“All right, get moving,” a man yelled, waking Linea in the process.

She raised her head and squinted at her surroundings. She was still in her cage, but in front of it stood a carriage with a similar cage mounted on it. At least a dozen Moon Elves were cooped up in it and looked at her with various expressions. Most prevalent was disbelief.

The soldier who had yelled at her to move, opened the cage. Linea got up and stepped outside the cage. The soldier motioned her to enter the carriage, which she did without resistance. As she looked out of the carriage, she noticed the dried blood in front of the cages.

She forced herself to think about something else and examined her new companions. Five of them were male and had slave collars like her. Interestingly, only two of the eight females had one. On closer look, Linea realized that she had met these tall and lanky women before.

“Tharolil? Tenevil?” Linea asked surprised. The two were in their mid-twenties if Linea remembered correctly. They were twin sisters, who became rulers of their Counties of Erunil and Turanil after most of their family died in the last Torra-surge. As members of the House Nethanil they were technically under the jurisdiction of Duke Turandir, but they had always enjoyed more autonomy than other houses, which lessened his control over them

“Your Highness,” Tenevil answered and nodded. She was easy to identify by a scar above her left eye. Linea still remembered when they had visited the capital a ten years ago and Tenevil had bragged about, how she had fought a Torra to death resulting in the scar. Later, Tharolil had ratted her sister out and explained that Tenevil had run against wardrobe and then hid herself because she had been too embarrassed. The search for her had lasted four days.

“What are you doing here?” Linea asked and looked back and forth between them.

“We were about to ask you the same,” Tenevil said. “And why Princess Senia was being pulled away.”

“I don’t know where they brought her… but I don’t imagine for drinking tea,” Linea replied.

“Most likely,” Tharolil said. “Excuse my sister’s rudeness. We had rough days.”

“I can imagine,” Linea said and her shoulders slumped. “I guess you had nothing to do with Turandir’s betrayal?”

“Of course not!” Tenevil said and furrowed her brows.

“He tried to convince us to join his plot by promising us many things,” Tharolil explained. “But we declined, naturally. Instead we tried to warn the queen. But he expected that and caught our courier. He used this to accuse us of treason. Put us in his dungeon for days. Now, we’re here.”

“So, you know what his plan is?” Linea asked, and her eyes widened. She still pondered how Turandir supposed to stand in power after betraying his own people.

“Only what he told us,” Tharolil explained. Some of other people in their carriage watched them interested. Tharolil raised an eyebrow and looked around. The others turned away instantly.

“What do you know?” Linea urged her to continue.

“He invited us to Avandir to discuss important matters,” Tharolil came closer and whispered. “Once there, he pampered us with all the luxuries he had to offer. We were suspicious from that moment. I don’t know, if you ever met him, but he’s an egotistical and greedy bastard. It was clear that he wanted something from us.”

“He explained that he had gotten an offer from the human emperor,” Tenevil continued without missing a beat. “The idea is rather simple: Break the army of Luna’sindra, help the humans subjugate Luna’sindra and release the duchy of Avandir as an independent kingdom allied to the Holy Seven Kingdoms.”

“All that, because he wanted to be a king instead of a duke?” Linea asked and clenched her hands into fists. “I will kill him.”

“Could be difficult,” Tenevil reminded her and tipped at her collar.

Linea took a deep breath to calm down.

“But how does he expect to stay on his throne?” Linea asked. “He betrayed his country, and it costed thousands of lives. No one will stand for that!”

“Yeah, but who knows about it?” Tharolil replied and her face grew dark. “The few people, who witnessed what happened on the actual battlefield, were brought into the dungeon and tortured to death. Everyone else probably just saw the damaged wall and dead soldiers, which is expected in a battle.”

“As far as we know, only the nobles who were part of the plan rode into battle with him,” Tenevil added. “Everyone else has been silenced. Permanently.”

There were so many things that didn’t seem to add up for Linea. What did the emperor want if not conquer the country? How had Fenandir come into play? Why did the emperor keep her and Senia as slaves instead of demanding ransom?

“That’s all we know,” Tharolil said. “What about you? How did you end up here?”

Linea sighed and outlined what happened to her without going into details. All three fell silent and Tharolil even laid her hand on Linea’s shoulder.

