Since you asked so nicely, yes there is. Enjoy!

# 022 Out of the Shadows

Did I expect the Faceless Men to come knocking?

No, I did not. I suppose it made sense in a way, with me flipping the board and making myself nearly impossible to find through the wards.

Did it really matter?

Not really.

Was I prepared? Not as much as I would have liked… but I had a few tricks up my sleeve if it came to a fight.

I tightened the grip on my staff. It was one of those preparations I had made in case I had to face a numerically larger opponent, trading finesse for power. Where my wand was a tool of control and precision, the staff was a weapon meant for war. The wood was reshaped from the Weirwood Ritual Circle I had used, making the wood connect to me on a spiritual level. At the same time, the nature of the material was ideal for channeling Magical Energy, which was the main advantage of a Focus of this size. The tip of the staff had the three-headed dragon that had been the remaining parts of the cloak pin, bound in Obsidian, similar to the core of my wand, ready to bring fire and blood to my enemies.

I stopped, looking at Dany standing by Ser Willem. Her eyes were filled with worry, as though something was going to happen.

"Princess insisted that there was a danger, and Wat seemed to notice something odd about the man," said Ser Willem, having recovered his sword, "Brains noticed that he should not be here on time, and the Eyes think he acts funny... stiffer, unused to his body."

"Missy was acting up," said Dany holding a ball of fur in her arms. "Says there is danger."

"Meow," greeted the kitten named Missy, already the size of a fully grown cat despite being only a few months old at best, her raised fur making her look larger still. She was named after another cat of impressive size... with adjustments made to fit her gender.

Missy was... by all definitions, a Kneazle... or a magical cat that had a strange ability to tell if someone was trustworthy. I do not think I need to explain why an animal like that might come in handy... or why I made sure Dany bonded with her.

Missy was one of the continuing Magical Experiments I had been running. Having mostly mastered the art of breeding normal animals and making them larger, I was working on adding concepts to them now. Trying to bind specific affinities to animals to give them Magical Talents was the first experiment I did when I discovered the concept of Magical Affinities before I used it on myself.

It was the next step of my long-term plans of Fleshcrafting, and modifying a pregnant cat to deliver what amounted to a Kneazle was a decent step for practical purposes. An extra large cat that was soul bound with the Concepts of Revealing and Survival through runes was as good of a defense as any when faced with Super-Assassins. I had to bind a Magic Circle onto the skin of his mother while pregnant and feed the pregnant cat a potion regimen based around Moonstone, but the result was a species that could sense hidden dangers and threats, making it an invaluable part of my preparations.

The fact that Dany took a liking to the kitten and stopped asking me to somehow combine owls and cats so she could have a pet of hers was an added bonus. My rules were mostly set, no cross-species experimentation without access to both Wildfire and Valyrian Steel... just in case.

A touch of the kitten's mind gave me a more comprehensive vision than any of the words that could be exchanged.

'That makes sense,' I thought, pushing the thought to the kitten. While she was Dany's familiar with all applications, she responded to my thought as well, and it was easier to train her this way.

I patted Dany's head, watching her lean towards my hand. Given how young Dany was, I wondered if the bleed-over from sharing a mind with a cat would be too bad. I needed her to start somewhere when it came to magic, and the instincts of a Kneazle were one of the most valuable things I could grant her, allowing her to feel whom she could trust in the long run. She was older than Rickon Stark when he got his dire wolf, so I was optimistic and a deft hand at Mind Magic if optimism did not pan out.

"The lads are outside with our guest," said Ser Willem interrupting my train of thought.

"Not a guest," I corrected, clutching my new staff. There was no need to give Guest Rights to someone who was not welcome. I did not know if Guest Rights held power, but I treated the whole thing as though I was making deals with Fey. With the White Walkers being compared to the Sidhe... it sounded reasonable to stick to small things. "I shall meet him outside, Ser Willem, secure the keep and stay with my sister."

"You do not need to go out there; only one of them exists. What can it do against a knight and two armed men? Let him try to storm the keep on his own," stated Ser Willem, clutching his cane that hid a blade.

"Underestimating the enemy is a path to failure. The Faceless Men thrive in shadows; I would much rather fight where I can see him... though let us hope it does not come to that, and he is simply a messenger," I said, taking a deep breath to calm myself.

"And if he is not?" asked Ser Willem, giving me a look.

I stiffened. From the memories I was able to gather, the Faceless Men were trying to pit me against one of them for a reason I did not understand. It might have been their way of testing me, similar to how Arya had to fight Waif. It was also possible that they decided what I had discovered regarding Magic was as much as they could tolerate and would take the knowledge through wearing my face.

That being said, one thing was certain, I did not trust the Faceless Man who was pretending to be the Master of Horse.

"Then I won't hesitate," I said with finality.

Ser Willem nodded before stating, "Take the dog as well; he is of more use to you outside than waiting in a room," he advised; as I moved outside, Huan followed without even being told, some weird combination of using telepathy to teach him language allowing him to understand the conversation. Dany would be safe with Ser Willem, and both mine and the dog's talents were much more useful out in the open.

