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Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
ASOIAF and all of its characters belong to GRRM
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 75: The Last Gift
Joffrey stood in silence, the small red sphere hovering before him, pulsing with a light that seemed to imitate the rhythm of his own heart.
The chamber was dark around him, the creature's fires dimmed to a soft glow, and the heat that had pressed against his skin since he entered had faded to an almost comforting warmth.
The creature did not respond to his question. It did not need to. The truth was written in the cracked shell of its obsidian body and the dimming light of its fissures.
It had been gravely wounded in the final battle, and instead of using what remained of its power to heal itself, the creature had chosen a different path.
Joffrey's mind drifted to the carvings in the temple above his head. The primitive humans kneeling before the sleeping god. The lines of light connecting the creature to their heads. The transformation that followed...the gift of magic, of knowledge, of power.
"You gave them a piece of yourself," Joffrey realized, his voice barely a whisper in the vast darkness. "You gave them magic. You gave birth to dragons. You poured your essence into this world, and now..."
Now there was nothing left.
The creature had not healed. It had spent its strength creating, nurturing, and sacrificing. It had poured its fire into the world, and the world had flourished in response. Dragons...along with all their variants, had scattered across the planet. Sorcerers, pyromancers, shadowbinders, and all manner of magic users had risen to shape the course of history. Magic had flowed through the land like blood through a living body, bringing life and wonder and terror to every corner of the world.
And the creature had been dying ever since.
Joffrey struggled to comprehend it. He had spent centuries chasing immortality, hoarding power, preserving himself against the ravages of time.
He had destroyed his own body, crossed worlds, and surrendered everything he had for the chance to live forever. And this creature...this primordial being, this fragment of creation itself, who already possessed the eternity he craved...had thrown it away.
'For what?' he thought. 'For what?'
The answer came to him unsolicited, carried on the gentle wave of the creature's presence.
The humans had knelt before it in supplication. They had offered their worship, their loyalty, their lives. They had built cities in its honor, raised temples to its glory, spilled blood on its altars. And the creature had seen something of value in those primitive, frightened, desperate beings.
Something worth saving. Something worth nurturing. Something worth dying for.
'They were not its children,' Joffrey thought. 'But this creature made them its children.'
He did not understand that kind of love. In his first life, he had loved, yes, but his love had been possessive, conditional, bound by the expectations of others.
In this life, he had loved no one. He had used people, manipulated them, and would not hesitate to discard them if they became a burden to his progress.
Even now, he had grown fond of some, like Saera, with her fierce loyalty and her jealous heart.
Tyrion, with his wit and his hunger for respect.
Sandor, with his stubbornness and his hidden depths.
And perhaps even Daenerys, with her fire and her dreams of a throne she had never seen.
But if they were to turn on him or stand in his way, he would not hesitate to remove them. He had done it before. He would do it again.
The love of this primordial being was different. It was selfless. It was boundless. It was the love of a god who had chosen to die so that its creation might live.
'How foolish,' Joffrey thought. 'Sentimental and weak.'
But even as the words formed in his mind, he knew they were not true.
There was nothing weak about this creature. It had fought for millennia, bled for millennia, sacrificed for millennia. It had given everything it had to give, and now, at the end of its long existence, it was asking for help to protect its legacy.
He had once been like that as well...when he was a naive young boy named Harry Potter. He had once been willing to sacrifice everything for others.
Joffrey looked at the small red sphere hovering before him. It contained the creature's most pure essence.
If he consumed it, he would be transformed. He would gain strength beyond anything he had ever known. He would become something more than human, more than wizard, more than the sum of his centuries.
But he would also be bound. The creature's purpose would become his purpose. Its mission would become his mission. He would be expected to finish what it had started...to find the ice creature and destroy it, or die trying.
"I make no promises," he said, his voice cold and steady. "I will take your gift, but I will not swear to complete your quest."
The creature's mind pressed against his own. It was not angry, nor disappointed. He felt only acceptance. Because the creature had known his nature when it had chosen him. It had seen his ambition, his hunger, his ruthlessness. It had seen the coldness in his heart, the willingness to do whatever was necessary to survive and thrive. And it had chosen him anyway.
'Perhaps it saw something in me that I do not see in myself,' Joffrey thought. 'Or perhaps it is simply desperate.'
He reached out and took the sphere.
It was slightly warm to the touch, like a living thing. It pulsed in his hand, and he could feel its power thrumming through his fingers, up his arm, into his chest.
It was intoxicating and terrifying, a promise of power beyond imagining and a warning of destruction beyond measure.
For a moment, he was tempted to use it right here, right now. To open himself to its energy and let it flow through him, transforming him, remaking him, elevating him to something greater. The hunger in his soul, the hunger that had driven him across worlds and through centuries, screamed at him to take it, to consume it, to make it his.
