Dellen’s Spark Core spun, and a magnetic field bloomed around him. He could feel it interacting with the metal in the ship’s hold, spreading out around him. He pushed against the bars, and they pushed him back, he pushed against both sides of the cage at the same time and found stable footing. He kept pushing and noticed that the buttons on his clothes all strained to be away from him.
He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, he could feel the metal, it just wasn’t moving.
Dellen released his Electrical Aether.
“Any luck?” Tristan called without much optimism in his voice.
“I’m still trying,” Dellen said. There had to be something, there was no such thing as a perfect cage, he was sure of it.
A door opened, spilling bright light, “Oi, you, cocky one, we going to have a problem later?”
The man stopped in front of the bars blocking Dellen’s way. It was the same man who had knocked him unconscious.
“That little slap of yours almost tickled.” He scratched his chin where Dellen had hit him. “Almost.” He laughed a harsh mean-spirited laugh. “I don’t know where so many boats of you weak little kittens came from; you’re lucky we found you before something ate you.”
Dellen frowned, thinking of the storm serpents. The man had come uncomfortably close to the truth. “What’s your name?”
“Hoskins,” he said, still laughing, “What’s it to you?”
“Hoskins,” Dellen said, “What do you mean eat us? I saw a serpent in a storm. Are there many things like that here?”
Hoskins looked at him in confusion, “What do you mean here? And where else would you see storm serpents?”
He had confirmed the name, storm serpents, and by his lack of a strong reaction, they were not uncommon. “Where are we going?”
Hoskins regained his calm demeanour, and replied with a grin, “You’ll see when we’re there.”
They went three days without food. The first two were the hardest. After that, Dellen’s stomach stopped its protests. Tristan stopped talking after the first day.
The end of the third day brought them a meal. Hard biscuits, dried meat, and water. Dellen had not seen the man serving them before. “All of you need to be strong for tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s the auction.”
Dellen's heart sank like an anchor as the news of their imminent sale reverberated through the prison cell. The weight of despair settled upon his shoulders, threatening to crush his spirit. Then he stopped and shook his head. He could always escape. He could always find a way back to the storm.
Voices rose around him. A stifled sob escaped the lips of one of his cellmates, their grief breaking through the facade of emotional numbness.
“You can’t sell us!” Tristan yelled.
“I won’t,” the man with the food laughed, “That’s the captain. We all just get a share,” he grinned, “Now, all of you need to eat.”
Dellen ate his biscuit and hard meat. The biscuit was dry, more like plaster than food, and the meat was salty. He forced it down. He was going to be strong for whatever came next. Gilgamesh had criticized him for rarely surviving to the end of a loop. He was going to see this through.
He spent the night trying to think of how to escape the cage, occasionally hearing Tristan bang against the bars in frustration.
The morning footsteps on the stairs and happy jailers to visit them, Hoskins first among them. “Oi, up you lot, you want to look shiny for today.” He walked over to Dellen’s cage, unlocked it, and strode in, confident. “I think I’ll cuff you first,” he said to Dellen.
He approached Dellen, a pair of cuffs dangling from his right hand.
Dellen backed up, anticipating the imminent confrontation. His heart pounded in his chest, adrenaline coursing through his veins. As Hoskins closed in, Dellen's eyes narrowed, his focus sharpening.
With a surge of determination, Dellen ducked to the side, evading Hoskins’s outstretched arm. Reacting on pure reflex, Dellen moved. He closed the distance between them in an instant, his hand darting out to grab Hoskins’s wrist. Gripping it tightly, Dellen channeled Electrical Aether from his hand into him.
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Hoskins’s eyes widened in surprise, and he smiled, “You still have fight in you. You’ll sell well.” He brought up his freehand and slapped cuffs around the hand Dellen had on him, then, holding Dellen’s arm in a grip like iron, he forced Dellen’s wrists together and attached him to a chain. He examined Dellen’s face from the side, “Still have a bit of a bruise here, shouldn’t affect your price though.” He attached the other prisoners in the cell to the same chain and led them to the stairs.
They trudged up the stairs, led by Hoskins pulling them up as though he dragged an unweighted line. They came up to the same deck where Dellen had jumped onto the airship. The deck itself bore the wear and tear of countless journeys, its wooden planks weathered and scarred. Dellen squinted in the afternoon sun. It felt bright after days spent below.
All of the prisoners were brought up and left in disorderly lines held together by chains.
The air was thick with a palpable sense of despair and resignation from the Aetheric Cultivators, their faces etched with exhaustion and defeat. The ship's crew moved about with cheerful efficiency.
