Chapter 16: Kingswood Vacation

After I brought back Varys’ body as proof of his death, I took care of Tommen and Myrcella that night. It was a cruel thing to do to a child who’s only sin was having the wrong father, but civil war would have been crueler. Tommen was sent off to the Citadel under guard, while Myrcella went to the Faith, both in tears, their worlds shattered.

I couldn’t stand to watch.

The next two weeks passed with me taut with stress as I waited for Joffrey to arrive. Security was extremely high as groups of Baratheon and Stark guards explored through the tunnels and masons were brought in to seal them up. There was the fear that Varys had passed on his knowledge to the other conspirators and that a band of assassins or infiltrators could enter from below.

Finally Joffrey arrived, swearing and fighting his fate. Another application of Red mana and he was sterile, a bit of Green to make sure it healed in a way to be permanent. And then he was off for the Wall.

A week after that Cersei arrived and was executed, and I finally breathed easier.

Robert had two strong brothers, and Stannis a child of his own. There was no possibility that a civil war would break out on his death, and so less incentive to kill him. Varys, likely the leader of the Westeros side of the Targaryen conspiracy, was also dead. If someone were to just bring in Baelish’s head I would be perfectly content.

Robert wanted to make me the new Master of Whisperers, which I adamantly refused. Fuck that. I didn’t want an unending, thankless job, and I sure as shit didn’t want to become the Seven Kingdoms’ Spymaster. That just sounded miserable.

No, I needed to get away for a bit. So I absconded with a young raven from the Rookery, and fucked off to the Kingswood for a proper break. It was time to work on my magic.

I named my new raven Nevermore because I was a massive nerd and found it funny. I had decided that I wanted an aerial scout, messenger and spy, and Nevermore was going to be it – after I modified him, of course. At first I was going to go for a bird of prey, the kill-iest I could find, because what red-blooded man-child doesn’t want to have a massive golden eagle or gyrfalcon swoop down on his enemies?

But then I thought about practicality, about how if I ended up in another world and got to bring my pets with me that I probably should have a peregrine falcon. Golden Eagles were for emperors, after all, and gyrfalcons for kings, whereas peregrines could be for anyone from a knight to a duke.

But practicality is like quicksand; after you get stuck in it, you can’t get out. I quickly realized that people might put together the peregrine I had as a pet, and the bird spying on them from the trees. So I settled on a raven. Of course, it was a Citadel raven, which meant it had been part of a centuries long breeding program for intelligence, loyalty, sense of direction, and flight speed. But it was still a pretty common looking black bird that you could find in just about every environment on earth.

Before I boosted Nevermore, I needed to get into the right frame of mind. I settled into the Kingswood, meditated for a day while bonding a couple Green mana, and then I was ready.

I was trying something new with Nevermore. I had had a decent idea of how to boost myself, worked out over several months, and then applied similar principles to Togo. In other words, slow, careful, controlled and purposeful improvements. For Nevermore, I was going to go with more power, a bit of intent, and some prayer to lady luck. Hopefully he’d have some beneficial magical mutations which I could then reverse-engineer and apply to myself and my other furry friends.

First, I gave Nevermore as much strengthening as I could without making him unusually large. He was a very glossy, powerful example of a raven when I was done, and his frame hid magically powered muscles that should have made him stronger than pretty much anything within his weight class and faster than anything relying on natural biology to fly.

As a side note, I really wanted to get my hands on a live dragon. No way were those things natural flyers, and I wanted that magic. The bones and scales I’d collected were impressive and useful, but I wanted to fly like a real wizard, under my own power, unlike that eagle-riding has-been Gandalf.

After that, I tried out a new enchantment I thought should work, called the Projectile Shield. I wasn’t willing to test it on Togo, of course, but I wasn’t attached enough yet to Nevermore. If it failed, there could always be a Nevermore II, III, IV, and so on, after all.

This enchantment was an improved and permanent shield, much like the Arrow-Ward in effect. Unlike the Arrow-Ward though, it was permanent. Though it could be overwhelmed, it would siphon from ambient energies and the user’s excess energy to recharge over time. I got the inspiration for that part from the wildfire.

