Chapter 38-A: Phoning Home

I wanted my family to be able to prove that they had had a true dream of me, which meant I needed to pull them all into the dream at the same time so they could compare notes in the morning.

I caught them as they entered their dream states; I pulled them one by one into my prepared space. I let them experience a memory of flying as first my youngest brother, then my mother, then my middle brother, then finally my father joined us.

I slowly ended the dream, fading in to a sitting room I had in my castle with a comfortable fire, thick carpet and plush chairs.

I stood in front of them grinning stupidly and opened my arms wide. “Tada!” I announced proudly. “It took me a fucking age, sorry about that, but better late than never right?”

“Dude, I hope this isn’t some beyond the grave thing,” my middle brother, Damien, said without really thinking about it.

I clasped my hand to my chest theatrically. “What, no confidence in your older brother, Damien? You think I’d die so easily?” I asked teasingly, as if that wasn’t a real and serious danger throughout my adventures. “No, this is a spell. An astral sending. A shared dreaming. Now, don’t everyone hug me at once.”

With that, the stillness was broken. I quickly ended up in the center of a massive group hug. After all the I love you’s and I missed you so much’s and Bro, what were you thinking, you know how upset you made Mom?’s were passed around we took our seats so I could explain everything that happened.

“Right, so let me tell you all what I’ve been up to, then you can catch me up, and then we can plan about what to do next,” I suggested to a chorus of nods. “Save the questions till the end, if you can; I don’t know how long the dream will stay up for.”

“Alright, so where do I start… I guess at the beginning. I was meditating in one of the courtyards at school, but when I opened my eyes I was somewhere entirely different. Not being a dumb-fuck and having read proper fairy tales, I knew how dangerous that was and tried to get back home. I couldn’t.

“I was found by Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Lord Protector and Warden of the North. He’s basically a duke, and in charge of one of the nine provinces of the country I ended up in, the Seven Kingdoms. Imagine all of medieval Europe under a single kingdom, and Ned ruling Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the UK all rolled into one cold, wet place and you’re not too far off.

“I decided to change my name, in case magic could target me through it; I’m Odysseus Gangari now. I proved my bonafides to Stark with math and a bit of other knowledge; they didn’t have any calculus before I got there so it was pretty easy. Then I spent the next eight months effectively as a courtier. I learned to fight, practiced archery like crazy, told them about four field crop rotation, and told stories to the Stark kids. That sort of stuff. I also realized I could do magic, and I began to develop that as fast as possible in secret. Fast forward eight months and life got more exciting.

“Ned grew up fostering with Robert Baratheon. About twenty years back they rebelled against the former dynasty, the Targaryens, which had basically gone batshit insane from inbreeding. Robert ended up as king after all was said and done. The previous Hand of the King, basically the prime minister, was this guy, Arryn, the one who they fostered with. When Arryn died, Robert came fifteen hundred miles north just to get Ned to be his new Hand.

“Not an insignificant journey, given their technology,” Dad noted.

I nodded. “That’s right. Especially since he had his bitch queen with him, and her stupid fucking carriage… I’ll get to her in a bit. But they were making twenty miles a day, and that with the king pushing for as hard a pace as he could. Just the travelling was five months round trip. While they were staying in Winterfell someone cut the climbing gear that Bran, the middle Stark boy, was using and pushed him off a wall.”

“Did he survive?” Ender, my youngest brother and the rock-climber in the family asked.

“Ya, he did. Kid was only ten too. He saw something he shouldn’t have, we found out later. Anyways, I wasn’t going to leave Bran a cripple when I had magic, so I healed him up, revealing myself fully to the Starks in the process. I investigated but didn’t find anything tying anyone to the crime.

“The king and company left to go south. Ned and his two daughters, Sansa and Arya, ages thirteen and eleven respectively, went with him. Sansa was betrothed to the prince, Joffrey. Meanwhile I stayed behind to make sure Bran healed up right then caught up to them on the road. When I finally found them, I ran across Joffrey, Sansa, Arya and some servant kid Arya had made friends with.

