"This... is not right..."
I'd barely muttered the words as I examined the boy I suspected was Jojen Reed but his father heard them all the same. The unassuming, thirty-something leader of the group of swamp ninjas was not quite hovering over my shoulder as I lay my hands on his son and worked spells he probably couldn't perceive, but he didn't stand back like the rest of his men either. His obvious worry was understandable; that he was even allowing a witch to work magic on his heir... they'd probably exhausted all other options to no effect and I was beginning to see why.
"When all this... sickness started, did he have reduced appetite? Was he complaining about feeling exhausted and had little interest in food and drink?"
"Yes," the guy who probably was Howland Reed said.
"Troubles focusing, complaining about feeling cold or being weaker than usual?"
"Yes," he agreed again with a frown. "He showed all the usual symptoms of Greywater Fever..."
"But did they start before or after the fever itself?" Because after delving the seven-year-old three times and trying to purge sickness from him twice, I was still having trouble finding what to heal. Having had similar issues when healing my adopted father I'd initially suspected a common cause, namely that the issue wasn't an actual disease but something with no foreign microorganisms to kill. Now however...
"...I could not say," the probable leader of the Crannogmen admitted after thinking about it. "He got feverish immediately, same day as the other symptoms."
"It didn't strike you as odd?" Just to confirm my suspicions, I narrowed my healing on just one of the twitching boy's hands. The twitching stopped and the clamminess went away, but as soon as I stopped pumping magic into the area, those symptoms returned.
"It was unusual, not unheard of." Because of course it wasn't. "What do you know? Did you find what is wrong?"
"I found what it is not," I told him then pushed as much magic into the boy as his weakened body could handle. His fever drained away, his pale skin flushed with a modicum of vitality, but any actual healing remained glacially slow and he kept twisting and turning in his unconsciousness... if it was unconsciousness. What I wouldn't give for a bit of skill with Divination... it would have meant less fumbling in the dark.
bthnknahor ot cahf turn'ghftor ronnyth ah geb
I ignored the incomprehensible whispers that seemed to be carried on the breeze and they faded away. Had they even been there at all? Shaking my head, I picked up my seven-year-old patient off the examination table. He barely weighed anything at all in my arms as I carried him over to the center of the cleared-out area and laid him down on a bed of soft brown soil with any twigs, leaves, rocks and roots removed. It would be comfortable enough and would ensure he couldn't fall over or injure himself on anything sharp. About more directly inflicted injuries... he probably didn't have anything to fear either.
"I'll be needing more space now," I told the twelve crannogmen and the ten year old watching the proceedings. Much like Howland Reed, the girl that had to be Meera, a cute, slim, freckled thing with long brown hair and green eyes, had her oval face and little button nose scrunched up in obvious worry. Her eyes shifted to follow my every move and her mouth had opened several times, unasked questions but a breath away. Her whole body was taut, ready to bolt at any moment, whether to go to her brother or father I did not know. "From this point on I'll be casting stronger magic, backed by the sacrifices you brought. Interrupting the proceedings would be dangerous."
"What will you be doing?" Howland Reed asked with an air of familiarity, if not understanding. It was not so surprising, given the magic I could feel about him or where he'd spent the winter before last according to the novels.
"You've studied in the Isle of Faces," I said instead of an answer and his men shifted and mutters rose among them. They'd known, of course, but now they also knew that I knew, of something that had happened during my first two years of life and kept a secret by most afterwards. Howland Reed did not react more than just giving me an impatient nod. "You've noticed how some of those with magic were sick at an early age, or had stunted growth?"
"What-" Meera started to say but a gesture from her father made her swallow her question - but not the looks he shot her baby brother. Instead of saying anything, the Reed patriatrch just nodded again.
"Magic can, though not necessarily does, use life as fuel." I pointed at the eleven pigs held behind the half-circle of armed crannogmen. "Animal sacrifices, for example. Anyone casting spells must always be careful not to overreach and sacrifice more than they intended, or could afford." Unless, of course, they forced those sacrifices on other people, in which case most people would be screwed. I started walking around Jojen Reed, marking a six-foot-radius circle in the soil with a stick as best as I was able. "Now, I tried to heal your son. Twice even. While it looked like Greywater Fever, they symptoms didn't quite fit... and they returned as soon as I stopped trying."
"You don't think he's sick," Lord Reed said.