A tap of my staff shut the doors behind me, the runes of Force glowing along the staff. Due to its size, a staff managed to channel more energy than a wand, but that meant a lack of versatility because it was clumsier to draw runes with it... not to mention the whole wand core not working. My solution had been to carve the runes onto the surface of the wood to act as a shortcut. It limited my choices to a dozen spells that I could cast with additional power faster than with a wand, but that would be worth it if Faceless Men had some counter-magic protection.

Sir Richard was standing there, with his sword drawn, while Wat the Eyes held a Myrish Crossbow aimed at the man standing there, as he was the one with the most talent for ranged combat.

The Master of Horse had been working in the Ranch for longer than I owned the place. He was waiting and pretending to be confused about why he was not granted entry. I was going to assume that the unusualness of the man's early arrival was a result of enemy action instead of anything else.

As a general philosophy, I did not believe in coincidences.

"Ah, Prince Viserys, it is good to see you," said the Master of Horse. "Your men are threatening poor..."

Something caused my ears to ring as my mind screamed, 'Danger!'.

THUNK!

My left hand, still holding the staff, had moved on its own volition, the tip of a black blade sprouting through the white staff that I somehow pulled in front of me.

There were no words exchanged, no boasting or speaking, no offers or targets to give, only an uncharacteristic scowl of the Faceless Men for failing to kill me in a single fast strike. It was unusual... Faceless Men were patient, and the deaths they caused were akin to accidents.

This felt personal.

Had it not been for the staff, the blade would have hit me through the eye and into my brain.

The ripples on the blade and spiritual pain that resonated through me were enough to let me know that this was Valyrian Steel. While the blade had been physically stopped by the wood, my soul was connected to the Weirwood it cut through, meaning that my soul was also harmed, even indirectly.

I noticed a lance of pain on the back of my left hand, though the flesh was not harmed.

'Valyrian Steel can harm the soul,' I noted, not putting it into words. That type of information was something I did not want another to realize. I did not spend time pondering the spiritual meaning of that event more than that, focusing on providing a response for the assassin before anything.

I chose to use my wand to respond to the attack instead of the staff, as I was not going to try casting with a Focus that just stuck by what was obviously Valyrian Steel. The best-case scenario would be the staff blowing up in my face, so it was going to be useless unless I fixed it.

In my opinion, I gave the most reasonable answer to someone throwing a magical blade to my face... lifting my wand, and sending fire... not a spell, but raw spellfire with the command to 'consume.' The spell engulfed the Faceless Men in a corona of blue flames fueled by my anger to consume the one before me.

I have played around with feeding my emotions to the spells, only to see if they had an effect. The more emotional I was, the less stable magic became... more destructive... reflected by the temperature of the fire. While I could do the same with simply control... control and emotions rarely went hand in hand.

I channeled my frustration... not the frustration at the Death Cult but the frustration at myself. Reasoning and dealing with a Death Cult was stupid... trying to understand them was an exercise in futility.

I was not sure what sort of logic a fanatic death cult followed... not that there needed to be a logic given it was a fanatic death cult, but the one before me wanted me dead, either because all of them wanted me dead or because this was some sort of a test.

The flames lasted for but a moment before collapsing into nothingness, leaving behind... the Faceless Men, untouched but lacking the clothing... Unburnt.

"What the hell?" I heard Ser Richard mutter, and I found myself agreeing.

My initial attack stopping had been the signal as Wat the Eyes, losing a bolt, while Ser Richard prepared to leverage an opening I would create when our opponent got close enough. We had worked through such potential scenarios, including a few instances of me using my magic against them, and they were not so stupid to try to get in close with a deadly assassin where they would be collateral damage to one of my stronger spells.

That game was changed the moment the Faceless Men proved himself to be fireproof.

That was my schtick!

The assassin's next move was some sort of a smoke pallet aimed at me. He must have been already holding them in his palm, ready to throw them.

The faint shimmer of the bubblehead charm protected me from inhaling the smoke as I held my wand in my right hand. A flick of it had the winds disperse the smoke while Ser Richard was far enough to not get the brunt of what was obviously pepper spray of some sort.

Realization dawned on the Faceless Man's face as I watched him realize that I did not say a word for the fire spell either. My use of Non-Verbal Casting granted me a brief window, as I caught a glimpse of the mind behind the Occlumency through the shock. He expected me to become incapacitated, choking on the smoke and unable to cast a spell. He seemed to have studied me enough to think that I was solely dependent on incantations, an illusion and an ace that I knew had been worth it.

Before I could take away anything else or leave him unable to move through a Mental Attack, I was locked out through the variant of Occlumency that the Faceless Men practiced.

