Devil of Devils

After taking over the city, I stayed in Astapor for a month. I had literally gutted every single individual responsible for the governance of the city and if I had just taken my army and left, it wouldn't have taken even a week for the former slaves to either riot between each other for resources or for New Ghis to send an army and put once again the people in chains. If I was to become a conqueror and liberator of slaves then I was fucking going to do it right and not half-ass it.

I made sure to bring order in the city, repairing whatever infrastructure had been damaged during the 'Liberation' as it is called and creating a City Guard consisting of a thousand of my Unsullied and a thousand former slaves that had been trained in fighting in order to participate in the pit fights of Meereen. They were responsible for the guarding of the city as well as the keeping of order.

Lastly, I appointed Ellaria as the temporary Overseer of the now renamed city of Asmodeous. She didn't like it but I needed someone I trusted to keep things in order until I could consolidate my power. Strong I might have been but my new city was surrounded by enemies in every direction. At the north were Yunkai and Meereen, at the East was hundreds of Khalazars hungry for plunder and lastly was the island of New Ghis in the south that would destroy and enslave any kind of merchant ship that would dare to sail using the flag of my city.

Even worse, the territories of the Old Ghriscari Empire consisted almost completely of unfertile land due to the fucking Valyrians burning and salting the earth after their conquest. As a result, food was hard to come by without the co-operation of all the sister cities with each other as well as trade with the wider world.

Due to this complication I was working I was on a timer. The city had enough resources to last for an additional 7 months by the time of my departure and my sacrificing of some unlucky pirates that had resided in Astapor at the time of my take over in a fertility ritual to revitalize the surrounding lands (secretly of course because nothing makes you lose the support of the people faster than human sacrifice) would maybe buy me an additional month tops. So I had to be the Empress of the whole Slaver's Bay in that time. Easy.

So after leaving Ellaria in charge of Asmodeus I left with Oberyn, 14.000 Unsullied and an additional 2.000 volunteers that wanted to join my quest of abolishing slavery and we headed for Yunkai. We reached the city in a month's time which I spent training my levies into becoming half-passable soldiers instead of meat shields to throw at the enemy.

Seeing my army resting outside Yunkai, the Wise Masters sent an envoy trying to bribe me with gold and when that failed they threatened me that they had hired the Second Sons, the Stormcrows and the Windblown, all famous mercenary (or sellsword as it is called in Plantetos) companies to crush me beneath their heels.

It was the most amusing conversation I had in a while. After I sent the envoy back to Yunkai sans the gold of course, I prepared my army for battle. The Wise Masters hopped to grind my army against their hired help and either get destroyed by them or even in victory, the losses that I would accumulate by pitting my unblooded army against such experienced adversaries would be great enough to stop my conquest to a crippling halt.

It was a good plan in retrospect and if I was a simple mortal human it would have worked. Unfortunately for the Wise Masters though, I was something none in this world could prepare for.

I stood before my army 16.000 strong. I was on top of my white stallion taller than any the world had ever seen with Oberyn riding beside me. We both wore full body Valyrian steel armor that was shining beneath the rays of the desert sun. My friend was wielding a Valyrian steel spear I had gifted him while I held my Holy Moonlight Sword in its dormant state for now.

Against us stood the 15.000 strong army of mercenaries jeering at us and behind them I could see the city of Yunkai, the Wise Masters standing on top of the walls gazing at the standing armies arrogantly, assured of their victory. I will make sure their confidence will turn to ashes in their mouths.

Turning my horse around I looked towards my army, raised my sword into the air and spoke while using a minor spell to make sure my voice reached both my whole army and every person inside the city of Yunkai.

"My people, my brothers, my friends.

I didn't lead you here today just to conquer another city under my name. I didn't lead you here today due to a desire for power or conquest.

We came here today because of a dream. A HIGHER PURPOSE.

We stand here today because we crave a world of freedom. OF LIBERTY.

For millennia the world has been plagued from scum that feed on the pain and agony of the innocent. They put us in chains. They bind us in bonds of servitude to satiate their never ending lust for gold and blood, uncaring about the millions of lives they ruin. I say no more."

I could see my words begin to resonate inside them and making them stand straighter, their attention solely on me.

"We have all prayed for salvation, we have all prayed for the yoke of the collar and the whip to end but the Gods haven't answered and never will.

So I decided that I am done waiting for a miracle that will never come. If we want to live in a world that is free then we will have to create it with our own hands. With our own blood, sweat and tears. We will be the rulers of our fates. We will no longer fall prey to the false promises of useless Gods who will never give us even a helping hand."

By this point every soldier was smacking the butts of their spears on the ground creating a staccato of sounds that almost shook the earth and yet I made sure my voice carried clearly even above this noise, the charisma of the Warlord's Essence almost purring in delight inside me and I let it out.