"No, I don't. In fact, other than the convulsions his symptoms fit more intense starvation or general weakness rather than Greywater Fever." Which made no sense for the son of the most powerful man in the Neck. "Which brings us back to the magic issue. If magic were a sword," which was a terrible analogy but one everyone in Westeros could understand, "those born with it would be like kids born with a steel blade in hand. Even if they didn't rush to use it the moment they heard stories of how awesome swords were, accidents would inevitably happen. Accidents like burning their own health in spells they didn't mean to use."
"Can it be fixed?" he demanded.
"That is not in question." I told him and slowly and openly so everyone would see what I was doing, I reached into the soil with my left hand. Magic, as much as I would have put into a flame close to the maximum size I was capable of, poured into the soil with a loud hiss, a reddish glow, and the acrid stench of burning earth. Where my skin and the soil touched, the soil gave way as magically infused heat turned it into slag. The secret was to use a pull of fire magic to prevent the heat from spreading out and dissipating, limiting it to less than an inch from my fingers so that the temperature would spike sharply in that limited volume and start liquefying the ground.
It was a slow, tiring process even with keeping the layer of nearly-molten earth rather thin as I carved along the circle I'd previously marked. Cutting a thumb-wide, palm-deep trench into the ground would have been easier and faster through water-softened clay and had the physical part been the whole of it I'd have done that instead. Doing it by hand and with my own magic, a magic that altered and shaped earth through the transformative and purifying element of fire, I was laying claim to the area much like the Valyrian mages of old had built entire castles of fused stone. Dragonstone castle it was definitely not, but it still would help with what came next.
Howland Reed's men had taken several steps back and a few had even raised their weapons when the very obvious, very visible magic came out. Maybe they had expected the subtle powers of Greensight, or the simple spells of hedge witches, but this was not who I was. There was an opportunity here to cement my reputation as someone that could do real, blatant sorcery, sorcery that could be valuable to them. Beyond just being a powerful lord in his own right, Howland Reed had the ear of a Lord Paramount, and while my immediate plans did not focus on the North that connection would be needed in the future.
"Bring me the hogs one by one but do not cross the line," I told the men as I stepped out of the smoking, cooling circle of what looked now like black basalt. The first pig was brought and I grabbed the animal around the head, stretching out its neck over the lip of the circle. Then with a brutal mental thrust that made Howland Reed twitch I stunned it then cut its throat open with my knife. Blood gushed from the wound, splashing on the line of black, glassy rock and spreading around the circle with another hiss. The pig twitched in my grip but it was already stunned and its strength was pouring away before it could recover. Then it died, and a modest stream of power poured into me.
"Next!" I called out as I threw the dead animal back and took a couple of steps around the circle. The crannogmen brought forth the next sacrifice and I stunned and killed it in the same way, throwing it back and moving around Jojen Reed widdershins. More pigs followed as I called for them, more and more blood pouring forth, more and more life pouring into me. Beyond holding the animals down and preventing them from making a mess, both of which were simple with my magic and well above average strength, the process was simple. Soon the circular ditch was full of fresh blood, all eleven pigs were dead, and my well of power had been filled... less than a tenth the way to the next milestone. Closer to a twentieth, even. A dozen farm animals, even large and meaty ones, simply didn't give as much as the basilisk had. It was not just a matter of life, a simple addition of quantity. The circumstances mattered a lot, as well. Still, it was enough of a temporary boost for a sizable spell, at least a few times more than I could have done unaided.
"Because it bears repeating, I'll say it again; do not interrupt the ritual from this point on." Mostly because I had no idea what would happen if one of my bigger spells to day was interrupted, but just in case... "Neither you nor I would like the outcome." Honestly, saying nothing had been tempting. It was magic; I shouldn't have to explain shit. Except every time a witch did that, some idiot got curious or got the wrong idea and everything blew on everyone's faces while a squamous tentacled horror intruded into holes it had not been invited.
I kneeled just above Jojen Reed's head, my hands cradling his head as they pressed over his temples. With an effort of will and a spark of sorcery I set the blood in the circle afire, amethyst-colored flames rising a good three feet into the air. My magic rose further, into an invisible dome overhead, but there was some odd resistance preventing it from closing above me and the kid. There was no such resistance on the ground I'd claimed, my magic and the warmth of the flames pouring into it like water into dry sand. Honestly, most of the circle and ground claiming had been a spur-of-the-moment idea to spice up the ritual, give everyone else something obvious to be distracted by. That it seemed to help me to work my magic into the actual healing was a nice if unexpected bonus.
