SORRY! PLEASE READ THIS!

I've got no real excuse as to why it has been so long since I've posted something. I've been dealing with some real life stuff which quite frankly has been beating me down little by little day by day. On top of that I have been having memory problems. Nothing serious like where I'm forgetting people and time, but enough to where I can't suddenly remember what I was planning to do, off and on, and it is becoming a struggle to try and remember with varying degrees of success.

As for this story... I haven't given up yet. If somebody wants to pick up the torch and try their hand at writing this story or their own version by all means go for it. You have my blessing, just let me know ahead of time.

I also wish to tell you guys that I am planning on rewriting this story. It won't be a major change, but the game system I've used has left me more and more dissatisfied the more I reread some chapters. Now by the time I post this Re: Gamer's Grimoire should be posted. If you still want to keep up with this story, I highly suggest you guys jump on that story, favorite/follow it, because by the time I reach the appropriate chapter, this story is going to be deleted.

Now I know you guys were expecting something so I'll give you all a taste of what's to come.

Recap: Jon Snow, a young man at the age of 16, has been bound to the Gamer's Grimoire, a mysterious magical artifact that has turned his life into a game. Previously, Jon had found the Weirbook of the First Men, a key to it, and was pulled into a melee King Robert had ordered him to participate in. During the height of it, Jon was beset by two competitors who have less than friendly intentions towards him.

Now

He was ancient. That much became increasingly obvious every time he came back to the real world after viewing the memories of the old world. Garth Greenhand was old. Older than anything that walked this world. Something only he himself could boast, not that it was something to be proud of. To watch all that you knew and loved become dust and remembered as little more than a myth was immensely disparaging. Those who believed immortality to be a blessing were nothing but the greatest of fools. Garth hated not being able to die. He's felt little else since the Children had resurrected him so very long ago. What little emotion he could show was little more than act for Jon. Oh, Garth could have killed himself at any point between then and now. There were a variety of ways he could have done it, but he still had a job to do.

The Night King

That was one mistake Garth could not leave this world with without doing something about it himself. He would not be able to pass on into the Ether until he was sure the Night King could at the very least be defeated. He bore some of the responsibility of the Night King's creation. He could not stop Brandon from going to war over their slaughtered kin. He had been too full of wroth and wild to be calmed over it. He could not understand what the Heart Trees had meant to them nor that their kinsmen were in the wrong. Sometimes, Garth had wondered if Brandon had truly been angry over their deaths or if he had just been looking for an excuse to fight. Perhaps it had been both.

Brandon was always protective of those he viewed as his own. And he always got into fights. Ever since he was small.

It was a lesson he had imparted to all of his sons when he actually paid them attention instead of keeping his people in line or fucking his women. The strong flourished, the weak perished, and the strongest lead. It was a law of nature itself, but Garth could not have predicted how well Brandon would take to it, nor could he have predicted that the Children would do something like that when he pushed them so far. And at the end, Garth had failed.

His son was dead. The Night King and his Others, in his place, now slaughtering Men, Children, beasts, and even giants. Raising them into an army never seen before.

It took dying at this creature's hands to realize just how much he had failed his children, his people, everyone. And then he met his grandson and Azor Ahai.

Bran had been different from his father. Quiet, contemplative, and always using reason, but never afraid to show his teeth when necessary.

Azor Ahai had been similar. Usually willing to listen to others, but could lead. Fiery and strong, but not hungry for battle.

Garth had compared his successor of the Grimoire to himself multiple times. Garth always took what he wanted, and none would be able to challenge him. Azor Ahai never so much as looked at another woman the same way he looked at Nissa Nissa, and would ask for things despite being more than capable of taking it. Azor Ahai's son meant the world to him, while Garth could barely remember their names when he had been alive. And yet they both cared for their people, willing to do anything it took to save them. And both had archenemies as Gamers.

