Chapter 9: Into Slavery

Jameson looked at the young girl that had been collared. She had barged into the camp and killed Frank on the spot. This was going to be a bad day. He could feel it in his bones.

After they had collared her, a platoon of soldiers had arrived. Said platoon was too small to put up a fight so they had pushed through. They then made their way into the town and killed a large portion of the population.

They had even decided to pillage the place while they were at it. it was rather shocking to see the fight the locals put after that. They had managed to push them back and into the woods.

The battalion had run into a young girl that seemed to be trying to wake up the captured girl after they got back so they killed her. She must have been a relative of the young girl, but Jameson didn’t really care.

Sure, he was rather confused as to why they had been told to invade Westport secretly. But after all, he was just a soldier, and good soldiers followed orders. That’s their job, and that’s what they are going to do. But they failed to push into the city proper.

It was surprisingly hard to breach the gates of it. If only they had time to set up siege weapons. Then they might have been able to make their way inside. But the battalion had been pushed out and back into the forest.

Jameson and his troops had to run back to the ships that they had hidden in the old, abandoned, elven dock. It was all rather strange in all honesty. The place was swarming with mana. It was almost like; well, something was about to happen.

…

She woke from a nightmare. Said nightmare was that her family had died, and she was left all alone to wallow in her own life. No mother to keep her warm after a bad day. No father to keep her safe with his mere presence. No sister to liven it all up, to make the day feel divine.

She looked around the room she found herself in. Well, it was really just a cage. Said cage was better than the one she had been in before. The bars were thick and rust free. The lock was robust and had a powerful magic seal on it. in all honesty, it looked like this would be her home for the foreseeable future.

But something felt different. Like her limbs had an extra pair of friends. Sitting up in the cage, she looked behind herself. Her eyes widened in shock. Her mouth opened, agape.

There was a pair of wings on her back. It was so strange. She could feel them in her mind. She could feel her blood going through them. She could feel the heat of her body being trapped by the feathers of the wings.

And speaking about the feathers, they were a beautiful emerald green. They looked rather large as well. At least the ones on the edges. The other feathers on top of the wings were much shorter than the edge feathers.

Her new wingspan seemed to be about a foot long than her arms could reach on either side of her. She could feel the chi flow through them, it was like they had always been there. She touched them and found that the fluffiness was unparalleled.

They were so soft as well, like a pair of clouds had been glued to her back. But a noise interrupted her revelry in her knew found limbs. The noise was that of the door to the room she was in opening. Into the room came a rather burly man. She honestly did not know why he was here. He could be here to make sure that she was all healed up. Or he could be there to make sure she was asleep or awake.

He walked right up to the cage she was in. He then reached his hand in and grabbed her wings. She tried to pull away, but he said something in French, and she felt a quick sear of pain go through her neck. She looked down with eyes at her own neck.

There, clamped around her neck, was a slave collar. It also looked far more powerful than the last slave collar she had seen. When the man said those words, it seemed like the collar had interrupted those commands and enforced them.

She stopped struggling and crawled over to the man on her own knees. He nodded and inspected her wings. Now that she was conforming to his order, he became a lot gentler. He looked at them and nodded his head.

He then combed his fingers through her wings and checked the skin underneath. He seemed satisfied and stood back up. The cage was actually rather small, and it seemed to be just on the floor, so he had to get on his knees to check up on her.

He then walked over to the stack of crates on the other side of the room and grabbed a tool off of them. It was a brand… Aisling’s mind did not quite catch up with the reality of what she was seeing. He was going to heat that thing up and stick it onto her skin.

She didn’t have to wait awhile though. She could feel magic emanating from the brand. The brand appeared to have been enchanted with fire magic. The end heated up and started to glow like a white-hot iron.

‘He is going to brand me!’

‘He is going to brand me!’

‘He is going to brand me!’

Those words ran through her mind a mile a minute. He walked over to her cage once more. But instead of sticking the brand through the bars like she expected, but instead he opened the door to her cage.

He reached in and tried to grab her. But she did something that most cat beastkin don’t ever do. What she did was seen as very rude and bordering on taboo. She hissed at him and bit his hand.

He pulled his hand away and scowled. She had drawn his blood rather easily. In fact, it was rather easy. You don’t know this but cat beastkin have cat-like teeth. This means that they can bite into flesh rather easily.

