Chapitre 26: Chapter 24:Sunset Sea(Sanjna's POV)
Asshai sprawls for leagues across both sides of the Ash, and its great walls allegedly could contain Volantis, Qarth, King's Landing, and Oldtown combined. The population of Asshai, however, is no more than that of a good-sized market town. By night only one building in ten shows a light.
The buildings, streets, and walls of Asshai are made out of black stone that seems to drink the light making the city appear to be a dark and gloomy place. Structures include bazaars, halls, hovels, palaces, and temples.
Asshai holds a significant amount of arcane knowledge. Of any current location, it is the most likely to have dragonlore. Ancient books of Asshai also record the Azor Ahai prophecy followed by members of the R'hllor faith.
It is rumored that spellsingers, aeromancers, and warlocks practice their arts openly in Asshai. Asshai is open to all sorts of practitioners of the "higher mysteries" such as godswives, night-walkers, pyromancers, bloodmages, as well as inquisitors, torturers and poisoners, and even worshippers of the Black Goat and Bakkalon and the Lion of Night. No practice is forbidden in the city, however depraved.
Most of the population are slaves. Some slaves worked as miners in the city's amber and dragonglass, gold, and gems mines. Some were slave priests. Some had been and others would become sacrifice slaves to their owners' blood magic. There were even Unsullied that guarded some of the most powerful temples. Although the city was within the shadow land most of the population was not Shadow Men, they were people from all over Essos, some were followers of a dark religion, and others were slaves that came from the route the slave bay-quarth or Jogos Nhai slaves sold by the Yi Tish.
Trade is controlled by the religions that fight over influence in the city. The city is ruled by the shadow council a council formed by the most influential mages from all the religious and cult groups in the city. The number of members a religion has in it depends on the number of freemen followers and their economical and political influence. By far the religion with the most grasp over the city is the R'hollor faith, though even they are not the absolute majority over the city.
My faith has been growing in influence over the city. The shadowbinders that gave origin to this faith were previously followers of R'hollor, Black Goat, and Lion of Night, that somehow were able to feel my metaphysical connection to all shadows in the world. These shadowbinders converted to my faith because my rituals do not demand blood or vitality sacrifice like the traditional shadowbinder magic. I only demand simple worship of myself and following a more dharmic path. As I do not charge a big price, they started to refer to me as the true goddess of shadows.
However, my faith was mainly popular among slaves and the poor, who wanted to have a way to protect themselves from the ones that hold power, because I demand that my followers follow dharma the best they can, which is in someway against the present status-quo of this city. I know demanding that humans always follow dharma is very hard because a mortal's life sometimes gets cloudy in some moments making every possible action seem like a wrong one, the famous moral dilemmas.
I was gradually guiding the shadowbinders for a more virtuous path. My faith, with my direct guidance, was taking being quite unsavory to most mages in the city, as it condemned blood sacrifice and slavery.
Three of the most powerful religions were losing priests, students, and followers to my faith, which made R'hollor priests propose to the other religions to make common ground and exterminate my faith. It was unanimously approved, even though it went against the city's major law that no faith should ever be subjected to extermination. This law may have started because the city was created to be a place of free practice of different religions, or because the city was holy ground for several religions.
"Then, you would give a temporary boost in power to your believers and exterminate the remaining godless religions, after my own" I said to R'hllor.
"Yes, fake god's like you whore should not be..." R'hllor started shouting.
All of a sudden, the dimension started to become hotter, R'hllor was sweating and did not know if he should kneel or tremble in fear in the presence of my husband.
"You lad called my wife what?" My husband shouted.
"I am dealing with this myself, so calm down."I said to him.
"Yes, dear." He said.
"You annoying and disrespectful lad will learn a lesson. Let's see."I said. I thought I would request a bit of aquamarine steel from Karna, as it's the closest there is to a divine metal I can get right now.
"Hubby, can you help me with this?"I ask my husband. With only a look he understood what I aimed to do.
So while I lifted R'hllor by the throat, I and my husband used our divinity to improve the quality of the aquamarine steel, and then I put the most important material for the recipe R'hllor's soul. With this, we forged a metal red-purple bow, powered by the red god. It sealed him in a way that he could not interact in any way with the outside world.
It's a custom of the Rhoynars that parents should give a gift to their son or daughter when they marry. I think I and my husband should give my stepson Karna this bow as a marriage gift. It surely would be quite helpful to him in the battles to come.
"What to do about the 'Great Other'? Oh, I see."I ask and then said. I sensed that little after R'hllor's imprisonment, its rival tried to ravage the world with a premature winter as cold as the long night and was quickly suppressed and sealed by Mother Rhoyne.
To avoid my followers from suffering genocide, I guided them, by walking in the shadows, to steal every whip used to command Unsullied in the city. Later, they united all the slaves in the city who were willing to follow them and cast fires to spread shadows. With divinity, I temporarily turned the shadow into portals. So the city was evacuated by my believers.
At the end of the portals was the twilight on three unhabituated islands in the Sunset Sea, I warned my followers that they were spread in these three different islands. The islands are pleasant and bountiful. Springs and streams provide plentiful fresh water.
The islands were previously uninhabited but for the wildlife, including wild pigs and huge, sluggish grey lizards as big as deer, whose bites can cause severe infections. I guided my followers about the danger of these lizards. The trees are heavy with edible nuts and fruits unknown in other lands. I guided them about which fruits were edible.
The islands are located several weeks' travel away from Oldtown, slightly farther south than the latitude of the Summer Isles, and at a longitude farther west than even Lonely Light. The islands are very small, with a combined land area no larger than Dragonstone; the largest of the islands is no more than a third the size of Dragonstone itself. They can be described as a mountain and two hills. I also guided them to adopt the agricultural method that I saw Karna using in his city but combining it with the agricultural methods from the remains from the Patrimony of Hyrkoon that are focused on growing crops in mountainous regions.
In Kayakayanaya, Shamyriana, and Bayasabhad they use stone terraces to keep the important Bone Mountains from eroding down the mountainside and to insulate the roots of plants during cold nights and hold in the moisture of the soil, keeping plants growing and producing longer in high altitudes. It's a pity that my people will not be able to irrigate these terraces by using water melting from nearby glaciers like Hyrkoon's do by building irrigation canals to move the water and cisterns to store the water.
Later, I gave them a vision of other islands spread in the Sun Set sea. So they started to build ships and spread throughout the sea, and soon would grow to inhabit one hundred and eight islands.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone