Bran saw him drown, saw waters around him forbidding any space for breathing. Alone, lost in a sea of death, not knowing which way was up, the man gushed wind through his nose and followed the bubbles. As he reached closer to the light, waiting for him in the sky was fear itself. Fire erupted through its face, dancing in his direction. It was cold, then it was hot, and then too hot.
The dungeons stank of the dead. He saw the bearded man pacing his cell. “I will not beg,” he was saying. Rats scurried through the bars of his cell in ways that stirred in him envy. He grabbed one in his hand. The rodent desperately bit his fingers before his hands tore him to shreds. The sight made Bran yell, but no one heard him.
Fever had failed to escape him. It was easy to see, but impossible to move. Someone, move me, he wanted to say. If you shake me hard enough, perhaps I will be alive again. Dark brown eyes stared through him. “Ice dragons are not real,” Meera Reed was telling him. “Maybe you saw the past. Was the Wall still standing?”
The dungeons were back again, only it felt slightly different. It was darker here, and the voices of rats absent. He saw a man chewing white hair, muttering to himself. “They must come to save me. They must.”
He was back in the cave with the Three-Eyed Raven. The old man looked at him, and this time, Bran was certain the eyes saw. “You have power beyond your bounds,” he said. “Mayhaps it is time to increase them.” But he could not. For him, time was but a space through which he traversed.
*
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