The guards saw them coming from a pretty fair distance away, so they hadn't closed up the gates or anything and weren't surprised as they pulled up to the gates. A couple of them came out, with Tom handing them their manifest, which bore the stamp of Baron Wiseman, and they did a brief inspection.
"Hold on. According to this list, you're supposed to only have four people. Why do you have a third slave with you?" the guard asked, while glancing over at the slaves.
"Well, sir, this one wasn't originally part of our shipment. We picked him up along the way from Gurnkey to here when he tried to rob us, and putting a slave collar on him was the only way we could be sure he wouldn't harm us any further or run to escape justice." Felix said, pointing to Castor.
The guardsman's eyes narrowed. "Are you telling me you enslaved this man without authority from a nobleman?" he asked.
"Well sir, like I said, it was our only solution. Unless you know of a better way we could have stopped a fireball throwing invisible thief without killing him?" Felix asked.
The guardsman looked at Castor with disdain. "Right, you'll need to speak to the captain of the guard, then, at the very least." he said, waving their wagon in to Fias. He then led Felix and Castor to a fancy looking building a short walk away. The guardsman knocked on the door, and yelled out "Captain, got an incident which requires your attention!", and then he stood back at attention. After a few moments, a rather large muscled man opened the door, looking at the guardsman in annoyance.
"Well, what do you need?" he asked gruffly, addressing the guardsman.
"Seems the one in the collar is a brigand who tried to steal from the other one on the way to Fias, and so they put him in a slave collar since he was a firebombing lunatic, sir." The guardsman reported.
The captain looked at Castor in disdain. "You two in my office, you back to the gate." he said. The guardsman give a quick salute and went back to the gate. Felix and Castor stepped in to his office.
The captain sat down at his desk. "Please have a seat." he said, gesturing to two chairs in front of him. Felix and Castor sat down.
"The Lord of Fias is very busy, and therefore has delegated the power of judgement to me in his stead. Now tell me what has happened." the captain said.
Felix recounted the situation, about how he was traveling to meet up with the Belrose family in the north, the trade deal, and finally, how Castor had broken into his wagon and tried to steal jewelry from him, and the ensuing fight.
"Is that slave collar bound to you, boy?" the captain asked, looking at Felix.
"Yes, sir." Felix responded affirmatively.
"Great. Do me a favor, tell him to only speak the truth to me." the captain said.
Felix was surprised. He hadn't even considered doing that. He guessed the concept of "no self incrimination" didn't exist in this world. Or maybe it did and the captain didn't really care because this entire setup was very informal to begin with.
"Castor, only speak the truth to the Captain." Felix ordered Castor. Castor nodded glumly.
"Is everything that he said true, then? You a fireball tossing sneak-thief?" the captain asked Castor.
"Yes sir. His story was accurate." Castor said glumly.
"So he used a spell that just stopped you from moving, while you tossed lethal fireballs. Far as I'm concerned, you're a thief and an attempted murderer. You can have your pick of slavery or the executioner." the captain said, looking at Castor with ever growing disdain.
Castor sighed. "I pick slavery." he said.
The captain nodded, as if he expected this. "Well boy, you're headed to meet the Belrose's anyway, right? Let's work out a deal here. You pay me a gold coin, I give you a piece of paper authorizing his temporary enslavement until you reach the Belrose estate, and the rights to sell him to the Belrose family, which would normally be reserved by Fias in this case, as the governing body with jurisdiction over where his crime occurred." the captain said, looking at Felix.
Felix thought about it for a moment. "What do you reckon I would probably be able to sell him for to the Belrose family?" he asked the captain.
"Probably around 5 or 6 gold, if I had to guess. He knows a couple spells, and he looks young and strong." the captain said, examining Castor.
"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it feels like you're giving me a good deal here then. Why?" Felix asked.
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"Well, it pretty much means I won't have to deal with him beyond filling out a couple of forms. If I held on to him, it could be for months until the next trade caravan comes through to take any slaves to the Belroses, during which time I would have to pay for his food and everything. If I just pass him off to you, you're gonna have to spend money on extra rations here in Fias, and I also make a gold coin right away for a pretty easy day's work." the captain explained, shrugging.
Felix supposed that all made sense. Win-win for them both. "Sure." Felix agreed, pulling a gold coin out of his coin pouch and handing it to the captain. The captain nodded, took the coin, and pulled out some paper. He spent a couple of minutes filling it out, and handed it to Felix, who examined the paper. The captain looked surprised.
"You can read, boy?" he asked Felix.
"Yes, sir. My father taught me how." Felix said. It was true, his father had taught him to read when he was 10, shortly after he awoke.
"You're lucky then. Anyhow, as you can see, it's a permit for his enslavement, and the second paper is Fias selling him to you. Everything look good to you?" the captain asked.
