Little Dragon - Game of Thrones

20

The nights were long and sleepless for Lyla, and she imagined it was the same for all of the north. They traveled south towards the neck, the group growing larger and larger as villages, farms, and towns joined them on their trip.

Lyla sat by a tree on the outskirts of the camp, looking at a bow she had been given. It was goldenheart wood, built in the Summer Isles. Another young girl, around Lyla's age, walked near her, looking at Lyla with skeptical yet curious eyes. Lyla shifted under her gaze, heat rising into her cheeks.

"Lyla Stark, correct?" The girl asked with a voice filled with authority.

"Yes." Lyla said shyly, unable to resist admiring how pretty she thought the girl was.

"I'm Lyanna Mormont." Lyanna stuck out her hand, and the two shook hands. "You're good with a bow?"

"I like to think I am." Lyla shrugged, smiling nervously.

"Would you care to show me?"

She nodded slowly, getting to her feet and grabbing an arrow from the quiver beside her. The air was quiet as Lyla cocked the arrow, and letting it fly swiftly into a tree in the distance.

"I'm not great." Lyla mumbled, shuffling on her feet and looking down at the ground. Lyanna gazed at her with a raised eyebrow.

"You seem to get the idea." She replied with a slight smirk. Lyla smiled, but the same thoughts plagued her.

She'd never be as good as Theon.

---

Thick, humid forest surrounded Lyla, looming above so high sure couldn't even see the sky. Was it night or day? She couldn't tell.

She breathed heavily, whipping her head around to face someone.

A woman, thin and tall stared at her. Lyla swallowed a lump in her throat, then cried out as the woman sent a force of pain through her.

Her veins pulsed, feeling tight and painful under her scales. Scales? She must have been a dragon... The tightness inside her blood coiled inside her, then moved into her chest... Then up her throat... Then...

Red sprayed out of her mouth. It was like all the blood in her body had just exploded out of her maw. She screeched, thrashing as feeling quickly left her tail. Like she was being rolled over by a tree and all her insides were being squeezed out. She looked down, and the reflection in the blood beneath her was not her own dragon self. Suddenly, the red blood engulfed her vision.

---

Lyla gasped, sitting up and grasping at her chest. That woman... She seemed so familiar. Lyla shook her head, clenching her throat tight as if she'd lose the blood once more.

She felt strange. Like there was another pair of eyes in her head. Gently, Lyla laid her head back down, going she could get at least a little more sleep.

---

She opened her eyes. It was there again. The red blood, all around her. She thrashed her head, she was completely submerged. Once more, Lyla was a dragon, so she beat her wings, breaching and gasping into the air.

No longer was Lyla in that dark forest. No, instead she was in a place she had only heard about in books, or from the most exotic of travelers. Black mountains stood evenly around the river she was in. A river of red blood. Black snow fell from the sky, and eyes seemed to linger and leer in the corners of her vision. Lyla slinked out of the river, shaking herself off. She willed herself to turn human again, but to no avail. It was like there was no her left in the dragon.

Lyla reared up onto her hind legs, beating her wings and taking flight. The air stung her throat, and she was vaguely reminded of her room in Winterfell going up in flames. She followed the rivers path.

When the river turned, so did she. When the water fell, she fell with it. Down. She seemed to be going down, yet the mountains stayed in place in the horizon. She couldn't see a sun in the sky, nor a moon, so she couldn't tell what time it was.

It seemed like hours, or maybe even days, that she had followed that river in this strange hell. Slowly, the rivers waters had turned a slimy, glowing green. Like wildfire. Lyla couldn't pin point exactly when this has started, or when it finished, but nonetheless the change had happened. The further she flew down river, the more the shadows of the land seemed to fold and twist into hideous, malformed shapes and beasts.

A gust of wind caught her wings, clawing at her and pulling her downward, into an abyss. The green water cascaded down into it, and it had plans to bring Lyla as well. She screeched, the force of the wind glueing her wings onto her sides. She tried to fan them out, to catch herself, but it seemed to be futile.

Lyla looked around as she fell. Towers stood around the cavern, tall, thin, spiked. She cried out as thin little nails dug into her flank. It felt like little rat feet on her scales. She looked, kicking her leg violently when she saw the half melted corpse clinging to her. More dug into her skin. She looked into the corpse's eyes.

His eyes...

Bran?

Then she woke once more.