by V. A. Lewis
I slowly rose in my cage, and gently touched Shang on the shoulder. The Dog Beastkin blearily opened his eyes, blinking multiple times to wake himself up.
"Hrn, how’d it go?" Shang asked, voice still hoarse from sleep.
I showed him the keys and flashed a grin.
"It went great," I said, not bothering to hide my excitement.
Shang’s eyes widened upon seeing the keys, and his lips slowly curled into a smile; underneath his muzzle, the Dog Beastkin’s mouth widened, revealing dozens of sharp fangs and two dagger-like canines. "Good."
"Let’s get out of here." I began sorting through the keys, searching for what would provide our emancipation. "But first," I said, stopping what I was doing, and looked to the ground. "What do we do about her?"
We both turned to face Rin, the white furred catgirl, lying on the ground, snoring loudly with a snot bubble blowing out of her nose.
"Do we—"
"I’ll wake her up," Shang answered my question before I could even finish.
It took us a minute to rouse everyone from their slumber; Rin was, surprisingly enough, the easiest to wake up. After that was finished, I tried sorting through the half a dozen keys in the keyring to find one that would set us free. None of them worked on our manacles, but one key did unlock the cages, and that was good enough for me.
We gathered in the middle of the small room to plan our next course of action. I had to hobble over, supported by Shang since my ankle was not fully healed just yet. I could walk, and the pain felt from each step was small, but I did not want to reopen the wound by pushing myself too hard.
The metal door to our room was bolted from the outside, so no key I had on me could open it up.
"Nn, I could smash it open!" Rin helpfully suggested, but was quickly shot down by Shang.
"No," he said. "That would cause too much of a disturbance. We want to bring the guards here to unlock it from the outside, and silence him quickly. Hrn, we’ll have to cause a bit of commotion."
I nodded my head. "It’ll have to be a loud one, but not loud enough to attract all the guards in the warehouse to this room. Just the ones nearby."
"Well, that sounds easy enough." Rin grinned, and hefted her manacled hands. They were not ordinary handcuffs which was what most everyone else had— they were shackles that obscured her hands all the way down to her forearms. Some sort of iron bindings which covered her fingers in their entirety.
The Cat Beastkin raised her arms, and slammed it against the metallic bars of the cages. Then she took a step back, and we waited for the door to swing open. It took a moment before the muffled sounds of footsteps reached our door. I heard the sliding of metal, followed by the a clink as the bolt was lifted. A guard stepped into the room, frowning.
"What are you animals—"
Shang slammed his forehead into the guard. The man fell, and opened his mouth to scream, but a Rabbit Beastkin came down on him, smashing his foot on the man’s face. I grimaced as I watched the man’s skull cave in, but that silenced him quickly enough.
Rin swung the door open, and smiled. "That was easy enough."
"Hrn, indeed," Shang concurred, stepping up behind her. They were all still chained up with our special forms of shackles for each type of Beastkin, but that did not seem to deter them in the slightest. "It’s time for us to take our leave."
I followed slowly behind them, trying my best to keep my gaze away from the corpse at my feet. "Yes," I said, taking a deep breath. "It’s time for us to be free from these lands."
No one laughed at my joke!
Ok, sure, Rin did giggle a bit. And Shang did give me a polite smile. But the two of them did not count!
It wasn’t even a bad joke too! Sure, it was a pun— which was supposedly the lowest form of comedy back on Earth— but at least it was not some dumb inside joke nobody would get!
I sighed. At least I’m trying, right? I believed that when someone was stuck in a terrible situation, they should never lose their sense of humor; even if they sucked at making jokes.
Well, that was not to say I was bad at making jokes; my friends back on Earth always laughed when I told one! But we were like-minded! And we enjoyed teasing each other too! Kind of like how Rin and Shang interacted, but less… personal?
There was a line we never crossed when we teased each other; a line that didn’t exist for these two. Speaking of which...
