Slaves Obey, men choose

“Why? Why?! We didn't do anything, to deserve it,” spoke seemingly more to himself than me as if asking a question while praying. A fat haggard man begged kneeling before me. The name of the man was Kraznys mo Nakloz. He had an oiled red and black beard, the same shade as his hair. The hatred in his eyes and the look he was sending me showed me that if he wasn’t missing his legs, he probably wouldn’t have been kneeling.

“Because you're fucking disgusting.” I felt hatred, one like I never felt before course through my veins. I had never been more honest, more angry than I actually was. I was so angry that I felt cold from the inside, so angry yet my thoughts never had been more clear. “All of you fucking are. You're just savages, wild animals, beasts in human shape. It is only fair for me to treat all of you this way.”

I slid my hand through the air in a cutting motion. It should have done nothing. Nothing should have happened but something did, something magical. The right arm of the man separated itself cleanly from his body as if he had been cut by a fast-moving sharp sword.

A shout of pain escaped from his lips as he fell to the ground and began to wreath in pain. He was turning pale, taking a sticky shade of white.

I could see his eyes began to be glossy. As if I would let him die so easily! I snapped two of my fingers against each other. Friction was heat. Heat could be fire. The thrum of magic I could feel in my soul answered and fire appeared over my fingers before rushing to his bleeding stump to burn it, to cauterize it with fire.

He yelled like a possessed man, like a man being inflicted with the worst torments and it only made me smile.

“Yelling just because of a little flame?” I taunted him. “So disappointing coming from such an esteemed man like you.”

“I can…I can pay you,” I heard him whisper. “I can give you all the riches of the world. I can make you richer than you could imagine. I beg you. Just let me go.”

I crouched before the down man locking our gazes together. “There are so many things wrong with what you just said Oh good master.”

I grabbed him by the neck, his body weighing like a feather for me. “Let me show you something,” I told him before beginning to drag him by the neck.

My gaze fell on a window, One who allowed me to view all of the city. I pushed his face toward the window “Look at your city. Look at it and tell me that you still can give me anything.”

“How? My city, my Astapor? What did you do to it?” he said his voice feeble like someone who just learned a horrific world-shaking truth.

It probably was the case. He was one of the good masters of Astapor, the equivalent of royalty here. What I was showing him was the destruction of everything his ancestors and he ever built.

Astapor looked even more red than usual, blood having plastered every corner and street of the city. It was said that Astapor was built with bricks and blood, blood from the slaves who died doing so. Wasn't it fair for the blood of the good masters to rejoin the one of the slaves? After all, death came for all and everyone was equal in it.

Flames and ashes rose in the sky turning it red. The smell of blood permeated the air feeling so thick that I could almost taste it.

“I see that you finally understand,” I told him. “You have nothing to give me.” I leaked toward one of his ears “And even if you had, it wouldn't have changed anything.”

“What you're seeing right now good master is just the beginning. Every city-state that upheld slavery, that allowed such depravity and suffering will suffer from the same fate.”

“You’re such a fool!” the man spat his eyes still glued to the destruction unfurling before our eyes “You're shaking the natural order of things. There’ll be consequences. Dire ones. Do you truly you could win by yourself against the entirety of free cities and their allies? Do you truly think you could win against the entirety of Essos?”

A mocking laugh escaped from the lips of the man before he turned toward me “Did you even think about what would happen now that not one of my creatures is going to push back the Dothraki? No, you probably didn't but it is expected coming from you. You may have learnt vile sorceries but you still are nothing but the Lyseni boy toy I paid to warm my bed and entertain me.”

Memories of his touch, of his skin against mine, of the pain, of disgust, of shame assaulted my mind and made me want to vomit. Memories of so much agony that something had snapped and everything went black. I remember waking up in a literal dumpster with what I knew had been body fluids coming from me on my skin with the memories of a boy no more than thirteen who had only all his life that his only goal was to pleasure others no matter how much it did hurt, no matter how much he wanted it to stop.

I tried to push, crush those memories down but I found myself unable to. It's as if instead, I had emboldened them by thinking of them.

