Chapter 184

The further south we traveled in the city the more beastfolk I began to see among the crowd, and the more slaves as well... Eventually we began to see more beastfolk than humans and roughly one in two beastfolk were wearing collars.

"Tch, looks like they're blocking off roads. We're going to have to walk through the market to get there," Cecilia said grimly.

Up ahead of us, barricades were blocking off the alleyways and some of the roads. The occasional Tamin priest or paladin walked by, patrolling the edge of the slums and forcing everyone through a checkpoint so they could keep an eye on everyone who came and went. The beastfolk and even more of the slaves tended to give them a wide berth, most knew better than to get anywhere near the Tamin adherents.

Eventually we followed the crowd to a large open-air market and one look at it made my stomach turn. Sure, there were plenty of other goods at this market, carpets, spices, weapons, and everything else, but it was obvious what the most prominent good this market sold was. Slaves.

Nearby was a large gaudy building that was immediately recognizable as the capital branch of the Slaver's Guild. There was a large doorway from the building right into the market where many of the 'lower value' slaves were presented in cages that sat on lifted platforms above the crowd. The slaves were clean and tidy and wearing those thin slave outfits I had seen back in Traehall. It was clear the fight had been beaten out of most of them. Some of them stared off into space and just stood there as the crowd talked around them. A few were dancing or trying to entice the crowd, these ones tended to have scars or disfigurements that made them less desirable despite their compliant behavior. They were heavily marked down in price, some as low as a few dozen silver. There were even a handful of obviously resistant slaves, covered in bruises and marks and collared as crime slaves. They cursed those around them through their gagged mouths and tried to slam their bodies against the bars impotently.

There were hundreds of them in these cages being displayed to the crowd, sometimes begging to be purchased. Hundreds of low value slaves, this wasn't even counting how many more must be in the fancy fortress of a building that loomed over the market. Bella took my hand to try and distract me from the twisted sight. I could tell through the bond that I was the one most affected by this picture. Raya and Sibyl were also disgusted... but not to the same extent that I was. To them this was somewhat normal.

"Let's hurry through here," Bella spoke aloud.

Cecilia didn't say anything, just cleared a path through the market. A majority of the people around us were weaker than anyone in our group, both the slaves and the people bidding on them. Trailing my eyes over the people, there were even some slaves bidding on other slaves. Most of the crowd parted for us, somehow intuiting how much stronger we were than them. Even the pushy salesmen hawking their wares backed off and let us pass without engaging us the moment they saw the look on Cecilia's face.

With the afternoon crowd, it took more than a bell to make it to the other side of the huge market. The slaves on auction only started to thin out within the last ten or so minutes as we reached the edge of the bazaar. I had to avert my eyes away from all of them in the cages. There were too many. I couldn't help them all. Even if I spent all my money pulling them off the auction block and freeing them, what was I supposed to do with them? I wouldn't have even made a dent in the number of people here and only encouraged the practice with my money. After walking past them for almost an entire bell I realized that my original estimate was wrong, there were thousands of slaves out here. That's just the ones at auction right now, just how much of the population here were slaves?

I had been naïve. It took actually seeing this to understand how big this industry was here. The slave collars they all wore enforced their servitude and made it so that they could have a larger portion of their population kept this way. The collars reduced the risk of a slave rebellion dramatically and even if the slave population was higher than the free population, most of them wouldn't even be able to pick up a weapon, let alone rebel with it.

"We're almost there," Cecilia eventually said. "I haven't been to this place in a long time. It's not the safest part of town but it's not like most people would be able to fight any of us anyway."

Now that we were on the other side of the market there were predominantly beastfolk and demi-beastfolk here. The number of slaves had lightened up considerably but there were obviously slaves here too. They were just owned by other beastfolk in this part of town. The idea almost disgusted me more, despite the beastfolk being discriminated against, the free ones owned slaves here too. It didn't take long to notice a pattern, the beastfolk following other beastfolk were almost always of other tribes. There were mice following cats, a cougar followed a deer, two bears were following a tiger. Only rarely did you see a beastfolk slave following another of the same type.

I was broken out of my observations when we walked up to a three-story building called 'The Hungry Hippo,' the name was so familiar and ridiculous that it even got a laugh out of me despite my awful mood. The building looked older than some of those around it, predominantly made of stone with wood accents. Like a lot of the architecture here, most of the building was made from one solid continuous slab of stone created using magic. It was interesting to see that much of the 'low class' housing was made of sturdy stone using magic and the 'high class' buildings were made from hand-shaped wood. It was a reverse of tastes compared to my old world where most houses were made from wood and only commercial buildings and expensive brutalist homes were made from concrete. I suppose something like quarried marble would be more expensive than either but I suspect marble doesn't have the same luster here as something artisanally created.

Cecilia opened the door and all of us filed into the lobby. There weren't many people hanging around in here right now and the only staff person here at all was a middle-aged demi-beastfolk that sat behind the desk. She had long black hair tied behind her in a loose ponytail with black cat ears sticking out the top. Her eyes were a bright red that shined in the dim light. Around her neck was a collar made from dark metal with thin blue lines. The woman looked like the spitting image of Morrigan if she grew a couple more feet and decided to grow her hair out.

