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Chapter 22
🕑 Added 2018-03-09 17:43:30 +0000 UTC Sofie Ramaut sat in a library at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, located in Brussels, Belgium, studying late into the night for an upcoming paper due a week from now. Being a linguistics major in the humanities department meant an endless parade of papers coming due, to the point that the library was almost her second home. Sofie didn't mind; she'd always loved books, and being around such a large collection excited her. Sure, she could probably find the knowledge she desired on the internet, but there was something about pulling a large book from a shelf and flipping through the pages that felt more right, more real.Her mind was deep into a chapter on the commonalities of languages throughout the world when she felt a buzz in her pocket. She fished out her phone and her face lit up. It was her boyfriend. They'd been together since high school, and he'd been good enough to get into the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Flanders. She was jealous, but her grades had just been a little too low to make it in to such a prestigious school. It was okay though. She'd been loving her freshman year in Brussels. There was so much fun to be had there, when she wasn't busy writing papers and studying for exams, which admittedly wasn't often.
She hadn't heard from him in a few days, so she eagerly unlocked her phone and began to read. Slowly that eagerness faded, replaced by disbelief. He couldn't be... She read it again and her soul plummeted into an abyss of sorrow. He was breaking up with her. The coward was breaking up with her through text. Her eyes blinded by a sudden tidal wave of furious tears, she hurled her phone as far away as she could. The device careened off a bookshelf off in the distance somewhere as Sofie put her head in her hands and wept. The bastard! She'd loved him, and he couldn't even find the decency to break up with her in person. This was the worst day of her life! She just wanted to die!
It was as if the world had been listening. Suddenly a strange immense pressure pushed down on her and she felt herself being sucked away somewhere in an almost metaphorical sense. She screamed in pain as the world vanished.
Impossibilities made manifest surrounded her as she plummeted through some strange hellscape that defied understanding. She could feel her very being warping, contorting in unfathomable ways. She fought it with everything she still had, closing her eyes and holding on to what she knew to be herself. The pain threatened to overwhelm her, and she could feel something building up inside her, like a billion furnaces burning in every corner of her body. She pushed back with every fiber of her will, bottling up the raging inferno inside of her as best she could, but it wouldn't stop building. Every centimeter of her blazed with incalculable energy. She couldn't hold it back anymore. Her eyes opened once more to gaze upon the unthinkable as her mind, body, and soul screamed its final scream. Her mind overwhelmed, she could barely process the horrors that she witnessed, barely grasp the glimpse of the being that she might possibly have seen off in the distance for just an infinitesimal fragment of a microsecond — a formless nightmare of golden, glowing eyes and an uncountable number of sharp, deadly teeth. And then, just as she knew her end had come, it was all gone. Her head slammed into a slab of stone that had not been there just before, and Sofie was out like a light.
* * *
Sofie sat in the doorway to the strange bunker where she'd arrived, trying to figure out what to do. It had been two days now since she'd awoken in an underground facility, surrounded by strange lumps of metal that she didn't understand. It hadn't taken her long to realize that she was not on Earth any longer; the multiple moons had made that very clear. But that knowledge hadn't helped her actually figure out what to do. She'd spent some part of a day poking around down in the bunker behind her, finding nothing other than a few rooms, all filled with weird metal shapes and lit by a strange crystalline version of track lighting mounted on every wall. Finding nothing else, she'd settled down and waited. Somebody had brought her to this place, surely. They would have to come back, right? But so far, the bunker remained lifeless.
The gurgling of her stomach reminded Sofie that she hadn't eaten. Two days was a lot of time between meals for somebody slight and small like her. If nobody was going to show up then she'd have to head out on her own eventually, and that was something she very much did not want to do. Sofie was a creature of cities and had been all her life — she preferred her air conditioned and her climate controlled, thank you very much.
From her vantage point overlooking the mountainside, Sofie could count dozens of strange-looking plants in a variety of colors that were just wrong. Trees weren't supposed to be purple, but there one was, just a few hundred meters down slope. If the plants were that strange, what about the animals? What about... the bugs?! Her body gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of going even a kilometer near an alien bug. They were probably all bloodsucking and poisonous too. Nope. No, she would not leave this place unless she had to.
