POV: Jon Stark
The next morning, I was still groggy, having stayed up late reviewing my notes on dragon bone structure, but the sound brought me fully awake. Through my bond with Ghost, I felt his alertness—visitors at the gate.
I dressed quickly and made my way downstairs. Talea was already at the gates, speaking with someone.
"Your delivery has arrived, my lord."
She opened the gates, and a large covered wagon rolled into the courtyard.
The driver hopped down—a young man, maybe eighteen or nineteen. He didn't look at me, just moved immediately to untie the canvas covering the wagon.
But it was the second man who made me pause.
He emerged from the passenger side with fluid. Tall and lean, with dark hair that fell past his shoulders. He wore simple clothes—brown and grey, nothing that would stand out in a crowd.
"Jon Stark?" he asked.
His accent was odd.
"Yes," I said, keeping my tone neutral.
He gave a slight nod and moved to the back of the wagon without further introduction. "One eagle, four ravens, one thunder fish," he said, as casually as if he were listing items on a shopping list. "All alive. All healthy."
I watched as he and the young driver began unloading cages from the wagon bed. The eagle's cage came first—a large wooden structure with iron bars, heavy enough that both men had to lift it together. Inside, I could see the golden eagle shifting on its perch, fierce eyes tracking every movement.
Next came four smaller cages, each containing a raven. The birds hopped from perch to perch, cawing softly at the disruption to their routine.
Finally, they carefully lifted down a large wooden barrel—the kind usually used for wine or salted fish.
Ghost had followed me out into the courtyard, and now he stood a few paces behind me, his massive white form drawing nervous glances from the young driver. But the other man didn't seem bothered by Ghost at all. He barely spared the direwolf a glance.
"Where would you like them?" He ataked.
"The outer building," I said, gesturing to the converted stable across the courtyard. "The one on the left."
When they finished, both men straightened. The young driver wiped sweat from his forehead and glanced at the older man, clearly waiting for permission to leave.
But the older man wasn't done yet. He stood in the doorway and looked at me with those unsettling empty eyes.
"Thank you," I said, more to break the silence than anything else. "And your name is...?"
A slight smile flickered across his face—there and gone so quickly I almost missed it. It didn't reach his eyes.
"A man is called many names," he said in that shifting, changing accent. "Today, he is called Jaqen H'ghar."
I kept my expression carefully neutral, not letting any of what I was thinking show on my face. "You're a long way from the House of Black and White," I said carefully.
"A man goes where the Many-Faced God wills." He tilted his head slightly, "A boy is far from home as well. Far from the Wall, far from winter..." He paused meaningfully. "Which is about to come."
Jaqen turned to leave, his movements as fluid as water, then paused at the door. He looked back over his shoulder, and for just a moment, something almost like genuine interest flickered in those empty eyes.
"A life for a life," I said quietly, remembering what I'd read about the Faceless Men's code. "Should a boy ever wish to discuss such matters, a man is not difficult to find."
Then he was gone, moving with that same liquid grace. He climbed into the wagon beside the young driver. The cart rolled out through the gates, and Talea closed them behind it with a heavy thud.
I stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed gates.
A Faceless Man. Here. In my home. Delivering animals.
'Later', I told myself firmly. 'Think about it later. Right now, you have work to do.'
I turned back to the outer building, forcing myself to focus on the present task.
I approached the wooden barrel first, peering down into the murky water.
The electric eel was there, coiled at the bottom, its long serpentine body barely visible in the dim light. It was agitated—I could tell from the way it kept uncoiling and coiling again, sensing the change in its environment, not understanding what was happening.
The barrel was completely wrong for it. Wooden barrels like this were meant for wine or salted fish, not living creatures. There was barely enough water for the eel to move, no hiding places, no way for it to regulate its temperature.
I needed to build it a proper home.
I needed something transparent like glass but stronger and completely non-conductive.
In my old life—my life before I woke up as Jon Snow—that would have meant acrylic. PMMA, we called it. Polymethyl methacrylate. A synthetic polymer that looked like glass but was lighter, stronger, and didn't conduct electricity at all.
The question was: could I create it using biokinesis?
After all, PMMA was just molecules. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen arranged in a specific pattern. And I could manipulate molecules. I'd done it before when I healed people, when I modified Ghost, when I created those ravens from scratch.
This would just be... different. Non-living chemistry instead of living biology.
But the principles should be the same.
"Sorro!" I called out.
The groundskeeper appeared from behind the main house, wiping dirt from his hands. "My lord?"
"I need wood. Fresh branches, still green. As much as you can gather."
He didn't ask why—he'd learned not to ask questions about my strange requests. "Right away, my lord."
An hour later, I stood in my workshop surrounded by piles of freshly cut branches.
Ghost lay by the door, watching me with patient red eyes. Through our bond, I could feel his curiosity and his concern. He knew I was about to try something difficult.
I placed both hands on the nearest pile of branches and closed my eyes.
'Focus. Break it down. Understand the structure.'
I reached out with my biokinesis, feeling the living cells in the wood. Then I began to tear them apart—gently but firmly, breaking down cell walls, separating the cellulose from the lignin, reducing everything to its most basic molecular components.