Then I reached out mentally to the kid, far, far more gently than I'd done with the pigs, let alone with the various animals I'd been warging into. I wanted to peer into his mind and see what was wrong with his magic, not hammer his thoughts into a stupor, or crush his psyche and puppet his body. That I was doing this at all was as a poor substitute to Divination. There was nothing wrong with his body beyond it being drained to near-death and my Sorcery was not advanced enough to give me a hint. The only magic I knew that could possibly find an answer was mental contact through Greensight.
What I did not expect was the world around us to seemingly shatter like a television hit by a sledgehammer and both me and Jojen to fall into a swirling vortex of black and green and purple. Then we were... elsewhere.
I struck the ground with incredible force, enough to crater the earth for a good six feet. There was no sound, no feeling of impact, no pain or dizziness. Then I was standing upright, with no memory of having climbed to my feet. I walked out of the crater to find myself in the middle of a forest, woods with ground too dry, with trees too great to have belonged anywhere in the Neck.
Everything was pitch-black but both me and the trees were still eerily visible as if edited in from elsewhere. The trees were tall and gnarled and ancient, with pale white wood like bleached bone and sparse, dark red leaves like spilled blood. Their roots and branches were so tangled I could not tell where one tree ended and another began and they seemed to be the only thing that existed in this pitch-black, utterly silent forest. There was no undergrowth. No animals. No wind. No stars or moon overhead. The only evidence that the ground existed at all was that it crunched underfoot, a sound I heard entirely through my body because the stale air carried it not at all.
I lit a bit of fire in the palm of one hand to see better and it came easily, almost effortlessly. Unlike everything else it was not silent, crackling merrily as it lit my way. And for all that it had broken the alien silence and the dark, I immediately wished it hadn't. Because now I could see before me what the silent dark had hidden before.
Jojen Reed was propped up not by his own power but by thick roots wrapping around his legs and snaking up his body. His eyes were white and pupiless, staring at nothing as he hung there in a trance and a faint green light pulsed out of his chest with the even cadence of a heartbeat. Each beat, each pulse of green was a little brighter, went a little further into the dark. And with every beat, the roots snaked millimeter by millimeter higher up his body. That, I immediately knew beyond doubt, was a bad thing. Not because of some arcane knowledge or mystical insight, but because several other people were tied up by roots in other trees. Said people had been reduced to bleached skeletons and their skulls had fallen off long ago. Some had even rolled close to Jojen's feet, a very strong argument that he should be taken out of those growing roots posthaste.
I was pretty sure that the giant raven perched on the kid's shoulder was going to object to that. It was darker than the darkness, and indeed tendrils of unlight stretched from it to the entire forest, covering everything in shadow. Its eyes - of which there were three, with one of them in the middle of its forehead - glowed a baleful red as they turned in my direction, the same color as the trees' leaves but far more radiant and menacing. And then the bird that was not a bird opened its beak and crowed;
"Interloper! Interloper! Interloper!"
"Interloper! Interloper! Interloper!"
"Interloper?" I shot back at the strangely echoing voice of the giant crow, an eerie crackle and hiss reverberating in my own words. "I was not the one to reach out a thousand miles away to invade a child's mind." I walked closer to the boy and the crow and more hisses followed. I looked down to find myself barefoot, smoke rising from stone at my every step. Visions were weird.
"Not invasion," the booming voice came out of the bird's beak instead of a crow. "Succour. Schooling. Succession."
"Is it?" I asked dubiously and walked on. "In my experience, it is not succour if you tie them up but slavery. It is not tutoring that deals agony but torture. As for succession, does the child know what it will involve?" As I stepped closer to Jojen and the roots though, the forest between us seemed to stretch. The more I walked, the further he seemed to get as if something unseen and unfelt was pushing me back without even touching me. "Did you even ask?"
"Necessity," the crow said, "Obligation." The forest grew darker, colder, and faint screams were carried in the sudden, bone-chilling wind. "The guarding shield fails. The realms of men shatter. The Night grows long. Winter is coming."
"Are you some fancy bird from the Summer Isles to parrot the words of House Stark?" I demanded, feeling more than a little annoyed. Without foreknowledge, the bird's words would have sounded appropriately ominous and prophecy-like but to someone that knew what they referred to and who was speaking they were just proof that the speaker was being deliberately abstruse. "Yes, yes, the Night's Watch is a joke, Westeros is on the brink of civil war, the Long Night is but eight years away, and you need all the help you can get. If you spoke more clearly people might be more willing to help you." Then I scowled angrily and pointed at the boy wrapped up in the roots. "But none of that is an excuse to do what you're now doing. Not to a child."
