Varys moved through the Red Keep's corridors silently. The castle felt empty these days, echoing with the absence of its usual loud inhabitants.
Poor Pycelle. The old fool had spent his final days demanding justice for the massacre that had happened at the Citadel, only to discover that staircases could be surprisingly lethal when one's neck met them at the wrong angle.
'Such tragic accidents,' Varys mused. 'Though whether the mage's hand guided that fall or someone simply decided to tidy up loose ends… he didn't know yet.'
His little birds would find out soon enough.
The small council had become concerningly small - It was just him and the Baratheon brothers now, and one of them spent more time in the ports than attending meetings.
Even Littlefinger's absence left a void; at least his schemes had provided entertainment between the tedium of actual work.
'Probably cowering in the Vale,' Varys thought, 'hiding behind Lysa Arryn's skirts.'
Though recent whispers suggested Essos instead. No matter. Rats always surfaced eventually.
The King would be in Winterfell by now. Varys allowed himself a small smile at the thought of all those explosive personalities crammed into one northern castle. Like storing wildfire next to a lit candle - entertaining from a distance, catastrophic up close.
His little birds traveling with the royal procession would sing their songs soon enough.
A small figure darted from the shadows—one of his messengers. Varys took the sealed parchment, expecting Illyrio's usual report from Pentos.
But the seal was wrong. This came from his agents in Braavos.
His practiced smile faltered as he read.
The Dothraki wedding had been interrupted. His agent wrote frantically of …impossible things. Half of Pentos falling into enchanted sleep. The Dothraki waking to find their khaleesi missing. Khal Drogo's fury unleashed on anyone within reach.
Blood running through the fields.
Both Targaryen siblings—gone without a trace.
And Illyrio...
The parchment trembled in his hands. For one unguarded moment, Varys's careful mask cracked. A single tear escaped, cutting through the powder on his cheek.
'Old friend,' he thought, his chest tight with grief. 'We were so close to everything we'd worked for.'
He folded the letter carefully, as if handling broken glass. The empty corridor offered no comfort.
"I will make sure that your death is not in vain, old friend, goodbye" he whispered to the shadows.
A sudden thought crossed his mind—something else that had recently happened that seemed like divine intervention.
No, it could not be him.
The mage had only acted when provoked.
He had people on the lookout for his movements, and they reported that he had not moved out, let alone left the continent.
Was he really capable of doing such things without being present? Or was he capable of being anywhere he wanted?
No, it was not possible.
It couldn't be.
-----------------
Tormund followed Ygritte—she wasn't one to normally ask for help, but it seemed that she was up to something again.
The group that had gone on the journey with the mage had returned stronger. He could cut through a ham with half the effort now, and Ygritte could shoot targets far beyond what he thought was possible. It was the same with everyone else.
He still wasn't as strong as when he was wearing those white flames, but it was definitely an improvement.
Mance and the entire camp were moving slowly towards the Wall. The goal at the moment was to be positioned in such a way that they could make a run to the Wall if they spotted an undead army. But there were a lot of people, so progress was slow.
Normally they would be scouting ahead, but Ygritte had asked for everyone's help for this particular small expedition. She hadn't explained beyond, "I need you guys to come with me. There's a good possibility we won't run into anything, but there's a small possibility that we're going to need to fight our way out of a hoard."
She had brought a lot of ropes for a possible fight though.
After a few days they came across an empty clearing which had all the signs of a wight army moving through it. Not a big one, but one of considerable size.
They tensed, ready for a fight along with everyone else, but it seemed that they had missed the hoard by a good margin.
He turned to look at where Ygritte was and saw her walking a couple of steps from a tree and looking down. He went to join her and saw a hole deep enough for a man …or a wight.
And that was exactly what he saw in the hole.
A single wight stuck, unable to move much
He laughed as he looked at Ygrittes smile
"You crazy girl, how did you know they would pass through here?"
"Wasn't hard. This was one from the latest group our wargs spotted, and I knew they were going north, so I made sure to make this little trap."
"How did you know they were going north?"
"Well, most of their army recently got destroyed by the mage. So what would you do if most of your army was destroyed?"
"...gather whatever remaining army I have."
"Exactly. And the mage did say he wanted to capture one to get a better idea of how to destroy them before everything went tits up, and it should make a good bargaining chip with the crows when we reach the Wall."
"Now, any ideas on how to get this thing out without losing any limbs?"
He just laughed at that.
-----------------
Now that I had a proof of concept after summoning Donkey, I could start tweaking the spell a bit to make it work for what I needed it for.
I had left Donkey back at the clinic to entertain the kids because even though he was hilarious, he didn't know when to shut up—I needed silence to work on this part.
I had finally drawn out the new ritual in my own grimoire, which I had put together after Vaylara told me to stop scrawling spells on random pieces of parchment.
I had given it to Vaylara to look over and make sure I had made no mistakes.
As I stretched the kinks from my spine after pulling an all-nighter, a familiar presence brushed against the edges of my consciousness.
Skitter. She was back.
I turned toward where I sensed her, scanning the empty air behind me. Nothing. Then, like a ripple disturbing still water, she shimmered into existence—she'd been hovering directly in front of me the entire time, invisible.
