8 07-Waking the Dragonwolf

Disclaimer: I don't own HP, GoT or ASOIAF.

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Acknowledgements: This chapter was edited by Cataclysmic Moon. I also want to thank my beta-reader nicknm for helping me bounce ideas around.

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Jon Snow

The first thing Jon tried to do when the Wall was out of sight was apparition, the most basic and the least magically demanding form of teleportation he knew. If he could do it, sneaking in and out of Winterfell would be child's play. And the further one tried to apparate, the bigger the requirement for magic power. On top of that, doing it wandlessly took quite a lot of magic, but after about ten days of training since his resurrection, he had increased his magic capability by a significant amount. Staying near the Wall greatly helped, as the air near the icy structure was saturated with magic, and he used it to recharge his reserves faster.

He gathered all his magic, focused his mind to the limit, twisted, and pushed. A crushing feeling enveloped him, and he felt something trying to squeeze him into meat paste. It would easily succeed if he was a normal human, but his body was far tougher than that after undergoing the body refining. He stopped trying to force apparition and reinforced his body with all of his remaining magic to resist the pressure better. The crushing force quickly dispersed, leaving Jon bleeding from all his orifices and spitting blood.

Most of his bones were slightly fractured, and his body was heavily bruised inside and outside. It took nearly an hour to heal himself fully, exhausting almost all of his magic.

He would have to travel and sneak the muggle way, it seemed. Winter had already grown to the size of an adult horse, but he was still too small for flying. If Jon was as big as a small child, he'd be able to mount his dragon, but he was nearly 6'3 feet tall and very heavy. The dragons themselves were still acting like small hatchlings from time to time and were unused to their quickly increasing size. Even though they were intelligent, the process of growing up mentally took time and experience they did not have. Staying any further at the Wall, where their growth was greatly accelerated, would only do them a disservice in the long run.

He mounted his horse and headed hurriedly towards Winterfell. Ghost was running after him through the nearby woods, and Winter and Stormstrider were lazily flying in circles above him.

He spent most of the time travelling, contemplating the reason why he would get such an adverse reaction by attempting to apparate. During the evenings, his familiars went hunting while Jon experimented with magic in every possible way he could think of while straining his magical perception to the very limit. In the end, he reached a conclusion. Not only was the ambient magic volatile, but there was also a certain presence in the air.

Whatever it was, it was strong, ancient, and overbearing. The will didn't do anything but directly exert its intent against any magical construct in the open air. To cast successfully, Jon would have to overpower its intent and overcome the volatile ambient magic at the same time. Even he could not compete with it, and together with the volatile ambient magic, it truly made almost every form of spellcasting impossible. Fire magic somehow slipped around the hostile intent, maybe due to it being based on the manipulation of a certain element or his draconic bloodline. The volatility of ambient magic was in line with the general nature of the fire element. Blood magic was almost impossible to stop or overcome, so it wasn't surprising that it was working. Runic inscriptions required a solid surface to be etched upon, but almost all materials decayed with time one way or another. When not inscribed on a sturdy material, the magic would dissipate if the inscription itself got damaged.

He could think of a few sources for this. A sort of worldwide ward suppressing magic. A curse on magic itself. Some sort of deity or a very powerful being interfering. Or someone committing a great taboo against magic itself, twisting it into something unrecognisable. As magic was semi or quasi-sentient, it definitely could be corrupted or angered. It was quite possible that it was something completely different, outside of his scope of knowledge.

All of these possibilities were not anything Jon could deal with at this moment, so he chucked the whole thing into a corner of his mind.

The journey from Castle Black to Winterfell generally took ten days on horseback. But with every passing day, the chances that Rickon still lived were greatly lowered, so he barely stopped aside for a few hours of sleep and a quick meal usually caught by Ghost. On the fifth day, his horse died from exhaustion, making him regret not taking a spare one. Winterfell was less than two hundred miles away, as he had just passed the Long Lake. The faithful horse deserved to be honoured, but he had no time for a burial. Jon simply continued running south, after quickly getting Winter to cremate the loyal steed.

