"Heave!"

"Ho!"

Mottled seagulls fly high above the people moving like ants below, calling out to each other.

Men shout back and forth at each other, working together to hold the heavy rope thicker than a man's waist. The rope led back to the bow of the ship to anchor the gigantic slave ship that docks in the Mioldri Empire Harbor. With its arrival in the Mioldri Harbor, it brought with it the foul scents of many unwashed beings kept in cramped quarters. The additional montage of stomach-roiling scents did nothing to faze the dockworkers who had grown used to the filth already abounding in the harbor itself. Rats scampered about in dark corners of the storefronts on the docks while stray dogs licked up the wet blood dripping off the fish seller's chipping block, riddled with flies.

A priest stood there in his white uniform, looking out of place in the muck of the docks as he awaited the newest shipment of slaves from the Trefia Elves.

The Trefia elves and the Mioldri Empire had an unofficial alliance, begun between them 200 years ago a few decades after the war originally started. The Empire would provide the necessary iron weaponry the Trefia were unable to smelt, and in return the Trefia would provide slaves.

As the war had dragged on and the number of captured Dark Elves dwindled, the Trefia had begun to secretly send over the very races they had sworn to protect. The weaker beings of the forest.

Satyrs, minotaurs, and other mixed beast/humanoid forest creatures stood chained, some kept dazed by a tamer while others followed orders patiently with a defeated look on their faces.

These were the creatures that had taken the wrong side in the war across the sea on the Continent of Fair Beauty, Caldros. Betrayed by their own guardians. They were the most available resource that the True Elves could offer to the Mioldri, when most of their other resources were spent in the war, simply called the Caldros War. It was the first and only war between elves, when many began to forget the old ways. The true ways of the gods who disappeared that had governed them.

It was a terrible war, the Dark Elves against the True Elves (Trefia) that continued to this day.

The war pitted the desert-dwellers of the west against eastern denizens of the forest.

"Give me all of your unsold slaves"

Crossing his arms, the captain of the ship nods to the back of the group, behind the young nymphs chained to an iron rope and hung by their arms to keep them unable to influence the wood deck beneath them.

"Them be the ones yer lookin fer"

With an incredulous look on his face, the priest looks at the strange trio that sit together, doing nothing. All were chained together, faced away from each other in different directions.

An old minotaur with no arms and jagged, broken horns, an even older-looking hag, and a blind dwarf, both eyes grey and unseeing.

"What'd ya need them fer, anyways?"

The captain of the ship asks, hocking a glob of spit behind him.

Covering his nose in a white handkerchief, "That's none of your concern", the priest squints his eyes in disgust.

"Official business of the Mioldri Empire, why else would I be here? Fool!"

The grizzled captain shrugs. He was being respectful by changing the trajectory of his spit anyways. Though the Mioldri Empire had power, its reach had not yet stretched beyond the continent or to the open ocean. As a sailor of the seas, he was still a free man.

The priest sneers, his mouth twisting into a prideful smile. As a representative of the High Priest, he felt honored with the task assigned to him. After all, it had come directly from the Emperor himself. He would carry out his orders to the best of his ability.

"Is this all?"

"Aye. The rest have all been spoken for. The pretty ones are always quick to be snapped up, heheheh." Smiling, the captain reveals his rotting teeth, gesturing out to the slaves being unloaded from a dock behind him. He didn't mind being unable to sample his merchandise. The pay was just too good. With the gold coins he would receive today, he could live like a king until it was time for his next voyage.

An iron cage is first to be lowered from the ship, a detail of Mioldri knights standing guard below to welcome the 3 Dark Elves chained to the bars within it. They would be expressly taken into the castle to the Emperor. No one knew what happened to them afterwards, and no one bothered to care. Any gossip about the Emperor was not tolerated in the Mioldri Empire. And most worshipped the Emperor anyways. The slaves were considered a wise choice. Everyone was happy for cheap labor that would fill their pockets. Nowadays, most hard labor jobs had begun to be filled by the slaves so the people of the Empire could live well.

"Too useless, too old, and too worthless."

A minotaur was used for hard labor, but one without arms? He was just a mouth waiting to be fed. A dwarf who couldn't smith was worthless if he couldn't see either. The priest didn't even know what the old hag was doing in the mix. She looked human enough to him, except her hair was a dark, shriveled yellow-green that seemed to squirm if he looked at it too long. And he didn't care to know what she was.

"What will I report to the High Priest!?" The priest bites his thumb in nervousness. Wracking his brain for what to do, the priest finally gives up as the knight who accompanied him on the wagon waves and tells him it's time to leave.

'.....He did say a few..I guess these will have to do for now. And they were all going to die anyways..'