My breath caught. She was massive now. Her rapier-like legs had grown longer than my arms, each one gleaming with a predatory sharpness that made my skin crawl despite knowing she was mine.
Christ, that was terrifying.
Then a voice echoed directly into my mind—crisp, clear, and utterly alien.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Wow, that was kind of terrifying
She looked absolutely lethal—the perfect assassin made manifest. For a brief moment, I wondered if I could send her after the Night King.
No. I dismissed the thought immediately. I wasn't about to send her against that monster, not when there was even the slightest chance she might fail. I couldn't bear the thought of losing her and being turned against me. I was not going to half ass that particular enemy again.
The next time we meet it would be overkill and nothing else.
And she completely ignored my request to use my name. Wonderful. What was with that way of speaking anyway? Where did she learn that? You know what, never mind—I didn't want to know.
Actually, there was something I'd been mulling over that I hadn't had time to start yet. The idea had come to me after seeing her work with the locusts. It was similar to how I'd created my cloud of bacteria that devoured everything around me on command, but I had another application for that concept.
I closed my fist and got to work. It took me a few minutes to craft exactly what I needed.
When I opened my palm, a single black fly sat there—small, innocuous, utterly harmless to anyone who didn't look too closely.
But this little creature could do two remarkable things: it could devour rocks and spit out concrete, or do the same with iron ore and steel.
But More importantly, it could eat virtually anything and split into two identical copies of itself—and those copies could do the same, on and on …exponentially.
It had no higher functions, no independent thought. It could only be operated by someone else, and I handed the reins directly to Skitter. I also built in a failsafe—if they ever lost that connection, they would disintegrate immediately.
Skitter studied the fly for a moment, her compound eyes reflecting an amount of intelligence. Then the tiny creature took flight, and I could see she already understood exactly what she'd been given.
The fly dove straight down into the earth. Barely seconds later, exactly 128 identical flies emerged from the ground and began lazily orbiting Skitter in a perfect formation.
"Ah, that's the thing—the task is a little harder than just destroying things. This time you need to create something new. You're in charge of building my home."
You see, I'd realized there was a practical reason almost all wizards built towers. Some magic was more effective when cast from great height—especially things like the scrying spell for my teleportation array.
So it was time I started playing tower defense.
It was time I had a proper fucking home that wasn't just a room in the clinic or a hole in the ground. Though I planned to build it on top of my existing cave system, naturally.
If I was going to build a tower, I was going to go all out, I was pretty vain like that.
I'd sketched out what I wanted it to look like. I was no architect, but I'd seen a documentary about how the tallest building in my previous world was constructed and how it dealt with the main structural issues.
And more importantly, it was cool enough to form a permanent memory. The shape itself redirected wind from any direction into vortices behind the structure, effectively preventing it from toppling.
Plus, they built it on top of nothing but a pile of sand, for Christ's sake—fucking friction held it in place.
On top of everything, I had a lot of advantages. I had an exponentially multiplying army of workers who I didn't have to pay. Plus, I was totally going to bug Vaylara into magically reinforcing it in every way imaginable.
It was going to be around three times as tall as the Wall.
Tall enough that, if needed, I could carpet bomb the entire continent with nukes from the top.
Sadly, I couldn't realistically make all the outer walls entirely out of glass, mainly because I had no idea how to produce glass that strong. I only knew how to make the basic stuff, so I would have to make most of its outer surface black stone with a few windows.
I still had to figure out how to build a functioning elevator for 160 floors. Oh, I just got an idea—instead of an elevator, I could just make localized set teleportation arrays, and I could make them look like the Harry Potter fireplaces on each floor! Oh, speaking of that, I knew exactly what to build the inside walls with: those black bricks that glow blueish green at the edges from the Ministry of Magic.
Oh fuck yes.
Okay, I needed to calm down. I was getting ahead of myself—there was still a long time for me to figure out the elevator and what the interior should look like.
Best get started.
I'd drawn what I thought the dimensions should be and translated them to Skitter as best I could through our mental link.
Her swarm of workers had already dispersed, scattering underground to multiply and begin working on the foundations.
With that, she vanished again.
Even with an infinitely scaling workforce, I had no idea how long it was going to take. I knew that it had originally taken six years to build, but I was confident it was not going to take longer than a year.
I'd check on the progress once she'd built the foundations, and I also needed to discuss with Vaylara how to magically reinforce the entire tower—make it stronger, immovable, and impervious to damage.
Hmmm, I wondered what I should name my new tower.
Ohh, should I just call it the Tower of Babel?
Because I was sure that most of the time, anyone on the ground would only be able to see the tower disappearing into the clouds.
Would the gods in this world take offense? How would they even know what it meant if they even existed?
Meh, I was an atheist anyway.
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A/N: I'm really sorry, guys. I know I suck. I was supposed to post this on Monday. I made that promise and broke it. Honestly, I should be court-martialed.
But in my defense, I made that promise after I had written the previous chapter at record breaking speeds on a good weekend. I definitely wasn't expecting to get slammed with literally infinite work the moment I logged in on Monday, which is still very much pending.