Chapter 2

“Bring your ass over here, Raeg!” A delicate looking woman with a not so sweet mouth was shouting at the running back of a child clad in white.

Hearing the voice, the child stopped and looked back. His not so short pure white hair fluttered with the wind, while a pair of piercing bright eyes looked straight at the woman a bit happily. These eyes, however, weren’t normal. One of them was a bright blue, while the other as black as the night itself.

“Yes mother?” The childish voice answered playfully at the angry-looking Pavia’s shouts.

“Don’t ‘yes mother’ me! Come over here right now!”

This child was Raeg. It had been five years since that stormy night of his birth. He had grown up as healthy as a slave child can and maybe a bit more. When the owners had learned of the child they were overjoyed. They had gained him for free, and even more, he was a child between a human and a dragonkin. Not to mention this last one, he had also inherited his parents’ best features and looked very beautiful, the delicate-ness of his mother minus the mouth (for now) and the somewhat carefree nature of his father (on the outside).

True enough, the child was quite aloof at times, sometimes indifferent of things and many times looking of in the distance at things others couldn’t comprehend, causing people to find it hard to go near him. The only people he showed love to were very few and these included his parents, mostly his mother.

As he approached his mother with a small smile on his face, he looked up at her and asked her questioningly.

“Is something wrong, mother?”

Looking at the child, Pavia slightly (or not so slightly) poked at him with her finger, enough to cause him to hold his forehead with hands because of the pain.

“Ouch!”

“Punishment! You dare made me look all over for you,” said Pavia with a slightly devilish smile. “Mother Madre’s looking for you. She needs your help with sorting out the medical plants. Go at her place first then come home for dinner, ok?”

“Ok.” Raeg nodded and headed off to Madre’s place. As she watched his back growing smaller in the distance, Pavia had a weird and maybe a bit worried look on her face. Shaking it off, she too, headed off her way.

***

Raeg was walking toward Madre’s home slowly. Somewhere along the way he had started walking faster and then at some point he was simply running. He loved running. It felt to him like he was showing off his freedom whenever he ran, though even here he wasn’t completely free and a chain of slavery hung around his neck like all the other imprisoned slaves around.

When he was first born, he remembered that breath of freedom he had taken in his lungs and, even now, he couldn’t forget it. He knew at that time he was born again, but he never knew it could be such a wonderful feeling to be born. His first birth, he couldn’t even remember, it was unremarkable. He had one day realized he simply was there, and that’s all. But this time, it was like he had truly reached life.

He knew that here, he was a real being, not data. However the biggest change was that he now felt alive. 

Many other things were as they used to be. If he closed his eyes he could still see, information was able to enter his head, but different from before, this information didn’t come from a computer but from the world itself. It was much more than just his senses that perceived this, it was his being, his soul that did.

It was fascinating.

From time to time, he would do nothing but try to perceive as many things as he could this way. To other people he may have looked like he was staring into nothingness but, in reality, he looked at the world.

I may say the world but this sense did have a limit. It reached up to a hundred meters and no more. Since the time he was born until now, it had got considerably bigger. Thus when he had nothing to do, Raeg looked at his world in his own angle and way. He found and saw things other couldn’t, like the birth of a butterfly, the dancing of fireflies during summer nights, the flapping wings of a bird, his mother trying to break father’s neck out of love (though father tries to hide it), the mysterious thief of the kitchen that happened to be a very small army of mice.

Nothing could go past him in a circle with a hundred meter radius, when he opened up this sense.

After few minutes of running, he came to a stop in front of Madre’s house, the clinging of his chain reminding him of the freedom he had yet to gain. Madre’s house was an old very small building that smelled of spices. The houses of all the slaves almost formed a small village behind the manor of one of the richest people in the kingdom of Guraavl. I say houses but they were nothing more than one-room shacks where a certain number of salves passed the night. Every other part of their time, except the sleep time, was spent working .

“Come in,” and old voice answered loudly enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.

“I’ve come, grandma.” This is how he called her, ‘grandma’.

As he entered the room, he saw an old woman that had her hands full of herbs and other spices.

“Oh Raeg!” Once again the woman’s voice was very loud, and a small laughter escaped her mouth. 

Everything about this woman’s appearance betrayed her real personality. She looked weak and meek but in reality there was no one that dared to actually hold an argument with her and hope of winning.

This woman with gray hair had beast blood in her veins, making her lifespan longer than most humans. She had been there when Pavia had been still a child and it could be said that she had raised her, thus her bad mouth had stuck to Pavia. This, however, wasn’t something to be happy about, as Pavia really couldn’t hold her tongue if she actually started to argue. What people had started to fear was, this bad mouth of theirs sticking to Raeg too. They didn’t want a second beauty ruined by the ‘wonderful’ language, thus they had tried to force Pavia and even Madre to talk a little more politely but to no avail.

“Come sit here you little pipsqueak.” She patted the empty space next to her and signed him to sit. “I’ve got some new herbs this time. It would be good for you to remember them. Knowledge is never enough.”

