Six

I ran into my first humans a few hours before noon. Spotting a thin trail of smoke rising in the distance, I made my way to it like a moth drawn to a flame. It wasn’t too far off the road, and when I got closer, I could see a line of trees far off in the distance beyond it.

Actual trees! They were still a few miles out, but I could see long clusters of them as far as I could see. That was probably the biome line, and I had finally reached the end of the Bushlands.

I couldn’t allow myself to celebrate, though, and resolved to creep closer to the source of the smoke. The thin trail of black was from a low burning campfire in the center of a dirty-looking encampment. It seemed pretty quiet, with wagons loosely sprawled in a seemingly disorganized fashion. No cart, wagon, or tent was closer than twenty feet to one another. I guess they liked their personal space?

I circled around the perimeter of the camp, keeping far enough away that even tripping over my own feet wouldn’t cause sound to give me away. As I was observing the different wagons and tents, I noted that they seemed rather poorly maintained.

The majority were just plain wood that may have been varnished or stained, but most that were colored were missing big patches of paint; what was left had faded so much it was hard to tell what the original color was. Mismatched patches of material showed shoddy repairs and quick fixes everywhere I looked.

Some of the wagons had a mixture of boxes and what looked like burlap sacks packed into them, with others having a variety of baskets that I wasn’t close enough to identify the contents of. A couple of them had even been enclosed in something like a shed, reminding me of little camper trailers.

One camper, in particular, was set apart from the rest of the camp and seemed to be of fairly decent make. It was larger and more elaborate than the rest, and still had some vibrance in its color and much less wear and tear in general. It was probably owned by the most important person.

I spotted several people, all apparently adult human males, and all wearing dirty clothes that might still be alright if only they’d get a wash or two. Hygiene seemed to be an issue, but nothing seemed ragged or outright busted, so it could have been a caravan of workers or something.

Creeping a little closer to the encampment to get a better view, I made it almost halfway around the outer edge when I stopped dead in my tracks. For a few full seconds, I stood still and stared wide-eyed at a wagon that had just come into view. As soon as I snapped out of my shock, I dropped low and scuttled behind a particularly dense bush and tried to fight down a bout of anxiety.

That one wagon made my heart drop, and I found myself wishing quite fervently that I was anywhere else but where I was crouched at that moment. That wagon was larger than the others and mostly made of metal, with little bits of wood poking through here and there. The top was also enclosed, but with thick metal bars interlocked in almost a dome. A large, sturdy-looking door at the back had a hefty padlock hanging from it.

It was a cage. And it was a cage with people inside of it. I cautiously peeked around my cover and examined it more closely. There were maybe a dozen people in that cage, and there was quite the variety. Some were fair-skinned, some dark, some with red hair, or blond. And I couldn’t tell because of the distance, but one seemed to have small ears sticking out of the top of his head, while another had a slender tail laying across her lap, the tip flicking every now and then like a cat’s.

All of them wore loose, ragged clothes resembling burlap sacks with holes cut in them. Men, women, and even one small child I barely noticed curled up against a woman’s side, everyone wore the same dirty rags. They all had simple shackles on their ankles and wrists.

The odd physical traits of Ear-Man and Tail-Girl were ignored for the moment as I processed what I was seeing. The child’s presence ruled out prisoners and criminals. Most of the time, if a parent were a criminal, the children were not taken as it was just more hassle to deal with. Costs added up, and children were little more than a burden to the authorities or bounty hunters.

But in this situation, there was one particular profession that would gladly take on the extra burden of another mouth to feed because it had the potential for future profit. Only one line of work in this situation that I could think of took whatever they could in hopes of getting something out of it.

Slaves. That’s all I could think as I stared at those people in that cage. Half of them had vacant expressions, and the other half had mixtures of despair, fear, and depression. These people were faced with the end of their lives and freedom, and they knew it. They all huddled in on themselves and kept from looking at their captors very pointedly.

The captors themselves were mostly just lounging around. Even the two I had seen that appeared to be guards on watch leaned lazily on some spears but didn’t appear to be too vigilant. With how defeated those caged people looked, I guess they just decided there was no need to keep an eye on them.

As I circled around to the far end of where I began, I came close enough to the nice-looking camper that I heard noises from inside. Sneaking a few feet closer, I could hear voices: a deep and gruff voice, and a lighter, gentler voice. A man and a woman?

After a few more feet, the male voice shouted something I couldn’t make out, and then there was a muffled crash. Another moment or so passed, and I heard some creaking, the camper started to shake slightly, and I could hear the male voice grunting rhythmically.

