The small council chamber of the Red Keep had not been this loud in years.
Prince Jaehaerys stood at the far end of the long table with both palms against the wood and his shoulders hunched forward, the vein at his temple had been visible for the better part of a quarter of an hour. His silver hair had come loose from where it had been tied back that morning and hung in strands around his face.
"A week!" he said. "A week since my daughter vanished out of a locked chamber in the most heavily guarded castle in the Seven Kingdoms, and what I have been given in return is a series of apologies. Not one lead. Not one witness. Seven days, my lords, and the sum total of what this council has accomplished is that the entire realm now knows that House Targaryen cannot keep track of its own children."
Princess Shaera sat to his right with her hands folded so tightly in her lap that the knuckles had gone white. She had not slept properly since the night Rhaella disappeared and it showed in the shadows beneath her eyes.
"Someone in this castle either helped her escape or kidnapped her. That is the only explanation that makes any sense. My daughter did not simply walk out of the Red Keep on her own."
"Your Grace, we have questioned every guard on duty that night," Grand Maester Ellendor said carefully. "Every servant with access to the family wing. Every gatehouse keeper, every stableman, every kitchen boy. We have questioned them twice, and in some cases three times, and there has been nothing. Not one inconsistency in any account."
"Then question them again," Shaera snapped.
"With respect, my princess, at some point repeated questioning of loyal servants begins to produce false confessions rather than true information. Men will say anything if you frighten them long enough."
Lord Celtigar cleared his throat from further down the table. "There is also the matter of the expense, Your Graces. The search parties currently in the field number some four hundred men, drawn from the Gold Cloaks and from the household guards of several Crownlands houses, and the cost of provisioning and maintaining them at this scale is considerable. If the search is to continue for another month at this intensity then the crown will need to—"
"My daughter is missing. Do not talk to me about coin," Jaehaerys growled.
Lord Celtigar closed his mouth.
Prince Duncan spoke up from his seat at the middle of the table. "Brother, I have men working every route out of the city. The Kingsroad north and south, the Rosby road, the river landings, the fishing villages along the coast. We have riders as far as Duskendale and Stokeworth and Hayford, and every one of them is carrying a description and orders to report daily. If she went overland then we will find her. It is simply a matter of time."
"And if she didn't go overland."
Duncan hesitated.
"Then we have a considerably larger problem," he admitted. "Because there were nineteen ships that left King's Landing harbour the day she disappeared, they went to nineteen different places, and half of them were bound for Essos."
Shaera made a small sound and pressed her fingers to her mouth.
"We are checking the harbour records," Duncan continued quickly. "Every vessel, every manifest, every passenger. It takes time. The harbourmaster's clerks are not the most diligent men in the realm and their books are a disaster, but we are getting through them."
"Not fast enough," Jaehaerys said.
"I am aware."
"Are you. Because from where I am standing, brother, you seem to be treating this like a routine matter of administration rather than the disappearance of a princess of the blood who is betrothed to the future king of the Seven Kingdoms."
Duncan's jaw tightened but he said nothing.
At the head of the table, King Aegon the Fifth had not spoken in some time.
He sat in his chair with his hands folded in front of him and his gaze directed at a point in the middle distance somewhere above the heads of his councillors, he had contributed almost nothing to the discussion since it began.
Jaehaerys noticed.
"Father."
Aegon's eyes shifted.
"You have said nothing. Your granddaughter has been missing for a week and you have sat there through three of these meetings now without offering a single opinion on the matter. Do you have nothing to say. Does it not concern you at all."
The chamber went quiet.
Aegon looked at his son for a moment before he sighed. "What did you expect to happen, Jaehaerys."
Jaehaerys blinked. "I beg your pardon."
"I asked what, precisely, did you expect to happen."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Then let me be clearer." Aegon unfolded his hands and set them on the table. "For eight months your daughter has told you, in every way she knows how, that she does not want to marry her brother. She has told you. She has told her mother. She has told me. And when she came to me, and asked me to intervene on her behalf, I told her that I would speak with you about it. Which I did. Do you remember what you said."
Jaehaerys's mouth had gone thin. "I said that the matter was settled."
"Exactly... you said the matter was settled." Aegon tilted his head slightly. "So I will ask you again. What did you expect to happen."
"I am her father," Jaehaerys said. "It is my right and my will to determine who my daughter marries. That is how it is done in every house in this realm, from the Wall to Dorne, and my daughter is not so special that the laws of gods and men should be rewritten for her convenience."
