The Secure Enclave · Riley's Theme

Blake followed Riley outside. She leaned against the carriage and looked out into the distance, down the street. He kept his distance from her, but made sure not to hide his presence. Time to think alone was important, he knew, but he didn't want to leave her alone for too long, not in a city they'd never visited before.

The minutes passed. Riley continued to look out into the distance. She'd change posture, occasionally, or stretch her back, but not much happened.

Blake looked, too. He studied the skyline, or what equivalent there was for a society with this technology level. And he studied the nearer buildings too, and the road.

Sky Crest's condition was poor. It didn't look war-torn, but it was clear that there weren't enough hands to go around. All the capable workers must have been busy with more important things, or they must have left the country, or worse. Broken or cracked windows, patches of roof covered with cloth or wood where there should be thatching or slate, holes in the cobblestone-and-gravel road filled with loose rocks and dirt, and so on. The people going about their day on the street, as few as their numbers were, looked like they'd seen better days. Dirty faces, slightly torn clothes, and an overall tilted sense of constitution, with limps and slouches being very common. There was a great amount of cheer piercing through their attitudes, but it wasn't enough to cover up the negative vibes. Demon, human, or demihuman, old, young, or in between, they were all the same.

This is the capital city, Blake reminded himself. It was dire.

"I can't live in a place like this," Riley said.

"I'm sure there's some nice place in the country, somewhere," Blake said.

"I'll believe it when I see it. And... I don't belong here. I belong out there, over there, killing monsters and killing..."

She stopped herself.

"We haven't seen any monsters lately," Blake said.

"Yeah. The Guild has worked really well for thinning out their numbers, from what I've read. But... That's not the point. There aren't any monsters, but everywhere you go, there are bandits, Transporters, crooks with a dozen Companions, towns run entirely by thugs... Even the tiny little countries scattered beyond Greenwood and Icemarch are constantly at war with each other, constantly dying, even though they're under Imperial rule. What does the Empire even want to do? Just take tribute and show off their wealth? And why demihuman Companions? How nice it must've been to build a country on top of a bunch of old Netherite mines. What luck! Things aren't okay. I've felt this way for a really long time. I just want to..."

"Too many terrible people and not enough monsters to kill?"

"I guess. I can't tell what the problem is. But I can tell that I'm not supposed to be here, in this city, in this country, or sitting down anywhere. I'm supposed to be out there somewhere, doing something. Coming here has shown me that. I never really wanted to live here in the first place. Living in a town with such poor sanitation and upkeep and so many beaten-down people would drive me crazy, even if I was sheltered. I'd go out one day, watch someone starve to death, and question the world's sense of justice deep enough to uproot everything I know."

"That ever happen to you before?"

"No, but I read a story about it, once."

"Sounds like one from where I came from. A tale as old as time."

"Yeah, maybe."

"So..."

"I'm not staying here. I'm leaving with you."

"You serious? After all this? You're going to be in danger, walking around with us out in Greenwood without any chains or—"

"Danger? Compared to staying here, or going it alone? Give me a break."

"Yeah, but those chains—"

"These? Who said anything about removing these things?" Riley said. She grabbed two links of the chain attached the metal collar around her neck, the furthest out from her neck, with her bare hands. She pulled at them, hard enough that they began to deform. Pop. One dead chain link, no longer a part of her wardrobe. She tossed the dead chain link at Blake. "These chains mean nothing to me. Contract or no contract, I was never going to remove the chains," she said.

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Blake caught the thrown chain link and looked at it, dumbfounded. Having no idea what to do with it, he put it away.

"Uh..." he said.

"I don't know about you, but I've had chains attached to me in one form or another for nearly my whole life. I'm not ashamed to walk around in them any more than I'm ashamed to walk around with a tail or four strong sturdy limbs. The chains represent something terrible, but that terrible something has been with me my whole life. Am I treated any worse for wearing them? Yes, compared to a free human—but a free demihuman wandering the Empire all alone without a way to look the part of a Companion would be all the worse, the most dangerous lifestyle," she said.

"But... Even if you just leave the chains on, your contract..."

"What contract? You broke it. Sure, it looks like a Dominion contract, but it's not the same. I can do whatever I want, go wherever I please, cross any boundaries I don't respect. But oh no, there's some text on me that makes me look like I'm a Companion. So what? Isn't that better? If I run off and get stopped, I'll have much a much better chance going free again this way than if I had nothing on me at all. I'm so-and-so, please send a letter to who-and-who through the Guild and tell them where I am, they'll pay you, something like that."

"Wait, back up. We aren't removing the contract?"