The worst I think was that those memories more than being mine were similar to something I had desesperedly tried to forget. They reminded me how naive, how weak, how hopeless I had been.

I could feel myself itching, my body, my soul begging me to kill the man before me. It would be easy. Just one movement would be enough, just one movement and he would be dead.

The problem with that was that it wasn't enough. It felt too good, too peaceful for him. Watching the state of Astapor had shaken him but that wasn't enough. I wanted to break him completely. I wanted to make him suffer the most possible before killing him.

I smile at him to hide and maybe trick myself into forgetting the fact that I just wanted to rip him apart with my hands.

Astapor had been a powder keg wanting to explode. The only thing that was needed was a spark. In another world, it would have been a silver-haired Targaryen girl with her dragons.

Here in this world that should have been nothing but fiction, in this world I shouldn't have woken up in, it was me. I didn't care that sooner or later, things would have changed due to Danaerys. I wanted things to change now. I wanted the suffering around me to stop. I wanted to avenge myself on the entire world that watched, never did anything when it could have.

Normally, it wouldn't have been possible. Metaknowledge itself wouldn't have been enough. I knew stuff that could change things in the long run but I wasn't sure that I was smart enough to try to introduce them well and efficiently.

What I had, what I knew gave me an edge, the possibility of changing the way the world worked was what felt like a second heart beating in my chest, what I knew, the words inscribed in my mind since I woke up as a magical reactor, the magical reactor of an archmage.

It had grown since I began using my magic to free other slaves, strike and kill with it as if it fed on the blood I spilt and the destruction I created.

What was An archmage? Was he just an advanced practitioner of magic? Was an archmage just a superior form of mage?

I knew the truth of the matter deep down. Comparing a mage and an Archmage would be akin to comparing an ember and the sun.

The magic I had used and the spells I had created had not been taught to me. They were spells I created, I created only through following my own will.

“I want to show something,” I said to Kraznys still smiling at the man who once had been my owner.

I grabbed him by the collar as if he were a disobedient kitten and climbed on the edge of the window.

“Why are you doing this? Are you mad and not just stupid?” the man shouted. I ignored him my gaze turned toward one of the red pyramids of Astapor.

My brain was screaming at me to step back, to retreat away from what seemed a certain death. “Aegor! Stop!” the slave master shouted at me in fear.

“Why are you scared?” I spoke softly. “No matter what happens, you'll die today Kraznys. Are you so delusional that you think things can go back to what they once were for you?”

The body of the fat man began to flail, move wildly, trying to escape, to live longer. I ignored his threats, his shouts of anger and hatred, his shouts of fear. I guided the magic inside of me, releasing it into the world with only a wish in mind.

‘What was an archmage’ I thought taking a step into the void and not falling “Other than someone capable of defying the rules of the world and the gods?’

I took another step completely leaving behind the window. The man in my grasp had gone completely still. I turned to look at him in the eyes and saw in them only horror.

I took another step as if I was taking stairs and rose. Excitement and adrenaline flooded my body and my mind as I literally walked in the air.

The wind rushed around me, embracing me as if I were its prodigal child who had come back. Under me, the screams, the shoots of Astapor and the sound of metal tearing through flesh created a symphony that felt soothing to my senses.

I finally reached the top of one of the pyramids and landed on its top in a little rectangular area.

“What kind of pact, what kind of abomination did you do to access such power?” the shaking voice of Kraznys said to me. “I had never seen such a thing from the warlocks of Qarth or wondering mage.”

“Unfortunately for you Kraznys, I never made any pact,” I told him. “That power, that magic is all mine.”

“Then if it's the case, why didn't you use it before? I would have treated you differently if I had known! We could have become rulers of Astapor, maybe all the free cities!” He sounded delusional. He sounded broken. Greed or maybe it was madness seemed to have taken hold of his senses.

“Maybe I didn't use it before because a condition like being on the verge of Death was necessary to activate it,” I lied to him. Aegor, the one I had inherited memories hadn’t been on the verge of death. He had died suffering, begging, praying for someone to make the pain stop.

