Mogol slid slowly to the ground, his back against the scorched, ice-cold stone wall.
He could feel it clearly: the quarrel smeared with kraken venom was sending a freezing yet searing pain spreading from the wound in his chest and gut.
The toxin moved like countless tiny ice-needles, riding his blood into every limb. Wherever it passed came numbness first, then agony like a thousand stabs.
His sight began to blur; in his ears he heard his own ragged breathing, loud as a broken bellows.
He was going to die.
The thought was terrifyingly clear.
He had seen what kraken venom could do—flesh blackened, rotted, finally melted into stinking pus under unbearable pain.
Now that same poison was flowing in his veins.
No.
He could not die here.
The dream of restoring his house, the treasure of the Stepstones, the ambition to cast off the Mercenary life and rebuild the glory of the Crabfeeder—all of it unfulfilled!
In the darkness of despair a faint spark suddenly flared.
An antidote!
Years spent among poisons had taught him the habit—he always carried a few vials of broad-spectrum antidote. It could not cure every toxin, but it could slow them, buy time.
Survival instinct overrode the agony.
With his left hand, the only limb still obeying, he fumbled at the blood-and-dust-stained leather pouch at his waist.
His fingertips brushed several small, cold glass vials.
Found them!
But just as he tried to pull out the little bottle of murky green fluid—
Swish.
A flash of cold light.
He never even saw the movement—only felt the chill on the back of his hand, followed by piercing pain.
The lifesaving pouch, glass vials clinking within, was flicked away by a blood-slick longsword. It arced through the air and smacked among broken stones a few paces off.
A splash of liquid hissed on the scorched earth, rising in thin white wisps of smoke.
Mogol froze, lifting his head slowly.
Aegon Targaryen stood over him, having approached without a sound.
Dark-red highlights flowed across the Valyrian Steel armor in the dim light; the blood-streaked yet calm face looked down like a cold statue of a god.
'Save… save me…' Mogol's voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable, every word bubbling with blood. 'Please… I don't want to die…'
Aegon did not answer at once.
In his violet eyes there was no anger, no pleasure—only a calm, appraising look.
He knelt slowly until their gazes met levelly, studying Mogol's face twisted by pain and terror.
'Why?' Aegon asked, voice low yet cutting through the ringing in Mogol's ears. 'Give me one reason I shouldn't slit your throat right now.'
'Feud… blood feud…' Mogol swallowed with effort, tasting blood. 'Targaryen… all because… of you!'
Aegon's brows drew together almost imperceptibly.
Enemies of House Targaryen—scattered everywhere, even now when the line was all but broken, still avengers crawled from the dust of history.
'So you tried to kill me?' Aegon's tone carried neither joy nor wrath. 'Kraken-venom on a crossbow bolt—professional.'
The cold toxin was clouding Mogol's mind; Aegon's figure began to double in his eyes.
He forced his thoughts to focus:'Save… save me… I know… treasure… weapons… plenty…'
'Save me… I'll take you… only I know…'
Aegon's brows lifted a fraction.
'Treasure? Weapons?' he echoed, leaning slightly forward, gaze boring into Mogol's fading pupils. 'Why believe a man who just tried to kill me? And why trust the ravings of a dying wretch?'
'Not… ravings…' Mogol coughed violently, dark-red froth flecked with eerie green spilling from his lips. 'Stepstones war… Triarchy… fought you… supplies… never delivered, war lost… Daemon blockaded the Narrow Sea…'
His words tumbled, broken and disjointed, yet key details floated up like driftwood grasped by a drowning man.
Aegon's pupils narrowed slightly.
Stepstones.
Triarchy.
Daemon Targaryen.
The pieces clicked, matching fragments of history in his memories of a past life.
During the Dance of the Dragons, Prince Daemon—the Rogue Prince—had indeed crowned himself King of the Narrow Sea and the Stepstones, waging fierce naval war against the Triarchy of Lys, Tyrosh, and Myr.
