Chapter 2: The First Sip, 270 AC

Chapter 2: The First Sip, 270 AC

Pentos greeted him not with the granite solemnity of Braavos, but with a gaudy, cloying embrace. They called it the Sweet City, a name Elias found fittingly saccharine. The air, thick with the humidity of the bay, was a clashing perfume of exotic spices, blooming night-flowers, and the ever-present, underlying stench of human sweat and desperation. Square brick towers, painted in a riot of pastel shades—pinks, yellows, and pale greens—rose towards a hazy sky, their ostentatious wealth a stark contrast to the sun-baked squalor of the alleys that festered between them.

From the deck of the cog, Elias, now a Pentoshi serving boy named 'Naelo', observed the city with a connoisseur's eye for decay. He saw the fat magisters carried on litters by sweating slaves, their faces powdered and rouged, their fine silks already wilting in the heat. He saw the Unsullied guards standing stoic and silent at the gates of sprawling manses, their disciplined presence a quiet rebuke to the city's chaotic indulgence. Pentos, he mused, was a beautiful, rotting fruit, its skin painted to hide the worms writhing within. It was a city built on a lie—the lie that it was free. A treaty with Braavos had outlawed slavery, a fact the Pentoshi circumvented with a semantic dance, calling their slaves "servants" bound by law and contract, a distinction without a difference.

Hypocrisy is the grease that oils the wheels of civilization, Elias thought, a detached amusement coloring his perspective. They build their paradise on the backs of the broken, then tell themselves stories of their own enlightenment. It's the same in every world, it seems. A comforting constant.

His target, Vorro Tagaros, resided in one of these painted tombs, a sprawling manse overlooking the bay, its walls the color of a fading peach. The information from the House of Black and White was a starting point, a sketch. It was up to him to paint the full picture. The boy Naelo, whose face he wore, was a blank canvas of feigned subservience and wide-eyed youth, a mask that opened doors and disarmed suspicion. For two days, Elias walked the city's underbelly, the boy's memory providing a native's fluency in the local dialect and customs. He listened in wine sinks and at market stalls, gathering the whispers that clung to a man of Vorro's stature like flies to honey.

Vorro was a magister of coin, his wealth derived from the pungent, lucrative trade in spices and dyes. He was famously indulgent, but also, as Elias soon learned, famously paranoid. The "dozen sellswords" mentioned by the kindly man was an understatement. He employed a company of twenty, the Stormbreakers, a rough collection of swords from the Disputed Lands, led by a hulking Lyseni captain named Silas Marr. Marr was rarely far from Vorro's side, a brutish shadow with a reputation for casual cruelty and a keen survival instinct.

Infiltrating the household was a matter of patience and opportunity. Elias learned that Vorro's chief steward was a man with two weaknesses: cheap, strong liquor and a belief in his own superior intellect. Posing as a recently orphaned boy desperate for work, Elias found the steward in a grimy tavern near the docks. He played his part to perfection, a symphony of trembling hands, downcast eyes, and a carefully crafted story of hardship. He allowed the steward to feel clever, to feel magnanimous in his decision to offer the boy a menial position washing pots and scrubbing floors in the magister's kitchens.

"You'll work hard, boy," the steward had slurred, pinching Elias's cheek with wine-stained fingers. "Magister Vorro is a generous man, but he does not suffer fools or idlers."

Oh, I imagine he doesn't, Elias had thought, suppressing the urge to snap the man's wrist. Fools are competition.

And so, Naelo the orphan boy entered the House of Tagaros, a ghost slipping through the gates. For a week, he was the perfect servant: invisible, silent, and efficient. He scrubbed, he fetched, he bowed his head and kept his eyes on the floor. But behind the mask of meekness, his mind was a relentless engine of observation and analysis. He mapped the manse in his memory, every corridor, every servant's passage, every creaking floorboard. He learned the guards' rotations, the changing of the sentries, the delivery schedules for produce and wine.

His internal monologue was a constant, running commentary, a predator's assessment of its hunting ground.

The guards are lazy. Complacent. They drink on duty, their eyes lingering on the serving girls longer than on the shadows. Their captain, Marr, is the only true threat. He moves with a purpose the others lack. A predator's grace beneath a butcher's physique. He drinks, but never to excess. His eyes are always moving, always assessing. He will be the first course.

Vorro himself is a creature of habit. He rises late, breaks his fast with honeyed figs and spiced wine, and spends his afternoons in his counting house, a secure room on the third floor with a single, reinforced door and a barred window. He dines alone, save for Marr's presence, and his paranoia extends to his food. A taster, a nervous young slave girl named Lyra, samples every dish, every cup. A simple poisoning is…inelegant. And risky. The kindly man's suggestion of Arbor Gold was bait for a lesser mind.

