A Tale of Demons and Dragons
Story Mechanics:
/\/\/\/\ Cool Scene Transition /\/\/\/\
'Thoughts,' thought the author
"Speech," said the author
'Telepathic Thoughts (mainly bijuu but anything mystical)'
"Beasts speaking (including bijuu"
Author's notes
Important author's notes
(English Name of Jutsu listed at the end)
[Jutsu/Move names]
Author's note: I'm writing for a fairly small demographic. As it stands i don't think there are millions of people who want a story between these two worlds. So why am I putting this in my notes - for you.
Basically what I'm saying is that only a small amount of people will be reading this, and hence I'm willing to take into account any personal suggestions whether it be plot or pairings. I don't do this type of thing alot and usually I always stick to what I FIRST had in mind, no matter what anyone says. So either this sort of thing can make this story or break it.
P.S I'm releasing this on my anime fanfiction acc and I have discontinued all anime fanfics (except this one) as of Jan 2016
Don't worry only a few more words.
I'm a student studying literature, and yes that is hell for your sleep schedules. I love writing and I love receiving constructive input. This also means that I don't have much time, and this is my first time venturing into fanfiction for anime. Therefore, what type of response i get from each chapter determines when I'll write the next chapter and how much effort i put into it.
That being said 1. I'm writing this for fun, not one of my billion assessment pieces so you can expect a lot of weird techniques 2. I'm writing on my phone and its currently 3am at night.
Anyway without further adue, the prologue:
Wait just before we start, can I please urge you to actually read the story. In my experience (especially with Harry Potter) a lot of readers skim read stories, hastily looking for dialogue or action. Maybe it works in other stories, but you won't be able to enjoy my story if you don't read everything.
I lay out quite a bit of sh*t in my paragraphs for example, if you skim read you won't understand why this chapter is called 'Duty'. You won't be able to pick up on the duty atmosphere I tried to create and the changes I've made. I believe that a fair chunk of the story is made in the details not just the plot. (I know the second half is crap but please bear with it, it'll be worth your while)
/\/\/\/\ Chapter 0: Duty /\/\/\/\
The distinguished carol of the robin birds echoed melodically through the tattered apartment. As the leaves descended down a non-existent stream, liquid drizzled south of a rusty nozzle. The sound of dripping battled the canorous chirping.
"Arrggh, the taps leaking again," the boy droaned to himself, as if it made a difference. He lay on his bed, fully aware of the spring pressing into his thoracic muscle. If he moved however, he would be hit with the hellish screeching of the springs inside his mattress. So he chose to lay still. If only by laying perfectly still he could achieve some sort of power.
(Wink Wink Nudge Nudge, I know that was really bad foreshadowing)
The 15 year-old adolescent observed the brightness of his stained cream ceiling. '6-oclock,' he thought to himself as he cycled through his daily chores. It didn't matter how much stronger he had gotten, everything still remained the same.
3 years since he had graduated from the academy with nothing to show for it, in terms of his lifestyle. Not an ounce of respect had been gained, other than from his fellow secretive ninja. It didn't matter that he mastered the rasengan, he still got a sneer from the old man everytime he bought some beef. He had begun to think that that was the way it would always be. Defeating Gaara didn't impress the Building Land Lady.
Finally being able to get the bells from Kakashi-sensei hadn't brought Sasuke back. Quietly and softly, he wished for a different world. A world in which his power would be respected BEFORE he had to save someone from an evil genius. A world in which he wasn't judged for being different OR for being an orphan. A world in whi-
The ceiling disappeared into nothingness, as darkness enveloped his body.
Currents ripped at his near lifeless body, constantly morphing his hardened muscle. Constantly. It was as if all his senses except touch had been gridlocked. He couldn't find anything other then the intense pain invading him. He screamed as the pull of the rip reached its climax, the screech mirrored the ear piercing shrieking of the sheer pressure.
Then, after one final tug almost ruptured his torso, the currents inverted. They began squeezing and compacting his mass. The bones of his arms, especially, surged with some sore of electricity. Then as if some soul had heard his desperate inward cries, the pressure decapitated. He lost his last crumb of consciousness. Winter was coming even though the light had just arrived.
/\/\/\/\ Winterfell /\/\/\/\
Lady Catelyn watched as the snow gathered on the windowsill. Normally she would've had the window shut, sealed off with the 2 oversized wooden blocks hanging next to the gaping window. But they were far too dull, and seemingly would seep the life out of the stone room even more.
