[BONUS] Winter Comes Mini-Interlude (GoT SI) (Patreon)

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The Life and Death of Urrk Frag, Free Thinkin' Wildling

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He was one of the adventurous ones. One of the ones who questioned the nature of their existence. Nobody else did. The Free Folk had become kneelers in his humble opinion. They kneeled to a God at least, rather than a King or a Lord, but they still knelt. Well, not Urrk Frag. Urrk didn't kneel to no one, even if he did acknowledge the Night King's power.

Trying to start a revolution against the inhuman being was futile. Better to just leave. That was the conclusion Urrk eventually came to and so, like many free thinkers before him, Urrk had packed up his things and headed north. Wasn't like he could go south of the Wall after all. Not only would the Night's Watch kill him rather than let him through, Urrk knew that those south of the Wall were even bigger kneelers than the Free Folk.

It wasn't right, all that damn kneeling. Urrk was a free spirit and he needed to find a place where he could be that without the invisible shackles that bound his kin! And so Urrk headed north through the Haunted Forest. And eventually he came to the edge of the trees, looked out at the frozen wasteland before him… and nearly balked.

But no, once he'd checked to make sure his supplies were still tip top and what not, Urrk trudged on forward into the endless snowy plains in front of him. The wildling was not about to let a bit of bad weather stop him. He wasn't.

It didn't take long for Urrk to run into the first castle. He stared, wide eyed up at the thing. It was bigger than any structure he'd ever seen before… it might have even been bigger than the wall. All black, jagged spikes and foreboding skull gates. Urrk didn't think castles could be evil, but this… this Citadel of Ice, it felt like it was evil. Like there was a presence to it, like the damn eye sockets of the skulls were staring at him!

Urrk dared not enter. Instead, he continued onwards north. He passed by many a castle, some similar to that one, some not so much. The wildling entered NONE of them though, so shaken he was by the first he'd encountered. Instead, Urrk moved on and carefully rationed his supplies to carry him further and further north.

He was far past the point of no return by now. If he went back, he'd die on the way home. But Urrk didn't want to go back anyways. Even in the biting winds and freezing cold, he was still who he was! A free thinking man who didn't need no god or lord or king to kneel to! Gritting his teeth, Urrk trudged on, never stopping, barely resting.

Eventually though, his supplies began to run out. The elements began to get to him. Urrk needed shelter. Ultimately, he came across a structure amidst what felt like a hundred-hundred structures and this one wasn't so frightening. Made out of slanted sheets of ice, it spoke of solitude and loneliness to his innate sixth sense.

Urrk entered the seemingly empty structure, hoping that perhaps he would find food or water. He walked among the unnatural ice that made up the fortress and he shivered as he clutched his furs closer to his chest. Turning a corner, the wildling screamed and fell back as a wight stared him in the face without eyes.

The reanimated corpse was more than half rotted, but it still had hair on its barely there scalp, and teeth in its jaw. It seemed to regard him for a moment as he lay there frozen on the ground. Then, it moved past him, shambling along. Urrk calmed his beating heart. It was only a deader. No big deal. They were all around growing up, it made sense that they'd be here too. Just a fact of life right? Corpses got up and walked around sometimes and so long as you didn't bug them, they didn't bug you.

Slowly, Urrk got to his feet, staring after the corpse as it walked away from him. Where was it going? What was it planning on doing next? These questions filled Urrk's free thinkin' mind, but ultimately something far more important to the adventurous wildling reared its ugly head. His stomach growled so mightily that Urrk half thought there was a snow bear around for a moment.

After realizing the gnawing pain in his belly was getting worse, Urrk grimaced and turned away to continue on his path deeper into the fortress, that solitary feeling growing even as he found several more deaders along the way. Eventually though, he caught a whiff of something. Smelled like… like something edible. Urrk couldn't place a name to the smell, but he followed it along and ultimately discovered the fortress' larder.

The adventurous wildling was lucky that the Night King considered a fully stocked kitchen a proper component of any castle. Urrk ended up eating his full that night and every night for a week. He barely made a dent in the food store and at the end of the week, when he finally decided that he had to keep going north, that he couldn't allow himself to be tied down to one place, even a nice place like this… he took as much as he could carry with him.

