FicWad

Chapter 48: the ship
TRYSTANE

The next morning, she was still cloaked in the wereworld illusions. We broke our fast with dried meet and bread, washed down with water that Bran had magiced up and heated for us. Arya had hers with moon-tea in it. She was not ready to have children yet and now it had become more important that she not conceive.

After breaking camp, we resumed our journey. This time, without incident, so when we stopped to sleep, we were not so frantic to have each other. We just curled up together. I started to get in the middle, but Arya pushed me over so she could have that spot.

When our cuddling progressed to them making love, Arya didn’t do anything to stop it and Bran continued to thrust into her, not finishing until after she had. I had been alternating kissing them while they did this and before he had pulled out of her, he used his mouth to get me ready for my turn with her. After all of us had been satisfied and declared our love for each other, we continued to cuddle until we fell asleep.


JON

I had just walked into my room when the Force told me of my hidden observer.

“You can come out now, Lord Varys,” I said.

A section of the wall opened up and the Master of Whispers stepped into the room.

“Very good, Lord Hand,” praised Varys. “But how did you know I was here?”

“The Force told me you were there,” I answered. “To the Force you might as well have been advertising your presence.”

“Ah yes, this sorcerous religion of yours,” hummed Varys. “I must confess that his magic of yours and your siblings makes me uneasy. As a child, I was mutilated in a magic ritual by a sorcerer I had been sold to. I’ve carried a hatred of magic and those who use it ever since. And ever since you and your family have been displaying magic abilities, I have had my little birds watch you, keeping ever vigilent for some sign of activity for which I could have you all arrested. But I’ve seen no signs of blood sacrifice or murder to fuel your magic anywhere.”

“No. Our abilities don’t work like that,” I told him.

“But still, having someone with magic powers so close to the Queen makes me worry about your undue influence on her grace,” stated Varys. “Are you controlling her? Are you setting her up to be sacrificed in some ritual of nefarious purposes?”

“Our magic doesn’t work that way,” I explained. “The magic my siblings use comes from within them. They don’t have to do any kinds of blood sacrifices. They just project it out of themselves. I have this magic too, but I can’t do much with it. It’s too painful for me to use it. My power is called the Force and it is the opposite of magic.”

As I said this, I used the Force to levitate an inkwell in front of him.

“The Force and magic are incompatible with each other,” I explained. “Magic causes me pain, but the Force does the same to magicians and those who wield it. This is why my bolts of Force Lightning work on the wights. I’m using them to destroy the magic in the wights, making them permanently dead. But the magic of the Others causes me pain. They are filled with magic and I can feel them at a distance, even if other people can’t see them through the snow. It’s how I know there are millions of them around the city and not just tens of thousands of them.
From what Lord Edric and told me, he thinks these other magic users that you have encountered are actually people with very little magic in them. So to make up for the weakness of their magic, they used human sacrifice or let themselves get possessed by demons.”

“All this is not very reassuring,” said Varys. “I have served several Kings and now a Queen. But my true loyalty is to the Realm and the people that make it up. My little birds shall be keeping an eye on you.”

“I understand,” I told him. “And if it helps any, my best friend Sam Tarly has similar views. And it has not hurt our friendship any. In fact, he’s started a fraternity to help us become better men so that we can help people. Perhaps you would like to join?”

“I, sadly am no longer a man,” said Varys. “That status was taken away from me by a magican, when he turned me into a eunich.”

“When a portion of our membership were turned into Children of the Forrest, the rules were changed to admit all genders. Perhaps be can do the same for someone with no gender? If you’re interested, I can help you make a petition to join us?”



EDRIC

At Cat’s request, I made a quick trip to Winterfell and back to retrieve her daughter: Edmina. Then, I returned there to make my report on the state of the Riverlands. Most of the Riverlords were quite cross to find that their families were gone. And Lord Blackwood asked to be sent back to his keep, along with all his men. I made them portkeys to be sent back to their home and instructed them not to move from where they came back until Lady Blackwood had a chance to let them in on the secret of where they were.

After I had made my report, I still needed to remain in Winterfell a few days, so that I could be here when Bran returned with the location of Arya’s ship.


