(Negary pov)
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'Let's go kill the Faceless and eat their souls, maybe steal some assassin skills...20 minute fucking adventure, huh?'
I stood on top of the ruins of the House of Black and White. Emerald flames danced around me, their hypnotic glow reflecting in my eyes as I stood amidst the chaos I had wrought. I observed as they voraciously consumed everything in their path—wood and stone alike. What once stood proudly as a bastion of faith and the home of the faceless assassins was now being mercilessly reduced to rubble. The inferno blazed with such ferocity that even the stout marble, so meticulously laid in the construction of the temple, succumbed to its unrelenting fury. Silent witness to the destruction unfolding before me, I watched as the grandeur of the temple crumbled into dust and ash.
At the same time, I also watched Braavos in the distance with both my enhanced eyesight and my soul sense. Now that the sun had set, the city was dark but not silent. There were people everywhere, talking, drinking, fucking, and the sound of the waves crashed against the shore and the city itself. There were lights, some of them were bright, and there were some that were dim.
My initial plan was quite simple. Just send a split soul to Essos, hunt some Warlocks and eat their souls to absorb magical skills. Shadowbinders, Priests of R'hllor, Soothsayers and everything in between was on the menu.
This was supposed to be done in secret, maybe over the course of several years, while my original soul strengthened our foundation by gathering the souls of hundreds of thousands back is Westros.
But...everyone has a plan until they get their head cut off a few times by a God.
I raised my gaze towards the sky, only to be met by the baleful red light emitted by the red star in the sky. I could feel my skin prickling from the obscene amount of mana and soul energy radiating from it, but at this point it was a familiar sensation...
The maiden's avatar disappeared after finishing its story..and while I expected a shit show this went above and beyond.
'The Stranger, as it was named by the king of Andals, led an army towards westros , against the First Men and the Children of the Forest, and while humans fought amongst themselves, The Stranger hunted the Children one by one, as they were nowhere near as strong as they were thousands of years ago...and ironically, to prevent him from growing too strong after eating their souls, the Mother and the Father, the strongest aspects amongst the good ones, had to start hunting the Children as well, just so they could maintain the balance of power between the Stranger and the other 6....I wonder how Leaf would react if I told her this story...'
I had long since suspected the reason for that, but now I had confirmation...after all, if the 7 weren't dead, where would they be hiding? Since they were constantly fighting amongst themselves, attempting to suppress each other, how much devastation would they produce? A fight on that level would make Aegon's conquer of Westros look like a warm hug...and for all their flaws, the Maiden claimed that the 6 lawful aspects didn't wish for the needless loss of human life...
...so they thought of a solution.
A place where they could keep the Stranger contained, far away from fresh souls or humans it could influence...where else than the freaking stratosphere?
My attention was drawn towards Braavos once more, specifically towards the small pulses of mana emanating from within the city.
Warlocks, too curious for their own good, using scrying magic to find the out why the temple of Death was burning. Not an unreasonable choice, all things considered but not one I was inclined to forgive...
My timetable had to be brought forward, after all I didn't know how long I had until the Red Comet landed, and right now I didn't really fancy my chances.
While I seemed unfazed by the Maiden's avatar, that was only due to the fact that my other split soul was providing me with soul energy through our connection during the fight, making me able to fight relentlessly.
My luck lay in the fact that the Maiden couldn't control her avatar with too much finesse all the way from orbit, so she wasn't able to sense and sever our connection. If she somehow did, I would have struggled to even escape, such was the power of that avatar.
And all that was but a fraction of the Maiden's power, controlled by a fraction of her consciousness, while she was busy suppressing the Stranger. Add in the fact that in her words, she was the weakest of all aspects, well, it didn't paint a pretty picture for myself.
And of course...since I wasn't the type to just roll over and die...I would have start putting in some work...
The smouldering ruins all around me could be called an intermediary step toward that goal. What they accomplished was to let any decently strong warlock know of my location. Through them, the word would spread throughout Essos and beyond, that the House of Black and White had fallen.
The cautious would hide and lay low, but the greedy would rear their ugly heads, like those chucklefucks from the House of Undying and many others.
Since I didn't have the time to be a hunter hiding in the night, I would become a raging bonfire.
And I'll burn this whole continent to the ground if that's what it takes to win…
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A.N - it's been a long time but I'm back.
Friendly advice - Don't let Perfect be the enemy of Good.