Alice and Bronsen:
Alice and Bronsen slowed to a saunter, then came to a halt. They carefully placed their patients on the ground ten metres from the waiting group. Standing before them, tails swishing around in nervous agitation, they wondered what to do. Fortunately, Aragon was up to the task.
"Hi there! I've come back."
Four people were waiting: one woman and three men. When they recognised Aragon, they all appeared to relax.
"Well, so you have. Have you finally decided to take up a real job and join us?" said one of them.
Aragon laughed it off. "Well, I don't know about that, but I've decided to look after these two for now."
He pointed to the two lying on the ground.
"Hmm," said one of them, "Certainly a lot of slaves around the place. Although all of the others are dead."
Alice and Bronsen looked at each other.
"You know each other?" said Alice.
"Sure, Manifestoria was where I was born and raised," said Aragon.
"And then he decided to run off." said the female guard.
A slow of irritation from Aragon, "Never mind that. We need to get these two down safely. And I need to give my report to the current border captain. And then escort these ladies to Manifestoria."
"How long do you think before they are released?" said the female guard.
"Can't be too long..." said Aragon.
That was a lucky guess on Aragon’s part. As soon as he said that, the mother twitched, shuddered, and then sat up and gasped. This might have been a bit unadvised considering her condition, as she promptly fell over sideways.
"Shit!" said Aragon. He rushed to her, knelt on her side, and held her body.
"Oh," said the female guard, who knelt on her other side and checked her condition.
"She's fine, just exhausted." said the female guard.
She looked at Alice.
"Also, could you and your boyfriend sit on either side of the daughter? They know you, and she will also probably be released soon."
Eventually, the two slaves were awake and aware of the others but unable to do anything. Alice and Aragon gave them a drink and some food, and they soon slept like lifeless logs.
The other guards had kept their distance. Eventually, two of them went off, one in each direction, a few hundred metres, and took up guard stations. Aragon chatted with the remaining two, then approached Alice and Bronsen.
"We're looking after these two, so I suggest we stick with them and try to get some sleep, OK?" he said.
As the sun dimmed in the sky, Alice cuddled up to Bronsen. Alice whispered to Bronsen:
“This is no fun whatsoever. We can't even make love.”
They drifted off to sleep.
Bronsen woke with the dawn sun. He yawned and stretched, then remembered last night.
As it turned out, they were exhausted and washed out. Able to answer a few questions, like What are your names? But not capable of much more, at least for the time being.
Aragon and the guards had another little discussion, with Alice and Bronsen listening in.
"We talked with Jane by light semaphore. She suggests you take the women down while us guards stay up here. Ah, that's right. Those other two teenagers say they know you and are going to race up the stairway today to meet you," said the female guard, who appeared to be the temporary leader of the guard group.
"You mean Cassy and Drayden!" said Alice.
She jumped up and down in excitement.
"At last, we meet up with them!"
By now, Alice and Bronsen were holding each other and jumping up and down and around and around. Eventually, they remembered that they had an audience. They stopped and looked a little embarrassed.
Aragon, the four guards, and the mother and daughter looked at them.
"Oops, sorry, we haven't seen our friends for a year, and when we last saw them, things were a bit intense," said Bronsen.
“Ah, right,” said Jane.
"Hmm, yeah. Anyway, let's pack just enough food and water to get down, and then shall we go?" said Aragon.
But how do the mother and daughter get down? It was rapidly determined that they barely had the strength to hobble around on flat ground, let alone go down fifty kilometres of stairs. So it was a matter of carrying them.
By their improvised sedan chair? The trouble was, when going down the steps, the person carrying the front end had to hold it up high, while the person carrying the back had to hold it low. It was feasible to rig something up so that each person held their end comfortably - until they came to a stair landing. They needed to keep the chair on level for a couple of metres, turn it 180 degrees and continue going down.
Alice and Bronsen, not being slaves and thus not being compelled to do this, decided it was all too much of a pain. Since they were so freakingly strong, even by the standards of Aragon and the guards, they decided they'll carry the mother and daughter down.
The proposed recipients of this act of gallantry didn't look too confident. So Alice put a folded blanket across her arms and had Aragon gently place Esther onto it. After racing around in a perfectly even gliding motion, demonstrating that she was hardly exerting herself, she asked Esther,
"So, do you now think I can do it?"
"Ah, yes?"
They set off. At the start, Alice carried Esther, and Bronsen carried Evereena. Arragon took the food and water they needed for a few days. They expected to get down in three or four days. They also expected to meet up with Cassy and Drayden sometime after the first day.
Esther:
Thump. Bronsen lightly hopped down the final two steps of the current staircase, took a couple of rapid steps, turned around the balustrading, and glided down the next set of stairs, two at a time. Esther had to admit, he was doing a pretty good job of it. There was only a tiny amount of jarring and jolting.
