I vibrate, my thoughts hissing like a tea kettle jetting out steam. For there is no such thing as owning a person; hell, we practically eradicated the idea of property decades ago. No, I refuse to accept that the spirit essentially owns everyone here!

But I think while tapping off the glasses. It does make sense why he can teleport them so freely now, meaning, and belief heavily affect your magic, and I would bet my nonexistent hat on him getting a massive increase in efficiency for them being his property. Eugh I shiver at the thought of that.

But that does mean that if I free them, it would quickly become ruinous to keep teleporting everyone. There has to be a limit considering that if there wasn’t he would most likely be doing a lot more to intimidate, browbeat, and dishearten the people with his magic.

It won’t be easy to do so. But magic appreciates a bit of pomp and flair, and I see nothing but a thug. So it should be very easy to shatter the weight behind the magical slavery, considering that the whole thing is very fragile. So if I make a big deal out of the Duraja people being freed, then most likely the magic will follow the lead of the one with more weight behind it.

And well, even if this leads to nothing, I am not willing to just leave people branded with their ownership. Oh gods above and below is the situation in which I find myself both ridiculous and quite distressing. Well, if I want more metaphorical weight, I should most likely use something from their culture.

So I walk over to Adjo, still resting with my breastplate on him, healing his wounds, and I ask, “Hey, Adjo, I’m going to need you for a bit. Is there any ceremony that usually indicates that slaves were freed? This if of grave importance”

Groggy, he says back “No, why would we need one? We don’t have slaves; others do, but we specialize pretty heavily in diplomacy; if we are going out to battle and taking slaves, we have already failed.”

I frown, from what I understand, slavery was pretty much a fact of life for the losers of political conflicts, and wars during this time. So it is both unexpected and frustrating that they don’t have essential policies or traditions around slavery. Hmm, it looks like this got just a bit more complicated.

Those thoughts still on my mind I say, “Alright, go fetch everyone, and get me a link of chain, I’m going to make a speech.”

Because if there are no traditions, then I will just have to make some of my own.

—

I stride forward as I go up the stairs, not that they are worthy of being called stairs; they are more like a collection of crates sloppily pulled together for a higher platform. But it doesn’t matter how the stairs look if they only see what’s on top of them.

After all, despite my own blindness to it, I am apparently a figure of blinding light to everyone else. And they aren’t going to pay attention to anything else other than the figure of incandescent light. So despite my mourning for my protection, the armor stays off for dramatic effect. After all, a speech is nothing but dramatic effect, and spit.

With one last step, I reach the top, my light most likely cresting like a sunrise, symbolizing our rise and all that crap. I stand at the top, overlooking all of the people, my arms itching for a podium to grasp, but I start nonetheless.

“Are you content to be animals kept diligently in their pens? Gently shoved back inside by their master whenever they try to leave?” I ask rhetorically, in a slow and deliberate manner.

I survey the people, taking the time to look into the eyes of a great many of them for a couple of seconds, and they are scared, hesitant. Few make the effort to say no or even shake their heads.

And that must be changed, so I lower myself, getting closer to them, as I say in a firm whisper, “Well, I say NO!”

The people shocked out of their stupor look up at me, and I can feel the gears start to turn in their minds. Encouraged, I gesture upward with my hands.

“No, we are not animals; we are not babes forced to listen to those above; no, we are humans.”

“And a human does not just sit down and take it when freedom is a few steps away. We are not animals who stay in their prisons made of sticks, and twine. We are humans, and we do not stay in our chains, at least not for long.” I say pushing and pulling the crowd, drawing back the water so that a flood might come.

And as I do so, I see heads rise and eyes harden, with the firm resolve to do something even if it hurts, even if they can’t see the way forward. But despite their confusion it will be okay because I will show the way.

