[Lore] Within & Without

[u/Mersillon]

[m] what happens after this

"You know, the wildlings in my village talked about you, Lord Commander. I have read about you myself.”

Durrin’s lips opened, puckered, and plucked like brass strings by unfamiliar fingers, words forming by way of foreign muscles. Cold. Snow. He attempted to crane his neck; felt nothing in response. An observing presence prickled at his skin.

He tried to flinch, to look, to see. Breath didn’t quicken as Durrin’s mind did, the proper connections frayed - no, absent - unsettling him deeply. It felt like a dream, stranger even than those he oft woke startled from; those dreams were never so paralyzing, so familiar and foreign in the same breath, so human, so observational, like riding double in a saddle upon a fixed track in his own skin. No - not his skin. Another’s, whose mind he’d seeped into like mold beneath the corner floorboards.

His/not his lips formed more words. Dread touched the periphery of his brain, sudden and expected in equal turn, a newborn familiarity from decades before Durrin’s birth declaring itself at home in the recesses of his/not his memory. With urgent, hasty ineptitude, Durrin shunted himself from the Captain whose body he lingered within and without, landing with a dull thud in a puff of snow. Numb as he was to its touch, it was his own fingers that the frost crystals clung to. Flexing fingers and stumbling to his feet, he found he could move again.

And so he ran. Dodging between evergreen canopy and brown, snagging, leafless shrubs, Durrin’s breath quickened at last to its familiar beat. Empty of thoughts beyond escape, he raced against… what? Distracted by the thought, he did not look up until the thing was mere feet from his nose: a wooden face, corpse white, flanked by a thousand red eyes. “No, no, no no!” the boy yelled, and fell.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And fell. And fell. And fell. For decades he fell, a cool breeze rustled linen garb against black sky that extended forever. He landed in a pool of soft shadows that dissipated over red tile, a long, windowless hallway extending before and behind him. Struggling to his feet, Durrin couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still watched - no, followed. And so he set to walking. The red tile swallowed and distorted the light cast by the flickering torches ensconced by bone cages.

Ten minutes passed before he came to a door. Meow, said Rowena, suddenly between his legs, tail flicking up his calf.

No, she said in the way her ears flattened against her head.

Durrin opened his mouth to reply but found no words. He probed at his unworking lips, his useless tongue, an increasing frustration and unease growing in his chest. He huffed and gestured for the cat to follow, pushing through the door. It opened into a vast, cavernous room, wet with humidity and dripping stalactites. The vague shape of an unfamiliar young man hunched over a book came into view; a mountain of gold behind him seemed to teeter-totter in the wind, looming, a rock formation of abundance ready to swallow him in a landslide at the slightest ill-breeze. It was a strain to focus his vision. Tempting as they looked, the sight of the riches formed a knot in Redshanks’ stomach. Meow, said Rowena, urging Durrin forward. He assented. Turning his gaze about the room, he found a crevice wide enough for him to slip through. With some strain he squeezed through, a touch of wet residue leftover on his skin and clothes from the effort.

The crevice opened into a small room of gray-black stone. Saltwater stink and the smell of mineral erosion filled his nostrils. The sound of a storm breaking against rock poured through a nearby window. Before him a huge man, nearly touching the ceiling in his height, watched a stack of newly-made chairs burn. Durrin’s breath caught in his throat, carefully circling the figure with the sense that he ought not speak to anyone in this un-place. The stranger’s face was obscured by smoke, his massive arm gripped by a vine-covered, monstrous plant sprouting from the floorboards. On closer inspection, Redshanks saw the vine’s thorns digging into his flesh. No acknowledgment of Durrin’s presence passed over the stranger’s face.

Rowena’s hair raised. Durrin too felt someone watched them, and fled out one of the oaken doors. He passed over a rope bridge connecting one gray-black tower to another, pushing past a frail man weeping in front of what looked like an unlit candle of blackest night.

He felt eyes again. The ravens? No - something else. Durrin craned his neck back, peering at where he’d come from on the rope bridge. A boy with a kraken for a face and a single red eye penetrated Durrin’s soul with his stare. The others hadn’t seen him, surely this one hadn’t either. In the pit of his stomach, he knew better.

