The Fighting Pits of Meereen were a raucous mess.
Former slaves packed shoulder to shoulder with masters who had once owned them, merchants rubbing elbows with dockhands and sellswords.
Their clothes marked the differences in wealth and station, yet the revelry made them equal.
All throats roared as one. All eyes burned with the same hunger.
Bloodshed had a way of doing that, in war and...in the Great Pits.
Baelon watched the chaos from beneath a shaded awning. He clicked his tongue, more out of habit than irritation, and leaned back in his chair.
When he had taken Meereen a year ago, he had left the pits standing. Abolishing slavery had been trouble enough.
Closing the pits alongside it would have invited riots, knives in the dark, and the sort of devotion only Gods could inspire. Compromise was easier. Distraction easier still.
Let them cheer. Let them scream themselves hoarse. A crowd with its eyes fixed on the sand rarely noticed the dragon looming overhead.
Below, the gates groaned open, and the fighters emerged.
The first was a mountain of a man, bare from the waist up, his skin a map of old scars. He carried no shield, only a large blade in one hand, which he waved about as though daring the pit to give him reason to use it.
The crowd loved him instantly as they cheered in excitement.
His opponent followed more slowly. Thin. Narrow-shouldered.
His ribs showed faintly beneath his skin, and his sword arm looked too light for the weapon he carried. He received noticeably fewer cheers as he solemnly sized up his foe.
Vrrrrrooooohhhhhm!
The horn sounded as the big man charged forward like a wayward bull.
On the other hand, the thin man circled around the edge of the arena, light on his feet, blade flickering in small, testing arcs.
Steel rang once as their weapons met, then again, sharper each time. Suddenly, the thin man darted in, cut low, and leapt back before the counter could land.
A murmur rippled through the stands.
The big man laughed, loud and proud. Then, he surged forward, forcing his opponent back with brutal swings that cracked the air.
Each blow caused the thin man to tremble, the strength of his sword arm harshly waning.
Sure enough, one blow caught the thin man's guard wrong, jolting his arm aside. Another struck his shoulder, spinning him half around as he was thrown to the ground, whilst his sword tumbled away.
The crowd roared with fervour, spit and screams flying everywhere.
The fight was over.
The thin man lay pinned in the sand, the big man's knee pressed into his chest, forcing the breath from him in short, wet gasps. The blade at his throat trembled, close enough to kiss his skin.
Instead of finishing it, the victor rose.
He lifted his arms wide and turned slowly, drinking in the cheers. He paced the length of the arena, thumping his chest with a fist, shouting something lost beneath the thunder of approval. Sand stuck to his blood-slicked feet.
He was smiling. In joy. In glory. In…arrogance.
Thus, retribution came in bitter irony.
When he turned back, with triumph still bright on his face, the thin man moved.
A dagger was drawn out of his pouch, clutched in his left arm and driven deep through the soft flesh beneath the big man's jaw, punching out through the back of his throat.
Blood sprayed in a cruel arc.
The big man staggered, hands clawing uselessly at the hilt jutting from his neck, eyes wide with disbelief. Complete and utter disbelief.
He fell, clutching his throat, gargling on his own life.
The crowd screamed some in delight, others in horror. It hardly mattered which; they all sounded the same to Baelon.
"How disgusting…" Baelon murmured.
Two years had passed since he had claimed New Ghis. Only one since Slaver's Bay had fallen. Unlike New Ghis, the slaver cities had offered little challenge.
Astapor had folded the moment he arrived. The would-be New Unsullied and the remaining Good Masters bent the knee with remarkable speed, eager to survive if nothing else.
Yunkai and Meereen had required more care. Thankfully, the Bronze Fury had grown greatly over the years and had done much of the work.
By now, Baelon reckoned it had already rivalled Vhagar in size. And, unlike the giant Targaryen granny, Vermithor was not half-stepping into its grave.
Its might was enough to bring the two cities to their knees, while Baelon's men slipped through sewers and stirred unrest from within.
The flood of refugees from Astapor following the prior riot had helped as well, swelling the cities beyond what their granaries or patience could bear.
For that, he owed New Ghis a quiet thanks. He had not understood, before then, how powerful a weapon a desperate populace could be.
Raze resistance to ash.
Then?
Let the people finish the rest.
Still, even now, Meereen and Yunkai resisted him.
"Fools…" Baelon scoffed under his breath.
Today was a gift to them. To these would be resistors.
A reminder of what ruled these cities now and how cheap their blood spilt is.
Rising from his perch high above the city, Baelon sauntered off without sparing the arena's victor a glance.
He took only a pair of Unsullied with him as he passed down from the Fighting Pits and into the streets of Meereen.
He held no banners. No escort worth his name. Yet, the city watched him anyway. He knew it did. Eyes slipped from doorways and latticed windows, then vanished just as quickly.
He tilted his head back as he walked, tracking the slow, circling shape of Dreamfyre against the sky.
The dragon wheeled lazily, her pale wings catching the sun as she carried Helaena home from their daily flight.
Baelon allowed a smirk to appear on his face as he thought of what was to come.
He turned down a narrow street, the stone walls closing in, the air full with spice, rot and…tension.
Whoooosh!
