Chapter 46: The Rival God
The conquest of Myr was followed not by a pause for celebration, but by a period of intense, almost frantic, consolidation. The Grand Army of the Great Work was no longer just an army; it was the administrative body of a burgeoning, pan-continental theocracy. The city of Myr, like Pentos before it, was being remade. Its slave markets were being converted into temples, its palaces into public works offices. The sheer scale of the undertaking was staggering.
It was in the Westerosi command pavilion, now a semi-permanent structure of timber and stone outside the walls of Myr, that the next phase of the new world order was forged. The Braavosi envoy, Tycho Melis, met with King Viserys, Prince Jacaerys, and the aging but still formidable Lord Velaryon heir.
"Let us be clear, Envoy," Jacaerys began, dispensing with pleasantries as he now always did. He was the supreme commander, and his time was a resource to be managed with ruthless efficiency. "Your Iron Bank wishes to invest in our… enterprise. We are not for sale. Our god does not require your gold."
Tycho Melis gave a serene, unbothered smile. "Of course not, Prince Jacaerys. One does not offer to sell water to the sea. But your new cities require lumber from the forests of the Axe, stone from the quarries of Andalos, and grain from the fields of the Reach. This all must be moved. Your new citizens must be clothed and housed. This requires commerce. It requires logistics. The Iron Bank does not offer charity; we offer efficiency. We will be the engine of commerce for your new world. You handle the salvation of souls; we will handle the shipping manifests."
"And your price for this 'efficiency'?" asked the Velaryon lord, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.
"Exclusive contracts, of course," the Braavosi replied smoothly. "Favorable tariffs in all liberated ports. And a stable, predictable market, guaranteed by the power of your god." She spread her hands. "It is a small price to pay for the logistical and financial might of Braavos. We will help you build your new world, and we will all prosper from the order it creates."
Jacaerys looked at Viserys. It was a devil's bargain, an alliance with a secular power of assassins and bankers, but it was a logical one. To refuse would be… inefficient. "Draw up the terms," Jace said to the Velaryon lord. "Braavos will be the official trade partner of the Great Order."
The new world was taking shape, built on a foundation of divine terror and cold, hard commerce.
In the next war council, Jacaerys unrolled a map of the Disputed Lands, his finger tapping the cluster of islands that formed the Free City of Lys.
"Our work here is not done," he announced to the assembled lords. "The cancer of slavery still festers in Lys, Tyrosh, and Volantis. But Lys is our next target."
Lord Stark's heir, a grim man named Torrhen, spoke up. "Another beach landing, my prince? Another wave of the Blessed to break their gates?"
"No," Jace said, shaking his head. "Lys is not Myr. The city is a maze of islands, connected by bridges. A direct assault would be a bloody, chaotic affair. It would be… untidy." He had begun to adopt the vocabulary of his god. "We will use a different tool. We will use the weapon our new allies have provided."
He looked at Viserys. "We will not attack the city from without. We will see it liberated from within. The slaves of Lys outnumber their masters ten to one. We will provide the spark, and they will provide the inferno. Ellyn and the Hands will begin projecting their message of hope and liberation into the minds of every slave in the city. And the Braavosi… their agents will provide the daggers in the dark, eliminating key sentries and opening the armories when the time is right."
King Viserys looked horrified. "You would incite a slave revolt? The bloodshed…"
"Will be immense," Jace finished for him, his voice hard. "But it will be the blood of slave masters, shed by the hands of the slaves themselves. It is a more… just form of liberation. And it is more efficient than sacrificing our own soldiers. This is the new way of war, brother. A sermon whispered into the hearts of the oppressed, backed by the shadow of an assassin's blade."
The lords were silent, awed and terrified by the cold, brutal logic of their commander. The Great Work was evolving.
In the perfumed, sun-drenched halls of Lys, the council of Magisters was in a state of utter panic. The fate of Myr had reached them, and they knew they were next.
"We cannot fight them!" cried a Magister whose fortune was built on the city's famed pleasure houses. "Their saints walk through fire! Their god makes rivers flow from dust!"
"And we cannot appease them!" another wailed. "They refused Myr's offer. They do not want our gold. They want our ruin!"
It was then that an ancient, wizened Magister named Horonno, a man long rumored to be a student of the dark arts that had flourished in the shadow of Old Valyria, spoke for the first time. His voice was a dry, rasping whisper.
"There are other gods," he said, his eyes glittering with a feverish light. "Older gods. Gods of shadow and blood that have slept for centuries, angered by the rise of this new, orderly power. If this Westerosi god is real, then perhaps others are too."
The other Magisters stared at him, a new, forbidden hope dawning in their eyes.