“Any idea where my sister is?” Linea asked and looked around. The carriage still hadn’t moved one bit as the soldiers were still busy packing their equipment.

Both twins shook their heads.

Their travel on land was arduous, and the cramped carriage made thing even worse. Linea had lost track of time, but she guessed that their small caravan was already on its way for over eight weeks. Other carriages with more slaves had joined them on the way, but they had only human slaves. Only when they had reached Tanim, a port city at the Tavarian Sea, other non-humans were added to their group. At least two dozen beastmen and even a pair of dwarves were brought in a separate carriage even though Linea didn’t understand where they might have been caught as their countries was on the other side of the sea.

They halted at the market down by the harbor, and the citizens of Tamin gathered to catch a glimpse of the Moon Elves. The guards, who protected the caravan, held them on distance, but Linea was still disgusted. She was a princess, and they treated her like some animal. Her gaze wandered around in search for their slave trader, a man named Untran.

“Master!” she called for him. The word left a bitter taste in her mouth, but she had learned quickly that defiance didn’t help in her situation. He wanted to be called that way, and he had ordered her to do so. And the slave collar made sure, she followed that order.

Untran strolled over to her carriage.

“Yes?” he asked with a smug smile.

“The usual,” Linea said. “My people have sunburns from the travel again. May I heal them?”

Untran looked at her carriage and in fact all of them looked feverish and their skin had a strange purple tint.

“Fine,” Untran said. He didn’t pamper them and only gave them the bare minimum to not starve, but he had to make sure that is freight didn’t suffer too much damage. “I order you to heal those in your carriage. You’re not allowed to use magic or healing magic in any other way.”

A rush of adrenaline rushed through her as she noticed the collar working its magic on her. Whenever Untran ordered her something, there was this need to fulfill that order immediately. If she stalled it, the feeling would grow until she could not bear it anymore and everything else became irrelevant. She loathed the man for every order he gave her though this time it was something she wanted to do anyway.

She put her hands outside the carriage and a guard opened her shackles with his key.

“Make space,” Linea said to the others in her carriage. It wasn’t difficult to cure a sunburn and barely drained her reserves, but it reminded her of Luna. Linea guessed that the goddess probably had a way to break this damned collar, but without a temple, Linea had no way to contact her.

While the humans on the market slowly dispersed as the evening went on, Linea became more active. She looked around and tried to find any idea for an escape, but found nothing useful. No one was willing to help, but why would a human of the Holy Seven Kingdoms even consider something like that in the first place?

“Buckets!” a voice startled her.

One of the women in their cart pulled two buckets from under the benches and brought them carefully to the back where a human slave collected them with guards watching over them.

Linea turned away from the bucket and pressed her nose against her arm to prevent herself from smelling it. She didn’t smell any better after weeks of traveling without bathing, but it was better than the smell of the ‘poop buckets’ as the others called it.

While she was looking anywhere, she noticed a group of people marching over the market towards the docks.

“Senia!” she hissed and Tenevil, who sat beside her, turned around as well.

They couldn’t make out details over this distance, but Linea still recognized her sister. She walked at the side of the man Linea had come to hate even more than Turandir. Tanus talked to some officials and Senia walked two steps behind him, her stare fixated on the ground before her. They were followed by a group of servants carrying some chests.

They disappeared behind some harbor buildings and didn’t return the whole evening.

“All right,” Untran pulled Linea out of her thoughts. “We’ll now board the ship which will bring us to Tavaris. You will line up in front of the carriage, and then we’ll walk down to the ship. Fall out of line, and you’ll get punished. Understood?”

“Yes, master,” the group answered unenthusiastically.

As the group boarded the galley, Linea got another glimpse at her sister, who stood beside Tanus at the bow of the ship. But before she got a closer look, she and the others were led below deck into holding cells. Five people had to share one compartment, which were way too small for them. The air was stuffy and damp, but even worse, in each cell was one of those buckets. Linea cursed at the humans.

Linea was placed in a cell with Tenevil, Tharolil and the dwarven pair. They were the only slaves on the ship with a collar as far as Linea had seen.

