Slave collars come in a number of different forms, but they all fall into three types: punishment, compulsion, and control.
Punishment-type slave collars punish the person collared for disobedient thoughts and actions toward their masters. This might seem like an ideal collar for training slaves, but it isn’t uncommon for slaves to get around this by convincing themselves certain actions that harmed their master are actually beneficial to them. In an extreme case, there was a slave whose collar failed to punish her after she tortured her master to death. In her own words, ‘Master likes it when I give him pain, so I gave him pain.’
Compulsion-type slave collars use verbal triggers to set limitations or force specific actions. As an example, it is common for slave traders to immediately order slaves collared with this type to not attempt physical harm against the owner. However, it should be noted that use of this collar has deleterious effects on the mind of the slave, often rendering them useless within a matter of years.
Control-type slave collars force the slaves in question to immediately obey any order given by the holder of the matching slave ring, but they cannot be used to give long-term compulsions or orders. These are primarily used on slaves without combat skills, as harming the holder of the ring is well-within the abilities of the slave if they can do so before an order is given. This type of collar is cheaper than the punishment or compulsion types because of its simplicity and reliance on a physical control catalyst in the form of the slave ring.
Excerpt from The Methodology of Slavery by Crast Ardren
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Diandra didn’t bother punishing anyone over the slave girl. Apparently, he was in a forgiving mood since the offender, Lean, was killed by his own. He seemed inordinately pleased that I hadn’t interfered in the execution, which probably meant it fit his vision for my future.
However, a few days later, a quarter of our forces deployed from the town to meet a raid from the neighboring baron’s lands. Apparently, the harvest there had failed, and the baron, unknowing of his neighbor’s fate, sent his men to raid the local villages for their grain stores.
Unfortunately for him, the villages were already burned to the ground, their supplies taken to the castle town. The wards placed in the ruins alerted Diandra’s sorcerers of the raid, and Diandra decided to crush the raiding force rather than let it continue its pointless attempts to forage for food in the empty landscape.
I was amid the troops deployed, along with all the probationers. My unit hadn’t been restored to its usual number, but, considering that Diandra had only deployed one and a half times the size of the enemy force, there would be losses in any case.
The winter snows fell around us as we rode the horses loaned to us for the fight. We weren’t cavalry, but all of us had been instructed on the basics of riding a horse for times like this. When we reached the battlefield, we would dismount, and the quartermaster’s minions would take the horses behind the lines.
I was miserable, like most of the probationers. The regulars all had heavy furs taken from the monsters in the mountains to the north, but we probationers only had hooded wool cloaks over our piecemeal armor.
It wasn’t so much the cold itself as the way the snow would get caught inside the cloak, melt, and get me wet, resulting in me feeling colder than I really was.
My unit’s remaining members, the twin oni girls, rode to either side of me, barely clinging to the saddle. Neither of them had any experience with riding a horse, so they were as miserable as it was possible to be.
I sipped at the raw grain alcohol from my flask occasionally to keep myself warm, but most of the others hadn’t had the forethought to steal some before winter hit.
As was common, one of the cleverer mercenaries had set up a distillery in one of the intact homes and was producing fire water as quickly as he could. The product was as nasty-tasting as you could imagine, but it fulfilled its purpose.
The girls both had iron-bound spiked clubs strapped to their backs, the traditional weapon of the oni tribes of the south. After Lean’s death, they’d asked me to let them switch weapons, admitting their family had taught them how to use it. Getting the quartermaster to provide the weapons had been the most painful part of the experience (mostly because of the bribes).
Ris’s unit rode to our right, Ris occasionally sneaking glances at me from the corner of her eyes while her two companions looked on with sly grins. When our gazes met, her tail swished back and forth in a way that made it clear her attitude toward me had changed. Unlike me, she was at the right age for first love.
Her friends had softened their attitude toward me as well. The reason… was obvious, if saddening. If there had been some way to save Lean and the rest of the probationers at the same time, I would have taken it, but our collars made that impossible. Our time in a collar had taught us not to feel guilt over what we had to do to survive, though the ache of my conscience bothered me sometimes at night.
The rest of the probationers still saw me as a deathbringer, however. The team on my left kept more distance between us than was really necessary, and those behind me were too close to those behind them.
