“...He's... He's alive...” Abe prodded the pile of flesh with his staff, eliciting a strangled hiss. After two such attempts, he pursed his lips and tried to process what he was seeing. Regenerative powers existed, but not like this. Healing limbs passively or remaining alive when all the blood had been drawn from the body were two things he had never seen a mortal race do before. Even as a healer, he had no idea how such a thing was possible. Maxxid were capable of 'rebirthing' themselves into younger forms from a deceased body, and heal quite ably, but this was... Well, it was.

“Mako...” Girshan backed away, making the warding sign of the flame. “What in the world is that thing? That's no human.”

“Primus.” Xavier's eyes remained dead. Even if there was some life left in the man, there was no chance that he'd recover. At worst, this was a foul extension of life, impossible agony. Something no living creature deserved to suffer from.

Jura prodded one of the arms with her boot, hearing the thing hiss again. She looked to Abe who nodded at the implication. Few knew of the spira, and Abe was not exactly one of them. He'd never studied it in depth, but understood how it was necessary for things to grow and thrive. A quick spell and a bit of focus was all he needed to see it. A rare ability, even among telurians. “I've never seen anything like this. Theoretically, this should not be possible.” All energy came from two points in the human body. Mana from the navel in most creatures, and spira from the solar plexus. World energy, as he'd heard it called. His knowledge of it was limited, but mages had been claiming its existence for centuries. Some saw it as the proper 'soul', others as something else entirely. Abe didn't know the answer to that age old question, but he'd never needed to.

Not until now. Whether it was a soul or not, the energy hovered all over the ground. Indicating that the man was still very much alive, even if his responses to stimuli hadn't come. Detached limbs that should have been cut off from the energy were still connected via threads of it. Some thicker than others based on the size of the missing flesh. An anomaly that he could not wrap his mind around.

“...Put.”

“It's speaking!” Yana stumbled backward, tripping over Neal's prone body and sprawling on the ground in an attempt to get away from whatever the thing was.

“Jakuul, that's fucking nasty...” Jura spit, but despite her claim she was watching in rapt attention, couldn't take her eyes off of it.

“Repeat yourself.” Girshan commanded, ears twitching to get a better read on the mumbled whispers passing through the mans lips. “...He wants us to 'put him in a pile'...?”

“Astonishing.” Abe mused before being rebuked by Girshan. He had a habit of going 'academic' about this or that. More interested in studying the phenomena allowing the man to live rather than helping to save him. “Oh, yes. Um... How should we go about this?”

Nobody answered, how could they? Jura scooped various fleshy detritus from the ground with her bare hands, dropping them on top of the mans detached head with a sickening squelch. Xavier sprinted from the clearing to vomit at its edge, feeling his early lunch leave his stomach, heaving until it was all out of him, and then heaving some more. After a minute or so, with the help of Abe's 'life sense', they were able to collect most of the pieces of the man. All while Yana watched on in disgust. Neal had truly jellied the man and he was in hundreds of pieces now.

For Abe, he was rapidly jotting down notes and breathing heavily into the grimoire he was holding. What had been Tyr was now a red bubbling mass of wild anima, bits of metal, artifacts he'd borne on his person, and an intense flare of spira causing the ambient mana in the air to crack and buckle. Sparks flew everywhere, spraying out and scalding the skin of the onlookers – forcing them to move away.

What emerged from the wild conflux of energy was a relatively healthy, but completely naked man. Bald and hairless for only a moment, before his features returned to normality. Subjective, of course. His haircut was so terribly uneven and slapdash that they couldn't fail to notice it over their shock at what had just happened. This Tyr, prince of Haran, stared back at them balefully, clenching his fists and preparing to come charging straight at them.

Then, without further ado, he collapsed limp on the ground. Still conscious, though fading quickly. It would stand to reason. There was no way something could wield that much power and not exhaust themselves. For most mages, that level and intensity of energy was enough to cause them to experience a 'mana down'. For Tyr, he seemed to be fine – though his body was covered with scars from feet to collarbone, ending before they reached his neck. Such a mass of grisly old injuries that they blanketed nearly every square centimeter of his bare skin. Old and white, long healed except for the red welts where Neal's spell had taken him apart.

“Alright.” Jura nodded, clearly impressed – but always with a mind for not standing around staring at a naked man, giving him the honor of draping a burlap coverlet atop him. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

“And leave him?” Yana and Abe asked at the same time, though for very different reasons.

“We're not leaving him.” Girshan refused the suggestion. Even if he could heal like that, it was unconscionable to consider that such a power was endless or infinite. Eventually, he could very well die – and this place was heavily monitored by divination mage. Whether it be a day, a week, or a month from now – someone would come looking and would use the badge now laying on the ground to identify how the young man had been killed. They kept very thorough records in the republic, including who was in the vicinity when they were incapacitated. “He comes with us.”