The galley had two decks, one for the goods and one for the rowers. At least, Linea assumed it to be that way judging by the groaning and drumming above them. From the chats between the crewmen she had learned that the passage to Tavaris City would only take five days, which made her happy simply because the conditions on the ship were even more disgusting than on the carriage. The heat of the day made it impossible for Linea to sleep properly while she was wide awake at night.

The twins tried everything in their power to help Linea. They offered her more space in the cell, shared their food with her and even gave her some of their water rations. At first Linea had taken it for granted, but after two days she realized that the twins suffered from it. She had immediately stopped accepting any more help from them.

She sat with her back propped against the cell’s wall. The small vibrations of water streaming alongside the hull helped her relaxing even if it was just a bit.

It was in this moment when she suddenly heard a long-missed voice in her head.

‘Urgh… where am I?’

“Sarah!” Linea shouted relieved.

“Who?” the twins asked startled and looked confused at her. Even the dwarfs had woken up and looked at her.

“Ah, nothing… just remembered… something,”

‘Linea?’ Sarah asked with noticeable confusion in her voice. ‘Where are we? Who are those people? And what the hell smells so bad?’

‘That’s the… bucket,’ Linea answered dreadfully. ‘Listen… things happened… bad things…’

Sarah kept silent for a moment, and Linea didn’t force her to speak.

‘All right, I remember fighting the dragon and the dark mage,’ Sarah said. ‘What did you do? How long was I out?’

‘A few months,’ Linea answered.

‘Months?’ Sarah asked shocked. ‘I didn’t expect it to be so long…’

‘Well, but it happened,’ Linea said. ‘And I could have needed you…’

As she added that she fought back her tears. Talking to Sarah forced her to remember Tarina and her mother.

‘What happened?’ Sarah asked unsure how to take this situation.

Then Linea told her. She told her everything. Every little detail she remembered. She cried when she came to the battle, but Tharolil came over to her and hugged her without even saying anything.

‘Bastards,’ Sarah said after Linea was finished. ‘I would have never guessed things to go so out of control.’

‘Me neither,’ Linea said. ‘And I feel like an idiot for not running away.’

‘To be fair, I would have attacked this asshole as well,’ Sarah admitted. ‘I have seen my parents die in front of me, and if they hadn’t told me to run, I would have gone on a rampage.’

‘So, you don’t blame me?’ Linea asked slightly surprised.

‘How could I?’ Sarah said. ‘You did was your sister asked of you. And I was the one who went all heroic and did that overcharging. I should have focused more on us.’

‘No, please,’ Linea intervened. ‘Let’s not blame ourselves. Maybe we should have dealt better with certain things, but in the end, there are others, who did this. Turandir, Fenandir, Tanus and the emperor for example.’

‘You’re right,’ Sarah said and shook off her current thoughts. ‘Let’s focus on how to fix this. What can you tell me about this slave collar?’

‘Not much,’ Linea admitted. ‘Without magical education I can’t tell you exactly what it does. But I can describe you its effects. First, I can’t destroy it. Whenever I try anything aggressive, it infuses me with a thought to stop it. This thought is so overwhelming that I gave up trying.’

‘Okay, what else?

‘I can’t attack my master,’ Linea said. ‘It creates the same effect. Oh, and whenever I try breaking it or hurting my master, one of the crystals glows.’

She skimmed the crystals on her collar.

‘I noticed three crystals, is that right?’

‘Yes, I assume that each crystal has a specific function, but I don’t understand yet what the third one does,’ Linea explained. ‘And also, whatever my master orders me to do, I must do. The collar pressures me until I can’t resist anymore. But it doesn’t cause the third crystal to glow, so I guess it’s an enchantment on the collar itself.’

‘Okay, give me control,’ Sarah said. ‘Let’s see if I can bust this thing!’

Linea happily gave Sarah control, but to their disappointment Sarah wasn’t unable to do anything.

‘Damn it,’ Linea said. ‘I hoped it wouldn’t affect you.’

‘Yeah, that’s a bummer,’ Sarah said. ‘But we learned something from it.’

‘We did?’ Linea asked surprised.

‘Remember when you explained to me the different magical schools in the world, and what their focus were?’

‘Remotely,’ Linea answered.

‘You mentioned a guild in the empire focusing on soul and mind magic.’

‘Ah, yes. You mean the Academy of Transmigration in Torsh.’

