After being paraded around most of the Diego City, the train of slaves arrived to a large common area that David judged to be the center of the large city. As they were walking through the open lot of land, David could notice the small booths set up around the perimeter of the area. It appeared that this common ground served as a market. The booths were selling street food and hawking wares that ranged in variety from weapons to kitchen tools. It was quite busy and everyone seemed to have some business to accomplish.

The group of men were led to a small building at the center of the common area and marched inside. Once inside the building, each slave was crammed tightly into very small singular holding cells.

David could hear a ton of commotion outside as if there was a crowd. Reaching out with his soul sense, David could see that there was a crowd in front of a stage. As the guards took a slave out of a holding cell, they would shuttle them up the stairs to be auctioned. Once a price was decided, the slave would be brought down the opposite side of the stage to another set of holding cells.

One by one, the slaves that were ahead of David were taken up to the stage and auctioned. David even saw Chaz get led up the stage and auctioned off like cattle. David hoped that this man faced a horrible fate at the hands of his captors. The thought made him feel better.

Eventually, a guard came and opened David's holding cell.

"Your turn now, slave," the guard said as he lead David up a small set of stairs on a leash. David was humiliated by the leash. Sure he had been treated poorly before but he always felt that he had some remnants of a human.....now to be lead around like a dog.

David had a crazed scowl on his face as the guard lead him out onto a stage. Looking off into the crowd, David could see people pointing, people laughing.....people going about their daily lives while someone was in front of them selling slaves. At this point, David had made a decision...he didn't care who these people were, how nice they were, or what they could possibly contribute to society.....he just wanted them all dead. Every last one of them.

Standing on the stage with a guard holding his leash, David broke out of his moment of madness as the slave auctioneer began to speak.

".....and now we have Slave number 8. This man is roughly 30 years old, but has limited physical strength due to previous injuries. While he may not move along too well, he was an architect by trade, has an abnormal ability to walk through mirror fields without resistance, and he is a Level 3 Darkness foundation stage cultivator and he has mastered the Body of Recovery skill. He has decent skills with knives but is untrained in other weapons. His 3 mastered Darkness skills include the Shadow Skill, Doom Skill and Retribution Skill. In our opinion, he would make an excellent helping hand to fix things around the home. He would also serve very well as a scout for exploration," the fancy slave trader said loudly to broadcast his voice over the crowd of people.

David just stood there looking at the man. How did they have so much information about him? After a few seconds, he realized that Gabriel must provide information with the slaves that he turns over in order to get a better price.

"As with any higher cultivation slave, I will start the bidding at ten stone. Do I have any takers?," the slave auctioneer said questioning the crowd.

"Ten stone," came a shout from someone standing in the crowd.

After a few seconds, no other responses were heard. The auctioneer seemed pissed that no one was participating.

"Although it has a few defects, this is a good item for sale. Do we have anyone who will offer 11 stone?," the auctioneer said.

There were no responses from the audience.

"Going once, going twice.....sold, for ten stone," the auctioneer said in a disappointed manner after waiting slightly longer than a minute.

Immediately after he was sold, one of the people wrangling slaves grabbed David by the arm and pulled him off the edge of the stage and placed him into one of a large number of small.....very small....holding pens....it was basically a cage big enough for one man to stand in.

As he was thrown inside, the slave wrangler barked at David, "Stay here slave. Your new master will come get you shortly."

David could still hear the auction going on in the background. Most slaves sold way above the reserve price of 10 stone...David was the only one that sold for so cheap.

"Must be the eye patch," David said to himself as he stood in a cage getting baked by the hot sun.

Looking around, David could see several of the other men who were already sold waiting to be picked up by their new masters. One of those men was Chaz who actually managed to slouch down on the floor of the cell while waiting.

After about 20 minutes, the auction seemed to be winding down and it sounded like the crowd was starting to disperse in front of the stage.

A few people in nice looking clothes walked up to one of the guards.

"I'm Javi from the Manco Family. I am here to pickup the two slaves that we purchased earlier," a slim man in robes said as he passed a piece of paper to one of the guards.

"Number 3 and Number 8," the guard yelled out to the other guards who immediately began moving in the direction of David's holding cell.

