“Whoa, man. Are you ok?” Brian asked.

“No.” Jonathan was telling the truth, he had been calm throughout the week but his chances of survival right now apparently only stood at 5%. This on top of the revelation that some entity had apparent control over his life and wanted to use his struggles to amuse itself. He felt his cheeks get warm and wet with his tears. No sound came from his mouth. He couldn’t remember if he had cried since he got here, he probably did, but he felt as if he hadn’t cried in years and needed a release.

DAMN IT ALL! he thought. DAMN! He wanted to cry out. To punch and kick and lunge and scream, but he didn’t. He knew it would call the attention of the guards, and he didn’t want to agitate a group of people who he had just seen hack seven men to death. He tried to calm down, he tried his best, but his emotions started to bubble up. Just as he was ready to shout out, he saw a notification pop up in front of his eyes.

[You have reached an abnormally erratic emotional state.]

No shit.

[Your emotions corrode your mental well-being.]

[Your mind is being corroded.]

[Skill: [Calm Mind] has stopped mental erosion.]

[Skill: [Calm Mind] has lessened your emotional state.]

He calmed down immediately. He had wondered why he took being sent off to some god forsaken alternate existence so well. He spent some time thinking about it during his first day in the Empire, his analytical approach bothered him, he was a much more emotional man and his sudden switch was too unusual. He didn’t spend too much time thinking about it because it entertained the idea that he was stuck in some mental ward somewhere. Seeing the notification caused it to finally click. It’s because of the skill.

He watched the [Chosen]’s worried looks. He decided he would look into it later, if he survived, before wiping the tears off his cheeks. He smiled at them.

“No, but what can you do? The only way is forward.” Jonathan did his best make a brave face. He wanted to tell them about how his quest but he decided not to, whoever sent him the quest clearly didn’t want the [Chosen] interfering.

It didn’t matter much, he told himself. He had decided that he needed to get himself away from them; he had a feeling that they would get him killed, sooner or later.

“You sure?” It was Peter, he looked worried, almost as worried as Jonathan felt.

“Yeah, let’s do this.” Jonathan gripped his short sword tightly in his right hand.

There were two guards just outside of the entrance both in full metal armour and hands on swords or spears. They didn’t care enough for the slaves’ lives to use whips. Both of them were looking at the proceedings. People were being shuffled in straight lines-loudly and painfully- onto a podium. It was an auction.

The light from the outside of the tunnel they were staring at the mouth of made was real sunlight they realized. They hadn’t thought that the slave trade was so normalized that it could be done under broad daylight. It looked late too, about noon-ish at Jonathans best guess.

Brandon spoke to them, making sure that his voice never overtook the cacophony of the shouts from prisoners and jailers alike.

“It’s loud and there’s a lot of people, that’s good and bad. Good, because it means we only have to be moderately sneaky and we can just blend into the crowd if things go sideways.” He pointed to the shirts they wore and their collars when he said ‘crowd’. Jonathan frowned, he decided not to point out that they had could blend into the crowd of slavers if they wanted, they had no scars and they could remove their collars, but he decided not to. They had blood all over their clothes and started to smell of vomit, the chances of blending in with the slavers was unlikely. Brandon continued to speak. ”It’s also bad news because we’re probably going to be watched as soon as we get out of this tunnel. We just gotta do our best not to day and we’ll figure this out together, alright?””

All of them nodded, swallowing the saliva collecting in their mouths.

“Let’s try not to die. Here goes nothing.”

Brandon was the first to move. He lurched forward in an effort to be stealthy and brought his sword up to shoulder height. He lunged at the guard nearest to the entrance and stabbed his sword through the back of the mans’ neck. The man died making an awful gurgling sound, trying to call for help but none came. Tom had already killed the second guard at the entrance; Jonathan couldn’t tell how Tom had moved to kill the guard so silently from his position. One moment, Tom was next to him, next moment; the second guard was coughing up blood. His throat was slit.