Raising the link of chain that Adjo had given me, I place it into the sky, the metal cleverly made fragile by me fluctuating the temperature quite rapidly with my guantlets. And I say, “HUMANITY KNOWS BETTER THAN TO BE CONTENT WITH OUR CHAINS, SO LET US TOGETHER BREAK THOSE WHO ASPIRE TO CHAIN US!”

And with that, I smash the chain against my knee, and it crumbles into shards that rain down onto the crowd below. Along with the broken chain, I can hear a strange creaking as thousands of brandings strain and *snap*!

And with that snap, I start to hear a crack. I frown and peer down on the excited people, only to see their smiling faces bloat and inflate before exploding. One after another, and soon all the smiles and cheers turn into nothing but horrified screams.

As their neighbors, friends, and spouses heads explode into showers of blood, painting all nearby in a coating of red and gray. Worst of all, before their heads turn into fountains, they can feel it, their heads slowly being pumped before they *pop*.

Unable to withstand this sight, I tumble down the set of crates, my own weak knees unable to take the strain, and I fall into the blood. Quickly, my skin-tight clothing gets soaked in blood, but I can’t be bothered to do anything.

I lay there in the newly created muck formed from the dead as they run and scream like chickens with their heads cut off. And that metaphor quickly becomes prescient as their heads explode and they fall to the floor.

And soon I hear nothing at all except for a single groan. I wearily turn to meet it, and I see Adjo. His head starts to inflate as he croaks out, “This is all your fault; none of this would have happened if you had just left us alone.”

And with his dying breath, his mind explodes, sending shards of skull, blood, and bits of brain into the air. And all those little pieces scatter, and a piece of Adjo’s brain that poor, dedicated boy *splats* onto my face and slowly slides down.

And I think my brain just collapses, unable to put up a fight or even conjure horror in the wake of the grisly deaths of each and every person I foolishly tried to save.

I try to cry, to force a tear down my face as some grim sign that they meant something to me, but I can’t. Not when I am their murderer. Adjo was right—if I had just refused, none of this would have happened.

And I give up, my face falling onto the bloodstained ground, stricken with sharp bits of bone and gray matter. All I can see, my own failure.

But with a *crack* I realize something: that demented bastard couldn’t have possibly resisted laughing at me, for even daring to hope.

And if this wasn’t to hurt me, well, then why am I still alive? The people’s brands broke before he killed them, so it’s not like that’s the answer. It’s more believable that a spirit of mystery whose power lies in deceit would trap me in an illusion. Rather than be able to instantly murder all of his opposition.

So that must mean that there is something to hope for. That there is more than this grim vision, so I stand up and rise above the lies, refusing to fall to this pain. And with a terrible rip, the entire world that I see is torn into shreds. Falling apart like wet tissue paper in a hurricane.

—

I awake not amongst a pool of blood but amongst a sea of people, murmuring shocked whispers as I lie among their assorted arms, toppled off the platform I was on earlier.

I frantically look around and sigh in relief to see each of their faces. Yet no matter how hard I try I cannot get rid of the image of those faces inflating. Each person I see, I see their decapitated head as well, just out of view.

I attempt to grimace but quickly stop myself. They are already distressed enough by my weakness; I can’t dishearten them at this crucial juncture.

But I don’t have to worry for long as soon a booming voice echoes out, “Oh bloody hell, you survived? Humf, it looks like I will have to retrieve the dissident sheep in person.”

I maintain my stoic expression as my mind starts to run at full speed within its confines. Because in the end, while the spirit might be a pompous, idiotic bastard, it has shown its might to be terrifying.

Mere seconds ago, I was in danger of just staying forevor in his custom-crafted illusion of despair. And the ability to affect both space and gravity is simply supreme. He sculpts the fundamental forces of the universe like they are playdoh.

But well I can’t admit that to a group of frightened civilians, so off we go terrified savior in hand.

—

My armor clangs on the stone floor of the long hallway, refusing to take it off after the psychic assault the spirit inflicted on me. Who knows, maybe if I wasn’t so arrogant as to show it off, I wouldn’t have had to deal with it.

