Chapter 84
Life went on, Mellis family managed to survive the winter, but not without difficulties. Although no one attacked them, the lack of food and the condition of their father put them on edge. Father needed to eat a lot to recover and the medicine they bought for him cost all their savings. After a month of treatment, Morgan felt much better and was even able to walk, but his body was still wounded and had not fully recovered. He felt fragile, unlike how he used to be.
Besides the fact that his body was very weak, he had several other complications. Mellis failed to stitch up the nerves properly and they did not heal properly, leaving her father with constant pain in some parts of his body and in others under certain strain. Of course, he said that everything was fine and he was used to it, but Mellis did not believe him and thought that he wanted to look strong. She often cried because of this, reproaching herself for not being able to do everything right.
Mellis also thought that his weak condition could be due to the fact that his liver had not healed properly, she had used silk threads and because of this there was a lot of scarring in the liver, and then even more when she removed the stitches, having to cut her father's body open again. What consoled her was the almost complete absence of inflammation in the liver itself, the drugs really worked, so she hoped that with time he would be able to recover better.
When spring came, Mellis' mother went to work for a slave trader and was forced to leave. Contrary to how things had worked out before, when the weather started to get warm, the slave traders did not give work to the people in the slums, or they did, but paid only in food, which was not enough for even one person to eat, forcing everyone to starve.
Now the slums were completely cut off from the city, the guards let out only those who had permission to leave, the rest, all who tried to escape were mercilessly killed and their heads were hung on the peaks of the square, not sparing even children. Several times the inhabitants of the slums united in order to try to break through the wall and try their luck in the forest, but they were mercilessly killed. The city guards even connected magicians to this, despite the fact that they were rare among the beastmen. One fireball burned dozens of people who tried to put some pressure on the wall, hammering it with homemade weapons. And then the remaining ones were fired at with several volleys of arrows so that the warriors would find survivors and hang their heads on the peaks again. For this, the guards placed many wooden peaks throughout the city, after the second case of riot, the heads of more than two thousand people were hung on the peaks.
There were no further cases of breaching the wall, life in the slums moved to a new level of despair and cruelty. Murder in the middle of the street was now a frequent occurrence, robberies and robberies happened every day, with deliberate cruelty, rape and murder. Previously, local gangs could stop this by killing the perpetrators, teaching everyone a lesson, but they stopped coping, and later began to fight among themselves for the right to survive.
The only ones who didn't suffer from this were the slavers, each of them had combat slaves, warriors and mages for protection. Only they had the right to leave the slums. They thrived in all this, taking advantage of the fact that the only chance to survive was to voluntarily sell themselves into slavery and only if they were in the mood. Often they refused people, because of which they committed suicide.
Those who did not want to be slaves, or could not become one, had no choice. They were in complete despair. Parents killed their children out of mercy, and later committed suicide. Those who had a strong will to live, or could not muster the strength to commit suicide, resorted to robbery and cannibalism. What the slums turned into was a real nightmare.
Mellis only survived because her mother was liked by the slave trader, he was one of the newcomers and was not yet so cruel. Thanks to this, they moved to the slum area where only slaves lived and could work for him for food. In these circumstances, it was luck, but Mellis did not think so...
She began to lose the will to live, she did not want to imagine what it cost her mother so that she and her father could live in relative safety. She cried constantly, trying not to think about it at all, despite how bravely and strongly her mother behaved. Her father also became worse, he was forced to work, because then he would be fired, or perhaps killed. Because of this, his condition worsened more and more every day, he lived only because he was indebted to her, just like her.
Since the beginning of spring, Mellis had strange attacks, sometimes she could literally feel someone else's grief, anger, fear, hatred, despair, regret. Any strong emotions of people, Mellis felt like black smoke stretching into the clouds and enveloping the city. At such moments, she did not recognize herself, all the negative feelings came over her, and the city in her eyes in the light of day turned into ruins filled with suffocating black smoke.
The first time it happened, it was so fast that she thought she imagined it, but the second time she saw the world like this for longer. At that moment, people's emotions cut her from the inside like thousands of knives, it was simultaneously cruel and merciless, and at the same time indifferent and pitiful. She felt that people's emotions were intertwined into black streams of smoke and passed by her, letting her feel the duality of their experiences.
It affected her, each time she felt her hope fading, and her desire to live becoming less and less. With each such vision it became stronger, longer, she felt emotions more deeply and personally. After the 9th time, she began to feel people's emotions without being in the black world. She could look at a person and feel their experiences.
As soon as it happened she wanted to talk to her parents. Before she didn't want to distract them with her hallucinations, she thought it was because of depression or psychosis. But now she couldn't close her eyes to it, it was very similar to schizophrenia, she saw visions, her state of mind changed and most importantly she didn't see any drastic changes in it, thinking it was normal because of the experiences she had gone through.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
That day Mellis met her parents, as soon as they opened the door she felt sick, and when she saw them she threw up. She was attacked by their emotions, there were many different emotions and thoughts, and they felt much stronger than anything she had seen before. She could even see black smoke oozing out of them, but she disappeared into the surroundings.
As soon as she threw up, they ran up to her trying to help her, asking what happened, but Mellis couldn't answer. They came closer and the emotions became even stronger, it disoriented her, she could understand that she felt their anxiety, fear, love. From this she felt better, the terrible feelings almost disappeared, but as soon as she raised her head, she saw black smoke that was oozing out of them with even greater force.