That conflict lasted years; the Narrow Sea routes were cut for a long time…
Mogol's claim that 'the relief supplies were delayed and hidden' made perfect sense.
'H-how many?' Aegon's voice remained steady, yet his pace quickened a fraction.
'Plate armor... five hundred... more than that... also weapons... spears... swords... many...' Mogol's eyes grew increasingly vacant; his breathing turned ragged, and the skin around his wound took on a sickly ashen-black hue and began to swell. 'It's all in my head... the map was burned... only I... save me... I'll lead the way...'
Five hundred sets of plate armor.
Aegon's heart gave a violent lurch.
In Westeros, a single suit of well-crafted full plate could bankrupt an average knight.
Five hundred? Enough to outfit a core elite force capable of shifting a local war!
Not to mention the accompanying weapons.
The temptation was enormous.
So enormous it let him, for the moment, smother his urge to kill the assassin at his feet.
Yet Aegon's expression did not change at all.
He remained crouched, gaze cold and terrifyingly calm, as though appraising merchandise.
'A vague location and a few words that might be nonsense— that's meant to buy your life?' Aegon shook his head slowly, injecting just the right amount of doubt and scorn. 'The Stepstones are a maze of islands and hidden reefs; saying it's hidden there is no different from saying it's on the moon.'
'If I waste time searching and find a trap—or nothing left—what would your life be worth then?'
'N-not a trap...' Mogol panicked; poison and ebbing life rapidly eroded the last walls of his mind. 'East of Sawtooth Reef... the third cove... an underground river... entrance's underwater... invisible at high tide... I checked— it's still there...'
He rambled, but names, bearings, and landmarks spilled out one after another.
Aegon's mind raced, piecing those fragments together with the geography he'd studied in this life and the last.
Sawtooth Reef—a notorious, treacherous cluster northeast of the Stepstones, its passages convoluted and seldom traveled.
A submerged river mouth—fit the hidden caverns formed by shifting geology.
The chain of logic tightened.
Aegon fell silent, weighing options.
The pleading light in Mogol's eyes dimmed, death's grey flooding his pupils.
He stretched a trembling hand, already blotched with black, trying to clutch Aegon's hem but clawing only empty air.
'P-please... believe me...' his voice was a thread.
Aegon moved at last.
He rose, looking down at the dying assassin—then, under that faint flare of hope, calmly leveled his sword.
Its point hovered over Mogol's heart.
'N-no... you said...' Terror eclipsed the last spark in Mogol's eyes.
'I said I'd consider it,' Aegon replied, voice cold as Valyrian Steel. 'I never said I'd spare someone who shot me with a poisoned arrow.'
'Besides,' he added, glancing at the ashen-black stain on Mogol's chest, 'kraken-venom—blended from sea-serpent and abyssal toxins—rots the blood and liquefies the organs.'
'Your antidote won't stop death; it will only prolong agony.'
Mogol's lips quivered, struggling for words.
Aegon gave him no chance.
A flick of the wrist.
A flash of steel.
Thuck.
The sharp point slid unerringly into the heart.
Mogol convulsed; his pupils blew wide. The last thing etched on his face was a rictus of despair, defiance, and excruciating pain.
Aegon withdrew the blade; blood ran down its fuller.
Without another look at the corpse, he turned east—toward the Narrow Sea, toward the Stepstones.
Five hundred sets of plate, and all their weapons.
No longer rumor, but a concrete, credible, and very attainable treasure.
A starting point solid enough to gain a foothold on the far shore of the Narrow Sea and raise a real army.
He bent, lifted the leather pouch, and poured out the remaining vials and a few silver coins.
No map—as Mogol had said: memorized, then burned.
But in Aegon's mind the location was now etched in perfect clarity:
Stepstones, east of Sawtooth Reef, third cove, submerged river entrance.
Five hundred sets of plate armor—an unexpected windfall.
Aegon gazed beyond the ruins at the gloomy sky.
The road ahead looked a little clearer.
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