[OPEN] Oh, in dreams I have watched it spin

[northerndragon]

WHO? Jon Snow (northerndragon) & maybe you!
WHAT? Open log including dream event prompts.
WHEN? December 2017! Backdated and forward dated are very welcome.
ANYTHING ELSE? Opening summary below cut, detailed prompts in the comments.

The surface of BASE may be unfamiliar, but it doesn't take long -- a few days at most -- for Jon to begin to realize that in its bones, it's a lot like Castle Black. Everything around them speaks of a military organization with stretched resources. The little machines are like builders and stewards and maesters, and he suspects they eat much less than sworn brothers do. And he can see evidence everywhere of attempts to keep everything in good working order and to reuse anything that can be reused.

As such, in spite of those surface differences, he begins to feel more at home.

Comments

DREAMS

[northerndragon]

I. FOEMEN

[northerndragon]

Jon had never been warm at the Wall. If he were awake, he would find it strange that he's warm now.

The border of the forest here at Castle Black is kept a distance from the Wall itself, so a man standing 700 feet high at the top can see the edge of the woods, can see rangers returning or wildlings threatening an attack, and so that no one can climb it. And it's a black and white world from this high up, and blue, and green: snow, ice, and trees as far as the eye can see.

Now there's the red and gold and orange of fire in the night, and horns and howling and a steady pulse of war drums coming from the woods. Tiny figures break from the tree line, armed with spears and bows and axes, some riding in bone chariots… and there are bigger figures too. From up here, even the giants look small.

“Stand fast,” he calls to his brothers, though it seems hardly possible to shout loud enough. “Throw them back. Flame,” he cried, “feed them flame,” but there's no one to pay heed.

They are all gone. They have abandoned me.

Burning shafts of arrows hiss upward, trailing tongues of fire. “Snow,” an eagle cries, as enemies scuttle up the ice like spiders. Jon is armored in black ice, but his blade burns red in his fist and he feels as warm as he ever has.

As the dead men reach the top of the Wall he sends them down to die again. He slays an old man and a young boy, a giant, a young woman with blue eyes and thick red hair. Before she falls, he recognizes her, but as hard as he tries to say her name, as much dismay as it obviously causes him to see her there, he can't.

The world dissolves into a red mist. Jon stabs and slashes and cuts and kicks. He hacks down more people, some he recognizes as friends, some of whom he knows aren't dead at all. Davos Seaworth goes as surely as Ramsay Bolton does. Tyrion Lannister follows Alliser Thorne. A Dothraki screamer with glowing blue eyes and torn skin follows the rest.

A dragon cries overhead, circling in the night. The sounds below grow faint as it goes on.

Something draws him to look down the wall, and he sees it: a king made of ice with a dead heart of ice, with an ice-bone crown, with the power to make it all start again even if it seems to be ending. The king approaches him, approaches you, step by slow step, almost unconcerned. Slowly, the sounds of war below awaken again with his progress.

"I can't stop it," Jon says, desperately, with no one to hear him but you.

[Credit: Parts of this dream and its overall shape are lifted directly from A Dance With Dragons, but not all of it.]

cw: gore and death

[dorzalta]

The winds howl--or they should, this high up, but they don't. Instead, they whip at her clothing, Meereenese silks long since abandoned. They whip at her hair, her cheeks--and yet she is not cold.

It would be beautiful, to gaze upon the world from this height. Much akin to flying on Drogon's back, with surroundings transforming into minuscule specs, like little dolls and wooden pieces for a child to create his or her own scene.

It would be beautiful, to be this close to the moon... were it not for the haunting war horns further ahead. Snow and ice crackle beneath her boots as she steps along a well-worn path. Guards do not flank her; sentries do not line the walkway, save for one figure further ahead.

Jon.

She's just about to call his name, relief upon seeing him near palpable. Or it was. Sinking fear causes her heart to skitter when she realizes he fights. Old, young--a beautiful woman with haunting blue eyes and a snarl on her lips. She tumbles over the side, down, down down... and the look on Jon's face makes her think she shattered his heart before her fall. It gives Dany pause. Hesitation to shouting his name.

Ser Davos. Lord Tyrion. One of her Dothraki. All with haunting eyes like the redhead. She grips her gun tightly, not realizing when she'd reached for one, not realizing when she'd obtained it, nor how it possible she did.