Suddenly, a horn was blown and a messenger came riding past, crying, “The enemy is here! Get into formation!”
We quickly dismounted, and the slaves came from the rear and took the horses. The enemy seemed to be mostly infantry men-at-arms, wielding spears or short sword and shield. As far as I could tell, the part of the world I was in now preferred straight swords that were better for hacking and bashing than slashing, and the spears tended to be almost exclusively used for thrusting, the tips only an iron or steel point rather than having a blade that allowed them to be used for slashing.
Most of the enemy were wearing light armor or none at all, though they were led by a few men on horses in medium plate. We had more cavalry, mostly because Diandra had wanted a mobile force. They only had about twenty mounted troops, whereas we had fifty. In exchange, our infantry numbered a mere one hundred and twenty, as opposed to their one hundred and forty or so. Roughly a third of our forces were probationers, whereas half of theirs looked to be peasant militia or adventurers forcibly recruited for the raid.
We had twenty archers, all of them using compound bows that could be wielded from horseback, whereas the enemy seemed to have ten or so hunters who wielded cheap short bows. The difference in equipment, even between our probationers and their regulars, was heavily in our favor. The only question was whether their regulars were veterans or green troops.
This force is slightly larger than Diandra said it would be, but I suppose that makes sense. They probably picked up a few opportunistic mercenaries or bandits along the way, I concluded as I readied my spear and shield, placing a metal-reinforced leather cap on my head, tying the straps under my chin.
I had both sisters line up to my left, as I didn’t want their clumsiness getting in the way of my spear. Ris lined up to my right, drawing a talwar, a cold, humorless grin curving her lips as she observed the enemy. A year or so ago, she was little different from them, but her experiences with Diandra and the battlefield had hardened her greatly.
The enemy seemed to be having trouble forming up. The peasant forces in particular couldn’t seem to be able to form a line, and the regulars’ line was too straight, telling me that they weren’t veterans. Veterans didn’t get so obsessed with neat lines that they ignored terrain features like dips in the land or hills, but the same couldn’t be said for the enemy infantry. The small cavalry force with the enemy formed up on a hill to the left flank of their lines, obviously thinking to use the inertia of a downhill charge with their lances to punch through the lighter cavalry force we had.
It was a stupid decision. Our archers were remaining on their horses, cold grins on their faces as they licked their lips, probably focusing on how much coin the heavier metal armor the cavalry were using would bring them when sold later on. Their compound bows were designed to launch bodkin arrows with enough force to punch through heavy plate. Half the regular cavalry split off to join the horse archers, while the rest headed for our left flank, most likely intending to cut their way through the militia forces.
Our regulars, on the other hand, were sizing up the enemy regulars with contempt. There would be little to be gained from looting their corpses, and the regulars all knew it probably wouldn’t be worth the effort.
The horn was sounded a minute later, and we began trotting toward the enemy lines with an easy loping gait. Our cavalry kept pace relative to us, until the enemy cavalry began their charge. The horse archers whooped with glee as they kneed their horses into motion, knocking arrows in preparation for an initial volley. Their guardian cavalrymen maintained a screen between them and the heavier cavalry, reading shields and sabers for the inevitable clash with grim expressions on their faces.
The enemy infantry set themselves in place, obviously thinking to receive our charge. Unfortunately for them… they underestimated the light cavalry on our left flank. Just before we were about to clash with their lines, the cavalry sped up and smashed through the militia, cutting down a few and bowling two dozen over. We howled with bloodlust as we saw our enemies rendered vulnerable, and I thrust my spear into a prone elf’s neck without a hint of hesitation. Ris cut an oni down, and the sisters clubbed a large man with an axe to the ground, their expressions full of savage battle rage.
All along the lines, confusion was spreading, and I could see out of the corner of my eye that the horse archers were mangling the enemy cavalry, the charge having ground to a halt after the five men at the tip of the spear fell from their saddles, pin-cushioned with arrows. Their advance slowed to a crawl, their lances became more of a hindrance than a help as the saber-wielding light infantry wove their way into the enemy formation and began cutting into the vulnerable parts of the armor, even as the horse archers galloped around behind and began firing into the enemy’s backs. I stabbed a spirit fox man in the knee on my right, and Ris cut off his head.
