TWL Chapter - 81

Cersei was livid.

He had forgotten her.

She had seen it in his eyes—that moment of recognition followed by annoyance, as if she were nothing more than an inconvenient interruption to his day. 

He had easily dismissed her after everything he had done to her. After she had spent every waking moment with his face burned into her head, those dark eyes haunting her dreams and nightmares alike. After she had begged—begged—the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms reduced to pleading like a common supplicant. And he had given her what she wanted, partially at least, but only because he wanted her gone.

How fucking dare he.

The worst part was that she could feel again—just enough to remember what she'd lost. Just enough to make the emptiness that much more unbearable. Like being given a single drop of water after years in the desert, only to have the cup yanked away.

Just as she was contemplating how to burn this entire wasteland down, someone knocked on her door.

"Go away," she snarled.

"It's me, Cersei." Jaime's voice carried through the thick oak. "I need to speak with you."

"What do you want?"

"I need to talk to you about something important." His voice was unusually strained, urgent in a way that made her pause. "Something big is happening and I'm not sure... you're the only one I can trust at the moment."

Despite herself, curiosity stirred beneath the rage. Jaime rarely sounded shaken.

She opened the door reluctantly, and Jaime slipped inside.

"Well?" she demanded, crossing her arms. "What's so important that you had to barge in here"

Jaime nervously ran a hand through his hair—a nervous gesture she recognized from their childhood. "They're talking about White Walkers, Cersei. The Others. From the stories."

She stared at him. "What?"

"Stark called a meeting of all the lords currently in Winterfell, he seems to have somehow convinced the King as well." Jaime began pacing the room. "They claim the mage and Benjen Stark went beyond the Wall and encountered them. An army of the dead, led by something called the Night King."

Cersei felt a laugh bubble up from somewhere dark inside her chest. "You're telling me that Ned Stark has convinced the King that children's stories are real?"

"That's what I thought too," Jaime said, stopping his pacing to face her. "But it's not Stark who's driving this. It's him. The mage." His expression darkened. "He's the one who went beyond the Wall. He's the one telling these stories. And everyone is hanging on his every word like he's some kind of prophet."

At the mention of the mage, Cersei felt her emotions surge—terror mixing with rage in a cocktail that made her hands shake. Just hearing about him made her skin crawl, made her remember the helplessness she had felt as he casually described how he could easily destroy her life and there would be nothing anyone could do to help her.

"Don't," she whispered, backing away from Jaime. "Don't talk about him."

"Cersei, listen to me—"

"No!" The word came out as a snarl. "You don't understand what he is. What he can do."

"Why does everyone keep saying that? Even Tyrion was talking the same way." Jaime's frustration was evident. "I'm starting to think he must have cast some sort of spell on everyone that seems to terrify them, just like he did in King's Landing, but more subtle."

"Really? And you think you're immune to whatever he has done?"

"I don't know, alright?" Jaime ran both hands through his hair now, looking more agitated than she'd seen him in years. "Something just feels off about this entire town.”

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Oberyn had seen many uncomfortable feasts in his time, he had even been the cause in some of them but last night's had been painful to watch.

The great hall of Winterfell had felt more like a funeral wake than a celebration. Lords picking at their food, whispering in hushed tones, shooting nervous glances at each other when they thought no one was looking. Half the guests had fled early, muttering excuses about needing rest.

Under normal circumstances, abandoning a feast in honor of the king's arrival would have some consequence. But these weren't normal circumstances, were they?

He understood why the king hadn't made a formal announcement yet. He was probably waiting for confirmation from whatever lucky bastards volunteered to cross the Wall and see the threat for themselves. 

But the king was fooling himself if he thought this could stay quiet much longer.

This wasn't the kind of news you could keep under wraps once enough people knew about it. Oberyn had already overheard at least three different versions of last night's meeting being whispered in corridors, each more dramatic than the last. Hell, half of Winterfell probably already knew. The other half would by evening.

Lords might sometimes know how to keep their mouths shut when it served them, but their servants gossiped like fishwives. And when you had this many visiting dignitaries crammed into one castle, each with their own retinues of guards and attendants... well, secrets had a way of growing legs and running.

Oberyn had watched the faces around that table taking note of how everyone was reacting. Some were willing to consider the possibility — those were the smart ones, in his opinion. The rest had scoffed, but even the skeptics couldn't quite hide the unease in their eyes.

Everyone was scrambling to figure out what it meant for their houses, their plans, their futures. And how they could use the looming apocalypse to get ahead—because that's what people did. 

He couldn't really blame them. You didn't survive long in Westeros without a healthy dose of selfishness.

That was yesterday's drama, though. This morning promised something far more interesting.

He had heard from his daughter that the White Mage himself would be teaching a class today. 

That had apparently happened only once before, and his daughter had not stopped talking about how the mage had created stringless little puppets that represented different parts of the human body and had acted out a play to help everyone learn what different parts of the body did and he himself had been fascinated.

Oberyn had never been one to pass up an opportunity to learn something new, especially from someone as fascinating as El. The man who had allegedly dropped a star on an enemy that had pissed him off.

