7 Powers And Limits (Part 1)

[POV AQUILES VIRIDIUM – YEAR 271]

Several hours had passed since Aquiles and Ser Rodrik departed from Winterfell. They were now riding along an ancient dirt road that wound through a cold forest with twisted trees covered in ice. The evening light pierced through the gaps in the canopy, casting long shadows that stretched across the road with small patches where the sunlight illuminated.

As the golden sun of the evening began to set on the horizon, Ser Rodrik looked up and then announced, "Night is coming. Let's set up camp under those trees!" The knight pointed to a group of trees on the left side of the road, a few meters away. As the sun disappeared, the temperature began to drop, and the cold, cutting wind became more frequent.

Ser Rodrik and Aquiles quickly removed the saddles from their horses and began to erect their tents. With the motivation of the cold driving them, the camp was set up swiftly, and Ser Rodrik volunteered to light the fire. After grabbing a branch and sharpening it, he took a small piece of wood and placed the tip of the branch under it, starting to spin it between his hands, generating friction against the wood below until sparks formed.

Carefully, Ser Rodrik placed the resulting ember among straw, giving rise to a small flame that began to consume them. Then, Ser Rodrik transferred the flame to the ground previously cleared by Aquiles, adding small twigs to feed the fire. Initially, the flame took time to spread among the twigs as they were very damp, but fortunately for both of them, after a few minutes, the moisture evaporated, and the fire began to spread among the twigs, forming the bonfire they desired.

Aquiles dragged two short logs and placed them in front of the fire, then sat on one and began to remove his gloves; once removed, he stretched his arms forward to the fire, and the heat he felt against his hand made him smile.

Ser Rodrik sat on the log beside him and did the same, quietly. Aquiles had noticed that the man didn't speak much; the knight had barely uttered a few words since they left Winterfell. After sitting by the fire for a few minutes, Aquiles put his gloves back on and stood up, heading towards the forest.

"Hey, where are you going?" Ser Rodrik's voice carried a slight tone of curiosity as he watched Aquiles walk away.

Pulling some branches aside from a bush to create a passage for himself, Aquiles replied, "I'm going to try to hunt something!" Ser Rodrik nodded once before turning back to the fire and returning to his usual silence. Ser Rodrik doubted that Aquiles would be able to hunt anything in this forest, but at the same time, he knew it wouldn't make a difference whether he succeeded or not; the knight had brought more than enough supplies for the journey.

As he pushed through the bush and entered the forest, Aquiles immediately wielded the sword he had acquired from the Winterfell blacksmith and, as he ventured deeper into the woods, made small cuts on the trees to ensure he wouldn't get lost on the way back. He walked into the forest for about half an hour, just to make sure Ser Rodrik wouldn't see him using his powers.

Finding a small clearing free of trees, Aquiles thought, "This place is far enough already!" An excited smile began to form on his face as his heart raced with anticipation.

"I'll start by testing my {Poison Manipulation}!" Aquiles deliberated as intense anticipation filled his being. Not wanting to waste another second, he reached out, removed his glove, and then activated his {Poison Manipulation}, responding to his will almost instinctively; a small, crystalline, translucent droplet began to form in the center of his palm, to the naked eye, the droplet was exactly like any drop of water.

Instantly after the droplet materialized in his palm, Aquiles once again focused his mind, and the droplet began to metamorphose. In an instant, transparency gave way to a fluorescent green; with another thought, the droplet of fluorescent green poison transformed into a yellow-colored poison, then blue, and so it continued, changing from color to color several times. A smile of admiration and understanding illuminated Aquiles' face. "All I need to do is direct my will toward the desired poison, and the ability responds immediately," Aquiles contemplated with admiration. The poison changed once again, now from a milk-white poison to a blood-red one.

"This poison is the strongest poison of the ability... According to the knowledge inherited with this skill, this poison can kill even an elephant instantly with the slightest touch on its skin," Aquiles thought with admiration; this ability gave him knowledge of thousands of poisons, and this was by far the strongest.

"I could kill all the Lannisters now and end the war before it even begins! But I won't do that; if I kill any of them, it could alter the future I know!" Aquiles thought after a moment of reflection, imagining the things this power would allow him to do in the future.

