Hello to all my dear readers, I have to tell you that I felt bad for having made the previous chapter a little boring despite the length of that one, so today that I had some free time, I took one of the parts that I discarded and remade it better, I hope you like it.
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Asshai by the Shadows, Temple of the red god R´hllor.
Melisandre POV.
A drop of blood fell into the bonfire beneath the altar of the one true god. The drop evaporated quickly, and the flame rose almost a meter.
Letting me see… more, but still less than I wanted to see.
"…blood is too common for what my lord asks… haa…" The prophetic visions sent by my lord had begun to become "less clear" or repetitive in some ways. The same sacrifices were no longer of any use, and I was beginning to worry.
'The last visions… They were plagued by creatures never before seen…' I couldn't stop my hand from trembling as I remembered those creatures, but especially… 'Him.'
-…whispers…-
That enormous, crowned being, clad in armor as black as night and armed with cruel blades.
-whispers-
That being who seemed to pierce you with his gaze and see your deepest secrets, even when only dark blue lights shone from his helmet.
-whispers!-
That being who, by simply walking, created abominations in his wake.
-whispers!!!-
… That being… who wanted to consume the entire world…
"…priestess…priestess Melisandre!" the panicked voice of one of my fellow priests brought me back from my memories, and I looked at him. His face showed fear, almost terror. Doubt then settled in me: what had happened that had moved him so much.
But then… I felt it in my hands and understood the terror he felt.
A piece of that golden "metal" fell from my hands when I dropped it in fear, but something else remained.
A sticky black-purple substance clung to my hands. It was small, it fit in my palm, a small puddle, but that tiny bit was… consuming my magic.
"No! Go!" I screamed, feeling a weight on my mind, wanting me to submit and give it all up.
'No!'.
In desperation, I approached my lord's altar, took a blade from it, cut my wrist, and the blood quickly ran, soaking my contaminated hand.
I immediately placed it in the fire, cast my magic, and began to pray to my lord, hoping my lord would purify it with its flame.
"Hen sendruro oños, hen ñuqir perzys, hen morghot glaeson!".
The other priests also joined me in prayer and magic, offering their own blood as a sacrifice. Disjointed and incomprehensible, but powerful, voices were heard from the flame, shaking my existence and theirs.
The magic fought fiercely against the dark stain on my hand, and it struggled to resist being destroyed. The minutes of confrontation were long, until finally the stain was removed from my hand, and the flame of the altar grew stronger.
Putting us all in a trance, a nightmarish vision swallowed us all.
I blinked a little to better assimilate my surroundings. It felt almost real, but still had that resemblance to my lord's visions.
I didn't know these ruins, but the atmosphere told me I was still in the shadowlands, and a shimmering green river confirmed it.
Perhaps…this was the city of night, the fallen city of Stygai in the Valley of Shadows, built on oily black stone and said to house all manner of creatures, demons, and dragons.
And at this moment…the vision was showing them to me.
In the center of the great ruin, in what would once have been the city's central plaza, a much larger piece of the golden "metal" that had arrived in Asshai by ship weeks ago, and we had purchased it for study. It was almost floating above the ground. But the disturbing thing was watching as the nameless creatures approached the metal, they began to change, growing larger and perhaps… stronger.
But I didn't get much more than that when the presence I had felt materialized as a floating liquid and began to take the form of "that" being.
The armored being emerged in a moment and stood before me.
And he spoke… in a strange language, with some sounds clearer than others, but then the fear returned. The being began to exude malevolence that made me tremble, and a sob escaped my mouth.
The being approached, its figure dwarfing mine. It raised its black hand toward my face, and when it almost grabbed me… flames erupted from my body, covering my vision, and when they disappeared… I was back in the chambers of my lord's temple.
"Oh, Lord of Light, thank you! Thank you so much!" I sobbed, grateful that my lord had saved me from that being of dark malevolence. But then an inhuman scream sounded near me, along with the surprised cries of my companions.
"What, what is that?!" "It's like the one in the vision!" "They turned him into a monster! He was Zahir! I saw him transform!"
"Zahir?" He was a Shadowbinder, relatively young for a magic practitioner, and now he was here, transformed into a monster never seen before.
