LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 2 – The Awakening
North, King's Road, 289 AC, two days later
Jon opened his eyes and realized he was in constant motion. Quickly, he looked around and saw that he was asleep inside a cart. Dozens of questions began to form in his mind, but a slight headache interrupted them. Suddenly, memories of what happened before he passed out came rushing back, and he felt pain. Pain for a mother he would never see again, pain for losing his last hope of life.
Even as a bastard, he would do anything to reach the person who could give him a chance to feel the true love of a mother. He longed for maternal love in his life, and it would be his mother who could heal his wounds and traumas from the past two years. Now, discovering that his mother was dead at the hands of his own father's words, he lost her too. Why should he live on, in that hole called one of the most renowned castles in Westeros, Winterfell?
He wanted to live as far away from that place as possible now. Sure, there was still Arya and his father there, but he didn't want to stay there anymore, even if he felt the pain of distancing himself from the few people who truly loved him. Jon wanted to find his home somewhere else.
The boy expressed his lifeless and hopeless gaze again. He wanted to know what to do with his life now. He reasoned that he should first have information about the current situation and why on earth he was inside a cart, especially alone.
"Is my father sending me to the Wall for theft?" He thought for a moment. "I heard many criminals are sent there."
Trying to keep his face as normal as possible, he opened the curtain and saw some guards. One of the four noticed him, and upon seeing Jon awake, quickly spoke for the others to hear:
"Look, the little thief is awake! Hide your wallets, lads, HAHAHAHA.
" They started laughing after that comment, and Jon shrunk a bit. Still, he tried to maintain some dignity in front of these men and did his best not to cry in the face of mockery, which hurt him a lot.
"What's happening? Where are they taking me?" He said, but his tone showed a bit of desperation. The men stopped laughing, now looking somewhat conflicted, until one of them came closer to the window and said, "We're going to the Wall, lad. We're escorting you north, by direct order of your father, Lord Stark."
Despair overcame Jon. "Do the gods hate me so much?" It was his first question in his mind after hearing this.
"Not only do they take my mother from me, but they also have my father send his 8-day-old son to the Wall?" Even though he claimed he no longer wanted to stay in Winterfell, finding out that his father sent him to the Wall was a shock.
"Still, it would be better than losing a hand," he muttered. He was very afraid of losing his hand, despite being able to take it with a grain of skepticism; his father would never bring him to such a situation. Still, being sent to the Wall was a bitter pill to swallow, so he asked with a tone still showing his desperation.
"Am I going to be sentenced to the Wall for theft?" I asked. The men looked at each other. The man who spoke to me before didn't have the disdainful look like the others. He looked at me and said in a neutral voice,
"No, lad, at least not forever. Your father plans to punish you by spending 1 year at the Wall with your uncle, Benjen Stark." He said, and the boy's heart eased a bit. He just didn't know if it was because he wouldn't be at the Wall forever or because Uncle Benjen could take care of him. His uncle had always been a good person to him when he visited Winterfell.
Jon thanked for the information and closed the window again. He lay on the small bed inside the cart as he looked up at the ceiling. He thought about the future. He was a bastard, a boy hated by the world, without a mother, a father too busy to be the same, a stepmother who hated him, a brother who mocked him as if it were his natural right, a sister who disgusted him in the same way.
But he also had a little sister who loved him unconditionally. He smiled at the image of Arya in his mind. She was something he couldn't have expected in his life.
"I hope Arya will be okay," he thought of the little she-wolf of 4 namedays. And there's also Bran, a dreamy and sweet little boy who always asked for new stories whenever possible.
"I hope he'll be okay too."
He wasn't sure if he would return to Winterfell. He shouldn't go back there anymore. He had that feeling now. He promised himself that he would try to live with his uncle Benjen. Maybe see how grand the Night's Watch is and that even a bastard can have a name there.
"Maybe the world really has a place for a bastard," he thought before being interrupted by a new voice.
"And he does... Jon," a female voice sounded, not even sounding human, so beautiful like a melody. This happened suddenly near his ear, so he startled, stood up, and checked if he was still alone. The cart had no one else here. The only sound was the noises of the wheels on the road, while he heard some guards laughing outside the cart.
"Maybe stress is making me hear things," he just murmured before lying back down and trying to sleep a little more.
4 days later.
When night fell, they made a stop in a clearing, which travelers usually use to set up a camp near the road. He had been having a routine for days. He was practically silent all the time. He wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, just to get to the Wall and get this over with.
