Reaching a branch off from the main passage I stop and wait for anyone to emerge, but when no one appears, I contemplate my options.
Take the safe route and detour into it and make sure no one comes up behind me or the somewhat reckless route and keep moving headlong on the main path into the cave and hope that I’m not prematurely discovered?
My mind urges me to take the safe route, but I am feeling impulsive and head down the main path where I can hear the voices of the slavers. Rounding a corner light pours in down the way and I find a natural doorway leading into what I assume is the main cave. When I approach it, I crouch and move slower so as not to attract attention.
Looking down from the doorway there are stairs carved in a spiral around the side of the cave. Cages are built into the rock walls with barred doors reminiscent of a dungeon just past the rock stairway. I count three slavers there, but hear others across the cave out of my vision.
Switching to the other wall of the opening, I can see down into the rest of the cave. There are crude wooden tables set up with coins of gold and silver stacked and spread out everywhere. A few flour sacks sit on the floor near the tables and I can imagine that they too are filled with coins. Four more slavers hover around a separate table and, while I can’t see what it is they’re looking at, they seem to be discussing plans.
A whip cracks and a woman cries out. The slaver who assaulted her grunts and laughs. While I move back to the left side of the opening to get a better look, I settle in time to see him crack it once again at a pair of hands clasped around the bars. Blood immediately oozes out and a man groans. My rage builds.
I can’t wait here much longer. Do I rush in or do I force them to come up the stairs and fight me in the tunnel?
Before I get my answer one of the slavers begins to come up the rock stairway and my only choice is to take him down as he stumbles upon me. Grabbing the torch from the wall right behind me, I hide it behind my back, holding it at an angle away so I don’t catch my clothing on fire.
The slaver is moving slowly. I take two steps back from the opening so that he doesn’t immediately notice me. He reaches the top of the stairs. My heart beats faster. I can see it in his eyes. He knows something is wrong and still he edges toward the darkened opening.
My sword gleams and his eyes widen, but before he can get a word out I arch my arm back and pitch the torch at his face. He screams in pain as it burns him and while he stumbles, rubbing his eyes, I lunge at him and put my sword upward through his torso. It’s too late for subtlety, so I lean back, put my foot on his hip and kick him off my sword, causing him to fly backward off the top of the stairs, landing with a thud and a gurgle.
The other slavers seem stunned for a moment as I stand there baring my teeth and staring down at them in a taunting manner. They have no choice but to come up the stairs, or so I think, until two of them pull swords and quickly disappear into a sub-passage I was unable to see until now. Three of them head up the stairs and one hangs back by the gold.
The sub-passage must attach to the one I chose not to go down. They’ll be upon me in a moment.
My only option is to jump into the three heading up before the other two get to me and I do just that. Taking a step back, I rush at them and jump. The closest one readies his dagger, expecting me to come at the upper half of his body, so instead I shift my weight downward and plant both feet into his right shin. It snaps and before he can bring his dagger down, I put both feet on his chest and shove. With a broken leg and no balance he has no choice but to go where I’ve directed him, falling into the others and they tumble down.
In hindsight, I realize I shouldn’t have drop-kicked him. Returning to my feet I rub my tailbone due to the pain. A noise from behind alerts me to the two that have circled around and I turn to address them, finding myself now at the disadvantage being lower than they. Looking down behind me, two slavers are getting back up while the other one lies on the rock floor wailing. The body I had thrown over the edge lies there motionless and an idea comes to me.
I jump. It’s stupid, but I do it anyway. Aiming for the dead slaver I point my feet in his direction and when they impact his soft flesh I drop my sword, tuck and roll forward. When I’m finished rolling, I jump up, stumble a few steps and find myself face to face with the one that was sitting back. His fist connects with my jaw and my body reacts by swinging the same direction as his fist. While it hurts, I come back and thrust a right hook toward his ribcage, but he deflects it and pounds me in the temple. Blurry vision plagues me briefly and I stumble.
