The wildlings always collect and burn the corpses near their camps, as they know the dead can come back to life—and once revived, they'll hunt the living.
The Hill Tribe also sends spearwives to clean up the corpses around the temporary camp before nightfall.
The chieftain's wife, a spearwife herself, was among those working, and during the task, she encountered the sixskin, Varamyr.
She touched him—and he possessed her.
In his battle with Melisandre, Varamyr was burned seven times. In six of those instances, he fled from his animal companions before his soul could be attacked, sustaining only minor injuries. But on the seventh time, when he swooped at the red-robed woman's face in the form of a hawk, he was affected by Orell's presence within the hawk.
It seemed Melisandre sensed this. The fire magic she used to burn the hawk was not the same as that used on the polar bear, the shadowcat, or the gray wolf.
Just as pyromancy has three levels, Daenerys had only mastered the first two. The final level is an ancient secret of the grand sorcerers—capable of using fire to ignite other elements, like a fire elemental god.
Melisandre's fire magic had multiple tiers as well. When fighting the sixskin, she employed two: one igniting physical matter—fur, flesh, and innards of his animal companions; and the other, blood magic fused with fire, burning the soul beneath the skin.
Put simply, when she burned the polar bear, the fire consumed its organs and fur. But when she burned the hawk, it incinerated everything—flesh, feathers, and even the souls of both the hawk and the sixskin.
This happened because the hawk had previously belonged to another skinchanger master—Orell.
Though Orell's body had been slain by Jon Snow, his soul lived on in the hawk, starting a second life. Yet Varamyr gave him no chance to fly freely, immediately taking over the bird.
Still, Orell's will lingered faintly within the hawk. It usually didn't matter—after all, Varamyr's title as "strongest wildling skinchanger" wasn't for nothing. Over time, Orell's soul would have been fully assimilated by the hawk, his humanity fading until nothing remained but a beast.
But in the battle against Melisandre, that tiny flaw nearly cost Varamyr his life.
His soul was gravely wounded. Two animal companions—the bear and the hawk—died instantly. The shadowcat and three wolves were severely injured.
Later, he forced the shadowcat to carry him away from the camp. But once they entered the forest, the cat sensed his growing weakness and turned feral. It attacked him and bit off his arm.
Yes, animal companions have their own will. They can be commanded, but the resentment they carry runs deep.
That's why many wildlings choose wolves. Dogs are the easiest to bond with and the most loyal, but they're too weak.
Wolf-like dogs form emotional bonds more easily than other beasts—and wolves are strong. Thus, the wolf-spirit became a vital branch of the skinchangers. Ordinary folk even mistook all skinchangers as "wolf spirits."
At that point, Varamyr, like all dying skinchangers, had one last chance: possess another life to begin anew.
He'd intended to take over the shadowcat, but it dragged him to a Hardfoot camp, right as several spearwives were gathering corpses.
The shadowcat fled.
Lari found the bloodied, unrecognizable Varamyr. The sixskin changed his target and possessed the spearwife before him.
"Beast! No!" Lari, who had been writhing and wailing on the ground, suddenly arched her back, her face contorted, and screamed sharply.
A duet—male and female.
The shrill cries mingled with a man's low, muffled groan, forming a chilling chorus of spiritual agony.
"Get out! Get out!" Every muscle in the spearwife's body trembled and strained. Her brown eyes were laced with blood-red veins, bulging from their sockets.
It was as if every muscle, bone, and patch of skin had become a battlefield, with Lari and Varamyr fiercely fighting for control.
"Mother, Mother! Waaa!" The chieftain's daughter burst into tears.
"What's going on?" the Hardfoot chief shouted angrily. "He hasn't taken full control yet? Varamyr, you bastard, get out—leave Lari's body!"
"I… can't leave. She'll die too," the spearwife said, her face twisted into a ghoul's, mouth full of blood, tongue and lips chewed bloody.
"Beast! Beast! Beast!" Chief Doss was livid, stomping and cursing, eyes aflame. "That beast possessed Lari's body, and last night even came to me for intimacy! Spent half the night in bed! Damn beast!"
Daenerys shot the Hardfoot couple a strange look and nodded. "Beast. Truly a beast."
"End Lari's pain," the white-haired old woman sighed.
"Grandma, don't kill Mama! I want Mama! Waaa…" The barefoot little girl threw herself onto the old woman's lap, wailing.
"You're a skinchanger too—enter Lari's soul sea and drive out the sixskin," Daenerys said to Jon.
"I can't. I've never done this. No one ever taught me how. I don't know what to do," Jon shook his head in panic.
