Hello everyone! Sorry I've been gone. I have been busy busy! I hope you can forgive me. To those of you who reviewed my last chapter THANK YOU THANK YOU! I'm so happy you guys enjoyed the twist! I know it's very off canon, but going off canon is so much fun!
This is a short one, but I hope you guys enjoy it, I had lots of fun writing it!
Blood hit the impeccable snow in a small pitter-patter to create a masterpiece of flowers.
Ellysia could taste it as it filled her mouth, warm and metallic. And far too familiar. She got up to her feet, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve. The corner of her lips pulled up to reveal crimson-stained teeth, bared in a playful warning. This time the air was knocked out of her and she fell onto her back.
"You son of a useless whore!" She screamed out, hand coming to rub at her chest. "You kicked me in the tits."
His face appeared over hers,cheeks rosy and wind-lashed, his grin wide and arrogant. Tormund ran his fingers through his bright ginger hair before offering his hand to her.
"Of course I kicked you in the tits!" He propped her up on her feet again, brushing the snow off her back. "Given the chance you would have gone for my nether region. Now pick up your sword and stop confining the art of fighting into a box."
"That would have been a service to the entire clan." Ellysia muttered, blowing a strand of snow-specked hair off her face. "Me, turning you into an impotent man."
His grin was back, deepening the crow lines around his eyes. "And deny our little village the chance of beautifying its population? Half the people here are missing teeth, I would be doing us all a favor."
The rusted sword felt clunky in her hands but she managed to twirl the pommel in her grip, creating an arc of steel in the air. It wasn't her sword, it wasn't her beautiful red Valyrian steel. She was hardly allowed to brandish Red Rain, for it was much too enticing for curious eyes and would surely draw attention.
"Fuck it." Ellysia dropped the steel sword.
Tormund's eyes flew wide as soon as the sword hit the snow. She had bounded across the threshold between them, closing the gap. With her arms wide, Ellysia grabbed Tormund and they both hit the floor. Her little fists raining down on him with an unrelenting fury. In a swift move, she pulled out the bone dagger strapped to her thigh and held it high above Tormund.
"I win." Now she was the one wearing an arrogant bloody smile.
However, his smile never seemed to fade, and it was irking her. Tormund pointed with his eyes, and she followed. He held a dagger as well, pointed right beneath her ribs.
"You sure about that, Elly? Because I could disembowel you like a goddamn goat from here."
She didn't answer, instead, she picked up a fist full of dirty snow and shoved it into his mouth to shut him up. The two of them grappled like that for a minute before someone cleared their throat. They looked up to see a man standing there.
Not just any man.
Arvan Skull-Goblet.
He stood tall and proud, wheat-colored hair blowing back with the wind. She thought him to be square, from the shape of his face to the shape of his body, even his personality. There he was with what appeared to be a large white pelt draped over his arm. He wore a gauntlet on each forearm made of teeth, intricately woven like beads.
Skull-Goblet, for drinking out of your enemy's skull. He must have broken his brain trying to come up with that name. Ellysia thought to herself.
The two got off the ground with some difficulty, snow fell out of the Giantbane's mouth when he greeted Arvan. Arvan only ignored him like he were a mere ghost.
"Ellysia, I thought I may present this pelt to you." Arvan handed it to her, she hated to admit it was beautiful. It was the purest color she had ever seen, not even a dappling of cream on top of it.
"What creature does this belong to?" She asked, stroking the short fur.
"A deer I saw in the woods this morning. White like the snow. It is said that animals that wear white fur are protectors sent from the Old Gods." He was glowing, eager to share his accomplishment with the two of them. "I know you are devout in the Old Gods."
"Ah, so your first thought was to kill it?" Tormund asked.
Arvan wasn't smiling anymore.
Ellysia punched Tormund in the nether regions to shut him bent over like a wilted flower.
"You cunt." Tormund managed to say through a strained whisper.
"You know you're the Princess of us Wildlings." Arvan motioned with his hand.
"I'm not a Princess." She reminded him for what could have been the hundredth time.
"You are the daughter of the King beyond the wall." He reminded her so sternly. "And I am the best warrior and raid-"
"Say that again, Arvan?" Tormund's hand came to rest on his pommel.
Arvan cleared his throat. "And I am a decent warrior and raider. I could make you happy. I should remind you I take what I want."
"Aren't you kind?" It was taking everything for Ellysia to stay patient and not pull out her bone dagger on him. "But I'm a free woman and I do not care for marriage. I didn't care yesterday when you asked me, nor did I care for it the day before. And if you can't respect my choice then perhaps you'll respect my choice of weapon I will use to shove down your throat and tear you open so that your shit slides right out of you with every step you take.'