One of the sisters went down with an axe in her hip, and the other sister went mad with rage, swinging her club in wide arcs that smashed the man to her left as well as those in front of her. Ris and I kept back, and I felt my lips set in a tight grimace as the berserker was pulled down by a small unit of regulars that surrounded her after she punctured the enemy lines. Hopefully, the sister who had taken the axe would survive, and I wouldn’t have to worry about finding yet another unit to team up with.
A few minutes later, it was mostly over, except for a few stubborn enemy regulars who thought they could fight their way clear. The enemy cavalry lay still far to the right, and our cavalry was gleefully cutting the militia down as they ran. The archers were busy stripping the corpses of the enemy cavalry.
I sighed deeply and went looking for the wounded sister… only to find that she had bled out while we fought. Apparently the axe hit something important.
Ris patted me on the shoulders as they slumped glumly with the thought of what the other probationers would say when we returned, “Nothing for it, Iryun. You always get assigned the people no one wants. You did your best to give them a chance, and they threw it away.”
I sighed sadly and was about to respond when suddenly, our collars glowed for a moment, before opening and falling off our necks. My eyes widened as I realized what had to have happened, Diandra and the quartermaster are dead!
I grabbed her elbow and waved for the elf sisters to follow us as I did something I hadn’t had a chance to do since before my souls fused into one. I used my unique skill…
And summoned a motorcycle with a two-person side-car… to be specific, a BMW R75 from WWII (or at least a magical facsimile of one). I motioned for Ris’s friends, the two elf girls, to get into the side car and got onto the motorcycle. Ris looked at it in confusion, and I barked at her, “Get on behind me. We’re getting out of here!”
Her eyes sparked with understanding, and a moment later I felt her soft body against my back, my tail squeezed in between us. The elf girls managed to squeeze their way into the side car, and I started it up. The light cavalry and regulars were surrounding the probationers as a whole, shouting at us to put our collars back on, but I had no intention of going back to being a slave.
I started the motorcycle with a thought and it growled to life. I immediately sped through the lines of light cavalry and headed for the road, knowing that off-roading with only the vague memories of Tajiri’s past exploits and experiences would not be a good idea.
The elf sisters were whooping with joy as the wind blew their hair out behind them, but my expression was grim. I was leaving the other probationers behind to an even worse fate than death, since it was all too likely that the company was going to break up without Diandra to lead them. The surviving probationers would be taken to the nearest town with a slave market and put up on the block, sold for whatever coin the mercenaries could get before the company disbanded.
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We easily escaped from the mercenaries, heading north toward the pass. The fortresses there were in ruins, so we could easily travel through the pass to reach Gevaria, where things were a little more stable (from what information I’d managed to gather along the way).
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That night, I sat beside Ris in front of the fire. The elven girls lay in a single bedroll, practically curling around one another for warmth and comfort. Like all the probationers who survived, they had learned to sleep when they could.
“Iryun, just what is this thing?” Ris asked, tapping the sidecar, raising a scarred brow inquisitively.
“It’s a summon that comes from my unique skill, Artifact Steed,” I replied shortly.
“You have a unique skill?!” She asked, looking stunned.
“Three of them, to be honest,” I replied, unwilling to lie to her for some reason.
“Three… I’ve never heard of someone having three unique skills…” She murmured, looking thoughtful.
“My skills aren’t useful for combat, so I never had a reason to show them off,” I replied to her unspoken question with a shrug.
“You have an inventory, don’t you?” She asked suspiciously.
I nodded reluctantly, “Yeah… I have enough stolen food in there to keep us going for a month or so.”
During our raids, I was always careful not to steal too much for myself. A barrel of salted pork here, a sack of flour there, etc. Most of it ended up getting eaten during the campaigns, but the raids we’d taken part in before winter had given me a better stock than usual.
On the other hand, I had a rather large store of bronze bits, copper coins, and silver chips stolen from corpses along the way. I always made sure to only take one or two coins from each body before handing the rest to the quartermaster, but even so, I’d built up a large enough purse that I probably didn’t need to worry about coin for a little while.
