Chương 11: The Wrong Kind Of Freedom (1)

"Up, boy. We've arrived." Teren opened his eyes. For one instant, he expected to see the post in Brakka's hand coming down again. He expected dirt under his cheek, broken arms over his head, and the crowd cheering around him as heavy wood crushed through bone and skull. Instead, iron bars filled his vision. The wagon rocked beneath him. Chains held his wrists and ankles. The morning air was cool against his skin, and his body was whole. Teren lay still. His first breath came slowly.

His second hurt, though nothing was broken anymore. The pain was only a memory now. His ribs were not cracked. His arm was not shattered. His leg answered when he shifted it. But his mind remembered the pit. He remembered Brakka's broken post, the roar of the crowd, and how his body had kept him alive for only a few minutes. Even when he desperately tried to summon purple fire, nothing had happened. Teren closed his eyes. He had magic, but he had no idea how to use it to save himself.

Everyone seemed determined to prove that to him, just before they killed him for having it. Across the cage, the older captive watched him.

"Ya awake now?" Teren opened his eyes again. The man had asked him something similar in other loops too, his lined face and tired eyes as familiar by now as his rough voice.

"I am," Teren said. The man looked him over.

"Ya look worse each time I look at ya." Teren went still. How did he... Then he realized the old man only meant he looked exhausted in the present moment. Of course he did. To everyone else, this was still the first day. Teren pushed himself upright. The chains scraped under him.

"Just... bad dreams." The old man snorted.

"Wrong place for good ones anyway." That was true enough. Near the rear of the cage, the broad lizardfolk captive sat with his eyes fixed on the mounted guards outside. He was called Dagan, if Teren remembered the name correctly from one of the shouted orders. His thick shoulders and heavy arms were tense with the same anger Teren remembered from the earlier loops. Teren had warned him once. Dagan had attacked anyway. This time, Teren said nothing.

He did not have enough strength to save anyone by being stupid at them twice. Karthane rose ahead, its huge gray walls cutting into the morning sky. The faint curve of the barrier shimmered above the city when the sunlight struck it at the right angle. The sight was still impossible. It still belonged in a dream, or a painting, or some elaborate fantasy film from a world with comfortable seats and overpriced popcorn. After seeing the city this many times, most of Teren's wonder had disappeared.

Karthane's huge walls and ancient defenses now felt more like part of the system that kept funneling him toward one death after another. The wagon crossed the drawbridge. The bronze token passed through the portcullis bars. The gate opened. The caravan moved beneath orange glass lights and into the noise of the city. Teren watched more carefully this time despite how exhausted he felt. His body was fresh, but his mind felt rubbed raw.

Each death had piled on top of the last without sleep, without pause, without even the mercy of forgetting. He could still smell his flesh burning from the successive white fires. Feel the explosion from the basement trap. Taste the fighting pit's dirt. Remember the anger at the yard-master's hand forcing his fingers around the assay grip. But anger had not saved him. Anger had put him in the pit. With Brakka. Remembering that was enough to keep his mouth shut this time, so he took a deep breath and watched.

The main road beyond the gate was busy with carts, horses, soldiers, merchants, and the long-backed iguana-like scaled beasts pulling heavier wagons through the street. Their heads moved low to the ground, tongues flicking out every few steps. Their claws clicked against the stone. The wagon turned away from the main street and entered the intake compound. The smaller wall closed behind them. Cheering came from the fighting enclosure on the left. Teren did not look toward it. The cage stopped, and the door opened.

The guards shouted at the captives to climb down. Dagan attacked almost immediately, just like Teren had known he would, though that did not make watching it easier. The big man drove his chained fists into the first guard's face and sent him sprawling. Another guard hit him with a spear haft. Dagan stayed up. A cudgel struck his shoulder. He twisted, caught the next man with his bound hands, and nearly knocked him down too. Then the others came in. Three guards. Four. Five.

The new guards piled in, striking Dagan behind the knee, across the ribs, and finally against the side of his head. Dagan fell, but the guards kept hitting him until he stopped trying to rise. Teren made himself watch because he needed to remember what happened. Dagan's anger let him hurt a few guards, but against this many armed men it only ended with him beaten into the dirt. A guard shoved Teren into line. The clerk sat at the same table under the same strip of shade, ledger open. The wooden tag was lifted.

The same questions began. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. This time, Teren answered plainly. The clerk made a simple note after all the questions had been asked.

"Literate. No listed trade." Teren moved on. The assay line crawled forward. He had been here enough times to know the order, so this time he looked beyond the handle and paid attention to the guards, the clerk, and where the different groups of captives were being taken, as well as the small groups forming near different doors and gates. A broad-shouldered man three places ahead of him produced no light from the mana assay, but one of the guards looked him over and called toward the far side of the yard.

"Another for the barracks?" A man in a mail shirt near the low wooden fence glanced over.

"We need one more." The captive was unchained from the assay line and shoved toward the restricted section of the compound. Teren followed him with his eyes. The low fence cut across the far side of the compound, separating almost a third of the yard from the rest. The area beyond it looked cleaner and better guarded. He saw a row of barracks or offices, a stable, a few men in better armor, and a pale crystal lamp mounted beside a covered doorway even though the sun was up. Then a guard near the fence called out.