She smiled, allowing a chain of blood and saliva to dribble down her chin. Arvan paled. Tormund snorted.
Arvan's jaw twitched, his fingers bunching to a fist. Without another word he turned and walked away, probably to raid another nearby village.
"Love to watch him walk away." Tormund clearly admiring Arvan's behind.
Ellysia squinted her eyes, trying to see what Tormund was seeing. "How can you see anything beneath all those furs?"
"It's called imagination, Elly."
The greased leather strip glided across the Valyrian steel with ease. Valyrian steel was rare and sought after, especially to those south of the wall. All the great heroes had a Valyrian sword, and so did Ellysia. It even came with a name, Red Rain. The sword itself had belonged to her Grandfather, and one day it would have gone to his eldest son, Reynard. She greased the sword until she could see her reflection perfectly in the ripples of dark silver and red.
Her fingers ran over the intricate red pommel, a lioness.
It was warm in her tent, next to the smoldering fire. A white pelt sat atop a pile of ever-growing gifts, a collection of proposals of which she turned down. She didn't care for such vain gifts, weapons, furs, and various bones made into trinkets. None of the gifts had anything to do with her and her likes or interests. They were nothing but trophies for men to feel good about themselves. Skinning an albino stag. Weapons and bones stolen from a fallen body.
Unfortunately, Ellysia had to hide her most prized possessions. Books. Every time her father would make a yearly trip to Craster, he would come back with books for her. It was the books that had taught her all the histories and stories of Westeros and Essos. It was the books that taught her all the great houses, their words, and geography.
The flap to her tent opened, Ellysia was ready to skewer Arvan, but it was only her father.
His smile exuded warmth much like the fire she sat across. His dark eyes landed upon the sword in her lap, and like that his smile extinguished. The sword was given to her the day she learned to pick it up, for it became much too heavy for her father with all the pain that had been tied around it.
Mance would tell her of the flood. How Tywin Lannister forced the waters of the river into the hold of his castle. They were locked in, he would say. The water came rushing in, drowning every member of House Reyne. He had climbed a chandelier and clung for his life watching his family struggle and fight for air. Their bodies blue and bloated within an hour. His father, Robert, brothers Roger and Reynard, his sister Ellyn. All were gone. Mance's House in ruins, the legacy of Reyne was no more. Mance waited for the water to dissipate. And when it had, he took the sword off his father's corpse.
The last member of House Reyne had fled with nothing but Red Rain strapped to his back. It was at the wall where he took refuge, for no one could touch him there, not even Tywin Lannister and all his gold.
And that was when he had met her mother. A wildling woman. He had been an injured crow on a patrol mission, and she took him in and helped him recover. He fell in love with her, her people, her ways. Mance had dropped the name Reyne, for it was dead and gone anyways. From then he had become one of the best Raiders their small village had seen. And soon Mance became a Rayder.
And now they called him King Beyond The Wall. The title was a mockery for the Wildlings didn't believe in bending the knee to anyone, Kings were non-existent in the land of the lawless.
And here was Ellysia. A Rayder, a Reyne, a messenger of the Old Gods.
She had always secretly thought the way he and her mother met was romantic. Enemies to lovers, forbidden love, the same things she had read in her books growing up. She would never tell her father that, for it was tragedy that had forced him to find his way to her.
Mance sat across from her, stretching his hands above the flames, allowing them to warm him.
"You think yourself a hero with that sword?"
There was no bitterness in his voice, but it was off-putting all the same.
"I'm not a hero. Just like i'm not a princess." Ellysia sighed out, stretching her aching limbs closer to the fire. She could feel the welts and deep bruises decorating her skin, there were fewer this time, and she would wear them like badges. Tormund was one hell of a fighter, but she was catching up.
He choked a laughter, not one of mocking, but one of admiration. She felt little in that moment, a mere child still unable to step out from the shadows of the King Beyond The Wall. The flames of the fire danced behind his eyes like he were a dragon himself, swearing to bring destruction to those who had ever wronged him.
"Hero, victim, warrior, maiden. Child born in death and sacrifice. Seer of the Gods. Call yourself whatever you like, or don't."
She inched closer for warmth, closer to him.
"The nights are growing longer, the winds are getting colder. The Starks are right, Winter is coming, and with it comes the dead." He was unable to lift his eyes from the fire. And in that moment she saw in her father what she had never seen before.
Fear.
Ellysia felt heat prickle at her face, not exuding from fire. She could have laughed at his dramatics. Perhaps, she wondered, in his old life he was a mummer.
"Stare into the fire, tell me what has been in your visions."
"I'm not a Priestess of Asshai." She relented.
The muscles in his face didn't move, frozen like a pond. She didn't dare quirk her lips at him.