I leaned closer, confused at first until a constant underlying sound became clear to me. Someone was weeping quietly, likely the woman I heard before. I recoiled from the camper by reflex and moved away as quickly as I could without standing up and running.

I let out a low sigh under my breath, already disgusted and disappointed in this world. Having completed my circuit of the camp, I sat for a few moments and watched the people in the cage. Aside from the people with animal parts, this scene looked nearly identical to how it probably looked in my own world’s history.

One man, obviously drunk, stumbled over and tossed a bucket of water through a small hole on the side, sloshing some of the liquid on the cage floor before he stumbled back to the fire. My heart felt like it was slowly being hollowed out as the slaves took the bucket of water, and rationed it out to each other.

The small child drinking water out of its mother’s hand was too much emotional heaviness for me, and I finally turned away to begin following the road again. This was way too over my head, I couldn’t even figure out how I felt about myself or my place in my own world. But, now, I was watching a situation unfold right in front of me that I couldn’t possibly begin to come to terms with in any world, let alone this new one.

This whole setup looked shameless and blatant enough that it was probably common, which meant law and order were in too short of supply to deal with the amount of lawlessness running around. And that meant if any of the slavers saw me, they would either kill me to keep me from telling anyone about their operation, or they would catch me and put me right in that cage with the others.

I took it as a sign that I would have to be more selfish, to take greater care in making sure that I was always in control of my own situation. Letting anyone else have control over me didn’t seem like it would bode well at all if things like this were commonplace. I couldn’t afford to be very trusting of anything or anyone. And I definitely couldn’t afford to try being a hero, because that was my head on the chopping block.

I only made it a few steps before the door to the fancy camper was kicked open, startling me into dropping behind a bush. I heard an annoyed-sounding voice and some other crude replies, but I was too far away to make out most of what was being said. All I caught was something along the lines of “All this bitch did was cry, she wasn’t fun at all” and then a few male voices rising in laughter.

I peeked through the branches of the bush to see a large and fairly well-built man roughly shoving a young blond woman into the cage. He locked the door with a key he put in his pocket, then made his way back into his camper, stopping once along the way to grab a bottle of something from one of the other men.

After the door closed behind him, I looked back to the cage and saw the blond girl curled up in a corner. Her head was in the lap of the mother, and the mother was gently patting and soothing the quietly sobbing young woman. The child, not even old enough to understand, still reached down to mimic its mother in attempting to comfort the distraught woman.

The scene made my heart ache, and I practically fled from the camp in a near panic. My heart pounded in my ears and my eyes burned as I jogged away, once again reminding myself that there was nothing I could do.

I didn’t know anything about this place, or the customs, or the law, or the beliefs. I was not a native, and everyone was a stranger. I had no reason or business sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. This wasn’t even my problem, after all, it was just something I had coincidentally seen, a “wrong place, wrong time” kind of thing.

Besides, they were many and I was one. They were used to swinging swords and shit around, used to killing other humans and selling off the survivors. I had trouble killing some pigs. Any action other than immediately leaving this camp behind was nothing more than suicidal. My heart went out to those caged people, but I had zero chance of helping them.

As I felt a wracking sob working its way up from my diaphragm from my own sense of helplessness, I stumbled through the side of a bush in my distress, limbs rustling and cracking as I nearly got my feet tangled and tripped. As I got my feet under me and staggered to a stop, I was met with a peculiar sight.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Just on the other side of the bush was a man squatting with his back to me, his pants down around his ankles. His head whipped around and he half turned his body towards me as I had come crashing through the undergrowth like a drunken idiot, and then we gaped at each other in shock for what felt like an eternity. His mouth opened and closed a few times, his face an almost comical mixture of surprise and confusion.

Any day before I had woken up in this place, I would have laughed at the sight and situation both. Today, however, face to face with one of the men from the camp that had wandered a ways away for a private place to conduct his natural business, I found myself at a complete loss.

I did not know what I was supposed to do. This human being, this man, this potentially evil threat was suddenly just here in front of me, and I had had no time to prepare myself. I was dumbfounded, caught out in my moment of emotional weakness, and I imagine the look on my face was just a mirror of his, plus tears.

This confused staredown ended when the man recovered first. He started to stand, twisting towards me, grabbing awkwardly at the sword at his belt, which was around his ankles. He opened his mouth, and not in his impression of a fish this time, he was inhaling a lung full of air and he was probably about to scream at the top of his lungs to alert the entire camp to my presence.

