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123 AC, Sothoryos
A line of Light appeared from the fissure that the sword had cut, splitting the very lands in two. It was not cutting the ground, not really, but a chunk of the world itself was being cut away. The ground and sky were split, cut in two, by a great white slash, and then the world turned white.
Power had never been something that Harry sought, not really. In his youth, he had always been consumed by his obsession with understanding the world around him, whose mysteries seemed almost endless. Looking back, he had never truly given up on his obsession, for even after the War against Dumbledore and Grindelwald, he had very rarely stopped jumping from one mystery to another.
He studied magic, everything he could get his hands on, and perfected his own methods of casting in a way that every improvement felt marginal at best. It was then that he turned to understanding the mysteries of his world, exploring tombs and ancient sites alongside his wife. Even when they left their universe, they might have had their goals, mainly ending Daphne's curse, but it all changed to solving mysteries. After all, there was an infinity of universes out there, each unique in its own way, each one with its own mysteries that he could solve.
Power had never been something that he sought out, because it came as a byproduct of knowledge, of finding the answers to the mysteries that surrounded him.
However, what he felt in this moment made him truly understand the depths of the difference between power achieved through understanding and power through the very nature of being. Oh, Harry was strong. He was immensely so for a wizard, but he always used feats of great power through rituals, using foreign energies to power great feats. This… This was different. Through his ring, he felt his soul connect with the fragment of Light, with a nugget of creation, and he understood why R'hllor had felt so confident fighting him, until the end, and perhaps even why the Night King continued fighting until the end.
They too wielded fragments of the Light and the Night, nuggets of creation itself, and there was nothing as powerful in this universe. At this moment, Harry felt as if the entire realm of Planetos was an extension of himself, of his will, and he had not even claimed the thing. He could only imagine the power that R'hllor had at his disposal, where he was its lord.
If he had chosen to use this power, then Harry would have had a far worse time in their confrontation, but ironically, it was fear that was R'hllor's downfall. He could see it now, the truths that lay within his dead realm. He was more afraid of the fragment of Light being taken away from him, from using its true power, to potentially fight greater deities than himself, than to use it. Perhaps he was even afraid that the Elder Dragons would have taken the fragment of Light from him.
This was the true reason why he used it to peer into the future, to manipulate the world into becoming the most powerful god in the world, and it was why he had lost.
He was right, in a way. The use of a fragment of creation was not something that any god would ignore. It changed the world fundamentally, leaving a distinct mark with every use. Then again, Harry was not known for his subtlety.
Slicing a part of the realm away wouldn't have worked had this world been like his old one, a realm of matter, to which gods were born through faith and thought, gaining form from the void, and with it, their domains. After all, powerful or no, the entire universe was centred on the idea of the existence of matter.
This was different. This realm was not material in origin, but that of a god, one that the fragment of Light had turned into Light. The universe was not centred at it, because it was one of gods, and they simply predated the idea of matter. Cutting away part of it was possible, only because it was just a part of a whole, and existence did not depend on this realm at all.
That had been the conclusion that Harry had gotten to, which meant that he could technically just wipe out the rot that was brought by the Outsiders by simply cutting away the realm. Harry wasn't exactly surprised that no one had come up to something like this, because what he had done was such a drastic and almost heretical act that no one would ever do.
No sane creature would tear apart their own realm. The instinct was not there for gods, for it was a part of them, a part of their whole, and they would not give it away. Alas, he was no god, and perhaps that was where the difference lay. He was mortal at heart, and a trapped animal would chew their own legs off to escape a trap.
There was so much that he could do, in just that moment, where he felt the fragment of creation follow his will, his soul, but despite it all, his first instinct was the one that he had since he was a child, and that was to solve the mystery.
He had figured out a lot of things, but he wanted to understand the realm that he lay in. It was irregular for such a realm to have been created in the first place. Even with the Light, creating a material world needed precise control and will.
Through his control over the fragment of Light, he looked at the world he had made his home in the past year and peered at its source. He almost gasped as he felt a tune, a song reverberating across the very foundation of the world.
It was a beautiful song, of creation, of a beginning and an end, of creation and destruction, of life and death, of everything and nothing.
As the music shifted, the great expanse of white before him changed as well. Mountains grew from the ground and disappeared, and so had the silhouettes of endless forests, of beautiful scenes, and the disasters that brought them to ruin, all small verses of the endless song.
Harry had known how prominent songs were in the world he resided in. Prophecies were sung into existence, the Children of the Forest shaped the earth around them through song, but to think that everything existed with just this song as its base, a melody within the great song that was the foundation of this world.
The realisation came quickly after that, the only explanation that would cause this effect, where everything clicked together, feeling awe that had been absent for some time, "This was a realm of music."
Planetos was built atop the corpse of a realm, turned into a mimicry of a realm of matter through the fragment of Light, and it was logical that such a realm, such an existence, would be that of a god who would have his own domain, one who would be suffused through the realm that had been born of his corpse.
