“Again!” Sergeant Vargas shouted as Freyjin tried slamming her sword against him only for him to get out of the way, and hit her in the gut, sending her to her knees in front of him… and then to take a knee to the forehead and put her on her back again.

“I remember the fight with the mistress before! You’re strong willed… Freyjin. But that is not enough!” He kicked her when she didn’t get back up fast enough, and she forced herself to rise again as the trio watched from the other side of the room.

She was breathing hard, breathing violently, her hair dangled loose behind her and dripped with sweat.

“You did the best out of all of us…” She muttered, her breast heaving as she held the sword in both hands in front of her. “I don’t… I don’t… I can’t die out there, and I can’t let me… any of my children… die in collars…” Freyjin growled like a feral beast as Vargas stepped away from her.

“I did better than anyone… and remember…” He leveled his sword at her, “That wasn’t enough to save my wife, or my city, when Pas’en broke through the gate.”

Freyjin howled with almost demonic rage and ran at him with her sword up by her face, she thrust out, the heavy wood would shatter jaws or teeth… but with a healer nearby… ‘It is only pain…’

She thought, until the pain hit her jaw, her wrist, her kidneys, and her head when he hit each one in succession and dropped her. “We have to get stronger, you… me… all of us. We saw something out there… you watched her with Bracer, didn’t you? You saw?”

She got up, clutching her side, her vision was blurry and her body spasmed, but she was rising, and as she rose, she nodded.

“I… did. I saw more than you know… felt it… when she beat me to the sand, and when… she helped me to rise… and before… and during the fight…” Freyjin’s sword fell from her fingers, her knees shook, her legs were bent.

“What did you see, Freyjin? What did you see?!” Vargas shouted at her, a vague memory was stirring again… a martial art… ‘What was it called… what did I use…?’

“The will… will to power... a goddess of will!” She staggered forward, raising a desperate fist one more time, while three pairs of eyes were locked on a lesson they would not forget.

She made it to him… and felt him step into her weakened, worn out punch, take her face, and slam her head down on the mat.

“Healer!” Vargas called out over his shoulder, and then gestured with his sword to where she lay and looked to the trio of young girls. “Go ahead, hold her, she deserves to wake up being held.”

Lenah, Straen, and Veema approached the unconscious form of Freyjin gingerly at first, but quickly found their stride, and working together, they drew her body up over their laps while the healer used his magic and undid the copious damage Sergeant Vargas had done.

The palace of the Prince was like any other except that the waiting room was rather larger. It was also rather full. They were at the back of a very long line. Neither complained. ‘To be expected when it comes to slaves, they’ll see the others first. I wonder if he’ll be surprised that I’m the one that has come to see him? Then again,” Sado thought, ‘with Diana here, who would notice anyone else?’ The woman’s entire body shouted, ‘Behold my radiance’.

He looked her up and down out of the corner of his eye, Kaiji’s most dangerous weapon had brought down dozens over the years, just that he personally ordered or knew about through Kaiji’s own reports. ‘Even when we slept together years ago, there was a distance in her there, but it didn’t feel like her warning was anything less than sincere. And she hasn’t called me ‘Prince of Chains’ since…’

She flashed a ruby smile at him as she stood up, “Come along, Prince of Dreams, don’t lose focus. I know I’m nice to look at, but keep your mind on the task at hand. If you want to get Prince Yanmelu to sell our people to our mistress, you must be convincing. If you want to convince him to sell off his right to the city’s farmlands, you must be very convincing.”

She moved a few chairs up as several others from the front row left the room.

There was no noise for their departure but the sound of the heavy door letting out a ‘click’.

“I know, and I know waiting is to be expected, but… that doesn’t make it less tedious.” Sado remarked and folded his arms across his chest when they claimed a seat closer to the door.

“Impatience, Sado, that was always your downfall. If you’d just waited and let Kaiji work? Maybe I could have gone to Pas’en and seduced Rasgen to persuade him to back you or at least stay neutral. Maybe she could have given me to one of the great Princes as a price for neutrality…” Diana huffed and crossed her arms.

“You say that so…” Sado sought a word but found none and so he said instead, “you would have really been willing to leave Kaiji so easily?”

Diana shrugged and turned a pitying eye toward him, “Sado, if it had been a choice between sending Kaiji away and saving Komestra, what would you have done…?”