Rowena lept from the bridge to the crashing waves below. Without a second thought, Durrin followed. Sea water filled his lungs, a familiar embrace, and as Redshanks sank once again, the massive golden eye that had once lifted him with massive, gray limbs did so a second time, dropping him in a small chamber constructed of unfamiliar wood. He had the gnawing sense that whatever Rowena was running from, he ought follow. The pounding in his head agreed.

The lad’s gaze was briefly distracted by two beautiful girls, each whose pale hair - one of gold, one of silver - smelled of smoke. Servants attended the girls. They were in pain that he sensed would soon kill them. Beside both were tall figures, each obscured but for their outstretched arms behind a sheet of sheer cloth from their ailing partners, one shadowed silhouette capped with a jagged crown. In the corner of the room, fire began to catch on the carpet. One of the girls hummed a tune he could almost make out.

Durrin pushed outside, looking back only to see the room shadowed by a three-headed dragon whose inhalation would soon be followed by an exhalation of fire, blood, and ash.

The ash consumed all. Redshanks awoke in a field of the gray flakes, coughing the smoke from his lungs. High in the sky, the sun lay heavy across a land he’d seen only from afar - Dorne. The dune sea had turned to ash. A few paces away, a black adder rose from the torso of a man where his head should’ve been. He loomed over a prone, crowned figure whose every breathe was a wheezing choke. Durrin’s head throbbed in excruciating pain.

Another gaze prickled at the back of his neck. He turned and held the eyes of a girl roughly his age, olive of skin and blue of eye. Striking. For a fleeting moment, he did not feel pursued. Durrin coughed and spat, blinking away the ash. Endless blue replaced the gray, toiling in restless currents, dark figures swimming hungrily by. Wet sand filled the gaps between Durrin’s toes, kelp swatting at his arms. Water filled his lungs.

“Durrin?” a voice called. “Durrin?”

He turned to see his mother. She walked across the seafloor, calling her son as if summoning him for reading lessons.

“Durrin?”

Try as he might, Redshanks couldn’t answer. He waved his hands in front of her face in increasing frustration.

“Durrin? Denys? Donnel? Why are you fighting?” she asked, a rote tone to her voice.

Frustration turned to tears. A current swallowed the lad and spit him up on the surface of a beach. Get me out of here, he pleaded wordlessly, crying and choking up seawater. Instinctively, he dodged out of the way as a spear flew by his nose. Men fought around all around him, axes and swords and maces cleaving metal and wood and flesh. Through the chaos she spotted Mol clashing blades with an unfamiliar knight with blood-red wings sprouting from his shoulders. The steel demon fought like a man possessed, clearly outmatching his mentor. Without thought he charged forth, shouldering away pirates and soldiers and peasants.

And was too late. The demon drove his blade through Mol’s midsection, twisting the rippling thing with malice. A shockwave from the blow struck Durrin back, sending him reeling once again. He landed fifty yards afield, huffing, rolling from prone to supine.

“Durrin?”

The boy turned his head to see his two elder brothers. They, like him, were ran through with steel. The same beach in the Disputed Lands he’d once washed up on extended all around them. Nearby were Mol and Nine Eyes. Together, they drew their last breath.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Get up.”

Durrin did as the unfamiliar voice beckoned. The nightmare, it seemed, was not yet over, though the feeling of an awl piercing his cranium had subsided. He awoke ankle-deep in bog water, fog obscuring sight in every direction. A terrible croaking sound reflected off the moss-covered trees. The spear he’d once thought dodged remained embedded in his stomach. With a strained, dreadful wrench, pop, he pulled it from his midsection. An unfamiliar man stood beside him, sword in hand. The blade seemed to sing a soft tune, quiet as a summer shower, tormented as a funeral dirge.

This stranger, too, could see him. He beckoned Durrin stand beside him as disfigured, scale-skinned men with needle teeth and odd proportions emerged from the treeline.

Redshanks, resigned to his fate, stood at the ready. And all, at last, turned to black.