The Chained Maiden: Bound by Fate

by Ian Rodgers

  The Monk hopped off of Glast’s shattered body, brushing white dust off of his body.

  “As much of a pain as he was to fight, as least his remains are easier to clean up,” he idly commented as his tattoos receded and his skin returned to its usual yellowish hue.

  “Good work,” Ain complimented his friend as he, Dora, and Long-Tail-Shadow happily reunited with the bald Qwanese man.

  “I noticed you decided to let me fight him alone,” Enrai said dryly as he clapped Ain on the shoulder. He did this to hide the fatigue in his eyes and the wobbliness in his legs as the vast amount of power he’d been channeling departed, and left him feeling weak and unsteady.

  “I figured it was safer for me to do that, then try and get in your way. Your Divine Jeweled Armament form is a hundred times more powerful than you normally are,” the elf responded. He then passed over a Mana Replenishment Potion to the Monk. “Here, drink this.”

  Enrai eagerly chugged the blue colored liquid and let out a sigh of relief as he felt strength return to him. “Thanks, Dora! Your potion brewing skills are getting better! It almost tasted like blueberries this time!”

  Dora snorted in amusement, but nodded at the compliment. Long-Tail-Shadow, meanwhile, rushed over to Enrai and hugged him.

  Thank you, many-many times, for saving me from being stomp-squished,” the Rakkar chittered, her tail flicking about gleefully.

  “No problem. Couldn’t let our guide get pulverized so easily,” Enrai joked.

  She released him, adopting a grim expression. “We must leave-flee soon. City Guards will no doubt have sensed the commotion-fight. They’ll want to capture-punish us if they find us!”

  “Ooo, yeah, we did kind of wreck part of their city,” Dora said, looking around and finally noticing the extent of the damage done to the hanging garden of cages.

  “Worse, slavery is technically legal here in Down, which means we not only committed a massive amount of vandalism and ‘shoplifting,’” Ain said, gesturing to the emptied cages nearby, “but we also killed Glast, the person who ran the slave market. We’re looking at life imprisonment, or worse!”

  “Can’t exactly bring myself to care,” Dora spat. “Remember what he said he’d do to us?”

  “Sell us to demons? Yeah, what about it?” Enrai inquired. Wordlessly, Dora handed over the scrap of paper that contained the name of the person who’d bought Nia’s Elemental Tails.

  “Oh, come on!” Enrai groaned in disgust as he looked at the information in his hands. Ain and Long-Tail-Shadow peered over his shoulder to see what was written down. They too showed expressions of utter contempt.

  “Rakkar might be sneak-thieves, but even we draw the line at working-obeying demons!” she spat.

  “Wait, then does this mean we have to go to the Abyss next?” Ain asked Dora in disbelief. The half-orc Healer nodded, as unexcited about that idea as he was, and the Grand Elf massaged his temples.

  “It’s worse than that,” Dora claimed. “We have to go to the Abyss and confront the Queen Swathed in Vermillion, who just so happens to be a Demon Lord I picked a fight with a while back.”

  Enrai and Ain both grunted, while Long-Tail-Shadow winced. Ain’s ears suddenly twitched, and his grimace deepened.

  “I hear people approaching. They’re clanking a lot, so they must be wearing heavy armor,” he said softly. “Odds are these are the guards. We need to find a way out of here to avoid getting caught by them.”

  “I know ways-paths out of here to the upper levels-floors,” Long-Tail-Shadow announced. “We can hide-flee from the guards there.”

  “Sounds like a plan!” Dora said with a smile. “Could you give me the keys first, though?”

  Confused, the Rakkar passed Glast’s keyring over to Dora, who then looked up into the air. “Hey, you little guys want to have fun and also get back at the people who enslaved you?”

  Bewildered, everyone else craned their necks back, curious as to whom Dora was speaking with, and had their jaws drop when they saw the cloud of Carbuncles hovering over their heads.

  “How did we miss that?” Enrai muttered to Ain.

  “Post battle fatigue?” the Spellsword suggested in a whisper, and the Monk nodded.

  “Yeah. That sounds a lot better than admitting a rainbow-colored army of adorable fairies managed to sneak up on us.”

