1st bonus chapter: 100 powerstones
2nd bonus chapter: 150 powerstones
3rd bonus chapter: 200 powerstones
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Jon Snow watched the city from the balcony of a manor house that had once belonged to one of Mantarys' noble families. The owners had vanished during the sack. Killed. Captured. Or simply fled.
The house had been given to him by the city's new governor for his service. It now served as both his residence and work place.
Jon's work filled nearly every room. The manor had become a hive of activity. Scholars, scribes, and young alchemists moved constantly through the halls carrying scrolls, jars, and strange instruments salvaged from the laboratories of the Flesh Alchemists.
Mantarys' greatest prize had not been gold. It had been knowledge. The Flesh Alchemists had practiced their craft here for centuries. Their experiments had twisted flesh, bone, and blood into forms that most people would consider abominations. But the knowledge behind those transformations was priceless.
The Red Faith intended to claim it. Every surviving laboratory had been stripped. Scrolls packed into crates. Specimens sealed in glass containers. Every scrap of research was being cataloged and shipped back to Volantis where the Priest would study it in the Great Temple.
Jon oversaw much of the process. Moqorro had placed him in charge. Working alongside him was Azula who had joined the campaign to fight Tolos and Elyria, now was stationed in Mantarys.
Looking at her as she directed the slaves that carried all the gear down from the Alchemist labs, he saw the nasty scar on her face. A shadowblade got really close to assassinating her like they unfortunately did many mages and commanders.
The young priests and alchemists working under him barely understood half of what they were uncovering. But Jon did, most nights he spent his time going over them by candlelight.
The knowledge was… staggering. Methods for reshaping bone growth. Procedures for strengthening muscle density. Techniques for accelerating healing. Many of the experiments had been monstrous.
But others… Others held incredible promise. Jon could already see how the Faith might use these discoveries. The Red Priests could offer biological enhancements alongside their magical blessings.
Warriors strengthened beyond natural limits. Healing rituals combined with controlled tissue regeneration. The potential was enormous. The Faith would grow stronger because of Mantarys.
Not all the city's alchemists had been executed. About half had chosen to join the Red Faith rather than face death. There were some with him now, the senior head who knew the secrets to crafting chimera and the more advanced biomancy.
The rest had entered the service of the Old Blood. Both factions understood the value of their knowledge. For now the cooperation was uneasy. But it was cooperation nonetheless. Mantarys was too valuable to waste.
The city itself was proving just as valuable. Mantarys sat in an ideal location. Beyond the Painted Mountains it was protected from the raids of the Dothraki khalasars.
At the same time it stood between two of the great trade regions of the east.
To the west lay the remnants of old Valyrian holdings which was Volantis. To the east stretched the ancient territories of Old Ghis and the Slaver Cities. Across the coast was Slaver's Bay and the Gulf of Grief.
And just south lay the routes toward Lands of the long summer where many ruins of the freeholds were located if anyone was foolish enough to head into them. There would be of course plenty of treasure hunters that would be doing so and the Red Faith and Old bloods would be there to handsomely reward them for their finds.
Trade would flow through Mantarys again. That much was certain. The city would become rich once more. Only this time under Volantene rule.
Besides the great knowledge contained in the city and the perfect trading position it offered, Mantarys had also been staggeringly wealthy. Jon had begun to understand that only after the conquest was over and the inventories started coming in.
Mantarys had not merely been a city of experiments and fleshcraft. It had been a city of trade, tribute, and hidden hoards accumulated over centuries. For generations the rulers of the city had dealt in strange commodities such as exotic beasts, alchemical substances, rare metals mined from the Painted Mountains, and living specimens brought from distant lands for experimentation.
Much of that wealth had remained untouched during the siege. The nobles of Mantarys had believed their walls would never fall. They had been wrong. Now their treasuries were being opened one by one.
Crates filled with coin had been discovered in vaults beneath noble estates. Chests of ancient Valyrian gold, tribute gathered over centuries from surrounding lands, and strange relics taken from ruins across Essos had begun flowing into the possession of the new rulers.
The division of that wealth had followed the usual laws of conquest. The Volantene state had taken its share first. The Old Blood families had claimed vast portions as reward for financing the campaign. The Red Faith had claimed what it considered sacred artifacts or resources useful.
And the rest had been divided among the commanders, priests, and officers who had made the victory possible. Jon had not asked for any of it. It had been given to him anyway. The manor he stood in now was only the beginning.
