The training field is desolate. Not a single life occupies it at this moment, not even a single bird or rat. The sky is a yawning void, stretching on and on without hope for a single pinprick of light. The cold breeze stings my skin like knives gliding across flesh but soothes my necrotic hand. I don't remember why I came here. I don't even remember how I came here. I turn back to the entrance into the castle's hall's but the door is locked. I hammer on it and yell quite loudly but to no avail. Some guard is shirking his duties. I'll hang the whoreson when I find him.

I scoop up a fistful of small pebbles and begin throwing them at windows. Five at one window, no response, five at another, no response, five at another, five another, pick up some more pebbles, five at another, five at another, the whole fucking fistful at one. No response. No stirring, no muffled complaints, no indication of occupation. So I scoop up a rock, a rock almost the size of a skull. It feels nice, smooth, perfect. With all my might I hurl it at a random window. Glass shatters and some unfortunate wooden object snaps and then… silence. Not a single yelp, cry or even whimper.

"I'm certain this joke has provided you all with much entertainment!" I yell at no one in particular. "But if you don't let me in right fucking now I'll personally-"

"Hang them?" Terrence finishes, startling me briefly but I manage to deny him the satisfaction of making me flinch.

"Is this some new game of yours cousin?" I inquire, turning to face him. He looks better than when I last saw him. His face is almost completely healed, but his eyes are still wild, though there's something new in them, something less human, more animalistic. "Locking me outside my castle with nothing to preserve my modesty. It's certainly funny, I'll grant you that. Of course the humour will soon be lost when I'm breaking the fingers of whoever you bribed to let this happen."

"You're not going to," he states rather grimly.

"Oh please don't make me laugh cousin, if the fucker was dumb enough to enter into an agreement as moronic as this he should consider himself fortunate I don't break his neck instead. Now get that door open or I'll-"

Terrence draws a long wicked dagger. Savagely sharp, perfect for carving open a man. "You're not going anywhere," he spits.

"Terrence," I sigh. "You're not going to use that. You couldn't even watch Martin beat me with that poker. Now let's go inside and I'll forget this whole night."

Terrence approaches me with quick strides, ready to thrust that knife into me. He's not playing. His courage is almost impressive.

"Just think for a moment cousin!" I beg. "The royal guard will take you, they will torture you and they will execute you!"

"You're a monster," he declares. "I'd die a hundred times to stop you!"

"Please cousin!" I plead, "You love me! You're the only one left who truly loves me! Without you I have nobody! Without you I'm alone!"

"You're a murderer, you're scum, you deserve so much worse than this."

He closes the distance between us quickly and thrusts the knife forward. I try to grab his wrist but I'm too slow and only manage to divert it a bit. It sinks deep into my side. It's like a white hot poker. He tries to pull it out but I grab his hand and hold on tightly, moaning in agony.

"You hide behind that crown," he grunts, wrenching the knife, causing waves of suffering to flood my body but failing to get the weapon back. "You use it as a justification for all your crimes, as a shield from justice, as a tool for destruction. Everyone will be glad-"

I kick him in his manhood, hard. He gasps and doubles over. I let go of the knife and grab his head. Before he can regain control I slam my forehead into his nose, breaking it. He falls to the dirt groaning. I take a few steps back for safety before wrenching the knife out. The wound bleeds quite a bit but the blade seems to have missed my guts, fortunately.

"Why?" I ask after some consideration.

"You'll be a tyrant, you'll destroy everything you touch-"

"I fucking loved you!" I scream loud enough to hurt my throat, tears slowly run down my face. "I trusted you! You're the only one who loved me! The only one who didn't lie to please me! The only one who didn't pretend! The only one-"

"You killed that boy!"

"One murdering fucking guttersnipe! One fucking speck of filth in this fetid cesspool and you're angry I removed it! Angry that I cleaned some spot shit!"

Terrence surges forward and tackles me, knocking the both of us to the ground. He slams one fist into the side of my face before turning a ghostly white. He looks down at his chest, I follow his gaze, finding the knife buried deep between his ribs, my hand still clinging to the hilt. He rolls over onto his back, taking the knife with him.

