Sour was a city overshadowed by the Forest of Frost that borders it. By outcome of the many goddesses wills, monsters were more or less contained in specifically allocated areas. This is true everywhere; haunts are dangerous places that adventurers go to for glory and greed.
And many of these haunts are placed all over the Continent—the Forest of Frost is merely one of them.
Sour, the city that was practically encapsulated by the haunt, was where beastmen lived. More accurately, it was a city where beastmen were enslaved, with the few that had yet to be captured, instead being in the Forest of Frost by right of necessity to escape that fate and thus had to live in an environment where these monsters were contained.
None of this was anything remarkable.
More accurately, beastmen were looked down upon throughout all of The Kingdom of Maiega, which was the small country that Sour took up a portion of the north as one of The Kingdom of Maiega’s three cities.
Slave trading was widely encouraged here due to the favoured way the Lord had treated the industry and the wealth that came from it. The Lord even had many of his own beastmen slaves that he used for his own amusement.
Despite that, the city itself was the poorest out of the three cities which you would probably say was due its hard to reach location in the north, but was actually due to the selfish Lord who would scrape as much money as possible from the city and into his own pockets.
This becomes far more obvious once you see the lower district of the city.
Sour was divided horizontally straight through the middle with the top side closer to the north being the upper district and the bottom side closer to the south being the lower district. The lower district was riddled with crude, cramped buildings and jagged, uneven roads, with the only exception being the large central road that ran straight from the south gate all the way to the northernmost area. And majority of the citizens that inhabit the lower district of this mess of a city only just barely manage to put food on the table.
“A clear sign of wealth—or lack thereof…”
Intelligent and non-intelligent species that are not human are classed as lesser than humans, making it legal to do anything you want to them; the only exception to this rule was when they were authorised by the right institutions or in countries that forbade it.
That’s what the humans believe.
“…The species that is actually lesser are the humans. They are weak. They have shorter lifespans. And they are delusional, clearly.”
At least, that’s what I think.
Having to defend against common monsters; the city had a stone wall surrounding it that was about 8 metres tall, with soldiers having the task of defending it. Sour was not very large but still had about 30,000 people living within it’s walls.
“Disgusting.”
As she walked through the jagged and filthy street that was clearly not well-maintained, leaving footprints behind as she stepped onto the thin layer of snow that had piled up from the night previous, she saw a group of unique-eared women and young girls pulled by way of collar.
In The Kingdom of Maiega, slave-traders were common and not at all illegal. In fact, buying and selling beastmen slaves that were not exceptions was legal across most of the Continent and beastmen in particular had been persecuted by the humans for many years—bad news for me.
>w<
A very cute girl by the name of Emi—very cute, mind you—had begun her journey once she departed from her parents in the early winter night, showing its form with the small, soft snowflakes that descended upon her with cruel fate.
“Mother and Father are getting home late…”
Emi waited and waited as the sky above turned from its orange and pink blush of colour to the deep dark of a night sky, illuminated by a watchful moon. She waited for them to return until it got far too late to be normal.
Her parents usually went searching for fish and wild mushrooms in the vicinity of the river that was further down from their home. Emi had gone with them before and they often told her stories, so she knew.
Exiting her home, which even in good faith, couldn’t exactly be called a “home” due to the appearance of it—but they lived in it and her parents cared for her there, so it could definitely be classed as a home. It was a dilapidated shelter surrounded by vegetation and very expressive trees that seemed as though they were struggling to hold up this aforementioned “home”. Emi and her parents had lived there for Emi’s whole life.
Exiting their home through the decrepit door, Emi was immediately met with an ominous air. While it had just become nighttime, the cloud-covered stars that she couldn’t see; the absence of the small critters she had no idea the name of that should have still been making a ruckus; and the moon peaking through the cracks in the clouds just gave her a sinister feeling of what was to come. The deep foreboding darkness pressuring her—but maybe this was just the anxiety of a young girl.
“Mother! Father!” Emi called.
“Mother! Father!” Emi yelled.
“Mother!!! Father!!!” Emi bellowed.
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The young girl continued to walk, feet sore and barely being able to see through her tear-soaked eyes in the dark of night, rubbed red by small, scratched up hands that became so from the rough shrubbery she found herself pushing through.
There was no way they could have simply been lost.
Nighttime carried on as Emi was distraught at the idea that something had happened to her parents. And she barely cared anymore about the fact that she herself had become lost as she aimlessly made her way through the frosty forest, panting out a puff of visibly white air as she struggled.
Rustle…
“Mother? Father?” She elatedly called.
