Page 94

Lunch came and went and we were back on the road again. Time passed quickly as we looked over the far horizon. It was cloudy out still, it didn't look like it was going to rain again yet but the possibility was there. A few more featherjacks got close to our caravan but none of the other uuna riders had as much of an issue with them. They were clearly more experienced with the throwing spear that was attached to the uuna saddle than I was. I was just happy no one gave me a hard time about it when we were stopped for lunch. From what I could gather most people just thought I was unlucky.

I continued to chat with Silva here and there but we were obviously avoiding any private topics. We joked around a bit but a lot of the time was spent in silence watching the road slowly pass by. If this trip was driving anything home for me, it was just how long travelling took in this world. Going between sixty and eighty miles an hour on an empty highway tended to get you places pretty quickly. And air travel was a completely different story.

Night finally rolled around and my ass was hurting more than it had the last few days. Even riding an uuna was more comfortable than the riding a carriage or wagon with no suspension. The only thing that made it tolerable was that the roads were flat and relatively smooth but it was starting to catch up to me.

Tarklin stopped me briefly before dinner to tell me Fae would be staying with some of the other female adventurers today so we could properly separate her from Silva who would be staying with me and my group from now on. From what I heard Fae wasn't that happy about it since she had been attached to Bella but she was also relieved to be away from Silva. It still made me sad that Silva, who had gone through such great lengths to protect her, would be so shunned by the young noble. I could understand why though, trauma doesn't always let you make the 'good' decision.

We stopped once again at a fort built along the road. If the road to Traehall became more important, the areas around these forts would probably swell to the size of small towns. For now they were just waystations for travelers. Built by the terra shaping adventurers on their way to build Traehall into a frontier town. It was only a matter of time before these waystations were settled, the likelihood of finding a dungeon nearby Traehall that didn't have any demon influence was quite high and there was already another dungeon found near a different frontier town in the same area from what I had heard.

The five of us were given one room to share so we decided to eat in our room. We had a lot to talk about now that Silva has joined us. Both about my history as well as Silva's. The torchlight flickered in the corner as the five of us sat on the crude beds left by the people who set this place up.

I cleared my throat. "So, the very first secret that I need to share is about Mimi. She's been patient the last few days but now that it's just the six of us, it's time for her to come out."

Before I could even prompt her Mimi flowed out of the sword sheathe and sat next to me on my bed. She was in her normal form again, her slightly reflective gold skin shimmered in the torch light and her red eyes stared at Silva curiously. When Mimi first appeared Silva tensed, instinctively ready to fight but once Mimi proved to be non-threatening she relaxed a bit.

"Hi! I'm Mimi. I've been able to watch you but I'm not allowed to talk in public so I haven't been able to say hi yet. So hi!"

"Er, hi there... I'm Silva?" The rabbit demi looked over at me confused.

"This is Mimi, she's an intelligent Mimic that is traveling with us. She's an important friend who's saved my life in the past. You don't have to worry about her harming you, she's friendly."

Silva quirked an eyebrow. "Is she... a monster?"

Mimi tilted her head but I make a point to answer for her. "She used to be but because of one of my abilities she isn't one any more."

By the look on her face this just confused Silva even more.

"I'll tell you more about that soon, first lets talk about you."

"Right..." Silva's eyes trailed down Mimi's naked form before focusing back on me. "What do you want to know?"

I nodded. "Well, first things first we want to know about the circumstances that led to you being enslaved. From what Fae said you were accused of murdering a noble?"

Silva tensed a bit. "Not accused. I did murder a noble."

"Will you tell me about it?"

Her face hardened. "Is that an order?"

"No." I sighed and looked at my friends, they were curious but all of us knew I would have to do the talking here. I refocused on Silva. "That's not really how I do things Silva. I want to treat you with mutual respect, like we talked about on the trail this morning. I won't order you to tell me what happened but trust goes both ways. I've shared one of my secrets with you, mostly out of necessity but I can't trust any of my other secrets with you until I know who I'm dealing with... I'm not like Fae, I'm more openminded about what might push someone to do that. I just want to hear your side of things."

Her features softened a bit and she looked at everyone's faces before landing on Mimi's once again. Mimi tilted her head and smiled, always curious but lacking the context of what was bothering the demi-rabbitkin woman.

"Before I start... answer me honestly. Are you a noble Lilith?"

I groaned. "Always with this question, no I'm not a noble. I have my own circumstances that I'll likely go into later." Torien nodded giving more weight to what I said.

"...Give me a moment." Silva took a few bites of her stew and took a sip of water while she collected her thoughts. "I grew up as a farm hand. I mostly worked with bulls, horses, and uunas, never learned to ride any of them though. Anyway, my family worked on land owned by Baron Julian Samlin."

I heard a quiet gasp from the twins and looked over to see they both had shocked expressions on their face. Clearly they knew at least part of this story.