The wood dissolved under my hands, becoming something like a thick soup of organic compounds. I could feel it changing, feel the complex structure of the plant tissue breaking down into simpler molecules.
Now came the hard part.
I needed to take those molecules and rearrange them. Pull out the carbon atoms. Attach them in long chains. Add methyl groups here, methacrylate groups there. Build the specific structure of PMMA, one molecule at a time.
It was painfully slow work.
Unlike when I healed people or modified animals—where I could follow existing biological templates—this was pure synthesis. I was building something from scratch, creating a structure that didn't exist naturally, forcing molecules into arrangements they wouldn't normally take.
Sweat began to bead on my forehead. My hands trembled with the effort. But slowly, impossibly, the pile of wood transformed.
The brown organic matter lightened, fading from brown to amber to pale yellow. Then it became transparent—first cloudy, then clearer and clearer until it looked like colored glass.
The texture changed too. The rough bark and wood fibers smoothed out, becoming uniform and glossy. The mass solidified, the liquid-like soup of molecules organizing itself into a solid polymer structure.
When I finally pulled my hands away, gasping with exhaustion, a perfect sheet of clear acrylic lay before me.
I picked it up carefully, testing its properties.
It was lighter than glass—much lighter. When I knocked on it with my knuckles, it made a different sound than glass would—more plastic, less crystalline. When I flexed it slightly, it bent instead of cracking.
Perfect.
But one sheet wouldn't be enough. I needed to build an entire tank—something big enough to house not just the one eel I'd bought, but the females I planned to create. A breeding population would need space to establish territories without constantly fighting.
I took a deep breath and reached for the next pile of wood.
By midday, I had six large sheets of acrylic, each about three feet square.
I was exhausted—drenched in sweat, hands shaking, head pounding from the effort of so much precise molecular manipulation. But I had the materials I needed.
Morra brought me lunch—bread, cheese, cold meat—but I barely tasted it. My mind was still focused on the molecular structures, on the bonds I'd created, on whether they were strong enough.
The actual construction of the tank was simpler than creating the acrylic had been.
I arranged the sheets into the shape I wanted—a large rectangular tank, eight feet long, four feet wide, three feet deep. Big enough for a small breeding population to live comfortably.
Then I used my biokinesis to weld the edges together at the molecular level. I fused the polymer chains along each seam, creating bonds that were just as strong as the rest of the material. No glue, no screws, no weak points. Just seamless acrylic, as if the whole thing had been grown rather than built.
When I finished, I stepped back to admire my work.
The finished tank dominated one wall of my workshop. It was completely transparent—I could see through it as clearly as if there were nothing there at all. The seams were invisible, perfect.
And most importantly, it would be a perfect electrical insulator. The eel could discharge all it wanted inside that tank, and not a single spark would make it through the acrylic walls.
Now I just needed to move the eel into it.
Transferring the eel proved tricky.
I filled the new tank with fresh water from the cistern, checking the temperature carefully with my hand. Electric eels liked it warm—around seventy-five to eighty degrees. I added several large rocks to create hiding places, and pieces of driftwood to make the environment feel more natural.
But the eel itself was a problem.
I could see it through the gaps in the barrel, coiling and uncoiling frantically, sensing all the changes around it. New smells, new sounds, unknown threats everywhere. It was stressed and frightened, which meant it was also dangerous.
A stressed electric eel could discharge six hundred volts without warning. If I tried to net it and move it physically, there was a very real chance I'd get shocked badly enough to kill me.
I needed it relax and calm.
Which meant I needed to warg into it.
I'd warged into my raven and Ghost many times. Birds and mammals were relatively easy—their minds had structures I could understand, emotions that made sense to me.
But a fish? An electric eel specifically?
This would be complicated.
I pulled up a stool beside the barrel and placed my hands on the rough wooden sides. I closed my eyes and reached out with my consciousness, searching for the eel's mind.
There, completely different from Ghost or raven that I almost recoiled. There was no warmth here, no affection, no complex emotions at all. Just... instinct. Pure, simple, ancient instinct.
Hunger. Territory. Threat/not-threat.
And underneath it all, was strangeness I'd never felt before—a constant awareness of electrical fields!?
The eel could sense the faint bioelectricity of living things, could map its entire environment through the subtle distortions in the electromagnetic field around it.
Except right now, alone in the barrel, it couldn't sense anything. It was blind in a way that had nothing to do with its eyes.
I pushed deeper, forcing my consciousness into that strange, cold mind.
Suddenly I wasn't Jon anymore. I was in the water, feeling it flow over my skin—no, not skin, something different. A surface that was sensitive to the electrical signatures.
I could feel the wooden walls of the barrel confining me on all sides. Too close. Too tight.
Every instinct screaming: 'territory violation, danger, flee, attack, defend—'
I pushed calm at the eel's mind, broadcasting the feeling as hard as I could through our connection.
'Safe. No danger. Rest. Peace. Calm.'
It took a long moment, but slowly—so slowly—the eel's body began to relax.
'Good. Easy. Safe here. Calm.'
I quickly stop warging and used my hand to get it out of barrel.
It was extremely slippery because of slime around it but I quickly put it in new tank.
…