“That’s a large inventory… I thought I saw you draw weapons out of nowhere sometimes in battle, but I concluded it was my imagination… just what the hell was someone like you doing as a slave for that monster, anyway?” She asked.
“My skills are a ‘gift’ from a rather nasty god, and that god gets one geas for each skill. For some reason, he wanted me to serve under Diandra and used the first geas for that. Who knows what he’ll do now that that plan has been ruined,” I said, feeling a bit glum at the thought.
She winced, “Ah, a god… you should have known better. Everyone knows you can’t trust the gods. They never give a gift unless it is to benefit themselves. Only priests and fanatics say otherwise.”
I smiled wryly in response to her reproof. My situation was complex, as technically it wasn’t really ‘me’ that had received the skills from the god in question. I’d just inherited them when I was born from the ashes of Tajiri and Iryun.
I still had to obey the geas when he used one of them to give me an order, but I had a feeling I wasn’t supposed to have been released from the geas by Diandra’s death. The process I’d gone through to become me had probably weakened the compulsion somewhat.
I wondered how Diandra had died, a certain warm fire building in my heart as I imagined all the horrible ways he might have been killed.
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Fourteen Hours before, Veinbern Castle Town
Diandra looked out the window of his personal quarters with rage filling his heart. An army of more than two thousand regulars was surrounding the castle town, wearing the coat of arms of more than a dozen nobles.
He knew what this meant.
Every once in a while, a mercenary company became too much of a threat for the fractious nobles to ignore. When that happened, even the worst of enemies would join hands to end that company’s existence.
Diandra was bitter. He’d thought he was walking the line between respectable mercenaries and brutal raiders a bit better than that. Most of the time, nobles ignored it if a few low-rank aristos and peasants were killed while he indulged his fun, but he must have killed someone important along the way.
Diandra looked at his status.
Name: Diandra
Age: 59
Race: Werewolf (Graizar Clan)
Common Skills: Qigong 8, Sage Arts 3, Magic 2, Swords 5, Unarmed 7, Axes 9, Natural Weapons 8, Dual-wielding 8, Evasion 4
Passive Skills: Rapid Regeneration 7, Physical Resistance 9, Magic Resistance 4, Fire Resistance 9, Lightning Resistance 8, Poison Immunity
Unique Skills: Infinite Stamina (blessing of Chaos) Curse of the Berserker 7 (blessing of Chaos)
He was on the verge of taking the trial to become a Master, his body capable of ignoring arrows and smashing stone with a casual blow. However, he could sense three individuals in the army before him at a similar stage of power. Any one of them he could probably take down due to his unique skills, but all three would be impossible.
The next strongest member of his company would not even be able to do that much. The Chaos Pantheon had blessed a number of his lieutenants with unique skills or other forms of power, but it would not be enough. His total force before he’d sent out a quarter of them barely numbered eight hundred. Moreover, a tenth of those that remained were probationers who weren’t ready to fight with the big boys yet.
He tried to think of a way out of this… but he wasn’t particularly intelligent. Diandra was cunning and cruel, but his ability to logically consider strategy and tactics was virtually nonexistent beyond the basics. His value as a mercenary had always been his ability to consistently deploy a powerful and experienced force and the fact that he never acted against his most recent employer.
His tactic of turning the company’s sex slaves into probationer troops had produced a surprising amount of skilled mercenaries who had a twisted sort of loyalty to their former masters. However, he knew that the strength of his company was reliant on the fact that they never faced overwhelming odds. He always made sure to deploy them against an enemy of lesser strength, cutting his way into the enemy lines himself as necessary.
This was normal for a mercenary. Mercenaries were out to make money by killing, not get themselves killed on the job.
Unfortunately, it was at times like this that a mercenary’s attitude became a hindrance, rather than a help.
He could see his elite light cavalry trying to punch a hole in the enemy siege lines to the west, but they were already getting bogged down by troops carrying long spears. It was only a matter of time before the organized troops there dragged them down.
Idiots… it costs a lot of money to train a cavalryman, even for us mercs. I can’t believe they wasted all that time and money on an idiotic charge into a bunch of pikemen! He thought, enraged at the idiocy.
