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This chapter is going to have a different flow than the others, because I am trying to compress a lot into a little short bit. The next chapters will have more gory brutality, but this is important to plot development. This is the end of the 'Golden Age' Arc if we are to speak in 'Berserk' terms.

Warning... Really dark shit beyond this point. If you can't sleep at night after reading this, don't blame me. Its not my fault you are an idiot.

Warning... If you are not an adult, I advise you wait a few years before coming back to this.

Warning... I warned you three times. Don't continue if you are not a fan of gut twisting cruelty.

If you report me to the moderators for outrageously evil writings I will track your IP. I will find you and fuck you up good and proper.

I don't want a single review for offending anyone or making you cry. I don't give a flying fuck how you feel. I'm not writing this for you. It is my way to express my rage in a safe outlet. If you are a whiny little bitch who can't take a lot of gore... Fuck off!

On with the horror... Don't blame me if you can't handle the ride.

A little girl.

Very skinny and completely naked, she looked malnourished. She couldn't be older than six or seven. Stringy black hair and wide brown eyes. She looked at me with an expression of amazement. white chipped teeth and very chapped lips. Ashy black skin.

The Summer Ilse?

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Water.” I croaked.

A strange sight to see a little kid not crying in the middle of a beach awash with rotting bodies. Where are her parents?

“Water.” She parroted back to me with an even larger grin and stood still next to me, but, out of my reach.

Strange accent.

I rolled over onto my back with a grunt. I gestured toward my mouth and repeated the request again. I think she understood that time. She ran into the jungle-like woods behind me.

My arms continued pulling my weary and waterlogged body farther up the sandy beach and toward the shade of a tree. The ground is more rock than sand here and easier to drag myself over.

I want to live. I never want to fight that Tyrek giant again.

A large ocean worn rock with a fern overhead is where I finally stopped. I leaned back onto the rock and relaxed.

I started to access myself for injuries. I was used to fighting exhaustion to treat my own injuries. Ever since a Maester had told me that leech bleeding was the best cure for an infected cut, I had been my own doctor. I had four medical certifications in my past life and could take care of myself better than the assholes here anyway.

Sunburn across the front of my body. From mild to severe in different places.

Heat stroke.

Dehydration.

Muscle cramps from the heat stroke and dehydration. My whole body hurt. I had survived worse than this before. If the little girl came back with water, I could recover from this enough that in a couple hours, I should be able to walk.

If she came back.

The sunburn may form blisters in a few places. If I kept from popping too many, I should be able to avoid too bad an infection. My immune system was very strong from the exposure it received in the last few years. I noticed some differences from the last time I looked at myself.

My legs and arms were thick with muscle. My hands and feet far larger. Maybe the effects of wine of courage mixed with a lot of dragon's blood. I had rippling muscles across my abs and chest. I could feel them twinge in pain with every movement. I will have to learn to fight again with this size. If I live through this.

If the girl brings water.

I hope she comes back. First time in my life I have ever wanted a little help from a naked child before. Maybe it would have been better to marry the Down's Syndrome girl. I wouldn't be in this situation for damn sure. I'd probably be balls deep in the Fat-asses' wife right about now. Fuck if I turn down the easy life to go on a damned fool's adventure ever again.

The little girl came running back through the woods and quickly spotted where I was at. She held up a large coconut and smiled again. “Watta.” She mimed eating back at me. I don't know if the actually understood the meaning of the word. Coconut milk is just the right thing right now though.

I felt relief. I nodded and held out my hand for it. She threw the coconut at me. I flinched away and brought my arm up to guard head. It struck me in the stomach and landed on my lap. I barely felt the tap of it on my stomach.

I fought through the agony of moving to rest the coconut on the rock next to me. It hurt even more to lift a stone and beat at the pulp. I hit it a few times with my weakened strength and managed to crack it through the thick green pulp. I brought it up to my mouth to sip a few drops.

If I drink too much I will vomit. That would be the worst thing right now. I need all the fluid I can get. I continued sipping the coconut in the shade with an ocean breeze as the sun dipped lower in the sky. I watched the birds feast on the remains of the men on the beach. The little girl sat near and stared at me mystified, with a innocent smile on her face. I don't think she had seen another person before. She didn't behave like I would imagine a feral child to though. No barking like a dog or the like.

