“Oh, man…” Gene mumbled.
The guys averted their eyes from the scene in the center of the huge tent.
Less of a tent and more like a large, open-floor home really.
There were scattered beds sort of like those Japanese beds they had in Japan from the one time Tessa’s family had visited.
A stove was near the far wall.
It looked weird and different, but she instantly recognized it as a stove.
It helped that there was a wood fire going on underneath it and pots filled with steaming food.
She certainly hoped that it wasn’t ‘elf’ meat in there.
Couldn’t take it for granted.
It was a different world.
A different culture.
Maybe the rapists were also cannibals?
They might not even consider it cannibalism since the species was different.
Tessa forced herself to turn her attention back to the center of the tent.
An ‘elf’.
Well, several, were chained to thick iron stakes driven into the hard ground.
Except, not all of them were the same.
Most were as Johnny had described them.
They were all women.
Obviously.
It was easy to tell since they were naked.
Dark-haired and brown-skinned, but in a shade more like rich wood than the typical human skin tones… the typical Earth human skin tones.
She had to remember that there was a distinction.
They were small and skinnier than the average Earth human.
The last ‘elf’ was not.
She was tall.
A lot taller.
Even forced into a disgusting position it wasn’t difficult to see the length of her limbs and body.
Statuesque.
Perfect proportions.
Size wasn’t the only difference.
Her pale skin was almost white, like… those fancy stuff they used for sculptures.
Alabaster? Marble? Ivory?”
Her hair was almost metallic… platinum?
There was a glow, a shine to her.
Skin and hair.
Not even the countless marks on her body could dampen it.
Honestly, Tessa was in awe.
“It’s like I want to curtsy or something,” Johnny said. “Feels bad just looking at her. Like I’m part of the crime, you know?”
Sure enough, he was keeping his gaze to the ground near the feet of the ‘elves’.
“Alright, Gene, you’re the talking guy. Do your thing.”
“I— I can’t,” Gene hissed.
“Seriously?” she raised a brow. Sure she was in awe, but not that much. “Men,” she snorted.
Like Johnny, Gene looked away while squeezing the hilt of his longsword tightly.
“Fine,” she rolled her eyes. “So. We don’t want violence. We’re going to release them. We want to ask some questions about this place. Where’s the nearest city? What’s it like? What dangers are in the area? On the way to said city? Do I ask about the Z-guy?”
“Don’t use its name,” Gene said.
“Ask about the sociopolitical climate,” Johnny added. “And make sure they aren’t evil,” he whispered.
That was a fair question.
If there was a species war going on then they didn’t really want to get caught up in it.
Hopefully, the darkened faceplates and strange-looking armor would keep either side from attacking on sight.
Then again, it was reasonable to expect that those things would lead to just that.
Tessa stabbed her kanabo into the hard ground.
That should set the tone.
The ‘elves’ eyed her.
Except for the super tall, pale, glowy one.
She approached slowly, hands at her side held open. Like how she did for the deercows back on the Threnosh world.
“Hello? I mean you no harm.”
They stared at her without blinking.
Dark orbs.
The pupil took up more space in comparison to a human eye.
“Can you understand me?”
She was a hundred percent certain they could talk.
They had opposable thumbs and their throats looked like a human’s.
The differences were superficial.
The eyes.
The long, pointed ears like knives.
The skin color.
They had finger and toe nails.
The same bits.
Are those bite marks?
She shook her head.
Fucking rapists!
“Is the Universal Translation System working?”
She realized that the shackles around their wrists and ankles and the collar around their neck had faintly glowing symbols.
“Wait… nod if the collars are stopping you from talking?”
They answered with vehement nods.
“Guys! Magic collars.”
“I can’t feel the mana because of theirs,” Gene said.
“There’s got to be keys,” Johnny said.
She raised her brows at the ‘elves’.
Several fingers pointed toward the north end of the tent where a small wooden desk lay flush against the thick cloth wall.
Johnny walked over. “Ask them if there are traps.”
Several shook their heads.
“No traps.”
The desk only had one small drawer so it took no time at all for Johnny to come up with keys.
He muttered a curse as he came back and handed them to her.
Her face twisted.
“They’re made out of bone?”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Magic bones,” Gene added unhelpfully.
Even without the faintly glowing symbols on the ivory surface she could feel their vague power through the electromagnetic field around her. It manifested in the same tingling sensation that other magic stuff tended to elicit.
“Whatever.”
She regarded the ‘elf’ women.
The bigger one was probably the leader, right?
Nope.
She couldn’t make assumptions.
