Allen1996
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Chapter 4: Friction
🕑 Added 2024-05-09 05:29:58 +0000 UTCA nation, what made one? Was it a common origin? If so, wasn’t it in itself a limited concept?
Was it appartenance to the same ideas, the belief in the same gods? To make a nation, was homogeneity necessary?
This was the most pressing matter I had to deal with, the crown of my worries. What was Astapor beyond being a city full of freed slaves?
Those people in the streets, shouting my name with joy, finally able to smile, did they see themselves as part of a greater whole?
Did they truly believe in a vision of a nation where everyone would be truly free or did they nod at my words because they believed or feared me instead? Did they agree because when looking at me, they only saw a god?
Power was in my opinion a poison. It corrupted even saints, turning the best into the worst, angels into demons.
I had seen closely how it had changed my family, how those I had thought were the kindest made things that could be called nothing but inhumane because power allowed them to do so without impunity.
I already had power with this magic I could feel drum to the beat of my heart, that I could feel moving through my veins.
I had used this power. I had killed with it. I had slaughtered men, no beasts as if they were cattle. I didn't regret it. I didn't think I was wrong in doing so.
The good masters, the Dothraki, how could I weep after making them spill blood when they deserved it? How could I regret when the only thing I did was bring them to the gods they worshipped?
What I feared though was being wrong in the future. What I feared was this power warping me beyond reason. This is why I hadn’t wanted to be king even though they were the ones wishing to crown me.
Saying A crown was a heavy burden wasn’t accurate. A crown isn’t a burden. It is a chain, a golden one but still a chain and I found myself tired of chains those days.
Yet, It was a chain I had chosen to wear because it was necessary to sometimes do the things you hated when it was for the greater good. The freed slaves of Astapor have only known slavery.
They have only known the weep, harsh words and humiliation. They didn't know what it was like to live. They only knew how to survive. This was the only thing they knew.
I hated how patronizing it sounded but they needed guidance. What I was introducing was completely novel to them, to this reality.
Democracy in a world ruled by autocrats and monarchies. It was a pipe dream made manifest, not something I think could survive here by itself.
The beautiful concept of freedom, of choice, it was like a fragile flower and in this harsh world of ice and fire, it was something destined to wither unless strength, unless Power, Almighty power was used to introduce it, to preserve it.
It needed to be nurtured like most plants were. It needed to be watered, protected, allowed to grow strong enough to stand on its own.
This is why I will take the crown. This is why I will do what I hate deep down. I will let gold rest on my eyebrows for the moment, as long as needed.
I will be the first and the last king of Astapor. This was the decision decided, this was the decision taken not only by me but by the representatives of the now-freed slaves of Astapor.
There would be no announcements of kinghood, no parades, no great speech. This wasn’t a moment of glory. It would be nothing but a formality, a formality that wouldn't affect in any way the lives of the freed people of Astapor so what would be the point of announcing it?
If I didn't have to fear the possible stability of a democratic system left alone, I would have only pushed for the creation of the three usual branches of government but I couldn’t, so the government of Astapor will be one with four branches at least temporarily.
Firstly, The representatives represented the legislative branch. For now, their numbers would be limited due to the fact that most of the population wasn’t what I would call educated but with time, I'm sure that it would be something that would change.
Secondly, The judiciary power would be one filled by slaves known as good judges of characters with unsullied ensuring the exercise of their power would not be challenged even I would be surprised if it was the case. The fact that I was the one to introduce this concept here will make sure that for a while, things wouldn’t go wrong.
Thirdly, I will in not too long introduce the concept of voting. I wanted Astapor to have a president/mayor, one that would be the one dealing with most of the things not regarding primordial matters at least for a while, not while we were technically at war with all of the ‘free’ cities of Essos.
This concept of president would have to become one ingrained in the lives of the people of Astapor. It was necessary of them to accept it, get used to it, so that one day, the concept of monarchy, of people ruling because of their personal might, would be a foreign concept to the people of Astapor.
Finally, as ‘the king’ I, only, would have the right to intervene in any way I deemed necessary to ensure the good function of the system.
The legislative representatives were to the number of seven. They were the most respected amongst us, freed slaves. They were those people naturally saw as leaders and gravitated towards. They were those if they went rogue, decided to crown themselves would represent a danger to the structure of the city-state I wanted to create.
Didn't Sun Tzu say something like keep your friends close and your possible enemies closer?
This was what I was doing. I preferred to have them close to me, where I could more easily see what they were doing. Them being in my surroundings also helped with the fact that with one gaze, I knew every one of their thoughts.