A day later, it was abundantly clear that she had to. The lack of nutrition had brought about a persistent light-headedness that was getting worse. Soon she wouldn't have the energy to do anything. Reluctantly, she headed off from the strange door in the middle of a mountain where she'd waited for the past days, stopping once to look back at it for a second. Tucked under an overhang and colored like rock, the door was nearly impossible to spot from just twenty meters away. She wondered for a second just who had made such a strange place, but the rumbling in her stomach chased those thoughts away.
Making her way through the thickets of trees, bushes, and ivy that covered the mountainside, Sofie tried her best to not think about all the rashes she was probably going to get for this. Really, though, she was worried more about disease. Brussels had still been fairly warm in late September, and she'd been dressed appropriately. Never one to put fashion ahead of comfort, she'd been wearing her "study clothes", a pair of comfortable shorts and a well-fitting tee shirt with a picture of a unicorn on it. While fine for the warm nights of early autumn, her getup did little for her in the cold, rainy mountains she now found herself in.
Several regret-filled hours later, her body weak, she heard something other than the sounds of insects for the first time. Could it be? She listened closely. Voices! Those were voices!
"I don't get it," said the first voice, a female. "There's nothing worth hunting up here. Where'd all the fenbaras go? They were all over this place just ten days ago."
"I dunno," replied a gruff, male voice, "but we'd better find something or Cadmar's gonna skin us. They're running low on meat and even the slaves are gonna need a little meat for the march tomorrow."
Perhaps if she had been in a better state, Sofie would have processed those words, but she wasn't thinking. She was only reacting. Voices meant people. People meant food. She needed food. That was all there was too it.
Emerging from the brush, panting, Sofie found herself staring at two of the strangest-dressed people she'd ever seen. It reminded her of historical re-enactments she'd see on television sometimes. The woman was perhaps one and a half meters tall, dressed in leathers with short hair and a large axe strapped to her back. The man was fairly large, coming in just a few centimeters under two meters tall. He also wore leathers all over, and carried a bow, which he had pointed at Sofie, ready to fire. Only then did Sofie begin to realize that none of this was necessarily a good idea.
"Uh, hello-" she began, hoping to explain what was going on, but the woman reacted faster than any person she'd ever seen, leaping forward faster than any human had a right to and dragging Sofie to the ground.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" she asked, a predatory grin flashing across her face. "Some sort of noble's daughter who lost her way?"
"Let go of me, you creep!" Sofie cried. She struggled as best she could, but days of fasting had left her weak and the woman was bizarrely strong for her size.
"Isn't this some luck?" laughed the man as he pulled out some rope. "Something tells me Cadmar will forgive us today."
The woman held Sofie still as the man tied her up. Sofie couldn't help but notice the disturbing level of skill with which he tied her hands and feet, like he'd done it to hundreds of other people before. Once her hands, arms, and feet were bound, the woman lifted Sofie over her shoulder like she was nothing more than a sack of flour.
"Put me down!" Sofie cried. "What the hell is wrong with you people?! Put me down this instant!"
The woman sighed. "Hey," she said to the man, "she's going to be annoying."
"Alright, alright..." the man replied, pulling out more rope.
* * *
"That doesn't look like dinner," said a commanding voice.
"Sorry Cadmar, we couldn't find a single animal anywhere on the mountain," replied the woman. "Got something better, though we did have to gag her."
"Let me see."
Sofie grunted as she was unceremoniously dumped onto her back. A bearded man squatted down near her face, reaching out with a finger to gently caress her skin. She recoiled at his touch, his finger sending shivers of revulsion down her spine.
"What manner of clothing is this?" he wondered, inspecting the unicorn jumping over the rainbow on her shirt. "The quality of the art, and the material! So high!"
"From her speak, probably some foreign noble's garb."
"And she was alone?"
"Nobody but us and her."
"Excellent. I've never seen such flawless skin. There's practically no blemishes. Her hands are fine as well, no calluses." He grinned. "I bet we could get more for her than the rest of the shipment combined. Well done, both of you."
Her two captor grinned. The bearded man untied the rope that crossed over her mouth that the others had put there as a gag.
"Where are you from, girl?"
Sofie didn't respond, her lips sealed by a mixture of fear and resentment towards the three kidnappers. The man responded to her silence by pulling out the largest knife she'd ever seen and brandished it at her.