She looked anyways, warmth lightly beating against her face. It was making her eyelids heavy, but no odd sort of comfort followed.
"I see the color of blood." Ellysia kept her gaze on the fire allowing the sword to bite into the soft pillowy flesh of her palm. Warmth pooled there and began to slip between the cracks of her fingers.
"The Blood of those who damned my family. I see the color of a lion, proud and strong, the color of a comet that streaks through my dreams. The eyes of an animal, bright and piercing. I can't stop seeing this animal's eyes."
For a month now it was all she could see. It had plagued her so vividly that she could see it with her eyes closed.
"You see things, girl."
Ellysia grabbed at her own face, dragging her hand down to her neck. Her face paint was one to be feared. "I know things."
Again, the gods had given her a glimpse of wild red eyes.
"Listen to me." Mance spoke slowly, softly, and carefully. "The dead are rising, and they are approaching."
She searched his face for a tell, a crack in a facade, anything that pointed to a lie. But once again his brow remained furrowed, his lips in a taught line that didn't part to tell made-up stories. He talked of horrors recounted in the story of The Long Night. When the dead rose, the world was to freeze over and perish. Ellysia swallowed thickly, this was all certainly real.
"What do we do?" She asked in a whisper, afraid of anyone else finding out.
"I'm to stay here, look after our people. Protect them from whatever may come."
A heartbeats silence fell between them so that all she could hear was the snow falling in gentle whorls outside, the crackling of the log.
"And you are to go south of The Wall. Figure out your visions, and possibly find us refuge if we are forced to leave here."
Her eyes flew open and at once Ellysia was at her feet, sword falling to the ground.
"Refuge, south of The Wall!? You are to say that the fate of our people may lay in my hands, and my nonsensical visions? And I, a wildling, am supposed to find us sanctuary in a land designed to keep us out?"
"...Yes."
"You've gone mad, father!"
Mance remained seated, the faintest curve took to his lips. "We are out of options. And you, my blood, are the only one I know who is capable of such a thing."
"They built a wall to keep us out." Her mouth suddenly felt so dry. Her forehead crinkled, the skin pulling tight with the blood that had dried there.
He finally got up, resting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. "Befriend them if you must, slit a few throats, upheave a few houses. Waiting beneath still waters, my darling daughter."
She flinched at the Reyne house words. Waiting beneath still waters. For they had meant nothing to her for the longest time, and now they felt like instructions.
" I don't care what you do, Ellysia. But do not let our name be known."
Reyne. He was talking of their true name. For if it were known, she would be hunted down.
A last warning from her father before he went back out to his people. "And more importantly, do not go after the Lannisters. It is a dance you cannot begin to comprehend.
"We crawled through the same crevice you did." With every step, the shackles at Osha's feet clanked. "The three of us had to lose a few pounds just to make it through, stripped our furs and everything."
Ellysia followed her to the dank holding cell. She had been able to convince Robb to keep Osha as a servant, find some use in her rather than disposing of her. Of course, Theon put on a stubborn front, protesting every word that came out of her mouth. She enjoyed watching his putrid little scowl when Robb agreed with her.
"You reckon the dead walk the earth again?" Osha blew a strand of dirty hair off her face and sat on a bale of hay.
It was dingy here and dirty. Ellysia's dress had already been tarnished, but even still, she didn't want to ruin it more by sitting down. So she stood. Standing above Osha felt off. Where she came from no one saw themselves as higher or better as anyone else. But here, in this backward world, she had to stick her nose in the air and play a part.
"I don't know Osha. But I don't think my father would uproot everyone's lives and force them someplace where they are not wanted, over nothing. You should have seen him...He was afraid."
The wildling woman began picking at her teeth with her pinkie. "How will we get to where we need to go?"
She had thought back to her visions. They were a mess of red, short spurts that means nothing. The red eyes had belonged to Ghost, Jon's Dire Wolf. The boy in her dreams had told her to stay put, she wasn't meant to leave yet. What Ellysia knew to be true was that she was in the right place.
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "But I think Robb Stark may be the key to that."
"Huh." Osha seemed far from convinced. Her shoulders sloped and she rolled her head back to look at the leaky ceiling. "A boy who pisses green. Fine. And where will our people go?"
Ellysia lowered herself so that they were at level. " For now, we wait beneath still waters. And when all is ready, we go to where I was supposed to grow up, take back a place that is meant to be my father's, and mine."
"And where would that be?"
"Castamere."
Oh wow that was one hell of an exposition dump all over you guys, sorry for that hehe.
Thank you for reading the chapter, bless your eyes for making it this far.
Please let me know what you think, send some love and motivation my way through reviews, because they help me more than you know!
also, yes, Tormund Giantsbane is Bisexual in my story :D