Trigger warning: events discussed (not played out) in this chapter are of a graphic and disturbing nature.

Brynden V

He awoke doused in sweat

with an unsettling chill in the air.

He began to shiver.

From both

the air

and the dream.

For he had not the depravity to understand what he had just witnessed.

Brynden had seen the girl before, but never the young man.

She was one of Princess Daenerys' ladies in waiting. Betty, if he remembered correctly. Brynden could tell she found him horrifying to look upon by her reaction when he was first introduced to her, which was more common than not, if Brynden was honest.

It hurt to see that look, but especially on a face as pretty as hers. So his initial impression of the girl was a slightly sour one.

But she did not deserve that. No one did.

Brynden feared the contents of the dream enough, but what he began to fear more as the moments passed, was that the dream had been conjured by his own will. His own imagination. Fearing further still why the first dream he'd had that wasn't the crow, would be such a perverse horror.

The dream started in flight. His thoughts were simple, naïve to the terrors of the crow and its knowledge.

His feathers were brown and tan, patterned to mock the trunks of the trees in a forest where he'd once been from, now a decent match for the drab color of the city. And though they were short, his beating wings helped him soar through the alleys, and above the walls, to the Red Keep, where food was plentiful for a sparrow as he.

He feared only the larger birds and cats, as the people let a sparrow be, and as night fell, he found a place upon a stone outcropping in the halls of the castle. His mind worked differently, flitting between the bird that flew and the boy that thought, but somehow, he could still recognize the halls of the castle, even in the moments it seemed he wasn't the one in control.

A commotion drew Brynden's attention, and when the bird turned to see people bantering about in the candlelight, instinctively he flew in closer, as it was in times like this people would drop the most from their tables, and it was worth risking proximity in order to seize some easy sustenance.

The music reminded him of his own form, though he could not describe how he felt both one with the humble bird, and separate at once.

But it was just a dream. And dreams only felt real.

It was then, in the dream, he first saw the girl. From above, he couldn't help but peer at the soft exposed skin of her chest. Even the bird felt a twinge of shame, but he kept flitting back and forth from her curly, flowing hair, to her cleavage, to the crumbs from the pie on the table in front of the fat lord, and then back to her.

The bird chose to sing sweetly, for they felt it best to acknowledge beauty.

She's certainly not horrifying to look upon.

Only, the dream progressed, and it ended in horror.

Horror his young mind didn't understand. It was unsettling, and abhorrent, and he knew not why he'd imagine something he couldn't even conceive. Brynden had read his fair share of adult themed books with love and ladies. He knew not of the intricacies, but he knew enough to know the ways of adult courtship, and how children were made.

But the histories and songs of love weren't specific. They only hinted at the things that would happen. And when maesters described procreation, it was usually in a way that explained two beasts breeding to reproduce.

Brynden had never thought of anything like he'd dreamt up.

What kind of monster am I?

All there was, was the nightmare, as moments passed into eternities of endless pain, as he huddled into himself, his knees tucked into his chest, hugging his legs with his thin shivering arms, whispering songs to himself to clear his thoughts of the crime.

No whispers were loud enough to quiet her screams, or even the subtle defeated moans when she knew it was futile to fight him off.

Am I somehow that tall boy? Why would I hurt her so horribly?

At the conclusion of their last meeting, the crippled maester instructed Brynden to come to him with anything about his dreams that seemed different, or unusually disturbing.

Brynden replied, "Every dream I have would be unusually disturbing to the common person."

"Unusually disturbing for you, then, Master Rivers."

Maester Forman also told him to try and recount in ink any dreams he could remember specifics from.

Brynden feared the maester would think him a demon if he recounted in ink what he had just seen. After nearly a half hour of endless moments, he assumed, for there was no way to logically perceive the actual passing of time when every breath slowed to a frozen halt through the dread of what it all meant, sitting up in bed and holding onto himself as he shivered in the unnatural cold air of his room, he felt compelled, or desperate enough, to seek Maester Forman out. Even this late in the evening.

Even if it was him that was the evil

The evil was just too awful.

It had grown so late; the servants had snuffed out all the candles in the halls. He set out into the black of the corridor, keeping a brisk pace, but as he strode, his bare feet lightly clapping against the cold stone below, a sense of unease lingered about him. It wasn't the dark, for darkness was nothing for Brynden to fear. But as the boy knew better than most, there was more to terror than the absence of light.

When he reached the maester's door, Brynden saw candlelight from within flicking beneath it. As he crept closer, he could hear whispers in hushed, but heightened tones from within.

Brynden feared knocking.

Is this still a dream?