Aegon laughed and beside him Queen Betha laughed as well, softly, one hand rising to cover her mouth.
Jaehaerys stared at them both. "Something about this amuses you."
"Your will." Aegon shook his head slowly. "Jaehaerys. My son. I have had five children. Five. And in the entire course of my life, do you know how many of them married the person I chose for them."
Jaehaerys did not answer.
"One. Rhaelle. And she only did it because she happened to like the boy, which was a stroke of luck rather than an exercise of my authority." Aegon began to count on his fingers. "Duncan renounced his claim to the Iron Throne to marry a woman from the Riverlands whose family nobody had ever heard of. Daeron, gods rest him, would not have married the Tyrell girl if I had commanded him at swordpoint, and we both know why. And you, Jaehaerys. You and your sister ran off and married one another in secret, without my knowledge, without my consent, and against my explicit and repeated instruction."
"You broke a betrothal I had spent two years negotiating. You humiliated House Tully and House Tyrell in the same afternoon. You very nearly cost me a war." Aegon's voice never rose. "And now you sit at this table and tell me, with a straight face, that your daughter must marry the man you have chosen because it is your right as her father."
Jaehaerys's face had gone red from the collar upward. His mouth opened and closed twice. There was, quite plainly, no answer available to him that would not make his position worse, and after a moment he simply looked away.
Shaera picked up the argument in his place, her chin lifting.
"It's not the same, father, and you know its not. Jaehaerys and I married for a reason that transcends any personal want. The prophecy is clear. The prince that was promised will be born of our line, and that means our line must remain pure. Rhaella and Aerys must marry. It is not a preference, it is a necessity, and every day that she remains missing is a day that the future of this family hangs in the balance."
Prince Duncan waved a hand dismissively without even lifting his head from where he had propped it on his fist.
"There is nothing in that prophecy that says they have to marry each other."
Shaera turned on him. "What."
"I said there is nothing in the prophecy that says they have to marry each other. I have heard it, sister. It says the prince that was promised will be born of their line. Of their line. That means born to you and Jaehaerys, or born to your children. It does not specify that your children must marry one another to produce him."
"That is a wilful misreading."
"It is a plain reading, Shaera. The wilful part is what you and Jaehaerys have been doing with it."
"The blood must be pure," Jaehaerys said, finding his voice again. "That is the entire point. The prince that was promised cannot be born into another—"
"Enough," Aegon said loudly.
"We are getting off topic. We are not here to relitigate a prophecy, we are here because Rhaella is missing and we need to find her." He turned to Duncan. "Widen the search radius. Everything within a hundred miles of King's Landing, by land and by river. Send riders to Maidenpool, to Rosby, to every holdfast and inn along every road and I want the Kingswood swept properly."
"Yes, Father."
"Send word to Lord Velaryon at Driftmark. I want the Velaryon ships stopping and searching every vessel that passes through the bay, both directions, no exceptions. If she went by sea then she went through those waters."
"Yes, Father."
"Finish the harbour records. All nineteen ships. I want to know who was aboard every one of them, where they went, and where they are now, and I want that information within four days." Aegon paused. "And send a raven to every great house in the realm asking them to report any unusual arrivals of young women of noble bearing within their lands. Word it carefully. I do not want a hundred lords riding around their own territories interrogating every girl with pale hair."
"It will be done."
"Good." Aegon stood, and the councillors rose with him. "That is all, my lords. Get to work."
The chamber emptied slowly. Jaehaerys left first with Shaera close behind him. The councillors gathered their parchments and filed out in twos and threes, murmuring quietly to one another. Duncan paused beside his father's chair long enough to grip the old man's shoulder briefly, then followed the rest out.
The door closed.
Aegon stood alone at the head of the table.
Except that he was not alone, because Ser Duncan the Tall had not moved from his position by the wall.
"You did not leave," Aegon observed without turning around.
"No, Your Grace."
"You have something to say."
"I do."
Aegon finally turned. "Then say it, Dunk. We are past the age of being coy with one another."
The big knight crossed the chamber and stopped on the other side of the table. "Egg. The harbour records are going to come back in four days. Maybe five, if the clerks are as bad as your son says they are." He paused. "And when they do, someone is going to notice that of the nineteen ships that left King's Landing on the day the princess disappeared, one of them was carrying Lady Mira and Lady Cassandra bound for Brightwater Isle."
