"Gods, have mercy!" Varamyr wailed. "A beast did it, not me!Gods, have mercy!"
The giant face gave no answer, yet the skin-changer seemed to lapse into confession, dredging up each past sin. Scene after scene flickered above his head, bright enough to dazzle the eye—though in her soul-form, Dany saw some of it with awful clarity.
It was the life of Varamyr Sixskins, and every crime in it.
His talent had been strong. At six he awakened as a warg, seized the body of the family hound and, jealous of a younger brother who was more cherished, bit and devoured the two-year-old while inside the dog.
So ruthless—six years old, and his first taste of human flesh was his own brother.
He was taken in by a warg-mentor named Haggon, who fostered and taught him after his father drove him from home for the murder. When Varamyr grew to manhood, he repaid the kindness by betraying and killing his teacher, stealing Haggon's wolf and, in that wolf's body, eating the old man's heart.
Freed of any restraint, Varamyr wallowed in every wickedness a man might try.
He thieved, he murdered, he raped. He coupled with animals in their shapes and let beasts couple with him.
Even when age left his human body weak and unready, he would take the form of a wolf, a lynx—once even a great bear four meters tall—to slake his lust.
He drank mankind's blood, delighting in the hot spurts that gushed from torn throats of the dying.
"Monster!"
Fury blazed in Dany; her eyes all but burst as she started forward to end him.
At once the visions vanished. The Sixskins man staggered from his penitence and threw back his head, laughing at the giant face. "Yes, I did monstrous deeds, the blackest sins—so what? They were your gifts! Yours!"
The huge face stayed as grim and stony as before, neither soothed by confession nor angered by blasphemy.
Yet something in Varamyr broke free. Suddenly he flung himself into that gaping mouth—and Dany, too close to halt, tumbled in after him.
And saw herself.
From another angle she watched Ghost curled nearby while Barristan, Jon, and several Thenns pinned down Thistle's body. She knelt atop the spear-wife, forefinger pressed to the woman's brow.
"What is happening?" Dany cried.
In the next heartbeat she understood.
Drogon circled overhead, her scout in the sky, and through his eyes she found her own body's place—inside a weirwood!
She was observing herself through the weirwood, while the body beneath her main soul turned its head and met the carved face in the tree.
South of the Neck the Andals had felled most weirwoods; only a few stunted saplings lingered after thousands of years. North of the Neck they stood more often, for the Northmen still kept the Old Gods.
Beyond the Wall they were everywhere. In the Haunted Forest alone weirwoods were only outnumbered by ironwood, sentinel, and soldier pine.
Not far from the Thenns, several grew—white-boned trunks, red leaves. One bore a wildling's carved face: a bole thick as two men's arms could encircle, eye-sockets smeared with red-leaf paste, nostrils hollow, a savage mouth stuffed with a skull as sacrifice.
Through those red eyes Dany looked upon the world.
"What is this?" she murmured, lost.
The scene vanished; her sight soared—past the treetops, past Drogon, through low clouds. All dissolved, yet everything flashed before her.
She saw and did not see: wind and sky, forest and earth; sparrows and hawks aloft, squirrels and owls on the boughs, deer and antelope in the snow, even voles gnawing roots in the frozen dark below.
Sudden understanding struck: she had become the wind, her soul returned to sky and soil.
No—not her. Varamyr.
The Sixskins' spirit was drawn into the weirwood, back to earth and air, and she had followed, witnessing it.
"So dust to dust—is this the fate of men? No world beyond death?"
While she pondered, the vision shifted yet again: deep in the forest a pack of wolves loped over snow-strewn hills. Three looked weary, singed fur still smelling of fire—Varamyr's beasts.
Dany's viewpoint plunged toward the lean black-furred elder wolf, struck its brow, and entered a shadowed, drowsy space.
"Seven hells—he still isn't dead? A warg's spirit is this tough? That's absurd!" Shock made her curse aloud.
For Varamyr was there again—frailer, clearer, as though washed of every stain, pure and bright.
Well, as bright as a filthy old man could be; the parts lost in dissolution must have been the darkest sins.
Not noble, but distilled.
"Why will you not leave me be?" he snarled at Dany. Without waiting, his form melted, man-soul and wolf-soul flowing together, fusing into a wolf grown larger by half.
A wolf's body, a wolf's face—yet the eyes held Varamyr's hate for her.
"A true wolf-spirit at last," Dany thought. "Man and beast perfectly merged—just like my dragon-bond… No, his humanity is fading; the wolf is swallowing it."
Dany was astonished, and at the same time, she came to a realization—Varamyr had begun a second life in the form of his wolf spirit.
