The sudden acceleration of the cart flipped me over and my head bumped against the wooden slab that had served as our dinner tray. I opened my eyes and saw no sunlight sliding in through the gaps created by the moving tent flaps. It must have been night still.

I shifted my eyes over to Kai who seemed to still be sleeping, apparently unaffected by the turbulence of the moving cart. I tried to rearrange myself and after a minute of struggling, managed to sit upright.

The bonds that held my elbows and wrists, as well as those on my knees and ankles, were not as tight as the day before but still not loose enough for me to perform even the most basic of tasks. I wasn’t even able to scratch the increasingly annoying itch on the side of my neck where the mana nullifying choker was rubbing my skin.

Outside, there was a sudden burst of activity. I heard a succession of voices shouting commands from the front to the back of the procession.

“Traveler ahoy!” the voices shouted. “Move faster.”

The sound of the wagon wheels turning accelerated and the turbulence became strong enough to wake Kai up. Immediately, it occurred to me that I could scream in order to get the attention of the traveler they had mentioned. But what would one traveler be able to do by himself, or even two of them?

At least I could let them know that they were dealing with slavers carrying magic nullifiers.

I heard the incoming sound of a single horse galloping, but the sound came from in front of us and not from behind as I had assumed. This took me completely by surprise, and even as I quickly inhaled to shout as loud as I could, the sound of the hooves was already fading away, along with our only hope of escaping.

***

We traveled for most of the morning, both Kai and I laying down on the floor without talking until the cart slowly came to a stop. For a while, people chatted merrily outside and then we started moving again. This time however in a much slower pace and on uneven terrain, judging by how much the cart was shaking.

By my estimation, we were traversing the hard land at walking pace for about forty minutes before we stopped and the same man who brought us dinner the day before threw the flap on top of the cart and jumped in.

“How are my little animals,” he asked, and tried to hoist Kai by the ropes that circled around his shoulders. “Up you go, dog.”

Kai snapped his head and bit the man’s arm, just above his wrist. He jerked his hand away but Kai didn’t let go. Seeing this, the man clenched his other fist and punched Kai in the gut.

“You little shit,” the man hissed, as he raised his hand in order to see the back of his arm where Kai had bit him.

There was blood on his arm but it didn’t look like anything too serious. The man obviously did not have the same opinion as me regarding the seriousness of his wound, and moved to kick Kai in the ribs.

“This’ll teach you!” He stretched his leg backward, ready to project it on Kai.

I launched myself in front of the trajectory of his foot and took the brunt of the force when his shin hit me in my stomach. I felt the air being forced out of me as his kick pushed me backward, and I landed on top of Kai.

“So you want to protect him, do you, witch?” The man now unsheathed a dagger from his belt. “This one is on you, kid.”

He grabbed me by my hair with his off-hand and pressed Kai’s chest down with the sole of his large foot. The way I was bound made it impossible for me to pull myself away from his grasp.

All I could do was clench my teeth and look him in the eyes as I waited for whatever torture he had in store for me. I would not show fear.

He lifted me by my hair and I welcomed the familiar pain, but it ended abruptly and I fell to the ground, hitting my knee as I was not prepared for it.

I lifted my head only to see that the man was now holding what seemed like a red rope. It was only once he threw it at me that it dawned on me.

What he was actually holding was my hair. He’d sliced it off. The realization hit me harder than his kick and even though I knew spells to grow my hair back, such a personal violation, left me speechless. Only a monster would do that.

“Stupid spineless mages,” the man said under his breath, and picked up both of us using the ropes on our backs. “Why won’t you just accept your fate?”

He had no trouble dragging both of us at the same time. Even jumping out of the wagon while carrying us seemed to pose no problem for him.

I hadn’t been outside of the carriage for quite some time and the light of the sun hurt my eyes, which at least helped take my mind off the pain of the kick I’d just received and the thoughts of what I must look like without my hair.

Without the canvas to mask the sound, I could now hear grasshoppers everywhere, a strong indication that it was still summer in this place. The man continued to carry us upside down, our faces close to his knees and our tightly bound feet dragging along the ground.

“Well, what do you know?” our torturer said mockingly. “He does actually shine under sunlight.”

As soon as my eyes adjusted to the new lighting conditions, I turned my head to the left and saw that Kai was already looking forward. I glanced in the same direction and was faced with a rather steep slope of yellow rocks and green bushes.

It looked like there was a path leading down, though I could not yet see what was directly at the bottom of it, only the sea creating a little gulf on the coast.

This was not how I imagined my first time seeing the Endless Sea would be. I was hoping Kai and I would travel along the coast before settling down in the forest we had selected, perhaps going for the occasional swim. The glistening blue horizon was as beautiful as I had heard and I tried hard to suppress my anger at our predicament.

As I suspected, once we were close to the top of the precipice, I could see that there was a narrow path leading down to a beach where a large wooden ship was now anchored, its black sails still rolled up. There were at least a hundred men and women already hard at work, carrying things down the slope and loading them on the ship.

“If you continue to wriggle,” the man said, as he brought Kai up in front of his face, “I will just toss you down there. It will be much faster and easier for me.”

Kai stopped moving and I heard the man grunt, pleased by his reaction or rather lack thereof.

I couldn’t see behind us but by the sound of it, more people were arriving. As the man started making his way down toward the beach, I noticed more than two scores of children shouting and playing near the ship. They were definitely not captives and the fact that many of them were running around some of the pirates could only mean that they were their children.

I had never imagined that people as disgusting as the slavers could raise children, but here they were, hugging them and carrying them on their backs, throwing water on them and laughing. They seemed happy and for a brief moment, I thought maybe they were like us after all.