Seven

While walking toward the group of men, some quiet thoughts ghosted through the back of my mind in the handful of seconds it took for me to manipulate the air in front of me. “Is this justice?” was one of the first. Following that, “Any justice you believe in would demand action.” And right on the heels of that thought, “Anything you can do will not compare to what they’ve already shown you.”

I became much angrier when I read between the lines of my own thoughts. The lesser of two evils, huh? What egotistical hypocrisy. I was looking for excuses to hurt people because I wanted to vent my anger at what I perceived to be an injustice. I wasn’t going to fight for survival, I wasn’t going to altruistically save these people, and I wasn’t trying to be a hero who fights for an ideal world.

I was just furious at how repulsive and twisted these slavers were. I wasn’t thinking of justice, I was thinking of punishment. I wanted to kill them to satisfy my anger at their actions and make sure they never did something like this again. I was not a hero, I was not morally correct, and I was just making excuses for myself.

“All I want is to just hurt them until they stop hurting the others.” The straight, unfiltered honesty of that last thought turned the stillness that had settled over me earlier into a cold and detached calm. My resolve solidified into a stone that sat heavy in my gut, and my emotions all melted away save for one: An intense, cold rage.

My mind was clear, it worked quickly and efficiently to compress air into a solidified bar six inches thick and twenty feet long that extended from my hand. The shape of it was hard to see in the dim light of the fire and what few torches were spread around the camp, it shimmered in the air like heat rising from the sand on a sunny day. Light from the fireplace and torches refracted through it, and some corner of my mind was reminded of light distorting through water as it danced across the surrounding surfaces.

The strain of maintaining that bar of air felt like I was wearing a really tight hat, and I knew I was going to have a bad tension headache later, but I didn’t care. I could see the cage in front of me, full of looks of despair that made the tragedy of the situation sink heavily into my soul. The people inside looked on, devoid of hope, merely awaiting their own fates as they watched the scene unfold.

My rage continued to build until I felt like I was shivering from the cold radiating from the core of my being. My feet carried me forward steadily, one step at a time, as I funneled the intensity of my feelings straight ahead of me. The bar I had created was now so dense that it had started to catch the light, glowing dimly, shooting off little rays of brightness like sunlight leaking through the leaves of a tree into the shadows underneath.

There was a vice grip on my brain now, the drain of pushing myself further than I had ever gone before gave me a migraine so intense that it made me squint my eyes, but I didn’t stop. I kept walking, pushing the bar straight ahead of me until it extended fully between the cage and the group of slavers.

At that point, one of the men in the group turned to look at my creation when a stray beam of light lanced across his face. I couldn’t see his face or hear much of anything over the deafening pounding of my heart and the screaming pain in my head, but he must have reacted in some way to draw attention because a few more of the men turned to look as well.

I was starting to lose focus, reaching my limit in more than one way, when I began hearing a quiet screaming bubbling up inside my head underneath the roaring sound of blood in my ears. It wasn’t until I saw one of the group snap his head towards me, when I saw his eyes widening in recognition, that I realized I had begun actually screaming out loud.

As soon as the second man spun towards me, I decided that it was enough. I swung my arm horizontally, away from the cage, putting everything I had into the motion, twisting my whole body with a loud grunt of effort. The bar of air, glowing dimly in the night, swept toward the group with a loud sound resembling a wave of water crashing into a cliff.

I dimly noted three of the men react quickly enough to try diving out of the way before I had finished my swing and the bar hit the first person closest to it, then there was a great cracking felt inside my head as the strain of maintaining it amplified. That person was swept along with the bar, bent unnaturally from the lower ribs where it had hit them as it carried him into the man next to him like a ragdoll.

The air rod continued to ram through the group, and vaguely I had the impression of that sweeping bar of metal that clears bowling pins from a lane after you had your throws. Bodies were smashed together with such force that they were lifted off their feet and carried into the next. The whole of the group still standing was mashed into a tangle of limbs and bodies as they were swept along.

The strain peaked ever higher with every body added to the jumble that my rod of air had forced its way through. I completely lost my ability to focus on what was happening in front of me before I even confirmed the last person was struck, the mounting pain of effort was too great. My legs nearly gave out and I stumbled sideways with the twisting of my body, and my grip on my magic loosened until I felt it slip completely out of my grasp.