I sigh, the sound thankfully not going far trapped in the confines of my helmet. But a psychic assault, strangely enough, would be the least of my worries right now.

Because at the core of the issue is that the spirit didn’t take one or a couple people; he took everyone, so that means that we need to transport those unable to keep with the pace, not that the pace is particularly fast with how it seems that everyone is carrying at least three weapons and enough food to last an apocalypse.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Not that those aren’t prudent things to carry, but it just extends the amount of time we spend trapped in the belly of the beast, or rather, in the belly of the demented spirit.

Nonetheless, it means that I lead the way at a snail’s pace. More casually walking than anything approaching a hilke or job. And so I warily watch the walls with my careful eyes, never turning my head.

Thankfully, the large helmet allows me some freedom to scroll around, but I can’t do much other than that. I can just … wait. Nothing more to do or say except to keep as many eyes as possible on the walls.

I recruited some scouts to help me with the lookout, but everyone is too excited about the prospect of freedom to truly pay attention, mere minutes ago they couldn’t even take a step out of their rooms without stepping back in, so the energy amongst the people is infectious. And this might make perfect sense, but it leads to me being the only person keeping watch over a small city-state’s escape.

Ugh, the air is so thick I could cut it with a knife. Hell, I almost wish someone was cutting me; at least I would be able to defeat them and head on with my day.

But I am sadly not getting any knife-wielding lunatics, so we keep plodding forward.

We’re making steady progress, the procession slowly making its way through the long, sinuous corridors of the spirits domain. The journey is long and boring, my eyes constantly lazily trawling over the walls, but suddenly I hear a scrape, and my head snaps around as I see a glint of metal.

But it quickly disappears into the darkness as I look at it. And I wince as I hear the people around me erupt in murmurs and whispers.

Oh no, my image has already been pretty heavily damaged by my tumble; I can’t hurt it more now. And to think that a mere hour or so ago I was practically begging to be seen as less important and now. My importance and the hope it supports are crucial to keeping this show on the road.

They are only managing to keep even this slow pace due to lots of assurances as to their safety. If they start panicking, and are forced to make on the spot sacrifices and choices, the entire group might splinter into nothing.

I have to keep the image alive, I don’t want to fail them, I can’t let that awful vision become an awful reality. And I can see it so close to the surface even right now as my eyes still nervously scan for danger.

Oh god, I can feel it just pressing on my mind, and I know the signs, and I know that I’m breaking just a little bit, but I can’t do anything but just watch, just like I just stood there and didn’t even try to help as everyone’s heads exploded like bits of popcorn!

*Shink* A dagger suddenly flies out of the hallway in front of me, and lodges itself in my icy visor, its clear surface incredibly hard to break with it’s slowing effect. And still the dagger has sunk its tip into the ice, almost tickling my nose with its deadly sharp edge.

I frantically scramble backwards too late to react to the deadly weapon, waving for the people to stay back, as a strange man emerges from the hallway, appearing from a strange shimmer remnscient of the man himself.

A dark, lonely gash into the universe in the shape of a man revealing a malevolent grey star that nonetheless conveys, despite its lack of a face, absolute disdain as they say, “Well, well, well, if it’sn’t you disgusting wretch, you didn’t think I was going to let my slaves get away, would you?”

I shiver as they look me up and down, obviously planning to place me among that number. But despite my shivers, I stand to my full height, determined not to let those ranks replenish.

“Hah, don’t think you can even dare to try, for I am here, and all of their troubles will disappear,” I say with a flick of my wand, quickly sending an invisible ray of sleep.

But I am surprised to see a ripple and tear in space before suddenly a random person falls asleep.

“Oh, did you really think that would work again? You blasted waste of power; now I have turned your own abilities onto those puny mortals. And they will never wake again!” The spirit says it with a cruel flourish, obviously gunning for my despair.