I couldn’t quite manage to fully optimize it yet, but in the future I wanted the shield to be able to share energy with other nearby Projectile Shields. Really, I just liked the image of a group of my enchanted animals charging through a concentrated hail of arrows or bullets to rip apart the enemy.

The Projectile Shield was also a move towards a more finely defined conceptual application of the White ideal protection. The earlier Arrow-Ward was a clunky thing of White to protect, directed by Blue to detect incoming energies, and Red to push them away. It worked almost entirely on my physical understanding of the world, and though it used magical energies to do so, was really no different from a modern counter-rocket system you might find. It had that same sort of detect-analyze-react procedure.

The new Projectile Shield in contrast didn’t use the Blue and Red parts. Instead, it was more of a imposition of the concept of being defended from incoming projectiles. I’d decided to focus on projectiles because by doing so I could push the outer boundary of the shield further from the body. That was good in case I ran into explosives in the future, but even dealing with arrows, stones, bullets or other simpler threats it allowed for a longer time to decelerate the projectile and bleed off the kinetic energy. That made it more than twice as efficient against projectiles compared to a tighter body-hugging shield, and I figured that with my growing strength and speed I had less and less to fear from someone in close quarters.

I wove the structure of the enchantment, and began tying it to Nevermore’s essence. It was easily the most complicated enchantment I had to date, mostly because all my previous ones were more in line with enhancing things that were already there or working within the crudest form of that color of Mana. But eventually I managed it, and Nevermore was arrowproof.

Well, at least for one arrow, even if it was a ballista bolt or something, though a heavy trebuchet rock or cannon shell might break through. After that, depending on how much it strained the spell, the shield could go down. For normal arrows, it would take three to five at the same time to totally take down the shield, or half a dozen within about five to ten seconds. I wasn’t able to test it that easily, and the spell was designed to work on living creatures so it was somewhat cruel to experiment with.

I realized after putting the first Projectile Shield on Nevermore that I could, at least in theory, add a second, even a third. Unfortunately, that took more skill than I could manage for such a small creature. I decided to leave Nevermore for a day or two in case there was an adverse reaction, and continue to ride east towards the Wendwater River, bonding another three Green Mana as I went.

Once I felt confident Nevermore wasn’t going to spontaneously explode or catch cancer or something, I applied the same Projectile shield to Togo and Aethon. Being much larger, and with my growing familiarity with the spell, I managed to stack it onto them three times each. Basically, as one shield went down, the next would cycle in making it much, much harder to take my precious pets down with ranged weapons. I even managed to get it on myself twice.

Next I wanted to see if I could induce beneficial magical mutations or adaptations.

I started pushing Blue into Nevermore, filling him up with it. I was trying to meditate on the concept of air, of flight, while I did so. I wanted something that would at least allow him to fly further, faster, longer. Optimally, it would give him some controlled air magic, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

Eventually, as I somewhat predicted, he developed something, even if it wasn’t the full-blown air magic that I’d hoped for. By careful observation, Nevermore always seemed to have favorable winds. Whether an updraft when climbing or a tailwind when flying, it was just that little bit of assistance, but it made a big difference in speed and aerial agility.

It wasn’t amazing, but I applied it to Togo, Aethon and myself as well. It helped our ground speed a bit, and if nothing else when we were hot a nice breeze would blow.

With the Blue evolution completed, I added in the final enchantments. These were linked, allowing me to see out of Nevermore’s eyes, and for him to hear my voice. They were based on the sympathetic research I had been doing to try and kill all the Lannisters via the Kingslayer’s blood. That research hadn’t succeeded, but I did manage to figure out how to cast a link between two creatures which I was touching, in this case myself and Nevermore.

Then it was pretty easy to set that link to be specifically one way for visual or auditory information. I put in a weak White ward which could be deactivated to activate the sending/receiving aspect of the link. Nevermore got a Visual send only, and we both got audio send/receive. That way I could close my eyes and see what he saw, and I could speak and relay new orders to him while he was in the field. Similarly, if he was listening in on some conversation, he could relay it to me.

I also boosted his memory and intelligence. Ravens were actually already capable of speech, and that way he could remember conversations and relay them to me later. I gave him an everclean feathers enchantment, and loaded his mind with a bit of extra White so he’d be calm and patient when flying and spying.

With Nevermore to fly backup, I wouldn’t walk into another ambush like the Mountain’s again.

