A Song of Ice and Void 1 (Game of Thrones/Dishonored)

Marked

“Ilyn Payne, The Hound, Cerseiiii…” Arya Stark’s muttered words trailed off along with her consciousness as slumber finally took her. Closing her eyes she went to sleep, before opening them and finding herself within Winterfell once again.

The brisk wind embraced her like an old friend, and even as she shivered, Arya felt some of the tension leave her body. How can this be though? I haven’t been in Winterfell in months, but this dream feels so realistic. She was in her old lessons room, cold air coming from the window. There were books on all sorts of subjects that the tutors would run her through, of ancient facts and household histories, or even worse, sewing. All things that were way less exciting than practicing in the yard (even when they would only let her practice archery and not hold on to any swords). 

The dream was so realistic she practically expected to see her Septa Mordane sitting there at the slightly uneven wooden table. The seat where she would sit and hold lessons for her and Sansa was pulled out, but no one was there. In fact, Arya couldn’t hear any of the usual sounds of the castle at all. No one was practicing down below, not a single scuffling of feet beyond the door to indicate staff bustling about to keep the castle in order. It was eerie.

The slight uncomfortable feeling was amplified by the sense that someone was watching her. Arya marched up to the door of the small chamber, trying to open it, but the solid wooden barrier refused to budge as she jiggled the handle, even less give than if it had simply been locked. A cold wind caused her to turn around in annoyance, only to stop as she took in something entirely new.

While the desk in the center of the room and much of the side walls, lined with books and other learning tools, were much the same, there was one gaping difference. The study room no longer ended anymore, where there was a stone wall and window before, now there was suddenly an opening that led out onto a massive sheet of black, angular, rock.

Hesitantly, Arya stepped forward onto the rock, peering around to try and make sense of this dream. The more that she saw, the less she felt she knew. If this is a dream it’s the strangest one I ever seen.

Stepping out onto the rock, she took in a strange vision of the world. The light was dim and diffuse, possibly coming from some far off point in the grey-green sky. It was hard to tell with the rest of the world off the edge of the rock shelf seeming to extend upwards and downwards forever. The wind howled, smaller shards of that same strange black rock swirling through the air like leaves, causing Arya to flinch as they approached, though none touched her.

Turning around to try and find who was spying on her, she saw nothing. From the outside she could see that room she had started in was just that room, somehow placed in this world. The rest of Castle Winterfell wasn’t there, though off in the distance she could see other places that seemed to be replicated in part from Westeros sitting on the black rocks, slowly drifting through the space.

“Poor Arya Stark,” came an unexpected, unfamiliar voice. Whirling around, she reached for Sting, failing to grasp it as it wasn’t by her side in the dream. She saw a boy standing at the tip of the rock. He looked to be only slightly older than Arya herself was, with pale, gaunt skin and messy brown hair. His arms were crossed in front of him and he was wearing a dark jacket with several buckles, blue pants, and tall boots that went almost up to his knees.

While attired better than some of the boys in camp, his appearance wouldn’t be so unusual and Arya would almost think he was just another one of them, were it not for him appearing here… and his eyes. Where others, where people had whites and colored rings there was nothing, each of his eyeballs looking like the dark center had expanded to take up the whole thing. No, more and worse than that. Something about that darkness feels like an endless pit to swallow me whole if I stare too long.

Glancing away from his face, she saw a subtle, dark aura flickering off of him as well. This was no boy but a being of magic. The creature continued. “Your sister was captured, your mentor left to an unknown fate, and your father gone-”

The pieces clicked in her mind. This must be the Stranger! Death… he’s come to take me too now. The thought chilled her for a second before her body exploded into motion, running at him. “Not today!” She shouted, trying to push him off the edge, only to hit empty air as he swirled away, disappearing before her eyes.

With nothing left to push on, Arya stumbled forward, arms windmilling wildly and then twisting in the air as she fell, barely managing to catch herself on the edge. Walking slowly, the god stood above her, looking unimpressed, his arms crossed as he stared down at her. He didn’t make any move to strike her or stop her, so she arduously pulled herself back up.

“I am not Death, little wolf. Nor the Stranger, or any of the gods you would seek to name. Trying to push me off the edge of my own domain will avail you little, and in any case, I come bearing gifts.”

“Who are you, then?” She asked warily. “And where are we? And- a gift?”

“In order, I am one who views affairs from beyond your world. My name was lost over four hundred years ago and now drifts beyond it, so you may call me, The Outsider.” Says he’s not a god and then calls himself a title like that. 