"Stop what?" It? The attack? The bodies he knocks back down? Something else? She looks down as he does, and amidst the mass of bodies, one stands out. Haunting eyes. A passive visage. A large spear of ice in his hand.

The Night King. Is that what he truly looks like? Is this the entity she'd encountered in a time not yet lived? The one who stole from her? It doesn't matter; a dragon's roar mutes her fear, has her rushing closer to the edge and Jon as she gazes beyond. Beyond the masses of bodies below, beyond the forest of trees, up, up into the night sky, where her child's body circles. But--but there's something wrong. Something wrong with him. He does not strike their foes.

Soon, there are two answering cries. Shadowed silhouettes soaring overhead. One swoops downward, a funnel of flame decimating the front ranks before Rhaegal breaks from his dive and flaps upward. Drogon ignores the masses below, bellowing a roar she's never heard--anger, grief, betrayal--and crashes head on with Viserion. Viserion.

"Don't!" she yells to her children. "Stop it!"

They ignore her. The bodies continue to crawl up the wall, much like Irriella does her arm when beckoned. The next one which threatens to land before them receives a bullet in its throat; she nearly drops the gun when dark, congealed blood oozes from the hole, from the creature's mouth.

"How do we destroy it?"

[northerndragon]

He turns to look at her then, and when he sees her, his expression is complicated: relief that he's not alone, pleasure that it's her, and much more than anything, dismay for the same reason. She will die here. She will die if he makes even the slightest misstep.

And over their heads, dragons are fighting. Two of them -- Drogon and the one that has been lost -- tangle in the air, and the dead one shoots flame the blue of the wights' eyes. He'd thought that nothing could be more sickening and angering than the way the dragon died, but this surpasses it.

There's nothing he can do about the dragons now: he can't stop a wight dragon from here and he can't stop the other two from fighting it. Meanwhile, more figures climb the walls. It doesn't matter if Daenerys puts a bullet in the throat of a wight... bullets aren't made of dragonglass or Valyrian steel.

"I don't know how to destroy it. Drogon, or Longclaw... Lightbringer... I don't know. It doesn't matter what the Red Woman says, I'm not The Prince That -- "

Something reaches for her, and with a lunge and a crunching swipe, he kills it, then uses his foot to kick it off of the length of his sword and back down the wall.

[OOC note: I keep forgetting to say it, but chronologically, this thread follows more or less after this one! Which is NSFW in later parts.]

[dorzalta]

He wouldn't have to fight this alone. Not that all their talks come to mind--no, she's too busy frowning, attention flicking from Jon and to Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion again. Ear-splitting roars which settle in her bones. Blue and orange flames, creating bright explosions when they connect. The urge to retch grows stronger by the second.

Bone crunches, and she's jerking back. Stupid to look away. The more immediate threat was literally right in front of them... not her dragons.

"--was promised can bring the dawn." Looking at him now, she's far too pale. The Red Priestess from Asshai--Melisandre, she called herself. She'd spoken highly of Jon, pleading Dany to meet the King in the North. Faintly: "It's the prince or princess."

Prophecies. They're dangerous things to believe in, isn't that what she'd been told? The blast from her gun echoes, the knock-back from the bullet's impact sending another corpse over the edge before it can pull itself up.

She reaches for him, fingers digging into the thickness of his top, buffered by his cloak. They were... they were going to die if it was the two of them against an entire army. She was no warrior, not like him. Her only power was battling in the skies as she watched him, swallowing past the lump in her throat as she does.

"We have--" Ice crunching has her looking away... only to meet the gaze of the Night King. No longer hundreds of feet below them, but standing a foot or two away. Cold, dead eyes. Expressionless. He's reaching for them, and her grip on Jon's arm tightens. She can't move. Can't look away. Drogon roars and the pained sound of Rhaegal echoes in her ears and--

Why can't she can't move?!

[northerndragon]

Not everyone climbing is a wight, but some of the ones that fall seem to begin to climb again with eyes glowing blue. Never mind fighting all of these people alone: how are they meant to kill all of them time and again, whether he does it alone or Daenerys helps him?

He can feel her fingers on his arm through the armor. They push through it as though it's soft.

When he hears the ice crunching closer to them than anyone should be, his head whips around, and when he sees the Night King, so near to him that their final battle seems imminent and inevitable, he feels cold for the first time. The dragons shriek in the sky and his lover's fingers grip his arm tightly, but not even the unnatural warmth can survive the Night King's presence.

