‘Porous’ Pete wondered if this was what sweating was supposed to feel like.
He wasn’t fleshy like the rest of the people sitting around the game table he found himself at. No, he was Sculpted, and sculpted out of pumice. Like the rest of his ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, once upon a time he had been nothing more than a mindless AutoVant, built for a specific purpose. In his case, some absolute flippin’ genius had hit up on the idea of trying to reinvent the wheel. He wanted to custom commission an AutoVant for ship work at sea, and didn’t want the standard wooden model designed for that purpose.
No, he wanted a stone ‘Vant. To work on a ship of all things.
Beyond the fact that most of the heavier Sculpted, those hewn from metal and stone, couldn’t swim, there was another problem with that. The weight, you see. Most of them just weighed too much, more than a typical fleshy crewmate. If a Captain took the heavy ones with them, then that was more cargo they couldn’t haul. The wooden ‘Vant’s just weighed less, and actually floated on the open sea instead of sinking like the stone ones.
But that customer had been insistent, and so Pete was ‘born’. The exasperated craftsman had decided to shape him out of pumice, a type of volcanic rock. It had even worked. Pete could float out in the salt.
For a while. Until he filled up, that is.
Only, the customer hadn’t much cared for Pete’s appearance. Pete was cursed to forever look like a pimply-faced hume teenager forever, with his pumice pocked skin.
When that bastard, whoever he was, had refused to pay for Pete, he’d been shuffled into a closet. That closet had been where Pete had opened his eyes for the first time, during the Second Initialization. He’d stumbled out of it like an undead, all covered in cobwebs and extremely confused.
His first memory had been of his maker letting out a high-pitched shriek of surprise, before chasing him out into the street. After that, one thing led to another before Pete had found himself serving with his current crew, and under his current Captain.
Gods, he hoped she appreciated what he was doing.
Pete fidgeted in his chair around the card table he’d found himself at. In front of him, in the middle of the table, lay a pile of coins that had been wagered over this current hand. Salt’s breath, he thought there were even a few platinum coins in the mix. Those sure as hell hadn’t come from him, what with how broke he and his Captain were. No, that wasn’t what he was betting on this game.
He was betting himself.
The only way that he had managed to buy his way into this game was to bet his freedom. Everyone knew that the Longslip boys dealt in the flesh trade, and were making coin hand over fist selling to the stunties. Pete wasn’t exactly flesh, but he supposed stone worked just as well for these here bastards.
He’d been doing pretty well, for the first few games of Karat. He’d hedged his bets and won a modest pile of coin to stay in the game. Only, Pete hadn’t realized the trap he was falling into.
They were letting him win.
One by one, the rest of the players at the table had been eliminated, until it was just him and one other person at the table. Captain Donovan Longslip himself sat across from him, legs thrown up nonchalantly on the table and puffing on a cigar without a care in the world. It didn’t even seem like he was paying much attention to the game at all. He was holding his cards off to his side, and was only glancing at them every once in a while in disinterest.
No, most of his attention was on Pete, his unfairly handsome features twisted in a knowing smirk. Everyone in the cove knew that his fair face hid the blackest of all hearts.
Pete gulped, even though he didn’t need to as a Sculpted. It was just one of those things you picked up around the fleshies. He knew that he shouldn’t be giving away so many tells, but everyone in the room knew that he was boned now. He drew in a shaky breath to calm his non-existent nerves, looking down at the measly two crowns in his hand. The bastards, they hadn’t even bothered to make it an easily missable cheat. That wouldn’t save him, though. The Triumvirate wouldn’t care, if he even got the chance to plead his case to them. In their eyes, he’d fallen for an easy trick, and would get what he deserved.
These boys had set things up that way on purpose. The game had been rigged from the start. The jaws of the trap were closing in on him now. They were just waiting for him to lay his final cards on the table in order for the charade to finish.
Pete fixed a shaky smile on his face, and tried to meet Longslip’s eyes. “Well, lads,” He said in an unsteady, whistling voice. “I think I’m goin’ to have ta fold on this one. I’ll just be gettin’ out of yer hair now.” He tried to rise from his chair, only for a firm hand to fall on either of his shoulders and push him back down. Glancing over his shoulder, Pete found that two of Longslip’s musclebound enforcers had hands on him, with sadistic looks on their stupid faces. Quaveringly, he turned back around to Longslip.