  A cheerful chiming sound echoed out of the swarm of jeweled fairies, and Dora grinned. “Great! Take these keys and see if they can unlock any other cages! Also, fly around and find any other keys the other slavers might have left lying around and free the rest of the slaves here in the market. Then, could you escort them to safety? Maybe lead them to a level of Down where the guards won’t catch them? Thanks!”

  The Carbuncles happily swooped down and took the keyring and surged into the marketplace, gleefully prying open the bars of some cages and unlocking the doors to others, freeing the trapped people within.

  Dora smiled a genuine smile at the sight of the slave selling camp being dismantled by its own former captives. After a brief moment of enjoying the scenery, she turned back to Long-Tail-Shadow.

  “Okay, ready now! Lead the way to safety!”

  Chapter 10: Den of rats and thieves

  The next several hours were frantic ones for Dora and her friends. To evade the law, they had to go through numerous side alleys, cut across decrepit slums, and at one point squeeze their way through a – mercifully empty – sewage tunnel. The whole escape was unpleasant, not to mention nerve-wracking, as almost the entire time, the group could hear shouting, clanking, and swearing aimed their way.

  But at last, after ascending three whole levels and avoiding the grim-faced, brown and grey armored figures that were Down’s guard forces, they made it to an area of the ever-growing city that was seemingly abandoned.

  The group emerged from the attic of an old building that had been designed in the Varian kingdom’s old Gothic style, into the cellar of a mansion that had one point had no doubt been a stunning sight to see with its impressive carved stonework. But now, age and looting had reduced the proud manor to a sagging ruin.

  As for the rest of area, as far as the eye could see, there was little that wasn’t dusty, tumbled down, or in some way broken. The street lights that had helped the lower levels of Down stay lit were non-functioning, many broken into in an effort to get at the magic tools within. A heavy darkness that reminded Dora of the tunnels she’d wandered through earlier in Gaeum lay across everything.

  “I think we’ve shaken ‘em off,” Dora said as she leaned against a rusty old drain pipe that was near the stone mansion’s entrance. The thought occurred to her that it was an odd addition for a house that was in a place that never experienced rain.

  She looked around at the crumbling remains of countless buildings. “Where are we, anyways?”

  “Floor Nine,” Long-Tail-Shadow informed her, the young Rakkar woman looking around furtively. “One Floor below the absolute limit-end of habitability in Down.”

  “How do you mean?” Enrai asked from where he sat on the mansion’s worn and moss-covered porch.

  “Down is ever expanding, so the numbers shift constantly. But there are some things that stay the same. Floor Zero is the level where construction-building takes place. Floor One is where the nobility-masters and rich-lords live,” Long-Tail-Shadow explained, drawing a small diagram in the dirt for them.

  “Floor Six is where the flesh-market was, and it’s considered the end of ‘civilized’ space for Down. Floors Seven to Nine are the slums. The actual, genuine, ones. These are the regions-domains not even the law will venture, as it’s too deadly-risky.”

  “What’s on Floor Ten and above?” Ain inquired, wearing a worried frown.

  “Monsters,” the Rakkar replied. “Monsters and all the things in Gaeum you do not want to meet-greet. When Down finishes building Floor Zero, it turns into the new Floor One. And everything shifts downwards. In a few centuries, this floor will become the new Floor Ten, a
nd the one below will be Floor Nine. And when that happens, the monsters enter-invade. Some are nasty-cruel and territorial. Others just plain evil-mean. They’ll either chase-hunt out the poor-weak and homeless living here, or hunt-kill and eat them. Or worse.”

  “So that’s why everything looked so nice and fancy, despite being part of the lower-class area,” Dora noted, thinking back to some of the impressive, almost palace-like buildings that had dotted the Floor they’d first arrived at. “Those buildings had been actual mansions, but were abandoned when the nobles living there vacated for the newer levels!”

  She frowned heavily at that. “How incredibly wasteful! How can anyone afford to keep digging downwards and paying for new houses every couple of generations?”

  “Not everyone can. Some noble-masters find themselves going bankrupt trying to keep up with the constant construction-building. Then they end up being forced to stay in their nice, fancy house when everyone else leaves,” Long-Tail-Shadow stated.

