Chapter 38: A Pair of Slavers

The first few hours of the second day’s march towards the Abby of Xoth’s ruins were uneventful, with the girls chatting idly among themselves to pass the time. However, that changed in an instant just as the day was drawing towards noon, when all three of the adventurers heard indistinct shouting coming from up ahead. The ground had grown much hillier during the course of their journey, and they currently stood at the bottom of a rather large incline, which both confused the sounds and prevented any of the girls from surveying the situation.

After the complete debacle of their last encounter on the highway, none of the adventurers needed any guidance on keeping silent. At once, they froze in place, straining their ears, but were still only able to make out the faint echoes of what sounded to Lexi at least as the mingled shouts coming from representatives of both sexes. Always quick thinking, Gretel again tied Thomas the mule’s bridle to a nearby tree, to keep him — and their supplies — safe from whatever might be up ahead. As the trio crept up the hill, making as close to no noise as was possible, the voices at first began to become more clear, but were still too difficult to make out until they crested the ridge.

“Let me go!” a distressed female voice cried out.

This was met with raucous laughter from a pair of men. “Not a chance, knife ears,” one of the men replied, still chuckling maliciously.

Knife ears? Lexi mouthed silently to Gretel.

The mage mouthed back a single word — elf — which immediately cued Lexi in on the fact that this was some kind of nasty slur in Aeternia.

“Aye,” the other man chimed in, laughing darkly as well. “You’ll fetch us top price at the market.”

“Slavers,” came Samantha’s deadly whisper before Lexi could voice the question. A look came over the monk that sent a chill down the paladin’s spine then, the ice cold glare that stopping her cold. “This cannot be allowed,” the monk said — no longer bothering to whisper. Standing up to her full and eminently impressive height, Samantha continued even more loudly. “I will not permit it.”

Lexi and Gretel looked to one another nervously, a mild panic setting in between the paladin and mage as Samantha’s uncharacteristically brash and incautious behavior not only continued but grew rapidly more pronounced. Shoulders square and iron staff clenched tightly in her huge fists, the monk began to climb to the top of the hill, heedless of the obvious consternation written on her companions’ faces.

“Fuck it,” Lexi said to Gretel, shrugging her armored shoulders and scrambling to catch up with Samantha’s long strides.

“Well shit,” Gretel mumbled. “Wait for me!”

Samantha reached the hilltop first, standing atop the ridge with her rippling bronze muscles bathed in sunlight, looking every inch like the fierce warrior monk Lexi knew her to be. The paladin joined her companion a few seconds later, with Gretel scrambling up beside Lexi soon after, panting mildly from the unexpected exertion climbing the rather steep hill so quickly.

Looking down at the scene in the valley below, it appeared to the adventurers that Samantha’s assessment was entirely correct. Though it was still hard for Lexi to make out the precise details through the dense canopy of trees separating the two groups, what appeared to be happening in the valley down off the roadside was that an elf maiden had been caught in some kind of a snare set by the two men — presumably slavers — who were accosting the girl.

The elf maid was hanging upside down from a tree, bound at the ankle by the rope snare into which she must have stepped, but her hands were otherwise free, and worked furiously at the slipknot around her ankle, trying to free herself before the men closed in. And, before Lexi could even register what she had seen, a flash of gleaming steel appeared in the elf girl’s hand, severing the rope. She tumbled into the leaves below, but quickly regained her feet, backing up slowly and holding the small knife between her and the two large men.

The elf maid was a waif-like slip of a thing, barely topping in at five feet, but as slender as any young girl Lexi had lain eyes on. Her dirty blonde hair was bound into a braid that wrapped around the back of her head like a crown — reminding Lexi very strongly of photos she had seen of Eastern European women on Earth dressed in their traditional costumes. Long and gracefully pointed ears poked out from either side of the girl’s head, framing a pair of enormous eyes that were as brilliantly green as an an Irish countryside.

She was dressed in an unassuming outfit that would not look out of place on any country farm girl, a simple dark green skirt topped with a short sleeved white blouse and a tightly laced black bodice. The only thing that immediately struck Lexi as unusual about the elf girl’s outfit was that her skirt appeared to be intentionally slit high up one side, giving her more freedom of movement as well as showing off a single pale leg clad in a thigh-high knit stocking and a leather boot which came to just above her knee.

Lexi’s heart cried out to help the girl. Despite her diminutive size and the fact that she was armed with only a small utility knife, the look of fierce determination on her face struck Lexi as being worthy of any warrior. The glint in her eyes showed Lexi that there was likely much more to this slender elf maid than first met the eye.

“You’re right,” the paladin said to Samantha. “We have to help her.”

The mask of righteous indignation which clad Samantha’s face temporarily melted, as a true smile — not just the hints Lexi normally saw — blossomed across it. So relieved was the monk that her lover needed no convincing in this matter, that she inadvertently lowered the hard facade which normally concealed her emotions. The steely eyed gaze returned as Samantha gave Lexi a quick nod and turned back to survey their new foes. But, Lexi was glad to see that the faintest trace of the smile that had warmed the monk’s face remained still.