He doesn’t let up and aims an uppercut at my jaw, but just moving slightly to the left causes him to miss. I take the opportunity to bring my knee home to his gut. When he steps backward he coughs and bends over. Not unaware that I’m being closed in on, I grab his dagger, move around his back and put it to his throat. They stop.
My mind races and I try to decide what to do next. Justice must be exacted but something inside hesitates to draw the knife across his jugular.
They begin creeping toward me, surrounding me and if I want to get out of this alive, I have to act before they form a circle. Clenching the muscles in my arm, the knife gets tighter against his neck and I see a trickle of blood run down the blade. He attempts to throw me over his shoulder but I grip him and dig my heel into the back of his knee. As he lunges up and bucks against me, my hand slips. The knife in my hand has drunk his blood and he collapses to his knees.
“Kill…him…” he gargles while grasping his neck.
They rush at me, four on one and I feel adrenaline course through me. With no hesitation, I rush into them and begin swinging the dagger both to deflect incoming attacks and to try and hit them. Dodge. Parry. Strike. Spinning around, I attempt to keep them all at least in my peripheral vision and while looking one direction, I attack in another.
They parry and I try again only to divert my path halfway through to dodge a sword blow. Nearly making myself dizzy trying to keep an eye on them while being circled like weak prey, I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. When they all swing at once and close in I dive through one of their legs, somersaulting behind them and quickly standing back up. Turning around, I see my sword is only a foot away to my right and I try to quickly grab it but one of them rushes at me to plant his boot in my upper chest. I exhale violently and roll to the left to avoid a sword coming down on me.
Struggling to regain my composure, they circle again. Closing my eyes I focus on breathing and my instincts tingle, nagging at me as I all but give up, waiting for the killing blow. I take a deep breath in and as the instinct begins to scream at me, I open my eyes to see a sword coming down on me.
“No!” I yell and extend my hand as if to deflect the sharp instrument.
Instead, my latent power kicks in. It feels like every nerve in my body reverberates and a visible shockwave blasts from my palm and impacts this assailant. The others unsure what to do, stand there in awe as it pushes him into the bars of a cage, impacting with crushing force.
While still on the ground, I point my hand and use the still built up energy to do it again. Flying across the room, a slaver crashes into a table and causes it to flip, sending their treasure scattering everywhere. Glaring at the two still upright, I stand up.
“What are you?!” one screams out in terror.
They begin to scatter.
Too late, justice will be done.
The dagger still in my hand is launched and impacts one fleeing toward the sub-passage, hitting him in the leg. To my disappointment my dagger throwing isn’t that great and it hits him flat bladed. I seek to quickly rectify his continued existence by grabbing my sword and bolting after him to the sub-passage.
My eyes adjust to the darkness as I pursue him. In an attempt to slow me or stop me, he grabs a torch and tosses it at me while continuing to run away. Deflecting it to the side, I catch up with him and he tries to turn around to face me. As our swords clash in the confined space, I hold him in a deadlock, place my hand on hi
s chest and unleash. The shockwave tosses him like a ragdoll against the winding cave wall and he bounces to the ground.
The cave shakes and I run uphill to the main passage to attempt to head off the other one who is no doubt trying to escape. When I reach it I look both ways, and he is already well above me, about halfway up the cave. He tries to outrun me but to no avail as I overrun him and give him zero chance to fight back.
Thrusting my sword in between his legs while we both run, I put it against his inner thigh and draw back. Collapsing onto his hands and knees he cries out in pain and in two quick motions, my sword is up and then it’s down, buried between his shoulder blades.
A sense of vindication fills me and I feel powerful. Gloating, I hover over him as he dies and when I pull my sword from his back, I kick him over so that he can see my face. He heaves and coughs, with fear in his eyes and I feel something that I’m not sure I should right now: elation from their deaths.
Shaking my head, I break free of the evil, satisfying, feeling that taking their lives has given me and, turning back around, I head into the heart of the cave once more.