“Arya was a total tomboy, and at eleven wanted nothing more than to learn to fight. She’d been playing with sticks with the kid. Joffrey, that fucking psycho, comes up and starts cutting the kid with his sword. Arya hits him with a stick, Joffrey fucking loses it. I came into it when he was about to stab her. I was a moment from putting an arrow into him when Arya’s wolf just fucking tackles him.

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot to mention; the Stark kids found these direwolf puppies and adopted them. Five or six hundred pounds of ferocious beast when fully grown, but the wolves love the kids and are pretty tame.” I saw my family’s eyes light up. We were all big dog lovers. I grinned. “I can’t give you direwolves when I finally figure out the transportation, but I can give you what’s basically huskies enchanted to grow that big and strong.”

Mom rolled her eyes at our antics. “I’m glad you haven’t been wasting your time then. Just know, if you all get dogs, this won’t be like last time; I won’t be the one in charge of walking them.”

We chuckled.

“Anyways, so Joffrey’s a little mauled and crying like a brat,” I continued. “I bring the kids back to camp, and the queen throws a hissy fit. Her family, the Lannisters, were a real piece of work. She ends up getting Robert to agree to have the wolf put down in some petty vengeance. I told Arya to have a trial by combat; they still did that shit there.

“Cersei, the queen, is championed by her brother, Jaime Lannister. He’s part of Robert’s Kingsguard, seven knights sword to have no children, inherit no land, and basically die protecting the monarch. Jaime was meant to be one of the top knights in the kingdom.

“Arya was championed by Togo, my dog. Togo had been a testbed for magical enhancements. He was about as big as a large-ish tiger at that point, and his skin and flesh was as tough as oak-wood. Togo tore Jaime’s face off.

“There was a lot of bad blood between Lannisters and Starks before that, but after it got worse. There was a whole bunch of bullshit. In the end Tywin Lannister, the head of their house, sent his fucking monster after me.”

I paused for a moment in the memory of that fight. “Gregor Clegane. They called him the Mountain that Rides. Dude was eight feet of rage, hatred, and murderous strength and skill. He tried to take me with forty men in an ambush.”

“Holy shit. How did you survive? Did they not know about your magic?” Damien blurted out.

“Nah, I used horse archery. I was faster than them, and I just killed them all by firing arrows while running away. After, to make a point, I went back after and took their heads off. I walked into the royal feast and confronted Tywin, dumped the heads of his creatures out for all to see. We fought a duel the next morning and Tywin died.”

I saw Mom about to say something, and just shook my head. “Trust me, all of this was totally necessary. And I wasn’t really at that much risk, I didn’t even need to use a lightning spell or anything. I was already crazy fast and strong from my magical upgrades.

“So after Tywin’s dead and the Lannisters are pretty much broken, it comes out that Cersei, the queen, had been fucking Jaime. All the kids that we thought were the princes and princess were their little incest babies. When Arryn, the former Hand found out they killed him. When Bran saw them fucking, they cut his rope and threw him from the window.

“The capital was, generally, a fucking cesspit. Of the small council, basically the top ministers, three of them were traitors. One, the Grand Maester, basically the royal doctor and advisor on all things intellectual, was in the Lannister’s pockets. I killed him before all of this, after he poisoned the king, who I healed. Another, Varys, their chief spy, was plotting to bring back the Targaryens from exile. He jumped a long way onto rocks rather than let me capture him. The third, Baelish, who was the Master of Coin had defrauded the government to the tune of millions of golds, threatening to send the country into economic collapse. He’s still in hiding.”

“How did it get so bad?” Dad asked.

I grimaced a bit. “Much as I like the man, Robert was a very disinterested king. He’s a bit better now, but it was pretty bad for a while, and the corruption just built and built. Ned has it under control though. I helped him clean a lot of that shit up, got the realm out of debt by restructuring their finances, and generally kicked ass and took names.”

