Chapter 232

Click. The first door was unlocked. I drew my sword in case anyone inside turned out to be hostile. Torien moved away and stood next to Silva who was leaning against the door, listening for anyone coming nearby. I cautiously opened the door to reveal two beastfolk, a thin rabbitkin man and a larger demi-wolfkin man. The two of them eyed the sword I was holding warily. The room they were in was a small cell with two straw beds, a chamber pot, and nothing else.

"What is this about?" The demi-wolfkin asked.

I looked over them, both had pretty neutral karma which was normal for people who had low-level classes. Both of them were much weaker than us, the difference in mana between us was obvious. I wasn't sure if they knew it as well, but the sword I was holding was deterrent enough.

"The Order of Lilith is here to free as many slaves as possible. May I approach to remove your collars?" I asked.

The two looked at each other in disbelief for a moment before the rabbitkin stood up and took a step toward us. "I'm not yet too broken to look for hope in your words. What do I have to do for this?"

"Escape and flee to the Northern Greens. Don't hurt civilians but you can protect yourselves from guards. Don't run yet, we're going to free as many as we can and flee all at once." I reached up and channeled my mana through the bracelet before touching his collar. The collar popped open and fell to the floor in a racket making both slaves stare at it in shock.

I sheathed my sword and looked at the wolfkin. "May I free you as well?" I asked.

He nodded and held his neck out without getting up from the bed he was sitting on. I reached over and touched his collar. Like the rabbitkin's his collar fell off the moment my fingers made contact. He immediately reached up to rub his sore neck. "None of you are actually dogkin, you smell wrong."

I looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Keep that to yourself."

"It was a warning, your disguises aren't perfect." His ears went back in submission.

I took a step back. "It's fine. They're good enough. Do either of you have any skills that would help the rest of us escape?"

"I can help keep watch, I have keen hearing," the rabbitkin offered.

The demi-wolfkin just shrugged. "I'm a baker..."

"Go wait by the door with... them," I said gesturing to Silva. We hadn't come up with aliases or anything before coming in here. I hadn't considered if it would be necessary or not. "No names," I said to everyone. The two slaves we had freed nodded as if I had been talking to them.

Walking back to Torien I crouched by the door while she worked on the next lock. After a bit more waiting the door clicked open revealing two more beastfolk men. A foxkin with tan fur and scabbing wounds marring his arms. The other was some kind of scaled beastfolk that was one of the rarer ones I had seen around the capital. "Are all these the cells for the beastfolk men?" I asked Torien.

"Looks like it," she replied.

"The Order of Lilith is here to free as many slaves as possible. May I approach to remove your collars?" I asked these two.

Like the last two, they warily accepted and allowed me to remove their collars. Once their shock at being freed had come I turned to the foxkin. "Go over to her for healing," I said pointing to Bella.

Bella looked over the gashes in his arms before channeling nature magic through them and healing his wounds the rest of the way. "I can't do anything about the scars but your fur should come back in over them," she told him.

He rubbed his scarred arms before looking over our group. "If you have spare lockpicks I can help you open the cells."

I looked over at Torien who nodded and pulled out a spare set of lockpicks she carried. She unrolled the bundle and pointed one of the picks out. "This is the size I've been using."

The fox nodded and took a couple of the tools from her before looking at his scaled cellmate. "They'll probably be less wary if the two of us are the ones to open the cells."

"Very well. We're collecting a crowd it seems." He looked over the other two slaves we had freed waiting by the door.

We spent a while opening cell doors when I suddenly felt the building shake, followed by the loud crash of an explosion. The walls echoed so much that I couldn't hear which direction it had come from. Our crowd of freed slaves was starting to form a pretty large group in the hallway, Morrigan and Lorriene were organizing the group while Bella healed anyone with injuries and Mimi stood near her protectively. At one point some of the slaves had started to ask about the Order of Lilith and Lorriene began to explain the group to them, this turned out to be quite popular information and the room filled with low whispering chatter.

After I had finished opening one of the cells a taller demi man with horse ears approached me. "Sire, does your group intend to free the women beastfolk as well?" he asked with some amount of hesitation.

I took a step back as Torien continued to work on one of the last doors. "The Order of Lilith intends to free everyone we can. Is there something I should know?"

"My wife was taken at the same time I was and I'm not sure if she is still here. Sire, may I come with you to look for her?"

"That's fine, all of us will travel as a group. No need to call me sire though."

I felt a sudden ripple rush through the bond. Feelings of danger and alertness flowed into me from Silva before she could even say anything aloud. I shushed everyone before coming up to her as quietly as I could.

"Guards are coming... Four I think. I hear keys. I think they're coming to check on the prisoners," Silva whispered.

I drew my sword and spoke quietly to the people nearby. "Everyone stand away from the doors. We'll handle this." I looked at my friends. "No magic yet, I'll put up a [Zone of Silence], get ready." I prepared the spell to envelop part of the hallway and the area near the door. Since Silva is our only means of detecting guards without that new spell I developed, I've held off on casting this. But if we get into a fight I'd prefer the sound not carry. Casting magic at all is a risk but someone hearing us fight is more likely to get us caught than my silence spell.

