'Son of a mother fucking bitchcake this is not how I wanted my day to end'.

Dirk heaved as he hauled ass up the steep forested hill. His office shoes were decidedly fucking useless at providing much needed purhcase on the wet rocks of the stream he was following. After patches of moss and smooth rock put him on his ass twice in as many seconds, he decided he'd be better off trying to push through the dense undergrowth along the banks rather than risk twisting his ankle or breaking his tailbone at a time like this. Behind him, he heard the distinctive sounds of pursuit. Shouts and calls in some foreign language he didn't recognise could be heard, as well as whoops and laughs of excitement, and they were disturbingly close by.

His first few moments in this new place had been pretty nice. The sudden change of scenery did little to affect his cheery disposition, having just been accepted on the spot for a new position at a local tech company. He'd marvelled at the brilliant blue hue of the sky, the warmth of the sun, and the sight of the horse-drawn caravan that had stopped dead some fifteen meters away. He'd even raised a hand and nearly called out a friendly greeting.

Then he'd seen the cages. Those cages had killed his good mood faster than he could say "Well how d'you do?"

Filled with people, all of them emaciated and frail looking. Some had loose rags, but many of them were stark naked, and all of them were absolutely filthy, it was perhaps the most shocking thing he'd ever encountered in person. He might have considered the whole thing a setup, but one glance at the obviously starved people dispelled that thought. You can't fake that kind of starvation. It was such an open and blatant display of inhuman treatment that it left him speechless.

Then he saw the... people? Not in the cages, but the ones around them, they were adorned in metal armour and had long, shining spears. Their features were strange, though clearly male they all had long hair, and their faces were taller and more angular than he was used to, though not really outside what he would consider 'human'. What really stood out to him were the eyes. Each of the slavers - as it was pretty clear that's what they were - possessed the strangest glowing eyes he'd ever seen. Not even with contacts could you truly replicate the effect of their eyes. The pupils of their eyes literally shone with different colours of light and glittered as their various gazes rested on him.

"Schöroughladmavdeuar" one of the riders said, before kicking his horse into a trot and raising his spear. Dirk had put two and two together and booked it. The riders had laughed and given chase.

And that's how he gotten here, dressed in business clothes, running up a ridge to the top of some random hill in some godforsaken forest in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, with alien fucking slavers after him.

"Fuck me!" he cried out with his exhale as a stone whizzed past his head, destroying leaves and smashing through a branch before lodging itself firmly in the ground. Whoever had thrown that rock had thrown it hard, and hadn't been overly concerned for the state of the target upon impact. Daring to glance behind him as he continued his mad scramble, he saw one of the riders, no longer on his horse in the thick forest, raise his hand with yet another oddly smooth and discus-like rock, small and perhaps fashioned for the purpose of throwing. As he wound back to throw his eyes flashed even brighter for a moment, and his arm whipped forwards with unerring precision and deceptive speed. The projectile made very little noise as it flew through the air, but luckily Dirk was able to move his head out of the way before he had his skull caved in. "Just leave me alone you fuckers!" he shouted.

The one who had thrown rocks at him was giving chase, and they weren't wearing office shoes. Realizing he was simply losing ground and out of options, Dirk whirled around with a snarl while lunging at the man. A flash of surprise showed clearly on the man's face before Dirk had his hands around their throat and was throwing them to the ground. Dirk didn't really want to sit there and strangle this man, but he was panicking, out of breath, and too afraid to let go and potentially allow retaliation, he pressed his advantage by applying more and more weight to the man's windpipe. Suddenly, shouting could be heard from all around and Dirk looked up too late to realise he'd been surrounded. Finally letting up on the man beneath him, Dirk rose slowly into a crouched position, analysing the dozen or so men who now surrounded him. There was a rasping sound beneath him as the man he'd strangled gasped for air, but he was in no condition to rejoin his comrades any time soon.

It occurred to Dirk that he might want to use the rock-thrower as a hostage in order to bargain his way out, but before he could act on that thought, his world went dark.

* * *

Dirk awoke with the second worst headache he'd ever experienced, though he could tell straight away that it was just biding its time to take first place. Groggily looking around with as little effort as possible, he noted that he was sitting with his back rested uncomfortably against the side of the cage, and the jostling he was experiencing suggested that he was moving. So they caught him, then. He very quickly realised that he was completely naked, which under different circumstances would have bothered him a lot more. Looking around the cage more, he saw half a dozen other people also imprisoned along with him, all of them dangerously thin and were either asleep or staring despondently at nothing. Their skin was much darker than his was, and had a leathery quality to it, clearly these people were worked hard.

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Looking outside the cage, he could see several other cages similar to his. Most of them held men, but some held women and one even held a dozen of so small children. Anger the likes of which he was unaccustomed to boiled within Dirk at the sight, but he was not stupid enough to not realise that there was little to be done about it at the moment. Riding next to the procession of prisoners were guards, each riding a single horse and dressed in the same uniform-esque gear. They carried long spears and also wore a bandolier of what Dirk now recognised as the stones that Stone-Thrower had hurled at him. Dirk could only see just over a dozen guards, though he suspected there were almost certainly more out of his line of sight.