Despite his inhuman body and stamina, Jon tired greatly after running for nearly twelve hours without rest, so he stopped to sleep and eat. After a good night's sleep and a generous amount of meat, he spent the next four hours running again until he was finally close enough to Winterfell to scout. He headed towards Wolfswood and picked an easily defensible location. Winter and Stormstrider perched on the biggest nearby tree and got ready to bathe any potential attacker in dragon fire. Ghost vigilantly stood in front of him.

Jon sat down cross-legged and tried to spread out his awareness. It took him thirty minutes to finally slip into the mind of a nearby raven. A twenty-minute flight later, he sneaked into the Winterfell dungeons. Thankfully it was late evening, and the pitch-black raven slipped by unnoticed in the darkness.

Soon enough, he entered the cells and froze for a moment. The sight inside made him tremble with rage. The dead body of Rickon Stark was mutilated almost beyond recognition. His face was left untouched, most likely on purpose, but everything below the neck looked like an experiment conducted by the darkest and vilest of dark wizards. This, however, was not done by magic but directly by the hand of a human being.

In his rage, he lost control of the raven and roughly returned to his body. His blood was boiling in fury, and his ears were ringing; he could even feel the edge of his vision redden. The magic inside him churned uncontrollably, and the air around him ignited in a crimson flame.

Jon forced himself to close his eyes, attempted to focus, and tried to calm himself down. He was still barely in control of his mind thanks to his occlumency, but he could feel burning hot rage coursing through his veins. His current body was in the peak of youth and was very prone to anger, not to mention his bloodline abilities as the Wolfsblood and the Dragon's blood. He had only a vague guess about the specifics of those abilities.

According to his uncle Eddard Stark, the Wolfsblood was "strong" in Arya and Rickon, making them wild and nearly unrestrained. And the Targaryen side of his family was also known for their hot tempers. Both of those bloodlines had been strengthened in one way or another during his rebirth ritual. With an iron will, he slowly managed to take control of the pure unadulterated rage he was feeling.

Once he was fully under control, Jon withdrew from the depths of his mind and opened his eyes. He had almost no magic left. Sweat was pooling in his brow, and he found himself panting like a horse after a race. Everything about a metre around him had been glassed by his magical fire. Thankfully, Ghost had moved away before he could get burned, and no nearby trees were set on fire.

Ramsay Snow would rue the day he laid a hand on Rickon.

The last time something like this happened was when his wife and children died in a muggle terrorist suicide attack. Both magical and mundane governments had turned utterly useless, and he had to take things into his own hands again, leaving hundreds of corpses behind, destroying the organisation responsible to the last man, together with every direct supporter, as a dire and bloody warning. He could get away with killing magical terrorists, but apparently, disposing of the muggle ones proved unacceptable. ICW and Magical Britain had declared him a dark lord. Harry had no fear of either and could easily take them on at this point. While they were morons, he did have some former friends and acquaintances in both organisations, so he decided not to bother with them at all. What was the point anyway? With nothing left for him in Wizarding Britain, he simply changed his identity and travelled around the world exploring magic.

He had a desire to simply sneak into Winterfell and rip the Bolton bastard apart with his bare hands. But that would simply be far too easy and too quick an end for him, not to mention that Jon himself could still be overwhelmed with numbers or killed by a lucky strike/arrow once cornered. He had long lost his fear of death, but dying stupidly before dragging all of his enemies down to hell together with him was unacceptable.

And even if he succeeded and managed to run away, the rest of the fuckers responsible would scatter around or be on alert, making his job even harder. If he had his original powers back, every single Bolton man and their allies would die screaming in agony by the end of the night, but sadly all he had was fire magic, runes and an insanely strong body. His best chance to kill all of them was in open battle.

Or in a staged wedding, just like his brother in all but blood, Robb Stark, had been killed, he thought in a fit of dark humour.

The army of the wildlings would take nearly two months to come. The distance from Castle Black to Winterfell was around six hundred and fifty miles, and if the weather was good, the average marching speed of men on foot would be around fourteen miles per day.