Besides the bigger one’s eyes looked dead the way they stared at the ground.
Now that she studied the ‘elf’ it became clear that the woman was as still as a statue laying on the ground. At least as much as she could lay with the chains keeping her partially elevated in a position that Tessa shuddered to think about the obvious reasons for.
“Who should I free first?”
When in doubt ask the people who knew best.
Gene cleared his throat.
“Hold on. Let’s be clear here. We mean you no harm. And all we want from you are those answers. After that, you go your way, we go ours. Nod if you guys got it.”
They did, so she unlocked the shackles from the ‘elf’ that beckoned with the approval of the others.
“Outworlder…”
The voice was a rasp.
Tessa didn’t know what she had been expecting.
Something more magical? Musical? Like the songs of the forest or some such crap.
Instead, the ‘elf’ sounded like any human woman. High-pitched, but still deeper than it seemed like it should’ve been.
She handed over a water bladder from her bag of holding.
The ‘elf’ took a sip and tried to hand it back. “The Dominion soldiers?” she asked.
“Some dead. All subdued.”
That was good information.
She instantly felt less bad about the men she had killed.
As she and her friends had taken to saying ever since they had been plagued by the nightmares and visions.
Fuck the Dominion!
“May the forest feast on their black blood.”
“Yeah. Fuck the Dominion!” Johnny snapped.
“Uh, yeah. That.” She held the keys out to the ‘elf’. They might’ve preferred one of their own to do the deed instead of a faceless outworlder in strange and, she just noticed, red-splattered armor.
The ‘elf’ recoiled as if from a sparking wire.
“Ah… right, magic. Sorry.” Tessa freed the women one by one while the first shared the water with each.
“The others?” the first ‘elf’ said.
“If you mean the ones in the wagon? Then they’re still there. We were careful about collateral damage, uh, innocent bystanders,” Gene said. He had no difficulty looking her in the eyes now that she had moved away from the glowing ‘elf’ still in chains.
“They will be freed,” the ‘elf’ said.
“Yes. Of course,” Gene said.
“I’ll do it. Maybe one of you guys can come with, um, after we find clothes or something.” Johnny kept his gaze to the tent’s ceiling.
Tessa tossed the keys.
Johnny caught them.
“The black-blooded filth destroyed our clothing,” the ‘elf’ said.
“Sheets?” Johnny gestured vaguely.
“We have no modesty left.”
“It’s cold outside,” Tessa said.
A silent conversation ensued between the ‘elves’.
Tessa would’ve missed the subtle twitches of their fingers and expressions had she not been watching them closely for any signs they might attack.
A few ‘elves’ grabbed knives from the little cooking area and quickly turned the blankets and sheets into crude ponchos.
It wasn’t enough for all of them, but she figured the Dominion men probably had clean clothes in one of their supply wagons.
“You got it, Johnny?” Gene said.
“Yup.”
“Alright, if a few of you would like to accompany him. Please explain to your fellow, uh, women that we mean you no harm,” Gene said.
Johnny led the clothed ‘elves’ out the tent.
“Chill, guys! We’re— Whoa! Chill, chill! Don’t worry about him! That’s Twinklestar, he’s—”
Sudden screams quieted from outside as Tessa turned her attention to the next issue.
“What about her?”
The big, glowy ‘elf’ woman was still staring into nothing. Completely unresponsive to the activity in her surroundings.
“Honored High.” The first ‘elf’ Tessa had freed did a weird thing with her hands and bowed her head. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “The black-blooded inflicted untold suffering and dishonor.”
“She won’t, like, lash out when I free her?”
“No.”
“Good enough for me.”
The ‘elf’ had spoken truth.
High, she supposed that was the glowy ‘elf’ woman’s name, did nothing upon being released from the magical shackles and chains.
The other ‘elf’ women proceeded to see to High with softly chanted magic that glowed green from their hands.
The bruises and bite marks on the pale glowing skin vanished. The dried blood on her legs were cleansed.
When they finished, they draped a blanket they had saved.
“Oh thank God,” Gene muttered. He regarded the first ‘elf’ Tessa had freed. “So, not to rush you, but those questions…”
“We will provide if your words are true.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely!” Gene said.
Tessa cleared her throat.
“We’d like to take a look at their loot. Don’t worry, we’ll leave most of it to you guys. We might want to take one of the wagons.” Gene glanced at Tessa. “Will Twinklestar pull it?”
Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen any beasts of burden in the fort. Granted she had been focused on the fight.
“If he won’t, me and Vee can.”