When the twins followed in after me the woman sat up in shock. "Morrigan? Torien?"

Morrigan froze in place and gasped. "Aunt Lorriene?" She bolted over to the older woman and crashed into her, giving the woman a big hug.

The woman worriedly scanned the rest of us but when no one objected, she wrapped her arms around the younger pantharian. "Morrigan? How did you get here? I heard the two of you were headed to the frontier."

Torien walked toward her more casually but she had a big smile on her face. "Aunt Lori! I didn't think we would find you here. What are you doing in the capital?"

She looked dumbstruck, looking between the two sisters. "I... my master purchased this inn recently and I'm the one that takes care of it with some of his other servants." Lorriene looked down at the two of them, her eyes traveling across their adventuring maid-uniforms. "The two of you are adventuring servants? Is one of these ladies your new mistress?" She asked as her eyes skimmed across the six of us.

"Ah! Aunt Lorriene! I want you to meet Lilith!" Morrigan ran over and pulled me over by an arm, her exuberance made me laugh.

"Lilith..." Lorriene murmured my name under her breath before looking over at one of the people behind me. It struck me as odd so I glanced over my shoulder and saw that she was looking right at Silva for some reason.

"Aunt Lorriene! This is Lilith my... mistress." She gave me a concerned look before turning back and continuing. "Uh, we met her in Traehall and did a dungeon together! Afterward she said she was going to free the two of us but heh, seems she didn't know about us pantharians. Anyway, she bought us anyway and we've been traveling with her!"

The woman smiled warmly at me. "Looks like you've been taking good care of my nieces." She turned back to Morrigan. "Did you get the kind of mistress you were looking for?" she asked her quietly.

Morrigan's face turned bright red and she nodded. "Y-yes um. Lilith, Bella, and Mimi over there are my um... girlfriends."

Lorriene's eyebrows rose as she looked back over to us. "Oh... A harem... interesting..."

Morrigan chuckled awkwardly. "Yeah... it's... different. But I'm happy! Lilith's been super good to me and Torien. Oh! And guess what! I'm not the only one who got a girlfriend while we were out. Torien hooked up with that sexy rabbitfolk over there with the big muscles."

"Mo- Mori! Don't just go blurting things out like that!" It was Torien's turn to go bright red with embarrassment.

"Oh? I didn't know you were into girls like your sister," Lorriene said letting go of Morrigan and pulling Torien into a hug.

Torien melted into the hug, looking more relaxed than I'd ever seen her. "Yeah... I didn't know till recently either..."

"We shouldn't talk about these things out in the open with so many of the Tamin bigots around town," Silva commented.

Lorriene hugged Torien close and looked over her shoulder right at Silva. Unlike when she was looking at me and my girlfriends the look she gave Silva was... frosty to say the least.

A moment later she let go of Torien and smiled down at her. "I'm glad you're doing well Torien. I always worry about you, you know."

"I know Aunt Lori," Torien said with a grin.

The older demi-beastfolk let go of her niece and looked at me. "So, did you and your group need a place to stay? You look more well off than someone who would need to stay here but I'm aware the Tamin church is pushing all of the beastkin to the southern quarter right now. ...Family relations aside, I'm afraid I'm not allowed to give any discounts."

I smiled at her. "That's alright, how much would it be for three rooms?"

"Fifteen silver for the three but uh..." She looked over at Silva. "The rules say crime slaves aren't allowed to be left in a room unsupervised. She'll need to stay with someone that isn't wearing a collar."

I sighed and looked over my group. Cecilia raised her hand. "I wouldn't mind rooming with Silva and Torien." She gestured at Raya and Sibyl. "I would like to spend some time with those two at some point though."

"Right," I said with a nod. "We'll rotate a bit then I guess. For now, Raya and Sibyl will get a room to themselves."

Sibyl raised an eyebrow. "You're not making us pay our own way?" she asked.

I laughed. "Don't worry Sibyl. We're family, I don't mind paying for your room while we're here. We'll talk a bit more about what our plans are but I need to run some errands tomorrow and figure out how long we're going to be staying here. Oh and ugh, I have to meet with that guard captain tomorrow as well."

"Why are you meeting him? If you don't mind me asking of course." Lorriene asked.

"Probably something to do with hunting demons I'd bet." I waved at my group. "They let us into town because we're demon hunters, I'm not even sure they would have let us in at all if not for that."

She looked bewildered. "Uh, you all are demon hunters?"

Torien sighed. "Yeah, the two of us, Lilith, and Bella over there were outside of a demon dungeon during a dungeon break. Ever since we've been wrapped up in it. We just came from Goldenhearth and helped clear out their castle."

Lorriene cleared her throat. "Uh, right. It sounds like the two of you have been really busy since the last time we've talked. We should talk later if your mistress allows it." She gave me a meaningful glance.

"I don't mind if the three of you catch up but I would prefer if you didn't call me their mistress, legally true or not. Just call me Lilith."