A/N: Axel finally gets so much needed answers.
-x-X-x-
"Awaken, Champion."
The first thing Axel Baratheon notices when he wakes up is that there's no pain. The second thing he notices is that he's not really 'awake' at all. Not unless he's dead and this is supposed to be his afterlife. All around him, he sees nothing but a white void. And when he looks down, he doesn't seem to have a body either, hence the lack of pain from his recent injury. Hm… maybe he is dead after all.
"You are not dead. You are rely unconscious."
Looking forward, Axel finds himself face to face with nothing in particular. Yet sohow, he intuitively knows exactly who and what he's speaking with. The Seven.
"Yes. We understand you have been hoping to have a conversation with us for so ti. We took this opportunity to reach out to you, knowing you had many questions for us. We hope to provide answers, where we are able."
Well they weren't wrong. He did have a lot of questions. But Axel has to admit, he can't focus on anything but the present. What just happened between him and that White Walker… it consus him.
"The Night King. He is the Great Other's Champion, as you are ours."
So they did claim him as their Champion. Given they'd helped him with Daenerys, Axel supposed it made sense. But back to this 'Night King'… what in the world was that scream? Why had it hurt so much?
"The Night King took advantage of an unknown weakness to both you and us. No doubt he did so at the behest of the Great Other. The sa physiology that allows you to fly also leaves you vulnerable to certain high pitched sounds. If we had known ahead of ti, we might have been able to protect you… as it was, we were only able to assist in a limited capacity."
The voice. The lody in the back of his head. They'd been with him then. He really was their Champion all along then, huh? All of this power… ca from them?
"No."
What? A jolt goes through Axel's non-being at the imdiate rebuke.
"Your power is your own, Champion. Your strength, your speed, your power. All of it cos naturally to you. We na you our Champion not because we had a hand in creating you or empowering you, but because you are the most powerful being to ever claim us as your gods. Before you ca along, we were powerless to interfere."
Axel would blink at that if he had eyes. They were… powerless? But they were the Seven Who Are One! They were literal divinity! How could they possibly be powerless?
"To understand that you must first understand the history of this world. Eight thousand years ago, the Long Night ca. Eternal Winter arrived from the frozen north. The Great Other sent his children along with ice and snow and terrible, dark magicks that allowed them to command and control all they slew. The Children of the Forest and the First n united in order to drive the Others back with fla and dragonglass."
He ntally twitches at that, filing away the ntion of both dragonglass and fla as weaknesses to the Others. Fire made sense, but dragonglass… he never would have guessed it.
"The Long Night ended with the Battle for the Dawn. The Great Other was defeated when his forces annihilated and he himself left without power. However, it did not co without a cost. The Children of the Forest were decimated. And the Gods of Westeros at the ti, those that you would call Old Gods, gave everything they had to shield their followers from the Great Other's Evil. In the end, a great working was raised in the form of your Wall, a monuntal fortification of ancient magicks… not just mortal magicks, but divine as well."
The Old Gods… were the Seven saying what Axel thought they were saying?
"Yes. The Old Gods have not truly existed in a divine sense for the past eight thousand years. Only fragnts of their power and will remain behind in their heart trees. There is no mind behind them though. No divine intelligence remains to direct those slivers of ancient intent."
Huh. So that explained why the Old Gods hadn't made a play on his life like the Drowned God or the Lord of Light, Axel supposed. They quite literally couldn't because they weren't really around anymore. Oof, Sansa and her family weren't going to like hearing that. Maybe he just wouldn't tell them…?
"In the end, when the Wall was finished, it drained the magic from the lands to its south. The construction sucked up all the power that it could, including divine power. This left the continent you know as Westeros as the equivalent of a desolate wasteland to entities such as us."
Wait, really? That causes Axel to do another ntal blink. He didn't think of Westeros as anywhere near 'a desolate wasteland'. It was a beautiful place of many different and diverse environnts, was it not? But then, the Seven were likening it to a desolate wasteland only for the divine. So then… why had they ever ca here in the first place.
"Why indeed. Our exodus here was not by choice. Six thousand years ago, two thousand years after the Battle for the Dawn, we suffered a major defeat at the hands of our enemies across what you refer to as the Narrow Sea. As a consequence, we were stripped of much of our power and forced into the divine wasteland that Westeros had beco. This was considered a death sentence by our triumphant foes, but we were not ready to lay down and die just yet."
Hm, that wasn't how the histories said it went. Everything he'd been told and everything he'd read said that the Andals ca over to Westeros as conquerors, traveling across the sea and taking over most of the southern half of the continent from the First n who had been there first.
"We pushed for our followers to make the journey to Westeros with the last scraps of our power. We pushed for them to set down roots and build new hos in the place we'd been exiled to. And we pushed for them to build places of worship, temples to our nas that could be used to strengthen us and keep us from falling into obscurity."
