The Asshai's Bloodmage

 Soon after Rafael's ships left Qarth, the current leader of the city was woken up earlier than usual to fulfill his duties. Normally he didn't even need to get up so early, but since the fall of Valyria, everything has been extremely tumultuous. His wife sat down next to him after they had breakfast together, and began to help him with the letters and messages sent to him.

Usually, many letters arrive from merchants or commoners who decide to ask for help or complain about something to the local lord, so his wife helps him check them since some of these letters may contain important information. And today that was the case, his wife put her hand over her mouth while holding a certain letter and shouted:

"DEAR, READ THIS!"

I was startled by her overreaction so I quickly went to her and started reading:

(The Great Emperor has fallen, and the shadows of his fall spread across the world.

From the twilight of the ages, a century of blood will be born.

Kings will rise from every corner, and pretenders to the throne will threaten their home.

A swarm of cruel sharks will swim in the sea of ​​sand, devastating everything in their path.

The last knights of the emperor will fall, either upholding their legacy or returning to their cursed land.

This is the new vision of the Red Sage, do not wait for danger to arrive and prepare yourself.)

I take a deep breath trying to understand as I read it a second time. The news about Valyria arrived through many crows, and one name was responsible for the survival of many commoners. The Red Sage, many priests of some religions have offered rewards for the whereabouts or information about such a person.

"Why did he send a message to us?" I wonder aloud.

"Maybe he wants to protect the well-being of the commoners of Qarth?" My wife replies.

"Yes... Maybe it's his intention to warn us, our city is in a very important strategic point if a period of wars is going to start then we will be targets, the other Kings must refer to the other cities declaring their independence. And the pretenders do not refer to heirs, but rather people with ambitions over our city."

"And the sharks in the sand sea, any clue as to what this means?"

"Some, but I can't confirm yet, we must prioritize more trade routes by sea and reduce caravans through the desert, obtain more ships to protect our port and surroundings and prepare a larger army while we are still at peace. If such a war is going to last 100 years may the Gods have mercy on us." I say while making a religious sign.

My wife quickly repeats my words making the same signs. Suddenly a soldier runs in:

'Sir, some important information has arrived about a matter you asked to investigate.'

"Speak!"

"This morning, many civilians reported that last night in a tavern in the port, there were several men who claimed to be part of the Red Sage's crew. They said they had been following him since they left Valyria. They also told many details about this person. Here is everything we have collected. Unfortunately, the supposed ships that the Sage was on board have already departed 3 hours ago, but we have confirmed that they were ships of survivors from Valyria."

As soon as the guard left, my wife advanced towards me, almost taking the papers from my hands and asking for details about the Red Sage.

"Quick, dear, let me see!"

Without much choice, I began to read out loud:

"He goes by the name of Rafael, silver hair, red eyes, about 1.85 meters tall, he is 16-17 years old. Despite his age, they say he is a mature, charismatic and powerful man, he uses powerful magical weapons, he took the lives of many pirates and even some sea monsters personally, he defeated the crew of Jones the "Bonebreaker" and handed him over yesterday for his reward, he can use fire magic, his ship is the Valyrian Sigh and he is heading to Asshai."

"Incredible, besides seeing the future, he is a man with such fighting capabilities, the most incredible thing is his age... Dear, quickly send a ship after him, we must marry him to one of our daughters."

He really seems like a formidable young man, but remember not to be too picky, he has already given us valuable information, we cannot be greedy and try to keep him in our house. When will our trade fleet go to Asshai?

"In 3 weeks, if all goes well."

"Just prepare a thank you gift and send it to him."

After his wife agreed with him and left the room a little dissatisfied, his eyes turned to the part about the emperor's knights and the cursed land. He had already heard some rumors of people trying to return to Valyria to find gold, riches or simply recreate their empire, but there were no responses from anyone. Even the Lord of New Ghis who sent some ships to explore reported that none of them returned and there were no responses. Now the Red Sage mentioned a cursed land... It could only be Valyria. He then decided to burn the message after memorizing it, and just wait. It was better that this part about the curse took a long time to be discovered, especially for the remaining dragonlords.

***

 While Rafael's information spread quickly to the temples and even to the commoners, he was on the ship unaware that his crew had leaked so much information. More than a month had passed since they left Qarth.

At that moment, Julius, one of the crew members who had worked for Captain Henry for many years, was sitting at lunch. Sitting in front of him was his wife, who was a passenger, and his son, who was 13 years old and an apprentice on the ship. They were also having lunch. Julius slowly moved towards his wife and whispered:

"Yesterday I was on watch on the night shift, and I saw them gathering." When his wife heard "them," she quickly lowered her head and moved closer to the table to try to get closer to her husband while listening. He then continued: "It was almost 9 pm, everyone was wearing colorful robes and had some animal with them. They all gathered in the empty cabin, and stayed there until late at night."

The curious wife then said:

"Didn't you come closer to hear something?"

"What nonsense are you talking? I don't want to offend a bunch of wizards and end up like those unfortunate pirates."

