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123 AC, Frostfangs, Beyond the Wall
As if to prove her point, Cregan's ancestral weapon glowed in Harry's hand, which created a shockwave that seemed to stall the titanic figure sliding at him, a shockwave that he distinctly did not feel in any way.
It had been some time since Harry Potter felt genuinely angry. He found that he did not miss the feeling at all. Rage had never been something that drove him, or emotions in general. He had been a bit of an idiot in his younger years, at least emotionally speaking, but thankfully, time with Daphne helped him develop what little social skills he had, though he rarely bothered using them.
Nevertheless, he could not deny feeling his rage bubbling away as he heard the screaming souls in every creature he fought in the Frostfangs. He could not put into words just how horrific it was, understanding the agony that every soul felt in silence, slowly withering away in pain. There were a few times when Harry regretted his Arcane Hearing, his inherent ability to interpret the world around him as songs, and this was one of them.
He was fine with necromancy, though he found the practice distasteful, but this kind of warping of souls was beyond wrong. Hell, in his old world, it would have backfired massively, likely similarly to a small magical nuke. Death did not like having souls being tampered with, not in a way that could affect their afterlife, which this definitely did.
Unfortunately, Death was not as powerful or strict as it should have been in this world, but it still wouldn't have stayed so idle as this kind of blatant sacrilege occurred. Something was very wrong, something more than just the effects of an old divine conflict or a Great Cataclysm, and he needed to figure it out.
Honestly, he had gone to the Far North on a whim more than anything. Sure, satiating his curiosity about something as infamous as the Others was an incentive to come, but it was mostly the fact that much of the imbalance in this world originated from it. This realm existed on a knife's edge, almost on the brink of collapse but not quite there yet. Dealing with the Others should give him enough breathing room to finally make some more progress for Daphne's ritual.
Now, though, he felt slightly responsible for destroying the Others. That kind of blatant violation of some of the fundamental rules of Death irked him, and he would set things right and make sure that these poor souls could move on.
Which brought him face to face with some kind of Eldritch Worm barrelling towards him, creating a wave of snow at either side as it approached. The creature wasn't quite an Outsider, not like in Valyria, though the differences were trivial at best. Don't get him wrong, the creature seemed to emanate the void, and with it, the unreality that it represented. However, it was tightly leashed in a way that no creature of the void would have allowed itself to be; they would have felt so stifled that they instinctively would have broken through their bindings to spread themselves. Perhaps it was a weapon that the Others had created with their obvious connection to the Outsiders, or perhaps it was a protector of the Heart of Winter, one that would unravel any possible trespasser.
Then again, Outsider or not, its properties were similar enough that it didn't matter, as it was a pretty grave blunder on the Others' behalf to send the creature against him. Risks of unravelling the realms with its sheer presence aside, its existence messed with the rules inherent in the realm. No matter how intertwined with the Outsider it might be, the Lands of Always Winter were very material in origin, which meant that they had a degree of structure to them. One of the main rules set up in this realm was that no form of divination could peer within it. This was, of course, completely irrelevant for most people, as the chaos inherent in the creature would have made up for any possible counterattack.
Of course, Harry, arrogant as it might sound, was not a normal person. He navigated the very chaos of existence, which meant that the Others had unintentionally let him have a small peek into the possible timelines. It was barely more than a second, but it was more than enough time to get a feel for what came next and quickly come up with a plan that would set the board in his favour. He couldn't exactly see everything, as it was extremely foggy, but he had a few hunches that seemed to make things end smoothly, starting with Daphne taking Cregan and Leaf to a little side quest while he finished with his own.
Well, Harry had thrown them in a partial echo realm, but that was a technicality at best. Echo realms were a bit of a new discovery he made. He'd been playing around with the connection between mirror realms and reflection and found that they were just the first layer that echoed a perception of the real world, that other forms of reflections could create other echoes with some very interesting properties.
Anyway, magical jargon aside, he still needed to make sure that they would be able to do so. Even technically in another realm, Daphne and their companions weren't exactly out of harm's way. After all, the giant white worm thing was warping reality with its every move, and that effect wouldn't just translate to a single realm.
Deciding to be a little proactive, Harry used Ice, Cregan's weapon, to create a shockwave of structured magic, which was the antithesis of the creature itself, making it recoil. The weapon was surprisingly well-made, given how lacking magical artefacts appeared to be in this realm.