The chill begins to hurt, begins to freeze him from the heart outward. The armor begins to solidify again so he can't move, and Jon struggles against it, but he --

Wakes up like a shot, narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the ceiling of his chamber, and rustling Daenerys, whose head had been pillowed on his chest.

"I had a bad dream," he says, hoarse.

[dorzalta]

I had a bad dream, he says as she's jostled awake with a gasp. Dead eyes haunt her as she struggles to sit up, her limbs sluggish not with sleep, but the sensation of being weighed down by ice. Filling her fingers, hands, arms... and the same with her legs. The room is warm. She is warm, especially curled against him.

There's a tremble to her hands as she presses to her knees and reaches for him. One around his shoulders to pull him into a tight hug, the other to cradle the back of his head.

"I did, as well," she whispers. If she closes her eyes, the images remain. She doesn't close her eyes. "We were at the Wall, I think."

[northerndragon]

He lets himself be hugged and likes the comfort of her hand against his head, but his limbs feel as sluggish, and it takes a moment for him to put his arms around her.

When she speaks, he pulls back and looks at her, surprised.

"At the Wall. You had a gun. The dragons were fighting each other in the air.

"I was always alone before, in that dream, and there were no dragons... just people climbing the walls. It seemed like it would never end."

[dorzalta]

Her hands slip from around him, and she settles back; his surprise is mirrored.

"Viserion was--" She shakes her head, something desperate entering her gaze. "You saw him die. He couldn't..."

...Could he? But no, she doesn't know how the dead work, and how could it possible affect a dragon in the same way? No, no this is not possible, so she focuses instead on what he speaks of.

"How often have you dreamt it? There were people we knew with the corpses, those not dead."

A redhead.

[northerndragon]

"Not often. I don't understand the armor, but maybe I was thinking of dragonglass. The sword... it's a little like Lord Beric's sword, but it wasn't like Longclaw."

He doesn't remember just now that Daenerys hasn't yet met Beric Dondarrion.

"Viserion went under the water, where the dead can't go. I'd fear that he would become a wight... there are bear wights and mammoth wights... but I know they can't touch him there."

His hand goes up into his hair, which is loose, to push it back from his face as he frowns.

"It seemed at first like I was killing everyone I knew but you."

[dorzalta]

"How often since coming here?" She's no idea what the Night King or even the wall would look like. And how would she share a dream with him? He's appeared in a number of her dreams, some morphed memories of her past, and others strange and in settings she imagines were part of his life. Also morphed and dream-like. But this, this was far too real. "I don't know who lord Beric is, Jon."

This is not her room, though it is her assigned sleeping quarters. With a quiet sigh, she shifts around so that they're sitting side by side, and she tugs the blanket up to tuck beneath her arms. Nakedness never bothers her, but tonight, it makes her feel far too exposed.

"So he's spared from that. Good." She sounds tired. She is tired. "You didn't kill me in your other dreams?"

[northerndragon]

"Coming to BASE, or finding myself with COST? I had it once in Jerusalem."

He drags his hand from his hair to scrub it against his eyes.

"I didn't kill you. Never you. And Lord Beric... he has a flaming sword." As if that explains it all; as if he hasn't killed what now feels like a hundred other people, in his dreams and out of them.

[OOC note: also I am a fool, they are in Dany's room, and he did not almost hit his head upon awaking, because there's actually clearance in that room.]

[dorzalta]

"Never since?" How often did he have it in their world? Gods, to wake up alone from that sort of dream...

She presses her cheek to his shoulder. Her own hair is a tangled mess, loose as it is. Not worth the effort of taming it at this point. If they fall back asleep, would the dream haunt them again? Would it be a more peaceful sleep?

"Who else did you know?" How many of those faces were people he knew? Gods, she hopes not all of them. "Save the ones we know."

II. WINTERFELL

[northerndragon]

It's a castle, with tall walls and taller towers. It's stood for thousands of years. Its name is Winterfell, but no one is sure why.

It's also Jon's family home.

He enters through the East Gate from the Kingsroad, riding a sturdy brown stallion. Like any castle, Winterfell should be full of the bustle of family and soldiers and servants and beasts, but today, it isn't.

A blanket of sparkling snow rests lightly on everything in sight. The snow is undisturbed, and its crisp crunch under the hooves of his horse make it seem like it's been hours since it fell. He can see his breath spiraling through the air, and the horses's… and there's nothing else. It's as if everyone has completely vanished.

