Nestled amidst the snowy landscape, the ancient stronghold of Winterfell rose proudly, its formidable towers piercing the crisp winter sky. The air was filled with a biting chill. The towers, adorned with banners bearing the sigil of House Stark, stood tall like silent sentinels, their battlements crowned with a delicate dusting of snow. The entire castle seemed to emerge organically from the landscape, seamlessly blending with the wintry surroundings.
Aoto could see the struggle in the eyes of Jon and Arya; he could feel that they wanted to just go and ask around to see what was going on around Winterfell and have a proper understanding of which time period they were in.
"In order to be sure, put up a disguise with an illusion and make sure that we don't fess up anything," Aoto said.
"Wait, so these two here know this place, and we might be in the past. And meeting their own selves will be fine?" Loki asked.
"There is no banner saying that we can't?" Aoto said.
"But that goes against all norms of time travel," Loki said.
"Yes, but we are not in TVA, and better still, we are in disguise, so I think that is fine," Aoto said. Loki just shook his head, his hair following the head nod. With that in mind, everyone slowly started walking towards the gates of Winterfell.
Aoto was also a bit curious, wanting to know which time period they were in. Soon, they came to the village which was on the footsteps of the gate of Winterfell. As they walked, they came across several men and women living in these huts.
"Man, this place is really backward. No offense, Jon," Edward couldn't help but say as he tried not to let his automail get all muddied. Though it was not required. His automail had an auto-repair and auto-clean function of magic.
But Edward was a bit of a clean freak.
"We aren't in your world," Arya rolled her eyes and said. She didn't care about the insult at all and was just curious about what was going on in Winterfell. As they passed some houses, Jon, in the native English tongue, asked who was the Lord of House Stark at the moment, to which he got the joyous response of Ned Stark.
Jon and Arya's eyes got wet when they got to know that. This was beyond what they expected. Aoto came forward, and he too asked another question.
"Did the King ever visit?"
"King? You mean our King Robert Baratheon? You know of his visit too? From what I have heard, he is supposed to be here in two days. The castle is being made ready for his visit," the stranger man said. Some of them were surprised that Aoto could even speak their tongue, as many people here didn't know the local tongue.
"Oh! So he is on the way? That's good," Aoto said with a smile. Everyone was looking at him with wide eyes, and Kisuke couldn't help but ask.
"You are full of wonders, Aoto."
"Yeah, and you are full of shit," Aoto replied with friendly banter. Meanwhile, John and Arya finally got to know which time period they were in. The time period before everything went to shit. Not that it wasn't shit before, but at least for the Stark family, it did go to shit. Aoto knew the story, so he looked at John and asked as they walked away from the people around towards the castle.
"So what do you want to do? Change the future?" Aoto asked.
"Of course, we will change the future. We aren't in the same timeline, so we can just change it in any way we want." It was Arya who replied. John looked at Arya for a second before replying.
"Will it be too much if we do change the future?" John asked.
"We have already stepped in, and honestly, our presence will already change the future. We can get away from it by removing our time interference, but since we are ready to do business here, it means we are already involving ourselves with them. So I guess you can do what you are itching to do," Aoto said.
"Thank you... Thank you," John was over the moon. He was scared that messing with the core things might affect, as he had read enough in the books to not mess with time. But he desperately wanted to save his father and his family, so was his sister.
"Then let's go in," Arya couldn't wait to go in. They soon came to the huge gate of Winterfell. They were immediately stopped by the guards in suspicion. In response, John showed them the materials. Loki wanted to just manipulate them and force themselves in, but John refused.
So before entering the gate, John with his chaos magic conjured some clothes in a huge cart, a show that he was here for business and came from another part of the Kingdom to sell and earn money.
Of course, the guards had to check up, and John convinced them that he had more wares on the way and needed the permission of Lord Stark to set up a shop inside the castle, and he had gifts to give to Lord Stark.
He even showed them and told them he had better clothes which Lord Stark could present to the King when he would come to visit. John even said that he could choose one for himself. John had made them out of chaos magic, so it wasn't an illusion. In fact, when Loki came to know that John knew chaos magic, he actually became apprehensive and touched his arm to see how much chaos magic he had.
He was surprised that John wasn't going down the chaos mind route, which was basically witchcraft. Aoto spoke of the reason why John might know chaos magic, and this surprised Loki even more.
"Okay, now I am more interested in the magic of this world. Bringing back the dead and not being a zombie. That's definitely something," Loki said.
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