The trouble was he was holding her in his arms. The position wasn't all that comfortable, and her back was slowly getting cramped and bruised.
She was also finding it hard to cope with the change in her circumstances.
Why are they doing this? What is the benefit they expect to gain?
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Were they going to be sold to some brothel?
There's nothing much else we are useful for, is there?
Except Aragon vowed to look after us. And it is, somehow, backed by the Voice of the World.
But what are these vows, anyway? I've never heard of them before.
Bronsen went across another landing, looked down the next run of steps, and saw that Alice had stopped on the next landing. So he stopped there also.
"Well, that's 2443 so far," said Bronsen.
" I make it 2447 landings; you must have missed a few," said Alice.
"I missed a few?" said Bronsen.
"Amen," said Aragon, "I haven't been counting landings at all; I just count the open recesses. And we are going a bit slower than I thought we would."
Alice and Bronsen decided to bury the hatchet in that argument. They swapped over and kept going. Eventually, they got to another of the open recesses. They decided to rest at the lowest landing in this recess that was still open to the sky.
They placed Esther and Evereen on the ground, who then hobbled around and around the landing for a while, trying to build up their stamina and get some kinks out of their body. Aragon dug through his backpack and produced some food.
After eating, there was a period of silence.
Those three look as if they are unwilling to ask us anything.
It feels so strange. This will take some getting used to the fact that I can choose what I do all by myself.
But what do I do?
She didn't have a clue. She had spent a decade and a half doing only what she was told to do. With some reprieves when she was allowed to look after Evereena without any intervention. She didn't have much practice in socialising with anybody else. Eventually, she thought of a topic.
"Ah, Aragon..."
She stopped, in fear that she might be speaking out of turn.
"Yes, Esther?"
She was encouraged to keep going since he answered gently and without any impatience.
"That vow you made... Why did you decide to make it? And how did you get The Voice of the World to be a part of it?"
"Ah, right. Hmm, why did I? Well, because err, because you obviously needed help, of course."
"But, but, why did you want to help us? We can't do anything in return."
"Well, you see, the people of Manifestoria, and for that matter the much bigger city clockwise called Crysteth, don't have slaves. Slavery is illegal, and trying to introduce slavery will be met with extreme force."
At this point, Aragon noticed Alice and Bronsen listening in with extreme concentration.
"Oh, I suppose you don't know about that, either, do you? You see, once slavery is introduced, the slave masters will do everything in their power to enslave everyone around. There is no such thing as a mixed slave/non-slave society. Well, grey-collared slaves can exist in a free society, but once any higher-ranked slaves are introduced, then everything goes to hell. After all, once a slave has a collar on, they can never get it off, and they can never disobey a master. And every coloured collar above grey is a master of the grey collars. So such masters will order any new slaves to fight and collar more people, and so it goes until the entire population have collars."
"You mean, there are still non-slave locations?" said Esther, "I thought my original village was one of the last."
"Oh, there are plenty. But we all have to band together and fight like hell to maintain that," said Aragon.
Esther thought all of this over. She was still trying to work out the implications of being a released slave living in a non-slave country.
She was having a hard time.
So, she decided to leave that question alone for the time being.
"So, how is the Voice of the World involved in vows?"
"Oh, that's one of the services the Voice of the World provides. Any person can make a public or private vow, and the Voice will register it. However, the Voice will decide how serious the person is. It will ignore it if the person isn't serious, say just some stupid kids playing around. Or it may decide it's a fairly light-hearted vow and will only register it as 5% strength."
"But, I've never heard of it," said Esther.
"That's because anyone wearing a slave collar can't make one. Because they don't have the free will to make a vow."
"Oh," said Esther.
I'm still a slave. I can't even make a promise to look after my daughter.
She hung her head in shame and held Evereena a bit tighter.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be cruel," said Aragon.
He lightly and briefly patted Esther's hand, then backed off.
There was another small silence.
"Well, what do the percentage strengths bit mean?" said Alice.
"That is just a measure of how firm the Voice will be, trying to get the person to carry out their vow. A very light strength vow results in some nagging; eventually, the Voice will give up if the person doesn't fulfil their vow. On the other hand, not carrying out a high-strength vow has much more serious consequences."
"So, how serious are the consequences for not carrying out a 100% vow?" said Bronsen.
Yes, that's the strength of Aragon's vow.
About now, if Aragon had been wearing a suit and tie, he would be loosening his tie while looking distinctly uncomfortable. Since he wasn't, he just appeared distinctly uncomfortable.
"Well, now, the consequences are, hmm, you could say such consequences are kind of bad. Like, maybe even dying kind of bad. The Voice of the World will never give up trying to get the person to fulfil their vow. Ahh, I should mention that a 100% strength vow is extremely rare. I've never heard of one before."
Aragon really has committed to looking after us.
