Y'know, the title... It was funny way back when I first wrote that first chapter, okay? Somewhere inside my messed-up, sleep-deprived, unmedicated mind at that time, it was hilarious, because I can't drive, and I was learning the basic rules of driving. "Right of way" became "Wight of Way," plus I have this speech thing where all my R's sound like W's when I'm not paying attention to my speech... so... yeah. Funny. If you guys have any good title suggestions, let's hear it.
I should be working on my SWxAvengers story, but the GoT hype has gotten into me, so... yeah.
Then
The War of Stones, also known the Infinity War, the Mad Titan's War, the Universal War and dozens of other names in hundreds of languages and dialects… well, it was devastating. Half of the universe died during the initial start of the war, gone in the snap of the fingers. Trillions more died in the direct aftermath of that first battle; car crashes resulting from dusted drivers, airplanes spiraling into buildings, and a hundred other little things.
Then came the indirect results. Power-hungry fools fought for the top tier left behind in a power vacuum. Innocents were blamed for the deaths of loved ones and killed by grieving mobs. Parents who lost their one bright spark in their lives and others those who watched their entire world crumble to dust… many of them found no reason to continue on.
The war had been lengthy. Costly. Hundreds, no—thousands—of planets reached out. Fury and grief brought them together in a way nothing else could. Some planets sent practically every man, woman, and child able to hold a gun. Others sent a few token warriors. A few could not provide anything other than supplies. In the name of vengeance, they scoured most of the known world… and the unknown. They found Thanos on a little planet far off of the acknowledged star maps.
In the end, most who took up arms were dead. The first wave of starships were overwhelmed by Chitauri forces. Still, sheer numbers eventually overran the Chitauri. Every one of them, down to the last hatching, was slain.
Thanos sat in the wreckage, uncaring of the slaughter. Finally, he stood to face his opponents, carving a bloody trail through the attackers. It was Thor who finally took him down. This time, Stormbreaker struck true.
It was a hollow victory.
They probably should've figured it out beforehand. Yes, many died to take down the Mad Titan, but still. It should've been harder to kill a being who held the fabric of of the universe in one hand.
When they approached Thanos's still body, Tony realized that the stones were missing. The scorch marks told him everything he needed to know. They were destroyed.
The surviving heros and defenders of the universe all gave one last look at each other, somehow realizing that they would never see each other again. The memories their presences brought were too painful. Each of them took off for their home planets to lick their wounds and properly mourn their fallen comrades, not looking back.
And if one grieving man from Earth decided to take home some alien technology... Well, no one had to know.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Now
(Far North)
Screaming, crying. Nothing deterred the undead, not even the tears of their once-family. Grimly, he hacked away at the zombie until it was in harmless—though still-twitching—pieces. That messy deed done, he propped his axe onto the ground and leaned on it heavily. It had been a long time since a zombie had caught him off-guard like that, but he guessed that it was understandable. There was no cure for old age, and he was getting on his years.
Brushing the sweat off his forehead, he eyed the family—the people who were still foolish enough to try to give a dead body a funeral instead of chopping the head and limbs off. Because of that, their daughter almost died. "You're almost there. Walk a straight line south and you'll be safe by morning," he promised. That particular safe zone was held by wizards. The dead would have a hard time overcoming that.
"What about you?" the wife asked. "You're hurt."
He looked down at his mangled leg and grimaced, though the family probably couldn't see his face because of the scarf he wore around his mouth. The zombie got him good. Luckily, unlike the movies, these particular zombies didn't infect people with bites or scratches, so he wasn't in any immediate danger of becoming one of them. "I've had worse," he said. It was technically true. Nothing could beat the emotional pain of losing a loved one. The physical pain of heart surgery without anesthetics during his stint in Afghanistan far surpassed one mauled leg, and Siberia had the leg outdone in terms of pure damage. In regards to that, the leg was nothing.
"But your leg!" the kid who was probably a son or nephew of some sort said.
"You heard the radios. It was stupid of you to stay here. You should've left the body and walked through the night," he said harshly. "You're going to make up for that mistake by leaving now and not stopping. The rest of them will be here in less than an hour and you have to be out of here."
Biting their lips, the family obediently started packing.
"No, leave that here," he snapped when they started rolling up their sleeping bags. "You're not going to sleep anytime soon. They'll have bedding for you once you get there." Probably. He wouldn't know. He had only been there for a few minutes before continuing north. It was a stupid decision, one he was starting to regret making.