He could do many things to prepare, like practising a particular branch of magic that he knew of but avoided using because of its high risk. A lot of rituals could be powered by the life and soul of an enemy. And those could equally well be harnessed in his smithing experiments, provided he could find a forge nearby. Magic that dealt with ritual sacrifice was powerful and had equally powerful consequences that he generally did not want to deal with. But now, all bets were off, and there were ways to deal with most negative consequences. There were plenty of Bolton men patrolling in the Wolfswood, still searching for deserters and stragglers from Stannis' army. They would make very good material for his foray into ritual magic.

Whatever reservations about using such magic Jon had left in his heart had died with the sight of Rickon Stark's mutilated body. Ghost had caught the scent of horses nearby, and with a savage expression on his face, Jon followed his trusty direwolf.

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Ambushing Bolton's men with the help of Ghost and his Dragons was easy. Taking most of them alive was a bit more difficult. But considering he was far stronger and faster than them, they stood no chance against a surprise attack. Also, he could scare any horses they might have by flaring his magic if they weren't already scared by the presence of Ghost or his dragons. Jon managed to capture more than half of the enemies in his first ambush by using the flat of his blade to knock them out. He did suffer a few wounds, as two of the men had managed to land a hit on him with their swords; nothing he couldn't fix by healing himself. Thankfully, he could still cast magic on himself internally; otherwise, things would be really troublesome.

The first thing he did with some of the captured Bolton men was to do a trial run. A simple ritual to cleanse his body and unlock its potential. He had been rather lucky and managed to snag two Bolton parties one after another, and had killed four and successfully captured seven. A good and magically powerful number for maximum effect of the ritual.

This branch of magic had almost completely been forgotten after being banned for a couple of centuries. There had been a scant few recordings, guarded jealously by practitioners of the art, but almost all of those were lost after the ban on rituals. What little was left of the practices went underground. Thankfully, in his long life, he had studied the topic out of interest, so he was not unfamiliar with it, as he had performed a few minor and harmless rituals. A ritual was essentially a trade; one had to present an offering and request a type of boon. If the request is greater than the boon, the difference would be taken from the one undergoing the ritual and could easily damage the body irreparably. A large difference would directly kill you. As long as the request was less than the trade, there would be no negative or positive consequences.

Most rituals required some form of frame, usually a runic matrix, to set the parameters. The exact parameters and runic clusters could generally be calculated with the help of arithmancy. If you set the parameters wrongly or in a way that did not compute, the outcome would also vary greatly, almost always in a very negative way for the person undergoing the ritual. Rituals were not a precise form of magic, yet a small mistake or deviation could easily have deadly or irreversible consequences. Not to mention that undergoing multiple rituals was incredibly dangerous, and he had to perform them in a certain set of potent magical numbers to avoid instability.

This sacrificial ritual was archaic and ancient but easy to set up if you knew what you were doing and you had live enemies on hand. He had no access to runic ink, nor did he have any idea how to make any, so Jon resorted to a mixture of his blood and weirwood sap as a substitute. Blood was a potent magic conductor, and weirwood sap was magically potent. This was not a surprise, considering that weirwood trees practically glowed with magical power, and he even felt a very, very faint connection to them.

He had learned it from the Black family library, but back then had been too young and unwilling to use this type of magic. Rituals involving living sacrifices affected the soul and mind. They were very similar to the use of unforgivable curses, and with enough practice, they would twist you permanently. Thankfully, his mind and soul were incredibly sturdy and could bear some damage that would simply repair with time. Rituals directly damaging or breaking down the trinity of mind-body-soul were also something he wanted to avoid, as he had seen the consequences of this type of action in Voldemort, who had lost more and more of his sanity with each consecutive soul shard he had made, despite being a veritable genius in magic. But while he wouldn't break or mutilate the sacred trinity, he could enhance certain aspects or simply add to it without suffering terrible backlash.

He chose a giant rock as the ground for the ritual, as the runic matrix could only be drawn on a hard surface effectively. Jon placed the unconscious captives in the sacrificial nodes in the ritual. Then he softly channelled his magic in the inscription, activating the ritual. It was a relatively painful process, and he could feel the ritualistic magic running painfully in his body, doing its job. His insides felt hot, and he could feel himself changing, creating a nearly unbearable and painful itch. Seeing the ritual was working correctly, Jon ignored his pain and focused his perception on his surroundings, waiting to see if the malicious will would interfere with the ritual. There had been no interference in his resurrection ritual, but one could never be too careful.