After the milk ran dry I pointed to the coconut and motioned to my mouth again. “Water.” I said again. She looked back at the coconut confused and back to me. She pointed at her mouth and back to the coconut. “Watta.”

I mimed drinking from it and she caught on. She dashed back into the woods. I watched the gulls fight over an eyeball one had managed to rip out of a sailor. The sun would set soon. She soon returned with two more coconuts with the silly grin still on her face. I cracked the first one open and pushed it toward her. She grabbed it without getting too close. Little kids can't go all day without eating or drinking anymore than I can. Kids were always my soft spot.

The only thing on television to really get to me were those horrid commercials with the starving kids of wherever living in shitty mudded streets. I can't stand watching little kids in pain. I doubt she could open these coconuts as easily as I could, even in my condition.

As the sun went down, the little girl came closer to sit on the rock near me. She fell asleep with her little head resting on my giant leg. I didn't stop her. I don't want to traumatize the feral child more than she must be already. I wonder if she has ever seen anyone before. Is someone looking for her?

In my existence in this life... This is the most at peace I have ever been.

I watched the twilight sky move from the purple and blue into a shade of black and blue. The unfamiliar stars and a moon that was a little too big shone bright. The gulls continued to feast. I leaned back into the rock and watched the star twinkle until I drifted off to sleep.

I am somewhere on the coast of Essos I think. I have no where to go. If I traveled to a city, I would be a poor beggar. I don't want to be a sell-sword and fight never ending skirmishes for chump change. I have no interest other than enjoying the time I have left before I go back to wherever the next life is. The zombie apocalypse was coming for all living anyway. Going back to Westeros would be a death sentence after running out on the Queen.

Really... Nowhere to go.

It is nice enough to stay around here though. Plenty of fruit trees. No taxes or lords.

Maybe being alive isn't so bad.

666 666 666

One month later. I think...Maybe a little longer

“Shh.” I hushed Parrot as she waited in a tree above me. The name I called her because of her mimicking. The way she climbs though, I should have called her monkey. She had learned a few words, but we mostly communicated with body language and hand signs.

I listened hard for the sound again. The grunting snorts and rustling leaves as a boar's snout searched for food. I was hungry. Fruit becomes boring after awhile. I wanted meat. I heard little squeals coming after in loud rustling. Piglets. Even better.

I felt my heartbeat speed up. The usual rush of hormones did their thing.

The snorting search for food stopped. Momma pig smelled me from fifty feet away. I threw the stone in my hand. It landed somewhere in the clearing between us. She came charging out of the bushes squealing up a storm. Ready to kill anything near her babies. I can understand the feeling now. I don't want to end up like Tom Hanks without Wilson the ball. I don't know what I'd do to someone coming to eat Parrot.

A sharp cracking sound echoed over the now shrieking squeals. I took a peek through the bushes I sat in. I glanced up at Parrot. “Stay.” I said. She nodded back. She was a quick learner.

As I rose from the bushes, the squealing grew louder still. I walked slowly across the clearing. The sow hung a few feet off the ground. She was caught around the belly. The fresh rope was starting to fray under the weight. I need to set the next one a little farther forward to catch the neck. It will save some hard to make rope. The little piglets fled into the bushes as they noticed me.

I could see the pure animal hatred in the sows eyes as I thrust the stone knife into her throat. I punched the top of her head to render her unconscious before the rope breaks. I walked over to a tree on the far side of the clearing and let the tension loosen enough to get it off the sow. The tree creaked and swayed as it was allowed to straighten for the first time in a few hours.

I whistled you universal call for a dog and little Parrot came running back over to me. I patted her one the head and pointed to the branches above us. “Get rope.” I said. She smiled again. “Rope! Rope!' she repeated as she climbed the tree. I couldn't have set the snare without her. She followed me everywhere I went. Did what I did. Said what I said. She reminded me of my little sister 'Sarah' mixed with my dog 'Wednesday Addams'. I can't remember what they look like anymore.

Are they still alive somewhere? I had not thought of them in a long time.