“I guess I’m in too,” Gretel groaned dramatically. “Just make sure that you don’t do anything that’s going to get me all gross again, Lexi. In other words, no experimenting with any new spells. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am!” Lexi said with mock formality, snapping a quick salute to the pink haired mage — which, as Lexi intended, succeeded in drawing a resigned groan.

“Let’s stick with the usual formation then,” Lexi said, serious once again. “Muscle up front, magic in the rear. OK?”

“Works for me,” Gretel said.

“Agreed,” Samantha said softly with a nod, briefly clasping Lexi’s shoulder. “Let us proceed then.”

As the trio made their way down the hill, although they tried to do so quietly and maintain their element of surprise, it was all but impossible to move with anything approaching silence on a forest bed covered in twigs and dry leaves. Naturally, the sounds coming from their direction reached the ears of the two slavers, who whipped around to see whom or what it was that was trying — unsuccessfully — to sneak up on them. In doing so, Lexi and her party got their first good look at the two slavers. Lexi had no preconceived notions about what to expect from slavers in this world, but whatever ideas she might have been harboring, these two were like nothing the paladin expected.

The one on the right was easily one of the largest men Lexi had ever seen. As tall and broad as Samantha was, this man completely dwarfed her. Closer to seven feet than to six, and with a frame carrying as much corded and thick muscle as an ox, his silhouette alone inspired a healthy amount of respect from the paladin. He wore no armor that Lexi could see, and little clothing either, apparently being clad in nothing more than a pair of roughspun drawstring trousers that had been lopped off at the knees and turned into the medieval equivalent of shorts. This left his spectacularly built body more or less fully displayed, and as the trio drew nearer, they could see that there was not an ounce of fat on him.

Whether through genetics or by choice, he was entirely bald, which had the effect of making him look that much more intimidating. The sole weapon born by the enormous man was a strange contraption that Lexi — a complete and utter weeb — instantly recognized as a kusarigama, which was composed of a coiled length of black chain connecting a dangerous looking sickle which he held in one hand and a large weighted ball that dangled freely from the foot of chain extending from the muscled warrior’s other hand.

His companion could hardly have appeared more different. Where the first many was enormously large and powerfully built, the second was actually shorter than the elf maid the two had snared. His bent-over, almost crouching, stance made him appear even smaller. His entire body was wrapped in loose fitting black robes, and the arms which extended from the sleeves were themselves covered entirely in tightly wound strips of black fabric, leaving not a square inch of skin exposed. His face too was covered by a white mask that could have been made from ivory or bone, wrought in the hideous image of a screaming human face, eyes and mouth clearly contorted in some combination of hatred and pain.

The crooked little man bore nothing that immediately appeared to be a weapon, but had both of his wrapped hands clutched around a long staff carved of some off-white material which strongly resembled that of his mask. The staff was long and straight, with a single ornament, a gleaming sphere of onyx worked into the very top, that looked like it was being held in place by a clawed white hand. In her encounters in Fantasy Adventure Quest thus far, Lexi had learned not to allow herself to be lulled into a false sense of security simply because an opponent was smaller than she was. After all, the only reason she was even on this quest to begin with was because of the curse placed upon her by a goblin priestess no larger than a human child.

And, this small crooked man exuded a malignant aura that put the paladin ill at ease. Lexi did not know why, but something deep in her bones was telling her that the small cowled figure was the more dangerous of the two — potentially by far.

“What have we here, Ivan?” Lexi heard the small man ask his companion, the black pools of the mask’s empty sockets studying the adventurers.

“You know,” the big man said, chuckling dangerously. “I think that we may have snared a bit more game than just the knife ears here, Sascha. If you ask me, our purses will be fat as a lord’s once we get this lot to market.”

“Right you are,” Sascha said in response.

Amid this dialog between the slavers, Lexi’s party reached the slope’s end, coming up just a half-dozen yards from the odd pair. The paladin had caught the two men’s quips as she descended along the hillside, and grew more incensed with each passing phrase.

“Listen up, and listen good!” she said, sliding her huge broadsword from its sheath. “Because, I’m only going to say this once. If you two can find it within your butt ugly hearts to get the fuck out of here, me and my girls will do you a favor — we won’t kill you. But, make one move against us, and you’re fucking toast. Got it?”

If either of the two had “gotten it,” their demeanors certainly did not show it. Instead, Ivan turned to Sascha, grinning. “I do believe we’ve just been threatened.”

“And by meat nonetheless,” Sascha replied darkly. “It seems we may get a bit of sport from today’s quarry after all. Why don’t you take care of the interlopers here, while I round up the elf.”

“With pleasure,” the big man said.

Grinning widely, Ivan turned back to the three adventurers. He brought the index and forefinger of one hand up to touch his forehead, and as soon as the fingers made contact, the skin beneath began to buckle and warp. Spreading rapidly from his forehead to encompass the enormous man’s entire body, Lexi watched with growing trepidation as his skin transformed into a coarse gray substance which had more the appearance of stone than anything resembling flesh.

As the stone-skinned giant began advancing towards them, Lexi started to wonder if she and her companions had bitten off more than they could chew.