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Raeg sat next to her, ready to listen to the new information. He didn’t know a thing about this world where he was. He was used to having a lot of information and now, knowing so little, he felt vulnerable so he always welcomed new knowledge. As Madre said, it was never enough.

“This here is a Bluemoon weed. Like I said it’s a weed and thus pretty useless by itself. However, when you wash it with a bit of white oil it will release a very special flavor that can be used as a secret spice when cooking stew...” Madre began explaining calmly the names and effects of various different plants. “This is a Gukin seed. The plant itself is quite rare as it needs special conditions to fully grow. Only after it’s fully grown it can be used. It is considered a bit of a miracle plant as it is a healing herb far more potent than most of the common healing herbs that are sold in shops, but it still falls short of the carefully made medicine the alchemists can produce… This one is a Sharschar. To keep it short, it’s poisonous…”

The lesson kept going for few hours to say in the least. When Raeg returned home the sky was as black as it could get. He helped old Madre with plants very often and there were many things he had learned, mostly while listening to her but sometimes while observing with his own eyes. He probably knew as much as a normal herbalist or maybe a little less.

It took him several minutes to get home only to see an unexpected sight. In front of the hanging door of the shack, his father stood on his knees. His bleeding back had visible signs of a whip and he was barely staying conscious. His mother was working to stop the bleeding with some bandages and cloths. Some nearby neighbors were walking slowly towards them with sad or angry eyes.

“Those rich shits!!” said a man possibly in his forties.

“Raan, are you all right?” Garner was shouting while running towards his direction. “What happened?”

“The freaking cow, that’s what happened!” Pavia answered while gritting her teeth and several other people nodded in anger at her words.

“Moo was here? What was that guy doing here again?”

Hearing the name, Garner became shocked. There was no slave that hadn’t heard about ‘the mad cow Moo’. He was a slave trader, the worst of the slave traders. The slaves he sold were top-quality and more obedient than a well-trained dog. If he put his eye on someone he would try, in every way possible, to make them into the perfect dog and it didn’t matter to him if he used torture or whatever. And the worst of it was that he had the backing of many powerful nobles and powerhouses around the whole continent. He could do whatever he wanted and get away even if he insulted a king (maybe).

“Did he come for Raeg?”

“How could that bastard come in here to take this manor’s number one beauty!”

This may have sounded like a joke but it wasn’t. They really considered Raeg to be like a jewel and very important to them. It was double, no, ten times more true to his parents. They loved him so much. How could they allow some weirdo with even weirder hobbies to take him away and turn him into who-knows-what.

“Then I just have to make sure not to get caught, right?” A childish voice rang out amidst the crowd’s voices and every one returned to watch a little figure clad in white walk towards them with a smile. However it wasn’t his normal smile. Raeg might have not noticed, but the look in his face that was as calm and clear as the surface of still water, wasn’t a look a child should have had. It was like the calm before the storm. Even the air around him felt heavy. He was angry beyond compare and unintentionally had taken a Last Boss face like the time he was in the game, the time when the only thing he could be was cruel.

“Raeg,” Pavia suddenly talked with an equally calm voice. Hearing her voice, Raeg turned to look at her, this time with his usual childish face in worry. “I’m gonna take Raan inside. He’ll be fine as the bleeding stopped but he needs rest. Please prepare the bed for him.”

Raeg looked questioningly at her but soon run inside to take care of the only bed in the house. Pavia entered right behind him while holding Raan who was now unconscious and with a slightly pained expression. After putting him on the bed she returned to look her child who stood at the side quietly.

“You’re not gonna ask what happened?” She said to him after some moments of silence.

“I’ve already heard form the earlier conversation that he has come here before and he has come for me. I’m guessing, however, that this is the first time he actually tried to take me by force and went as far as to hurt father.”

“This would be the second time he’s come,’’ said Pavia after listening to his words. “The first time he came to visit the master of the mansion but I think something went wrong and the master thought of offering a slave to him to calm him down. He mentioned your name as you were a child of a human and a dragonkin and you have my beauty. He sent his subordinates to take you but they failed and he left in anger.”

“And that’s why the master punished us and lessened our food rations?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point. A few days ago master was able to convince that person to come again. I guess he must have seen you one of these last days and took a liking to you. The moment he came himself to take you I knew nothing good would happen. And this is it.” She said the last part while looking a little worriedly at Raan. “I don’t think he will leave it at that so I’m even more worried.”

“…”

“That SHITHEAD! ASSHOLE! THAT %^@#$%@#%$^#!!! Raeg, no matter what, don’t let yourself get caught by Moo-moo-ish person. NEVER! OK? I will protect you.”

As she suddenly reverted back to her loud self and yelled and cursed , she put her hands on the child’s shoulders and looked at him straight in the eye while telling him to never get caught by him. He was left flabbergasted. His mother had a very fired up look in her eyes and determination was written all over her face.

“Yes...” was the only thing he could say.