Lazaro the artisan, Araz the scribe, Daenolla the whore, Noraphos the undefeated, Varello snake eye, Lessirah the matron and Tychor the smith.
Lazaro had been the slave of a good master whose fortune had laid into textiles. Lazaro represented most of the artisans of the city. This made him very important due to the fact that the infrastructures of Astapor are I would say inadequate, inadequate because those that remained, that weren’t destroyed by an angry mob of slaves weren’t enough.
Before, the ones inhabiting those homes had either been merchants, wealthy tourists or the good masters themselves and people affiliated with them.
I could create structures for people to sleep in but those structures weren’t homes. They didn't look like it, didn't feel like it. More than that, I couldn’t do everything by myself. I needed to involve others. They needed to feel as if Astapor was theirs. They needed to personally be attached to it, to everything they had and will have because if it wasn’t the case, if I gave them anything they asked for all the time, why would they care about Astapor?
They would be caring about me, not the city and this was what I wanted to avoid. I needed to create an identity, a concept they would cradle in their heart, that they would wish to lay down their lives for if needed.
More than that, his people and him had been the ones chosen by the good masters to do the exchanges and trades they saw as lesser which means that he was a possible key to kickstarting an economy.
The only reason why Astapor hadn’t imploded like in canon after the chains of the good masters were broken was because of my magic that ensured no one was starving or sick.
Most of the Merchants who had been present in the uprising had been killed by the mob of angry freed slaves and honestly, I couldn’t blame them.
The economy of Astapor had laid on slave labour. Most Slaves were not born as such. They were captured, tricked and sold, sold by merchants.
Even if we took into count the possibility that not all Merchants had been complicit in turning the freed people of Astapor into slaves, it didn't change the fact that the reasons why Merchants had loved Astapor, why Astapor had been so rich and made them rich in return was because the labour of a slave was cheap, almost absurdly.
You could come as a merchant to Astapor, buy things made with the help of slave labour that you could easily sell somewhere else to at least three times what you had initially spent.
Evil wasn’t always committing the crime itself. Watching, trying to do nothing to stop the atrocity if possible, contributing knowingly even if indirectly to the evil institution that was slavery. It wasn’t that different from enslaving yourself to another person. This was what I knew most of the people of Astapor thought, maybe not in such words but surely in that same idea.
I didn't think that there were no nuances, no shades of grey because things were rarely black and white but what mattered wasn’t what I thought but what those people did.
Araz was an older brown-skinned man with short-cropped hair and hazel eyes. He had almost a South Asian look. He was old, especially for a slave.
More than fifty years his memories had indicated. Fifty years who had majorly been in chains.
Slaves rarely lived long. This was the truth of the matter. Him having survived so long was something to respect in itself because as a slave, you only lived so long by being wise and lucky or by being a traitor and the man sitting before me wasn’t a traitor.
The man had been the scribe of a good master. Now, he was the representative of I wouldn’t say intellectuals but those who had accomplished non-menial tasks for the good masters.
Daenolla was clearly by her name and her appearance a woman of Valyrian descent. She was a woman in her mid-thirties who looked as if it was now she was stepping out of her teenage years. We shared together a lot of the same features, the same paleness, the same eye colour, the same hair colour.
It was natural when taken into count that she was just like me, that she had been like Aegor. She had been the sex slave of a good master the same way I had been, the same way Aegor had been. Like me, she probably originated from Lys.
She had fortunately or unfortunately depending on who you asked survived being a bed warmer for the good masters since her childhood.
Daenolla was what Aegor if he had survived, what I could have become if I hadn't wake up with any power, well, it was if the world hadn’t ended before or I hadn’t chosen to finish by myself what Kraznys had failed to do when he threw my body with the garbage.
Looking at her, I felt anguish, looking at her, I felt hatred. This hatred that came from me, no, from the remains of Aegor was one I knew was baseless.
Daenolla hadn’t been the one to hurt me. She had never done anything wrong to me, to Aegor but Aegor had hated her.
He had hated her existence, the way she always seemed undisturbed, how she always looked as if nothing was wrong, as if nothing could reach her.
He had hated the way she always looked composed, how he had never seen her angry. He hated how perfect she seemed to have been, how she had been the model cited, shown by the good masters, by Kraznys.
He had hated how she had seemed content with the status quo. Aegor has loathed Daenolla, how he had been forced to serve Kraznys at her side, how she had taught him at Kraznys’ request.