Sure, the strange material had helped a lot as it was able to absorb magic and spells in ways that genuinely impressed Harry, but the spell itself, crafted to be the very antithesis of the chaos inherent in the void, was impressive. This was also very telling of the Others' nature and what they had turned themselves into. The physical enhancement was also very impressive, especially when coupled with the few tricks that Harry had learned over the years.
After this mess was over, he'd probably ask Cregan for his dagger back as it was made of the same material. He hadn't gotten around to playing with it yet; Daphne had called dibs from the moment she saw the pair in the Citadel, with both daggers being a pair of something. They ended up giving one to Helaena, mostly because Fate seemed to urge him to do so. He agreed on a whim, even though his wife gave him a strange look, mostly out of a mixture of curiosity and the fact that Helaena having a dagger in Chroyane didn't seem like such a bad idea.
He didn't have the time to finish this train of thought as he noticed the eldritch worm's maw closing in on him. Somewhat irritated by the interruption to his inner thoughts, Harry jumped into the air and turned himself into his Animagus form, a raven, to rise up in the air and dodge the creature's maw, which had way too many teeth. The enhancement magic from the sword had surprisingly worked even in his raven form. Still, he turned back into a human in mid-air and conjured steel wings on his back, which allowed him to glide down on the giant worm's form. Normally, he would have been tempted to injure the creature, but he found a better purpose for it.
After all, a creature that warped the very fabric of reality with its presence would mask any form of space warping from the Others. However, to do that, he needed a proper distraction, and luckily, he had one in the form of the Ice Fortress's guardian before him.
Harry listened for the creature's magic with his Arcane Hearing, specifically the binding that kept it from unravelling reality with its very nature. His eyes widened as he analysed the spell.
It was absolutely one of the single most insane pieces of magic that he had ever seen, an ever-shifting enchantment that counteracted the creature's nature. That approach shouldn't have worked and was only something that a mad genius would ever think of. There was something binding the chaos, or perhaps it would have been more accurate to call it guiding it. It wasn't often that Harry saw magic that he couldn't figure out immediately, so he was curious.
Still, the nature of the magic presented another clear vulnerability, one that admittedly would have been very difficult to actually take advantage of. Unfortunately, for the Others, Harry had exactly the very thing needed to do so. With a vicious smile on his face, he took out his wedding ring, a humble golden band, which released a very intense pulse of Light at the spell, destabilising it and setting the creature's inherent nature free.
Immediately, the world started to warp impossibly, like a black hole was swallowing it bit by bit. As Harry had expected, something was obviously trying to rein it in and to stop the giant Worm from shattering the realm completely. In the chaos, Harry activated his invisibility cloak in mid-air and bent space near the spreading chaos, allowing him to glide through one of the openings of the so-called Heart of Winter and land inside.
Harry smirked as he put his wedding ring back on his finger. He had found it alongside its twin when he and Daphne explored an ancient Mesopotamian ruin. He had recognised the magic immediately. It would have been impossible for him not to, for it was Solomon's.
The rings were designed to mimic the Light's energy, specifically its tendency towards order, something that made travelling through the void between worlds and the chaos within much easier.
Harry fully believed that they were put there on purpose, probably as a way for the legendary mage to mess with him, even from beyond the grave. After all, they found them about a month after getting officially engaged. That man must have been very bored if he essentially gave Harry an engagement present thousands of years in advance. Even at his greatest expectations, he didn't think he would ever match Solomon's skill in divination, and if he was honest, he didn't wish to. That kind of knowledge of the future, that certainty, felt like it cheapened the prospect of life.
All in all, the rings were quite nice, but the magic never quite agreed with him. It might have been because of some lingering resentment over Dumbledore and anything that had to do with the man, but then again, Harry was never quite a creature of order. Nevertheless, it did its job well enough. Well, He and Daphne mostly used it as wedding rings, which would likely make any mage have an aneurysm.
Though, it did sometimes have its uses, as was shown by the giant worm-like creature slowly be enveloped with a sickly frost which was slowly overwhelming its inherent chaotic nature, with the energy of the very energy of this partial realm. Harry had to admit that it was an interesting approach to dealing with the creature, and it was definitely an effective one, too, given how quickly it was working. However, he could almost feel their influence over the rest of the realm shrink, as they contained it, until the worm inevitably shattered into minuscule shards of ice, which scattered away into the wind.
Still invisible, Harry used the opportunity to properly make his way into the so-called Heart of Winter. The first thing that he could see was that the entire structure felt… strange. Curious, Harry closed his eyes and focused on the very walls, only for his eyes to widen.
It was… "Genius. This is, without a doubt, a work of genius. The combination of structured and chaotic magic is beyond impressive. I've never seen anything like it."