The air split.
Baelon's ears twitched, and his lips curled into a grin. "Got them."
He threw himself aside as an arrow hissed past, shattering against the stone behind him. In its wake, a dozen more were fired and struck where he had been standing moments prior.
In the same breath, the street erupted. Shouts rang out. Doors slammed. Men and women scattered, robes and baskets abandoned as the crowd fled in blind panic.
His guards soon moved too, standing between him and the rising chaos.
Then, from the smoke and confusion, figures emerged.
Men and women alike, faces hidden behind smooth golden masks. They came in silence, daggers sliding free from their robes.
"Sons of the Harpy?" Baelon laughed as he remembered what the rabble called themselves. "Are you witless? You knew well enough that if you kept your heads down and obeyed, you would have been spared. Just as those in New Ghis were."
Alas, his words were met with silence as the masked figures advanced.
Baelon's eyes brightened at this.
He had left his greatsword behind in his bedchamber atop the pyramid, a deliberate kindness to his would-be killers.
He wore no steel nor wielded any blade. Nothing to frighten them off too soon.
It wasn't as if he needed it.
He flicked his fingers.
Fire bloomed in the air before him before it shrieked as it surged forward, crashing into the oncoming assassins.
Screams followed as robes ignited and flesh blackened, bodies collapsing in writhing heaps.
Others pressed in regardless.
They were fast. Desperate. Brave, perhaps.
Still, not fast enough.
Baelon stepped into them, movements almost lazy, his body flowing aside from blades that should have found his throat or heart.
A dagger scraped across his sleeve where his chest had been a heartbeat before. He answered with an open-handed blow that caved in a ribcage with a wet crack, sending its owner flying into a wall.
He seized another by the wrist, twisted, and snapped bone as easily as if it were a twig. The man screamed until an annoyed Baelon kicked him away, smashing him into an abandoned stall.
Unfortunately, numbers could always render strength useless. Before long, one assassin came close.
Too close.
The masked figure's dagger flashed, arcing toward Baelon's face as it sliced through the air.
For Baelon, time seemed to slow; he lacked the time dodge and could only watch the dagger mercilessly cut towards him.
Even so, Baelon had a countermeasure; after all, his abilities had not simply plateaued for these past few years.
Promptly, Baelon opened his mouth as a fire poured out in a spiteful orange wave.
The moment the fire kissed the dagger, it melted mid-swing and warped into slag.
However, it did not end there as the fire pushed onward and began to devour the assassin whose mask glowed red, then white, before it collapsed inward as flesh burned away beneath.
Baelon drove his foot into the corpse, sending it tumbling across the stones.
More shadows rushed him.
With a casual sweep of his hand, Baelon shaped the air again. Dozens of small daggers formed from flame, hovered for a breath before screaming forward.
They punched through cloth, through muscle, through bone, leaving bodies crumpling where they stood. The street was filled with the stink of burned meat and scorched stone.
Silence followed, and Meereen's streets stood empty once more.
Baelon remained unharmed, not a mark upon him. One Unsullied bled from the shoulder. The other nursed a deep cut along his thigh. Neither complained.
Baelon sighed at the sight and slowly approached the pair, ignoring the charred corpses around him.
"Stay still," Baelon muttered as he raised his hand.
A bead of blood welled at the tip of his finger, trembling for a moment before it leapt.
The droplet shot forward, slipping into the Unsullied's open wound. The blood there stirred, thickening and knitting itself together as if tugged by invisible threads.
Torn flesh drew closed with a faint, wet schliick. Soon the gash shrank, sealing over in moments, leaving behind only a thin, angry line where steel had bitten deep seconds before.
The Unsullied stiffened, then blinked.
The pain was gone.
Baelon lowered his hand and turned to the second guard, repeating the gesture with practised ease.
It was a derivative spell, an offshoot of Life Force Transfer and the Blood Oath, where it used blood to heal another's wound.
They had begun ranging near Valyria again, half a dozen moons ago. Not Old Valyria itself, yet, but the smaller ruins scattered along its edges.
More…forgotten places. Names of cities like Draconys, cities he had never seen marked on any map prior to their venture.
They had found no eggs. No weapons worth the telling. But they had uncovered many spells, preserved in dragonglass or fragmented scrolls, each one a fragment of the dead empire's arrogance.
A healing spell. A charm for bending beasts to one's will. A spell that allowed one to view the memories of a corpse.
They were useful things. Dangerous even.
Baelon turned, surveying the street.
The bodies lay where they had fallen, masked faces tilted toward the sky, golden masks dulled by soot and blood.
Too many. More than he had expected. This had not been the work of a handful of desperate fools.
He narrowed his eyes. Even Mereen and Yunkai combined would not have been able to muster enough men for this fool's errand.
After all, most people were content and would not actively chase death.
"Alas," Baelon said softly, shaking his head, "it seems some people have filled their heads with gold and arrogance rather than knowledge."
A rueful smile touched his lips. He had a sliver of suspicion about who was to blame for this gift; still, he could only be certain after interrogation.
And, that was if these pawns had even a sliver of information worth knowing.
"If death is his calling," he continued, gaze lifting toward the city beyond the narrow street, "then so shall I grant it."