“What gives you the right, boy!?” Fredric screamed and thrashed, unable to do anything against the threads of golden light holding him up in a kneeling position. “You have no right to act as a judge, jury, and executioner! I am a noble of the Holy Kingdom of Light!”

Allen tossed his new dagger in the air and caught it again. “Okay, first of all,” he began in a disinterested tone, “the Holy Kingdom doesn’t even have juries. Secondly, this isn’t the Holy Kingdom, it’s the East Sylvan Federation. Slavery and human trafficking is punishable by death, so I don’t think a fair an unbiased court would provide a different outcome for you.”

The nobleman was really beating around the bush, but for someone who was about to die, that was somewhat understandable. Still, Allen and Iana couldn’t unequivocally agree that Fredric was any more guilty than Arturo. It was one of the two, but not necessarily both. Things weren’t looking good for Fredric though.

“I am a NOBLE!”

“But are you innocent?” Allen retorted. “Why are your records forged?”

“A simple mistake,” Fredric replied, his attempt at a smile failing utterly with how much he was shaking. “You have no proof.”

“You imbecile, there has to be over two-hundred slaves behind them,” Arturo said through clenched teeth. He was right too, Meredith and the others were all very busy freeing and healing the many slaves as they spoke. “Admit to your crimes and maybe they will make your death painless.”

The back and forth continued for another minute, but nothing of substance was revealed. Iana ended up getting frustrated and freezing Fredric’s throat solid. She turned to the noble woman and offered a tired smile before unfreezing her throat in exchange.

“What do you have to say about all this, Lady…”

“Helen,” the woman coughed. Her makeup-smeared eyes landed on Iana with unbridled terror as she futility shuffled against her restraints.

“Right, Lady Helen,” Iana began. “Please shed some insight on this matter. I’d very much like to go home and soak in a bath right now. I’m sure you feel the same.”

Helen tried to turn to face the two nobleman on the ground next to her but being magically hog-tied made that exceedingly difficult. Instead, she settled for shouting over her shoulder. “I had nothing to do with this! It was all part of Fredric’s and Maurice’s plan to frame Arturo, but I didn’t know they would go this far!”

“WHAT?! Frame me? to what end? We’re engaged Helen, what the hell are you talking about!?”

“Maurice wanted your inheritance and your title, you utter fool. It would have been in better hands anyway, you just don’t have the ambition necessary to rise through the ranks of the mercantile faction, or to keep me satisfied for that matter, unlike Maurice. He and Fredric were going to take it over, but you, dearest, needed to be removed.” The noblewoman looked slightly hysterical when she turned back to Iana. “You don’t care about any if this, right? I have no involvement with those slaves. It was all his idea!” She pointed at Fredric who was red in the face and thrashing so much he might explode. Arturo was just lying in the dirt motionless with his mouth hanging open.

“Well, that’s morally repugnant, I must say,” Iana said, clearing her throat, “but you are right, I don’t at all care about your, ah… family matters.”

“You… WHORE!” Arturo suddenly shouted. His deafening voice caused Helen to shake. “My own cousin! You’ve been in bed with my own cousin, plotting treason! Fuck, Helen! FUCK!”

Allen momentarily stored his mask just so he could pinch the bridge of his nose and groan. He gave Iana a dead-eyed look while Arturo verbally decimated his, presumably, ex-fiancé. Iana just rolled her eyes and sent a wave of cold air over the screaming noble, silencing him.

“Should I assume you’re innocent?” she asked him.

Arturo let his head fall back. He was covered in sweat and still breathing hard, but he seemed sort of serene, in a way. It was completely at odds with Fredric, who still hadn’t run out of steam yet. Arturo waited for a moment on the ground, his torn clothes and designer haircut completely ruined, then he nodded. “This is the worst day of my life,” he muttered to himself.

Allen couldn’t help himself. “The worst day of your life, so far,” he replied, leaning in with a grin.

