CHAPTER 23 - Did I hear it right?
“So, you are all escaped prisoners?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Roderick, one of the people leading this group answers me with sadness in his voice.
“Are all these people the ones that remain?”
“Yeah…”
Roderick is a nice guy, he is the one who came to me to talk the moment I approached these guys. He told me about how they ended up here in this state and how they were just trying to flee from the city, trying to find a safe haven.
We talk as the rest of his group moves the wounded and the dead to a nearby building, looking for temporary cover.
“Would you mind telling me who were the ones trying to slave you and how you managed to escape?” I ask again, not being aware of how things are in the city center right now.
He hesitates, probably still shaken by the experience of being shackled and nearly converted into a slave. It definitely has to be quite the experience for someone who had been living in a relatively peaceful environment, but he still decides to let me into the details.
“Our group was a lot smaller at first. We had survived for a couple of weeks at that point more or less, but our food was running low, so we decided to leave to fetch some.”
“We set off one day to a nearby grocery store, but all we found was the empty streets. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything in the first store and we had to make our way onto the next one, but it all took a turn for the worse when we were caught by a group of monsters.” His expressions start to turn grim, showing how tormented he is by what happened there.
“Huge monsters about 3 meters tall spotted us when getting inside the store. They had such large and strong physiques that resistance was futile.” He then pauses, reminiscing.
“We thought we were going to die, yet they took us in as prisoners, dragging us around the city.”
“We were all bound by a tight rope around the wrist, forced to watch how they searched for more humans and enslaved all of them.”
‘Searching for humans?’ I can’t help but contrast his information with mine, but as the story progresses I am more inclined to think that the monsters he is referring to are the orcs, the bigger and stronger ones.
Why would they look for prisoners? No idea, but nothing good can come out of that.
With nothing clear yet, I keep listening to the guy, who at this point is already trembling a little.
“They forced us to follow them and witness the whole process from start to finish. From a group of prisoners of only five people from our group to a lengthy row of nearly thirty people.”
“At first we were naive and we tried to resist. We even attempted to escape the group of 8 that guarded us with a coordinated attack on our part.”
‘Huh?’
Did they seriously think that they would be able to achieve it? Not only were they bound by the wrists and tied to one another, but they thought they could outrun them? Handcuffed?
Or did they really think they would be able to win a fight against them? Even if they weren’t bound and unarmed they would still lose with those numbers.
“Obviously we failed.” He says while looking down at his feet.
“The worst thing is that they didn’t care that much about our well-being as much as we thought. They just suppressed our meager attempt at escaping with brute force, killing a few in the process and leaving the rest not too much better.”
I don't even have time to voice my question when he answers it himself with what he got to know.
“That took us aback. Why capture us if they were going to kill us anyway? So we started to analyze them.”
“Their method of communication, their relations between themselves, their tactics, everything. We all put our mind into getting to know their reason behind all of this, but we discovered that they were in fact a lot more scary than we deemed them to be.”
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Roderick (A few days before)
“Hey Roderick, look, their leader and the other next to him seem to be talking.” My chained friend gets my attention to the couple of monsters on the front.
“Why do you say that? How are you so sure?” I ask as I look at both monsters that seem to be looking at the front while making sounds that to me, seem no different than gurgling a mouthload of water or a grunt.
“I know it, I just know it! Look at their eyes, aren’t those expressions they are making very similar to ours? Roderick, they are definitely thinking, discussing something.”
Without even letting him finish, the monsters start to move. Half of the group advances forward, circling the building in front of us and going into the other side of it, encircling it.
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Moments later another one of them goes from the front. This one starts advancing while roaring and making himself known to alert the people inside and make them leave the building on the other side.
He goes at it for a while and by the time he stops the two monsters on the exit have already caught six people.
That wasn’t the only instance they acted like that. There would be times when they found only a lone survivor and they would let him escape just to follow him to discover the rest of the group.
Days passed and we slaves numbered over sixty, yet none of the new ones tried anything after being forewarned by us. It seemed like we were returning to their base when we got to an area with a red mark on the wall, resembling a red fang.
The monsters seemed confused at first, but then they just walked through, taking a straightforward path. At least till they stopped.
A little figure showed itself in front of us and started saying something to the leader of the monsters, who in turn became enraged.
“You saw that? That little kid made the monsters start trembling in fear.”
I can’t help my curiosity either, what makes them so scared of the little guy? But we didn’t need much time to know it as the kid continued talking. Clearly making fun of our enslavers and taunting them.
It ended up saying something he shouldn’t have said and the monster turned around, ready to fight. They didn’t even bother holding the rope that was binding us, all of them started running at the kid the moment his words left his mouth.
