‘There’s a first time for everything.’ Priceless thought at the dark elf’s reassurance. The goblin with the oversized ax only winked at her and tested the edge. The dark elf in slave clothing kicked his collar away from himself in disgust. “Ugh, I like acting… I hate acting like… ew, it’s just so beneath me!” His face turned sour and Priceless flinched when it came close to striking her, moving past her face and hitting the side door of the carriage with a dense ‘thud’ nose. She jerked her face back in surprise at the alarming heavy thud of the heavy bronze metal. Her eyes popped open briefly and her mouth opened to let out a cry from her throat that died before it passed her lips.

Her breath went faster and she tugged lightly on her bonds, trying to worm her way a little farther from the pair. “See, this’s why Iya call em worms. They all wiggle just the same.” The goblin said before letting out a cruel little cackle.

Priceless whimpered at the blow to her self respect, and stilled her movement.

“Now now.” The dark elf raised his deep tanned hand, “There’s no need to be rude, after all, we’ve been hired to kidnap her, not torment her. Politeness costs nothing, after all.”

The goblin grumbled, set the ax at his side, crossed his arms, and with an annoyed ‘hmpf’, he crossed his legs as well and turned his large nose up to look toward the light coming into the carriage window.

The dark elf stretched out, revealing firm muscled arms when the rough cheap fabric pulled up past his biceps. He then reached down and patted Priceless’s head when she looked away. “I’m sorry for my comrade, he’s a bit unrefined.”

“Unrefined? I’ll show you unrefined you sonofa…” The goblin was grumbling with mild annoyance but otherwise paying them no mind, and so the dark elf didn’t either.

Priceless didn’t push her head into the right hand that touched her hair with its gentle motion. She simply closed her eyes and remained quiet.

“If you’re thinking I’m going to hurt you, I’m not. Oh don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a favor to you, but I’m a gentleman, a proper gentleman doesn’t beat up small, tied up women. Maybe steals from them, maybe blackmails them, maybe pleasures them behind their husband’s back so that he can blackmail or steal from them. But no.” He turned up his nose with arrogance coming off him like a faint perfume, “He definitely doesn’t just beat them.”

‘But he does hit a girl on the back of her head and kidnap her.’ Priceless clenched her teeth, and as if he could read her mind, he answered.

“Hitting you was distasteful, yes, but necessary. However I meant what I said, ‘the man’ we are taking you to, well if you’re sure that you’re not being stolen away to be in someone’s harem or workshop, then there will be questions for you. Questions you’d best answer. If you do, not only can I be sure you’ll live, you’ll walk away unharmed, and probably better for it.”

Priceless glared at him accusingly with eyes that shone with tears of anger and frustration. She tried to get the words out, her mouth opened and closed, while through her mind the kinds of things they might ask, ran through her head.

‘No, they want to ask about my mistress... No… this is a worst case possibility… how can I be this unlucky, how… how… how?!’ Terror thudded through her veins like debris through Pas’en’s streets at the height of the rainy season.

When she gave up on words, all she could do was lay there and cry, sobbing into the floor of the carriage and shaking in fear.

She saw the goblin and the dark elf with her, glance at one another and shrug, ignoring her for the rest of the way there.

She felt the carriage slow to a stop, the light was blocked by a large building, and the carriage door opened against a wall only part of the way, making a crude ‘scrape’ noise as the wood of the carriage door hit the red brick.

“Go get Borku, you know I don’t do the heavy lifting around here.” The dark elf muttered with annoyance when he jumped lightly down to the ground from within the carriage.

“I’ll show you some heavy lifting you lazy…” The ax bearing goblin muttered under his breath, but as near as Priceless could tell, he obeyed.

The dark elf touched her ankle, and she shot him a look instantly, listening when he spoke. “Borku likes to smash things, unless you want him to smash you, don’t resist, he’s going to carry you inside, unless you’d prefer to be dragged through the muck. Nod if you’ll cooperate.”