Aegon said nothing.
"They left that morning. She vanished sometime the night before or that same morning. Two women who were her closest friends in this castle, who visited her chambers nearly every day for the past year, who had access to the family wing without question and a ship of their own already booked and waiting at the dock." Ser Duncan's voice remained perfectly level. "It is not going to take a genius to draw the line, Egg. Your son is many things but he is not stupid, and once someone puts that manifest in front of him he is going to be on a ship to Brightwater with two hundred men before the ink is dry."
Aegon reached down and picked up his crown from the table. He turned it over in his hands slowly, examining the black stones set into the gold as though he had never looked at them properly before.
"We do not know that for certain," he said mildly.
Ser Duncan snorted.
"We do not," Aegon insisted. "There is no evidence. There is a coincidence of timing, which is not the same thing at all. Perhaps my granddaughter took a horse and rode north. Perhaps she stowed away on a Braavosi trader. Perhaps she is sitting in an inn in Rosby at this very moment."
"Perhaps."
"It would be irresponsible of me to leap to conclusions."
"Deeply irresponsible."
"A king must be careful about accusations."
"Notoriously careful, Your Grace."
Aegon's mouth twitched.
Ser Duncan's mouth twitched.
And then the two old men, who had known each other since one of them was a boy pretending to be a hedge knight's squire and the other was a hedge knight who had no idea what he was getting himself into, began to laugh.
Aegon wiped his eyes and let out a long breath.
"Gods, Dunk."
"Aye."
The king walked to the window at the end of the chamber and pushed the shutter open. Aegon put his hands on the sill and looked out at it.
"What a mess," he said quietly. "What an absolute bloody mess."
_____________________________________
Thirty miles of open water away, one hundred and twelve young men were finding out exactly how much punishment a human body could absorb before it stopped functioning.
"AGAIN."
The line staggered.
They were in the fourth hour of the morning session, the sun had climbed high enough to burn the shade out of the yard entirely, and every man in the formation was soaked through with sweat.
They stood in four ranks of twenty-eight with wooden shields on their left arms and blunted training spears in their right hands, though the shields were the problem, because Arthur had ordered them made at twice the weight of a real shield.
"I said AGAIN. Front rank, forward two paces, shields locked. Second rank, spears through the gaps. If I can see daylight between two shields then the man on either side of that gap is dead and so is everyone behind him. MOVE."
The line movedd and shuffled forward, shields grinding together, spears jabbing out through the spaces at chest height.
It was better than it had been two weeks ago.
It was still nowhere near good enough.
Arthur walked along the front of the formation with his hands behind his back, and he stopped in front of a broad-shouldered boy near the centre whose shield had dropped four inches below the line.
"Pol."
The quarryman's apprentice snapped his shield back up. "My lord."
"Your shield is protecting your kneesx where is your shield supposed to be."
"Chin to thigh, my lord."
"And where is it."
"Waist to shin, my lord."
"Why."
Pol's arm was shaking visibly. "Because it is very heavy, my lord, and I cannot feel my fingers."
"The enemy is not going to care about either of those things." Arthur reached out and took hold of the bottom rim of the shield and pushed it up until it sat at the proper height, and he held it there while Pol's arm trembled underneath it. "Every man in this line is depending on the man beside him to hold the wall. If you drop your shield because you are tired then a spear goes through the gap and into the ribs of the man on your left, do you understand what I am telling you."
"Yes, my lord."
"Then hold it up."
Arthur released the shield and Pol held it up.
Arthur stepped back and raised his voice so that the whole yard could hear him.
"I am going to tell you all something. There are one hundred and twelve of you."
He walked slowly along the line.
"There are lords in this realm who can raise five thousand men in a fortnight. There are houses that can put ten thousand in the field. If any of them ever decide that they want what we have here, they will not come with one hundred and twelve. They will come with thousands, they will march up through that forest and they will expect the road to open for them."
He stopped and turned to face them.
"It will not open, because I expect every man here to be worth ten of those men, I expect you all to be soldiers the like of which have never been seen in Westeros.
He let that sit for a moment.
"So yes. The shields are heavy. The runs are long. The mornings start before dawn and you are likely going to go home tonight and lie down and not be able to lift your arms above your head. Every single one of you is going to hate me at some point in the next year, and several of you already do, but that is fine. Because in a year or two you are going to be the finest hundred men in the Seven Kingdoms, and when someone comes for your families, they are going to break on you like water on a rock."