But what shocked her was the fact that he had no reaction besides the scowl. He said another phrase in French, and she felt yet another sear of pain go through her body. She flinched when he reached in again but didn’t resist him anymore. He pulled her out like how you would grab a cat and set her dropping her onto the ground.

She simply lay there, steeling herself for the most painful feeling in her life. Then he ripped her pants off. That wasn’t what she was expecting. Was he going to rape her, and the brand was simply a kink of his? No, he took the brand and stuck it to her thigh.

Because of the shock of her clothes being ripped off, she had lessoned he pain resolve she wasn’t ready for the brand. She screamed out in pain and started to finally tear up. He then grabbed her once again and shoved her into the cage she was going to call home.

Tears began to roll down her face.

‘Why am I here? Where is the old man when I need him? Why am I here? Why am I experiencing this pain? I don’t deserve this…’

Thoughts of home ran through her mind. Until she finally got tired and fell asleep from the overbearing pain.

‘I want to go home!’

…

When she next awoke it was dark in the cage. She sat up and poked the tarp that covered it. It seemed that they had put a tarp over the cage she was in. She then decided to inspect the brand on her now exposed leg. She felt the burned skin and seared flesh.

It hurt to touch. But another thing was in here with her. She could feel that something was off. Like she was being stared at. It wasn’t the new thing in here with her, but it was rather looking at her through the tarp.

She decided to inspect the new thing as well. She crawled over to it and grabbed it. There was very little light in the cage. But her cat eyes were ever-so slightly better than a human’s eyes. So, in the dark so she could see the thing mostly.

It was a bucket, a rather large bucket. The thing reeked of human feces. This was most likely a poop bucket, or a spare one they had lying around. It was then that she noticed how much she had to go pee.

Sucking down her pride she pulled down her now ruined pants and sat down on the bucket. She had to bend forward to even fit on top of the thing. She then sucked in a deep breath and let loose her bowels. The soft sound of her pee hitting the surface of the bucket resonated. Some bounced back and hit her butt, but the majority of it stayed inside the bucket.

When she was done, she got off and pulled some of the ends of the tarp through the space in between the bars. She wiped herself down with it and pushed it back through. She then put back on her ruined pants and sighed in pleasure. She had actually not made a mess of things.

It was then that the sound of the door opening resounded through the room. She stopped in her effort to lay down. She then sat back up and decided to sit crisscross-applesauce. Sounds of two people conversing in French came from outside her vision and it seemed like they were changing shifts.

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She was very thankful that her now masters had put a tarp over the cage. It would have been very embarrassing to pee in front of them. Or, it would have been humiliating. Now that she thought about it, why was there a tarp over her new home?

It wasn’t like they had any respect for her. Or maybe they didn’t want to see a young girl pee in a bucket and probably eat off the floor. She was very thankful for the little miracles she had.

The old lookout went out of the room and that only left her and this new guy. She didn’t know anything about the last guy, but he seemed to be the one that had been staring at her through the tarp. If he had wanted, he could have just taken off the tarp. But he didn’t so she was thankful.

This man however seemed to have different ideas about how to watch her. She heard him walk over and then he pulled the tarp off. Aisling flinched at the light of the lamp in the man’s hands. She covered her eyes and looked down to avoid his gaze.

He seemed satisfied and walked over to the table in the middle of the room. There sat on it was a piece of hardtack. He picked it up and threw it to her. It flew through the air and just managed to slide through the bars and land next to the poop bucket.

She sighed in relief that it didn’t get soaked with her own piss and grabbed it from the floor of the cage. She then sat back down and began to eat the thing. She looked at eh man who was now sitting down at the table. He was rather robust, and not like the last man.

He had a beer belly and slightly chubbier cheeks then the last man. He kind of looked like Santa Claus if Santa Claus was in the French military. His mustache was curled at the ends and his gaze lingered on her brand for a moment and then he looked at her in the eyes.

This man was going to be just like that other man, wasn’t he? He wasn’t going to talk to her, and he wasn’t going to say or do anything that would make her more comfortable. She was a slave now. She could not escape.

But he did feed her. She was very thankful for that. She had been starving since before she was branded. She looked down at her hardtack and sighed. Since she was starving, it tasted better than it probably was, but it was still the closest thing to food she had had all day.

