Seven and half years ago, Persy’s perspective:
“Grandfather!” I shouted, seeing the wagon pull up and running as fast as my tiny legs could take me. He had jumped out of the wagon by the time I got there, so he bent down and picked me up, giving me a big hug before sitting me down. “So, did you get me anything?”
“You sure are a greedy little girl, aren’t you? How about you help me with the horses and I tell you about my trip to the city.” Spring harvest had just finished on the crops we had brought in, and Grandfather had went with the other farmers to the nearest town to sell all of the preserved food that mother and Grandmother had made from it.
I held the reigns of the old work horse and lead it into its stable in the barn. We might only own a single ten year old plow horse, but it was so well trained that I could probably climb on its back and ride it, even as small as I was. Though that would mean that I could actually reach its back. The only way I could do that would be to get it near the ladder going up to the hay loft and climb off the ladder onto it. “See anything cool in the city?” I asked him. Grandfather always had good stories to tell about the city and all of the strange people living there. In our village, however, we only had a bunch of Beastfolk, mostly Foxes and Cats, though their was a Wolf family that served as our butcher and hunter, and an old Dwarf woman that worked as a smith. I didn’t know why she moved into the village, as we didn’t have much work for her to do. Grandfather said she was re-tired, but she looked like she had plenty of energy to me.
As he took the bit out of the horse’s mouth, a job he still wouldn’t let me do, and started wiping it down, he told me about all of the people he saw there. There was a rally tall man called a Giant, that he said was like a really tall human, but I’d never seen a human. When I told him that, he tried saying it was like a dwarf, but twice as tall, but that would just look weird. Maybe it was like the difference between a pony and a horse? The town mayor’s kid had a pet pony, and one time she let me ride it. He also told me about getting to visit the palace, where the Count’s chef bought some of mother’s fruit preserves to serve with breakfast. A Palace was like a big, fancy house that rich people lived in. He said that he’d love to work there, because that would mean our family didn’t have to farm and could eat well, but I thought we were doing ok.
Once we were done and I’d finished dropping down some hay from the hay loft into the horse’s pen, grandfather and I went inside. Mother and Grandmother were almost finished with supper, so I helped set the table. Once we were done we all sat down, thanked the Lord of the Forest for the deer father had shot today, and started eating it. Deer meat was so yummy.
I started telling everyone about all of the cool things grandfather found in the city, then realized something. “Hey, you never told me if you got me anything.”
“Persimmon! Don’t talk with food in your mouth!” mother fussed.
Grandfather finished chewing and swallowed. “Yes, I bought you something, but no, you can’t have it. Your sixth birthday is in a week and it’s a birthday present.”
I pouted. I liked it when he brought me things. But since it was going to be a birthday present, that meant it was going to be bigger, right? That cheered me up.
After supper I helped Mother and Grandmother clear the table, then sat in front of the fire to practice my magic. Mother was a talented apothecary, and she promised to teach me how to make potions if I learned to sense essences. For that, though, I knew I had a lot of work to do.
I kept practicing until I was out of mana, then, barely able to keep my eyes open, I went over to my bed and climbed in.
Grandfather woke me up. “Come on, Pers, we need to go.” He got me out of bed and made me put on my shoes and grab my coat.
“But grandfather...” I heard someone scream in pain outside and stopped talking back. I quickly grabbed my stuff and he picked me up. He ran out the door and I saw father blocking someone’s spear with his woodcutting ax. Mother was beside him, throwing spells and potions at people. I saw her throw a vial at a man in armor and when it hit him he screamed in pain as his skin started to melt.
Grandfather made me look away and we went into the barn where he put me on the back of the horse, then hoped on behind me. “Hold on good, Pers.” he said, then kicked the horse, getting it to run out of the barn.
I looked to the side as we left the barn to see the spearman stab Father. “Father!” I yelled, and the man noticed and called out to his friends. Two of them ran over and jumped on the backs of their horses, which had saddles, and chased after us.
Their horses were faster than ours, and soon one man fired an arrow which our horse’s leg, causing it to tumble. Grandfather grabbed me and rolled, protecting me from the fall, but as we got up the three of them threw some sort of spells at him and his legs and back seized up, causing him to collapse in pain.
