Getting jostled woke me up. Moving turned out to be a mistake, as my captor threw me off his shoulder unto the sands and none too gently either. My head cracked against a piece of rusty metal. Everything hurt but I got up despite the pain. My captors started shouting strange incoherent words at me. The one who held my bindings punched me in the gut and went back to walking.

Getting the hint, I did my best to keep up. It was hard. The shackles dragged at my feet, unbearably heavy for some reason. Hunger and thirst tortured me. Debuffs littered my System screen.

Malnourished, -5 all attributes. Dehydrated, -5 all skills. Encumbered, -7 all attributes & skills.

Blood was full, but my overall body health was down into the seventies, adding yet more negative modifiers all over the place. Except for my stomach, which showed 56/125. My status said ‘enslaved’. Everything else had been redacted, even the previously unlocked stuff.

They kept me in a constant state of deprivation. My meals consisted of the occasional tossed leftover pieces of meat or moldy bread. A waterskin had been offered to me, filled from a fouled oasis we came across. The water there had been dirty with unknown particles inside, some of them moved on their own. A sheen of oil on top had displayed the full spectrum of colors. It was a miracle drinking it didn’t kill me outright.

We seemed to be wandering between small settlements across barren desert. My various body parts recovered to full health during the first few days. Wherever we arrived, the locals - all human - presented their own copy of the strange book, held high, and bowed down in obvious worship while the ripped priest spoke strange words. My despair peaked the first time it happened. I had made the mistake of looking up at the blazing sun.

It wasn’t the usually expected orb of fire. Instead it looked like a glowing ball of massed tentacles wrapping around each other. Some of them wavered languidly, clueing me in to what the symbol on the book was supposed to represent. These insane bastards worshipped some kind of elder god or cthulhoid entity. Their constant chanting of its name taught me my first off-world word. Cor’Athoz.

The days of suffering continued. We eventually made it to a more vibrant area with grass that left small cuts in my feet. A large winding river snaked throughout the fertile valley. Small farms littered the landscape. I saw a battle of seemingly well-fed warrior-priests with equipment in various states of disrepair fending off a group of strange, fat creatures. They looked like a mix between a velociraptor and a hippo.

My debuffs kept switching back and forth between their current state and ones that were twice as bad. They were called starving and parched. At least the encumbrance malus lessened slowly, it was now at only -3. My athletics skill had reappeared again as well, clocking in at 1 right now.

Eventually, we made it to a settlement. A giant adobe wall obscured most of it. My vision had improved but not by much. I never made it inside, having been passed off to another group of hard-faced men. They had normal statures and wore the kind of equipment I’d expect from a medieval knight badly down on his luck, mixed with Japanese influences.

It seemed interesting but getting caught looking at my new escort was a terrible idea. They instilled the lesson into me with a beating. It brought most of my body parts down to below the seventies again, but at least toughness had reappeared, now sitting at 2.

Our journey took us through a winding mountain passage. The wind threatened to sand my skin off, at least it felt that way. I received another beating during our climb up a rocky slope, evidently for going too slowly. Looking around was still difficult because of the constant heat haze, but I saw specks circling in the sky near our destination.

We crossed a wobbly wooden rope bridge across a chasm. Below was nothing but large river raging between two sheer cliffs. The head of a gigantic statue of someone who wore clothing similar to the ripped priest stood out from the middle of an enormous winding pit. On the far end of the bridge, five big guys stood in a chevron formation with their arms crossed. They nodded to the group escorting me while I kept my head down.

We passed some square adobe buildings on the way and I burned the layout into my memory. They brought me all the way down and locked me in a cage and fed me properly for once. Clean water and real bread almost made me feel alive again. Other slaves looked at me jealously, hinting that I shouldn’t expect this kind of treatment for long.

A slave next to me in our half circle of cages tried speaking a few times, but my replies simply caused him to frown and shut up. The other cage next to mine was empty. Thankfully, we had a tarp of dirty cloth covering us from the scorching sun. It was riddled with holes and no matter how I tried to hug the cage walls, some ray of light always landed on me, unbearably hot.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Things got a lot worse about a minute later, when a group of six men with whips and wearing shoddy clothes showed up. We were given a crude backpack made of a plank, some cloth and held together by sticks. A blunt pickaxe was shoved into my hands. One of the taskmasters prodded towards a section of the open pit. He apparently wanted me to mine rocks. It was exhausting but the fear of more beatings pushed me to continue until my breaking point.

