Chapter Twelve

Astapor. Esso.

As I waited for my meeting with one of the Good Master I thought about this city and the people who called it home. Without even turning my head I could see more than a dozen types of slaves. From bodyguards to singers, to dancers. From wet nurses to those that would be inevitably tossed into the pits to fight each other or the wild beasts that were sometimes let loose in the arenas. Plus there were plenty of women around who you couldn't even call whores, because a whore could always refuse you. Of course, there were also simpler slaves. The labourers, cooks, and cleaners that all masters required. To not have at least one of each was to have no status in this city, and that spoke volumes about a person from what I understood.

Then there were the soldiers, the Unsullied were impressive from what little I'd seen of them as they drilled. The Unsullied moved as a singular being. Their shields interlocked, and their spears stabbed out in unison. They could do this because they had been mercilessly drilled to fight as part of a unit. Only as a part of a whole they might as well be battle robots of some kind.

I could tell that the slave-soldiers greatly outnumbered the few free men who had chosen to be sellswords or bodyguards. They would be no match for the Unsullied in battle because no free man would choose to undergo the rigorous training that the Unsullied had forced upon them, and their more expensive equipment could not make up for that. Nor was the slight advantage they had in having some kind of free will.

By now I'd decided that following Dany's course of action in the show would be my best move. I did not wish for the cruel practices of this city to endure and while I knew that I could influence the minds of the people I spoke to I knew that I couldn't change this city. Yet I wasn't sure if I wanted to simply destroy the whole city after taking everything of value.

'Good Masters' weren't nice people, but that didn't mean they were all evil. Sure the Unsullied killed babies, only they did that because they were ordered to, and they'd been more or less brainwashed into following orders, however, did that didn't mean every master was like that? What about those who trained slaves to clean houses and work in kitchens, were they so cruel?

As I moved towards the arranged meeting place I saw the crucified slaves who had been left out in the sun to die slow deaths as an example to others. The Good Master did this to keep the other slaves in line with fear so there was a method to their madness, yet I knew it had to end.

I steeled myself as I finally made up my mind. This city had to die. I would have the Unsullied kill all the master, and then I would take any willing to serve me to the Stepstones, moving so many would take time as would removing anything of value from the city. Once it was done I would have my cruiser utterly destroy the city so that never again would be a centre of suffering in this world.

(Line Break)

Dragonstone. Westeros.

Melisandre of Asshai had for a time now not known what to do. She'd been spending nearly all of her time looking into the flames, seeking visions of the future in her desire for guidance, and while this wasn't an oddity for her it was not normal for Melisandre to struggle so much to make sense of what she saw. Something had changed recently, an event she didn't understand that had greatly altered the course of events, and now when she looked into the fire she could not understand what she saw.

She saw such strange things in the fire as she studied the flames. Flying machines, machines of metal that tore up the ground as they moved, armies of men who marched as they carried alien weapons, she saw cities fall to unknown invaders, death rained down from the sky and a man with a golden aura at the centre of it all. It all seemed like madness to her and yet she yearned to see more, to understand better what it was her lord deemed important to share with her.

Suddenly the image in the flames changed as Melisandre saw not the strange men and their machines, but rather alien creatures who walked like men, but there was something off about them. Their armour and weapons seemed even weirder than that held by the invading humans, and they see saw some of these invaders here on Dragonstone, she had to warn Lord Stannis. The guards must be alerted and Stannis must take up Lightbringer now.

Only she was too late. An alarm filled the air as men began to die. The aliens were here, how they managed to sneak about the castle in their colourful armour the Red Woman could not understand. Why had her lord not warned her sooner of this attack?

Judging by the screams it was not just Stannis's men who were being murdered, no one would be spared, not even the few children who called this island their home. Melisandre prayed for aid as she waited for death. She knew that she could fight off the aliens and trying to barricade herself in her quarters would only by her time. Only the Lord of Light could save her yet he seemed unwilling to take direct action.

"Who are you?" Melisandre asked when one of the alien warriors entered her room "Why are you doing this?".

The alien creature was covered in colourful armour and yet the Red Woman knew that this was no human before her. It moved with a grace no human possessed.

"You have been tainted," said the alien warrior "The Farseer has ordered all those that have been infected by your darkness to be destroyed".

No Melisandre served the light, not the darkness. Before she could argue this point a spear that was covered in ruins had entered her chest. The alien seemed thin and yet it was strong enough to lift her off the ground as she was impaled.

"We will cleanse the temples of your false god," said the strange warrior.

Those were the last words ever heard by Melisandre of Asshai. She was not the last to die that night and by morning all that would be left on the island of Dragonstone would be cold stone and corpses.