Ros had known somewhere in the back of her mind that eventually Jon Snow's mysterious fire god would call upon her if it truly was as alive and real as Jon himself. For that was what the powerful always did with the powerless like her wasn't it: give a little taste of what it was to have a better life before expecting service in return? No different from any other who entered a brothel flashing some coin to get what they wanted.

Nothing gained without paying the price as Diane would often tell her.

And at this moment in time, she wasn't entirely sure she'd have accepted Jon's offer to teach her magic if she'd known it would lead to this.

Most all the smallfolk had seen the hint of a fire that had arisen from Winterfell in the dead of night. No one could figure out what it meant, the fire being extinguished soon after it started and there being quite a lot of chaos and hubbub in the meantime.

Unwilling to wait a few days for the guards and chamberlains to filter word of it to her through the girls, Ros decided that she would try and look to the fire for answers as Jon had told her was possible using the same method she drew strength and vigor from it. She'd already gotten a taste of what knowledge could do to give her an advantage in the form of her reading and writing. Why shouldn't her fledgling magic be more of the same?

She wasn't willing to go back to waiting with her hands in her lap: not when the tool to tell her more were right here practically begging to be used.

Concentrating as hard as she could, she drew first her right hand over the fire, letting its warmth filter past her palm before imagining she was wafting the warm air toward herself even as her left hand came over the flame, repeating the motion and the idea that was attached to it.

As she did this, her right hand cupped over the flame in an upside-down half circle as if to fill her hand with the essence of the fire. Her left hand joined it shortly to create a rough and uneven bowl over the fire as the heat built in her palms. Her eyes firmly closed, she concentrated on the pleasure of the warmth and the pain that came from bringing it too close to her bare skin.

As she did, she tried to visualize herself as being trapped within an impenetrable darkness. Her mind repeated the mantra Jon had said could help her if ever she desired his god R'hllor to answer her.

'The path I tread is dark and filled with peril. I beseech you: light the way My Lord.

The path I tread is dark and filled with peril. I beseech you: light the way My Lord.

The path I tread is dark and filled with peril. I beseech you: light the way My Lord.'

She repeated this for what seemed a dog's age before she felt the strength of the fire filling her. With that familiar sensation, she opened her eyes and cupped her hands behind the candle to protect it from the breeze as best she could. As she did this, she looked deep within the heart of her candle flame until the black wick at the center was all she could see. She didn't know how long she sat there, entranced by the dance it made in the occasional breeze that filtered over her fingers, only that after some time she'd started to see something within it. As she continued focusing in on the fire, trying to clear her mind of all thoughts except bringing the flame to the shadowy realm within her own mind's eye, an image began to form. At first pulsing like the lapping waves on a shore but steadily coalescing into something more than that.

As she did, she saw within her mind's eye…what appeared to be a flickering candle flame: the only point of fire in her self created void. But wait, that wasn't right either. It was growing larger, becoming more solid and present even as Ros continued the mantra. Soon enough it became…a memory.

A familiar one at that. Jon Snow ignited his hand before her eyes as she leapt back in startled fear.

She remembered that day well: the revelation that magic was real would've shaken even the most learned of men, let alone a self-educated but very limited in life experience whore.

Jon turned to her as his hand burned, the fire bright on his unharmed appendage. Instead of flickering it out however, he turned to face her fully; palm extended face up as if to take her hand in his. Then he spoke, his voice crackling and grating like ash sifting through an urn in his throat as a few sparks leapt from his mouth.

'Selfish little thing. You come begging for strength. And to what end? Not to help but to hoard. Not to revive but to rise. Why should any trust you with such power?'

Ros could feel her breathing hitch, the instinctive desire to protest Jon's characterization of her dying as quickly as it formed. She realized the figure had not spoken those words as a damning pronouncement, but as a question. If this was truly a connection to the power Jon had showed her a glimpse of, her best hope was to be honest. Within the privacy of her own mind, she was forced to admit she held no great attachment to House Stark outside of Jon Snow.

That her calling on Jon's god stemmed not from any sense of fealty, but from wondering if this fire at Winterfell was signifying a change in the winds of fortune. There was no more real concern for the ruling family of the North in her desire to know than one might possess for a stranger in one of the other lord's strongholds a distant relative wrote to say had fallen ill. Though it would've been entirely selfish to admit that even to the wierwood trees or the seven that the lady of the house worshipped. But here…here, if this was some form of Jon's god, it didn't feel as though she had to pretend altruism where none existed. (For all the good it would do her in any case.)

Before she could open her mouth, images flashed through Jon's hand, drawing her eye to his palm. The sun rose and set upon the North. Days or months or perhaps years passed. But as the days went by, the fire that had begun in Winterfell spread from the keep to Wintertown before it engulfed all the North. As more time passed, the fire guttered out and died down before newer trees cropped and the forests regrew: somehow stronger, more vibrant than before.

Ros couldn't help but think that Jon was showing her this for a reason, that there was something to what it was showing her. She had heard no screams, smelled no burnt flesh when it did that. Hopefully that meant that R'hllor didn't want her to burn down all of the North by her lonesome.

