Tormund
"AHHHHHHHH"
Fresh screams rang out ahead and Tormund shifted his focus from the strange man to the spectacle ahead of him and he saw that in the space of a few seconds, when he turned to look at where the sound came from then to Hector, the entire front line of crows had been massacred.
Their bodies cut through, their steel plate proving useless as a giant blade cleaved through three men in one blow, the backswing of the giant blade almost caught the white haired form of the Lord Commander of the Watch, but before it could bury itself into the old man, a young lad with brown hair and dark eyes dived into the blow.
He angled his sword, deflecting the blow to the side, ensuring the Lord of the Night's Watch lost only an arm instead of half of his body. The great ice sword cut its way through the steel sword at an angle, when it finished its arc, the lad was left with half a sword in his hand. He immediately threw it in the face of his opponent before he began to drag the old man back, the rest of the men giving space.
Tormund blinked in realization as his eyes went from the giant ice sword to the figure holding it. The pale figure stood at over six foot, with predatory and sharp features much like a beast. Its pale skin was protected by a strange armor of ice, and it stared down at them superiorly with a thin smile. Its pale blue eyes sparkled in dark amusement as it stood in place.
An Other.
Despite being hunted down by the Others for months, this would be his first time actually seeing one of them in the flesh and so close. The Other's pale blue eyes roved carelessly, its greatsword tip kissing the ground and it looked at them like they were insects.
"For the Watch!"
A particularly loyal crow cried out and charged ahead with two other men trailing behind him. The Other stayed still and watched them charge until they were four feet away from it, then it moved, so fast that Tormund did not even see the first kill. He blinked and the first man had a sword through his chest.
One of the men attacked from the flank, hoping to catch the Other off guard. The man swung the torch in his hand at the Other's face, but the creature swayed like a leaf in the wind, dodging the blow, then it ripped its sword sideways. It tore through skin, flesh and steel with a painful ringing before relieving the second man of his head. The two bodies dropped an instant later and the third man faltered in surprise at the speed of his companions' deaths.
The Other's head tilted, and it said something in a language like glaciers breaking. The words were an attack on their own as the men flinched back then it turned away from them, and Tormund knew what it was about to do next.
"Stop it before it leaps into the settlement!"
This time, he didn't just wait for the crows to attack; he pushed and shoved his way through. He had seen how it fought, the strength it displayed, the speed it moved with and the deadliness of the blade it had in hand and he knew for certain he would not fare any better than the men before him. Perhaps an extra second or two difference, but that was all. Still he pushed through the surprised and frightened group of men.
A sudden and frightening boom as well as a crash of stone upon wood told him that the gates would not hold any longer against the reanimated giant. He knew his old tales, tales that the kneelers and the crows must have forgotten. Tales the giantess that had breastfed him had sung to him as a child. If you kill an Other, whatever wights it raised died with it. He just had to hope this particular Other was the one that had raised the giant.
He lunged towards the Other, but the creature had achieved its goal and made a new breach head and the wights immediately began to climb over the walls once more. He cleaved the head off an old woman with shrunken lips and no tooth. He dodged the wild lunge of a brown haired child that stared at him with blue eyes that asked why he did not save him. He barreled into a fresher corpse, this one still leaking blood from where a wight had shoved a knife into his throat. A ranger.
Then he was face to face with the Other. The Other spun as if it sensed his presence, sword singing as it aimed to take his head with its pivot, but Tormund had learned and moved before the Other even began its swing. He discarded his axe while diving underneath the swing and slammed the full force of his weight into the midsection of the Other.
It was light.
He flung both of them to the side of the wall, but the Other's armor cushioned the blow. What it didn't cushion was the shock. The great ice blade dropped from the Other's hand and Tormund grinned, until an ice armored knee slammed into his rib so hard he heard two cracks. He coughed out blood flecked spit as he was forced to release the Other, then it began its counter in truth. A fist to the side of his face sent him reeling. Tormund had been in enough fist fights to know to protect his face so he immediately balled his hands up in a hasty guard.