“So, we’re going to make sure you have what you need to get where you need to go,” Gene said.
“That is acceptable,” the ‘elf’ said. “We will answer what we can.”
What they got was of mixed value.
The nearest settlement was a few weeks walk down the road.
They knew nothing about it since this was the farthest they had traveled from their homes in the forests nearer to the base of the massive mountain range to the west.
The translation system referred to the range as ‘The Mothers’.
A string of lucrative and difficult encounter challenges had appeared on and under the mountains a few generations ago. That was in ‘elf’ years.
Tessa wondered if they were more long-lived or functionally immortal. The only thing she had to go on was fiction and it felt rude to ask. She had no idea if that was a cultural taboo that could’ve put a stop to the answers.
The sudden appearance of said challenges was behind the state of war between the Dominion and the ‘elves’.
The former controlled lands to the west all the way to the ocean and beyond, while the latter, presumably, held lands at the eastern base of the range and on the eastern side.
The ‘elf’ didn’t elaborate.
Which was fair.
Tessa wouldn’t want to give away intel unless it was absolutely necessary to get something worth it in return.
The ‘elves’ weren’t ‘elves’. At least that wasn’t how they referred to themselves.
They were the ‘Low’.
‘High’ wasn’t the glowy one’s name. It was her species? Subspecies?
She might’ve asked for a brief explanation to satisfy her curiosity but the golden symphony lurking around the edges of her thoughts kept her focused on their one goal.
The tale of how they had come to be captives was a tragic and harrowing one.
They had been traveling from the settlement of the father of the High’s unborn child when they came under attack by an overwhelming Dominion force likely teleported from the closest encounter challenge.
Tessa saw Gene stiffen when the Low briefly described the battle with a flat, matter of fact tone despite describing spells and Skills that split the sky and devastated entire swathes of the forest and mountainside.
In the end, the Dominion had gained enough of an edge with the ambush to triumph.
The ‘Low’ fighters that hadn’t perished in the battle were slaughtered afterward.
All that remained was one High and less than 30 Low women and girls, mostly noncombatants.
The enchanted shackles and chains were enough to render them weak enough for a few hundred sub-Level 40 fighting Dominion men to keep them captive and violate them for over a year. First at a Dominion stronghold. Then on the long road as they finally sent them east. Their ultimate fates lay across the narrow sea to the main Dominion land. Where the naturally high concentration of mana in their bodies promised greater suffering for many years as their bodies and very essence would be slowly stripped of their magic until they remained nothing more than withered husks clinging to life, too hollowed out to even wish for the release of death.
“I’m sorry for you losses.” Tessa forced her gaze to the High. “And for your baby.”
That drew the first reaction.
A mere flicker of her eyelids.
As for Zalthyss?
The Low knew nothing more than that it existed.
“Thank you,” Gene said.
“We’ll have to interrogate the rapists,” Tessa said.
She wasn’t looking forward to it. They’d have to interrogate multiple men, multiple times because their information would be obviously suspect. It would take a lot of work to corroborate everything to sift for kernels of truth in their bullshit. She’d much rather wash her hands of them entirely.
That was when they ran into their first snag.
“We claim our rites of the aggrieved,” the Low said.
Tessa shrugged with a glance at Gene.
She didn’t need an explanation.
It was obvious what that entailed and they were welcome to it.
Gene sighed. “I’m not really looking forward to talking to those guys. We lack the ability to find out if they’re lying to us, which is a guarantee. So, it’s not like what we could get from them would be useful.”
“We could scare some of the younger ones pretty easily.” She felt compelled to play devil’s advocate.
“How important are these rites?” Gene said.
“We would’ve performed them already if not for our deference for your saving acts, outworlder,” the Low said.
“Can you wait a little longer? Our party needs to discuss things,” Gene said.
“That is acceptable.”
Tessa followed Gene out of the huge tent.
“One guess on what this rite entails?” Gene said.
“Well-deserved punishment. I don’t care about the details. As far as I’m concerned they’re welcome to it. They’re the ones that’s been raped and tortured for over a year. Jesus Christ, that’s some grim darkness garbage!”
“The others won’t have a problem with it or enough to complain,” Gene continued. “Except for Vee… probably.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“We should do it as a group.”
“No. She’ll feel less ganged up on if its just me and her.”
Tessa figured it’d be a coin flip in regards to Vee’s reaction. Her little sister had a child’s conception of justice, but Vee could be convinced with a reasoned argument.
Then again, what could be more justified than the victims deciding the fates of the rapists?
It was black and white for Tessa.