GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 413 - An Egg — Inner Fire

The blurry shape in his perception sharpened, degree by degree, until it was unmistakable.

It was not a living creature.

No heartbeat. No breath.

It floated in perfect stillness at the very center of the light orb, holding a flawless oval shape.

Lynn stopped breathing.

An absurd thought detonated in his mind — absurd, and yet impossibly, terrifyingly close to the truth.

An egg.

Was that an egg?

A dragon egg?

This red comet that had split the sky, that the Citadel's maesters had called a herald of doom — its true nature was an egg from beyond the heavens?

The realization hit him like the ground dropping out from under his feet. He had always assumed the dragons of this world were native creatures, born of Westerosi magic. Now that assumption crumbled. Their origins ran stranger and deeper than anything he had imagined.

Maybe the ancestors of House Targaryen, those Valyrian shepherds, never discovered dragons at the Fourteen Flames at all.

Maybe they found the first Red Comet.

Lynn didn't move rashly. The energy storm churning around the light orb was too wild. Even at his current strength, forcing his way through would not end well.

So he chose the safest option. The only real option.

Wait.

He took Winter and retreated to the basin's rim, found a sheltered hollow out of the wind, and settled in.

Seven days.

He didn't waste a single hour. Sitting cross-legged, he let the energy wash over him — that gold-and-crimson tide from beyond the sky, rawer and more violent than anything the Continent of Westeros had ever produced. Under its assault, the magic inside him circulated faster, burned hotter, refined itself into something denser and harder than before.

Winter lay at his side the whole time, all three heads turned toward the basin, watching. Patient as stone.

And the comet changed.

Day one: the light orb's pulse slowed. The energy storm raking the basin dropped from a howl to a roar.

Day two: the blinding golden-red of the flames softened, shifting toward a gentler orange-yellow.

Day three: the golden lightning crawling over the orb's surface thinned out, its fury spent.

The natives noticed.

They emerged from the jungle in clusters, faces painted in colors that meant awe and fear. They kept their distance, kneeling at the basin's edge, performing some wordless, ancient ritual toward the fading light. When they finally caught sight of the black dragon coiled at the rim, vast as a hill, and the figure sitting calmly beside it, they scattered. Hands and knees, screaming, back into the jungle's dark.

Lynn paid them no attention. Everything he had went toward the egg.

One week later, the last wisp of orange-yellow flame flickered twice, like a candle guttering in a draft, and went out.

The violent energy that had filled the world vanished as if it had never existed.

Lynn's eyes snapped open. He was on his feet before he'd finished the thought.

At the basin's center, the massive crystal dragon egg floated half a meter above the scorched earth, perfectly still. The light was gone. The brilliant nebula patterns etched across its shell had gone dark. But it was still stunning , something beautiful in the way a meteor is beautiful, cold and absolute.

He walked toward it.

With every step he took across the glass-black ground, the earth crumbled to fine powder beneath his boot. The light orb had stripped this land down to nothing, sucked every trace of life out of the soil.

He stopped in front of the egg.

It was larger than he'd expected. Nearly the size of a pumpkin.

Lynn reached out and pressed his palm against the shell.

Cold. Smooth as polished mirror. But underneath the smoothness, a faint natural texture ran through it , like something vast and ancient had been written into the surface, the orbital paths of stars made tangible.

Inside, he could feel it. Faint but real. A sleeping life, pulsing at the very edge of perception, resonating with the magic in his own blood.

Life calling to life. The deepest kind of recognition.

He gathered the egg into his arms. It was heavier than it looked , heavier than a pumpkin, heavier than he'd braced for, the weight of a full-grown adult pressed into that smooth shell.

He tucked the dragon egg into Winter's mouth for safekeeping, then turned and looked out across the continent one last time.

He leaped onto Winter's back. The black dragon answered with a low rumble deep in its chest, spread its wings, and launched skyward.

Higher this time. Faster.

Before turning back to Westeros, Lynn wanted one final look.

Winter cut across the high sky like a black bolt of lightning. From ten thousand meters up, the continent spread open beneath him in full.

Unbroken primeval jungle, green as far as sight could carry, carpeting every inch of the land. Black mountain ranges rising like the spines of buried giants. Rivers coiling through the forest below, their water running strange colors , jade green, ink black, shifting as he passed overhead.

He spotted more tribes. Bonfires in clearings. Hunters bringing down massive beasts in the undergrowth. Every one of them, when they looked up and saw the dragon, dropped to their knees and screamed.

No cities. No harbors. No roads.

This place was still living in the first age of the world.

Lynn pulled his gaze back.

The continent's value was obvious. He'd even spotted an open-pit gold vein , enough to make any king lose his mind. But none of that could be touched yet. It would take years to explore, to consolidate, to build.

And time was the one thing he didn't have.

From the day he'd left Winterfell to the day he'd set foot on this continent to the seven days he'd spent waiting out the egg , over half a month had slipped past. Westeros would not hold still for him. The game there never paused.

He had to go back.

"Time to go home."

He patted Winter's neck. The dragon answered with something almost cheerful, banked sharply, and turned east at full speed.

➤ Next: The Strange Uses of the Dragon Egg