His body turned gray and black, his head flattened, and he lost his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. His hands were also transformed. His entire forearm was formed into a single, long, sharp spike, but there was something familiar about him: a strange cross on his chest, the same color as the "metal" that had attacked me just a few minutes before.
But the monster didn't let me analyze it further, because in the blink of an eye, it moved.
And the muffled scream, along with the sound of a slashed body and dripping blood, echoed in the temple.
"Shit! Attack!" someone shouted, but I paid no attention; I moved too.
Using what remained of my blood on my hands, I conjured the most powerful flame I knew. So powerful, I knew it could melt stone if I tried hard enough, and I was doing so until I saw the inhuman head appear above the flame. I thought I'd hurt it, but the creature only seemed to be glowing red-hot, and it was still moving.
It moved its head toward me. My heart leapt as I thought it might attack me now. But it raised its arm as one of the temple's Unsullied guards slashed at the creature with his spear. Another Unsullied followed suit. Soon more came in and surrounded the creature, but the mundane spears could do little except scratch the creature's skin.
'What can we do?!', The Unsullied were being torn to pieces and sent flying, while their weapons, spears, swords, and knives were useless against the creature.
Suddenly, I felt cold, and clouds of black smoke passed by me toward the fight. I looked back, and they were some of the Shadowbinders, who had been practicing the birth of killer shadows for weeks. They looked tired, pale, and sweaty, held by some of the acolytes. They had wasted their shadows for the creature that was now struggling to defend itself from the killer shadows.
'I'll have to thank them later', I nodded to them and turned back to the fight, my thoughts swirling, searching for something, anything, that could finish the creature off.
'What can I do? There's no magic I could do without proper preparation! The most powerful ones require a strict ritual!'
Unconsciously, I reached for my choker, with my blood ruby.
I froze for a moment, a dangerous thought forming in my head, but…
'It's… it's too much to pay.' The personal sacrifice I would have to make was too much, more than I could ever make.
I looked toward the fight, and it was still the same. The shadows distracted him. Their claws, which could pierce a Westerosi knight's armor, were barely better than the weapons of the Unsullied.
But still, I hesitated. This would continue, or I would have to sacrifice myself.
Then, before I could decide whether to do so or not, one of the blood mages, Khorhozas, whom I hadn't even realized had left at some point, entered the temple room with a sword, smoky gray, with ripples along the blade, a Valyrian steel sword.
He ran past me, straight toward the creature.
"Out of the way! Rhaemir! Sivana! Hold its arms!" he ordered as he ran.
The Unsullied made a path, while the exhausted Shadowbinders ordered their shadow assassins to hold the creature's sword arms.
The creature let out an otherworldly sound that made my soul tremble, but it was still held tightly by the shadows as Khorhozas reached for the creature with his sword raised.
"Ah!" Khorhozas cried as he slashed across its chest, neatly separating the golden cross on the creature's chest. It let out another scream, this time in agony.
But even in death, it didn't die as a living being would. The creature dissolved into tiny motes of light, and more worryingly, that black-purple liquid that had nearly consumed me.
And perhaps my fate would have been the same as Zahir's.
Everyone began to calm down, some more than others. The Unsullied, despite their lack of emotion, I saw were almost bewildered by the creature they had fought, and we, those who had presented the vision of our Lord, began to think about what this meant for us and the world.
"…what…what will we do?" the question was heard throughout the room. A young, trembling acolyte asked the question everyone in the room was thinking.
"… I think it's clear what we have to do", I finally found my voice, "There's no more time to doubt. For moons, our Lord has sent us visions, some clear, others to be interpreted, but what we're experiencing today is only the beginning, and none of us, despite knowing it, have said the words."
I looked at each and every one of them. The situation was clear, and there was only one way to explain what we had seen and fought for.
"The night is dark and full of terrors, and the night is beginning, children of R'hllor. The fight for the dawn is almost upon us… and we must prepare".
The room fell into a heavy silence, but suddenly I saw it in their faces: the realization, the denial, the fear. But I paid no attention. I had said what needed to be said. Now it was time to prepare and search, search for the one who would guide us through the night and bring the dawn.
'May the Lord of light guide your path, for the night is dark and full of terrors, Azor Ahai'.