Aegor has hated, feared the fact that one day, if he survived long enough, he could become just like her.
She had probably been hurt as much if not more than me. I should have felt empathy looking at her, some kind of kinship but I didn't. I only felt disgusted looking at her.
Looking at her felt revolting. It made me want to puke, to break the idea of the benevolent god they all had of me. Looking at her felt as if I, not Aegor but me, the soul who had reincarnated in this body was back in Kraznys’ chambers.
It wasn’t something real. I knew this and even if it were, what could the good master do to me? With my magic, he wouldn’t even be able to breathe unless I were to wish him to do so.
Those feelings reminded me of the fact that this body hadn’t always been mine. This body no matter how much different it was now, no matter how much magic now ran through it had been the body of a child slave, a pleasure child slave.
It was as if there were vestiges, as if the body itself had memories, as if it was affecting me. It made me think of the question of the ship of Theseus.
My soul was still mostly the same I supposed and my soul was supposed to be my essence, the primordial matter that represented my ego in its entirety.
This soul was now in another body, one with different brain chemistry, one that was almost different at every level.
Could I be said to be the same person as before? Was your soul the cause of your Persona, of your consciousness or was this the case just partially?
What I had deducted since waking up in this reality was that the body could affect you, could affect your soul. I wasn’t sure to which extent but I was sure that it was possible.
A healthy soul in a healthy mind in a healthy body. This was a philosophy I was familiar with. This new life made me wonder if the meaning of the quote wasn’t that the soul in our case needed a healthy vessel to function, to be healthy but instead the soul needed a healthy spirit and a healthy body because the soul was the body as indicated by some conceptions of Buddhism.
If I wasn’t wrong, the spirit that we would conflate here with the soul wasn’t separated from the body. They were the same thing or so much intertwined that there was no true difference.
If that was the case with me and I wasn’t wrong, it would probably mean that I wasn’t the one completely guiding this body like I thought or if I was, it was while being influenced by the will of Aegor.
The hatred of slavers that I had, the massacre I had committed with the Dothraki, how much of it was me and how much of it had it been because of Aegor’s body I wondered.
My eyes crossed with the ones of Daenolla and I had to tighten my grip on my chair to suppress the disgust that I felt from being expressed on my face.
The eyes of the woman were sad almost melancholic as if she could see the disgust I had for her, as if she could read into my mind as easily as I could do with hers.
It was going to be a mess I would have to deal with, wasn’t it?
Daenolla was the representative of the slaves who had once been obligated to serve carnally the good masters.
She wasn’t the oldest of us like with Araz but what she was, was the woman who knew the most about the secrets of the deceased good masters.
There was a reason why most of the time, prostitutes were eased to spy. Tongues got easily loose after a visit to one.
Noraphos had been a gladiator. He has been one of the slaves bought by the good masters from a destroyed Khaalasar to fight for their amusement.
He had survived death again and again, the scars on his face, one going from his right cheek to his bottom lip and one almost stitch-like on his forehead showed how close he had been to dying.
He honestly looked like a berserk character, like a character Guts would meet and befriend but who would die fearlessly against a demon or an enemy of the black swordsman.
The gladiators and Noraohis had been the ones to kill the most brutally the good masters and for that, I really appreciated him. There was also the fact that he looked like a no-bullshit kind of guy.
I had thought about including him and his other gladiators in the official military that will be led by Greyworm before realizing that maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea.
There was a difference between the gladiators and the unsullied, a simple but important difference. The gladiators were not soldiers, weren't trained to be soldiers. I didn't even think that most of them had ever been trained. They had survived, not fought and this was the difference.
It didn't feel right to make them fight again when it had been something they had never wished for.
The same couldn’t be said about the unsullied in the sense that they had been trained to fight, to serve since birth. They weren’t people who felt regret about a past life or something of that kind. Why would they when they had never known freedom? No, the unsullied were soldiers.
One look into their minds confirmed that. Most of them didn't see themselves as people. Hopefully, with time, it will change. If one of the ex-gladiators wanted to integrate the army, I wouldn’t oppose it but none of them had tried to do so.
Lessirah was a very matronly-looking woman who seemed to have never smiled once in her life. She was looking at me with poorly concealed disappointment. One look in her mind had shown that it wasn’t because she harboured negative feelings toward me but it was instead the contrary.
It was because she found the concept of a child like me doing what I was doing a horrible thing.
This was something I noticed with the people of Astapor. They all held respect for me but while some of them turned it into faith, others like her saw it as a tragedy for a child to be respected because he killed.
