Mid 272 Fall
I did not feel the usual relief when Bear Island ca into view, for each night as we drew closer to ho my dreams beca more and more intense and the subject matter was always the sa, an invader landing on my ho shore, slaying n and beasts, capturing won and children, subjecting them to brutal conditioning. Over and over.
I'd almost feared that I'd grown a conscience until my son told I had sothing green in my eye. A green that spread each night until both of my blue eyes turned an unnaturally deep green.
Magic fuckery abound.
Magic in a world of ice and fire is a curse. All of it fueled by fire, ice, blood, and sacrifice. The Valyrians and the Others reached the pinnacle of their respective magics and both are horrors of the worst kind hidden behind supernatural beauty (I hope I'm dealing with the wrinkled blue ballsack others and not the ice fey). I knew my sudden bout of magic wasn't so Harry Potter experience waiting to happen, even if it hadn't taken the form of nightly torture. If the Old Gods thought to break with these dreams they failed.
I spent little ti in port at Far Harbor, only getting my ship unloaded and reloaded with a full crew of warriors and supplies before sailing off again across the Bay of Ice. When I landed I took with only fifty of the most cruel and godless n. The night we needed to make camp on route to the nearest trio of face carve weirwoods was the worst night of my life as I felt all the pain of the people hard in my dreams.
Fatigue dragged into sleep and agony forced awake in a terrible cycle capable of reducing a man to a gibbering sack of flesh and madness. In waking my mind felt like I was thinking two lines of thought, one to fast to understand and the other to slow to react to the world around . It began taking longer and longer to focus my vision and more and more difficult to keep my balance.
In this state I looked within myself, within my heart, for a source of strength to keep driving on. I did not have to look hard, for I found a foundation of bedrock with which to hold up my efforts. The black hatred in my heart for magic and all its fuckery. For people like Blood Raven and Euron, lisandre and Jaqen H'ghar, dragons and children and others. Eldritch gods and oily black stone. It's all so fun to read about until your in the world itself getting chewed up by it.
I resolved myself that since sothing magical cursed , that I would not allow myself to leave this world without harming sothing magical in return. Even if I could not reach what ever sought my end, I had a map with magical trees marked on it and a felling axe with which to take so small vengeance.
When I finally saw the red leaves of the three weirwoods in the first location I marked on my map I leapt off my horse felling ax in hand, screaming like a wild animal as I charged across the snow at my enemy and hacked into the tree with the full power of my body.
The Children of the Forest believe that the weirwood trees are the gods, so it was a god's screams I heard as I cut that tree down. My axe should have dulled with that action, but when its blade stained in red sap struck the next of the three massive trees, it bit even deeper than when the blade was fresh and the screams were even louder.
When I toppled the last tree, the screaming finally ended and I sat atop a stump while my n went to work preparing them for transport. Gazing at my red stained axe in exhaustion, I slipped into sleep and dreamt of falling, falling onto a floor of spikes and below a thousand skulls littered the spiked earth. When a three eyed crow ca to tell to fly I snatched it out of the air and as its eyes bulged as I wrung its neck I gave it my answer.
"No." I told the crow as I twisted its head off and awakened from the dream.
I sighed as I opened my eyes and went to wipe the cold sweat from my face. On my sword hand a wine colored raven in flight stained my palm, and no amount of rubbing it on the snow washed away the mark.
"When it rains, it pours." I growled in anger.
Pushing thoughts of the mark down in my mind, I helped haul the final processed tree to the beach before we boarded The Thunderer and sailed to the next location. We traveled for weeks clearing out the weirwoods, in this wasteland of stumps left in the wake of my prior passing, and each night after I'd slain more of the Old Gods my dreams beca slightly less intense. Just one little step at a ti and soon enough I no longer felt the pain and desperation of those in my dreams.
We returned to Bear Island several tis to drop off loads of felled weirwoods, and despite the obvious chilling effect it had on the people, I persisted. On and on I went, rarely encountering anything living except the red leafed trees, until our final haul. As we took the felled weirwoods to the shore, a bear erged from behind a hill, so large I wondered how that hill could have possibly hidden it.
