Once Burnt, Twice as Cold

Once burnt, Twice as cold

Prologue

On a quiet night in a quiet street, a knock was heard, resounding through the air.

 What was unusual about the knocking wasn’t quite the sound, but was instead the cause of it. As though they were black streaks on a white canvas, the three men stood out against the background like sore thumbs. It was evident that they weren’t from here, and, from their actions, it seemed like they did not intend to be here much longer.

 Another knock echoed out, louder and harder than the last, accompanied by the fast tapping of an impatient foot and the quick pacing of another. The sounds of the feet started to get faster and faster, until the sounds were overtaken by the loud creak of the opening door. A head popped out from the gap and the three men leapt into action.

 “Get him!” the pacing man shouted.

And then everything went to hell for the poor soul who opened the door. That is to say, everything went to hell for me.

 I answered the door, not really expecting who or what would come knocking at midnight. Lets just say my guesses were right out of the pond, so far out that it may as well have been an ocean that my guess landed in.

 “Hello?” I asked, opening the door to see three impeccably dressed caucasian men standing outside my door, all of whom looked very irritated.

 “Get him!” Shouted the man who looked to be the leader, he was wearing a red suit and a black shirt. Had it been any other time I would have made a witty remark about how he dressed, but now was not that time. Now was a time for running away.

 I turned straight around and ran up the stairs behind me, grabbing at the steps in front of me, anything to get me up faster and the men farther away.

 “Jack!” I screeched, he was probably sleeping for all I know, and if I know Jack then it would have taken a lot more than screeching to get him up and in any fit shape to help me.

 “Calling for help won’t make it any easier, just come to me, we’ll make it real easy.” The biggest of the three said, he was also the closest to me, mainly because of his extreme size taking up most of the stairwell.

 He tried grabbing at my heels, trying to get a hold on me in any place that he could. Every time I felt him touch me I kicked him as hard as I could in any place that I could, but he seemed to take the brunt of my force in his stride, mostly laughing it off

Turning around another bend in my seemingly endless staircase I found myself in front of my bedroom door. I opened it and flung myself in, slamming the door behind me and using my chest of drawers as a form of blockade.

 Seeing that I had made my room as secure as it could be, I began to search round my room for a weapon, anything I could use to protect myself, and only one item came to mind. It was a giant wooden walking stick I had bought late last summer, mainly because it made me look classy as anything, but secondly because I liked the feel of it, it had a good weight behind it, but it wasn’t too unwieldy. Also, it was ‘Baller as fuck yo’, in the words of a few of my friends.

 Hearing the door being barged into a few times and not successfully breaking it, the banging stopped, but was instead replaced by the sounds of the men talking.

 “It doesn’t matter if you come out now or never, eventually we will smoke you out.” To emphasise this I heard him flick open the lid of a lighter and turn on the flame.

 “What do you want? What did I do!?” I shouted. What had I done to deserve mutilation and maybe even death? I mean, the most I had ever done to someone was make them cry over the internet.

 “The sins of the father are paid by the sons.” I heard him say through the keyhole. He chucked his lighter on the ground, igniting our carpeting beneath it.

 “Men, lets leave. I want to be able to see the fireworks from a time away.” A few moments after I heard my front door slam, and began to fully realise the situation that I had been put in.

 I began to walk around my room, pacing in front of my door. In my haste to close the door and keep it from opening, I almost destroyed my chest of drawers, and, while it still did the job of keeping anything from getting in, it also stopped me from getting out. Remembering from all of the fire safety lessons I had when I was younger, I had about 10 minutes before the door gave way and burnt me to a crisp. Checking my room for my phone, it wasn’t anywhere to be found. Not disheartened, I still spent a good 5 minutes looking, thinking it was my only means of escape. I had already tried the windows, but they were too reinforced and small to be broken and then slipped through. The person who had designed this house must have had a prison in mind instead of a comely abode.

 Now panicking, I started shouting for Jack. But this was again to no avail, as my screams were hindered by the door being fully shut and a fire raging on outside of it. I began to jump up and down, mainly to vent my frustration at the situation at hand, but also to try and make enough vibrations to hopefully wake Jack up in the bedroom across from me. But after a few minutes of trying this, I resigned myself to the fact that this was the end, and that I was most likely going to die in the next few minutes.

