Chapter 9: The Lucky White Walker Slayer
The ice sword struck the human, but it did not produce the expected smooth sensation of slicing through flesh. Instead, with a crisp "ping!" of shattering glass, it disintegrated into a cloud of fragments. Simultaneously, a surge of warmth blossomed beneath the White Walker's chest; a small, glowing object had bypassed the protection of its ice armor, entering through the lower abdomen and stubbornly forcing its way into entrails that served no actual biological purpose. In the next heartbeat, the object became searingly hot, as if cauterizing its very soul!
How could this be?
As a weapon maintained by magic, how could its blade simply shatter? Even clashing against the finest steel in the world, it shouldn't have suffered a single crack or nick. As for the object piercing its body—as a being born in the Land of Always Winter with surging magic coursing through its veins—it shouldn't have felt a shred of pain even if doused in boiling lava. Unless...
As the magic sustaining its existence was disrupted and dissolved, the White Walker lost the ability to think. It dropped the useless hilt of the ice sword and clutched its abdomen in a futile attempt to hold the leaking magic in place. Pale blue blood sprayed from the wound, hissing and steaming around the dagger. It reached out two bone-white hands to pull the blade out, but the moment its fingers touched the obsidian, they began to smoke and dissolve. Finally, unable to deal with the foreign object in its body, it let out a final, unwilling shriek and fell powerlessly to its knees, moving no more.
Egger slumped in the snow, staring blankly as the kneeling form of the White Walker rapidly shrank. First to shatter and fall away was the translucent armor of unknown material; then, the exposed pale flesh turned blurred and viscous like a festering wound, melting and dripping away like a snowman under the sun. within tens of seconds, only a skeleton of milky-white glass remained, translucent and exquisite as a jade carving, shimmering with a clear light... Yet even this final evidence of its existence began to thaw. In the end, only the dragonglass dagger remained. Amidst the swirling vapor, the weapon seemed to undergo a magical transformation; moisture from the air condensed into layers of frost upon its now-freezing surface. The once-dark weapon soon turned snow-white, blending perfectly into the drifts—it would have been impossible to find without a careful look.
It wasn't until half a minute later that Egger realized with shock: he wasn't dead.
The hand that had held the sword was numb and throbbing, the webbing between his thumb and forefinger torn and seeping blood. The enemy's strength had been so terrifying that even if the steel hadn't snapped, he never could have held onto the blade after the impact. He used his other hand to feel his shoulder where the White Walker had struck. The outer fur cloak had a gash in it, but the clothes beneath were intact—there was no horrific wound or gushing blood. He puzzled over it for a moment before a wave of intense relief flooded his chest.
His survival was pure, unadulterated luck.
A moment ago, during that life-and-death clash, he had fully intended to go down with the enemy. By all accounts, his obsidian dagger and the White Walker's ice sword should have struck simultaneously. Given the creature's strength—enough to hurl a blade through a tree—his entire upper body should have been cleaved in two. But he won. He won because his dagger struck a tenth of a second—perhaps a hundredth of a second—sooner.
The result of that razor-thin lead was this: the moment the ice sword grazed his cloak, it turned into a mundane object—a literal sword made of ice. Consequently, the moment it struck him and met resistance, it shattered like a common icicle into a pile of frozen shards.
If he had been half a beat slower, he would be slowly waiting for death in a pool of blood right now; if the White Walker had known he held obsidian and fought with caution, he likely would have been hacked to pieces... But there are no "ifs" for what has already passed. He won through a series of coincidences and the arrogance of his opponent.
The terror of his near-death experience arrived late. A wave of trembling surged through him, making him feel as though he might lose control of his bladder; had he not emptied it earlier, he suspected he would have wet himself. His legs twitched with weakness, and for a moment, he couldn't even scramble to his feet.
Nearby, the fallen Gared let out a short, moan-like sound. Egger flinched in surprise, then scrambled on all fours to retrieve the frost-covered obsidian dagger and the hilt of his broken sword. Against a wight without magic, this should be enough, right?
"Gared," he spoke tentatively. He had wanted to ask if the man was dead, but realized how stupid that sounded just before the words left his mouth. Instead, he asked: "Are you still alive?"
The fallen man let out another string of moans. Though the words were unintelligible, it was clearly a short, rhythmic sentence. Egger exhaled sharply and sat back down in the snow.
With the threat to his life gone, his ability to think returned. He remembered: in the original story, after Jon Snow killed a White Walker, all the wights turned by that specific creature instantly collapsed into piles of rotting bone. Since this White Walker was dead, the people it killed could no longer become wights.
Looking around, another sight confirmed his theory: the wight horse the creature had been riding had also collapsed, reverting to a simple dead horse. Looking back, this change likely happened at the exact moment the ice sword lost its magical enhancement—the moment the obsidian pierced the White Walker. He had simply been in such a desperate, hyper-focused state that he hadn't noticed immediately.
With a great effort, he stood up again. Intuition told him there wouldn't be a second White Walker nearby, but logic told him intuition was unreliable. He decided to leave as quickly as possible. Holding the broken sword in one hand and the dagger in the other, Egger cautiously approached Gared.
The veteran was pale, his lips purple with cold, but there was still a spark in his eyes. He was clearly alive.
"Cold..."
Egger looked around. His own horse had bolted, but fortunately, Gared had unloaded all their gear when he prepared to slaughter the animal earlier. The blankets and clothing were still there. He quickly laid out a makeshift bed to keep his teammate warm.
Fortunately, upon checking the wound, Egger found that because the ice sword was exceptionally sharp and his timely intervention had prevented a finishing blow, Gared's chest injury wasn't fatal. The entry wound was small and far enough from the heart that it hadn't caused irreversible hemorrhaging. Even more strangely, the blood on the surface of the wound had already frozen into a solid mass, and the surrounding skin showed clear signs of frostbite...
While the low temperature from the ice magic on the weapon had temporarily saved Gared from bleeding out, it would severely hinder his healing later. He needed proper medical treatment as soon as possible.
Egger looked up at the grey-blue silhouette of the Wall visible in the distance. He knew that this time, desertion was likely off the table.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MistaQuartz
On Patreon, you can explore Extra Chapters in advance!