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Essos, Vaes Khadokh
Caspian Blackwood
57 AC
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We had arrived, and truth be told, the city was horrifying. It must have been a grand city in its heyday, judging by its tall bronze and black stone towers that still stood. There was rubble everywhere, as if it were a bombed city, and I had seen many of those, but this, this was different.
The heaviness in the air was enormous; even the oxygen I breathed felt stiff upon entering my lungs. It was something very difficult to explain, but I had only felt the same way when I visited Armero, a city in South America, and the feeling was identical.
It was as if thousands of sorrowful souls were present. "You feel it, don't you?" A silky voice spoke to my right, and I did not have to look to know who it was. "The decay, the weight of death lurking beneath every piece of rubble, how they cry and clamor, wanting to be free."
I looked at her; Valka, the first witch I had summoned to this world. Her appearance was different; gone were her fire-green eyes, the scar marks on her face, and the sinister aura. In her place, the woman standing beside me could pass for a normal woman, and that was a fearful thing to consider. You would not know if a woman in front of you was a witch. And that made them very dangerous.
"Many people died on the same day the city fell; it's normal for the atmosphere to feel like this," I told her, looking at her intently. To be honest, she was attractive; there was something that made me pay attention to her, even with the other witches, whom I had been summoning as we advanced, I did not feel the same way.
"If you wish to establish a foothold here, it is advisable that you banish the ghosts and entities that call this place home. If not, the khalasar runs the risk of encountering danger in ways that are beyond our control." I thought about those words. I had actually considered destroying everything by hand, but Valka told me that would only remove the material, not the unnatural.
And it was then that I thought of the structure block, something I had learned about it was that it not only served to load and save structures, but also to erase them. And although this latter function only covered five hundred square meters, it was better than doing it by hand to destroy what remained of Vaes Khadokh, not to mention that it would also erase any entity or strange thing in the place.
So, wanting to start working immediately, I set out to begin. "Blood of my blood, let the khalasar camp on the outskirts. I will dedicate myself to creating the settlement." I gave instructions to my Bloodriders, and handing my horse to Qrano, I rose into the air and loaded the saved structures: large cabins and huts, bathrooms, stables, water wells, and blacksmiths. Thanks to doing this every time the khalasar stopped to rest, and never stopping the summoning of more blacksmiths, more than half of the khalasar now had new arakhs made of emerald.
This, coupled with the Dothraki armor, along with their horses' armor, had boosted my confidence when facing any other khalasar, although fortunately, this never happened, and our journey was safe.
Once I had set down the settlement structures, I began the real work, which was starting to erase all evidence of Vaes Khadokh from the map. The process consisted of placing the structure block on the ground, setting the erasing option to its maximum extent, and loading it. Upon reaching this last step, faint lines materialized in the air, where the block would erase everything in its established space. And just like that, the magic happened.
A large expanse would disappear: the rubble, towers that were still standing, half-collapsed buildings, I would even say that the air and oxygen in that part vanished as if they had never been there. And it was surprising and terrifying at the same time.
This process was not difficult to do, just very time-consuming and tiring, since, due to the small extent of the block, I could not advance much terrain, coupled with the process of organizing the block, it meant that even after half a day, I had only cleared a quarter of the city.
"My Khal, Qohor is half a day's ride from here. That city humiliated our people, and in it there are sorcerers who use demonic magic," Essino spoke to me during one of my breaks from building the stronghold, telling me about Qohor and how the Dothraki hated the city and its people to death.
I always listened to the stories they had to tell, and today was no different. However, what I heard from them is what sparked my curiosity, "If a Khal decides to rally the khalasars of the Dothraki Sea to raze Qohor, would they follow him?" I asked. My khalasar, although of a considerable size, was nowhere near one of the largest. From Onno I had learned that there were even khalasars with more than sixty thousand warriors, which, by calculation, the entire Dothraki population would account for more than two hundred thousand souls.
