Chapter Thirty-Two
**Hermione's POV**
Hermione looked down at the girl on the floor before speaking.
"When you and your instructor Jaqen H'ghar were greeted at the city gate by the docks, where he presented a certain token to the guard on post, and you both were instructed to touch the orb at the gate before entering...do you remember?" she asked.
She watched as the girl nodded.
"Well, that orb sends your name and location to this map here, and from there, as long as you are in the city, your location will always be known."
What she failed to mention was that anyone entering the city without touching one of the orbs would automatically set off alarms, their location appearing as a red dot on the map with no name attached, classified immediately as an unknown threat and held in custody until the situation could be properly assessed. Many times, she had gone to investigate such an alarm only to find young children who had discovered a tiny tunnel they had made for themselves through some gap in the outer wall and were using it to come and go as they pleased. She usually found an excuse to visit them afterward and bring treats, and sometimes even played with them and told them stories. They were always very curious about her, which she could appreciate...curious minds deserved encouragement...so she indulged them just a bit.
Hermione nodded to herself at the thought, which earned a curious look from the girl still on the floor.
"Come on then," she said, getting up from her chair and moving toward the door. "If you're going to be following me around all day you might as well be useful. Let's go."
She reached the door, her hand on the frame, and turned back.
"Are you coming?"
---
**Arya Stark's POV**
Arya knew it had to be magic of some kind that had given her away.
She had been perfect with her surveillance. Always at the target's back, preferably an elevated and covered position. If cover was unavailable, blend into the background, sometimes being an injured child gave you not only perfect cover but direct access to the target, if they were soft-hearted enough. And at worst a look of disdain, the person you were following wanting nothing to do with a crying child and going out of their way to ignore you, which was in many ways even better.
Beggars were most often the ones unseen by everyone; people generally chose to ignore unpleasant things. After all life was hard enough as it was without looking at something that reminded you of it every second of the day.
Jaqen had given her the freedom of the day to explore and gather whatever information she could, with a test waiting for her at the end of it. She had decided to cut to the chase and go straight to the heart of the matter. Everywhere she went she heard nothing but positive whispers and often outright prayers to this so-called Goddess. The name was on every corner and in every conversation, she passed through.
Arya held no malice for this person. In fact, the younger version of herself would have thrown her arms around her and thanked her with everything she had. She had heard the stories of her family's rescue during her travels. First, she had saved Rob and Mother. Then she had saved Jon and made him a prince in his own right. Now she had heard that both Rickon and Bran were safe, having arrived only a few days before them. She had even heard rumors of some eight-foot-tall fire-breathing pointy-eared Admiral who had saved Nymeria and now fought alongside her.
So of course, she had to know what kind of being had sunk their claws into her family, she had to see it for herself just to be sure.
They walked in silence through the upper corridors of the pyramid; the warm stone walls lined with oil lamps that cast a steady amber light across the polished floor. The city outside hummed distantly through the high narrow windows, the sounds of the market drifting up faintly on the morning air.
They stopped at a door.
Arya was almost certain the door had not been there the last time they had passed this particular stretch of wall, at first Arya thought the girl was lost having past the same spot three times but that door was new. She was completely certain of it, but she said nothing and filed it away as yet another mystery.
The woman opened it onto an impossibly long torch lit hallway that extended so far into the distance the far end was lost in a warm haze of light. Arya stood in the doorway and stared.
"Currently, as you do not have permission, we are taking the back door to farm plot number three," the supposed Goddess explained, already walking. "The secret to the success each new city is getting."
The walk down the hall taking far less time then she anticipated, it was almost as if the distance to the end of the hall had shrunken, the torchlight moving steady and warm on either side, before the passage ended and a door opened and they stepped out...into open air, blinking in the bright morning light as a sharp wing buffeted at her hair and cloths. She looked towards the direction of the gust only to see that they were standing directly beside the dragon pit.
It was currently occupied by two rather large dragons. One a deep black with blood red running thru its wing membranes, the other a contrast as it was a deep gold with an almost ethereal white on the wings.