Since I managed to achieve the main pet upgrade of the trip, I had a bit of spare time to gather more Mana and practice some other spells.

I had been avoiding evocation, or combat magic, for a few reasons. First, I was originally pretty weak. I didn’t want to be burned as a witch. Second, they were flashy as fuck, and I was avoiding being a really obvious, scary mage. I much preferred being seen as a fairly obvious, scary warg-knight loyal to the Starks. I fit in to Westeros’ understandings of magic that way. Third, I used to have only the smallest reserves of Red which introduced a limit to my ability to cast proper battle magics.

But I was no longer so weak, and I had three times more Red mana than I did just after I arrived at the Red Keep. It was enough to be a pretty respectable battlemage. And while I didn’t want to be too scary, I was soon approaching the point where I would be needlessly hampering myself not to develop truly effective combat magic. My best spell before entering the Kingswood in that regard was a variable strength wildfire bolt, and I learned that almost by accident.

I’d done some reading on myths and legends. Westeros had, apparently a long time in the past, been under assault by zombies and their ice-demon overlords in the North. Those dudes hadn’t been active in millennia, but I figured that extra-magically-destructive fire was just the thing to fuck them up if they decided to make trouble.

On the other hand, dragons had been around as recently as a few centuries ago. I figured the odds were higher of my getting into a fight with one of them. Mostly because I intended to track down a dragon and get every single bit of magical knowledge out of its body I could. Then I wanted to get a dragon for a pet. Aethon was awesome, but Smaug was going to be even better.

Unfortunately, wildfire was known to be ineffective against dragons. It didn’t always even work against the dragon-riders, since apparently some of those Targaryens were naturally fire-proof. I should probably add tracking down Valyrians and seeing if I could find a fire-proof one to my projects, come to think of it.

And no, not by setting them on fire and seeing if they lived. I’d have to develop good enough scanning magics to be able to detect the active or inactive magic in their body, blood, or whatever else it was attached to.

Anyways, I decided that I wanted a different combat spell option than just killing it with (wild) fire. Not that that was bad, I was as fire-loving as the next mage, but I felt it lacked a certain breadth.

Also, I just couldn’t call myself a proper battlemage until I could cast chain-lightning. So obviously, I had to develop that.

First I figured out a basic Lightning bolt spell. It was a very fast spell, and it automatically hit the target since I was effectively designating them as a ground and then using magic to make a conductive path between my finger (where the bolt started) and their face/chest (which then exploded). Better yet, it was efficient and scalable. It cost a full Red and two Colorless to cast, and I could add as much Colorless as I wanted. That was pretty expensive, but the damage was well worth it, capable of splitting fat oaks in half even at minimum charge.

Then I was playing about with having the starting point be somewhere other than my hand. This led me to develop what I jokingly termed Tribulation Lightning (because it came from the heavens on a clear day). Unlike the previous Lightning bolt spell, this one called a lightning bolt down from the sky to strike the target.

It was a little more subtle, and I figured I could easily use it on those perceived as wicked, liars, etc. to simulate heavenly wrath. It did need a bit more energy than a standard bolt though, consuming an extra Red mana per casting without all that much extra power for the added cost.

Then after a couple days of experimentation and wanting it really, really hard I figured out how to do Chain Lightning. While I could make it look like Sith Lightning, that was really far less effective than having the Lightning bolt fly out and pinball between different targets. It was as expensive as Tribulation Lightning, and easily the most effective targeted anti-personnel spell.

As opposed to a big wildfire fireball, which basically just burnt the fuck out of everything, I could even have the chain lightning avoid jumping to specific targets in an area, perfect if I ever ended up in a hostage situation. Well, I could do that about half the time if I concentrated hard; suffice to say, it was a proof of principle but needed more practice.

After a few days of playing with Lightning, doubtless scaring the shit out of the local wildlife and any poachers or bandits, I decided to get a move on and finish up my Mana collection. By the time I was back where I entered, I’d picked up a total of seven Green Mana, doubling my supply of that resource, and three Blue mana, two from the Wendwater and the last from where it fed into Blackwater bay.

