Standing Tall
Sixth Day of the Third Month 294 AC
The walls of the tunnel were covered in pale vines that coiled through the dark spaces as the witch-lights on the wall seemed to pulse like a living thing. The air stank of yeast and nameless spices, like sweat and fear. It reminded Sandor of the smell of an armed camp before battle, of the court where the great lords feasted on fine meats and the king drank away his life in Arbor Gold and Dornish Red.
He kept putting one step in front of the other, like he always did. This was his chance at last. He hadn't expected it to come through magic brew and wizard's craft, he hadn't expected to ever set foot on bloody Sothoryos, and none of that was worth a bent copper beside the chance to finally kill fucking Gregor.
The door beyond opened like a pale mouth filled with shapes he couldn't quite put a name to. The chain devil, clinking and smiling way too bloody, too cheerfully, called them 'pods' as she explained what he would be going through.
I would've sold my soul for this if some other devil had found me in my cups, the Hound admitted to himself has he unbelted his sword and shed his armor with a clang.
Lucky me, it was the dragon and his tame devils that found me. The younger Clegane brother was not used to thinking himself as lucky, but he didn't take the thought back, even as the fleshy lid came down on the pod. It didn't matter what kind of monster he would come out as, so long as he could kill Gregor. After all, he had seen first hand how good monsters were at killing.
***
Elsewhere Elsewhen
Sandor Clagane
burned as though he had been wrapped in sheets of fire. Sizzling filled his ears and his arms were heavy at his side... broken... useless, unable to raise a hand to his defense, a nightmare at once familiar and strange. It wasn't his face that burned this time, just the rest of him. He could feel his skin crackling and peeling, he could feel his eyes boiling in their sockets. He burned, and in his mind he gripped the stake all the tighter. The Hound had not forgotten why he was here, what he had been promised. He would endure.
"The fire isn't real," a familiar voice, high and girlish echoed from somewhere outside his blind torment. "Open your eyes." It didn't sound like an order, but more a request.
Sandor opened eyes, though some part of him insisted he wouldn't be able to. Before him was a field of grey, as though fog had swallowed up the world, and he saw the little princess perched on a roundish chunk of stone like something fished out of a river. "What the fuck?" he didn't bother holding back the curse, still not sure this was real.
"The pain
is real, of course," she continued. "It could hardly be otherwise. The transformation is soul deep and that is something no potion or spell can utterly expunge."
"Then what difference does it make?" the Hound growled as he tried to pick himself off the ground. Probably wasn't a dream, he decided. He didn't think he would be seeing this of all things if it was just in his head.
"By thinking of it as fire to be endured, you are making it worse," the little princess continued. "For all that we call the place your body now rests a 'flesh forge', you are not a sword being forged anew under the smith's hammer, Sandor Clegane. It is more like a caterpillar wrapped in silk as it grows into a butterfly. " At the word a single blue butterfly as big as her head somehow unfolded itself from the girl's palm.
Mariya had liked butterflies. Maybe it was the strangeness of the place he found himself, or maybe the pain like phantom fingers along his spine, but the thought didn't come with the surge of anger he was accustomed to. "Good distraction, doesn't hurt as bad," he said, not quite sure how to thank the princess when part of him still resented her presence.
Silence stretched uncomfortably before the girl asked, "So did you hear the jest about the hunter and the fisherman?"
Sandor only looked at her darkly, as much bemused as suspicious.
"Talking will keep your mind off the pain and that seemed an innocuous enough topic," she replied, shifting a little on her seat, though only Sandor's familiarity allowed him to pick out that she might be a touch uncomfortable. "I'll just be quiet, if you like."
In spite of himself, the warrior snorted in amusement. "Well let's hear it then, the joke."
"A hunter lies in wait, a fisherman waits, then lies," she replied.
It wasn't a very good joke. He laughed anyway.
***
Thirtieth Day of the Third Month 294 AC
He rolled from the pod in a wave of oily water that formed strange patterns on the floor. for a moment all Sandor could to was stare at it. It was so much clearer, sharper. He could feel the moss-covered floor, the hot air, he could smell a thousand times more things for which he had no name. Instinctively Sandor rose to his feet... up and up and
up.
I must be ten feet tall, maybe a few inches higher yet, the first praetorian realized. It
should have thrown him off. He still remembered how clumsy he had been when he had gotten his inches in as a boy. But somehow he felt lighter on his feet than he had ever been in his life. Stronger, too, and pulsing in his veins was fire, bright and cold, fire that was now his to do with as he wished.
Without thinking, Sandor jumped, just to see how high he could go. The answer ,it turned out, was very bloody high.
What next?
[] Write in
OOC: You will notice he did not immediately think 'I'm taller than Gregor'. That thought will occur soon, but it was not quite the first thing on his mind in the moment of transformation. The scars are starting to heal at least a little. Not yet edited.