He angles the horse to the south, past the armory and the Great Keep, seeing nothing but snow and empty buildings. There should be smoke coming from chimneys, the sounds of arrows hitting their targets, the clash of practice swords, hammers at the forges. There should be voices. His sisters and his brother should be here, his sisters' feet making marks in the snow.

When he reaches the stables, he finds them empty except for the bones of the animals that should be residing in them. They look like they've been there for a long time.

He is afraid. The idea that his heart hammering in his chest should be the only human sound in Winterfell strikes him as vaguely absurd.

Further investigation reveals nothing but more of the same: no people, no sign of any recent life here, or even recent death. He looks in the kitchens, the library, the maester's tower, the Great Hall, and all is cold and silent and still.

And then he goes to the crypt, feeling called to it, feeling like he must. There's a lichyard there, but what he's after is the heavy ironwood door. He means to pull at it, but it isn't heavy at all; it lifts with no resistance, and when he steps inside, it closes behind him, leaving him in the dark with a single torch on the wall.

There's something he has to see, something he has to find. He takes the torch from its bracket and begins to descend the steps that wind deep down into the earth, his fear growing with every step.

tags finally after so long

[horsepowered]

This environment is unlike anything Chiron had encountered thus far through dream walking. The closest he might compare it to would be Mordred's dreamscape, but the atmosphere is too different for the comparison to go beyond the overall materials used for building and some architectural elements.

And it is quiet.

That last part has Chiron concerned. His hooves echo through the hallways he travels, seeking out any living soul in the unfamiliar castle he has found himself in. (For in dreams, he's a proper centaur again, rather than a man.) Each room yielded no indicator that there was a living soul, and eventually, Chiron decided that to check each room was a fool's errand.

Checking courtyards yielded nothing either, but gave a sense of the place's scale. It isn't just that the place is large - it's the sense that it is for keeping people in as well as out. It may be an incorrect reading, but no matter.

Time travels strangely in dreams. Chiron can't say how long it takes to locate the crypt or to notice that there the great door there has been left slightly ajar. It is the only place unexplored, and Chiron is sure that after this, there must be a world beyond this castle to explore instead.

When he tugs the door open further, there is genuine surprise that he can see far away light illuminating the stairs.

"Hm," he says, before knocking gently on the wall to see how the sound carries further down the stairs. If there is another individual there, he may well finally get a response.

yesssss

[northerndragon]

The stairs wind down and down into the cold earth.

Sometimes, on nights when Jon passes this way, he has a torch. At other times, he doesn't... so he's lucky today, and lucky not to have a leg wound that will make the stairs more difficult to descend.

The more recent crypts aren't as far down as the oldest ones, and as he reaches the level where Father's bones should rest, where Robb's bones should rest, he begins to hear sounds. There's music, conversation, laughter... the sounds that in combination never mean anything other than a feast. They're distant, but he decides to follow them. On the way, he'll have to pass the tombs of the old Kings of Winter, with iron swords stretched across their knees and stone direwolves to guard them.

There are footsteps behind him, too, ones he hasn't heard until now... or it may be that his horse is following him into the crypt. He should attend to that before he tries to find Father and Robb, before he tries to pass by all those dead Starks guarding the way. He feels unwelcome here, and though he's a brave man, a little bit afraid.

"Is someone there?" He calls the words out into the darkness up the stairs.

Apologies for it taking so damn long

[horsepowered]

"Yes, there is."

There's zero point in not responding to the question. Not when Chiron barely knows where he is, and the lack of people is deeply disturbing to him. The place is desolate, reinforced by the poor weather outside and the stairs leading down, down, down into the Earth.

He is certain to add one point that should help. Or raise new fears, depending on the person in question.

"I mean no harm."

[northerndragon]

Anyone can say that, can't they? That they mean no harm? People mean no harm until they do, and they may be dishonest about their intentions.

Yet, at the moment, Jon finds that he's glad of the company. He moves back up the stairs with the torch, frowning, and sees...

"Chiron."

Wait, that's not right -- or is it? It's a different face.

"I have to go down into the crypts. I know it. Will you come? They may not want me here."

In all honesty, he doesn't really want to go: his reluctance is apparent in his tone. But so is his determination to do it anyway.

[horsepowered]

It is a different face, but there's no correction in the name. Chiron himself sees no reason to do so, not when it's simply a matter of history branching off into two very, very different paths.