"Necessity! Necessity! Necessity!" the three-eyed bastard crowed, its three eyes glowing brighter. "Urgency! Urgency! Urgency!" It lied.
"You still utter falsehoods as easily as you breathe when it suits you, Brynden Rivers." I growled and for a moment the green illumination of the forest flickered into purple. "You were seven and seventy when you were taken in by the Children of the Forest and look how well you took to your position. A child of seven with not a lick of magical training has no business taking the duties and burdens of an old man. Why not take someone else?"
No response was forthcoming. Not with words at least. But the trees in the dream seemed to writhe and move, a hundred hundred glowing spots appearing in their canopy. All red like the giant bird's though much smaller, all in pairs instead of a line of three. But they were still eyes and the pressure of that many stares fell on my shoulders like a giant's weight. It was obvious that Bloodraven had made up his mind and did not wish to speak with me any more. He was trying to cast me out of Jojen's ming. But I refused to bend, or be pushed back as the wind howled. He was older and far more experienced and the greater Greenseer by far between us. But he was also more than a thousand miles away, behind The Wall and beyond the realms of men, and Jojen and I were standing in the center of my place of power, in a circle of blood and fire, and Valyrian sorcery. With effort I stood tall.
"This is neither necessary nor the fastest way. The boy's father is with us tonight," I said as I forced my way closer against the feeling of pressure, of growing distance. "He is a grown man. A man trained in the ways of the Green Men in the Isle of Faces, with a spark of magic in him fed by wars. A man of duty, a keeper of secrets. Why not ask him to be your successor? You could hardly ask for a better candidate unless you went looking in the Isle of Faces itself." Now that I thought about it, it was odd that he hadn't asked a member of that order, or even someone else desperate to learn magic like a certain archmaester of the Citadel.
Goka n'ghauh'ee aimgr'luhhThe skeletons bound in the roots of the other trees shifted, drawing both my and the giant bird's attention with their sudden movement.
"Successor," one of the skulls on the ground said in a voice coming from the deepest of caves, its empty eye sockets looming larger.
"Successor," the skull closest to me said, the voice echoing from where its jaw used to be making it shift like an unseen wind.
"Successor," a skull near Jojen's feet repeated, the sound of crunching leaves accompanying the words as they were blown away.
"Possessor," the first skull continued, the roots closest to it recoiling with a hiss as little flames gleamed in its eye sockets.
"Possessor," the second skull repeated accusingly, rivulets of fresh blood dripping from its every crack.
"Possessor," the last skull hissed like a curse, any roots within several inches blackening and falling into dust.
"Your own victims seem quick to accuse you," I told the bird, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. "What say you, Bloodraven? What is your real reason for going after a child?" I had not wanted to assume but the hints had been there. I had no idea how or why those skulls had spoken, but even if I discarded their words entirely, I could see no other explanation for why Brynded Rivers would not pick any of the superior student options. Even in the novels and television series there had been multiple Stark children, all with the same blood as Bran, except for Jon who had even stronger magical ancestry, yet he had only sent his agents to bring in the youngest who had shown magical ability. The most naive, the one who'd been crippled and would jump at any offer of something better. In fact, Bran would be in a pretty similar situation to what Jojen suffered now; in great danger, sick, with Bloodraven offering 'succor'. "Be persuasive, or I'm taking Jojen out of here right now."
It was not just the kid that had me threaten one of the few real mages in all of Westeros so. I despised deceivers, rapists and slavers who preyed on the innocent, and if the last living Blackfyre was doing what the skulls had accused him of then he was all three. I waited for his answer while mentally going through all ways I had to get Jojen free when the trees' roots writhed like snakes... and then they grew. In moments, a seemingly impassable barrier of tangled, many-thorned vines was barring my way.
"So be it, you thrice-blind featherbrain," I growled and raised both arms as if gripping something invisible and tapped into the power in my soul. My magic responded to my call far more easily in thise forest of dreams than it ever had in the outside world and in moments I was holding a sphere of flames the size of a roaring campfire. This I hurled at Bloodraven's barrier; the orb flew through the air like a basketball and shattered upon impact into an equal amount of liquid flame akin to Wildfire. The trees screamed as their roots writhed like tentacles, wood and vine and thorns going up like so much kindling.
