“Sorry, I can let you prepay for the cheap ones, but that one? She’s going to the block. We expect to get a lot for her.” The pig of a man had a pig’s squeal for a voice when he felt Nua’s attitude change.

Outwardly there was nothing. Nua’s pointed hand that had gestured to the naked demon-elf in the cage, slowly lowered to her side and folded behind her back.

One hand into the other, she turned around very slowly to face the repulsive insect. She took a deep breath, the scent of stale sex still wafted off of him, she felt strangely grateful, it made her vindictive hate rise a few more notches.

However, her eyes closed to disguise this and she calmly asked, as the temperature seemed to drop even further in the room, “Why are you expecting so much for just one slave that you can’t sell her early? She’s not bad to look at…” Nua turned and gave the woman an appraising look, her eyes went from feet to brow, and the demon-elf snarled in fury and yanked her chains again.

Nua ignored the indignant response and turned back to the sentry, he’d begun to sweat slightly, it stank, but she suppressed the wrinkling of her nose. “She certainly is exotic, but so much so that there’s no presale for those who can afford it? No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh she isn’t for that. No, no, we expect the city government to buy her. Send one of these west as a sacrifice, and we can spare a hundred more. Living bodies of Demon-Elves are a delicacy.” He explained it without even looking at Kaiji, but she responded to his words nonetheless.

“Bastards! Bitches!” She pulled at her chains, thrashing and spitting, they rattled hopelessly, “Go to hell! Go to hell! I hope the Tlalmok Empire eats this whole shit city! I hate you! I hate you! Just diiiiiiie! God just kill them all...” She screamed and fell to her knees, gripping the metal bars and shaking them like mad until she lost all words and simply wailed..

The sentry unraveled the whip over his arm and approached the woman. “S’cuze me m’lady, got to stop this one again. N’other discipline problem…” He shouted over the still shrieking demon-elf.

Nua felt her heartbeat faster and faster under Solution’s smirk at her back, and she was not in a human city far from home, but in Kami Miyako watching a woman ready to punish a slave, the day Raymond almost died, the light of torches might as well have been the sun.

Only the steady gaze of Solution, her cold gaze, kept her from falling into the delirium of memory greatly hated and greatly loved. The sentry’s whip came back, her breath was moving faster than the long brown cord.

It sailed past her as it extended behind him, “Shut up! Shut up you stupid bitch!” He was shouting through the cage, the long whip was returning from it’s full extension. ‘It must be moving so fast but… everything… so slow… but why isn’t Raymond stopping it…? No, he can’t, he’s dead, he’s dead and I’m alive because of him and I’m here and she’s going to, this fat potato man is going to… eaten, she’ll be eaten, my people were that, how frightening it…’ All that ran through her mind in the span of time it took for her left hand to reach out and grip the chord of the whip.

Her fingers tightened on it, and she tugged… hard.

The potato man pulled a stupid face, one she saw clearly as he tumbled backwards, flailing to catch hold of something, and finding purchase with nothing. He landed on his back, Nua bent over him.

“Don’t damage my property.” She said icily as her blue eyes bored into his skull.

His face twisted in a scowl, a scowl that became terrified as Solution approached and bent over to look down at him as well. “Don’t even think to pull that face with my ‘mistress.’” Solution smiled, and the smile was just a ‘little’ bit wider than a human should have been able to make, giving her an inhuman appearance that shook the safe confidence that had resided in his heart when he bore the whip and free movement among naked and caged slaves.

“Ah, she’s not your mistress’s property, sh-she belongs to the Lu’Gin slave company.” The potato shaped man stammered out as he started to scramble to his feet.

Kaiji’s red eyes went sharply into focus, ‘I… wait, she can’t…’ Kaiji thought hopefully. ‘If I want to live, I have to encourage this.’

“Mistress! Buy me and I’ll be loyal to you forever! I am young, I can give you centuries of faithful service! Don’t let me be eaten… please! Save me, and I’ll be loyal and faithful! Only save me… I can read and write! I can do math better than most! I can use third tier magic! I can even play two different instruments!” Kaiji randomly shouted her qualifications, anything, everything, as long as it might keep her from the Tlalmok Empire.