But he quenched that hunger with an act of will. He had learned this lesson before, at the cost of his own body and the life he had built.
If he tried to assimilate this much energy all at once, he would suffer the same fate as Harry Potter when he had attempted to absorb all that cosmic energy into his mortal frame. His body would shatter. His soul would scatter. He would be unmade. And there was no guarantee that another life awaited him after this one.
He had learned that lesson the hard way. He would not repeat it.
He conjured a small stone box, its surface etched with protective runes that glowed faintly in the darkness. He opened it and placed the sphere inside, then sealed it with a whisper of power. The box hummed, and the light of the sphere faded, contained, preserved.
He turned and walked toward the stairs. Behind him, the creature's fires dimmed further, and the chamber grew darker.
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The climb back to the surface seemed shorter than the descent.
Although he was unsure of how long he had been down below…it did not feel more than a few minutes, but perhaps it had been hours.
He did not know. Time had lost its meaning in the presence of the creature.
When he reached the top of the stairs and stepped out of the hidden passage, he heard a soft click behind him. He turned and saw the secret door closing by itself, the stone grinding against stone.
Then the glyphs on its surface flared with light, and the stone seemed to fuse, sealing the entrance completely.
Joffrey wondered if this was the creature's way of saying that it would not be receiving any more visitors. It had given its gift. It had said its piece. Now it wanted to be alone.
'It does not want to be disturbed,' he thought. 'It is preparing for the end.'
He shook his head and moved back into the small antechamber behind the statue, where he had left the others to tend their wounds.
But the chamber was empty. The Hound and the Dothraki were not there.
For a moment, Joffrey's heart quickened. Had they abandoned him? Had they assumed he was dead and returned to the boat? Had something happened to them while he was below?
Then he heard voices from the main chamber, and he followed them.
The Hound was standing near the great statue of the fire creature, poking at something inside the massive brazier that had been used for sacrifices.
The brazier was filled with ashes...thick, grey ashes that had accumulated over centuries, perhaps millennia. Aggo and the other Dothraki stood nearby, watching with curious expressions.
"What are you doing?" Joffrey asked.
"The Prince is back!" Aggo exclaimed when he saw him.
The other Dothraki hurried to bow at him as a sign of respect.
The Hound turned, his scarred face creased with concentration. "I saw something shining in the ashes. Thought it might be treasure."
'At least they seem to have recovered,' Joffrey thought, before approaching the large brazier. His eyes narrowed. The ashes were deep, almost up to his waist. The Hound had been poking at something with the obsidian spear he had taken from the stone guardian after losing his sword.
Joffrey could not see anything shining, but on closer inspection, he could detect a faint trace of something. It felt like a warmth, a pulse, a whisper of power coming from within the ashes.
"Let me see," he said, conjuring a small light sphere and sending it floating closer to the brazier.
The ashes glowed under the light, and at the bottom, something gleamed...something dark, smooth, and curved. Joffrey reached into the ashes with his bare hand and was surprised to find that they were still warm, despite the fact that this brazier had likely been out of use for millennia.
His fingers touched something solid. He grasped it and pulled it out.
"This is..." Joffrey's eyes widened.
"An egg?" The Hound sounded disappointed.
"The Khaleesi once received eggs like that one," Aggo pointed out.
"Dragon eggs."
"So it is not treasure." Sandor huffed.
"It is indeed an egg," Joffrey said, examining the object in his hand. "But I do not think this is a dragon egg."
It did not have the defining scales that dragon eggs always had, according to every document he recalled reading on the subject. This one was completely smooth and black...the same glistening black tone as the magical stone used to construct this city. The same stone that covered the body of the fire creature.
"Whatever is inside here is definitely not a dragon," Joffrey said.
"Then what is it?" the Hound asked.
Joffrey looked back at the egg in his hands. He could feel the life inside it stirring, responding to his touch. It had been hidden in the ashes for who knew how long, waiting for someone to find it.
'All those sacrifices,' he thought. 'All that blood and fire and devotion. It appears they did end up bearing fruit. It is too bad the primitive humans who built this place did not live long enough to see it.'
He wrapped the egg in a cloth and placed it carefully in his pack. "I do not know yet. But I intend to find out."
One thing he was sure of…this egg was valuable…perhaps more valuable than anything else in Stygai. It was the last piece of the creature's legacy.
"I believe it is time to leave," Joffrey said.
The Hound and the Dothraki gathered their supplies, and together, they made their way out of the temple, through the silent streets of Stygai, back to the boat that would carry them down the Ash River.
Behind them, the Corpse City slept on, its secrets buried, its guardian fading.
And in Joffrey's pack, the egg pulsed with a light that no one could see.
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