Chapter 7

To Zeik's eyes, the medieval look of Azira's capital seemed like fiction. Knights stood guard at the city's gates, and the walls surrounding the city stretched on for as far as the eye could see. Since the Empire of Humanity was really just a cluster of feudal states, the Emperor, the only one capable of uniting the entirety of humanity, did not live in any of the "kingdoms" and instead had his own city close to the center of everything. Zeik saw it as sort of the Washington D.C. of this new world.

The guards granted him access after a single look at the coloration of his hair, and a jolt of excitement ran through Zeik as he set foot in the city of Azirtia, the capital city, not to be confused with the name of the kingdom. A wide, smoothly-paved cobblestone road stretched all the way from the gate to a massive castle-like building in the center of the city, which was barely a silhouette at this range. Zeik could not remember any information about that building, and since there, ironically, isn't a King to the Kingdom of Azira, that couldn't have been an actual castle. Actually, it was odd that the place was called a kingdom instead of a dukedom. From that, a bunch of small streets and alleyways branched out into the rest of the city, leading to stores, homes, and brothels. Close to the city's gates was the Church, which worshipped not a god, but Creation itself, and the Guild, a place where one could sign up to join the Adventurers, a group of humans tasked with expanding into Fallen Territories, places overrun by Demons, and eventually erase the existence of Demons altogether. The job paid well, for sure, but not many were willing to sign up due to the risk it put them at. From just a single peek in the door, Zeik noticed how quiet and lifeless the Guild's building was, which was completely different from what he imagined it'd be.

Annabel quickly pulled Zeik from the Guild, and tried to get his attention onto something else. Zeik found this odd. In all the fiction he'd read, being part of such a Guild was an honorable and heroic thing, and that was what a lot of stories were centered around. To him, it didn't make sense why such a position was so unpopular to the people of this world.

"Mas- Zeik, we should hurry. There's an absolutely delightful restaurant further down, and it'll fill up if we don't get there early."

"Ah... But I didn't bring any money."

Annabel pulled a pouch of glimmering, golden coins out of her purse and shook it, filling the air with the resonant sound of small metal-on-metal collisions. A few heads turned towards them, but quickly returned to their original position.

Zeik felt a rush of anxiety, and rushed to push Annabel's hands down, back to the purse in her other hand. Even though Prince had no sense of money, Zeik could infer that gold coins were of great value on his own, and waving them around was probably a terrible idea.

"I got it, so please keep those until we need them." Zeik pleaded.

Annabel looked at Zeik's flustered face with surprise, and slowly placed the pouch back in her purse, out of sight.

"We should get there in time for lunch, if the queue isn't too long." Annabel said.

Zeik found himself instinctively pat his pocket for a phone to check the time, but realized that such advanced technology would not exist in this world. He decided to trust Annabel's sense of time. The two turned onto a side street, and the noise of the bustling main road quickly faded into the background.

A little too quickly, Zeik observed. He felt a chill at the base of his neck, and spun around. Nobody was there, of course.

"Zeik?" Annabel stopped.

"Just my imagination, I guess." Zeik said, scanning their surroundings. Finding nothing in the shadows between each building, he shook his head and kept walking.

It became apparent after a few more minutes of walking that Annabel had no clue where they were anymore. "We must have taken a wrong turn off Main." She concluded.

Zeik could not find the energy to feel annoyed or disappointed, as he had just realized the consequences of letting a body that stayed in the same few rooms for the past 10 years finally go outside. He sat with his back against a wall, hoping that the searing pain in his heels would go away. Prince had been taught to eat balanced, controlled meals that contributed to him not growing fat despite not even taking a step outside for so long, but Zeik did not expect that walking in hard leather shoes would hurt as much as it did. In fact, it felt as if someone had taken a mallet to the bottom of his foot, and just had ten seconds to do as much damage as humanly possible. To Zeik, if the people of this world had adapted to these shoes, then they could very well just walk barefoot across barely-hardened lava.

"Even if we made a reservation, it'd be hopeless." Zeik said. "What's the plan now?"