Nobody spoke.
Arthur nodded once. "Formation. Reset. AGAIN."
They ran the drill eleven more times before he let them break, and then he put them through unarmed grappling in pairs until half of them were bleeding from the nose and the other half were bleeding from somewhere less immediately visible, and then, finally, when the sun had passed its highest point and the shadows had begun to lengthen across the yard, he dismissed them.
The men filed out toward the barracks and the bath house, several of them clapped one another on the back as they went. A few were laughing which Arthur took as a good sign.
He turned toward the wall on the eastern side of the yard where three women had been sitting for the past two hours with a spread of bread and cheese and chicken and a jug of watered wine laid out on a cloth between them.
Cassie was on her feet before he had taken three steps, a damp cloth already in her hand.
"Sit down before you fall down."
"I am fine."
"You are the colour of a boiled crab and you have not had water in an hour and a half. Sit down."
Arthur sat down on the wall.
Cassie went to work on his face and neck with the cloth, wiping away the worst of the dust and sweat with brisk efficient strokes, while Mira pressed a cup of watered wine into his hand and physically closed his fingers around it to make sure he did not put it down again. Rhaella, sitting a little further along the wall with Morgana asleep in the crook of her arm, watched the whole operation with an expression of amusement.
"Drink all of it," Mira instructed.
He drank all of it.
"Now eat something."
He ate something.
"You are terrifying, do you know that," Rhaella said. "I have been sitting here for two hours watching you shout at those poor boys, I am fairly certain I would have wept and gone home after the first half hour."
"They will not weep. They have their friends and their brothers standing next to them and none of them wants to be the one who falls out first. It is the most powerful force in the world, that. Not wanting to look weak in front of your friends." Arthur tore off a piece of bread and pointed it at her. "In six months I could march that lot into the training yard of the Red Keep and they would embarrass every household guard in the city."
"I do not doubt it."
Mira shaded her eyes and looked out past the curtain wall to where the land fell away below the shelf, the great forest rolling green and unbroken all the way down to the coast, and beyond it the enormous blue plate of the Blackwater Bay stretching to the horizon.
"I still cannot believe it," she said. "I have been here more than a week now and I still wake up in the mornings and go to the window and think that it's all a dream."
"Don't worry it's not."
"I know. But I think it anyway." She shook her head slowly. "It is so beautiful, Arthur. I have never seen anywhere this beautiful in my life. The forest and the lake and the way the light comes off the water in the mornings. And the castle. Gods, the castle."
"It's better than the Red Keep," Rhaella said.
"It certainly smells better," Arthur said.
All three women laughed at that, and Rhaella laughed hardest of all, which was a thing that had been happening more and more over the past week.
He finished the bread and drained a second cup of wine and then pushed himself up off the wall.
"Where are you going," Mira asked immediately.
"Solar. I have work to do."
"Arthur, you have been on your feet since before dawn."
"I know but it's not the kind of work that involves being on my feet." He bent down and kissed the top of her head, then Cassie's, and then Rhaella's. "I will see you all at dinner."
Cassie sighed theatrically. "Fine. Go. Be mysterious in your tower like a proper lord."
...
Arthur closed the door behind him after entering the solar, crossed to the desk, and dropped into the chair with a long exhalation. He sat there for a moment with his eyes shut and his head tipped back against the wood.
Then he opened the drawer and took out the letter.
It had arrived three days ago on a Raven from Kings Landing, sealed with the three-headed dragon in red wax, and he had read it perhaps twenty times since.
To Lord Arthur Pendragon of Brightwater Isle,
I write to you in a private capacity and not as your king.
My granddaughter, the Princess Rhaella, has disappeared from the Red Keep. She was last seen eight days ago. We do not know whether she left of her own will or was taken, and we do not know where she has gone. Every resource the crown possesses is currently engaged in searching for her and none of it has produced anything of value.
I am asking for your help.
This is not a command. I want to be very clear on that point, because I know how such letters are usually read and I do not want you to mistake my meaning. You owe me nothing in this. Our arrangement stands regardless of your answer, and if you choose not to involve yourself then no word of complaint will ever reach you from me or from anyone in my house.
But I have watched you find things that other men could not find so it there is a man in this realm capable of finding my granddaughter, I believe that man to be you.
I would be grateful for whatever you are willing to give.
