The Lands Beyond the Wall - 280 AC
Sasuke frowned, looking down to where his legs up to his calves had disappeared under a blanket of snow. First step into a new world and he already hated it.
He looked around, sharp eyes taking in every detail of the landscape in a fraction of a second, and for a moment he thought the portal had taken him to the Land of Snow.
The land was covered in white. Wind howled through the snow-covered forest, the kind of cutting gale that seeped into your bones and threatened to take hold of you. Pine trees swayed and groaned, shedding snowflakes like snakes did their skins.
Sasuke shivered under his cloak. He wasn't a big fan of the cold. Cycling chakra through his body to stave off the icy wind, he hopped up onto the drift, walking over the snow like he would over water, and started walking south
For the first time since he was a child, he had nowhere to go. No big mission to accomplish. He doubted the Sage had sent him to this place without a reason, but for now it was just him and an endless winter forest.
He would roam the land until something pulled at him, something that would help him answer the question of who he was. Learn to live, the Sage had said.
Sasuke snorted. "Easier said than done."
If nothing happened and there was no other living soul in the forest, he would simply walk until his Rinnegan allowed him to jump into another world again. He didn't mind either way. Perhaps learning to simply walk aimlessly was a lesson on its own.
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Dacey Mormont POV
Mormont girls did not cry. That's what Dacey told herself even as she sobbed silently into the collar of her coat. The wind stung her cheeks, almost freezing her tears, and she quickly wiped away at them with her sleeve.
Bear Island was an icy island, but she had never felt as cold as she did now, being dragged by her arm by a mean-looking woman who called herself Mother Mara through a snowy forest beyond the Wall.
Another eight wildlings travelled with them, all following the small man who wore bones over his boiled leather armor and had a small pack of dogs with him.
Dacey had escaped her cousin's keep to play in the forest, and after hours of running around gathering mushrooms and pretending to be one of the great heroes of old, she ended up in a village on the northern side of Bear Island.
Without announcing herself as a Mormont, she had been playing with some village children when the wildlings came.
She could barely remember the raid itself. The wildlings didn't try to fight the entire village, they simply snatched the closest women and children they could find and ran back to where they had hidden their boats before the men of the village could rally.
Dacey fought as much as she could, biting and kicking and screaming, but a hit to her head meant she passed out until they were already on the Frozen Shore. The trek to the place the wildlings called the Skirling Pass had lasted weeks, and one of the women and two of the children they had taken with them didn't make it.
The wildlings burned their bodies and left them behind without a care in the world. The three children that survived had cried that night as they huddled by the fire, while Tilda, who was only sixteen but was the only adult left alive, tried to comfort them.
Dacey had cried too, but she didn't tell anyone, just sobbed quietly like she was doing now.
Her thoughts were broken as they suddenly stopped in the middle of a clearing in the forest. The wildling woman holding her yanked her by the arm and threw her to the frozen ground next to the other children. She grunted, but tried not to show the pain on her face. She had her pride as a Mormont, even if it felt meaningless now.
"Watch them, ya hear, " the man with the dogs said, snarling at his companions, "I'll scout ahead. We be only a few days away now."
He soon disappeared into the forest, his four dogs racing ahead of him.
For a moment everyone else in the clearing was quiet. They were not stopping for long, Dacey knew, as the wildlings made no move to gather firewood.
They passed around dry elk meat from a kill they made weeks ago between themselves, while one of the men gave her and the rest of the Bear Island folk some pine nuts to chew on.
The silence broke when Tilda suddenly yelped. Dacey turned in time to watch Mother Mara drag Tilda by her hair to the center of the clearing. The mean woman had her hair shorn short like a boy's, and a large scar running from her mouth to her near bald scalp pulled her lips into a permanent scowl.
"So which of you will be man enough to take the little bitch, huh?" Mara asked.
Dacey froze in place. She was only eight, but she knew what that meant well enough. Her mother had taught her how to defend herself from men trying to take advantage of her since she could hold her training mace.
Skair, a black-haired wildling as tall as her Lord Cousin, scoffed from the side. "Leave the lass be, Mara," he said. "Lant's told you already, chief Ygon'll have the girl fresh. His sons will have her after he's done."
Despite the man's words, there was a grumble of dissatisfaction between the men.
Turning away from Skair, Mara sneered at the others. "Hav' the Gods truly made you all craven?" she asked. "Fine piece of meat in fronts' of ya, and you can't find the balls to put your cocks in it." She pointed at one of the men. "You, Karl, didn't you capture her yourself? Are you not a free man to take what's yours by right?"
Karl was younger than the rest and the smallest of the bunch. But he'd been groping Tilda every chance he got when the wildling leader wasn't looking, and Dacey watched with fear as he gained a vile gleam to his eyes.
Mara spoke before Karl could say anything. "Maybe I'm more man than you, worm. I'll have her bloody with my axe handle if you can't get your cock hard enough." Her lips pulled back even more to show her yellow teeth. "Give her a nice red smile too, it'll teach the little bitch she's not as pretty as she thinks she is."
Tilda shuddered under Mara, but she wasn't a fighter. Karl growled something she couldn't understand and stood up from where he sat, stalking toward the two women.
"Git' the fuck out o' my way or I'll show you next if I'm man enough, bitch," Karl snarled at Mara, but the women only laughed and threw Tilda toward him.
The man pushed Tilda down to the ground and got on top of her. "Don't fight or it'll be worse for ye, girl." Mara laughed at that as she sat next to them as if to watch.
One of the other men sidled up to Skair. "You gon' do something 'bout this?"
Skair shrugged. "He'll kill him for this, but I won't stop him."
With that last hope dead, Dacey did the only thing she could. She screamed. Not for rescue, for she knew they were too far away for anyone to come and save them. No, she screamed for the man with the dogs and the bone armor to come back. She screamed until Mara grew annoyed and walked up to backhand her across the face.
Even then, with her head throbbing and her mouth filled with blood, Dacey screamed.
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