–

The first thing he felt – or rather tasted – was wet and loamy soil. A mouthful of it. Body full of it. Tyr's insides, lungs included, were chock full of the stuff. His body had pushed out what it could during the process, but it was never perfect. Sometimes, he'd feel a grinding between joints from some gravel that had gotten inside, forcing him to pull it our via magic. This time, he could only heave – suffocating under the alien sensation of lungs filled with earth.

Voices came from somewhere. Of shock and disgust. “That's vile. Is that dirt?”

“Incredible!” Someone cried. Tyr heard the scraping of quill on parchment, reminding him of his days spent at the academy. Where was he? All he could think about was the dirt, grainy and impacted into every open space in his body.

“I think I'm gonna be sick...”

“Okay!” Someone else cried. “He's awake, now let's go, before he sees us!” A loud thumping was heard, like a wooden object had been laid again bone. Tyr couldn't focus on this, though. Only snapping to attention at the speakers next words.

“Hit me again, slave, and I'll see that you lose that hand. The first, I could forgive, but you will not get a chance for a third!” Neal burst into a rage, like he always did. A coward, but he fancied himself more competent than he was. Granted, he was well on the path to a future position as an archmage in Kriegstad, but he solved his problems afar. With magic. Only confident when victory was a guarantee. Such as... “I push the button, and all of your collars ignite!” His voice was shrill and irritating. Tyr had no idea who this man was, but he hated him even before hearing the words that he'd spoke. Spoken like a young nobleman from the countries that didn't give much face to merit, and relied on old bonds and political clout to position people into power. Or just money, sometimes 'new money' was worse than 'old money', in a different way.

“Slaves?” Tyr asked. His eyesight blurry. Surrounded by people he only barely recognized. Lingering anxiety after their fight and how much pain he was in thrown aside to focus on one silhouette in particular. Eyes gradually improving in their ability to see. “Fuck, I'm hungry.”

“My prince!” Near squeaked, dropping to both knees and immediately groveling. Men in Haran knelt, those with the right to, but they never lowered themselves to the floor. Not even to the gods or a primus. Not if they had any worth or self respect, not even farmer peasants. It was improper. “Please, take whatever you want! We have plenty to go around, ha ha, of course. Anything for you, your grace! Even gold! Of course I will personally see to any and all remuneration, given your eminent status as heir primus!”

“Slaves?” Tyr repeated, dragging his attention from the sniveling coward in front of him. His mana was quite impressive, all told, but his personality... That which he'd been given the opportunity to observe – at least – was not to Tyr's taste. Instead, he looked at the panther, assuming him the leader of the party that had put him down, remembering everything. “You are a slave?”

Girshan nodded, lifting his chin until a slave collar was made plain and visible beneath his midnight mane. A feline beastkin, like the woman with the pendulum. If not for the overly thick hair and two pairs of ears on the tops of their head, they'd both pass for a human. Girshan in particular was a bit hairier than the rest, except for Ajax. As for the two beastkin in this particular party, they could've passed as father and daughter by the look of them.

“He is your master?” Tyr asked, pointing toward Neal before vomiting another pile of soil from his stomach. Long from cleansed, he resisted the urges of his body to continue doing so, it was just dirt, his body should be able to handle it. There was a worm in there too, though, a little earthworm being cooked alive by his internal temperature. So Tyr opened his gut with a knife and plucked it out, returning it to the soil without changing a beat. The others stared at him oddly, one in particular writing even faster into his grimoire, but they didn't say anything about it.

“No.” Girshan replied. “We are from Kriegstad, he is our overseer. A slave driver, perhaps. He owns us on a conditional basis only, to be returned when we are finished with our contract here. We are... Rented, you could say, and subcontracted.”

“I see.” Tyr said, walking slowly to the pile of equipment that belonged to him. They'd collected everything, including his thrown hammer. As before, like when his father had incinerated his soul, his bracelets were still around his wrist. As well as his dimensional ring and communication amulet. Something to do with magic, he'd bet – but he didn't care to ask why that always seemed to happen. He picked through the pile, ensuring that everything was there before plucking up the hammer. It felt right, given the situation. “You are the party responsible for assaulting me, correct?”

Girshan nodded grimly. Jura was quick to arm herself, as was Xavier. It didn't take a genius to know where this was going. Abe observed coolly, brows lowered but hands never straying too far from the staff leaned up against the bench it rested on. A circle of them surrounding a fire. They were located somewhere on a rise – a cliff overlooking a jungle bathed in twilight. “We are.”

“Ha! You've done it now!” Neal crowed. “My prince, you need but give me the order and I'll execute any one of the slaves you'd like. We'll even forgo reparations for damaging my employers property, out of respect of your position, only inferior to that of the gods.”