The idea that crypts can reject a man's presence is not something to take lightly. There's no questioning of why that might be so, only a firm nod of the head.

"Lead on, please."

He also extends a hand, should the torch be too tiring to carry.

[northerndragon]

Jon has been down here too many times to relinquish the torch too willingly, but after a moment's hesitation, he hands it over; it will free him for the use of a sword, if it's necessary. Then he starts the rest of the way down the stairs to the most recent graves again, which still go back well past the time of Aegon's Landing three hundred years earlier.

Below this level, the stairs continue to twist into the earth in the dark, and Jon knows he will have to descend them eventually.

The nearest tombs are the oldest, and instead of having swords across their knees, the kings have a stripe of rust fallen below where the sword once was.

"Can you hear the feast? It's down here somewhere. I can hear my father* and my brother, even though my brother's bones were never laid to rest here. But tombs were set aside for them. If they're feasting anywhere in the crypts...."

[*Nerd Note: Ned's bones absolutely did not make it to Winterfell in the books; there are a variety of fan theories about where they are. They seem to have made it to Winterfell in the show, because Jon has Rickon buried "next to his father" in 6x09.]

[horsepowered]

Chiron keeps the torch level as the stairs lead downwards. His eyes have no problems adjusting to the darkness, but his hooves do. They're narrow steps, twisting, illsuited for equines. Not that they would be expected here, clearly.

The concept of the dead feasting is something that he cannot tell is meant to be literal or metaphor. Death has a way of making both options plausible, and Chiron peers deeper into the darkness to try and make that determination.

He cannot, so his answer must be honest.

"I cannot. Not at the moment, at least."

[Nerd note deeply appreciated!]

[northerndragon]

When you die, there's nothing. He knows this.

There shouldn't be a feast, only an absence of everything... even calling death darkness and silence is making too much of it. Yet Winterfell shouldn't be empty of the living, and he can hear his dead feasting. Now, a young boy's laugh echoes through the vault with the rest of it: another lost brother.

He feels an impulse to run down the steps, as he always does when his dreams bring him here, but he's aware of the trouble Chiron is having, and forces himself to go slowly. Eventually, they reach the level with the most recent burials, and he steps onto it... though when they go back to the stairs, they'll have to go deeper.

It's cold in the tomb.

"These are my ancestors, the Kings in the North, the Kings of Winter, the Starks. But I'm not a Stark."

He begins to walk down the center of the vault, tombs to either side, with their rusted swords and their stone direwolves.

Did one of the stone direwolves just turn its head to watch him pass?

That would be madness.

[horsepowered]

The consideration is something that Chiron is grateful for. He has no grudge against whoever built the place - no one would have expected someone with his particular build - but it is a relief to be rid of the stairs and on proper, solid ground. Cold as it is, there's no endless curve.

It did not feel strange to intrude on a family crypt. Chiron's not sure why that is the case, not when he can, indeed, hear very faint voices of the dead if he strains his ears. It is Jon's words that make him feel like a true interloper.

"Were you raised as one?"

The question is asked in a soft voice, one trying to respect the crypt and the only other living person within them. If this is a matter of identity, then treading lightly is the only way forward.

Strange that the statues seem to have keener eyes here. But this is a dream. Maybe that's tied into the matter as well.

[northerndragon]

"Yes -- no. Lord Stark was my father, but I'm a bastard."

A few statues further in, the swords haven't yet crumbled to rust. And although they're getting a little closer to where the feast should be, the sounds of it aren't any louder: it remains distant, untouchable.

"When I die again, there won't be a place for me here -- not among the trueborn Starks. Maybe among the Kings in the North, but there was never one who wasn't a Stark before me."

The again seems to have passed his notice completely. It's not something he'd say to anyone while he was awake.

[horsepowered]

"In all the ways that count then, the answer is yes."

It could be a correction. It could be an observation. The ambiguity is very much on purpose, and Chiron falls silent after it. The sounds haven't changed. They're as distant as they ever were, and that is deeply disconcerting.

Holding the torch level, trying to shine it further into the darkness, Chiron's eyes go to the statues. The ages of them are impossible to tell. Stone shouldn't crumble so easily in these conditions.

"Are your bones more important than your deeds, and what stories will be told when you pass?"

The again is something Chiron notes, and it is why he adds: "Did their placement matter the first time?"