'To grow heedlessly is to die slowly. To burn without discrimination is to die too soon.' Jon's figure said as he came closer, grey eyes now interspersed with flashes of blood red even as his hair whitened.

'Stoke the flame of change for your flame to grow greater.' He warned before his hand was covering her eyes, burning so hot Ros couldn't help but scream. But even as the sound started to leave her throat, her entire field of vision was consumed by the whirling conflagration within his palm before the burning orange and reds became an outside view of Winterfell. As her disembodied self flew inside one of the windows, Ros beheld a wrinkled and withering book weighed down by chains: white hot and sizzling as they blackened the cover and pages. She looked at her own hands, seeing the barest of flickering candles at her fingertips. But before she could register truly this, her hands drew forward of their own accord; their fire inexorably drawn to the heat of the chains. As they gripped the chains, the fire grew to encompass her hands, strengthening her even as she pulled the chains off the book.

As the book's pages flipped so strongly it began to make gusts of wind blow into her eyes, she instinctively shut them and with a gasp she stumbled against her dresser, her eyes beholding the world as it was again. Ros looked down at her shaking hands, barely able to believe they weren't encompassed in the flame she saw in her vision.

She shook her head to be rid of those thoughts, knowing she had to go to Winterfell if she was going to help them with the burned library or the aftermath of it in any case. Whatever it was that R'hllor wanted her to do, it certainly involved that. She took the brown traveling cloak she'd purchased some years ago when she'd been slightly shorter than she was now and wrapped it around herself, briefly contemplating letting Diane know that she was going out.

She decided against it, knowing that her aunt in all but blood wouldn't want her to go up to the castle since there was nothing she would see worth gaining by her doing so. But Diane also didn't know what Ros now did, couldn't possibly understand it even if Ros tried to explain.

Ros made her way through the back, past the bare patch of ground with the washing basin where she'd scratched her letters back when she'd first been teaching herself to read. Before she could completely plan how she was going to get through, she reached the gate to Winterfell.

Only two men stood at attention there, the portcullis wide open. She recognized the one on her right, a younger man close to her own age whom she'd bedded on a few occasions the previous year when his fellows had told him stories about her and so had spent much of his wages purchasing her body before he'd decided it was too expensive to keep doing so.

He'd been eager to learn, if not terribly imaginative once he got into the rhythm of the act she recalled. But what was his name?

"State your business." The one on the left said, looking almost suspicious even though no one could've come and gone for hours now. The North was a remote kingdom and the Starks, while a decent family of lords, were still stand-offish as far as Ros could tell: preferring for things to be run efficiently rather than try to entertain visitors overmuch.

"I've come to see Theon Greyjoy." She answered with the first excuse that sprang to mind.

The man snorted derisively.

"Of course that iron-headed prick can't even deign to visit the brothel like the rest of us." He muttered. His eyes ran over her a few times and then to his fellow guard who flushed a bit but nodded as if to say he recognized her.

"If anyone sees you, yer on your own. Got it?" He warned tiredly as he waved her through.

"Of course." She said, dipping into a brief curtsey before striding quickly into the courtyard.

There were plenty of people milling about the courtyard, each keeping their eyes forward or on their task at hand, no one even paying her a second glance as she made her way into the keep proper.

Once she was inside the corridors of Winterfell itself, she turned away from the great hall, moving instead toward what she hoped was the library: gambling that she would gain some insight into what it was the god of fire wanted her to do.

Through the place she wandered until she came upon a chambermaid. Putting on as non-threatening a smile as she could whilst keeping her cloak about her, she approached.

The girl had watery blue eyes and brown hair. Her chin was barely discernable from her jaw, but she looked at Ros with only polite concern as she asked quickly where in Winterfell she was and explained that she was seeking Theon Greyjoy's chambers.

"Oh, you're close to the Library miss. Lord Theon's chambers are the other way." She helpfully said, pointing the way Ros had come.

"Mind you don't see Lady Stark though." She added in a sotto voice.

"She doesn't much like people being around ever since the fire in the library." The serving girl informed.

Ros nodded in understanding, holding her index finger to her lips in the universal gesture of 'silence is key to secrets.'

"I understand completely." The red-haired whore agreed, starting to move again.

"Thanks. It'll pass, everyone's just been on edge since Maester Luwin's burning in the library." The chambermaid remarked as she also began to return to her duties.

Ros was still only a moment as her mind raced, connecting the chained book to the few times she'd glimpsed the Maester of Winterfell from a distance, never having to have seen him herself for any sort of physical maladies.

With a concerned smile, she turned back.

"Oh, the poor man! After all he's done to look after Winterfell, who's to look after him?" Ros asked, moving back toward the chambermaid with new purpose she hoped the young woman wouldn't recognize.

"Well, I suppose the Lady Catelyn is looking after him." The maid said, a thoughtful expression on her face indicating she hadn't truly devoted any of her mind to wondering about it before Ros asked.