We were just quietly waiting for them to kill him and return when we saw the first one of them being decapitated. Then the second.
By the time they reached him, four of them were already dead, beheaded by some kind of invisible blade of some kind.
“What are you daydreaming there, Roderick wake the fuck up! We make a run for it, it's our moment!” I can’t even take my eyes off the fight as we all flee, tied up together by the rope.
I didn’t wait to see the end of the fight, but the last thing I saw as we left the place was another head flying and the leader of the monsters facing the kid while its tattoos started shining.
It was a huge impact to us, the same unbeatable guys that enslaved us and against which we couldn’t do anything having their asses handed so easily and fast by a small kid that seemed human.
It was the kind of stuff you hear in fairy tales, yet we experienced it. We ripped our binding the moment we found a place with a few metal poles with an edge after grinding the rope against it and separated in smaller groups.
We thought that maybe in smaller groups it would be easier to avoid detection. Just like that, we left from our more or less two-week enslavement.
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“So you are basically saying that a random boy came up to the group of monsters that had you all captive, and he single-handedly took care of them all?” I ask the guy again just to make sure.
“Yes, and easily at that. It was more of a slaughter than a fight. They couldn’t even see what killed them before it was too late.”
“Okay…thanks for telling me.”
I will have to take a look into that kid and the red fang symbol. There are so many variables that it is better not to jump to conclusions.
“I will be taking both beasts with me now and-” I can’t even finish the sentence before he interrupts me.
“Can we accompany you?” Roderick asks that with dread, making it sound more like a plea than a question. I can nearly see beads of sweat running down his face.
“If what you said was true you are all part of the same group of slaves right?” I have to ask that much at least.
“Yes, all of us were captured by them at some point.”
“Okay, follow me then if you want. I will be gathering all the monsters I killed on my way here before getting you back to our base.” I said that and spring into action, going to retrieve the other corpse.
I come back pulling the dead beast with the rope I brought to these guys already trying to upload the other beast onto a nearby car.
I help them load both of them on top of two different vehicles and then use the rope to secure them.
“Follow me with the cars, and stay on the lookout for any trucks with a big enough cargo area. We still need to take two more bodies.” I tell them to look for a way to bring back the other two big guys.
If I am going to accompany them back home might as well make the trip worthwhile.
An hour later we are loading the two big chunks of meat on a trailer we found. There haven't been any accidents yet, so we load them without wasting time and even though they are heavy, with a little bit of cooperation and creativity we manage to move them where we want them.
They all seem surprised at the sheer size of the size, but what to expect? The humongous hedgehog look-alike is nearly as big as an elephant, though definitely not as heavy.
We pack everything and in the blink of an eye, we are already leaving the city in the direction of our base.
‘Would you look at that? No accidents whatsoever.’
When we get to the base I leave the people with Jake after he comes to greet us when we get back, probably having been told by Nick and his squad.
I drop by the smith to let James and Martin know that they have new materials to work with and to ask them if they could reforge my sword.
“You want me to reforge it the same? Or do you prefer another kind of sword for the end product?” James seems confident in accomplishing it so I feel reassured that I leave in the right hands.
“The same shape should be fine, I quite like it. You can make some light armor while you are at it with the armored plates of a beast I brought. I have no idea how hard that will be though.”
I take my leave and let them both work on that.
‘This is quickly spiraling out of control. First a wave of weak monsters, and later on smaller groups of super strong and seemingly intelligent monsters. Not happy with all that, now there is some kind of monster that looks like a child?’ I can’t get my head around it.
“Hey, Shadow.” I call out to my best stalker, knowing perfectly that he started chasing me around the moment I came back to base.
“...” He shows up out of nowhere and comes straight to me.
“Hey Shadow, I need to do something. Go tell Jake that there is something fishy going on, tell him that they are monsters with similar appearance to us humans and we have to watch out for them.”
“I suggest you keep someone on stand around the base searching for weird behaviors of the people inside.”
Jordan, or as I like to call him Shadow, reveals one of his rarely-shown surprised faces and quickly rushes over to Jake to tell him.
I can’t be sure that none of them are already monsters in disguise, so now that he is not chasing me around I take the chance to tell the same thing to all the other leaders personally. ‘Better safe than sorry.’
After quickly doing that, I rush to the training grounds to practice for the rest of the day and to not seem suspicious.
‘If there are really monsters hiding among ourselves it will be difficult to make anything happen at all.’ I can’t stop thinking about a way to discover any impostors, yet for now, I can only go on. I can’t alert them myself.