We start out down the path again, the Party information spread to everyone so they can watch for the moment of the ambush and react. The plan took some time and revisions from my first concept, but I think this should work best.

We travel in a spread out block, groups moving three deep and four across, two or three people per group, with Master Liina and me in the back left corner. The east side of the group, nearest to Thanifa. Presumably the most vulnerable position since they would have a much harder time going after anyone with a group traveling behind them, and would need to take us toward the town.

As expected, the attack comes. What we don't see coming is, well, the attack. With no warning, Master Liina just falls over. I stop, looking around in confusion, like I don't know what's going on.

Not really hard, since I kind of don't. Then there's someone there. Like, they were there the entire time, but I couldn't notice them. I have no idea if they were even invisible, masking their presence, or what.

“Yo, you alright there?” the human man asks out of nowhere, nearly sending me jumping out of my skin. He's dressed all in black, with short brown hair falling in gentle curls around his forehead and sparkling blue eyes. He's both really comfortably familiar in an attractive way after so long around nothing but altraska, and absolutely terrifying.

“Y-yeah, I'm fine.” I answer stiffly. I have no idea if I can act my way through this.

“Come on, we'll get you out of here.”

I make myself say, “Thank you.” And then there are two more people with him. I blink, then rub my eyes. Where did they come from?

“Haha, I guess you've never worked with Assassins before,” the man laughs, then extends a hand. “I'm Croens.”

Taking his hand, I respond, “Yumi,” and make myself smile. With a small wave, he signals the other two with him haul up the fox-woman much larger than themselves, and begin to carry her.

Walking along with them, I listen as Croens as he explains. “We've been set up here for a few months now, saved a whole lot of slaves, and captured a ton of these animals too.

“Looks like they've caught on though, that force was definitely sent to search the pass,” one of the others notes.

“Bah, we'll either capture all of them or send them packing. Either way, we'll have to move on since they'll stop sending anyone through here. Even those animals are smart enough not to walk straight through a trap.” Croens shrugs ambivalently. He draws a chuckle from the other two men and I force a small smile onto my own face too.

“So, how are you doing?” Croens addresses me again, resting a hand on my shoulder. I keep steady, not flinching under his touch by reminding myself that these men don't mean me any harm. Even if they are arrogant, racist pieces of shit who intend to sell my master into slavery, they want to help me.

Because they think I'm like them.

“I'm fine,” I say again.

“How long have they had you?”

“Umm,” I think about it. Do I make something up or tell the truth? “Well, I don't know, like five or ten days?” I settle on, since that's the last time Master Liina re-enslaved me.

One in the back whistles.

“Wow, you sure you're still in one piece?” he asks, looking at me closer now. “Most people don't last half that long being tortured by those things.” Shit, should I have said they just captured me? How do I explain this?

“W-well...” I look back at Master Liina and get an idea. “She didn't treat me too badly, not like the others I saw. I'm guessing she has a thing for humans?”

“Hahaha, a thing for humans?” the men all start laughing. “Maybe it'll make for a high rated slave? Would be nice, most of them do nothing but bite at the hands of their masters until they're broken.”

People keep saying that, and I really want to know what they mean by it, but now is not the time to be asking unnecessary questions.

Wait, no, maybe it's the perfect time for questions like this? Keep the man talking and distracted... Talking about something other than me.

“Umm, sorry, I never had a chance to see for myself since I got lucky, but how are slaves broken?”

“Mm?” Croens looks at me weird. “Never seen a slave broken before?”

“I...” Fuck, is it really common to see slaves around human towns here? “I'm from really far away, a town called Emriset. We didn't really have any slaves there, so it's pretty new to me.”

“Emriset? Never heard of it.” They all look at each other and shrug.

“It's on the Plane of Emerald.” God damn it the whole point of this was to keep the conversation off of me!

“Emerald?” They all share another look before one offers, “I think I might've heard about it before. Yeah, supposed to be real far away. Like, halfway around the world or something.”

That draws another whistle before Croens asks, “And what brings little old you halfway around the world into our neck of the woods?”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“Well, there was a man who really helped me once and I wanted to thank him, so... yeah.” I shrug and try to smile to explain it away. “Kind of ended up getting caught up here though.”

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“Pfff!” One man in back tries to stifle his laughter and ends up snorting.

“Damn she's an airhead.” The other shakes his head.

For his part, Croens offers a wan smile. “Sounds like quite a journey. What are you?”

“Mm?” I don't know what he means by that, whether he's suspicious or not, so I frantically lean into the ditz routine.

“Rank? Class?”

“Oh. Rank two Synergist.”

“Synergist?”

“Rank two?”

Croens again, narrows his eyes a little. “I've never heard of an academy training Synergists before. Much less stopping their training at Rank two...”

Academies? Do humans have academies that train people for their Classes here? Is that why everyone is focused around a few Classes?

Holy shit I don't know anything about human culture in this world.

I am so fucked.

“Well...” I roll my head to the side. Say something ridiculous and stupid, maybe they'll think I'm just an idiot! “I... never exactly finished training like I was supposed to... It's been more like... uhh... wandering while training on my own...”