And he wasn't exaggerating.
They had used the very nature of the Outsiders, their ever-shifting existence, to create a never-ending flux state that they used to create every single piece of ice in this structure, a truly impenetrable war, or fortress. The Outsiders' energy was corrosive and liked to mutate anything it could, physical or metaphysical alike, just as it had Valyria, and yet they had seemingly tamed it.
He normally wouldn't have thought it possible. The only theory he had was that they something powerful, unbending, that would be able to contain it. He could almost feel that he was close, that the answer was at the tip of his tongue, but it still evaded him.
He would figure it out eventually. He always did.
Still, Harry had known that the Others were somehow connected to the Outsiders, but this was beyond his wildest expectations. It was only Harry's familiarity with sensing the Outsiders' energy, or perhaps the void they left behind, that allowed him to really get as much information as he could. He doubted that he would have managed to learn anywhere near as much as he did about the Others in his younger years.
However, instead of spending more time trying to unravel that little mystery, Harry chose to look for any sign of high concentration of energy or dimensional breach. After all, a realm actively trying to overwhelm another needed a lot of energy to be maintained for so long. It was hard to sense anything, given the eldritch nature of the walls of ice around him, and he instinctively started to walk around the corridor he had landed in.
And after just taking a single step, he noticed the inherent space warping that the corridor was imbued with. It seemed to be completely dynamic to his senses, and not quite arbitrarily. If he had to guess, it was some sort of event that allowed the Others to move into the structure very efficiently. He tried to do something similar in their home, but Daphne said that it made her dizzy and vetoed the idea, which was a shame since it would have been very neat.
Still, this level of implemented non-Euclidean geometry was very surprising to see in this realm. Having spent years mastering this level of spatial manipulation, Harry tried to perceive how they managed to pull it off, only to freeze as he realised that the bastards actually used the void itself to do it. Seriously, he would have applauded the ingenuity if it weren't for how insane this was. It was like using Fiendfyre to light a campfire. Sure, it did the job, but the risk definitely wasn't worth it.
It was also likely a form of security measure to stop anyone from navigating into the fortress. Unlucky for them, he was pretty experienced with Spatial Manipulation. He quickly managed to feel a nexus of energy nearby and discreetly activated the path there. With a single step, he found himself in a large room, which he immediately knew was his destination.
Harry Potter entered it without ceremony, and the temperature dropped so sharply from the sheer intensity of the ice magic that he was experiencing. Absolute zero, that would be the best description he had of the effect, and given the elemental origin of the Others, also quite fitting. He instinctively used his cloak to shield himself from the effect and turned to take a better look at the chamber.
It was vast, circular, and hollowed from ice so dense it resembled polished crystal. Inside the walls, in a way that eerily reminded Harry of the structure in the Frostfangs, were dozens of figures, perhaps even hundreds, given how high the chamber stretched out. Each of their bodies was half-submerged in the ice, faces locked in stillness, their eyes empty. Threads of pale blue light extended from their chests to the centre of the room.
As he walked closer to one of them, he froze as he recognised their features, for they were very similar to those of the Corpse Queen. It wasn't a comparison that he made lightly, for it was female, not quite as crystal-like as the Other he had met in the Frostfangs. What made him sure, however, was the distinct presence of inherent Ice Magic, but also not a single drop of any foreign energy, like that of the void.
Harry's gaze turned towards the rest of the figures and found them all the same. They were all female White Walkers, but not quite Others. But most worryingly, the motes of light were small fragments of their life force that they were feeding into the floor. He knelt down and touched it with his palm, and found a pulse, much like a heartbeat, slowly pumping something deeper into the structure.
The sorcerer found himself muttering to himself, "They needed the life force, one that isn't corrupted by any sort of Outsider influence, to power the ritual. For a long-lived species like this, they could do it easily for thousands of years, and the sheer scale of it would be insane. Life force pooled together like this would be dense enough to… create… a realm. Oh… A Heart of Winter indeed."
That wasn't quite accurate. While the life force would not have been enough to maintain a proper realm, it was more than enough to make an extremely small one, a manifestation of their goals and dreams, like a home that they lost, brought into being. It was much like how gods were born, but on a much smaller scale, but if one were to introduce a powerful source to enhance the effect, to fan the spark into a true flame, something with the same reality warping properties as an Outsider, well, that would explain how the realm North of the Wall was formed.
Which meant that the women were the fuel, the anchor, and the stabiliser all at once. A closed system of life, memory, and will bled slowly into the foundations of an artificial world. Harry straightened and let out a slow breath. The more he spent time North of the Wall, the less he found himself liking it, despite the new magic that he was experiencing.