This was a puzzle, and Elias savored the intellectual exercise. The target was not just Vorro; the true prize was the absorption, the first taste of this magnificent new power. He needed to understand its mechanics. Did he need to be the direct cause of death? Did proximity matter? Could he absorb multiple lives at once? The variables were intoxicating. He decided on a two-part solution, a performance in two acts. He would kill the captain first, to remove the primary obstacle and test the waters of his power. Then, he would deliver the gift to Vorro.

The opportunity presented itself on the eighth night. A shipment of Arbor Gold, a personal indulgence for the magister, had arrived. The cellar was located deep within the manse's foundations, a cool, damp space reeking of earth and fermented grapes. Silas Marr, as was his custom, personally oversaw the storing of his master's favorite vintage. He would dismiss the servants, preferring to handle the final placement of the casks himself, a small act of security that would prove to be his undoing.

Elias, now familiar with the labyrinthine servant's passages, slipped into the darkness of the cellar's anteroom hours before the shipment was due. He was a shadow amongst shadows, his breathing shallow, his heartbeat a slow, steady drum. The boy's body he wore was a marvel of physical conditioning, capable of holding a cramped, motionless position for hours without complaint.

He watched as Marr arrived, flanked by two of his men. They grunted and swore as they rolled the heavy casks into place. The captain, ever the diligent watchdog, sent his men away once the work was done, uncorking a bottle for himself as a small reward. Elias had anticipated this. He had spent the afternoon preparing his tool. Not poison. Something more…personal. From the kitchens, he had procured a long, thin meat skewer, its point sharpened to a needle's tip on a whetstone. It was a crude instrument, but in the hands of a Faceless Man, it was as deadly as any dagger.

Marr sat on an upturned crate, taking a long pull from the bottle, his back to the narrow passage where Elias waited. The sellsword captain was relaxed, cocooned in the comforting darkness, surrounded by his master's wealth. He was at his most vulnerable.

A common mistake, Elias mused, his hand tightening around the skewer. The belief that security is a place, a wall, a locked door. Security is a state of mind, a constant vigilance. A state you have fatally abandoned.

He moved. There was no sound, no warning. He flowed from the darkness like spilled ink, a silent, inexorable tide. The boy's body, guided by Elias's cold intent, was a symphony of deadly efficiency. In the three steps it took to cross the space between them, Elias's mind was a crystalline shard of focus. He saw the target: the space between the man's gorget and helmet, the vulnerable nape of his neck.

Marr must have sensed something at the last possible second, a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, a subtle change in the air. He started to turn, a curse forming on his lips. It never came. Elias's strike was perfect. The skewer slid through flesh and sinew, severing the spinal cord at the base of the brainstem. There was a soft, wet crunch, a sound that was shockingly intimate. Marr's body went rigid, a silent, final spasm. The bottle slipped from his grasp, shattering on the stone floor, the sweet scent of Arbor Gold mingling with the coppery tang of fresh blood.

Elias held him for a moment, supporting the body to prevent it from collapsing noisily. He felt the life drain out of the big man, a warmth that faded into a final, chilling cold. And then, it happened.

It was not a rush. It was a deluge.

A torrent of raw, unfiltered existence flooded his consciousness. It was a chaotic storm of sensation, memory, and raw power. He felt the ghost of Marr's muscles, the thick, corded strength of a lifelong warrior, superimposing itself over his own lean frame. A jolt of pure vitality, raw and untamed, surged through him, a physical sensation like a lightning strike to the soul. He felt decades of life—a lifespan cut short—pour into his own, a vast, empty reservoir suddenly filling with a potent elixir.

Then came the memories. They were not his own, yet they were. He saw a grimy upbringing in the alleys of Lys, the brutal tutelage of a pit fighter, the sun-scorched plains of the Dothraki Sea from the back of a horse, the clang of steel in a dozen nameless skirmishes in the Disputed Lands. He felt the phantom pain of old wounds, the burn of cheap Lysene brandy, the rough touch of a brothel slave. He tasted meals he had never eaten, heard insults in languages he didn't know but now understood, felt a brutish, simple loyalty to the man he had just helped kill.

And beneath the memories, the skills. The muscle memory of a thousand sword swings, the intuitive understanding of a brawl's violent ballet, the practiced ease of maintaining armor and weaponry, the callous calculus of leading men into battle. It was all there, a library of violent knowledge downloaded directly into his mind.

For a moment, the sheer volume of it was overwhelming. The persona of Elias Stone, the cold, calculating psychopath, was momentarily submerged in the turbulent sea of Silas Marr, the brutish sellsword. He stumbled back, gasping, his hand flying to his head. Naelo's face felt thin, a fragile pane of glass threatening to shatter under the psychic pressure.

Control.

The command was a shard of ice in the mental storm. Elias's own consciousness, his true self, asserted its dominance. He was the master here. This flood of data was a resource, not a tidal wave to drown in. He began to compartmentalize, to sift, to organize. He pushed the mundane, the emotional baggage of Marr's life, into the background. The loyalty, the fear, the crude desires—he walled them off, observing them with detached curiosity. He retained the essence: the strength, the vitality, the skills.

