* * Your group has slain [Slave - Korra Grey: 97 sigils]

"The fuck, boy?" Greliro Mildbrook grunted, looking at the half-Terr'den lass his partner had just killed, himself holding a bloodied sword in his hand. "Did she try to bite you or what?"

"N-no, she… s-she moved. It was a reflex, fucking instinct."

"You serious, boy?"

"I… I fucked up. Didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did - a big time."

"Fucking tits! B-but, you saw it, didn't you… she moved and..."

"Sorry, boy, I was a little busy with the dude who took your fucking spear. When the others hear about this, they'll laugh their asses off."

"Th-them? I'm more worried about Rayden gonna have my ass for this."

"She sure will...and no, don't look at me like that. I'm telling what I saw, not some bullshit. And I advise you to do the same, Clay - you know how allergic Captain is to lies."

"Fuck!"

"Do you want me to report this or...all right, all right, I'll do it. You, Clay, put away the spear, pick up the one that guy took from you, and take a breath. It's not the end of the world. Just bad luck."

"Bad luck? Mine or hers? How long do you think she's been in the city?"

"Do yourself good and don't overthink it. Just bad luck, you understand."

"But..."

"You understand, boy?"

"Yeah… yes, I do, Grel."

"Good, take a breath, go out on the street if you have to. I'll take care of it here."

─◇─◇─◇─

Waking up was the worst.

On that edge, between dream and reality, there was still hope that I would not open my eyes to the nightmare my life had forced me to wade through. The treacherous Fae, forests full of dangerous beasts and moss, a city full of people, deafening noise, thugs coming for my throat and trying to take the last of me, and worst of all, my slow decline into a feral beast.

But I did wake up - and like so many times before, it was into a nightmare.

'Shit! Shit, shit, shit! Where?!'

Choking back a shriek as it might draw unwanted attention, I tried to peer through the oppressive darkness surrounding me. But even with the eyes that allowed me to see inside the Esulmor Forest at sunset, I failed to find out what kind of place I had woken up in.

'W-where the bloody heck am I?

Instead of any source of light for my eyes to use, I found nothing but an overabundance of oppressive darkness and dire lack of warmth. The cold here may not have been freezing, but it bit deep, went all the way to the bones, and numbed the muscles.

That was why looking around, pointless as it was, turned out to be a painful, tiring chore.

'Wait. No. No, this can't be...'

A shudder, not caused by the cold, jolted through my body as a dreadful thought flashed through my still half-asleep mind. This place, the cold and the darkness, felt all too familiar.

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'The cellar!'

Hitting my mind with [Indomitable Will], I stifled another yelp, for he might come.

'Dungreen!'

Or worse, the shoelace bitch.

'D-did she get to me?'

She promised to make me a pet for her daughter - whatever that entailed, nothing I could imagine it to be sounded good. However, when I got my numb hands to my neck, I didn't find a collar or a choker, as I feared. In fact, there was nothing that would restrict my freedom.

Relief did not come, though.

There were many magic tools in this damn world - like those shackles with which they tried to suppress the beast.

'The beast! I shifted into the beast, didn't I?'

Remembering was so hard, painful even.

'Did I turn into a beast, though?'

I had my claws out; there was blood on my hands - that much I remembered.

'Wait, my domain.'

With dread of what I would find gripping my heart, I shifted my focus to my perception, almost fainting as it took quite a toll on my work-averse mind. But when I looked, there was no beast. All I found was a terrified me - the half-human that deranged asshole had made me. I had my two human hands back, albeit with a copper ring on the left one, the same with my feet, dirty as they were, I had five human fingers on them, not paws. What took my breath away, though, was I sported a dirty torn shirt, knickers, and what seemed to used to be a skirt - and not just any skirt.

'A skirt I got from Mrs. Scoresby.'

Pain shot through my mind.

'Shit! City Hall, Ria, Scoresbys, bathhouse, thugs!'

In one big rush, everything started coming back to me. My arrival in Castiana, gaining citizenship, my first steps through the streets, the desperate fight to hold on to what I deemed dear, the arrival of the city guards, and my...

'I died. Shit. They killed me, didn't they?'

Those memories weren't as bright as the rest, but I remembered a blade sticking out of my chest and a notification I'd read so many times before, flashing through my mind. And the notification was still there when I dove into my Grid Forge to check.

* You died

Mortified, I shifted my attention to the spot where the blade had come out of my chest, trailing it with my fingers. But what I found was nothing but Fae runes, a mocking reminder of why I was still breathing. Once again, the illusion of my freedom shattered. Threads. Even though I couldn't see them, I was nothing but a marionette in the hands of the Fae, acting on invisible threads directed by them for their twisted entertainment.

It would be so much better if I never woke up.

'Yet I did.'

Hitting my mind once more with [Indomitable Will], I took a deep breath, swallowing my frustration with myself.

'Then why? Why the fuck was I so glad to be breathing?'

Because I was just like anyone else, trying to survive no matter how hard life sometimes got. In fact, that was likely what the four thugs were trying to do, too, just survive the best way they knew. Not that it somehow justified what they did and intended to do to me and Ria.

'Ria! No. No, no, no, no!'

My little guide.

'What… wh-what is this...?' Fearing to find myself locked in a small box, a coffin, or worse, lying next to a small kitsune, I widened my focus and instead found the bodies of the thugs on stone tables next to mine and myself just a breath away from screaming. Both of them, the woman and the big guy, were still, with the third one no doubt somewhere out there in the darkness.

'Two more people, two more whose blood was on my hands.'

I sobbed softly into the silence as guilt lay heavier on me than the oppressive darkness. Two others that will never see the light of day because of me.

'What about… what about Ria, though?'

The horrible thought of finding her here, let alone awake like me, forced me to get up from the stone table and search the place. It was big. Full of those with their eyes closed, almost looking just asleep. But unlike mine, their sleep was eternal. There was no heartbeat, no shallow breaths to be heard, no little kitsune to be found.

'Ria is alive. Oh… oh, oh, oh. The silence!'

This eerily dark room was silent, utterly silent. No noise assaulted my ears for the first time since I was dragged to Eleaden. There were no tortured cries of slaves to hunt my mind, no cries of birds in the treetops to keep me awake, or the chatter of people in the street to make me deft. Just silence, utter silence.

Something I'd very much enjoy if I were in a different company.

Instead, the eerie silence of this dark, cold place, forced me to sit back down on the stone table I had woken up on and curl up into a ball, Sage pressed against my chest, wings enveloping me in a tight bun.

'Someone had to come, eventually. To check on the corpses - to check on this morgue. This was a morgue, not a crypt, right?'