From the groans, that would have earned a facepalm from the two in back if their hands weren't busy carrying Master Liina.

“Oh wow, you must be the luckiest person alive to have gotten this far,” Croens says while shaking his head. Winning the magical fantasy world lottery twice and finding the only decent altraskan master on Verilz? Yeah, I'd say he's actually about right on that one...

Still, the whole point was to get them to talk about breaking slaves, not barely managing to fumble my way through a life story only vaguely based on my life experience, and a bunch of lies. At this point, I try to smile a little and otherwise go quiet. Hopefully, they leave things there, or back up to the previous topic.

Thankfully, it works. “So, breaking slaves was it?” He thinks for a moment, glancing back at Master Liina. “Basically, when you take one of these things, they still want to think with those worthless brains of theirs. So you have to beat some sense into them, make them realize what they want doesn't matter. Their only purpose it to obey, and they'll suffer until they do. You'll know you've broken a slave when they stop fighting you.”

As he speaks, Croens steps forward a little, hand still on my shoulder, then leans into my personal space to stare into my eyes. “If you look them in the eyes, they won't have the same will in there.” I try not to flinch away, but he's so close!

Is he threatening me or flirting with me?!

Thankfully, he backs off after just a few moments. “Anyway, they changed the way they were searching. What's up with that?” he asks. It's a sudden change of topic, but at least it's one I was prepared for.

“Oh yeah, they noticed that they were starting to lose people, that's why they changed. They think it will help, but,” I try to smile and shrug, gesturing to Master Liina. “Not so much, obviously.”

“Hah, yeah.” One barks a laugh. “Like those dumb beasts could out-think a human.”

“Do they have any idea how we're taking them down?” Croens asks.

Now I really push myself and smile a big smile at him. “They have no idea. I don't think they even know about Assassins.”

“You hear that boys? This is going to be a walk in the park. Anyway, we're about there.” He jerks his chin forward, where I see a few metal cages, with what look like people lying inside. As we approach them from behind, he throws his arm over my shoulders, and I cringe a little. Why is he so close?!

Trying not to react as he draws me to his side, we circle around the cages with the unconscious altraska inside. As we pass them, a new figure comes into view. The brown hair takes a moment to remember from behind before she turns around and I see Tess.

Oh shi-

----------------------------------------

I slowly squint my eyes open. Ugh, the fuck...?

I'm slowly becoming aware that I'm lying on the somewhat rocky ground, the feel of scrubby dried grass under me. Pushing up to my side, my glazed eyes scan around, the images barely making an impact on my brain. Meaningless swaths of browns, greens and grays, with a few other, brighter colors here and there. I can't actually merge the colors together into understandable forms and objects.

Red grabs me and I flinch. There are words, a voice that I feel like I should recognize. I feel stupid and slow. Like only half of my brain is working. Like I'm drunk or... something...

I end up fumbling stupidly for a while before things start to pull together. Master Liina is here with me. I still can't understand her words. Where are we? There are other people, and some cages nearby.

Eventually, I manage to stagger my way up, Master Liina supporting most of my weight, as things come back in bits and pieces. Where we are, when we are, what we were doing.

Right, we were trying to stop those humans from kidnapping people. Dull eyes staring around, I see the altraska standing nearby. A few of them look over at me, but I'm not reading anything on their faces. They're all wobbling around too much.

I'm shaken a few times, each time bringing things into focus more, until I can make out Master Liina's voice calling my name.

“Master...” I drawl back at her.

“There's my girl... How are you feeling?”

“...Stupid...” I mumble out. And so slow...

“Oh, you're not stupid. It all worked out fine.” I have no idea what she's talking about.

I end up standing there in a stupor, the overall conversation going over my head for a while before I recover enough to understand.

From the sounds of it, Tess told the slavers about me, so they knew I wasn't one of them, right from the beginning. Then the reason they didn't knock me out was to try and get information out of me while I thought they thought I was one of them.

Still, that part wasn't important to our trap. As soon as they hit Master Liina, it signaled everyone to follow, staying far back and out of sight. Not a difficult task for some of the stealthy scout class altraska. It was a change on my original plan of jumping the ambushers, when we realized that if we took them out, we wouldn't have any way of finding the adventurers they'd already captured outside of like, torturing them for information.

A few altraska wanted to go that route, but thankfully, the party leader decided that just tailing them would be a faster and safer way of getting their people back. Besides, they could always do the torturing later if our plan worked...

As it turned out, it only sort-of worked. From Master Liina's recount, apparently they knocked me out as soon as they got me back to the cages, but that was the time for the tailing altraska to attack and take back their people.

Unfortunately, as soon as they jumped after the slavers, they threw me and Master Liina aside and fled. Unsurprisingly, Assassins are very good at running away.

So in the end, they lost everyone they tried to kidnap, but they got away. Which means that they're going to start up the same thing somewhere else... The thought makes me grimace a little.

Doesn't that mean this whole quest is basically a wash? I mean, we cleared out the issue in the pass, sure, but all we did was relocate the problem to a new, unknown location...