Jon couldn't tell how long he had been walking. It might've been an hour a day a night. Even a week for all the passing of time could be marked. His only company was the flickering orange light that currently engulfed his outstretched right hand. The red path stretched out endlessly before his eyes, a streak on the ground that led to an unseen horizon. One that could either hold a new dawn or setting sun. The beginning or the end. But Jon had already vowed to himself he would pass these tests no matter what it took.
'Then again, when my only choices are pass or die…' He thought morbidly. He idly traced patterns through the air as he walked, his eyes still kept on the path where the light shone. As he continued on, he wondered what was happening to his body in the real world. Who was tasked with taking care of him? Maester Luwin was the most logical choice. Old Nan might watch him in the night for any dramatic changes. But it was unlikely that anyone outside of Lord and Lady Stark would be allowed to check on him.
For that, he was glad. He didn't want to see his brothers or sisters to see him like this.
He felt a change in the air again. This time it felt as though he was shifting from naked to being clothed in light leather and chainmail armor. Heavier but more solid than his simple training armor. As he continued forward, the path began to feel like hard packed soil with a thin layer of loose shifting yet infinitely tiny grains of earth atop it. He wasn't sure what to expect now as he'd never experienced sand before in his life even if he had heard of it when Maester Luwin had taught them of Dorne.
Soon enough he came to a set of heavy stone doors. Straining to push them with both his arms, right hand still lit, he managed to push them open enough to slip through. What he stepped into was something else entirely.
It was an arena of some kind. That much was obvious from the surrounding seating that went higher up and farther back as a giant circle. The stone appeared to be weathered but had obviously been grand at one time. Jon looked to the sky.
'Can it rain in this place?' He wondered to himself, taking note of the darkened storm clouds that occasionally echoed with the sound of thunder and constantly shifting air that threatened a downpour at any moment.
"It does not matter." A deep voice answered from what Jon had thought at a glance to be an empty royalty box to his left. Jon quickly turned, hands reaching for a weapon that he did not possess as he took in the figure that he could've sworn wasn't there a moment ago.
It looked to be a robed man, all of his face obscured but for a dark beard that extended beyond the shadows that his hood created. His voice sounded distorted, as though he were speaking through a haze or underwater. He stood up and in the blink of an eye, large torches were lit along the walls of the center of the arena and circular ones large enough to fit several men comfortably within them lit at the fringes of the arena walls, seemingly oblivious to the coming storm as a loud crack of thunder echoed like a whip wielded by the hand of the gods.
When Jon looked at the box again, the man was gone. But before he could ponder where the figure could've possibly gone, the man spoke from inside the arena to the right of where Jon was.
"Whether the storm comes or goes, you must still face what lies ahead." The man said as if he hadn't somehow just disappeared from several hundred feet away and appeared again directly behind Jon.
Jon jumped, his constant calling and use of the inner flame causing it to spring to his right hand on instinct as he landed away from the figure with his open palm outstretched threateningly.
The figure only chuckled. "If I were you, I'd worry more about him." He said, right hand gesturing to a changing form that was getting closer and closer with every step.
Its appearance was like nothing Jon had ever seen before. The legs and tail looked at first glance to be those of an upright dog though easily large enough to belong to a Direwolf. The fur was a deep red that made one think of a rich wine or a bloody wound. It was so dirt crusted and stained however that it almost appeared to be brown. In sharp contrast, its torso and arms were scaled all in pitch black and glistened like a still pond as the light from the surrounding torches reflected off it from multiple angles. Its hands were roughly shaped like a man's though it only had three large fingers: a thumb and a pair of padded fingers the thickness of two of a human's tied together. All capped with talons that looked able to cut a man to the quick. Topping its thick trunk of a neck was the head of a dragon that had an almost lupine snout and canine eyes that glowed an eerie amber color in the torchlight.
The shoulders were capped with fur while the tail appeared to have spines ridging it all the way down to the tip. All in all, it appeared to be a creature that was born from an unholy union of dragons and wolves. Jon momentarily felt an absurd stab of pity for the she-wolf that had been forced to bear this abomination and birth it.
