GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 416 - Peering into Dreams
Inside the workshop, the maesters had descended into full-blown frenzy.
They crowded around the stone slabs covered in "oracles," arguing one moment, gasping in wonder the next, hands shaking as they frantically copied everything down onto their parchments.
To them, this door to a new world was more staggering than the return of magic and dragons combined.
Lynn left them to it.
He took the jet-black glass candle and walked back to his room.
He turned it over in his hand. It felt like gripping a chunk of obsidian chipped from the deep heart of a glacier , unnaturally cold, slightly numbing to the touch.
He raised the twisted candle to eye level and studied it against the firelight.
It didn't reflect. The firelight hit its surface and simply vanished, swallowed by something invisible, not even a faint halo leaking out.
To the maesters, this thing was proof that magic had returned , a forbidden relic of a lost age.
Lynn saw it differently.
Ravens.
On the Continent of Westeros, the raven was the fastest method of long-distance communication. The only method.
And it was still too slow.
A raven flying from Winterfell to King's Landing could take days, even weeks. Along the way, a blizzard could ground it. An enemy archer could bring it down. The message could be intercepted, altered, replaced entirely.
The outcome of a war. The rise or fall of a House. All of it sometimes came down to whether a single small bird made it to its destination on time.
But this candle...
Ravens? Messengers?
Against real-time communication, those were primitive tricks. Stone-age nonsense.
With this, he could sit in Winterfell and simultaneously direct an army in Dorne, coordinate merchant vessels across the Narrow Sea, and hold a private conversation with an ally in King's Landing that no one else would ever know happened.
Green Sight could pull off something similar, yes , but it drained his mental energy. The glass candle didn't. And it could transmit images.
No more delays in intelligence. No more garbled orders.
There was also the other thing.
Whether a person could light a glass candle had once been the ancient test for identifying genuine magical talent.
This wasn't just a magical artifact.
This was a strategic weapon , one capable of reshaping the entire power structure of Westeros.
And then there was the terrifying part.
It could peer into dreams.
What did that mean?
It meant he could become a god inside everyone's dreams. Or a devil.
He could reach an enemy at their most vulnerable, stripped of all defenses, and plant fear there. Sow chaos. Break their will before they ever woke up.
No assassin's dagger was that lethal. Nothing was that hard to guard against.
Lynn slowly fed a thread of magic into the candle.
No dramatic reaction. No surge of power.
The thread of magic sank in and disappeared without a trace, absorbed completely, like dropping a stone into a still lake.
Then , without warning , the tip of the "wick," which looked like it had been ground from obsidian, flickered to life.
A ghostly blue flame bloomed out of nothing.
It carried no warmth. If anything, it breathed cold.
It didn't dance upward the way a normal flame would. Instead, it gathered at the wick's tip and coiled into a vortex , spinning, shifting, never still.
Lynn pushed his mental energy into it.
BOOM!
Hundreds of images slammed into his mind, twisted, blurred, fragmented, all at once.
He saw the Trident rushing in full current. He saw the Eyrie stabbing into cloud. He saw the filth of Flea Bottom sprawling under King's Landing. He saw the Wall rising at the edge of the world, colossal and pale.
The entire continent, compressed into one tiny flame.
He could even see Winterfell. Every corner of it, sharp and clear.
Ned sat in his study, frowning at a map of the North.
Sansa and Margaery were tucked together in a room, whispering over a new bolt of fabric just arrived from the south.
Cersei stood alone at a tower window, staring at the distant snowcapped peaks with an expression he couldn't quite name.
Brienne and the Hound were going at it in the training yard, blades ringing, sparks scattering across the stone.
And there was Arya.
Lying in bed. Dead asleep.
Her brow was faintly creased, like something in her dream was giving her trouble.
A thought surfaced.
Arya, you're volunteering for this.
Lynn steadied his focus and locked his will onto her.
The thousand images swirling in the vortex dissolved. Only Arya's small bedroom remained.
The image moved closer. Pushed through walls. Pushed through air.
Something shifted in Lynn's perspective — he was no longer watching. He was entering.
When his consciousness fully crossed over, the world around him transformed.
Cold stone walls. The warmth of the fireplace. Gone.
In their place: a vast, cracked wasteland stretching in every direction. The sky was gray. The ground was split and dry. The air carried the weight of something hostile.
Arya's dream.
Arya stood at the center of it.
Across from her was a man in ragged black clothing, his face impossible to make out clearly.
"Draw your sword."
Arya gritted her teeth. She raised Needle and drove it forward with everything she had.