"Here are the controller disks for for the collars. They are your responsibility now. Thank you for your business," the guard said while handing Javi a stack of paperwork and two small metal disks.

Seeing the metal disks, David couldn't keep from staring in their direction. That was the disk that controlled his life at the moment. If he could get a hold of it, then he would be able to disconnect this collar.

After fantasing about stealing the collar's control disk, David looked over to see what other slave had been purchased. To his surprise, Chaz was being lead out of his holding cell.

David and Chaz were tied together through the loop in the collar around their necks and marched towards a small caravan made of about a dozen men and around twenty camel looking beasts.

"We need to leave now to make it back to the oasis by nightfall. Hurry and load these two slaves up so we can get moving," Javi told one of the men as he walked David and Chaz over to the group. The man he had just spoken to was holding the beasts steady with a rope strung through rings in their noses.

The man motioned over to four other men with his free hand. In a manner of minutes, the four men had both David and Chaz loaded into some sort of basket seat on the size of the large beasts. The seats were connected by a few ropes strung over the beast's back.

Once they were strapped in, the caravan immediately started moving it's way out of the City of Nazca.

The ride was actually pleasant. David had spent most of the time with his eyes closed in a fake sleep. He didn't want the men to know that he was constantly eavesdropping on their discussions.

From what David could tell, the group of men were traveling to a small oasis town, called Manco, approximately 8 hours away. The beasts they were riding were called Allocs and could move a pretty rapid pace through the sands of the desert. Probably about a speed of 30 miles per hour. That would make the distance between Nazca and the oasis was approximately 240 miles.

David also learned that the family that oversaw the Manco Oasis had main industries of both farming and mining. The caravan had been sent to the main city to sell some items, trade for a few supplies and pickup one new slave for the mines.

David got the entire story from Javi as he explained it to another one of the caravan members.

"We really lucked out that some fresh slaves were brought in today. I had been trying to negotiate with a few people to sell us one of theirs, but no one would take the offer of 50 stones for a good laborer. At the auction, I really lucked out. There didn't seem to be another family from a mining oasis present, so I picked up that first slave for only 20 stones. It was a great deal. Because I had a few of Mr. Gravel's stones left, I decided to see if I could get another good deal. Who would have known that I would get another slave for only 10 stones. Mr. Gravel should be pretty excited...two slave and he only spent 30 stones. Also, the beat up looking one is good in darkness skills that I know can be helpful in the mines," Javi explained his dealings.

'It seems that I was a bargain,' David thought to himself, 'these people have no idea.'

_______________________________

After hours of travel, the Alloc Caravan finally arrived at a small fortified oasis in the middle of the desert. The oasis is very fortified with walls approximately 20 feet tall completely surrounding the populated area. These walls were made of stone and were thick enough to have soldiers patrolling every couple hundred feet or so.

Since night was falling, the temperature was dropping pretty quickly and the caravan was rushed to get inside the town gates. The one thing about the night that was surprising to David were the moons. During the day, David would have thought that he was just in a large desert on Earth. But when the three moons of Nibiru came out in the sky...David finally felt like he wasn't on Earth anymore.

After entering the town, David and Chaz were herded over to a storage room in some building nearby the entrance to the town. After being brought inside the building, the two men were lead over to a large room that seemed to be a housing barracks of some sorts. There were about 18 or 19 men laying on straw mats on the floor in the room.

"Go lay down and rest. You will receive orders from your master in the morning," the man leading David and Chaz over said.

After the guard locked up the barred room, Chaz tried to start a conversation with David.

"What do you think will happen to us?," Chaz couldn't keep from asking David.

"I do not know. But you will most likely die horribly...or at least that is what I hope for," David said to Chaz with a smile on his face.

Hearing David's response and seeing his grin, Chaz realized that he wasn't going to have the chance to be friendly with David again.

Chaz got up and walked to an empty bed on the opposite side of the chamber. David could see him trying to talk to some of the other slaves that were around him.

David didn't care. He had his own plans. Since he first arrived to The Other, he had been waiting for one thing...night time.

As David laid down on the straw bed on the hard dirt floor, he chuckled to himself thinking, 'These people really did get themselves quite a bargain.'