If the Night King had been Garth's ultimate enemy, then that dark monster all the way to the east had been Azor's. He had not told Jon of that creature due to Azor having managed to kill him, and himself both, at the end because it was ultimately pointless. Only one adversary from the Long Night remained, and he was the one Garth needed Jon to focus on. Only a Gamer, Garth believed, has the chance to truly kill the Night King forever. Azor had come the closest, but none of them knew the Night King had survived the fatal blow until it was too late. By the time Garth had learned of his survival, Azor was already engaged with his own adversary. And so after his death, Garth tried to find the next Gamer, and the next and the next until he eventually came to Aegon Targaryen. Of all the ones he had found, he had been both alive and close, and so Garth had been hoping to get into contact with him, but Aegon had been caught up in his own game of conquering the Seven Kingdoms, and by the time he could actually do something about it, he was already too old. And so Garth tried to find the next one... yet he could not.

Centuries would pass, yet he saw no sign of the Grimoire. From Westeros to Essos and even to Ulthos and Sothoryos, yet there was no sign at all until around 17 years ago. He had been sure Robert's Rebellion would've led him to it due to its influence. Sudden and heavy change usually was caused by it, but he did not see the Grimoire on anyone. Not any of the Targaryens, Starks, Lannisters, or any of them. Instead at the end, it showed him a vision of the next Gamer, a young man, wielding Lightbringer against the Night King. That same man was a little prince who had just been born, already having lost nearly everything.

So Garth resolved to watch over this child, this... son of Ice and Fire, the Gamer who might be able to rectify his millennia old mistake.

'Right about now Jon should be fighting in the melee.' Garth thought to himself. He was just about to go view it personally when he felt something ripple among the waves of the Ether itself. Something that was neither Jon nor the Night King and definitely not him, so what was it? He followed the flow all the way to its source until he came to the city of K'Dath. If he had not borne witness to horrors of the various wars since his death, he might have shivered at the dreaded city. It was ancient, older than himself, having heard of it as a child, this place was said to be the birthplace of blood and shadow magic itself.

It was much worse than that in these times. Garth walked through the streets listening to the cacophony of wails, snarls, and the sound of flesh being torn.

The city itself was decrepit. The old stone buildings were cracked and not maintained as they should be. The windows in the building were little more than holes carved into the walls which appeared as if they themselves were barely standing. Some of them had symbols on them and looked to be recently used. The insides of these buildings were filled with pillars of wood, sticks, hair, some sort of black grease, and bones. Other buildings were simply more than rubble, destroyed by the passage of time. This dead city however wasn't uninhabited. A minority of the people here were Abominations; people possessed by demons, while the majority worshipped those Abominations seeing them as some form of higher being. The physical differences varied with abominations. All of them were easily identified as being human once, but all had some degree of hair loss, skin color becoming paler, various deformations and the appearance of starvation. Most generally become hyperactive, bordering on feral, and extremely violent. The weak-willed became cannibalistic. That was an absolute truth. All abominations gained an increase in both strength and agility, but ultimately become little better than animals in terms of intelligence. The degrees in strength and agility varied between each abomination, but all became dangerous enough that they could overwhelm any person caught unprepared.

The other people who were not abominations were insane fanatics. A cult of some kind, though Garth never bothered to try to understand their language. These people comprised largely of Yi Tish descent, but there were still some people, mostly slaves, or more likely sacrifices, of other kingdoms. From what Garth had managed to gleam from them over the years when he'd spy them, they despise outsiders and will torture and kill any they come across. They worship abominations and seek to emulate them for some ungodly reason. From a distance the cultists were indistinguishable from the abominations unless one got close enough to see them. All cultists shave their hair from their bodies, and ritualistically mutilate themselves by carving and burning symbols onto their flesh while taking some sort of herbs or a concoction of different herbs. Either way they appear to hallucinate and be able to take the pain of being burned better with them. These people revered the Abominations so much that they would allow themselves to be eaten by one if they faced it.