“I’m proud of you, Bro,” Damien said with a grin. “Showing those primitives what’s what,” he mocked.

“You kid, but basically,” I admitted with an abashed smile.

“So things were stable again. Partially on my advice Robert was betrothed to Margaery Tyrell; her family controls the Reach, which is the most populous of the major provinces, and that bought their loyalty. The Vale is ruled by the Arryn family, who are loyal. Ned and Robert are best friends, which means the North is loyal. The Riverlands are ruled by the Tullys, and the two daughters of their Lord Paramount are respectively Ned’s wife and Arryn’s widow, so they’re loyal. Robert was originally the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands, and his brother still rules it.

“That left three regions that weren’t too loyal, but knew better than to do anything about it. Dorne, who hate the Lannisters a lot and Robert a fair amount for some warcrimes the Lannisters committed during Robert’s Rebellion. The Westerlands, ruled by the Lannisters, who weren’t too happy with everything that had gone down. And the Iron Islands, populated by a bunch of would-be pirates who need smacking down once a generation or so.”

“Did you have to smack them down?” Mom asked.

“No, or at least not yet,” I replied. “But about two years ago Robert heard that Daenerys Targaryen, who was fifteen at the time, had just been married to Khal Drogo. Drogo was a Dothraki Khal or warlord; they’re basically no different from a Mongol warlord, even more savage maybe. In return, he was meant to lend his army of forty thousand cavalry to help Daenerys’ brother retake Westeros.

“Robert wanted to send assassins after Daenerys and her brother, but Ned thought that was dishonorable. I ended up going over there instead to kill Drogo and Viserys Targaryen, and see Daenerys either installed into the gathering of the widows of Dothraki khals, or returned to Westeros and Robert’s keeping. I took Jon, who is both my squire and Ned’s bastard, along with me, as well as Togo and Ghost, his direwolf. We rode Aethon and Shadowfax, our enchanted horses.”

“I’m not sure if I’m happy about this quest,” Mom objected.

“It was better than the alternative,” I replied. “The Targaryens were fucking insane. Burning people alive at the slightest provocation, not cutting fingernails or hair for fear that anyone with scissors was an assassin, they just went nuts towards the end. But I’m sure there are some people who would follow them, and that would cause war. It wasn’t like the Targaryens were living a nice, peaceful quiet life. They were gathering an army.”

“No, I get that part,” Mom agreed. “I’m not sure I’m happy you volunteered to risk yourself.”

Ah, that’s Mom for you. The world can burn so long as her kids are safe. I missed her so much, I thought with a fond smile.

I chuckled. “Ok, that’s possible. But it got me out of wedding preparations, and I was looking for magic. I needed to accelerate my learning, to gain the skills and techniques that might eventually help me get back home. Riding across a whole other continent was part of that. And I really wasn’t at risk. I don’t think they had anything that could hurt me, at that point in time. I was just too much faster and stronger than they were, and could outrun anything I couldn’t outfight. As proved by my killing Drogo and getting the survivors of his leadership cadre to give me Daenerys.

“After that, I brought her back to King’s Landing, the capital, and got made Lord of Harrenhal for my troubles. Harrenhal was a shit-heap, the biggest fortress in all Westeros, but also cursed and half ruined in the past by dragons.

“I was finally strong enough with magic at that point to be able to beat just about everyone in a war if I needed to, so I said fuck it, and stopped hiding my magic at all. I used stone-shaping magic to rebuild the castle. Since then I’ve made my fief the most profitable in the entire country. I have a semi-modern metalworks, a glassworks, paper and printing factories, even an extremely profitable enchanted sword business. I started a program to spread agricultural improvements, including magically enhanced animals that I designed, and that should start showing improvements in a year or two.”

Everyone looked at me with this odd expression. “So, you’ve basically been playing that game you like, what was it, Medieval Total War with cheat codes but in real life, huh?” Damien asked, articulating what everyone was thinking.

I laughed. “That’s it exactly,” I admitted. “I actually had that same thought a bunch of times.”