Sado slowly closed his mouth, but clenching his fists he said unhappily, “I… I don’t know. She’s like an aunt to me. I don’t know if I could have… what’s the point of saving the city if you’re giving away its people to do it… maybe it can’t be helped with the Tlalmok but… that’s different.”

“No, Prince of Dreams… it really isn’t.” Diana put a hand on his thigh and lowering her head, she shook it pityingly. “When Kaiji was my mistress, I knew she cared about me very much, the fact that she spared me, had me taught, and let me grow up as I did, I couldn’t doubt that. But if it came down to me or the city? She’d have chosen the city. If it came down to herself or the city? She’d have put herself where she is now, if that was what it had taken. Prince of Dreams… your duties and ideals are not the same thing.”

“It’s the job of the Prince to make them that way.” Sado argued with a decisive and bold look to his companion. “I just failed, that’s all.”

“Just…” She sighed, “Simple word. But you know what it means, if you’d been patient, you might not have ‘just’. Now though? Because you rushed? A lot of bastards from different cities are growing in Komestran bellies, and here we are…” She looked around the room slowly, pointedly, “trying to buy our people back with another’s coin. Be patient, Prince of Dreams. Then maybe you won’t fail next time.”

Another day, before their journey, he might have expected a harsher tone, even cruel, but as she spoke to him in that moment, he reflected that she, if anything, seemed attentive, patient, understanding, and even hopeful.

“Perhaps you’re right.” Sado acknowledged sullenly. He recalled working in the kitchens of the Duchessa, and when he’d asked if they would have cared ‘how’ he won, as long as he won… It would haunt him for a long time, how some of the Komestran women had quietly shown him their swelling bellies and left that alone as a mute answer to what they considered a foolish question.

The line went down, and finally near the end of the day, they were at the front.

Lodira didn’t move from where she had fallen to her knees, and it wasn’t the pain of striking the stone that kept her there. Her heart raged against herself for the first selfish thought that passed through her head with Albaer’s passing. ‘He was distracted because he was worried about you, he was distracted because he was probably praying to the stars that your lover, or that virtual stranger would come to your aid. He dies because of you, and your first thought is that you’re glad he was able to help you first? Scum. Disgusting scumbag, vile worthless trash, you don’t deserve the help. You never deserved to be a noble, no more than Anton did. You’ve seen a truly noble act…’ She thought of Sobella, laying naked beneath the eyes of the death worshipper as the false hand laid curse after curse on her beautiful demon-elf body. ‘Could you do that? Could you go to the Tlalmok for anyone?’ Her lip trembled with the understanding that she could not.

‘When did you ever do anything that wasn’t for yourself? You hate your father, well fine, you’re just like him. That’s what he’d have thought.’ She cursed herself and ran through her memories of the servant, from his stern corrections in her posture as a young girl, to his final embrace and backward hopeful smile, the last one he’d given to her.

Left alone even by Anton for a time, she wallowed in her own self flagellation and came to an argument. ‘Let fate decide whether the help comes or doesn’t. I don’t deserve it, but Albaer didn’t deserve to die, and neither does Sobella. I’m just like Anton after all, so maybe at least I’m getting what I deserve. Or maybe not. I’ll just ask Anton for this, and be done with it.’

With her nerve resolved, she rose to her feet and made her way to the office of her lord, late as it was, Anton was sure to be awake and likely working. She hesitated just before knocking… ‘I need an excuse, I’m not his daughter anymore, I can’t visit, even to make a request.’ She told herself and returned to the kitchen. She prepared a single cup of tea with practiced ease, indifferent to how long it would take as she was sure he’d still be there.

The steam and fragrance of it were almost heavenly to feel in the cool night air of the musty manor. The faint clink of glass upon glass was the only sound in the silent kitchen. She put the candle on the tray to light the way and walked to Anton’s office. Her steps were slow and quiet, and yet despite that the faint tap of her sandals still followed. Till at last she reached the door, she rapped on it three times and uttered, “Tea, master.”

“Enter.” She heard his crude, gruff voice through the wood.

‘One of the few loves we share… hot tea at night.’ Lodira reflected and opened the door, closed it behind her, and set the dark wooden tray on the desk. She laid the cup before his left hand, then taking two lumps of sugar between her fingers, she dropped them one after another into the liquid. She then poured the cream, and reached for a spoon to stir.

