Chapter 122: Epilogue

Chapter 122: Epilogue

Thank you all for reading my Fanfiction so far.

Synchronicity wanted this last chapter to cross the 400,000 word threshold. Ahahah! Thank you all you readers for your support!

This will be the last chapter of Volume I of: Paladin of Old Gods.

I recommend you read it lightly with the soundtrack base that helped me find inspiration to write it!

Hoenix - Introspection (Extended Version).

Happy Reading!!!

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POV: A Concerned Daughter

On an unknown island farther west than Lonely Light.

About an hour after three requests were made and the three sonnets sung...

This time even Ser Murdor was forced to stand back at an appropriate distance from the High Priestess and the Beloved Daughter...

"Green eyes with silver streaks, you say?!" The Great Mother asked with concern.

"Y-yes, Mother." Malora.

"Are you sure the Tallhart was the real father? Who was the hideous female creature who begat that abomination?!" High Priestess.

"E-excuse me but... no, mother. We are not sure that Bloody Snow is the rightful blood heir of House Tallhart... Maester Golbarth's reports tell us that Ser Helman set out on a punitive expedition searching for Wildlings who attacked villages on the edge of the Wolf Forest. He returned about two moons later along with a commoner wife. A woman with snow-white hair whose provenance was unknown. Maester Golbarth suspected that the woman might be a Wargh or even a Greensight of the Free Folk, so during the birth, he let the bleeding take its course." Malora explained.

"A dirty Wildlings and alleged Greensight to boot! And you let that bastard live?!

That flock of cowardly Grey Sheep!!! Useless cattle!!! Argh!!! "

*Sdrhurshh!!*, *Kaboom!* Jets of purplish flames erupted from the hands of the enchantress, razing to the ground statues, plants and trees of a unique rarity in a cone of ninety feet radius. The Great Mother's hair came to life, lashing deadly lashes in every direction within a fifteen-foot radius from the duo.

Only from the pressure of the wind did Malora sense that each slash could sharply sever any limb too exposed. The Mad Maid began to tremble in a cold sweat.

The explosion of fury from the entity a few feet from her was frightening.

The Great Mother began to speak to herself while clenching her fists. Dark nails sank onto the pearly skin creating a painful scratching rubbing. The skin of that inhuman creature must have been harder than stone if Valyria's steel found resistance in slicing through it...

"Filthy weeping sapling-loving Druid!!! You found the Heir of Joramun, didn't you?! You swooned by branding him with such a seal and are having him watched by the other two Guardians!" Malora remained in a religious silence, wisely waiting to speak only when asked.

The Great Mother gasped fiercely, stealing excess air.

After a little more than a minute, the woman resumed a semblance of fragile stillness.

"Malora..."

"Yes, Mother!" The girl knelt at her feet.

"Go to your father and inform him that I will demand triple the tributes from today on. And that they are to be handed over to me at each end of the twelfth cycle on the one."

This meant that another load of tribute was to be delivered to the island within the next two moons!

"Also... I want every corpse in the Highlands and Riverlands that you can get your hands on. Move on tiptoe. I don't want to alert the Guardians...

I want all of Oldtown to be activated to a state of emergency. Not one ounce of Dragon Glass will be put on the market anymore! Stock up on gold, jewellery, and other valuable assets to purchase as many Mana stones as possible.

Triple the recruits in training, triple the fleet, triple the city defences, triple the eyes and ears! Triplicate everything!" Shouted The Great Mother.

"Yes, m-mother... It will be done... I beg your pardon.." Malora had to ask the question for the sake of her household.

"Yes, my daughter?" Asked the imposing dark voice that would not accept the slightest refusal or retort.

"I humbly wanted to ask if we are officially at war with the North, High Priestess?" So asked the trembling Malora, still with her knee to the ground.

"We always have been, my dear ... we just didn't know it yet.

Since the first wailing uttered by that unclean creature, we have been at war!

Tell your father to act as soon as possible if he notices the slightest glimmer of opportunity at the tournament to move against Bloody Snow and the First Men.

Do not enter open warfare yet. Instead, strike in the shadows every blind spot. Use every opportunity to get all the remaining six kingdoms to move war against the North!

You must not allow the descendants of Ice a moment's respite!" The Great Mother.

"Gr-Great Mother..." Malora's survival instinct screamed at her not to voice those thoughts in any way, but reason and the logic of the obvious overrode common sense...

"Talk..."

"The Watcher, Mother... The Guardian of Love is the guarantor between the factions for as long as the Wizarding Confederacy is a guest in the lands of the First Men. We cannot move freely until the Spider Queen summons all her forces from Westeros... At the slightest sign of belligerence, the Fourth Organization and the powers of the other Guardians would openly side with The North and Carcosa.

The Titan would remain neutral, waiting for all the other forces to slaughter each other...

We are not ready to face a war of such magnitude without the right preparations. Besides... Lord Leyton has bound himself to a Blood Oath in the Name of the Three-Great-Powers-of-the-World with the Spider Queen." Malora held her breath. She was no longer sure that this malignant entity brimming with power could not or would not harm her.

A mother would not kill a daughter just for telling the truth, right?

Her eyes could not lift off the ground even if she wanted to.

The longest seconds of the Mad Maid's existence passed.

"Mh! Mh! Mh! ..." the tension subsided. A burst of jovial and liberating laughter spread through the air.

"You are right, my daughter. You gave wise advice to a foolish mother who got carried away by the emotion of the moment...