The man simply turned aside, casual and unhurried, letting her blade pass harmlessly. Then two fingers extended and caught her sword tip with pinpoint precision.
"Too slow."
"Too weak."
He pressed down slightly.
CRACK!
Arya's sword broke in two.
The dream snapped shut.
---
Back in her bedroom, Arya wrenched upright, gasping for breath, cold sweat beading across her forehead.
That dream again.
Since leaving King's Landing and coming back to Winterfell to marry Lynn, this dream had followed her. Every time, she was sparring with Syrio Forel , the water dancer who had taught her the blade. And every time, no matter how hard she pushed, she couldn't touch him. Couldn't last three exchanges.
The frustration sat heavy in her chest.
Then a voice came, right beside her ear.
"It's just a dream."
Arya froze.
She spun around.
Lynn was sitting on the edge of her bed, turning the now-dark glass candle idly between his fingers, an amused look on his face.
"You — when did you get in here?"
"I thought I'd figured out magic, but was that all a dream?"
Arya's cheeks warmed. Her brain wasn't keeping up.
"Walked in," Lynn said, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He studied her face , the confusion, the frustration , and asked, "Want to win?"
"What?"
"In the dream. Beat him."
Arya stared at him. She didn't understand how he could possibly know what she had been dreaming.
If he knew that...
Then he might also know...
The color rushed into her face all at once.
"Lie back down," Lynn said. "Close your eyes. Go back to sleep."
She did it before she'd decided to.
She lay down. She closed her eyes.
Lynn set his palm gently on her forehead. The cool weight of it cut through the noise in her head like a clean stroke.
He let a current of pure magic flow out of him, threaded through with his own imprint, and eased it slowly into her mind.
In his other hand, the glass candle lit again , that same cold blue flame curling at the wick.
This time, Lynn's purpose was exact.
He was going into her dream.
And he was going to take control of it.
---
The gray wasteland again.
Arya stood before the faceless man.
"Draw your sword." That same hoarse voice.
Arya's hand tightened around Needle , whole and unbroken this time , but she didn't move forward.
"What? Scared?" A note of mockery.
"No."
She shook her head and looked past him.
"My backup just arrived."
The man went still. He followed her gaze.
Lynn stood a short distance away, watching them both with easy patience.
"Who are you?" The man's tone sharpened.
"Just passing through." Lynn smiled, and snapped his fingers.
The world rewrote itself.
Cracked earth pushed out green. Rich, soft grass spread in every direction. The gray sky cleared into deep blue. And in the distance, a castle rose , massive and familiar. Winterfell.
"There." Lynn rolled his shoulders. "Much better."
He walked over to Arya and glanced at the thin blade in her hand.
He shook his head.
"That needs an upgrade."
He snapped his fingers again.
Arya felt the weight change instantly.
Needle, light and quick, was gone. In her grip now sat a long sword with a gorgeous, rippling sheen across its blade. Valyrian steel. Unmistakable.
"This..."
She turned it over in stunned silence.
Lynn clapped her on the shoulder. "Go. Use everything you know. Take him down."
Something lit up behind Arya's eyes.
She gripped the sword, pulled in a breath, and charged.
A sharp cry tore from her throat as she closed the distance.
This time was different. Her sword moved faster. It found its mark more cleanly. It had intent behind it.
Lynn stood back, watching, and called out when he needed to.
"Rotate your hip. Drop your wrist. Let his momentum do the work for you."
"Don't pull back there — your opening comes right when he thinks you're about to retreat!"
Arya was improving. Visibly, measurably, with each exchange.
She stopped reacting and started fighting.
CLANG!
Clean and sharp.
Arya's sword knocked Syrio's attack wide for the first time , and the follow-through left a shallow mark across his chest.
His projection looked down at it. Then up at her face, flushed and bright and fierce.
Something shifted in those blurred features. Something like pride.
"Good."
His body came apart in fragments of light, drifting upward, gone.
"I won — I won!"
Arya flung the sword aside and leapt. Lynn barely had time to brace before she crashed into him.
He laughed and caught her, ruffling her hair.
The feeling of it was stranger and better than he'd expected.
He could enter someone's dream. He had already known that. But he could also reshape it entirely , build it from scratch, tear it down, fill it with whatever he wanted.
He could teach inside a dream. Train inside a dream.
His "god-making plan" had just acquired an engine he hadn't accounted for.
Days: have the maesters teach Margaery and the others to read, to write, to reckon. Nights: Lynn himself, personally, inside their dreams, teaching them to reach for magic.
He could even PU in dr,
Off track. Focus.
The efficiency of this was absolutely, staggeringly ridiculous.
➤ Next: A Whole New Way to Play