“In any case, it changes nothing Kraznys. The only reason I haven't yet killed you was because I wanted to show you something.”

I took a deep breath and turned inward, toward where I knew my magic reactor was. I was familiar with fire. I knew what it was with both sets of memories I had of how it felt to be burnt by it.

I knew I could create fire. I already did before when I wanted to cauterize the wound of Krasnyz and stop him from bleeding out.

Fire was good but it wasn’t enough for what I wanted to create. I wanted something that would burn hotter, that would make sure that what would was doing would be felt and seen everywhere in Astapor and possibly beyond. I wanted to make sure that the good masters who were still hiding in their pyramids were protected by their slaves who stopped anyone from penetrating their abode to suffer.

I exhaled before focusing on the Pyramids in my sight, the pyramids I knew where hid some of the friends and some of the family members of Kraznys.

I directed my magic, letting suffuse through the air and encompass the pyramids and only the pyramids.

I had been an avid fan of Star Wars before, well the legend one that the evil mouse overlord had unfortunately made non-canon.

One of the powers it was shown a Jedi was able to use was to create fire. It had been cool as fuck reading it but after I had wondered how it was possible, if it wasn't an asspull.

After all, it was only shown that force users were telekinetics and telepaths. I realized later that this was the reason why they could do so, that this could maybe be an explanation for force lightning could be used by the Sith and dark side users.

It began with the very very simplified fact that plasma could be said to be fire but fire wasn't plasma.

Fire in itself especially when it was impure, no matter its colour didn't burn hot enough to create enough ions and not enough ions meant no plasma.

Plasma in itself was more of a state of matter than anything else. What the bubble of magic I created did was allow me to control as long as I could maintain everything inside it, a little like a room created by a surgeon pirate.

I could if I wanted unearth, break the Pyramids of Astapor even if something told me that it wouldn’t be a good idea, that it would be something I wasn’t powerful enough to do now without a severe backlash.

Instead, I focused, turning it attention toward the unseen, the microscopic, to a point where I could feel the almost infinite number of atoms and molecules in my bubble.

If I wanted plasma, if I wanted flames no one would be able to avoid or survive from, I needed to make those little things vibrate.

‘What about the innocent children of the Good masters of Astapor who did nothing? What about the slaves still imprisoned in those pyramids? Wasn’t there a better more peaceful way’ the voice spoke softly.

Children who had done nothing to stop the suffering, who were able to be raised and live with the greatest luxuries because of slave labour, because of the suffering of slaves, because of the suffering of People like Aegor, because of my suffering. They could all go fuck themselves!

With a turn of my wrist, plasma consumed the pyramids creating giant bonfires. The Pyramids didn't crumble. They didn't even melt. They vanished as if they were nothing but mirages.

I turned toward Kraznys who was looking at the giant bonfires. “Maybe one of your family members or friends or maybe one of your children was inside and died without you being able to do anything. This is the end of an era. This is the end of everything you stood for Krasnys. This is just the beginning,” I told him.

I grabbed by the collar rising to a point where I could touch the clouds with my fingers if I wished to do so.

The man had unfortunately stopped moving, stopped reacting. He wasn't dead. My magic made sure it wouldn’t happen without me wanting to.

I brought before me, my gaze losing itself in his broken one. “Sooner or later, I know that I'll die,” I told him softly. This world after all was merciless, one so much more cruel and brutal than the one I originally came from. There were so many things that could be threats like the white walkers beyond the wall of Westeros, the fact that I knew that sooner or later, I would be encountering other mages, mages who were native to this world and who only seemed to grow stronger through cruelty and evil rituals and so many other things I wasn't probably aware of.

“But when I do so, it’ll be after living a life without any regret, a life so full of joy and good moments that they will eclipse everything wrong you did to me.” Those words, they felt like remnants, feelings that had never been said but could finally be.

I stopped grabbing him letting him fall to what would surely be his death “Goodbye Kraznys,” I whispered completely free of any shackle, the stars shining over me.