Chapter 9 - Meet the Slavers

Gasping, I jolted awake, eyes wide open before my brain kicked into gear and registered I wasn’t back home anymore. Orange flickering spotlights stabbed through my retinas, forcing me to blink tears from my eyes.

I would never talk to Vince again. I thought back, attempting to recall the sound of his voice or how he looked, but the scenes faded and dissolved when I tried to hold them. In every memory I had, there was nothing but the surreal finality of Vince’s last, pained sigh played over and over again as he died. It played on loops through my mind, echoing through every memory.

The one person in the world that didn’t think I was a burden, and he was gone.

What are the chances he fought the reavers to save me? What are the chances I killed him?

I buried that thought, afraid to entertain the possibility that the others stayed to fight because I’d been wounded, even Mel. That would be too much.

Sharp, penetrating pain in my shoulder brought me back to the present again.

I was lying down on something hard. My legs and arms were bound with rope, rough and, judging by the raw sensation I felt in my wrist, wet with my blood. All sources of light, of which there were a handful, assaulted my vision from multiple angles, tiny suns all of them. I howled, contorting my body and trying to bring my arms up to guard or to swing at whatever it was, but my bonds held fast.

“It dreams still.”

Why was I alive when the others were not? Why didn’t the System make Vince the Exotic? He would have done something great with this.

I needed to move. I needed something to… I don’t know. I wanted to lash out, to rage. To hurt something or be hurt.

“You poke it again. Make sure,” a raspy voice commanded from somewhere.

Someone stabbed me. Pain shot through my hip on entry as the blade ripped into the meat of my quadricep and buried itself deep, the reflexive motion of my body making the weapon wriggle around in the wound before it was ripped out.

Unknown attacks you for 2 damage.

Status Gained: Bleeding [.1 HP/sec]

I didn’t scream, per se, mostly because I was out of breath at the precise moment I was stabbed, but I did manage a quiet groan.

Blurry shadows resolved into semi-distinct shapes in the light, humanoid-ish. Large heads atop small bodies with long arms and stubby legs. One of them crouched low, poised to thrust its spear into me again. I tried to focus on them, but the light was too intense to see anything detailed.

“Awake now,” the one with the spear announced flatly as if he were talking about the weather.

A higher, softer voice joined the two. “Yes. Yes. I tell you already. It is awake. Now I fix a new cut, stupid Hunty.”

“Hey! I do what he says!” The one with the spear, Hunty, held his arms out indignantly.

The raspy voice came back, clear authority in its words. “Now we are sure. It is light burned. Needs fixing.”

“Now it is light burned and bleeding, Kuul. Yes, it needs fixing,” the softer voice admonished as something was stuffed painfully into my leg wound. I could feel the familiar burn of some kind of antiseptic agent go to work, before numbing the wound as it cleaned it.

“The stories say they heal fast,” the commanding one replied.

“Hoof” I said, though it’s not what I meant to say. My lips felt dry and cracked, and my swollen tongue was an entity entirely separate from the speech center of my brain just now. I tried to work some saliva into my mouth, but I had none. “Washel”

Kuul didn’t seem to appreciate that. “It speaks. Stab it again.”

“No, Hunty, you don’t stab it again!” The healer shouted. “I leave you bleeding when next you come here if you stab it!”

There was a pause, then a fist cracked across my chin, hard.

Unknown attacks you for 1 damage.

“It does not speak,” Kuul rasped. “It does not cry out. Understand?”

I worked my jaw around, making sure it wasn’t broken. Pulling up my status screen, I checked. My HP was at a respectable 20, but I had some status effects.

Exposure (Light) [18Hr]

Bleeding [.1 HP/sec]

Restrained: You are bound.

Dehydration [-1 Mind, -2 Body]

Underfed [-1 Mind, -1 Body]

“It understands, yes?” he asked again, his dangerous tone telling me more violence was to come if I said no.

I nodded, slowly, consciously not flexing against my bonds anymore.