After wiping her lips, Mellis stood up to talk to her parents. First, she assured them that she was fine now, and then said that she should talk to them. In one breath, she told them much of what she had experienced in the past few days, how she lived through the visions in the world of black smoke, how they became stronger and more frequent, how she began to feel the emotions of those around her and how it affected her.
After her words, the parents' eyes darkened and Mellis began to feel sick again, the black smoke that oozed out from them began to represent a kind of dark aura, illuminating the black world behind them. Seeing this, she realized that she could no longer make out their emotions and thoughts, they were too strange for her, like something that was divided into many paths leading to nowhere.
While her parents were silent and thinking about it in their own minds, Mellis began to understand them better. They were thinking about how to solve it, where it might lead, and whether they could do it. Then Mellis felt deeper thoughts, there was hopelessness, fear, despair.
Mellis leaned over and threw up again, her mother came over to her, took her face in her hands, wiped her mouth and tears, and then hugged her tightly. Feeling her love, Mellis felt better, but she realized that love was not the only thing she felt, there was hopelessness. Her mother realized that she could not help her in any way and because of this, her heart was bleeding. She began to cry silently, trying to hide it from Mellis, but now she did not need to see to understand it. Mellis closed her eyes tightly from grief and pain, feeling how her father hugged her and her mother tightly. She felt love in him too, but it was different from her mother's love. Her father was determined to overcome everything, he had a steely determination to protect her no matter what. He knew it was hopeless, but he did not see it as an option, or he could not do it. This made Mellis feel better and she again gathered her determination to survive this too.
So they sat in an embrace until Mellis fell asleep. After putting her in bed, Morgan spoke.
"We should tell Mr. Zarya about this. What Mellis told us sounds like the beginning of an ability, and you said that she was able to heal me with unknown skills. This should interest him, he might be able to save her life."
Hearing his thoughts, Alice shuddered at the mention of the slaver's name. As disgusted as she was, she had to think about it. She closed her eyes, beginning to meditate to better restore her body, after a couple of minutes she opened her eyes, they were cold as ice and spoke.
"No, Mellis will be no better than an ordinary slave and will eventually die of fatigue. No one will seriously consider her medical skills, or this ability. They will think that it is a lie. They could still be convinced about the medicine, but it is not worth much. Having learned everything from her, she will become an ordinary slave, if not worse. As for her "feelings", it seems like on the description of curse. Especially the way she describes this black smoke, I admit that she is not mistaken and these are really negative emotions of people. But most likely for this, she will be banished as cursed if anyone finds out about this." Alice finished gloomily. Morgan listened to her entire speech with a blank expression on his face, without answering.
***
After talking with her parents, Mellis experienced the tenth vision. As soon as she woke up the next day, she was inside the black smoke, feeling a disgusting rotten taste. Getting up from the floor, Mellis looked around the room, it was all in this smoke, but it did not block her vision. Opening the door, she went outside, and was able to see more than before. The black smoke in the entire city became thicker and its taste began to feel rotten. People walked with a larger aura that floated out of them, forming barely noticeable figures from the black smoke. Looking at them, Mellis could understand that they were a manifestation of negative emotions. The silhouettes for the most part showed animalistic features, and for some reason Mellis could understand that they did not even exist on their own, they were given strength by the environment.
It was an amazing realization, feeling it further Mellis began to walk between the houses, paying attention to the slaves, trying to read and understand them. Passing by residential buildings, she entered the workers' quarter, where the slaves worked. Most of them were chained and engaged in various hard labor, loading stone blocks into carts, sawing trees, hauling coal. Each of them emitted different negative emotions, creating a trail of black smoke. Each was experiencing something personal and great uncertainty in their future lives.
As she walked among different people, her gaze was strange, Mellis realized that although she felt their emotions accurately, they stopped affecting her as before. Yesterday she was losing the will to live, feeling the general despair, and now she was just unpleasant, it was very strange in her opinion, perhaps she was losing the ability to empathize.
That's what she thought until a boy about the same age as her ran past her. He was a bunny-beastman, with long black ears. His body was full of bruises and traces of baked blood, his bones were easy to see through the rags he was dressed in, and it was impossible to look at his sharp cheekbones and skeletal hands without pity. Mellis felt his emotions... It was sheer despair, the boy himself believed that he was more dead than alive, but he still desperately tried to survive.
As she looked at him, Mellis noticed something else. The black aura around him created a picture of the boy being protected by his mother from an attacker, who beats them.. Her dark silhouette swayed and covered the boy with her own body, while the male silhouette continued to beat her.
At that moment, the boy disappeared from sight, but the image of black fog remained in the last place where she saw him. Without thinking twice, Mellis approached her, and saw how the dark silhouette of a man continued to beat the woman and the boy. In the end, the woman fell down exhausted, the man stopped and took off his pants. At that moment, Mellis could not see it anymore and waved her hand. With the wave of her hand, the silhouettes dissolved into black smoke.
What she saw was terrible, she felt sick, she wanted to cry hysterically, but what was more painful was not that she saw it, but that the boy had lived through it, now she could feel his despair and stupid will to live. Mellis began to cry and once again complained to the world about everything.