"No. I'm not staying here, so removing it would be dangerous. You worked through that when we first met. The contract itself doesn't mean anything to me."

"I'm confused. Let me catch up. The problem here isn't what it means for you, right, is that what you're saying? The whole problem is the world being so bad. But that doesn't mean you have to—or no, wait, is this some kind of rationalization thing you're doing?"

"Rationalization? Never done it." Riley crossed her arms, stuck her nose up in the air, and closed her eyes, superior and aloof.

"Well... Okay, sure, I can't order you around or anything. You're free to follow me around if you want. It's just, I've played my fair share of games like this, and the ones where the main character had a slave always felt really fucked up. I feel dirty having a... someone that looks like a slave in my crew. It makes me feel like I'm complacent in something abusive. I can't overlook fucked up personal situations any more, not after... uh... the life I left behind. It's fucked up."

"Well, I sure don't feel fucked up. I'm the only person that it concerns, wearing these chains, not some weirdo looking at us from the side of the road."

"This is more about what's going on inside my head than what other people think about me..."

"It's not about you, it's about me. Would you rather I stay here and get horribly depressed? Run off all alone and get abducted? Or keep following you around? Think about it in terms of consequence, what's actually going to happen, not what it looks like. Looks don't matter."

Blake scratched his head.

"You're not wrong. I'm just not happy with how this is turning out. This should be a better city. No, a better world," he said.

"A better world, huh?" Riley said.

She looked up at the sky.

The sun was just about gone, and the first few stars were beginning to appear. Westwards, where the sun fell, the horizon was cast with a dazzling array of all sorts of colors, fading out up above into a dark blue, then black, beyond where any hand could reach.

Her right hand extended upwards with an open grip, and then, fully extended, clamped down into a strong, firm fist, with a force that even Blake could perceive.

"If I could reach up into the sky, and grab hold of one of the many other worlds that this world might ever connect to, and bring it here, I'd do it. Or I'd tell them, take me away, take me to your world. Just take me far from here. I don't want to be here. Not in this city, not in this country, not anywhere here. This world is broken. It's all the same to me, living here, living there, wearing this chain, not, but I'm forced to follow through with lesser evils day after day. If I lose out on my least bad option just because it looks bad, I'd want to kill myself, or worse," she said.

Blake, too, looked up at the stars.

It was hard, but he could see them. They weren't the stars he knew from Earth.

He loved his past life. His job as a waiter was nice and simple, and paid well enough. His home life was nice and simple. Drinking, takeout, TV, and the occasional game, in the comfort of the company of himself. He didn't need much else, and he kept himself in shape, so his body didn't deteriorate and feel like crap all the time. If there was one thing his old life was missing, it was a sense of literary romanticism, the thrill of adventure, a sense of wonder. He had that, here, but he didn't know that he would appreciate it until he ended up here, so it wasn't really a problem, not having it back then.

And, before that, before he'd managed to find a stable life outside of the states, his life inside the states turned to absolute hell, something he was desperate to escape at all costs, even by the cost of becoming someone that he was not. The him that was standing here now, under the evening-going-on-night sky of this world, was hesitant to compare that experience to what Riley was going through. Nothing he suffered growing up was as bad as slavery. He dared not even attempt a direct comparison. But he felt like there was an inkling of a similarity. And although he might have indeed felt ever so slightly chained-down in his waitstaff life, it was, in comparison to what came before it, heaven. And he thought that maybe, in a weird sense, Riley following him around in chains might somehow be similar to that, even if only faintly, compared to being with her former owner, depending on just how bad things were.

This wasn't okay, having a slave, even if only on paper. If ever a chance to right this wrong arose, he would take it in a heartbeat.

But at the moment, he couldn't hurt her feelings, right or wrong. That was the one thing he couldn't bring himself to do.

So Blake said, "I get that. I don't get it, but I get that. It's a broken world, and I can't fix it, so I can't be ashamed of pretending to play by its rules."

Riley's expression turned to a faint, depressed smile.

"Yeah. You can't fix what's already broken," she said.

"Not sure what that's supposed to mean, but I'll take it. Come on, let's drive around town. Might as well get a good look at this dump before we leave tomorrow."

"Yeah."

"Here. Get up on the bench."

"Thanks."

They left.

Night fell.

Later, they returned.

Sophia and Nash were ready to leave.

Blake erased the Dominion contracts on the slaves.

He didn't erase Riley's.

They left again, and found an inn, one not too shady to stay at.

They didn't talk much.

There were many long days ahead of them, on the trip home.

Supplies were low, they'd have to restock.

Of course they would.

Good night.