 I was not unfamiliar with the concept of death, having been born to a set of older than average parents my family members began to drop off like flies by the time I was 10. I was also a very clumsy boy early on, and had near brushes with death from about 5 and upwards, whether it be falling from a tree or narrowly missing a car at full speed. I just considered myself very fortunate that I had survived those days, but now it seemed like Lady Luck had finally caught up with me.

 Finding a nice soft spot in a corner of my room, I began to think about everything that had happened in my relatively short life. Relationships made and bridges burnt. Old family members’ smiles and bullies’ grins. I turned my head around my room, looking at my stuff for one last time. There was my computer, trusty old thing. I had named her ‘The Wall’ after finishing up George R R Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’. There were also my posters from times long past, like a Warhammer: Apocalypse billboard that I got when my local Games Workshop closed down. Then there was my most recent addition to my space, which was a poster of all the season 1 and 2 villains from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It was one of the items I held very close, even though I had only been a ‘Brony’ for about a year now. The show had become an increasingly important part of my life, including many new friendships forged in the heart of tolerance and lots of drama to be had at the expense of the haters. It had been a good life, and I liked to think I had lived it well.

 I closed my eyes as I felt the fire burst forth into the room, burning my door to ashes and setting my chest of drawers alight. I had a smile upon my face, remembering fond memories of days past, and at least knowing that my brother Jack had probably died in his sleep, alone with himself in his dreams. The heat began to get more and more intense the closer it got. When it was about a foot away, the fire jumped to me, and the pain made it feel like I had swallowed napalm. I felt myself slowly slip out of consciousness, and the pain swept over me.

When I regained consciousness, the fire was still burning inside of me. Every inch felt as though I my blood had been replaced with lava. The feeling was excruciating to say the least, and for the few hours I was conscious I was too weak to open my eyes. Every ounce of my strength was used to try and keep the raging inferno of pain and flame at bay and not let it drive me mad.

 Over the next few days I intermittently slipped in and out of consciousness every few hours, but in the time I was conscious the fires receded and I was able to listen at little snippets of the outside world. From these snippets I found out that I would never walk again. The flames had damaged my nerves enough in my legs that they now couldn’t respond to any impulse that was sent down to them. You could stab me with a fork and I wouldn’t feel a thing.

 I also found out that Jack hadn’t died like I had assumed. He’d woken up as the smoke filled his room and was able to get out of his window, throwing himself onto the roof of our conservatory and had gained major burns across his body. Other than that he was not injured, and the doctors were saying he would be up and out in a few days time. I, on the other hand, would require very invasive surgery to even think about being able to lift my pinkie toe, and that made me sad more than anything else.

 I tried to cry, thrash in my bed and just scream it all away, but my body wouldn’t let me. It was as though was too weak to even move, and I was left alone to my thoughts.

 For the longest time I thought I would never truly wake up and that i would just stay in that state, akin to a vegetable on an operating table. I would still pick up snippets of information now and then, and after a few days I heard a few of the doctors talking about me. Putting the pain to one side as much as I could I strained to hear what they were saying.

 “Tests are looking good, sir.” Someone said with a note of awe in his voice. He must have been an intern; experienced doctors are too jaded for awe.

 “Thank you Angie, how is he doing?” The voice was familiar, it must have been my doctor.

 “He’s stable, sir, if that’s what you’re asking. His legs are covered in burns and his sacral plexus is completely unresponsive. He was lucky enough to have survived as it is.” Said ‘Angie’.

 “Yes, he’s definitely lucky. But that still doesn’t explain why he hasn’t come out of his coma yet.”

 “Do you think he’ll ever come out of it?”

 “I don’t know, but from these results the future is looking grim for him.” Their conversation continued, but by that point they’d walked out of earshot.

 The doctor’s words hit me like a ton of bricks. I was going to be a vegetable for the rest of my life, such as it was. I stormed through the prison of my mind, trying to find an escape: some muscle I could move, some sound I could make. I beat futilely on the bars, but I couldn’t break them without facing the pain again.

 I confronted my pain again. Left with no other options, I let it all out, all of my sadness, my fears and my rage, all into one last ditch effort, and it worked.

 I opened my eyes at once, looking around the room, straining every muscle in my body because I was so hopped up on my own adrenaline. I then looked up to the ceiling and let out the biggest roar I could, channeling everything into it. Lets just say my friends don’t call me a screamer for nothing.

