Keane leads me over to the front hall and approaches a group gathered off to one side near the counter. I'm surprised to see that same fox-altra who led our last party. Liina? I think that was her name. It reminds me of my friend's name, back on Earth...
She has silky red fur over most of her body and a fox face and snout, rather than a completely human face like some altraska. Her big pointy fox ears and bushy tail look so nice...
“Oh, what a coincidence,” she says with a friendly wave to Keane. “Here for the mine shaft quest?”
“Just her this time.” He says, pushing me forward a little. Besides the fox-woman, the rest of the party glares down at me, and I retreat back a little, until I run into Keane who's right behind me.
“Hmm, alright,” the woman shrugs, which draws some raised eyebrows from the others. I glance around a little.
No tank this time, but we have two, somewhat more bulky looking frontliners armed with swords and hatchets, to join her, and an incredibly tall female altraska that apart from being gray and furry, I can't place. Her draping robes make me think healer?
They all look a bit surprised by Liina's indifference to me joining. She waves a hand. “Alright, give her here.”
“Sure.” He pushes me forward and I stagger a step toward the fox woman. Then he says, “Grant Limited Slave Control, six days.”
“W-what?!” I stammer. He's giving her control of me?! What if she... she... I don't know?!
While I'm suddenly having a panic attack at the thought of someone other than the decent Keane having power over me all of a sudden, Liina mumbles through a series of commands.
“Set slave punishments: Disobedience, moderate. Betrayal, harsh. Running away, severe. Harming master, severe. Killing master, death...” The list she rattles off mostly sounds like what Keane did when he first... err... enslaved me...
“Alright, all set,” comes Liina's voice again, snapping me out of my panicked daze.
“Take care of her, yeah?” Keane says.
“Ohoh?” The fox grins at him for some reason. “Let's see... Slave Status.” Then she does a double take between me and him, her mouth falling open. “The hell?” she asks in disbelief.
Now the other members of the group look both confused and intrigued. “Thanks a lot,” is all Keane says as he waves and walks off.
“The hell's the guy playing at?” Liina huffs for some reason. I'm caught, halfway wanting to know what she's so shocked and displeased by, and half too scared to even talk to her since now she has total control over me...
In the end, the fear wins out and I just lower my head and wait for her to calm down. I'll ask Keane instead when we get back, he should be able to explain, right?
Liina stalks off to get the quest started, and the other party members all eye me suspiciously. When she returns with a receptionist, I'm incredibly relieved to see it's Malic this time. We share a small smile before he clears his throat and goes over the quest details.
Again, the entire group scoffs, except Liina, when he notes that I'm still Rank zero. I guess it does take longer to level up here. More like a tabletop RPG than a video game, I guess. Either that, or it's due to the slave crest making everything slower. Maybe some of both.
Finishing with the quest signup, everyone Scans me again, and we head out. The walk through the city goes quickly, and we leave through a different gate than the other times, heading south. There are more people along this road, and I'm a bit hesitant to go throwing out big magic attacks at random with other people around, especially since Liina might not take it as well as Keane did...
We go for a few hours, taking a number of forks in the road, before the foot traffic thins, and I manage to work up the courage to speak to her. “U-umm... you don't mind if I keep practicing my magic, do you...?” I rub anxiously at my collar, and don't feel any compulsion to stop anymore.
“Mm? Like last time?” She considers for a few long, nerve-wracking moments, before answering. “Nothing flashy, I think there might be bandits in this region, don't want to attract any attention once we go off-road.”
I gulp and nod quickly, for a number of reasons. There are bandits around here?
Since I know I'm going to need smaller scale magic anyway, this is a good time to work on that. Like I have been recently, I summon one element after another as we travel, trying to make it fast, automatic, so I can do it on reflex. Like memorizing the muscle memory for a complex skill rotation in an MMO or arena combat game.
Unlike the other trips, I'm not blowing all my mana at once and waiting like a half hour for it to refill. I'm going at a constant, rapid pace of extremely low cost spells, just summoning the elements so they hang in a cloud around me before dying out.
Even so, after hours of walking and casting, my concentration is fraying at the edges. As much as I try to make it as easy as muscle memory, the process of manipulating the celestial magic that lets me use the spells is so much more complicated that it's really hard to get my brain to automate it like muscle memory.
