Chapter 14: The Burden of Assets
The god's domain was gold. Not the gaudy, lifeless yellow of mortal coin, but a living, incandescent lustre that permeated the very fabric of his reality. It was the colour of absolute authority, of a successful hostile takeover on a cosmic scale. The faith that had surged from the heist on the Isle of Cedars was a masterpiece of flavour and potency, a complex blend of audacious genius, treacherous cunning, and the iron-clad belief in a power that could orchestrate reality itself. This was the faith he had craved—not the desperate pleas of the helpless, but the confident belief of the empowered.
He felt his own consciousness expand, solidify. His thoughts were clearer, his strategies more far-reaching. He had ascended. The jump from a stealthy, systems-based deity to a god of grand, strategic acquisition was as significant as the jump from a tribal chieftain to an emperor. He now possessed assets of immense, world-altering potential.
In a shielded corner of his domain, two new constructs had formed, physical manifestations of the prizes his followers had won. One was a pool of shimmering, black liquid, volatile and deadly. It was the essence of the poisons, a strategic deterrent, a weapon of mutually assured destruction whose power lay in its possession, not its use. It was his ultimate defense.
The other construct was far more compelling. It was a perfect, obsidian sphere, resting on a dais of golden light. It pulsed with a deep, slow, almost imperceptible internal heat. The Dragon Egg. As a god who wore the form of a dragon, he felt a strange, primal resonance with the object. It was more than a treasure. It was a question. It was potential. As a CEO, he recognized it immediately for what it was: the ultimate seed capital, an asset whose value was either near-infinite or tragically zero. Its potential had to be unlocked.
He watched his council, his mortal board of directors, and he knew they faced the most important strategic decision of their existence. What to do with the spoils of their impossible victory? He had guided them this far, but a truly successful enterprise required its leadership to think for itself. He would observe. He would analyse their reasoning. And he would only intervene if they chose the path of ruinous, short-sighted pragmatism.
The cellar of The Serpent's Coil was a pocket of impossible reality in the heart of Meereen. Here, five slaves and one freedman stood as the secret masters of a power that could bring the city to its knees. On a sturdy table in the centre of the room, lit by a single, hooded lantern, sat their victory. The small, heavy cask containing the Tears of Lys and Basilisk Blood radiated a palpable sense of menace. Beside it, nestled on a bed of soft wool inside its lead-lined chest, was the egg.
It was larger than a man's head, its surface a swirling pattern of obsidian and deep crimson, like cooling magma. It was warm to the touch, and seemed to absorb the lantern light, revealing no reflections. It felt ancient, heavy with the weight of forgotten eons, yet possessed a strange, dormant vitality.
Elara, her face pale, was the first to speak, her voice barely a whisper. "I have studied what ancient texts I can find. The Tears of Lys… a single drop, colourless and odourless in wine, is enough. A cask… this is not a weapon. It is an apocalypse. It must be hidden, guarded, and never, ever used." Her words hung in the air, a necessary and sobering reminder of the terrifying responsibility they now held. They were in unanimous agreement. The poisons were leverage of the highest order, a threat so profound it could never be uttered, only held in reserve.
But the egg… the egg was a different matter entirely. It was not a weapon, but a promise. A promise of what, none of them could agree upon.
"We sell it," Lyra said, her voice cutting through the reverent silence. She was the treasurer, the pragmatist, and her mind was already calculating the astronomical value of their asset. "We don't sell it here. Not in Slaver's Bay. We use Fendrel's contacts to smuggle it to Pentos, or even Braavos. We sell it to a Magister, a Sealord, someone whose vanity is matched only by their treasury. The price for a dragon's egg, even a petrified one… it would be a nation's ransom."
Her eyes shone with the vision of what that wealth could accomplish. "Think of it. We could buy a fleet of ships. We could purchase an island in the Summer Sea. We could buy the freedom of every slave in this compound, in ten compounds. We could arm them, train them, and establish a free city, a new home, built on a foundation of gold. This is the logical path. This is the fulfillment of everything we have worked for: freedom for our people."
Hesh nodded his solid agreement. "The girl is right. It is a stone. A beautiful, priceless stone. But a stone cannot feed a hungry child or break a chain. Gold can. We trade the symbol for the substance. We trade the rock for a future."
Jorah, however, was shaking his head, his eyes fixed on the egg with a warrior's reverence. "It is not a rock," he growled. "It is the heart of a dragon. It is the soul of the power that crushed the Ghiscari and built Valyria. You speak of buying freedom with gold. This is freedom. This is strength. To hold this is to hold the fear and respect of the entire world. Kings would bow to us not because we are rich, but because we possess a power they can no longer imagine. To sell it would be like a king selling his crown for a sack of grain."
Elara, ever the voice of caution, wrung her hands. "To keep it is to paint a target on our backs for the rest of time. Every king, every warlock, every shadow-binder from Asshai to Westeros who hears even a whisper of its existence will come for it. It is a magnet for disaster. Its power is a flame that will surely burn us."
The council was split. The pragmatic path of immense wealth and practical freedom versus the perilous path of immense power and symbolic authority. They looked to Kaelen, their prophet, their leader, the one who spoke with the silent god.
Kaelen felt the division keenly, for it mirrored the conflict in his own soul. The businessman in him screamed at the logic of Lyra's argument. It was the deal of a lifetime, a chance to liquidate a high-risk asset for near-infinite capital. It was the smart move. But the part of him that was becoming something more, the part that communed with a dragon god, felt an instinctual, profound connection to the object on the table. It felt like… family. He knew he needed guidance, a clarification of the divine will.
That night, in the small, secret chamber Hesh had built for him off the main cellar, Kaelen prayed. He laid out the arguments, the choice before them, and pleaded for a sign.
