FicWad

Chapter 56: years later

SAM

We have been in an endless night for years now. It is never brighter than a starless night outside and the constant, perpetual blizzard blows non-stop. The snow depth is greater than the height of the city walls and it continually over flows them. We have to have crews working non-stop to remove the snow from the streets and dump it down-wind over the South wall of the city.

The food stores have long since been depleted and we would have faced famine if Lady Margaery of the Riverlands, known to the followers of the Old Gods as: the Lady of the Forrest, had not offered us a solution in the form of a fast growing, highly nutritious mushroom. No one prefers them over the taste of pre-winter foods. But they are keeping us alive. We can grow them underground. Fortunately, the city of King’s Landing has a vast network of tunnels beneath it. And all of them, even the dreaded Black Cells have been put to use as places of mushroom cultivation.

We were warned in advance that those of us who accepted the transformation into neo-Children of the Forrest would have lower fertility rates. Nevertheless, there have been a few children born to our new kind, most notably in my household to Cat, the wife of my wife, Shae. Unlike us, the baby is green. Most likely because the child is still growing.


JON

“Jon, I’ve become a woman,” said Shireen. “As soon as the bleeding stops I want us to become a real husband and wife.”

“It would be safer for you if you waited a few years before trying to have children,” I told her.

“NO!” shout Shireen. “You promised! You promised that when I was a woman we could have a REAL marriage! Well, now I am one! And you are going to keep your promise and consummate our marriage!”

“Shireen-” I started.

“NO!” barked Shireen. “No excuses! You’ve kept me waiting long enough!”

“ . . . .. .Yes, my Queen,” I told her, before pulling her into a kiss.

And when she deepened it, I let her, and responded with enthusiasm. We’ve been married for years. Perhaps it was time. But I still feared that if she started too young she might die in childbirth.

Once we had done the deed, our marriage became more passionate. We had been meditating to suppress our urges for years. And now, she was like an insatiable erupting volcano that couldn’t get enough of me. And I felt the same for her. We’d had years to grow to love one another, living our lives with a pure love, unsullied by lust. Now that we were free to indulge our passions, our love had grown even stronger!


I was starting to teach my sister, Edmina, how to use the Force. But unlike the Jedi, I was not forcing her to cut ties with her mother. She still lived with our mother, who would visit with Shireen when Edmina came to the Red Keep for her lessons. Mother had a new baby now, a green Child of the Forrest, which was source of great curiosity for Shireen.

Bronn has found a wife and they have two children thus far. They had brought each of them to me and I found that each of them, like myself and Bronn, were Force sensitive. I promised to begin training them when they were older.


EDRIC

In the years since I have been training them, most of my students have made little progress. Part of the problem is that their wands are not well suited to them enough. I am not a professional wand maker and I was just very lucky in the creation of Bran’s and Sansa’s wands. I had not been able to make anyone else a wand as well suited to them. For now, I’m holding on to Bran’s wand, hoping I can find it a new owner that fits it was well as he did. But the main reason my students are not doing well is: I don’t have enough time to spend to teach them properly. Robb is too busy being Warden of the North, Lord of Winterfell and father to his children to spend time properly studying magic. Rickon and Arya are not willing to put in the time when I am not there. And even the Free Folk students I have were too old when I started trying to teach them.