A sweep of my wand caused the grass to burst into flames and release smoke. Plants had their own form of soul stuff... a bit more foreign and lacked the more complex properties of a living being, but it was still useful when molded into the most destructive Cutting Curse I could produce. The Curse was amplified by shadow smoke from the grass, giving it more substance. Accounting for the fact that the Assassin was fast enough to dodge all the bolts sent by Wat, I sent a wide crescent of shadow without a word, a moment later followed by another, just behind it, slightly higher.

In the first spell, the Assassin jumped over before Huan slammed into him, catching his sleeve and ensuring that the Assassin could not dodge the second cutting curse before releasing and running away, knowing that a prolonged struggle would end up with him injured.

I watched the blade of shadow hit its target, droplets of blood flying in the air.

The smoke and shadow that caused the shallow cut roiled before sinking into something close to his neck instead of bisecting the man as I would have expected from the experience.

'Some form of protection,' my mind supplied as I followed through with the bolts of fire meant to pierce instead of burn.

The Assassin dodged the three bolts of Magical Flame, responding with another throwing knife that bounced off the shimmering air in front of me. A flick of my wand sends the compressed Air Shield to my opponent. The assassin rolled to the side of the shimmering air, only to catch an arrow to the shoulder... to no effect.

'Resistance to Physical and Magical attacks,' I mentally counted, the way the Assassin shrugged off the bolt and my spellfire... that was essentially dragon fire. 'Must be an item or something,' I concluded, knowing that such a process was hard to achieve on your own.

Seeing that he was focused entirely on me, I noticed that the only proper offense he was aware of that could definitely hurt me was the knife made of Valyrian Steel; I chose to do the simple thing of banishing the staff from my hand to Huan, who took it between his jaws and ran towards the woods with a mental command.

The look of offense I got caused me to smirk as I sent three more Firebolts, the most simple yet efficient spell I had. Instead of the assassin, the flames hit the drops of blood that had landed on the grass, allowing me to forge a link and push a mental attack through it.

Fun fact, Faceless Men have some sort of Occlumency... a way to keep their personality and tap into the memories of the faces they wore. That was their trick, how they could get around more powerful Mages in this world, using the memories from the dead to form a front while hiding their true intentions. It probably made them very good at killing anyone who dabbled in Magic and got far enough to be considered a danger... like the Pyromancers of Valyria.

Another fact, mentally I had the mental impact of Robert's Warhammer when I wanted to. It was not useful for Legilimency, but for controlling bodies... or making sure they are locked just long enough for someone to stab my opponent... I could do that.

While we were locked in a battle of wills that brought the Assassin's speed down to manageable rates, Ser Richard had swung his sword and carved a long gash across his torso.

The bite of steel broke the Mental Connection as the Faceless Man turned to face the knight, as though his guts were not starting to fall off.

Sir Richard took a knife to the gap in his armor on his thigh, grasping at the Faceless Men and trying to pull him back. The training armor he had on when the Assassin showed up was padded, but it was not the best at protecting him against sharp objects.

A mental thug moved Ser Richard out of the reach of the blade that was aimed at his throat. The modified summoning spell was the most I could achieve without a wand, as I was simultaneously occupied with the air rushing into a small ball between my left hand and the tip of my wand.

He turned to charge at me, but Ser Richard's distraction gave me time to charge something I had not managed to stabilize into a proper spell yet.

A breath later, the Assassin was before me, his knife made to stab me in the center mass. It was hard to miss... only stopping because of the enchantment I had bound to the leather vest. Unlike the tunic, the leather could hold stronger protection, and all I felt was a hit that would bruise instead of break a rib.

The ball of compressed air destabilized as it always did when I tried casting it, exploding outwards with force, launching all three of us away from the center.

My back hit the ground, the shield spell I wove in the last moment preventing the worst of the damage, even if I was going to end up bruised from the impact. The prototype Explosion Spell, shelved until I either figured out how to ensure the explosion happened away from me or until I had more protective gear, did its job of giving me distance and physically stunning my opponent.

It also had the side effect of turning my entire body into a bruise. It would have been worse without the shield spell I had managed to layer around myself, but it was not a spell I had mastered yet.

Rather than wasting time to get up normally, I pulled a move straight out of Dracula, using Magic to lift me up to my feet, as my entire body rotated upwards around the balls of my feet to stand up.

My entire body was going to bruise, and that trick was a pain on my ankles... but time was of the essence.

'What is this guy made out of?' I thought, watching the Faceless Men get up, his right arm broken and his body looking like it had gone through the ring a dozen times over. There was blood, a large yet shallow gash across his chest from the Cutting Curse, and a deeper cut through his stomach with his bowels hanging out and the bits of broken arrow shafts sticking out his body.

None of the injuries seemed to have an effect on the Faceless Men, so I decided for the countermeasure I prepared for those who were harder to kill, like the Alchemist and now the Faceless Men... taking out a specific knife.

The blade was the one I had recovered from the Sorrowful Men, coated with what I now knew to be Manticore Venom. Before, I had made the mistake of not having a blade that could potentially harm someone with magic against the Alchemist, and I was left wanting. My use of Shadowbinding ought to have addressed that, but apparently, there were protections against that type of magic, as my current opponent showed.

