"Are you sure about this? Just taking all their stuff?" Blake said.

The deed had long since been done. They were now on the road again, riding away with a full carriage of the slavers' stuff. Blake wasn't sure he'd be able to drive, considering his driving history where he came from, but once he got behind the reins, it Just Worked, as though the horse was somehow trained to stop and go properly regardless of how incompetent the driver was.

"Yeah. If anyone asks, we got attacked by bandits and this is all we could get away with," Riley said.

"I mean..."

"It happens all the time."

"Including all the death?"

"Yeah."

"What kinds of stuff do bandits do around here? Stealing from caravans? Slavery? Raiding villages? Uh... Assault? Murder?"

"All of the above."

"Wait, how old are you?"

"In human terms? Twenty two and a half."

"..Are you lying? You look really short..."

"Hmph! I might look small to you, but us demihumans age quite a bit differently from you humans!"

"Really? I might be on the tall side, but even compared to the girls that came in where I worked..."

"That's prejudice! This is just how female demihumans look!"

"Okay, okay, sorry, I don't know anything."

"Hmph!"

It was true that demihumans grew differently from humans, but they grew faster, not slower, until they reached their adult height. Riley had another year until she knew whether she was going to have one last final young-adult growth spurt or not, but whether she had one or not, her growth was stunted, and she'd never be as tall as the rare wolflings raised in opulence. She could get maybe an extra inch, if she was lucky. And that fact dug at her.

"Wait! I get it! Those slavers short as hell, too. This is like that thing where people in the past—uh, where I live, I mean—were all really short, even with the same genes. Because they didn't eat as good. No way people here eat as good as I did. It makes sense! You're not short, I'm just huge!"

"Yeah! That!" Riley said, not understanding a word he said.

"So... Slave, right? If we get that neck thing off, you're free?"

"No. I have to get the Dominion contract removed at Queensland. It's the only country nearby that doesn't observe Dominion."

"Dominion contract? Is that like, a kind of magic?"

"Yes."

"Is there, like, a way to review it? Can anyone else remove it?"

Blake had a little experience with contracts on Earth. Not a lot. Unlike most people, he liked reading EULAs, and actually bothered to read his employment contracts in full. He also played with loopholes in sweepstakes a few times, but that was about it. He was by no means a lawyer.

"It's 'bad for the economy' for the properly Companioned to go free, so it's illegal almost everywhere, and none of the Scribe-class mages for hire anywhere are willing remove a contract. Except, like, to free abducted rich people. Queensland is the exception."

"Scribe class? Oh fuck that's right there's RPG stuff. Gimme a sec..."

Fantasy world, sure, he fully processed that already. In fact, it was so clearly a fantasy world that before setting the slavers ablaze earlier, Blake took one of the slaver's outfits to wear. No point running around a fantasy world in Earth clothes. It would attract attention, which is the last thing you want to do in a world you don't know isn't hostile to your presence.

He made a point of keeping his shirt. The slavers' shirts were made of much, much worse fabric, and his shirt from earth looked close enough that it wouldn't stand out.

"How do you clean clothes around here?" he asked.

"Er... With magic. There's mages everywhere that do it for not much money. We can do it at town. Isn't that common sense?"

"I see."

But... An RPG? Until he was reminded, it slipped his mind.

Blake stopped the carriage and said random words into the air, trying to get a screen to appear like it did before. Eventually, he said "Status panel!" and it worked. Riley watched in amusement as he clumsily attempted to navigate what was to her common knowledge.

"Okay, so... Skipping my stats, no idea what they mean... My class is Bladescribe? What the hell is a Bladescribe."

"Bladescribe? Really? That's a really obscure class!"

"Oh no don't tell me I'm special."

Rather than responding, Riley grinned from cheek to cheek with a nya-ha-ha type of giggle.

"Right. Okay, so my skills right now are... Roundhouse Kick, Dropkick, Skewer, Blade Dance, Bind Breaker, Absolute Arbiter, Rewrite, Fitness, and Foodcraft. No spells, though."

"You have the rewrite skill! Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Please, oh, I beg you, strip my Dominion contract! —Wait. No. Not yet."

"Uh... Why not? What are you worried about? Don't you want to go free?"

"It's still dangerous for me around here."

"Let me guess. Demihumans like you aren't protected properly by the law."

Riley nodded.

"Okay. So, like, for example. Does law enforcement do if someone binds a free demihuman with a slavery contract?" Blake said.

"Dominion contract. But no, no help."

"Call it what it is. So if someone abducted you again and tried to re-contract you... Wait, how easy is it to enslave someone?"

"Putting a Dominion contract on someone is easy, way easier than removing it. There's a contract-binding mage for hire in almost every big town. Scribes aren't that rare."