After a moment of silence far too long to be Annabel pondering her answer, Zeik finally looked up from the cobblestones on which he sat. Pinned against the wall a little ways away, with a hand firmly cupped over her lips, was Annabel. The other hand connected to the cloaked, masked assailant was around her throat, thumb jammed into her windpipe. It took Zeik a moment to comprehend what was going on, and once he did, he shot to his feet.

"Pin him down." A gruff voice ordered from the mask. "Don't let him see your faces."

two thin, small figures with what looked like scraps of cloth wrapped around their heads came out of the shadows behind the man, and tackled Zeik. In his previous, decently well-built body, there was no way he could have been knocked over, which was why he didn't even think to dodge. It occurred to Zeik far too late that Prince, while still maintaining a thin, healthy body, did not exercise at all.

"Fu-" Zeik attempted to curse as the two childlike figures pinned him to the cold, bumpy cobblestones, shoving a crusty, bloodstained cloth against his nose and mouth. Not being able to move his arms or legs, Zeik desperately thrashed his head around to move the cloth, but the hand pressing it to his face wasn't letting up.

"Knock him out, kill him, you two choose." The man's gruff voice came again. "They won't find us anyway. Take anything of value you can find."

Zeik could somehow see the man's smile. A wide, greedy grin was what Zeik imagined was behind that design-less black mask. Even when he couldn't physically see the man's face, and was facing a completely different direction from him, Zeik felt a shiver run down the length of his body.

Whether it was Zeik himself, or the selfish instincts of Prince that jumped to action, Zeik resorted to flopping in an ungraceful fish-like fashion, fully aware that the action could very well get Annabel killed, finally shaking the two pinning down his limbs, and jumped up. The cloth fell to the ground, and Zeik wasted no time yanking the cloth wrapped around the two's heads off, simultaneously jumping back to avoid being grabbed.

Zeik hesitated as the two newly-revealed faces stared back at him with just as much surprise as he imagined he had on his own. They were two children, both female and around eight years old, with dry, messy hair that frizzed out enough to make the natural light brown color seem wispy, and cheeks so hollow that they looked half-dead. Their hazel eyes stared emptily, both looking at Zeik and at the wall directly behind him. But those weren't the first details Zeik noticed.

Atop the two girls' heads, amidst poorly-kept hair, were ears like that of a cat. Now that he had time to look closely, the girls had tails hanging behind them, too. Though they were lifeless enough to be mistaken for heavily-used ropes.

He couldn't help but do a double-take. There was nothing about animal girls in the books Zeik had read, there were only stories about the deeds of humanity, wars against Demons, and a general image of the island that the Empire of Humanity was built upon, with the other island to the Northeast deemed as "Fallen Region," where Demons resided. There was no mention of other races. It would seem that whoever the human historians were in this world, they were extremely biased and did not care for anything besides humanity itself.

The man holding Annabel cursed. "Useless little shits... I knew that trader wasn't competent." And ran off, disappearing into the shadows between buildings. Annabel collapsed to the ground, gasping for air.

The two children attempted to run, too. Zeik quickly grabbed them by their wrists and pulled them back, noticing the thick bands of metal around their necks, each one stamped with a number. the girls were 034 and 035 respectively. Zeik tied their wrists and ankles together with the cloth they had around their heads earlier, and rushed over to Annabel.

"Are you alright?" Zeik helped her to a sitting position. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't paying attention, and-"

"I'll be fine." Annabel managed to choke out. "Thank you, for worrying about me."

Zeik breathed a sigh of relief. There were some pretty bright blue-and-black bruises around her throat, but it didn't seem like Annabel was having too much trouble breathing. Zeik returned to the two he had tied together, who were now playing dead.

He knelt down and undid the knots, receiving large-eyes stares from the two. However, he did not let of their wrists.

"Those two..." Annabel's eyes locked onto the ears on the head of the girl with the collar stamped 035. "They're Halves, and slaves at that."

Of course, it occurred to Zeik that this different world might run off a system different from any he was used to, but hearing the word "slaves" still gave him a jolt. It was only something he had heard while learning about the American Civil War, and even then, that was so far from his place in history that it hardly felt like a real event.

"Halves? Slaves?" Zeik asked.

"I don't know much about them, but Halves are humans with beast-like attributes. They're lesser beings, basically. To see one in Azirtia..."