"But maybe changing the fate of some people is better than letting shit hit the fan!" Aquiles thought, remembering the fate of Robb Stark, who would die at the Red Wedding, and also the fate of Daenerys, whom the God had stated would be assassinated in Essos in the future.

Aquiles remained absorbed in his thoughts, the dilemmas and possibilities intertwining like the branches of the trees surrounding him. "This is not a choice for now; I will make the decisions about whom to save in 27 years." Aquiles thought, dispersing unnecessary thoughts from his mind. Aquiles had decided to only think about it in 27 years because it would be in that year that Jon Arryn would die and Robert Baratheon would go north to name Ned Stark as the Hand of the King.

While he was in Winterfell, Benjen Stark had visited him in his room, and Aquiles seized the opportunity to find out how long it would be until Robert came north. The method he used was simple; he knew that Ned was 35 when Robert named him Hand of the King, and he also knew that Ned is 4 years older than Benjen. So, when the little one said he had just turned 4 years old, the calculation was easily made, and he found out he still had 27 years to go.

"When I was using my poison, it felt as if something inside me was being consumed to generate it and to make it change from one to another. This energy I felt being spent must be my mana," Aquiles mentally considered the possibility that made the most sense, but to be sure, he reached out to the side and began to expel as much poison as he could through the palm of his hand, just to confirm that the mana inside his body was indeed being consumed as the poison was expelled. Immediately after deactivating the ability, he began to feel, albeit very slowly, his mana reservoir filling up again.

"It's enough now; now that I have a sense of my {Poison Manipulation}, I must test my other abilities, next on the list is the {Mastery of Diseases} ability." Aquiles decided and then activated it. Upon activating the ability, he immediately sensed the presence of countless microorganisms living within him, as if a true army of viruses, fungi, and diseases were at his disposal, ready to obey the commands of his mind.

Each of those viruses, fungi, and diseases seemed to pulsate in harmony with his will. Aquiles realized that he could control and modulate all of them just by exerting his will, directing them to any part of his body with just a thought, without any effort or resistance on their part. Stretching his arms forward, he began to release small fungi towards a nearby tree. The fungi stuck to the bark of the tree and quickly began to multiply.

Seeing the rapid rate at which they multiplied, fear began to grip Aquiles as his mind began to imagine futures where he had accidentally exterminated the entire world population with diseases from this ability, and this only increased his fear. "Damn, damn, damn. Come back to me!" Aquiles thought with apprehension and fear, reaching out and touching the fungi with his index finger, then saw them entering through the tip of his finger and slowly disappearing from the tree until they vanished without leaving anything behind.

However, the realization of the magnitude of this power opened Aquiles' eyes to a world of responsibilities and risks. He could feel the presence of a multitude of diseases within him, like a dark catalog of afflictions that included the dreaded cancer, the deadly Tuberculosis, the virulent Ebola, the nefarious Cryptococcus Neoformans, and even the sinister Greyscale, among many others. The shocking novelty was realizing that, in addition to the diseases, Aquiles' body also harbored the cure for all of them.

The thought of the lethal potential of this ability echoed in his mind, stirring contradictory feelings of fascination and fear. "If a single one of these viruses were released in this world, millions would die!" Aquiles fearfully acknowledged, feeling sweat trickle down his spine. "It's better not to use this as a weapon. If I lose control, I will have to bear the guilt of having killed millions. If possible, I will try to use this power only to heal people!" He thought as he deactivated the {Mastery of Diseases}, feeling his connection to the diseases in his body dissolve like smoke in the wind.

Aquiles skipped testing his {Gift of Healing} ability because he had already seen its effects when it healed his body from the wounds caused by the bear. So he moved on to the {Lord of Magic} ability. When God gave him this ability, He also gave Aquiles the basics of magic knowledge and a single spell. "At least I should see how strong the magic God gave me is." Aquiles thought with anticipation and then pointed his hand towards the same tree he had used to test his previous ability and began to chant the spell in High Valyrian while releasing his mana through his palm: "Brivose Darilaros, Brivose Darilaros, Brivose Darilaros..." (Brivose Darilaros = Fireball)