The three taboos of a skinchanger: eating human flesh, mating in beast form, and seizing human bodies.
Breaking any one of them would make you a monster.
So when Dany caught Brynden's malicious implication, he snapped furiously, "Do you even know what you're saying? Leave. Now."
Meera looked puzzled, while Hodor seemed deep in thought. Dany only shrugged indifferently and left with her followers.
As they retraced their path, Dany encountered several more ravens perched upon the skulls of the stone-wall shrines.
Like before, the birds gazed at her with eerily human red and black eyes, silently watching her group depart.
On a sudden impulse, a fragment of Dany's second soul—the Greenseer—split away again. Just as she once entered the roots to commune with the weirwoods, she now slipped into the consciousness of a raven.
She wanted to try controlling one as an animal companion.
To her surprise, it was effortless. There was no mental barrier to overcome.
Normally, her spirit ring's second soul could never enter an animal's mind without causing harm.
True, the Dragon Horn's simulated magic could forcefully subdue any creature's consciousness, but such a method always damaged the target's soul—that was, after all, the principle behind the "True Dragon Roar."
Ordinary beasts couldn't withstand draconic might; their souls would shatter instantly, leaving no chance to control them like a skinchanger's bonded beasts.
Yet this time, her entry was astonishingly smooth.
Her soul fragment slipped into the raven like a drop of alcohol merging into a lake—easily breaching the soul's surface.
But once inside, the sight before her left Dany stunned.
"Seven hells—they're not ravens!" She stopped abruptly, pointing at the birds in disbelief.
"What do you mean, not ravens?" asked the Big Bear, puzzled.
The squirrel-like Child of the Forest, Leaf, suddenly grew alarmed. "Dragon Queen, your soul cannot bond with these creatures! Whatever you do, don't merge your spirit with theirs."
"They aren't ravens at all—they're the Children of the Forest. These are their second lives," Dany said gravely.
Within the raven's soulsea, there was no bird—only a Child of the Forest staring back at her with curious eyes.
A raven's body, but the soul of a Child of the Forest.
The being looked at Dany with curiosity but showed no fear or panic.
What shocked Dany even more was that this spirit retained its original humanoid form—it wasn't a hybrid beast like Varamyr's second life, a wolf with a man's face.
The Children's souls remained as they were in life.
"I told you before—they are my kin," said Leaf quietly.
Dany froze, then recalled it.
Yesterday afternoon, when they first entered the cave, Leaf had said those words sadly as they passed the shrines.
At the time, Dany thought she was referring to the small skeletal remains enshrined there—the skeletons of the Children of the Forest.
"So that's what you meant," Dany murmured with a wry smile. "Are all the ravens in the weirwood forest like this too?"
She thought of the Three-Eyed Raven's vast flock—thousands upon thousands of them.
"All of them," Leaf replied, nodding.
"There are thousands!" Dany said, incredulous.
"At least three thousand," Leaf answered, her gold-green eyes brimming with sorrow. "I still remember the names of at least three thousand of my kin. The rest have been gone too long."
"So at least three thousand souls…" Dany frowned. "Given your people's small numbers, it must have taken millennia to gather so many ravens. Can they even live that long?"
"The Children of the Forest live far longer than humans," Leaf said softly. "And we do not die as you do. You return to the lands of the dead; our souls merge with the forest, with the earth, the mountains, and the rivers."
"Sometimes, when I sleep upon the roots of a weirwood, I can still speak with old friends buried within them—friends who've been dead for centuries."
"Even so, ravens that live for thousands of years sound like demigods," Dany muttered, astonished.
Then a thought struck her. She remembered their first clash in the apple orchard of Crownlands, where Brynden had possessed a great raven's body.
A single raven had fought her—and two dragons—to a stalemate. If not for Drogon's self-sacrifice and Dany pushing her powers beyond their limits, who knew how that battle might have ended?
Perhaps an ordinary raven couldn't have managed that. It must have been one of these Children-inhabited ravens.
"Are these ravens Brynden's companions? What's special about them?" Dany asked.
Leaf grew anxious. "You must withdraw your spirit at once! Do not merge with that raven's soul!"
"Why? Brynden has thousands of them. Giving me one wouldn't matter, would it?" Dany asked, confused.
"You can't use them," Leaf said quickly. "Your soul is suffused with dragon essence—it's no different from a dragon's. Think! Could a raven possibly bear the weight of a dragon's soul?"
"That…" Dany froze, realizing the sense in her words.
Seeing Dany retract her spirit, Leaf exhaled in relief and continued, "These ravens are far more intelligent. They possess magic within them, and they're larger, fiercer—no eagle could match them.
"Also, ordinary ravens have forgotten the Old Tongue. We still remember it. The Old Tongue is the language of the first spells."
"So by using these ravens, a skinchanger can cast any spell they know?" Dany asked, eyes widening.
Leaf nodded.
"That's outrageously unfair," Dany muttered, half in awe and half in envy.
In Westeros, the Three-Eyed Raven already held absolute dominion over information—omniscient, all-seeing.
Now, with the Children's ravens, they weren't just all-knowing… they were almost omnipotent.
Omniscient and omnipotent—doesn't that describe God?
Indeed, Westeros truly is a forbidden land for all other extraordinary beings.