But I do not give him anything, as I calmly reassure the victims with, “Don’t worry, give him a shake and he will wake; he’s just sleeping after all.”

I then turn to the spirit and say with a cruel smile, “Oh, did you think the sleep was magical? No, no, no don’t pump up your self-importance; it was made for nonlethal combat why would it cause other to fall into eternal slumber? The truth is that all it would have taken for you to wake mere minutes after I hit you, was for one of your servants to be brave enough to touch you.”

“You have an army of personal slaves; there was even one right outside your room, and not a single one dared to touch you. Because you are weak! All that power, and it lead to nothing due to your own fear-mongering ways,” I say, delighting in his failure being tied to his failure to summon even an iota of humanity, and compassion.

I see the spirit clench his fists, boiling with anger, before he lunges forward. I quickly flick the wand at him, hoping to catch him by surprise, but he redirects it with ease.

He grabs at the air and summons a strange ripple from nothing before viciously slashing down on me.

I jerk to the side, his blade whistling past before cutting an enormous gash into the stone floor.

Alarmed, I wave for the others to get away as I pedal backwards, keeping my feet firmly on the ground as I make some distance between us.

But it doesn’t matter as the spirit dismisses their blade and a tear into reality is summoned between us. It splits the very fabric of space, like someone had just demanded that everything shall be cut.

I try to scramble away, but I can do nothing but desperately block the attack with my gauntlets, and with a rip, a massive tear is torn into my armor, revealing a thick slice into my arm.

I gasp in pain, my hands, or what’s left of them after what he did, trembling. But I don’t have time to even cope with it before I have to move again. Stumbling forward away from the terrifying gash.

But strangely enough, the tear into reality dissipates into nothing mere seconds after touching me, and my armor quickly heals the damage on my hands. My preparations protecting, and healing me even against the spirits terrifying magic. Giggling, I remember that what I wear to battle today would bankrupt nations, and it’s time to start acting like it.

Infuriated by my giggles, the spirit points at me, and I feel a terrifying rush as if the atmosphere suddenly escapes, and a strange ray shoots out of his finger with ridiculous speed and strikes me!

Only for nothing to happen at all, the energy responsible for trying to destroy me quickly pulled away and gushing into my enchantments, adding to the already insane stockpile of energy I have in my armor.

The spirit screeches as if someone had torn out their toenails, saying, “What the bloody hell is going on! It is ridiculous for magic to just disappear; that’s not how it works! It’s not energy; it’s ideas!”

“If something is expended so that something might happen, then what is it except for energy?” I say quizically, mocking the lacking perspective of this frog in the well.

The spirit snarls before summoning its blade again and striding forward in firm, grounded steps before thrusting forward to my chest plate.

My calm disrupted by the sudden attack, I duck and slap his hands away from mine, driving the blade away from my heart as I get closer to the spirit.

Taking the opportunity, I tackle him to the ground, the both of us crashing onto the ground. The spirit grunts as the air is blown out of his excuse for lungs as the heavy weight of armor fully presses down on him.

With the heavy weight of my armor coming into play, I grab the spirit’s arm holding the blade and try to slam it on the ground. Yet as I do so, the blade simply disappears and is summoned in his unrestrained hand.

Shocked, I lunge for the other hand with all my might, but even that prelude to failure is for naught as the spirit below me *pops* out of existence and behind my prone figure.

I gasp, and struggle to my feet while they murmur something. “Hmm if th.. ar..or on.y af.fects d.r.e.t att..ks the. A.l I ha.e t. .o .. summ.n a. I.dire.ct affe.t”

And with that, they wave their hands, and sideways becomes down, and up becomes sideways, as I am crushed into the wall. As if the walls had the mass of a thousand suns.

I hiss unable to do much but wriggle, restrained by my own fearsome armor. And I am horrified to see the spirit stand up, brush off some dust from the floor, and start calmly walking towards the terrified townspeople.