As soon as I was no longer maintaining control over it, my vision and awareness snapped back, but the great pounding pain in my head remained. I had just enough mental capacity returned in that split second to snap my eyes towards the group, to watch the glowing rod of air lose everything that had forced it to maintain its cohesion.

There was a brief flash of light, and then a massive boom as all that compressed air expanded outward beyond the speed of sound. An explosion rocked the center of the camp, large enough that a massive shockwave hit me straight across the front of my body.

Once, when I was a young boy, I watched a man light a large pot-shaped firework on the street on the 4th of July. When it exploded, I felt a shockwave for the first time in my life. It was strong enough that when it struck me it rocked me back on my heels and made me stagger backward a few steps.

This shockwave was many, many times the force of what I had felt then. It hit me so hard that it lifted me out of my stumbling collapse, up off of my feet, and flung me backward through the air. The wind was knocked out of me and a blinding amount of dirt was kicked up with enough force that I couldn’t even see the ground when I hit it. I rolled a few times and slid to a stop, trying to breathe and only managing to choke on the debris in the air as I writhed weakly on the ground.

After a moment my hearing returned, but all that I could make out was a quiet whooshing and a pitter-pattering over the ringing in my ears. Soon after that, the dust settled enough that I finally managed to catch my breath. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees and coughed some dirt out of my lungs and throat. My eyes were watering and I couldn’t see much through the dust and tears, but I strained as hard as I could to get a look at what had happened.

I was flung back quite far, and there was a clear trail in the dirt where my body had dug a furrow as it was pushed along. My pack had also been torn off at some point. I started crawling my way back toward the center of the camp, desperation slowly mounting as clarity steadily returned. I needed to see who was still standing, I needed to be ready, I couldn’t afford to be laid out on my ass and defenseless if there was still danger.

The pain in my head was intense, and it took a few struggling attempts to stand upright as I made my way forward. My ears were ringing and I was unsteady, stumbling and collapsing once before I finally managed to keep my feet under me. When I got close enough, and the dust in the air had settled enough to give me a clear view of the aftermath, what I saw was nearly enough to make my legs give out again.

The whole encampment was covered in a dirty brown haze of fog. Bits of fabric and smaller pieces of wood were fluttering down through the air at the edges of the camp. I had to squint hard as the air continued to settle, to make out the dim shapes of wagons and carts overturned, baskets and boxes flung every which way, a tremendous mess scattered all throughout the area.

Still walking slowly forward with bleary eyes, the tinny whining sound mostly faded from my ears. I could then hear coughing and groaning with the soft crying of a child off to the side, which I dully registered as around where the cage of slaves should be. Though I still couldn’t see it, I bit my lip and felt a small wave of guilt as I wondered if I had hurt any of them.

After a few moments of aimlessly stumbling about, trying to make my way around and estimate the damage, my vision returned and breathing became easier as the air cleared up. I was still in something of a daze as I wandered the camp, and I tripped over something to fall flat on my face. Letting loose a grunt straight into the dirt, I pushed myself back up onto my knees and looked at what had tripped me. That was when I noticed the bodies.

The person I had tripped over was sprawled and motionless, partially sunken into the ground and covered in dirt. Their dirty eyes stared motionless up into the sky, their mouth hung open in a bloody teeth-baring rictus snarl. They must have been under the explosion and smashed into the ground.

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I was about to turn and get back to my feet when I noticed some loose cloth torn from the corpse’s chest. For a second, I almost couldn’t believe what I saw exposed. I reached out and swiped away the cloth to reveal small breasts, which I stared at in shock. Double-checking the clothing this person was wearing, I was in disbelief at what I was seeing.

This was one of the slavers, and now that it was put into context, I actually vaguely remembered the face as one of the people who had been holding the man down and laughing while he was getting beaten. It was a woman.

I fell back on my ass, dumbfounded. Some logical part of my brain was telling me that I should not be surprised, that it takes all kinds, and being a man or a woman made little to no difference in most walks of life. Enslaving others to make your own life better wasn’t something limited to only one gender, and my own world had even shown me that. Thinking back to the young blond woman from earlier as I stared at the corpse made my stomach do a sickening backflip, though.