He got his axes, two adamant masterpieces made by a dwarven mastersmith and enchanted by an elven runemaster to be unbreakable, off their pegs on the wall and slipped them through the loops in his belt before heading downstairs. Along the way, he came across the werewolf girls currently serving as his toys, and he ripped open their throats with his claws, unwilling to let a bunch of nobles steal his property after he died.
And he knew he was going to die. Even if the nobles were willing to spare some of his men, they would never spare him. He’d made too many enemies during his relatively long career as a mercenary, and matters had already progressed to the point where they were willing to ally with their enemies to exterminate his company. There was no way he got out of this situation alive.
He raged against his fate as he went out to meet the enemy on the field of battle. There was no point in trying to get his men to form lines. The company’s discipline was falling apart even before he awoke. Defending the walls of the town wasn’t possible. Too many of his troops had gone out to meet the raiding party. Holding the castle and keep might have been possible, if he could have trusted his men not to behead him and hand his head over to the nobles.
So he walked out of the town boldly, deciding to make an impression in his final moments. His god was not a forgiving god, but if he made his death enough of a show, the god might show some mercy in the afterlife.
He drew his axes and roared, putting mana into his voice in a particular pattern. The regular troops shuddered in fear, but three figures soon walked out of the crowd, striding toward him at a measured, calm pace.
Two of the figures were men in scale armor. One wore a bastard sword at his belt and carried a halberd. The other had two scimitars sheathed on his hips.
The third figure was a woman in tight-fitting battle robes. Unlike the other two, who wore face-concealing helmets, her features were plainly visible. She had the slightly blue-tinted ivory skin of a mystic, with the purple eyes that signified she was of mystic nobility. She had likely once been an elf, judging by the shape of her face and hands, but the transformation into a mystic had given her blue curved talons at the end of her fingertips, and she was completely hairless. Her canines were as sharp as Diandra’s own, and he could sense she hungered for his blood.
She carried a mithril rapier covered in runes from the guard to the tip of the blade, and he could see that she wore hardened leather over her robes on her chest.
Mystics were one of the most feared races, as they were physically and magically more powerful than the rest. However, their birth rate was frighteningly low (once a century for most females), and it was costly in power for even a high-ranking mystic to transform one of the other races. As a result, it was rare to see more than two or three mystics in any one place, and there were major cities that had never been ‘blessed’ with her presence.
This was a thankful reality to most people, as mystics needed to feed on other intelligent species to retain their sanity, killing them in the process. Most mystics used slaves, but some spent time on the battlefield so they could feed without restraint.
Thankfully, they only had to feed once a year, but that still meant that they had to kill at least one other intelligent being every year.
Diandra cared little for this either way, though. What mattered to him was that she was probably the biggest threat of the three near-Master rank fighters in front of him. He could sense that her mana and spiritual energy were ridiculously dense, meaning she was probably a mage type primarily. However, the way she held the rapier told him she was probably only slightly below him in skill levels for her primary weapon.
The battle robes themselves were made of black silk, but Diandra could see that layers of metal fibers in the shapes of runes had been inserted between the layers of cloth, providing at least some magical protection.
Wordlessly, the three surrounded him, and he could feel the qi building inside the bodies of the two warriors.
Instinctively, he dove toward the man with the dual swords, striking at his right elbow with one axe while the other came down at the man’s left knee. The man managed to deflect the blow at his elbow, but Diandra’s axe bit into his knee, causing him to collapse.
Before Diandra could finish him, the other warrior’s halberd lashed out at him, streaming crimson qi from the haft and blade.
Diandra launched himself toward the halberdier, slamming his shoulder into the shaft of the halberd at a point far from the blade, ruining the strike. He tried to lash out with the axe in his right hand, but a flash of lightning blasted him before he could finish the swing, knocking him head over heels to crash into the ground behind the swordsman.
To his dismay, he saw the swordsman’s wound draw together and heal itself in seconds, allowing the man to stand up easily once again. He now had both swords ready and launched himself at the prone Diandra with a snarl of rage.
Unfortunately for him, Diandra had high magical resistance, so his axe caught the swordsman in the groin as he prepared to bring down his swords on the werewolf’s body. The swordsman shrieked in agony for a moment before Diandra slammed the bit of his axe into the side of his head, ending his life.
A moment later, a piercing strike from the halberdier’s fist slammed into Diandra’s ribs, shattering four of them in a single blow and pulverizing his left lung.