"We can make a sacrifice," Horonno hissed, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "A great sacrifice. A thousand souls, offered up in a single, unholy chorus. We can perform the Ritual of the Unveiling. It is said that a cry of such profound agony can tear a hole in the veil between worlds and draw the attention of a rival power, a being of chaos to fight this being of order."
It was an act of ultimate desperation. To fight a devil by summoning a demon. "And what if this… being… we summon cannot be controlled?" another Magister asked, trembling.
"We are already damned," Horonno replied with a terrible smile. "What does it matter which god presides over our extinction?"
Krosis-Krif felt it. From his throne in Westeros, he felt the subtle, sickening shift in the psychic currents of the world. He felt the gathering of dark, chaotic energy in Lys, the stench of blood magic, the desperate prayers aimed not at him, but at the empty, silent void.
And he was… delighted.
His game had become too one-sided. His opponents were predictable, their strategies mundane. But this… this was new. This was a player from a different game entirely, invited onto his board. A wild card. A chaotic, unpredictable variable. It was the most entertaining thing that had happened since he had tasted the soul of Vhagar.
He could have snuffed out the ritual with a thought. He could have turned Magister Horonno to dust from a thousand leagues away. But why would he? A true master of a game does not fear a new challenge. He savors it. He decided to let it happen. He wanted to see what kind of monster these pathetic mortals would call up to face him. He settled in to watch the show.
The night Lys fell was a night of fire and blood. As the Magisters gathered in the catacombs beneath their palace to begin their dark work, the slave uprising began. Driven by the telepathic whispers of hope from Ellyn and the Hands, and armed by shadowy Braavosi agents, tens of thousands of slaves rose up as one. The city guard was overwhelmed in minutes. The slave masters were dragged from their beds, their pleas for mercy ignored. It was a brutal, bloody, and righteous revolution.
Jacaerys and the Westerosi army watched the fires from their camp outside the city. "It has begun," he said to Viserys, his face illuminated by the distant flames.
But as the revolt reached its crescendo, a new and terrible energy pulsed from the heart of the city. A wave of black, corrupt power so profound that even the common soldiers felt it as a chill in their bones. The sky above the Magisters' palace began to warp, the stars seeming to twist and scream.
"What is that?" Viserys gasped, his hand flying to his sword. "Jace, what have they done?"
"The fools," Jace breathed, his face pale with a new kind of horror. "They've actually done it."
In the catacombs, Horonno chanted the final verses of his ritual, his acolytes slitting the throats of the thousand slaves upon their blood altars. With a final, agonized scream from the last victim, a tear in reality opened. It was not a gateway. It was a wound, bleeding pure chaos into the world.
From it emerged a being of utter, formless horror. It was a creature of living shadow and dissonant angles, a vortex of anti-energy that seemed to suck the light and heat from the very air. It had no shape, but it had a presence, a malevolent intelligence that radiated pure, nihilistic hunger. It began to consume everything around it, slave and master alike, their souls dissolving into its chaotic form with silent, horrifying finality.
The Westerosi army watched in frozen terror as the chaos entity began to spread, turning a section of the city into a formless, screaming void. This was not a power they could fight. This was the end of all things.
Just as the entity began to swell, to breach the walls of the palace district, a single, pure beam of black-and-starlight energy lanced across the sky. It did not originate from a ship or from the heavens above. It came from the west, from across the Narrow Sea, a direct projection of will from the god on the hill.
The beam did not strike the chaos entity. It struck the ground around it, in a perfect, glowing circle miles wide. The moment the beam touched the earth, a wall of shimmering, unbreakable force erupted, a perfect, translucent dome that slammed down over the entire palace district, trapping the chaos god within it.
The entity threw itself against the walls of its new prison, but the divine energy held firm. It was caged.
And then, the voice of Krosis-Krif entered the minds of every soldier in the Grand Army, every slave in the city, every lord and lady back in Westeros, and every terrified Magister cowering in the Free Cities. It was not a whisper. It was a proclamation, filled with a terrifying, cosmic amusement.
"AN UNEXPECTED DEVELOPMENT."
"A NEW PLAYER HAS ENTERED THE GAME."
The voice was not angry. It was not concerned. It was… pleased.
"THIS IS FAR MORE INTERESTING. LET US SEE HOW IT PLAYS."
The army of the Great Work stood staring at the city they had come to liberate. In its heart, a god of chaos was now trapped, raging in a divine prison. And they all understood the terrible truth. Their own god had not saved them from a new monster. He had merely contained it, preserving it. He had allowed a new piece, a rival god, onto the board simply to make his eternal game a little less boring. The Great Work had just become infinitely more complicated, and infinitely more dangerous.