The dream was the most vivid he had ever had. He stood on a vast desert plain under a baking sun. Before him, Lyra, Hesh, and a thousand free, happy people were building a city from sacks of gold coins. They built walls, towers, and pyramids of shimmering gold. It was a beautiful, magnificent city, a testament to their wealth. But as they finished, a wind began to blow from the desert. A soft wind at first, then a howling gale. And the city of gold, for all its beauty, was nothing more than a pile of heavy sand. The wind tore it apart, the coins scattering across the dunes until nothing was left but the empty plain.
The vision shifted. He now stood in a fertile field. In the centre, he and the others were not building, but planting a single seed—the dragon egg. They nurtured it, protected it. And from it began to grow a tree. It grew slowly at first, but its trunk was as strong as iron, its bark like overlapping scales. It grew for a hundred years, for a thousand, its branches reaching up to scratch the bellies of the stars, its roots digging so deep they anchored the very world. A city grew naturally around the base of this immense tree, sheltered by its boughs, nourished by its fruit. It was not a city of dead gold, but a living, growing empire.
The whisper of the god was not a command, but a lesson in value.
Gold buys a kingdom. A seed grows an empire.
Kaelen awoke, and the debate in his soul was over. The god did not want a quick profit. He was playing a longer game.
He gathered the council in the cellar once more. He did not claim his insight was a divine command. He knew his friends, his fellow directors, deserved more than that. He framed it as his own conviction, telling them the story of his dream.
"…a city of sand," he concluded, his voice resonating with the truth of the vision. "Lyra, your dream of freedom is a noble one. But a freedom purchased with coin is beholden to the next man with more coin. It is a temporary state. The Whisper has shown me that this egg is not our payday. It is our genesis. It is the seed from which a true, lasting power can grow. A power that cannot be bought or sold."
His words, filled with the quiet authority of his faith, shifted the balance in the room. Lyra, though her pragmatic mind still wrestled with the logic, saw the deeper wisdom in Kaelen's parable. Jorah nodded, his belief in the egg as a symbol of power vindicated. Hesh and Elara, who trusted Kaelen's connection to their patron above all else, also gave their assent.
The decision was made. They would keep the egg.
A new, monumental question immediately fell upon them. What now? A seed was useless if you did not know how to make it grow.
"How does one hatch a dragon's egg?" Hesh asked, his practical mind grappling with the absurd, mythical task before them. "The Targaryens did it, a century and a half ago. But the knowledge is lost, turned to ash with Valyria."
"Then we must find it," Lyra said, her strategic mind already shifting from the problem of selling the egg to the problem of developing it. "The knowledge must exist somewhere. In forgotten books, in the minds of scholars, in the secret histories of the world."
Their mission had transformed. They were no longer thieves or spies. They were now seekers of lost lore, archaeologists of a forgotten magic. They had to launch a new kind of intelligence operation, one aimed not at the secrets of living men, but at the secrets of the dead.
"There is a man," Lyra said after a long moment of thought, her eyes distant. She was accessing the vast library of information she had gathered over the years. "I heard of him when I first came to serve in Grazdan's pyramid. The masters mocked him. He is a Septon from Westeros, cast out from his Starry Sept for heresy. His obsession? The history and lore of the Valyrian Freehold."
"A Westerosi Septon in Meereen?" Jorah asked, surprised.
"He fled the wrath of his High Septon and journeyed east, seeking the ruins of the civilization he studied. He is a broken, disgraced man, but his mind is said to be a library of Valyrian knowledge. He now makes a meager living as a tutor for the children of a minor Great Master, a man named Yezzan zo Qaggaz."
A new target. Not a merchant to be ruined or a eunuch to be controlled, but a scholar to be mined for information. Their methods would have to adapt once again.
The meeting concluded with a new sense of purpose, a grand, almost insane ambition that dwarfed everything they had done before. Their ultimate goal was no longer just freedom. It was resurrection.
Later that night, Hesh, with help from Tarek and Jorah, completed the construction of a new sanctuary. Beneath the floor of the tavern's cellar, he excavated a small, dry chamber, lining it with stone and lead. It was here they would keep their treasures. They placed the cask of poisons in one corner, and in the centre, on a new pedestal of soft, clean sand, they laid the dragon's egg. As the heavy stone slab was moved into place, hiding the chamber from the world, it felt like they were burying not a treasure, but a heart, waiting for the day they would learn how to make it beat.
The god felt the council's decision resonate through the web of faith. It was a wave of pure, long-term ambition, a belief in a destiny far grander than mere survival or wealth. They had chosen the path of the seed, the path of the empire.
His golden domain responded. At the very centre of the primary web, on the obsidian mountain where he had first been reborn, a sapling began to grow. It was not the silvery moss of life, nor the crystalline flowers of healing. It was a tree of golden wood, its bark like dragon scales, its leaves like shards of shimmering light. Its roots sank deep, twining with the glowing channels of his network, drawing power and sustenance from the faith of his followers. It was the physical manifestation of their new, ultimate purpose. A Tree of Life, born from a dragon's seed.
The god looked upon the nascent tree, the symbol of his long-term investment. His followers were now on the correct path, the path of greatest risk and infinite reward. Their quest for the lost knowledge of Valyria would be long and perilous, but he would guide them. He would be their divine venture capitalist, providing the whispers of insight they needed to unlock the potential of their greatest asset. For the first time, he felt a flicker of something beyond strategic satisfaction. It was a paternal pride in the ambition of his children. They were no longer just building a church in his name. They were undertaking a sacred duty that he, in his divine prison, could not. They were trying to bring another dragon into the world.