… Then again, if that WERE the case, then why was there no Andal Empire over on Essos? The Hills of Andalos, where the Andals were said to originate from, shared nothing in common with the Andals of Westeros. Not a single trace of their culture… or worship to the Seven, remained on Essos. It lined up with what the Seven were telling him right now, Axel supposed.
"Unfortunately, it was not enough. In a place as desolate and unfriendly to the divine as Westeros, our followers and their worship were not enough. Enough to sustain us yes, but not enough to empower us. Only enough to keep us alive for a ti."
Oh? They certainly seed to be a lot more than living now…
"Our enemies considered this fitting when they realized what had happened. They knew even if we could survive indefinitely, that one day the Great Other would return. They expected us and all of Westeros to fall to the Great Other and his armies while acting as the early warning for the rest of them to heed."
Bait. They were essentially being used as bait. A barely breathing, unmoving body set out before the great beast's lair so that when it finally exited hibernation and began to eat, the screams would alert everyone else that it was awake again.
"An apt description. Yes, our enemies saw no reason to move to finish us off when we seed to pose no further threat to them. Until now. Until you, Champion."
Him?
"Indeed. Only when you ca along and started worshipping us did we begin to receive more energy. Enough to do more than just survive. Enough to begin to act, if in small ways here and there. It is your faith, your belief in us, that gave us the strength to help you where we could. This terrified the remnants of our ancient enemies who exiled us to Westeros in the first place. The one you know as the Lord of Light was one of them."
That was paradoxically difficult and easy to believe. On the one hand, it lined up with everything Axel had observed so far. On the other hand, it sounded utterly ridiculous. If all of their followers, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Andals, couldn't empower them with their worship, how did one man, even as powerful as he was, equate to enough on his own?
"Because you are no re man, Champion. Your father was one of ours, there is no doubt about that… but your mother… your mother ca from the stars. You yourself are Starborn, Champion. And that cos with more power than you can ever imagine."
… Starborn. Fuck, every answer they gave him only prompted more questions. But… no. No, he needed to focus. He needed to ask the right questions. Or rather, the most ti sensitive questions. What was happening out in the real world right this mont? Was the Night King and his army of corpses on the move?
Were they bearing down on Axel while he lay sowhere, wounded and unconscious? The last thing he rembered was… the wildlings. He'd instinctively flown to their camp and he thinks he killed soone… but the Seven have already said he's not dead…
"Do not fret, Champion. There is still ti. Just as our other enemies moved too fast, so too has the Great Other as well. He has sent forth his Champions and his armies too early. The Wall could not stand forever, the power that built it had to eventually run out… but it has not run out just yet."
The Wall could not stand forever?! That was a chilling thing to hear. But then again, the massive fortification was already eight thousand years old…
"It will take months more for the Night King to force his way through the dregs of the Wall's magic. Months for you to recover, months for you to rally your armies and prepare for battle. To the Great Other, these months are nothing but the blink of an eye. His folly is not understanding what you, Champion, have proven yourself capable of accomplishing in the span of re months."
Months. That… wasn't the worst news, Axel supposed. Though it did put him in a race to the finish. Every mont was precious and he couldn't just spend it all here, in his mind, talking to his gods. He needed to wake up. He needed to get moving.
"It will do you no good, we're afraid. You are still gravely wounded and those trying to help you have used dicines that will leave you delirious and barely capable of stringing two thoughts together in the waking world."
Axel would be the judge of that. He could handle a little chest wound. And he was immune to poisons as well, so what were so wildling drugs going to do to him? No, he needed to wake up. Now.
"… Very well."
Suddenly he's awake. Suddenly, the pain is back.
-x-X-x-
Val finds herself tending to the kneeler king's wound and trying not to admire his impressive physique too much. It's been two days now since he'd crashed into the snow and taken off Rattleshirt's head.
Two days in which the Free Folk Wisewon had said he was getting neither better nor worse. Enough ti for them to start teaching her so things so they didn't have to move their old bones across the camp to her tent every few hours to do the work themselves.
Everything Val knew about injuries said that Axel Baratheon should already be dead at this point. Even as she unpacks his wound and then repacks it, she wonders if there's any real hope for his survival. He hasn't woken up in all this ti either, forcing them to drip water and mush into his mouth and massage his throat until he swallows it so he doesn't die from starvation or thirst.
It was all so damn hopeless. He was- Google seaʀᴄh NoveI(F)ire
Val's eyes widen as she's caught off midsentence by a hand suddenly gripping her wrist. Her head snaps up from his wound to look right into the kneeler king's striking blue eyes. Except… they're glassy and glazed over right now. He looks at her but it's clear he's not all there. Though, that doesn't stop him from mumbling.
"Beautiful…"
Swallowing as heat rises to her cheeks, Val wonders if she should call for the crow. She can't exactly go and get him right now, not with Axel Baratheon holding her wrist in an iron grip that she knows she cannot escape without breaking bone. But Jon Snow is probably nearby, so if she calls out… he might hear her.
Then again, raising her voice might also startle the kneeler king laid out in front of her. And given what he'd done to Rattleshirt, she didn't necessarily want to do that. Not that Val was afraid… if anything, she found such violence rather arousing.
"… Make you my woman… if you want…"
Val blinks owlishly. In the end though, she can't help herself.
"Yes. I'll be your woman. All you have to do is claim ."
Smart? Not in the slightest and she knows it. Fuck, what if he tried to claim her right here on the spot while he was half dead? But Val can't help herself. And… in the end it seems to be the right call. The kneeler king's lips curl up into a bright, sunny smile at her easy agreent. It's a very nice smile; Val can't help but think to herself.
Unfortunately, a mont later he passes out again, his mont of strength leaving him and his hand falling away from her wrist, allowing her to continue tending to his terrible wound. As she finishes repacking the hole in his chest, Val purses her lips together.
The crow will be happy to hear that his king has woken up, if only for a mont. But Val can't help wondering if it's STILL just a false hope, in the end. It would be nice to be his woman though; she finds herself thinking. She liked what she'd seen after all… before he'd gone and gotten himself impaled by sothing…
-x-X-x-
Coming back to consciousness in the white void, Axel can't help but feel frustration, especially as his scant mories of waking up in the real world slip through his fingers like a particularly murky dream. He thinks he rembers soone tending to his wound, but beyond that… nothing.
And while he knows it's irrational, Axel also can't help but be a little angry at the Seven for being right about him being gravely wounded and too delirious to wake up just yet. It was just… so damn frustrating! Couldn't they just use so of that power his worship had given them to heal him up already?
"Unfortunately, it is not that simple. We have been using everything we have to help you in what ways we can for so ti now, but we are still terribly limited."
Oh? How so?
"The first ti we were able to support you directly was when you burned. We are sure that you noticed the unnaturalness of burning for seven days and seven nights."
… Yes, actually. Axel could indeed acknowledge how utterly baffling that was. So they'd saved his life then? They'd kept the wildfire from consuming him entirely?
"No. You would have survived the wildfire on your own rits if we had not intervened. Indeed, you would have stopped burning after two or three days if not for our interference."
If Axel had eyes, they would be narrowed right now. While he appreciated the honesty, he now found himself wondering exactly how the Seven were claiming to have helped him when they were actually admitting to making sure he burned longer.
"If we had not interfered, you would have been left scarred, disfigured, and permanently hairless. Your body would have survived and you would have eventually healed, but you would have been reduced to a mass of ruined flesh, in constant pain for the rest of your days."
… Oh.
"We stepped in and redirected the wildfire's flas, nudging them with what little power we had at the ti and turning them towards sothing more… rejuvenating. By utilizing the symbolism of having you burn for seven days and seven nights, we were able to leave you completely unblemished and stronger than ever before. You helped in your own way by instinctively going to our place of worship and kneeling before one of our statues."
Alright, all things considered, that was pretty good. They'd done him quite the favor there and Axel could admit he appreciated their help. But Baelish's assassination attempt was many months ago at this point. Surely they'd gained even more power and influence since then, right?
"Indeed. We did not have to intervene whatsoever when it ca to the Drowned God's Champion and his sea monster. You were able to handle the threat posed by those enemies all by yourself, giving us more ti to marshal our strength until it was necessary again. Unfortunately, it was still not quite enough when the ti finally ca."
Not quite enough? Axel narrows his eyes, curious what they an by that.
"The Servant of R'hllor, the one you know as lisandre… we sought to obfuscate her visions of the future, to hide Westeros from her gaze so that you might trap her and her pawn down in the south as you initially intended. Unfortunately, we failed. She was able to peer through in the end regardless of our efforts, though it was enough to crack her veneer and turn her dragon pawn against her, thankfully."
Huh. That… actually made a lot of sense. Daenerys had ntioned to Axel at so point how haggard lisandre had begun to look as they approached Westeros, and how it had ultimately been part of what allowed Daenerys to begin questioning the Red Priestess.
"The Lord of Light was nothing but a minor deity six thousand years ago when we were first exiled from the lands across the sea. He was but a servant to the Gods of the Valyrian Freehold. But after the Doom ca and wiped them from the world as surely as the Old Gods of Westeros, he was able to grow his power all the more and beco quite the formidable foe indeed."
Axel would clench his jaw if he had one right now. He still had a promise to keep where the Red God was concerned. One day, he would go to Essos and he would destroy every temple to the Lord of Light that he could find. By the ti he was done, there would be nothing left of R'hllor's worshippers.