It stopped just short of the hooded figure's hand, its height more than making up for its less than bulky stature. Jon knew however that he could ill afford to underestimate such a foe, no matter how strange and ungainly it may seem. Concentrating with all his might, Jon forced an unfamiliar second flame to occupy his left hand while he shifted into the basic fighting stance Ser Rodrik had drilled into his head over the course of countless hours on the Winterfell training grounds: his hands up around his head, right fist clenched nearby the corner of his mouth while his left fist hovered at eye level.
The creature growled at him in what could've been greeting or warning. It was a deeply foreboding voice, with a nightmarish scratchiness to it that sounded as though some cruel god had mashed two competitive means of communication between predators into one being which wound up making it sound as if its vocal chords were battling themselves with every sound it made. Jon gave a short nod while never letting his eyes leave his opponent.
"Let us see how you fare." The hooded man rasped before taking a step back again and disappearing into the central watcher's box once more. "Begin when ready." He announced grandly as a clap of thunder boomed in the sky directly overhead.
Jon barely had enough time to start moving back when the thing had charged him at the word 'Begin.' But it was proving too fast for Jon already. Its left fist had hammered into Jon's right side twice and with such force behind each blow that his bottommost rib had audibly broken with the second strike. The pain of the second hit distracted Jon's aim, causing his left hands blast of fire intended for the things chest to only glance of its shoulder.
It roared defiantly at him, a right hook slamming into Jon's nose so hard he saw stars even as he attempted to let loose another large cone of fire from his right hand that missed the creature entirely. The thing was simply too fast for him.
Every time Jon thought he had it, the thing would duck under or leap over his fire or it would simply not be where he sent the flames. Growing desperate, Jon attempted to use the torches around the arena by summoning them to him so as to catch the thing off guard. But it never allowed him enough of a break to concentrate in order to do so. The creature circled him as he tried once again to send a blast of fire at it, sweat beading his head as he struggled to breathe through broken nose and ribs, his bruises feeling as though they had bruises while his muscles screamed at him for trying to go at speeds he couldn't possibly keep up.
Jon charged the creature, feinting to the left before going right, his hands lighting up to fire off simultaneously. The creature simply moved under the fire and hammered his sternum with its right fist so hard he was blown back a foot by the force, coughing and wheezing as he fell to one knee as his lungs desperately worked overtime in an effort not to lock up on him.
The figure in the stands called out to him: "You have eyes and yet you refuse to see! Do you think that there is mercy in this place? If so, you would be gravely mistaken."
There was a sinister pause in the air as the wind picked up briefly.
"Or perhaps," The figure pronounced to another deafening crack of thunder. "You simply lacked the incentive to use your sight to its full potential." It gestured to the creature. "Give him a reason to regret his choice."
When the creature charged him to get in close, Jon unleashed another blast of fire at point blank range that splashed against its scaly chest, setting the surrounding fur alight. It roared in fury as it gripped his head in its hands, aborting his hasty attempt to stand and get back. Without another sound, it ruthlessly plunged its thick thumbs talon and all into Jon's eyeballs.
Jon Snow began screaming.
His brain almost couldn't cope with the catastrophic amount of pain his body was telling him he was in: the reptilian thumbs crushing what remained of his ruined eyes as the talons felt as though they were scraping any remains of his orbs that might've been left away. He flailed against the monstrous arms in a futile and panicked attempt to get it to stop.
Abruptly, it let go of his head and allowed him to collapse to the ground. Jon's hands instinctively covered his ruined and bleeding sockets as he continued screaming while his body curled into a ball to try to protect himself. Over the sound of his own hoarse and desperate cries, he heard the unseen man call out.
"Enough of this!" it said. "If he will not let himself see, than he is not worthy of the power he wields!"
Another clap of thunder as his command was given. "Finish him now!"
Jon could hear the creature coming toward him, could feel the heat, could see the flames licking its fur in his mind's eye. His mind raced as he realized through the haze of pain fueled adrenaline that even without his eyes he could see the flames inside his head.
He rolled away from the creature rapidly, his sense of the fire able to see the shape its' body took even with his face turned away. The shoulders were not those of a monstrous creature, but those of a young man. The head was a simple wolf's pelt head no different than what one might see on a warrior of one of the mountain tribes in the Vale or the North. The legs and the back were furred because they were leather greaves and a wolfskin cape respectively. The heat washed over a set of heavy scales that seemed to transmit heat to the body underneath through some weakened areas that provided a clearer picture.