Eventually, I start trying to link it to actual muscle memory, the way I've heard people do with memory contests and math competitions. I've never practiced something like that before though, so I don't know how you actually go about doing it. So I just do it. Twitch one finger, like a keystroke, and summon an element. Then do it again. And again, and again.
I work at that for a while and I think it's sort of working, but there's a problem. I can't physically twitch my fingers fast enough. Summoning fifty plus elements together for complex spells is only a single action, but for a barrage of tiny spells, I'm doing them in batches, dozens of individual elements, each requiring their own action, one after another.
It's like trying to play Starcraft at two thousand APMs...
Still, the practice helps. It gets me closer to connecting my thoughts with the magic I'm trying to manipulate. Makes it more of a bodily reflex, like moving my hands.
I draw a lot of confused looks from the other members of the party, but I try not to think about that.
Then Liina finally comes over and asks, “What are you practicing exactly?”
“U-umm, just, uhh, casting speed,” I stammer. I still feel so freaked out talking to her. I hardly know anything about her...
“Hmm...” she rumbles, still eyeing me in an unnerving way. Is that just how she normally looks or is she messing with me? Sizing me up? Why? I don't know! What's she going to do to me?! I don't fucking know!
Liina quirks an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”
“No? Maybe? I don't know yes?” My breathe is coming quick. Heart hammering. I can't focus. The fuck is wrong with me?!
“Looks like she's having a panic attack,” a party members laughs, one other joining in. Is that what's happening? Why? Because an unknown fox lady I don't know was just handed the reins over my entire life?!
“Here, this should help,” comes from the group's towering healer as she walks over. Her hands extends toward me. “Sleep.”
Sleep? Why would I...
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My thoughts feel muddled. Everything is bumpy and jostling and uncomfortable, but at the same time... so soft...
Despite the stiffness and uneven shaking, the softness is amazing and I snuggle into it happily. Like a thick, plush fur blanket. Like that one I had when I was younger. In the middle of winter that I could just cocoon myself inside and it was like being wrapped in fluffy warmth...
A particularly violent jostle knocks a little more sense into me, enough to realize that I was just unconscious, and now I'm not. Where am I?
I squint my eyes open slightly, to a strange sight. Like the nape of someone's neck, but fluffy with bright red fur that feels so nice against my cheek that I just want to go back to sleep for a moment, but... no, what's going on right now?
I jolt upright a little, realizing that besides my face snuggled up around the nape of her neck, my arms are wrapped around Liina's shoulders, fingers entangled in the fur around her of her chest, just above her armor. She's carrying me piggyback.
“Ah, awake now miss touchy freely?” she snarks, turning her head to look back at me over her shoulder.
Was I just!?
“I-I-I- sor- so- sorr- I- baaahhhh.” Between grogginess, shock, embarrassment, and a hefty amount of shame, my words fail completely and I end up making some strange sound.
Without responding to my stammering uselessness, she kneels down and slides me off of her back. Once I'm back on my own feet, Liina straightens out the fluffed up fur that I was apparently playing with in my fucking sleep.
I want to curl up and die...
“Come on, this road isn't about to walk itself.” Liina calls back to me as she keeps going. Swallowing all of those feelings, I rush after the group. I try to get back to my rapid casting practice, to keep my mind off all of that.
But a little while later on, Liina speaks up again. “Being so clingy... How long has it been since you got some?”
My face turns into a fucking tomato. Did she really just ask that?!
“No, really. Why hasn't your master had you do anything like that for him?”
I wasn't aware it was possible to be more embarrassed.
I start shaking my head. I've never done anything like that, ever.
“Hmm? You swing the other way? Or does he?”
Please can't we talk about anything else?
My parents never let me have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Just another way of controlling every aspect of my existence.
I don't even know what I like.
I mean, besides my porn preferences that skewed... I glance back to the Liina's big fluffy tail, and I think my face is the same color as her incredibly silky fur.
I bury my face in my hands. I can't do this. I feel like I'm just going to explode and die.
After I don't offer any answer for a little while, Liina chuckles and slaps me on the back playfully. In my current state, her touch makes my entire body jolt violently. “I guess it makes sense, getting pent up like that without any of your own kind around.”
I curl up to make myself as small as possible. Like that will make her stop noticing me somehow.
