A Crown of Thorns

Ethan felt his head spin. He knew where he was. Part of him was thankful he wasn't sent to Fear and Hunger, but part of him was worried.

He was in the Song of Ice and Fire universe.

He never watched the series, and all of his knowledge about the world came from listening to the incessant ramblings of one of his friends about the Game of Thrones and reading a random dead fanfiction with 10 chapters and then going on to read 15 chapters of the first book.

He could be considered a sage if one considered the hundreds of hours he spent studying while the theme song ran on repeat in the background, but that was not the point here. He asked a lot more questions to the wildling, or freefolk as the man called himself.

Essos, Sothoryos, Westeros, Ulthos, the seven kingdoms, the Others, dragons, magic, and every other important point he could think of at the top of his head. The man was able to answer some, but knew nothing of the majority. Ethan did not blame him. It was imperative that wildlings do not get the same education as people that actively study the known world.

His own knowledge only came from the fanfiction. He knew a lot about the main story. It starts when Robert something dies and Daenerys Targaryen marries a barbarian in Essos. Other than that, the Others are beyond the wall; the prologue of the first book starts with them. There's the stark household and the fact that Jon Snow is supposed to be a descendent of the House Targaryen?

There's that guy that was killed by his own wife and sparked a continent sized war. And the bastard king that follows is supposedly so inbred that he can barely form cohesive thoughts... Ethan surmised the important points in his mind.

After the questioning was done, he stripped the man free of his weapons and began to loot the bodies. He took the fur coat from the supposed leader; bear skin, he figured; it was subble, brown, warm, and soft as sin. The leather chest piece and sheepskin leggings also fitted him after slight adjustments. The same could not be said for the gloves and boots.

Finally, he looted the intact iron axe, some salt, dried meat, ale, and curiously enough, honey.

After he was all set and done, he walked over to the man who had took his spear and looked upon his body. He had thrown the spear in a panic to stop the bowman.

Archers were basically superweapons in the medieval times. The arrows could pierce through most armor, and the distance was hard to bridge. Have a hundred of them and they could take on thrice as much men without ranged advantages of their own. If not for his spear's unique property of being weightless aside from the strange viscosity it held over air, he would be the one on the ground; it did help that aiming with it at such small distances was extremely easy because of the weightlessness and the large blade. Even if he missed by some distance, the spear would definitively take an arm of two. If not for him being doubtful of his aiming skills over large distances, he would have definitely opted for the bow than any other weapon.

He looked at his hand where a scab had formed. The pain had long since subsided, if it were even worth mentioning. He brushed some of the clot off and saw fresh skin underneath. It was clear that he had also developed accelerated healing.

He looked at the fallen man right beside the spear. His hands had been charred black and blisters had exploded across his face and neck. His eyes were bleeding black, and one of them seemed to have been dug through my his own hands. Blood welled beneath his furs and it was quite clear he had died in horrific agony.

Ethan looked again at the spear. Seeing the man's dead carcass was making him uncomfortable. He extended his hand to take the spear, but stopped midway.

Slowly, he sought to recall the spear from a distance. A few heartbeats passed, nothing happened.

Nothing huh... Ethan felt a bit disappointed, but then, as he was about to grasp the handle, a slight itch appeared at the tip of his fingers, spreading upwards on his hand and up his arm.

His face exploded into happiness as the itchiness spread through his arm and all over the skin and then under it. In his excitement and slight annoyance from the itching he noticed that the man who he had kept within his line of sight until now, was behind him, having taken up a wooden spear and drawing closer on padded footing.

His eyes widened as he turned around, sword in hand, but by the time he did, the man had already been in the stabbing motion.

And unconscious cry of panic rang from his mouth as he shielded his vitals, but the pain promised never came.

A blur. A blur of black and white leapt up from the snow, large and ferocious and with cruel jaws and sharp claws.

The horses whined in protest and began to run off. Ethan hurriedly grasped the reins of one of the destriers close to him. The horse yanked him ahead, but by some miracle, or perhaps by his own improved strength, he held the horse down without problem.

The large shadow, it's fur gleaming in the sun sunk it's jagged fangs into the man's neck, ending his life before he even knew how. The snow muffled the noise of the fall, but not of the growl and rending flesh.