He could feel it now. A new, thrumming power in his limbs. His body, the boy's body, felt denser, stronger. His senses were sharper. He could smell the dust motes dancing in the faint light from the corridor, hear the drip of water from a crack in the ceiling with startling clarity. He had not just killed a man. He had consumed him.

A slow, genuine smile spread across his face. It was more potent, more intoxicating than he could have ever imagined.

He dragged Marr's body into the deepest shadows, arranging it to look as if the captain had simply fallen in a drunken stupor, hitting his head on a protruding stone. A clumsy, ignoble end for a man of violence. It would be hours before he was found. Hours Elias would use.

He ascended from the cellar, his new strength making the climb effortless. He felt…reborn. The second act of his performance awaited.

Vorro Tagaros was in his dining hall, a cavernous room decorated with Myrish carpets and gaudy tapestries depicting scenes of Pentoshi history. The magister was a mountain of a man, his flesh spilling over the sides of his carved throne-like chair. He was sweating, dabbing at his brow with a silk handkerchief, his small, piggy eyes darting nervously around the room. The slave girl, Lyra, stood beside him, her face a mask of terror. She had just tasted his wine.

Elias, back in the role of Naelo, entered bearing a platter of roasted quail. He kept his eyes downcast, his movements humble. But inside, he was a wolf circling its prey. He had the strength of Silas Marr now, but a frontal assault was still crude. The art of the Faceless Man was subtlety, elegance.

His plan had adapted. With Marr's memories came a crucial piece of information: Vorro, for all his paranoia about poison in his food, had a secret vice. He suffered from a painful affliction of the joints, a rich man's disease, and secretly chewed a paste made from poppy, a mild form of milk of the poppy, to dull the ache. He kept a small, ornate box of it on a table just out of sight. Marr had known because he was occasionally tasked with procuring it from a back-alley apothecary.

Elias had his poison. A tasteless, odorless compound known to the Faceless Men as the Tears of Lys. It was a cruel substance, mimicking a sudden, catastrophic failure of the heart. He had coated the tip of his little finger with a crystalline residue of it before entering the room.

As he set the platter down, he "stumbled," his hand lurching forward. It was a masterful piece of acting, a clumsy boy off-balance. His poisoned finger brushed against the inside of the magister's wine goblet, a cup already tasted and deemed safe. The contact was fleeting, almost imperceptible.

Vorro, startled, cursed him. "Clumsy oaf! Get out! Get out of my sight!"

Elias bowed low, murmuring apologies, and backed out of the room, his heart a cold, steady rhythm. He didn't wait in the servant's quarters. He slipped out of the manse, melting into the humid Pentoshi night. He found a secluded rooftop overlooking the bay, the salt spray cool on his new face.

He didn't have to wait long. A commotion erupted from the Tagaros manse. Shouts, screams, the sound of running feet. The gift had been delivered.

Elias closed his eyes, waiting. This time, he was prepared. The flood came again, but it was different. Vorro's life force was…sluggish. Pampered. It lacked the raw vitality of the sellsword's, but it was rich in other ways. Decades of surplus lifespan, a life of ease and indulgence, flowed into him.

And the memories. A whirlwind of commerce. The intricate dance of trade negotiations, the shifting values of saffron and cloves, the complex web of shipping routes that spanned the known world. The secret ledgers, the hidden accounts, the names of corrupt officials in half a dozen cities. He learned the art of usury, the cold mathematics of profit and loss, the subtle language of contracts. He saw through Vorro's eyes the inner workings of the Pentoshi council of magisters, the rivalries, the alliances, the deep-seated corruption that was the city's true foundation.

He absorbed it all. The knowledge settled within him, a vast, ordered archive of mercantile genius. He now possessed the martial prowess of a veteran warrior and the financial acumen of a master trader.

He opened his eyes and looked out at the lights of the ships in the bay. He felt…limitless. The boy he had been was a distant echo. Elias Stone, the psychopath from another world, was a fading memory. He was something new, something more. He was a collector of lives, a mosaic of stolen skills and borrowed time.

One sip, he thought, a feeling of profound, chilling ecstasy washing over him. Just one sip from the river of life, and I am already so much more.

He thought of Westeros. Of the game he was destined to play. With Vorro's wealth of knowledge, he could build a financial empire. With Marr's strength, he could protect it. And this was just the beginning. There were warriors, scholars, spies, and perhaps even magic-users out there, their lives, their skills, all waiting to be…acquired.

He looked down at his hands. They were the hands of a boy, but they felt like the hands of a god in the making. The path of dominance he had envisioned was no longer a distant dream. It was a tangible, achievable reality. He had taken his first step, and the world had trembled, even if it didn't know it yet. His twisted sense of amusement blossomed into something darker, something colder. It was not just about winning the game anymore. It was about rewriting the rules.