‘Yes, that one! My suspicion is that the crystals implement some kind of soul magic, which affects us both because, we’re technically the same soul,’ Sarah explained. ‘But the collar itself, which manages the orders given by a master, works on your mind. But our minds are separate, which means orders given to you don’t affect me.’

‘That’s… That’s something,’ Linea admitted. ‘But does it help us?’

‘Give me a moment, I want to see if I can gather something from the magic with my psionics. I can feel the magic through you. Perhaps I can find out what the third crystal does.’

It took Sarah and Linea over two hours to work through the enchantments. Sarah was unable to analyze the enchantments with her psionics, but Sarah’s vigor animated Linea to try it herself. She tapped into the spells to find out how they worked.

‘I can't do it…’ Linea said angrily.

‘What? Why?’

‘That Untran guy forbid me to use magic, but apparently I use magic to analyze the enchantments without realizing it,’ Linea explained. She was frustrated about her inability to help Sarah, but it was interesting for her that she was able to use magic by instinct.

‘Maybe…’ Sarah said but didn’t explain further.

‘Maybe what?’

Sarah kept silent for a long time, but Linea realized that she was doing something in her mind. She recognized it from the times when Sarah had tried mind manipulation on her before.

‘Okay, try again!’ Sarah said, and she sounded excited.

Linea did as Sarah said and to her surprise, the order preventing her from using magic was only noticeable as a slight pressure before fizzling out.

‘You’re a genius, you know that?’ Linea said laughing mentally.

‘Yeah, tell me something new,’ Sarah said with a giggle.

Linea got directly back to work, and this time it didn’t take her all that long.

‘Well, good news is the third crystal is not too bad, even though, it’s a bit weird,’ Linea said. ‘It forces us to return to our master before going to sleep, unless he or she ordered us otherwise.’

‘Well, makes sense somehow,’ Sarah said. ‘I mean it ensures that we can’t run away, but also it gives us a bit of freedom to work on stuff for the master.’

Linea agreed to her assessment.

‘But how do we use that to our advantage?’ Linea asked.

‘I have no idea, yet,’ Sarah admitted.

Tavaris City was gigantic. Linea had considered Luna’sindranar to be a huge city, but the capital of the empire was more than Linea had ever expected. The ship docked not in the main harbor directly at the coast but upstream of one of two rivers. Despite Linea’s distaste for humans in general, she was impressed by the sheer size of the city. Starting from the harbor, the city climbed a large hill towards a palace, which dwarfed the palace in Luna’sindranar. Linea wondered how many humans lived in this city.

‘That’s interesting,’ Sarah said as she analyzed what they saw.

‘What?’ Sarah asked and looked around to find what had aroused interest in Sarah.

‘The architecture reminds me of the ancient Rome back on earth,’ Sarah explained. ‘The resemblance is astounding. Perhaps the similar climate and situation of the city call for such kind of architecture.’

‘Certainly interesting,’ Linea said and took a deep breath, ‘but can we focus on more pressing matters?’

They were interrupted in their discussion by a guard bumping her with the blunt end of his spear. Linea threw him an angry look, but he didn’t care. Instead he motioned her to get in line with the other slaves. She followed his silent order and waited to be led where ever they were meant to go.

Untran let them stand in the burning midday sun, while he got his paperwork done, which caused more than just one Moon Elf to collapse. Linea was assigned to heal them every time, but she could only do so much against sunstrokes and dehydration.

Finally, Untran brought them to a market near the harbor where they were assigned a tent. Inside the air wasn’t good, but at least they were out of the sun and it was not as hot. Tharolil organized water for them, and together with Linea’s healing they helped them considerably. Linea even helped the beastmen and a few of the humans, who asked nicely for help. At first, she was apprehensive, but they all sat in the same boat. Only the dwarfs rejected any help.

‘I didn’t expect the beastmen to be so… furry,’ Sarah said as Linea helped some cat-like beastmen.

‘Well, they’re called beastmen for a reason,’ Linea countered and eyed the beastmen up. They were predominantly human except for their shoulders and heads. From the shoulder upwards, they resembled whatever animal they represented. The cat-type beastmen around her were to a large part from the Panther-Clan as far as Linea remembered her lessons about the different clans.

After a while, Untran returned with two robed men, who were most likely mages or at least sorcerers.