The door swung open, as the guard walked in muttering to himself. "I swear I heard something—"
He was cut off by a pair of hands that grabbed him, and smashed him against the doorframe. "Sacred—"
Thunk. The man collapsed to the ground, his skull cracked open, and blood slowly dripping from his head.
I flinched at the brutality of it, and averted my gaze from the corpse. Did I think that he deserved it? Yes, he did. But I was still not used to such… casual violence. That was why I kept trying to lighten the mood with jokes— even bad ones.
This was criminal justice. We were slaves trying to reject the fate we had been given, and somehow, that was considered a crime. I’d prefer to think of it as vigilante justice, but that was not true— definitely not in the Free Lands, at least. It was a terrible place with a terrible sense of morality, which made for terrible acts of retaliation in return.
Shang grabbed the man he just killed and dragged his body back to our room and piled it up amongst the other corpses of guards. Rin entered this new room, and I followed after her. We found ourselves in what appeared to be a break room. It was small with a table full of half eaten food pieces and dirty plates; there were some glasses of beer and ale, but they were completely empty. Perhaps the guards had been drunk— or at least, not sober— which contributed in the ease of our escape attempt so far.
There was a cabinet full of thin drawers sitting in a corner of the room. I began pulling it open, rummaging through the pieces of paper and writing tools, searching for a key.
"Do you see anything?" Rin asked, peeking her head over my shoulder.
"No," I said. The Cat Beastkin could not help me in my search because the manacles in her arms gave her no fingers to open things with. However, I did appreciate her company because she made me feel safe. "Nothing," I sighed. "This whole cabinet is full of documents, but no keys."
"Eh, guys!" a voice called out from the hallway. The Rabbit Beastkin from earlier popped through the doorway. "We found it."
"You did?!" Rin and I exclaimed at the same time. We rushed out to the hallway, following the Rabbit Beastkin into a room; he could not move fast, because of the special manacles around his feet, however he could still walk, and that was good for me since I did not want to run either.
Once we reached the room on the other side of the corridor, Rin practically shoved the Rabbit Beastkin aside to get in. I hesitated behind her, as I looked at Shang, standing in the middle of the room.
The Dog Beastkin turned around as I heard the clatter of chains hit the floor. I stared at him, his face free from the muzzle, and his arms and legs unbound. He held the keyring with over a dozen keys in it up, and smiled.
"Now—"
Rin ignored him and snatched it off his fingers. "Yoink," she said, the metallic ring in between her teeth. She paused, staring down at her arms. "Uh, could someone help me?"
Shang sighed, "You’re an idiot."
"And you’re a meanie!"
I smiled. And half an hour later, we were all finally freed from our bonds. We were not free from slavery just yet, but this only increased our chances. And it made the Beastkin only more efficient.
We cleared out the rest of the hallway, entering each room and killing the guards inside of it. Rin knocked on a door, and waited for it to open. An unarmored man came out, rubbing at his eyes. "What is it—"
He was cut off as Rin jabbed a finger forward. She immediately silenced the man, slicing his throat open; he collapsed with a gurgling noise, choking on his own blood.
The Cat Beastkin lowered her hands, blood
dripping off of her claws slowly. She flicked her wrist, cleaning the blood from her claws, before they slowly retracted back into her fingers.
Wolverine? Is that you?! I didn’t know you were an X-Men, Rin!
I tried my best to ignore the dying man on the ground, and focused on Rin’s ‘super power’. I watched as each of her nails slowly shrink from four inch long daggers, back into normal looking nails.
Well, by ‘normal’ I meant normal for a Cat Beastkin. They were actually quite long and sharp even in their reduced state; they protruded out by about an inch from each finger, and unlike Human nails, they looked sharp enough to draw a lot of blood. Like a cat’s claws.
As they were now, they were like Shang’s nails; in fact, both Dog and Cat Beastkin had sharper than normal nails, but Rabbit Beastkin had normal nails. And by that, this time I meant regular Human nails.
