~ Maegor Stark POV ~
~ Nightfort, the Wall ~
The Nightfort was the first of the abandoned castles of the Night's Watch along the Wall, the only one whose steps up the side of the Wall were carved into the ice. It sits between Icemark to the west and Deep Lake to the east.
The Nightfort is remembered for horror stories of the north dating back thousands of years. It was here that the Night's King reigned before his name was wiped from the memory of man, and where the Rat Cook served an Andal king (Oswell I Arryn) his prince-and-bacon pie. It is where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint was raped and murdered, and where King Sherrit called down his curse on the Andals of old. The Nightfort is where apprentice boys faced the thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes saw hellhounds fight, and where Mad Axe walked the yards and climbed the towers to butcher his brothers in the dark.
The Nightfort's kitchens, a stone octagon with a broken dome, contain a huge central well which descends into the earth. A skinny weirwood has grown through the kitchens' slate floor. The well has stone steps which circle down to its depths, and the Black Gate at its bottom is said to be findable and accessible only by members of the Night's Watch.
Set deep in the wall of the well, the Black Gate is made of faintly-glowing white weirwood. The old face on the wood is pale, shrunken, and wrinkled with blind white eyes. When someone approaches the Black Gate, the blind eyes open and the face asks them to identify themselves. If a man of the Night's Watch repeats a part of his vow, the Black Gate will allow admittance. The door's lips open wider and wider still until nothing remains but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles.
Yet, when I stand before the gate, I'm not asked for anything. As I stood before the Black Gate, it's milk pale eyes stare at me for a moment before the mouth opens up. I first assume that I'm about to be asked, 'who are you?' No. No question is asked. Instead it's mouth continues to opens up until nothing is visible of the carved face except for the lips and wrinkles around the lips. The passage is a kaleidoscope of color, and not the dark passage leading to a underground river channel that I know about and that I expected.
'Nothing ventured, nothing gained.' I thought as I took a step through the doorway.
The next few moment a sight and feeling of dazzling arrays of colors and movements, as if I'd had traveled through the Bifrorst from the Marvel Thor movies. One moment at the Nightfort the next I find myself standing within the cavernous hollow of the great hearttree beyond the Wall. As I emerge from the roots of the great weirwood network, I feel my greenseers blood singing with joy, a song about freeing apart of myself that I wasn't aware of.
Weirwoods are considered sacred to the followers of the old gods, and children of the forest believe weirwoods are the gods. The greenseers of the children of the forest can see through the eyes of weirwoods with carved faces. Since trees have no sense of time, the greenseer can see into the past or present when looking through the eyes of a tree. Weirwoods are also used to bear witness to important ceremonies such as marriages and oaths, since followers believe that the old gods watch through the faces. It said that it is impossible to lie in the presence of a heart tree. Weirwoods once grew throughout Westeros, although they never took to the thinner soil of the Iron Islands. The children of the forest are said to have carved faces in weirwoods during the Dawn Age, before the coming of the First Men from across the narrow sea.
Yet, it seems like the weirwood network still had a surprising ability never spoken of, not even in any fan theory I've seen in forums on reddit. Not even in any of the greenseers of the Children of the Forest was this ability to move through the weirwood network physically ever displayed. The implications of this discovery ignited a thrill in me, my future plans becoming far easier for my future self. Especially if I can use this semi-Bifrost like mode of transportation without needing to rely on a magical nexus of the weirwood doorways.
But for now I'll just be glad that my body survived through the weirwoods Bifrorst travel and that I ended up traveling to a destination that I had planned to go to soon. The cavern that was to becomes the throne room for Bloodraven as the Three-Eyed Crow. Beyond that, the roots that make up the future Brynden Rivers weirwood throne, the route steeply descends to a great cavern opening on a black abyss, with a swift river six hundred feet below.
A vast, silent cave system extending far below and home to more than three score living singers, the children of the forest, and the bones of thousands dead. Its cramped and branching tunnels are full of weirwood roots. One echoing cavern is as large as the great hall of Winterfell and contains stalagmites and stalactites. Further on, the passage is littered with bones of birds and beasts, children of the forest, and giants. Skulls of various creatures are placed in stone niches in the walls. The cave has chambers full of bones, shafts that plunge deep into the earth, and a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hang upside down from the ceiling.
Murders of ravens live within the cave, who all at once turn upon my arrival and cry out. "Usurper! Usurper! Usurper!"
The children of the forest, or as they like to be called, "those who sing the song of earth," stand across the natural created weirwood root bridge over the six hundred feet abyss staring at me. A murmur begins amongst the Earthsingers gathering on the other side of the bridge. A murmuring that I ignored for the moment, it's time to aura farm this moment.
I turn my back to the ongoing bewilderment of the children of the forest and touch the roots of the heart tree with my right hand, the murmurs quietly abide as I raised my hand. Drawing on my reality-warping ability and my connection to the Old Gods I create a throne for myself. A sliver of shadow transfers into the roots and the cavern trembled as I stepped back a few paces and watched on as my aura count rose.
With an collective gasp and loud squawking coming from the Earthsinger and the ravens, the roots start to slither up and out of the earth like albino serpents moving through the earth. The visible outer roots move to congeals into the thicker central roots as it starts to take on a form. The central roots forming into the back of the throne reaching high above into the hill above, the outer roots and the raised earth forming a dias upon which the roots form into steps leading to a seat with armrests of white weirwood as if carved into place.
The whispers of the True Tounge only spoken by the Earthsingers gathering here and the murders of ravens they teach quiet down as the caverns trembling ceases. The weirwood throne settled into place as I took a step forward, my leather boots the only sound as I step upon the bone white weirwood steps.
Instead of of taking my seat, I turned to the inhabitants of the sacred last bastion of the Old Gods, the sanctuary home of the Children of the Forest and asked in their True Tounge. "Who would challenge my claim as the Three-Eyed Raven. As the Voice of the Old Gods of the Forest and Rivers. As the Song of Ice and Fire. As your Greenseer King."
For a moment silence, then from the ravens, "King. King. King." As they started flying around the cavern, some now perching themselves upon the roots around the throne. One brave young raven perched himself on the left armrest and was rewarded with a stroking of his dark plumage.
Amongst the Earthsingers, a small group of what seemed to be made up of their oldest members, judging by the faint wrinkles around the face and hands, step forward and cross the bridge towards the throne resting in the back of the cavern.
As they approached, I took in their appearances. They have nut-brown skin, dappled like a deer's with paler spots. Their hands have only three fingers and a thumb, with sharp black claws instead of nails. They have large pointed ears and they usually have large gold and green eyes slitted like those of a cat, allowing them to see in dark passages. The children are slight, quick, and graceful and all hunter's and gatherers. The Game of Thrones shows portrayal was close enough for the difference to not matter, yet I would compare them more to the Greek mythology of wood nymphs and faeries and not the greenish short alien women of the show. For one they've got a more than a few male Earthsingers in the gathering.
Coming out of my musings as the elder representative of the race reached the raised dias of my new throne. A female Earthsinger steps forward and briefly bows her head to me in greeting and asks me with trepidation in the True Tounge.
"Are you the 'Shadow that devours the old ones'? Are you the one our last greenseers spoke of before they all fell silent? Are you an enemy to our kind?"
~