The blade itself was nothing unnatural, but it was coated by the venom of the Manticore. I had no idea how the venom worked, as any attempt to study had been a failure, mostly because I did not wish to possess the rats I killed with the poison on the off chance that it was magical enough to influence the soul. What I could gather from observing the dead rats with my Glasses of Mage Sight was that the venom seemed to have poked a hole in the soul for the Magical Energy to rapidly escape... leaving the victim without any Life Force, leading to death. Being magical in origin, it was hard to heal, so I tended to keep the blade away unless I really needed to.

I reached to the shadows bound to my arm, pulling the Shadow-smoke from the scar that I had used as storage. Wrapping the shadow smoke around the blade, I threw it with my left hand. The blade was hidden by the Shadow binding, taking the form of a raven made of smoke and magic, accompanied by two other shadow ravens that leaped out of my sleeve.

I threw the blade with my left hand just as three shadowy ravens came out of my sleeve, one of them covering the dagger and guiding its flight midair, making it curve and aim for my target.

All three ravens, made from shadow-smoke to become my variant of Magic Missile, bound around the cut on my arm to act both as a temporary suture and in case I needed to call upon self-guided shadow familiars. With the cutting curse removed, the flesh still had an affinity to Shadow-Smoke.

All three of the bolts, vaguely shaped like ravens, hit their target even when the Faceless Men moved to dodge. The first two got absorbed by the same protection that shielded my opponent against the Cutting Curse, while the last one revealed the dagger sticking out of his chest.

The Manticore Venom on the blade that was once owned by the Sorrowful Men that targeted me proved to be deadly and efficient, the blue color tinting the veins on the neck of its victim. The Faceless Men looked at me with shock, understanding clear in his eyes that he had just been killed.

Instead of accepting it, however, his shocked look changed to a sneer. With a strength he should not have had, the man before me took out the dagger that had been stabbed to his own heart and threw it back at me before collapsing.

'Should have I dodged,' I thought to myself as I watched the blade rip apart the Magical Shield I hastily erected. Against a normal weapon, the shield would have held. A knife covered with blood and Manticore Venom was not a normal weapon, however, not to mention the fact that I had tinkered with it enough times to know it would pierce through my armor. As I reached to alter the path of the knife, my control slipped, the covered blood causing blocking my access. As the accidental Blood Magic caused my control over the spell to be ripped from my metaphorical grasp.

Something, or rather someone, tackled me out of the way as we fell into a heap of muscle and steel. A second was all it took me to get my bearings, summoning my wand back to my hand from where it had fallen as I made to get up.

The Faceless Men seemed to be dying, the black veins slowly spreading out from the cut.

That did not change the cold anger I felt as I slashed my wand up from the ground, pulling on nature itself to bind to my will.

A wordless roar heralded the water rising out of the grass and the ground itself, wrapping around the Faceless Men's fallen body, before turning into a block of ice with my will forcing its vibrations of the atoms to stop, pulling the heat into my own wand and encasing the collapsed Assassin in a block of ice before turning around to the man who had saved my life... again.

Spells, when you knew how to make them happen with the rules of physics, worked best, in my experience.

Sir Richard was on the floor, the blade stuck to his right arm. He was still alive as I pulled out the blade from where it was stabbed into the armor, having punched through the steel plate as though it was not there. Next, I pointed my wand at his arm, burning away the clothing and straps that kept the armor together, revealing slowly spreading blue veins.

The good news, they were not black... indicating that the venom was diluted after first use.

Bad news, I had no idea how to treat and counter the Magical Venom.

"Shit," I said, pulling the knife out and stretching out his arm. While common sense indicated that a knife should not be removed from where it was hit to prevent the victim from bleeding out, venom-coated daggers had other rules.

Sir Richard looked at me with pleading eyes before his eyes hardened as our eyes met. He gave me a nod of understanding as Wat made it close enough to get an idea of what I was about to do, placing a few arrow shafts between the fallen knight's mouth.

"Apologies about this, Ser," I said, lifting my wand and swinging it. "Lacero Inflamare!" I intoned, using a variant of the cutting curse. The made-up incantation was meant for a Cursed Fire that caused inflation and further torture. It was a way for me to put down groups of people and prevent them from further attacking, but the basis of it was still a flaming cutting curse. Given that I was knocked around more than my fare share, the added focus that the incantation could provide was needed.

I slashed my wand down, drawing a line of fire in the air with my wand, sending the spell-flame imbued with the concept of cutting, severing the limb just below the shoulder, and cauterizing the wound at the same time. My intent targeted the Manticore Venom, burning the damage around the area.

Ser Richard... screamed, as Wat kept him from trashing about. The limb fell away, but the danger had not yet passed.

Manticore Venom was potent, but most of it had already dissolved in the body of the Assassin. Whatever remained on the blade after it was used a second time was less potent and slower to spread... or so my brain came up with, having gone fully logical when confronted with an emergency.