Harry heard the song shift for a moment and heard a voice answer, "That is quite right, O' Stranger to my lands. Beautiful, is it not? The endless song. A Masterpiece that I still marvel at, to this day."
The sorcerer turned and noticed what seemed to be a man sitting on a wooden chair, watching the ever-shifting nature of the world before them. The man looked portly, wearing simple clothes, with a white beard on his face.
It was apparent that this was not a man, not truly; to Harry's sense, he seemed more like a part of the song. Yet, before he formulated a reply, the man pointed at the chair next to him, "Come sit, Harry Potter. This is not a conversation to be had while standing up."
Seeing no reason not to, Harry did as he had and sat down on the surprisingly comfortable chair. They stood there in silence, while he spoke up, "You know me, then?"
"I know of you, the Lord of Space and Time. Such a complicated character you are, powerful beyond what most beings grasp, yet it is your mind that truly makes you dangerous, so very dangerous. Cunning and opportunistic, and yet, tempered with a kindness, nonetheless. But it is curiosity that drives you, enough to be the first to attempt to see what lies beneath the foundations of this world. But that is not the question you wished to ask me, is it?"
"You are the god, aren't you? The one whose realm had turned into Planetos."
The man smiled jovially, "I am but a remnant of what was, and an echo of what lay before the song began. After all, a god is his own realm, and this realm is thriving indeed, is it not? He exists in every grain of sand, every blade of grass, in every drop of water, in every spark of magic. I hold no power over the whole; no one does, truly."
From the looks of it, or perhaps the lack of bitterness or wish for things to return to normal, the god had no problems with how things were. That reaction alone posed many questions, "But why? Why did you do this to yourself?"
The god simply shrugged, "Very few remember the world before the War in Heaven, but I do. We, gods, existed in pure mediocrity, a useless existence, where we did nothing but stay in our domains. No one did anything, not truly. It was an eternity of nothingness, which I could not bear. I was the Lord of Songs and Stories, and yet, there was nothing to be sung of, no stories to be told."
"So, you made your own," Harry surmised.
"So, I made my own, but not quite as first. My instinct was to discover the world around me, but then I saw it, a fragment of the Light, the being who created us all. And from it, I learned much. It had seen so much, so many songs, so many stories, before it shattered alongside the Night. I learned then that my approach to experiencing a story was flawed in the first place, for there was nought but chaos around me. And so, I decided to become the song myself. I turned my realm into that of matter, my power into the energies to propagate the universe, opened its borders for all, and waited. And I did not have to wait for long, until the story began, and what a story that was."
It was remarkable how this realm, this single god, without outwardly doing anything, had set in motion things that changed the very nature of the local cosmos, of divine wars, and even a Great Cataclysm, and the mortal life that followed. This… This had been the person who had started it all.
Harry shook his head and asked a question that had plagued him for some time, "Did you intervene in any way, since your story began?"
The god laughed at the mere idea, "Of course not. My song, my story, would have lost its meaning if I had done so. I will admit that I was tempted at times, perhaps when the war began, or when the Dragons claimed the Light, usurping control over my realm. But in the end, they were all part of my story, the one born from my body."
"But Planetos was almost destroyed many times. The Great Cataclysm, the Long Night, the Outsiders."
"Then the song would have ended," was the god's answer with a shrug, "Though I doubt that the children born of my realm, nor the gods that they worship, would go quietly to oblivion. They would fight, succeed or fail; either way, it would be a great story indeed."
It wasn't hard for Harry to realise how twisted the rationale and priorities of the god were, but then again, most gods were not rational creatures, and one who stood by as this universe collided with others would doubly hold to other morality. And in a way, it made sense, for he was powerless, really. In a twisted way, at this moment, Harry held more power over the god than what was left of his consciousness, as he controlled the fragment of Light.
Speaking of which, Harry gave the god a sheepish look, "I'm guessing that I should apologise for cutting you apart like that."
He had technically cut away an entire section of the god's realm to fall into the void and rid himself of the Outsiders' influence over it, which wasn't exactly something that most would be appreciative of.
The god in question snickered, "Oh, that was quite the spectacle, one that I did not expect. Cutting away the rot, how brilliantly mortal… No, Harry Potter, I am not angered by your decision."
"Then did you bring me here to stop me from going through with the next part of my plan? I imagine that it will have its own consequences on you, both your realm and the echo that you are now."
That did slip the smile from the god's face, and he looked strangely serious for the first time, "Just as I did not interfere when my skies split open, and my lands were ruptured, when my gods fell above my flesh, when the Outsiders walked atop my existence, I shall not interfere in yours. The story may be mine to read, but I am not its writer; my children are. And while you may have been born outside my lands, you are a part of my song, nonetheless."
"Not for long," Harry answered with a laugh.