"You killed me," he gasps before erupting into a coughing fit, gargling on his own blood.

"No you killed yourself" I spit, trying to keep from crying. "You killed yourself you stupid fucker! You fucking left me!"

Terrence gargles something incomprehensible before going silent.

I turn back to the door and begin to hammer on it hard enough to hurt my fist, yelling a litany of threats and insults at the top of my lungs. I hammer until my hand bleeds. I yell until I've exhausted every possible combination of words. Then I scream and scream and scream.

It takes a few moments to notice the sobbing, at first I thought it was me but it continues after I close my mouth. I turn and see a female figure weeping over Terrence's corpse.

"My beautiful nephew," she laments, "so sweet, so kind."

"Mother?"

She looks up. She isn't the mother I preserved in my mind. This is not the quiet woman who silently knitted in her old chair, who occasionally stared at nothing for a few minutes, sometimes an hour. This is the mad woman who had to be hauled off of a maid after she gouged the poor girl's eye out. This is the woman who was carted away like an unwanted decoration, who howled like an animal. A long thick ugly scar marks the side of her face, she did that to herself with a kitchen knife. The mirror allegedly told her to cut off her face.

She bares her teeth like a dog.

"You killed him!" She spits.

"It was an accident!" I try frantically to explain. "He threw himself -"

"You fucking bastard," she shrieks, rising slowly. "You killed him!"

"Please listen to me, it wasn't my fault-"

She strikes me across the face, hard enough to knock me to the floor.

"Liar!" She declares, spitefully kicking me in my wound while doing so causing everything to go white for a few seconds. "I should have listened to her, she said you were a problem, I should have fucking drowned you!"

"Please mother -"

She kicks me again in the gut.

"You let them take me away! Do you have any idea what they did to me!"

"I couldn't stop them! I was eight!"

I crawl to my knees, she tries to kick me a third time but I grab her ankle and shove it away as I rise to my feet. She scratches at my face, her nails carving deep into my cheek. When she tries a second time I grab her wrist.

"Stop please!" I plead pathetically.

She doesn't listen, instead she bites my fucking hand. She ignores my cries of pain and keeps clamping down until she rips out a sizeable chunk of flesh from the back of my hand. I release her wrist only to seize her throat. She swats at my wrist futilely, trying to claw open my veins with her nails to no avail.

"You were insane! You talked to your fucking mirror more than me! You looked at me like I was some sort of freak! You held my head under the bathwater and you would have kept it Karis didn't stop you!"

"You're… a… cancer!" She manages to choke out. "A… blight… on… the soul!"

"You wanted to kill me the moment I was born but I always loved you!" I scream as my grip tightens. I let loose a flood of dammed emotions. I scream regrets, grievances, hatreds, accusations, justifications and contradictions. I continue even after her neck breaks and when I'm finished I drop her corpse. I stare at it for a moment, my mother, face purple, eyes bulging, tongue poking out like a hideous worm. I vomit a watery mess at her feet.

"How could I ever raise such a weak, useless son?" A scornful voice inquires. I spin round to find my father. Standing in a suit of plate armour with his sword by his side, standing strong and proud. Not much older than twenty five.

"I did everything you ever wanted me to," I murmur, approaching the man

"Yet still you disappoint."

"You never stayed long enough to even say goodbye to me before you ran off to some pissant squabble." I deftly pluck Terrence's dagger out of his chest without breaking my stride.

"Are you truly so weak that you needed your daddy to read you a-"

"Then you got yourself killed, breaking my mother and leaving me with that monster."

"I believe you'll find-"

"Then you had the audacity to haunt my dreams as if it was my fault somehow!"

"It was your fault-"

I slit his throat quickly, warm blood sprays all over my face. He topples over and writhes like a fish.

"You were already dead! It wasn't my fucking fault!" I kick him. "I did nothing! It was not my fucking fault!"

Someone claps. I look up to find grandfather standing right in front of me, alive albeit ancient. So close I can smell his fetid breath .

"Bravo!" He cheers. "You disappoint me even when I'm dead!"