I wouldn't be alive without her.

After gutting and bleeding the big pig we started on the way to our lean-to. I thought about what I had done over the past month.

I had gotten a few arrowheads out of the remains on the beach on the day after I woke up. I had been up and moving by dawn. New pink skin, a shade darker than before. My sunburn had healed over-night. I don't know how. My skin had not even peeled. It healed...

As I walked over to the half eaten bodies that day. I had seen a couple of broken arrow shafts sticking out of some of the crewmen. It was quite disgusting to pull them out of the hard rigor mortise flesh. Green, purple and bloated, I don't know how the gulls withstood the smell.

As I dug my nails into the putrid flesh, I noticed a big difference. My hand was twice the size of any man's on the beach. The little girl barely rose higher than my knee when I stood. I was far larger than The mountain had been. I don't know by how much.

Five iron arrowheads were worth quite a bit to me though. The vegetation in the woods was pretty close to subtropical. I kept walking east on that beach for a couple days with the little girl following. I spotted quiet a few fruit trees and made sure we both drank a few coconuts.

On the third day, I found a stream of fresh water heading into the ocean. I came across no roads or signs of people. I picked the little girl up and carried her piggy-back through the jungle, we followed the small river to it's source. After another three days of walking through the jungle, I found the spring coming from a bat infested cave. It was at the foot of a mountain. I spent the time after that making a lean-to an hour or so downstream from the cave. I put it under an overhang to protect from rain and far enough away from the river to keep the danger of a flood down. Making fire and gathering saplings to split and braid took up most of my time since then.

Making little snares to catch small game and teaching Parrot to be a little more civilized took up plenty of time. My feet did not get cut on the ground anymore and I saw no need for clothes. I wanted to to escape life with other people. Wearing them just means you are self-conscious about people seeing you in this environment. I wasn't shy, and it was not cold. I had a belt that I wore to keep the best badly chipped flint knife I had near. Other than that, I just stayed as naked as Parrot.

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I ripped the skin off the sow first when we reached home. I used an arrowhead to cut the legs and belly of the wild pig and tossed the rest into the creek below. I wrapped the pork belly and legs in it's skin with a lot of fruit. Parrot was bringing big armfuls of clay over. She learned quick. I caked clay all over the skin and let it set for a little while. I went to join Parrot for more clay. We would need a lot for this. After covering it all and molding it into a square shape, I hefted it over to the fire pit. I set it in the middle and piled sticks on top.

For the entire night and the next, I kept the fire going steady around the big clay square. I made more rope and taught Parrot some more knots. I moved the fire over to the other side of the 'not-even-a-hut' and let the meat vessel cool. When the sun started to dip, it had cooled enough for me to crack the clay egg open. If you have ever left a pressure cooker going for a couple days full of ham and fruit, at low heat, you know the smell. The skin stuck to the clay and formed two giant bowls as I split the vessel down the middle.

I drank pineapple juice from a gourd and ate sweet sweet ham for two days. Parrot and I ate all we could before it was inedible from age. My belly was quite full of meat anyway. The piglets were still clumsy and quite easy to catch. I would show parrot how to whole roast pig next.

My pineapple juice was starting to ferment. Why did I not go live in the woods in Westeros? Sure beats the existence as one of the Mountain's merry men.

This was the life.

666 666 666

Three full moons later. I lost track of the days a long time ago...

The rain fell hard and fast. The overhang above my 'now-more-of-a-hut' looked like a waterfall. The creek started to rise. It had been raining for two days or so and doesn't loot like it is letting up any time soon. If it doesn't stop soon, we will have to leave our home.

Rain kept falling for days. As far as the eye could see was flooded. I tried to keep pace with her as we made our way through the trees to the mountain. We made it after a few hours. The slick branches made it slow going in the rain.

After we got to the mountain, we rested for a day. I started teaching her the A B C song. She did as her namesake and picked it up pretty quickly.

The day after that we climbed our was up a goat path to the peak through the drizzle. I was kind of used to the rain at that point. My muscles were not even tired anymore. I carried a couple hundred feet of rope, coiled over my shoulder. It had taken nearly all my time to twist and braid. My hair was still a golden color and reached mid back now in a shaggy mane. I grew a decent golden beard to match my wild look.