"So erasing the contract and leaving you on your own might be dangerous. Wait, don't get me wrong, I'll erase it if you want. Let you go on your merry way and all that."

"Right... Uhm... Can you bring me to Queensland? Where I'm not at risk?"

Blake looked closely at Riley's face. It was clear that she wasn't sure what she should do, and that she was acting based on gut feeling. He had to be careful.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Uh... Well, I don't have anything better to do, but... Moving a slave around doesn't really sit right with me, even if it's an underground railroad type thing."

"Wait, why doesn't it sit right with you? You're not like, a Transporter."

"I just don't understand any of this stuff. It shouldn't be this complicated, I don't understand any of the local anything."

"I don't have any good options! If I walk the roads to Queensland alone, I'll get kidnapped by bandits or Transporters!"

"Is there a way to get you there on the down-low? Or without people thinking you're an escaped slave, or a free demihuman?"

Riley sighed. "I could cut through the forests, I'm strong enough to survive in the wild, but it would be real, real slow, and I might get ambushed in my sleep. Maybe if I looked like I was traveling with my 'owner', but the moment anyone looks at my contract, they'd know..."

Blake mulled it over, trying to figure out how to make all the different pieces work together, without doing anything that goes against his morals.

"I have an idea. First, I make myself your 'owner'. Second, I fudge the contract so you're functionally free, but there's still something that looks like a slavery contract on you, so you can't be arrested or re-enslaved. Then we go straight to Queensland and strip the contract there for real, and you can go on your way."

He wasn't sure this was legally sensible, that it wouldn't count as freeing her when placed under legal scrutiny. But this was a fantasy world. It was unlikely that its legal institutions were as robust as those of where he came from. As long as nobody had a chance to look too closely for too long, and the contract magic was still technically there, it was worth a try.

"Okay..." Riley said, her voice full of uncertainty.

She didn't trust him a hundred percent. There was a faint but real possibility that he was just going to take her. But it was better than getting sold off to a freak like was originally going to happen to her, and he seemed easy enough to manipulate if she ever needed to. What's more, the likely outcome was a good gamble.

"Here we go," Blake said.

He poked around her contract for a few moments, looking for possible loopholes, and then acted.

"Rewrite," he said.

CONFIRM CHANGE OF OWNER FROM FRANCIS BRAVO TO BLAKE JACKSON?

Blake was about to take ownership of another living being. He hated this. But, in context, it was better than not doing so, as far as he could tell. And he'd make it right, later, he told himself. That was the whole point. Getting her to Queensland safely.

Words have power, he thought. Every statement is an action. Every action in this world will bear a consequence. Consequence beats all else.

It made perfect sense for him that magic would be triggered by speech, even if or when not casting magic by name. So he spoke.

"Yes."

CONFIRM CHANGE OF WORDING OF PARAGRAPH SEVEN PART SIX FROM "SHALL NOT DISOBEY MASTER'S ORDERS TILL DEATH UNDER PENALTY OF ASSIGNED PUNISHMENT UNLESS UNDESIRED COMPLICATIONS MAY OCCUR" TO "SHALL NOT DISOBEY MASTER'S ORDERS TILL DEATH UNDER PENALTY OF ASSIGNED PUNISHMENT UNLESS UNDESIRED. COMPLICATIONS MAY OCCUR"?

"Yes."

CONTRACT MAGIC REWRITE CONFIRMED

----------------------------------------

"Glad I was paying attention when comma splicing came up in English class. Well, this is some kind of period splice, but same deal," Blake said.

"What did you change?"

"I inserted a sneaky period. Now it says you can't disobey me 'unless undesired'. So, basically, anything I say is just a suggestion. Man, this is so stupid, I can't believe I'm getting away with this. Here, punch me."

She punched him. It hurt a lot. The look on his face was precious.

"Hey, you ordered me!"

"No, you... Okay, look. I'm going to order you to do something you don't want to do. It's a real order. But you technically don't have to do it. You won't get punished with anything at all. I want you to experience that you don't need to obey anyone any more, even if a bad person becomes your 'owner', unless they reapply the contract from scratch. Got it?"

She nodded, slowly.

"Okay."

"Bite me."

"What?"

"Bite me. Punishment for touching your tail way earlier."

"Gross! Masochist!"

"Just do it."

She was so stunned that she couldn't do anything but sit there with her mouth wide open in shock, but soon, it dawned on her that she didn't feel compelled to follow his orders.

"It worked?" she said.

"Of course it worked. Punctuation is super important!"

"That's... That's so stupid."

"Look, it just means you aren't really a slave anymore, even though you kind of sort of technically are. If you think it's stupid, take it up with the god of language or whatever."

"Oh, Lord Frank?"

"Wait. There's a God of Language."