The slaver Captain took a long puff of his cigar before speaking. “No, yer not,” He said casually. “Be a good lad now and lay yer cards on the table.”
Shit.
Almost resigned to his fate, Pete did as he was told and limply tossed his hand on the table. “Two crowns,” He said, defeated.
Longslip hummed to himself. He sat up, swinging his legs off the table and laying his own cards out in a sweeping motion. “Four swords,” He said with a smirk.
Pete gazed at the cutlasses emblazoned on Longslip’s cards dully. He shook his head. “Ye slimy bastard,” He said in disbelief. “Ye couldn’t even pretend, could ye? I have one of those swords.”
“Well, I don’t know how that could have happened,” Longslip said mockingly, amused at his own ‘cleverness’. He turned to face one of his subordinates in the room. “How’s about ye, Micah? Do ye know how those extra swords got into me deck?”
Micah, a slim, dark-haired rake of a man leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, snorted. “Can’t rightly say I do, Captain.”
“Don’t matter anyway,” Longslip said, turning back to face Pete. “Games done, and it’s time to collect me winnings.” He stood up from his chair and outstretched a hand to Micah. The flunky pushed off of the wall and picked up a bucket lying at his feet, taking something out of it and handing it to his Captain.
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A slave collar.
Pete drew in a shuddering breath at the sight of it. Mockingly, Longslip snapped the open end of the collar at him, as if it were the jaws of an impatient beast. Meanwhile, Micah approached the wood-burning stove in the corner of the room. Reaching it, he drew a branding iron from the bucket and thrust it into the stove, heating it.
Pete didn’t resist as Longslip walked around the table and clasped the collar around his porous neck. “Ye know me Captain ain’t gonna stand fer this,” Pete said quietly. “She’ll come, and she’ll make ye regret this buggery, Longslip.”
Longslip chuckled, leaning down to ear level with Pete. “I’m intendin’ on it,” He hissed in the Sculpted’s ear. “Lass as comely as her? Well, she’ll probably fetch more than ye will. And she don’t got anyone else to back her up no more, now does she? Yer All. She’s. Got.” Shame and horror rolled through Pete at Longslip's words. This hadn’t just been a trap for him.
This whole charade had been so they could bait a trap for his Captain.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pete saw Longlip accept a burning red branding iron from Micah. With a harsh shove from Longslip, Pete fell face forward onto the table with a grunt. “Now, don’t scream too loud, will ye? Don’t need the nobs upstairs complainin’ about the noise.”
As he felt the head of the branding iron hovering over his back, Pete cursed the fool who designed Sculpted to feel pain. He tried to brace himself, but wasn’t truly prepared for the searing sensation of the iron as it tore through his shirt to rest on his stone skin.
He screamed.
……………………………………..
Pete was barely conscious as he was dragged out of the game room. He was hazily aware that the same two enforcers from earlier had him in between them and were taking him somewhere. He retained only enough presence of mind for his surroundings to appear as if they were shrouded in mists.
So this was what it was like…
As far as he knew, it was rare for Sculpted to get collared and branded like slaves since they’d all been woken up. But from speaking to others, he’d learned that it was a crapshoot what the binding would do to them. Most of the time, it knocked them for a loop, losing their Status all at once. Not only did they lose what strength they had fought for, they lost control of their bodies altogether. At least for a time. Apparently, for those unlucky enough to be bound, it should eventually return. But for now, he was just an unblinking hunk of rock in the form of a hume.
Sometimes though….
Sometimes it was worse. For some Sculpted that got branded, they lost the sapience that had been given to them. They just returned to the mindlessness of the before times, when they were little better than farm equipment.
Pete wondered which had happened to him. Was he just powerless for a while? Or…was he trapped inside his own mind forever, while his body was puppeted around under the command of whoever he was sold to? Was this what actually happened to his brothers and sisters who were collared and sold as slaves? He would have shivered, if he could.
