Ned (283 AC)
Eddard Stark's first mistake when he came upon the Tower of Joy in search of his sister was thinking that bringing six more men would be enough to take on Ser Arthur Dayne, especially while he was aided by Ser Oswell Whent.
Though Ned was able to make sufficiently short work of the lesser Kingsguard, that was not before Oswell had killed one of his men, and distracted Ned from focusing on Arthur earlier, whose two swords allowed him to easily keep pace with the five men attacking him, slashing Ser Howland Reed, spinning him aside.
But the graver mistake he made, one that was made of all the men there to fight for the fate of Lyanna Stark, was not taking sufficient notice of the Doll sitting by the wayside.
They had been too accustomed to treating the Dolls as simply hazardous parts of the landscape and the scenery. They had all failed to consider how Strength and Black Gold Saw joining the war portended to the possibility that the Dolls themselves were changing. And while all the men had consciously made sure not to approach the Doll in their fighting, Arthur had failed to watch where he knocked Ser Howland away, who tumbled and knocked over the Doll.
The only reason Ned knew that to be case was that just after he killed Sew Oswell, Howland slammed into him full force and sprawled the two of them several feet away.
As Ned recovered from the sudden assault, while Howland rolled himself off his Lord, a young woman's voice was heard, saying, "Quiet."
And all sound of violence ceased, as Ned's men held back from attacking Ser Arthur Dayne and he to them in turn.
Ned looked at the Doll, who was smaller and looked younger than Strength, who with her gray cloak, dark hair and brown eyes, would not have looked out of place among the other orphaned children in Flea Bottom. That is, she would have if her skin weren't as white as bone, and she didn't wield a spiked flail in one hand that the Mountain Who Rides would have struggled to lift with two.
She gazed at them, a look of curiosity in her eyes, as if she were seeing for the first time, and took in everything around her. She looked at each man, at the weapons in their hands, and the bodies on the ground. She then spoke again.
"Why are you fighting?"
The silence could have been forever, it could have been an instant, Ned did not remember this moment clearly, because neither he nor anyone there knew what she would do, whatever answer they gave.
Only Arthur was brave enough to answer, and he answered only with the unvarnished truth:
"We must, for we have left ourselves with no other recourse."
Once again, Ned was reminded of how much he respected the man hailed as the Sword of the Morning, and why, beyond his skill at arms, he hated having him as his enemy.
But for a brief while, his respect for the man died, because of the Doll's answer.
"Ah," the Doll responded, looking at her flail before turning back to the fighting men. "I don't know what I must do. So I shall do what I can do."
Without any more warning, she cocked her arm with the flail back, and flung it forward in the blink of an eye, the chain extending to launch it straight into Arthur Dayne to slam him against the rocky outcrop facing the Tower, crumpling his armor like parchment, and pulping his body like a ripe fruit.
All of Ned's men still standing dropped their swords and ran, something Ned himself would have done if he weren't still too sore from the Doll throwing Howland at him, or if Howland himself weren't seriously injured.
The Doll yanked the flail back to herself and swung it in an arc to her left. Two men died.
Ned crawled over to Howland, near whom his sword lay.
The Doll yanked the flail back to herself and swung it an arc to her right. Two men died.
The flail had passed mere inches over Ned's head on that pass, causing him to instinctually look back at the Doll.
The Doll yanked the flail back to herself-
And it was then, at the moment that Ned knew he was about to die, that his life was saved.
*CRACK-BOOM*
The sound was loud as thunder and cracked like a boulder fallen from a great height, followed by something snapping the chain on the flail, leaving the Doll with only a length of chain attached to a metal rod and a look of confusion and panic on her face.
*CRACK-BOOM* *CRACK-BOOM* *CRACK-BOOM*
Three more times that sound echoed in Ned's head as the Doll jumped back to the side as the ground burst twice at her feet and then she spun back as if struck with an invisible missile. The Doll skidded as she hid around the corner of the boulder Ned was near, a dark substance leaking from her side like blood, and kept herself stock still.
As time passed, and the sound stopped ringing in his ears, Ned heard someone approaching, their shoes marching across the dirt toward him. He reached and grasped for his sword, saw a strange pair of black and white shoes - made of something neither simple fabric nor leather – stop next to his blade, and turned his gaze up.
The Doll he saw now was taller than Strength, but dressed far more scantily with a strange wrap across her bosom, what appeared to be trousers cut just short of the top of her thighs circumvented with a white belt, and her only concession to modesty being a long, hooded coat so darkly blue that he would have thought it black if the sunlight didn't reveal its true shades on its edges. Her hair was the same shade as her coat, tied in two ratty tails, the left far longer than the right.
The two things that stood out the most, however, were the massive, metallic, intricately and precisely crafted glowing barrel on her right arm, and her bluer than blue skies eyes, the left one blazing with a blue fire.
The brown-eyed Doll seemed to find an opportunity to attack, as Ned saw the new figure lash out with her barrel(?) to intercept the enemy's length of chain that wrapped around it. The new arrival yanked the chain and carried her attacker through the air toward who swung her rod to cave in the arrival's head. The rod was intercepted with her free hand, and she aimed the barrel and it flashed with a great light and blasted a loud *CRACK-BOOM* and the attacker's shoulder simply evaporated, the arm holding the flail completely severed from the main body, her fluids spilling over her killer and victim as she was flung back again, screaming in pain.
The blue-eyed Doll lowered her weapon, and Ned rose to his feet, sword in hand, ready for whatever came next. She turned to him.
"Step aside, please," she addressed him.
While Ned still wasn't fully accustomed to being a Lord Paramount, he still did expect to be respected as one under normal circumstances. The current circumstances being as far from normal as they had ever been in his life, he obediently stepped aside for the strange Doll.
As she walked up to the Doll she downed, Ned noticed that his strange savior's coat had a white, five-pointed star on the back. The barrel on her arm then shifted itself and broke apart like a moving puzzle, before compacting itself into impossible smallness and disappearing into her coat. She then drew a long, dark and thin sword from her side he'd failed to notice before, and grasped it in her hands as like a headsman.
And like a headsman, she swung the blade down and relieved the flail-bearing Doll of her head.
For a brief moment, all was still in the world once more, as Ned Stark witnessed the first time a Doll attack another one, and the first time a Doll is killed. The killer then turned to him, her blade stained with the mud-like remains of the dead brown-eyed Doll, the flame in her eye finally going out.
Certain now that she posed him no threat, he relaxed his stance, and held his sword at ease by his side, as Howland behind him finally returned to his feet.
"You have saved my life," he addressed her. "May I ask you your name?"
At first, it seemed the Doll wouldn't answer, as she closed her eyes and held back her head to catch a breeze ruffling her hair. After it passed, she opened her eyes and answered:
"Black Rock Shooter."
And after that, the sound of a woman's cries of pain rang forth from the Tower, and Ned turned and rushed in, with Black Rock Shooter coming in after him.