"You brothers that stand here before me with your spears in hand and bravery in your hearts and you, brothers and sisters inside the city of Yunkai who have toiled away for years under the cruel hands of these Wise Masters.

I SAY NO MORE. No more will we accept their cruelty. No more will we have to mourn in silence for the husbands and the wives, for the brothers and the sisters and the sons and daughters whose blood these monsters have spilled in the name of gold and authority."

By this point the shouts had become almost deafening and as my voice echoed in the ears of every living human in and around Yunkai the city was embroiled in a slave uprising never seen before, bringing chaos inside the walls. My sword now pointed at the gates of the city was glowing in an ethereal green light similar to an Aurora Borealis and I put a considerable amount of my reserves into supercharging it.

THIS ERA OF DESPAIR IS AT ITS END. NOW IT IS TIME FOR A NEW ERA TO BEGIN. AN ERA OF LIBERTY. I RIAS GREMORY WILL GIVE IT TO YOU AND NO ARMY OF HONORLESS SCUM OR GREAT WALLS WILL STOP ME BECAUSE I CARRY THE GREATEST POWER OF THEM ALL. A POWER THAT RESIDES IN ALL OUR HEARTS AND EVEN THE GODS IN THE HEAVENS TREMBLE BEFORE IT, WE ONLY HAVE TO GRASP IT.

I CARRY THE POWER OF HOPE. "

When I ended my speech, I let go of the charged cosmic energy and from the tip of my blade a narrow wave of power scythed through the middle of the enemy army killing hundreds and shattered the Gates of Yunkai, not even leaving splinters behind.

When the dust settled everyone both friend and foe alike that had witnessed my skill froze like deer to headlights unable to comprehend this supernatural event. Oberyn that stood on his horse beside me almost dropped his spear and had to actually hold it with both hands while trying to calm his frightened horse from fleeing.

I on the other hand had to keep myself from cackling in glee but there was no time for it now, I had a city to conquer.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? THEIR ARMIES ARE BROKEN, THEIR GATES SHATTERED BEYOND REPAIR, VICTORY IS BEFORE US. CHARGE!

FOR FREEDOM!"

My spell had shattered whatever cohesion the sellsword army had. These people had no loyalty to the city behind them, they were only loyal to gold and when they saw the ease with which I destroyed their fellow soldiers, they made a run for it, not that that managed to get very far.

My charging army cut them down like a scythe cuts wheat painting the sandy ground of Yunkai crimson with their blood and once we were done with them we entered the city through the broken gates and the real slaughter begun.

By the time we were done the streets had been turned in rivers that were created through the blood of both slavers and Masters. There was no mercy or quarter given to them and while I could have contained the carnage I choose not to.

I have no doubt that not all the nobles of this city were cruel and abusive, I had noticed while touring the cities before my conquest begun that some of them (not many but some) have exercised some decorum of propriety or even respect for their servants and while admirable of them to be able to look past the whole indoctrination of their system and manage to keep some token of common decency, I couldn't afford to spare them.

These people had suffered too greatly and too much at the hands of their 'Masters' and if I gave a single hint that I sympathized with them then I would have a rebellion against me instead so I decided a clean slate would serve me better in order to consolidate my power in the hearts of the majority of the people and bring stability as fast as possible. If some healthy eggs had to be broken together with the rotten ones then so be it.

The first thing I did once we entered the city aside from assisting in the extermination of the trash, was to take over the docks and port. Due to the rioting it was inevitable that much pillaging and property damage would ensue and I didn't particularly care about that much. What I did care about were the ships.

As I had said before, the cities of slaver's bay gained more than 60% of their food through trade with the outer world due to their infertile lands and without ships there would be no trade. It was also a way for me to catch the smarter of the slavers and pirates that had seen the writing on the wall and they were in the process of running for it through the sea.

It wasn't possible to catch them all unless I took to the sky so a few of them escaped but I wasn't deterred. On the contrary, I was quite pleased. The handful of scum that escaped will spread what happened to the other slaver cities and sooner or later word would spread of my deeds bringing fear in the hearts of the Masters and nobles of Essos and hope of salvation to the slaves.

It took less than 24 hours to return the city into order, my 16.000 strong army being more than sufficient into bringing the peace. I had assigned 1.000 Unsullied to keep guard over the docks, another 2.000 on top of the walls while around 3.000 more were patrolling the city keeping the peace by preventing fights, looting and other baser more pervaded acts from occurring to the best of their ability. From the rest of the army, 1.000 men were assigned with the help of some of the former slaves to inspect the city in matters of integrity of the infrastructure, the provisions, cataloguing of the material wealth as well as a rough counting of the population which was about 15.000 which was pretty decent for a city of humans with the technological advancement of the world. The rest were situated outside the broken gates as protection and were also used to rotate those assigned with guard duties in order to allow them to rest.