A gangplank thudded from the ship onto the ground.
Chain by chain, the prisoners were urged forward, forced to march across the gangplank like livestock being herded. Dellen's heart sank as he took his first steps onto the weathered wooden plank, the weight of his chains dragging him down. He glanced back at the ship, its name etched on its side in bold letters: The Ironclaw. The name sent a shiver down his spine.
As he crossed the gangplank, Dellen couldn't help but observe his surroundings.
The auction house loomed before them, a massive structure adorned with dark, imposing facades. The walls were reinforced with heavy iron bars, serving as a stark reminder of the nature of the trade within. Unlit torches dotted the exterior. The air was thick with anticipation, fear, and resignation.
Dellen and the prisoners walked forward, their shackles clinking with each step as they were led towards a loading area that catered specifically to the grim trade of slavery.
Their captors prodded them forward with cheerful indifference. Within the compound, Dellen’s group was led past a series of pens and holding cells, all empty, but dirty. They were brought to a well-kempt man wearing a suit, holding a book, making notes.
“What have you brought me today?” He looked at Dellen’s group, and his eyebrows drew together. He gave Dellen himself a brief quizzical look and moved on to the people around him. “Wherever did you find so many unforged adults?” He started to walk briskly through the group from Copperopolis. “You have almost seventy unforged here. I’ve never heard of such a thing.” He tapped his fingers on his chin, “It will be interesting to see how people respond. I haven’t seen a group like this in well… Ever.”
“What about these others?” Dellen and the relatively few sporting steelskin were pointed out.
“Leave them with the unforged, let’s see how they affect the price, unless I miss my guess, none of them are even at First Trinity.
Dellen frowned. In Copperopolis he’d been remarkable for the forging he’d done. Here, he was remarkable for how little he’d accomplished.
The man in the suit waved them ahead, “Put them in pens to wait for auction,” he paused, “Clean pens, the unforged are more fragile, we don’t want any of them dying before sale. Give me an hour to send letters to buyers. These will only fetch a good price from those with discerning eyes.
They were herded into a cell large enough to hold more than a hundred prisoners.
Dellen waited for the door to clang shut before collapsing to the floor with his chain-mates. He tried his strength against the chain and the cuffs. He clenched his teeth and ignored the pain, pulling against the cuffs until they bit into his flesh and blood flowed. The cuffs didn’t respond at all. Aether flowed from his Spark Core to his wrists; he tried to produce enough to forge the alloy binding him, but it was like trying to put out a fire one drop of water at a time.
He stopped, head slumped. Death would be an escape, but he didn’t see how he could even manage to die.
Time crawled, but, Dellen didn’t see anyone make an attempt more strenuous than his own to escape. The door clanged open. A man walked in. Dellen’s eyes followed his chest up; he hadn’t known such large people existed. More than seven feet tall, dressed in leather over gleaming steelskin, this man looked like he could have ripped their chains apart with brute strength alone. He hauled the nearest chain of people to their feet. “Everyone up!” He said in a voice like a feral roar.
They were led down a hallway and came out to the side of a stage. The auction began, slavers paraded the prisoners one by one or group by group onto the platform. Dellen felt a mix of anger and helplessness swell within him as he watched gavel after gavel come down.
The auctioneer's voice boomed across the market. The crowd of potential buyers jostled for a better view, their gazes scrutinizing every detail of the prisoners on display.
Dellen's heart pounded in his chest as he awaited his turn, a mix of anxiety and determination coursing through his veins. He waited in the hope that the loop would reset, and he’d find himself in the storm again.
The auctioneer's gaze finally fell upon Dellen, first in line on the chain he was attached to. The weight of the moment hung heavy in the air. “We have a special treat, one that no doubt many of you came here to see, we have a batch overflowing with unforged.”
Dellen almost felt he could hear the crowd’s surge of attention.
The enormous jailer marched them onto the stage.
Dellen felt the weight of stares from the crowd, examining them and him, not as a person but as an asset. His skin crawled. He forced himself to glare out, meeting the eyes of any that he could.
Near the front row, a group of burly individuals adorned in black leather jackets caught Dellen's attention. They exuded an aura of raw power and confidence. Tattoos peeked out from beneath their sleeves. Dellen watched as a man with a shaved head and a fiery gaze raised his paddle, his bid echoing through the hall.
Not far from them, Dellen's gaze shifted to a group dressed in crimson robes, their features concealed by masks of crosshatched silver that left only their eyes and mouths visible. Dellen noticed a woman in the group with a silver emblem on her robe calmly lifting her paddle.