Urrk continued on north with his food store. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and Urrk would stop by the fortresses that looked exactly like the one he'd first looted, whenever he began to run out of food. There seemed to be no end to the massive structures, but at the very least he'd learned the lay out of this particular one, which seemed to be repeated every dozen or so castles over and over again.

Ultimately, there were only about ten to fifteen different types of structures, made over and over again in the same exact way every single time. But there were hundreds if not thousands of those ten to fifteen types and Urrk wondered if there was ever an end to this, or if they simply layered across the north forever and ever.

Months became a year and then two years and then three years. Urrk kept moving though. An adventurous spirit like him could never be happy with settling down. He had to explore, he had to discover new things. And with a full stomach, he could do that. Even if the new things he was discovering at this point were just new versions of old things he'd found for the last several years dotting the landscape behind him.

It all grew rather repetitive and more than once Urrk considered turning around… but then he'd spend the same amount of time going BACK to the Free Folk as he'd spent getting here and he was afraid it would drive him mad. Surely he had to be close to the end of the repetitive castles and fortresses and citadels and palaces, right? Surely, there had to BE an end to them, somewhere in the north…

And he was in fact right. Eventually, Urrk found the end. He came to the place where a dozen new massive structures were being built and he stood there with his eyes wide and his jaw dropped open. An uncountable multitude of deaders scurried all over the foundations of the half-built castles before him. Slowly, Urrk found himself putting one foot in front of the other, until he was close enough to see them more clearly.

They weren't rotted. They had skin and eyes and beyond the blue glow in said eyes and the paleness of said skin, they almost looked as alive as anyone he'd ever known. But… deaders weren't this intelligent were they? How could they possibly be building a castle? Had they built EVERY castle?! Slowly, Urrk explored further, making sure to never disturb any of the dead in their work. The horror stories of fucking with the reanimated corpses were taught to every Free Folk child. You don't touch them, you don't throw rocks at them, you don't even shout at them if you can help it.

Deaders were harmless… until they weren't. So Urrk was very careful as he continued on, until finally he saw something that made his already frozen blood run even colder. There was a White Walker there, sitting atop a horse, watching the proceedings. Almost as if he was observing the deaders… almost as if he was controlling them.

A whole lot of pieces crystallized in Urrk's mind in that moment. He had to make several leaps of logic to get there, but when he did he was pretty much spot on. Urrk Frag, free thinker and even freer spirit, had discovered the truth. Both about the White Walkers… and the Free Folk. They were… they were being cultivated, his people were! They were being grown and they prospered at the benevolence of the White Walkers, solely so that when they died, the blue skinned beings could use their corpses for… t-this?!

Urrk didn't fully understand why, but he did get the what. And it was horrifying to a man like Urrk. The desecration of their dead across untold amounts of time. There were more dead here along this stretch of half-finished castles then Urrk had thought existed. Many magnitudes more than the living Free Folk back in the Haunted Forest.

This… this was the truth of the North. This was the TRUE True North. His kin beyond the Wall, they had no idea what was awaiting them. Someone… someone had to tell them. Had to tell them all.

Urrk spun around to begin the trek back down south, possible loss of sanity be damned, only to run straight into the chest of a waiting wight. It's clawed, bone fingers grabbed him before he could fall back and he was left staring into its empty gaze. Its glowing blue eyes flicked up past his shoulder and Urrk followed them, looking back to see the White Walker staring down from atop his horse.

"Oh no…"

They were the first words the adventurous wildling had spoken in a long time. They came out raspy, but it was a miracle that they came out at all given how long his frozen vocal cords had gone without use. They were also the last words Urrk ever said. He turned back to the wight and it attacked, a roar coming from its throat and its jaw spread unnaturally wide.

Urrk died there and a few moments later, he rose up and alongside his wight brother, he got to work. Just like every adventurous 'free thinking' wildling before him and just like every adventurous 'free thinking' wildling that had yet to come.