“How many people live on your lands?” Mom asked.

“About four hundred and fifty thousand,” I said. “I’m not in the top ten when it comes to population, but I am in the top twenty.”

“That’s big,” Dad noted. “How did you end up getting given that fief?”

“Well, I did all that shit for Robert, and then the last remaining member of House Whent, the people that used to own Harrenhal died, so he gave it to me,” I answered. “I’ve had it for almost two years now, and other than my magic it’s been eating most of my time.

“Except for earlier this year when I had to go off and fight again. There’s this huge, eight thousand year old wall in the North. It’s seven hundred feet tall, and one of the few instances of magic that survived into the present. Imaginatively, they call it the Wall. An order of convicts and volunteers called the Night’s Watch guards it, preventing Wildling savages that live north of the Wall from raiding the Stark territories. The Night’s Watch has been getting smaller and smaller. After a recent disaster when they tried a reconnaissance in force beyond the Wall, they only had seven hundred people to try and defend about three hundred miles of wall.

“Even worse, the Wall wasn’t built to keep out Wildlings, but to keep out these winter-fey ice demon creatures called White Walkers. The Walkers and their undead wights were driving all the Wildlings south, so the Wall was looking at an attacking force of over a hundred thousand. There was a massive mobilization, and I ended up getting sent to be Robert’s Envoy until the situation was resolved.”

“So what happened?” Mom asked.

“Obviously he killed the Wildlings and the ice demons, Mom,” Damien answered.

“But then the corpses would get turned into wights,” Ender objected.

“Why don’t we just wait and hear the story?” Dad asked exasperated. “Seriously.”

I chuckled. “Right. Well, we killed the Wildlings that attacked, but those that didn’t and were willing to swear fealty were allowed to immigrate. I’ve got fifteen thousand of my magical Guard Hounds up there, each one capable of running over three hundred miles a day and easily the match for a man in plate armor. If the Wildlings try and leave their territories to raid, they get eaten.”

Damien burst into laughter. I looked at him questioningly, and he shook his head. “No, no. It’s just, I was so surprised that you were willing to let the savages somewhere you felt responsible for. I was surprised until you told me that you’ve basically prepared to wipe them out if they cause trouble.”

I scratched the back of my head sheepishly. “Their culture literally makes no distinction between capturing a woman and raping her, versus making her your wife,” I explained. “The ones we killed represented the warriors for something like a fifth of the population, and they were so fucking stupid and aggressive that they decided charging a seven-hundred foot tall fortress, with a single gate, was a good idea. And this is after the fortress was fully garrisoned. So, no, I do not trust the inherent goodness of a society of raping, murdering, anarchists.”

Mom started laughing then. “I’m glad that you haven’t changed that much, honey,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Anyways, if everyone’s done giving me shit for perfectly reasonable actions, I’ll finish up. After I dealt with the crisis at the Wall, and saw to its reinforcement in the event of those Walkers trying to start a zombie apocalypse, I went back to Harrenhal, where I’ve been working on methods to try and teleport back home for the past year.

“I figured out a lot about teleportation. I’m pretty sure that it’s impossible for me to return; I just don’t have a strong enough anchor on Earth, and there are probably an infinite number of places I could end up other than Earth. But I might be able to use our shared blood to get enough of a fix on you that I can bring you to me. That’s a little bit easier, magically, and it already worked well enough to get this dream space functional.”

“What are the downsides if we do?” Ender asked.

“Well, much in the same way that I can’t follow you home, I can’t send you back either. There is some risk in the teleportation, though I’ll do extensive testing before trying anything with you. Beyond that, it’s basically the middle ages here. I have running water and toilets in my castle, but the rest of the world is filthy.” I could see they were getting turned off by the idea, so I hurried onto the advantages.