There was a tearful, jerking nod, and Priceless was still. She heard a faint splashing, and the smell of shit hit her nose a moment later. She gagged.

“You’ll get used to it.” The dark elf said with a scrunched up expression that told her he was only being partially truthful at best.

A moment later the large meaty hand of an orc reached in and dragged her out. She managed to keep from whimpering when her breasts scraped along the floor of the carriage, but when she was ass up over the large thug’s shoulders, she gasped as he knocked the wind from her.

‘The street… it’s the street… isn’t it? Or, a side street… lower district, think Priceless, think!’ She swallowed and let her eyes dart around without moving her head. ‘Scream. All you have to do is scream, someone might hear, they might drop you and run! ‘

She felt eyes on her. ‘Or…’ She saw the orichalcum knife the dark elf had, it was a brutal looking corkscrew shape that spiralled up toward a slightly extended tip. ‘If he stabs you with that… no…NO!’ She screamed inside her head, her eyes honed in on the knife like it was a dragon’s maw, terror of his blade despite his politeness, ripped through her, and the lips she’d begun to dare to open, closed. The breath she’d taken hoping to expel a cry for help, became a quiet exhale of utter despair. Her head drooped down, her hair dangling low, she just looked at the splashing dark murky puddles they tramped through.

As their feet splashed through the muck, and her tears of fear ran down her head from upside down and dripped from her brown hair, the heavy feet of her captors behind her, stamped down through those as well, and somehow, that made it all even worse.

Nua approached the now openly weeping Vargas, whose greatest dread had been wiped away, and his deepest hope offered out. “I have asked much of you all,” she said as she drew close, “but I offer much as well. The money you earn is yours, I ‘will’ require that you put at least some of it into the local bank. At least one copper in ten. However, all the rest is yours to spend. We’ll tend to that later.”

They looked up at her with uncertain confusion etched on their faces as they tried to understand the point of her edict, but there was no confusion on Vargas’s face.

He stared up at her as she drew closer, craning his neck from where he now sat again. The light of the sun streamed past and through the golden strands of her blonde hair and around the rest of her body. ‘A black clad angel of the stars…’ He thought as her right hand came out to him. He cupped her wrist and gave his submission, pressing his lips to the giving palm. ‘My wife… my wife… my K’josa…’.

The warm flesh of his mistress’s right palm was hard and calloused, far from the soft hands of the women he’d known best, it was hard for him to believe it belonged to a woman so shapely and lovely, and yet he felt no attraction to her at all. Only reverence. Only admiration. The warmth of the sun struck his body and passing through her as it did, passing around the body of this black clad angel as it did, it was as if the warmth came from her.

When he had kissed her palm and let her hand go, he raised his head with shimmering pools of joy still lingering there, he said through the lump in his throat, “Mistress. I am your man… forever.”

Nua towered over him in his eyes, despite her slight build. “You are more than a man, Sergeant Vargas. You are a champion of your wife, and a champion among my Breakers.” Her blue eyes became golden as the sun at her back as she summoned the power of a priestess’s passion, and within her mind, she addressed her death loving partner.

‘Yersin. I want you to use some of your mana, boost Vargas’s strength, speed, and if you can, give him an aura of fear. I want him to have every edge available when confronting their cavalry.’ Nua gave the order, and felt the gem pulse in her palm.

‘I would be happy to. He’ll have the better part of a day with considerable boosts to himself in every way. It’ll make others piss themselves to think of telling him ‘no’.’ Yersin answered, and Nua suppressed her amused laugh.

‘You do that.’ Nua replied with a smile buried in her tone.

To Sergeant Vargas, her lilting singer’s voice carried on, “Today you are given much, and now I have a task for you, an urgent one. You will escort and protect Kaiji on a brief assignment. Harm to my slave is the same as harm to me. So for this task… I bless you.” She uttered, the words with a voice that rang like crystal. The left hand pulsed, throbbing from the gem at the center with a black radiance that expanded and shrank like a black, beating heart.