As Garth walked through the streets he noticed how low any sound was. Yes, he could hear the abominations rustling, but there were no cultists in sight. Where were they? Had they all been eaten? He had yet to see what had caused the shift in the Ether so he kept walking until he heard it. Mass chanting. He picked up the pace and moved to where the sound was originating from to find a colosseum of sorts built into the ground. A massive construct that could house hundreds but was largely empty save for the middle. He walked down the stairs to find the chanting becoming louder until he reached the end, surrounded by dozens of cultists all with their heads bowed and chanting the same thing over and over.

"XUÈ SHÍ HUÁNGDÌ! XUÈ SHÍ HUÁNGDÌ!" They spoke as one. Garth leaned over the railing to see an arena that the colosseum had been built around. In the dead center of it was an oily black stone. To those untrained in magic, they could not see anything more, but Garth could. Around the stone were fog-like whips of a sinister energy emanating from it. Garth knew what this thing was. The oily blackstone was the opposite of the whitestones that fell in Dorne and the one Nissa Nissa and Azor Ahai summoned to fight the Night King. Unlike the whitestone, which had mix of spirit magic that leaned more to creation magic, the blackstone leaned more toward entropic magic. The energy it gave off affected all life around it. Some things would die due to having the life sucked out of it while others would changed by it. Its power also gave strength to demons and to a lesser extent, abominations.

'That explains why K'Dath is like this, but why now? What's changed?' Garth thought to himself, still observing the arena. Then, as if response to his thoughts, several gates down in the arena opened and nearly two dozen of different abominations came running out their clothes dirty and tattered. Most appeared closer to an average man, or woman, as some were, others were children, barely old enough to start becoming men and women. Others however were different. Some were huge, big a muscled, capable of breaking a man in two, and with hands that looked as if they could pick up a cart. Others however, were darting at speeds Garth had seen only lions match when they are chasing down prey. The abominations ran to the stone only to stop in front of it before actually bowing to it until all had to come to circle it in submissive reverence. Just then, a man came out clad in a dark robe, hooded, face obscured from Garth. Then the man spoke.

"Ānjìng! Wǒmen dōu jiànzhèngle huángdì de chóngshēng!" Garth could not understand the man's words, but his intentions were made clearer as he began to gesture to the stone, "Jǐ qiān nián lái, wǒmen xīshēng bìng qíqiú zhè wèi jìng'ài de huángdì huíguī. Zhēnzhèng de shàngdì huí jiā! Zhōngyú nèitiān dàole!" With each sentence he spoke the crowd cheered.

"Xiànzài wǒmen zuò chū zuìhòu de xīshēng. Xuǎnzé zìjǐ bìxū shì nàyàng zuò de! Tōngguò xuǎnzé de xiěyè, huángdì jiāng xǐng lái, bìng jiāng shìjiè dài dào tā de xīgài!" The crowd cheered even louder as he removed his hood and brandished a knife. Garth was stunned by the man's visage. He had wondered why the abominations had not attacked him and now he knew why. The man himself was an abomination! He looked just like the average one, but without any genuine deformation and with an intelligence he should not have had! The abomination then cut his own wrist and began chanting. The blood flowed from his wrist then acted as tendril. With the speed of a loosed arrow, the tendril of blood shot around, cutting the throats of every abomination until it fully circled and pierced the intelligent abomination's throat. All of them fell to the ground while the cultists began praying harder.

"XUÈ SHÍ HUÁNGDÌ! XUÈ SHÍ HUÁNGDÌ!" Garth merely watched, somewhat stunned by the display. A self-sacrifice ritual with abominations. That was new. But what was the purpose of that? To perform a blood sacrifice to the stone itself? Garth noticed that the blood of the abominations stared to pool together as if it were alive before being sucked into the stone. The cultists chanting became fiercer and stronger. The demons that had inhabited the bodies of the abominations floated out of their corpses before going towards the stone. One of them laid a single black hand upon the oily surface of it gently. The fog-like wisps that surrounded stone turned into a black smoke and came alive grabbing the demon and pulling it in until it was absorbed into the stone. Other tendrils of smoke grabbed the surrounding demons and did the same as Garth backed up before performing a spectral dash to the top of the colosseum. Just in time to get out of the way from a tendril of smoke too. Once all the demons were absorbed the tendrils lashed out towards the cultists, entering their bodies through their mouths.

