Work Text:
“You created them,” he breathed, shocked. “You—you put something…” he touched his chest, remembering the vision of black crystal being forced inside the chest of a long-dead man.
Leaf’s response was dipped with melancholy. “We had no choice. The First Men—they were killing us. Destroying everything we loved. We could not fight them. We are not warriors. Our magic is not for bloodshed.” She dug her small fingers into the cold earth. “We were dying and our holy trees were burning. We had no choice,” she whispered again. The regret was painfully evident. “We stole your greatest warriors and remade them.”
He stared at her, horrified by the revelation. The Children truly had the power to-to make someone Other? Bestow the power to raise the dead? His mind rebelled at the idea—his body responded with nausea.
Admittedly, as he scanned her tiny, thin body, he understood why the Children would need such a force on their side. Leaf looked as if she would blow away in a strong wind. Had the First Men been so monstrous, that they’d forced the Children to create something so much worse?
The Others’ hatred of humans suddenly makes sense, if they were created for the sole purpose of killing us.
He shook his head, mourning the mistakes of his ancestors. “So, something when wrong when you created them? Is that how the wars between us ended? A common enemy?” He could see it, from a strategic point of view. The reemergence of the Others were uniting long-rivaling Houses; it stood to reason they could do the same for two different species.
The living would always side against the dead.
But Leaf slowly shook her head. “No. We created them four thousand years before the Long Night. We used them in the war against your people. They were empty shells animated by magic,” she murmured, her lyrical voice sad enough to wound. “Puppets that the elders could control from afar. Terrible creatures wounded only by the glass that Made them; their weakness was our biggest secret. One of them was enough to end a whole army of humans. If it fell, then we could simply make another. No more of our lives were lost.”
He stared at her, nonplused as all his theories unraveled.
She looked up, anguished. “We were so few left. So few. We bought our survival with blood. The Pact was formed: Men kept to the open lands, we kept to the forests. Eventually, our gods became yours. Harmony. Four thousand years without conflict.”
“But…then how? What happened?” How were the Others now independent entities?
She shook her head. “We don’t know. We sent them all to the farthest north, entombed them in ice, and then forgot about them. They were insurance in case of another war, a warning so the Pact would never be broken. Eventually, they were all but forgotten by man. But then…” Her gaze grew haunted. “We sent many humans and children to their tomb, during and after the Long Night, seeking the answer. None ever returned. Their songs simply stopped.” She gazed at him, disturbed. “Even death does not steal a song.”
Leaf had told him she was young for their people, having been born early in the reign of the Dragons. Yet she spoke as if she’d been there, seen and heard this with her own eyes. The Children had no written language to record their history, but hearing her speak, he suspected it was because they didn’t need one.
“The first years-long winter was heralded by their coming,” she continued, eyes hazy as she stared unseeingly over his shoulder. “But they were not the same things we’d created. Their skin was blue and brittle, their breath was cold enough to extinguish flame. Their armor and weapons were of impenetrable ice. Their strength was the same, their weakness too, but they were no longer ours.” She met his eyes, and the next words were a whisper. "Yet somehow, their gaze is aware."
A puppet needs a master.
“The children have no dominion over death, small human.” She swallowed, and her body shook. “We gave them no such power.”