In these times, after the Doom of Valyria, the rise of the Dothraki was smooth sailing, so their numbers were much greater than in Daenerys' time, and that caught my attention. The idea of having a cavalry with over two hundred thousand men was attractive, and the idea was nesting in my mind day after day.
However, concentrating them under my hand was neither an easy nor a quick task. I remembered that Daenerys gained the largest khalasar in the known world after burning all the Khals in the temple of Dosh Khaleen, but that was a series, and this, as much as it hurt to say it, was the real world.
And although I could be immune to fire with the help of a potion, there was no way I could manage to gather all the Khals in one place, not without forcing them, and if so, facing their khalasars. That is why the idea of gathering all the khalasars under one command, to destroy Qohor, sounded attractive.
"Khal Temmo was a great Dothraki; he had one of the largest khalasars during the Century of Blood, but even so, he could not sack the city, even after eighteen attacks. To this day, the eunuchs of the city wear the braids of the fallen tied to their spears; it is the greatest offense and humiliation our people have ever endured," Essino explained, and I could tell, from his tone of voice, that he was angry just telling the story.
He took his arakh and raised it horizontally, making a striking motion with the weapon. "If I am told there is an opportunity to take revenge for that, I would gladly accept it," he lowered his arakh and looked at me, "but now I follow the rider of the Horse God, and that is enough for me."
For the following days, I continued building the city, but the idea of Qohor would not leave my mind. I knew that if I managed to conquer Qohor, I would gain a much higher status among the Dothraki Khals, and my name would resonate throughout the world.
Added to what I had already shown my own khalasar, I could pass myself off as the blessed one of the Horse God, and thus, with luck, be able to unify the Dothraki under my power, but that, although exciting, had to wait.
Because I had to finish the city so I could think about whether or not to attack Qohor.
For the city, I decided not to build walls. At first, I had wanted to use the Bedrock block, but in the end, I decided to surround the city with a mountain range high enough to provide protection against attacks and the elements.
That was the most exhausting part, but once I managed to finish a mountain that seemed acceptable to me, I copied it with the structure block, and from there, the work was easier; I just had to make more copies of the mountain appear over and over again with the help of the block, and improve some parts, and that was it.
Once this was done, it was time to organize the terrain, which involved leveling the ground, creating waterfall zones, so that when it rained, the water would run to two parts of the city, where I would build two lakes.
The houses were next, but also the fastest. I did not have to build houses with different designs; instead, I built a large five-story house, each floor with two large apartments, each apartment with more than 500 square meters, with four bedrooms, each room with a bathroom, two living rooms, and a kitchen. Each house, which could well pass for a building, could comfortably house ten people in each apartment.
So, each building was capable of comfortably housing one hundred people. That meant I only had to build 299 identical buildings. It would be the Dothraki's job to memorize where their dwelling was located.
I left two large areas for crops, and to the right of the city, just after entering through the enormous gate, which I made of oak, and which later, when everyone was settled, and the new blacksmiths were working, I would ask the smiths for Netherite plates to reinforce the gate.
To the right of the city, I built three enormous stables. They resembled the Roman Colosseum, except that instead of being points of festivity—or at least one was—the other two were to keep my people's horses, camels, and donkeys in one.
While the breeding and sacrificial animals were in the other, there would be cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens.
To the north of the three stables, I made a lake, which I filled with all kinds of fish, from cod to salmon, I even put turtles in the lake. And to the north of this, I built the blacksmiths and the mine.
The mine was a huge grotto kilometers deep, the walls of which I covered for meters and meters with blocks of diamonds, emeralds, gold, bronze, iron, gold, and Netherite. And as if it had been a strange sign, I finished almost on the seventh day of starting everything. And now, only the most tedious task of all remained, which was distributing everyone to the apartments, but luckily, I had acquired the labor of more villagers, and they would be the ones in charge of that.
For my part, I would have to summon more animals, since even after more than a week, I still did not have the necessary quantity.
(Image)