“Listen up,” he aroused attention. “These men will check your mana capacity. We want to get the best price for you, don’t we?”

Linea watched as the mages pulled out different crystals from their pouches. They called each slave to a table which they had occupied and let them take a crystal. With most of the humans, the crystals didn’t react at all, only a few could elicit a small reaction. When the crystals glowed in various tones of blue, the examining mage would hold a slate next to it and the other would write down something.

When they came to the beastmen, the crystals became more active, which meant they had more magical potential than the humans.

But it got really interesting when they examined the Moon Elves. Most of them had a basic education in magic, at least enough to have them manage their mana. It was not unusual to store your mana in crystals for someone else to use. It had the downside of making the donor drowsy for a few days, but peasants used it to earn additional money in the winter.

The examiners were excited about their average mana capacity, and when it came to the twins one mage even squealed in excitement.

“That’s around eight on the scale,” the leading examiner said astounded. “I wish I had that capacity…”

“Well, I have saved up some gold. Perhaps I can buy one of them,” another one said.

“Good luck,” his boss said and gave him a dry laugh. “I heard all three archmages will be on this auction. You think they’ll pass on that?”

He motioned the twins to step aside and Linea to take their place.

“All right, the last one,” he said and checked his list. “Princess Linea?”

“The correct form of address would be ‘Your Royal Highness, The Princess Linea of Luna’sindranar’ or 'Your Grace',” Linea corrected him. She knew this didn’t matter to them, but she was a proud princess after all.

The man raised an eyebrow but ignored her cheekiness otherwise.

“Take this crystal,” he said and gave her the biggest one on the table.

She knew what would happen, even before she touched it, and as expected the crystal glowed in a bright blue light. The mages squinted for a second and averted their eyes.

“I have never…” the examiner stuttered. “This is even higher than our scale can show!”

‘You are more powerful than even I would have thought,’ Sarah admitted.

‘I’m our Soul-Aspect of Magic, remember?’ Linea said.

“I’ll just note higher than ten on the scale…” the examiner mumbled and wrote something on his list.

The mages gave their list to Untran, who disappeared with it. Sarah guessed he would make all their data public before the auction to give potential buyers the chance to decide on what to buy.

But they didn’t have to wait all that long before they were brought outside and onto a stage. The construction of this market didn’t look provisional in any way. Instead it was build as if slave trade was a common occurrence here. The viewers ranks were filled with wealthy looking people. The richest of them seemed to have gathered under the shade of some tents at the sides.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” a man in long, heavy looking robes shouted as he entered the stage. The crowd in front of him went silent. “Today’s auction will definitely be interesting as we have special goods for you on this fine day. I hope everyone had a good look on the list as we’ll start right away!”

The auction was degrading for the slaves as each of them was called forward individually and had to strip naked in front of all those people. They auctioneer started with the humans. The process was rather fast as a human only costed around ten gold pieces per person while the beastmen were sold for fifteen gold on average. The dwarven pair was sold for thirty-five gold as a package, as they were apparently master smiths and only worked together. Linea was still puzzled how they had ended up as slaves. But on the other hand, her story wasn’t usual either.

“And now, let’s start the part everyone has waited for!” the auctioneer said with a bright smile. “From the far-away lands of Luna’sindra, captured by the magnificent Prince General Tanus Seranus in our glorious expedition against the ghastly Moon Elves, we proudly present to you: Moon Elves!”

The crowd cheered, and Linea wanted nothing more than to rip this man’s throat out.

He started with the male Moon Elves, which he praised as exceptionally strong, but also warned them to keep them on a short leash as they could be dangerous. He also advertised their newest invention, the slave collar, as an effective method to control them. Along with the females, they were sold for around fifty gold each.

When it was the twin's turn, things became interesting. Before the bidding could even start, an old man with a beard so long he could trip over it proclaimed that the Tavarian Mage Guild would buy them both for five hundred gold. As no one contested that, Linea assumed they had the right to snatch anyone from this auction for a set price.

“All right,” the auctioneer said as the twins were led off the stage. “Let’s end this auction with the most interesting and exotic item on the list.”

He motioned Linea to step forward. Linea did what he wanted, and murmurs started in the crowd as everyone realized that’s she was the princess from the list.

