This is a mistake. All these random people are slowing us down. I imagined putting Rose, Drake, and Kassie on Rukia’s back and the rest of us running. Kassandra and Kiara both were high enough level and I could tell by how they moved that they had put points into their Agility, Kassandra, more than Kiara. Hell, even Magnus’s bear, Koda could move faster than the former slaves. My thoughts paused for a moment as something struck me. Why are there so many people in my party with a name that starts with K? There’s Kassandra, Kassie, Kiara, and Koda… I shook my head at the irrelevant thought. It doesn’t matter. Besides, there were only two names, starting with K before we rescued my ex and her daughter.

I’d tried to get people to move at a run, but barely half a mile later people had flagged, several dropping too far behind. I’d been tempted to just leave them behind, but one look into my wife’s concerned eyes made me sigh in resignation and I slowed the pace. I hadn’t even broken out of a fast walk, but my agility easily doubled almost everyone else there.

“Bloody hell, didn’t they feed any of you?” I asked in exasperation. Nearly every adult had the Hungry and Thirsty status ailment. It wasn’t as severe as what Magnus had suffered when I had first met him, but it still impacted their Health, Stamina, and in the cases of those on the Path of Mana, Mana regeneration.

It was bad enough that they were almost all fairly low level, but taking a hit to their regens made them even slower overall.

“All the ‘workers’ were on short rations while ‘Lord Jackson’ worked on increasing food production,” Rose told me after she finished another casting of Nature’s Boon on another former slave.

“Surely there was enough water to go around, it’s supplied by all that System fuckery.”

“Supposedly, Jackson didn’t want to pay the upkeep on another water source. Something about needing to save the Essence for a different upgrade, or something like that.”

“Well, we need to clear these debuffs as soon as we can. I don’t want to be anywhere near here when they finish with the hobgoblins,” I said. I looked behind the group. We had at least gotten out of sight of the prison, though we were still within its area of influence. “Hey, Magnus. You still got those emergency rations?”

“Yeah, there’s still almost fifty of ‘em. They taste like cardboard and we’ve had better food. Why?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but those are supposed to feed someone for a day each, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, something like that. Here, let me check,” Magnus answered, then he pulled out a small foil wrapped brick. It was only three inches long by an inch wide, and just under an inch thick. After looking at it for a moment, he nodded and tossed it to me. “Yup, it says it will feed a grown person for a day.”

I caught it and used my own Identify skill on it.

Trail ration

Quality: Average

Rarity: Common

Durability: 5/5

Effect: Upon consumption, will provide sufficient nutrients for a single adult for one day.

Rose was suffering under the same debuffs, though without complaint, so I passed it to her and pulled out a water bottle. It was from my last case, though I still had several gallon jugs stored. This won’t last long; I thought as I made my decision. “Pass one out to everyone while I hand out water bottles. That should clear the debuffs, and we can then make better time”

Rose gave me a fierce hug, tears leaking from her eyes again. “Thanks, love. I’m so glad you made it to us safely and got us out of there. We may have been safe from… you know, well mostly…” Rose’s eyes flicked over to a couple of the women in our group, “but that didn’t stop the beatings, constant hunger or forced labor.”

I was tempted to ask about that pause, and if she had been assaulted, but this wasn’t the time or place for it. She was bearing up well for now, and that discussion could wait until we were all safe. Well, a relative definition of safe, anyway.

Magnus passed around the food, and I handed out the water. I only had thirty-six of the pint-sized water bottles, and we had rescued almost fifty people. I ended up having to refill them from my jugs so everyone could have a drink. Just that bit of food and water managed to perk everyone up, and they started to move faster, much to my relief.

A few of, well, I couldn’t keep calling them former slaves, refugees. Yeah, refugee is a much better term. A few of the refugees suffered from more serious injuries. It would seem that a simple spell like Nature’s Boon, or even the Ki healing from an old Chinese man, couldn’t mend broken bones. At my request, Rukia allowed those who suffered from such injuries to ride on her back, which helped our pace as well.

After everyone had eaten, I had discovered the next thing that was slowing down our progress: the children. Their shorter stature and overall lower stats didn’t allow them to cover as much ground as the adults, so I kept my eye out for something that could help. About fifteen minutes later, I’d found what I’d been looking for.

“That’s perfect,” I declared as I laid eyes on an old trailer. Someone had taken the bed off of a pickup truck, mounted it on a frame with a tow hitch and a single axle. It might be snug, holding ten children and three adults, but it would work.

‘Hey, girl. Think you can pull this with people inside? We can make a harness, like your old one, to pull it with?’ I asked Rukia through our bond. I had included the mental image of all the kids in the back and the three grownups.

I got a sense of consideration from her for a moment before she accented. I then looked in the back of the truck and found several ratchet straps and a decent length of chain.

“What you thinking there, hoss?” Magnus asked.

“I’m thinking that we can quickly rig a harness up for Rukia to pull this trailer with the kids in it,” I answered.

“I’m pretty good with knots. If you want, I can use them straps to make the harness. It’ll be better on Rukia than rope, more comfortable,” Magnus offered.

“Okay, you do that. I’ll secure the chain to the tow hitch. Rose, do you want to round up the kids? We need to get those three off of Rukia too.”

“Master Baker, if I might have a moment of your time?” The old Chinese cultivator had approached quietly and waited for me to finish directing before speaking up.

“What can I do for you? We don’t have a lot of time, but I can spare a minute while Magnus does his thing.”

“Thank you. My name is Doctor Yang Ming. I met your family before being captured by those pok gaai slavers,” He said.

