Chapitre 121: Arthur 41
293AC
Breaking the news of my oath with Asha turned out to be a fair bit more difficult than breaking the news of my apparent heathen connection. I didn't explicitly mention any magic in the blood oath, but I think my mother picked up on it anyway.
She wasn't happy.
She wasn't angry either mind, more… disappointed that I hadn't conversed with my father and her before taking such a step. She was willing to listen to my reasoning, but forbade me from taking any other such risky actions without consulting her or my father, preferably both.
It was both a lighter punishment, and a better reception of it than I had expected, but it had probably helped that I had framed it as a sort of personal oath of vassalage.
Westerosi understood that, especially in the Reach.
Still, after an exhausting day of showboat information and saying hello to children around my city, and then of explaining some of my more… controversial, decisions to my mother, I was left with only one thing my plate.
"Prince Arthur." Gerald greeted, likely having anticipated my coming. "I was quite glad to hear that you were still alive."
"I was as well," I chuckled, smiling at the man, "How has your progress been while I was gone?"
"Well, we've had some minor advances in the consistency of the fuse model I designed." He nodded towards the testing fields back behind the castle, "and cannon production was up before your father went off to war, but he brought most of the testing-gunners with him."
"Sounds reasonable" I noted. "I'll need to start a training program for our sailors, try to avoid them killing themselves when we start issuing the cannons across the fleet."
"That does seem wise," Gerald admitted nodding before he halted for a moment his eyes turning elsewhere. "Ah, and there was a… development, in the labs at the black tower."
"Not one that you can speak of here?" I guessed, wondering if there had been a wildfire accident or something similarly dangerous.
Gerald nodded silently, "come, we can speak of it as I show you."
I followed the man to the forbidding Obsidian tower that we had taken over for alchemical experiments, ostensibly for storing wildfire, but also for other things which I would have a harder time explaining to my parents. The books containing my foreknowledge of the war of the five kings and the invasion of the White Walkers were stored here also, useless as they now were.
As we passed down into those depths however, I noticed the change quite quickly.
"Where are the plasma-Jars?" I asked, noting that the light in the laboratory was now being provided by wildfire torches, a considerably more volatile light-source in comparison.
"That is precisely it. They are what changed." The Frey said, stepping over to one of the sides of the room, where several heavy chests were placed. "I would suggest you cover your eyes for a moment while I open these."
I nodded, lifting my arm over my face as he cracked the lid on the first chest and the room exploded with a blazing white light, even with my eyes covered and shut as they were, it was disorienting, as we went from the dingy grunge of the former dungeon into what might as well have been an enormous spotlight.
I cursed under my breath as my eyes quickly tried to adapt.
"Don't look directly at them my Lord." The Frey corrected quickly as I turned his way, "poor Erik was responsible for putting them away, and he's gone half-blind as a result."
I nodded at that, turning sideways to the chest and making a mental note to ensure the acolyte got a pension for his troubles. I stepped up next to the Frey, turned away from the vile behind me, which I realized were crackling audibly.
"How long have they been like this."
"Since shortly after you disappeared off of the Dorneish coast."
I nodded at that, going over the ramifications in my head.
"Seems that wildfire, or at least it's equivalent here, is more connected to its maker than we thought." I rubbed at my chin. "This is probably just a more visual representation of it. But it would explain why wildfire gets more powerful as it gets older. Its manufacturer is getting older and more powerful too."
"Did you experience some great growth in power in the summer sea Prince Arthur?"
"You could say that," I said, raising my fingers in front of me, though I couldn't quite make lightning crackle between them.
Such control was beyond me for now. 'Perhaps not for long though…' I thought, my mind turning back to the beakers behind me.
"It might be wise if you stood back a bit, Gerald, this next bit could be dangerous."
"Oh?" Gerald asked, stepping away from the chest rather quickly as I chuckled, reaching down and gripping the neck of one of the beakers, raising it's blinding firm out of the chest where it sat.
I could feel the pull, the attraction between the lightning of my soul and that within the beaker, they were the same, gently, slowly, ever so gently, I moved my other hand up beneath the bottled lightning so that it would rest where the actual liquid was. As I raised it I felt sparks begin to run along my flesh, up and down my entire arm, as if pulled there in anticipation of the contact.
Then I touched the bottom of the beaker.
It's hard to describe what happened next.
If I was a ponce I might call it enlightenment, or some other hokey bullshit, but in reality, it was more like a form of understanding, a type of raw realization of a fundamental truth that was only possible through magic.
Before I had possessed lightning and not known it's true nature, like a bird not knowing its wings.
Not so now, whatever base-instinct had driven to touch the bottle of liquid lightning had taken me to another plain, a level of understanding I wasn't even aware of, like music being written into my skull by a peal of thunder.
I grasped it now in truth, how it could be made, how it could be improved, how it could be used…
I couldn't help it, I laughed.
I laughed and kept laughing,
What a magnificent prank of existence, a hilarious beautiful prank. That I had made at seven and dismissed as useless a thing that should now buoy me above the conceptions of science or magic I had used in making it. A sheer primal essence contained within something I had used as a shirt lightbulb.
It was simply too far beyond my consideration.
The glass shattered in my hand, shattered and broke into shards as the liquid lightning poured over my hand, it's power drawn into me even as shards of broken glass saw my palm bleeding.
I laughed through the pain.
I laughed as my clothes began to char and my hair stood on end.
I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.
Before I had held a flower and not known its scent.
Now I could care for it in my garden.
As the need to laugh gradually left me, and I pulled the energy that crackled through my veins back into my core, my humor gradually faded to a chuckle, my eyes roaming the lab before I spotted the open chest.
I shut it gently, before latching it tightly.
"Heh, Are you alright Gerald?" I asked, a sudden surge of fear overtaking my good humor as I turned towards the Frey, who had thankfully extricated himself to the other side of our ill-fated Wildfire Forge.
"A little scorched my prince, but otherwise intact." The man admitted, clamoring from behind his rocky barricade. "Er, if I may ask, what was that?"
I smiled and suppressed the urge to make lightning crackle through my eyes, despite the inherent appeal. "Progress, Gerald, that was progress." I chuckled a little, before noticing the blood dripping from my hand.
"Ah," I said, picking a shard of glass from my skin, "I'll need a bandage I'm afraid." The pain was only now starting to register in my mind over the sheer knowledge that had entered into my form. "Oh, and we're going to need to up our copper imports considerably."
The Frey looked at me oddly.
"Are you planning on making more of those things my lord?"
I glanced at the man, then chuckled again, my good humor still roaring.
"Yes, but that's not what I need it for mostly." I glanced at the bottled lightning beside me, a gleeful smile playing across my face.
"No, we're going to be making wires."
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone