“Sometimes good deeds are done simply because they happen to be convenient to do in the process of doing something else.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

“Think Kino is doing okay up there on her own?” asked Eilonwy as she strolled leisurely through the mansion’s surprisingly extensive underground dungeon. The elven girl blasted a cell door’s lock open with a burst of carefully applied death magic and opened it to allow Aideen into the cell where she could treat the abused, malnourished slaves within.

That there was a slaughter going on in the dungeon was something that the girl simply ignored, even when she was the direct cause of said slaughter. Eilonwy simply used the opportunity to practice her undead manipulation and sent out her eleven skeletal minions to do the deed, something the guards in the underground dungeon were completely unprepared for.

While skeletons were generally weaker and less durable compared to zombies due to their lighter weight and lack of flesh, Eilonwy’s reinforced, higher-grade skeletons turned those qualities into assets instead. Her mother had modified her skeleton to make them far more solid and durable, also greatly increasing the power they possess, while at the same time, their bodies remained mostly hollow, which made them very lightweight for their size.

Which in turn led to shenanigans like the rapidly moving skeletons running along the walls and leaping down on the dungeon’s guards from above like birds of prey. Their light weight meant that with some momentum they could actually move along the walls with relative ease as long as Eilonwy controlled them properly.

It didn’t help the dungeon’s guards one bit that each skeleton wielded a bone spear – all of which were carved out of a massive thigh bone that belonged to a great lizard from the western plains – that were heavily enchanted. The enchantments made the light weapon far deadlier and more durable than it should have been, piercing through their armor and bodies with ease.

Some of the captives – slaves that were still being “trained” prior to selling them as merchandise or ones who had not been slated for sale yet – watched and cheered as the guards were slain one after another by the skeletons. Others cowered in fright in the corners of their cells at the sight. Yet others only stared blankly with eyes full of apathy at the slaughter before their eyes, as if they had nothing to do with it.

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“Eh, she’ll be fine,” replied Aideen as she coaxed a frightened middle-aged woman from the corner of the cell. The woman was covering a young, teenaged girl who looked far more enthusiastic and interested at the slaughter outside with her own body, probably a mother and daughter pair. It was common for the slaves to originate as family members of people who took up loans to the slave trader and found themselves unable to pay it back.

Though from what Farouq had been able to find out, the slave trader also kidnapped a good amount of his “merchandise”, mostly preying on unlucky travelers in the region. It was enough information for Aideen and the rest to condemn the man as the sort of scum the world would be better off without, so they had zero qualms about the violence they were inflicting in the man’s house that night.

As for whether the man would have some associates with him or not, people willing to befriend such scum likely deserved what was going to happen to them anyway.

“It shows that you think like an elf sometimes, Eilo,” noted Aideen as she worked her healing on the mother-daughter pair and helped them get up and out of the cell to follow the throng of slaves that now timidly walked behind Eilonwy. “Kino’s well over fifty by now, and while she did lack proper learning in the first couple decades of her life, someone that age would be well over halfway done with their life if they were human.”

“I know, know,” replied Eilonwy with a shake of her head. Even while chatting with Aideen she didn’t forget to direct the slaves behind her with gestures, mostly telling them to stay put by the sides. Despite that, some followed her regardless, mostly the ones eager to see the slaying of the guards which likely tormented them during their stay in the dungeon. “It’s a bit hard to put it into words, but when I see Kino, I kinda see her as both a big sister and a little sister of mine at the same time, if you get what I mean?”

“I kinda do. She was older than the three of you when you first met her, but mentally, she’s probably worse off due to how her life had been,” noted Aideen with a nod as she walked out of the cell as moved to the next one over. That next cell held several slaves who showed heavy signs of physical abuse, with scarring from lashes still fresh on their bodies.

All of them also looked at the guards being slaughtered with hatred in their eyes, but were too weak to raise their bodies to get a better vantage point.

The looks on their faces showed both bafflement and wonder when Aideen laid hands upon them and healed most of their physical injuries within mere moments. Unfortunately she couldn’t do much against malnutrition and what seemed to be a slight case of starvation, but at least the slaves were healthy enough to move on their own once more.

Almost as one, the slaves in the cell looked at her with wide eyes, then one of them prostrated themselves before her, saying words in a local dialect she didn’t quite understand but knew enough to catch words like “savior” or “benefactor” from it. The rest of the slaves in the cell followed suit moments later before she could tell them not to do that.

“More worshipers for the cult, eh, great-aunt?” teased Eilonwy in jest. She knew all too well that Aideen didn’t like people prostrating themselves before her, yet with her growing reputation and habit of healing people, it happened far more often than she liked.

“Shush, you. You’re not so old I’m above spanking you over my knee like a petulant stepchild.”