King Aegon V Targaryen
Arthur set the letter down on the desk and stared at it.
He had no idea what to write back.
That was the honest truth of it. He had sat in this chair three separate times over the past three days with a quill in his hand and a blank sheet of parchment in front of him, and each time he had put the quill down again without making a single mark, because every response he could think of was either a lie or a confession and he was not prepared to offer either one.
The worst part was that he could not tell how much Aegon already knew.
He put it at even odds. Fifty in a hundred that the old man had worked it out the moment he heard the news and had written this letter with full knowledge that it was going to land on the desk of the man who was currently harbouring his granddaughter.
The letter read that way, if you looked at it a certain angle.
I write to you in a private capacity and not as your king.
This is not a command.
Our arrangement stands regardless of your answer.
Those were the words of a man giving someone room.
Or they were the words of a desperate grandfather who genuinely believed that the young knight who had saved his city might be able to save his granddaughter as well.
Arthur could not tell and getting it wrong in either direction would be catastrophic.
He pushed the letter aside and leaned back in the chair and made himself think properly.
The core of the problem was simple enough to state. Rhaella could not stay here in secret indefinitely. While he knew everyone in this castle was loyal to him, it just took one person for the information to get out and he didn't want to confine Rhaella to the family wing.
So secrecy was not a solution.
Which meant that at some point, sooner rather than later, he was going to have to make it legitimate. He was going to have to get to a position where Rhaella could walk out of that room and stand in the courtyard of Camelot in daylight without the Iron Throne descending on his island with fire and steel.
Which meant a negotiation.
Which meant he needed something to negotiate with.
Arthur got up and walked to the window and looked out at the sea.
"Gold," he said aloud.
He turned the idea over. He could make gold. Two bars a day, which over the course of a year was a fortune that would make the Lannisters take notice. He could offer the crown an enormous sum. Ten thousand gold dragons. Fifty thousand. Enough to fund the fleet that was being assembled against Dragonstone twice over, enough to make the difference in a war that Aegon knew was coming.
He discarded it almost immediately.
It was a stupid idea, no, it was worse than stupid, it was insulting. What would he actually be proposing. That the King of the Seven Kingdoms sell him his granddaughter. That a princess of the blood be traded for a chest of coin like a horse at a market fair to a man who already has two wives, one of them also being Targaryen.
Aegon would not merely refuse, he would be so offended by the framing that he would never trust another word out of Arthur's mouth as long as he lived, and Jaehaerys would use it as proof that the upjumped farm boy from Harrowfield had never been anything more than a common criminal.
Gold was the wrong gift, it was common and easily enough earned by the Targaryen's already.
He needed something that was rare.
Something priceless. Something that no amount of coin could buy at any price, from anyone, anywhere in the world. Something that would not look like a purchase but like a gift, an offering of such magnitude that accepting it would restore more honour to House Targaryen than losing one granddaughter to a minor island lord would cost them.
Arthur stood at the window for a long time.
And then it came to him.
He turned around slowly and looked at Sunset where it hung on the wall bracket behind his desk.
Valyrian steel.
House Targaryen had no Valyrian steel.
Blackfyre had gone east with Daemon Blackfyre and had never come back. Dark Sister had gone north with Brynden Rivers and had vanished into the snows beyond the Wall. Two swords, both lost. It must've been incredibly insulting for House Targaryen that Blackfyre was being wielded by their sworn enemies.
There were perhaps two hundred Valyrian blades left in the entire world. The art of making them had died with the Doom four hundred years ago. They could not be bought, because no house that possessed one would ever sell it, and they could not be made, because nobody living knew how.
If he could put a Valyrian steel sword in Aegon Targaryen's hands.
If he could put several.
That was not a purchase.
That was the restoration of something the family had lost and grieved for years, and any king who accepted such a gift would owe a debt that no ledger could express, and the entire realm would understand exactly what had been given and exactly what it meant.
Arthur's heart was beating faster.
He sat back down at the desk and put his hand on the table and reached for [Creation].
He had to understand the object completely, down to its smallest details, its structure and its composition and the process by which it came to be. Bread was easy because he had baked bread. Gold was harder but manageable because gold was simply gold, a single pure substance with a single structure, and once he had learned it he could produce it endlessly.
He closed his eyes and pictured Valyrian steel.