Ethan stared wide eyes before he stepped back. His grip on the reins and the sword tightened as he took in the visage of the beast.

Of course, it was the same beast. It had followed him here. He had felt it's gaze when he travelled, but in the skirmish, he had forgotten it was there.

"What the hell..." Ethan could not help but smile wryly. The tiger dropped the man and looked at him with it's unblinking slitted eyes. Then it growled. That agitated the horse again. "Damn man. Thanks?"

The tiger licked it's paw and growled again.

Does it want me to leave or to stay? It's always good to pick the latter when dealing with predators.

With that thought, Ethan wasted no time. He climbed onto the destrier, not daring to unsummon his sword and nudged the horse with his feet.

Without any more pleasantries, the horse turned to gallop.

...

Ethan was not ashamed to admit that he fell more than once while getting away from the battle zone. The horse even tried to run away at one occassion, luckily, or maybe unluckily, Ethan's foot got stuck in the reins, which promptly led to him being dragged along the snow for a dozen meters.

"Stupid horse." He said, feeling petty. No man would willingly blame himself right? "Sigh! I'm really useless aren't I?" It seemed Ethan wasn't just a normal man after all.

He had found out from the wildling that the wall was a day's journey down south. If one rode without stop, he could reach before sundown. I just wanna get the hell out of this frozen hell. I'll think of everything else afterwards. As he said those words silently, he could not help but doubt the legitimacy of his own words. Frozen? Sure. Hell? Far from it, it was. He knew the cold would be unbearable for most people. Him? He alright, chilly at best. Whenever he began to feel cold, he could prompty desummon and resummon Longinus and rid himself of the frost.

Even the mammoth cloak did not make him feel any different, only a sensation of soft fur, but he barely felt insulation. The cold and heat were there, of course. It was not like he could not feel them or that he had lost the sensation. He just felt... comfortable?

The horse was surefooted at the very least. It did not stumble much on the undergrowth, and at times it did, that was the rider's fault. The sun dashed across the sky, and soon inclined westwards. Ethan had gotten the hang of riding for the time being, enough to not lead the horse into a hole every 100 meters.

And as he fitted into the monotonous journey, filled with dense thickets of snow laden trees, and chilly winds and small animals, his thoughts drifted. He thought of the skirmish he had been a part of. It was a revolting experience to be sure.

He had taken a life. He had killed a man. And not only one, but multiple. But as much as he felt the guilt from having snuffed a life from this world, he felt disgust. Disgust at himself. Disgust at the calmness that was in his heart at having committed such an atrocity.

Should I not feel something? Should I not feel disgusted at the act of killing itself rather than disgust at not feeling anything? His thoughts were a mess.

By the time the sun came over the horizon, painting the sky in plumes of orange and yellow and red, the wall was nowhere in sight. It was not that the man had lied, Ethan presumed, but that he was really too shitty at riding.

Seeing that he was probably not going to make any more progress, and that the horse would be hard pressed to continue on at night, he decided to make camp.

Only that he had no idea how to make a proper one, nor had he looted the resources for it. The horse carried bundles of hay on it's sides, but not the supplies for a camp. He could make a fire, sure, but not a tent for the horse.

"I'm an idiot." He said, listlessly as he looked around, wondering what to do. In my defense, the other horses who most probably had the camping materials were scared off by the tiger.

The cold winds might freeze the horse. If that happens, I might need to cover the rest of the distance on foot. And I don't feel comfortable leaving this guy here. He's hauled my weight over a long distance by now. I can't answer to that in apathy.

And so, since he could not make camp through the normal means, he decided something.

He would make a large, very very large fire; enough to keep the both of warm through the night. And for that, he would need wood.

Ethan dismounted the horse and told it to stay. But at the end, not trusting the thing to simply stay put, he wrapped the reins around the sword's handle and dug the sword in the ground with a single thrust.

"That ought to do it." He patted the horse's side. "Rest up buddy, I'll get a source of heat ready." He put the hay from it's side bags in front of him and summoned his spear.

Then, arriving in front of a small tree, somewhere 20 meters in size, he swung the spear.

Craaack!