Thankfully, nothing happened, and the process was successfully finished. His magic flowed quicker on his command, his mind was a tad sharper, and his body was stronger and faster. He was also hungry enough to eat a whole cow.

While there were no cows to be found in the wolfswood, there was a big brown bear nearby, which quickly became his next meal, but not before he had Winter burning the lifeless husks left from the ritual to ash.

With his new improvements, capturing Bolton soldiers became even easier. The next ritual he did was to deepen his connection and affinity to the fire element, considering it was his only currently usable offensive magic. Another seven lives later, he had succeeded, and conjuring magical flame and controlling it felt smoother. But for some reason, the colour of the magical flame had become dark purple with a black hue.

He had done only two sets, and for the effects to be stable in time, he followed up with a third one, which surprisingly turned out to be the most painful of the three. He purified his magic and increased his affinity with ambient magic, which would help him regenerate his reserves faster.

He repeated the same set of three rituals for both his direwolf and his dragon Winter with the caveat that Ghost's second ritual increased his natural magic affinity if he had any. The direwolf had grown bigger and was just as tall as him now. His fur was silkier, and his hide was infused with magic. It would be incredibly hard to penetrate without a well-aimed piercing attack or a sharp blade, like those made of Valyrian Steel. His bite was now stronger – where before he could bite through bone with some effort, now he could easily shatter it even through armour.

Winter had also grown bigger; his scales became harder, and their colour darkened significantly. His dragonfire was now dark blue and had a tinge of darkness in it, as well as being twice as hot as before. But both of his familiars had become not only stronger but more willful and wilder as well. If it wasn't for the strong familiar connection that he shared with them and his well-trained mind, he would be hard-pressed to control them at all. Those were only the obvious changes, and only time would tell what else had also changed in his familiars.

He considered enhancing Stormstrider as well, but as the purple dragon's connection wasn't as strong as the one with Winter, he decided against it. And it wouldn't be fair to Bloodfyre if Stromstrider got an upgrade and Bloodfyre didn't. Not to mention that if they bonded with another person with dragon blood, they would be very hard to control.

Around four days had passed until he finished ritualistically strengthening himself and his familiars. Increasing the number of rituals Jon could undergo would only make his body, mind, and soul more unstable without a proper set. He already did the best that was without adverse effects. Getting greedy and grasping for a set of seven rituals could easily be his downfall. But there were still plenty of Bolton scouts and patrols around, and he had other projects that didn't require him to be the one undergoing rituals.

With a reference to the Valyrian method of spellforging using human lives as anchors for their spells, he could surely do better with a well-designed sacrificial ritual than fumbling around in enchanting with his blood, which, while very magically potent, couldn't compare with imbuing magic via the sacrifice of life or soul.

There were plenty of small abandoned villages and holdfasts in the wolfswood, and some of them had a small smithy. Plenty of bronze could still be found in various tools and appliances, so he had materials and tools to experiment with. While he knew the method of making Valyrian steel, and now both his magical flame and Winter's Dragonfire were strong and hot enough to make it, he wanted to make something unique, something better. And if he did fail, he could always make Valyrian steel itself, but it wouldn't turn out very well, considering he was still shit at hammering a weapon into a proper shape. Since he had plenty of material at hand, Jon took his sweet time experimenting.

Four days and little more than thirty Bolton men-at-arms later, he finally had his first spellforged weapon at hand. A greatsword, rivalling the ancestral blade Ice in size, but with slightly different enchantments. It was bronze in colour, with pitch-black veins spreading along its length. In the end, the workable ratio had been twelve parts bronze and one-part dragonglass dust. Thankfully, dragonglass could be found all around the wolfswood and the nearby northern mountains. Most of the people living around had even used it as a simple ornament.