"I asked you a question."
"I, uh, come from Brussels, Belgium," she said immediately. "It's not a place you would know, it's in a different world and I was there and then suddenly I got sucked here and I don't know where I am and please don't point that thing at me I-"
"Shut up."
Sofie's lips resealed themselves immediately.
"You didn't tell me she was mad. Mad slaves don't fetch much."
"Gee, we didn't know, boss," said the first man. "Maybe if we just keep her quiet?"
Mr. Beard sighed. "It's better than nothing." He turned back to Sofie. "Listen up. You are not to speak again until you are sold. Am I clear? I know plenty of ways to bring you pain that won't leave a mark."
Sofie's faced paled, her eyes never leaving the knife.
"Am. I. Clear?" he growled.
Sofie shook her head, terrified that he might follow through on his threats. Her stomach, on the other hand, grumbled loud enough for them all to hear.
"Get her some gruel and put her in the wagon," the bearded man said. "Then inform the others. She is not to be touched. We need her unspoiled if we want to get the best price."
Maybe she would have been better off staying in the bunker after all.
* * *
Sofie sat chained inside "the wagon", which was apparently what they called some boards stuck between four wooden wheels, as it bumped its way down the road towards who-knew-where, thinking. There had been so many new things to ponder over the last week and a half that her mind almost couldn't handle it. Somehow, through means that she could not fathom, she had ended up in a different world. The existence of alternate realities was mind-blowing enough, but then she'd witnessed magic.
One of the slavers, which was what Cadmar and his group were she'd realized rather quickly, had made a flame out of thin air. Just... poof! Fire! Sofie's mind buzzed with the possibilities. Could the people here fly? Could they send her home? If there was magic, did that mean there were unicorns here too? What about dragons?
Unfortunately the excitement of the possibilities this world possibly had in store for her were effectively trampled by the harsh realities of everything else. The technology she could see was pathetic. Swords, bows, and wagons with wooden wheels and no suspensions, pulled by large animals called "garophs" that looked like furry rhinoceroses without the horns. No firearms, no steam engines, nothing that indicated any sort of technology past the Dark Ages, especially, as her time around the men had made abundantly clear, no deodorant. That also meant no cell phones, no internet, no texting or Facebook or Twitter... what was she supposed to do all day? Just watch trees pass by for hours on end?
She was desperate for something, anything, to take her mind off of her predicament, and even more so that of those that followed behind the wagon. Slavery. Its very existence in this world rendered everything else moot. A long train of people, twenty six to be precise, trudged along behind the wagon, pushing themselves to keep up with the vehicle. Each person's shackles were chained to those of the person behind them, so if one of them fell, the entire train stopped. That was when the beatings would start.
The slavers, of which there seemed to be ten total, held no regard for the health or safety of the slaves. They fed them little and forced them to march many kilometers every day on their way to their final destination. None of the slaves seemed to be in good health. Most of the slaves didn't even seem to be fully there anymore, their eyes empty as if the person inside had died long ago and only the body still clung to life. The display of abject human misery had been enough to reduce her to tears many times over the last few days.
Her own preferential treatment only made things worse, leaving her awash in guilt. She wasn't made to march and was given larger portions during mealtimes. She wanted to share her meals with the others, to help them just a little bit, but her chains were not long enough for her to reach outside the wagon. All she could do was eat and feel the gazes of the few slaves that were still mentally whole. She hated those gazes. The glares of envy were bad enough, but the pitying ones were even worse. She found the idea that these people on the edge of life, bound for some horrible fate in a work camp or whatever, would feel bad for her and her future to be absolutely horrifying. She didn't know exactly what was in store for her, but it wasn't hard to come up with a few educated guesses.
Thoughts of escaping somehow, of freeing herself of her chains and running off where they would not catch her, crossed her mind with regularity, but they were nothing more than fantasies. Even if she were somehow to slip out of the shackles that held her, that in itself a practical impossibility with how tight they squeezed her wrists and ankles, she'd never actually escape without being caught. Probably because of her supposed "market value", at least one slaver seemed to be watching her at all times. She hated their gazes most of all, especially Cadmar. The bearded slaver terrified her. It had been obvious to her when he'd claimed to be able to hurt her without leaving a mark that he hadn't been lying.