The wood groaned and screamed as metal filled it's side and exited from another. A clean cut, and the tree tumbled down.

Shkrrrr!

Boom!

It fell with a large noise, almost on top of Ethan himself if not for him sidestepping at the last moment.

"Damn... I really do not have any idea how to survive in the forest. Can't even get the technique down." He glossed over that fact that one was not supposed to cut trees down in a single strike and instead thanked Alll-Mer that he at least had enough sense to cut the tree far away from the horse.

The stump that jutted out from the ground was sizzling with reddish particles; it was burnt wood. Ethan moved quickly after that. He used the sharp blade of the spear to cut the wood into many smaller pieces. It took him an entire one and a half hour to do so, but it might well have been far longer since he had nothing to note the time with.

The sky had darkened considerably and black seeped in from the horizons like an infection spreading through the sky. The sun hid away, and in place of it, the stars and the moon came overhead, greeting the world for another cold night.

It was not some time later, that Ethan stood in front of a large structure. It was a sprawling mass of wood and sticks and leaves, a head or two taller than he was and bounded on all sides by rock and stone. Drying the leaves had been an especially painful experience for him, but now, with Longinus and a blood sword in hand, he was ready.

He struck metal with metal, and a blazing pyre came to life. He looked to the side where a lot more wood was waiting to be thrown in and then to the horse who was trying to move closer to the fire, only stopped by it's reins still bound by a sword.

He could summon as many swords as he liked, so long as he had blood. And from what he could feel, so long as he did not consciously desummon them, they would remain. He had not yet figured out a time limit afterall, which was starkly different from it's in-game counterpart that only remained until the battle was finished.

His eyes drifted to the sky as the fire spread.

The sky had become a bit cloudy and snowflakes had begun to float down in astonishing numbers.

"Now... What type of story am I gonna go with when I reach the wall?" He had a lot to muse about.

...

The night lengthened.

The huge pyre of dancing flames cast receding shadows over the trees, large and scary. The darkness was quiet and if not for the whining of the horse, the howls of the wind, the crackling of wood under the fire and the ever rare, soft hoot from a distant owl, Ethan would have doubted if he was even on the same plane anymore.

No animal would tread closer so long as the gigantic pyre burned towards the heavens. And so, Ethan sat quiet, eating the dried meat, smoked over a smaller fire.

He did not have any water, and he wanted to avoid eating the snow off the ground.

I need to sleep, he realized. Although thirst was not that big of a deal so long as he set off early in the morning and found a stream, he had not slept the night before either. He was beginning to feel a bit groggy; and although it wasn't something to be alarmed about, it would soon become something to be alarmed about if he let the matter persist.

And so, with his stomach full and under the protection of the fire, he laid some empty bags on the group, fed the fire and decided to hit the sack.

Or he would have, if not for a certain feline peeking out of the trees and towards him.

Ethan sighed.

"..." He was truly feeling speechless. Absently, he threw some smoked meat towards the cat. It sniffed the air, nudged itself out of the shadows and snapped the meat into it's mouth. Slowly, it began to eat right there, not bothering to retreat.

As it bit into it, it's ears and tail shot up, it's eyes dilating - evidently, it had liked the meat. It ate it all in one bite and looked at him with it's slitted eyes.

It should have ate the mean as well, right? But I suppose a tiger needs all the calories it can get. Ethan thought, throwing some more meat, this time, closer.

He heard the horse whine in response as the tiger drew in closer, but did not bother to comfort it. He silently looked at the sword laying on his left and the spear that was on his lap.

They provided him the necessary confidence to make a choice many would call him mad over.

The tiger devoured the meat with reckless abandon.

At one point, the tiger had arrived directly in front of him. It's eyes were poised and sharp, as if daring Ethan to make a move. Ethan felt sweat pool on his back, and he smiled.

He extended his hand. The beast flinched, and he flinched upon the action. His hand almost grasped the spear handle, but he let it rest.

With his empty hand, he got some more smoked meat and threw it down, closer, within hand's reach.

The tiger went forth, warily and went down.