If I die in the future, could my soul be housed within Big Black's body?As the Mother of Dragons, she had raised five little dragon sons. When the old mother grows weak and frail, is it too much to ask to spend a month at each of her sons' homes?"Heh…" At this thought, Dany couldn't help but laugh wryly.
"Wretched creature! I've slain men, gods, and ghosts. I judge men, gods, and ghosts alike. Even if you escape reincarnation, you cannot escape my judgment!"
With a thunderous shout, Dany charged forward on her white dragon."I sentence you… to death—!"
"Roar—!"The dragon's roar erupted like it had been held back for centuries. The newborn wolf soul shattered inch by inch under the dragon's call.
To prevent the skinchanger from causing more trouble, Dany immediately activated her "Soul Infusion" skill, cleansing the shattered fragments of the wolf soul of any spiritual imprint, reducing them to pure spiritual matter—light green in color, much lighter than the greenseers'.
Hmm… the quality was far inferior to that of a greenseer.
"Awooo—"The old wolf running across the hills stumbled and collapsed, blood seeping from its seven orifices. It breathed no more.
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"Whimper…"Its companion curiously nudged its body a few times. Realizing it had lost all signs of life, the pack rushed in and feasted greedily, devouring it like ravenous beasts.
Varamyr—truly and utterly destroyed!
After slaying the wicked skinchanger, Dany immediately withdrew from the old wolf's body, floating in midair in her soul form.
She had a feeling that, if she willed it, she could fly more than ten kilometers back to her own body in an instant.
"Sigh, this is too much…"Suddenly, an old voice sighed by her ear."Every skinchanger is a child of the gods. You have taken what belongs to the divine—you have defiled the gods!"
Startled, Dany looked around cautiously. After a moment, she spotted a weirwood tree as thick as a bowl seven or eight meters away. Its bloody, hand-shaped leaves swayed gently, radiating mental waves.
"So you're not dead after all," she snorted coldly and mocked, "Any god who gave birth to such a creature must be an evil god. And what of it if I defile an evil god? I have a clear conscience!"
"Good and evil exist among people too. Does giving birth to an evil man make his mother evil as well?" the Three-Eyed Crow retorted.
"Uh…" Dany paused, then chose not to argue. Instead, she shifted the focus of the conversation."Whether your Old Gods are righteous or wicked, Varamyr the skinchanger committed heinous crimes—there's no denying it. Punishing him was an act of justice."
"How do you know the gods wouldn't have punished him? Without your intervention, he would've encountered another skinchanger in half a month. That person's direwolf would've killed the shadow wolf and set fate back on its original path."
In soul form, Dany sat proudly atop her white dragon, facing the weirwood calmly."I am destiny!" (Thanos-style)
Silence followed—a long, long silence.Just as Dany was preparing to leave, the Three-Eyed Crow sighed.
"You are distorting fate. The future has become uncertain because of you."
Dany snorted impatiently."I don't have time to chat with you. Either come out and fight me again so I can kill you properly, or get lost and never bother me again. Or—submit to me and follow me into the unknown but surely bright future."
"Sigh… where did it all go wrong? What caused such a drastic shift in fate? How will this Long Night end?"
The Three-Eyed Crow murmured to himself.For the first time, Dany heard vulnerability and confusion in his words.
She didn't pity her enemy, but she did want to understand a few things.
"The Others, the Cold God, the greenseers, and the Old Gods—what's their connection? The Others and the greenseers seem to share a common origin, and the Cold God is one of the Old Gods. Does that mean there's been a schism among the Old Gods?" she asked.
"I didn't expect you to uncover so much about the Others in just a few days at the Wall," the Three-Eyed Crow said, clearly astonished.
After a pause, he said slowly,"You're right. The Others and the greenseers are deeply connected. The very first Other was once a greenseer."
"What?"
Weren't the Others created by the Children of the Forest using magic on captured humans?
—That was the official explanation in Game of Thrones.
Now, Dany no longer blindly trusted the show's plot—too many things in reality diverged from the series. If she followed Game of Thrones too closely, she might walk straight into a trap.
But she had personally witnessed human babies being turned into white walkers, so at least on that point, the show hadn't lied.
"Daenerys, what is your current state? Why do I sense the aura of a greenseer in you?" the Three-Eyed Crow asked curiously.
"Learned from you," Dany boasted, bluffing."After I dealt with that big crow lingering in the white dragon's mind space yesterday evening, I obtained fragments of a greenseer meditation technique. When I studied it, inspiration surged, and the technique evolved."
"This…"The Three-Eyed Crow was even more stunned—and hesitant.If the Dragon Queen truly possessed the talent of a greenseer, should he consider letting her inherit his place?
(End of Chapter)
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