For her, this wasn’t the place of a child no matter how powerful they were. A child for her needed to be a child, not a king, not a killer, not a ruler. She saw it as a failure not of her but of the world.
What she hated the most looking at me was the fact that she knew how important I was to the survival of all the freed slaves.
The only reason she was a representative was because she had been shoehorned into the role.
Lessirah had been in her youth desired by a good master who raped her. An unfortunate tale that was as old as time. She had been a slave. Nothing that she had done, could have done would have changed anything.
Unfortunately, her tragedy didn’t stop there. She had become pregnant, pregnant with the child of her rapist.
She had thought a lot of times about drinking moon tea or consuming any substance that would have killed the child of the man who had violated her.
She would have done so if she hadn’t feared the consequences of her action. The funny thing was that as a slave, she didn't have any rights but her unborn foetus, due to the blood of its father had rights, privileges she would never have had.
Killing the foetus would have been akin to her destroying the propriety of a good master, something punishable by death at best. There were worse things than death. This was something every slave learned at one point so she gave birth to a child she had never wished for. Fifteen hours of hard labour where she almost died, almost bled out because of how young she had been. All of this just for the legitimate wife of the good master to throw her child from one of the high levels of a pyramid while she was resting.
All of this had been for nothing. Forced to bear an unwanted child, one she had hoped that maybe she could have learned to love, a child killed without remorse, without consequence.
Lessirah had been a slave and the wife of her master had been a noble. There was nothing she could have done. More than that, she would learn later through the wise woman who had helped her give birth that due to how young she was, how hard the pregnancy had been for her, how much blood she had lost, there was a great chance of her never having children again.
Lessirah would probably never have a child, be a mother because, at fourteen, she had been raped by one of ‘the good and blessed masters of Astapor’.
Lessirah would probably never have someone who would love her because which slave would dare to fall in love with one of the used toys of a good master?
The next decades would only prove the wise woman world. A lot of people when hurt by the world choose to hurt others, to make others feel the same anguish as them.
Lessirah could have been bitter toward the mothers around her but she hadn’t been. Lessirah had instead been the one there to help them.
Most of the orphans in Astapor, those who never knew their parents or had lost their parents or those the parents were unable to take care of knew the woman before me. How couldn’t they when she has been the one to try to make their lives more bearable under the whip of the good masters?
Lessirah may have lost the possibility of giving birth herself but it hadn’t stopped her from becoming her mother. Family wasn’t always blood. She had been chosen and accepted to be a representative because people trusted her to want the best for their children.
She was the perfect example of coal being tampered with by fire to create diamonds. It was a good thing that the tree I had created healed any physical ailment.
I wonder if she had realized it, that what she thought had been forever taken away from her was back. She probably didn't. I would have to tell her after.
Tychor looked like a lumberjake, like someone who could with just one pull uproot a tree without the use of magic. He had strong features, almost ethnic, exotic I would say, foreign to most of us in this room. He was born a slave and like many born slaves had never known who his parents were but they were probably of different ethnicities. He had been a blacksmith, one of the slaves specifically taught to forge the weapons that would be used by the soldiers and guards of the good master. He was a representative because I shit you not, the others had preferred staying in their forges than coming here.
One look into his mind had showed me that it wasn’t because of a lack of respect but due to the fact that most of my smiths were introverts. When they were slaves, they didn’t have to interact with a lot of people and were mostly left to their devices. They had also hated the good masters but they preferred the heat of their forges and it wasn’t something I would hold against them. Most of them had only spoken with each other. They had been isolated intentionally by the good masters from other slaves, a logic I could understand. Better not give the idea to a smith to forge weapons for another slave they had befriended.
Honestly, secluding myself in a place where I wouldn’t be bothered and able to do my hobbies just as I wished sounded like a dream.
Varello, the last but not least of them was the youngest amongst them being no older than twenty-one if I wasn’t wrong. He had hair you would have expected to see on the head of a final fantasy protagonist more than anything else with how frizzled yet good-looking it was. The young man had blue coloured eyes. The reason why he was given the snake eye surname was due to his S-shaped pupils. I had forgotten the name of this condition but I think one of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok in the TV show Vikings had such eyes.
I wondered if there was another season out. I honestly think the reason why wars start so easily in a medieval world is because of how bored most of the nobility or the wealthy are.
When you can’t read books or fanfics, listen to almost an infinite number of songs at any moment and watch some TV, of course, it would be normal in such conditions to choose to feud with others. I really missed the internet. Magic was fun but it wasn’t the same. I pushed down a sigh. I would have to get used to it.