The dense forest that he'd arrived in had given way to hilly farmland, and the road was now roughly following a small river.

A deep and gravelly voice came from Dirk's left, the low rumble a stark contrast to the man's slight figure. "Hey you. You're finally awake."

"Oh fuck off." Dirk grumbled under his breath, but raised his head to meet the man's gaze. "You speak english?"

"Fuck you mamin' about? You dumb? A dumb little country priss'ead?" His accent was unlike anything Dirk had heard, something like a cockney british and south african hybrid, yet even still more distinct. Some of the slang words were unfamiliar as well. Regardless, it was undeniably english, which raised questions of its own.

"I... I don't know where I am. Or what's going on." Dirk said. It was surprisingly difficult to say, but it needed to be said. Dirk understood exactly what had happened at a cerebral level; He'd been captured by strange slavers and locked in a cage in a horse-drawn slave caravan in a region of the world he had no business being. How he'd even arrived here was a mystery, his last memory before this was of stepping outside after his interview. 'Fuck, my phone and keys are gone!' They'd be in his pockets still, unless the slavers removed them. He idly wondered if these people would even know what they were, or if they were living so primitive out here that they'd just discard them. Surely not, right?

"Hey, priss'ead, I'm speak to you. You look at me when I'm speak to you, or I'm kill you, you hear?" The aggressive tone of his voice finally registered in Dirk's brain, and immediately he felt his heart rate begin to climb. "You're give food to me tonight, or I'm kill you. You hear?"

"Are you really threatening me for food?"

"You fat boy. You fed too much. Give to me. I'm kill you." Dirk was many things, but fat was not one of them. If anything he'd tell people he was too skinny. He'd always struggled to put on weight, and only in the last few years, when he began regularly visiting gyms, had he actually put on any significant weight as muscle. As it stood, he'd say he was probably a fairly in-shape twenty year old.

"And what about the others? Why should you get mor- uhf!" Dirk's retort was cut short from a blunt jab to the kidney that left him out of breath. Turning, he saw Stone-Thrower riding alongside the cage, giving him the most hateful look he'd ever seen. Dirk felt shivers run down his spine as he realised he had a real honest-to-god enemy now. He'd never really been particularly controversial back home, so it was almost funny to think that day one in a foreign country and he'd already made an enemy.

"Gohlfaxvarneardahrloghl." Again the strange dialect that these glowing-eyed people spoke was completely incomprehensible to him, he couldn't even make out words from the mess of syllables and sounds they spoke. Although the hand sign, that of him closing a fist by his mouth, was pretty universal. No talking. Dirk's eyes met with Stone-Throwers and for a few moments they held their gazes. Dirk was never one to go for power plays or shows of dominance through body language, in fact usually he never thought about it, but in such a situation he could clearly see how the glow-eyed man's anger level rose in proportion to how long Dirk held his gaze. Dirk turned his head away first, despite some petty side of him wanting to stare the man down. Angering his captors any more than he already had was surely a terrible idea. Slaves were traditionally not treated well, and the evidence suggested that things were no different here, so any excuse he gave them would just make life harder for the foreseeable future.

"You give food, I'm kill you." said the small man that Dirk had started to think of as Kilyu, though much quieter and only once he was sure Stone-Thrower was out of earshot.

Dirk only had to think for a second. If he allowed Kilyu to take his food portions, assuming Dirk even got any, then he'd be setting a precedent for others to do the same. Considering how skinny these people already are, they surely don't get fed much, meaning that even a single missed meal is a vital lack of energy. Dirk knew from experience that food is vital to staying healthy, as well as fresh water and good rest. If he allowed his food to get taken from him, then even more people would try to take from him in the future. So, in other words, even if he was going to have to fight for it, there was no way Dirk was giving up his food.

* * *

I think that's all I'll write for now. I definitely want to continue writing, but I also just want to get this out there. Consider this like a prologue chapter, or an intro of sorts, and expect any future chapters to be a bit longer. I would like to say I'm gonna write a chapter a day, but I'm not putting any pressure on myself. If you liked this and would like to read more, feel free to DM me and let me know, and I will happily make time to write out some more. If you didn't like this and want me to stop...

...well, I'm sorry I guess.

Anyways, I have a few good ideas for the direction that I want the next chapter to go in. As I briefly mentioned in the blurb, I am writing this on a whim and I have done literally zero preplanning. Everything you just read is off the top of my head, but honestly that's my favourite way to write. As always, remember to like, comment, subscribe, follow, rate, share, favourite, bookmark, friend me, save my number as a contact, and ring the notification bell so you can be notified right away when I release a new video. It really helps out the channel.