But it still doesn't make sense.
Perhaps I'll just let it go for the time being.
Aragon:
Aragon got up and started pacing down the stairs, followed by Bronsen and Alice gliding down, trying to make the trip as gentle as possible for the ones they were carrying. After a while, they could hear the rapid sound of footsteps below them coming in their direction. Aragon stopped at a landing, a tiny fire spark above his head lighting up the area just enough to see him.
"You lot, go up a landing. If these people are hostile, at least you will have a slight warning," he said.
They waited. The footsteps rapidly grew in volume, and Aragon finally saw two teenagers come around the landing beneath him. They stopped and looked at each other.
"Er, Hi! We're looking for Alice and Bronsen..." said a voice.
"It's them!" screamed Cassy.
Aragon, Esther and Evereena had a ringside seat as the four Misfits greeted each other with much shouting, hugging and crying.
Honestly, I have never seen such an amazing production in all of my life. What is their relationship with each other?
After a mere ten or so minutes, the Misfits gathered their wits together and started to take notice of the other people present. Note that while they had been talking nonstop at each other all this time, there wasn't much actual information exchanged. They needed to set aside sometime later for some serious updating. Just not yet.
Eventually, the four Misfits lined up, and Bronsen introduced Cassy and Drayden to Esther, Evereena and Aragon.
I had better step in and keep this rabble moving.
"I'm sorry to interfere with your reunion, but we should get down as fast as possible." had said.
He also pointed to the two massive backpacks that Cassy and Drayden were carrying.
"I suppose they are supplies for those up on the top?"
"Yep, we were told we leave them when we meet you. The team following us will carry them up the rest of the way," said Cassy.
She and Drayden took the packs off and plonked them on the ground. Evereena, who was right next to one of the bags, very timidly tried to move one. It didn't budge.
"It's heavy, isn't it!" said Cassy, "Us Misfits have high strength, although Jane said we shouldn't go around telling everyone exactly how much."
Cassy knelt and smiled warmly at Evereena. After looking up at her mother for reassurance, she smiled back. Drayden knelt diagonally behind Cassy and also smiled at Evereena. Evereena started to look as if things were getting too much for her, so the teenagers promptly stood up and moved back a bit.
Yeah, Cassy and Drayden are just like Alice and Bronsen. Kind and gentle and incredibly strong and totally naive.
Aragon gathered his flock and managed to get them to continue going down. They passed another kilometre of open stairs and a kilometre of enclosed stairs and finally stopped at the topmost landing in the next open recess.
"We might as well camp here. And, ahh, when you go to do your, you know, business, go down a few flights for privacy and just toss it over the side. But try not to fall off yourself, OK!" he said.
"Oh, I just realised; what about the people down at ground level?" said Cassy.
Aragon shrugged. "You probably didn't notice, but generally, nobody stays within a kilometre of the base of the wall. Or, they stay inside the base camp buildings as much as possible. There's no other convenient way of doing things, so..."
Alice and Bronsen looked at each other with slightly guilty expressions. As did Cassy and Drayden.
Aragon just snickered.
"You both came from monster territories. There ain't anybody living there, anyway."
They had a shared meal, courtesy of the food that Cassy and Drayden had brought up. Then, there was a strained silence.
Cassy and Drayden want to ask about the two slaves but don't know how to. The Misfits are dying to talk to each other, but not in front of all of us. Esther and her daughter want to talk about the rest of us, but also in private. And is that the fifth of so yawn I've seen?
Aragon put on a big smile.
"Let's postpone the detailed discussions for another night since we are all tired."
Especially Esther and Evereena.
"And, let's say Cassy and Drayden go down three or four flights of steps and act as an advance guard for anything coming up. Alice and Bronsen go up a few fights and do the same. But I don't think we need to put up a watch tonight so we can all get a good night's sleep."
The teenagers seemed happy to do this, and they split up and went their separate ways up and down the stairs.
He he, give them their blanket time with each other; you can thank me one day.
He looked at Esther and her daughter and half smiled, half snickered.
"Ah, hormone-charged teenagers..."
Only to get two blank looks back.
Oh, crap. Stupid, stupid, I forgot. They're slaves.
"Ah, sorry, never mind; how about I sleep on the landing just above this?"
Cassy and Drayden:
Cassy and Drayden went down four flights of stairs and then sat down.
"We still didn't get to talk to them," said Cassy.
"I know! But, if we have spent half a year getting to this point, I suppose we can wait another day or two."
They were both tired but didn't want to sleep or do something else just yet.
"Say, do you think we can still tunnel through the Wall?" said Cassy.
"Let's try!" said Drayden.
After a minute or two...
"It appears that we can't any longer," said Cassy.
"Shame. And System-san was quite definite about it, wasn't he? But, I suppose it's not as if we would ever need that skill again, anyway." said Drayden.