The spirit huffs, as he calmly strides towards the townspeople, their minds abandoning them as they wheel around, desperately running away in a stumbling, clumsy mess.

“You really don’t keep them on a tight enough leash, but no matter, they are the real goal of this, not fighting a barbarian like you. They must relearn the importance of brands one iron at a time. I can deal with you later” The spirit says menancinly approaching the terrified crowd, their frantic run not enough to get away from his calm steps.

No, I refuse to allow this to happen! Even if he pinned me to the wall with rusted knives, I would rip them out if I could save them. So I raise my arm with the wand in hand, it feeling like a weight heavier than I would ever carry. The muscles fail drowning in acid before promptly being restored by my healing enchantment.

And slowly, by healing my muscles as they break, I raise the wand and press the button over and over until the wall is layered with dozens of walls, my thumbs twitching with pain. As the healing stops, my reserves empty, and I feel the muscles in my arm tear off, like someone stripping the meat from the bone.

My arm crashes back onto the wall like a meteor falling from space as I scream out in pain. The arm now a useless wretch of broken meat and bone.

The spirit lets out a cruel laugh, almost falling to the floor from the apparent hilarity of my desperate actions. Wiping away a tear he says “You do know that I can just teleport around the wall, right? Oh you young stupid thing, I would go after them, but well, while I’m here, I might as well finish the job.”

I stare defiantly into what approximates an eye, but there’s nothing, no cruel expression of glee, and you feel like he’s just going through the motions. I shiver, for in those depths I see that his cruelty is not even for pleasure but because he’s not exactly sure what else he should be doing.

His hand darts forward and grabs onto my helmet, his mouth refusing to shut as he says “Uh, uh, uh, you’re not allowed to squirm; you’re supposed to just sit tight. While we get on with the procedure.”

I try to squirm, but the spirit is surprisingly strong, holding me tight with barely a single hand as he reaches into a portal and pulls out a red hot iron.

“I didn’t want it to come to this, you know. You might be a ragged excuse for a pure spirit like me, but at the very least you aren’t some mortal trash to die. But it looks like you refuse to be rational, so if you can’t be leashed, then you will be made a tool.” He says his body showing that he doesn’t regret this at all.

But I am no waif; I am Tara, and I have faced death in the eyes, so when someone deigns to grab me, I don’t become afraid; I use it as a weapon. I pull in anger and push it through my face, rapidly heating the surface of my helmet, precisely manipulating the energy so that it comes out at precisely 1100 temp.

His hand melts, the strange portal that he is made of crumbling in the face of the massive heat. He screams like a pig with its throat slit as he frantically tries to pull away from my helmet.

For you see, I emitted what is known as black heat, where it’s just hot enough that the skin does not blast off, leaving relatively minor wounds, but rather the skin melts, adhering to the surface. Forcing the victim to remain attached to the heat as it ruinously burns them.

The spirit yanks on the surface of my helmet in a desperate scramble to escape, but he can’t manage, and instead he falls a bit above the ground his hand still attached to my grimly hot helmet.

I stare at him pathetically screaming as I continue to melt him, and I huff, who cares if you are a spirit if you melt just the same as a human?

And I hold this image in my mind as I conjure the pure hatred I feel for this pathetic little miscreant. I see his disgraced corpse tossed into a pit of lions, I see him forced to hang by his nails off of a 10-story building, desperately screaming for release as he feels his nails get pulled out of his fingers bringing him to his doom. And I see in the end him, for his image is all I need to conjure all the hatred in the world.

And he burns despite the sheer impossibility of it, his form sags, and scars with the force of my pure hatred towards him. He tries to break my helmet so that he might escape and he fails, only able to desperately scratch at the expressionless iron.

His flesh, after all, is weaker than my iron, and he recognizes that as he summons a blade and cuts down on his own arm, freeing himself from my deadly iron grip.

He falls completely onto the floor, no longer supported by my helmet, curled in a fetal position, with hate clearly painted on his gray figure as he teleports away with a *pop*.