A small part of her entertained the notion of playing up the "mad noble" angle when they finally arrived at wherever they were headed, driving her own value down to spite the bastards that had done this to her, but the bearded man's threat kept that part small and insignificant. She didn't want to be hurt, especially not by somebody who could organize a death-march like this one and not even think twice.
A cold wind began to blow and Sofie curled up against the wagon's side. How many more days would this continue? To think that just a little while ago, she'd thought that her boyfriend dumping her was the worst thing to ever happen to her.
* * *
The city of Zrukhora was both exactly like and nothing like what she'd expected. Having visited many historic European cities, she'd expected a mess of winding streets filled with buildings that seemed to be almost built on top of each other and that was exactly what she'd found. The place was architectural chaos made reality. It was as if not a single person had bothered to plan for the future or even consider their surroundings, instead simply staking claim to a spot and putting whatever they felt like there. At one point she saw, in order, a butcher shop, a stable, a tailor, and a building with a large sign hanging out in front of a strange-looking large bear-like creature that appeared to be... dancing? Some sort of tavern probably, judging by the hoots and hollers she could hear going on inside even at this morning hour.
What she hadn't expected was the number of people. The streets were choked with them, though Sofie noticed that most of the people did their best to avoid going near her wagon and the slave procession that followed it. Several streets past the weird tavern with the dancing whatever, the wagon ground to a halt. Cadmar entered the wagon, unlocked her restraints, and pulled her from the vehicle. Sofie writhed in his grip but she could do nothing against his strength.
Grabbing her head, the bearded man forced her to look at him. "I'll say this once again. No speaking until they've paid me. Understood?"
Sofie withered under his gaze. She gave a tepid nod and he released his grip on her head and herded her into the building to their front. Within lied a small entrance room, perhaps four meters by four meters at most. The room was empty save a desk and two men, one sitting behind the desk and another guarding the only other door in the room, which led into the building. The man behind the desk was thin and reedy, with a thin mustache and clever eyes. The man guarding the door, on the other hand, was a large brute of a man, covered in scars. He radiated a "don't fuck with me" quality that Sofie figured would be ideal to play the role of muscle in a place like this.
"Ah, Mister Cadmar, it's good of you to join us," said the reedy man as they entered. "Are you here today on business or pleasure?"
"Business," the bearded man replied. "I have somebody who should interest your mistress."
"Of course, sir. One moment." The thin man rose from his desk and entered the door, leaving just Sofie, the slaver, and the guard. An awkward silence settled over the room as they waited. Sofie squirmed under the guard's gaze. She didn't like the hunger she saw in his eyes, like that of a starving man staring at cakes on the other side of a bakery window.
After what felt like hours, the thin man finally returned, motioning them to follow. Cadmar pulled Sofie along and they entered the main part of the building. Immediately, Sofie's suppositions were confirmed — this was a brothel. Down at the other end, a young man, perhaps just a year or two younger than she, was being led into a side room, his wrists, ankles, and neck all encased in shackles. The restraints didn't look anything like the thick, brutal ones that she and the other slaves had worn on their way to the city. Instead they were thin, designed towards elegance and enticement, sending messages of submission and subservience. Sofie shivered.
As they were led down a long door-lined hallway, her ears picked up the moans and cries of carnal acts emanating from behind nearly every door. At the end of the hallway was a set of wooden stairs leading upward and another door. They passed through that door to find another hallway, perpendicular to the first, and went left. At the end of that hallway was another door, this one seemingly of better quality than the others.
"Madam is waiting inside," the thin man said as he opened the door and ushered them through. The room on the other side was much more luxurious than the rest of what they'd seen. Exquisite woven rugs lined the floor and several cushy, upholstered chairs were arranged around a small, round wooden table. In one of those chairs sat a rather plump lady in her mid-fifties or so. The woman wore an excessive amount of makeup and jewelry, covering herself with rings, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces.
"Cadmar," the woman said as they entered. "How good it is to see you again. It's been so long, I'd thought you'd moved your operations elsewhere."
"It's been harder to find good stock for you, Madam Gartruda. But this time I think we have something special."