"Oh, Lord of Space and Time, your verse may end, but the song may never end. As for now, you have much to do, Harry Potter, much indeed. Good luck."
Suddenly, Harry blinked his eyes, and the world changed around him.
He found himself standing at the precipice of a land, a realm, sliced apart, with the South of Sothoryos, which held the remnants of the Outsiders, slowly fading away in the distance. Masses of unreality kept trying to walk forward, trying to bridge a way back, only to be stopped completely and utterly. He was back in Sothoryos, where he had just sliced a section of the realm away.
He was filled with a strange awareness, the song that he had perceived when he met the progenitor of this realm, still ringing in his head. He quickly realised the purpose of their conversation, and he found himself humming along its tune, perceiving it through the fragment of Light, though faint it may be, and with it, a faint sense of awareness overtook him.
He looked at the broken realm before him and knew immediately what he needed to do, and that was to sing. He opened his mouth and sang the song of the realm he was in, the song of matter and light and might, one inherently in the very roots of this realm, and the world obeyed him. The realm before him continued to fill in, just as they had once existed, as if it remembered its shape before the Outsiders twisted it with their chaos. Slowly but surely, an expanse of plains started to spread south, until it continued until he could not see, until the song deep within the world felt complete.
It was only then that he stopped, when the world was complete, and great weariness suffused him. He had expanded much of the energies of the Great Stallion with this, which had been suffused through Daphne's tree in Qohor. He had also exerted his soul greatly, puppeteering the realm of a god to make that happen, but looking at the sight before him, he smiled, for the realm had mended itself.
He released a loud sigh at that, though that could have been worse. It was clear that whatever echo of the god whose realm was now Planetos had used the opportunity to have a conversation, just so he could use the song that lay within to mend the realm properly. Huh, that did pose some questions, given his supposed non-interfering stance, but that was a matter for another day.
Now, what was next? He had removed the Outsider's taint from what he could, sliced a portion of this realm apart to rid himself of what he couldn't, and mended the damage. Which meant that what would come next would be…
Before he could finish that thought, the sky was split open, and the constellation that split shaped themselves into the forms of the Elder Dragons, who loomed greatly at him. He smiled at them and waved, "Ah, you're finally here. Long time, no see. How have you been?"
Harry could almost see Daphne palming her face at what she had done. And yet, he couldn't help but contain his smile. After all, it was time for the Elder Dragons to really understand the difference between their last confrontation and this one, where he was actually prepared for a fight. He had a feeling that they wouldn't be happy with it, not at all.
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The Mysterious and Cursed Lands of Sothoryos
By Malora Hightower of Oldtown
Oh, my father, with every second that I spend in the cursed lands of Sothoryos, I gain a better understanding of your thoughts regarding Qohor, for this continued seemed to be made of nought by mystery. We have traversed the jungles of Sothoryos, having gone deeper than likely none before the Rhoynar had when they fled under Princess Nymeria, and I must admit that the most unsettling part of the journey was the silence. I have travelled far, both in Westeros and Essos, and forests are always littered with the noises of animals. Alas, in these cursed lands, we walked with the sound of our footsteps and the winds that shook the leaves of the trees of the jungle, without a single living creature in sight.
Alas, it seemed that we had failed in our quest to find the fallen city of Yeen, despite spending moons looking for it, which should have been at the river delta. However, we have discovered something completely and utterly insidious, which my mind still fails to grasp. Where the city of Yeen should have been, the jungle ended.
Every written record, both the remnants of the Valyrian Freehold and from the Old Citadel of Oldtown, described Sothoryos as an endless jungle that was as large as Essos was at the very least, and yet, here I am, witnessing with mine own eyes that these claims are false, for the jungles certainly ended, and in its stead were endless plains of grass that spread as far as the eyes could see. The soil looks as fertile as that of the Reach and perhaps even the North. Strangely, the jungle transitioned into the plains in an unnatural line that almost seemed as if it split the continent in two. This was not something that anyone should miss, or should have even tried, and further proof of the mysteries that surround this strange continent.
I find it strange that so many accounts of Sothoryos are so false. I would have blamed the Citadel of Oldtown and its rot and propensity to spread falsehoods of our history, were it not for the fact that many other accounts were so similar. Even then, I know not if this is some conspiracy that involved the world, or something unnatural that had somehow affected an entire continent. Looking back at it now, I cannot help but wonder which one is the more frightening possibility.
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AN: I was tempted to leave this chapter out since it doesn't advance things by a lot, but it was a central piece of lore that I guess I wanted to show off a bit, mainly about how different the universe was, which is not centred by a material realm, but that ended up doing that anyway because of the Lord of Songs and Stories. With songs being so prominent in the lore, I thought that it was fitting to make it so. Anyway, I know that this chapter was slow, but I had fun exploring a bit of the lore of the story before we get back to the actual confrontation ahead. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me, check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions on them, so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.