More roots charged at me from every tree, a bleached-white tide of grasping coils as fast as a galloping horse. But magic or otherwise they were but wood and I was the flame. I cast a second fireball and a third and a fourth, forming them as quickly as I could visualize the result, launching them as quickly as I could make throwing motions. My magic rose in song and instead of fatigued I felt empowered for not only were my spells stronger in the dream-vision, but I could for some reason cast them without the exhaustion that followed in the real world. In moments, the barrier was but kindling slowly turning to ash and cinders at my feet.
Then an invisible hammer swung by a giant struck me between the eyes and sent me reeling, the next fireball dying before I could throw it. The second unseen blow staggered me and pushed me back, the third threw me down to the ground. Then the largest murder of crows I'd ever seen rose from the trees like a black tide. Hundreds of little feathered menaces with glowing red eyes, thousands. The flap of their winds was hurricane. The clack of their beaks was thunder. Their weight and momentum was like a tidal wave, picking me up and carrying me along as countless claws and beaks scratched and bit at every bit of exposed skin.
With a scream that was mostly swallowed by the monstrous swarm, I conjured a pair of fireballs and detonated them point-blank. Expanding blasts of fire struck like twin grenades and every stupid magical bird within two dozen feet was instantly barbequed. I fell off the murder's grip, dropping and dropping through the air until I landed on a smooth, black, familiar surface. It was not the mud of the swamps, or the barely any harder earth of Westeros' dismal roads, or the root-covered ground of a forest. Its texture was both hard and slightly elastic with a hint of grease and a deep breath brought in the acrid tang of oil and rock and molten tar. It was a fresh-paved road; a modern one.
I got to my feet, my clothes in tatters. I ignored them for we were still in the dream and Bloodraven could spy on me at any time if he so wanted. It was another factor that added to his overall creepiness and my desire to punch him in the face up close and personal, but I set it aside in favor of taking a look at my surroundings. It was a city, a metropolis by even modern measures, but one in a style I'd never seen. There were stepped pyramids with rounder temples at the top, each more than the size of the entire Arcopolis complex in Athens, taller and wider several times over than the largest pyramids back on Earth... and there were seven of them. Each was made of a different type of stone that gleamed under the twilight, glittering green or blue, yellow or pink, black or white or purple.
Between those titanic edifices towering above everything nearby stood countless more reasonable-sized buildings. Some were as large and thick as ten-floor residential blocks, others were thin elaborate spires shooting as far in the skies as the Empire State building. Unlike any modern city though, they were not cramped together in a near unbroken skyline but left vast spaces between them for parks and pools and more paved streets. Countless carriages with no sign of horses littered those streets, not in thousands or even tens or hundreds of thousands but in the millions for the city extended as far as the eye could see. But the streets were deserted and if the carriages were ever drawn by animal or beast and driven by men or other there was no sign of them whatsoever.
In the titanic city-scape, Bloodraven's murder of crows seemed tiny. Still a cloud and of impressive size for a flock of birds, but they spread across less than a tenth the distance between two of the pyramids, a mere half-mile. Below them, one of the empty, abandoned parks was rapidly growing into something wilder, the trees twisting and sprouting in moments the growth of centuries even as their trunks and limbs and roots were bleached of all color and their leaves turned red as if dipped in blood. Something hissed overhead, the sound both alien and strangely approving. Looking up I saw the moon but it was black and took up nearly a quarter of the sky. There was no sun or stars, merely a crown of red around the black moon's circumference, casting the entire city-scape into that reddish gloom. And in the rest of the sky lines of red and black and white radiance signaled the fall of meteors, some no further than the mountains beyond the city's limits fifty miles away, others so far they were merely sparks. And before the moon that looked more like a black hole than anything else flew a comet, a comet the color of spilled blood.
"Secrets! Secrets! Secrets!" a million crows spoke in surprise and glee as they approached. "Mine! Mine! Mine!" they declared.
"You know what, Brynden? Screw you!" I drew on my magic deeply, as deeply and strongly as I could in this land of visions. I was met not with a small campfire as in the outside world, or with a roaring wildfire as it had been before in the dream, but an endless torrent of power, an entire ocean seemingly pouring in from everywhere around us. "Screw you and the tree you rode on!"
"Successor! Successor! Successor!" the murder of crows spoke slyly with a million beaks. "Possessor! Possessor! Possessor!" Apparently, he had changed his mind about wanting Jojen as his new minion and possible meat-suit because he'd seen a far, far juicier target in me. And why wouldn't he? If he managed to take me over he'd not only gain a body with far more innate magic, not only know what secrets I was obviously keeping, but he'd also prevent me from spilling his own secrets to interested parties that might visit a certain cave beyond The Wall and give a hundred-and-twenty-year-old bastard (in all meanings of the word) exactly what he deserved.