JON

The Others had attacked again! Shireen and I were on the city walls fighting them when our word reached me that they were starting to come over the walls in another part of the city. I raced there until I found a group of musketeers fighting a group of wights hand to hand because there were so many that a group of them had made it to the top of the wall. As the men fought, more and more of them were coming over the wall. The visibility was down to about twenty feet in this blinding snow. But through the Force I could tell what was going on at a distance. As I raced toward them, the platoon leader exhorted them to keep fighting while he did his best to fight them, himself. I could tell that he was highly skilled as a fighter. But he kept having the most amazing good luck, doing things like noticing that he was going to be stabbed in the back, just in the nick of time. I realized that this man was strong in the Force, even if he was untrained in it’s use. When I got close enough, I used a Force push to push all the wights off the wall except the ones mixed in with the men. I leapt into the fray, using my dragon glass dagger, Force pushes and Force lightning to whittle down the numbers of wights.

“Thanks for your help, m’lord,” said the leader, when things had died down enough to catch a breath. “They almost had us there.”

“What’s your name, soldier?” I asked.

“Bronn, m’lord,” he told me.

“It looks like you’ve go things under control here. After you break your fast tomorrow, come see me in the Red Keep, Bronn,” I told him, before I left. “I’m needed elsewhere now.”

Eventually, after hours of fighting, we drove them off. But there were still so many out there we had barely made a dent. And I could feel the Wight Walkers raising more wights to join their army.

The next morning, which is actually after the city had gotten some sleep and broken our fasts. It was eternal night now and the maesters were the ones who told us whether is was night or day now. While breaking my fast with Shireen and her mother, a guard informed me that Bronn had arrived. I had him sent to my solar and after finishing my meal, I went to go meet him. When I walked into the solar, he had been pacing around, snooping into everything, But had stopped just before I opened the door.

“M’lord, you asked for me?” said Bronn.

“Yes, I wanted to speak with you about something,” I told him. “Have you ever noticed that things just seem to happen for you?”

“S’pose I’m just lucky, m’lord,” replied Brann.

“In my experience there’s no such thing as luck,” I quoted one my Jedi teachers, “only highly favorable adjustments of multiple factors to incline events in one’s favor. You might have noticed during the battle that I have certain abilities?”

I levitated a book in front of him.

“This power I have. . . “ I told him. “ . . . you have this power, too. If you had been trained, you could have learned to do these things too.”

“So you’re gonna teach me to use your magic powers?” asked Bronn.

“No.” I explained. “You are too old to learn. It takes years to master the Force and you have to start at a young age. Do you have any children?”

“Not that I know of,” replied Bronn. “I haven’t really had a chance to start a family yet.”

“Well, there is a good chance that any children you have will inherit your talent with the Force,” I warned him. “Bring them to me and I will test them. If they do have the Force, I will teach them to use it as I do.”

“So my children could be High Lords like you, m’lord?” asked Bronn.

“The world is in flux. I was not always as important as I am now,” I told him. “As a child, I was an unwanted bastard. But I trained myself relentlessly and earned my family name and eventually I became the Hand of the Queen. Serve me well and your own fortunes should rise too.”

“Thanks for the offer, m’lord,” replied Bronn. “But I work for Sam Tarly and he’s always done right by me. I don’t want to do anything to betray him.”

“Samwell Tarly is a good friend of mine,” I praised him. “Your loyalty to him does you credit. You may continue to serve him loyally. But when you have children of your own, keep my offer to train them in mind.”

“I will, m’lord,” said Broon.


TRYSTANE

Our three person fling continued as we traveled across the barren landscape. We had a few run-ins with wights but they were more easily defeated them than the ones who had pulled Bran under.

And when we stopped to rest, we shared ourselves with each other completely.

It was a happy time for all of us. But I knew it was drawing to a close when we found the shore and started out across the ice. When we found the ship, there were no corpses of her dead crewmen that had fallen when the Dead took the ship. The first thing she checked was the the special hold. It was still locked. When she opened it to check, the light of Bran’s wand made it all shine much more brightly than the lantern light had, last time she showed me her treasure. She then checked the rest of the ship. The ice had squeezed it bad enough that the hull had cracked open in places and it would surely sink when the ice melted. The last place she checked was the captain’s cabin. She lit a lantern to supplement the light of Bran’s wand and check to see that all of her possessions were there. Then she sat on her bed and kicked out with her feet a few times, excitedly, and dropped the illusion of being a blonde.

“Before you go, Bran, do you think we could fuck one last time?” asked Arya before turning to me: “Alone?”