Casting one last reluctant glance at the ravens, Dany continued on her way.
The dim yellow torchlight dispelled the darkness inside the cave. Carefully stepping over the weirwood roots and scattered stones, Dany turned to the squirrel-like being beside her and asked,"Why did the ravens forget the Old Tongue?"
"The world has changed," Leaf sighed. "A long time ago, only the Children of the Forest used ravens to send messages.
The ravens, like us, spoke the Old Tongue, and communication was effortless.
We would tell the ravens what to say, and they would deliver our words to the recipient."
"My dragons can speak the Old Tongue, but I can't. How about visiting Slaver's Bay for a few years?" Dany invited.
"I'm very tired, my legs are weak, and I don't wish to leave my homeland. Besides, this is a special time—my people can't be without me," Leaf declined gently.
"Hey, the queen owns half the world. Follow her, and you won't have to suffer in caves anymore," Belwas laughed.
Dany gave the fat eunuch an approving glance.
"I know how greedy humans are. If we enter your world, we'd be captured, sold, and collected like rare beasts," said Leaf.
Even so, the squirrel-woman understood the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the Dragon Queen. As they reached the cave entrance, she offered to let Dany take two ravens with her.
"When you enter their bodies, don't merge your souls—communicate only through your minds.
They, like me, have traveled across Westeros for centuries and understand the human tongue.
Once you can understand the Old Tongue, you may release them. Even across the Narrow Sea, they'll know the way home."
Leaf, a powerful skinchanger herself, merely raised her hand toward the dark sky, and two red-eyed black ravens, each the size of a hen, flew down from the weirwood forest with loud caws.
"What are their names?" Dany asked.
"Our human names exist only for your kind. Call them whatever you wish."
"Skreee—"
A dragon roared, and a burst of crimson dragonfire illuminated half the mountainside.
Dany waved her hand, and the stream of flame swirled down like a ribbon, gathering into a sphere in her palm.
As the fireball expanded to the size of a volleyball, she tossed it upward. The glowing sphere hovered thirty meters in the air, casting the valley in a warm twilight glow—everything within half a kilometer became visible to the naked eye.
And that was only the beginning. Drogon roared again, spewing two more waves of dragonfire into the sky. Soon, three fireballs floated above, blazing like miniature suns.
After eating the weirwood seed paste, Dany's magical power hadn't increased, but her control had multiplied several times over.
Casting spells now felt effortless—controlling three fireballs at once came easily to her.
With the three glowing orbs burning bright, the mountainside was as bright as a late afternoon.
The snowdrifts and trees were not crystal clear, but they were bright enough to reveal every single wight.
Crrrkkk—crkkk.
The dragons hadn't been there long before the scene turned into something from a zombie movie. One by one, corpses with glowing blue eyes emerged from beneath the snow, trudging slowly but steadily toward the cave that radiated the warmth of the living.
"Boom!"
Drogon landed directly at the cave's entrance. Dany stepped forward, leaving the magic circle's protective boundary.
Channeling the five dragon souls within her, she unleashed—for the first time—the fivefold dragon-spirit technique: Soul Extinguishing Strike.
Thoom—
The air itself rippled with a visible shockwave spreading in a fan shape from Dany's position down the slope.
Buzz… buzz… The snow across the mountainside trembled lightly.
Hundreds of charging wights, sprinting toward Drogon, were instantly obliterated—like fragile cars crashing into concrete at 120 kilometers per hour.
Crash! Bones shattered, limbs flew through the air.
In the blink of an eye, the once-pure, snow-white slope—like a maiden's first love—had become a bloody slaughterhouse.
Blue sinews, pale bones, dark red viscera, and gray intestines gleamed under the firelight.
"Hiss!" Dany gasped, drawing in a sharp breath.
The destructive force of the fivefold dragon-spirit's "Soul Extinguishing" strike was so terrifying that even she was stunned.
"By the Seven!" Her White Knight stared, wide-eyed and speechless.
Suddenly, Leaf leapt out like an agile monkey, landing on an exposed rock in the snow. She untied a coil of hemp rope from her waist and, like a cowboy roping cattle, flung it around the neck of a wight bear. Her brown face flushed red as she pulled with all her might.
Coldhands, who had been standing guard at the cave entrance, stepped forward skillfully to help drag the creature.
"What are you doing?" Dany asked in confusion.
"It's a bear," Leaf replied.
"Yes, I can see that. What about it?" Dany suddenly had a bad feeling.
"Bear meat is edible," Coldhands said.
"Eat—eat what?" Dany's face went pale, and she almost gagged.
"After corpses turn into wights, they stop rotting. This bear just died not long ago, so its meat is still fresh.
We always hunt like this—use dragonglass daggers to kill animal wights, drag them into the cave to improve our meals. We get tired of eating fish every day," Leaf explained.
"Then the meat we ate last night…" Dany's voice trembled.
"That was a wild boar. We killed it last summer, tied its legs, and left it outside the cave to turn into a wight—it keeps fresh that way.
When we heard important guests were coming, we killed it yesterday morning as a treat for you," said Leaf.
"Urgh!"
After retching, Dany suddenly remembered—she hadn't eaten any meat. Instead, she had drunk most of that weirwood seed paste...
(End of Chapter)
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