Taking out a Bezoar from my pocket, I held it next to the stump, letting spellfire consume the material and take on the properties of the Bezoar. While normal Bezoar did not have the properties of counteracting poisons as I hoped it would be able to on its own, combining it with magic allowed me to create a spellfire that absorbed foreign materials.

The echo of the cursed flame from the cut joined to the flame that was meant to absorb the poison of the stone from the stomach of a goat, providing me with a way to burn the poison out.

The flames that were burning a soft yellow took on a blue tint for a moment as I wove a quick enchantment on the remnants of the poison itself, breaking down the will of the Manticore with my own.

A bird landed nearby only to burst into flames with a look from me and a finger of fire from my left hand, the ring on my finger acting as the focus. The fire and shadow wove themselves to anchor the enchantment... binding the Manticore Venom to the blood and the enchantment of cursed flame and Bezoar... reaching a balance.

I used the small break to take out my glasses, putting them on. They were no simple aids for my vision. The Glasses of Mage Sight were crafted from a combination of Dragonglass and Weirwood and gave me the ability to see Magical Energy and even souls.

Watching the process through the Glasses of Mage Sight, I saw the strange way the remnants of the Venom influenced the body before me. "The Manticore Venom is slowly leaking Magical Energy," I mumbled to myself, watching whisps of light leave through the cauterized wound.

The effect looked the same as it did with... Nightwood. That was what I was missing... Nightwood must be some sort of a hybridization of Manticore Venom and Trees, which would explain why it had the ability to remove Magical Energy from the soul.

Magical Energy was so linked to willpower and drive. A vision of Ser Robert Strong came before me, lacking his own will... his own motivation, and drive.

Where my initial treatment had prevented the actual venom from causing damage, its ability to leak magic was one that I needed to fix, lest Ser Richard would find himself with no life force and a shell of his former self.

'Your fault!' a treacherous part of me whispered in my mind.

There was, ironically, only one answer I could think of to solve his problem.

I clenched my left arm, only now noticing the ghost of a cut on my hand. It had been... something, a strange feeling that I had forgotten in the heat of battle. While my flesh itself looked unharmed, in the Unseen through the glasses on my face, there was damage, as though my hand had been stabbed through instead of the staff that I used to intercept the Valyrian Steel.

There was nothing to do with my injury directly, but I noted that it was only skin deep... in a metaphysical sense, at least. It was limited to the layer of soul I added lately... in my pursuit of divinity. A layer of soul that was meant to absorb, amplify and channel Magical Energy... the Life Energy.

The layer of soul-stuff I wrapped around my own self was meant to absorb Magical Energy, a process that I had achieved by binding the Essence of Weirwood to my own soul. It was the exact opposite of Nightwood in a sense, the exact opposite of what the Manticore Venom was doing. It could balance it out.

Threads of soul-stuff extended from the fingers of my right hand, digging themselves into my left hand where the cut was, tearing off a chunk of the added layer I had gained through the Ritual through gritted teeth.

The soul stuff looked frayed in the corners; it was still malleable enough that I could remove it. In the unseen, I could see the smooth cut from Valyrian Steel, with the skeletal outline of my original soul remaining, but the ghost of the pain was gone now. The soul-stuff I took was held in my hands, though I would need a medium to bind it.

I coughed, my throat felt raw, as I noticed that I was screaming in pain... not even noticing that, so wrapped in my task that I was. What I was doing... it was hard to put to words, instincts guiding me through Soul Magic as I surrendered myself to what I intended to do.

The cut from the Valyrian Steel was part of the soul now, a piece of it. I poured my will through the connection, shifting that story of the soul slightly. Where the soul stuff was initially cut, now it would cut. Where the soul stuff was severed, now it could be used to sever.

"My blade," I declared in High Valyrian, finding the words fitting.

I pressed my hand onto the back of Ser Richard, pouring the essence onto his flesh, watching the soul stuff bind itself to the dimming soul of the knight who had taken a knife for me... who had saved my life more than once.

"He will live, but it is still touch and go," I admitted, collapsing onto the couch. It had taken hours and dozens of potions to stabilize the Manticore Venom, along with other poisons that the Assassin had used.

Now that I had time to relax, I felt the bruises on my body. Using Magic to move was much more dangerous than normally moving, as it turned out, which, combined with having a spell explode in front of me, made me feel like I was a walking bruise.

Nessa had brought some food while others were waiting on me to explain what happened or come to a decision in the case of the Black Pearl and her daughter. It was only the adults in the room.

I did not realize that the sun had already set, and everyone was looking at me.

'They are afraid,' I noticed, realizing that most of them had not seen me use my spell to go all out. Ser Willem knew, as he had watched me use most of my spells one time or another, and Bellonara had an idea of my abilities but not the extent. Compared to the fight, all I had used were cantrips in comparison.