Little Parrot no longer had the swollen belly of a sick and starving child. I made sure she ate more than twice a day. Rain or shine. I feel a little guilty for keeping her in the wilderness with me instead of a pretty house in green field with pizza and television. Those don't exist in this world though. Only blood and death. Hatred, greed, and war. Even worse for females here. What I wouldn't give for a Buddhist temple of peace and love to pop up out of nowhere.

I don't think any natural man was as strong as I was now. The dragon's blood had done something to me. I could reach into fires and handle embers without burning. I could rip thick branches off of trees and throw boulders of massive size. I must be somewhere near nine feet tall. Like a chimpanzee, my strength for outweighed my size. I was no Superman or Goku for damn sure. I think I could whip a Gorilla in a grappling match with little trouble though.

When I saw to the east over the top of the mountain, I saw a river. The little creek I lived near for months was not a spring fed creek. It was runoff from this river, channeled through underwater caves. We spent another day in the drizzle traveling back down and around the mountain. I spent another couple of days using a stone hand-ax to gather logs. My strength paid off in this. It would have taken weeks to do with a regular man's strength.

A little girl deserves better than living in the jungle with a wild man. There is bound to be a town or city somewhere along a river this big. Rivers attract people like a moth to a flame. Men as strong as I am should not have any problems with money after cracking a few skulls. I should easily be able to afford to give Parrot a comfortable life. She will never have to face the hardships like this again. I will kill anyone who gets near her to try and make her unhappy.

Her skill with tree climbing seems to be because she is used to these floods. Maybe her parents had died in one? Maybe they were still looking for her. She saved me. I can't remember smiling before I met her. Her happiness was infectious. She not only saved my life, she saved my soul.

I would save her.

I used the rope I had to tie together a small raft. Big enough for both of us to lay and sleep on. I spent a couple of days finding as many coconuts as I could and twisted a few saplings into a web-like basket. I got a long and straight tree trunk to use as a pole. We set off east along the river.

She chattered her gibberish at me, mixed in with a few words in the common tongue. I think she actually did speak a language of some kind. She was learning mine as I started to pay closer attention to her words. The rain slowed after a few days. Most of those days she laid on the raft under big woven palm leaves to stay dry and talked.

I talked about Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter. She talked about something else. We sang. Ate coconuts that I could crack open with my bare hands. She got the ABCs perfectly. I bet she is one of the only if not the only girl in the world that knows that song. I liked to hear her talk and she liked to heard me talk.

Every night, I pulled the raft ashore and slept leaning against a tree. It would wake me up if the raft moved back into the water. Every day, I poled against the weak west flowing current, heading east, up the river.

I pulled ashore a couple times to pick particularly pretty flowers for Parrot. I eventually dreadlocked her hair. I showed her how to dreadlock mine. I tied colorful flowers into her hair and she into mine. It was relaxing. Just going up the river. Going to find a better place for the kid. I started to finally understand some of what she was saying. She spoke Myrish I think. A slang version of Valyrian that all the Free Cities have a version of. She referred to the raft as mir. 'Home' I think it means. Thats why my guess is Myr. Otherwise, a little girl alone in the jungle invented language on her own.

I saw all kinds of animals. Alligators, Otters, Giant snakes. You name it, we saw it. I think I saw a big ass tiger stalking through the trees once. My skin darkened a few more shades until I had a nice tan color. Parrot's Wesley Snipes complexion was just as immune to sunburn as I was to depression.

I can't remember being happier.

A moon and a half or so after setting out from the 'Rainy Mountain' we met another river. This one was the mother river that fed the one we were on. It was flowing roughly north to south as far as I could figure. I poled us into it and we began to drift south. I slept on the raft, as we wouldn't drift backwards in the night.

It had a fairly strong current and we drifted far faster down this river than we did up the other one. The river was wide enough that there was an actual breeze that blew on our backs with the sweet smell of flowers and fruit. The alligators were thick here. I made Parrot climb a tree when I went ashore to find food as quickly as I could.