“Thank you, sir,” shew said in the most submissive voice she could.

She didn’t want to anger the man. She didn’t want to get into his mind. She didn't even want to be on his mind. This man might be a pervert. Or maybe even a rapist. After all, they had enslaved her. She was their or their lord’s property now.

If she acted like a person, it would get on their nerves. But if she acted like a thing to be tossed around, like a tool, like a pretty piece of furniture, then she would be able to actually keep her mind intact.

She wouldn’t have to be beaten down at the start. She could stay whole. She then looked at the new lookout and saw that he had grabbed a thin book from atop the table. On the cover was some French she couldn’t speak; but below it was Irish.

Then he nodded his head and lifted an eyebrow in intrigue.

“You are Thankful. Was that yes?” he asked in a deep throaty accent.

She was shocked that he would try to actually talk to her. It was not something that she expected him to try and do. But he was kind of off. His accent was clear enough, but the words weren’t right.

She nodded her head slowly and looked down from his gaze.

“You were mostly correct sure. You used thankful instead of welcome, and used yes instead of correct,” said in a submissive voice once more.

He nodded his head and smiled. It seemed like he had been satisfied with her correction of his grammar. He then started to talk in French to himself and smiled. He then set the book down and walked back over.

He grabbed the tarp and put it back over the cage. Thankfully she would have some privacy yet again. She sighed and thought about the location of Old Man Spirit. She didn’t know where he was, but she still felt like his power was going through her. Like he was… trapped… inside of her. He was, wasn’t he? He was lost and his power was locked and merged with her. She didn’t know that was possible, but it was. A tear ran down her face. She was truly alone now, all alone. With no one coming to save her this time.

She lay down on the floor of the cage and cried, she didn’t know if the lookout was listening to her tears, but it seemed like he didn’t care. Her tears soaked the whole right side of her face. Soon she drifted off to sleep. But when she next awoke, things were different.

She looked up and the roof of the cage and heard loud feet stomping over to her. The tarp was ripped off. Light form the lamp the last man and current lookout was carrying spilled into her eyes. He then opened the cage and grabbed her.

He put her over his shoulder and said something in French. By the feeling of pain that shocked through her, she could tell that it was an order to not escape and to stay still while he was carrying her.

She complied as she didn’t know what was going on and being with someone who knew what was happening just seemed like it was a good idea. He then grabbed some thick steel cuffs from the top of one of the crates and stormed out of the room.

It was then that she finally figured out where this was. She was staying in an old abandoned Elvish port, with a craggy rock overhang. There, docked at the port, was a Francian warship. Or more accurately, a slaver ship. A strange crest belonging to the duke of the west French isles was imprinted on the main sail.

She could hear gunshots and shouting coming form behind the man that was carrying her. A stray bullet missed past her captor’s shoulder, nearly hitting her leg. It was nothing but chaos. Then a cannon ball collided with the ground a couple of feet from them. The man carrying her was blasted back. As a result, he dropped her. When her head hit the ground, the whole world went black.

…

She opened her eyes to find herself in a crate with some airholes. Said crate was rather small. It was so small in fact, that she had to bend her spine a bit to move. She could feel the sides of the crate, they were course and wooden. She tried to move but the fact that it was small hampered that idea.

She could feel that the box was being moved. It didn’t help her current predicament in all honesty. Here wings were at odd angles and one of her feet was stuck up her rear end, the other foot was in her face.

Then, she felt the crate fall. It hit whatever that was below her with a great force. A sound that frightened her to no end arrived at her ears. It was water. She squirmed in her confined space.

She didn’t know why she was in a crate, but she did know that if this thing filled with water, then it would be over for her. In any case, she was going to have to try and escape faster than she thought. She could feel that the water from the outside of the crate wasn’t leaking inside yet.

The bobbing of the crate was starting to make her feel seasick already. In all honesty, she wanted to barf. But she swallowed it back down as she tried to figure out the best way to escape. She looked around in the crate. There was no light in the crate.

And then she had an idea, a very normal idea. One that she was shocked she didn’t use earlier. She simply called up her light spirit and had it fill the crate with light. She was rather stupefied with herself that she hadn’t used this in the cage when she had no light, but better now than never to remember.

