Demons and evil spirits

The North, Sea Dragon Point, Western Mountains, Blackstone Ruins.

"P-prepare for battle!"

"Eel" Ralf and "Thin Pigeon" stood side by side at the very front of the group. Although their initial words had sounded thoroughly righteous and resolute, many of the miners were too frightened to move once they actually saw the Wights' terrifying appearance.

At the end of the day, these men were only miners. Some had never even killed a chicken. When "Eel" Ralf saw how frightened everyone was, his initial indomitable momentum was completely subdued, and those were the only words he managed to shout.

After the corpses climbed up from the ground, however, they did not attack every living creature as they did in the ancient legends of the First Men. Instead, they simply stood motionless, like so many immobile statues.

"Thin Pigeon" was also filled with fear at the sight. The unknown was often the most frightening thing of all. If his brothers had been here, he would have dared to take a chance, but most of the people here were unarmed miners. If anyone who died also became a Wight, the losses would outweigh the gains.

Although "Eel" Ralf had initially been terrified as well, he noticed something wrong after carefully surveying his surroundings. To him, these creatures seemed to be controlled by something.

With that thought, "Eel" Ralf looked thoughtfully toward the stone platform, only to freeze in terror when he saw what was there.

The statue that had originally stood on the stone platform had shattered. In its place was a terrifying humanoid creature with enormous, batlike membranous wings, twisted horns, and a dragonlike head that looked horribly distorted. Beneath its dark gray skin, molten iron seemed to flow.

For some reason, when "Eel" Ralf looked at the monster, his eyesight became extraordinarily sharp. He could now clearly make out even the Dragonglass fragments between its muscles. Although he did not dare look into its eyes at all, he could still feel its terrifying gaze upon him.

"Uh... ngh, Th-Thin Pigeon, do you see that...?"

It had to be said that after one shock after another, "Eel" Ralf's capacity to withstand them had grown stronger and stronger. Even now, he could suppress his terror enough to ask "Thin Pigeon" beside him a question. Clearly, the blood wine the Bloodheart Clan men had made him drink seemed to have changed him.

"What? Aren't there only Wights here? Boss Ralf, are you tired? All right, most of them have gone now. Let's back out slowly too!"

After hearing "Eel" Ralf's words, "Thin Pigeon" instinctively glanced in the direction he was looking, but saw nothing beyond a few Wights near the stone platform.

"Wh-what? I... you... what do you mean... ah..."

"Eel" Ralf was immediately frightened by "Thin Pigeon's" reply. He hurriedly shook his head and rubbed his eyes, but when he looked toward the stone platform again, he saw nothing.

Then, before "Eel" Ralf could react, "Thin Pigeon" summoned several foremen to carry him out. Before leaving the ruins, "Eel" Ralf took one final look through a gap, but the unfortunate man saw a scene that chilled him to the bone.

At some point, the monster had moved over to the Wights. "Eel" Ralf was not quite sure what the monster he had seen actually was, but its terrifying appearance certainly had nothing to do with goodness.

The moment he connected it with the god those Bloodheart Clan warriors had spoken of, "Eel" Ralf felt as though he were looking at mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Meanwhile, in the dream world, Eddard was confronting a powerful being. Bat wings, monstrous horns, cloven hooves, and a tail with an inverted triangular tip-however he looked at that distinctive appearance, it belonged to the same species as the demons of myth and legend.

This world had never lacked legends of demons. The place with the most demon sightings was the ruins of the Valyrian Freehold on the Summer Sea, shrouded in smoke and overflowing with poisonous fumes all year round. In some versions of the legends, the Valyrian Freehold had been destroyed by demons.

While studying magic at the Citadel, Eddard's predecessor had once had the good fortune to read a secret journal recording an actual demon sighting. The incident was rather famous throughout the Seven Kingdoms, because it concerned House Targaryen of the previous dynasty.

In the year 56 AC, Aerea Targaryen and the dragon Balerion the Black Dread returned to the royal capital of King's Landing covered in injuries after having been missing for a year. Upon discovering this, Ser Lucamore Strong of the Kingsguard-the seven sworn knights who protected the king, a position many knights pursued all their lives-took the young princess to Grand Maester Bennifer. (The Grand Maester was a senior maester selected by the Citadel's Conclave to serve the king as the Citadel's representative.)

The journal described the incident in detail. Grand Maester Bennifer considered the treatment a truly horrifying undertaking, because he had seen some kind of terrible creature inside Princess Aerea Targaryen's body.

In Grand Maester Bennifer's account, it was a creature resembling lava. It constantly moved beneath her skin and was always trying to burrow out of the young princess's body. That terrifying monster kept burning her from within.

To help the young princess being burned by the flames, Grand Maester Bennifer could only fill a bathtub with ice water. Finally, after struggling in the ice water for a long time, the strange creature fell still as the young princess passed away.

"That monster looked very much like a human. When the young princess died, it had already torn open her navel. I will never forget that horrifying visage, a dragon's head combined with a human face..."

Those were the words Grand Maester Bennifer had written at the end of the journal, and the words that had left the deepest impression on Eddard.

According to the journal's account, demons did indeed exist in this strange world, very possibly amid the ruins of the Valyrian Freehold. Otherwise, there would not have been so many people in the history of Westeros who went there and never returned.

"Who are you?"

