A/N: Right, so, sorry guys, it's been More than awhile, had a bout of depression after that whole DanYara drop last season and lost momentum on the fanfiction front. I took some time to learn some new skills, worked on some original pieces (still in the very early roughing in stages) and then I finally had enough time and sleep and motivation to actually Make Something. Also, my LilMunky is going to be THREE in October, because where on earth does the time go? Which also means toddlers and trying to find (but usually failing) time/space to type, or even concentrate. It's shorter than usual (about a third) but I'm working on the next chapter right now. This magical instance and the timeline had me stumped for about six months and then I just gave up because of the leaks and HBO/D&D's butchery of the subject material.

And if HBO Jon and Davos can travel 270 miles overland in Winter through the North on horseback (40mi/day in Good conditions, so Seven Days, plus sleeping…where exactly?) and then 2700 miles to Dragonstone from White Harbor (11mph max, so about 245 hours or Ten Days) in storm tossed seas in A Week, I'm done giving a crap about accurate timelines. Clearly everyone is borrowing Varys' TARDIS and apparently he's the 14th Doctor…

Chapter 27 – Interlude – The Red Woman

Tired eyes opened, reflecting red in the dim gleam thrown off by a nearby lantern.

She hurt. Lord, did she hurt, but she still drew breath, and could continue her service as a priestess of R'hllor. She could still fight the Other, and stave off the Long Night. She turned her head slightly, narrowing all her focus down to the tiny, sputtering flame at the end of its trimmed wick.

It blazed, transforming the fickle glow into a comforting, even luminance. Jon had left her side when the storm first arrived, at her own insistence. Someone needed to keep the lone wolf at the helm safe. A glance at the burgeoning flame revealed a large furred body curled about the wheel, and two forms sheltered from the brunt of the wind and rain.

A pack, giving strength and reassurance to one another despite their passage through the deathly domain of the Other. She smiled to the flames as she saw the reborn Azor wrap his cloak around the Stark girl and the two shared a glad moment. His sacrifice was little, as her prince needed fur to stave off the cold as much as she did, but the gesture meant much to his sister.

She steeled herself and sat upright, grimacing tightly against the pain that slashed through her side. The injury had been a bad one, but she was no simple shadow, no glamour bound shade. She was Melisandre, flesh and bone, and she would overcome this.

Ghost stirred at her motion, kept by her side at Jon's command and his own cautious looks at the open deck outside. He was fierce, but in his own, quiet, obedient way. Not nearly as prone as the silver direwolves to leap into danger without a thought to their safety. He was a reflection of his master. Jon deliberated, trying his best to reach a compromise before it escalated to bloodshed and life taking.

Once he was cornered, and unable to reason any longer with his enemy, then the fierceness surfaced. He had already paid the price for peaceful inaction once. Ghost and his master were now of one savage mind when it came to keeping Jon alive.

She was their ally in this, so long as it did not conflict with her greater duty. If the toll keeping Jon on this side of the bridge to the realm of Light and Dark was too costly, she would need to let him go, for all their sakes.

Ghost burrowed beneath her outstretched hand and she gripped the coarse fur at his nape, drawing stability as she forced herself to stand. Their time away from the land bound minions of the Other was coming to a close. Beyond that, she glanced at the flames once more, the Queen was coming.

The ship lurched as a vicious gust hit the side, and she nearly fell before the amulet at her neck flared. Searing heat coursed through her as the muscles of her legs caught and held.

Flesh and bone, she reminded herself, flesh and bone.

She hoped that here, where dragons flew and the old magic that made the Wall ran strong within the earth, that flesh and bone would be enough.

A week prior…

The currents in the air stilled, and the wind began to blow in a new direction. Ghost sat down beside her and raised his nose into the air, sniffing cautiously. A storm was coming, and sooner than she had thought. She had told Jon and Bran back at Hardhome, telling them she would be gone for seven days, and this was the morning of the last day.

She had been marching since she left the caves, forgoing sleep and giving her rations to Ghost so that he need not waste time and energy hunting. The storm would not kill her, as it would another, but the tall snowdrifts it would bring would slow her considerably. She would not be able to return home in time for the attack she knew was coming.