  “Pointless,” Enrai sighed in disbelief.

  “We’re not here to judge how completely idiotic their way of life is, Enrai. We’re here to lay low for a bit, and possibly find a way into the Abyss to finish Dora’s quest,” Ain said. As he finished his sentence, he looked over at the half-orc. “That is part of the plan, correct?”

  “Y-you really want to go with me to the Realm of Demons?” she gasped, shocked. “I didn’t think…”

  “Dora, we’ve come this far together. Why on Erafore would we turn back now?” the Spellsword asked with a chuckle. “I’ll admit, I never expected we’d end up going to the Abyss when Enrai and I vowed to follow you to save your family, but life certainly can be full of surprises.”

  “Yeah, Dora! What, did you really think we’d just abandon you after we freed the Yellowmoon Menagerie from Targua?” Enrai asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice. “Give us more credit than that! After all this time and all we’ve been through together, haven’t we become friends?”

  “I-I don’t know what to say,” she murmured, shaking her head slowly. “I’ve never really had friends. I mean, I consider you both to be mine, but I didn’t know you thought the same. Especially with my past, and all.”

  “The past is the past, Dora. Sure, you might have worked for slavers, but you did so out of obligation and, I suppose later on, kinship. Besides, so what? You’ve clearly changed and want to do better,” Enrai said kindly. “Besides, we all have our skeletons in the closet. I used to be a fatty-fat-fatty, and Ain used to have a stick up his butt that needed an X-ranker to beat it out of him!”

  The Monk turned to the Rakkar who was watching the group curiously. “I bet even Long-Tail has shameful parts of her past she’d rather keep quiet about. Right?”

  “Yes-yes, very true,” she replied quickly, bobbing her head.

  “See, Dora? Now, turn that frown upside down, and let’s go find a portal to the Abyss! Never thought I’d say that with such enthusiasm,” Enrai said, standing up and muttering the last part under his breath.

  “Miss Long-Tail, do you know where we can find such a thing?” Ain asked their guide politely, who nodded hesitantly after a bit.

  “Perhaps-maybe. My den-clan lives here, on Floor Nine. Some explore-scavenge the higher Floors out of desperation. One of them might be aware of Abyssal portals. Or an elder might remember-know something about areas beyond Down.”

  “Well, that sounds promising. Probably our best lead at the moment, too,” Dora said, a look of determination upon her face.

  “Before we go, please secure-hide any valuables you don’t want stolen-taken,” Long-Tail-Shadow requested. “I won’t sneak-steal from you, but others in my den-clan might not be so nice-generous.”

  “Hmm, alright, thank you for that advice,” the Healer said thankfully, and she, Ain, and Enrai quickly spent a few minutes adjusting their packs to put away items they wanted safe and secure. So long as their valuables were inside their Bags of Holding, it’d be impossible for anyone to steal them. They’d have to snag the whole backpack, and trying to do that while they were being worn would make the attempt quite conspicuous.

  “Well, I think we’ve got everything squared away. So, please lead on, Long-Tail,” Dora said, gesturing off into the vast, dark depths of the abandoned Floor. Their guide bobbed her head, her tail and whiskers twitching in a gesture that Dora had come to understand meant anticipation and excitement, and escorted the group into the dark.

  Dora lit the way with a Dancing Light spell, the orbs of silver shedding plenty of illumination across the abandoned region. Here and there, things scuttled out of the way of the glow, wary of the light and the beings who carried it with them. In some places, eyes stared out of the dark, watching and observing the party for unknown reasons.

  Onwards they trekked, the Rakkar leading them past empty market places and gutted buildings. In some places, the walkways had collapsed and bridges had fallen down, either due to rot or being deliberately broken, and they had to go around. Seeing everything so broken and gloomy when it had likely been full of life not too long ago filled Dora with a sense of sorrow.

  An unexpected pang of pity and empathy for the gods flickered through her soul. ‘This must be what it feels when a god looks down and sees their old followers having withered away and died, leaving behind newer, and unfamiliar, souls,’ Dora thought to herself.