He smirked, raising a hand and twisting it. In response, several of the rocks floating nearby, some with frozen tableaus of real world scenes, spun around forming a floating path. “This world is the Void. An empty space between places, that sometimes glimpses upon your world… and the reverse may happen as well.”

“Which brings us to my gift. You have faced many tragedies, Arya Stark, and will face many more.” She grit her teeth at him. My father is dead and my family scattered! I’m running, hiding as a boy and headed to the Wall. How much worse can it get? She didn’t say that however. This god clearly had immense power, and she had no desire to challenge him any more than she had.

“Take my Mark, like many have before you, and I will give you access to powers strange and unusual, what people would call ‘magic’.” He spoke as if the concept was quaint. Arya had been warned of magic many times, how it was a blade without a hilt, how it would cut those who used it as much as those it was used on. How it led to witches performing terrifying rituals, human sacrifices and worse.

But if I could choose who to sacrifice… I wouldn’t mind it if Joffrey was the one being sacrificed. “What do I have to do to get the Mark? What’ll it cost me?”

“Simply accept. I demand no worship, seek no sacrifices. I merely wish to watch what you’ll do.” Arya boggled for a moment at the words. It sounded too good to be true, but she was still uncertain.

“Why me?”

He shifted again, re-appearing on a small hunk of stone floating nearby. “Westeros is in for interesting times, and these are only the beginning. You will play a pivotal role in the years to come. How many are you willing to kill for your vengeance? What are you willing to become?” 

The words were as soft as any others, but there was a certain weight to them. This was it; she could remain as she was, the scared little girl, running and hiding from the King and his mother and all their minions, or to step out into the unknown, and become something more.

In the days to come, Arya would wonder if this was how all witches were made. If this ‘Outsider’ gave them their powers too. But in that moment, all she felt was determination. “I accept.”

The moment the last syllable passed her lips, a burning sensation erupted upon her left hand. Arya clutched it tight, screaming out as she saw lines form upon her flesh, glowing until it was finished, the pain fading away and replaced by a cool, empty numbness.

Wiggling her fingers, Arya confirmed she could still feel and move her left hand, it was just a bit unusual right now. Like this sigil. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Arya wasn’t the greatest student, but she thought she would have remembered something that looked like that before.

“You can use that power to traverse short distances instantly, without detection,” he informed her. “Try it out along the path to find your way to my other gift.” The Outsider then disappeared before Arya could question him further.

“How do I…?” She spoke aloud before feeling something. The sensation was hard to describe, but there was a slight trembling in her marked had as she reached out to the next rock. There was a tension as she fixated on that spot and then as she let go, it was as if she had been pushed forward rapidly, instantly finding herself over thirty feet across from where she’d been.

“Wha- magic. I really have magic,” she wondered, staring at her hand for a moment before shaking it off and focusing on her goal. There were several more rocks to traverse to whatever her second ‘gift’ was.

Arya quickly found she couldn’t just skip all the distance at once. Her power could let her travel quickly in the blink of an eye, but no more than fifty or so feet, she figured. It was also draining, Arya would find herself tired after a leap, and while her stamina returned remarkably fast, it meant she had to walk some of the way, taking the time to look at the scenes the Outsider had presented to her.

Some of them were unfamiliar to her, the frozen image of a stern middle-aged man hunched over a large table set up as a war map with a beautiful woman with a red dress matching her fiery hair meant nothing to Arya (though she was creeped out by how the woman’s eyes seemed to follow her despite everything being frozen in this realm). Others however…

“Why are you showing this to me?” Arya questioned the Void as she walked by the image of her father, his head hung low, the executioner’s blade held above it. The scenes were small, so there were only a few members of the cheering crowd, eagerly awaiting her father’s demise, which she had to walk around, to get close to him.

At the execution stage, she saw a note fallen beside him. It read ‘I’m sorry, my daughters, I failed you. Arya, get away from this place, and Sansa… stay safe.’ The youngest Stark daughter looked away from it to glare up at her sister, sitting in the stands behind the stage (none of the others were included in that image, even if she remembered Joffrey and Cersei well).

“It’s your fault he died,” she hissed. But there was no response from her sister, since it wasn’t really Sansa, just a frozen image in time. The rage died as she really took in her sister’s visage and saw Sansa weeping horribly looking distraught at what was about to happen. Sansa is a fool and a liar… but she didn’t want this. Joffrey gave the order, and Ilyn Payne swung the blade.

