but Mikhal himself had thoughtfully agreed that it might be their best chance at finding who it was that had a vested interest in seeing Bran dead. Of course, a small part of him also acknowledged that it was also a rare chance to see the ability to practice magic develop firsthand and perhaps have a hand in recording and creating a useful guide about it.
His recordings thus far had been astounding.
Bran had seemed to have a thus far limitless ability to mentally enter the minds of animals nearby and even control them after a fashion: as he'd handily demonstrated by having one of the ravens from the rookery land on Luwin's window and present the message tied to its leg before dipping its beak in his inkwell to peck the letters "B" "R" "A" and "N" on a nearby piece of parchment before departing again.
Meanwhile the whole time his body had lain prone upon Luwin's mattress with eyes white as a blind mans' until the raven left. At which point the whiteness cleared and he'd sat up on the bed again.
Mikhal had been forced to ponder long and hard if this was how ravens had grown to be such intelligent birds that they were used for most every public message carry from King's Landing to the unnamed cave tribes of the North.
As he perused the notes he had taken in the library of Winterfell whilst attempting to write out his observations of Bran's growth, he paused his scratching quill. It was quiet outside, only the occasional dog barking or the sound of the guards moving around the courtyard. But there felt like there was another pair of eyes that shouldn't be here. He slowly put down his quill before moving into the bookcases in case that was the truth. As he stood there for what felt an age, he almost began to feel like a foolish, doddering old man jumping at shadows before the sound of crackling flames reached his ears.
As quickly as he could, he rushed out of the stacks only to see the books closest to the door way set aflame, a lit torch on the ground inside as it quickly spread to more stacks closest to him.
"FIRE!" He called in the loudest voice he could muster out the window. "FIRE IN THE LIBRARY, HELP!" He repeated before gathering up the sheafs of parchment he'd written his observations of the Stark's magic upon as though to protect them from the ever-climbing fire.
The fire was continuing to spread while the air was getting so thick and hard to breathe. He could barely hear anything over the growing roar of heat that came ever closer, even the tolling alarm bell that was ringing urgently in the crisp northern air.
Mikhal knew instinctively that there were only two options available to him now. Leap from the window to an almost certainly crippling injury and potential death. Or charge the door and pray to whatever godly powers might be listening that he managed to get it open before he was burned or consumed by the fire.
Clutching the writings that represented his work with Jon, with Arya and with Bran to his chest as though he were seeking to protect the children themselves who'd made him aware of so much more of the world, he briefly bowed his head and closed his eyes.
"Godly powers I know not, please." He begged in a near inaudible whisper as the flames grew closer and closer.
"I beseech you: let me through these flames, let my work with these precious children not perish to the machinations of cruel fate. Let these writings not suffer the ignoble burning of so many before them." He said, feeling the heat press against him almost like a physical presence now.
"Please." He finished, only allowing his sincere plea to the gods who would ever remain silent to his voice carry on the heated air as he opened his eyes and dashed for the heavy oaken door.
As he came closer to it, he could feel the flames begin to lap at his Maester's robe, the heavy jangling of his chain and the small pouches of herbs on his body a reminder of how much he was seeking to carry in his advancing years.
As he came to the door, he sought to ram it with his shoulder, only for it to barely budge even as the fires began to eat away at his flesh beneath the robes. Crying out in alarm as his prayers had seemed to go unanswered, Luwin charged the door again; this time with enough force he felt his shoulder pop out of its socket. The flames abruptly continued all the way up the rest of his robes: superheating his chain as his flesh sizzled and crackled beneath the burning clothes. Screaming in abject agony now, he tried unsuccessfully to flail out of his robes before the door was abruptly flung open and Mikhal managed to get through the open portal to the hall.
His robes still alight, he collapsed to the ground writhing and screaming, even as multiple presences attempted to beat out the fire with robes and clothes. As at last the flames upon his person died down even as the chain continued to burn and the acrid stench of burning herbs and flesh wafted through the air, he saw that his papers remained untouched by the flames. As he began to lose consciousness entirely from the pain, he could only reflect on the warped sense of humor the gods must possess and wondering whether he should've prayed forgiveness for his disbelief before there was only blissfully unaware blackness.
A/N: Still not dead. Just glacially slow.