Upon receiving the message Eddard transmitted through his consciousness, the demon seemed to pause. Then a somewhat terrifying, chaotic stream of mental information came back. It was an exceedingly ancient language, its rhythms seemingly originating from another dimension. Even though they were communicating through consciousness, Eddard found it extremely difficult to understand.

What he could tell, however, was that the other party considered him an incomparably powerful being, because few beings in this dream world could reach his level. The reason this demon and that evil spirit did not dare act rashly was precisely the "power" Eddard displayed in the dream world.

Eddard suspected, however, that what these two truly feared was most likely his Golden Eye. Still, he knew very well that the evil spirit really had little offensive power and posed no substantial threat to him.

The same could not necessarily be said of this demon. In Eddard's perception, its current condition was extremely strange. It seemed not to have fully awakened-or rather, it had only forcibly broken through its seal and awakened after discovering that Eddard and the evil spirit might be about to deal with it.

Only after deciphering the demon's mental message did Eddard learn that it called itself B'lack and came from a world named "Brenham." It had originally been a demon lord of considerable standing in that world, but during a battle, an opponent had used magic to banish it to this world.

After learning this world's precise location, the demon B'lack had constantly sought to claim it for itself. However, it had somewhat underestimated this world's mysterious beings. Before some of its plans could even be put into action, it had been sealed away.

The demon B'lack claimed that it had no ill intentions whatsoever and merely wanted to survive, but what it meant was completely at odds with its actions.

"Hmm... so you couldn't hold back after all?"

Just then, after probing several times, the demon B'lack finally lost patience and charged straight toward Eddard. The evil spirit, meanwhile, ran far away and hid. Its purpose in occupying Bel's body and stirring up trouble had been to steal the demon B'lack's body and power.

Now that Eddard and the demon had actually started fighting, this was nothing short of a windfall for the evil spirit. While it was planning how to reap the rewards of their struggle, Eddard had already joined battle with the demon B'lack.

The demon B'lack's current state was somewhat similar to Eddard's: an amalgamation of consciousness and soul. However, this creature was far more powerful than Eddard-or rather, its control over power within the dream world was stronger.

The demon B'lack could actually use weapons and special abilities in this dream world. Its fiery attacks, combined with its strangely shaped sword, repeatedly forced Eddard to dodge. Had he not been protected by the Golden Eye's power, he would probably have been injured long ago.

Eddard's current means of attack were rather limited. He could only attack the demon B'lack with threads formed from his perception. Throughout this time, however, he had also been observing its methods of attack. With the Golden Eye's help, Eddard's perception worked like a high-speed computer, calculating all the demon B'lack's actions and the patterns by which its power operated.

The demon B'lack's flames came from a special energy within its body. That energy originated in the blood of the humans sacrificed by the evil spirit. The sword in its hand came from the same energy, constituting a more highly concentrated aggregation of it.

Thus, Eddard began searching for that special energy within his own current state. To his frustration, however, the Golden Eye's power contained nothing like the demon B'lack's power. What the Golden Eye possessed seemed to be abstract, conceptual energies of time and space, entirely incapable of forming tangible energy attacks.

Or rather, what the Golden Eye controlled was not energy in the ordinary sense, but some kind of inherent existence. After sorting out his thoughts, Eddard understood that all he could rely on now were the powers on his left and right wrists.

When Eddard's perception first entered the dream space, his initial form had been that of a strange humanoid creature enveloped in three powers. After he became proficient in using the Golden Eye's power, the portion above his neck had also become something he could control and distort at will.

Although Eddard looked terrifying within the dream world, he did not care, because this power was truly useful. As long as a being was within the dream world, he could deduce its past anytime and anywhere, as well as grasp certain clues to its future.

When Eddard spread his threads of perception toward the crystals on his left and right hands, two powers, one scorching and one warm, flowed from their respective positions. One was a violent, chaotic flame energy, while the other was a strange, warm energy formed from a mixture of ice and fire.

Within Eddard's perception, these two powers constantly consumed and wore away at one another. The flame's power was very similar to the demon's, filled with brutality and slaughter, while the strange power composed of ice and fire was like Dragonglass, embodying a mixture of extreme heat and extreme cold.

The flame energy melted the hard ice forming the Dragonglass energy's outer shell, while the melted ice sealed away a portion of the flame energy again. The interaction between these two powers left Eddard afraid to act rashly. He could only extract equal amounts of both at the same time.

Although the process was complicated and dangerous, Eddard managed to extract the energy without mishap with the Golden Eye's help. Although the Golden Eye's power had little offensive capability, its powerful abilities to look back and extrapolate could still help him a great deal.

Boom...

Just as Eddard was dodging an attack, an enormous fireball suddenly appeared near him without warning. The terrifying shock wave blasted his perception into a blur. Before he could react, the demon B'lack charged toward him like a cannonball.

Boom...

The flaming greatsword slammed into the Dragonglass Sword Eddard had hastily conjured in his hand. As the two energies collided, an extremely violent explosion erupted in the area. This explosion of pure energy produced no smoke, but its terrifying force battered the space into a mass of chaotically distorted energy.

Aaargh...

As a strange, furious mental message reached him, bursts of flame abruptly appeared in the space surrounding Eddard. Then the searingly hot energy transformed into a ferocious dragon's head and swallowed him in a single bite.

Boom...

The scorching orange-red energy erupted the instant the dragon's jaws snapped shut, blasting the area into a mass of chaos once again. Looking somewhat weakened, the demon B'lack watched Eddard's position, a hideous trace of a smile appearing on its savage, ugly face.