Dany was standing next to Ser Willem, looking at me with wide violet eyes while still holding Missy. She was the first to move, forcing me to scoot over as she sat next to me on the couch, snuggling beside me.

'She is the same girl who would hatch and ride dragons,' I mused mentally, playing with her silver hair as I watched her fall asleep against me. That seemed to have set everyone at ease, as Lanna's stiff shoulders relaxed while Bellegere looked at me, biting her lips while making eyes at me.

"What will you do?" asked Bellonara, her intentions clear.

"You would have me declare war on the Faceless Men?" I asked, breaking through the subtlety that she was trying to go for.

"What do they want?" asked Ser Willem, looking his age more than before.

"I do not know," I admitted. At the end of the day, the Faceless Men were a Death Cult, and those tended to not be limited by mortal concepts like logic or reason.

Looking back, every action of the Faceless Men has been beneficial to me until now. Sir Richard had proven his loyalty more than enough times. The Alchemist had been the path to discovering more magic than I could normally do in a short amount of time. The attempt on the Sea Lord of Braavos seemed too staged and had been a boon for me. Even Black Pearl had been a boon, the Faceless Men forcing my hand and teaching me to distrust the motives of others.

What was their end goal, though, that remained a mystery. The Kindly Man claimed that I was some sort of messianic figure, blessed by their Many-Faced God, but their actions were very... Sith, you know, kill everyone you care about, break down your morals for power... that kind of thing.

"When will it end?" asked Ser Willem, "if we left Braavos..."

"Valar Morgulis," I whispered, repeating the words of the Faceless Men. 'Until I am dead,' the words whispered.

"That is ominous," commented Bellanora, making me realize that I had spoken those words out loud.

"Can you kill them?" asked Ser Willem, finally asking the right question. 'Can you win?' his words meant.

'Not in a straight fight, obviously,' I thought to myself. Fighting Faceless Men would be futile unless I took them all out in a single blow. While I could protect myself by hiding, it would not change the fact that sooner or later, someone close to me would get hurt instead.

I would need a decisive strike, one that would end the threat in an instant. I could not let the Faceless Men respond, not give them a choice in the matter. That is what the likes of Tywin would do if he were in my place. I found myself agreeing... fuck, when did Tywin Fucking Lannister become the voice of reason in my head?

If you hit the king, you better kill the king, as the saying went.

Huan trotted in then, distracting me from my thoughts, my staff still between his teeth.

"Good boy," I said, ruffling his fur as Huan dropped the staff onto my lap. The blade was still stuck a quarter way through to the top of it.

I severed the part of the staff that had the blade stuck in it, leaving me with a walking stick. I was not sure if the cut itself could be fixed, but I was not willing to risk using it.

A flick of my wand had the Weirwood and the knife it was connected to set on fire. The spell I used cleaned the Valyrian Steel knife from any substance around it, my insight returning only traces of blood and cleaning oil. I would have expected poison of some sort, a trick that I would expect from the Faceless Men and 'Constant Vigilance' and whatnot.

Once the Weirwood was burned out, I was left with a gloved blade on the floor. The flames also caused the blade to reveal something.

I grasped the dragon bone handle; it was not hot, as dragon bone had some unique thermal properties. The words in High Valyrian Glyph clashed against the ripples of the Magical Crucible Steel, which the ignorant would think to be folded instead of formed naturally through a chemical reaction.

"From my blood comes the Prince that was Promised, and he will be the Song of Ice and Fire," I read out loud... before cursing whichever idiot had the idea of putting the words of a Prophecy into a Magical Artifact and leaving it unsupervised.

Everyone looked out the window to the field where I fought the Faceless Men, half burned and half frozen.

Strangely, it reminded me of which world I now lived in.

This was a cruel world... and I had no luxury of hesitating.

I did not want to choose to be reborn as Viserys Targaryen, but living a peaceful life was not going to happen. It was time I stopped holding back.

Before making any more life-altering and possibly foolish decisions, I needed to strip everything off of the Faceless Men that came to kill me.

The ice that trapped the now frozen corpse of the Faceless Men slowly retreated with my will until I could stab the corpse in the heart with the Valyrian Steel dagger... just to be thorough, before proceeding to decapitate the corpse... through... definitely not for some reasonable anger on my end... just being through.

When I swung the blade the first time around, the blade clinked against something, causing me to do a few follow-up cuts to remove the head... both because the dagger was too short to do it in a single swing and because whatever was around the man's neck was strong enough to stop Valyrian Steel.

That thing turned out to be a necklace that I was quite fascinated by. It is clearly Valyrian Steel, with dragonglass and rubies decorating it. Interestingly, there are bits of the metal that look like it had melted and cooled, and half the jewelry is missing, with the remaining half looking as though it had melted. It was likely that it had been recovered from the Royal Treasury by the Faceless Men when he stole the dagger. Knowing only dragonfire or possibly wildfire could melt Valyrian Steel, which narrows the object to an heirloom of House Targaryen that either survived Summerhall or even possibly belonged to the only female royal executed by a dragon… Rhaenyra Targaryen.