And with that, I fall as well, no longer held onto the wall by his artificial gravity. The armor clatters and bangs, and I get frighteningly close to the still frighteningly hot helmet face. But I rise even if I scrape against the stone.

I hobble my way toward the wall I made, all my magical stores for healing taken when I made that ultimately futile wall.

A wall that I melt down with a quick heatbeam, revealing a whole corridor filled with terrified people.

“Do not worry, there is nothing to fear, for I am here. The spirit shall not bother you anymore, not while I protect you. Now let’s get out of here!” I say making my best attempt at being valiant.

But despite my obviously bedraggled form, they cheer, the sheer human noise bringing a smile to my face as we quickly scramble to get moving, and get out.

—

We arrive at the edge of the domain me floating in the gray mist that instictually retracts around me, the townspeople, standing on invisible ground in a great mass of thousands of people. And out of that mass three people walk out.

Together they bow before rising, the old lading stepping up and saying, “Oh, great spirit, thank you; without your help, our entire tribe would have died a whimpering death, barely fit for a mention in the great expanses tales of times past. Your cunning and determination, are a shining example of what it could mean to aspire for more. We wish you the best of luck, and give you an anchor in your path. Because no matter what else might come you have saved thousands today.”

“With a deafening boom, the collective voice of the town erupts into a resounding ‘thank you,’ their gratitude and relief washing over me like a tidal wave. Tears stream down my face as I realize the enormity of what I’ve done. It wasn’t just a matter of freeing the town from slavery; I had given these people their lives back. A family will walk back into their home and be greeted by the happy barks of their dogs. A child will pick a wildflower and offer it to their mother with a beaming smile. And the man who carves the most interesting birds into wood will sit down at his workbench and begin to create once more.

I swallow down the lump in my throat, and a thousand little moments bloom in my eyes, and as the cheers die down, I can truly feel the fact that I brought so much back into the world. And despite the terrible circumstances I find myself in, I am glad that I was able to be here, to do this.

So it is with teary eyes that I see them off as they faze out of existence in a shower of sparks, and I look at each and every one of them, and I hold their grateful glances deep in my heart. Before, there is no one to see off anymore.

And then I am here all alone except for one straggler, Adjo. I see Adjo wave at me before walking over on ground I cannot see.

I am surprised that he hasn’t left yet, but I am glad; it would have been a tragedy not to see the determined young man off.

“Thank you, great spirit; I was honored to play a part, no matter how small, in assisting you, she who rules language with an iron fist. And I wish for you to see the sunrise with your own two eyes, if you have them,” the man says with a stern look on his face, betraying a bit of awe.

I wave him down and say, “You’re a good kid, and I’m sure you’re going to do great back home; just keep your head on your shoulders, and remember that humanity is great, but that intricate systems bog down the very things that make us human.”

The boy shrugged again, as he did when I mentioned I was a human and not a spirit, treating my very useful advice like the eccentric ramblings of a madman, as only those both calm and firm in their beliefs can. Before he steps forward, waving one last time as he shimmers away.

I turn away, my heart warm with all the gratitude that I was given, but it is time for other matters. It’s time to go home now, my true home, Earth.

—

I rocket through the astral upon a tide of stone as I rapidly approach the frozen meat plannet and its attached station. Carefully managing my speed I slip through the open roof and into the throne room to see a strange sight: Patient Bridge waiting for me inside the throne room.

Despite my confusion, I elegantly make my way into the throne of colorful fabric, and intricate plans. His shape, a sore on the surface of my perfect throne room. Emanating a subtly outrage I ask, “What are you here for, Shaman? You have not dealt me a good hand with your task, and you certainly aren’t allowed to just stroll into my domain like this!”

But he simply rises from his seat, head bowed, eyes downcast, as he somberly says, “Tara, I’m sorry. I have come back with grave tidings. It’s hard to say this, but I have failed.”