Fuck, I have to use it now, or I won’t get a chance! Diandra thought, releasing his hold on his Curse of the Berserk unique skill for the first time in years.
Black waves of mixed qi and spiritual energy blasted out from him, knocking the halberdier away like a leaf in the wind. Diandra’s eyes turned red, his fur grew thicker, his muscles bulging until his armor and clothes ripped from the inside, leaving him naked from the waist up. His snout grew more pronounced, his fangs longer and sharper, his claws hardening as the gifts of the Chaos Pantheon warped him into something atavistic and horrifying.
He roared, and dozens of the nobles’ troops fell to the ground, blood streaming from their eyes and ears despite the distance between them and the monster.
The mystic woman grimaced, blue blood falling from her ears, though her eyes were intact. The halberdier managed to rise, but it was obvious the roar had sapped him of something fundamentally needed to participate in battle.
The mystic woman, Reyr Naran of Clan Naran, assessed the situation coldly, Lagvist isn’t going to be useful for the rest of the battle, and I doubt there is anyone else in the army that can stand before this monster for more than a few seconds. His physical abilities just surpassed those of a low-ranking Master, if I’m estimating correctly… but his mana resistance has probably plunged to almost nothing. Almost all of his energy has been converted to qi, which is fine for physical combat but useless otherwise.
The situation was bad but not irretrievable. She would likely lose a few limbs in the process, but she had no doubt she could kill the monster… eventually.
The thing that used to be Diandra focused its eyes on Lagvist, and a moment later, its claws pierced his armor like it was made out of paper, blood spraying from the visor of his helmet, most likely vomited at the moment of the strike. The creature opened its mouth and bit down on his head, helmet and all, ripping it off then chewing it briefly before swallowing.
Thick ropes of drool fell from the creature’s mouth as it turned to Reyr, and she felt her hands tremble a bit at the thought of confronting the beast… However, she wasn’t about to allow such weakness to rule her, so when the creature struck, she was able to leap to the side, just outside the reach of its arms, then thrust her rapier into its armpit, firing an ice bolt inside its body.
Blood sprayed from the creature’s armpit, and she quickly used wind magic to drive herself backwards, activating her sage arts to give her three dimensional vision in all directions. Almost before she landed, the creature leapt toward her, seemingly unhindered by the wound.
She bit her lip with her oversized canines, drawing blood which she infused with spiritual energy, causing spears of blood to blast out from her, slamming into Diandra in mid-leap, knocking him slightly off-course. The spears failed to pierce his skin, as she had chosen to blunt the tips to shove him to the side.
She fired off a series of spark bolts at the creature’s head, dazing it as she leapt forward thrusting twelve times in rapid succession. Each thrust hit a joint or vital point, but she immediately leapt backward afterwards, understanding that only death would slow the creature down.
As she predicted, the creature’s claws swept through the space she was standing a moment before, and the creature roared in frustration, a shockwave of sonic force blasting her off her feet, tumbling her head over heels to slam butt-first into the ground forty feet away.
She used earth magic to thrust herself to her feet, blasting a large purple lightning bolt from her right hand that slammed into the creature’s head, knocking it back just before it was about to leap at her. With a shout of rage, she channeled mana through her rapier and thrust, focusing roughly a quarter of her remaining mana into ice magic.
A razor-sharp lance of ice flashed from the tip of her rapier and slammed into the creature’s chest, impaling it through the heart.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough to stop the creature. Until it was actually dead, it would continue to rage, as Diandra hadn’t bothered retaining any control over his curse when he unleashed it.
Reyr slammed her palms into the earth, combining sage arts and magic to bring the ground beneath Diandra’s feet to life for a brief period of time. Dozens of stone spears plunged into the creature’s ankles and thighs, pinning it to the ground.
With a roar of effort, she formed an incredibly dense spike of stone beneath the creature’s groin… and thrust it upward, plunging into it below in a spray of blood and gore. For a few moments, the creature looked as if it would break free… but as the last blood flowed from its veins, the red in its eyes faded, and it collapsed forward, held up only by the stone spears piercing its body.
With a sigh, Reyr forced herself to raise her rapier and cry out her victory to the world.