She looked down at the tray, ‘No…’ She cursed the forgotten utensil while he waited expectantly for her to stir for him, his eyes as warm as unburnt coal in winter, Lodira adapted.

She folded her fingers in except for her pinky, thrust it into the tea, and looking straight at him, stirred the tea for him, doing her unsuccessful best to hide the burning pain.

“Y-Your tea, master.” She uttered, and then stepped back to curtsey.

“What do you want?” He asked after taking a sip.

Lodira’s finger was still in pain, and she clenched it tightly into her palm, disguising her action by her curtsey.

“I… I want three things. They will cost you nothing, master.” She added hastily, and that was enough to at least get him to listen.

She felt his eye on the hand with the burned finger, and waited for the silent pause to end before he nodded.

“Fine. Ask.” He grumbled and continued to sip the tea.

“I want to visit Albaer’s grave before I am sold. I want to say goodbye to him. I want… I want to choose the name I’m sold under, if I’m not going to have any choices anymore, let me pick that at least. Lastly… I don’t want to wait.” Lodira dropped the curtsey and stepped back several paces, and sank to her knees.

“Wait for what?” Anton asked with a raised eyebrow.

“To be sold, Albaer was the only nice thing in this house, he’s gone, so I want to be too. The Lur’gin company has a permanent office here, just like in Pas’en. You don’t have to wait for the trade caravan, and you know it… my lord.” Lodira uttered her last request, and bit her tongue to keep back words that could only sabotage her desires.

“I can get more for you if I wait.” He said decisively, and Lodira steeled herself.

“No, you can’t. I will make sure of it. I will do everything I can to ruin that sale if you make me wait. I’ll knock out my teeth, mark up my face, shave my beautiful hair, I will show the worst possible manners, and nobody will believe I came from a noble house. I’ll make you look terrible, and I’ll keep myself disgusting and filthy and stinking. What’s more, I’ll make sure everybody knows you made me, anonymous sale or not, your name will be on my disgusting lips before everything I say or do with them. In every town, village, and city. I’ll show you what worthless really means.” Lodira spat the words with savage hatred, and felt his anger rising in the tension she saw in his muscles. In the center of his forehead a red vein pulsed with bloody anger as she threatened his reputation, his name, and his pocket all at once.

Lodira did not give him time to stop the seething, she lowered herself into a prostrate position, and then said in the throaty voice that Rasgen and Sobella had loved in intimate hours alone by light of candle, moon, and bright affectionate eyes, she went on. “But if you do this, get me out of here tomorrow… get me a private sale to their local office… I will shine like the stars that hate me. I will show like a goddess, I will make them beg you to take more than they have ever offered before. So much so that they will even waive the cost of keeping me till the caravan arrives. Remember… Count Valoisin… before abandoning me, I enthralled the Prince’s own heart… what do you think I can do to a mere counting house appraiser?”

Lodira didn’t need to look up to know that his rage was abating as opportunity poked at him.

She chose to sweeten the deal. “You intend me to be anonymous, but we both know the question comes up… do this for me, and when it does, I will name the Prince through a concubine as my father, your name will never come up. Lodira will be truly dead.”

Nua checked her travel path regularly, she was well and fully off the road now, but she was not traveling pointlessly. The smell of wet grass, crushed under horse hooves, reached her nose and she stopped herself a mile away from the beastman village. She dismounted and bound her horse into place with a simple stake slammed into the ground.

[Scent of Water] [Endurance of Unlife]. She activated her techniques, and, crouching down for a sprint, she smiled at the distant silhouette and took off at a dead run. This would be her fourth village on her fourteenth day of travel since going off path, she was well afield of the original path of return.

The village was typical of Tlalmok construction, stone blocks to make homes permanent, no walls for the small population, almost no usage of wood, but ample use of brick and earth. Like their cities and towns, it was laid out in an orderly grid pattern with very clean paths in between. Nua sniffed the air, her ears twitched, the wind was in her favor.

She walked with care, one foot in front of the other, her knife out, a day of watching had told her this one held no nocturnal beastmen, and in this late hour, nothing would trouble her experiment.

She went to the smallest home. It had a tiny window, too small for a beastman, but just fine for an acrobatic elf. She reached up and placed her hands on the cool stone cut deep within the block, and pulled herself up, she then drew herself into the room.