So now that Margaery’s oldest are approaching old enough to learn magic, I am thinking that it may be time to start that school of magic I had been planning. It would have to have a different curriculum that the one I learned. I don’t have the availability of textbooks for my students and many people are illiterate. Magical Astronomy will have to be re-invented . . . sometime next spring when we can see the sky again. Magical Herbology relies on plants that don’t exist on this world, most of which Margaery has not re-created yet and plants don’t grow in this Long Night, anyway. Potions, as a class, suffers from a a lack of ingredients, especially now that the plants are gone. I think I will replace both Herbology and Potions with a basic science class taught by Margaery. She can teach them a mixture of biology and chemistry, with the techniques for mixing potions added in. I will teach a class that combines Charms, Defense and a few spells from Care as many magical creatures don’t exist here. Sansa can teach transfiguration. Jojen can teach Divination as a first year course, but only allow students to take his course if they have the talent. Warging will be first year course. I will get Orand, one of my Free Folk students, to teach Warging and we’ll see that every student gets a direwolf pup to learn it with. Trystane can teach a course on his kind of magic. He’s already taught some of it to all the wizards at Winterfell. Though none of them have gotten as good at it as Arya. But since his teaching method involves mushroom trips, we’ll save that one for older students. Having a school for one student makes little sense. But it will give us some practice for when we have more. I have persuaded Rickon to delay his and Lyanna’s resettlement of Bear Island so that I can finish his magical education. The two of them are newly wed. I’m doing the same with the Free Folk wargs I have partially trained as wizards. I’m moving all the Free Folk who swore fealty to me and their families to Harrenhal. A few wanted to stay in Winterfell, and I released them from their vow. But most were willing to leave Riverrun or Winterfell to help guard my new school and its’ students.


MARGAERY

It’s been years . . . years of darkness . . . years without plant growth . . . years of continual blizzards howling in from the north. We would have all died of hunger if I had not been able to breed a fast growing mushroom that can bud on any rotting organic material, even humanure. The current variant is bland and tender when they first appear and gradually get more flavorful and tougher the bigger they get. The biggest they can get and still be edible is about the size of a donkey. At that size people treat them like chewing gum because they are very tough, but have the best flavor. If allowed to grow even larger, they can even be used as a substitute for wood. Growing these in every single underground space beneath the city was the only thing that allowed King’s Landing to survive. Here at Riverrun, we had filled our dungeons up with them and Sansa was able to use magic to enlarge our dungeons enough that I had space for some more experimental varieties. I can’t do everything I used to be able to do with plants. But I can do some things. I’ve even been able to come up with some substitutes that allow Edric to make some of his magic potions.

All the plants in the Gods’ Wood have died except the heart tree. Somehow the weirwoods are able to weather the storm. Everyone misses plant based foods and meat. The Reachlander knights kicked up quite a fuss when I commanded that their horses were to be slaughtered for food. We no longer had any grass to feed them. We reached a compromise that the best stallion and the mares would be sent by magic to Highgarden in the hopes that they would somehow survive until spring. But the rest of them were a welcome last feast of meat.

After Bran’s death, Summer became even more friendly towards Meera and I than he had been. He would even let us ride him. He also seemed to have become a lot more intelligent, seeming to possess as near-human level of understanding. He would often been seen guarding the children and letting them play with them.

Meera and I have each had a couple of more children. If not for the eye color, I honestly wouldn’t know whether they had been sired by Edric or Trystane. But Meera had Edric do magic to confirm that both of hers were from Trystane. In this new world we were building, paternity was only a matter of curiosity, not inheritance. I have officially made my daughter Willow, heir to Riverrun and Meera has made her daughter Branna, heir to the Neck . . . if she ever is able to go back and reclaim it.


TRYSTANE

The breeding of dire wolves is going well. Nymeria has produced several litters with Summer, as has Lady with Ghost. We bred one of Nymeria’s females with Greywind, the other with Shaggydog and the pups produced have grown old enough to have pups of their own. And Lady is also the grandmother of pups of her own. With this many direwolves, we were able to train quite a few of them for riding. The wizards and Wilding wargs got first priority as they find it easiest to handle them. Lord Robb has gotten Quite good at warging Greywind. I think that’s the only form of magic he has taken the time to get good at. The remaining dire wolves had been trained to carry people and loads. Most of them are not yet old enough to carry people. They’ve accepted their owners as part of their pack, but are quicker to bite you if you don’t treat them right than a dog would be. They are basically just big dogs that will eat you if you abuse them.

Whenever Nymeria is bred, Ayra always wargs into her while it is happening. She swears that Bran is inside of Summer and once tried to convince Summer to stay with us. But the dire wolf, when choosing between her and Meera, picked Meera.

Arya has had two more children, Bran and Dorana. If we ever return to Dorne, Joan will be my heir.