And Ethan's hand touched it's head. The beast growled at once, snapping at his hand, but by some force or by it's own better judgement, decided against it at the last moment. Momentarily, Ethan had felt his heart lurch out of his chest, but the calmness around his mind allowed him to keep his hand on the beast's head without too much of a problem.

Gently, he scratched the tiger behind the ear, it's white striken black fur ctahcing stray shadows in the illumination of the fire. And now, for the first time since he had met his curious companion, he heard it produce a voice that held the closest association to a purr.

Ethan widened his eyes, but excitement downed the doubt that was present in his mind.

If not friend, why friend shaped? Hehe. Remembering a popular meme back home, he could not help but chuckle. The purrs of the tiger were low and guttural, and more scary than cute; completely unlike a normal cat. But the way the tiger sought his hand after a minute or more of scratches, Ethan could not help but feel proud about himself.

He had done it. He had tamed a tiger, the same way his ancestors had once tamed direwolves.

Anything that can be petted can be tamed. Indeed, those are words to live by. Internet does have a lot of useful information now that I think about it. Ethan prattled on in his mind as he left the soft fur of the tiger. Contrary to his expectations, the fur was very soft even though it looked bristly. After about 10 more minutes of petting the cat and feeding it some more smoked meat, Ethan held off.

He did not want to feed all of his food to the cat. It would be better to hunt for the car and save all the already processed food for himself. Remembering the food he had prepared, Ethan felt like shooting himself in the head. It was tasteless, burnt, and a mushy. Completely unlike the smoked meat he had prepared now.

Indeed, proper processing was key to making good food.

After he stopped petting it, the tiger looked at him for a few moments. It was not long before it realized that the petting session had ended that it leapt away and into the trees.

"Well, there goes that. At least now, I can be somewhat at ease that the tiger won't eat me in my sleep." He said. He fed the fire again and headed off to sleep. He hugged the spear to his chest as he did so, just to scare off any predators that came close despite the fire. He could never be too careful.

And so, he drifted away into the realm of dreams.

...

...

William ducked into his fur cloak, feeling the chilly winds so far north crash into him. The boiled leather, the ringmail atop it and the thin fur coat suited more for combat did little to block it away. The cold was biting and he was slowly beginning to regret his choice coming to the wall. His grip on the sword tightened as he walked away from the yard. Ser Alliser Thorne's booming voice, sharp like an edge of a Valyrian Sword cut through the air.

"William! The sword is not a walking stick! You'd do well to remember that! Put your weak little legs to use!"

Instantly, William straightened his back, squared his shoulders and held the longsword by his side. "Yes!" He yelled. "Useless!" Ser Alliser boomed behind him. William did not dare turn around, lest Ser Alliser poked at him with his same, piercing and terrifying stare.

He heard some of the other recruits snickering and could not help but sigh.

Soon after the feast he shared with his family, he had taken a pony to head along the Kingsroad. He had questioned his decision several times as he made his way to Winterfell where he would resupply and make way further North. But in the way, perhaps by the will of the old, he had met a wandering crow.

The man was named Yoren. He was stooped and sinister and had a twisted shoulder. He had hard black eyes and his features, although sharp looked rather coarse and even a bit ugly. He wore tattered garments, colours long faded to gray through hundreds, perhaps thousands of such journeys, north to south and then back again and his smell, oh, his smell, it was foul. He was constantly chewing a sourleaf, something that William could not wrap his head around even after spending a whole 20 days with him.

They had marched along the kingsroad, and it had taken them 19 days to reach the Wall. The cold grew by leagues every mile they crossed and the hills he saw in the south grew until he could not see the top clearly. The stony peaks, gigantic and looming had given him much a reason to anticipate what would be coming.

He had heard tales after all, from the Old Man that the wall dwarfed even some mountains; though it could not be called larger than all of them.

The imagery of such a mighty structure, forged of pure ice sent a shiver down his spine if the cold failed to do so.

But as he had found out, the cold was just the beginning. As they neared the wall, the cold became so bad that William felt as if he was freezing his balls off. He had, many a times, prayed to the old gods that his sack may still remain cozy, lest it broke off from a frostbite. Back in his village, he had met a man, an old man, who had lost a hand from the chill of winter and it did not help his overactive imagination.

