Harry couldn't help but smile as Alaenara laughed happily when light shone out of the wand's tip in her hand. It was quite a surprise for Harry to find that one of the wands he created using Unicorn hair bonded with Alaenera. But after watching her work the wand for days, he came to the conclusion that she was a perfect fit for the wand. Watching different colourful sparks of light branching out of the tip of her wand, he was all but certain that her bubbly personality made the wand bond.
Even though Alaenera's life was ripe with tragedy from the very beginning, somewhere deep in the recess of her mind, there was a yearning for a dignified life. Her mother had been a seamstress for a wealthy Tyroshi family, but a sickness robbed the woman of her life. This left Alaenera in the care of her father, who became a drunkard and was deep in debt. The man had sold her to a pillow house to square his debts.
Since then, Alaenera had grown up in the pillow house as a serving girl. Her experiences there had obviously jaded her as she witnessed men's depravity from a front-row seat. However, she must've held on to a spark of hope in escaping the hand that fate dealt her in life because the Unicorn core responded to her magic. The wand had even cajoled the untrained sleeping magic within her to awaken and pull it to the forefront.
The magic was singing in the air, and Harry was becoming sensitive to the subtle emotions and auras of magical objects. He supposed this was how Garrick Ollivander felt when he sold his wands in Diagon Alley. Despite how proud he was of his creation, he had no interest in seeing it tested against the dangers that lay ahead.
"You must not step out of this room without my leave." said Harry, bringing the joyful atmosphere within the room to a halt.
"What! Why?" Alaenera asked, looking at him in betrayal and anger.
"A little speck of power, and you think yourself the mistress of magic." Harry said amusedly as his hand glided through her smooth silver hair.
"The danger that awaits us is far beyond your capabilities. To your misfortune, you have the blood of the Freehold in your veins. The Doom that broke Valyria would not spare a survivor, as evidenced by all the failed expeditions of Valyria's daughters to reclaim the land."
"But you taught me magic… you taught me to face my fears…" Alaenera protested.
Harry liked her attitude. She was brave and paid proper respect to the power within her. But she was incredibly ignorant of the powers that be that thrived in the shadows of the world. Also, she was becoming extremely arrogant because of her magic. He supposed he was to blame for that.
"I also taught you not to be stupid. Valyria is no place for a novice in magic." Harry said firmly.
"But you said the ship will be safe from the monsters…" Alaenera argued.
"The ship is well protected, but your mind is not. If you cast your eyes upon the ruins of the city, you'll stir things from sleep and gain their attention."
A playful look suddenly gained on Alaenera's face.
"Am I stirring things that are sleeping within you, my lord?" Alaenera asked coyly.
"You will if you talk like that." Harry warned, making her let out a tinkling laugh.
Alaenera climbed into his lap and pressed a chaste kiss on his right cheek. Harry, in turn, wrapped his hands around her body and hugged her close to his chest. The tip of her wand sparked more bright colours, mimicking the emotions of the woman in his arms.
He felt a strange sense of serenity at the moment. Was it because he was about to step into one of the most dangerous places in the world? He didn't know. The threat of death or even far worse awaited him in Valyria. Harry knew that quite well, but he needed to scour the remains of the infamous city. The Old Gods were tight-lipped about Valyria when he asked, and Ygg told him to ignore the East, a policy the island god follows to this day.
"You plan to take the ship into the heart of Valyria and visit the doomed city yourself. Won't you be in danger?" she asked in concern.
"Of course, there is danger. But I'm prepared to face it and keep anything harmful at bay. You, on the other hand, will be vulnerable." said Harry.
Alaenera shot him a pout at being constrained to her current room for the rest of the journey.
"We're not yet at Valyria, are we?" she suddenly asked.
"No. We're not."
"Good. I want to see everything below before I'm a prisoner in my room." Alaenera said, jumping to her feet and dragging Harry out of bed as well.
A few minutes later, Alaenera made excitable gestures as flocks of birds and landmarks passed by from the bow of the airship. Harry watched the excitable Tyroshi girl from afar even though she was in the company of Elsera Snow.
"I don't think Lord Stark will be happy if you bring her to Avalon," Jon said as he stood beside Harry, watching Alaenera. "Lady Catelyn will definitely be cross with you."
"Hm…" Harry let out a noncommittal grunt before walking towards the command bridge.
"Are we close to Mantarys?" Harry asked, not really caring what anyone thought of his life choices, at least for now.
Besides, it was not as if anyone could do anything with what he did with Alaenera, save the girl herself.
"We should be. Are we planning on staying there? It's said to be a cursed place, and the people there were cursed by the Doom," said Jon.
"Aren't you interested in seeing whether the rumours hold any truth?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I suppose." Jon said uneasily, "Listen, brother… do we really need to visit Valyria?"
Harry paused in his step and stared at Jon with surprise.
"You were most excited to visit Valyria and explore the ruins when I proposed the idea. What changed?" Harry asked curiously.