“Go ahead,” I told her. “Have fun, you two!”

I shut the door behind me as I walked out on the deck. But then I shifted into the wereworld so I could sneak back in there and watch them. They both shared affection with enthusiasm and after Arya had finished with her repeated calls on the ‘Old Gods!’ I snuck back out of the room and returned to the deck to wait for them. It was about fifteen more minutes of them being quiet and alone with each other. I surmised that they were probably whispering sweet words to each other as they ended their incestuous fling.

“She wants to see you now,” said Bran, when he came out on the deck.

I entered her cabin to find her still in the bed, under the blanket with it pulled up to her chin.

“I know you were watching,” my wife told me. “That’s why I left the lantern burning, so you could see us. Was it good for you, too?”

“Not as good as it was for you,” I told her.

“Well, I’m still wanting it, if you’d like a turn while we’re waiting for them to come back” said Arya, as she peeled back the covers to invite me in. After I let her watch me undress and joined her in the bed, I felt the effect of the spells that Bran had cast to make the blankets warm enough that we could do this.


EDRIC

After Bran apparated back to Winterfell and found me, he side-along apparated me to his sister’s ship. When we arrived, I could hear my sister-by-law calling upon the Old Gods with great enthusiasm.

“Have they been doing this the whole time you have been gone?” I asked Bran.

“You have no idea!” chuckled Bran.

He showed me where the hold was but we decided not to magic the lock open and waited for Arya and her husband to take a break. When they finally came out, with happy expressions on their faces, I had her open the lock and show me. It looked like if we could put it in our room at Winterfell, if we stacked it floor to ceiling. I had to portkey it there in batches and when I was done, I made a final porkey to take us all, including the dire wolves back to Winterfell.

Once we returned, we need a way to guard this much wealth. I couldn’t do a Fidelitus inside a Findelitus and there was already one on the whole of Winterfell. We went over several options, like a glamour to hide the location of the door but settled on just transfiguring the door to be part of the wall. It was now inaccessible unless you could walk through walls, something that Trystane could easily do and Arya could do with difficulty.

Once that was taken care of. Bran apparated back to Riverrun to be with our family there and I began checking the keeps of the North.

TRYSTANE

Arya picked out the choicest pieces of valerian steel and made sure that she and her closest friends and family all had them. She gave Bran a short-sword, her friend Lyanna got a spiked mace so big that she had to use it two handed for now, but she assured Arya that when she grew, she’d learn to wield it in one hand. She sent a pair of daggers each for Sansa and Margaery. The suit of armor was too big for her, and I didn’t want it. So she gave it to her brother Robb. She set aside a sword for her brother Rickon. For herself she took a dozen arrowheads and a sword that she didn’t like as much as Needle. But this one was valerian steel. She also took a couple of spearheads. Finally, she started negotiating for the rest.

“Look I realize the importance of all this valerian steel and why we need to dole it out.” Arya told her brother, Lord Robb Stark. “But this is worth a lot of money! This is my fortune! It makes me richer than you! But if we don’t use them, they become useless! So, I’m going to need some sort of compensation for this. I’m just not sure what it is. I’d like a new ship. But I won’t be able to use it until spring. I could ask you for a keep here in the North. But, I’m already a Princess of Dorne and I’m sure there are plenty of castles down there for me. I just don’t know if we will ever be able to go back there.”

“Arya, I promise that you will be fairly paid for it all,” assured Robb. “How about, a promise, for now, of a favor of similar value in the future, when you need something?”

“I guess that will have to do, for now,” admitted Arya.

“Now another thing,” began Robb. “The stories you told me about how well the dire wolves worked out made me think we should have more of them. We should start selectively breeding them. How about when Nymeria goes into heat, we mate her with Greywind?”

“No,” said Arya. “I want her to be mated with Summer.”


TORMUND

Lord Stark started giving out valerian steel weapons to those of us who showed the most skill battling the Dead. Brienne got a sword and shield out of the deal. I was offered something, but the Sword of Icy Fire was all I needed for close quarter combat. However, I did accept five arrow heads. I planned to get them put on crossbow bolts and get a hand crossbow made to shoot them with. That way, if I ran into a Wight Walker, I would have some way of shooting him from a distance.




Note: I’m using untrained Force talent as my explanation of the plot armor that made everything constantly work out in Bronn’s favor.