To epitomize the world in which we live, we must first step back and remember that we are flawed.
But to understand the world in which we live, we must recognize that man realizes just this: the good exploit the flaws and the wicked jeopardize their...
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Meera's wishing, as she bolts through that cave, that she had been better prepared for an escape at any time, especially with monsters at their back and only held back by a magic now absent. Ahead of her, Hodor lumbers with Bran and behind her, thousands of wights chase them with no relief in sight but a door somewhere ahead of them but currently lost to darkness. Leaf rushes at her side in the small and lithe form of the Children, but suddenly drops back as Meera then forces herself into a stop.
"What are you doing?" Meera's voice carries through the tunnel and to the last remaining Child whose green eyes are heavy with sacrifice and duty.
"Go!" Leaf shouts as she palms the weapon in her hand. "Tell Bran—tell him that the Children have waited many years for him, and that everything relies upon his knowledge!"
And though she should move, Meera just watches as Leaf's overcome by the bloodthirsty wights of men, holding the bomb to her chest and voicing her pain before clenching her fist and they go up in an inferno—the last of the race to peer into the hearts of men and live through their tales.
"The crown and the faith are the twin pillars upon which the world rests. Together we will restore the Seven Kingdoms to glory," Tommen recites to the gathered crowds of King's Landing as he stands upon the steps of the Sept of Baelor with Margaery beside him and the High Sparrow nearby. And below him, his uncle Jaime Lannister glares heatedly upon the latter man as the voices of the common folk cheer and Olenna recognizes defeat for what this is.
Bran stares at the mysterious man before him—the one that had saved his and Meera's life in the endless forest outside the weirwood tree, the last place he expected to be saved from death but he's seen too much to doubt such miracles. And slowly—but surely—the man begins to unwind that scarf to reveal skin of a continued white blemish and swelling, but even then, Bran knows who this is: "Uncle Benjen. The last letter Jon wrote me said you had been lost beyond the Wall."
"I led a ranging party deep into the North to find White Walkers," Benjen reminisces on the mission that led to this change of fate. "They found us. A White Walker stabbed me in the gut with a sword of ice. Left me there to die. To turn. The Children found me. Stopped the walker's magic from taking hold."
"How?" Bran asks.
"The same way they made the Walkers in the first place. You saw it yourself."
"Dragonglass," Bran nods in understanding, remembering that story far better than the rest. "A shard of dragonglass plunged into your heart."
Benjen nods as his eyes take on something deeper, like a father bequeathing his own lordship to his son, "You are the Three-Eyed Raven now."
"I didn't have time to learn. I can't control anything." Benjen stands at the worry in Bran's voice, crouching over the handicapped boy who has the potential to same them all.