"I…" Jon looked embarrassed, "Lord Stark ordered us to return speedily. Do you want to antagonise him more after Myr?"
"Let me give you some advice, Jon." Harry said in a conspiratory voice with a playful grin, "It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission."
"What do you mean?"
"We are at the precipice of history. Nobody has visited Valyria after the Doom and survived to tell the tale." Harry took hold of Jon's shoulder and looked closely into his eyes, "We have a flying ship and the most powerful magics to ward against anything dangerous in the ruins. There is no better time than this to explore Valyria."
"I know. But you saw how mad father was when he last spoke. He won't be pleased, not one bit." Jon said morosely.
"This place is not just a remnant of an old civilisation. It holds secrets to what went wrong to the greatest empire the world has seen, and learning the mistakes of the past is far more important than the pressures of the present."
"Somehow, I don't think Lord Stark will understand or approve." Jon muttered tersely.
"What he doesn't know won't harm him." Harry patted Jon's back, "Now, let's go and see to the preparations for the expedition. We have quite some work cut out for us in our journey ahead."
****
Harry needn't have spent much time in Mantarys to see there was something deeply wrong with the city. He had hoped the dark rumours about this city were only rumours. But spending a few minutes within the city already revealed the insidious nature of the old settlement. For this reason, Harry ordered all the crew not to buy anything from the city, especially food and water.
They prowled the length of the small city under the garb of Pentoshi merchants. The one good thing about Mantarys was that it sat at a crossroads into the far east cities that followed old Ghiscari civilisation. Though Mantarys was never of a stature similar to that of the other free cities of Essos, it controlled the dragon road that stretched into the far east cities.
This allowed silk from the far east to travel down the dragon road. The silk industry in the far east was abundant and of high quality. Spice was also a major commodity passing through the city along with slaves. Harry had seen caravans carrying Unsullied soldiers and other slave children. The call for war in the Disputed Lands was gaining traction, with Myr suddenly left weakened, so the slave trade was now fast and active.
They didn't dally longer once Harry saw the deformities the people of Mantarys suffered. Some of the people had two heads on their shoulders, three hands and many such deformities. He didn't bother to find the source of these deformities and cajoled the group to resume their journey.
The Doom of Valyria was the obvious cause of these deformities among the citizens of Mantarys. According to all available sources, the city was a vibrant trade hub during the height of the Valyrian empire.
The physical deformities he saw in Mantarys confirmed one thing. There was definitely dark and twisted magic involved in the Doom. The consecutive explosion of the Fourteen Flames would never leave people to suffer physical deformities even after all this time.
The sights he saw in Mantarys influenced his decision on the journey ahead. He had planned to take the airship from Mantarys to follow the dragon road further south and trace their way into Valyria proper, passing the cities of Oros and Tyria in the Lands of the Long Summer. Oros and Tyria already had a far more sinister reputation than Mantarys. So, Harry thought it was better to abandon any notion of visiting those cities.
Instead, they chose to observe the cities from afar in the sky under the cover of protective shields and disillusion charm.
"What is happening?" Anya muttered as she guided the airship into the Lands of the Long Summer.
The phenomenon also stumped Harry. They could clearly see the sun from the sky—it was bright and shiny, casting its rays far and wide. But the land below their ship was getting darker and darker.
"This place was once the cradle of civilisation and trade. The Land of Long Summer was supposed to be a highly fertile land with triple the yield of the Reach." Harry said as he stared at the darkening land with concern.
It was as if someone had covered the land in a veil of darkness. The strange thing was that there were only a few specks of areas where the darkness was not present. Those areas were either isolated grasslands or even pine trees. There were also some occasional hilltops untouched by the darkness. He had the urge to go down and poke at the veil of darkness blanketing the land, but he was also not an idiot to jump head-first into a dangerous magical anomaly.
"This place is forsaken by the gods. Maybe we should stop going any further." Robb suggested as he looked at the darkness below with fear.
"All right, people. From now on, we'll be using the charmed goggles and charmed bodysuit until I say otherwise. No one is supposed to take it off if you're outside the cabins exposed to the air." Harry ordered.
He began issuing orders for all the crew to take up the clothes he had prepared for the journey into Valyria.
Harry didn't exempt himself from protective gear for the journey ahead. Within a short time frame, he was dressed in a full-body suit painted as black as night. His eyes were secured under charmed goggles, and the rest of his head was covered by a charmed protective helmet. Magically enhanced hearing ensured he could hear sounds around him in high clarity. The charms also ensured his basic senses couldn't be meddled.
The helmet closed in on his mouth and covered it with a charmed filter regulating the airflow. The bodysuit attached itself to his helmet, leaving no gap. Charmed gloves covered his hands, while his legs were protected by charmed boots.
After making sure everyone was in protective gear, then only did he poke at the anomaly.