Their bodies spasmed and seized making moans as if trying to scream but couldn't. Finally, as the tendrils broke from the stone, they all went still, unnaturally still. As one they all turned to Garth. All of their eyes were pitch black. Stunned by the turn of events he got himself into a defensive stance, spirit magic at the ready to fight just in case. All of them opened their mouths and let out ear-piercing shrieks before the black smoke suddenly exited them, heading back towards the black stone. As the smoke left, their bodies became desiccated, to the point as if they'd been dead for centuries until crumbling away into dust. The oily black monstrosity began to pulse with dark magic. From behind, Garth could hear shrieks, snarls, rustling before what sounded like a crowd came running towards his location. He turned to see a small horde of abominations, two-hundred easy came stampeding towards him. He dashed towards the top of the building to watch them flood into the colosseum. As they got close the stone's tendrils shot out this time surrounding the entire colosseum. Garth did not dare get closer but he could hear the abominations' snarling and shrieking turn into screams as the sounds of flesh and bone being ripped joined it. It became a horrendous chorus reaching its height that all he could hear with dozens of beasts cry out as if they were being slaughtered until it steadily gave way to the sound of demons shrieking that came into play. The sounds of dozens upon dozens of demons came to a crescendo before all became silent. The smoke receded into the stone to reveal the abominations' corpses having been ripped apart. There was no blood as Garth could assume it absorbed it all when they were ripped limp from limp. The demons must've been eaten too.

What was this thing?

The sound of cracking and grinding filled Garth's ears. With a horrified look, he stared as the stone cracked all over. He placed a barrier around the immediate area of the stone before it burst, exploding in a shower of dust and rock and body parts. He managed to hold his barrier up with some effort. It was a translucent green barrier of energy that protected against, or this case caged, anything magical that was meant to harm. What had burst from the stone was a being made of black smoke. It's shape was that of a person, but it had crimson eyes. It stared at Garth yet he felt it was glaring at him with a hunger only a demon could have.

"You are no demon. What are you? Speak!" He ordered thinking it might understand him. The creature merely tilted its head.

"Nǐ shénme dōu bù zhīdào. Dàn wǒ huì jiào nǐ sǐwáng." It's voice was unnatural speaking in a cacophony of different voices, with some sounding purely demonic all the way to a high almost childlike voice. Garth actually could not tell which was more disturbing.

"I will ask again, who are you?!" He replied readying himself for a spirit battle. The creature merely shrieked and charged at him.

Ned and Benjen were watching with rapt attention. Neither had been happy when King Robert had ensnared Jon and Robb into this little Melee for his own amusement. Both the Lord of Winterfell and the First Ranger's gazes jumped from Jon to Robb and back several times over the course of the event. The two boys had done very well considering it was their first ever Melee. True they had fought in the ring time and again, beating their peers, even fighting more than one opponent at a time. But this was different.

Both boys would be swept up in a battle with multiple opponents who would take all sorts of shots at them. Robb had used his shield to the best of his ability blocking and striking, taking down opponents who were years his senior, yet he was nearly taken down once or twice and he had yet to go against either the Hound or the Kingslayer. Jon appeared to be more skilled with a blade this time around as he took down opponent after opponent with general ease. Yes, around a third of them had been drunk given by their sluggish movements, but both boys were doing very well. Then that knight caught Jon from behind with a mace. A blow like that could have easily maimed Jon if it had struck his head instead. Eddard and Benjen both had been surprised when Jon knocked the man out with one swing of his arm.

"Not a bad hit your boy gave that one, eh Ned?" Robert asked at his side. Ned glanced at his old friend briefly who was staring in Jon's direction before looking back at Jon who was dragging the unconscious knight to the outer edges of the area.

"Yes, Your Grace, it was well struck."

