THE REIGN OF WOMEN

S1 EP2: The Blind Maker

502 AD, Slaver's Watch, Sparta

Once met with ground, Sapphira felt a change in the air she breathed. The foul smell of White Wardens finally left her and now the smell of decomposition and excrement met her nose as they stepped foot onto Slaver's Watch grounds. For just a second, Sapphira had hoped the clean air at Bay was spread through the City but she was wrong.

Unlike the poor city of Katalie, or Magior, in the City of Light, the Slaver's Watch in Sparta was a nightmare in comparison. On top of living in poverty, the City was a walking epidemic. Inside the Watcher's Gate, living subjects were followed by insects and decomposition. Dead and decomposing bodies, lay out on the street and were irregularly picked up by slaves and tossed into a corner.

To get around, the people of the Watch lifted their feet so as not to step on the bodies spread out through the City, that await to be collected and tossed into a mound.

Because of the decomposing bodies, many illnesses circled through the air. Every day more and more people die. Some would succumb to a deadly disease they inherited from the air, others would choke on the poisonous fumes of the City and others were killed and hanged at the Watcher's Gate for attempting to break out and escape the death that followed.

Using a piece of fabric from her dress, Sapphira covered her mouth and nose in hopes of not retracting a disease that would end her short life, while they moved through the City. Sapphira remembered being carried by Warden Thormund and seeing children shackled by their feet, their bones sticking out of their bodies and many of them had nothing but underpants on.

She felt for those children and for the fathers who had to watch their children slowly and painfully die. How could one be so cruel?

As Thormund brought Sapphira to where she was to meet her Masters, he walked closely by the Watcher's Gate where suddenly a small body had fallen from the sky and every bone in its body had broken. At the realization of what had happened, Sapphira's body shook aggressively and her hands jumped to her ears.

"2586," another slave shouted from afar.

"The slaves keep count of how many people try to escape and die." Thormund coldly stated.

The Watcher's Gate was a terrifying place, one not meant for a child. It was built to keep the slaves inside and prevent them from escaping into Eternos and Dospos. While it is named the Watcher's Gate it is indeed a city, renamed after an unknown catastrophe.

Sapphira had been told of its existence yet she could never have imagined a story to feel so real.

Before the Gate was built, the City was called Sento and was once the Capital of Sparta. Many healthy inhabitants occupied it, but according to an Acarian Myth, it is believed that in the early days of 15 AD, the City burned down due to the destruction of Ethos killing every single Spartan, there ever was.

The City became uninhabitable until Boros Stark, founder of the Kostōba Tribe, appointed the Land to House Corleone who rebuilt most of it.

The destruction of Ethos was also believed to have been just a myth, though many people considered it. Due to its history, it became a factor of House Stark, despite the destruction never being documented in any books.

Sapphira did not know much of the History of Eternos or any History but she had heard tales from her father and his Band of Brothers.

The Masters of the Slaver's Watch wore white and golden Kaftans with a sash, and steel masks covering their whole faces, allegedly shielding them from catching diseases while they operated inside the gates. Once they traveled to the east of Sparta, no masks were required outside the gates as the air was clean and the people wealthy.