The airship lowered considerably from the sky, and Harry prodded at the veil of darkness with the most obvious opposing force in nature. He let a small ball of light fly from the tip of his wand into the veil. The little ball of light pierced through the veil without any problem, and the veil flickered away, leaving a substantial hole where the ball of light made contact.
"Huh." Harry pondered the nature of the veil while he absently dismissed the light with a flick of his wrist.
"What did you find?" Robb asked curiously, still staring warily at the veil of darkness.
"Nothing substantial other than the veil behaves like the natural concept of darkness. It cannot exist before magical light, but somehow, it can prevent sunlight from reaching the land." Harry said absently as he observed the veil while their ship sailed away.
"Could it be smoke from the Doom?" Josera Snow asked.
"It's not smoke. Smoke won't be chased away by magical light." Harry shook his head.
"Maybe it's the magic from the Doom." said Jon.
Harry scowled at the simplistic answer but had no other convincing explanation for the anomaly. He had no choice but to attribute the strange anomaly to the Doom. At least he didn't sense any nefarious aura from the darkness, so he left the veil intact.
****
Travel through the Land of Long Summer was equally intriguing and boring. The further south they travelled, the stranger things they saw.
There were deformed birds in the sky that were making a nuisance to the ship's crew even though he had engaged the shield of the airship. But birds with glowing red eyes and multiple heads still scared the crap out of the crew of his ship. It'd seem even the sturdy Northerners were not immune to the horrors of Doom.
The curious thing was the birds were aware of the ship even though the disillusion charm kept the ship invisible. He knew that only because a flock of crows circled the ship for a time until they grew bored and flew away. But the real kicker was when their ship finally reached the old city of Oros.
Only dark whispers followed the name of Oros, the once mighty city built by the Vlayrians. But now it lay in ruins under darkness with dark things stirring in the shadows. Harry watched the ghost city using telescopes from the airship and scowled.
"What do you see?" Jon asked worriedly.
"Things to destroy," Harry said firmly as he watched the dark figures move in the shadows. "Stay on the ship and make preparations for the cleansing bay. I'm going into the city."
Harry summoned the flying carpet and flew to the desolated city of Oros. As he climbed down from the heights of the sky, he could feel the unnaturalness of the beings infesting the city.
Only one thing came to mind when he felt the aura from these beings – horcrux.
His magic was urging him to cleanse the whole city. It was steeped in everything unnatural in the world, like a steaming pot of unnatural aberrations waiting to spread like rot on the natural world. As someone who had hosted and faced off such natural magic, Harry was attuned to find such magic with one look. He didn't bother to look for anything in the city as the flying carpet levelled with the rotting structures of the city.
He only had one thing to say to the old rotting city of Oros.
"Fiendyre."
A bright torrent of hellfire flowed out of the tip of the Deathstick with the ferocity of an angry god. The darkness that shrouded the city was blotted out as light and fire, unlike anything the city had seen till then, descended upon it without mercy. The hellfire swept through the streets of the ancient city and gobbled up stone and dark spirits alike. The horrendous screeching and wailing filled the air as the hellfire burned away the rotting, corrupted souls that lingered in Oros.
Harry stayed floating high above the ruins of the once-great city as he directed the hellfire to spread across the street by street and building after building. It was like conducting a concert as he directed a symphony of destruction. The hellfire curse was the pinnacle of destructive force, and it lived up to its expectations, leaving nothing but scorched and glassed ground in its wake.
The screeching and wailing of the shades in the city started to die down and gave way to the sound of hellfire burning the entire city to the ground. It took him half an hour, but the hellfire spell now consumed the entire city. The old city of Oros burned so bright that it chased away the veil of darkness and fog surrounding it.
Harry looked south from Oros to see the Smoking Sea. If he looked closely enough, he could see the silhouette of a faraway land. There were many scattered islands in the Smoking Sea after Valyria was shattered by Doom and carved away from the mainland. Right now, the ancient Freehold was an isolated island because Doom separated it from the mainland. In the process, small islands were carved out of the Valyrian Freehold, which lay scattered in the Smoking Sea.
As Harry stared into the dark sea ahead, he could feel the malevolence that inhabited the lands ahead. The shades that inhabited Oros felt like they were unintelligible brutes with no sense or power to their self. But whatever that was in Valyria felt like it was strong and dangerous.
But Harry was never one to back down from a challenge, especially when a dark entity is capable of turning a magical civilisation into shades of dark magic. Such entities should not exist, and the fact that it had spread its influence all the way to Mantarys was enough proof that the threat was real.
In the worst-case scenario, he had the option of building a wall to keep the entity contained in Valyria. The Wall in the North had kept Balor and his necromantic slaves at bay, and he didn't see why that could not be replicated here.
Harry shot a look at the burning city below and asserted his will over the Fiendfyre curse. The fire died out instantly, and there was eerie silence in its wake. He sat on the flying carpet and urged it to fly towards the airship. It was now time to cross the Smoking Sea and face the Doom of Valyria.
AN:
For artwork related to the fic:
https://discord.gg/Nw2JH25fJf