“W-what are you going to do to me? I have nothing to do with the slaves.” Helen asked. She looked over at Iana like a frightened child caught playing with something she wasn’t supposed to have.

“Phantom, has she been telling the truth?” Allen whispered.

The spider replied quickly with the general feeling of affirmation, mixed with amusement. That was all Allen needed to hear. As a Dawn aspect user, Phantom’s empathic abilities were even better at detecting lies than Iana’s soul sense. Iana pursed her lips and seemed to think about what to do with the noblewoman. In the end she just shrugged.

“Send thoughts and prayers, I guess,” Allen replied for her. Then he glanced down at the struggling Fredric in the same way someone looks at a pile of dogshit they’ve just stepped in. “As for you, the court of me, myself, and I finds you guilty of organized international slave trafficking. If this were Krëztland, the penalty would be death by giant octopus strangulation, I’m not even kidding, but you’ll just have to settle for a knife through the heart. Any last words or requests?”

Iana promptly unfroze Fredric’s throat, freeing the nobleman to immediate start shouting obscenities. “Go FUCK YOURSELF, boy! This aggression shall not stand. You commoner trash will face the wrath of the Holy King! There won’t be a dirty shit-filled hole left anywhere for you to hide. Not even a thousand peasant dirt-farmer brats will change—gah-AAAGH!”

“Oops, that’s not your heart. Slip of the wrist,” Allen mumbled, pulling his knife out of Fredric’s neck. The noble gurgled and sputtered as Allen poured the contents of one of the convoy’s sting potions into the open wound. Black veins expanded from cut and quickly took over Fredric’s whole body, causing him to seize in place. “Sting potions are supposed to be used right after death to prevent respawns, but this also works I guess.” Not wasting any time, Allen put all his weight and skills behind another downward stab with the fancy new knife. Weakened and defenseless as the Scholar was, the blow completely pulped his heart and the surrounding organs, blowing gore outwards in every direction and killing him instantly.

“May you find peace and atonement, Fredric.” Allen added the name to his mental list as he stood up and nodded to Iana. His own arm healed by itself in a few seconds. “Well, that about does ‘er. I’ll help the others clean up, which leaves the rest of them to you.” Once all the hostiles were dealt with, Allen would finally get his experience, which he was a little excited for. It might even be enough to get to level two-hundred.

“Okay, it shouldn’t take long,” Iana said. She got Meredith’s attention while Allen walked back to the others with Nora. “Unbind this one, would you please,” she said, pointing down at Arturo.

Nora piped up after a few moments of silence, before Allen found his way back to the four others from his group. “That’s not what I had expected at all,” she said. She sounded confused, morose, and maybe even a little scared all at the same time.

“Typical noble stuff,” Allen replied. He stopped to fix his apprentice with a neutral, instructive look. “That wasn’t actually that bad. Nobles can be foolish, arrogant, selfish, and abusive, but its rare to find one who’s truly evil. At their core, they’re all just spoiled, misbehaved children with too much money. Compared to what you’ll have to deal with eventually, this whole thing will seem like a relaxing field trip.”

The two stared at each other for a second or two before Nora caught on to the unspoken question. “I s-still want you to mentor me. I’m going to be a Spade.”

She said those words with enough conviction to make Allen smile. “Of course,” he said, and rejoined with his group.

It took about twenty more minutes to free all the slaves from the boxes and then remove all their thorns. By the time Meredith was done, they had exactly two-hundred and twelve slaves, about eighty percent of which were children while the rest were mostly women.

The mercenaries actually looked rather upset by the scene, but hundreds of bound and gagged children to be sold off to brothels for the elite was not something the normal mercenary dealt with. For the Spades however, it was just another Tuesday.

Ty and Camila were sitting on an empty crate watching the scene unfold with glazed over expressions, although in Camila’s case it was just because she was drunk. Christopher and Amelia were helping Meredith, Jack, and the mercenaries identify the freed slaves with the help of a few of them who had been woken up. Allen and Nora helped out as well, and the whole ordeal was done with relatively quickly, but there were a few problems.

