The Green Fork 302 AC.
The Night King.
The fall of the Wall should have been his moment of triumph, just as taking a Dragonrider should have brought him a dragon, and yet neither proved true. It was not an army he faced after taking the Wall, not a dragon he rode through the North and onto the rest of the lands south of it. Instead, he'd been forced to chase, to fend off attacks only by dragons, and to not have his own to call upon. As for the Dragonrider, she was to be his queen, his equal in rank if not in truth. Yet she too was a disappointment and not as fully his as she should be.
He could feel her fighting him and try as he might he couldn't reach the depths of her. It had made him think about ending her, taking back the magic he had put into her and as they marched, those thoughts became more and more ones that he considered. Other thoughts though soon became his focus. While there were no living for him to turn to his side, there was plenty of dead to raise. The North was full of meat for his army, or so he had thought.
There were none at the Wall, though he had not expected there to be. The Night's watch burned its dead and so it was to other graves that he looked. In the small village, he raised some and assumed that would be the way of things. Only to find it was not, paths were blocked to him, graves unable to be touched by his magic. Barriers had been put up, barriers he knew all too well and had encountered over the course of his long life. Not even his magic could break them down. These were the same barriers that had once kept the children and the old god's servant from him. Now they kept the dead from him and he cursed the one he had to face for taking them off the board.
It was why when he had the chance to take him at the large town, he and the men who he felt were there with him, he launched a far bigger attack than he had intended. An attack that brought him no closer to the end of his enemy, for that was what he was now to him an enemy and not simply an obstacle to overcome. Worse than even that though it cost him far too much, the magic he had wasn't limitless and he feared he'd underestimated his enemy's cleverness. This fear only growing stronger when his intended trap failed and those he'd sent to take the boy had themselves fallen.
"Why won't he fall?"
"How does he know my moves?"
"Am I outmatched?"
The questions resounded in his head and the more he lost as he marched, the more they began to take hold of him. He reached as deep into her as she allowed him or he was able to go, relaxing when he found that it was not her and yet a part of him had believed it was. When they made it to the trees he relaxed even more, what he'd seen within her had shown him that despite the problems his enemy had caused him, he didn't have the will to do what needed to be done. In here he and his army would march unmolested, where if his enemy was truly a threat, they should falter.
He felt the magic when he reached the place where Winter had Fallen, the strength of the blood that those who named this place their home had possessed. It was not the same as those who flew on dragons, powerful but more subdued and he was eager for as much of it as he could gather. Once again he found himself angered and disappointed and locked out of places that should be his to stroll. The wood where the giant tree stood was blocked to him as was the place where the dead rested. That idea he had of hurting his enemy by showing him the one who'd birthed him was now his, would have to simply remain that.
So it was with great anger and fury that he left those he couldn't raise behind, his march now far more hurried and it was only when he reached the swamps that he slowed down. Here he then lashed out as he realized his mistake, his stupidly, over the things he'd forgotten in his haste to reach his enemy and take his power for his own. The potential boon to his forces they would bring were lost to him and he cursed himself for forgetting about the giants and his plans for them.