Arya glared at the executioner for a moment, reaffirming her vengeance on the man, before she turned to look at her father. Yoren had told her how he’d sworn vengeance for his brother’s murder even after forgetting what his brother looked like, how he’d burned the image of his killer into his mind. Arya planned on doing the same, but given this chance, she wanted to keep her father’s memory close as well.

For a long time (minutes, hours? How did time even work here? Everything seemed frozen in time - did it flow at all?) she stared at his face, even tracing it with her hands. The feel was wrong, frozen as it was, but she burned that image into her heart. Ned Stark looked tired, distressed, weary. His hair hung down in thin lines over his face, showing the toll his weeks of captivity before being dragged to the stand had caused.

It wasn’t the best look, not the memory Arya would have preferred to keep, but it was something. He didn’t look afraid though. Even as the blade was coming down, father had no fear. I wonder how much fear Joffrey will have when I get to him? Will that pompous fool piss himself when I appear suddenly behind him?

The thought brought her a bit of joy as she continued, and it was something Arya reminded herself of as she Blinked to another rock and saw the Lannisters, smiling. Joffrey was sitting on his pointy throne, with his mother slightly behind and to the right of him, watching a Meryn Trant marched towards them, bloody blade held at his side. Is Syrio-? Doesn’t matter, Just means that Trant is still alive. Another name to the list.

She continued along, winding her way down, past the images to a small shrine set against an alcove. The shrine was strange, nothing like the places of worship Arya had heard of for the Old Gods or the New. But the Outsider ‘isn’t a god,’ so maybe this works for whatever he is. The fact that the shrine glowed bright red yet gave off no heat made Arya a little more trepidatious, but with nothing else to it, she carried on, walking towards the shrine.

There were small plates of strange bone, with runes like the one on her hand carved into them. At four uneven points, metal latches were clasped onto them. Picking them up, the runestones felt warm, like the bones in the dungeon in King’s Landing. They were solid in her hands for but a moment before cracking and then fading away to dust as she felt a swell of power within her.

With a swirl of stone and wind, The Outsider appeared again, off to the side, slowly walking around. You’ll find shrines like these in the lonely, dark places of the world. Seek them out, to deepen your connection to the Mark. My gift, however, will not be found in such places.” He gestured and Arya turned her vision to that which had been concealed by the runestones, the source of the illumination.

Sitting atop the shrine was a slowly beating heart, devoid of the body it should be attached to. Metal wires stuck out in place or were wrapped around some of the vessels jutting out of the heart. Near the center of the organ, a glass disc sat, like an eye to peer out to the world. Hesitantly, Arya grabbed it off the shrine, the glow fading as she held it up to the open space. Then she heard a voice, deep and achingly familiar. So familiar she dared not think of whom it belonged to.

“You should not be here, in this land without stars, without sky. No one should.”

As she gasped in shock, her vision slowly faded away, the Outside leaving her with some final words of advice. “The Heart will reveal much of the world as I return you to it. How you use it and your Mark is up to you, but know that I will be watching with great interest.”

***

Arya’s eyes snapped open to the sound of chaos and confusion. Horses in the distances, the clanging of blades, and even burning. The camp was under attack and she barely had time to think, would have shaken the vision off as a queer dream, except as she stood up from where she had lain, she felt something weighing down her pocket.

Reaching in with her Marked hand, she pulled out the Heart, and realized this had been no dream. As the guard wrenched open the door on the ramshackle structure she and the boys had been squatting in, she disappeared in a Blink.

A/N: So this is an idea that’s been sitting in my head for a looooong time coming, and as I’m now actually getting back into GoT and rewatching the series as well as replaying Dishonored 2, I feel this is the right time to flesh out this idea properly.

There are a lot of themes that intersect between GoT and the Dishonored series, but I feel that Arya Stark is the best choice for someone going on a Void-powered revenge spree. She won’t be the only one able to use some magic/giving a Void flavoring to some of the magical powers used in the series (which isn’t very hard as a lot of the stuff in GoT just works so well with that stuff).

Not everything, however. Westeros as a setting is much less technologically advanced than Dunwall, and while I am attempting to make this into a partial fusion crossover, I don’t want everything to be copied note for note. I have an idea on how some more advanced technology might be introduced later, but for the most part the tech will be a bit lower.

On that topic, do people think Arya should have a folding blade? On the one hand, it’s a bit advanced. On the other, Needle was a special gift from Jon commissioned for her before she left, and Winterfell was founded by Bran the Builder. It’s not impossible they could have master craftsmen capable of making foldable blades for a young noble lady in need of a discreet self-defense weapon.