Anyway, Varello was the little brother of one of those who had been pretenders of the crown of Astapor. I didn't need any mind reading to know his presence here was a way to grab as much power as possible. I wouldn’t do anything because no matter my personal feelings, Varello had been chosen, probably with the help of his sister but still chosen.
Those were the seven people holding the power of making the laws that would be enacted for Astapor. They were the ones with whom I was creating a constitution, the supreme law in all of Astapor.
Araz had been tasked with writing them on pieces of parchment we had looted from the homes of the good masters.
For now, things were going well even if slow. I just wished it could be faster. I had been silent, letting them speak between each other. I wouldn’t speak unless something truly outrageous was proposed. More than that, this was a first draft. It was something that will be improved with time.
“I have finished writing the twenty-third article,” Araz spoke, his voice as raspy as a chain smoker.
“I think it is enough for now,” Daenolla said. “Those laws must not be seen as overwhelming.“
“You fear if we do too much now, those laws would be taken as too binding. You fear that the people of Astapor will see them as chains,” Varello spoke.
“Yes. The simple fact of creating a law is akin to enforce a command, a command when broken creates punishment. More than that, creating them is akin to saying we don’t trust the people to have good behaviours,” the valyrian-looking woman spoke.
“Most of us here are humans sooner or later, humans behave in an unbecoming way,” Lazaro said inserting himself in the conversation “unless they know there are consequences. I don’t think creating laws is wrong because they are needed for human cohabitation.”
“Interesting,” Varello said a sardonic smile painted on his face.
“I agree that there must be laws so that people know what to do or not to do but I don't think men are evil in themselves the way you're implying,” Lessirah said. “I had seen babes grow and turn into adults. None of them was evil. Even when one of them broke a law and was punished, it was because they needed to, not because they wanted to do so. If they had a choice, they wouldn’t have.”
All our gazes had turned toward the older woman “I have to accept the fact that of all of us, you’re probably the most familiar with human behaviour but tell me, are crimes always born of need and not of want? The good masters,” Lazaro said the title rolling like a vile curse from his mouth “knew we couldn’t disobey. They knew they didn't need to hurt us because we knew the consequences of disobeying but did it stop them from hurting us? No, it didn't. They hurt us not because they needed but because they could because they wanted to do so and nothing else.”
I watched as some of the representatives silently nodded in accord with the words of the Artisan. He was right when he said the good masters had hurt us a lot of times not because they needed to but because they had wanted to.
Even then, I didn't think they were the perfect example. After all “They had been monsters because this is what they had been taught. They were able to hurt us in the first place because the law itself had allowed it,” Lessirah said.
“I believe that in a city where people are taught since birth to care about the possible consequences of their actions on others, such things wouldn’t take place. Laws can be created for a possible condemnation but they also can be created so that such condemnation would not happen,” the woman finished.
Well wasn’t it interesting? I could already feel the beginning of the creation of two different factions. Maybe I would be more eager in the future to attend those meetings. It seemed that I had found my entertainment after all.
scene
My space marine program was advancing at an acceptable pace. Being healed by magic and fed magically altering fruits to the unsullied already showed results.
They were all noticeably more muscular and taller. What made me think that it really was working though was the spar happening before my eyes.
I had chosen to directly teleport to the Unsullied Barracks after the meeting with the representatives.
The unsullied now used to it had just bowed their heads before going back to doing what they originally had been doing before I came.
I had searched for Greyworm and I found that he was sparing. Greyworm was sparing against three unsullied at the same time. Each of them attacked him with a ferocity you would have expected to see from someone intending to murder and if not to seriously maim.
A spear met a shield with a loud clang. I watched how the earth under Greyworm cracked but he didn't move.
Another one of his opponents tried to use this moment to attack his unprotected back. The man moved, his body more akin to a well-oiled machine than anything else.
He moved his head out of the trajectory of the spear. The unsullied who had tried to attack stumbled as his spear met nothing but air.
Props to him, he regained quickly his equilibrium but the time it took him to do so was enough for Greyworm to move.
The man batted with the side of his shield the spear of the unsullied in front of him on the side. The spear made of iron bent as if it were fragile glass.
Greyworm didn't stop here. He launched a kick toward the unsullied he had broken the spear. The younger unsullied put his shield to protect his stomach. It was proven the good choice when with a sound akin to thunder, he was set careening away from Greyworm, his form was sent tearing through the training ground.
The second unsullied who had attacked Greyworm tried to bash his head with his shield.