"You don't suppose I could nip over and pay my respects to the maester? He was always so good to me and my mother." Ros asked, making up an excuse on the fly.

The serving girl, apparently seeing no reason to mistrust the red-headed woman, nodded without a second thought.

"Don't take too long though, wouldn't do to keep Lord Theon waiting." She whispered, giggling a little at the end. No doubt she'd been on the end of the Ironborn ward's charming smile and suggestive inuendos before.

Ros smiled back gratefully, nodding once as though they were in this together. Which they were in a sense, just not in the way the other girl would likely suspect.

It was fortunate Ros talked her into keeping watch so she could be sure she wasn't going to take too long to pay her respects. She was sure from the vision R'hllor had gifted to her that it wasn't going to take long at all.

Looking back, she really should've wondered if it would quick in the same way taking a woman's maidenhead was. Brief yes, but also incredibly painful if done by someone not fully knowledgeable about what they were doing.

Ros made her way into the Maester's bedchamber while the maid, whom she'd learned was named Daena, looked out to tell her if the Lady of Winterfell was returning.

As she looked to the maester's nude body, she couldn't help noticing how withered he was and how it seemed as though part of his flesh had melted onto his chain and fused with it. They couldn't keep him in his robes and hadn't managed to help the seared and blistered flesh without his knowledge to guide him, only dull his pain with what she presumed was something to knock him out and get him upon the bed.

The chains though…

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it seemed to her they still shimmered, as though they longed to return to the fires that had heated them so. She looked down at her hands before bringing them closer to the chains as her vision had shown her. As she did, she felt a power that was familiar yet somehow more when she did. Something akin to what she experienced when she drew the strength of the candle flame into herself as Jon had taught her.

Mesmerized, she drew ever closer, the sense of power the chains drew her ever closer until she noticed that the shimmering appeared to be centered on a link that was undarkened by the heat and entwined with his burned flesh deeply. It looked to be steel but appeared to have suffered no warping or blackening from the flames that had no doubt touched it.

Ros couldn't help herself at this point. She reached out her right hand toward it even as her left was brought to hover above an area of Luwin's body that didn't have the chains burned into it. As soon as her fingers grasped it however, the burning began.

It felt as though all the fire that had been sustained within the chains themselves was being channeled through the link into her. She gasped loudly as the power that filled her began to filter into her brain too. As it did, her mind began to speed up, her surroundings almost seeming to slow down as a result. A single string of strange words filtered to the forefront of her head.

'Eracona sĕin: Gaomilaksir iksis se ureffőn hen kustikāne.'

Somehow, she instinctively knew what those words meant.

'Remember this: Duty is the burden of strength.'

And then there was pain.

The burning intensified. Her left hand instinctively flew down to the right to try and get it off, but her fingers were locking up, unwilling to relinquish their grip or simply unable to. Tears built in her eyes, immediately blinding her as she tried to free herself again. She thought she smelled sizzling even as her left hand came to rest on another part of the chain. The pain grew so intense she couldn't resist screaming in agony, blindly pulling without her conscious mind realizing that there was no weight to the chain anymore. Instead only able to concentrate on the fact that the red-hot instrument of her torture had managed to wrap itself around both of her arms. She fell to her knees on the ground, unfeeling of the impact on the stone floor as she curled over her arms, trying to shake the chains off her even as there was a loud commotion growing inside and outside of the maester's resting room.

Now terrified and in an incredible amount of pain, she hunched over; unable to understand why Jon's god had done this to her and wondering in a part of her mind that wasn't focused on her abject physical agony whether R'hllor intended to strike her dead this way.

After what seemed hours but was in all reality only a minute or two, others had stormed the maester's room led by Lady Catelyn to discover Maester Luwin watching in horrified awe, bedsheets drawn over his unblemished body as a beautiful red-headed woman sobbed piteously in a hunched form on the ground.

Ros was pulled back from her semi-fetal position by Catelyn Stark, who could only look down in astonishment as Ros' tears were being shed from both the pain she had been in until only moments ago, the relief of having it ended and the terror at what had become of her arms.

For the chains that Maester Luwin wore now rested upon the ground, as innocuous and spotless as ever. But the arms of the crimson maned whore…they were now burned red and pain where the chains had imprinted their shapes haphazardly into her flesh, making it look as though she had been imprisoned with burning manacles.

Even as the pain receded and Ros felt information of what she now knew as Valyrian and rudimentary practices of magic Jon had never told her about swimming in the back of her head like long forgotten memories, she had to wonder if the trade-off was worth it; instinctively understanding now that because she had obeyed the vision and found not only the knowledge she had sought, but more besides, that she was bound to R'hllor's will and thus would be in his service for the foreseeable future. No matter what that may come to mean.

Nothing gained without paying the price.

A/N: Still not dead. Just glacially slow. As an additional note, most of the Valyrian in the phrase I use is as accurate as I can make it save the words

Eracona sĕin and ureffőn: so far as I can tell, there are no words that translate for 'remember this' and 'burden.'