Arya went very still.
The golden one was enormous up close, both captivating and terrifying in a way that pictures and stories from distant sightings just could not prepare you for. The black one beside it was not far behind, the heat coming off them was a physical thing, like standing near a forge that had been running all day, and the smell of them was ancient and dry and something underneath that Arya had no word for, but remembered smelling something similar under the Red Keep.
They both turned their great heads toward the woman.
She smiled while looking the golden one in the eyes, then nodded her head once.
The golden dragon looked at her for a long moment, and then...and Arya was completely certain of what she saw, it had nodded back. Something passed between them in the space of a breath, wordless, but she was sure of what she saw. Then both dragons rose, the great downbeat of their wings sending a wall of air across the pit that knocked Arya back a full step and set her hair flying in every direction and her eyes watering, as she desperately tried to shield her face with her arms.
The Star-Goddess or whatever's hair simply fluttered slightly, her dress moved in a way only described in one of Sansa's stupid story books.
*So unfair. *
The dragons were already distant shapes against the blue sky by the time Arya recovered herself and pushed her hair out of her face, as she tried dusting herself off now that she was caked with sand.
The woman had already crossed to the far edge of the pit, where a square patch of bare earth sat in the sun, no bigger than the span of Arya's arms stretched wide. Just dirt, ordinary dirt, pale and dry in the morning heat.
Arya looked at it, she looked at the woman, she raised one eyebrow.
"Truly a wonder to behold," she said, in her most sincere tone of absolute mockery. "This yard of dirt, were all saved."
The woman smiled brightly, "it truly is, isn't it." She produced a small piece of parchment and held it out. "Here. Read this to yourself and hand it back."
Arya took it. *P3 ND P2. * With a confused look on her face she turned it over, nothing on the other side, was this a joke, or some kind of code? She opened her mouth to ask a question.
Then the ground moved.
The patch of earth in front of her expanded outward at a speed that made her take several rapid steps back, the land unfolding and stretching in every direction as though it had always been there and simply been folded up and stuff in a chest. Within moments it was almost certainly a league long, the far end so distant it shimmered slightly in the heat. And then the glasshouse began to appear...materializing out of nothing in sections, great panels of pale glass rising and connecting and settling into place with unhurried certainty. By the time it stopped, a vast incomplete greenhouse structure covered nearly the entire length of the field, divided into enormous, sectioned areas, half constructed and half already green with growth visible through the glass walls.
Arya stood very still and looked at it.
"When everything is complete," the woman said, walking to the nearest glass wall and pressing a hand flat against it, "each section will have its very own Biodome. They will magically produce the proper environment for whatever is planted inside it." She paused. "The only drawback is you can only plant one type of crop in each separate biosphere, otherwise the spells counteract each other and sometimes kill all the crops in the process. And have been known to cause F5 tornados." She said this last part while tapping her chin with a finger and giving a thoughtful look out into the distance in obvious thought over something probably complicated. Arya didn't understand what an f5 was, but she had heard of Tornados, then the woman continued. "Killing untold people and destroying everything in their path, as it grows to over 2Km across." She patted the glass. "So, the separation."
Arya looked at the dividing walls between sections.
It was only glass, glass...her right eye began switching.
A single piece of glass between herself and an unknown number of crop-killing people-destroying city-erasing tornado-causing magical disasters, each one separated from the next by something you could put your fist through if you had a rock.
*There is definitely something not right in the head with this person. *
"We currently have one functioning hidden area like this in each city," the woman continued, apparently unaware of or entirely unbothered by Arya's internal assessment. "The people who work the land there are given full compensation, and food is no longer a real issue for almost everyone in the city." She turned to look at Arya directly. "We can even trade excess food to other countries. Help those in genuine need, year-round." She looked back at the glass. "I am currently developing a more permanent means of access for the workers, strong enough to last for generations. With access to certain magical hearthstones found recently while aiding those affected by greyscale, I am only months away from each city being not only entirely self-sufficient but able to create room for other industries in the future." She ran her hand along the glass as she walked. "This will also make waiting us out, if ever we were attacked, a completely useless strategy, as we or rather the people could wait indefinitely. There are even pastures for cattle, and fields for chickens, goats, horses...whatever you please, really."
