I sat cross-legged beneath the weirwood.
Around me, lay countless black feathers. Some were pristine, glossy as midnight, others were burnt at the edges.
Test subjects one through forty-two, all failures.
I picked up one of the burned feathers, turning it between my fingers. The first dozen had simply died from the shock—their hearts stopping the moment electricity coursed through their bodies.
"Forty-three," I murmured, reaching for the unconscious raven lying beside me. "Let's see if you fare better."
The reference raven rested in a small cage nearby. I placed my hands on the pile of biomass.
The creation process had become as natural as breathing, after so many attempts.
I created the magical node in its heart, and around the raven's neck, I carefully constructed electrocytes.
Thousands of them, stacked like organic batteries, connected to the nervous system for control, linked to the magical node for enhanced power.
A layer of specialized fat, dense and nonconductive,
surrounding all vital organs. I started adding it after the first raven died.
It would act as insulation, preventing the electrical discharge from cooking the bird from within, but it didn't work as it should.
I pulled my hands away, gasping slightly from the effort. The newly created raven lay before me, identical to its template but improved in ways no natural bird could match.
The raven's chest rose. Fell. Rose again. Its eyes opened.
I reached out with my power, gently encouraging the raven to activate its electrocytes. Just a small discharge. A test.
The bird responded, the charge started building, the voltage increasing—
Blue-white sparks crackled across its neck feathers.
The raven twitched, but didn't convulse. Didn't scream. The electricity discharged harmlessly into the air, and the protective fat layer kept its organs safe.
It lived.
But as I watched, my elation faded to frustration.
The electricity was just… electricity. Normal electrical current, no different than what the electric eel could produce.
Despite the magical node, despite the enhanced power source, the raven couldn't produce magical lightning. The electricity refused to transform.
"The magic is there. The structure is there."
I dismissed the raven back into its cage and sat back, thinking.
Magic could be shaped—I knew that. The weirwoods proved it. The dragons proved it. Fire and ice and blood magic, all different expressions of the same fundamental force.
But how did the shaping work? What was the mechanism that transformed raw magical energy into specific phenomena?
I needed a reference. A template, just like I'd used the eel for electrocytes.
My hand drifted to the pouch at my belt, curling around a small object I'd acquired in King's Landing.
A bone fragment of Balerion the Black Dread.
I drew it out, holding it up to the weirwood's light. It was shaped like a disk, white as winter snow.
If any creature knew how to transform magic, I thought, it would be a dragon.
Dragons were one of the apex magical creatures, their entire biology intertwined with supernatural forces.
I gathered more biomass and used it to create a dragon egg.
I made it deliberately oversized, perhaps twice the size of a normal dragon egg. If I was going to observe the creature inside, I needed space to work with, needed to see the structures clearly.
It started as all vertebrates do—a cluster of cells that rapidly differentiated. Neural crest, notochord, somites forming in precise sequence. But there were differences, structures that had no place in any normal reptilian development.
The heart formed early, as it should. But within it grew a magical core far more sophisticated than anything I'd created before.
From this central core, pathways spread throughout the developing body.
I watched in fascination as organs took shape. Lungs with unusual geometry, designed to process air in ways that defied normal biology.
In the throat, surrounding the air passages, were clusters of cells unlike anything I'd seen before. They weren't quite protein, weren't quite mineral.
Crystal-protein structures.
They formed intricate geometric patterns, each cluster precisely arranged. And when I traced the flow of magic through the developing dragon's body, I saw how it worked.
Raw magical energy flowed from the heart, up through the pathways, into these crystal structures.
And there, through some process that was more like alchemy than biology, the magic transformed into dragon fire, creating a hole in its eggshell.
I pulled back from the egg. The implications of these crystal proteins were staggering.
If I understood this correctly, these crystal-protein structures acted as catalyst.
I started small.
I created a mouse but with a few modifications. A miniature magical node in its heart. Tiny pathways running to a crop-like structure in its throat. And within that structure, a simplified version of the crystal-protein catalyst I'd observed in the dragon egg.
The mouse woke, whiskers twitching. It seemed healthy enough, if confused by its sudden existence.
"Let's see if this works," I murmured.
I reached out with my power, encouraging the mouse to activate its magical systems. To try breathing fire.
The mouse opened its mouth.
A thin jet of flame erupted from its throat, perhaps six inches long, far hotter than normal fire.
It lasted for exactly three seconds before the mouse collapsed.
….
POV: Jon Arryn, Hand of the King
"The Ironborn grow restless, my lords," the Spider said, his soft voice carrying easily in the close quarters. His hands were folded in his lap, his expression as bland and pleasant as always. "My little birds tell me that Lord Balon Greyjoy has been rebuilding his fleet."
"The Greyjoys never learn," Petyr Baelish said. "It's what they do. Build ships, lose wars, build more ships."
"Nevertheless," Varys continued, "it might be wise to keep an eye on Pyke. The Ironborn have long memories, and they have not forgotten their defeat in the Greyjoy Rebellion. Should they perceive weakness in the Crown…"
I opened my mouth to respond—to point out that another rebellion would be costly, that the Crown could ill afford another war—when the pain struck. It lasted for just a few moments.
But as the pain faded.
'I remember it all!'
"Lord Hand?" Pycelle was saying, his watery eyes wide with alarm. "Are you quite well? Should I summon a maester—"
"I'm fine," I said, my voice hoarse. I forced myself to sit up straight, to slow my breathing. "A moment of… vertigo. Nothing more."
But my eyes had already found Petyr Baelish across the table.
Littlefinger sat very still, his expression carefully neutral. But his eyes—those grey-green eyes that never missed anything—were watching me with an intensity.
Had he been the one? Had Petyr been involved in my poisoning?
Lysa, I remember her face when I was on my dying bed. How she and Petyr talked about their new life.
If Petyr had asked her to poison me… would she have done it?
"Perhaps we should take a rest for the day," Varys suggested smoothly. "The Lord Hand has been working too hard, I think. The summer heat can be most taxing."
"Yes," I said, seizing on the excuse. "Yes, I think that would be wise."
The others rose, gathering their papers. Pycelle fussed over me, suggesting I take more rest, eat more red meat, drink less wine. I barely heard him.
...