It had been but a day like any other, a quiet communion within the Godswood.
As was his custom, he had sought the dark solace of meditation, only to have his requisite calm violated by the intrusive friction of an unwanted observer.
The Weirwood’s visage, with its weeping sap and hollow, carved eyes, pulsed more erratically than before with the magic of this world and that within its bark.
The culprits had used a form of telemetric awareness and sight through the trees, a rather useful ability to see the existing area, perhaps even further.
Simultaneously, a psychic probe had been funneled through the mundane vessel of a carrion bird perched upon a nearby branch.
It was a clumsy attempt at spying on him, especially since he was so attuned to the Force in ways those worms couldn’t even begin to understand, that he made them realize the height of such folly.
His retaliation had been as instinctive as it was absolute.
With a mere squeeze of his hand, he had collapsed the bird into a wretched ball of flesh and matted feathers before it could even beat its wings to flee.
He had vented a surge of unfiltered malice into the ancient bark of the tree, a forceful scream so potent it would have killed a dozen men where they stood.
He had felt the hidden spy recoil in genuine, shivering fear and terror, and it had pleased him so dearly.
Using that thread of fear, he had tracked the presence northward, past the architectural wonder of the Wall, into the frozen lands.
Yet, just as he triangulated the source, the presence vanished, retreating into a void of total silence.
Wise, he conceded then.
He hid his presence totally now, but the damage was done; it would be a little time before he caught the culprit once he resumed his search with different other methods.
Though they were shrouded in the chaotic darkness of the far North, a more sinister, entropic will lay not further away from them, a thing that sought to drown the world in a silent, icy grave and darkness.
Perhaps these were the enemies of the prophecy he read about in those books, such parasites.
They tried to hide themselves as best as they pathetically could, but that level of benign hate for all that held life could never be hidden.
That stench could never be cast under a rug as ill-made as theirs.
And back then they felt him as he felt them, but for the moment, they were content to cloud his vision as much as he clouded theirs with the potent miasma of the dark side; he used their very fears to torment them before they could push the effect away.
That moment of torment had made him cackle internally as he saw that they could feel the effects of pain.
And that was more satisfying than just killing them.
Those creatures were intriguing, but he would broker no talk or truce with them, for they lived only to bring death and cold.
An antithesis to both sides of the force, he would have no rivals to what he set out to achieve, whether natural or supernatural.
Their fate was complete annihilation, and he would make it so.
Until then, they would remain under his silent, close surveillance.
Reminiscing aside, he turned his focus back toward the castle’s interior, reaching through the Force for his valuable prize.
The boy, his supposed half-brother, was a coarse fiction.
Eddard Stark might have played the role of the honorable father with grim devotion, but eventually to a master of deception, the lie became transparent.
Ned’s emotional instability flickered with a chaotic, recognizable guilt whenever he spoke the word “son” to Jon, and the distinct, bitter reluctance of maintaining a falsehood was shown in the force.
It had taken only a few pointed, seemingly innocuous questions, phrased with the practiced guile of a senator and the curiosity of a child, to confirm the truth.
Jon Snow was no bastard of the North.
He was Jon Targaryen, the legitimate scion of a fallen dynasty.
If Jon were even his given name, the point is that Jon was a member of royalty.
He was the true king of Westeros, a king Ned Stark hid and, based on his observations, had no ambitions of letting him regain his birthright.
Ned Stark was not necessarily a pacifist, but he believed in the act of avoiding unnecessary bloodshed.
His lack of ambition and his desire for a quiet life rather than the pursuit of power, personal gain, or legacy seemed rather foolish in such a setting of a feudal society.
This assertion is especially true because the geographical position of the north and its weather hinder progress in many areas.
To him, Ned Stark was not only a fool but also a hypocrite who thought his lack of intervention, political passivity, meant doing the right thing.
How foolish and naive he was, yet the irony of his character was sublime.
The boy he hid, his cousin Jon Snow, was a nexus of power, the blood of the dragon and the wolf braided into a singular, potent line.
His potential in the Force shone brightly, more than the others, but he was still not at the chosen one’s power level.
But unlike Anakin Skywalker, his treacherous former apprentice, a creature of volatile fire and fragile glass, Jon could be carved into the perfect servant, but he’d have to be careful.
Vader had proved to him that the Dark side could be relinquished after soaking in its power for so long, a thing he didn’t thought impossible but his love for his son had seen him prevail.
Sorry it took so long.