"Alright, you can stop right there." Zeik felt an oncoming headache. Lesser beings? Wasn't this the same story of racism and slavery that he had learned about in school, just with slightly different sides?

"So these two were forced to help that guy, huh?" Zeik looked at the two trembling girls before him. "They don't look like they feel like talking any time soon. What do you say we do?"

There was a clear look of disgust in Annabel's eyes, despite her nature as such a nice and innocent girl. "We shouldn't involve ourselves with them. Let's just let them go."

The girls stared at her with eyes even wider and more scared, then glanced at Zeik with the same eyes.

"They'll be taken back into slavery then, won't they?"

"That's highly likely, yes."

Zeik shook his head fiercely. "Then that's not happening. These two are coming with us."

"But Zeik-"

"That's final." Zeik said, and Annabel's mouth snapped shut. She was trained to follow her master's every word, so such a command instantly shut down whatever she was going to say.

"Come on, stand up." Zeik helped the two girls to their feet. "You don't have to trust me, or talk to me, but I'll let you choose. Whatever slaver you came from, or take your chances with me."

Unsurprisingly, the two girls clung to Zeik.

"There's your answer." Zeik nodded at Annabel. "We'll decide what to do with these two once we get home. Do you know a way back that doesn't involve Main?"

Annabel took them through a dark, winding path between buildings that led them to a side gate of the city, guarded by one guard, who let them through immediately after glancing at Zeik's head. After that, they took a forest path that led to the Vincent Mansion's back door, an entrance that Prince didn't even know of.

Annabel insisted on leaving the two outside, and Zeik agreed to it after a full minute of arguing. It didn't seem like the girls planned on running, since they knew that the chances of them starving in the wild or getting caught were almost certain. Zeik entered the house with a promise to bring them some food.

Annabel showed Zeik to the dining hall's side entrance, and Zeik dismissed her to attend to her own matters, since she was technically off the clock by then. He placed a hand on the doorknob, and froze.

"-ve some common sense!" Chelsea's voice could be heard through the heavy wooden doors. "There's no way that brat has changed at all! Other world, my ass! He's tricking us again, and you know it!"

"There is truth behind his words, and I have faith in that!" Duke retaliated. "Have you seen him? He's not the same Prince as always!"

"Then what do you think he's doing, out this late?" The sun had already set, due to the detours Zeik was forced to take back. "He's celebrating his victory over us! He's probably out there again, tearing the town apart as we speak!"

"Think about what you're saying!" Duke wasn't letting up. "have some faith in your own son! In our son!"

Zeik heard a sharp, cringe-inducing slap from the other side of the door, and the sound of someone standing up so fast that their chair toppled backwards.

"Our son? OUR?" Chelsea screamed. "That b- that THING stopped being my child the moment it began thinking! I can't believe that I gave birth to such a terrible being, and I can't believe you're still taking his side!"

"Honey, wai-"

"Don't 'Honey' me!" Chelsea's footsteps rang out loudly, followed by the slamming of the dining hall's main doors. Her footsteps echoed down the Mansion's many halls as she stormed up the stairs.

Zeik fell to his knees. Tears rolled down his face.

"I did this." He thought. "If I'd just kept isolating myself, or if I built up trust first..."

But did that really matter? Could he really have filled the gap in their hearts from all those years ago?

"They'll be better off without me here." Zeik concluded. "I'm just causing problems."

"They probably didn't even see me as 'Zeik' to begin with."

Without even confronting his father, who sat stupefied in the dining hall, the slap still stinging his face, Zeik stood up and ran back the way he came from, not going to his room to pack up clothes, not grabbing any food or tools. He burst out of the back doors, not even bothering to wipe his tears, and grabbed the two girls there waiting for him.

"I'm sorry." He apologized to nobody in particular. "But it's best if we leave right now."

The girls, sensing that something was wrong, didn't struggle against him, and just nodded.

"We'll have to go somewhere far from here." Zeik tried his hardest to not just break down and curl into a ball, crying until he couldn't anymore. He hadn't known the Vincents for long, but from all the time Prince had of his parents in his memory, they were like family to him, too. Even if Prince could have, Zeik couldn't bear hearing the two argue like that.

"Somewhere I won't cause any more pain."