I watched Greyworm smirk before I realized why. He had chosen to let him attack. The unsullied had been too close when he had attacked and being too close to your opponent while using a weapon like a spear, a mid to long-range weapon wasn’t a good idea.
Greyworm dodged, bending his body backwards, his body spinning with his spear in hand. Greyworm grabbed it as if it was a bat and swung. Even far away, I could feel the air separating due to how fast and hard the Leader of the unsullied had attacked.
The younger unsullied eyes widened realizing that he had overextended, that he was too close to dodge. It was fortunate that they were three against one.
The third of the opponents of Greyworm slid on the way of the strike, holding his shield with his two hands.
Shield and spear met making the air howl in agony. What made a spear dangerous was its tip, its blade, not its body. There was a difference between the spear Greyworm used and the ones his opponent utilized.
The three adversaries of Greyworm had spears made completely of steel. The head and the body were made of iron while Greyworm spear had an iron head but a body made of wood.
This is why the spear of Greyworm snapped in two, shards sent flying. The unsullied who had used his shield to stop Greyworm strike was sent rolling in the sand, cracks littering his shield.
The one he had protected saw an opportunity. Greyworm had lost his spear and was not yet back in a defensive position.
He shifted the grasp he had on his spear, directing it toward the head of the leader of the unsullied before plunging it.
Greyworm stayed calm. In that moment when it seemed he would lose, our gazes crossed for an instant. In his eyes, I only saw calm and certainty.
The man moved, not trying to dodge the strike but seemingly launching himself toward it instead.
At the last moment before the spear could penetrate his right eye and his brain after, the man moved his head. It wasn't enough to allow him to dodge.
The spear was too close but Greyworm seemed to be fine with it. The spear cut a bloody path on the right side of his face separating flesh, fat and muscle. The strike continued, tracing an angry red line just above his right ear.
The man extended one hand, grabbing one of the still-flying shards of his spear that had been broken, a pointy one almost the size of a knife.
The hand of the man grasped tightly on the shard before moving toward the form of his opponent. Did I explain how unfair this fight had been, how things had been purposefully stacked against Greyworm?
His opponents wore armours of steel to protect themselves further when he didn't. His only defence had been his weapon and his skills and that had been enough.
Greyworm hand moved like a blur with frightening accuracy, the shard lodging itself in one of the minuscule gaps of the armour of his opponents.
The man lost his grip on his spear, his hand moving instinctively to his neck where he had been stabbed.
He tried to push away Greyworm with an overthrown punch with his other hand. Greyworm didn't move as it crashed against his nose with a loud crack.
With one last look into the eyes of his opponent, he removed brutally the shard from the neck of the unsullied, dark blood erupting from the wound and bathing Greyworm and the field.
A look at the others unsullied showed that none of them were back on their feet. It was clear who was the winner.
Now that that fight has ended, others rushed toward the fallen unsullied, fruits of the tree I had created in their grasps.
“You could have gone easier on them, you know,” I said to Greyworm before I released my magic, twisting it and shaping it to my will between my hands before launching it at the man. The magic bathed the man in an eternal light before vanishing with his injuries.
“There was no risk of any of them being killed or maimed for their whole lives my Lord,” the man said.
This was I think the only negative consequence of having soldiers who knew that no matter what would happen, they wouldn’t die, that they would be back to perfect health.
They didn't fear death and because they didn't fear it, they were so vicious and brutal in their training that I was sure even a spartan god of war would lift an eyebrow.
I watched as the three others unsullied were fed, their injuries disappearing slowly but surely.
I sighed “You’re their leader. You know more than me how to train others. Just, don’t forget you aren't objects, tools. Even if I can heal any of you, you still feel pain.”
“Such Pain is temporary my lord. We all had gone through worse. We wouldn’t be unsullied if it wasn’t the case but,” His tone seemingly became softer “I hear your concerns my lord and will take them to full consideration.”
That was as much as I could ask from him now. I had learned that with Greyworm, things needed to be taken slow to change. He was a man unfamiliar with it who preferred what he had always known.
This is why he was calling me lord instead of Aegor. In the beginning, it had been master and the revulsion he must have seen on my face had ensured he never did so again. After, it had been my king and after bothering him for like a really long time like asking him every three minutes for three days to promise me to not call me Aegor, he accepted. Now, he just called me lord which was progress. One step and all of that.
“Aegor! Aegor! I know you are here!” a familiar feminine voice was shouting. Shit, I had forgotten about her for a moment. I had been so focused on the fight that I didn't check if she was coming closer.