The Other didn't bother getting past it, instead, it sent another punishing blow into his side, and if its first attack cracked his ribs, this one definitely broke them as Tormund immediately coughed out another mouthful of blood once more before dropping to his knees.
His eyes blurry, his body weak. He forced his head up and watched the Other take a slow walk towards him. They were in the middle of a sea of wights, the only safe space was the circle they fought in, around them were wights clashing with both rangers and free folk. Tormund knew death had come for him at long last.
"You're a tough bastard aren't you." He said as he gave the Other a bloody grin. It inclined its head towards him then it froze on the spot, as an ice greatsword burst its way out of its chest. The Other turned back woodenly, and Tormund was greeted to the sight of his savior. The brown haired crow that had pulled the Commander of the Night's Watch away previously. The only way he could have had it here was if he had followed immediately after Tormund.
He tried to remember the name of the young crow, what had the kneelers called him... Snow?
The boy looked as surprised as the Other must have felt. The Other spun and backhanded him so hard the boy was sent flying over the walls and into the settlement. Tormund tried to move, tried to slam into the Other once more and throw the both of them off the walls but his limbs refused to move, then as the Other pulled out the sword from its midsection, Tormund saw something shimmering as it fell from above them.
It landed upon the Other with so much force that it sent them both crashing hard enough to buckle the wall, and before the Other could recover the shimmering figure immediately began to maul it. The Other struggled, surprised and shocked as it was, it didn't express it; instead, it tried to make use of its greatsword, but the angle wasn't right. Tormund watched, surprised as black blood spilled out of the Other, highlighting deadly mandibles and pincers that dug and tore their way through the Other, and all of a sudden the Other stilled, then slowly began to break down.
Its skin cracked, its armor fractured as everything that comprised it burst into ice fragments. Tormund blinked confused eyes as the figure that had mauled the Other to its death rose on its feet, and whatever sorcery that had fueled its invincibility began to unravel until it revealed itself. It stood at over eight feet tall, its limbs were slender, four of them ending with sharp tips and two that held it up. Tormund blinked bleary eyes once more, wondering if he was hallucinating as the spider human hybrid shimmered again before it turned invisible, then he felt it.
"What in seven hells" someone began, but their words were lost as fire bloomed in the darkness above. An explosion of heat and fire. Something hit him, a scrambling wight forcing him to fall as everything turned blissfully dark.
x
Isaac
Isaac rode through the cutting winds. The snowstorm was an annoyance that he frowned through as he made his way to the wall alongside three others. He willed it, and the night creature he was riding dived, the smaller ones following behind.
They screeched out loud in demonic fury; not even his iron tight control over his creations could completely deprive them of revealing the fact they came from the deepest parts of the seven hells.
They had come just in time.
Four dark shapes descended from the storm clouds like falling stars, their bat like wings cutting through the blizzard with grace. They passed through the storm and without the snowstorm to cover their movement, for the first time they were revealed in full.
Creatures that looked like a mixture of bat and man. Their hides were black as midnight, their eyes burned with fire, and from their opened maws came bolts of flame that turned the night air itself into a weapon.
The demon gargoyles shot down bolts of fire that killed the wights upon the walls with pinpoint accuracy, avoiding the humans as best as they could.
The first two demon gargoyles circled the walls, shooting down fire, obliterating any wight that still moved, flames creating a barrier of heat that no undead flesh could cross as Hector hastened and forced the rest of the Watch and the free folk to move. The third dove low, its claws raking across the backs of wights that had already gained the battlements, tearing them apart as they stalled before the wall of fire.
Isaac spent only a second looking for the night creature he had sent hurling towards the Other that had been slaughtering men on top of the wall just seconds earlier. The invisible night creature had been created off the corpse of the giant ice spider he had killed a while back.