She stopped and looked at the glass with something that might have been genuine affection and patted it once more.
"They actually make this in Astapor now, this glass, we had masters brought in from Qarth and sent to teach their trade." She glanced at Arya with a slight smile. "Most tradesmen would never sell their secrets to the masses, unless... of course you gave them certain knowledge and a few secrets of your own. You see I like to read about just about everything that tickles my fancy at the time, and I gave them some improvements to their craft...information from a few books, I keep laying around for light reading." She waved a hand. "Well, the knowledge and two hundred thousand gold dragons each, to teach and study together the art of glasswork with our own people. With as much sand as there is in this region, I don't imagine they'll run short of material any time soon, do you?"
---
The next place Arya found herself was considerably further from the pyramid, somewhere near the Giants' camp at the edge of the city, where the ground was harder and the smell of the mammoths reached you well before you saw them.
Five Giants were working steadily in the open space, their movements unhurried and enormous, loading great handfuls of stone into bags that were then fixed to the sides of the mammoths. Each rock looking almost exactly the same, an almost perfect rectangle. The mammoths themselves stood with patient indifference, shifting their weight occasionally and watching the proceedings with small wise eyes, as another Giant feed them large tufts of grass and some other kind of feed that the beasts seem to enjoy.
Arya had seen the mammoths from a distance as the ship was coming into the docks, they were impossible to miss after all. Seeing them up close was an entirely different thing, she was mesmerized.
Hermione noticed the girl's expression smiled and began to speak.
"You see, where I'm from, the magic users of old would have workers break off great slabs of marble stone and shape them. The stones would be shrunk down, then loaded onto barges and sent down the river, where they would be unloaded and carefully arranged and carved by hand. Then when everything was positioned correctly, they would bury the entire miniaturized structure in fine sand and drench the whole area. Once everything was nicely wet and packed down, they would release the spell holding the stones to their reduced size and weight." She watched the Giants work as she spoke. "The stone grinding against itself as it expanded, as well as the sand packed into every gap, would fill everything in — creating an almost airtight structure with every passage completely finished and ready, needing only the final cover stones."
A small chuckle escaped her.
"To this day," she said, quietly, low enough that only Arya could hear it, "muggles still come up with absurd ideas about "how it was done"." *ALIENS*
Arya looked at the Great Pyramid behind them in the distance, pale and enormous against the bright sky. Then she looked at the mammoths being loaded with stones. Then she looked at the woman beside her.
She was absolutely planning on making another one appear somewhere.
*Seriously something wrong in the head. *
Then the woman sighed and turned to Arya with an expression of genuine and immediate concern that had nothing to do with pyramids or glass or mammoths.
"Sorry. I've just remembered I forgot to feed certain plants this morning." She said this with the gravity of someone remembering a genuinely urgent appointment. "They can get very grumpy when not fed on time and will slap you if you're not careful." She was already waving her hands at the Giants, as a few waved back. "We can continue this tomorrow at your appointed time," she said with a final nod.
Then with a *POP* she was gone.
Arya stood in the space where she had been standing, looking around confused at first.
She became aware, gradually, of the fact that she was now alone in the Giants' camp, and that somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen enormous sets of eyes had turned in her direction and were examining her with the attentive curiosity of very large beings looking at something very small.
Arya straightened up, she met each set of eyes in turn, moving slowly around the group, letting none of them see just how nervous she was, she was a wolf after all.
"What are you looking at?" she asked in a carefully measured voice neither rude, nor passive. As she began to walk off back towards where she would be staying for the night.
A low sound moved through the Giants; it took her a moment to identify it as laughter.
Several of them nodded their great heads slowly as she turned and walked back toward the city, her spine straight and her pace unhurried, the warm morning air carrying the distant sounds of the market back to her on the breeze.
Behind her, the Giants watched the little wolf cub go, and found, in their ancient and unhurried way, that they approved.