"I see that. Bring her closer." The woman did not stand up as the slaver maneuvered the unwilling girl past the table and over to her side. She squinted at Sofie, inspecting every centimeter of her body like she was a piece of meat. "The top of this table has more curves than her."
Sofie hated her already.
"Notice how pure her skin is. So smooth and free of blemishes," said Cadmar as they began to bargain.
"Yes, this skin is extraordinary. I've never seen anything like it. A shame about the face, though."
The hell? Who did this woman think she was? Sofie opened her mouth to object to the woman's comments but before she could say anything her jaw shut on its own accord thanks to a scathing glare from the slaver. Why did she have to be such a coward?
The two continued to argue for what were without a doubt the most humiliating few minutes of Sofie's life. Like any woman on Earth, she'd faced the remnants of the world's patriarchal systems before, but she'd never before been literally objectified, literally nothing more than a good to be bought and sold. She wanted to just shrivel up and die from the dehumanizing experience.
Eventually the two agreed on a price and the slaver left, his presence replaced by a man and a woman Sofie had not seen before. "Welcome to your new life, honey," Madam Gartruda said. "As long as you behave you'll be just fine here. Disobedience, however, will be punished harshly. I do not tolerate insubordination from my children. Now go with Jonath and Emera here. They will get you prepared for your first clients tomorrow."
Unable to dam up her overflowing emotions any longer, Sofie collapsed on the ground and wept. From happy student to inter-dimensional traveler to sex slave in just a few weeks. Why her? Was this some sort of punishment?
Suddenly several hands grabbed her roughly and yanked her to her feet. She cried out as Gartruda's palm slapped across her face. "What did I just say? Save those tears for the bedroom. Some like the helpless waif routine."
That was too much. Sofie's mind shut down for the next few hours. She was taken upstairs and bathed for the first time since her arrival in this world, two weeks of muck finally washing away, but her mind didn't register the joy of cleanliness. She was dressed in new, clean clothes, scanty things that left little to the imagination but were still the first clean things for she'd worn in two weeks, yet she took no note of it. When she finally became aware of herself again, elegant shackles, thin but strong, had replaced the blocky ones she'd had on since her capture.
"All done," the Emera said as the last band snapped into place. "Now all that's left is the branding."
"I'll get the iron," replied Jonath, heading out the door.
That got Sofie's attention. "No!" she cried, struggling futilely against her restraints. She had this feeling that once she was marked, she would have crossed a line that could not be undone and she would lose herself.
"Finally back with us?" laughed Emera.
A low, rumbling roar echoed far off in the distance.
Emera stopped, puzzled. "Did you hear something?" She waited for a second. "I guess it's noth-"
A second rumbling roar came, same as the first.
"What in the world is that noise?" Emera strode to the wooden shutters of the window and pulled them open, leaning out in an attempt to see what what going on, but her sight was blocked by the nearby buildings. "Must be something going on up north. Nothing important." She shut the shutters again.
Minute after torturous minute passed as they waited for Jonath to return. Sofie wracked her brain trying to figure out a way out, some avenue of escape, but she couldn't come up with anything. Like a lot of the people in this world Emera was far stronger than she looked, so overpowering her was out of the question. She couldn't really sneak away, since even the slightest movement generated clinking from her chains, and with the way that her feet were tied, the chain connecting her two ankle being perhaps forty centimeters long, running was also out of the question.
"Sorry, I couldn't find where we'd put these," Jonath said as he eventually reentered the room brandishing several brands. "The basement is a mess."
"Excuses, excuses," complained Emera.
"Yeah, yeah," he replied. His face took on a look of concentration and suddenly a hot flame appeared just beneath one of the brands. Sofie watched in horror as the metal began to glow a bright red. She backed up as much as she could, her eyes fixed on the brand as the pair approached. She prayed in her mind for a hero, for somebody, anybody to stop this, to save her.
A massive roar crashed against the building, shaking the walls. Whatever was happening, it was much closer this time. The sudden racket stopped everybody in their tracks as the sounds of pandemonium erupted outside. The screams and shrieks of hundreds crying out filtered through from the outside.
"What in blazes?" Emera muttered to herself, marching over to the shutters again, throwing them open, and poking her head outside. "Jonath."