As I reach the opening to the sub-passage I glance in it and listen for any movement, any noises. Nothing.
Continuing down, I reach the doorway into the main cave and the slaver who hit the table tries to bolt past me. Throwing my arm out, I clothesline him. He falls back and hits the ground with a thud.
“Please, do not kill me!” he pleads.
“I bet that’s a familiar phrase for you. How many people has your band of merry men killed?” Glaring at him, I put my foot on his chest and press.
“It was never me!”
“Did you stop them?” I point my sword at his throat. “Did you ever even try?”
“I…” he breathes heavily.
“Get up.” I wave my sword upward.
While he is getting up, I motion with my hand for him to turn around and head back down the stairs. With him facing away from me I point my sword at his back and put the tip of it to his spine. He whimpers, though I take no action to kill him. The captives cry out for help and I nod at them. Moving down to the bottom of the stone staircase I survey the room more fully this time but no keys are in sight.
“Who had the key to open the doors?” I demand of him.
“Him,” the slaver points to the man whose throat I unintentionally slit.
“Get them and return to unlock the doors. If you run, you will die.”
He does as I command and the doors of the cages are opened one by one. Following him down, I stop at the man whose leg I broke and his face is wet with tears, snot and drool from the pain; the most he can muster is a whimper.
A rush of people swarm outward. Several men begin to beat both the injured and uninjured men.
“Wait!” I holler over the yelling.
They all stop and turn to me and I now have an audience.
How shall I address them?
“I want these two alive to spread the word to any of their brethren who will listen that slavery will be punished with severe prejudice.”
“Who are you?” a young man asks.
“My name is Rain, but let’s save the questions for later. I need everyone’s help to haul them and the coin up out of the cave.”
The people rush to grab as much gold as they can, while I search the area around the collapsed table. A map lies next to it, and on it are routes and areas marked with ink that I presume they’ve hit for people as captives. Their reach is far and stretches over several cities and countrysides, but I note no originating kingdom. Flipping it over I find a detailed list of gold taken in over the course of a few years, but I find both the markings and the gold nothing more than circumstantial evidence. Leaving my sword behind, I fold the map up and stick it under my belt.
I wonder if I should still go see the mystery woman. It’s still unclear whether she set me up or if this was what she actually wanted. I suppose if she requires anything else, she can do it herself.
As the cave clears out of both captives and coins, I’m left with the surviving two slavers. The one who had let loose the slaves lies on the ground with a swollen face. He groans when I move over to him, bend down and yank on his arm to pull him up.
“Move.” I shove him toward the staircase while pointing to the man with the broken leg. “Pick up your friend.”
Rising back up out of the cave, I see the freed people have already torn the cage off of the cart and at the head of it all is Evalyn mounted on one of the horses that will pull it. People gather on it, the gold in the middle, and they seem ready to depart. Pushing the slavers toward the cart, I receive glaring looks from the folk who harbor ill feelings toward them, but I ignore them and allow them both up onto the cart.
Turning back around, I face the opening of the cave. Like stretching and working muscles makes one stronger and things become easier, I find that I am gaining the ability to control my power at will. Both hands come up in front of me and I feel those hairs on my neck stand up.
Though it takes a significant amount of concentration, I feel that energy building within me, starting from the bottom of my feet and the top of my head and converging through my torso and out my arms. Releasing the energy into the belly of the beast, the shockwave spreads outward, hitting the rock face, causing it to shake. It continues downward causing a howl through the tunnel as it pushes the air rapidly into the main cavern.
The cave rumbles and I hear it begin to collapse. Heavy thuds come from deep down and get louder and closer, coming to a conclusion as the mouth rumbles and collapses in on itself, kicking up a massive wave of dust, causing me to cough. Satisfied that the slaver’s den is beyond repair, I turn around to the cart and pass the dead man to address the two surviving slavers.