Tyr took two steps forward, before swinging the hammer with all the might his weak body was capable of. It took two more. The first was to break the mana shield emitted from one of the artifact rings worn on his finger. Second to cave in his skull. Third because he wanted to. The assembled party stared at him with wide eyes. Even Girshan seemed taken aback. Tyr spat on the corpse before relieving it of valuables, dragging it to the edge of the cliff they camped on and kicking it off into the darkness. “It was a good fight. Been a while since I felt so helpless, your teamwork was something I've never seen before.”

“Not exactly how I thought it'd go...” Jura shook her head, standing back a bit and placing her mothers bow on the bench – to ensure that her family heirloom was not destroyed in the process. Eventually, someone would find it, and maybe they'd use it. Or sell it. It was all she had left of her family – and she wanted it to be well famed and known. The last remaining artifact of the Laughing Moon tribe, as far as she knew. A powerful thing, with the sigil of her clan embossed in the bloodmaple furniture. It would only accept someone worthy, with her hoping that it found that person fast – and stuck with them for a long while.

Tyr observed as the team alternated their gazes between themselves and red stain on the ground where Neal had perished. Hugging one another and shaking hands with varying emotions. The older of the two were accepting. The younger ones, however, were not. But there was nothing they could do. He was a prince, and a primus at that. A truly immortal one, apparently, but maybe they all were like that to begin with. This was their reality, as it always had been. Heaving again, Tyr spat what remained from his insides over the cliff, using water magic to cleanse the rest. It felt odd, letting strings of water wash clean the surface of his lungs. Dusting himself off the linens he was provided, he turned back to face them.

Ah... That would make sense. Overseer dies, and their slave collars go wild. One of the impossibly rare situations he actually had a solution to. He returned to the pile of his gear, storing all of it save the spellbreakers. There wasn't much. Just bits of his mothers armor that were worthless now, the two short swords, hammer, dimensional ring, amulet, and gauntlets. As well as his badge, of course, those were pretty hard to destroy or so they said.

Tyr calmly slid his hands into the spellbreakers while the ground across the camp embraced each other. They were clearly quite close, speaking sorrowful goodbyes in low voices. 'I'm glad it was with you' – 'You were the best friends I could ever ask for' – 'It was my greatest honor'. Other assorted drivel.

“Shut up.” Tyr growled, earning himself a scathing look from a now axe wielding Girshan. He felt no great ill for humanity, but it was something to die fighting rather than simply waiting for death. Their masters wanted them to feel some brief flicker of hope before fear set in. The collars were cool for a handful of moments, then gradually increasing in heat until they exploded – ending them. A cruel way to go, and a very painful one, literally cooked alive. In the event that Neal perished in combat, they'd be killed. Insurance – they called it. “Seriously, I'm trying to focus. I'm not that quick a hand at magic, but these things are complicated and I need to focus.”

“What do you--”

“Please. I'll be kinder with my request this time. Please be silent, okay?”

Abe reached out to Yana who looked like she wanted to question them further. Tyr was an endless source of study. Important information he'd not get elsewhere, not while a slave. A lifetime of servitude that he could never hope to buy himself out of. And then, just like that, one by one, their collars were deactivated. Opening to swing loose on their hinges. The magic inside of them dead and lifeless – runes eaten away from the inside out.

“Actually...” Tyr mused to nobody in particular, stooping down to grab one of the strange artifacts, letting it flop around on its leather bits before throwing it over the edge. “That wasn't that hard. Who made these things?” He addressed Abe, who seemed the wisest and most reasonable of the group.

“A forgemaster named Stefan Duderich of Kriegstad. He makes the best collars in all of the successor states – Varia too. Or so I'm told. Some salesmanship, I'd imagine. I digress, how did you...?”

Forgemaster...? Some 'master'... The runes were seemingly made to be defused, the explosive component took hours to properly activate and there was no redundancy to stop even someone who wasn't a spellbreaker from tampering with them. Maybe this Stefan was keen on making money, but he was either an idiot or he'd done this on purpose.

“How did I deactivate them?” Tyr seated himself back on the bench. His 'hospital bed' was comprised of a tightly packed linen sheet filled with clothes. It seemed like they'd done quite a lot for him – and they seemed competent as well. There was no reason to treat them like enemies, considering that they'd dressed him, and the young kijin was offering him a bowl of mystery meat stew, one he promptly declined. Now that he knew. Abe nodded, and Tyr answered. “I am a spellbreaker. I use my...” As he was wont to do, he droned off trying to work around explaining the spira...

