I awoke to shouts and screams, howls of pain and opened my eyes to a world I couldn't hope to recognise.
A gust of cold wind blew past me, and then came a knight in plate riding forth on a warhorse that trampled a few men, beheaded another with a heavy swing of his longsword and fell when a lance was thrust into his horse's neck. His neck was crushed, and the life drained from his eyes as a dull sky watched overhead.
The iron stench of spilled blood assaulted my senses, mingling with piss and shit and the tears of men who had no inkling of what it was that they had signed up for. Peasants with rusty swords and pikes struggled against men in mail and proper gear.
To my right, men were pushed into a deep river and drowned in its rushing waters by the charge of cavalry. They held aloft banners I couldn't place, a roaring lion on red, three dogs running on yellow, a grey wolf rushing on white, and many many more. They shouted words and names I couldn't place, and called out to gods I had never heard of before.
Rows of soldiers, with shields held out and spears poking from within them, came piling down the side of a hill. They looked barbarian, with unkempt hair, thick gambesons and savage eyes that weren't of men at all. They brandished jagged axes and swords almost as large as men.
"Winterfell! Stark!"
My eyes widened, those words I did know.
"Casterly Rock!"
Those, I did too.
What men met them were more properly ordained and yet no better at all. They wore proper armour, with chestplates enamelled a red, or a burgundy, they listened to what was being shouted over the desperate cries of men dead or dying.
Steel struck steel, steel struck flesh, the grass ran wet with blood. Men tore open each other's throats, each other's flesh, and spilled guts on to the plains. They bludgeoned each other. They maimed each other. They cursed, and they killed.
My throat caught up, I hurled out whatever I'd eaten and my breath ran ragged. The bit of armour strapped to my chest felt heavy. The gambeson under it choked me. I desperately unclasped the cast iron halfhelm on my head, and tossed it with no regard for where it went.
I didn't understand. Where was I? How was I here?
There was nothing particular that I had done. I was a mere graduate, headed to give an interview for a job I had no interest in but would make ends meet until I could find something better. There was nothing special to me, aside from passing fascination with history. I had been rejected twice and graduated with no great honor. Even my passion for the mystical and the unexplained was seen as childish and idiotic by most people.
"...Bryce! Bryce! Get a hold of yourself, boy!"
...Bryce?
Who was tha-... I was thrown to the grass by an older man, with a short, greying beard and pale eyes under a helm. He seemed... familiar. I opened my mouth to question him, plead or decry but he was gone before I could. A towering man threw himself into the stranger who called me, and in the blink of an eye, he opened him from shoulder to gut. His eyes lingered on the fresh corpse for a moment, and then, a raspy, amused chuckle escaped his lips like grating stone.
With easy disregard, he turned to me. There was cruelty in his eyes. There was violence in his form. He was so tall he seemed inhuman. His shoulders were massive, and his arms were as thick as tree trunks.
To me, he seemed a mountain, an insurmountable obstacle.
"...You saw." He considered.
A moment later, his battle-scarred plate armor rumbled as he hoisted his great sword above. That was when it hit me. He was going to kill me too.
Why?
It didn't matter.
My arms suddenly weighed a ton, and my legs were stuck to the ground. I was afraid. I didn't know how. I willed them to move. My limbs struggled to answer. By then, his sword was halfway down.
It took all the strength I could muster to simply throw myself out of the way, and roll pathetically in the grass as his blade buried itself into the soil. Blood stained my hands and my face. I found I didn't care.
The mountainous knight let out an annoyed growl as he wrenched his sword free and began stomping my away.
Around us, the battle raged. And men whose profession was murder toiled endlessly, moaning and shouting, but killing all the same. It seemed to be taking a turn, as another cavalry charge shattered through the defensive lines of the men hoisting the direwolf banner.
A sudden clarity took me as my hands found a long dirk fastened to my belt. I groped along the hilt, and pulled it out. The man laughed at my flimsy blade.
"Mine's bigger."
I didn't know where the words came from.
"...It's how you use it."
He laughed again. His gauntlet found the dirk faster than a man his size any right to and the metal groaned and shattered under his strength. I let it go. But, he had been expecting that. He swung his sword with the other hand and that was it.
My desperate struggle had amounted to all of nothing in the face of this... monster.
And yet, I still raised my hands.
When his sword struck my palm, a deathly chill gushed from within. It was not like the tremble in my hands from before, nor like the bile or the fear that rendered me immobile. It was foreign, yet natural. As if it was meant to be there.
I heard a crack, and opened my eyes to a face from some nightmare. The knight's eyes were still ajar in surprise, from fear or what I did not know, but his movement had come to an abrupt halt. The sword meant to tear me open shattered into a thousand pieces and fell like glass.
I looked at my palm, and found that there was a wound but no blood at all. It was merely a gash, like one would make on something frozen. I looked at my enemy, and found no life in his eyes. It was as if he was some well-preserved sculpture, or an exhibit in some museum.
He was dead. I knew it.
In the moment I closed my eyes, he died. The men around us didn't seem to notice, too busy making corpses of one another. Cautiously, I crept up to him, wondering if it was truly wise. Then, it came to me. There was nothing wise to be done. I was in a battle, pushed against a river. There was nothing to do but struggle because I did not want to give up no matter how foreign the situation was.
His armor felt icy to the touch, yet no colder than what was now riling within me. When I put a bit more strength into my hand, he fell lifeless to the earth, like some marionette without strings. He died without flair, or grandeur. Just... abruptly taken. Ironic, considering he had no need to attack me. There was a roaring lion sewn into my gambeson, the same as his.
I clenched my palm, and pointed it outwards. When I willed it, the deathly chill gushed out once again, as if it were some biological function, not akin to breathing but like the movement of an arm or a leg.
This time, the grass crumpled and shattered. The air solidified into shards of ice, and someone did take notice. Distracted before a sword from some soldier buried itself in his back, the soldier rushed at me, and the ice shot forth. It blew through him. Then, he too unceremoniously crumpled to the earth.
"Well now..." The words drew me and I whirred around to come face to face with a thin, tall man. His dark hair fell over darker eyes under a steel halfhelm that only revealed his chin and slight stubble. "If my eyes work right, and I believe they do, that's the Mountain. Did you do it?"
The stranger wore dark, oiled ringmail over leather and thick hide gauntlets. He rested his longsword on his shoulder, and scratched his chin, smiling wolfishly.
I readied myself, hands open.
But, he suddenly raised his free hand in surrender. I guessed it was his experience that let him be so calm amidst a battle when my eyes wandered and twitched over every slight movement, waiting and afraid of when someone would turn their sights to me.
"Wait, wait. If you did him in, I'd be out of my mind. You're Lannis-...! Behind y-"
My inexperience shone through. How could it not? This world was foreign, I did not have the faintest of ideas how to handle it. This situation made no sense. I could only imagine that this power over ice had to be used voluntarily.
He ran at me. I thought he was bluffing, but he was not. Something hit the back of my head hard, and my world went black.
=
I've been reading on this site for a few months as a guest and finally decided to try my hand at writing. Took me a decent bit of time but it was pretty fun. I'll take any pointers you might have for a starter, and I hope you enjoy the story I have to tell.