Rin must have noticed me staring, because she began to proudly explain herself. "Cool, right? It’s something only us Cat Beastkin can do! We got these claws that are as sharp as any knife— sharper even! Shang wishes he can do this—"
"I think she gets it, Rin," Shang cut off the catgirl. "Now please be quiet. We don’t know if there’s anyone else in the other rooms."
She pouted. "Stupid Shang, you always ruin the fun."
One by one, we checked the rooms in the hallway, starting from the ones all the way at the end, slowly making our way back to the corner rooms.
Most of the rooms held boxes and crates full of chains, manacles, and other similar bondage equipment. But one of the rooms in the middle had half a dozen guards, sleeping in their beds. I struck up a conversation with one of the two Rabbit Beastkin as they were quietly disposed of.
"So… got any cool powers?"
"Powers?"
"Rin has claws, and Shang has fangs. Do you have… anything like that?"
"Eh, our kind doesn’t really have anything special like that. We just have good legs."
"Good legs?"
"It lets us jump very high. Eh, about 25 feet up for the average Rabbit Beastkin."
I blinked. Nothing special, my butt! You can probably dent metal and smash concrete with that!
The conversation ended, as Shang and the others were finished with the guards in the room; we continued making our way down the hallway, until we finally reached a different room. The door to this room was bolted, just like ours, and I exchanged a glance with Shang.
"Slaves?" I asked, lifting a brow.
"Hrn, probably the ones that work here. The others in our caravan were brought downstairs," he said, unlatching the door. "But be prepared for anything."
The wooden door slowly creaked open, and three sparsely dressed men with thin frames immediately scrambled to their feet; even while standing, they looked like they were laying down, as they took on slumped postures to make themselves as small as possible.
"Yes, master? Is there something—"
They paused as they noticed the people standing at the door, and stared. I looked back at them, and saw two middle aged men who were highly malnourished, and a younger— but just as thin— man standing over thin cloth beds.
After a moment of silence, the younger man managed to muster up a question. "W-what’s going on?"
Perhaps, somewhere deep down inside of them, they knew what was going on; the situation spoke for itself, after all. But they must not have believed it. So I spoke flatly, not bothering to explain how this came about.
"We’re getting out of here. You’re all free."
"W-we are?" the younger man asked, voice shaking with shock— at the suddenness of it all.
"Yes." I dangled the key in front of their faces, and grinned. I walked up to them, and continued. "Now let’s just—"
"Don’t!" One of the older slaves threw himself between me and the man. He spread his arms out, blocking me, and hurriedly spoke. "Don’t do it. Please. Just leave us alone."
"What?" I uttered the words stupidly. I was flabbergasted. I nearly dropped the keys in shock, but held on.
I was not the only one caught off guard by their reaction. Shang stepped forward, and raised his hands placatingly.
"I’m sorry, Eld— Hrn, Sir." The Dog Beastkin paused briefly as he adopted human formalities. "I don’t know what you think is happening, but I can assure you that this is no trick. We are setting you free. So if you just—"
"No!" the man nearly shouted the words this time.
Everyone stared at him in shock; not just us, even the younger man was surprised. He turned to his elderly companion, and asked the question in everyone’s mind. "What are you doing? They’re helping—"
"Do not listen to them!" The older slave grasped the young man by his shoulders. "You’ll die if you go with them."
"W-what?" More than one person in the room said the word, but the younger man’s voice was the loudest. "What do you mean by that?"
The older slave shook his head and crossed his arms.
"What they’re doing is suicide. They unchain you, then what? You fight? Sneak out?" He looked around the room and met everyone else's eyes. He briefly passed his other companion— the second old slave— and got a nod in agreement.