You must forgive me. Centuries of stillness have made me soft and far less forward-looking.

Forget all my previous requests except one -- the tributes.

You will go to your father and tell him I will need rivers of blood and magic stones. As long as The King in The Yellow remains in Westeros, make no impulsive moves." Great Mother.

"Yes, Mother." The Mad Maid.

"Mh,mh,mh... Ahahah! A yellow trap, no doubt. And I was about to pounce on the bait! Ah... Looks like a funny player has joined the Big Game Table! Ahahah!

What do you think, Malora? Get up, my child; you have nothing more to fear." Malora rose to her feet and found the strength to stare at the Great Mother again.

The cheerful smile was comforting, but the eyes-that bloodthirsty gaze was eager to reap victims.

Big-Table-to-Game? Her father explained the rules of 'The Great Game.'

Currently, less than a hundred people on all continents know the 'truth' about the origins of the World. Members of the four Supreme Councils, some Millennial Royal Families-such as the dynasty of the Golden Empire of Yi Ti-and, the Guardians...

There was only one 'approved and consequence-free' way to join the circle.

"B-but Bloody Snow could not be aware... Unless..."

"Yes, my child, it is as you think...

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POV: Author

Altar of the One True Goddess, Island of a Thousand Virgins.

A few hours after a Beloved Daughter returned to a ship to set course for an Ancient City...

There was still no sign of auroral flashes to the east of the starry sky blessed by the Crimson Moon.

The darkest hour of that night had struck, the ideal time to pray and invoke the help of the One True Goddess.

The High Priestess chanted lofty prayers over and over again...

A dance of crimson and purplish hues danced among the shiny reflective features of the statue. The work of art was erected millennia earlier in black stone, and a glazed mother of pearl seemed to glow with each invocation.

The island ruler invoked the last chant and stood up, inhaling all the magic deeply in the air she could muster.

Then the woman began to laugh. A peal of deep icy laughter steeped in impure thoughts.

She gave vent to all the madness and emotions she had to hold back for a long time.

One moment too many out of control, and the Sovereign might as well have killed her so carefully bred black sheep and scattered deserts of ashes throughout her domain.

The Great Mother could not reveal her valid concern concealed in a single word of that prophecy.

"Not Three, but Four Sparks..." she said, voicing her thoughts.

"A Fourth Invading Power in my domain..."

"So be it... The hunt will have to begin sooner than expected.

First, it will be my turn to flush out the Songbird, then blind the Spiderbane, and finally... to dry every leaf of the Sapling...

After that, I will come for you, Crimson Snow Knight. Mh, mh, mh!

Please try not to die before the black hour!"

Small finger gestures and a whisper of chanting evoked a triple runic circle.

The figure rose gently from the ground, spreading its arms wide to be invested by the last lunar glimmers.

The High Priestess soared through the sky in the direction of the Crimson Moon until she reached three thousand feet in the air.

The distance was enough to give vent to all her emotions.

If the enchantress could not vent in the sky, she would do so on earth, generating massacres and calamities.

The witch was aware that using all that power on a mere whim was a waste...but she needed it; she could no longer contain herself.

Whatever drop of magic had been used by the Great Mother was lost forever. It would not flow back into the tremendous magical web of the World like blood and dust to the earth but would be dispersed into oblivion, abandoning this World forever...

Perhaps the Guardian of Magic would have sensed this new rupture in the Plot, but it did not matter now...

The long hair came to life and began to engrave nine purple runic circles.

It was a spell she had not recited for millennia now...

Six times she used it to raze the castles erected by Durran Godsgrief, the ancestor of the ancient and buried Durrandon dynasty.

[Storm of Disaster]

The dark clouds in the skies were called back again and again.

The air became charged with electric tension...

Water thickened into clouds, ready to bring down the storm...

The enchantress's hands began to flow gently like a conductor, summoning pure primordial wind energy.

The Great Mother waited for the moment to be propitious...

*SKARBOONN!!!, *SWOOSH!!!, *CRABOOM!!!

The first wave of wind, thunder and lightning would be able to sink a small fleet or uproot an entire village.

Filled with power and excitement, the figure gave vent to the voice tearing through the skies with rumbles of thunder:

"I TREMBLE WITH ARDOR IN ANTICIPATION OF THAT HOUR, HEIR OF JORAMUN!!!"

*CRABOOM!!!*

"Armies, Magics, Guardians, Legacy...use everything in your power to entertain me!!!

I will soon take everything away from you!

I will personally smother your every spark!

Like feeble candles amid an Icy Stormy Ocean!"

The enchantress gathered the power of nature...

"I will extinguish your Love!"

*CRABOOM!!!*A roaring thunderbolt lit up the sky.

"Your Beauty!!"

Two thunderbolts, more powerful and brighter than the first, roared across the sky.

"Your Magic!!!"

The magic climax seemed to be reached when a power of nature capable of decimating a city was unleashed.

But the Orchestra Head had not finished the Opera.

The pounding, untraceable freezing rain, capable of stoning to death any creature that was not clad in hardened steel, continued to invest the enchantress incessantly.

It was only pleasant tepid water that helped her to cool the boiling adamantine skin...

The wrath unleashed was not enough to satiate that immense murderous fury that plagued her.

The High Priestess of the One-True-Goddess summoned a gargantuan amount of cloud, wind, water and electricity around her, preparing for the last great act of the ballad...

"And lastly... YOUR HOPE!!!!"

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End Volume I

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