“I know what it is. The energy that you speak of, and I understand why advanced information regarding it is restricted. Do not fear. So...? You...?” Abe gestured for him to continue, with Tyr squinting his eyes. Abe didn't, in all actuality. There were dozens of theories and most were regarding as a joke. Tyr had heard some of them in the academy, but he seemed rather unique in the fact that he had learned to sense and access it so quickly. Why? He didn't know. It didn't even matter. He was still as shit an adventurer as ever, if a bunch of slaves were able to overcome him with relative ease. That wasn't to say that slaves were 'less' because of their status, but anyone able to be taken by others was clearly lacking... Well... Tyr was who he was, a terrible person no matter what side of the coin he tried to justify his criticism with. To him, strength was worth, but there was something to be said for the people who used their strength to chain people up like that.

“I used that to temporarily sever the mana circuits binding the runes while using sacred flame to overload them individually. Without the--”

“Ah!” Abe interrupted. “Of course. Without the regulatory rune necessary to guide the function of all the others, the mana flow collapsed – rendering the artifact effectively inert. Clever! But that would require a fairly intermediate understanding of runesmithing. Of course, I've no hand in it – myself – so I might be wrong. Where did you study?”

“The Red Dragon.” Tyr replied, digging through his dimensional ring until two of his prized stuffed chickens were revealed. Still steaming from the day that he'd pilfered them from the palace kitchens on his way out. Munching on them, he sighed in pleasure. Crispy skin crunching beneath his teeth, oily fat coating his lips. All while ignoring the ghastly looks sent his way by the others. It was a fairly bizarre turn of events all told, and Tyr was completely oblivious to how messy of an eater he was. “I'm really not anything special, just lucky.”

“As expected of our primus and savior, and so humble too! The Red Dragon...” Abe chuckled. “I'm Abrath, by the way. Just Abe – though – to my friends.” He winked. “This is Girshan, and...” He continued on. Tyr barely listened. The old telurian was friendly, but Tyr was still a mess psychologically from his experience with a 'true death', thoughts awakened by recovering after dreaming for what had felt like an eternity. Whatever they were, visions, clairvoyance... He was grumpy even at the best of the times when rising, having had to make several apologies to the palace maids before they'd learned not to rouse him. Only the food prevented him at lashing out at those around him, remembering who he was. How he was supposed to be. Now. Free of those burdens. They did not concern him. Or they shouldn't, if he'd had his way.

But it was a slow process, all talk of 'changing' aside, people didn't just wake up different one day. It was effort, and he was trying his best. Silence pervaded the camp. Eventually, the orcish woman and the beastkin seated themselves, followed by the kijin. Eyeing Tyr warily as they too partook in a meal, he'd brought out some of his ridiculous food stores and shared freely with them. He was selfish by nature, but not what he'd consider stingy, certainly not enough to force them to eat that slop of beans and ground meat. Too many spices, there was such a thing.

“I'm not the prince of Haran.” Tyr finally said.

“What?” 'Abe' asked. Telurian's were for the most part, friendly with mankind. Their populace mostly centered around the aptly named Teluria, an archipelago west of Saorsa, south of Varia. They had a real talent for trade, and a fair hand in diplomacy. Others lived in Saorsa, which was something of a haven for all 'demi-humans' – though Tyr had never particularly liked that word. Neither had his father, nor his mother. Each race was afforded its own respect as thinking beings. And if they were strong enough to keep imperialist Varia from conquering them, as Saorsa was, they were doubly worthy of that respect.

“My father, if he even is my father, banished me. I am not the heir primus, he's had another son with his new wife. I am just Tyr, now. Not Tyr Faeron. Might not even be Tyr Ebonfist, that's my mothers family name. A bastard, he called me. I've accepted that, and you should know, I doubt anyone would've come looking for me so you have no need for treating me like anyone special.”

“Well...” Jura shrugged. “We're slaves, so...” Not many of those that would care about the parentage of another person. You learned not to judge, spending so much time in that life.

“Not anymore.” Tyr frowned. If he was going through all that, the least they could do was accept the aid they'd been given. They were free now, and in his mind it was that simple.

Abe chuckled. “News passes slow all the way out here. We've been in the astral space for, what... Girshan?”

“Five months, now. With some breaks, but they were short.” Girshan replied, the panther. “In any event, we are still slaves. A breaking of collars doesn't change that.”

“Then I'll buy you. And free you.” Tyr stated calmly, as if it was so easy a thing.

“Even if our master wanted to sell us...” Abe pursed his lips, no longer the jolly old man, or telurian in his case. “I am worth at least five hundred credits. Girshan, maybe two hundred. The younger ones are at least a hundred. Yana in particular, I doubt he'd let slip for five times that. Double that again, and our master is still unlikely to do it, he's not exactly strapped for cash. It's nearly impossible to find talent like ours at a slave market, excuse my arrogance.”

“He'll sell.” Tyr replied confidently, wishing they could shut up so he could finish his second chicken.

“And if he doesn't?” Girshan asked, assessing the young man with observant eyes.

“He'll sell.” Tyr repeated, finishing his second chicken and moving on to a third with astonishing speed. “You wouldn't happen to have any beer, would you?”