As of right now, the only things that possessed movement were the cackling flames of the fireplace, and the crystaline flakes gliding down, visible through the window mesh. Normally she wouldn't be stuck in this confined tower at all.
She hated this part of her 'home'. 17 years and she was still afraid of the unfamiliar voices behind the bleak walls, and the occasional boom of the firepit. 17 years ago, if any piece of firewood had been a centimetre different to another, she would've had the filthy lowborns punished.
But now was now. This was the North. And she was a Stark. The North had always been peculiar and strange to her as a girl. It was strange to every girl raised in the other 6 kingdoms. But now the North was her family, and she had a duty to her family - not just the Starks either. Everyone here had become her family, from the butcher who cut the meat in her meals, to the handmaidens who layed out the firewood.
So she ignored the uneven firewood, and the occasional booms that occured as a result of it and she focused on the snow through the window mesh. And she made yet another pointless promise to herself. 'By the time the snowfall stops, Bran will be awake and healthy again.'
She couldn't remember how many of these promises she had made to herself. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd been out of this room. But that didn't matter. As of now, her only duty was to be Bran's mother. She was the only one Bran had left.
Ned and the girls had left to the capital. The bastard of Winterfell had betrayed her family once again, and left to seek honour and glory in the Night's Watch. Robb was too busy ruling Winterfell in his father's absence and Rickon was too busy being a child. As of now, she was the only one Bran had left and her only duty was to be Bran's mother.
So obviously she was enraged when she heard Maester Luwin knocking on the door for the 7th time today. Reluctantly she repeated the words she had said the first 6 times - 'come in'. However this time she put an even more frustrated oomph into the statement.
"I'm sorry to disturb you my lady," Maester Luwin perched as he entered the room, "but something has come up which needs your attention."
"We've discussed this," Lady Catelyn hissed back at him.
"I am aware," Luwin replied calmly and respectfully, "but I believe that you would like to be the first one consulted on this matter."
"What matter," Catelyn replied in an almost identical tone
"A boy has been found," Luwin began to explain, "No one was able to identify him and neither has anyone claimed responsibility."
"I DON'T CARE ABOUT SOME BOY WHOS GONE AND GOT HIMSELF LOST, YOU CAN SORT THIS OUT YOURSELF," Lady Catelyn bellowed back, clearly having reached the peak of her frustration, "leave me."
"But my lady," Luwin still spoke with a calm voice, "the boy was found next to the keep's tower, and it looks like he has also taken a considerable fall."
Lady Catelyn averted her eyes from the snow to the old maester dressed in loose robes. Maester Luwin never joked around, it seemed another boy had fallen from a tower. Could he have a connection to Bran?
"Bring him here," She said in a more calm tone, pondering the possibilites of this new piece of information, staring at the falling snow once again.
"But my lady this room is hardly the-," was all the maester could say before the Lady sharpely twisted her body again to glare at the man.
Maester Luwin simply bowed obediently and signalled to a couple of knights behind him. He then turned to look at the lady, wondering if he should've contacted her in the first place.
After a few minutes of the awkward silence, it was broke when two knights came in with an unconscious boy and lay his body across a narrow empty space on the floor next to the bed. The cold stone floor was the least of the boy's worries as Lady Catelyn's eyes widened.
This boy was definitely no ordinary boy.
His pure golden blonde locks were not something lowborn children could possess. Rarely had she seen lowborns with dirty blonde hair if any at all. It would've been impossible for her not to have seen this strange boy once or even know of the boy's existence. On the other side of the coin, with the boy's distinct hair it simply didn't make sense that no one could identify him.
Thus the conclusion she came to was that he didn't belong to Winterfell. He didn't even belong anywhere close to Winterfell. She noticed the strange whisker like markings on the boy's cheecks, adding to the extreme strangeness of the boy.
But she still felt a sense of familiarity with boy, like she had seen him before.
Suddenly she held her hand to her mouth as she stepped back from the boy. His face shape, the wide eyes and high cheeckbones, she had seen them many a times before. They were often the only truths left behind in paintings as no painters ever created a perfect portrait. She had seen thousands of people with the same traits painted across the seven kingdoms. - Often with the dragons they rode.
The boy that lay in front of Luwin and her shared all the traits of the original royal bloodline - the Targaryens. Suddenly she came to wonder the circumstances that led to him being in this room. Could he have had anything to do with what happened to Bran?
"Leave us," Lady Catelyn said with her reignited will. She sounded reminiscent to her husband, if only in stature and tone.