With the world in a blur, Pete couldn’t track exactly where Longslip’s crewmen were taking him. He could tell that they’d left the tavern by now, though. He didn’t think they were taking him to the docks, either, from the way he couldn’t hear the sea. Wherever they were taking him, they reached it eventually. The meatheads dropped him unceremoniously against a wall, and began to beat against what sounded like a metal door. Pete strained his ears as much as he was able, when he heard the sound of a latch opening.
“Password,” He heard someone grunt on the other side of the door.
Pete heard the sounds of the enforcer rummaging around in his grubby pocket. “Uh,” The pirate said stupidly. “The…password…is…dim…rum…run…you…moron?”
The person beyond the door sighed. “Close enough,” They said tiredly. “Get in, you idiots. Bring the ‘Vant with you. You got the slate?”
“Yeh,” The other enforcer said dumbly, rummaging around in his pockets.
“Give me that, you lunk,” The voice said irritated. Pete heard the sound of something shuffling hands. “No doubt a dumbass like you would manage to break it.”
Pete was lifted off of the ground again by the two enforcers, and dragged through the now open door. His vision was thankfully starting to improve, allowing him to just barely make out the shape of a wooden crate in the dim light. In fact, there were rows of them all around him.
The Longslip pirates had brought him to one of their warehouses in town.
They dragged him to the back of the warehouse where Pete assumed they kept their ‘live’ cargo. A row of huge iron cages, each big enough to hold an ox. Pete tried not to think about how many poor, unfortunate souls had been thrown in one of those to be sold to the stunties. He cringed mentally at the pain of being thrown into one of them himself, as the Longslip men clanged the door of the cage behind him.
He lay there, motionless and silent, wanting to weep at the depths of his own failure. But he couldn’t. The only thing he could do was stare up at the windows near the ceiling with an unblinking gaze in his frozen body.
Pete wasn’t sure how long he lay there before something changed.
A shadow moved in front of one of the windows he was staring at.
Pete’s stone heart dropped in his chest, half from dread, and half from hope. Who the hell was that? That couldn’t be his Captain. She didn’t have a discreet bone in her body. If she’d come to rescue him, he would have expected her to blow in through the front door of the warehouse.
He watched, frozen, as the shadow over the window slowly, soundlessly opened the window and slithered inside. Once inside, they somehow clung to the wall for a moment and slowly inched the window closed. In the brief moment that the moonlight illuminated their form, he could see that they were wearing a hooded cloak of some kind. After closing the window, the figure began to lower themselves to the floor of the warehouse using some kind of spiked rope before they slipped out of Pete’s view.
The entire entrance had taken only seconds.
Pete still couldn’t move so he strained his ears as much as he could. In the dim silence of the warehouse, he couldn’t hear much. His Perception wasn’t as high as he wanted it to be. All he could make out were the muffled coughs and shuffling noises of the guards as they patrolled the warehouse, alert for his Captain’s rescue attempt.
Only because he was listening for it could he tell when something thumped to the ground.
One of the guards must have heard it, too, though. “Jord?” Pete heard one of the enforcers call out. “You trip or somethin’?” He said, moving closer to where the sound had originated. Seconds later, Pete heard a gasp from the guard. “INTRU-”
He didn’t get to finish his shout. The enforcer was cut off with a strangled, burbling noise.
He’d done his job, though, as Pete heard the third guard in the warehouse sprint from his position with a rasp of steel. Shortly after that, he heard the unmistakable sound of battle. Grunts and the sound of steel on steel filled the air. Suddenly, rainbow light erupted from the corner of the warehouse where the fight was happening. As if he’d paid to see a two-copper shadow play, Pete watched as a cloaked figure, form illuminated on the wall, thrust a spear straight through the shadow of the third guard.
For the first time since he’d been collared, Pete managed to blink. By the time his eyes opened, the light show had ended.
The warehouse was cast in shadow and silence once more.
Pete had managed to struggle into a sitting position by the time his possible rescuer approached his cage.
They were a gruesome sight.
The cloak that Pete had seen earlier was clearly from a skill of some kind, as it seemed to be made of thorns and burrs. In the dim light of the warehouse, he couldn’t tell what color it was supposed to be originally.
But now?
It was covered in blood, dripping down the owner’s frame and off the points of innumerable spikes.
Pete felt a chill run down his spine.
Gods, what now?