Jon's mind raced as his gut drove him to take whatever means necessary to understand why the form before him felt familiar. He managed to block out the sensations of hurt and pain as he ignited his hands again, focusing the power in them on his sockets to reduce the clamoring of damaged nerves to a more dull yet insistent throbbing instead of the mind splitting sense of all-eclipsing agony it had been.
As the figure charged, he could sense it: the body heat outlining every move it was making in a strange riot of colors while it came at him. He flared his left hand as it blocked a swipe from the figure's right before making it impact the distinctly human jaw underneath the dead wolf's. His right hand flared as he grabbed the figure's throat, the sound of sizzling flesh clearly audible to his sensitive ears even over the boom of thunder. His knee struck the young man's sternum multiple times in short order, drawing pained grunts each time before he lifted the figure by its still burning throat and slamming it back first into the ground.
The ground crunched underneath his feet as the body impacted. Jon straddled the figure's chest, knees on the biceps before it could recover from the shock. Jon felt his agonized rage guide him as he let his right hand release the throat before his fiery fists impacted the figure's face over and over and over again, pouring his physical exhaustion, his newfound power and his fear into each strike of his blurring fists upon its visage.
As it grunted in pain at the constant strikes under his relentless assault, Jon suddenly understood why this figure was so familiar.
It was his own.
Jon's fist stopped just before his double's jaw, its labored breathing disturbing the broken skin and still wet blood that was now a fixture on his knuckles. Jon sensed the figure in the stands stand before taking a single step and managing to be just behind both sets of himself.
Jon almost shivered in its presence, a small concentrated flame buried beneath what felt like a veritable mile or more of ice. The frozen aura of this figure spoke to nothing but death and destruction. It spoke to him on a disturbingly fundamental level.
"What are you waiting for boy?" It asked him, a smile in its voice. "Finish it. Now."
Jon tried to think through the pounding in his skull that came from his empty and aching eye sockets as his newly awakened senses kept track of the fires and hot winds he could sense simultaneously.
'This thing…it's not me. It's too feral, too wild. But is it right to kill something that seems to only be able to follow its instincts?' Jon could feel the animalistic version of himself twitching, attempting to get its strength back. Every fiber of his being told him to finish off the prey in front of him now while he had the chance. That he wasn't going to get another opportunity to end this.
As he suppressed that primal killer's instinct, the figure groaned sharply. When it did, a stray possibility played itself out before his mind's eye. Jon decided to see one way or another if his sudden wild hunch would pay off as it had in the first test.
"No." He answered, right hand returning to the figure's neck again as it squirmed from the heated though no longer burning hand, skin cracking and sloughing from his touch while his left hand gripped it punishingly by the hair.
"My instincts are my own." He continued, willing the creature beneath him to submit. Its struggles intensified for a moment. "No matter how strong they may feel, no matter what they may tell me, They. Do Not. Control. Me." He concluded as he slammed his animal instincts into the ground by its head with each punctuation. It quieted its struggles, recognizing his dominion at long last as he sensed the heated blood in its veins leaked slowly onto the sand below them.
"I control them." He finished breathlessly, standing on shaking legs as the adrenaline faded and the pain in his eyes returned threefold. As he staggered and started to lose his foothold, a pair of arms grabbed him by his side, lifting him so that his left arm was across its shoulders.
It was his primal instincts made flesh. The figure faded to ashes and smoke before flowing into Jon's pores. As it did, he felt strength return to his limbs, his remaining senses sharpened to heights he had never previously imagined. The remaining other chuckled to itself.
"Very good." It praised, a faint edge of what Jon thought was mocking in its tone. "Any simple creature can act and kill. It is men and gods that think and create. Remember that boy. Or the suffering you have inflicted upon yourself here will be far worse for you and for those you hold dear."
As it faded from Jon's awareness, so too did the arena. Jon's hands lit again, this time without his conscious thought. As the pain of his last two tests returned to him, his pride and his will to survive pushed him to continue onward: the fires in his hands illuminating the path ahead like a river of lava in the blackest of nights. He placed his right foot forward upon the road of red beneath him, allowing his momentum to carry him as he winced with every movement.
'Two down, one to go.' He repeated to himself grimly, the mantra allowing him to continue walking when his body told him he needed to stop to lie down to rest.
Author's Note: My thanks again to everyone for your words of encouragement! Hope this chapter meets expectations. As always; reviews, critiques and comments are always welcomed and encouraged. :)