The giant white monstrosity roared and the horses reared in fear. I chose to leap off mine as it reared so far back that it fell. With Longclaw in hand I charged the beast which also reared up on its hind legs standing so impossibly tall. It raised its claws to swipe at , but like the bear itself I too am frighteningly quick for such a large specin and I ramd the blade into its titanic chest, twisting it and wrenching it to destroy the monstrous animal's vital insides.
A terrible pain exploded in my chest, and I beca disoriented. Both the bear and I collapsed, but Longclaw and its ironwood shaft bore the weight of the bear with the poml on the ground briefly while I crawled away so the creature didn't land atop .
I kept pawing at my chest wondering how I hadn't seen the claw strike happen and why my armor didn't stop it from rending open. My confusion increased as I felt no blood despite my life slipping away from .
After a few minutes I ca to and realized I hadn't been hurt at all.
"FUCK!" I shouted suddenly, startling the n who ca to check on .
They rallied, getting the horses back under control, and together we sailed ho that day with giant white logs and a giant white pelt. When I arrived that evening on the docks of Far Harbor, I made a trip to the heart tree of Bear Island, a weirwood with a snarling face not far from Mormont Keep. My whole life I ignored this place outside of the few tis my father commanded to be here. I never gave a damn what kind of calming effect the location may have, I will never worship a tree, a fire, or any of the other Chtuluu gods of this world.
For the first ti in many years I stood in front of the heart tree, and I did so with my red stained felling axe in hand. I was so focused on the tree I hardly noticed the people crowding around who gasped and scread when I rubbed the edge of my axe up and down the white trunk of the tree.
"Do you feel like a god now?" I asked the tree and left.
That night, for the first ti in a month, I slept in peace.
By the ti I awoke the next afternoon, any spies on the island would have a shockingly accurate tiline of my magic induced psychotic tree murdering rampage , from my sons accounts of my first nightmares on the ship and the changing of my eyes, to my wife's announcent that I slept soundly, the people of Bear Island sohow put the whole story together start to finish without wild speculation and embellishnt.
While a part of hoped Varys would find it all very amusing, I had yet to find a single tongue mutilated child on my island. It felt rather insulting, after all I'm the second most powerful man in the North, yet I am beneath the interest of the man with the largest spy network currently known. He obviously could use other sources like the infrequent rchants that visit the island, but I feel I deserve the primo treatnt, not rumors collected by traveling traders. The indignity of it, to be beneath the contempt of a man with no genitals.
Regardless I picked up the title 'Godsbane' for overcoming the curse of the Old Gods by bullying them into submission. Sohow, my reputation ca out ahead in this situation that at I assud would destroy when it started. Apparently the idea of a man being cursed and overcoming it with just his felling axe and manly will is inspiring. The Old Gods are god of nature, and nature is a terrible thing out to kill everything it can. A man overcoming the gods, overcoming nature, that's the kind of story people want to tell themselves.
The old adage rang true once more. If violence isn't solving all your problems, you just aren't using enough of it.
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There is so much going on in this Chapter.
Jorah gets cursed by the Old Gods with Green Sight who torture him with dreams of all the people he has hurt and destroyed.
Jorah choses violence.
The Old Gods rember that they are trees and Jorah is a pissed off lumber jack.
Jorah's axe drinks the blood of the Old Gods, and the nascent magic forced into Jorah, and the struggle of man vs gods births an occult weapon, The Godsbane Axe. 10 against gods and their devout followers.
The Old Gods send their puppet the Three Eyed Crow to seduce Jorah into becoming a tree man puppet.
Jorah choses violence.
Blood Raven passes his skin changing powers to Jorah.
Jorah encounters a bear
Jorah choses violence.
Choosing violence was a mistake as Jorah's untrained skin changing magic tries to bond with the bear while he kills it.
Jorah goes ho and bullies a tree.
Tree choses to shelter Jorah so it doesn't get axed.
I could have drawn all this out for drama, but chose not too.
JManM chose violence.
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