"Emera, get back here, I need you to hold her still so we don't have to do this more than once."
"Jonath!"
"What?" he asked, walking over next to the woman, who proceeded to grab him and shove his head out the window for a look. He froze for second, and then the brands fell from his hands.
"Let's get the fuck out of here," said Emera.
"Right," he replied and the two of them ran out of the room, Sofie's existence forgotten.
Sofie sat there for a second, stunned at the sudden development. Was this some strange ruse or something? What was going on? She stumbled her way to the window and leaned out for a peek and was so shocked at the sight that she almost fell out. Through a gap in the buildings she could see, off in the west, the largest beast she'd ever imagined. Nearly ten meters tall and perhaps thirty meters long, with gigantic scaly wings and glowing golden eyes, it roared with a primal rage that instilled fear in all that heard it. It was a dragon... and it was heading her way.
Any and all thoughts other than escape disappeared from her mind. Waddling and hopping as best she could, she left the room just as a large dark shadow passed overhead. The earth shook as the dragon landed somewhere nearby, though she couldn't see exactly where from the hallway. She was halfway down the hallway when dragon unleashed an ear-shattering roar, shaking Sofie to her core and leaving her temporarily deaf. An oppressive wave of heat followed, drenching her in sweat in seconds as she continued to hobble towards her freedom as fast as she could.
The first floor seemed surprisingly empty when she made it down, the patrons and proprietors having already fled. Still, she didn't want to end up running into somebody like Madam Gartruda so she headed away from the front, hoping to find a rear door somewhere. Luckily for her, she found one fairly quickly, throwing it open and hopping down into an alleyway behind the building. Many nearby buildings were already on fire, and she could see massive plumes of smoke rising up from the streets to the north. South it was then.
Hopping as best she could, Sofie worked her way down the maze of alleys, heading southward. Between her restraints and the refuse-filled alleyways, progress was slow and the fire was faster. Soon it would overtake her, she realized. She wasn't going to be able to make it out on her own. She'd need somebody to help her. This troubled Sofie, as she had not had much luck with finding helpful, compassionate people in this world. What if somebody else just tried to enslave her again? She was already chained up; their work had been done for them!
Still, it was that or die. She'd not been the only person to think to take the back alleys, as several others had already passed her by. She saw another group, this one three men, nearing her as she turned around.
"Please help me!" she begged, but the men just raced past her.
The fire had caught up to her now, the buildings to either side catching fire quickly in the heat. Another person soon approached, racing out from the flames, coughing.
"Please, help me!" she cried, stepping into the oncoming woman's path.
"Get out of the way!" the woman shouted, shoving Sofie violently to the side and continuing onward.
Sofie wailed as she tumbled to the ground. Hampered by the shackles, she fought her way back to her feet and pressed on. The buildings were all on fire now. She needed to get somewhere more open, away from all the wood. Her heart beat a thousand miles a second as she made her way out of the alleyways towards the street. Panting and gasping for air, she stumbled to the alley entrance and looked around. To the north was nothing but flame, the street itself now a towering inferno. To the south she could see people still running, heading away from the fire and the dragon, but they were far too far away and headed away from her. She'd never catch them.
A sound caught her ears and she saw a woman, perhaps just a few years older than she, run out of the building to her left. This was her last chance! Leaping out as best she could as the woman ran past, Sofie latched on to her with all her strength. The woman staggered and fought against her grip but Sofie hung on until the woman looked down to meet her eyes.
"Please help me!" she begged the woman, putting everything she had into this one plea. "Please! Don't leave me to die!"
Competing thoughts warred behind the woman's light-brown irises as Sofie looked on in desperation. After a moment that seemed to take a thousand years, the woman pulled Sofie off the ground. "Come on," she said.
Days of pent-up emotion erupted from Sofie at those words. Finally, after all these days stuck with the worse people she'd ever imagined, she'd found somebody in this world who wasn't terrible. There was good in this world after all.