"But my lady, we have no information on him, only the gods know what he will do once he awakes," the maester interjected once again only thinking about the lady's safety. Luwin knew exactly what the boy looked like.
"That is precisely why I want to witness his awakening," the lady replied in the same intelligent tone, "I may be older than my prime but an unarmed and hurt boy would hardly be able to attack me."
She then grabbed a large knife from on top of the bedside draws and then signalled for the maester to leave. Even if the boy tried to escape he would have no where to go.
"If it please you my lady," Luwin said one last time before exiting the room. If anyone would be able to get information out of a boy it would definitely be a frightened mother. Besides as far as matters went, this was personal and he had no right to reject Lady Catelyn's hope for information.
Lady Catelyn just looked at the boy one more time, in order to reaffirm her information before looking out the window at the falling snow. Once again the lack of movement in the room brought her into a trance-like state.
/\/\/\/\ A couple of hours later /\/\/\/\
'There's someone in there,' the hooded man thought to himself as he stood next to an open door, 'They're not supposed to be in there.' He wondered why the woman had not rushed out of the room once she saw the fire. It was her duty to make sure the people were safe. The idiot woman obviously didn't know her duty, but all that mattered was that the spoilt brat had left the room. The hooded man knew he couldn't take on a Stark youth. The hooded man was smart.
The hooded man knew he couldn't take on an armed woman either. The hooded man was a smart man, not a fighter. If only she had been unarmed, then he would've liked to play with her. Carefully, the hooded man planned his strategy of attack. He would sneak up on the woman and slit her throat before she knew what in 7 hells was going on, and then slit the throats of the 2 boys asleep.
He had been payed to only kill 1 boy, but he'd rather take the chance of killing extra than not getting the job done. The hooded man was smart. His benefactor was much worse than the wrath of the Starks.
/\/\/\/\ 50 seconds in the past /\/\/\/\
Naruto stirred from his slumber. It wasn't the hard uneven floor digging into his back that awoke him or the contrast between heat emanating through his head while his feel remained ice cold. 'Who in their right mind would have a fireplace on this time of the year,' he thought as he was familiar with the smoked bark smell. What had awoken him however was the intense killing intent he had picked up on.
He had been taught what to do in a situation like this and remembered Jiraiya's teachings well. The first step was to scout your surroundings without letting anyone know he was awake. Even without opening his eyes he could tell that there was a fireplace near his head, that he was indoors and was resting on stone. His mind quickly went to a dungeon but he hadn't been shackled or restrained.
He also realised that there were 3 other people in the room with him, 2 people were resting on an elevated surface whilst their breathing patterns indicated they were sleeping, and someone around 5 or 6 meters to his left facing away from Naruto. There was another person outside the room (he assumed because of the muffled breathing) to his right, the source of the killing intent that caused him to wake up.
He could sense the person was wearing a lot of fabric and squirming around what he assumed to be a door-way. The person wasn't a shinobi; he was way too clumsy to be one. But he was spying on into the room with an extreme killing intent - almost psychopathic. Then the man began to make his move.
He treaded slowly and quietly, not enough to avoid the attention of a ninja, but enough to fool a normal civilian. Naruto observed with his ears as the man completely ignored him and the two people resting on the bed. Instead he was moving directly towards the person who seemed to be standing, looking away. Naruto didn't know what to do, he didn't understand if he was being held captive or he had been taken in by a family. He didn't know if the man was trying to kill them all, or he was trying to save Naruto.
Either way, he waited for the man to be at a distance before opening his eyes and sitting upright. He was a ninja, the last two years of training with Jiraiya had made sure he knew how to sneak around civilians but he didn't want to take any chances.
As he got upright, but still resting on his knees to keep his stealth, he realised 3 things.
1. That the architecture of the building was incredibly different to what he was used to.
2. The person facing away from him was a woman looking out of the window
3. There weren't two people resting on the bed, just a boy and a DOG
'Damn there's always something that I miss,' he thought to himself. He could use this chance to escape but something kept him in that room and he found that he couldn't avert his eyes from the man sneaking up on the woman. Suddenly, and in such an amateur fashion, the man wrapped his skinny arms around the woman with his knife to her neck. But his amateur technique had allowed to woman to writhe aggressively in the split second he had solidified his hold.
Naruto watched as the woman pushed off the wall with her legs, barely having an effect on the man. The second time the man used the momentum to twist both himself and his prey around so she couldn't continue kicking of the wall. And then they both saw the third party – Naruto.