I ran over to him but one of the men ran over and slapped a collar on each of us. When Grandfather started to regain control of his legs, they stood him up and walked us both over to one of those caged wagons you would haul chickens or pigs in, the made us get inside. There were several wagons like that and as we sat there, I saw them grab various people from the village and throw them into cages too. They only seemed to throw other foxes in ours, though.
“I can’t believe how easy this is.” said one of the bad men. “All these foxes and cats so close to the border. Just waiting for us to come by and take our pick.”
“Get back to work!” yelled a man in slightly better armor who carried a sword. “Their forces will be here at any minute. Fill up your wagon and head for the border.”
“Farin scum.” muttered grandfather. I didn’t know much about the world, as teaching me geog...geography wasn’t that important at my age, but I did know that our village was in the eastern part of the Beastfolk Kingdom of Ridalia, where our ancestors had taken on several bad groups of ogres, trolls and orcs, befriending the goblins and some of the ogres and orcs in order to build towns here. We were only a few kilometers from the border, whatever a kilometer was. These men must be from Farin, the country to the east where Beast people were treated as slaves. “Even still in uniform. Are they deserters or a raiding party sent by some lord?”
“Shut up!” said a nearby soldier, who drove the butt of his spear into grandfather’s face, giving him a black eye. I had learned a basic healing spell, even though I wasn’t very good with it yet, so I went over to grandfather and tried to use it on him. As soon as I started releasing my magic, though, the collar seemed to heat up and pain filled my body, worse than any injury I had before. “Oh, look at that. Little girls thinks she’s a mage.” he started laughing, so it tried to use my ignite spell on his hair. Again the collar seemed to get hot and I started hurting. “Don’t think she’s very smart, though. Cute enough that some perverted noble will pay money for her, though.” He laughed again and walked off.
“Don’t use magic, Persimmon.” said grandfather quietly. “The collar hurts you if you do. Let your magic build up, though. You can even meditate and draw it in if you want. Just nothing outside yourself. I’ll find us a way out of this.”
As I sat there, watching them grab more people and shove them into carts I saw one of the men drag two women into the village square where they were parked, a red haired fox woman and a silver haired dwarf woman. I realized at once that it was Mother and Mrs. Nerris, the blacksmith. “Problem Sir.” the soldier said, and one of the other men turned around. “Saw the fox go into this woman’s house, but she swore it was just her inside. I broke in and saw this Fox closing the root cellar.” Most houses had inside doors to the root cellar, as you couldn’t go outside when their was snow on the ground.
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The man picked up Mrs. Nerris by her hair. “Tell me something, woman. Why would you risk your life for a fox?” Mrs. Nerris spit on him and he threw her to the ground. “Damn Dwarf.” he said, wiping his face with his cape. “If you were younger, I’d let my men have their way with you for spitting on me, but as old as you are, only Squin would touch you.” He pointed to the smiling man that drug her over, a man with burns on his face. “Something’s wrong with that man. But we’re in a hurry, so I can’t even hand you over to him.” Squin looked a bit sad at that. The man drew his sword as she started to pick herself up off the ground. “For the crime of assault against a noble, I sentence you to death.” He swung his sword down, and Mrs. Nerris’s head came off, spraying blood all over him and mother. “Damn it. I hate getting blood on my uniform.” He went over to pick up Mother. “Seriously Squin? Do you know how much she was worth?”
“She burnt half my face off. Bitch deserved it. Would have had my way with her as well if I had the time.”
“Well, at least she was pretty before you worked her over. Now, if she doesn’t get medical treatment, we’ll be lucky to sell her as a manual laborer.” The leader sighed. “Throw her in the cart with the other foxes. I’ll have the medic go over her once we’re back over the border. Hopefully he can salvage something, though I doubt he can regrow teeth. It’s coming out of your cut.”
Squin threw her over his shoulder and carried her over here and, after opening the cage, threw her inside and locked the door again. I went over to see what happened to mother and immediately noticed something was wrong. She was asleep, her chest was purple, and her face was all messed up. She had a black eye, was missing several teeth, and her head was bleeding. I thought about trying to heal her, but remembered grandpa’s warning. Instead, I took off one of my socks and stuck it to her head to try and stop the bleeding. Grandfather hugged me as I cried.
The cart started out and traveled for about an hour before we pulled into a small fort and stopped. The big doors closed and everyone got out of their seats. “Look here, boys, we brought you some entertainment!” yelled Squin, getting a mean look from the leader.
