(35.1) Mark of the Desert

Aki runs through the tunnels. Her breath comes in heavy pants from the exertion but she doesn't stop.

A magic arrow whizzes past her head and explodes against the wall, releasing a paralytic mist.

She exhales quickly to hold her breath as she sprints through it. Then Aki spins in place and throws up her hands.

Mana courses quickly down her arms and legs and is released through her fingertips.

The shackles on her wrists and ankles clack together loudly from the sudden movement.

Mana courses quickly through her body as it's thrown out.

"Shield!"

Blood pours from the effort as skin and muscles tear from her fingertips following the reckless freecast.

Rather than forming a solid barrier, a compressed wall that looks like it's being squeezed outward away from Aki forms. In the next moment it explodes right as Aki's pursuers come into view.

The mist and the slavers are blown away, paralyzed and bruised from the attack.

Aki can't enjoy it because the shackles respond to the mana and pierce her body, ripping at the flesh and absorbing her mana.

Loud screams for help snap her hazy mind to attention and Aki sprints once more, ignoring the pained screams her own body sends her.

"Not yet. Not yet!"Aki grits her teeth. She refuses to stumble.

Carefully she compresses her mana as tightly as possible, careful to avoid activating the shackles again, and circulates it through to her feet and hands, regenerating them back to normal.

"I'm almost there, Zed. Just stay hidden!"

She bursts through the heavy door at the end of the torchlit tunnel.

A slaver holds the chains of three slaves in her hand and a thorned whip in the other.

Standing protectively in front of the slaves, Zed shields them with her body. Judging from the tears in her dried leaves and body, she has already blocked several whippings.

"They have nothing to do with this. It was my plan and mine alone, egg muncher."

"Doesn't matter how valuable you are, dry root. Escape attempts are punishable by example and..." The slaver laughs, contorting her face into an ever growing perverted look. "I've been wanting to see what the inside of a dryad is like."

Flames engulf the thorned whip as she readies to strike again.

Aki is on the slaver in a moment, throwing her weight forward to slam their head into the ground.

Water splashes against the brickwork in the dark alley from the sudden impact. Aki's eyes widen as she's brought back to her senses.

The slave defending the others isn't Zed. She isn't even a dryad. It's a bloodied woman whose clothes are so torn from the whipping, it's a surprise she isn't naked after everything.

Beneath Aki, the one she's grinding the face of into the ground, isn't the lizalo slaver either.

"It's in the past. I'm free. I'm free." Aki clenches her jaw. She echoes the thoughts repeatedly, grounding herself.

She had been wandering the foggy streets of the expansive underground city. Her awe of seeing such a stacked city built directly and deeply into the stone distracted her from her initial goal to look for Dent.

Before she knew it, the faint fog from the outside had faded and Aki found herself somewhere in the labyrinthine streets.

Crossing bridges and running up and down stairs of the multilevel city was exciting at first. Although it quickly lost its lustre when she realised she was lost.

"Dent… why'd you go and get lost on me." Aki sighs heavily. She reclines against the edge of the bridge she's on and lazily gazes at the crowd of people on the levels below her.

"I wonder if there's a [Mapping] skill I could buy."

She opens her skills window, preparing for the chore of sorting through them when something catches her attention out of the corner of her eye.

Down below, a large crate floating on a plank is being pulled by a hooded courier and slowly moves through the crowd several levels below. Tarps loosely cover the sides and top.

However, a long gash on the top tarp makes it flutter wide open for a second. It is there that Aki sees the hidden emblem again.

An emblem Aki is all too familiar with, having had its visage burned into her mind and her lower back.

A four-petalled flower rising from a honeycombed salt flat inside a thorned ring.

Her memory goes blank thereafter, only returning now, who knows how far from where she originally started.

*

"Slavery isn't illegal according to the Abe-vian Coalition of City-States, cradleborn! Take your selfish views away from here and let me go!" The woman struggles to shout with half her face being crushed against the wet brick.

Aki loosens her grip and the woman hurriedly scurries away. She spits on the ground and pats herself to check for harm. The woman has large rounded ears with stubby points, an ape-ish face and an exceedingly full figure. 

This slaver is a sapien. And she isn't happy. 

"Slavery isn't, but buying and selling slaves is!" The bloodied slave Aki had mistaken for Zed interjects before stepping back to defend her companions instinctively.

"Quiet!" Orders the sapien slaver. She raises the whip she had been beating them with aggressively.

Aki takes a step forward between them and starts to heal the slaves with careful precision, using her water and cleansing spells to clean them up as well.

The slaver clears her throat and straightens her dirty tunic, tutting at the ruined fabric.

"Just because your backwards thinking believes slavery is wrong doesn't give you a right to attack someone. These slaves are mine and are helping me move with my business. None of your concern."

"What business? They're bloody, scared, and aren't carrying anything but their chains. Try again." Aki clenches her pendulum so tightly she feels blood pour from her palm.

"These are slaves of conflict. Of war! They forfeited their lives when they lost in battle and should be glad they're alive!"

"So it's fine to be a slave if you lost to someone, is that what you're saying?"

The slaver purses her lips, contorting her face into a poor attempt to hide a sneer.

"Listen, let's forget about this. You're doing something illegal, I'm doing something illegal. Call it even and let bygones be bygones, hmm?"

"You're here for the auction." Aki states. Once she does, the panicked emotions the slaver has spike then settle into a feeling of superiority and confidence. "Where is it?"

The slaver starts to laugh. "So you attacked me… even knowing who I work for? Well I guess the pretense isn't necessary anymore."

Any ounce of humour in her face drops and the slaver's tone hardens. "Capture her." She flicks her wrist and cracks the whip at the slaves.

Mana surges through the shackles of the slaves as they are compelled to follow orders.

At the same time, the pounding of feet against stone announces the arrival of the slaver guards Aki had knocked out and blown away earlier.

Too slow.

Unlike recent threats, these slaver guards are too slow in comparison.

Sluggish. Obvious.

Attacks like theirs won't even trigger responses to Aki's magic defences.

Yet with all the training Aki had been doing with Dent recently, she didn't need to rely on magic or the system to avoid them. With a step forward and a bow, Aki jumps and flips between the assailants effortlessly.

Careful to not harm the slaves, Aki grabs their arms and spins the slaves about, forcing them to crash into each other.

"I'll heal you soon, sorry."