His hand rose in a fist and struck the door. The hard wood felt true enough. Yet, his dreams, or at least the most recent one, felt all the more real to him, and as he waited for a response to his knock, his mind still struggled to find peace, both stained with the fright of the nightmare, and uneasy in the queer air of the hall.

The voices quieted, and after a pause, he felt steps from within the room move towards him, as if he could feel the maester's awkward, crippled footsteps better than he could hear them.

Maester Forman answered the door rushed and flustered, only opening it enough to peer out, hunched over to his bad side, with his good hand on the handle.

"Oh, Master Rivers," he said. He always seems startled when he looks upon me for the first time. I am quite a hideous sight. "Isn't it late? What brings you here, lad?" the maester asked. He opened the door only slightly, standing behind it as if to shield him from Brynden's hideous appearance and imagination.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, but I . . ," Brynden murmured not sure if he should even confess what weighed on his heart. It was as if he committed a crime of thought, even if it only occurred within the confines of his own mind.

Forman was perceptive, and quick witted, Brynden was happy to notice. "A dream?" he deduced.

Brynden enjoyed the maester's company. It wasn't often Brynden considered adults more intelligent than himself.

"Wait here for just a moment."

The maester turned into the chambers, leaving the door mostly closed as if to keep Brynden from entering, like he was hiding something from Brynden's view, and the boy respected the barrier, somewhat frozen in courtesy and fear. The queer weight was still at his back, and the cold stone was hard on his heels, but both were still better than the dread of the dream still cycling through his guilt racked little mind.

He waited. Voices hushed from within, and the hall became colder. The stone floor beneath his feet froze into a snow-white frost around the soles of his feet and the tips of his pale toes, and he felt, even through the dark, he could see the hot air of each breath in the heavy cold air around him.

The chill continued down his spine. Hair raised from his neck and back, and the feeling became the suspicion of eyes watching him. Judging him. Following him.

He turned, as if out of a wild instinct. Brynden gasped, but the fear stole his breath from his lungs.

Black swirls of dark air funneled into a figure down the hall beneath a shadowy corner of the buttress that held up the ceiling, spinning into an empty vortex, punctuated at its core with a foreboding, peering, black eye that stared through him, searing a smoldering, piercing pain into his forehead.

"What have you seen? Did you choose to fly?"

The pinions of a swooping shadow darted towards him, engulfing the stone walls in the black smoke of the abyss. As curved formations resembling talons opened to snatch him up, the boy shrieked and fell into the door, crumbling through the threshold, and crawling desperately into the light of the nearest candle.

Immediately through his episode, he looked up to apologize, knowing the insanity of his intrusion.

Beyond belief, he was looking into the empty eyes of the victim of the horror that brought him.

Betty.

Curiously, she looked before him exactly as she did in the dream, from her gown to the mussed hair from after the attack. He couldn't help but study her, and it was as if he could feel the flitting heart of the sparrow, as broken as his, breaking further to see her in the flesh, with his own eyes, in the same state, her dress torn, the paint from her eyeline and cheeks eroded, and the same disgusted look twisted into the beauty of her face, as if just the sight of him was as bad as the horror he imagined.

It struck him. As if an arrow from the Old Gods, and he knew a terrible knowledge from seemingly nowhere in his studied mind.

"Was it real?" Brynden asked, his voice almost not his own. "Did he hurt you?"

The girl looked back at Brynden like the monster he knew he truly was. Maester Forman tried to provide her comfort with his good side.

In the immediacy after, seeing the horror return to the girl's dead eyes, like she had once again suffered the torture all over again, she became hysterical. Forman worked diligently to offer some kind of remedy to Brynden's intrusion and outburst.

The boy could only think he wished it had been the crow he'd dreamt of.

After Brynden had confessed, and the girl understood as much as one could in her tragic state and the inexplicable nature of the albino bastard's midnight wanderings, Maester Forman worked diligently to reassure the hurting children the best anyone could. None in the room could say plainly what they all knew to have happened, but the trauma seemed to be shared, though unfortunately, not equally in the least.

The maester made the girl comfortable in his own room, giving her fresh linens to sleep on, and showing her a trick with a chair, leaning it against the door handle in a way that would keep her locked in after the door was closed. Brynden appreciated that. It was both clever and kind.

Then, he finally had the opportunity to speak with the boy.

"You saw the girl," the maester recounted. "And you saw what happened to her tonight," he continued solemnly. "I loathe to dwell in such horrid business, but this indeed is a drastic divergence from your norm, Master Rivers. Furthermore, this discussion may also be of use in apprehending the offender. I vow never to speak to you of this again, that is, after a few more questions, if you please?"