Slamming closed the locked chest that sits on the crate next to him, the older man thumbs at the papers he'd withdrawn, making sure he had the right ones.

They looked correct.

"Here's yer slave contracts."

Pushing the three papers into the priest's hands, the captain strides away, barking orders at his men to be more careful with the other merchandise. The sailors laugh in response as they continue whacking the hardy trolls forward off the plank. They would be sent to the mines to mine for more iron ore.

"Hurry up!"

Snapping at the slaves that finally disembark, the priest doesn't even look at them as he steps forwards, carefully avoiding the horse dung that litters the street. The minotaur lurches forward, a rope tied around his waist connecting back to the neck of the hag with her wrists shackled in irons, and the dwarf behind her that stumbles blindly with each step.

"There's no time to waste. They must be sent into the Wildlands today." As soon as the priest sits next to the knight on the driver's seat, the knight reminds him with a furrowed brow. He was a devout one. Orders needed to be carried out quickly, in accordance with the Book.

"No need to worry so much. It's only one raven. How hard could it be for one of the three to find it?"

The priest nods in response. That was true.

Turning to the three slaves who had followed him and boarded the back of the wagon, the priest clicks a mana stone in an open slot on the slave collars fitted around each of their necks.

The mana stones he'd inserted were all shining a bright red color, proof that they'd been filled to the brim with enough mana to cause a small explosion if any more was added. The second mana stone he inserted after that, a smaller one that was light blue in color, was the receiving stone. Made with the most cutting-edge Mioldri technology, it was attuned to the priest and 2 others' mana signatures. One of the priests would be watching the slaves with scrying magic around the clock, ready to dispatch mana to cause an explosion that would swallow a 50 meter radius around the slave.

The Wildlands was a strange place, a headache for the Mioldri Empire that wanted to conquer it as it laid on the edge of their territory. But alas, the monsters within were much too powerful and strange. And the mists that would appear every once in a while with the storms that accompanied it...Any man that went inside was gone for good. Magic worked strangely within the woods, with many adventurers reporting areas where magic didn't work at all. It was called the Wildlands for a reason.

The Mioldri Empire also suspected it housed something within it related to the old gods...Every so often, groups of powerful priests and knights would be sent in to observe and scout for old relics.

Once, in the very beginning of the expeditions, a knight had been found. There was something strange attached to him. A broken-off white stone finger, bleached pale in the sun. He'd stumbled out of the forest insane, the finger caught in his armor. The knight had gone missing one night in a storm, most likely lost in the mists after going out to do his business.

He could only repeat one statement, over and over for a week until he died, committing suicide by banging his head against the wall.

"Dust....All is dust....Dust..."

"All is dust"

This incident had secretly caused an uproar within the Order, and the Emperor had sent in more men to investigate. Too eerily familiar it was, those words, to the teachings of the old gods. It made the Empire nervous. The Emperor wanted to erase all mentions of the old gods and establish himself as the One god. If there was any chance of them returning, it would interfere with the Empire's goals. And so they'd observed, all for naught. Nothing turned up, and the evolving monsters devoured the priests if they weren't quick enough. The numbers sent for each round of investigations eventually dwindled after each round, year after year, brought back no new observations.

Now the expeditions were more of a customary occurrence to observe the new evolved creatures and report back to the Empire.

Sending in these slaves would be no problem.

It should be more than enough to get rid of one raven, as soon as they caught sight of it.

Krrrch!

Sending a light shock that makes all three slaves jerk in pain, the priest addresses them.

"You will be used for a reconnaissance and recovery mission in the Wildlands. It's very simple. If you find a raven, we will guarantee your freedom. If you fail, you will die"

The slave collars were imbued with a Light magic developed by the Mioldri Empire that encouraged obedience to the owner through painful shocks sent directly into the brain. Too many of the shocks could even kill you. Slave owners also had to be careful not to turn their slaves into doddering idiots with the shocks. That was another reason why some like to call being a slave owner an art. It took skill to know the perfect level of pain to keep your slaves motivated, but not disable them. Not even the famed stamina of a minotaur would be able to withstand the pain directly sent into the brain that didn't leave any physical wounds.

Krrch!

He zaps them again, harder, for good measure, making the small, malnourished old dwarf wince.

Sneering, the priest adds on an extra reward.

"We shall even let you live in the Wildlands once you're free."

It didn't matter what he promised them if they fulfilled the orders. They would die either way. As long as the Mioldri Empire existed, slaves would live and die as slaves.

Not one of the slaves' expressions changes, though the fingers of the hag seem to twitch against the wood bottom of the wagon. The wagon moves roughly, hitting each pothole in the dirt road that would take them out of the Empire capital and on the long journey out to the Wildlands.