As the enormous flock of killer-birds approached, I wished I could have done just that. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to find that particular cave in the far North. I did not know where it was, no road led to it, and I had all but confirmation that it was magically protected so only people led there by Bloodraven, the Children or their agents could find it. But Bloodraven did not know that yet... and he had made a mistake.
The same invisible giant's hammer as before struck my head... and bounced off. As the countless crows flew within a mere hundred feet it struck again and again, each time shrugged off by the power flowing through me. Unless I was completely mistaken, Brynden Rivers attemp to take me over had pushed us out of Jojen's mind into my own. Our surroundings were no longer a forest but a fusion of a modern city with what I imagined Valyria might have looked like at its height. The great magical disaster overhead was obviously the Doom, though why there weren't any volcanoes nearby, exploding or otherwise, I had no idea. But if we were in my mind then the vision had become my thoughts, so...
"I CAST ASIDE THIS VESSEL," I declared with a voice that shook every building within a mile and made the crows stagger and almost drop. Then every scrape and gouge, every bleeding wound they had dealt to me in this dreamscape expoded into amethyst fire. My torn clothes were incinerated in an instant as the magical fire spread, my injuries stopped hurting as they vanished and the flame became a conflagration of gigantic proportions even as the world around me grew smaller. Except it was not the world growing smaller but me growing greater and greater. Flesh and blood and bone went away for we were in my dream and all was but shadow, but the shadow still had my shape even as it towered over the abandoned carriages.
Asphalt hissed and boiled beneath my feet and the carriages melted into silver and gold and copper slag, reduced to puddles of electrum as the road became a river. The towering flames turned red even as they wreathed me like a weightless dress or perhaps an intangible suit of armor, and a halo of raw power formed around my head. My eyes became twin stars in the field of shadow that was my body, a body now taller than any Westerosi giant. More power flowed from my hand like a river, a river of fire that was also a giant whip, as from all around us shadows coalesced in the vague semblance of wings with which I took to the skies.
"ANCIENT COWARD! FLEER OF JUDGEMENT!" my voice boomed again like thunder but the crack of the whip was louder still, its strike killing every crow within a hundred feet from the shockwave alone, then setting them on fire. " YOU WHO STEAL FROM INNOCENTS TO ESCAPE YOUR FATE NOW WILL YOU ANSWER!"
More whip-strikes followed, shattering the giant murder of crows, burning tens of thousands with my every blow. Their remnants tried to flee but my mere proximity was already igniting their wings, the funeral pyre of Bloodraven's dream-minions spreading all over the swarm. Then I came down on the park where Brynden Rivers' influence had turned the plants into one giant weirwood tree larger than a redwood. Roots and branches as thick as siege rams twisted and moved to whip at my form or bar my passage, but the one whose image I'd modeled myself after had shaken a whole mountain and crashed through fortifications as thick as The Wall; the best they could do was slow me down.
Yet perhaps Bloodraven knew more about this dream-place than I did because slowing me down was not useless. Soon, I started to feel a rapidly increasing discomfort, a building pressure, an ache in my limbs and torso that slowly turned into searing spikes, that would soon become burning agony. Tapping into the seemingly inexhaustible aura of magic all around the deserted city, I was using far too much power, even for this vision in my mind. My mental equivalent of a body was already shaking under the strain and if the old bastard delayed me much longer I felt like something disastrous would happen.
I pulled at some of the magic forming my aura of fire, condensing it in the palm of my right hand while still striking out with the whip in my left. Denser and denser, from flame to an acetylene torch, to white-hot plasma that had a physical weight to it, or so it seemed in the vision. That I shaped into a sword, narrow and sharp and as long as I was tall. Where the whip had reach and its shockwave struck in a great area, the sword focused the same power to its edge alone. A broad swing sliced through the wall of roots and branches far more easily than the whip had, burning deeply into the barrier and setting it alight.
More strikes carved a path until I was standing before the giant weirwood tree itself, a face the size of a house scowling at me even as my proximity sent flames licking up its bark. The eyes glared even as they dripped blood and the mouth opened as if about to speak, but there was nothing that Bloodraven had to say that I wanted to hear. Grabbing my new sword with both hands I lunged, sinking its blade through the face and into the heart of the tree. For a few heartbeats nothing happened beyond a rapidly escalating sizzling and a soundless scream as the tree's mouth stretched wider and wider in apparent agony...
...then the tree exploded.