"Wonder if Sunfyre died from choking on Valyrian Steel," I muttered to myself, deciding to gift it to Dany. Even if it was half melted, it was still Valyrian Steel and managed to absorb any Shadowbinding-based attacks I could throw at its wearer. With the dagger by my side and the necklace on her, I would feel much better.

The thought about Sunfyre gave me an idea that I would need to pursue, but for now, I needed intel.

The face peeled away after I poked at it for a few minutes, figuring out how to remove the face he wore. The edge of my wand carving through the actual flesh. Once the skull was cleaned and prepared for me to turn into a Proto-Pensieve, so I could take a peak at the memories of the Dead Assassin.

The frustrating part was that there was nothing that made the Faceless Men my enemy. There was no personal grudge, no survivor of Aerys' cruelty wanting to get payback... he had been just a man, his life given to Faceless Men for revenge against those who wronged him. He had nothing personal against me, being told to take me out.

What was not there were memories of knowledge best shared with No One... the story of Valyria and the foundation of the Faceless Men was there, but the fate of the Fire Mages that Arya had not heard was not.

"An acolyte... maybe an apprentice," I commented, my hand falling from the Memory Potion I used to fill the skull to draw out the memories. The bone itself had merged with Weirwood, a white skull with no eyes or any holes... forming a cup. The white threads of memories were drawn out by the Memory Potion that filled it.

The Glasses of Mage Sight I crafted out of combining Weirwood and Dragonglass failed to penetrate the protections on the Faceless Men's face, while a bit of divination using scrolls of runes showed traces of Weirwood and Nightwood in the blood, consumed through some sort of a potion.

I clenched my jaw, thinking of an improvement to my glasses and how to increase its range... making a better variant of the Glass Candle that I was sure made from wood, dragonglass, and dragon bone, not dissimilar to my wand.

"Fuck it, let's go for broke," I muttered to myself, taking out the bronze cauldron I used to make potions.

The bronze cauldron sat before me, scrubbed clean for nearly an hour on the running river. It was decent enough, and I had channeled my Magical Energy to my at, ensuring that the cauldron would be clean enough for the delicate potion I was makin'.

My wand moved along the surface of the bronze, etching Glyphs onto the metal... delicate potion meant the cauldron would be single-use.

'Ask me the secrets of Sith Alchemy,' I heard the words echo in my memories... something I had only heard once, the voice cold and dark, 'and I would ask you for three measures of blood: one from a person you love, one from a person you hate, and one from yourself.'

First was the blood. The blood of the Faceless Men, who was my enemy, the blood of Ser Richard, who was my protector, and finally, my own blood.

Naga Sadow had been onto something. Three was a powerful number, one that happened in more than one work of fiction. Blood had power, and the three types of blood were all delicate in their nature.

'Blood of the Enemy, forcibly taken, you shall not hide from the Maker, ' another voice echoed; this one was hesitant, shaking, echoing as I focused on the heart's blood of the Faceless Men. It still held traces of the potion that worked to hide them from the sight of other magicals, a mix of Nightwood and Weirwood Saps that hid the Faceless Men from detection. It was a more permanent form of my amulets... though less refined and more long-term. I had no idea if the process left them unable to use magic or some other marginal side effect, but I was not going to try it... best I could think was that it would leave the drinker infertile.

'Blood of the Servant, given in defense, you shall protect the Maker, ' the words sounded in my ear as though spoken by me. The Blood of Ser Richard was an important aspect, the Venom in his blood, the essence of Weirwood bound to his soul, and the multiple set of unique effects that his blood now contained... a mocking copy of the potion the Faceless Men consumed to gain their powers... the same liquid that left them blind.

'Blood of the Caster, willingly given, you shall bind to the Maker,' the words completed themselves; I let my instincts guide me as I made a shallow cut on the finger and let three drops of my blood mix with the content of the cauldron.

Next was stone... sticking to the theme of threes. One for Sight, One for Hiding, and One for Revealing.

I already knew Dragonglass was magical and made the base of the Glass Candles, so I had the sight covered.

Hiding was easy as well, for Moonstone was the answer. I had a single piece of Moonstone I was experimenting with, using Sympathetic Magic to bind the stone to the New Moon and the conceptual hiding the moonless sky represented.

Revealing was tricky until I found a ring in the pile of jewelry we took from Dragonstone. Among the pile was a ring made of ruby and Sunstone... one that belonged to Elia Martell.

At first, I reached for the ruby before my fingers brushed against the Sunstone. It made sense, in a way, a representation of the sun to go with the moon.

Dragonglass, Moonstone, and Sunstone went in next, with three stones that represented the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun, respectively. Dragonstone to bind to Earth, Moonstone to find the hidden, and Sunstone to reveal it.

Lastly, three pieces of wood are suspended over the cauldron. The Weirwood and Nightwood were given. The combination of the woods hid the Faceless Men, and they would reveal it all the same.

