u/Wayoftheredpanda

Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.

Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Will heard uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.

The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl.

The Gerolds muttered a torrent of sardonic witticisms.

Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat.

“Will, where are you?” Ser Waymar called up. “Can you see anything?” He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?”

It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed hard against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on his cheek.

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, he was, and striking, with a handsome cruelty to his countenance. His long hair was of a Valyrian sheen but for a single sable streak, like a Dark Star rippling through a quicksilver sky.

Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss. “Come no farther,” the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy’s. He threw the long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands and lifted. The wind had stopped. It was very cold. 

The Gerold halted. Will saw his eyes; purple, like a cosmos ringing the Dark Star of his iris. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal.

They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five … Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence. 

The lordling almost dared to strike when the voice of his opponent stilled his hand.

“Men call me Darkstar, and I am of the night.”

A dark splotch grew across Ser Waymar’s pants. Whether it was piss, cum, or both, Will could not tell. The boy stammered for a comeback, but neither his blade or wit was sharper than that acrid tongue. He stood frozen, as if the words alone had sent him into a state of rigor morghulis.

The Gerold slid his own sword from its sheath but a hair’s breadth and seemed to hold it in place. “Your Watch has already ended,” he said with a voice of pure matter-of-fact.

The blade of the lordling’s sword seemed to fly off into the darkness as if it had been knocked off the hilt with a great force, though Will could have sworn he had not seen the Gerold’s sword move an inch from where he had held it in its sheath. Then Waymar’s ear fell off his head and onto the snow. Then his other ear. Then his head rolled off his neck. Then his entire upper body slid lazily off his waist, until only his legs were standing. His legs slumped to their knees as if in prayer to either the gods or the man who had just disproved their existence, and fell over completely.

The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Their belts unbuckled and voices spoke in eerie unison. “I believe I’ll have a piss.” And they did. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard the crackling of their golden tempest on Ser Waymar’s corpse. To calm himself, Will tried to pretend it was merely the sound of Hobb frying chicken, but the smell that wafted up to him ruined the illusion.

When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and the ridge below was empty.

He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed down.

Royce’s body was a tumbled ruin, like Moat Cailin in the form of a man. The face on the boy’s head was one of grimace, as if it had seen, felt, smelled, and tasted the wet desecration of its corpse. For mercy’s sake, Will prayed that it had not.

He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the steel cut like it had been butter. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.

What lay in pieces mere moments ago had now been reassembled. Will saw scars where the cuts had occurred, but they faded in the blink of an eye. His skin was wet with piss, but his body then absorbed it in a manner like the reverse of sweating. The black of his hair saturated into a polished silver sheen, but for a single strip that grew blacker. The boy had been comely, but his face then morphed into something more handsome yet. His cheekbones rose, his nose grew aquiline, his jaw sigma-strong. More handsome, aye; and hateful.

The final change came over the eyes as the grey of his pupils became washed into a Valyrian violet. The corners of his lips curved down as if pulled by a force stronger than gravity. His brow furrowed, and the furrows furrowed, and then those furrowed too. He spoke.

“You were up there so long I near thought you had become a squirrel, but on seeing your lack of nuts I find I was sorely mistaken.”

 Will pissed the piss of fear and came the cum of awe, fell to his knees, and died.