AN :
Next goal for another extra chapter is 550 power stones.
In the Game of Stones, you either win or you wait. The more Power Stones you offer, the faster the chapters come.
...
( Tywin Lannister POV )
Cersei scanned the letter quickly, under her breath Tywin heard her mumble something about how pretty her brother's handwriting was before she gasped suddenly. "I remember these!"
...
Tywin blinked at the outburst, craning forward over his desk to look at what Cersei was shouting about. Obliging him, the girl put the drawing of the Arc-Lamp down. "These are the Volt-Voltic… they're the stacks of disks he's had in his study since forever! I always wondered what they were for." she twirled her hair around her finger slightly as she looked over the notes.
"He talked about it a few times… I didn't realize…" Cersei began to murmur to herself lightly as Tywin looked at her, she seemed to be wracking her brain about something. "Mhmm, Callum is very clever." she finally seemed to decide. "I think he's known how to bottle lightning for a long time, if the notes here are telling the truth, and Callum wouldn't lie."
Tywin scratched his cheek as Cersei spoke, considering the new information. Speaking honestly, he had only actually visited Callum's study once to see the view. The climb up the stairs to the top of the rock took far too long to make regular trips, especially with Callum away from the Rock in Dorne when Tywin had last visited his home.
"Are there any other projects Callum was working on when you last visited his workshop?" Tywin would like to be aware of them in advance, if possible.
"Hmm, well when last he had the… things." she pointed at the drawing of the stacked disks. "He mentioned something about a noise maker, I wasn't paying attention." Cersei scratched the back of her head, blushing slightly.
Tywin frowned in thought for a moment. "Perhaps he's figured out how to make lightning, but not yet Thunder?" he posited. The two were related so he supposed if you could bottle one then you could bottle the other. He wasn't entirely sure what Thunder would be useful for though. He supposed he could add a question about that to his letter.
A heady scent filled the room as mutton spiced with rosemary was carried in on a platter for them to have, along with cups of watered-down wine to accompany their dinner. Tywin nodded to the servants, then waved them out, glancing back over to Cersei, who now seemed to have turned her attention to the other drawing. "Oh… " she commented, a content smile on her face. "Callum… he's really a lot like mother."
Tywin felt his heart warm as he saw his daughter's expression, and he reached out, placing his arm on her shoulder. "He really is." he chuckles lightly. "She was clever too, though in a… less dramatic way." Joanna had at times manoeuvered Tywin into doing things he didn't actually want to do, without upsetting him in the process. That required quite a bit of cleverness, though perhaps not of the same sort Callum had.
Cersei seemed to smile at that. "Of course! He takes after her in everything!" his daughter brightened up considerably. "Just like I take after you, Father!" Cersei declared proudly, standing to her full, growing height as she looked up to meet his gaze with her emerald eyes.
Tywin was a bit taken aback by the outspoken declaration and nearly snorted. Nearly. Instead, he let himself relax slowly. Cersei… well, he supposed she did take after him in some ways.
She certainly had the proper attitude towards those who insulted her house, and there was a viciousness there she had yet to refine. There was no argument that part of his seed wasn't strong in her. Still, he doubted anyone would mistake her for him the way they might mistake Callum for Joanna. It just wasn't worth correcting her on that, so he chose to change the subject.
"So, Cersei, our dinner is here, what is it you actually came here to speak to me about."
"Ah!" Cersei stopped preening and shook her head, glancing towards the door, and, seeing it shut, turning back to him, her voice dropped to a whisper. "Yes- I shan't forget it! Father! That Volantene woman, Valia! I saw her doing blood magic in the black cells! She is a sorceress!"
...
It was several months ago that Cersei had discovered a little passageway when she had been kicking around in a bout of frustration. She had been forced to attend to sewing and embroidery and other ladylike things she was quite displeased with, and in anger, she punched the wall of her room.
The blow knocked loose a wooden panel. Behind it, she found an entrance into an old dusty passage. The floor was thick with dust, and the air stale and ancient. The inside of it was illuminated only by a few peepholes that filtered in light from the surrounding rooms, squirreled away near the floorboards, or built cleverly into old furniture.
Now, any normal, cowardly eleven-year-old girl would have shrieked and run to her father and had it sealed up. After all, some villain might come and molest her in the night like Lann the Clever had done to the Casterly daughters. But Cersei saw herself more as Lann himself than as one of those helpless girls, and so, armed with a dagger she stole from the kitchens, Cersei Lannister snuck into the old passage with excitement and adventure in her heart.
The dust and the grime didn't bother her at all, though she did have to change her clothes more often and hide the dust as best she could from the washerwomen. The tunnels were actually a little less cramped than the similar passages of Casterly Rock, and far less extensive. She soon found a sealed dark room with a dragon mosaic on one wall that looked like no one had visited it for a hundred years.
From there passages went off all under Aegon's High Hill and across the Red Keep. They snaked between cells in the dungeons, up into the maiden vault, and around beneath the Godswood. Covered in dust and the grime of ages, the only place they never took Cersei was Maegor's holdfast. Untouched for decades, she saw not another soul in those tunnels as she explored as she pleased, a secret adventure hidden away from all the foolish people as she eavesdropped or spied on them through hidden peepholes.
In the dark of the night or in the early morning, when no one would think to check on her in her chambers and her father wouldn't have some knight or other following her about, she would slip into those uncomfortable passages and be transformed.
Like her dream as a child here she was, Lann the Clever sneaking into Casterly Rock through the mines, stealing their secrets and fucking their daughters under their noses. Well, not that last part, but she had certainly seen more than enough of that in the last few months, married and unmarried couples, illicit affairs, and even sword swallowers.
There were ten thousand little nooks and crannies in the red keep where they snuck away out of sight, but Cersei saw them all, or at least a good number of them. She had never known people did so much of that! It was thrilling in a way she didn't quite understand, and it put vivid thoughts through her pubescent imagination.
It was not all she spied through the peepholes in the tunnels though, not all that she heard through the walls either. Little plots of silly courtiers, duels in the evening fires of the great yard. Cersei saw it all from her hideaway, thrilled each time that she alone was clever enough to spy on them.
No one expected little Cersei, rebellious Cersei, could be watching them in their most private moments and discrete meetings. It made her smile just thinking about it. Even moreso when she saw the same courtiers, servants, and nobles in the halls of the Red Keep, she laughed within her mind, because she knew their secrets and they had no idea!
That love of adventure and spying on the unknowing fools was what led her to tonight, crouching in the tunnels of the Maiden vault to peep out at the Volantine woman and her barbarous entourage.
Cersei Lannister did not like the Volantine woman. She did not like the way she entered the city with a huge parade, full of marching elephants and Tigers in cages, or the way that the people cheered for her when she did.
She did not like that the woman's huge household had taken up a massive portion of the Red Keep, with Essosi servants rushing about everywhere, and she did not like that the woman went about like she was already the queen, hardly deigning to look at anyone save Prince Rhaegar and the King.
No, Cersei didn't like that one bit.
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