When I registered that the man was preparing to shout, something clicked in my mind behind the wave of panic and slid heavily into place. An image of myself in a cage, with the same dead eyes as those people, squashed every other emotion and thought as my panic peaked. I found myself riding the adrenaline forwards in great leaping steps. I covered the ten feet between us and swung my spear as hard as I could before I could think.

There was a loud cracking sound layered on top of a great wheezing cough. Splinters of wood showered in front of me as my spear shattered, and the man launched backward and down into the ground, actually bouncing once before sliding to a stop in a spray of dirt. I blinked as I gasped loudly, taking in huge gulps of air, staring at the man now lying motionless.

I looked down at my spear, broken a few inches above my grip, then back to the man. I was shaking as I took a few unsteady steps toward the still body. I poked him with my foot, but he didn’t move. I grabbed his shoulder and rolled him onto his back, but leaped back in shock and felt the urge to vomit rising in the back of my throat.

There were trickles of blood coming from his nostrils and one corner of his mouth. His eyes were half-closed but his pupils were rolled back in his head. I had hit him with the shaft of my spear across his chest like I was swinging a bat, and I could only stare in disbelief at where I had clearly hit him.

His chest was caved in. It wasn’t like I had squashed him, and it didn’t look like some extreme scene from a movie. His chest wasn’t rounded outwards now, it was rounded inwards. I had simply hit him hard enough to break bones, a lot of bones, and it showed in how his shirt clung to his concave torso. Blood was seeping through the fabric, causing it to stick to his and emphasize the damage.

As I watched, while I was still trying to process, there was a quiet rattling and clicking sound that came from his mouth, and then his body settled down into the dirt as all the tension I hadn’t noticed left all his muscles at once.

This man had just died.

He died because I hit him.

I had just killed a human being.

I spun away, fell to my knees, crawled a couple of feet, then violently emptied my stomach into the dirt. I collapsed onto my side and stared at the body as I held myself and shivered.

I felt disgusted. I was afraid. There was anger, there was sadness. So many emotions whirled around inside of me, a storm of complexity and self-loathing. I never wanted to hurt anyone, but I had just accidentally killed a man to defend myself.

Killing a pig so I wouldn’t starve to death was one thing. Killing a man so he wouldn’t put me into a cage was completely different. He was reaching for his weapon, he was attempting to alert the others, the others that had live people locked up like animals, like products. Logically, there was no need for pity or remorse, not for scum like that.

But, my heart still hurt. My stomach twisted and danced, and my mind started shutting down under the weight of all the negative thoughts swirling around inside of me. No excuse for harming another living being? It’s unforgivable to kill? There’s no justification for any of that?

That was before I was brought here against my will. That was all before I had to fight tooth and nail just to stay alive. That was before I actually had to live in a world that so far had only shown me “Survival of the Fittest” as its core concept. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be naive, yet the very first time that my own resolve was tested, I broke. How pathetic.

I curled up into the fetal position and stared at the corpse as I wept.

I had cried myself out. The sun had gone down, but I hadn’t moved. I remained motionless, sniffling, still staring at that man’s corpse. The guilt in me still hung heavy, and I had no desire to move any time soon. I still couldn’t convince myself that his death was the only outcome to be expected.

I finally closed my eyes and took slow, shuddering breaths. I was going to have to get up soon whether I liked it or not. I had spent hours here, defenseless, right next to the body of a man who would likely be noticed as missing and searched for. Staying like this was just asking to be caught and killed, and I had just killed a man to prevent that very thing, so where was that resolve? Was I just a hypocrite?

Exhaling loudly, I rolled up onto my hands and knees and pushed myself to my feet. The effort to stand was something I hadn’t felt before in my life. Everything was heavy, even my spirit, which felt like it would implode at any second and leave me an empty husk. I had no strength anywhere within me, but I had to move.

A whispering voice filtered up from the back of my mind. “You’ve killed one for your own sake. Do not mourn someone who would have done the same to you. They wouldn’t have even done it for survival, but for profit. That particular life is not worth grieving.” it said.

I looked up at the night sky. It was getting late enough that great swathes of stars were beginning to fill the heavens. Constellations I did not know, celestial phenomena I didn’t have a name for, and other great mysteries stretching out in the inky black above me re-centered me by reminding me how small and insignificant I was in the universe.

