As Edor began to wake up from the lull of the night a cohort of carts started to slowly trickle in as merchants arrived from all over Niuran to trade and visit in the City of Magic. Its white marble walls stunned and shocked inexperienced travelers with their venerable magnificence. Yet as the flow of refugees coming from across the Vitas dwindled into nothing and the conflict dragged on into its second year the city settled back again into its usual state of suppressive equilibrium.
The lone city more than any other remnant city-state of the late Empire relies on trade with the other powers to survive. Even Marinya far down south found itself in a better position than the old imperial university. Oriripol might have struck gold in terms of trade position but it came at a steep cost of settling on the eastern bank of the great river. Between Vitas and the inhospitable Great Plain, every single cubit of sparse fertile land was beyond precious.
Its price and sparse nature made ownership of farmland a clear sign of wealth and since the inception of the Magocracy, its magical elite centralised the land around themselves. Unlike in Marinya where the endless Green Sea curves, leaving more land uninfected by the strange grass and where raids from other races are not as common no one, no guild nor company had the means to cultivate the land leaving only the sorceresses able to own land away from the city's marble walls.
Thus a wheel was spun into motion as farmers deprived of land ventured into the city and in their place legions of slaves began to fill the villas and villages of their faraway masters who stayed close to their towers in Oriripol. Overseeing and watching the remaining citizens for either magic or disobedience which in both cases landed the person in service. And as each Sophist family tried to mark their name above their peers, the shipments of grain coming from the fertile west began to grow in importance as the ever-shifting theatre of Oriri politics required more and more resources to continue.
Maybe this fact made the Oriripol's army, possibly the strongest force on the continent cautious to ever leave the city, paranoid of a slave rebellion which would be quickly followed by a general uprising as the instability would halt most of the business in the town. And no matter how afraid of mages the non-magical part of the city populace was, hunger was far worse than the flaming blades of Katafrakts.
The sound of keys blindly hitting the lock caused Alexandre to open an eye. The people whose faces he had grown familiar with turned their heads toward where the door was. If he had been asked before what was the worst thing about being a slave he surely wouldn't have answered with boredom. It probably wouldn't remain for long but for now, he felt like a farm animal. The guards begrudgingly came over every so often but otherwise, they were left alone to their own devices.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
"Say hi to your roommates." The guard shouted into the cell before more slaves began to fill the previously half-filled cell.
Unlike them, the newcomers didn't come one by one but rather in one downpour. He too out of boredom leaned from his bunk and watched the new faces, an entire tapestry of Edor marching forward.
Out of the most exotic finds, there was a half-elf. His pointy ears funded him additional chains and a gag to prevent him from casting any sort of spells. It was most likely a precaution rather than punishment given how docile his eyes looked. Alexandre thanked that all his system gifts were abilities rather than magic able to be detected by a seasoned Geni'i. Still, it was odd to put such a catch with Kaffars like them. The half-elf was a sorcerer a living manifestation of their captors, a defenseless one at that. It wasn't hard to imagine someone cracking his skull open and it didn't help him that he wasn't a proper human and shared blood with monsters from the great forest. Regardless of what the slavers' plan was with the half-elf, Alexandre didn't plan to kill anyone so he would have to watch from the sidelines the aftermath of their scheme.
His eyes panned further down the chain of slaves finding a curseling, short in stature blending in with the sharp shadows. From a book he read, he knew that they called themselves something else but everyone outside of the Mensana and the surrounding sandy Misery called them curselings. It wasn't hard to guess why they had such a name. The woman possessed skin as dark as coal or tar with a slight metallic shine to it. If not for that shine, he would have struggled to distinguish any detail on her body as everything blended on her skin into one shapeless void. The strangeness progressed even more as he spotted her face emerging from behind the slave in front of her. Two flames wrapped around sickly green orbs blankly scanned the room with as much humanity as any other. Her roughly cut hair matched the two sinister irises in colour albeit dulled by the dirt and grime of her trip.
Alexandre wished he hadn’t forgotten the book he had read about the curselings as he stared at the simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary woman. Three things he hadn't forgotten which only fueled the fire of curiosity in him were that the strange being was still a full-fledged human from the city of Mensana who worshipped the System as a sole and almighty God of everything. A strange belief to understand as a Faithful.
As the curseling disappeared, a sight few outside the Misery will ever see. Alexandre noticed one of the newcomers, a heavily tattoed woman with short fussy hair watching him from far too close of a distance.
"Hi?" Unprepared and confused Alex revered his noble training rather than something more appropriate for the situation.
"Hi." The woman replied in the same fashion but more like a mirror to match his own greeting.
"These are occupied if you are wondering." He pointed at the beds around him seeing that the woman was holding what looked like a blanket.
"Ohh, I know that," She replied. Alexandre narrowed his eyes as he analysed the tattoos covering her body leaving only her face and hands free from the black ink. It wasn't an everyday sight to see a person so covered in tattoos, especially a woman. He tried to recall any gang symbols he could remember and try to match them with what he was seeing but the women's tattoos were rather chaotic with the only thing linking each artwork together being the motive of wings. "I guess I will wait a little bit more."
"?" Alexandre must have made a face as the woman gave him a toothy smile.
His confusion must have lasted for bells as the guard once again opened the door and began to order them to line up.