I turned away, pushed myself back up to my feet, and continued walking. The air and my mind had cleared enough at this point that I realized what I was looking for in my daze. The boss, the keys, a way to free the people in that cage. A simple enough goal to focus on to distract me from the frightening scene surrounding me. I would try to think about the rest later.

As I went from body to body, I couldn’t tell which were which when they were facedown, as dirtied and tattered as their clothes were, so I had to roll some over to get a look at their faces. After a couple of corpses, I found a man who was still breathing. He didn’t move when I pulled him onto his back and was breathing so shallow I didn’t notice at first.

The man had blood dripping down the side of his face from some wound on his head, which was covered by something resembling maybe a turban? It was hard to tell at this point, but it was ragged and nearly falling off of his head. I pulled it off to get a look at the wound and was met with a sight not quite as disturbing as before, but it still rattled me.

The wound on his head was deep, his skull had been split open, and even I could tell that he wasn’t going to live long. He likely had brain damage and was only moments from breathing his last. That wasn’t what shook me, though. What made my gut twist into knots were the little fluffy animal ears sticking up out of the top of his head.

What the fuck? Seriously? Is nothing sacred in this world? Women allowing rape against other women right in front of them, animal people allowing their own to be enslaved and even actively engaging in it? Realistically, I shouldn’t have even blinked at this considering what I’d seen so far, but something about this whole situation really got under my skin and made me irrationally angry.

Humans, women, and beasty boys all treating their own like subhumans? If I wasn’t so angry, I probably would have laughed at how absolutely ludicrous and familiar this all was. I guess scum is the same in any world, regardless of who looks like what or where their tiddly bits are located.

Disgusted, I turned away from the dying man and continued my search. I only managed to take two steps before I was blindsided by a large heavy mass slamming into me and taking me to the ground. I felt hands scrambling at mine, trying to press them into the dirt while I fought back. Whoever was on top of me was bigger and stronger, which was incredibly concerning considering what I had done to that man earlier with my spear, but I still managed to wriggle my way free in a panic before they could settle their weight onto me.

I scuttled away and leaped up before the other person could get back to their feet, and I got a good look at his face. It was the boss, and he looked furious. He also, however, looked a little dizzy and unsteady, and I could see a little bit of blood dripping out of one ear and some from one of his nostrils. I quietly thanked concussions and ruptured eardrums as I raised my hands defensively towards him.

He took a staggering step and then flung himself at me again. Even wounded and disoriented, he was still fast, and I only barely managed to duck to the side and avoid his hands. My own feet weren’t so steady either, and I nearly tripped and fell straight on my face as I scrambled away from him.

If I let him catch me, it was over. He was near twice my size, and I’d never had much physical strength in my life. My only option was to keep him at a distance and maybe try to hit him with magic again. I tried to focus on the air in front of my hands, and immediately regretted it. Screaming pain shot through my head and almost laid me out. I had vastly overused that particular muscle and I supposed I must have torn it.

He must have seen me wince and falter because he came at me again before I could recover. I couldn’t get out of the way completely this time, and he bulldozed against me, knocking me sprawling into the dirt. He hadn’t been able to grab me, but it felt like a farm animal had just knocked me on my ass.

I felt a rough impact against my hip which flipped me over onto my back. I looked up at him as I tried to backward crab walk away from him, only to take another kick on one of my legs, sending a burning numbness up my thigh. I let out a yelp and heard him bark a short laugh at me.

Getting back to my feet was hard, but I was starting to get desperate, and I needed to put distance between us. I limped away from him as fast as I could, eyes darting around the camp, looking for a weapon or anything I could use against him. The explosion had sent everything small flying, and the rest was covered in a layer of dirt.

I saw something looming ahead of me, and in my panic, I barely noticed that I was making a line straight for the slave’s cage. It had lost the wheels on my side and was tilted down toward me. Little bits of wood were plastered against the side of the cage, caught in the bars, and ripped up from the wagon that held the cage on top of it. Some of those pieces looked big enough to use as a small club. Anything was better than nothing.

I nearly made it to the cage before something heavy slammed against my lower back and bore me to the ground. The wind was knocked out of me in a huff and pain shot up my spine. Blows began to rain down on my shoulders and the back of my head, bouncing my face off the ground and sending bursts of black stars spinning through my vision.