As he approached the clinic, Oberyn couldn't help but grin. The crowd gathered outside was impressive—lords, merchants, even a few of the visiting nobles who'd managed to drag themselves out of bed after last night's revelations.

It seemed he wasn't the only one eager to see what the mysterious mage would teach them.

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I facepalmed as I took in what looked like half the population of Winterfell crammed into the auditorium, something I had built during the expansion of the school, just in case we eventually had bigger numbers of students. I guess it was already being put to good use.

I looked at Freya, "What is all this?"

"Well, word kind of spread and everyone wanted to attend, and they sounded pretty genuine in their desire to learn" she replied sheepishly.

I pushed back the oncoming headache. "I... never mind."

The murmur of voices slowly died down as I reached the center of the auditorium.

"Okay, this is a lot more people than I was expecting, so there's going to be some rules to follow," I announced, my voice carrying across the packed room.

"This is a classroom, so only one person speaks at a time. If you have a question, you raise your hand. I'll give priority to my students' questions since I'm technically here to teach them, but I will answer yours as well if time permits."

"If I hear anyone breaking that rule, I will be asking Fenrir to drag you out and sit on you. If you are bored, you can leave quietly."

I didn't hear any complaints other than a few muttered acknowledgments.

"Good, then we can begin. I know some of you are mostly here to learn about biology, but today is going to be very different."

I had given some thought about what I was going to teach today. I couldn't do the same thing as last time—I had certain standards I needed to live up to.

I had thought of teaching them chemistry so that they could start to understand something about medicine, but that would be too complicated to jump into directly. They would have to know basic physics for that, but physics was also a bit too complicated to understand without math.

"Today we are going to be learning the most important language in the universe."

That got their attention.

"It's a language that even if you meet someone from other worlds, you would be able to communicate with, with some effort."

I was pretty excited myself cause I was going to teach them my favorite subject.

"Math."

The reaction was mixed—some looked confused, others intrigued.

“Math is the language of numbers. Now I know most of you are familiar with your numbers but don't really see much use for it, but let's change that, shall we?"

I started simple with the number line, showing them how numbers worked, how they related to each other. I moved up to addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, using examples they could understand—counting sheep, dividing grain, calculating distances.

I introduced them to negative numbers, which caused quite a stir. The concept of numbers less than nothing was clearly blowing some minds.

Then fractions, which I explained using pies and loaves of bread.

Geometry came next, and when I reached linear equations, I looked back and saw nothing but confused faces and realized that I might have gotten carried away.

"Now I know I explained a lot and you all are wondering what the use of all that is. Math is the truth of the universe. It will not—cannot lie to you.

So let us work on some problems that we can solve with the help of math. Say you are packing for a journey to the Wall and you need to figure out how much food to bring. How would you go about it?"

A few hands went up slowly and I called on them. With everyone chiming in, I was able to hopefully teach everyone how to break down a problem into smaller parts and go at it one small manageable problem at a time, working my way to a solution that everyone seemed to agree on.

"Once you know how much food you are going to need, it is pretty simple to figure out how much it's going to cost. That was fun, wasn't it?" I got a few cheerful yeses and I took that as a win. 

“But let's think bigger, Say it's not just you going on an adventure. Now you are in charge of figuring out how much food you are going to need to keep the army fed and in fighting condition. Not just food though—you need to figure out water and medicine, arrows..."

The rest of the class was spent working on that problem with everyone chiming in on different issues and intricacies and how to incorporate them in a logical manner into the problem.

By the time I'd finished answering questions, I realized I'd been teaching for nearly three hours. The crowd hadn't thinned—if anything, more people had squeezed in.

"I think that's enough for today," I announced, though I could see disappointment on many faces.

"Will you teach more of this?" called out someone from the back.

I shrugged. "Yes, I'm not sure when, but the best way to get better at something after an introduction is to work on it on your own and come ask questions."

The cheer that went up was surprisingly enthusiastic, considering I had spent the last three hours ranting about math.

As the crowd began to disperse, chattering excitedly about equations and geometric principles, I noticed several people lingering, still discussing what they'd learned.

"Well," Freya said, coming up beside me, "that wasn't what I was expecting."

"I myself had no idea where I was going with it either. Math is and always will be my favorite subject. I had to adjust the examples to something the audience would best respond to," I replied.

"Though I have to admit," I continued, watching a group of northern lords still huddled together discussing supply calculations, "I didn't expect them to get this into it. Usually when I mention math, people's eyes glaze over."

"Well, you made it about food and war," Freya pointed out with a smirk. "That's basically the only two things most lords care about."

"Fair point."

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A/N: Sorry about the irregular updates guys, I kinda landed an internship last week and have been distracted trying to not fuck it up immediately. Still gonna do my best to write a chapter a week. Might finally finish editing the other stuff marinating in my drive before it starts to rot—you'll find out what I end up doing before the weekend ends, hopefully.

Leave a like or a comment if that's your thing. Like any human being, I find great joy in seeing numbers go up.