He had been personally summoned by the Wyvern Lord; made into a noble, given vast estates in the countryside, and plenty of gold. He had no idea what to do with it. He knew life was short and there was more important pursuits then worldly gains.
He had left its management entirely to the Faith's stewards. He had no intention of becoming a landlord in a foreign land. The faith already organized their lands output to support their expanding presence in Mantarys. The vineyards alone he got would bring considerable wealth once trade resumed.
…
The city was changing rapidly. Victory always brought rewards, but it also brought reordering.
A census had been conducted not long after the conquest was secured. Volantene administrators had spent weeks counting households, mapping districts, and recording the population of the city.
The final estimate placed Mantarys at roughly two hundred thousand souls. Even that number was uncertain but it was clearly down from the quarter million the city had before. Many people had fled before the siege began. Thousands had died during the fighting. Others had escaped during the chaos of the sack.
Jon had seen great cities in Westeros before, but this one rivaled the largest among them. It was not simply a settlement, it was a sprawling city-state that stretched across miles of ancient streets and towering structures.
Holding it would not be easy. The Red Faith and the Old Blood both understood that. That was why they were each hard at work in not losing their gains.
The Old Blood families began hiring mercenaries almost immediately after the conquest. Sellsword companies from across Essos were arriving in Mantarys every month, their banners appearing beside the disciplined formations of Volantene soldiers.
At the same time, more men-at-arms from Volantis itself were being sent across the demon road to reinforce the new colony. Even that might not be enough. Mantarys had too many districts. Too many people. Too many secrets.
The Old Blood began incorporating the surviving Mantaryan nobility and merchants. Not all of the city's noble families and merchant houses had been wiped out during the sack. Some had survived by surrendering early. Others had fled during the siege and returned once the conquest was complete.
The Governor-General made peace with them by taking oaths of allegiances from them in which they got back their lands and business in return. Besides that marriage pacts were formed between the Volantis families and the Mantaryan nobility to begin to tie the two cities together.
Also many sons and daughters of those noble families and merchant houses were shipped off to Volantis where they could join the courts, basically hostages of the city to keep them in line.
It was a practical policy. Many accepted the offer quickly. And it was the much needed order and gold the city needed to quickly get back to functioning.
While the Old Blood reshaped the city's political structure, the Red Faith worked on its soul. Mantarys had been a slave city long before Volantis arrived, though its system of bondage had been… different. Many of the slaves had been subjects of experimentation rather than labor. Entire districts of the city had once been devoted to the Flesh Alchemists' research.
Now that system was collapsing. The Red Faith had taken a firm stance from the moment the city fell. Thousands of slaves had been freed immediately. Those who possessed useful skills such as craftsmen, scholars, healers, scribes were offered positions within the Faith's growing administration.
Others were given a different path. The Faith needed arms. Mantarys was far too large a city to hold with Volantene soldiers alone, especially now that half the army had marched east to continue the campaign against Tolos and Elyria. So the Red Faith began forming militias drawn from the newly freed population. Men and women who had once been laboratory subjects now marched through the streets carrying spears beneath the banners of R'hllor.
Not everyone gained freedom. The Old Blood families of Volantis had claimed their share of captives as spoils of conquest. New slave markets had appeared in certain districts, this time operating under Volantene law rather than Mantaryan experimentation.
The result was strange. Some former slaves walked the streets as free citizens for the first time in their lives. Others found themselves sold again beneath different masters. Mantarys was becoming something new, but it was not becoming gentle.
Jon had seen the confusion on the faces of many freed workers as they tried to understand their new place in the city. Some embraced the Red Faith quickly, grateful for any protection after the horrors of the laboratories. Others watched the priests with wary eyes. Freedom, Jon was learning, came with conditions. And the Faith expected loyalty in return.
One of the most visible changes came from the children. The war had created thousands of orphans. Some had lost their parents during the siege. Others had been abandoned when families fled the city before the conquest. Many had simply been laboratory-born children who had never known their parents at all.
The streets of Mantarys had begun filling with them. The Faith moved quickly. Red Priests and Apostles spread through the poorer districts gathering these children and bringing them into temple compounds where they were given food, clothing, and shelter.
Jon had visited one of those compounds once. Hundreds of children sat in neat rows while priests taught them prayers to the Lord of Light. Others trained in the courtyard with wooden spears under the watchful eyes of veteran soldiers.
The Faith had plans for them. They would grow into the next generation of Red Guards. Orphans of Mantarys raised entirely within the teachings of R'hllor. Loyal soldiers who would never remember the old city.