  For a brief moment, the half-orc felt as if she was being hugged from behind, and a sense of gratitude was relayed through the embrace. Dora tensed up, looking wildly around her as the sensation faded.

  “Is everything alright, Dora?” Ain asked, reaching for his saber in case violence was needed.

  She shook her head. “No, I just… thought I felt something.”

  The group was on-guard from then on out. Before long, though, Long-Tail-Shadow called a halt in front of a building that, back in its glory days, had once been a bank. Large marble pillars still decorated the entrance, and the statues of griffons – a common beast to depict guarding gold, given their tendency to nest near veins of that precious metal – remained unbroken and regal as they flanked anyone walking up the stairs.

  Everything else, though, was run down. Grime had smeared and stained its way across the once pristine lobby, windows were broken or simply devoid of glass or shutters, and for some reason Dora smelled smoke as she entered the bank with Long-Tail-Shadow.

  Their guide began to squeak and chatter in a foreign language as they entered, and before their eyes, dozens of Rakkar emerged from the shadows. Many of them eyed Dora, Ain, and Enrai suspiciously, though the younger ones rushed towards Long-Tail-Shadow squeaking with joy.

  “Whoa! Where did they all come from?!” Dora uttered in shock as the rat-people crowded around Long-Tail-Shadow. “There’s no way they could fit into some of those spots they came out of!”

  “We’re good-experienced at hiding-running,” Long-Tail replied as she pet the heads and rubbed the ears of several of the smaller Rakkar who clustered around her.

  She squeaked out some words, and the crowd of Rakkar pulled back slightly. A few more squeaks, and a few scampered off into the depths of the bank.

  “Why can’t we understand what you’re saying?” Ain asked their guide, with a sideways glance at Dora. “I thought we were using a translation device?”

  “There are ways around those,” Long-Tail-Shadow said with a shake of her head. “It only recognizes languages that the maker-creators know-understand. And given how Rakkar are seen as vermin-scum, most common-cheap translators do not include our language.”

  “That is not only incredibly speciesist, but also insanely stupid. If everyone thinks you’re evil, or at least untrustworthy, why wouldn’t they want to be able to understand you? I mean, that’s just dumb!” Dora said, disgusted for more reasons than one. “You could be plotting their downfall, and they wouldn’t even know it!”

  “I know, right?” Long-Tail agreed with a wide smirk. “It’s probably one of our few advantages here i
n the Aether.”

  She turned her head as a male Rakkar returned to her and whispered in her ear. “Hmm, yes-yes, good. Thank you.”

  “Is there good news?” Dora asked hopefully, and Long-Tail-Shadow nodded.

  “One of the den-clan’s elders is willing to speak with you about a means to leaving Down, and Gaeum itself. Follow me!”

  “Is it just me, or do we seem to have gained some followers of our own?” Enrai asked playfully as he glanced over his shoulder and observed the crowd of tiny Rakkar trailing behind. Long-Tail sighed, before shaking her head.

  “Forgive my younger kin-cousins. They do not often see outsiders until they are old enough to venture out of the den-home. You are unique-curious.”

  She scolded the youngsters in her own language, and most of them ran off giggling madly. A few stayed just barely out of sight and scolding distance though as they walked over. Long-Tail-Shadow rolled her eyes at their antics and went back to leading her companions deeper into the bank.

  Down some steps, up a few more, and eventually they came to a room with an enormous safe inside of it, the door hanging open. The massive and heavy metal box was easily capable of storing Glast inside of it during his ‘growth spurt.’ Impressed by the size, they were momentarily taken aback when Long-Tail stopped in front of the open safe door and got on her hands and knees.

  “Err, do we need to do that as well in order to enter?” Dora asked, confused by what was going on.

  “It would be recommended. Unless your Healing magic can reattach heads,” Long-Tail-Shadow commented.

  Dora shared a look with Ain and Enrai, who both shrugged.

  “When in Varia, do as the Varians,” the Monk said after a bit and he got down low to the floor next to their guide. She nodded at him, pleased, and looked back at the last two, waiting.

  Half-orc and elf sighed in unison before crouching down, their dignity refused to let them get on their hands and knees.