“But, I can offer a lot of benefits if you come. I can’t teach you magic, at least not yet, but I can make you into at least a top-grade superhero. Tougher than steel, strong enough to treat metal like clay, regeneration that will make you the next best thing to immortal, improved cognitive abilities, precognition, increased speed, conceptual armor against damage as strong as a heavily armored vehicle, a shield against projectiles that would need a battleship to get through, and that’s just what I have working so far. Flight is pretty close to being functional, for example.

“And Mom will be happy to know that I have horses. Really awesome horses,” I enticed. Mom loved to ride. “On the less personal benefits side, you can help rule my lands. I’m about to start expanding my military; I only have something like two hundred humans in it, with fifty thousand Hounds and Ravens, so if you want to be a medieval general, that’s possible. After I do that, I was thinking about maybe conquering Essos. It’s full of slavers, barbarians, and all-around bad guys. Even the eastern part has nine major city states; you can rule one of those if you want. Or, you can do basically anything else that you want to. So, what are you thinking?”

“I’m going,” Ender declared. I was pretty shocked that he had decided so quickly. “It’s easily the best shot I have at leading a full-length life,” he added, clarifying his position. “You can heal basically everything, right?”

Ah. That made sense. Ender had a host of medical conditions. He was a tough kid, but he was eighteen and it was a minor miracle he’d survived high school. I nodded in answer to his question.

“Well, we might as well,” Dad agreed with a shrug. “I mean, why not? We’ll be immortal and powerful. The food’s probably really fresh and tasty. And otherwise we won’t be able to see Odysseus except for our dreams. The only problem is a lack of books, but I’ll just download a few computers worth, and Odysseus can magic up a charging system for the computers and kindles and everything will be fine.”

“As a note, I’m pretty sure I can find some modern Earth-equivalents, it just might take a while,” I said. “So don’t think you’ll be devoid of entertainment forever.”

“Fuck it, I’m in.” Damien agreed with a shrug.

Everyone looked at Mom, who rolled her eyes and snorted. “Please. As if I wouldn’t want to go wherever my kids are,” she said.

“What about the rest of the family?” Ender asked.

“You can offer the option to them too,” I said. “I can pull in our aunts and uncles via Mom and Dad’s blood, then get their kids, then get the parents who aren’t related to us.”

“I doubt many of them will go for it,” Mom replied. “They’re all pretty invested in their communities.”

“And it’s a bit strange,” Dad agreed. “Trust us, teleport into the great beyond, we had a dream. A bit difficult to go for.”

“Alright, well I wanted to hear everything about what you’re doing, but I can feel the spell slipping away,” I said hurriedly. “It’s pretty damned difficult to cast, so I think the next time we’ll see each other is when I summon you. I’ll try and do so in about two months, so you have that long to get your affairs in order. Love you guys!”

“Love you too!”

“It was great to hear from you, sweetheart,” Mom said.

And then the dream broke.

It was time for me to get to work.

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Figuring out how to call someone to me with just a blood link was difficult but not impossible. I had a method that worked every time I tested it within a month. I still couldn’t expand it beyond immediate familial relations, but that was fine; that was enough.

That gave me a month to play around with. I decided to play around with ultra-high quality clothing for enhanced persons. Back on Earth, there are these techniques to make cloth out of very thin metal wires. I once wanted to make a steel-cloth scarf, just as something to have.

But with magic I could go further. I made the thin steel wire, then gave it the Valyrian blessing. After that, I had my tailors process it for me into sets of clothing for myself and my family.

I still had more time to spare, so I figured out how to cast a magical projection of a Valyrian sword. I called it the TK Cut. Since it relied fairly heavily on my conceptual understanding of “cutting,” I suspected that in the future I would be able to develop more and more functionality for it. Cutting across space, for an instantaneous attack and teleportation. Cutting against concepts for offense and defense. Really, there were a lot of pretty cool applications even among the most obvious and off-the-cuff ideas.

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Finally, it was time to bring my family over.

First, I summoned Ender. Then Dad, Damien and Mom.

I had finally done it. I had reunited with my family, and though it was unlikely I would make it back to the Earth of my birth anytime soon, I didn’t care.

I was simply happy.