She swallowed hard, none of them were evidently paying any attention to her offerings of what she could do.

“See, disruptive too.” The sentry grumbled as he slowly got to his feet and rubbed the sore ass where he’d landed.

“I get it, she’s not ‘normally’ for sale, but that’s ‘normally’ because people can’t afford things like that up front. “However, I can.” Nua reached into her pouch, the beady brown eyes bored furiously into hers, but she brushed it aside.

She held her folded fingers out to him, and opened them, revealing five platinum coins. She smirked at the lecherous sentry, “You were barely going to get 3 gold for all of those with a glut on the market.” Nua swept her right arm out to encompass the ‘problem’ slaves that had been captured in battle. “I’m offering you that, plus this difference, for her.” Nua thrust her arm out behind her, pointing to the demon-elf woman on her knees who had pressed her face between the bars and grabbed them with a wild, desperate hope, her red eyes pulsed with tension as deliverance unfolded.

Once the slow sentry was on his feet, he took the platinums in hand, confronted with her in person, he turned red as he wordlessly took out his knife and tried to cut into the platinums one by one. “Don’t know where this coin comes from but… yeah… this is… this is real. My Lady, that one is yours. Just don’t take that collar off until you’ve got a better one, it’s suppressing her magic right now. Take it off, she’ll do to you what she did to the first few to try to capture her.” He let out a grim shudder and said no more on the matter.

“Come with me, let’s get the papers signed, and they’re yours.” He said, and he lowered his piggish brown eyes and extended his hand, “But… can I have that back?”

Nua looked down, ‘Oh, right, I never let go of the potato man’s whip.’

She tossed it to him contemptuously. “Next time don’t beat someone else’s stock.”

He bobbed his fat head up and down, “Yes yes! I understand My Lady!” He exclaimed, ‘How much money does this angry bitch have… damn I thought she was going to kill me right then, or have that… servant do it.’ He thought to himself.

For a moment, a rare pang of pity struck him, ‘What does bloodlust like that, want with unbroken slaves?’ He wondered, and suppressed both shudder and pity at once until they reached a desk near the front entrance. He flopped down into a wooden chair too small for his ass, it creaked and cracked under him, but held as he yanked out a document.

“You’re taking numbers one through twenty-four, plus the triple a value ranked number one hundred from tomorrow’s lot. Now as you’re here alone and I didn’t see any wagons, I assume you’d like us to deliver them?” He asked, and tapped his quill on the paper as Nua thought it over.

As she did so, she saw his gaze wander over to the woman alone in the cage near where he sat. The woman’s eyes found hers again, and for a brief moment Nua felt it linger.

Like she could hear the woman’s thoughts, ‘I hate this, all of this… so tired of it all…’ And then the look broke and the woman stared at nothing again.

“Delivered, but there’s one more small thing.” Nua said, as she pointed to the woman in the cage near his desk. “Throw her in as a signing bonus, I don’t really need the implements of pain, or extra chains, or extra collars you typically provide in these kinds of deals.” She flashed a winning grin down at him and placing her fists on the desk, and leaned over towards him, coming close into his personal space, so that her eyes were far too close to his.

“I have… plenty of ways, and tools at my disposal, to make them be and do whatever I want… understand? I’d rather get one more bit of stock out of it than a bunch of second rate garbage thrown in that I just don’t have a use for.”

He started to sputter, his lips and tongue failed to work in sync as her violation of his comfort zone and her enigmatic words brought all manner of horrors to his mind.

“My Lady! We don’t deal with s-” He tried to protest, only for Nua to stop him with a laugh.

“Do you think I don’t know how the slave market works? I know exactly how much you mark up used collars and whips and all those other tools to use on reluctant merchandise. I’ve been in this business longer than you’ve been alive, human. Now throw her into the bargain, throw out the garbage, or forget the whole deal!” She snapped sharply and crossed her arms defiantly in front of her chest.

The woman in the cage looked in a mixture of horror, awe, and fear, her body was visibly shaking. ‘Oh gods… no, what is she going to do with me… what… sounds like, god would I be better off with this pig than her?’ She trembled as she looked over the rich clothing the pair wore, the promise of vast experience in breaking slaves. She lowered her face into her knees so she could see no more, and let herself weep in secret as she became a bonus item to close a sale. ‘From one hell to another…’ She swallowed to keep from sobbing and kept her misery secret and flowing down her thighs from where her eyes rested at her knees.