"She's beyond saving. Even if we drive Varamyr out, Lari won't survive," the old woman wept.
"Your Grace, try using the 'True Dragon Roar' a few more times," Barristan suggested.
"I'm not confident. Lari may have the home-ground advantage, but her soul can't possibly match the sixskin's resilience. Who knows which of them would disappear first?" Daenerys hesitated, biting her lip.
"Ugh, treating a dead horse like a living one… we don't have time to waste. It's all fate," the old woman choked out.
"Fine. Hold her down."
Soon, Daenerys directed Jon and the others to gag Lari and pin her limbs, body, head, and neck firmly to the ground.
After a moment's hesitation, she decided to try the new "True Dragon Roar."
Until now, Daenerys had always used fire magic to drive the Soul Strike.
The sorcery condensed through the Grand Warlock's meditation lacks any "soul-piercing" quality; it can only batter straight ahead—using draconic might to slam into and oppress an enemy's soul.
Such brute force inevitably rebounds: the strength of the target's soul dictates how hard that backlash hits.
• Against ordinary folk, a soul-strike is outright steam-rolling—no backlash at all.• Against legendary beings like wights, the strike is weakened, but the dragon bears the rebound, leaving Dany almost untouched.• Against a demi-god as mighty as Balerion, even the dragon can't withstand it, and Dany herself would pay the price.
Now she has a second wellspring of power in her mind-sea. What if she drives the soul-strike with the magic gathered through the greenseer's meditation? Given that magic's "high penetration and high resilience," what will happen?
Nervous, Dany presses her right forefinger to the spear-wife's brow. "Soul-Strike, altered."
Snow's soul slips into her mind-sea. The pale-red ring of soul-light casts over him a veil of emerald—vivid yet icy.
That green glow is the mind-power and magic forged by her second meditation, a projection of a second soul, joining seamlessly with the white dragon's spirit.
Snow turns green.
So does Dany.
Green-hued Dany astride a green-hued Snow launches the soul-strike. Normally, the fused man-and-dragon soul would smash into the foe's soul-barrier like a battering ram hitting a gate.
But this time they meet not an unbreakable wall, but a lump of clay—there's resistance, yet they pierce through swiftly.
"Argh!" A flash of green crosses the spear-wife's brown eyes; her wildly struggling body goes rigid, as though the pause button has been pressed.
Like Dany's, Lari's soul-space is a dark-blue starry sky, but far narrower and thinner. The dragon perches gingerly, like a tank inside a wooden shed.
"Wretch, come out and die!"
Within the soul-space, green Dany is imperious and exultant.
Her hunch is right: the second soul rooted in greenseer meditation truly inherits the greenseers' power of soul-possession!
Compared to the sky-blotting dragon, Lari's soul is a caterpillar beneath a giant's foot—tiny and fragile.
At Dany's single command, Lari's soul wails and shatters into thousands of pale sparks.
Did… did it just dissipate?
With Lari's soul burst apart, the form of a dwarfish, gaunt middle-aged man is exposed, staring up in terror at the mountain-sized white dragon.
"Impossible! You can't— Even if you're a skinchanger, you couldn't have brought the dragon's soul here!" he shrieks, flailing madly.
True, a dragon cannot enter another creature's mind-sea, but Snow is no longer merely Snow—he is part of Dany.
A wolf spirit is man's soul overriding wolf's, so the animal often rebels—no being wants its will stripped away. A dragon spirit differs: man and dragon fuse into one; man is dragon, dragon is man.
Merged with Dany's greenseer-forged second soul, Snow now shares the greenseer trait and can follow her into a human mind-space.
"Monster, die!" Dany has no time to explain secrets to a minion. She roars and drives the dragon to bite.
Crunch! Like chewing ice, Snow's jaws crackle; something strange and milky seeps through his teeth.
"No—!" Varamyr Sixskins howls as he shatters into thousands of shards, sending a visible milky-white halo blasting outward, even beyond Lari's mind-space.
Because fragments of Sixskins' soul cling between the dragon's teeth, Dany senses him clearly—he has fled the mind-space into some unknown realm.
Instinctively, she follows that tenuous thread.
Boom!
White light explodes. Dany spirals downward through a blank-white world. In an instant she seems to cross endless distance, a thousand years of time.
Lost, bewildered—until…
Until she catches him. Ahead looms an enormous human face: red eyes glaring, aged features bone-white, solemn, mouth agape in rage—or in devouring.
Varamyr kneels before the face, weeping, wailing, "Gods, mercy, mercy!"
(End of chapter)
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