 I thrashed around in my bed, not sure why I couldn’t move. I had to wait until the nurses came rushing to my side to strap me down before I gained the ability to think straight again.

With my bloodshot eyes I could see the horrible scarring that the fire had left me and had realised why I found it hard to move anywhere, my legs wouldn’t respond to any movements I sent to them and if any of my scarring was touched on my upper torso it hurt. Just moving about in the bed hurt and made some of the flaking skin fall off.

 The only actual words I could make off when I ended this primal rage was to the nurse who helped strap me down.

 “Help me” I whispered, as again the sweet embrace of sleep came over me.

 As I opened my eyes having awoken from a very deep sleep I saw that I had visitors, and for the life of me I couldn’t recognise where from.

 The first of the two visitors wore a pair of plain blue jeans and a white jacket emblazoned with blue and gray streaks and accessories. His face was angular and, if I may say so myself, very attractive to the human eye. It was pale and he had bright blue piercing eyes, the type that if you looked at them for too long it seemed as though they were staring into your soul. His white hair was greased back but had tufts of it sticking out at the back, styled to look as threatening as possible.

 The second of the two had almost an exact opposite colour scheme, with her wearing an orange and red dress with yellow accessories. She was also very attractive in a very not-so-subtle way, with dark red hair falling down to her waist and long flowing eyelashes sprouting from her eyes. It looked as though they could be twins, minus the opposing hair colours, as both had similar faces as well as similar builds.

 What probably freaked me out most wasn’t their appearances, more the fact that they were staring intently at me.

 “Its good to see you finally awake” Said the woman, I had to push away the pain to get a good view of her, but boy was it worth it.

 “Yes, good to see you too” I asked hesitantly, as I hadn’t seen these people before.

 “Now, you may be wondering who we are, and for that all we have is a question.” The man cut in, stepping forward.

 “And that would be?” I was still cautious about these two, something didn’t seem right.

 “Well, that is whether or not you want out of here.” The woman sprung into my face, moving faster than I would have thought possible for her.

 “Uhm, sure.” I said, not sure if there was a deeper meaning behind her use of the term ‘here’. But I hoped she meant this hospital bed.

 “Good, because if you said no I probably would have forced you anyways.” She gave me a small smile, and a little wink. Were I in an anime I would have had blood stream from my nose like a  fountain.

 “Okay, how long till I can get out, if your idea is right?” This time I was still hesitant but in truth, I would try anything to get out of here. From prior experience I know that me and hospitals don’t mix well.

 “Well, if you really want we can get out of here immediately, but...” The man cut in again, taking his side next to the woman.

 “Anything!, I’ll shine your shoes, clean your damn car, do your taxes! Anything to get me out of here!” I practically shouted at him, not realising that my throat hurt like hell and finishing off my sentence by gargling with pain.

 “Well then, and one so eager too. The only catch is that you have to choose one of us, to be your mentor and guide, maybe more if you play your cards right.” She whispered that last part into my ear. I will tell you, it felt almost orgasmic. But, seeing her demeanor and my attitude and appearance, I began to factor in different things into the equation of the choice.

 On one side is a drop-dead gorgeous woman who seemed to be a flirt more than anything else, but if her clothes were anything to go by she also seemed to dress well. Quite spontaneous from the actions she has done before my eyes, and seems to enjoy in a little bit of surprise.

 On the other is a handsome man who seems to me more mystery than anything else. Cold and calculating is his gig from what I could see, a man more for actions than words. He also had quite a snappy dress sense and seemed to know what he was doing, predictable in an unpredictable fashion.

 After mulling it over for a while, I realised that I had come to my decision before the question had been asked.

 “I choose you.” I pointed at the man, and he nodded, accepting my answer.

 The woman looked disheartened, but not entirely.

 “Oh well, looks like I get the other one then.” With that she clicked her fingers, and vanished in a cloak of flame.

 Before I could react the man spun his arm around me, and I vanished into the unknown, with a real sense of chill around me.

 I woke up and looked around me, it seemed as though I was on the edge of a desert somewhere, or was just caught in the world’s worst dandruff storm since ‘98.

 Looking to my surrounding area I could see that I was about a half mile from a mountain range of sorts, although from the looks of it almost all the mountains had the tips of their peaks cut and flattened.