His routine was basically traveling during the day and camping to sleep at night, and it would continue like this for weeks because the North is vast, and Winterfell is in the heart of the kingdom, while the Wall is the extreme north. Without wanting to socialize with the guards, he ended up staying in a corner eating the vegetable soup they prepared, enjoying the silence of the dark night. He glanced at the guards, who were talking and laughing, but not too loudly. He also noticed that he received some looks occasionally, which was why he was avoiding any contact with them. Despite the leader of the four being a bit more attentive than the rest, the others spent the whole journey mocking him. Even without talking much with them, Jon found out that the leader's name was Jack, and he had been in Winterfell for a few years. More importantly, he was a northerner, so the disdain wasn't as much from him towards Jon, at least he didn't appear so. The rest of the guards were southerners from House Tully and held their beliefs against bastards...
Unwilling to interact with anyone, as soon as he finished eating, Jon stared into the fire in the middle of the camp, ignoring everything around him. He got lost in his thoughts, as there wasn't much else to do there. However, something caught his attention. He noticed, while the rest of the guards were laughing and drinking more loudly, that he was still in a trance by the flames. He looked intently at the fire that had caught his attention but not for long, as suddenly the flames flickered to the right. He turned his head to the left, trying to see what broke his trance and made the flames retreat. He felt a strong wind coming from that side. There was only darkness in front of him. He looked at the people, and they were all still engrossed in their activities, oblivious to anything. However, the icy wind began to intensify. There was still no snow on the ground; it was the middle of summer, but this wind seemed like some kind of storm.
An almost inaudible noise came from that darkness and increased as time passed. Jon started to get a little scared.
"Jon, something wrong?" Jack, seeing his suddenly frightened face, asked.
"There, something is coming." Jon pointed his finger to the darkness of the forest. The guards stopped chatting with each other, as everyone heard what Jon said. But the silence of the night was their only response.
"The bastard is mad... there's nothing..." One of the guards was about to start mocking Jon, but he was stopped. A strong wind came from that side, and the noise that only Jon had been hearing began to reach everyone's ears as it increased. We all stared into the darkness, wondering what this noise approaching us was, increasing every second after that cold gust of wind. We all stayed on high alert, especially when the noise became so loud that we started hearing sounds of branches breaking and trees being uprooted from the ground in the midst of the night's darkness. Jon, like a child, was very scared. Whatever was approaching us was enormous.
"A storm? Everyone, get ready, find shelter to hide!" Jack shouted. We looked for somewhere to go, but it was all dark, and our tents would be of no use, not for what seemed to be tearing everything from the ground as it approached. So, we all stood waiting for what was to come. The noise was getting louder and louder. I started running in the opposite direction, even though Jack called me. But I didn't have time to react because when I turned around, I saw men screaming in desperation, and I managed to see what was coming.
From the darkness, a gigantic wave of snow emerged out of nowhere, dragging trees and everything in its path. I could do nothing but shield my face from the wind and snow coming our way. It was so strong that even in the darkness, we could see a part of its size. I thought it was one of those avalanches I read about in books about the North, something that only happens in mountainous regions, especially beyond the Wall. Those were the last things I could think, because as soon as the snow hit me, I felt like a training dummy thrown by the impact of a wall, and soon after, I don't remember anything else. A large amount of snow hit me, and my mind was blank after being hit.
North, Unknown Place, 289 AC, some time later.
"Little Jon." A voice echoed in my mind, the same voice I heard a few days ago in that cart.
I opened my eyes, alarmed, and panicked as I realized I couldn't breathe. In the midst of a forest, there was a concentrated mound of snow. Everything was calm and silent until a child emerged from the snow, struggling to breathe. He had been buried entirely, wondering what had happened to the others. He wasn't foolish enough not to realize that a child wouldn't survive alone on the northern road.
Jon, after calming down a bit and having a regular breath again, surveyed the surroundings. He realized he was in the middle of a forest with vegetation different from what he remembered. "Where am I?" was his first question. It frightened him because he was sure he was no longer where he used to be, and there was no other sign of anyone from his group, as the snow was only piled up in an area of 15 meters. Other than that, the vegetation was entirely normal, with no trace of the storm that hit him. It seemed like he had been placed there, something that terrified him. It wasn't as if he could appear somewhere else without human help, especially when he was hit by that entire storm, but his reality seemed very different from logic.
First, he stood up and shook his clothes, removing the accumulated snow. The reminder that he could still freeze made him shudder, and he tried to warm himself by rubbing his hands quickly. Jon wanted to make a fire at that moment, but he had no resources. None of the guards' group was nearby. He tried to orient himself, wondering what had happened and where the hell he was.