"Little Larry said that some men delivered two pirates yesterday early in the evening to the same cabin, and while they were inside he said he saw a board full of strange numbers and a bookshelf with several books with strange symbols and most of them had blood red letters." Julius' son said with a scared and excited face, as he looked at his father and mother, soon the mother also continued:

"We shouldn't be afraid of the unknown, this was normal in Valyria, it was just more secretive without much being done in the public eye, but certain "incidents" happened from time to time and I saw many of them when I worked as a servant in one of the 40 families. I'm only interested in whether our son could become an apprentice to one of them, you saw them fighting when we were under attack by pirates two weeks ago. Some men were melted alive by acids and others were trapped in a pile of plants that came out of the floor of the ship itself. If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't have believed it."

Soon another woman who was carrying a bowl of food came close and heard part of the conversation and sat down saying:

"I go to the deck early in the morning almost every day to sunbathe, and I've seen some of them giving various orders to the animals, I never thought crows could be so intelligent to the point of following orders like that."

Julius spoke again: "Didn't you see how Lord Zhang has lost weight and changed completely? This is powerful blood witchcraft, the man has practically become another person, he now has enormous strength, not even the strongest new recruit can beat him in arm wrestling, and you know that among them there are some very strong ones with Dothraki blood…"

The conversation continued for a long time, and related parts of the fight where the crew defeated 4 small pirate ships that followed them after leaving Qarth, the secret meetings, the active participation of all the supposed "sorcerers" in the battles, the domestication of small animals and even other strange things. But unlike what one would expect in other places, magic was very common in Valyria and some atrocities of the Blood Mages were well known by the commoners, but beyond the fear of the unknown all the crew had was admiration, since in the last attack Pirate invaders were quickly and cruelly destroyed. One of the small ships was sunk by the mighty beasts before it even got close, the other lost its sails and ran aground, and the last two were paired with the two ships under the orders of Captains Henry and Will and it was a complete massacre. After that, the people on board began to travel in peace and even enjoy themselves as if they were on vacation. With so many sorcerers on board the ship there would be no danger they could not face.

In the small smithy within Valyria's sigh, Raphael was hurriedly summoned by his blacksmith's apprentice. He had visited this morning and handed over his rusty old sword that was now also burnt to his blacksmith to reforge, he would have gotten rid of it if it hadn't been a gift from his mother, but as he began the reforging process something unimaginable happened, melting the sword at the melting temperature of steel, the old, rusty metal came off like a cape and revealed what was underneath… It was Valyrian Steel! Rafael, his blacksmith and apprentice were open-mouthed.

"Boss, didn't you know?"

"How could I know? It was a gift left by my mother, it was always an old and rusty sword, but its blade cut very well and was light and easy to use. I never imagined that under a simple layer of cheap steel hid such a treasure. "

Rafael was always a little jealous of Omar for his Cutter of the Seas, Valyrian Steel swords were incredibly rare even during the period of the Valyrian empire and now that much of this steel is on the cursed island, the ones that are left are worth the price of a city and an army together, but even if they offered such value there would be no sellers. At that moment Rafael felt extremely grateful for his mother and almost cursed his father for throwing such a treasure into the sea during his rage. If he had missed that, he would have aged a few decades by the time he found out. Without needing to reforge the sword, I take it back and leave the smithy. As I admire the new shine of the red-hilted sword, I just sigh and regret not knowing its name.

Looking at the system I see the familiar messages, in the last month due to the pirate attack, I finally completed some of the missions.

[Special mission completed]

Kill pirates: 200/200

Kill sea monsters: 10/10

[Experience has been gained]

[Special Reward: Treasure Map]

[Optional mission completed:]

-Store and study the corpse of a mutated sea creature

[Experience has been gained]

I also studied the creature's corpse and the system helped me identify it as one of the races known as fish-men and it was also a mutant, I found it interesting that I only needed to understand its anatomy and the system identified it quickly, I didn't know it had such a function hidden, but I believe it was a creature created and altered by a Bloodmage, so the system identified it easily. The treasure map was a surprise, it wasn't what I expected from the special mission, but it's not something I can explore at that time. The reason is that the treasure is on Manticore Island, and I don't have the confidence to go to such a dangerous place at the moment. Being a system treasure map, it shouldn't be something common like gold or jewels, the islands are in the jade sea and I can go there in the future when I feel more confident.

I go to the Order room and see Fatty training a bird. I made the taming method that Esmer gave me available for 200 points and everyone bought it, with the exception of Omar, Fatty and Jhon who had already received it before. This generated a new hobby among apprentices which was training small animals, I had even started training a crow as a form of training for when I was ready to hatch the fire worm egg. According to my knowledge, fire worms feed on rocks, although they eat other things, I wanted to avoid hatching their egg while I'm at sea.

It wasn't like my crow was useless either, it was modified and had a larger than normal size, red feathers, large sharp claws and was making changes to it constantly as it gained weight. I wanted to see if it was possible to increase its size further or even make it more resistant, that would be good enough. We had another exploration of a second wreck, but it was not as dangerous as the first and not as profitable. With that, life on board continued and our arrival in Asshai was getting closer and closer.

Special thanks to Patreons:

Magic Apprentice: Parsa, Pato Senalima, Axel Bour, Gabriele Sulpizio and Vinnie