“I guess Nileyah didn't agree with you coming here,” Greyworm said his tone almost teasing.
“No, she didn't,” I confirmed with a sigh. I turned to look at where the voice was coming from and my gaze met the one of Nileyah.
Nileyah was a part of ‘my household’ and by that, I meant the one that created itself without my input.
Are people working because they have to? Would people be working if there was no need to? Would people be working if doing so didn't equal survival?
Well, the answer to this question was a yes. Greyworm, Nileyah and so many others. They didn't have to do anything anymore. They didn't have to want for anything anymore. I had technically created for them a paradise, one without disease, one without anger, one without suffering.
I would have accepted if they had chosen to do nothing. They had after all already worked for more than a thousand lifetimes in my opinion but this wasn’t what happened.
When you only know how to work, how can you stop? This is why I hadn’t opposed the creation of a household by those who had wished to do so.
Greyworm had wanted to be my personal guard so I let him do so. Some wished to follow me on my trips to the city. I allowed them to do so. Others like Nileyah wanted to make things easier for me and to be frank, I really liked her a lot.
What I liked about Nileyah was the fact that she treated me as Aegor. She knew everything I had done yet it didn't change anything. She treated me like a human and not a god.
One of the things she had asked me and that I had accepted was to not always be Aegor, the great Liberator.
I was supposed to always take if possible a moment away from any violence, anything concerning Astapor itself.
Most of the time, it meant listening to the gossip shared by the women of my household. I guess when there was no TV, no internet, no video games, no true crime documentaries gossip became one of the only ways to avoid boredom for women.
This is how I knew that this girl was in love with this young smith but didn't dare to approach him because she was shy. If that couldn’t be worse, the smith was also in love but he thought the girl avoided him which created the idea in him that she didn't like him too and there were so many other stories like that.
I honestly preferred playing, experimenting with my magic and seeing what I could create. Honestly, this was why I had been watching Greyworm fight.
I had wished to see how much stronger the unsullied were now with the help of my magic and the result hadn’t been disappointing at all.
Most of them were not superhumans but it was clear that one of my unsullied would be akin to one Gregor Clegane. That was without talking about their teamwork, their discipline and the fact that Greyworm and the three he had been fighting would make the others look like clowns and the best thing was that they were continuing to get stronger.
That was something more interesting than two dumb teenagers unable to see that they loved each other no matter how much they were pushed to do so by others.
I wondered how much stronger I could make them, if there were ways to speed up their growth. I also had projects I needed to share with the smiths. I had wanted so much for the meeting with the representatives to end that when it did, I didn't take the time to speak to Tychor.
“Aegor,” a disappointed voice said my name bringing me back to reality.
“Hi Nileyah,” I said to the woman. Nileyah was a woman probably three times older than me. I didn't ask her age because I wasn’t a fool. She had long brown hair she liked to keep in a loose ponytail. She had a wide round face with green eyes and freckles. “I'm sorry,” I told her before she could say anything else.”
This was a tactic that always worked. Apologizing when people didn't expect it caught them most of the time off guard. It also created a situation where they felt as if there was no need to be as harsh as they had wished to originally be because you had apologized.
Her disappointed gaze continued to peer at me “We had already talked of this Aegor. You know why. You shouldn’t hav-”
I lost my focus on the material world around me as I felt something only I had been able to feel by myself since my awakening. I felt magic, magic other than mine, magic that masked the intention of its owners, magic users and they were coming to my city.
I turned toward Greyworm “Mobilize the unsullied and make them guard any entrance of the zone” I told him. By the zone, I meant the barrier. This was a concept I had been able to explain to him. “No one enters, no one goes out. I'll be meeting them out of the city. You can join me if you have secured the entrances.” Only with one nod, the man moved toward the other unsullied.
“Nileyah, I need you to spread the word as quickly as possible. I want everyone to be on their guard, wary of possible foreigners or threats.”
“It will be done Aegor,” she answered a tint of sadness marking her voice. This was the proof of why I needed to do what I did and even though she may accept it, she hated it.
Nevertheless, I knew she would follow my instructions as I watched her go away. The simple fact that she was a part of my household would make sure that she'd be listened to.
I wasn’t fearful of anything happening to me, to be frank. With my essence and my imagination, there were few things that a low fantasy world as such could have that threatened me.
I was like a god in a world of mortals, a man of steel in a world of paper. No, what I feared was what could happen to the people of Astapor, to my people.