"Little Jon, come, lad." The female voice echoed in my ear again. He was confused, he was scared. 'Are the gods playing another trick on my life?' He couldn't help but think. Wasn't it enough to be a bastard; now he had to be crazy? Jon stood still, and the voice came again without warning.
"Come, lad. Your destiny awaits you, a grand destiny, not as a bastard you think you are, but as something greater, much greater." The voice once again brought him back to reality.
"Not as a bastard? Are the gods going to mock me too?!" He shouted in the middle of the forest, but there was no immediate response to that.
With not much else to do, Jon decided to go in the direction where the voice called him. Yes, he was afraid of it, but he was in the middle of nowhere, lost without any food or water, so he took a chance on this madness. He didn't have much to lose.
Even without hearing the voice anymore, he could magically feel it coming from a specific direction, where something was pulling him and drawing him in.
"That's it, little Jon, come to us. Keep going." The voice echoed like a reverberation. He continued walking in that direction. This went on for the next 2 hours. He no longer cared about hunger, thirst, or cold. He had no idea where he was. His only hope here was to follow where that attraction and strange voices were coming from.
After reaching a dense cluster of pine trees in the forest, he noticed how the trees were more concentrated, blocking the entire front view. He had to start maneuvering among them, and after a while, he saw a light in front of him. He didn't have sunlight because the leaves blocked all sunlight, yet he could see the light in front of him like a beacon in the darkness through some openings between the trees, so he kept moving forward.
After a while of dodging, he finally reached the light and passed through the trees. The light was a bit strong here, forcing him to close his eyes for a moment. Soon after, he began to open them slowly, looking somewhat hesitantly at the unknown, gathered courage, and looked at where he was. That's when he finally saw.
It was a place he never imagined in the North, a sight he had only seen in paintings and drawings in books about Southern kingdoms, like the Reach and the Riverlands. No, he thought better, the place surpassed them in beauty. Where Jon was was simply magical. There was no other definition, the child thought. It was painted with various colors of various vegetation, in addition to the many greens, and it was filled with life.
"A magical clearing, enormous! How can a place like this exist in the North?" He exclaimed in wonder. It seemed that Jon was in a Southern kingdom at this moment. Even in summer and without snow accumulation, the North is still very desolate. So, where Jon was, it seemed like a contrast to everything he had witnessed.
The place consisted of thousands of trees, all different, some carrying known and unknown fruits, grass and herbs in various places, not in smaller numbers, small animals, many species running through the clearing eating their fruits and vegetables while playing with each other. Even being of different species, they seemed to live in harmony. Jon was even more surprised by the heart tree in the center. It was clearly three times larger than the one in Winterfell; it seemed to nourish this place, as if it protected the clearing of hundreds of square meters from the cold of the North and did not let it affect the place. It was simply magical. Jon noticed how the clearing was surrounded by dense pine trees. No one could find this place by venturing from the forest. It was open only to sunlight, which illuminated the entire place and made the lake in the middle of the area shine with the reflection of the sun.
"Little Jon, approach the sacred tree." The voice brought him out of his thoughts, and he began to walk towards the tree. As the place was gigantic, it would take him a while to get there. He also wasn't in a hurry; he just wanted to enjoy this wonderful view. As he walked, he noticed the animals more closely, some of which he didn't know beyond the foxes, squirrels, and rabbits that ran all over the place.
"Little Jon, place both hands on the face of the tree, soon you will know your destiny." He had forgotten that he might be crazy with these voices after getting lost in the wonder of this place. Now he had reached the tree that the voice asked him to go to and began to feel a bit scared on one hand. But wasn't it the voice that brought him here? Perhaps only he arrived here, so it must be the gods speaking to him. And even with fear, what choice did he have? A bastard practically condemned to the Wall. Maybe the gods are giving him a better opportunity, as he repeated to himself when he entered this madness. He didn't have much to lose if he was honest with himself. So, without wasting any more time, he pressed his face against the sacred tree with both hands at the same time, but soon regretted it the next second.
His mind was shocked with all the information that began to enter him, going straight to his brain. In addition to the unbearable headache, his nose started bleeding. He was screaming now, frightening all the animals. He knew it was only 10 seconds pressing the tree where he couldn't take his hands off anymore, they seemed glued no matter how hard he tried. However, those 10 seconds of torture felt like 100 entire years passing in his mind.
His eyes burned like never before as he let go of the tree, falling to his knees in the grass and coughing while blood still dripped from his nose. His whole body was aching as if he had been run over by a cart of oxen. He struggled not to faint right there. But he knew, he felt, something had changed. His previous regret turned into gratitude, gratitude for the new opportunity the gods had given him.