I raised my hands behind my head to try and protect myself as I used my elbows to army crawl toward the cage. I didn’t even make it a few feet, just inches from being able to brush the cage with my fingertips before I was pinned down by a heavy point of weight in my back, and the blows doubled in frequency. I knew I was going to be knocked unconscious soon, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. I couldn’t use magic and I was physically much weaker than him.

He must have noticed that I stopped struggling to get away and was just trying to cover myself because he grabbed me by the shoulder and flipped me over. His knee dropped into my gut and knocked the wind out of me again, which left me gasping for air I couldn’t quite get enough of. He had me pinned and at his mercy.

One of his big meaty hands wrapped around my throat and squeezed, and my vision clouded over as blood and breath were both almost completely cut off. I looked up at his smirking expression as he spoke something to me in that language I didn’t understand. I just lay there and glared up at him as I felt my consciousness slowly slipping away.

Not getting a response, he punched me in the face. The back of my head was pressed into the dirt, so the full force smashed right into the bridge of my nose, and it felt like my head exploded. My vision was alternating flashes between bright red and faded black.

He made some other sounds to me, but my eyes weren’t able to focus on him. He hit me again, this time across the cheek. I had never been hit so hard before in my life, I didn’t even have anything to compare it to besides the previous blow. I was in so much pain and was beginning to become so delirious that the first blow already seemed like it was ages ago.

I could barely see his face, but not getting any responses must have made him angrier, because he just started hitting me over and over. I’m not sure how I remained conscious, probably from all the adrenaline and my survival instinct, but at some point, I was wishing that I would just pass out and die.

The hand around my throat released its pressure suddenly, and I drew in a ragged and coughing breath when I found myself able to breathe again. The knee on my stomach also removed itself, and I reflexively rolled onto my side.

My vision began to return, and looking up at him, I noticed that he was clutching his face and screaming something. Blood was running from between his fingers. Confused, I looked straight above me and saw a quivering length of wood pointed at him, with the tip splattered with a little blood. A shaking hand held the other end of the broken plank.

Following the hand back, I saw that young blond woman pressed up against the bars of the cage, straining forward with her whole arm outstretched. She had stabbed the boss in the face when he was beating me. For a split second, I oddly felt a flash of pride, but then my survival instinct kicked into full gear.

I reached up and snatched that bit of wood out of her hands, rolled up onto my knees with a frantic burst of strength, and used the momentum to awkwardly lunge at the large man. He had rocked back and was off-balance, and my weight colliding with his chest knocked him backward.

I plunged the sharp end of the stick into the base of his throat, and let my dead weight carry me forward and down on top of him. I rode him down with a death grip on the piece of wood and felt it grind down through his neck and out the other side, stabbing into the dirt beneath him.

He swatted at me with one hand, clipped the side of my face, and knocked me loose. But the damage had already been done. He struggled weakly, clutching at the wood sticking out of his throat, and I didn’t have any energy left to finish him off. I just lay on top of him coughing hoarsely as he writhed underneath me.

After a moment the writhing stopped, but I hadn’t been paying much attention, as I was slipping in and out of consciousness. I knew I was going to pass out at any second, but there was still something nagging in the back of my brain. My hands moved robotically, and I was only barely aware of them tugging the man’s keys out of his pocket.

Oh, right. That’s what really mattered, right? Getting those people out of that cage. All this death and pain was over, so now it was time to do the other thing. The other thing.. Which was what, again? My head swirled, the world warped, and I felt the urge to vomit. Probably not a good sign.

I struggled with great heaving coughs against my exhaustion and felt my body cry out in pain as I tried to push myself to my feet just one more time. I don’t know how I managed to do so, but it didn’t last for long. As soon as I was upright, I tipped forward and nearly fell straight back onto my face. The only reason I didn’t hit the ground was that I hit the cage.

I bounced off of it, my weak hands unable to find purchase in the bars and hold myself upright, and started sliding back down to the earth. Before I could, though, I felt more hands grabbing at me, keeping me upright. I struggled against them, frightened that someone else had recovered and was attacking me. After a few seconds, I realized the hands were gently holding me, and they felt like they were supporting my weight.

I stopped struggling and saw the keys tugged out of my grip, pulled into the cage by a dirty hand. I closed my eyes and went limp as darkness engulfed my mind. The last thing I heard was some panicked voices and the feeling of hands gently running over my body as I was carefully lowered to the ground.