[Halloween] Terror of the Toys

[_kinginthenorth]

Reynald Jon Stark has had a very exciting, very tiring day. In the morning, after breakfast, he ran around in circles until he got dizzy and fell over. Then he went searching for treasure, a successful quest in which he found an abandoned bird's nest, a small army of ants marching determinedly in formation toward an anthill, and a shiny blue

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[tooktheblack]

Summerfell, while a roomy enough residence, wasn't so large that Jon couldn't hear the shrieks of Reynald and considering Reynald wasn't normally a fussy child, hearing that set him instantly on guard. "Ghost, with me," he managed, getting out of bed and making his way to find his nephew.

The toys he'd been given at the strange festival the week before seemed to all have come to life and several look vicious. Jon was mostly concerned with keeping Reynald from harm.

"Reynald?" Jon said lowly, drawing his sword and trying to distract the toys come to life. "Reynald, stay where you are. Nothing can hurt you."

Not on his watch.

[_kinginthenorth]

Grey Wind is already at the door, crouched low to the ground with his tail straight behind him, lips pulled back in a growl. The toys haven't yet attacked, or done more than move; it may be the sight or scent of the wolves keeping them at bay--so why have they begun moving now? Grey Wind barks to Ghost, and it sounds almost like a general giving orders. He watches them, suspicious, ready to strike, but unsure what to target first.

[tooktheblack]

Jon moved to try and corner the toys between him (with his back to Reynald) and the two direwolves, imagining they could handle most things themselves. He wished he'd thought to bring a torch, though, and hoped this would do.

The monkey sunk its teeth into his leg and while he was in leathers, he could still feel it pierce his skin.

"Sometimes I really, really hate this island," he muttered, pulling at it and swinging Longclaw in a low, ineffectual arc to keep the others from breaking his position and getting to Reynald.

[lonewolflives]

Nymeria, like Arya in some ways, did not always stay close to home. She'd spent years running wild, and even years on the island hadn't entirely corrected this, perhaps because it was, for all the efforts of the people on it, still a wild kind of place.

But she'd spent those years building a pack, and was a different kind of independant to Arya, not holding herself separate in the same way. And at the first sign of distress she was a blur of grey fur bursting into the room with the others, moving to cover the other flank, to form a semi-circle around the toys.

Arya herself was moments behind. Reynald was shrieking, after all.

"What in the seven hells?"

[tooktheblack]

"Never been happier to see you, Arya," Jon said, finally managing to get the monkey off and fling it across the room. It staggered, bloody, but Jon had other fish to fry.

"Maybe I can try to push them out and you hold the flanks?"

[_kinginthenorth]

Robb is only a moment after Arya, delayed mostly by getting half out the door, deciding that Reynald's shriek was an actual cry of danger as opposed to toddler angst, and racing back to grab his sword. His disbelieving, "What in the seven hells?" is a good echo of Arya's, as for a split second he takes in the sight of the wolves facing off against a row of demonic toys and Jon Snow with a stuffed monkey trying to gnaw his neck.

But mostly, he's concerned with Reynald, huddled in bed wide-eyed. Realising that his screaming has accomplished what it was meant for and brought all the grown-ups in the house running to his rescue, he's gone quiet again and is trying to huddle as deep under the blankets as he can get.

A small and previously harmless looking bear toy lumbers toward the bed, and Grey Wind streaks across the floor, nearly tripping the giraffe to lock his jaws around the bear's little stuffed neck.

[lonewolflives]

Nymeria is right behind him, seizing the bears legs and yanking in the other direction as in a far more prosaic canine tug of war, the sheer force and size of the two direwolves beginning to take the bear apart at the seams.

Arya herself threw a knife at the monkey, but it was moving faster than she'd expected, up the wall.

"Fuck," she said, pulling Needle loose. Smaller blade, better for confined spaces.

"Get a sheet," she said. Pinning them one by one wasn't fast enough. As for driving them.. "If we push them out that just sets them on someone else."

[_kinginthenorth]

"We need to get Reynald out," Robb says, finding that driving his sword into the side of a stuffed giraffe really only results in a lot of fluff flying everywhere. "Are there any more of those things in Summerfell, or did we put them all in here?"