I’ve been teaching the other magic capable people at Winterfell how to enter the wereworld. Arya is the best at it and can now instantly change her appearance to anything she wishes. She can also shift into the wereworld instantly. But she is only able to do this with the outermost layer of the wereworld. She can’t go deeper it, as I can, unless I help her.

Edric is going to start a magical school and has asked me to teach there. When he’s ready, we plan to move Arya and the children too, so that we can all be together there.


JOFFREY

After walking all the way down to the sea on the South coast, killing everyone we met and adding them to our ranks, we began going north again. There were some places in Dorne and the Reach where they were able to hold us off. Some of us would go and try to take those castles. Others of us, like me, would go to the castles we had already taken, hide in the snow and wait for someone to return. I’ve been waiting a long time now . . .


TORMUND

The snow and darkness have continued, as they have for years. We only know what time it is or even what day it is because the maester tells us. The snow is higher than the castle walls and men have to continuously shovel it out of the courtyards and Gods’ Wood and move it to the downwind side of the castle. It helps when Edric shows up and does his magic to vanish the snow for a time. But then, more blows in. Living in perpetual darkness, stuck inside a castle, Brienne and I don’t have much to do but make more babies. She’s taken the other two a lot better than she did with Oedi. She’s enjoying being a mother now and Oedi is just starting to be old enough for her to teach him how to fight. Willow and Kayla are still too young though.

We managed to get our own dire wolves. Brienne and I have been training the pair of them to carry loads and they have just gotten big enough for us to ride them! But when we do that, Brienne has to leave the armor behind.


EDRIC

Lady Sarella Darry has been pestering me for years to go to the Citadel and retrieve the books there. And now that we are about to go open a magical school Margaery has joined her cause. Although I know they are right, the Citadel is this world’s version of the Library of Alexandria, going there is a big risk! In order to accomplish this, the closest we can portkey is Highgarden. From there, we’ll have to travel across land, riding on the backs of dire wolves. At any point along the way, we could run into wights, possibly enough of them to kill us all. After some debate about who was going and who would take care of the children, it was decided that the expedition would include: Sarella, Margaery, Arya, Trystane, Brienne, Tormund and me. Each of us going had our own dire wolf that had been trained to let people ride it and each of us had at least one valyrian steel weapon.

We knew from past experience that the dire wolves would fall over during transit. So we had tied a rope to all of them and used the rope as a portkey that we could all grab. As usual, I was targeting the Gods’ Wood as it took less power to transit to or from a God’s Wood with apparition or portkeys.


TRYSTANE

When Edric’s whirlwind spell ended, Arya and I were the only ones who landed on our feet. We untied the rope from the dire wolves and mounted them. I had fitted Coyotl with a pack to carry some supplies. But I would not be riding my dire wolf as, in the wereworld, I could travel just as fast. So could Arya. But she preferred to ride Nymeria. Margaery was on Nymeria’s mate, Summer. Edric was the only one that had a dire wolf not descended from Summer and Nymeria. His Remus being from Lady and Ghost. We’d have to keep an eye on the three non-magical people riding their dire wolves: Oberyn, Renly and Syzygy.

After Edric cast his secrecy spell, I shifted into the wereworld, and started running across the sand dunes after the dire wolves. The road was impossible to see. So we were going to travel is a zig-zag pattern to investigate major keeps and see if any of them had still living people. Since it was constantly dark with no sun, moons or stars, we would frequently have to stop so Edric could cast a spell and have his wand point the direction to Horn Hill.


TORMUND

When we stopped to rest, Edric pulled a shrunken tent our of his pocket, enlarged it, and set it up with his magic, then did the same with camp supplies. The result was a tent that looked large enough for maybe two of us, but was much bigger on the inside. After setting up the tent, he started doing more magic, walking around the campsite in a circle. The dire wolves had all run into the tent first and they were hampering Arya’s attempt to spread out a very large blanket made of many furs sew together and another one to go on top. We all piled in and crawled under the blanket, Brienne made a point of putting herself at the end, between me and her dire wolf, Renly. This made her less self conscious about being in bed with a bunch of other people.

It was some of the others at the other end that started fucking first. That Sarella girl tried to entice me to join. But I gently pulled her hands off me and turned my attention to Brienne. With everyone else doing it. I was able to coax her to let me have her. But like usual, she quickly turned the tables on me and became the aggressor.