She looked around the crate, but her eyes didn’t land on the airtight build, or the drilled through air holes. Her gaze landed on her thigh. She could still remember the hot sting of the brand in her mind. She used her awkwardly postponed hand to move the leg so she could actually study the mark left by the man who seemed so used to being bitten by beastkin.

She prepared herself to see letters, or maybe a nasty image. But it was just a simple letter-like crest. It took the shape of the letter Y. It had two, short lines coming from the two arms on top. The lines bent down.

Next in the middle of the Y’s tale end, two diagonal lines came from it. the left line had yet another line coming in at a right-angle inwards. The right side one had a large dot on the end. A line extended from the dot and wrapped around the whole thing in the shape of a simplified heater shield.

It was a simplified version of the Francian duke that rules over the west French isle’s crest. As she looked at it, she could feel the sting of the iron on her skin. After a shiver of pain and fear ran through her. She shook her head and sighed.

It was then that she noticed that she could see some stars in the sky if she peered through the air holes. It seemed to be night right now. If she weas to believe that she had been thrown into the sea for some unknown reason, she also had to believe that she would be abandoned.

The reason she came up with that answer; they had left her in the sea. If you were going to sell a rare and expensive looking slave to someone, then why would you chuck them into the ocean?

If they wanted to hide her from the army that had no doubt found them, they all they would have to do if keep her in that cage, but instead they put her in here. She was fed up right about now but as soon as she was starting to grow frustrated, something else drew her attention.

Some salt water had washed into her crate. The salt water itself was simply that salt water, but it made her realize that she was tipping over. She desperately tried to right herself, but it failed.

The crate she was in had tipped over and now there was saltwater seeping in. But the water soon stopped, the water level had stopped because of the air in the crate. She soon steadied her breathing; it was rather shocking she hadn’t remembered that it wouldn’t fill all the way up in the crate.

There was still air inside, so she would not drown, but she would still suffocate. That was when she heard a clap of thunder. It seemed like poor weather was rolling over the sea.

It soon became clear that she might die here. In this crate. As the box she was stuck in soon began to rock and dip up and down. She grew even more seasick. She could barely hold in her lunch. Not that the lunch she held in her was really anything but hardtack.

it rolled back over. She could now see the sky through the little holes in the box she would surely die in. The sky seemed beautiful. She was sure it was. Buit she was stuck in this box, in the middle of the sea. If only someone, anyone could pick her up. She would be almost thankful enough to let them keep her a slave, almost. That thought made her mind slip and she nearly lost her lunch once more.

…

In all honesty she was expecting, well, she didn’t know what she was expecting. It was simply that she thought that something would have happened by now. She had spent about a hole night in this crate.

It almost made her miss the cage. Then she remembered the brand, and the emotionless face of the man with the brand. Then came the searing pain again. All the emotions that came with it. that longing for that cage was nothing more than her wanting to be safe.

But she was not safe in the cage. She was going to be sold for crying out loud. She didn’t know why she felt that way. Maybe she simply wanted to be on dry land. That was probably it.

She looked up at the broken sky. The blue of it marred by thick clouds, for the storm had passed, for now. She could feel it in her bones, it was going to storm once more. The little box she was in might just fill, and she might just drown. It was a very slim possibility, but it was there.

She wanted to sleep. She had been awake for an entire night. But she might tip the crate in her sleep and suffocate. She might get found before that though. She hoped someone would find her.

After hours of her awake mind keeping her from sleeping, her thoughts were starting to slip. It was starting to become harder to stay awake. Sleep closed in and snagged her mind away. It was then that the gears of life began to turn around for little Aisling.

…

Cold, dead hands wrapped around his grip. This generation’s champion had fallen. It was going to be a while before he found a new host, a new friend. He looked around now. It seemed as if fate had decided to take the bone it had given him this time around.

But then, he felt new hands touch his hilt, grip his leather padded handle. They were small hands. They were that of a child’s. He was shocked. He had only had one child become his wielder. And it seemed she was shocked as well.

His mind shifted to her mind. His point of sight shifted to her point of sight. It was truly a shocking feeling for the girl, after all, he could feel her emotions now. Her pain, her sadness. And now her relief at being free!

But it all came crashing down.