“Strip,” the man said, but to Linea’s surprise the collar didn’t send out an impulse. Whenever Untran gave her an order, the collar gave her a push to follow that order. Even though Sarah’s block prevented her from being forced to do so, she at least noticed it.

But the order from the man didn’t have the same effect. Linea looked at him and said, “No.”

The auctioneer just smiled and waved for Untran. The slave trader came from backstage and gave her the same order. This time Linea felt the effect of the collar, but she was tempted to ignore it. She loathed the thought of standing naked in front of all those humans.

‘Just do it,’ Sarah whispered. ‘We can’t show them our ability to ignore the collar yet.’

Linea sighed and removed her ragged clothing and she blushed heavily. She heard a few whistles from the nearest buyers and a shudder ran through her.

“Princess Linea is fifteen years old and, as you can see, a real beauty!” the auctioneer appraised her. “We know from other members of the Royal Family that she will most likely mature into someone, who will be really nice to warm your bed. Our information suggests she is also expected to be a virgin. She shows strong abilities regarding healing magic and the magical examination has revealed an astounding mana reserve to tap into.”

The bidders started to throw numbers into the fray which quickly exceeded every other auction before. It raised to five hundred and higher.

“We have seven hundred and eighty, do we… eight hundred, we have eight hundred, can we get… yes, eight hundred fifty,” the auctioneer quickly said as he pointed at different people. “Eight hundred and seventy-five, we have eight hundred seventy-five. Can we get… Two thousand! We have two thousand gold pieces!”

Linea and many bidders followed the auctioneers hand motion to a man on the side. Multiple groans could be heard.

“Two thousand! Can we get more than two thousand? Last chance for anyone to get a real Moon Elf princess for more than two thousand!”

Either no one had the necessary funding for it, or no one dared to bid against this man.

“And sold for two thousand!”

The man, who had bought Linea, didn’t bother taking her with him immediately. Linea was led back into the tent from earlier where she got the chance to say goodbye to the twins.

“Keep your heads up,” Linea said to them. “We’ll find a way out of this somehow. I’ll do everything I can to free us.”

The twins just nodded, and Tenevil even gave her a hug.

“Watch out for yourself,” Tharolil said.

The mages retrieved their goods shortly after. Linea noticed that the ownership of the collar was transferred to the old mage with the beard, but she couldn’t see how they did it.

After waiting for over an hour, a man entered the tent followed by servants.

“Ah, Brice!” Untran said and welcomed the man, “I expected you to buy her, but I would have never expected such an amount! I guess the emperor was pleased?”

“Of course,” the man called Brice said. “He had asked me to buy her even before the auction. He would even subsidize the purchase if it got too expensive.”

“How come?” Untran asked surprised. “I mean every slave captured by the army is the property of the emperor.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t want to deal with her, apparently,” Brice said. “But he had a restriction for me. I can’t take her out of the city for some reason.”

“That’s odd.”

Brice just shrugged. “Doesn’t matter it was still a good investment.”

He came closer to Linea and inspected her.

“Exquisite,” he noted. “My name is Brice Si Trenia, but you’ll address me as master, understood?”

“Yes,” Linea replied trying to hide her disgust from this man. He was rather tall for a human and he looked good. In his younger years he had been handsome perhaps, but Linea noticed signs of aging and drinking too much alcohol.

“Yes, Master!” he said and looked at her with a stern face. “I’ll have to train you it seems.”

“Do you want to proceed with the binding?” Untran asked and pulled a small knife out of his bag.

With a small prick, Untran draw blood from one of Brice’s fingers. He put the blood on the backside of the collar, and Linea noticed a change in the enchantment.

“Heal it!” Brice said and showed her his finger.

Linea noticed the force from the collar and complied to his order.

“Perfect!” Brice said with a smile.

“I need to remind you due to regulations that in case you want to transfer the ownership to someone else, you need to replace the collar as it is bound to you now,” Untran explained.

‘And there we have it!’ Sarah said with triumph in her voice.

‘What to we have?’ Linea asked confused.

‘Our way out,’ Sarah explained. ‘We just need to force him to resell us somehow.’

‘Oh!’ Linea said as she understood. ‘And if he does, they need to take the collar off!’

‘And then they will regret ever laying a hand on us!’