"That's the last. Quota's full for the week." The weekly quota was full. He had missed that before. Of course he had. In one loop he had been terrified of the white fire. In another, focused on forcing enough mana to summon Edras or far too angry to notice anything but the next chance to insult. This time, he understood the importance. The barracks had taken the last conscript just a few turns before him. That could give him another option in the future.

If he played his cards right in one of the future loops, he might be chosen to become one of them. There, he could get some much-needed training about how not to die in five minutes after meeting Brakka. The young man ahead of him produced a weak yellow glow and was sent toward the examination hall where Edras waited. The goblin woman touched the assay, produced nothing, and was sent to labor. Then Teren stood before the device. The cloudy crystal sat inside its brass cage. The curved grip rose above it.

The scarred yard-master pointed at the handle.

"Hand around it." Teren moved before the man could step closer. He knew what he had to do this time. His hand closed around the brass. Cold sank into his palm, and the assay pulled. Familiar panic rose with the pull, but Teren kept his hand in place and fought the instinct to push mana into the device. He had no real technique for stopping the flow, so he simply clamped down on the sensation out of fear. His breath locked in his chest, while his fingers tightened until the metal hurt his palm.

Something inside his arm flowed toward the grip, then stopped as every part of him pulled back from the memory of purple glow and white fire. The crystal stayed dark. One heartbeat. Two. Still nothing. Teren barely stopped himself from grinning. The yard-master grunted.

"Send him for labor." Teren released the grip. His hand did not shake until he lowered it to his side. He had done it again. He had touched the assay and lived. For the first time, one of the choices in the yard felt like it belonged to him. The scarred man jerked his chin toward the labor group.

"That way." Teren obeyed. Neither meekly, nor rudely. His feet moved without argument, and no one hit him. His ankle chains were removed as well. That was progress. But even with the crystal remaining dark, the white-fire attacker remained at the back of Teren's mind. He might be somewhere inside the compound, or watching from the city wall to the left, and Teren had no idea what face to look for. Still, the attacks had only come after his purple mana appeared.

As long as he kept every trace of it hidden, he should be safe. Probably. The labor group was gathered near a long timber hall along the right side of the compound. Men and women were separated almost immediately. A few looked old. A few looked sick. Most looked hungry. Guards moved among them with iron tags, scraps of cord, and a narrow metallic rod marked with faint lines. Teren watched the rod closely. When his turn came, the guard pointed at his arm.

"Hold out your left hand." Teren did. The guard caught his wrist and turned it palm-up. The rod's metal tip touched the inside of his forearm. Piercing pain bit into him. Not like a cattle brand exactly. There was no hot iron smell, no smoke rising from the skin. The pain was sharper and thinner, as if a needle of fire had drawn a shape under the surface rather than on top of it. Teren hissed. When the guard released him, a black mark about two inches wide sat beneath the skin of his forearm.

A small crest filled its center, surrounded by a ring of tiny runes.

"What is this thing?" Teren asked before he could stop himself. The guard smirked.

"A slave mark. So we can find ya easier and kill ya if ya run." A few nearby guards laughed as the man moved on to the next slave from today's intake. Teren looked down at the motionless black mark. Once the initial sting passed, he could no longer feel anything from it. That didn't make it better. He had no way to judge what it could do. The old captive from the wagon stood beside him and held out his arm without being told. The mark was pressed into his skin too. He barely flinched.

Teren glanced at him once the guard moved away.

"You've done this before?" The old man looked at the black mark forming in his own arm.

"Been through enough yards, yes."

"Does it really work like they say?" The man lowered his sleeve over it.

"Wouldn't advise learnin' the answer by runnin'."

"Useful." Teren snorted, though he had every intention to test those words. The older man shrugged as he rubbed his wrists where the chains had been.

"Best kind of advice is the kind that keeps ya alive." The guard shoved them both toward the closest wooden hall before Teren could answer. A second hall stood farther down, smaller but built the same way.

"Men there," a guard said, pointing to the first hall. Then he nodded toward the second.

"Women there. Mix without orders and ya get whipped." No one needed that repeated.

"Go on. This is your new home now," the guard continued.

"You'll get grub within the hour, then you'll report for work to one of the guards. Be late and you'll find out exactly how good I am with whips." Teren nodded along with the other slaves as the guards walked away to do whatever they did when they were not putting slave marks on innocent people or whipping men and women. He walked to his new home. The labor hall was not like a cattle pen. Teren had expected cages, or open yards, or some filthy shed where people were packed in like animals.

Instead, the building was a long, low timber hall with a sloping roof, narrow shuttered windows, and thick doors that could only be barred from the outside. Close enough to a prison. It did not look comfortable in any way, but compared with some of the alternatives he had already experienced, he knew it could be worse. Much worse. Inside the hall, it was even a little warm, despite the shade.

He had heard some of the other slaves mention that it was autumn, and the air was already chilly whenever he stood out of the sun. The city would probably grow much colder in winter. At least the people who ran this place seemed to understand that slaves could not carry crates, clean stables, or haul water if they froze to death. He walked outside under the sun to wait for food and sat down with his back to the wooden wall. His stomach felt like he hadn't eaten in weeks.

Teren looked at the wooden halls, the tired slaves and the busy intake compound around him. Compared to being sent to the pits to fight with Brakka, this was still freedom. Just... not the kind he wanted.