"Well struck?" His king chuckled, "He knocked the fucker out with one hit!" Robert guffawed. Ned briefly noticed the queen roll her eyes at the king's crass language. Jon managed to get the knight out of bounds before he ventured back into the fray, making eye contact with them for a single instant as he turned around.

Suddenly his wife shook his arm with a cry of "Ned!" and an excited gasp from Bran in her arms had him looking at them before turning to look at whatever they were watching. Sure enough he saw it. Robb was going head to head with three men. His son appeared to be on the defensive as the three kept striking his raised shield. Though he was obviously not letting himself be overtaken as he kept backing away so as not to allow his opponents to surround him. The three kept attacking until he started to notice that their were moves were slowing down. And as soon as that started to happen Robb attacked with renewed zeal, instantly taking out one before focusing on the other two. Arya suddenly got his attention as she was pointing away from Robb's direction, causing him to look at what had to have been Jon. His eyes widened upon seeing Jon taking on two more knights.

Jon was tired, sweaty and more than a little crabby. He wanted to just go somewhere quiet, sit down, and close his eyes. Maybe even take a nap, but no, instead he had to make it to the final three of some stupid tourney he had no interest in, because the King had wanted him to participate, and to make matters worse, he had two fools who were bent on killing him apparently! He tuck-n-rolled as both knights brought their weapons down upon him. His arms were heavy and burning as were his legs. He knew he wasn't going to be able to keep up this pace, not against these two, who were relentless in their pursuit. He was going to have to take them out unorthodoxly, but not compromise his place in the Melee, otherwise he would have already used deadly force and try to kill them. He stepped back and started backing away from them to the nearest boundary of the melee, edging himself closer. Greataxe, as he had taken to calling the man charged at him. Jon waited until the man dropped his axe down towards him before dodging to the man's side. Greataxe looked at where he had previously been before Jon kicked him in the back hard enough for him to step out of bounds with one foot.

The nearest bystanders cheered and pointed at him, screaming 'OUT.' Instead he turned to look at Jon with a grimace and stepped back into the ring. The crowd galvanized at his blatant disregard of the rules, beginning to chant 'OUT' as he hefted his greataxe to attack Jon once more. Jon backed up raising his blade, ready to defend when several guards stepped onto the field and seized the man. Greataxe struggled and struck one of the guards before more came and dragged him off.

'Well, that's what happens when you think you can ignore the rules in front of everyone.' Jon thought to himself before jumping out of the way of a broadsword attempting to cleave him in two. His eyes landed on the other knight he nicknamed Broadsword in his mind. The man raised his sword again and this time Jon countered with a strike of his own, the two locking blades.

"You two seem more interested in actually killing me given how you and the other one were striking. Why?" Jon asked before breaking away.

"Doesn't matter why, more than anything it's cause you're an uppity little shit." The knight replied crudely. Jon ducked out of the man's swing before slamming his blade into the man's armored gut. His would-be killer doubled over wheezing and coughing. In a flash, Jon drew his blade out above the stunned man before bringing down his sword and slamming the pommel at the back of the man's head, knocking him face first into the muck. He stepped back and readied himself in case the man rose up, but he didn't move. Jon slowly walked towards him and cautiously nudged the downed knight with his foot until he rolled him over. Now that he was on his back, Jon could see that he had successfully knocked the man out. He signaled the nearest guards and gestured to the man before walking back to the few who were still on the field, panting. He could feel the sweat soaking his undershirt and even dripping off of his chin. As he walked towards them he took note of who was left.

A handful of men from either Winterfell, or whoever followed the King on his journey here, as well as Robb, who looked as Jon was feeling right this second, and... oh it seemed the Hound and Ser Jaime were facing off now! Wow, he really wished he could watch that, but it seemed the few left had decided to either fight or team up and Robb was dealing with a two-man team. Seeing the change, Jon made his decision and ran to Robb's side.

There's the preview for how things are going to go in the future, as well as introducing a new enemy, one that'll be a major adversary to Jon further along as the story goes. If you had decided to skip the author note up top, please read it.

And if you wish to try and stay on with this story please jump onto Re: Gamer's Grimoire.