Her eyes swept the space, there she found just what she wanted. ‘Bearman. My second favorite.’ She thought and approached. It lay on the rounded beds those beastmen seemed to favor, no real mattress, just a mat that it curled up on. She flipped her knife and rose up so that she towered over the sleeping form. For a moment she looked down at him, he was a living being. He drew breath in and out, dreams were passing through his mind, his lips curled as he muttered something unintelligible.

Nua brought the knife down into his brain, straight through the top, and twisted. The adamantite blade tore through the skull with ease, the twisting scrambled the brain, then he was nothing more than dead meat.

She pulled out the blade, wiped it on his fur, then placed her false hand over his head. ‘Yersin, raise him.’ Nua ordered, and the dark gem glowed as her partner obeyed her order. The dead eyes remained dead, but the body began to move, rising until it was the undead bearman’s turn to tower over her.

Nua laid her hand upon the slowly cooling fur that was already going from bright brown, to a snowlike gray. She looked up at the monster that she had made. “When I open the door, leave this place! Do you know the ranch with the forest beyond it to the south?”

The undead bearman nodded and groaned.

“Good. Go there, kill everyone you encounter within it that lives, but do not leave. Only roam within its depths, avoid all travel paths between here and there.” Nua ordered, and went to the door of the home.

She opened it from the inside, and the undead began to shamble out.

“Run.” She ordered, and it began to run.

Nua exited the window the way she’d entered, and ran back to her horse.

She spurred it to a gallop taking a long, long route around the village and went over her plans.

‘The Tlalmok prohibitions on travel mean little true communication, the villages won’t likely put it together, each one will just have one curiosity about a missing member. A mystery they won’t solve. A few more of these, and I’ll be close to a ranch and have some ‘help’ that should disguise my actions.’ Nua reviewed her plans, and repeated the process, taking inroads through the open countryside, she would quietly kill, reanimate, and give her order on where the undead was to go.

For days she repeated the process, with only one thing troubling her. Until the night of her twenty first day of her return trip.

The stars shone overhead as they always did, keeping their silent vigil when the moon faded away.

Smoke was rising beyond the hill in front of her, her ears twitched toward the faint crackle.

She dismounted from her horse, secured it with the stake, and approached over the hill on her belly.

The grass rustled underneath her and her keen eyes peered out over the distance. There she saw a curious and unexpected sight. ‘A traveler… a merchant…’ She thought, and recalling Tlizen, she licked her lips hungrily. He was asleep by the fire, a rhinoman, more massive in body than a bearman. ‘Yersin, I need you to dominate a mind for me.’

‘Fine, the one you’re looking at, I assume?’ He asked in turn.

‘Yes, that’s the one. We just found our scapegoat.’ Nua’s smile spread so far over her face she wondered if she might rival that of her teacher. ‘Actually, I wonder how Solution is doing… she hasn’t messaged me, so everything must be fine. Well, I’ll find out soon enough. I may be a little late coming back, but that can’t be helped. Teacher won’t mind.’

Nua crept along the road, remaining low, moving almost crablike as she stalked the rhinoman. ‘So certain of their own invincibility that he has no guards, sleeps in the open, nothing. Their arrogance and pride may be my best weapons against them.’ Nua kept the chuckle to herself and came on, creeping low, her knife in her teeth as a precaution. She thanked the lord of death who she worshipped, that rhinomen had very thick hides.

Her false hand went to the back of his head while he murmured in his sleep. [Dominate]. She uttered, and Yersin poured stored up mana into the sleeping, defenseless mind of the merchant. The sleeping body was instantly awake, limbs briefly flailed, and then fell back with a heavy thud into the dirt. A dust cloud scattered into the darkness, and white eyes stared blankly into Nua’s blue.

“Stay there.” She ordered, and the rhinoman did not move while she went to the high cart he’d been pulling. She smacked open the crate and looked within, her sharp eyes unhindered, she looked in on the contents and took out a small black ball.

“Hmpf, dye balls, lots of them.” She looked from the black one in her hand to the bright cloth of red the merchant wore draped over his mighty torso, and the hanging cloth behind him that was secured to a belt. Bright blue, it was the sort of style that might have become popular in Pas’en if people saw it.

“Well, this will do nicely, congratulations,” she said to the dominated rhinoman merchant, “you’re my new necromancer, or so they’ll assume when all this is over.’ Nua laughed as she hopped down from the cart, the rhinoman expressed no opinion…

But the dominated never did.