I killed a strange spotted cat on one of these trips and brought Parrot back a couple fangs the size of her thumb. She made some string from my hair and wore them like a necklace. It was cute. Like a little Tarzan princess.

Although I live a more savage life, I was never more civilized. My mind did not wander off on ways to kill people. I didn't think about torture or how to get gold. I didn't plan or plot to murder anyone. I felt more normal than ever, rafting naked through the beautiful jungle.

Another moon or so we drifted down the river. We saw many strange things. Massive ruined towers with no one around. Motionless statues of men dressed in rags. One question bugged me a lot...

Who took the time to put clothes on a statue in the middle of the jungle?

It started to get foggy a day or so downstream from the massive ruined tower. A thick fog that darkened the the forest on the sides of the river. Strange thin statues of men line the banks of the river. It is creepy. I can't help but feel that their eyes follow us every time we pass one.

Parrot spends the next few days closer to my side or tucked under my arm as we sing or talk. She feels safe with me. I wouldn't let anything hurt her. I would die first and tell her so. “That cat couldn't harm me. You think a weird skinny statue can do anything to me?” I asked as I tickled her sides.

“Nu uh” She manages to get out through her laughs.

Ruined towers or houses become more common. As do the strange statues. They have very pretty architecture. Fluted columns and delicate looking arches were a common theme. It must have been truly breath taking to see them as they were meant to be. Without all of the moss and thick black vines.

A few days into the fog, We came upon ruin after ruin. An entire city of palaces. The most beautiful place I have ever seen in any life. With the sight of this city, I felt I should know it. The only thing I could compare it to would be how Venice would have looked if it were built by the elves of Rivendell then left to age in a swamp for a thousand years.

Statues of men lined the ruined walkways of the city. How it must have looked in ages past with water flowing in the ruined fountains. We passed a great domed building with flowers carved from stone all around it. Giant beautiful bridges that were in ruins that once spanned this river connecting one side of the city to the other.

I stood at the front of the raft and dragged the tree trunk across the bottom of the river to slow us down as we gawked at the wonderful ruined city. Near the end of the city, the ruins became less common than the strange statues. We were going under the last bridge of the city. I was watching the city behind us and Parrot was sitting at my feet looking up at the bridge we were going under.

“Tyrek look.” She pointed up.

A statue was waving at us.

I turned to get a better look and felt my foot slip on the slick log under foot.

So great was my surprise that I forgot what was under my massive body. I dropped to a knee to avoid falling into snake and alligator ridden water as I had learned to do over the last few months. I dropped to a knee with a wet squishing and popping sound. I felt her fragile little bones shatter as my knee met the wood.

I looked down in anguish at what I had done. Her eye looked at me with an expression of confusion. Her mouth was open and her inside leaked out in a slurry of organs and blood. Her little black eyes blinked once before clouding ever with death.

“Noooo!” I wailed like a wounded dog and cradled her little broken body to my chest. I cried for days or weeks, I don't know. Night and day lost all meaning. I ran out of tears and drifted in and out of consciousness. I saw awful hallucinations.

She was gone.

Never to laugh or smile again.

She saved me and I killed her. Just squished her like a bug. She wasn't supposed to die like this. She was meant to die of old age in a palace in some beautiful place. Not like this.

The trees ended and a great field of grass ass far as the eye could see stretched into the horizon. I jumped off the raft and pulled it into the grass away from the river.

I started digging with my bare hands. Moving dirt and stone, I dug until my hands bled and kept going. I dug until I could hardly climb out. I pushed the raft into the hole. I carried the Innocent girl's body into the pit and laid her on the raft.

I have been to the afterlife. Barring myself, its a pretty painless place. Warm and comforting.

She will be safe there. Safe from this life and safe from me.

I spoke to the sky.

“I miss you Parrot. I will make this world a place you would have loved to see. It's not as nice a place as I told you it was, But, I will make it better. I promise!' I finished with a yell.

I filled the hole I dug and wandered naked into the endless sea of grass.

AN: Motivation other than just greed to conquer the world. A big difference than generally benevolent yet tyrannical behavior. This one will have a man who believes he is right for more reasons than mental superiority. A mission and goal with slightly deeper meaning. Making the world safe for future generations of little girls.