The dragonglass' fire and earth elemental properties boosted almost every aspect of the alloy and even facilitated the process of imbuing magic in the bronze. Enchantments also had a multiplicative power in magically powerful numbers of three, seven or thirteen. But he didn't know of any material that could bear thirteen enchantments at the same time and not fall apart from the strain. Bearing seven enchantments also seemed to be beyond the limits of most things too, including bronze, so he had to settle for three.

In the end, he went with the classic trio of sharpness, indestructibility, and lightness, which was tried and tested in the form of Valyrian Steel. Compared to invulnerability enchantment, indestructibility was one step stronger, and it would be much harder to overcome, on top of the fact that the bronze alloy was a far better conductor of magic, making the effects generally stronger. While Valyrian steel could generally be melted down and reforged or reformed, his bronze would require temperatures impossible to reach with the current level of technology in this world. They could potentially reforge it by using blood sacrifices; however, they would have to kill a lot of people to overcome the calibrated ritualistic sacrifice of a set of seven grown soldiers that fuelled the creation of his spellblade, which was also a tall task.

Sadly, when he tested his new greatsword on the next Bolton party he found, Jon realised it was not very practical for combat versus multiple opponents. It also felt too light in his hand, and while the blade was incredibly sharp to the point that he could cut through a person with armour on, it often got stuck if he tried to do that. The longer reach also made it rather impractical to fight effectively in tighter spaces.

He couldn't leave the greatsword around as it was priceless, nor could he afford to carry an extra weapon with such a big size, so his next project was crafting a bottomless pouch. Bear fur turned out to be the most resilient material. Another seven lives later, he had his bearskin bag enchanted with an undetectable expansion charm, indestructibility, featherlight charm, and tracking charms, reaching the limit of the number of enchantments material could hold without falling apart. His first spellblade went inside the safety of his bearskin bag. There were plenty of sacrifices to go around, so he also enchanted his belt with indestructibility and flexibility.

The next day, he made a bastard sword, similar to Longclaw but slightly bigger, and after long deliberation, instead of imbuing lightness, he decided to place a life-draining curse. Wounding or killing would energise the wielder, giving him more vitality or energy. The amount granted was quite small, and in effect, as long as you killed or wounded your enemies, you would simply tire slower than usual. The curse was something he had found in ancient underground ruins in South America, left by an unknown civilization.

Cast bronze weapons generally required polishing, filing, and sharpening because no matter how perfect the mould was, in practice casting the metal alloy in the mould always had some imperfections. He had a vague feeling that this would be the sword he would be using in the future, so he didn't imbue any magic during the casting process, and he waited for the blade to cool down enough before taking his time to carefully file, polish the blade, and sharpen the edge to the utmost possible limit. He had winter heat up the alloy again, and he finally used the ritualistic sacrifice to bind the enchantments to the blade.

This was something he didn't bother with the previous sword. But theoretically, normal swords were never sharpened to the extreme because they couldn't keep the edge in combat. His spellforge blade, however, was practically indestructible, and it would never lose its edge, not to mention that the cutting ability of the sword was further amplified by the sharpness enchantment. Just as he finished the ritual, he gently ran the blade through his palm, feeding it some of his blood. The sword absorbed every single drop of his blood and shone in a dark purple light for a quick moment before returning to normal.

The handle was made out of similarly enchanted ironwood but with a permanent tracking charm instead of sharpness. Jon also decided to wrap it up with leather to make wielding the sword more comfortable. The guard was also from spellforged bronze, and the pommel had been etched as the same white direwolf's head that Longclaw had. The handle felt right in his hand, and when he swung it around, a sharp whistling sound could be heard, a testament to both his speed and the sharpness of the blade. All in all, it weighed slightly less than five pounds, making it a little more than twice as heavy as Longclaw. His casual swings were nearly unstoppable, and he had far greater control and manoeuvrability compared to the nameless greatsword he made.

The number of ritualistic murders that Jon had done without any remorse had finally begun to take a toll on his mind and soul. But he still had some way to go before he reached the irreversible limit. Sure, he had a perfect sword for himself now, but he was rather vulnerable.