At the base of the Wall, she found shelter in a rocky cave near the coastline and began building the fire she would need to keep the wolves from the frozen grip of the Other. Ghost's ears perked as she gathered the sparse wood left buried in the ice. He dashed off to the waterline, anxious to find his pack as she set to work breaking the frozen crust off the logs. Melisandre could make ice burn, but it was taxing, and she needed her energy for other tasks.

She sparked the fire with a touch, coaxing it to flame with the gentle caress of a lover. It spread across the wood, blazing higher and hotter without consuming the fuel.

There was a noise behind her, and she turned to see the three direwolves at the entrance, the unknown wolf more than twice the size of her brothers and barely able to fit inside the cave.

She smiled at the devastation such savage power could gift upon the Other. Truly, the Lord of Light had heard her prayers for aid.

"Stay, my friends," she encouraged, "stay and warm yourselves."

Reluctant at first, it was the exhausted Ghost who put them at ease. Too tired from their endless trek from Hardhome, he lay down next to her, stretching out his paws and body so his underbelly could absorb the heat of the branch shaped coals.

The other wolves followed soon after, first Summer and then...Nymeria, if she remembered correctly, the wolf of their lost sister, separated as the girl in grey fled northwards. The tiny cave was soon packed with wet fur, warm bodies, and hot flame. She watched the large animals doze as they regained their strength and body heat. The two from the south, fat and hale as they were from hunting in the southern forests untouched by the Other, would make the journey quickly. Ghost was a different matter. The direwolf did not have the reserves his brother and sister did, and their pace had been relentless and bitter cold. He did not have the stalwart hand of the Lord of Light protecting him either. He would not make the run in time, not in the condition he was in.

Soon it would not just be the night that was full of terrors. A faint greenish white glow emanated from the satchel at her side. R'hllor had given her a solution.

Reaching inside, she retrieved the obsidian shard. Within the pulsing light of the glass candle, she saw the hearth of the room she shared with Jon. The way was open, but it would not be for long.

"Then it is time."

In her satchel was also a small knife. She drew it across her hand, blood welled in the shallow cut. She squeezed, and two droplets fell into the coals.

"The night is dark, and full of terrors." Her own voice spoke to her.

A duplicate appeared, a perfect facsimile in touch and appearance, but she was far more than touch and sight could know.

"Who are you?" She asked the shade.

"The Lord of Light provides." Came the cryptic answer.

"What spells are yours to cast?"

"The night is dark and full of terrors, the Lord of Light provides."

Not good enough. Melisandre waved her hand, dismissing the shade into a puff of smoke.

She should have known better than to hold back and cheapen the Lord of Light's gifts, but blood here created something far superior to spells cast south of the Wall. There, a similar shade cost much more: hair, skin, blood and tooth. Her tongue probed gently at the missing molar.

No, this spell would need bone.

She slipped off a supple red boot, soft and whole despite walking in them through half the world. Pale skin contrasted against the dark stone of the cave floor, the second toe was already missing, taken during her training in the Shadow to cast the first spell of this kind. She could do without another, there would be no need of toes or feet if the Long Night came.

She placed the obsidian dagger near the fire, waiting for it to warm. It was so much easier to harvest a part of yourself with the help of R'hllor's cleansing fire, both to distract from the act and cauterize the bleeding.

Easier still if she too had a little bag of fingerbones hung about her neck.

The fire crept up to the knife, but the glass refused to melt or burn. She bent low and wrapped her fingers around the scalding hilt. She felt the heat, but not the burn, the Lord of Light would not harm her, so long as she did his work.

She spoke the words, old words, older than Valyrian itself.

Then she pressed downward, quick and clean, and felt skin and tendon separate as she cut through the joint.

Quickly, so as not to lose even a drop of life, she closed the incantation and threw a piece of her into the fire.

She was met by her mirror image, standing in the flames and looking at her knowingly.

Such shadows as I bring forth here will be terrible, and no creature of the dark will stand before them.

