The Slavers - Part 7

This man was a tough opponent.

His stature and brute strength had made him formidable, dealing damage and blows far more powerful than Octavia would have imagined. She almost wondered whether he wasn't fully human. Having some amount of beast-kin blood or some other race may have been the cause for his strength.

Whether that was the case or not, his blows had still hurt. This made sense given that her human half, which mostly ended up being hit was still just that…a human half.

She had not fought well…she knew that. There were surely many things that she could have done differently, something she was sure everyone wondered about after a battle.

She should have come to the realisation about the lantern as soon as the fight had started. If she had, she was sure the battle would have ended much quicker.

There were numerous things to think about, but that would all come later…likely as she tried to sleep through the pain she was sure to suffer later.

But for now, she had to see this fight through to the end.

Which is what she hoped her last valiant strike with the sword would do.

…

*Slice*

It all went silent after she heard that sound.

She couldn't quite relate the noise to anything else in life. She thought it sounded like a blade quickly going through meat, like at a butcher's. But it sounded like it was much harder for it to make it though. And with a more solid end that it ended up striking.

It was actually quite stomach-churning. Even with the lights off, and Octavia only being able to see an orange hue…she knew the blade had met its mark.

She was worried she had missed, going through his shoulder instead, or that he had caught the blade meaning it only went through his hand. But before long, she knew she had hit where she had frantically aimed for.

His grip on her tail loosened and dropped off, allowing her to disentangle herself from him. Now free from his grip, she let out a sigh of relief and relaxed her shoulders.

But, before she could truly relax, she heard footsteps. It was at that point that things came flooding back to her as she remembered, hers wasn't the only fight that had been happening in the room.

Turning to the side, she looked over and found Sylvia and the other man fighting again. It would seem that they had stopped for a moment when they heard the sound of Octavia's blade piercing the man's skull. But with the other man in fear for his life more so than before, he tried to go back onto the offensive.

Octavia started to make her way over, but as hurt as she was, it was incredibly difficult to do so. But, not wanting to lose Sylvia, she forced herself along the floor as fast as she could.

She was forced to watch the fight, as they both alternated between lunging and dodging, fearful every time the man made a move. But almost halfway along, she realised she wasn't needed to save her.

…

The man had started to sway more and more as his fight had dragged on, something of which Sylvia was easily able to see. Then, when they heard a blade piercing a body freezing the both of them, once the man saw who had been the one to die, his heart rate shot up.

He had lost a colleague, and he may very well soon lose his life. The fear of all this made his heart beat much faster than before. Something that would be quite a problem for him as that just made him lose blood even faster.

He tried to fight back against Sylvia, harder than before…but as he did, his vision became blurry. Not long after that, he inexplicably lost his grip on his dagger, and then the strength in his legs just gave out, collapsing to the floor.

With that, the man looked up into the darkness, before closing his eyes, succumbing to it for the final time.

…

*thump*

The noise was heard in triplicate as the man, Sylvia and Octavia all slumped to the floor.

The battle was finally over.

They couldn't hear any more footsteps, no more voices and no more light was present in the doorway.

There were no more reinforcements, allowing them to finally rest after that horrible fight.

Sylvia was not hurt badly. She ended up with a couple of cuts here and there from the start of the fight, but nothing life-threatening. If anything, she was just exhausted having to dodge and attack for so long. Getting into fights was not something she did on a daily basis… or at all even.

Octavia on the other hand, was in an incredible amount of pain.

Everything hurt.

Thankfully, no limbs were lost, and a part of her was happy that she didn't have to wait even longer for her tail to regrow again. While she was thankful for that, she knew that all the damage she had sustained was going to take a while to heal from. It also annoyed her that she wouldn't be able to just rest and heal up now, as the situation they were in was still very much problematic.

So, with the little strength she had, she looked around and locked eyes with Sylvia, then started to crawl towards her, wincing along the way.

"St-stop." Sylvia managed to say in amongst the huffing and puffing of exhaustion. "You need…need to rest."

"We can't…will be day soon…need to find…the slaves."

Then, with a look of tired sadness on her face, Sylvia slowly pulled herself up off the floor, having to lean against the wall when she had made it just to keep herself from falling again.

She then slowly moved over to Octavia in order to pick her up. But before she did, Octavia realised something.

"We need…to check their…bodies."

Sylvia was going to ask why, but realised that was a stupid question. For one reason, these guys were no longer using their stuff anymore, and with them on the run every little thing would be helpful for them. Second, if they had slaves down here, something they still hadn't completely proven yet, they were bound to be locked up somewhere. Which obviously meant they needed a key to get to them.

So, Octavia being in no position to nimbly move her way over to the bodies and worm her fingers through their pockets, it was down to Sylvia to deal with. It was during this time that a single thought of "How did I get to this point in my life," ran through her head.

She was a noble after all. It almost seemed crazy to her that her life was now uncovering slave rackets, getting into fights and rummaging around dead bodies' pockets. If her father could see her now.

…

Putting aside her lamenting of the past, Sylvia searched through all their pockets and came across a few things. There was a small amount of food, mostly half eaten which neither of them really wanted to use, so that was thrown away. They did still have food stored for their travel so they were no need to resort to that sort of thing.

She also found a few scraps of paper, which they kept, not having the time to check it, but possibly having some evidence of their crimes.

Then lastly, she found a rusty set of keys, hitting the jackpot.

Assuming these weren't just for the doors to the shop and the abandoned house, they should have what they needed to get to the slaves that should be down here.

And so, with that, Sylvia, after picking up their weapons, along with the man's sword, made her way back over to Octavia, reaching down and placing her arm around her. She left the club, it being too heavy and all. Then with all the strength she could muster…pulled her up.

"Huunngg, wow. I know you are in a lot of pain, but I think you are going to have to help me a little here."

Octavia rolled her eyes, sure that if Sylvia wasn't exhausted, she wouldn't have seemed half as heavy to her. But, that was the case and so she had to use what little remaining strength she had to keep herself up, reducing the load that was on Sylvia. Something that hurt with every movement she made.

After the groans of pain had reduced, the pain changed from sharp and sudden to a constant throbbing sensation once she was up in place, they slowly made their way out of the doorway.

With one direction of the hallway exhausted, they headed the only other way they could, checking the doors along the way.

They found pretty much the same as the others, storerooms for various odds and ends. It was only once they reached the final door, that they could feel that this was going to be different.

Slowly entering, still unsure of whether the two men they faced were the only ones, they made sure to scan the room.

It was from this scan that both Sylvia and Octavia gasped at what they had found, thankful that they had achieved their goal.

As laying down on the opposite side of the room… were a dozen or so people.

All of whom were in chains.