“There are more people from that town in Nash among them,” Jack said, gesturing to the rows of unconscious people laid out on Meredith’s barriers, “but there’s no sign of the missing women and children from Silt Valley.”

“They’ve already been delivered to Hillford as a replacement to the ones we rescued last week,” Allen said. “There also not nearly enough people here to account for a whole village. We aren’t done until we’ve tracked down every slave to where they’ve been sold. Iana has the ledger, which should be useful even though it’s been screwed with. If you can track down where these crates have been sold, then it will all be easier.”

Jack hummed in agreement. “Alright, I’ll get the ledger from her,” he said, then nodded at an empty crate nearby. “These all seemed prepackaged, which is pretty fucked up. They definitely have a supplier somewhere. I’m assuming you didn’t get it out of them?”

Allen chuckled a little before giving Jack the full rundown of what had happened during their interrogation. He laughed it off as well, but the both of them were still frustrated by the lack of information they had gotten. There was another lead though: the governor of Hillford.

Then Iana joined up with everyone just a few minutes later. She was accompanied by Shoam and Clara who had just finished burning bodies and looking around for anything interesting. A redressed Arturo was also with her, along with about six of the employees who were loyal to him. Lastly, there was Helen, but she was unconscious and draped over Arturo’s shoulder like a sack of laundry.

“Alright, we’re done here,” Jack announced. “There are still more slaves in Hillford and probably elsewhere, I’ll be taking Jerr’s group with me there. Shoam and Clara should investigate this company’s supplier and track down more slaves. Iana, you can take all of them back to the temple,” he said and gestured out at the freed slaves. Then he looked over at the mercenaries. “We’re still not sure how far this goes, but you have your bounty. What’s your plan now?”

The mercenary leader suddenly stood straighter, for a moment it looked like he would strike a salute. “We would be honored to continue working with you, Scarecrow. We still gotta return to the capital to give a report, and I’m assumin’ your trail will lead us there anyway.”

“Understandable,” Jack replied, his masked face completely impassive. Then he clapped his hands and spun around, signaling the end to the meeting.

Iana quickly created a small army of giant frost owls, each of which went on to pick up one of the freed slaves before flying off into the air. “I’ll see you later sweetheart,” she said as her elemental eagle swept her up as well.

Jack shook his head and muttered something into his mask as a few Wyverns climbed out of his shadow. Everyone climbed on, except for Clara who preferred to just fly herself. That left only Arturo and a few others on the ground.

“Well, I wish you luck, you’ll need it,” Jack said, giving the noble a wave. “And don’t start a war, we’ll find you… also fix up the road if you can, none of us have earth magic.”

Everyone simultaneously looked over at the cratered and smoldering intercity highway. It was made from densely packed stone so only a moderately leveled geomancer could repair it. There were also huge swaths of scorched and upturned grassland on either side of the road.

Arturo sighed. “Luckily Ned can deal with that,” he said, elbowing the hollow-eyed Mage standing next to him. Then his eyes wandered over to Allen and he seemed to linger on a question for a moment. “Who are you anyway?” he asked, almost as if he hadn’t really expected an answer.

“I heard you were using tons of blood bulbs. You know those take sacrifices to make, right?” Allen asked, smirking as he dodged the question.

Arturo actually rolled his eyes. “Ah, those are made from Kobolds, nasty creatures. Its all very clean and organic, I assure you.”

“Okay.” Allen continued to smirk even though Arturo couldn’t see his face. Then he suddenly threw something at the nobleman, a regular old earthworm.

The reaction as the worm landed on Arturo’s shoulder was an immediate scream and a terrorized jump. He vaporized the worm with lightning, but that still didn’t calm him down.

“Yeah, definitely traumatized, you should get that looked at,” Allen said as the Wyverns reared up for takeoff. “Goodbye Arturo. The Spades send our regards.” Then they were in the air, leaving behind the wide-eyed noble and his demolished convoy.