I still had a couple days left before I had told Ned to expect me back, so I settled in to meditate a bit. I was going to try something pretty risky, first on Nevermore, then on the rest of us if it worked. I’d taken a bit of dragon bone from the wings and skull of one of the skeletons hidden away inside the Red Keep. The magic of it was dead, mostly, but I could sort of sense what it used to be, and even without magic the bones were a miracle of biological materials.

Obviously, I wanted to use the bones to replace our own. Dragon bones were a lot stronger, and I suspected that they’d allow for greater saturation and conductivity of magic within the body. If I could make my bones effectively indestructible while making them lighter it would be an advantage, making me tougher and faster at the same time.

First I tried the most basic way of doing it that I could think of. I took a bunch of Green and suffused it into both Nevermore and the bone. The bone needed a bit of Red, probably because dragons connected to destructiveness, freedom (for the dragon) and fire, so I added some Red to the Green. Then I basically thought really hard at the Green that if Nevermore’s bones were like that it would be a better animal; faster, stronger, swifter, more attractive to mates.

To my surprise, it actually worked. When I scanned Nevermore’s bones, they were distinctly Draconic.

Then I started to think. If that worked for regular dragon bones, what would happen if I improved them first? Made them stronger, better, with Green and Red. Gave them better arcane properties with Blue. Infused them with White, adding to the bone structure’s order so that they are stronger and can resist even conceptual damage, reinforce the dragon’s conceptual protection against magic so that a small amount of that carries over to the person using the bones.

I decided to try it out; I had a couple pieces of bone anyways, so if I accidentally destroyed one it was fine.

Nevermore’s transformation from dragon bone to improved dragon bone, or dragon bone mk. II, took a lot more energy than the original, as I had to supply the extra White, Blue, Red and Green, but it worked.

Of course Togo, Aethon and myself were a different story. The transformation was magically expensive, so I had to go slow, meditating for hours while I balanced out the transformation with my mana supply. Luckily, despite my utter failure to repeat my dimensional transportation while meditating, I had kept up my practice in the art of sitting still and focusing, and was able to manage it.

With my bones upgraded I went in for a whole new series of improvements in my body cultivation. My bones had previously been a limiting factor in my strength, the Green taking to the muscles and tendons more efficiently than the supporting skeletal structure. I also had a lot more mana available, and better control of it, so when I infused myself with those energies it was far more effective than before.

In the process, I naturally upgraded the oakflesh enchantment. Using a familiar fantasy naming convention, I wanted to call the new version “ironwoodflesh,” but that sounded fucking awkward, so I decided to call it “oakflesh II” until it was good enough to qualify as stoneflesh.

I massively strengthened my body, gaining at least twice the bonus from the permanent magical effects than I had had before. Previously, I might have been able to match the Mountain in a contest of physical strength; now, I could easily best him. The excess of Green further developed my muscles, pushing my baseline closer to the limit of what I could achieve. There was still room to improve, but I was at least on the level of a top physical athlete.

The bones also served as a good conductor for Red, which meant that I was not just reacting faster, but able to move faster in general. It was almost like a freedom from the restrictions of physics that limited my motion, a kind of conceptual speed and freedom of movement, rather than the simple improved physical performance that Green could achieve. Likewise, with more Blue mana available, I could push my inherent precognition further, had a finer sense for mana, and gained even faster, clearer thoughts.

The effects of the White also improved. I gone from a mild, to moderate, to significant store of healing energy, ready to recover wounds automatically. The skin-tight conceptual defense had improved with my finer understanding of the concepts of White’s protection as well, providing a back-stop of resistance for anything that managed to penetrate the Projectile Shield.

Even my Black’s aggressive protection against foreign toxins and diseases seemed to be operating slightly more efficiently.

I passed similar upgrades on to Togo, Aethon and Nevermore. Then, with my time up, I decided to return to stinky, smelly, civilization.

Another thing to add to the list. Have Robert spend extra income on a proper sewage system.

I hadn’t managed to get everything I wanted to done. The last item on the agenda was to try and figure out how to generate and implant graphene or carbon nanotube subdermal body armor. I had high hopes for it, and believed that the absolutely ordered structure would make it easily reinforced by White. Still, I didn’t have time for it, so I was forced to leave it be until later.

Honestly, I was pretty happy with the progress I had made.

Then I got back to King’s Landing and found out Robert had been poisoned. Again.