“Hah, even if she's human, I'd gladly give her a ride,” one of the other adventurers offer, and I physically flinch, the heat in my face turning to ice. It's the one with a hatchet, short and stocky with traits like a rhino or something.
He, what? No! No!
Panicking, my gaze spins to Liina. She wouldn't, would she?
No no no no no no no.
“Not happening,” is her answer. “No idea what that guy would do if I gave away his prized slave's first time.” My heart unclenches. I don't even care how or why she knows I'm a virgin. As long as that doesn't happen.
“Prized? Is she that valuable?” the tall healer woman asks.
“Heh, you have no idea. Either the guy's out of his mind lending his slave out, or maybe it's some sort of punishment, or... maybe he's trying to get her used to strangers? With anxiety like earlier...”
Listening to them talk about me like I'm not even here makes it hard to breathe. Just casually chatting about my life like it doesn't matter. Because it doesn't to them. I fall to the back of the group and start casting my spells again, trying to focus on that and shut out the conversation, even as I anxiously rub at my collar.
After rambling on through a few other thoughts about how or why I'm here and what, if anything, to do about it, the conversation dies off.
It doesn't help. Trailing behind them, I feel trapped. Strangled. My casting speed pitches up faster and faster as I attempt to push all other thought out of my mind but nothing is fucking helping!
I feel like I'm drowning in anxiety and fear. These people are going to toy with my life and throw me out and that will be the end!
It's fucking over!
Then we reach the abandoned mine. I'm sweating profusely, twitching and unable to control myself. Random spells are manifesting like a twitchy glitch in my fight or flight responses that are pounding incessantly in my ears to just fucking do something.
But I can't because I'm choked. By this collar. And the slave magic. And my party. And the fluffy red fox-woman. And myself.
I'm afraid.
I'm afraid.
Afraid.
Afraid.
Of everything.
We descend into the dark, the way lit by torches carried in a few hands. I think the air is made of tar. The walls spikes. The floor quicksand.
The light is lava. The darkness endless scorching void of space.
I'm going to die.
It's all over.
This is the end.
“Wait, I see something.” Someone brandishes a burning, terrifying torch down the narrow, suffocatingly enclosing tunnel with its walls trying to crush me down into nothing.
Green horror appears out of the pressing, dark.
“Ghreee...” An unnatural, whining keen sounds in my throat. It's the only warning the rest of the party gets, throwing themselves aside at the sight of me.
Hundreds of individual spells bombard every inch of the dark tunnel ahead, peppering the goblin, floor, walls, and every single other thing everywhere within reach as the magic boils over and my fight or flight finally unlocks and tells me to just fucking destroy everything.
Spells fling randomly, each one barely enough to tickle. But they crash and collide, over and over. It's a fucking nightmare mess of overlapping, clashing, cascading synergy magic that turns everything in front of me into a god damn crater of shredding death.
I sink to my knees. Tears streaming down my face. I can't do this.
I can't do this!
“Uhh...” No one knows how to respond.
When the smoke clears, the goblin is gone. But my breathing is ragged. I can't focus. I don't have the strength to hold on.
Finally, someone speaks up.
“The fuck?” It's Liina. My blurry gaze moves over to her from my spot on the floor. She marches up to me and says, “Bad girl! Punish Slave!”
Sharp, searing pain spreads through my chest. “Aah!” I gasp out. As I cringe, curling up against the burning throb, Liina keeps scolding me. “That was dangerous! Do not do that again!” Then she waves her hand and the pain recedes.
I'm left panting on the floor. A hand presses to my chest over my crest, where that awful pain came from. It hurt, but... I don't know. I think it pushed away that terrified panic from before.
Pushed it away with hopelessness and shame at being punished like some sort of misbehaving house pet, but at least I don't feel like the entire world is going to implode in on me now...
I can actually think straight again. At some point, I dully realize that goblin was my first kill.
When I finally bring my breathing under control, I pick myself up from the ground.
“I-I'm sorry,” I apologize. “I... I think I've calmed down. I'm sorry...” I lower my head, but Liina waves me off.
“Whatever, as long as you've learned your lesson. Come on guys, let's get going.” With that, she calls the group to move on, and we all go down into the dark tunnels. I stay near the center of the group this time, Liina and the other swordsman at the front, with me and the painfully hunched over healer in the center, and the nasty hatchet-wielder taking up the rear.
Having him behind me where I can't see him makes me anxious.