Silva glanced at the twins briefly before continuing. "My family were working the land and paying a portion of it back for housing and provisions. It was a good deal... at first. Over time the fees went up, it took more and more of our payment to cover the costs. One winter there was a blight that destroyed nearly half our crop and my parents went into debt. We were underwater but the Baron assured them it wouldn't be collected right away, they would have time to pay it back. But the fees kept going up. Even though they worked harder than ever, they were drowning in it more and more."

Silva took a break to continue eating and to put the next part of the story into words. "Eventually, the Baron decided to collect. The amount of money they owed at this point would put them in bondage for life, the only saving grace was that I wasn't wrapped up in it. I only took care of the animals so other than plowing the fields I wasn't someone who could take over the farm and I didn't owe the debt, only my parents did."

Silva took a shaky breath, I couldn't tell if it was from sadness or anger. "The day the Baron sent his slaver to collect my parents I found out that most of the town was in that same cart. He had done this to the entire town. Shortly before adding my parents to the wagon he gloated that they had all been tricked, that they were stupid for letting themselves be enslaved. When they opened the door to shove my parents in, one of the other people in the wagon snapped and rushed the guards, several of the other farmers that had been enslaved by the Baron's trick rushed to escape as well, starting a brawl."

She closed her eyes and took another breath to steady her voice. "My parents weren't even one of the ones trying to escape but the guards pulled out their swords to fight the brawling slaves and my parents got killed in the fighting... kicked and trampled to death by their neighbors and the guards trying to suppress them. I... just watched in shock at what happened, I was still young... unable to do anything. Six people died in the fighting, including my parents, more than half of the people in the wagon needed healers. Later on I heard the guard that gloated to the slaves became one himself, he was forced to take on the debt of the six people who died. Little solace for me, who watched my parents die."

Silva relaxed her hands. "After that I began training. Julian Samlin continued doing this to others right up until the day I was ready to kill him. I knew that I would probably be caught and killed for what I was about to do but I didn't care. I was once just a stable girl, my life didn't matter in all of this. I was able to sneak in pretty easily. I posed as one of the many slaves he kept in his house. It wasn't hard to get an imitation collar and sneak into his mansion."

She snorted with amusement. "He actually noticed me right away and insisted I serve him in his bed chamber. And so I followed him to his room and watched as he used a silence spell so we 'wouldn't disturb the maids' as he said. The idiot even had a decorative suit of armor with a spear there, allowing me to kill him with a spear rather than just break his neck as I planned to. Even before I started training I had a lot of strength and endurance from my long days working with large animals. When he sat down on his bed and pulled out his own spear, I stabbed him through the neck with the decorative one. The cheap piece of crap broke but it was enough to stop him from screaming even after he dropped his silence spell. Unfortunately for me, all hell broke loose anyway."

The demi-rabbitkin took another few bites of her stew as we were left in suspense. She finished up her bowl and sat it aside before clearing her throat and continuing. "One of the maids noticed that the Baron had dropped the silence spell and came in to begin cleaning up after him. Apparently this was such a common occurrence that the maids were trained to promptly clean up any messes from his trysts. She screamed and it wasn't long before all the soldiers in the house were trying to kill me. At this point I accomplished what I came to do so I wasn't afraid of dying. I killed twelve of them trying to escape, in my mind they weren't any better than he was. They watched him and took money from a man who was routinely tricking others, having people move to his territory only to be enslaved when he saddled them with debt."

"How did they take you alive?" Torien asked.

"I ended up passing out from blood loss rather than actually being defeated. There was a healer nearby that insisted on healing me. The guards apparently didn't complain thinking I would be publicly executed instead. I definitely would have been had Baron Norrin Morrister not stepped in to take me as a slave instead."

I scrunched my brow. "How did they possibly allow that? After you killed the Baron and twelve of his men?"

"Apparently Morrister pulled some strings, called in some favors or something. I don't know, whatever nobles do. Either way he pulled me off the chopping block and put me into slavery instead. He explained that he was a part of a group trying to get rid of slavery in the kingdom and was happy I killed one of his rivals. He told me that anyone trying to target him or his daughter would be the same kind of people that tricked my family into falling into debt. I wanted to keep on living and I didn't mind killing more people like Samlin so I agreed and trained with his knights. Eventually I was assigned to the young lady but early on I told her I had killed a noble, because of that she never trusted me, never allowed me to become close with her. She was cordial but kept her distance and didn't allow me to hold a weapon in her presence. It wasn't long before the Baron's words came true and people came for him and his daughter."

Silva looked down at the ground for a minute before looking back up at me. "I am a killer. I don't regret it. I don't feel bad about it. But I promise you that I don't enjoy it, I don't want to kill just anyone, only people that deserve it. I may not like being a slave but I probably deserve it, at least more than most. More than my parents did."

I shifted in my seat. Wow, I don't even know how to feel about this yet.

"So," Silva said. "Now you know my story, what's yours?"