Horse Chase

Every part of my view becomes dark green as we enter the edge of the forest. The dirt road is too wide for the leaves to block out the sun, but a large portion of the vast blue sky has been replaced.

The earthy smell that rushes my nose accompanying the new environment is very noticeable. When the breeze blows, instead of having the wave of the grass, I now hear the dance of the branches and the leaves.

I can catch with my eyes a couple of critters jumping around in the undergrowth and on the trees. The carriage in front of us is not that far away now.

As I look around to get used to the change of scenery, I feel a small hand reaching over my waist and into my pants.

"What the hell are you doing, Astra?" I say and turn around. There she is, with her tongue stuck out and trying to pickpocket me or something.

"Where are the candies?" She asks while continuing to feel me up.

How did this girl change so much in such a short amount of time?

"Not there," I say.

"Oh, I got something," Astra says.

"What?"

She leans back and pulls out the pulse pistol from my belt.

"Oi! Don't touch that!" I shout, but I can't exactly take my hands off the reins to snatch it back from her.

Astra inspects the gun with her curious blue eyes.

"Ooh, what do we have here? Interesting," she says.

"You don't want to mess with that."

"Some cool tool from the other world. I see, I see."

"Give that back!"

She is just completely ignoring me.

"Hmm, I wonder what this button does," she says.

"No!"

Astra presses the power button on the side of the pistol, and it comes alive with a whirring sound.

"Ooh, it growls."

"That's not- Okay, listen to me. It is now loaded. You do not want to keep playing with it."

"Or what? You are going to take it from me and steer into a tree?"

"Stop it right now, you little brat."

"Watch who you are talking to, heretic."

"Oh my God…"

"At your service."

Okay, fuck this. I take up both of the reins with my left hand and reach out my right hand to try to grab the pistol from Astra.

"Woop, woop," Astra vocalizes as she dodges her hands from my grasp.

As my hand misses the pistol again and again, Astra gets too excited and bumps her back on the top of the window of the cabin.

"Ow!" Astra groans, and at that moment, she takes her attention off my hand. I swiftly reach out and grab onto the pistol.

We are now engaged in a tug of war with a deadly weapon as the rope. Astra is a lot stronger than I thought.

"Unhand it!"

"Only if you give me a candy!"

"No! Not when you are behaving like this!"

"Then I won't let go!"

After a couple of back and forth, Astra's finger gets caught in the trigger guard.

PEW!

The gun fires out a pulse bullet, missing my head by a foot and shooting out into the trees in front of us. Astra's jaw drops, and she lets go of her grip.

"Whoa! I didn't expect it to do that," she says.

I put the pistol back into my belt and say, "No candy for you for the rest of the day."

"No…"

I take up the reins with both of my hands again and focus on the road. I realize that the bullet had hit a branch above the carriage in front of us, and a little twig is falling down.

POOF! The twig lands on top of the box being carried ahead. It caves in the tarp and pulls the back up, revealing a little opening at the bottom that I can see through.

Between the flaps, I gaze into what's inside the box. It's actually not at all a box. There are vertical bars around it. It's a cage, and in the cage, there are five elf girls, sitting with shackles around their ankles and hands tied behind their backs. Four of them are terribly depressed, silently sobbing while staring at the ground. One of them is comforting the other four without much of a happy face herself, and I recognize that face.

"Faye!" I call out.

The slit is too low for them to notice, and they can't hear me over the hooves.

"What?" Astra asks.

"Look!" I point out at the carriage in front of us. "There are caged elves in there! And Faye is among them!"

Astra squints her eyes and looks.

"Oh, a slave trader," she says.

"A what?"

"You know, a trafficker, a kidnapper, whatever you call it."

"No, I know what they are, but does that mean those elves are being trafficked?"

"What do you think they are doing? Going on a trip to the beach?"

"You fuckin- we need to do something about this!"

Astra doesn't look at all disturbed. "Suit yourself. That thing of yours looks pretty lethal. I'd like to see what it can do."

Oh, I'm pissed. If the Goddess tells me to suit myself, then that is exactly what I'll do. I was already dying to meet these bishops the elves in Alventyr were talking about, who knew that opportunity came this soon?

Those scums, taking invaluable lives from the already poor village. Even my father's colleagues wouldn't have stooped this low.

I am getting a murderous intent. The pistol by my belt could come in pretty handy by now, but no, I have to calm myself down. Whoever is driving could have nothing to do with this.

"Faster!" I command the horse.

The horse lets out a neigh and picks up its feet. As we raise dust behind us, the distance from the carriage in front closes in rapidly.

"What's wrong, Master?" Lohikaarmi asks and sticks her head out from the window beside Astra.

"Don't worry about it. It got this."

I move the reins to steer the horse to the side, and we race past the slave carriage. When we get ahead, I can see the driver. He looks like a human, with no sharp ears or anything. He's got a short stature and thick limbs, holding a whip and dressed in a silk laced shirt.

"Stop this carriage!" I call out.

The driver turns over and sees me. His face folds in irritation.

"Mind your own fucking business!" He bellows out and whips his horse, allowing him to open up the distance between us two again.

Well, I tried. He's definitely got something to do with this.

"Astra," I ask and unholster the pistol from my belt, "what are the rules regarding killing humans?"