"Hey, the door is already unlocked," a voice said from the other side.

"Be careful, someone might be in there," another voice replied to him.

The moment the door started to push open I released the spell and Silva yanked the door open, making the one opening it fall forward. Silva grabbed him and pulled him out of the way just as Lorriene leapt through the door and gutted one of the others. I hesitated, the brutality of their actions caught me off guard even though I knew this was what we were coming here for. Mimi ran through the door next, grabbing another of the guards by the neck and taking him to the ground. During my hesitation, Silva must have killed the other guard because she bolted through the door and tackled the last one before he managed to make any distance running away. She stabbed the guard in the neck with a dagger and the man went limp.

"I'll finish him off, step back," Lorriene told Mimi before killing the one she had pinned to the ground.

My voice felt hoarse. "I..."

Silva put her hand on my shoulder and whispered. "Don't worry about it. Let the two of us handle the dirty work."

I swallowed. I didn't know what to say. I froze up. I thought I had been prepared for this after fighting the bandits but it was hard... I shook my head and composed myself. Even if I wasn't okay, I needed to show a confident face to the prisoners. I licked my dry lips.

"Drag the corpses in and hide them in one of the cells. Bring their keys to your sister. We can finish up these cells more quickly," I told Morrigan. I pulled out a cloth we prepared for this and mopped up the blood before dropping the silence spell and closing the door behind us again. When I finished I found Mimi. "Can I have some copper coins?"

Mimi nodded and handed me eight coppers and I placed them on the eyes of the corpses.

"Is it wise to do that in here?" Silva asked. "They may receive proper burials later."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised if people hear about the Order of Lilith after this, if they already know it's us then what's one more sign? I'd rather not tempt my alliance with him by not holding to my word." She nodded and went back to the door as I closed the bodies in the first cell.

I took stock of the prisoners we had rescued so far. Everyone here was low-leveled and none seemed to have any combat training. The benefit was that most of the people here had mostly neutral karma meaning I didn't need to worry about that moral quandary yet.

Torien pulled me aside. "Where do we go with this many people? The guards would just slaughter them if they tried to fight back."

I nodded. "It would have been better if we found some fighters first."

"I know where they keep the combat classes and higher levels," a cougar beastfolk said, joining our quiet conversation.

The two of us turned to him. "Are they close?"

He nodded. "They split us up by race, the ones on this side of the building are all men and the ones closest to us are the beastfolk with fighting classes. That's your best bet if you're trying to get everyone out of here at the same time."

"Good, what's your name?" I asked him.

"Quinn, Miss. You guys seem strong and know what you're doing, but it doesn't seem like you know your way around this place. Let me help you."

I sized up this guy. He was on the higher end of the levels in this room but the farther off from your own level, the harder it was to gauge accurately. Possibly around level ten, impressive for a villager but not really on the same level as any of the adventurers we had run into, and that's only assuming his class is useful. He had the head of a mountain lion and bright blue eyes. He had lean muscles and looked kind of like a pretty boy. It was still hard for me to predict how attractive others found different beastfolk but I could guess that he would be considered handsome based on my own appraisal. Like all of the other slaves, he wore a simple rough cloth shirt and trousers but didn't wear any shoes which was common for beastfolk that had paws instead of human-like feet.

"You want to help?" Torien asked suspiciously.

He smiled. "I wasn't looking forward to being a slave so I'm thankful you're here trying to rescue us. It's best for both of us if I can tell you where things are. Then maybe I can tag along with you guys when we get out of here. I've lived in human lands all my life, I don't think leaving to the land of the elves and beastfolk would suit me."

I frowned. "We can talk about that last bit when we're leaving. Let's focus on what we're doing now."

Quinn nodded and pointed toward one of the walls. "The male combat prisoners are down the hallway that way and to the left."

"How do you know that?" Torien asked.

"My class gives me access to an ability that allows me to see outside of my body and through walls. I've been looking for a way to escape since I got here. All I've really been able to do is look around though, there haven't been any chances to get free until now and my range is limited. But I can probably be helpful if we're trying to sneak around."

It sounds like some kind of... astral projection or something similar? I'm curious about the ability but it's rude to ask about that stuff and now really isn't the time. Maybe I can convince him to tell me about it later.

"Alright, you can help us. Our goal is to get everyone that we can out of here. The larger the group we can put together, the easier that'll be once we can't sneak anymore."

Quinn smiled. "Great, lead the way then."

We organized the group into rows of two to follow us with Lorriene leading and Silva in the back. We should have more time to react from the front and Silva is better than Lorriene at fighting multiple people at once making her the better choice to watch for ambushes from behind. We explained that trying to escape with us could be dangerous to the former slaves but none of them here expressed any interest in staying behind, it was harder to make them stay organized than it was convincing them to leave with us. Lorriene, Quinn, and I led the group as we headed toward the combat slaves. Quinn assured me that the keys we found would open their cells too, so it should be faster this time.

Just as we were approaching one of the corners, the entire building rocked again as another explosion could be heard. What is happening in the bazaar right now?