Jon could see the logic in it. But it still left a strange feeling in his chest. The Faith was not merely conquering Mantarys. It was remaking it in its image.
Most importantly of all, the Faith wasted no time asserting its new religion upon the city's residents. Temples appeared throughout the city within weeks of the conquest. Former noble estates were converted into sanctuaries. Laboratory complexes became monasteries and training halls for new initiates.
Mantarys had never possessed an organized religion in the way other cities did. The Flesh Alchemists had effectively served as both scientists and priests for the city's strange traditions. Their devotion centered on transformation. On perfecting the body through endless experimentation.
Now that priesthood was gone. The Red Faith filled the vacuum quickly.
Every day red-robed priests walked the streets preaching sermons about the triumph of the Lord of Light. The message was simple. Mantarys had fallen because its people had strayed into corruption. The Flesh Alchemists had twisted the natural order. They had worshiped transformation instead of truth.
Now the city would be cleansed. The purges began slowly. Individuals who possessed minor flesh augmentations were summoned to temples and ordered to undergo purification rituals. In many cases the procedures were painful but survivable.
Others were not so fortunate. Some residents of Mantarys had been altered far beyond simple correction. Generations of experimentation had left entire bloodlines warped by the work of the Flesh Alchemists.
The Faith considered those alterations an abomination. Those who could not be purified were sterilized. Those who resisted were burned.
Jon had seen more than one of these burnings. Each time the flames rose, the tension in the city grew stronger. Many of Mantarys' people saw the purges as an attack on their entire way of life. And they responded accordingly.
Riots broke out almost daily now. Sometimes entire districts erupted into violence that required soldiers and Red Guards to suppress. The city was not peaceful. It was simmering. The new Governor-General and the faith butted heads more than once as the city situation was getting increasingly worse each day.
Jon found himself increasingly uncomfortable watching it unfold. This was not what he signed up for. Though he recalled the red witch and how fanatical she was. Maybe he should have thought more closely about who he got into bed with.
Most of the time, he kept his head down and was busy with his work in processing the vast, rich knowledge of the flesh alchemists. There was something that bothered him when he looked through these records.The whispers about Mantarys' god.
The Flesh Alchemists had never openly worshiped in temples, yet their writings made repeated reference to something beneath the city. A god of flesh. A being of transformation.
According to the fragments Jon had read, it had once been a giant king who ruled deep beneath the Painted Mountains long before the Valyrians arrived. The dragonlords had hunted its people. Crushed their kingdoms. And somehow imprisoned the king beneath the foundations of Mantarys.
Over centuries the creature became something else. A legend. A banner in which the giants arouse. Some believed it had ascended into godhood.
Jon and Moqorro had discussed the matter more than once. "It would not be unusual," the Black Flame had admitted.
In Essos, many gods had once been mortal beings. Heroes. Sorcerers. Kings. Powerful entities who had ascended through myth and belief until their names became divine.
If the hidden scriptures of the Faith were to be believed, even R'hllor had once walked the mortal world. Azor Ahai. The champion who saved the world from darkness. Some within the Faith believed that figure had ascended to become the Lord of Light himself.
Jon was not certain what he believed. But the idea that something ancient still slept beneath Mantarys unsettled him deeply. Especially now that the city above it was changing once again. He wondered what would happen if that buried god ever rouse up. And whether the Faith understood what it had truly conquered when Mantarys fell.
He brought up his concerns to even the Wyvern Lord, but the man's orders were clear…to bury it. To erase any record of it. To goal was clear, to starve it of any worship. It was obvious from the records this giant would not be any friends of theirs and take that kindly to the heirs of the freehold which hunted it and its people down to extinction being here.
-
The heat of the afternoon hung heavy over Mantarys when the messenger arrived. Jon had been seated at a long wooden table in the central chamber of the manorhouse, surrounded by open scrolls and scattered notes taken from the laboratories of the Flesh Alchemists. The windows stood open to let in the warm coastal wind, though it did little to ease the thick air of the city.
Scholars worked quietly around him. Glass containers filled with preserved samples lined the far wall. Scribes bent over parchment copying fragments of ancient biomantic texts. Mantarys had become a place of study as much as conquest. Jon had spent most of his days buried in that work.
So when the door burst open and a young Red Apostle nearly stumbled into the chamber, gasping for breath, every head turned.
The young man was near to his age in his early twenties, most likely a flame scion. Dust clung to his robes, and sweat soaked his collar. He clutched a leather satchel against his chest as though it contained something precious.