"Yes sir. Thank you." Felix said, rolling up both papers and placing them in his pocket.
"Great. There's a good inn here in town, they're just down the road. Tell them Captain Levi sent you." the captain said, dismissing them both.
Felix and Castor stood up, and walked out of his office. They returned to the wagon, where Felix explained what had happened to Tom, Jack, and Matthias.
"It'll be a bit cramped with an entire extra slave and rations." Jack grumbled.
"Look on the bright side." Felix said. "Now you have another person to share nightwatch with." he remarked. Jack did indeed cheer up a bit at that.
Felix was in a good mood, so he treated himself and Tom to stay in the inn, while leaving the slaves to watch over the wagon and stay in the stables with the horses, to Arboro's approval.
Felix wasn't that much of a spendthrift, so he and Tom still had to share a room, but at least they had separate beds, and it was a good break from the wagon and tents. They were given some bread, soup, and a bucket of water and a brush to clean themselves with. It wasn't luxurious, but it was a nice change.
The next day, Felix bought some extra food rations, and restocked their water out of his own pocket. He didn't mind though, he only ended up spending about a silver in Fias on everything, including the stay at the inn (not counting the gold coin he paid the captain though, obviously.), since it's not like a slave needed to be fed 5 star cuisine. Rice and potatoes were both cheap and plentiful.
It was still fairly early in the morning when they left Fias. There were actual trees in the area now, not just barren plains, and things were turning greener. The areas they had passed through so far had been dry, windswept, and dusty, but now things were starting to smell fresh, with all the vibrance of the late spring, and grass and clover abounded around them. Felix appreciated the view for a bit, before he turned his attention inwards to his spell space, and Arboro.
"So, how did my first real battle go?" he asked Arboro.
"Better than expected, but you got lucky in a lot of ways." Arboro remarked.
"Explain please." Felix asked.
"Well, first off, you're lucky he was only trying to steal from you and not trying to kill you. If he just hit you with a fireball from the start, you probably would have just died." Arboro remarked glumly. Felix nodded to this assessment.
"Secondly, you're lucky he was a dark and fire mage. So he didn't really have many mobility options. A wind or lightning mage could have easily gotten away from you. As could an earth mage, probably. Actually, the more I think about it, this is one of the few matchups you COULD actually win, with your limited spell pool." Arboro continued.
"What issues do I have?" Felix asked.
"What issues don't you have is the better question. Your offense is nearly non-existent, with only Fling Rock and Soul Siphon. Soul Siphon is good, but you have to land it first, and it's slow, and although they're very rare, a spell to regenerate willpower or soul energy would both shut you down completely. And then there's the fact that a highly mobile mage like a wind or lightning mage could just run away from you easily. For defense, Harden is good, but you shouldn't rely on it too much. It only enhances your natural human resistances, which means you got lucky with that fireball you tanked. You have a pretty good resistance to crush or concussive attacks, which is the only reason that fireball did basically nothing to you, but only a weak or moderate slash resistance, and you have basically no stab resistance whatsoever. A peasant with a pitchfork could still easily kill you in Harden." Arboro continued analyzing him. Felix was glad he asked, because he never considered these weaknesses.
"Continuing, you have no mobility. Actually, you have negative mobility, because Harden makes you slower if you haven't already absorbed a lot of energy from someone else. Your suite of utility and distraction spells can be considered passable, if barely and in the loosest sense of the word, but they need shoring up badly too, and your informational spell suite doesn't exist at all, unless you consider Night Eye to belong to that camp. Basically, you're incredibly weak." Arboro concluded.
Felix couldn't disagree with her assessment. "What do you recommend for my situation?" Felix asked.
"Well, you should focus on your strengths. As an earth mage, defense is your greatest attribute. I would increase your passive defenses, so hopefully you can survive if someone attacks you unexpectedly. I would look at the metal skin spells." Arboro said, shrugging.
"Do you know those spells?" Felix asked.
"No, I'm not an earth dragon. But I believe that manual you have, had a couple of them." Arboro said.
Felix pulled out the military spell manual. Arboro was right, it included three levels of skin spells for earth mages, Rock Skin, Talc Skin, and Gypsum Skin. According to the descriptions, they all built on each other, so you would start with Rock Skin, and work your way up from there, adding on to it's spell framework. It was a spell which permanently and passively boosted his resistances, which would be a great and obvious benefit. Felix was liking being an earth mage already, not dying sounded pretty damn good to him.
He then realized that since he picked up the wood element... he became even more defensive in nature. He wanted to cry a little bit, and then resigned himself to becoming a tank.
And so, they continued heading west, the environment growing ever greener and livelier, while Felix started constructing the Rock Skin spell, as he let the three slaves handle anything related to camping or cooking.