It seems that they had finally caught on that someone was butchering the small patrols, so they were withdrawn completely and instead sent out a couple of groups consisting of thirty riders and a few hunting hounds to find the murderers. Those squads could have proven a very hard task to take on at the start, but now he, Ghost, and Winter were infinitely more dangerous. Thirty men and a few hunting hounds could be considered a challenge only because he had to keep as many as possible alive.

He did warg into Bloodfyre to check on Sansa and the wildling host to see how far they had marched. To his great surprise, he saw a few new faces around the camp, meaning that some Northern Houses were actually joining them. The host was still a month away from Winterfell. While a good horse could ride a hundred miles per day if pushed, an army on foot could only do around fifteen miles. Jon had plenty of time to make himself a full set of spellforged armour. After all, no matter how strong or fast he was, he still got hit from time to time, and at some point, he could get fatally wounded, if not outright killed by a single strike.

Maege Mormont

House Mormont has always been one of the lealest supporters of House Stark. So even two years after the young wolf, Robb Stark, was slain, Maege Mormont was still toiling to fulfil his last order, which had become his will after he had been murdered under guest rights by those cowardly Freys and treacherous Boltons. Just the thought of it made her blood boil with anger.

Robb Stark had given his orders and sent her, together with her daughters and Lord Galbart Glover, back north via ship from Seaguard to the Neck, trying to bypass Moat Cailin, which was occupied by Ironborn at the time.

By the time they had reached Seaguard, word of the Red Wedding had reached them. There were no boats available, and they couldn't cross the Green Fork as the treacherous weasels held the only bridge. So, they continued north of Seaguard, intending to try and reach Flint's Fingers. Their party, however, was found and attacked by a large group of Freys. Thankfully, crannogmen from the Neck had found them at the last moment, barely saving their lives. Both Galbart and Maege were heavily wounded. A year passed before she could walk on her own, and it was another six moons before both of them were fit enough to travel. Scores of northern soldiers that had barely escaped from the Red Wedding were fleeing in the Neck, deciding to try their luck in the deadly bogs instead of the manned walls of Moat Cailin or the Riverlands infested by Freys and Lannisters.

Thankfully the crannogmen had managed to find most of them before they drowned in the bogs. About four hundred men survived from little less than ten thousand. Sadly, she couldn't take them on the way to Castle Black, as a big party would attract the attention of the Boltons.

When Lord Howland Reed heard that they were going to Castle Black to meet Jon Snow, he offered to aid them in every possible way. She decided that sneaking with 400 men was not going to be feasible and instead took thirty of the best soldiers that had escaped the Red Wedding. Howland Reed selected another ten of his finest trackers and scouts to go with her.

They moved very slowly and carefully, trying to avoid every road. They didn't know who to trust. A hard task for a dozen, but the crannogmen greatly helped detect and avoid people. It was a slow thing, but the size of the North played in their favour. After the Ironborn attacks, the lands around Torrhen's Square and Barrowtown were heavily affected. Often the reavers killed or burned everything that they couldn't take with them.

Sneaking from one end of the vast North to the other on foot was not an easy task. A journey that would take four to six weeks on horseback on the kingsroad was lengthened greatly to one over five moons, passing through the thick snow and the wolfswood.

They passed near Deepwood Motte and found out it was held by a token force of thirty ironborn, so Galbart convinced her to sneak in the night and take them by surprise. They were very successful, considering most of the reavers had been feasting and drinking without a care for the world, too deep into their cups to pick their weapons and fight back.

After Deepwood Motte was freed, they read all the letters the maester had collected. Jon Snow and Sansa Stark had begun marching on Winterfell with a wildling force and had called those still loyal to House Stark to join them. Also, one of the Glover vassals, namely House Forrester, had been besieged by House Whitehill. There were a few grumbles at the mention of wildlings, but they decided that they preferred a few wildlings to the flayed man. It took some time to muster a fighting force, but they managed to gather nearly three hundred and fifty total. Glover managed to muster under two hundred swords and his vassals, Houses Bole, Branch, and Woods, sent forty men each.

They would relieve House Forrester and hopefully join up with the Stark Host before Winterfell.