His eyes searched, but he could not see it, however he could not see the Other on the walls again, so he knew the creature had done its work. So had the smaller demon gargoyles. It was time for him to do his.
He tightened his grip on the Greater Demon he rode and the night creature shrieked loudly in response, then it breathed in. Its chest expanded, swelling as fire built up. Isaac angled the creature for a strafe and when it widened its fanged maw, it unleashed a devastating fire breath that swept across the corpse-ramp the Others had used to climb the wall, instantly cremating hundreds of climbing wights and reducing them to ash that scattered on the wind, including the giant that tried to take down the gate.
He spun the Greater Demon for another go, its bat wings flapping as it angled them, catching the wind and turning around. This time their target was different; he had his eyes on the two Others that even now were retreating speedily on their spider mounts.
"You're not getting away." Isaac said as the Greater Demon began to breathe in once more, its chest and midsection swelling with the captured fire, then it exhaled, sending out a stream of fire that trailed after the rapidly retreating Others. One was too slow, and was immediately caught in the stream and it let out a tortured and haunting cry before it exploded like ice that had boiling water trapped within. The spider's screech lasted a second longer before it stopped.
Isaac let out an uncharacteristic dark smile, then he angled the Greater Demon's aim towards the faster moving Other, but before it could catch the Other, a spear was hurled from behind him with such ferocity it tore the wings from the Greater Demon ,and they were sent spiraling towards the ground.
Isaac jumped off the night creature before it fully crashed and he somersaulted into the snow, bleeding the momentum off. Then he smoothly rose to his feet, dusting snow off his cloak before turning to the Other that had hurled the spear. He didn't know how he had missed it, no doubt it had either hidden or had been about to climb the walls before he launched his attack.
He turned towards the escaping Other and frowned, then he turned back towards the one that had ambushed him. Behind it, he could see that the gates had been opened, this time from the inside, and the free folk and the Night's Watch were rushing out in droves to kill what was left of the wights that still survived.
The Other charged at him, but Isaac simply stood still. The Other was unarmed, but he doubted it needed any weapon to kill a human. Isaac could see how it moved, the speed and alacrity it carried itself with, like a fledgling vampire. Isaac had killed fledglings before. Still, he was never one to rush bullheadedly into a fight; instead as the Other drew close, he simply took a step to the side, revealing the still breathing Greater Demon behind him.
He didn't think the Others could express surprise, yet he knew that's what the Other must have felt because it tried to slow itself as it watched the now one armed night creature raise itself from the ground, shrugging off the snow that had covered it, and revealing its slightly expanded chest. It had not had the time to fill it to maximum capacity, but Isaac did not need that here.
"Burn." He whispered, and the Greater Demon let loose in a roar that sent out a jet of fire from its maw, engulfing the charging Other in a white-hot blaze. It lasted only a heartbeat before sputtering out as the creature collapsed for good, its life finally extinguished by its wounds and the fall.
The Other staggered out of the split second fire a half destroyed, melted and broken wreck. Isaac took a step forward, unsheathing the Valyrian steel blade, and he sank it into the Other's neck in one smooth movement.
He stared into its eyes for a short second. Empty brown eyes into empty blue eyes as black blood escaped the wound he had given it, then it exploded.
Isaac dusted the ice fragments from his body, before looking behind him in annoyance. Annoyance that turned to surprise as he instantly fell to a knee in submission, his head faced down.
"Welcome back, Master Dracula." He said, voice steady as a figure approached, coming out of the forest and walking majestically towards them, scrambling and struggling Other in one hand being dragged by its neck. The darkness of the forest clung tight to him, his very presence a chilling thing in a way not even the Other could replicate.
Lord Dracula surveyed everything before him, his red eyes calm and tranquil as he surveyed the damage to the wall as well as the multiple shimmering ice, indicating where the Others had fallen.
"Rise, Isaac," he said, voice like velvet over steel. "Well fought, my general, well fought."