“Oh? I had a feeling I’d get lucky today!” The impudent man dressed in crude, brown, leathery armour called out as he stepped from the brush. He had simple characteristics and scruffy short black hair. His body was less simple, being rather plump. He was human.
Even Emi, as a sheltered 11 year old girl, had the intuition to find this encounter disagreeable. Though she still needed to ask.
“Have you seen my Mother and Father?” She cried out.
“I think I have! They have those disgusting blue ears just like you, right?”
Her ears twitched.
“I met them by the river. They ran downstream away from me and right into my buddies. Obviously we had only planned to kill the man, but those idiots messed up…! We could have at least had our fun with the woman first but they just had to stab her!”
Stab? Kill?
“I guess finding you makes up for it. I can’t be bothered dragging a disgusting beastman around to sell—so I’ll have some fun with you instead while I’m on my own… Oh right! Hah…! If those were your parents you can just join them soon! Hahaha!”
Stab? Kill?
The deplorable bandit-like man who, upon closer inspection, had something like a crest imbedded prominently on the front of his chest piece, started to walk towards Emi, who stood stock-still and completely wide-eyed.
Stab? Kill?
Emi’s eyes were as round as saucers that scanned top-to-bottom the man approaching her—she had a large amount of emotion deep inside her build up from within her small body. She could barely hear herself think. In fact, maybe she wasn’t thinking much at all.
“Do you want this to happen? You’re not even trembling in fear…is it shock? If you’re not going to kick and scream, then I guess I don’t even need to use magic on you.” He confidently stated with a foul smile.
Stab. Kill.
Right as the man took one last step towards Emi to force himself onto her, she instantly eluded him and quickly grabbed hold of the small blade attached to his hip using her left hand and pulled, unsheathing it. Of course, she was a sheltered 11 year old girl so normally there would be no way she would have been nimble enough to do this, but, she had caught this deplorable bandit-like man off guard.
“Wha—”
Using the now unsheathed blade, she stabbed the man through the front of his neck, pushing the blade through his throat in almost perfect motion—using her right hand to pull him into it further by using his collar, a red liquid escaping out from both his mouth and the devastating wound.
Now the one left wide-eyed was the man as he steadfastly succumbed to his now fatal wound. Blood violently escaped out of the man and onto Emi and her large blue ears moments before he lost his strength and collapsed.
A soft light shined over the scene from a captivated moon, almost like it was giving a blessing to the hopeless girl on the floor—one could say the sight before them was almost breathtakingly beautiful.
That very cute girl I mentioned is me, of course.
>w<
As Emi walked through the roads that were clearly not well-maintained through the streets of a city she heard had the name Sour, Emi saw a small group of female beastmen chained together being dragged to wherever the men leading them wished to take them; it was no doubt a disgusting environment that might very well kill them before their future owners can.
“Disgusting.” Emi said, looking at the state of the chained beastmen.
She continued walking down the street.
Her predominantly dark blue cat ears had white fluffy fur in the centre; these apparently disgusting ears Emi wore were being obscured by a black newsboy cap. She had soft, clear white skin that had a similar shine to the moon and her eyes were a deep, bright blue.
Mother always said my ears were pretty, though.
Meanwhile, her almost meter long and dazzling dark blue tail had a white-frosted tip to it.
I am not biased, okay?
That same beautiful tail had been forcefully stuffed into her pants and was contrasted further by her dull, fluffy warm clothes and an obvious lack of footwear. The young girl had dark blue, silky smooth but obviously unmaintained hair that didn’t quite reach past her shoulders and it bobbed as she hobbled along through a city she’d have to be no genius to know not to cause trouble in.
Emi walks further along when—
“Hey! Who are you calling ‘disgusting’, cat-girl!?”
Everyone turns and looks towards the source of the sound, then following the eyes of the caramel-coloured dog-girl adorned with a heavy metal necklace who had spoke them—they looked towards Emi.
Yeahhh… Unreal.
“Um… What did you just say?” Emi choked through, nervously looking at the young female beastman slave staring at her.
“I said, who are you calling disgusting, cat-girl!?”
“Why are you calling me a cat-girl?”
How am I meant to get out of this?
“I’m not a cat-girl.” Said the cat-girl.
“Yes you are!”
“I am not!”
The now outed, yet very well disguised cat-girl turns to continue walking, heading towards a side-street.
She passes the corner…and instantly books it!
Unreal!
“Stupid, dumb, idiot mutt!” Emi let out while she ran as fast as possible.
In the end, Emi escaped her predicament.
Leaning over, hands on knees and desperately clinging to breath in a cold, damp alley, the young cat-girl wheezes out what to her felt like a truly heartfelt message.
“God, I hate dogs…!”