Finding Those Who Have Moved On

Without any more reason for him to stick around, Vallum left Kenra and Birdie to go and prepare for his life starting a year from now. He had asked Birdie if he could keep the wisp after he delivered the message to her, but she insisted that she had to keep it, so he dropped the idea. To his surprise, Kenra produced her own ball of light and rubbed it against him, apparently so that it could hold his scent. After that, he was on his way.

He started the travel back to his village in a very somber mood and, of course, there was no talking or back and forth. He stopped by the city that he had met Sari in and looked around, but he saw no sign of the pair that used to travel with him until earlier that very day.

'I hope that Vynn isn't taking them back to that trashy city." Vallum thought.

Since the daylight was waning, Vallum decided to stay the night in the same inn that he, Vynn, and Sari had stayed at previously. He checked in and went straight to his room. He sat on the bed and looked around the small bare room for a while, thinking about what his companions would be saying or doing if they were here with him.

Vynn would be making fun of him, and probably tossing him a coin. At the thought of that, Vallum clutched that last coin that Vynn had tossed him. He hadn't noticed it until he paid for the room at the inn, but Vynn and Sari filled up his coin pouch before they left.

He thought back to all the trouble that Vynn had saved him from and how she guided him to Kenra with the help of Sari, 'She didn't pay me back. She put me into her debt.' Vallum thought as he went to sleep.

When he awoke the next morning, he left the city and traveled back to the horrible one that he had met Vynn in. This time it was a couple minutes into the city that he heard the tired routine.

"Sir! Could you please he-"

"No." Vallum said firmly without glancing in the woman's direction. If he weren't hoping to see Vynn and Sari then he would have gone around the city, but that wasn't the case. Since he had left the hotel early that morning, Vallum managed to make it to the town just after mid-day.

"Here, take these crates. They are so hea-" This time it was a super skinny man who was struggling with a stack of crates that attempted to load Vallum down with. Vallum sidestepped the man with the crates and kept walking.

He had already decided that he would spend the rest of the day looking around to see if he could find Vynn and Sari. The words he needed to say just wouldn't leave his mouth, and he was uneasy to leave things like that. He looked around for a while until night fell. He wasn't paying attention to the time, and busied himself with avoiding sketchy people, so when night fell he found himself on a small street similar to the one that he was brought to the first time he fell victim to a con woman. Once he realized the predicament he was in, he started back toward the roach-filled inn that he was going to stay in, but for the second time in this city he was hit hard in the back of the head and sent to the ground.

When Vallum flipped over on the ground, preparing to fight, he had a weighted net thrown over him and was trapped. He struggled against the net and started to get himself untangled, but there were several men that jumped on him and prevented him from making much progress. There was a man on each limb, holding him down through the net. The one on his right arm was weaker than the rest, so Vallum was able to throw him off and kick out of one of the other men's grasp. He went to roll to get the initiative on the other two men, but the net was too restrictive and a moment later he felt a needle pierce his skin. Darkness ensued.

***

Vallum woke up inside of a cage. He looked around, and found tons more cages stacked around him in a large warehouse building. Every cage he saw had at least one person in it, and the cages were made from thin iron bars; bars that he could probably bend, but he was weak from whatever he had been injected with during his kidnapping. In a cage right next to his, there was an old man.

"Hey there, sir." Vallum addressed him, "What do you know about what is going on?"

The man's voice creaked like a wooden floorboard when he spoke, "The great equalizer: slavers. No matter who you were, you are a slave now, boy. And you look like one that will be used a lot."

"Where are we?"

"Judging from the amount of sand on the floor and the apparel of the men that enter occasionally, I would say that we are in a holding house in the dessert."

Vallum looked around and noticed the sand that the man was talking about and saw one of the people he was talking about, too. The man wore bright white clothes with face coverings and a sword on his hip. The man looked his way.

The old man lowered his voice and continued, "They bring buyers in every few days that will leave with anywhere from one cage all the way up to as many as they can afford, and some of them can afford a lot. I have been in here for a long time, given my lack of viability as a slave. They have already stopped giving me rations, but some kind souls share their rations with me."

Vallum looked at all of the filled cages. 'Children, women, elders." He thought, 'All the weakest and most vulnerable people.' His face darkened the more he looked around. His mind went to Kenra and what he would do if she had been enslaved, and that made his mind.

'I will free everyone here.' He thought, but then he looked at his own shackled hands, 'I guess freeing myself comes first.'