Most Mages were not supposed to be able to do great acts of sorceries without a lot of sacrifices. Blood had value here. It held power.
They shouldn’t pose a threat. It's also not as if The red comet that allowed Danny to hatch dragons and let magic resurface was back. I was using a magic completely different from theirs, one they probably had never met before which meant that whatever they could be planning would most likely fail.
Even then, caution was never unwarranted. I closed my eyes, focusing on the growing bonfire in my heart, my essence.
I pushed my magic out of my body letting it outline me. Being limitless never did hurt. I’m not sure I could directly apply the concept of infinity to my barrier.
My magic depended on my imagination, on my grasp and familiarity with some concepts for some spells. Creating a tree hashirama style capable of healing was something easy to imagine.
All living beings knew what it was to hurt, to heal. This was the concept I had used for the creation of the tree.
For the barrier, I would need to do things the hard way using mathematics. If I remember well, limitless functioned on the principle of distorting space, dividing it. You could divide in two a number an infinesmental amount of times but you should never be able to reach zero.
This was limitless. In this case, I needed to be the zero, the zero that could not be touched and my barrier the endless division that will make sure it wouldn’t happen.
I fed my magic and my will into the barrier. I ignored the uncomfortable sensation akin to my lifeblood being drained away.
I heard a crack like a fragment of glass shattering before I felt my shield stabilize and fade from view even though I knew it was still there.
I looked at one of the broken pieces of the spear that Greyworm had used. As if I had an invisible hand, I grasped it with my magic before launching it at myself.
The spear stopped centimetres away from my skin standing in the air before falling. I would have to hope that it would be enough.
A gate made of shadows grew from the ground, giving a View to the outside of my city, of my Astapor.
It was now time to assert if the mages were possible allies or enemies that will be put down like rabid animals.
scene
“Your plan with the Dothraki failed,” one voice hissed.
“It is not like you to speak in such a tone,” a second voice said, calm and a hint of amusement in it. “Are you scared old friend?”
“It would only be reasonable to be. You heard about what befell your pawns. Such a thing is unnatural to the highest degree, dangerous, seemingly impossible to prepare for. You should be less calm. Have you forgotten what a threat the boy is to you, to our plans?”
“Old age changed you, old friend,” the second voice sighed. “Where is my dauntless brother who feared nothing?”
“He's still there. He’s just wiser,” the first voice answered.
“In my opinion, you worry too much. Yes, we have miscalculated. None of us had expected the rumours about the boy to hold an ounce of truth but it doesn’t change anything. More than that, I‘m sure that great Khaalasars are mostly made of slaves. That's probably why he had been able to win. He had probably triumphed because of the help of the slaves, the unsullied and its magic. Don’t forget, Valar Morghulis. Something tells me that soon, our little liberator will encounter its end while he's all alone and in case he doesn’t,” the man chuckled “it's not as if we were out of options.”
“What do you mean by that?” the first voice inquired to the second.
“The fat dear on the throne hates dragons with a fury akin to the flames of the underworld. It is said that if the falcon hadn’t been there to reign him in, he would have personally hunted after the surviving dragons.”
“You want me to use the deer against the boy? Have you forgotten the king hates Targaryens? We would have to prove that the boy is one, something that will be hard when taking into account that it is widely known that only two Targaryens are remaining unless yo-” the first voice stopped with a chuckle. “You are truly despicable,” he told the other.
“We wouldn’t have been so close if I weren’t. The fat deer hated Rhaegar Targaryen. Wasn’t it said that he smiled at the corpse of the Targaryens? You'll just have to Tell him that you heard of a boy who would have been the same age as the child of the prince, a child who had only shown the madness of his ancestors because how else could he have used such sorceries? A child who looked like the prince. The other traits could be said to come from princes Elia and to finish, tell him you learnt that Jon Connington had been particularly active in Essos.”
“It could work,” the first voice said but we would need to make Connington Lay low after informing the deer. He is an important proof of legitimity. Wouldn’t it be detrimental to the asset?”
“No, it wouldn’t. They would all be focused on the obvious target we would have painted. Honestly, I hope the child survives so that he will weaken our enemies before perishing. There is no chance we would lose. Truth is what will set us free because The best lies after all are those based on it. The child sorcerer won against thousands, against a Khaalasar. He would fall against hundreds of times this amount when the whole world will go against him.”
Comments
allen 1996
Would you all believe that this chapter was only supposed to be three K words max? Anyway, sorry for being late. The next chapter of this story should be posted today or tomorrow before I go back to oh bloodstained star