"Very well," the boy replied with reluctance. He remained silent to allow for the questions the maester promised.

"What details can you remember before the incident? What else did you see or sense?"

"I remember it all. From the smells to the feeling of flight. It was as if I've not truly slept. More like I . . ," Brynden began.

"Skinchanged," Maester Forman completed.

Brynden hadn't thought of it as a possibility. What he saw wasn't a dream, but his world through the eyes of a bird.

Songs and legends spoke of those with the ability to change into animals' skins, but those tales were children's stories. There was no truth to the snarks and grumpkins, nor skin changers.

Or was there?

"Here, lad," the maester said, hobbling to the dining table off to one side of the chambers, away from the private room where the maester saw the afflicted. He brought over a woven blanket stitched with the outline of a wine glass. "If you can help describe this beast, then mayhaps we can apprehend him for such a foul deed. You can once again be the hero," Forman smiled, likely thinking the encouragement would lighten Brynden's desperate mood.

It didn't. That word only ever made him feel worse.

Brynden struggled to find his voice. When his hesitation lingered long enough for the silence to feel as heavy as the air from the hall, the maester interjected, saving Brynden from further anguish, "Let me see to the girl. Hopefully, she's asleep. Think on it. Or don't. You've been through enough already. I will return in a moment," he said, smiling before turning and hobbling away.

Brynden would think of the horror, but first he thought of the notion of what it meant to have seen it. Pondering the maester's deduction, it seemed both likely and implausible that Brynden Rivers was a skinchanger, slipping into the mind of a sparrow instead of sleep.

He fought sleep every night, and shuttered in his feather bed as he felt the weariness of the day helping him drift closer to his black winged tormentor. Each night, he aimed to focus passed the terrors of the crow, thinking solely of waking again.

On nights he could, he'd stay awake until morning, but he hadn't the stamina to keep it up past the first day they arrived. King's Landing was to be his new awakening. He found it to have been more of the same nightmare.

Until this night. This dream. This potential revelation.

It was a relief, though, that his own imagination did not conjure the hideous sight he saw.

But, then again, as the bird, he could do naught but watch.

A hero would have flown in to rescue the lady.

Brynden and the bird were frozen in cowardice.

When the maester returned, he held a wine flask in his good hand. He sat down, collapsing into the cushioned chair like an ill formed slab of meat on a butcher's table. His arse nearly slapped against the seat, and he reclined into a position best described as defeat.

"What is this world but a horror?" he asked, staring into the dark ceiling above them, as if he spoke more to himself than to the boy.

"I'm sorry, Maester? What was that?"

"Nothing, lad." He sighed. "Nothing." Forman's eyes looked heavy, and the circles beneath them were as puffed as new pillows. "As terrible as it is to ask," he began again after a long, silent pause, "have you the gall to recall this young man?"

"He was tall," Brynden replied evenly, as if he was once again apart from his body. "Abnormally so. I cannot remember his colors, as the bird's vision was queer that way, but I do remember the shading. He was dark. Not of complexion," but of soul, Brynden thought, focusing on the help he could provide to fight through the guilt and fear building as he recounted the events again. "But his eyes, which were black and heavy. His hair was shorn, but thick and dark. His face was not that of a boy's, but not yet of a grizzled man of years. He was either younger, or freshly shaven, and his voice, though kind at the start, was deep and dark as well."

"You are very brave, Master Rivers," Forman replied, as sober as any man could sound while actively sipping wine. "I cannot apologize enough for this."

"No need. 'Tis the least I can do for her."

After more questions which were hard for Forman to comfortably speak aloud, and too mature for Brynden to answer helpfully, the maester conceded that he'd heard enough.

With the matter dismissed, though ever present, Forman tried smiling and said, "There's a man I know; an Archmaester. One whom I trust, that I'd like to discuss your treatment with. I am not wise nor experienced enough in things of this nature to provide anything more than I already have. He may be. He may not, but this realm has turned its back on the days of mystery and magic."

"It has always been my practice," he continued, "to keep the things I discuss with my charges to myself, as is and will be the case with the young lady in the next room, which I'm sure you understand extends to your knowledge of her business as well. You must never speak of this with anyone but myself, for it is the lady's business, and as horrific as it is, the fewer that know of it, the better it might be for the girl, in truth. A sad, dark truth of our world, but a definitive truth nonetheless. You understand how grave this information could be for her. You must never speak of this to anyone but myself."

Brynden nodded in agreement.