"My lord," the apostle said between breaths, bowing hastily. "Forgive the intrusion. I was told you wished to be informed immediately if word arrived from Westeros."
Jon's hand froze above the parchment he had been reading. For a moment he did not move. Then slowly he rose. "Yes," he said quietly. Turning to the rest, he waved them out, which they hurried to do so.
The chamber grew empty with only Azula left as the boy stepped forward and placed a sealed packet onto the table. "Caravan riders brought it this morning," the apostle explained. "The message was carried from Pentos to Volantis, then across the sea routes to Mantarys. The Faith believed you would want to see it immediately."
Jon picked up the packet. The seal was unfamiliar, stamped with the sigil of a merchant house rather than any noble crest. The Faith often relied on traders and informants to gather news from distant lands.
His fingers hesitated for a moment. It had been a long time since he had heard anything from his homeland of Westeros. He had the faith keep close watch of how things were going there. Slowly he broke the seal. The parchment inside was written in careful script, summarizing reports gathered from across Westeros.
Jon read the first lines. Then he stopped. The words blurred for a moment as his mind struggled to accept them. Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, had been executed in King's Landing. Beheaded by order of King Joffrey.
Jon closed his eyes briefly. It seem like his father did not listen to the warnings he left before heading to Volantis. Still like always seeing the words written so plainly struck deeper than he expected.
He forced himself to keep reading. Bran. Arya. Sansa were rumored to be captured. Their fate uncertain. Jon gripped the edge of the table. The room seemed suddenly too quiet.
Across the chamber Azula watched him carefully, her expression tightening as she noticed the change in his face. "What is it?" she asked.
Jon did not answer immediately. He continued reading. The war that followed had been as brutal as he expected. But the report contained something unexpected as well. Robb Stark was still alive. Jon stared at that line. The warnings he had written. The messages he had left behind. It seemed like at least his brother listened.
The treachery of House Bolton and House Frey had been uncovered before the infamous betrayal could unfold. Instead of falling victim to their schemes, Robb had turned the trap against them. The Freys had been slaughtered. Bolton loyalists crushed. The Red Wedding had never happened.
Jon exhaled slowly. For a moment a faint flicker of relief stirred in his chest. But the next lines reminded him that victory was never simple. Despite avoiding betrayal, Robb had still been overwhelmed. His brother had kept on winning the battles but not the war.
The combined armies of House Lannister and House Tyrell had pushed hard across the Riverlands. Meanwhile the Ironborn had struck along the northern coasts, raiding villages and seizing strongholds while the Stark forces were far from home.
Robb had been forced to withdraw. The North had called him back. The Riverlands were lost. The report stated that the Blackfish continued to fight in scattered resistance against the Lannister forces. But the greater war had effectively ended. The War of Five Kings was over.
Jon lowered the parchment slowly. For several moments he simply stood there, staring at nothing. His father was dead. His siblings were prisoners. His brother had fought bravely and survived betrayal, yet still lost the war.
Home felt impossibly far away. Azula approached quietly. "What happened?" she asked.
Jon handed her the parchment. She read quickly, her brow furrowing as she reached the end. She knew his connections to Westeros and especially the North. Lowering the documents, she turned her sad gaze towards him, "I'm sorry Jon."
Jon just shook his head, "It is somewhat better than what I expected at least."
Azula came closer and hugged him from behind, whispering in his shoulder, "If you want we can sail for the Sunset Lands with the full might of the faith and burn all those heretics."
Jon could not deny there was a spark between them and ever since the young fire witch came close to death she was also responding to their growing attachment.
"It is alright," he answered. "It will not change anything in the end."
Shaking himself from his dour mood, there were some more reports from Westeros. Another section described new developments in the Stormlands.
A name Jon recognized from stories whispered among soldiers and merchants alike. The Golden Company. The famed mercenary army had landed in Westeros.
They had not come alone. House Martell of Dorne had thrown its support behind them. Together they were attacking the Stormlands. No one knew what insanity had gripped the Dornish, maybe they finally wished to get revenge on the Lannister for killing their daughter and her children.
But also it was a mystery why the Blackfyre company was on the shores of Westeros. All Blackfyre died out with the final invasion of them in the Ninepenny Kings War.
Jon folded the parchment slowly. Westeros was still burning. Even if the war of kings had ended, new struggles were already beginning. It seemed like no matter what his homeland was fated to fight amongst itself till the end as the Great Enemy gathered beyond the wall.