"This is a just cause, and one we will wholeheartedly support you on, our Champion. Fortunately, the Lord of Light has overstepped. Just as we did not have the power to reach out across the sea and fully obfuscate the eyes of his priestess as we wanted to… he did not have the power to reach over to Westeros. Not with us renewed as we are."
Oh? Now that sounded interesting. Fortunately, the Seven were happy to explain.
"If it were not for your worship empowering us, the Lord of Light would have faced no opposition here on Westeros. Through his Red Priestess, he could have done anything he wanted. But with the death of the one you know as lisandre and his Champion turning her back on him, we had an opportunity. In trying to destroy Daenerys Targaryen for her betrayal, R'hllor overstepped and wasted much of his power in those final monts before we intervened and cut him off at the last possible second."
Well shit.
"Indeed. You do not need to worry about the Lord of Light or his followers traveling to these lands any ti soon. He took quite the blow when we welcod our lost dragon daughter back into our warm embrace at your urging. He lost everything he'd poured into his Champion when we stopped him from accessing her and made sure that her power would remain her own."
Axel was going to choose to believe they were telling the truth about… all of that. In the end, it wasn't like he had a better option at this point. And looking back, everything they'd said so far seed to line up with what he'd experienced. They really had been helping him for longer than he'd known. Although… sothing they'd said before sticks in his mind even now.
What did it an for him to be Starborn? What did it an that his mother ca from the stars? Were they saying his mother was a goddess? Was he so sort of half-god?
"No. To be Starborn is to be from beyond this world. Your mother was not a Goddess… but nor was she within our domain. She ca to this world from the empty expanse above, a place commonly believed to be nothing more than an abyss in which nothing can survive. And yet when we finally traced back your origins, we discovered that she arrived from that very sa abyss… and it was to that abyss she returned when she left you with your father."
Damn. Axel thought he'd heard and seen it all by this point, but they were talking about sothing beyond the world. The empty dark of the night, only kept from being pitch black by the stars spread throughout its canopy? That was where his mother had descended from? That was where half of him ca from?
No wonder he was fucking weird. He really wasn't entirely human. Hell, for all he knew, he might actually be half demon after all. Or even sothing worse…
"You are not anathema, our Champion. Even desperate as we were, we would not have taken your offerings and accepted your worship if your heritage was sothing we could not countenance. Still, you should know now that in all the history of our existence, we know of only one other entity that ca from the abyss above our world."
Again, he'd be narrowing his eyes here if he had them. Who were they talking about, exactly?
"The Great Other. He and his servants are no more of this world than your mother. But while she ca and went after producing you, he has stayed. Even in the wake of his failure to subjugate this world with his armies, he has remained in the frozen north, carefully marshaling his power for a second attempt."
Ah. Axel had to admit, being told that his mother shared company with the greatest evil that the world had ever seen was a little… disconcerting. But the Seven had already said that he was not 'anathema', right? So…
"Indeed, neither you nor your mother were cut of the sa cloth as the Great Other. In fact, we have co to believe that without you, any permanent victory against the Great Other and his servants would be dood. You, Starborn as you are, are our greatest opportunity of finishing the Great Other off once and for all and not just sending it into dormancy for another eight thousand years."
… Right. No pressure. There was just one problem with them pinning all of their hopes on Axel. How was he supposed to get up and make use of the handful of months he had left if he was laid out on death's door?
The Night King was draining the magic from the Wall and destroying the barrier holding the army of dead back right this fucking mont! Axel needed to heal up, but he'd felt like he was in just as much pain as before. It was one of the few things he actually rembered from his short stint awake.
"The Champion of the Great Other used a most terrible weapon on you, we're afraid to say. By all accounts, you should already be dead. The magic of the crystal spear is such that any living thing struck by one is ant to lose their vitality in monts, sucking them dry of all remaining lifeforce until they are just another corpse to be commanded by the Great Other's servants."
Well that didn't fucking sound good.
"You, however, are Starborn. We do not fully understand what you are capable of, only that your unique physiology is allowing you to fight the effects of the spear to a standstill. With the weapon removed, you may even heal from the wound on your own in ti… but as you said, we do not have the ti to wait."
Oh?
"We have already called upon the one that can help you heal from this predicant. They cannot fly as fast as you though, so it will take so ti for them to arrive. Not much longer now though, we expect."
Who were they even talking- oh. Ohhhh.
-x-X-x-
A/N: *insert inspirational music or superhero the here or sothing*
Funnily enough, this chapter was originally imagined as three chapters in my outline. Needless to say, that felt… gratuitous in the end. Hope people like this worldbuilding and expositing!
Feedback is GREATLY appreciated, every comnt helps shape the story with a Daily Free Write like this one!
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