Once the initial cataloguing was done, which took a little less than a week, the real work begun. Repairs had to be made, especially the gate considering the very real danger of a raid from some ambitious Khal that was lucky enough to lurk in the area as well as damages to homes and other buildings. Additionally, people couldn't be expected to just walk around aimlessly all day long, idle hands are the devil's workshop and all that crap.

Fortunately, the Masters were stupid enough to rely on their slaves in literally all facets of their lives, ranging from housekeeping servants and prostitutes to blacksmiths, craftsmen and even teachers for their children so after offering them actual homes instead of lodging them in mass dungeons beneath the ground, it was pretty easy to assign jobs to the people with minimal fuss, this time though with actual pay and without being afraid of getting whipped to death at the smallest of mistakes.

As a result, with hard work and the populations much higher spirits the city became fully functional in less than a month though there were still problems. You would think that after freeing the people from the tyrants they used to serve under they would have been grateful for the new state of things and while most of them were, a small part of the former slaves with the help of Masters that managed to hide themselves as slaves created a cult called the Sons of the Harpy causing deaths of both civilians and some of my soldiers and generally became a nuisance of themselves.

At the beginning I tried to solve the problems with my tried and true modus operandi I affectionately call SKED (Scour, Kill, Eviscerate, Destroy) but it was then that I discovered one of my most lethal deficiencies. I had no talent for subtlety and guerilla games and those pieces of shit continued to cause me problems and threaten the stability of both my newly renamed city of Leviathan and according to letters from a very irritated Ellaria, the city of Asmodeus though there the situation was more controlled due to the fact that my friend was better at all these sneaky and scheming facets of ruling.

Seeing that my way wasn't working and since Oberyn who was an expert on all that subtle stuff wasn't talking to me because he accused me of lying to him and keeping secrets which was fair, I decided to make use one of the powers of my Warlord Essence that allowed me to summon absolutely loyal homunculi which I could equip with superhuman parameters and a wide range of skills as long as they had to do with conquering and war.

Unfortunately, this ability was nerfed from Ashik because it would be stupidly easy to summon a few thousand super soldier level homunculi and speed run the whole conquest plan in a couple of years max. As such I was only allowed to summon 5 servants for every city (with population more than 10.000) I managed to conquer bringing my total maximum of servants by this point to a miserable 10.

Deciding to make the most of it, I summoned 2 servants that were skilled in matters of administration, ruling and politics and assigned one of them per city while the rest were given the skills needed to make an Assassin's Guild and were ordered to solve the problem with those Sons of Hoes pronto.

Following the advice of my latest well, advisors I transmutated the honking statue of the Harpies above the pyramid of my Leviathan into a statue of me wearing armor with one hand holding my helmet and on the other raising my sword on the sky. Additionally, I used my limited knowledge of runes to make the eyes as well as the blade of my sword glow with a green light similar to my HMS while the details of my armor and my hair glowed an identical crimson to my hair. The runes were dormant during the day, using the ambient magic and energy from the sun to charge up and the moment the sun disappeared from the sky they activated with their light being visible from leagues away. For Asmodeus I did the same but instead of me I made Ellaria holding a poison flask in one hand and a dagger in her other which she really liked if the kiss (with lots of tongue) that she gave me was any indication. Oberyn got no statue but he was pouting at me back then so I didn't particularly care.

The first night they activated the people lost their minds. From that day they all started looking at me in awe and some started worshiping me, calling me the Goddess of the Moon, War and Justice and while I never confirmed such rumors, I never stopped them from making their own conclusions and expressions of worship as long as they didn't hurt anyone. Their greater their awe of me, the most powerful their loyalty so it served me well in undermining those fuckers who seeing their cause losing traction rapidly started taking more drastic and risky actions making themselves ripe for the picking for my assassins and soldiers.

On another matter, the pyramids were situated at the center with the rest of the city built around them and while they used to be the residences and treasuries of the most powerful Masters of the cities, I had repurposed them into hospitals at the bottom, administrator centers in the middle and my throne room, city treasury and residence for the Overseer of the city which was Ellaria for Asmodeus and me for Leviathan, though both of those positions would be transferred to my administrator homunculi who I had named Sirius Asmodeus and Remus Leviathan respectively and whoever says that I plagiarized the names from Harry Potter I will only say that imitation is another form of flattery and anyway my servants my rules so meh. *raspberry*

Dealing with all the problems in Leviathan formerly Yunkai took the better part of 3 months and by this point I was at my witch's end with Oberyn's stubbornness because he still wouldn't fucking talk to me so drastic measures had to be taken. I sent a message to Ellaria we begun planning.

Hey guys, sorry for the delay but I had end of term exams and unfortunately they were a priority. Additionally I re-wrote this fucking vhapter like 8 times and I am still not completely satisfied so please pull your punches in the reviews. It is harder than it looks.