Naruto knelt, awestruck at what he had allowed to happen. It was clear that the old woman was not his captor, and the psychopathic man was not his saviour. He looked into her innocent and scared eyes, eyes that had never been in a fight. Then he looked into the man's amused eyes, who was obviously ecstatic at the new challenge that had arrived.
In that split second Naruto chose which side he was on.
"Move and I'll slit her god-damn throat bloody," He yelled as his smile revealed the rotting state of his teeth. The threat was empty however. It was obvious that the mean had no intention of sparing anyone in that room, regardless of whether or not he obeyed. So as swiftly and suddenly as he could he leapt forward towards the couple hoping he would make it in time.
He watched as he saw the blade move upwards, as the startled man panicked. The man's eyes darted across the whole room as he tried to predict his next move after killing the woman. Naruto watched as the knife moved millimetre by millimetre towards the woman's throat. The last thing he heard was her ear bleeding shriek before he saw real blood. Blood flowed everywhere, dripping down the dagger blade and towards the hilt. The man smiled at the familiar sight.
Pain filled Naruto's stomach.
Then the man realised whose blood it was. He quickly tried to retract his dagger and jump back but Naruto wouldn't let him. The woman's eyes gaped open as Naruto's hand rested against her neck, firmly gripping the dagger. Slowly Naruto retracted the blade away from the woman's throat and away from his own body until his was holding it at the man's shoulder. The man tried jerking the blade but Naruto's grip was harder than a clamp.
"…What…are…you…?" the man tried to ask before Naruto pulled at the dagger releasing the man's grip on it in the process. He then proceeded to throw the bloody dagger away before turning to face the man again. But before he could even lay a finger on the psychopathic man, the dog flew off the bed and at the man. Naruto watched as the dog tore at the man's throat whilst he writhed on the ground, hearing even louder high-pitched screams than he did from the woman.
He then turned around to make sure the woman was right, but he just saw her staring into his eyes, trying to process the events that had just unfolded. Her fiery red hair mirrored the blood that was all over their bodies. They continued to look at each other for a couple of seconds with dumbfounded expressions on their face before Naruto started to feel just how hungry he was. As the people began rushing up the stairs Naruto collapsed on the spot. The last thing he saw was the woman over his body before his conscious began to fade away.
/\/\/\/\ The Next Day /\/\/\/\
"I will go myself," Lady Catelyn replied hastily
"Mother, you can't," Robb ushered, wondering if the woman speaking to him now was the same woman who had been in the room with Bran. He couldn't believe what she had been through in the last day. "What about Bran?"
"I have prayed to the seven for more than a month… Bran's life is in their hands now," she replied again with more confidence than he had ever seen in her.
"And the golden haired boy?" Maester Luwin inquired.
"He has proven that he is not a villain, Maester," Catelyn began speaking calmly again "But I still do not trust that he is everything he seems. He should be allowed to stay here, in Winterfell for saving my life at least but don't become too trusting. Make sure he gets better and stays here until my return, and I will decide what to do with him after a proper questioning and audience. We are done here."
Lady Catelyn left the group hastily in order to hide her tears. It was wrong for a child to see their mother cry and Bran was not her only child. But still she was about to leave one of her baby boys in his time of need. But it was for the greater good. She realised now, that her duty was not to any single person or child - but a combination of them. There was no 'right' choice she could make in order to accomplish her duty, instead she had to weigh the choices presented to her and go with the one she thought was best. It was true she was the mother of Bran but she was also Lady Stark, and right now her husband needed to know what had just happened. She had just hoped the choice she made about the golden haired boy was the best one.
Where did his duty lie?
/\/\/\/\ Chapter End /\/\/\/\
Okay, so fairly short chapter AND I'm not proud of the way I wrote this chapter, especially the latter half. But my main aim was to just get the chapter out there quick while I still have the motivation to do this story.
Also to clear some things up, as most of the fans of the AOIAF universe picked up the story by watching the show, I'll be focusing on the main events of the SHOW. I feel as though if I tried to include everything in the books it would be waay too boring.
In saying that though, I will be using some characters and places from the books but if I do I'll make sure to completely introduce the characters and flesh-out their personalities. On the other side of the coin, I ain't gonna bother fleshing out the characters and events we've seen on the SHOW because then this story would be 80% repeat.
So basically what I'm saying is, take the show as cannon. If the events haven't changed I'm not gonna write about them. So don't expect to see a lot of Jon Snow or Daenerys for the first few chapters. Be advised I am gonna melt through the events of season 1 super quickly though so we can get into some even more fun stuff. They won't be MIA for long
Anyway, let me know what you think and whether I should continue the story