They had reached the wall 3 days prior, Castle Black to be specific, and William had already begun to miss farmwork.

It'll get better. He repeated to himself. You'll grow into it. Part of him was oh, so painfully aware that he was only lying to himself. One does not grow used to the cold, much less the cold on the Wall. But another part, however small it was, held hope that he somehow would. After all, he was going to spend the rest of his life here.

Life... He thought absently, a bitter feeling blooming in his stomach. He had barely had a life. And here, he had sacrificed all that. Almost every other recruit was older than he was, lived longer than he had and had less years to spend here. Him, a man grown yesterday could not help but lament the unfairness of it all.

The Wall had been everything he had hoped, cold, majestic, and ever overhead. The Night's Watch, not so much.

He had steeled himself to be met with disappointment, but even that could not prepare him for what he saw of the once legendary order.

It was a... tough fact to get used to. A good chunk of the order was made out of criminals, poachers, rapists, killers, slavers and rejects. The ones that remained were composed of bastards, lordlings that would never inherit the house or serve as bannermen and if ever, the rare individual who genuinely wished to serve. The latter consisted of William.

His gaze drifted upwards as he stood before the armory. It was midday now. The sun had broken through the clouds. The Wall was, as always, blazing blue and crystalline in the sunlight. Even after three days, the sight of it still gave him the shivers. Centuries of windblown dirt had pocked and scoured it, covering it like a film, and it often seemed a pale grey, the color of an overcast sky... but when the sun caught it fair on a bright day, it shone, alive with light, a colossal blue-white cliff that filled up half the sky. The largest structure ever built by the hands of man, only after the Hightower that towered over even the Wall.

Faint precipitation gathered over it. The brothers of the Watch referred to this as 'weeping.'

Sighing once again, he entered the armory.

The armory was a large hall, end to end it was almost as large as one of their fields back home. Coal burned on the other side of the great hall in many braziers, but the entire structure was still cold as ice.

William took off his armor, shivering and hung his longsword on the wall. He had been a craftly hand at swordplay, or so said Ser Alliser Thorne. And him being the master-at-arms of Castle Black, William was inclined to believe his words, even though he knew little of what his praise meant; if they even were words of praise.

Swordplay had not been something William enjoyed. He could not count the number of times he had been pummeled to the dirt by some of the other recruits and he was sure many of the wounds would leave scars.

"Cheer up, man!" He felt someone slap his shoulder. William winced, his body staggering under the weight of the blow. He knew who it was.

He turned around, getting face to face with a man he had come to know all too well. The man was large and imposing, standing a whole head taller than William. His face was covered by a thick beard, wrung like iron ringmail, and William had been shocked to know that such a man was only 19.

His body was not as imposing as his height, and he was rather lean.

"Paul." William nodded at his friend with the slightest hint of a smile. He was a lively man from the Reach, and was sent to the wall on account of murder. Apparently, he had struck a man who had slept with his wife unconscious, before running a dagger into the man's crotch. The man soon died of bloodloss.

"Don't be too hung up on Ser Alliser's words! He gets too cranky for his own good!" He billowed. William bristled. "Keep your voice down! If he hears us, we'll be punished again!"

Indeed, his dear friend had been the reason he had already been punished once - a whole 70 laps all around the yard for good measure. Even so, the man was a good person. At least William hadn't found any reason to antagonize him. And now that he was in night's watch, he would have no more women, so getting stabbed through the cock was not a problem he would face.

"Hahaha! You worry too much! Let's go and get something to eat! We need to attend to the horses afterwards!"

William sighed but said nothing against the man's words.

After dropping his equipment, he walked out of the armory. While doing so, he could not help but throw an empty glance to the end of the hall, where a lone man rested atop a chair, drinking ale with his remaining arm.

Donal Noye... William thought. The smith of house Baratheon of Storm's End. The man who made King Robert Baratheon's hammer and Stannis Baratheon's first sword.

The man was somewhat of a legend. Even with one arm lost, his vigour and desire to create remained.

William had never once struck a conversation with this pseudo-legendary figure, but he figured the day would come. He had all the time in the world after all.

Paul pulled on his furs that he had donned, the black he would become comfortable with for the rest of his life, and so he followed outside.