The rest of the escape was a blur. They'd hopped on a wagon driven by some large, rotund man with a huge, bushy mustache and a thick accent along with a thinner man with a ponytail and hightailed their way out of the city as fast as they could. At some point the dragon had closed in, ready to turn them and anybody else nearby to cinders, but then a second dragon had appeared! But then the first dragon had passed right through the second dragon? She'd found it highly confusing, even more so than everything else that was going on. It was right about then that the woman who'd saved her collapsed into her lap. In the end, the dragon had exploded for some reason, erasing everything within a certain radius of the city in a giant white blast. She'd held on to the woman's limp body as she watched the white wall of death approach, consuming all matter that it touched, but it petered out before getting too close. Nothing of the city remained except a massive crater kilometers wide. Sofie's eyes never left it until it passed over the horizon.
Several hours later the turquoise-haired woman remained catatonic, her head still on Sofie's lap as she gently stroked the woman's beautiful hair. She'd seen people with unnatural hair colors before amongst the slaves and in the crowds of the city, and she couldn't help but be jealous each time. She'd always wanted purple hair when she was younger, ever since she'd stumbled across anime as a child.
The wagon shuddered as the large man pulled it to the side of the road.
"Pee break?" asked the ponytailed man.
Instead of answering, the man pulled out a gigantic halberd and leveled it at Sofie.
"Ge' ou'," he said. Malice flashed in his eyes as he glared at her.
"W-what?" Sofie stammered.
"Ya 'eard me. This is as far as ya go. Off." He waved his weapon in a dismissive gesture.
"Jaquet, what are you doing?" the ponytailed man asked, mild concern in his voice.
"I'm doin' wha' I 'ave ta do. Ya know 'ow Letty is. She's too kind fer 'er own good. We don' 'ave a job, ev'rybody's fuckin' dead, an' she goes an' picks up a worthless trollop? We can' afford ta be dragged down by another mouth ta feed. I'm no' gonna le' tha' 'appen. She'll drag Letty down, 'er, me, all o' us."
"This seems like a bit much," the other man said. "Can't we at least take her to Poniren?"
"I don' care wha' ya think, Basilli," Jaquet spat. "Somebody's gotta make tha 'ard decisions, and tha's gotta be me. Letty migh' wake up by then, an' then she'll wanna help 'er, jus' like she did with Olenset, an' those kids in Rankura, an' all those other times before. Wha' good did any o' 'em ever do fer us? Nothin'! Jus' gave us a 'eap o' trouble and caused 'er pain ev'ry time. I'm no' lettin' tha' 'appen again. Ou' with ya."
"And how are you going to explain her sudden disappearance when Boss wakes up?"
"I'll jus' tell 'er tha' she wen' crazy an' ran off into tha woods. Letty'll believe me."
"I highly doubt that."
Sofie had heard enough. She'd finally found somebody who was nice in this godforsaken world, and this jerk wanted to kick her out? She couldn't let that happen! She wrapped her arms around the woman, hoisting her body up and using it as a shield. "No!" she said. "She said she would help me! I'm not leaving!"
The large man's face darkened at the sight of his weapon pointing at the unconscious woman. "Pu' 'er down, righ' now'," he said, clambering down from the wagon's wide front bench. Sofie scooted back, away from the angry man, dragging the other woman with her.
"Jaquet, stop. This is getting out of hand."
"I'm jus' doin' wha' I 'ave ta do," he said, as he strode purposefully around to the back of the wagon, a dangerous look in his eyes.
"I'll tell her what you did," Basilli said.
The large man stopped and turned towards the other, who still sat in his seat on the right front of the wagon. "Ya sidin' with this tramp over me?" he growled.
"No, fuck her. I'm siding with Boss. It's her decision, not yours. What was it you always say? A mercenary has to be willing to honor his commitments with his life? If she made a commitment to this tramp, she needs to stick to it. What happens when she wakes up is up to her."
Jaquet glared bloody murder at the other man, hesitating. Finally he reached forward faster than Sofie could react, grabbing her by the neck and lifting her into the air. Sofie gasped and struggled against his ferocious grip, his hand digging painfully into her throat. "If ya pu' 'er in danger, or anyone o' us fer tha' matter, I'll make ya disappear so quick it'll be like ya were never 'ere," he said before tossing her back into the wagon and storming back to the front of the wagon.
Sofie coughed and sputtered, trying to get draw breath as she clutched at the arm of the one person who'd shown her anything other than pain and grief since she'd arrived. This woman was her only hope. She couldn't trust anybody else.