The emotion from the memories were slowly slipping back into my subconscious, but something in my heart ached with the helplessness I felt, not just at being bound and beaten. I was back to being powerless, a feeling I’d forgotten when the System scrambled my brain and sent me here with a whole body and magic powers.

I wanted another Barrow to punch.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I didn’t want to capitulate to Kuul’s command. I wanted him to hit me again. I wanted to spit in his face, laugh at him, force him to hurt me, make him bleed me until I drowned him in my blood.

Everything was wrong. I was one of the System’s Chosen now, and I didn’t get that way by being exceptional like I’d always been taught. I became an Exotic by being weak, by being a victim. It felt like a consolation prize for being the most pathetic thing on Proxis that morning. I didn’t want it.

Kuul bent forward, uncomfortably close to my face, bringing with him the smell of woodsmoke and unbrushed teeth. “Good. I believe it.” I turned my head to peer at him through the stinging pain of the light.

Goblins. Of course, it’s goblins.

I knew it as soon as I brought him into focus. Kuul wasn’t like the monster I’d fought in the tutorial building, though. The proportions and bone structure were similar, the same way I was similar to a gene-fused spacer or an orangutan.

Where the oily, black goblin I fought was animalistic with powerful muscles, sharp teeth, and claws, Kuul had a mottled green, weathered face that didn’t seem to fit well on his skull, slicked back hair with a touch of gray, and the few teeth he had, while pointed, were noticeably duller than his scourge-touched counterpart’s. His mouth and jaw were a little more reasonably sized for his face as well, and his pointed ears were drawn back on his head. His clothes were some kind of rough spun fiber, but it was far better than a leather loincloth.

Kuul reached into a pocket on the side of his shirt and retrieved something small, clutching it in his fist before pressing the object into my hand.

“It makes something,” he ordered.

I blinked, confused.

The old goblin’s eyes bored into mine, searching for something. I got the feeling he was coldly analyzing every expression I made like my dad when he knew I’d done something wrong. Though his species was alien to me, I could still sense a keen and disciplined intellect behind those eyes, also much like my dad.

This old goblin had authority here, and he didn’t get that way through chance. “You would do well to remember that,” his wrinkled frown seemed to say.

The object in my hand, no bigger than a throwing stone, felt lumpy and cool to the touch. I ran a thumb over it in an attempt to figure out what I had, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out it was ore of some kind.

Kuul leaned in closer until his nose was practically touching mine. “It makes something or Hunty pokes it again.”

I opened my mouth to tell him to poke his mother, but my self-loathing was mostly under control now, sublimated by a more immediate concern: Kuul knew I could Shape.

How, exactly, did he know I could Shape?

Thinking back, Nali, as unreliable as she was, told me there hadn’t been a new Animator in a very long time. She hadn’t been specific, but I got the impression the time would have been measured in decades or maybe centuries.

Kuul mentioned ‘stories’ about man, implying his people had come into contact with mine before, only now it was a campfire story as opposed to actual history. That would make sense if they passed down their history in the oral tradition. Perhaps we were a local legend, like unicorns.

Seeing Kuul’s cold stare, I did, indeed, feel like a unicorn, and this thing wanted my horn…

But not before I granted some wishes.

Putting that unpleasant thought aside, I closed my eyes and reached for my mana, drawing it out of my core and channeling it to my hand where I held the lump of metal. I mapped the contours of the thing, surrounding it as I did the rebar, then squeezed. The material accepted my mana easily, much more easily than the rusted iron from the tutorial building.

MP 26/30

I saturated the metal with my mana until it was a part of me. There were imperfections here, bits I couldn’t reach easily, but otherwise Shaping it felt relatively effortless. I bent my will to change it.

Kuul hadn’t told me what to make, but I’d gleaned from context that this was more of a proof of concept for him than a specific demand. He wanted to know I could do the things his stories said. I could have made some kind of weapon, but, despite this ore being more pure than rusted rebar, my Shape ability was slow and unpracticed.

No, for now, I decided on making the ore into a sphere. I dove in, rounding off the edges, massaging the structure until the imperfections sunk down into the metal and were gathered at the very center of the construct. Shape gave me perfect knowledge of the material, which allowed me to make the outside perfectly round and smooth. Without actually looking at it, I knew the finished product shined.