After we awoke and ate our mushrooms, we packed up and started off again. Brienne had not brought her armor. It was too heavy for Renly to carry. But she had brought her valyrian steel shield, which she kept strapped to her back.

We had been traveling for hours when Trystane suddenly appeared in front of us, urging us to go back. When he yelled, a bunch of blue dots appeared! It was hard to see anything through this blinding snow. But I am guessing that each of those blue dots is the eye of a wight that had turned around to face us. Brienne shifted her shield around so it was on her arm and drew her Valyrian sword. I called up the Sword. The others were all drawing various weapons and preparing for battle. Edric made a jet of flame animals appear, which surged forward at the blue dots. But then something seemed to drive the flame back. There was a strong icy wind coming from that direction and it snuffed the flaming animals out. There were no blue dots in that direction, but then some appeared and rushed out of the haze at us. Now that they were closer we could see the wights. Now that they were on us, Brienne was bashing them with one arm and slashing them with her sword in the other arm. I was dispatching them with the Sword of Icy Fire which, like valyrian steel, would de-animate them in a single blow. The others were trying to fight them with their own weapons. Trystane had disapeared again. Arya was stabbing them on both sides of her with her with her double ended spear. Margeary has a dagger in each hand, sometime blocking their attacks, sometimes stabbing them. Sarella has hacking at them with her sword and Edric was stabbing defensively with his sword while attacking them with spells from his wand in the other hand. We were overwhelmed, and I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the dire wolves was killed. And if that happened, we’d be fucked!

I spotted a pair of blue dots that were higher than the others before I saw him emerge from the haze. It was a Wight Walker, riding on a dead horse and directing the army of wights we were engaged in battle with. I reabsorbed the Sword and pulled out my hand crossbow. pulling back the string to cock it, I set one of my bolts with the valyrian steel heads in it and aimed at the Wight Walker. When I pulled the trigger, it shattered into a million pieces and all the wights near us fell to the ground.

“RUN FOR IT!” yelled Edric, as he rode his dire wolf away. Briene couldn’t really control Renly with out a free hand. But her dire wolf, like mine followed the pack and we rode away from the Army of the Dead.

We rode for about an hour before Edric even tried using his wand to find a direction. After he did, we changed our course to the way he directed us and kept riding until the dire wolves were tired.

We quickly set up camp and all of us, human and dire wolf alike, piled into the tent.

As soon as we were in, we quickly fell on each other in a tangle of people. In the pitch darkness it was difficult to tell who was who. But I knew Brienne was fucking another man when I heard her calling out for the Seven Gods and demanding that they fuck her. At the time I was kissing some unknown woman that I guessed might be Sarella, while I was inside a different woman who, based on the sounds she was making I thought must be Margaery.

I woke when someone reached around me and grabbed my cock. I was laying on my side, with my hand on the boob of a woman I was spooning who was way too small to be Brienne. I grabbed the hand to removed it from my cock and felt that it was a man’s hand. When Edric lit up his wand, I saw that I was between Arya and Trystane.

“Guess it’s time to get up,” said Edric.

We all got dressed and broke camp. Before mounting up. I saw people were gathering in clusters to talk quietly. Edric with Margaery, Trystane, Arya and Sarella, . . . . I stepped towards Brienne . . .

“Brienne, I-” I started to apologize.

“It’s alright!” said Brienne. “I did it too. If you can forgive me for cheating on you, I can forgive you.”

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I’ve never been with another man before,” mused Brienne. “I would have preferred to remain faithful to you. But I don’t feel I was injured by the experience. If it happens again, I won’t fight it. But I would prefer that we only did that with each other.”

“How many did you fuck?” I asked.

“Do you seriously want me to answer that!?!” growled Brienne, before she let out a sigh. “If you must know, I took two different men, that I’m sure were not you. Also there was a woman, I’m not sure who, that put her hand in me and made me . . . call on the Seven.”

“This kind of thing sometimes happens with the Free Folk in the True North,” I admitted. “But we don’t talk about it after.”