Last, I went with the ash wood mostly because I found the concept of 'ash of ash' poetically appealing, and Goldenheart wood would not be of any use without understanding its properties. As the wood pieces burst into flames, I watched the ash mix into the potion, thickening it.

Three of threes, making nine, the number of divination and knowledge. Three stones, three kinds of wood, and three types of blood.

The last piece was going to be the part that closed the ritual in a way. The head of the Magical Staff I made, the three-headed dragons of dragon bone, even though it was also one, completing the potion with ten ingredients, and cycling back to the number One, representing unity and singularity, the three-headed dragons holding a fourth conceptual set of threes, which made twelve. That held meaning as well, one for unity, two for pairing, and three for stability all at once.

Pulling on the Magical Energy around me, I slowly reached out, lifting the potion out of the bronze cauldron. The materials resonated with my wand, the dragon bone was the same, and there was power in shared cores, even if the rest of the materials were different.

The final piece was some soul-stuff, like the piece I removed from around my own to remove the cut, a connection that would be established, elevating the control from affinity to mastery.

I slowly channeled spellfire through the ball of potion, crushing the liquid under my will, boosted by the power of the Well of Magic I had access to.

The potion ignited from the inside as the memories of the fires within the world came to me.

"Proteus," I muttered, opening my mind to those memories, using them to guide my consciousness through the world, reaching out and down to the core of the world, building a link between the core of the black sphere that was slowly forming and the core of the World, it's insides still glowing yellow, even though outside of the glass ball was cold enough to hold.

Once the Orb was complete, I held it in my palm. It was smooth, perfectly spherical, and large enough to hold within my fingers.

The core of the Orb glowed, and I saw.

In the Isle of Gods, in the middle of Braavos, a man walked off a drifting barge, guided by no one. Magic was handy like that.

I did not have time to heal up, my body was still too stiff for my comfort, but I needed to have this talk with the Faceless Men all the same and the two days I had was all I could afford.

"A man is angry," stated the Kindly Man upon seeing me standing before the House of Black and White.

I raised an eyebrow at the observation. "What gave it away?" I asked as sardonically as I could.

"The servants can clean bird droppings on his cloak so many times before he gets the idea," came the explanation, making me smirk. It had only been a week, but I had managed to put a more long-lasting hex on all the Faceless Men, linking the face I acquired, along with some specific memories of the Hall of Faces, to define the conceptual representation of a 'Faceless Men.'

"Even the ones who use less than magical means?" I asked, pretending and failing at sounding innocent... on purpose, at least.

"Just so," responded the Kindly Man, narrowing my eyes. 'Yes, you little shit, I can target each and every one of you; imagine what I plan to do next.'

And the two days was just enough to make sure that the Faceless Men got that message.

That had been the main issue with killing off the Faceless Men; their diverse methods of changing faces were not ideal. The only solution I could find was to target them, using some High-Level Sorcery to curse every face they wore.

In a similar vein, I could not target their non-existent name. While I did not know how to leverage the name of the person, there were enough stories that I could figure out with some effort.

Instead, I attacked their very identity, the face, the name, and the memory all at once, specifically using my own memory of the Hall of Faces that I removed from my mind, to isolate those who had seen the center of the House of Black and White, with the exclusion of myself... as I no longer held that particular memory.

In comparison, binding a constant compulsion on the birds to make them shit on the Faceless Men was rather easy, requiring a few birds to sacrifice. It was a bit wasteful, as I disliked sacrificing animals or people for spells that reduced over time but it was a necessity... sometimes, you needed to get the point across.

I could hit each and every Faceless Men all at once was the point... if it was not obvious.

"I killed that little test of yours..." I stated, causing Kindly Man to sigh. "That makes me one of you... now I want answers," I declared.

"A man is now truly, No One," said the Kindly Man, pausing for a moment, "now, could he stops the spell he put on the Servants of the Many-Faced God."

"Fine... no more bird poop for you lot," I nodded, tapping my staff and undoing the Jinx with a flex of my will. The Orb of Divination I crafted, the one that I placed as the new headpiece of my staff, glowed for a moment.

"A wizard is most gracious," said the Faceless Men,

"So, Servant of the Many-Faced God... what is the deal exactly? You lot are not really against slavery, or you would have killed off all the Masters and there would be an unending string of Slave Rebellions but you have weird rules and..." I was cut off, feeling something punch through my chest.

"A Servant of the Many Faced God would not have hesitated, he ought to have struck the killing blow when he had the chance," said the Kindly Man, "this way the Enemies cannot get a Wizard... he would be wise to accept the Gift. Valar Morghulis," said the Kindly Man, as I looked down and saw the hilt of a sword sticking out of my torso, clutched by the Kindly Man.

For a moment, all I could feel was the cold.

AN: Good news, this fic is not dead... Viserys on the other hand... well, find out next time on Dragon Ball Z Wandbearer. It should not take two months.