"How is your magic?" She asked the doppelganger.

"My magic is as strong as yours. Where is the candle?" Melisandre heard her own voice ask her. "We haven't much time."

"Then do as I ask, or we will fail if I have not given enough."

"As you wish." Said the shade of herself. There was a snap of fingers and the bonfire climbed higher, startling Ghost awake. He looked at her second incarnation in startlement before rising and sniffing the new made flesh.

Finding nothing amiss, he sat back on his haunches and waited.

"Good." Melisandre told the duplicate. "What spells are beyond you?"

"Only birthing the shadow is outside my power."

"As we knew it would be." Melisandre said.

"But I am not strong enough for what is to come."

"No." Melisandre sighed. "I will remedy that."

She reached behind and unclasped the jewel bound at her throat, handing it over to the shade as she felt the world around her dim and blur to her now weakened eyes. Her joints began to ache with a familiarity she had tried to erase these last few centuries.

Melisandre gave the youth and power up freely. It served her Lord's plans, and that was all that mattered.

The dress came next, and the supple red boots, until a youthful, red clad Melisandre stood waiting on a wasted old woman dressed in wrinkles alone.

The knife and satchel waited by the fire. A light glowed through the oilskin, and she stooped to retrieve it before placing the dagger back inside. In her hands was a glass candle from Valyria.

Within the twisted dragonglass was an image of Jon's quarters, of the hearth and the bed they shared.

"It is time." She said to the shade, holding out the candle.

The youthful Melisandre touched a finger to the glass and vanished, startling Ghost and the other wolves, who growled fiercely and bristled.

"Be calm, my friends."

The growling stopped, but the hackles remained until Ghost padded toward her and nuzzled her free hand, his voiceless concern plain.

"I am fine, Ghost." She stroked the white fur between his ears with bony, withered fingers. "You will not be if you make the journey back to your master the way we came."

She looked to Summer, was he the wolf or the boy?

"Summer, do you know the way to your master?" She watched for...some sign of acknowledgement.

The grey direwolf howled, and his silvery sister joined in before the two dashed out of the cave and into the snow.

She supposed she would take that as a yes.

The candle still glowed in her palm, and she pressed it to the direwolf's nose, feeling Ghost vanish from beneath her fingertips. The art of travel was inexact, but Ghost and her shade would arrive near enough to the candle in their quarters-

In Jon's quarters, she reminded herself.

They would arrive in time to aid in what was to come.

That was the important part. She, Melisandre, had other roles to play, other paths to follow now.

She tucked the candle into her satchel and shut it tight, wrapping the strings around before knotting them to keep water from soaking the herbs and powders she needed for her magics.

Melisandre waved her hand and the branch shaped coals guttered to ash. She stepped outside the cave and draped the satchel over a shoulder and across her body. She walked, barefoot in the snow, before wading slowly into the gently lapping water that flowed along the coastline of the Wall.

She walked until the water line crept up past the flat dugs of her breasts and began to swim, smooth, even strokes sluicing through the water as she paddled through the near darkness, the blue green edifice of the Wall her only company until the grey light of dawn outlined the southern bank.

A cramp took her mid-stroke, and she balled up against the discomfort, sinking down into the water, but it was no ordinary exhaustion.

Melisandre felt the tendrils of shadow rooting within her, twining and growing.

She kicked and pulled against the near frozen liquid until her head broke the surface and she gasped air.

A chuckle echoed in her head.

"You have lain with the blood of kings, you knew that this, and only this would come of it."

It was the voice of her Mistress, Quaithe, a voice she had tried to prove wrong, time and time again, but had always failed.

This time was no different.

Cold grey sunlight filtered from the eastern horizon, if the portents were right, this day would bring the dragon queen.

One half of the Prince that Was Promised.

She had left the other Azor Ahai to his fate, with as much help as she could spare.

Another fluttering kick and her feet and knees grazed tide tumbled rock. She started to walk upright, exchanging ice choked water for snow drifted air.

The cold did not bother her, it was a gift from R'hllor, one of many.

Melisandre turned west, and set her path towards Winterfell.