 Looking down at my body, well, looking down I really can’t call it my body, because it sure as hell isn’t mine.

 I begin to stand up, seeing as it has the same balance I used when I walked before the accident. Even though I had only lost the use of my legs for less than a week, it was still nice to be able to move of my own volition and feel the wind rush against my body while doing it. Looking down again I saw that I had been fully clad in some type of leather armour on that had become extremely wrinkled but was as hard as stone.

 Upon further investigation I saw that this was in fact my skin, and that I was well and truly naked except for a small loin cloth covering my manly bits, and while it may seem crude I did have a check to see if my old two-pump shotgun was still there, and I was quite happy to see that it was, and that the wrinkled skin hadn’t affected it either.

 Judging from my height and how high I felt off the ground I guessed that I was maybe around 6”5, which was alright considering I started off today as 6”1, so I put that in the plus column for today’s list.

 Now you may be wondering why I seemed so alright with inhabiting a new body in a world that might not even be my own, judging from the way everything looked. But the way I see it is that I got a new pair of legs and quite frankly I hadn’t had the best week of my life, so excuse me if I hadn’t gone a little crazy in my time as a vegetable.

 Trying to get a hang of walking round with my now much bigger feet was quite weird, it felt like I had put on some extra large shoes and waddling around in them made me feel like a clown. Now imagine you were minding your own business, trying to get a hang on walking properly again when a voice pops into your head. As you can imagine, I jumped a little and fell down.

 ‘Nice landing.’ The voice said, giving off a little chuckle.

 “Who is this?” I asked, already knowing the answer

 ‘It is I, the man from before, the one who gave you all that you now have.’ He whispered, the words echoing in my mind.

 “What do you want now, and why do I look so weird?”

 ‘What I want, not much. There is a game going on where you are right now and I had to choose my piece which, coincidentally, happens to be you. This game of ours has a few rules, but we must abide by them so, instead of directly involving myself, I chose you to be a conduit of my power. Onto your second question, you are what is commonly known as a ‘White Walker’ and the reason for the body change is twofold, one, your original body is of complete disrepair, and two, this will serve as a better mark for me as you are now of my blood. I forged this body for you as a true conduit of my element and as such I needed it perfect.”

 “Wait, so I am not a human anymore, but instead some mythical race in a book series I read? Things just keep on getting weirder and weirder.” I said to the mysterious man, know almost certain of who he is.

 ‘I'm guessing that you will want to know who I am?’ he again asked.

 “Let me guess, the mysterious ‘Great Other’ master of the winter and cold and all things in between. Leading on from this it seems as though the woman you were with was also another God, and I am going to guess R’hllor as in the books you both seem to go together in a pair."

 ‘Correct on both accounts human. Now that you know my name and my game, I am wondering if there's anything you want from me, as a parting gift for being loyal thus far.’

 “I am guessing it can only be from my worldly possessions, and if so can I please have my cane back. It was the one thing that I actually think I will need over here because it seems you haven’t given me a weapon to defend myself with, and from your description it seems as though I will need a lot of protection to survive out here.”

 ‘Very well, you shall be given your cane as a weapon. I will even enchant it with a few abilities of its own, but you will have to find them yourself as the body I have given you has plenty powers of its own.” He summoned the staff and it plopped on the sand right in front of me, as though it had been created out of thin air. ‘Also, you should know that here is Equestria, the magical place of love and tolerance from that incessant girls show you watch, personally I can’t stand the place but here shall be your battleground for the years to come. Anyways, I shall bid you good-day for now, but do expect me to drop by now and then to check up on you.’

 “Wait, you are leaving? Why?”

 “What part of no direct contact don’t you get? While a little is tolerated, too much will make us noticed.’

 And with that he vanished, not leaving a trace of himself behind.

 I picked up the cane in front of me, and looked at it closely, it seemed to have runes inscribed on it but I wasn’t able to make a lot of them out, it also exuded a faint blue glow and got colder the longer I held it

 I picked it up, tapped it on the ground and marched forward into my new adventure in my cherished land of Equestria!

A/N: Big thanks to ponyaddict , Ace and everyone else in the Chess Game of the Gods group for the help in writing and just for being all round great guys.

Anyways, those of you loyal enough to still be following me, thanks for sticking through with my very dry patch of writer's block, hopefully it won't be kicking in again any time soon.