“If you move, if you talk to these people, if you try to run, I will kill you and I won’t make it as easy as your friends. You will suffer.” I point my finger at them.
They avoid eye contact with me, ashamed, and I head for the second horse. Reaching it, I’m rewarded with a quip from Evalyn.
“That poor cave. What did it do to you?”
Smirking, I mount the horse and put my heel in its side to get it to move. Evalyn’s horse matches mine and we follow the path out of the hills. The ride is bumpy enough for the passengers on the cart so I keep it at a steady pace to keep from jostling them too much.
Evalyn breaks the silence. “So…about back there…” She looks forward, her tone casual.
“I killed several, evil men,” I tell her nonchalantly. “But Ami can’t know.”
“Understood. What you did was terrifying, but in a way, necessary.”
“How badly will this affect time?” I ponder out loud.
“Considering things haven’t looped back on themselves in a paradox, I’d say either not very much or not at all,” she says with a certainty.
What took us a day and then some to get here seems to be flying by quickly and with ease, thanks to the horses doing all the legwork. A few hours pass and nothing eventful happens, that is until a bush alongside the road yells at us.
Slowing the horse and looking to my right I see a familiar face. Lester has apparently not made it very far from where I originally let him go and I stop the horses. Motioning for him to get on the cart, I see his eyes go wide when he notices the two wounded slavers I am hauling. With none of the freed persons making any acknowledgement of knowing him, I take it that they do not know he was associated with the slave ring. Once he has settled, sitting away from the other two slavers, we resume our journey back to the city in which we left.
The sun gleams through the roof of the forest and the temperature is quite pleasant. I close my eyes for a few moments and think of Ami and that soon enough I will reunite her with her mother and we can relax for a few days before the time bubble whisks us away to yet another unknown time. While focusing on the sunbeams warming me up, I think of having my own bed to lie in, warm food cooked by Ami and maybe even a warmer
embrace by her. Wrapping the reins around both of my wrists so as not to fall from the horse, my head droops and I doze off, exhausted from using up so much energy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Waking to Evalyn prodding me, I open my eyes and rub through the blurriness to see that we are coming up on the farmland outside of the city Tamiell resides in. As we pass through, many people tending the farms stop what they’re doing to look at us with puzzlement shown in their faces. The town is abuzz as usual and the sight of a cart rolling in with more than a dozen people on it piques the interest of a few people. Coming to a halt, I dismount the horse and the people begin to disembark with several turning around and grabbing bags of gold.
“Hold a moment,” I state as a request.
They stop and give me their attention.
“We’re heading to Asta after this stop so if anyone wants to stay on for that journey, you’re welcome. Those that are staying here are welcome to take some of the gold to get your lives restarted, but I ask that some is left for those going to Asta.”
The people bustle about the cart, separating the gold out into portions and they seem to come to a fair settlement of what to give each person and how much to leave. Most of them leave after taking their share. A little girl who couldn’t be any more than ten years old, stands next to the cart and looks at me expectantly. It seems like she is looking for guidance as to what she should do, as no one claims her as theirs. Moving over to her I kneel down.
“Are you from Asta?” I ask.
“I was on my way to there with my daddy, but then we were taken. I miss him.”
“Wait, I know you. Lana, right?” I recognize her. It’s the girl whose father was killed right after I was captured. His death enraged me and caused me to embark on this vengeance-filled journey.
“Yes. How do you know me?”
“Dear, I’m sorry. I was there and I saw them hurt him. I had to pay them back for what they did,” I say softly and put my hand on her shoulder.
“Thank you.” She begins to cry.
I tear up and hug her, holding tightly as she weeps into my shoulder. After a few minutes, she calms down a bit, the tears reducing to a trickle and she’s left with hiccups. Letting go, I help her back up on the cart where I can see one other woman sitting, the only other remaining former slave. Thoughts plague my mind of what will become of her and what could possibly be done since her father is no longer able to take care of her.
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