He pictured an impossible edge that never dulled. He pictured the lightness of it in his hand, so much lighter than steel of that size had any right to be. He tried to reach past the appearance to the thing underneath, to the structure, to the how of it.
He pushed.
The energy left him in a rush.
It went out of him like water out of a burst barrel, an enormous draining that emptied him from the inside in less than two seconds, Arthur's vision went white at the edges and then grey and then dark, and he pitched forward and only just got his forearms onto the desk in time to stop his face hitting the wood.
Nothing had appeared.
Not a blade. Not an ingot. Not a shaving. Nothing at all.
"Gods," he wheezed.
It took him nearly a full minute to be able to sit upright again, and when he did the room tilted twice before it settled.
────────────────────
[CREATION — FAILURE]
────────────────────
Target object: Valyrian Steel
Failure reasons:
• Insufficient structural comprehension. User does not possess adequate understanding of the material's composition or method of production.
• Target material possesses intrinsic magical properties. Magical constructs require exponentially greater energy expenditure than mundane materials.
Estimated energy cost at current comprehension level: exceeds user capacity by a factor of approximately 40.
────────────────────
Arthur read it and then let his head fall back against the chair.
Of course. He did not know how Valyrian steel was made. Nobody knew how Valyrian steel was made. That was the entire reason it was valuable. He had been sitting here congratulating himself on a brilliant plan that depended on him possessing knowledge that had died with an empire four centuries ago.
Hesighed and stared at the ceiling for a long while.
Then, slowly, his eyes drifted down to the corner of his vision where a single icon had been sitting untouched for eight days.
[Trait Upgrader]
He had been saving it for the obvious choice, the choice he had assumed he would make from the moment he read the description, was [The World].
One and a half seconds had saved his life on the wall of King's Landing and again on the deck of the ship at the harbour, and one and a half seconds had failed to save him on the beach when the wyvern's tail came around.
Three seconds instead of one and a half would have been the difference between a crushed ribcage and a clean escape. Five seconds would make him nearly untouchable in a fight. Ten would make him a monster. In a war that was coming in two years, against enemies who could crew a fleet and field a wyvern this would've helped a lot.
That had been the plan.
But.
Arthur looked at the failure notification still hovering in front of him.
Insufficient structural comprehension.
More time in a fight was worth a great deal.
But he could not stab his way out of this one. There was no enemy standing in the courtyard for him to kill. The problem in front of him was not a problem that time could solve.
Arthur sat forward and put both hands on the desk.
"Right," he said quietly.
He selected the [Trait Upgrader] and applied it to [Creation].
────────────────────
[TRAIT UPGRADER — CONFIRM]
────────────────────
Target: [Creation] (Legendary)
This action is permanent and cannot be undone. The Trait Upgrader will be consumed.
Proceed?
────────────────────
Yes.
────────────────────
[PROCESSING]
────────────────────
The warmth started in the centre of his chest.
It was not the golden heat of Hamon, which he knew intimately by now. This was different, it felt like pure energy rushing into him.
His hands tingled.
The wood grain of the desk beneath his palms became, for one strange dizzying instant legible. He could feel the rings of the tree it had come from and the direction the fibres ran and the places where the glue had been laid and the slight difference in density between the outer boards and the inner ones, all at once, without touching anything differently than he had been touching it a second ago.
Then it faded.
His hands stopped tingling.
The desk went back to being a desk.
────────────────────
[TRAIT UPGRADED]
────────────────────
[Creation] → [GENESIS] (Mythic)
────────────────────
Description:
You no longer merely construct. You author.
Genesis converts stored energy into matter with vastly improved efficiency, reducing the cost of all creation by an order of magnitude. Complexity penalties are substantially reduced. Living matter remains beyond your reach.
Genesis is no longer limited to mundane materials. Objects possessing intrinsic magical properties may now be created, provided comprehension requirements are met.
────────────────────
SUB-ABILITY UNLOCKED:
[Revelation]
By placing your hands upon an object and focusing your will, you may perceive its complete structure, composition, and method of creation, down to its smallest constituent parts. Knowledge obtained through Revelation is permanent and immediately satisfies the comprehension requirement for Genesis.
Objects of magical origin require extended contact and cause significant mental strain.
────────────────────
Arthur stopped breathing.
"That's... that's... shit!" He said with a chuckle as a wide smile bloomed on his face.
(AN: So yeah Arthur is gonna start creating Valyrian Steel hoping to satisfy the King that way, will it work? Who knows man. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
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