"There’s an entire city out there. If you go with them, you will die! You— you can’t fight through all of them. I’ve seen the gladiators try to revolt. They— they knew how to fight. And how many of them were there— hundreds? Maybe thousands even?" he spoke, voice shaking with each word, and despair the only thing in his eyes. "But how many people are in Bys? How many tens of thousands of soldiers did they have to face? They— they thought they knew how to fight, but they failed. Most of them were killed, and the ones that do survive were punished."
The older slave slowly shook his head, and looked pleadingly at the younger man.
"You can’t escape. Even if you do— you’ll always be a slave. If someone finds you, they can just take you and sell you again. Just stay here."
The young man hesitated, he looked between us and his two older companions, uncertain of what to do. He was torn between doing what he wanted, and doing what made sense— what was safe.
He stared around the room, and for a brief moment our eyes met; I wanted to tell him to come with us, to not lose hope. But I did not.
"It’s your choice."
The young man paused, and looked at me; he looked deep into my eyes, as if he was searching for something deep inside of it. And finally, after much deliberation, he made his decision.
"I will go."
The other two slaves shouted in outrage, but his decision was final; Shang and Rin held back the two older men, stopping them from doing anything, as I uncuffed the man.
"What’s your name?"
"Feri," he said.
"It’s nice to meet you, Mr Feri," I said, trying my best to smile. "I’m Melas."
The manacles clicked open, and dropped to the ground. Feri inspected his hands, turning it over and flexing it, almost as if he thought the chains would suddenly reappear on it. But when it did not, tears welled up in his eyes, and he began to sob.
"Thank you, Melas. Thank you."
He clutched my shoulders, and collapsed to his knees as he cried. I hugged him for a minute, letting his emotions pass over; and when he was finished, he picked himself up and covered his face, ashamed of crying in front of a child.
I almost felt… happy. As if I did something so amazing to free this man. But I did nothing; it was his own actions that helped him free. Plus—
"It’s not over yet."
Feri turned to look at me as I whispered those words. He slowly stood straighter, and nodded his head. "Right."
Shang approached us from behind, and spoke to the former slave. "You’ve been here awhile?"
"Yes."
"So you know the layout of this building?"
"Yes—"
The two of them started discussing plans to escape as they walked out of the room. Rin and the other Beastkin followed after them, and I was about to too,
when I heard a voice come from behind me.
"You killed him."
I turned around and saw two pairs of eyes filled with hate staring at me. The older slave from earlier was kneeling down, being supported by his friend.
"You’ll die— you’ll all die— but you’ll die a murderer," he spat the words vitriolically. He turned his gaze up to the sky, and spread his hands out to the side. "You killed him. And the Goddess shall punish you for it in the afterlife."
Rude! That’s not how you speak to a kid!
I shook my head, dismissing the inane thought, and met his stare.
"I did not make the choice for him. He chose for himself." I held my gaze with the man, and continued. "So if he dies, then he dies out of his own volition. Not because I killed him."
I ignored the man as he began to sputter in outrage; I pulled out the key ring, grabbed one of the keys from it, and tossed it at the two slaves.
"Here."
The metal key flew in the air for a few seconds, and landed at the feet of the two older men. They stared at it, as I turned around to leave.
"You can decide for yourselves too." I began to walk out the door, then stopped. I turned around, and looked down at the two slaves; on the two men tied down by fear of others. "But we will not die. We will live."
After all, why would I be afraid of a few slavers, if I was going against god?
The false god wanted me to die. His followers said so. They wanted me to embrace my death. And he killed me before, so how was I supposed to fight back? Yet, I would try to seek revenge. I did not know why he wanted me dead, nor why he sent me to this world. It was probably to fulfill some unknown goal of his, but I would never accept it.
"I will live,"— I raised my hands up in the air, making a declaration to the world— "and I will live free."
Chapter 20: Shaken
I left the room with the two slaves, and followed after Shang and the others as they quietly whispered to each other; it was not as painful on my ankle to walk as it was with the chains around my feet, so I managed just fine by myself. They were standing by the end of the hallway, peering over the corner into the rest of the warehouse.
