May 22, 2019

Melisandre speaks a prophecy.

INT. DRAGONSTONE - MAP ROOM - DAY

VARYS watches Tyrion's face with a look of sympathetic pain. Tyrion looks like he has aged several years in the last few minutes.

TYRION

Do you remember when the Blackwater burned?

VARYS

I'll never forget it.

TYRION

Even from that distance, I could hear them screaming.

Tyrion broods on the memory. He blinks rapidly, suddenly fighting tears.

TYRION

I think... I think I brought wildfire back into fashion that day.

VARYS

This wasn't your fault.

Tyrion very much doubts that, in this moment.

VARYS

Jaime wouldn't want you to torture yourself on his behalf.

8.

TYRION

And Cersei would want me to burn myself living and complete the set. I'm taking the average.

Varys gives up on trying to logic Tyrion out of his grief-fueled self-loathing.

TYRION

I remember the pyromancer's face that night. He looked like a child in a sweetshop.

Disgust and anger come over his face, tempering his grief.

TYRION

I swear he worshipped the stuff. Called it "the substance." You'd think it had the power to raise the dead, listening to him.

Tyrion can't stand to think about it anymore. He reaches to self-medicate with wine, as Varys watches.

INT. QYBURN'S LABORATORY - DAY

A glass jar of wildfire sits ominously on a dark shelf.

Nearby, Qyburn bustles around his laboratory, his movements tense with urgency. He pulls stoppered flasks from his shelves, full of his sinister purplish Mystery Potion. He packs them into a box, taking care to protect the flasks with straw and wool, even in his haste.

The Mountain stands a silent guard nearby, looming in the corner near the dissected Dragonpit wight.

Qyburn closes up his precious box. He picks it up in his arms, tenderly, like a child or a timid animal.

QYBURN

(to Mountain)

Come.

Qyburn departs his laboratory, for whereabouts unknown. The Mountain follows after him, ever obedient.

INT. DRAGONSTONE CORRIDOR - DAY

Dany, Jon, and Tyrion walk together on their way to Dragonstone's audience chamber. Jon is disgruntled.

9.

JON

Why is she here?

DANY

She wanted the three of us together.

JON

Why?

TYRION

I imagine we're about to find out.

INT. DRAGONSTONE AUDIENCE CHAMBER - MOMENTS LATER

MELISANDRE stands waiting for them, supervised by Golden Company soldiers. She turns at the sound of the doors opening.

Our Holy Trinity enters, with Dany on point. Melisandre's eyes move reflexively to Jon's. She hasn't seen him face-to-face since he'd banished her from the North.

Jon's face tells her that he hasn't forgotten why. She averts her gaze.

MELISANDRE

(to Dany)

Your grace.

Dany addresses the guards without looking away from her.

DANY

We'll have the room, now.

The guards depart, allowing them their privacy. A suspenseful silence underpins the sounds of them leaving, and the doors closing behind them.

Once they're alone:

DANY

(to Melisandre)

Speak, my lady.

Melisandre nods to her deferentially. Her eyes seek Jon's once more, but he is not looking at her. He's looking at some unspecific point behind her, with an affect suggesting he would rather she not be here.

MELISANDRE

Do you believe in me, Jon Snow?

10.

His eyes shift to hers.

MELISANDRE

You once told me that you don't trust in visions. I was wrong about Stannis, but the flames did not lie. The great victory I saw... it came true the day you took Winterfell.

(beat)

The power that speaks to me is the same power that brought you back from death -- you cannot turn it away.

Jon says nothing. But he's listening now.

DANY

Tell us what you have seen.

MELISANDRE

I have seen the Night King defeated.

The three trade looks at this unexpectedly positive pronouncement.

MELISANDRE

I have seen his body shattered, and his army fallen. But the vision is not a promise. And should it come to pass, the cost will be very dear. Many thousands more will die.

Her voice sticks in her throat, suddenly. She pauses, fighting with the words she came here to say. A tortured beat passes before she finally forces them out.

MELISANDRE

And one of you will die as well.

Silence.

The words hang in the air. The temperature seems to have suddenly plummeted.

Jon is first to react:

JON

Which?

MELISANDRE

I don't know.

11.

DANY

(with steel)

What did you see?

MELISANDRE

I saw three figures, that were dragons made human. I could not discern their faces, but they stood cloaked in the colors of your House. The darkness fled before them, their fire burned the world clean. In the end, the Night King was defeated. And there were only two.

Dany and Jon look at each other. Tyrion looks up at them both.

Melisandre presses on, with a sobriety that belies the zealotry she once possessed. Jon watches her with quiet intensity.

MELISANDRE

This is the way of our Lord. Victory demands sacrifice. So it was in the first War for the Dawn, and so it is now.

(beat)

There will come a moment when everything hangs in the balance. A moment that will ask of you a most terrible choice. You must be brave in that choice. Or we are all lost.

Jon closes his eyes.