The aftertaste of crossing over was sweat, spent seed, and cheap perfume.
Lyonel came to on his back in it.
Naked.
Spread-eagle on a featherbed gone damp through the ticking.
A pale thigh lay under his short ribs.
Someone’s spit had dried in a bright thread at the corner of his mouth.
His skull rang.
He looked down.
Fuck.
The hands were wrong.
The feet were wrong.
The belly was a tight, thick drum.
Everything short, packed, cut to a bad ratio, with a thin scatter of blond hair that had no business being there.
He opened the left hand.
The fingers did not reach as far as the first knuckle of the hand he remembered.
Left.
He had been right-handed.
Candles on the stand had wept crooked all night.
Cloth lay wadded on the boards.
In the corner, a book, gold letters burned into the spine: *Lineages of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms*.
He shut his eyes and pulled in air.
Done.
Through.
Not into a rich man’s sheets.
Not into any clean new life.
Into a dwarf who had just finished buying the night and had not finished sleeping it off.
He gripped the bedframe and stood.
The floor hit and his knees nearly went.
Too low.
His eyes came level with the middle of the mattress.
He lurched for the copper glass on the wall, half the face of it smeared with old stain.
The thing in the metal was a face he would have paid not to own.
Head too large for the neck.
Brow wide enough to park a wagon.
Left eye a clear, sharp green.
Right eye ink-black.
The two colors refused each other, and the mouth canted as if it had been hung on a nail and left there.
He gave the glass three seconds of quiet.
Then he laughed.
Ugly.
All teeth.
Fine.
Cross.
Land wherever the joke lands.
Not the handsome knight out of a song.
The sinkhole.
The dwarf everyone in Westeros already knew how to hate.
His name, before, had been Lyonel.
Thirty.
Bottom-rung coder at a shop that burned men for shipping dates.
Bugs until two in the morning.
Last night on that side of the dark, the stack dumped him a `NullPointerException` and his heart stopped on the chair.
They carried him out with the error still up.
No house.
No car.
No woman.
Savings that would not have held a deposit on a closet.
Now the house was gone, the car was gone, the money was gone, and so was the height.
He leaned into the glass again.
The mismatched eyes stared back like they wanted a fight.
He stepped off.
The table corner found the small of his back.
The pain was exact.
He showed his teeth at it.
Tyrion.
The name came up out of the meat without asking.
Tyrion Lannister.
Youngest son of Lord Tywin of Casterly Rock.
The monster who had killed his mother coming into the world.
The most famous dwarf in the Seven Kingdoms.
He swallowed that.
A sound cut across the inside of his head.
Clean.
Bright.
Like a package hitting the step.
[System]
Crossing complete.
Soul and body fused.
[System]
Trait Stacking System activating…
[System]
Activation successful.
He stood there for a beat.
The corner of his mouth jumped.
Then it tore wide.
The cheat.
Late.
Present.
[System]
Starter pack delivered to inventory.
Collect.
A blue pane hung in the air.
Not a dream.
The letters sat too still for that.
Gold across the top:
[System]
Trait Stacking System 2.0
Host: Tyrion Lannister (Lyonel)
Trait slots: none
Daily draws: 1 (resets at midnight)
Trait ranks: White / Green / Blue / Purple / Gold / Red
First-draw rule: first draw is Purple or higher.
Draw now?
“Draw.”
[System]
First draw in progress…
[System]
Purple trait acquired: Lannister Blood Resonance
Charm 5
Starting regard with Lannister kin +10 (passive)
Active: briefly read the mood of nearby Lannister blood.
Cooldown: 24 hours.
He blinked at Charm 5.
He looked at the glass again.
Huge head.
Short legs.
Eyes that did not match.
Mouth on the slant.
Charm 5.
So.
Not ugly enough to call the watch.
Ugly enough that the watch would hesitate.
He wanted the joke.
He kept the useful part.
The five points of charm were a crumb.
The ten points of regard were the meat.
Lannister kin.
He shut his eyes and scraped at what the body still held.
Tywin Lannister.
The old lion.
Cold enough to frost a cup.
A glance from him had been a waste of life.
Cersei Lannister.
The sister who would have liked him pickled.
Jaime Lannister—
Warmth moved in his chest when that name went by.
Not his.
Leftover.
Hate and fear for the rest of them.
For Jaime, only the wanting-to-keep.
The Kingsguard with the gold hair.
Best-looking man in the Seven Kingdoms.
Every time he came home to the Rock he had slipped the Imp a gift on the quiet.
Ten points on Jaime made a loyal brother into a fixed one.
Ten points on Tywin… Lyonel wet his cracked mouth.
Zero to ten was still a failing mark.
It was also the difference between *strangle him* and *kick him out of the way*.
Movement.
The pane threw a second line.
[System]
Starter task issued: within three days, win one acknowledgment from your father, Tywin Lannister.
Reward: Purple trait — Fiscal Mastery.
His pupils tightened on the last two words.
The body’s memory had the scene already queued.
Tywin would toss him the western ledgers.
Three days to find the holes.
Fail, and it was black on the Wall with the Night’s Watch.
Three days.
Ledgers.
Task.
His head started working without being asked.
He had written code for a living.
He had also sat through finance on the side and, for the pleasure of it, worn down a few books on how money moved in ugly centuries.
Accounts were a cleaner game than nulls.
He took air in.
Stepped back.
Looked at the glass again.
Green left.
Black right.
Crooked mouth.
The big head on the short neck, like a jar someone had packed badly.
The eyes had changed.
Empty before.
Lit now.
He smiled at the copper.
The dwarf smiled back, worse.
“From today,” he said, soft, almost to the glass, “the Imp isn’t only Tyrion.”
A draft shoved through the window and slapped the *Lineages* open to the last leaf.
A yellow map.
The Westerlands.
Casterly Rock ringed in heavy black ink.
He shut the book.
Bare feet on the boards.
He came up on his toes to meet the ugly, short body that was his.
“One step.
Then the next.”
“Home first.”
He turned and dragged the crumpled Lannister crimson off the floor.
The coat was a tent.
Sleeves to the knee.
He rolled them five times before his fingertips showed.
Belt set.
Hand on the door.
[System]
Daily draw on cooldown.
Second draw refreshes at midnight.
Host agitation high.
Tomorrow’s rank odds slightly improved.
His foot stopped on the sill.
He looked down at the costume.
He looked back at the bed.
Three bodies still snored in the wreck of the sheets.
A woman’s hair stuck to a damp cheek.
Another had an arm flung wide, breast flattened to the wet feathers, mouth open.
The third lay facedown in the smell of last night, hips bare, a coin of cooling spend on the back of one thigh.
The bed reeked of skin and wine and the work he did not remember doing.
His own small cock, raw at the head, had dried against his belly.
He felt that when he shifted.
That, and the bruise of someone else’s teeth low on his throat.
He opened the door.
Morning came down the far end of the passage and pulled his shadow out long behind him.
Long enough to look like a promise.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
He rubbed his hands.
He took the first step.
“Tomorrow’s got better things.”