“Doctor Yang Ming? Any relation to the martial arts expert? I had a couple of his books before all… this,” I asked, having recognized the name.

“Yes. He is a cousin of mine. He went into martial arts instruction while I went into traditional healing. He is also a doctor, just not a medical doctor.”

“So, what did you need?” I asked.

“It is more of what I might be able to do for you. I am a Ki Healer now and I can see your Ki flow as well as your cultivation.”

“Interesting,” I said with a quirked eyebrow. “And what do you see that would tell you I need a healer?” I couldn’t quite keep the suspicion out of my tone, though it didn’t seem to bother the man.

“I can see that your cultivation was rather rushed. Completely understandable, with everything that had happened. But your foundation is severely unbalanced. You have excess Ki in some parts of your body, and a lack in others. I suspect that continuing your rapid advancement will cause you great harm, possibly halting your further growth. Mister Magnus as well suffers from this issue.”

I considered the doctor’s words. It made sense to me, in all the books I’d read, rapid advancement, without solidifying your foundation could cause problems, especially with all the cultivation pills I had used to do it. I nodded. “And what would your recommendation be, Doctor Ming?”

“Please, call me Yang. I am an acupuncturist by trade. I had discovered that I can infuse Ki through my needles to help correct Ki imbalances. It would not be a fast treatment, but I can help correct these problems before you suffer further harm.” Yang said.

“I’ll consider it. Once we get away and find a fairly safe place for everyone, we can discuss it further. For now, I need to get this trailer set up.”

Yang bowed. “Of course, Master Baker. Thank you for giving this old man your time.” He backed away, still bowing, before turning and joining the crowd of people.

Putting Yang’s observations out of my mind, I focused on getting the trailer ready to hook Rukia up.

In the end, I had simply looped the chain several times through the triangle shaped frame at the front of the trailer. It left me with two long lengths of the heavy-duty chain that we could tie the straps to. It wasn’t perfect by any means. It would have been better to craft some kind of yolk that was directly attached to her harness, but we didn’t have the time for that.

Brakes were another issue, but Magnus volunteered to follow alongside the trailer, keeping his hand on it and slowing as needed. It was a good enough workaround until we were far enough away that I felt comfortable stopping for longer. A mere ten minutes after we’d stopped, we had the kids, and the still injured refugees loaded in the back.

I removed the chocks from the tires, and Rukia gave the contraption a test pull. It resisted at first, and she paused. She gave herself a little shake, making the chains jingle, then dug her paws in and pulled again. This time the trailer rolled forward, and as Rukia kept pulling, the movement became easier until Magnus had to add a bit of resistance to keep it from overtaking her.

I smiled at my giant husky. It may not be a dogsled, but my girl is performing her ancestral job admirably.

***

“What the fuck happened?” Lord Jackson demanded from his subjects. “I know we killed all them mothafucking lizard men. Where the fuck did those hobgoblin bastards come from?”

Darnell Jackson stood before a line of his men. He wore dark brown studded leather armor with a royal purple cape attached to the pauldrons that he thought went well with his milk chocolate skin tone. A gold crown adorned his brow, accented with silver and gleaming gemstones at each point. His Soul-Bound metal club, blackened and pitted as though it had fallen from space, matched its name Meteor’s Fall.

The fight with the hobgoblin horde had taken nearly an hour to end, and he had lost nearly a dozen good men in that battle. Well, not good men per se, but they were his men. On top of that, a large part of his slave force had somehow managed to escape.

The first wave of hobgoblins weren’t too hard to handle, especially with how they blindly stormed the walls. It was the two other bands that had arrived to reinforce them. Apparently, siege magic was a thing he would have to look into soon.

“Well? Which one of you shit stains is going to answer me?” Lord Jackson asked when no one replied. He wasn’t too surprised that his men were afraid to answer. While his five-foot ten-inch frame wasn’t overly intimidating, he had made some brutal examples to get everyone to fall in line.

“Well… um… Milord, sir…” One man hesitatingly began. His white skin was even paler than usual. Jackson recognized the bald man. He used to run with the wannabe nazi gang before Jackson… subdued them. “I think… someone ran a train on us.”

“What the fuck does that mean, shitwipe?”

“It’s, uh… a gaming term. The man in the skirt. We’re pretty sure he pulled the first group of hobs to use to distract us while breaking the prisoners free. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.

“You are telling me, some kind of fucking drag queen mothafucka brought an entire hobgoblin army to our door, then stole my property? Is that what you sayin, boy?”

The man cringed under the verbal onslaught, but managed to nod his head. “Y-yes sir. Tha-that’s one way to pu-put it.”

“Skid! Skid, get yo ass down here. I’ve got a job for your crew.”

A six foot six-inch-tall man leapt off of a third story walkway. A long multi-hued cloak fluttered behind him as it took longer than most would expect for him to touch down. He threw his hood back as he stood up from the crouch he’d landed in. He was several shades darker than his new lord, and his black hair was braided into tight cornrows. As his cloak fully settled around him, the colors shifted to blend in with the concrete at his back.

“Aye man, whatchu got for me?” Skid asked as he clasped hands with his new lord. They brought each other in for a bro hug, each slapping the other once on the back before sliding their clasped hands away with a snap of their fingers.

“I need you and your crew to hunt down the motherfucking tranny that stole from me. Bring me it and my property back to me. Alive! Bring that bitch to me. No one attacks or steals from Lord Jackson and gets away with it.”

The level nineteen Ranger, affectionately called Skid, gave what he thought was a courtly bow, flaring out his chameleon cloak as he did so. “Your wish is my command.”