"I will do more than you could ever possibly could!"

"You already have! I only killed my brother, you massacred the whole family nearly."

"I will break this world open-"

"You've broken yourself and you'll break your kingdom but that's all!"

This man I have nothing more to say to. I grab his head and jam my thumbs into his eyes. They are crushed into paste with ease. Grandfather makes a harsh guttural sound, like that of an animal.

"I would have given you everything if you loved me!" I scream. "You could have been proud of me if you let yourself be."

He rots before my eyes. Veins decay and disintegrate. His skin peels. His sounds become the droning of a thousand insects. The thin plates of bone behind the eyes snap with ease and my thumb sinks deep into the squirming mess that once was his brain. All manner of carrion have made his skull their home. Slimy bodies squirm over my thumbs while hard carpaces scrape against my skin. I dig deeper.

A centipede manages to squeeze past my thumb. Long and hideous, glistening with rotting brain and blood, as thick as my index finger. Its mandibles drip with some translucent venom. It crawls up my arm and all the way to my ear. I expect it to bite, to tear out a portion of meat or to crawl inside and tear apart my eardrum. Instead it sits passively on my shoulder, mandibles a hair away from my ear canal and it whispers. It whispers words that have no spelling, no pronunciations or even meanings. Words that only incite primal instincts. I dig my thumbs deeper and deeper into the rotting skull as this monster whispers its terrifying secrets to me.

Grandfather's head comes apart in my hands, exposing all manner of hellish insects. Pale maggots fat with meat, centipedes clumped together, snapping and writhing. Creatures that have yet to be discovered by man.

I look to my necrotic hand and find it befalling a similar fate to grandfather's brain. Larvae gnaw upon the bones. Worms burrow through corrupted flesh.

I awake in the training field to find my thumbs buried in the head of a training dummy. I pull them out and inspect them in the moonlight. The rotting one is still riddled with corruption but otherwise fine.

I rise slowly and inspect my surroundings. It's empty. No corpses, no family, no witnesses. Quickly I head back inside, scared of what horrors the dark will bring to me.

I don't bother finding some clothes. The servants are resting and should any guard question me he will awake with a fractured skull and no recollection of tonight. I stalk through the halls like a madman.

We are mad

Shut up.

Terrence's chambers are locked unsurprisingly so I hurl myself against it, smashing the thing out of its frame.

Terrence cries out in fear and hits me in the face with something, hard enough to knock me onto my belly.

"It's me you stupid bastard," I groan as I push myself up to a kneeling position. My head feels light and I'm filled with an overwhelming urge to vomit. I shift back a bit and lean against a wall for support. An oil lantern is lit, painting his face rather pleasantly. The swelling is gone but half of it is still coloured an ugly yellow.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" He spits. "I could have smashed your skull in!"

"I need to talk to you," I grunt, shifting to a more comfortable position, wincing as a wave of nausea hits me.

"And it couldn't fucking wait till-"

"Do you still love me?"

"Are you fucking serious! You fucking smashed in my door for -"

"Do you still love me?" I repeat pathetically, like an infant. "After all the unpleasantness, do you still love me?"

"You're a fucking murderer -"

"Always have been and you always knew. Do you still love me?"

"You fucking had lunch no more than an hour after that boy was hanged!"

"Would it be any different if I waited two? Or if he was an old man?"

"You defiled -"

"I burned his body like all the others. If I didn't incinerate it someone else would have dissected, fucked or reanimated it. Do you still love me?"

Terrence stares at me blankly.

He'll betray us. He'll cut our throat while we sleep.

Guards' feet hammer their way down the hall and through the door. They look at Terrence first, suspicious, then see me, naked. Confusion rules them

"Some fucking use you are," I grunt. "I could have cut his throat and be outside the castle walls by now."

"A-apologies my king," one stammers. "We-"

"We will have a conversation tomorrow," I say grimly before leaving.

The dark halls of Castle Black are a cold place. The ink black stones seem to emanate hatred. Perhaps they're the reason for the twisted nature of all my predecessors.

Perhaps they're why we feel so at home here.