"Yes, of course. There has been for exactly seven thousand years. It's in all the history books, right in the opening chapters. He ascended during the—"

"Okay, forget I said anything. Let's get going. Coal City, right?" Blake started driving again.

"No, I can't go there. That's where my, uh, new 'owner' lives. Even if you're kind of my 'owner' right now on paper, to them, I'm just stolen property."

"So not Coal City. Where else?"

"If I'm remembering the maps right, there's a road to White Oasis halfway between here and Coal City. It should be safer there."

"Sure thing. If we run into any other slavers on the way, will they recognize you?"

"Probably. Legal Transporters are well-connected. If they didn't keep track of everything, they'd all get backstabbed all the time."

"Sounds funny to me that they try so hard to keep clean when doing something that's so wrong."

"Right? Right?" Riley wagged her tail.

"Hey, is self defense a thing here? Those guys trying to enslave me, it made it self defense for me to free you. I think. At least up to the part where I slit their throats... So, if we run into any more of those freaks, we should get rid of them? So they don't collectively realize you escaped. Just in case."

"Yes! Of course!" Her tail wagged even harder.

"Let's make it a thing. Until we get you to Queensland, we kill any slavers we run into on sight, for the sake of your safety."

Riley thought hard and fast. About what, Blake could not tell. But the end result was something Blake would never have expected a slave-on-the-run to say.

He said he 'wasn't from around here'. And he's totally unhinged, saying he'll kill Transporters on sight like that... Just like... If he's... Then... That means maybe I...

Her mind ran wild, imagining the bloodshed she could cause the Transporter 'community' to experience.

"I mean... If we're doing that, I don't really need to get there right away. We can run around killing Transporters for a while first, if you're okay with that. Take the scenic route. Bask in their blood."

"Look, I know my hands are already dirty, but I'm not really hot on risking getting caught. And what the hell? Don't you want to get there as soon as possible?"

"What, are you going to order me around? Say 'go to Queensland, even though you don't really want to live there' just like that?"

"Wait, no, that's—"

"I don't want to live there. Everyone says it's cold and unfriendly. It's just the safest place for an escaped slave. But if I'm not an escaped slave, there's no problem! Like, yeah, they're probably looking for me, but an extra week or two out here isn't going to get me caught."

"This doesn't make any sense. Do you want to live like this?"

"No, of course not, but living alone in what's basically a refugee country might be even worse for someone that looks as young as I do," she said, holding back the damage it did to her pride to pull the baby-face card.

"Okay, okay, point taken. But I don't know anything about this world, so I can't make any promises that I'd break the moment I learn enough to know what I want to do here. Short term only. If we go separate ways then I'm stripping the contract and you're gonna have to get there on your own."

Riley Hmhm!-ed and made a smug movement, giving off 'yes indeed' energy.

She'd won.

After a few minutes of silence, further down the road, Blake spoke up again.

"No matter how bad things get, no matter where you go, no matter what happens to you, nobody defines you but you. Other people end where you begin."

"What?"

He continued. "It's all you. From head to toe and the ground you stand on. Even if you've lost everything else, even if the world demands it all from you, you don't have to bow down to anyone but yourself. You're always your own hero, and nobody else's."

Riley sat still, staring at the forest canopy as it moved overhead.

"There's nothing good abo—"

"Wait, do parties of adventurers here have names?"

Blake interrupted her. He didn't even notice she was talking. She was glad, really. She was about to run her mouth.

"Yeah? Usually," she said.

"Do we count as a party?"

"Maybe. We might. Are you registered with the guild?"

"Look. Getting knocked out by those thugs on the forest floor is the first thing I remember here. I mean, yeah, I remember stuff before that too, but clearly something happened when I was walking down that street and it all went black, since, like, I'm here now, but what you see is what you get. No history here to speak of. So no, I'm not registered."

"Okay, you're going to have to register. What are you going to name the party?"

"What kind of thing are you? Wolf girl?"

"I'm a wolfling."

"Okay. How about The Pack? I know there's only two of us, but I don't care."

"The two of us? And that's good."

"Alright. In the name of The Pack, fuck slavers!"

"Amen!"

And so they rode off into the depths of the forest, headed for White Oasis.

It was only a matter of time before they had to camp for the night, laying down in the back of the carriage with lots of padding.

Blake woke up the next morning with Riley sleeping on top of his covers.

Why? For warmth? Blake thought to himself.

Wait, that's not the problem.

"Hey, get off of me!"

"Wah! I'm sorry! It's an instinct, I was asleep, I didn't know, I was having nightmares, it wasn't me! I know I have a problem, I'm trying to get better, please don't chain me to my bed again!"

An endless string of well-practiced excuses. Some of them true, some of them not. Regardless, Blake regretted throwing out the tents.