The family finished a much faster without that bit of extra work. They refused to look at the dead body, probably an uncle's. He limped after them as they finally left the low building and started walking down the road. They looked back at him questioningly, as if realizing only now that there was no way he could keep up with his injury.
"Go," he said resignedly, not even bothering to try to follow them.
"What? But, sir!" the wife said.
The little girl, the one he saved, she threw herself at his legs and hugged them, crying. Tony bit back a curse as he almost fell. Luckily, his leg had mostly gone numb by now. Still, the pressure she was putting on his leg stung. "Look," he hissed out once he regained control of himself, "There's no way I'm going to make it anyways. All the medical supplies are gone. On the off-chance that the cold and the dead don't get me, what are the chances I'll survive the infection?"
"Please, your name," the father begged. "I need to know the name of the man who saved us."
He pursed his lips. There was a reason why he didn't tell anyone his name. He looked at the man. He could see the man wavering. If he didn't tell the man his name, the guy would still take his family and leave, but not without protesting. Still, they didn't have time. The dead could arrive at any minute.
He pulled his scarf down.
The reactions were immediate. The wife gasped, hand flying to her mouth. The girl looked around in incomprehension, too young to have recognized him. The other kid's eyes widened and he pointed. "That's—" The husband was moving instantly, grabbing his wife, son, and daughter and drawing them away.
He gave them a wry smile. "The name's—"
The wight jerked out of its visions as the slow, rambling walk of its kin suddenly stopped, almost causing it to bump into the wight in front of it. Maybe, if wights could feel, that particular wight would have felt annoyed. It might have even been enraged of being cheated out of such vital information and self-discovery. Alas, it was a mere dead body that sometimes happened to have visions. As such, it did not feel a thing, not even disorientation at such an abrupt change of scenery.
From its position at the back of the group, it could not see what had halted the advance of the horde. It was distantly aware that its master stood at the peak of the next hill, in the abstract way children knew the clouds were high; it simply was. Suddenly, as if pulled by a string, the wights all rushed forward.
The visions had already disappeared, nothing more than a whisper of a memory for our particular wight. All that was left was the master, the master's master, and the orders.
No true orders were given to it yet, just the general feeling of rip-rend-kill, but the wight scrambled up the last snow-covered hill in the wave of its kin, heading towards the strangely annoying screaming sounds. The wight would have said the sounds were grating to its ears but, of course, wights did not speak. Screech, yes. But speak? Not a man in living memory—or dead, for that matter—could say they spoke.
Over the hill, the carnage had already started. The wight almost reluctantly headed for the loudest screams as the screamers—the humans—tried to flee. Foolish tribe. What did they expect to find so far north but death?
They never should have come here...
The wight felt rather than saw a pair of glowing blue eyes, almost identical to its own, turn on it. There was a heavy pressure against, no, inside its head. Some part of the wight, some part that was Before pushed back, gave a token resistance before crumpling completely as the wright moved to do its master's bidding.
The temperature plunged as it drew closer to its master, then became somewhat more reasonable for the terrain as it left its master behind for the moving targets that presented itself.
First slowly, then more quickly, the wright ran towards the stragglers that were of living, breathing flesh. Faster, until it was almost at inhuman speed.
The flesh, the warm blood pumping under a thin membrane. The living turned, maybe hearing, maybe sensing—
But it was too late, the wight was upon the human, knocking—him? Her?—to the ground. No, the wight was almost certain that this was a female. Something about the pliable flesh, the soft, warm body beneath it sang to it that the body beneath it was female.
Not that it cared. The dead were beyond caring. They were supposed to be.
Caught up in an echo of a memory, it failed to notice the weapon in the female's hand until the spear pierced its shoulder, lodging halfway in. Head tilted, our wight examined the useless wound. Even on a human, the wound would not have been immediately fatal. Due to the female being pinned to the ground, the weapon had entered at an awkward angle, missing everything important. Furthermore, due to lack of leverage, the wound was a relatively shallow one, especially for a spear.
Something resembling admiration fluttered in the back of the wight's mind at the female's bravery, and it granted the female a quick death.
Release the arms—
Bat away the hands—
Hands on either side of the head—
Quick twist—
It was done. A snapped neck, and the light was gone from the female's eyes. Somewhere deep in the empty chasm of the wight's mind, the part from Before gave a burst of acknowledgement at the mercy, acknowledgement that went ignored.