“Not you, Squin. You and Hari are going to transfer the slaves to the jail cells. Merchant should be by tomorrow sometime to brand them, then you can buy yourself one if you want. Until then, I don’t want you touching them.”
“But Sir.” Squin said, and the man cut him off. “After what you did to that one I’m not letting you be alone with them until you own them. Understood?”
Squin nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said sadly. “Come on, Hari. I got one you need to heal.” He came over and opened the door. “Come on, Fox. You want to get healed, don’t you?” After a few seconds he slapped mother’s foot. “Hey, I said get up.”
Hari giggled. “I think you knocked her out. Might need some medical attention.”
“Shut up. Damn alchemist burnt my face. Of course I punched her in hers.” he grabbed mother’s leg and pulled her to the back of the wagon as Grandfather held be back.
Hari looked her over. “I think you punched her a bit too hard. She’s dead.”
I grabbed grandfather and started crying again. “Damn it.” Squin cursed. “I was hoping to buy her. Now the captain’s going to take her cost out of my pay. You know how much a Fox girl in good condition is worth?” He continued to complain as he picked her up and laid her to the side, but I didn’t care. My mother was just killed and they only cared about money? I barely even knew what things were worth, but even I knew people were worth more than money. They told us to get out and grandfather picked me up, then climbed out.
“She able to walk on her own?” Hari asked Grandfather. “If she’s injured I can fix her.”
“She can walk fine. She just found out her mother, my daughter, is dead.” He looked at mother’s body that was laying to the side.
“Understood. Just don’t blame me, ok? I wasn’t there to fix her when Squin messed her up. If I could have, I would have.”
Grandfather was still angry, but he nodded, and went to the jail cells. “Seriously man? You’re treating him like a POW, not a slave. You’re not hoping to buy that little girl are you? That’s kind of messed up.”
“Of course not. Being nice to them occasionally makes them work harder and be less likely to try and escape. Besides, if there’s a slave revolt, now he’ll likely slap a collar on me and make me cook for him instead of slitting my throat like he would with you.”
I cried myself to sleep in the overcrowded jail cell, curled up with grandfather for warmth where the one bed was being used by a pregnant cat woman. A few hours later, however, Grandfather woke me up again. There was a Panther man wearing black clothes at the door of our cage. He unlocked the door and our collars and whispered for us to be quiet. He and his partner had knocked out half the camp, but there were still guards. Once he was finished unlocking all of the cells his partner would open the gate and we and the other prisoners could escape. A minute later he motioned for us to follow him and we left through the front door of the jail, the man behind the desk passed out on it.
Just as we got to the big door that had been opened part of the way, one of the men spotted us. “HEY! THE PRISONERS ARE ESCAPING!” He ran over to the front of the mess hall and started dinging the bell as loud as he could. The Panther Man threw a Dagger into his back and he collapsed, but we were told to run for the border and not stop until we met our soldiers or entered another town.
Grandfather picked me up and started running. I don’t know how long we ran, but the several people were using their magic to keep going. I started to try and use Healing on grandfather, since I didn’t know the spell for getting energy back yet, but he didn’t seem tired. He must have used his own magic. A few minutes later the Panther man caught up with us, with the pregnant woman on his back. Panthers were known for their speed and stealth, but carrying another person meant that he also needed to use his magic to keep going.
As we reached the road that ran near the border we ran into a caravan camping out there. We were all exhausted from running, so even though they were all humans, dwarves, and goblins, some of us wanted to stay and accept their offer for a place to rest. The panther man told us we needed to keep going, but they insisted. When he started to leave, a goblin mage threw a spell at him, knocking him down.
“We would have preferred if you just accepted our hospitality and let us drug your soup. You would at least have a full belly. But now you’ve got to do this the hard way.” All of the men drew their weapons and, with the group being exhausted and filled with mostly women, children, and the elderly, we weren’t able to put up much of a fight.
They forced us all to step one at a time into some sort of magic circle one of their mages made, with any of us that refused, like the Panther man, being knocked out and thrown into the circle. When you stepped into the circle, though, he would say something and the circle would glow, making you glow and hurt all over, like every part of your body hurt, but your head most of all. After that the mage would tell you to leave the circle and if you refused your stomach and chest started hurting like you got kicked by a horse. At least that’s what grandfather said it felt like when he tried to not obey. The man then reset a few items around the outside of the circle and made another person step inside.