Jonathan marvelled at what Tom had done before he realized that the two men’s’ blood would flow down the brick floor and alert whoever dared to look down. Jonathan had nothing to worry about from the blood; the others were already alerted to what had happened. It seemed that one ‘knight’ getting hit by a bad case of ‘sword in throat-it is’ was too unusual or them not to notice.

Everyone stopped to look at them. Six men covered in blood holding 5 longs words and what amounted to a big knife being stared down by a group of armoured men. This was a bad plan. The [Chosen] looked scared, sans Brian who looked like he had just walked into a surprise party. It took a beat of silence before Brandon whispered to the group. “Let’s try to lose them bac-“

Brian jumped forward into the crowd of slavers and slaves alike. The [Chosen] looked crestfallen. All of them seemed to think of Brian as an idiot, especially his father but it looked like they underestimated him. Brandon yelled out.

“You cheeky bastard! You’ll get us killed!” before he jumped into the crowd too. The other [Chosen] had no choice; they jumped into the crowd too.

It was Pandemonium, The guards barked orders to capture and kill the whole group and people were fighting to capture them and shouted orders at the slaves to point to the unexpected party poopers. Only, the slaves barely recognised each other, they had just met each other, each group pointed to another and most of their shirts were already caked with blood, making it hard to tell them apart from the escapees.

Meanwhile, Jonathan ran back through the tunnel. He knew they would get him killed. He just didn’t expect it to be so soon. As soon as Brian jumped and Brandon shouted at his son. Jonathan had decided to run, hoping that the chaos that the [Chosen] had caused would buy him enough time to find a place where he could think. He ran down the tunnels, taking random turns, hoping to run into some sort of miracle.

Soon he started to get winded. He was out of shape, hungry and thirsty. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t run randomly, all that made him was tired and frustrated.

He calmed down and tried to think, from what he had seen, the tunnels he was running through used to be or were still part of some sort of sewage system. All sewage systems have an outlet somewhere, right? He thought as he tried not to gag at the idea he was proposing to himself.

He listened out for water walking around aimlessly for what felt like an eternity before coming across a corridor that seemed overly wet and smelly. He walked into it, just then he heard footsteps. It looked like the distraction could only work so long. He had hoped that they had forgotten about him. Maybe they did but wanted to be cautious, he couldn’t tell. He felt his heart beat against his ribcage; he needed to get out of sight, fast.

He frantically checked the doors in the corridor for any open one before he found a door that seemed older than the others. This door squeaked even while it lay unopened. It had no lock. Unable to believe his luck, he opened the door, entered and closed it. Inside it was dim, with a glowing moss in one corner providing all the light in the room. Through the moss he could see a gaunt dirty long haired old man chained to a wall. The old man opened his eyes. A motion he practiced countless times. He saw Jonathan and he heard footsteps get louder outside. The old man’s eyes widened. He knew that if Jonathan was found in his cell, he would get beaten again. He did not want to get beaten again. His last beating was years ago but had still not recovered from that.

The old man tried to shout. All that came was a cough. He was out of practice. Jonathan panicked, seeing what the old man wanted to do. He ran up to the old man, covering his mouth. The old man struggled and bit into his hand, deeply. Deep enough that he would need stitches if he could get them. Jonathan recoiled from the pain and saw the old man prepare to shout again. They would kill him. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to get back home and make bad jokes with Eddie and have awkward dates with Marie, like the other guys his age. He grew desperate.

He tried to stop the old man again, this time by putting his hands around the old mans’ throat. The old man prepared to shout again, his eyes full of fear. Fear of the Empire and fear of Jonathan. Jonathan squeezed.

Tears fell down his face as he felt his arms get stronger. His grip wouldn’t loosen. It couldn’t. Not until he was sure he was safe. The old man flailed and tried to fight back, his limbs too emaciated to do any actual damage.

Jonathan felt the life drain from the body of the old man. His grip didn’t loosen until he felt the life leave the old man for good. He loosened his grip, realizing what he had done.

His tears flow freely in-between quiet sobs. He feels nothing but disgust and his consciousness starts to darken before it suddenly rights itself and he has to face what he has done.

A notification popped into his field of vision.

[Congratulations! You have earned the trait: [Monster in mans’ clothing]]