The wight stood up and turned its attention to the spear that was hanging from its shoulder, swaying from the movement. Other wights would have let it stay there, incapable of the independent thought required to know that a weapon jutting out of their body would be a hinderance. The wight took hold of the wooden shaft and yanked. The spear shaft fell away easily enough, but the head was firmly lodged in the skin.
That was where the independent thought ended, however. The wight took no notice, for what was a little rock under the skin to the undead? It could not bleed, for the last of its blood had been spilled countless millennia ago. It could feel no pain, for its nerves had long since rotted. It had no friends, for those around it had no mind. The wound had no effect on the wight, and so our wight did not care.
The few seconds that the scuffle and 'first aid' took had spread out the wight army. There were a few wights here and there overpowering some hapless humans, but most of the army had continued their pursuit of the fleeing main group of wildlings.
Some part of the Before had the wight using long-unused muscles to scrunch its face up in disgust at the way its kin messily tore the survivors apart.
It turned to lope after the army—after its master—only to come face-to-face with a human.
Foolish human.
Maybe, if the wight could fully think for itself, it would've wondered how the heck a human could've stayed alive when all the wights around them were having a party, ripping up all the humans they could get their hands on. Still, we have a brainless, zombie wight, and the wight raised its hands to the human's throat to end him as quickly as it had ended the female human just moments before. The human, however, regaining its senses, stumbling back.
Undaunted, the wight followed. It had to reach down to clamp around the human's throat. The human was short. Tiny.
...A kid.
Wide molten chocolate eyes met glowing blue.
Not the kid.
And for the first time in its existence, the wight truly faltered. The 'kid' watched, fear fading as one hand tugged absently on the cold, undead fingers around his neck.
Please, he's, what? Six? He's just a kid!
The two stood, motionless in the falling snow. The sounds of battle, of pain and of the dead… it all seemed so far away. The battle was dying out, all souls deceased. However, there was a battle in the wight's head, unseen to those around it.
Let him go.
The pressure within the wight's skull became overwhelming. Dead hands fell away from living flesh.
But... the wight had to kill humans.
The 'kid' was a human.
A hand came back up a moment later, this time grasping the wrist of the child in an unbreakable grip, though the child had made no attempt to flee. At that moment, multiple pairs of glowing blue eyes turned to the boy, the one true living in this land that belonged to the dead.
Let.
Him.
GO!
The wight sprang into action, leaping forward, past the boy. The arm in his grasp wrenched the boy along, making a cry escape his lips. The wight paid no mind, running at speeds the child could not hope to match on his own.
"Wait!"
—What was that sound? It sounded so close...
"Please, stop!"
It was coming from the 'kid.'
The 'kid' was asking… to 'stop?'
The wight had the impression that it should stop, so it did. The wight stood still, almost bemused by the unlikely reaction that came from the human.
The human buried his head into what little scraps were left of the wight's clothing, cheek pressed against the glowing 'heart' that was revealed as two torn strips of fabric shifted. The young human stared in fascination. Two small arms wrapped around the wight's neck. "It's okay. You can go now."
And so the wight ran. It ran from the legions of the dead that followed at its heels. It ran, clutching the boy close, because the boy was precious. It ran over hills and through high drifts. It ran around large boulders and dead trees.
It ran, the boy weighing nothing in its arms, but the strength was was quickly leaving its limbs.
The power that held its bones together and prevent it from decaying was quickly leaving it. Its strides were slower and slower. It took one more step, and could run no longer. It crumpled forward, boy falling out of inert arms.
The boy was curled up on his side, dazed look on his face. He reached out near his face to touch some blue wildflowers that had somehow survived.
The wight gave a harsh screech as it tried, unsuccessfully, to right itself. It clawed itself an arms length closer to the boy as the biting chill got stronger, heralding the approach of its Master.
There was nowhere to run. There was no way to run.
With energy that came from the warm pulse it its chest, the wight twisted its head around with an emotion that would have been described as 'panicked' if only it was living. If it was only alive. As we have covered before, it was literally a dead body, though.
Still, our lovable ice zombie reached out a regretful hand towards the child.
Only…
There was no one there.
And in the depths of Winterfell, Bran Stark woke up with a jerk.
Heck if I know what's happening. YOLO.
Okay, I don't know if it's just me, but Bran Stark's eyes look brown in the show. I mean, I think they're supposed to be blue, but Imma just keep it brown, 'cuz it serves my purpose. It's been a while since I've compared eyes to a yummy piece of chocolate. If it bothers you... Ha. In yo' face.
Join Discord, yo.
discord. gg/XDyEJep