“You are an extension of my will, Sergeant Vargas. Will you fail me?” Nua asked, drawing her hand away, she watched the way his body shifted as he felt the rushing brutal power of death given mana flow through his veins.

“I would rather die.” He brought his hands together, fingers interlocking as if in prayer and kept his eyes on the golden goddess he saw in the form of his mistress. “Your will. My hands.”

“When Kaiji returns, you will use them. Make sure you use them well.” Nua replied, and looked toward Freyjin.

At her left and right, the two white haired twins clung to her arms, staring around with wide, fearful blue eyes. They didn’t cry when Nua’s eyes found their elven guardian, but they didn’t look away either. They simply clung a little tighter to her, and inched themselves a little closer. They bit their lower lips at the same moment, and watched their elven mistress with dread.

“Freyjin. I have a task for you as well.” Nua pronounced, and the two girls went to clinging as tight as they could.

Priceless lay limp over his shoulder until the big muscle bound orc simply flopped her down with a graceless thud that splayed her legs out along the dirt floor. The room was dank, it stank, and only the faint glow of a few half burned candles set on a half rotted wooden bookshelf, cast out light to show her the rest of the space. Above the candles, there was a long rectangular slit in the wall, leading to another room into which she could not see. ‘I’d have splinters all over my ass now if it weren’t for this expensive clothing…’ Priceless thought to herself frantically looking around her.

Borku loomed over her with crossed arms and stared down hard, fairly daring her to move, or run, or fight.

Priceless’s heart pounded in her chest and everything inside herself said ‘Run away! Run!’ But at that same moment, she was paralyzed without a spell beyond her own innate fear. Her lungs defied her very desire to breathe.

When he was satisfied that she wasn’t going to run, and his shoulders drooped with disappointment, the dark elf approached her from outside the room.

He spoke politely, but the corkscrew shaped greenish orichalcum knife came out. He put the tip to her throat, tapped her bronze collar with the tip making a faint ‘ting’ noise before he traced the tip so that it scraped her vulnerable flesh, following the path toward her chin. She felt the faint trickle of blood and the very small tearing of her skin, her head came up to look at him so that he would not cut her worse. Her lower lip trembled, but she listened without falling to wailing. “Good, you didn’t run, now listen to me, in a little while a man will enter, and when he does, he will want something from you, I don’t know what, but it is best for you to give it to him. Don’t move from where you are, do you understand?”

He took the knife away, and she managed to whisper out, “I’ll be a good slave, sir.”

A deep swallow followed, and the knife came away. He put it into his odd cylindrical black sheath, and straightened up. “Good, now I’m going to get out of this disgusting clothing… it’s so… ‘beneath’ someone like me.” He made a scrunched up face and left the room, she heard a lock turn on the other side of the door when he was gone, and Priceless waited in silence. Somewhere in the shadowy room, a faint dripping sound from the low stone ceiling echoed out into the larger room. It dropped into a puddle somewhere in shadows just out of view, marking the moments of passing terror.

Priceless did not move from the seat, not even when her body’s sense of paralyzing fear allowed it, her shaking hand rose to touch the place the dark elf’s unusual blade marked her, feeling the tiny sting, she drew her hand back. The faint wetness was clear, ‘He cut me… he cut me he cut me he cut me…’ Priceless thought and brought the fingers of that now wet right hand into view. The faint red smear the act put there, was illuminated by the dim, dancing candle light. The expensive clothing her owner gave to her, rendered useless to protect her body from the blow that let them take her, or the cut to her bare flesh.

The voice of Priceless came out like the squeak of a mouse while she stared at the termite riddled, damp, rotted brown wooden door. “Mistress Nua… Kaiji… help me… please… don’t let them cut me again… I’ll be good… please… don’t leave me… please don’t leave me here… I want to go home… please… come get me… I want to go home...”

She was still saying that when she heard the lock turn. Hope leaped from her heart all the way into her throat and with it, came a profound sense of sudden awe as bright as the glowing sun from which she was presently hidden.