Chapter 194

"This… this is not the work of a human." Smalljon said and murmured a few more curses under his breath as he looked at the large pile of dead bodies piled in a ritualistic spiral circle around an old pine tree.

The body of a teenage girl was separated into dozens of part and pinned to the center of the tree.

Even the most skeptic in his group who didn't believe his claims about White Walkers were looking at the scene in stunned silence.

"This was done just a few hours ago." Kalmyr said as he bent down and took a sniff once again. "This is… something is not right here."

More than 'something' was not right here.

The magic in the area repulsed him.

Whatever kind of ritual the White walker had performed with the changed the whole magic around the area to the point where he couldn't use any of it.

The magic here now belonged purely to the elements of death and cold. And the ritual was somehow still working, filling the area around it with the cold and death elemental magic.

He had finally found how the White Walkers changed the nature of magic.

But that didn't mean he understood it.

The whole ritual was unlike anything he had ever seen.

That was understandable as the White Walkers were totally different from humans on many fundamental ways but it still didn't made him feel any better for not understanding the inherently simple look ritual.

Because that was what it was.

A simple and basic ritual.

He had read about the wizards of the old and even the first wizards who started using magic to perform rituals made more complex rituals than these.

That was why it boggled him so much when the basic level ritual converted magic on a fundamental level in such a large scale.

Cold and Death. That's all that he could feel around him.

In a sense, he could guess why the ritual would work so well.

This area was already filled with cold and death. The White Walkers simply used the human sacrifices to somehow turn that factor into reality by changing the magic with it's help.

There was something vital he was missing about this whole thing. And he just didn't know what it was.

"We should burn the corpses." Ygritte's words brought him out of his thoughts and he noticed that a lot of people were now looking at him for guidance.

He took a deep breath and nodded.

"You're right." Then he spoke loudly "Gather the bodies and burn them. We'll continue after…"

His words were cut off as a hand reach out from the snowy ground he was standing upon and grabbed his leg, making his eyes widened in shock, understanding and irritation.