Once everyone had the spell cast on them, we were told not to go more than twenty meters away from the camp and given not-drugged soup. I wasn’t sure how far twenty meters was, as I was bad with distances and could barely count to twenty, but I found out when I got too far from camp while looking for a place to pee and my stomach started hurting really badly.
We were given basic tents to set up, some of them having holes in them, and told to get some sleep. You could tell who was trying not to sleep by the screams.
The next day we were told to climb in the back of the wagon and the wagon took us north, towards some town called Starshine. A few days later, Grandfather told me happy birthday, but I didn’t feel too happy about it. They only gave us basic food, so it wasn’t long until we started to get weak. The Panther Man, who I learned was named Grin, told them about the woman he was carrying being pregnant, so they gave her enough to eat, but none of the rest of us.
Seven days into the trip our wagons met another group on the road. The people in charge of both started talking, and a few minutes later they came to look us over. The merchant seemed interested in buying the Cat woman until he found out she was pregnant, then sighed and bought Grin and Grandfather for his business. After that we parted ways and finished our trip to the city. The Wolf woman from our village, name Mimi, started looking after me after grandfather was taken, and even let me sleep in her tent after the men from the camp left to let her sleep. A few days later we made it to Starshine. There was an argument at the city gate, something about a type of money called ‘entry tax’ that the caravan master didn’t want to give up, so we parked beside the moat and the master and some of his men went into town to advertise that they were selling slaves. It smelled like a bad outhouse here, and most of the men from the caravan stood far away from the wagons because of the smell. After most of them had stepped away, Mimi whispered something to me. “I’m going to distract them. I want you to run.” She didn’t tell me where to run to, so a few seconds after she got out of the wagon and approached one of the men acting like she was in heat I jumped out of the wagon and ran across the bridge into town, mixing in with a group of Adventurers that were returning.
Not knowing what to do, I stood there, looking around. That didn’t last long as two big men that were dressed similar to the people that attacked our village started screaming at me to stop. When the pain didn’t start I knew I could disobey them, so I ran. I bumped into a boy with red hair, but I got up and kept running.
I managed to get away and sleep in an alley that night, covering up with an old tarp someone had thrown out. The next day I found an old hooded coat someone had thrown out, hid my tail in the back of it and looking around town, pretending to just be a normal child. I figured out that if they didn’t see my ears and tail they would assume I was a human child, not a Fox.
Unfortunately, anyone I asked for food would just call me a street rat or tell me to ask my parents. I almost corrected them that I was a Fox, not a Rat, but I stopped myself. I also didn’t have parents to ask. I saw both of them die.
I sat down between two buildings to cry and one of the city guards spotted me. I ran and, just as I started to lose them my stomach started to growl. I hadn’t had anything to eat today, but there was a restaurant just down the road that smelled like it had good food. Since I didn’t have money to buy anything, I looked through the garbage can out back, where they threw out all of the food people ordered but didn’t eat. Mother had told me that I should always clean my plate, but apparently the people here didn’t tell their children that.
Just as I found some kind of sandwich that looked good, a boy in nice clothes told me I shouldn’t eat out of the trash and offered me a piece of candied fruit. I obviously preferred the taste of fruit, so I took it. He then lead me to a stall where they sold some sort of yummy smelling meat on a stick. As the man was getting our food ready, though, a guard came over and tried to take me. Something I didn’t expect happened, though. The boy lied to him, and said I was his slave. Was he just trying to take me, so he could treat me like garbage like the merchants treated us? That didn’t make sense, as the merchants would never buy us delicious meat on a stick or candy. After convincing the man to go away, he offered me a job in the palace. I remembered what grandfather said about working in the palace and accepted.
He told the older man he met and his parents that he bought me from those merchants, and his parents accepted me. He then introduced me to Marya and Tanya, and told Tanya I would be working for her. The next day he took me to some fancy office where the man did a small magic circle ritual, then placed a drop of mine and the boy’s blood on a piece of paper. A weird shiver went through my body but it didn’t hurt like the last magic circle. He handed the boy the rolled up paper and we left.
I told him about how much the magic could hurt, but he promised me that he would never use it against me or hurt me any other way unless I did something to hurt him first. I agreed.