I only stopped for a few minutes and a whip lashed my back. Taking time off wasn’t allowed. The taskmaster did allow us to rest eventually. I even received some moldy bread and thankfully clean water. My slave group had two people other than me. Both of them looked a lot like the fish stick monster but were about half again as tall and of a brown coloration. They didn’t have the sharp jagged teeth either, but rather a mouth full of what looked like wooden molars. Their eyes were strangely human.

And then our work continued. I barely made any progress but eventually filled up a backpack. They had me carry it to a landfill and dump it out, only to repeat the whole process again. At the end of the day, we got a complementary beating. Every morning, I woke up in the cage with half healed injuries. They barely fed us and then put us to work immediately after.

During the third day, a new member joined our group. This one was particularly strange. It looked like the stick people but mechanical. It made no sense whatsoever, loose wires and jutting metal were sticking out all over it. Moving clockwork mixed with pistons and tubes. Somehow it all worked despite the obvious state of extreme negligence and disrepair. How the sand didn’t clog up everything was well beyond me, but its arrival was the best thing that could’ve happened to me.

It had been put in the empty cell next to mine for the night. I figured it was their version of a Sunday or something because they didn’t beat us unconscious and were praying to the alien sun for the third time as it settled. Out of sheer desperation I tried talking to the robot.

“Hey there, can you understand me?”

It turned towards me, completely still, and ciphers flashed in the screens where its eyes should be. At first it stuttered and gave out soft mechanical screeches. Its voice modulated a few times until, finally, I understood it.

“Greetings fellow meatbag. I comprehend you,” it said in a decidedly toneless mechanical voice.

“Uhh… Meatbag?”

“Yes. A bag of meat. Like you and me.”

“Buddy, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but you’re a robot.”

“My name is not Buddy. I am Robeep. I am a bag of meat. Like you and me. Like you and me. Like you and me.” It spazzed out for a bit, twitched a few times and then started over. “I am Robeep.”

Right, best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Alright. Robeep, sure. Can you tell me where we are?”

“We are in the Great Womb. Here we are born again. It is a great opportunity granted to us by his grace, the Grand High Priest and Holy Representative of Cor’Athoz. Cor’Athoz. Cor’Athoz. Cor’Athoz.” A few sparks flew out of Robeep’s head.

“Ooookay. What’s the grand priest’s name?”

“Bill, but you must refer to him as the Grand High Priest and Holy Representative of Cor’Athoz. Otherwise, you will be beaten. He is the leader of the One True Faith. One True Faith. One True Faith.” Robeep twitched a couple of times, and then headbutted the cage three times in a row.

“Understood. Do you know why they keep us here and enslave us?”

“We are not enslaved. We have been given the great opportunity to cleanse our sins by working until we die so we can be reborn as pure humans instead of filthy xenos scum. Xenos scum. Xenos scum.” Robeep’s arms attempted to spin wildly, constantly crashing against the bars.

“My status says I’m enslaved.”

“Does not compute. Please clarify. What is a status?”

Oh, well at least it’s my System, I guess. “Never mind. Forget I said that-”

“Deleting data. Forgetting complete.”

I stayed quiet for a while, afraid Robeep might go into a frenzy again. A night guard was making his rounds. About five minutes after he left earshot, I continued. “You sure you’re alright, Robeep? It sounds like you’re… a bit under the weather.” Like you’re a broken computer.

Robeep’s eyes blanked out for a few seconds. They looked suspiciously like a blue screen of death. It spoke afterwards, “Diagnostics incomplete. Lacking administrative credentials. Provide username and password to complete diagnostics and initiate cognitive repair.”

Hmm. What are the odds? “Username: Admin. Password: Admin.”

“Credentials cleared. Diagnostics complete. Cognitive repair complete.”

Suddenly Robeep’s voice gained inflection, that of a highly excitable teenager. “Greetings, fellow meatbag! Thank you for fixing my fleshy brain. Please accept my eternal service as gratitude. I look forward to the great adventures we will have together, here in the Great Womb, working until we die! What is your name?”

A system notification popped up before I could answer.

Robeep has joined your squad. Name your squad.

It wasn’t hard to decide on a name. After all, it was all around me.

Squad name confirmed: Sun, Sand & Wasteland.

Might as well rip it, new world and all that. “Just call me Susawa.”

“It is great to meet you Susawa! We will become the mightiest warriors to have ever lived. After we die and are reborn as pure humans, of course. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

At least I wasn’t in this alone anymore.

Now to figure out how the hell we’re going to escape from this hellhole.