“Alright, deal, you sure do know the business.” The sentry grunted and annotated one more slave, then signed as Nua laid out the platinum coins on the desk.

He turned the contract around, Nua read through it swiftly, then signed it with a dramatic flourish and accepted a receipt torn off from one side of the document that matched the other.

“Good, they’re now my property, give them blankets, and feed them well tonight, I’ll send word to you about where to deliver them, tomorrow morning. Set them apart from all the others, oh and…” Nua pointed to the girl in the cage, “You use my property without paying me first, and I’ll have you gelded. Am I clear?”

He gave swift, sharp, small nods as Nua spun on her heel towards the door, and Solution followed her back out, leaving everything behind.

The door closed and locked behind her, and Nua looked out into the downpour. Both she and Solution were quiet, until after leaning back against the door, she heard the sound of footsteps as the sentry began to carry out her last instructions and was rapidly becoming more distant.

When she was sure he could no longer hear her, and her eyes and nose told her nobody was close enough to see or hear her through the downpour, she smacked the back of her head against the wood, and braced herself so she couldn’t collapse. Nua felt her body shaking and brought her hands up to close them over her face, and let her own tears start to fall.

“What?” Solution asked, “It’s fine, you’ve accomplished everything, all we need is a place to take them to and we can get to work.”

Nua shook her head and her small voice was again as it had been in Kami Miyako over a decade and a half earlier. “It was… just like then, I saw myself in her, that hopeless face, the knowledge that there was no chance for a better life. That anyone wearing anything at all was a person, and I wasn’t. The… beastmen eaters of the Tlalmok reminded me of the last year of the Slane Theocracy… Kaiji’s pitiful wail… I saw myself a thousand times in there.”

Nua swallowed hard, “I admit it, I wanted to get them all out, even the humans, but… I can’t. There’s nothing I can do, tomorrow after the rain has stopped, the sale will start up. Children will be torn from their parents, wives and husbands will never touch again. Pregnant women will find out how much their unborn babies are worth in coin… all that misery, to just fill a few already overstuffed pockets.”

Solution shrugged, “You could have tried to break them out.”

Nua shook her head, “Not without an unacceptable risk and a high probability of failure. And failure is unacceptable. So? They don’t matter to the plan, so I have to let this happen and just be grateful I am able to get as many as I’ve already gotten.”

Solution gave a very small smile, the corners of her lips just barely turning up and cupped Nua’s cheeks in her hands, “You’re such an apt pupil, really did a number on you to make this cold of a choice. I’m so proud of my student.” Solution turned her smile into a grin that warped her face beyond human ability.

Nua reached up and gently removed Solution’s hands from her face, and replied confidently, “I learned my lessons well, from you, from Raymond, even from the rest of the Slane Theocracy. And I learned from the greatest mistake the Dark Savior made. I won’t make this into a second Wenmark. I’ll have to live with the fact that I didn’t help all those who wanted or needed it, but I have helped those I could, and they will be useful to me as a result. Now come on, let’s get out of here and go find a place to stay that will have room for this many people. I don’t want to waste an hour if I don’t have to.” Nua threw the hood of her cloak up over her head, turning the already dark night, into almost pitch black, which didn’t matter to the elf girl or her demonic teacher in the least as they stepped into the rain with indifference equal to their contempt for the rain and windswept night through which they now moved.

“Hurry up.” Nua said as she picked up the pace just a little bit, and Solution imitated her pupil, “Let’s move, I want to find a place soon, I’m starving and tired and I don’t like being either one of those things.”

“Relax,” Solution urged Nua calmly, reassuring the little maid demon with her a low and catlike purr, “We’ll find a place for us soon enough, and if we can’t…”

“If we can’t?” Nua asked over the rain, urging the maid demon to respond at greater length.

“We make one, of course.” Solution replied as the rain continued it’s futile assault on the only pair to brave it in the darkness of the open city air of Pa’sen.