He couldn't help but wonder why it was only women being drained? It didn't make sense. Was it some kind of conceptual ideology of 'birthing' a realm into being? The whole affair was honestly horrific. This had likely started during the first Long Night, and these women were slowly withering away, powering a realm whose expansion was being held back by the Wall.
Alarming as the scene before him was, his priority was finding the thing that empowered this ritual, likely some kind of dimensional breach that made all of this possible. Luckily, he could use the ritual to track down its location in the fortress. He activated the non-Euclidean passageway to let himself through, having finally found what he was looking for.
And yet, the moment he witnessed the scene before him, he couldn't help but freeze in shock. The room he found himself in looked quite similar to the ritual chamber he had been in, only with a single great difference.
Half-buried in the ice, as if frozen mid-emergence, was a colossal black hand which flickered in and out of reality. Its fingers were long and jointed in ways that had no business existing in a material world, each one coated in a viscous, ink-like substance that bled slowly into the ice, as if staining it black.
Dozens of trees made of ice impaled the hand, seemingly absorbing the liquid. At a closer look, Harry froze as he realised that inside the trees were veins of Black Stone. He immediately recognised the feeling their presence held, and they were shaped intricately into the very core of every tree, with some of the energy even reaching beyond.
However, it was the weapon that the hand was holding that stopped him cold.
It was a dagger, an enormous one given its proportions, but it was distinctly shaped like one. Inside it was a fragment of the void, a living rift, given form. Its presence alone should have swallowed half of this realm whole if it were not for what seemingly contained it, a twisting of black and crimson energies, something that was achingly familiar.
Suddenly, the piece of the puzzle finally clicked. After all, what could have possibly been powerful enough, unbending enough, to stop something like the void from destroying this entire realm of existence? Staring at it, the answer that he should have seen coming since he entered this fortress, he couldn't help but mutter, "Death."
As if it were waiting for his realisation, the very ground around him shifted.
He could feel the fortress of ice slowly sink into the Lands of Always Winter, just as it had appeared, as though something beneath the fortress had decided it was time to pull everything back into place. Harry felt all non-Euclidean passages freeze instantly, as if they were locked doors.
From the walls around him, dozens of Others emerged, each one armed, fully formed, and clearly aware of him. They spread out across the chamber, forming an organised perimeter. They did not move, as if they were waiting for something.
In the meantime, it dawned upon Harry that the creatures were able to detect him despite wearing the invisibility cloak. Realisation dawned upon him as he looked at it and noticed that he was visible in the crimson light originating from the dagger. That made much more sense. After all, nothing could hide from Death, not even itself.
Finally, the Others seemed to have finished waiting as one of them moved ahead of the rest.
Physically, the Other looked quite like the rest, but Harry could feel the very world warp around it, immediately recognising him as the biggest threat in the chamber, and likely the King of the Others. It might also have been the crown of ice he was wearing, but he liked the first explanation more.
However, interestingly enough, there was a thin scar cut diagonally across its face and given the way that he saw the creature eye Cregan's sword for a fraction of a second, he had a clue as to what caused it. However, that did not seem to stop a smug grin from growing on the creature's face.
It didn't take long for the pieces of the puzzle to fit. There was the use of the giant eldritch worm, which had seemed like a mistake at first, though it should have been a hint. It was all a trap to bring him here, though if Harry had to guess, they didn't think that he would have been able to almost collapse their realm in their little attempts.
It was clever that he would admit to that, at the very least. He never could resist a mystery, and the Others were definitely that, though he was quickly gaining a clearer picture of them. The trap would have probably worked on a large majority of mages, even exceptional ones.
Unfortunately for them, Harry wasn't exactly a normal mage, though it had been a time since anyone managed to even get one over on him, even if he knew something that they didn't.
He idly rubbed his wedding ring as a smirk curled up at his lips, mirroring the creature's own, "Hello there, I'm Harry Potter. I believe it's time we had a conversation, don't you?"
This was going to be fun.
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AN: That chapter was a lot harder to write than I expected. I didn't realise how rusty I was when it came to writing Harry's POV even then, I don't know if it came out quite right. Now that I think about it, this is the first time I wrote the thought process of 'older Harry' while in action.
I wanted it to be like a thousand thoughts being in his head at once while he quickly analyses his surroundings and comes to various conclusions. A part of me thinks that I made him a bit too confident, but it's somewhat warranted given what he can do. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me, check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions on them, so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.