I was grasping at anything I could to make me feel even a tiny bit better. Being a speck of dirt, a part of the cycle of life, even wondering if I was something of a vigilante? All of those things didn’t feel real or right. They were just worthless platitudes to soothe myself. I wasn’t going to come to terms with this just by circling around inside my own head.

I was a killer. It didn’t matter if it was an accident, or if I had any justification, death is death. Pragmatism and bitterness calmed me somewhat, giving me back some control of my body, and I walked slowly over to the corpse.

My foot brushed against something hard sticking up out of the dirt as I reached the body, a piece of my spear. I was reminded that my weapon had broken, which made me feel uncomfortable.

I knelt and numbly tugged the man’s sword from his belt, still around his ankles, and hefted it. It was a shortsword, about a foot and a half long with an edge on both sides of the blade, and the last four or so inches had a slight curve. It looked a lot like a normal sword from movies in the handle and guard, but I don’t recall ever seeing a blade like that. The blade had a few flecks of rust and some chips, but it didn’t seem like it was too bad.

The man’s belt had a small sheath attached to it, a simple piece of leather a few inches long that kept the blade at his hip, so I took that as well. I replaced the leather straps around my waist with the belt and slid the sword into its sheath. It felt more comfortable, being a real belt, but the weight hanging off of it reminded me of where it came from.

He didn’t look like he had anything else on him, just his shirt, his pants, and some shoes that didn’t look like they were much better than mine besides the hard sole. They were too small for my feet, so I didn’t bother with them.

I was thinking about whether I should bury him, when I heard some shouting in the distance, back towards the camp. At first, I dropped low and darted behind a bush. Then I realized the sound of the shouting had some laughter to it. Curious, I slipped closer to the camp for a look.

There was a commotion around the cage, a few of the slavers stood around the door and were pointing and laughing at the women inside. It looked like they were comparing and playfully arguing amongst themselves. My stomach knotted as I tried not to think about the context.

A moment later, the boss came out of his cabin and joined the men around the cage. He unlocked the door and motioned them to go ahead. One of them jumped into the cage and grabbed a woman, pulling her outside by her shirt and her hair. She wasn’t screaming, she merely held a defiant glare on her face as she struggled against the man’s strength.

It was the mother of the small child. I could feel my heart sinking to my gut. The stranger I had seen show kindness to another, slapped down into the dirt after she had bit the man’s hand. I knew what was going to happen, and it made me sick.

The blond girl from earlier was struggling at the door to the cage now, screaming something out at the other woman. I didn’t understand the language, but some of the slaver men jeered back at her in the same tongue.

The girl was shoved aside by a plain-looking man of average build who then threw himself out of the cage and on top of the boss. The other men grabbed at him as he struggled with the boss, but he was overwhelmed quickly and pulled to the ground. They started beating him. The mother cried out in a pained voice, and the man tried to struggle and crawl toward her.

The boss called out to them, and they stopped, he shouldered his way through them to reach the plain-looking man and was promptly kicked in the nuts. The man on the ground laughed and spat blood at the boss, which seemed to really piss him off because he began kicking the plain guy while the others held him down. Brutal kicks aimed at his stomach, his crotch, and his ribs rained down on him. He curled into a ball and covered his head, but the boss didn’t stop.

I would think, normally, slavers wouldn’t want to kill or severely injure their slaves, because they wouldn’t want to bring market value down, right? But this boss man looked angry, like he was venting on the poor guy instead of just punishing him to set an example. He might actually kill this person.

The man holding the mother lost patience and started dragging her again, laughing over his shoulder back at the group as he pulled her along into a tent. She was screaming out the same thing over and over, probably the man’s name. I bit my lip, my eyes darting from the tent to the boss still laying into that guy and back again. I felt an anxiousness, a restlessness building to a fevered pitch as I watched.

I was going to watch an innocent man get beaten to death by someone just because he was angry, while others held him down and laughed about it. I was going to let a mother get violated while her child’s locked in a cage? Was I going to make this child watch his father die trying to save his mother?

The man I had killed belonged to this group of.. Barbarians? These vile savages who chose a life of murder and human trafficking, who laughed about it? Not one shred of hesitation or remorse could be seen. By not attempting to stop this, would I be complicit with this?

A stillness settled over me as the thought of being the same as these animals broke something within me. My heart calmed, my breathing steadied, and a feeling of some weight dropping away resounded in the background of my soul.

I drew the sword at my waist, walked out from around the bush I was hiding behind, and held my hand out towards the group. I concentrated on the air between me and them as I muttered under my breath.

“Guess it’s on to me to deal with this garbage.”