When I opened my eyes again, I was breathing hard, and my head pounded with my thundering pulse. I clenched my teeth with the pain of my ever thickening blood struggling to bring oxygen where I needed it. My clothes were damp with sweat yet again, and I desperately needed that water given how dehydrated I was.

You have created: Tin Marble (Common)

You have been awarded 12 experience points. [10 base, +2 new design]

Shape is now level 2.

Despite the circumstances, it was nice to see an experience message pop up in my log without any penalties attached. Being a non-combat class seemed to have some drawbacks in life or death situations, but…

An electric tingling crawled over my body, starting in the center of my forehead and building, swelling into a crescendo of sensation that activated every nerve ending I had all at once. It drowned all conscious thought in a tide of intense stimulation.

It felt… great. My muscles didn’t ache anymore, and my mind felt clear and focused, more than it did before at least. I still had all of my negative status effects, but they felt less severe now, like I’d gotten a pep talk and an energy drink to power through.

A deluge of messages scrolled through my log.

Level up!

You are now level 1.

Max HP +5

Max MP +5

+1 attribute point.

Ability: Spatial Storage unlocked.

Quest advanced: Tutorial

Tutorial: Return to insertion point.

It was my first level as an Exotic, bittersweet considering what I had to give up to get it, yet I felt a sense of fading euphoria. In the back of my mind, I knew the emotion didn’t come from me. I was tied up, stabbed, beaten, blind, and I’d just lost people I loved, but there it was, a gift from the System.

Achievements awarded this level:

Victorious: You have defeated your first foe. [+1 body]

Ambitious: You have defeated a foe above your level. [+1 to lowest level ability]

Nemesis: You have encountered your first Scourgeling and lived. [+1 Spirit]

All Natural: You have spent 80% of this level with full mana. [+1 body]

Spirit of the Warrior: You gained 51% of your experience this level from defeated foes as a non-combat class. [+3 spirit]

Near Death Experience: You fell below 10% of your HP this level. [50% bonus experience gain for next level]

Baptism by Fire: Your first defeated foe was an agent of the Scourge. You have been noticed. [+3 to highest combat abilityERROR]

While the level up was nice, it seemed that my real jumps in attributes came from what I did to earn my new level instead of just reaching it.

Achievements.

Everyone back home knew about levels. Exotics loved to talk about them when they were being interviewed or while comparing themselves to other Exotics. Our patron saint, Constance, was supposedly level 40 before she died, and it was a major point of pride for my clan to be loosely tied to her by blood.

Achievements, though, I’d never heard about. As obsessed with the System as my clan was, there was nothing in our culture that mentioned them.

“Something happens.” I heard the stabby goblin say, accompanied by scraping chairs and multiple tiny feet slapping on stone as they came to my side.

“Is it done?” the soft voice of the healer goblin asked from somewhere I still couldn’t see.

The figures crowded around me again, their forms and color a little clearer this time. My eyes were getting better. I checked my debuff timer.

Exposure [16h]

“It looks better. Stronger.” The healer said with evident concern.

The one with the spear stepped forward and snatched the oversized ball bearing out of my hand and passed it over to the hunched shadow whom I guessed was Kuul. The old goblin brought the metal ball close to his face, turning it this way and that, tapping it with a fingernail as the other two goblins watched him, and awaited his verdict.

ERROR: No valid combat abilities found.

Resolving…

Ability awarded: Volatility

Volatility is now level 3.

Kuul put my metal ball back in his pocket and nodded to the other two.

When the old goblin spoke, there was something different about his voice, a lightness to it that made him sound younger, more hopeful. “The stories speak true. Now, Tiba heals it, and Hunty guards it.”

“What do you do?” Hunty asked, tilting his head sideways while leaning casually on his spear shaft but still keeping me in his peripheral vision.

Kuul turned back to me. I couldn’t see it, but I imagined that calculating scowl back on his face. “It needs a special cage,” he said, turning on his heel and marching out of sight.