"Good. But for you, only an Archmaester in the higher mysteries can provide you with any more than ears to share your suffering with, and Merle is the only one who's not likely to end your suffering with an ounce too heavy of sweetsleep."

Brynden felt the white hairs of his arm stand.

"You've nothing to fear, Brynden," the maester said fiercely, sitting up as straight as his twisted form could. "I can read those eyes of yours as clearly in the dark as day. Nothing ill will come of you whilst within the Red Keep. This, I assure you."

"I have nothing but fear," Brynden replied, exhausted and desperate. "Not of those in the castle, though I am still very frightened by even the thought of human interactions, as foul as the looks I get are once anyone takes in the sight of me, but from within my own mind. How can anyone protect me from that?" the boy pleaded. "I cannot even imagine a fulfilling rest it's been so long since I've had it. I will depart from these chambers with naught but the terrors of my own thoughts, and the associated fear of sharing those thoughts with anyone other than you."

"You'll have me, then. We will remain here, and I will remain awake to provide you the kindness you deserve. Speak what you will of what you want. No need to rest when the morning so soon upon us. I'll drink, you tell me things. I'll be drunk and wiser," the maester giggled trying to add fun to the otherwise awful situation. It failed.

"I enjoy asking questions more than telling stories, Maester, if you please."

"Well, then let's hope I know enough to entertain you before I'm lost to the drink."

As the sun rose, Maester Forman's head quit nodding back up when Brynden would speak. He had fought valiantly to stay awake, and some of his insights seemed worth taking under advisement, but it seemed the man could take no more. Forman fell into a hunched ball of himself on the chair, folding into his bad side in an interesting enough way to look at for longer than normal.

One thing the maester said stuck out in Brynden's mind as he rose from his own chair to return to his chambers. Light began to seep through the bottoms of the windows, easing the room of the dark, and the halls were similarly lit. By now, servants began to make their morning rounds, and the halls wouldn't be as lonely.

As he rose to blow out the flickering wick of the candle on the desk, he recalled Forman's words in the man's own voice, "What you should do is go down to the yard and beat every strand of stuffing from one of those dummies. If I'd the two good sides, I'd be releasing my terrors daily on some poor unsuspecting tied canvass stand in for a foe."

Yes, Brynden thought, planning the rest of his day on his mostly careless stroll to his chambers, the floor warmer than it had been, and the sun ever rising to chase the night away.

I believe it was a Maester Simmon who equated the physical exertion of a man and its correlation to healthy thought throughout the day. He described it as a phenomenon called "activity induced vigor," which described the euphoric feeling one obtained from successful performances of physical exertion. A later maester clarified the exertion should be, "for sport rather than obligation," but that qualification does not disqualify this assertion in this case. I enjoy the yard.

"Brynden felt at one with his thoughts, for the moment, feeling somewhat ahead of the horror for the first time since he'd seen it.

The bird wasn't far from his mind, nor was the feeling of flight, and as he walked to his room, he wished he could soar. Then, he was sobered by the sight again.

Brynden dressed himself for the yard in an exhausted state of confused fear. Every moment he felt hopeful, he felt hatred: for the horror, himself, and the hedonistic villain who perpetrated the attack. Vacillating between sane and insane mindsets, he couldn't even recall the way to the yard.

A knight in a gold cloak led him eventually, but if Brynden was honest, he couldn't even recall asking the young man for aid.

Before he could realize, he was armored in padded gear, armed with a wooden sword, and being introduced to his Bracken brother for the first time. With all that had happened on his route to the capital and within the walls of the Red Keep, he had nearly forgotten that Aegor Rivers existed.

"Well met, brother," Brynden said in a quiet voice best described as distant.

The dark-haired boy grunted, and dismissed his hand. "Bugger off, creep."

Brynden could not find the name in his troubled mind of the White Knight that would instruct them whilst Ser Ball was away. One of the shit ones, was all he could think.

His forced air of etiquette was as evident in his posture as the tone of his voice, as he said, "Today, visiting members of the noble houses in attendance from last night will have use of the grounds as well. Keep in mind their space as to avoid any accidental encounters with the squires and young knights armed with steel."

Brynden looked over towards the far side of the yard where the visiting trainees were starting their drills. All but one of them were already drilling against the wooden dummy with the rotating pegs, peppering it with parries and short slashes, to train in close quarters combat.

Then, clearer than any sight since the bird, he saw him.

The tall young man walked toward them with an evil grin across his smug face.

Brynden closed his eyes and searched.

He could be a coward no more.

As he slipped, the last thing Brynden heard with his ears was his Bracken brother calling in urgency, "There's something wrong with the freak!"

Nothing is wrong with me, brother. Not anymore.