With nothing left to do, I found a nice hiding spot under a large boulder a way off from the river. I hoped it was inconspicuous enough that no one would single it out and look there, but I had no way of knowing.

When I had hidden all of my things under a large scraggly bush near the boulder, wrapping the food in several layers of my extra clothing, I squeezed under the boulder. I just hoped it didn't tip in the night.

As I lay there, I thought about how sick I was of large rocks. I vowed that tonight would be the last night I would use one to keep the bad men away, as had the rocks of The Inner Sanctum.

Then I thought about Perrinu and Helnion. I hadn't realized how used to their presence I had become. Now that they were both gone, Perrinu dead and who knew what with Helnion, I felt something missing. Not alone, but missing.

With those thoughts I fell asleep.

Like the dreams I had on Korron my dreams tonight were of memories. Unlike the other dreams these dreams were not of my memories but those of others. Much like what I would have expected the dreams Perrinu had of the men she helped as far as I could guess.

Unlike the dreams of my memories, these dreams went by as a flash. I saw memories of different childhoods flash quickly through my mind, too fast to "see" everything that happened, but slow enough to feel everything that happened.

As I experienced these memories, I came to know the horrible hardships the owners of these memories had experienced. From their life on the streets as children, stealing food, abusive parents, lack of parents, extreme poverty, periods of starvation, among many other things. Sadly, all the memories were this way and as I saw more, I realized this was the norm for most children from poor families in Toa Mirr.

As I watched, I began to realize I was watching the memories of four different men. As they became older, I began to realize who they were. They were the men I had just killed. The leader, the two that had held me down, and the last man.

If I had thought their childhoods had been bad, I soon found myself forced to watch as they began to turn to greater and greater crimes and despicable acts. I saw them go from more minor problems like drinking, gambling, and bar fights to stealing, rape, and murder.

It was the latter two that made my soul ache. I found myself forced to watch every detail. Forced to feel their sickening desires and emotions as they did so. I even.. felt… what they felt even if it was dulled.

I awoke suddenly and violently, hitting my nose hard into the rock above me. I felt filthy, the feelings and sensations still fresh in my mind. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream.

Hoping to get the filth out of my mind, I forced other thoughts into my mind. I thought about the fun times I had pulling pranks at the school and Usui's city. Thought about the training I had done and many other things.

A few hours later when the first light of the morning came I came out from under my rock. I still felt sick and defiled, but now I had a sense of purpose. I would get out of this canyon alive and do my best to forget about the things I had seen.

I also thought I had a good idea of what had happened and why I had seen the memories. I had realized that the four men that had touched me in one way or another were the ones I had seen the memories of. I had also remembered feeling what they felt as they had touched me.

I was still not sure what had happened but between the fact that three of the men that had touched me had died without a scratch and all had weakened at my touch. It reminded me of the Berserkers. While I had only heard that the Berserkers got stronger as they killed and had heard nothing of how they got stronger because of this, it would make sense that they did it by touch.

The reason I thought this was because I had felt stronger after the fight and not weaker. It was entirely possible that I had stolen something from the four men, life energy or what I didn't know, and that it had become a part of me, explaining the nightmare I had had. Probably.

I was sure of one thing. I didn't want to experience a night like that again. Both the fighting and the dream part. Hopefully, those would be the last men I saw in this canyon and I could walk into town and find some place safe to stay for a while, but life never goes exactly how one wants it. I hoped this was a time things went well.

Now I was feeling better, though not enough to want to eat, and had my thoughts about me I took one last look around the area before I moved on. Aside from Kitten and a few small animals and birds, I saw nothing of any concern.

The first thing I wanted to do was take one last look at the men. I had only done a quick search for food the night before but I now wanted to see if they had anything else on them worth taking, hopefully, something that would get the collar off of my neck.

I found that, despite their shabby appearances, they had a few useful things on them. Aside from a fair sum of money hidden on the leader I found several knives, small pouches of either a fine powder or dried and ground leaves, cheap jewelry, and other unnotable items of little to no worth. I also collected the weapons they had dropped onto the ground but decided I couldn't carry them, aside from a few arrows, so dumped them into the river.

Sadly, I had failed to find a key or something that would remove my collar. I just wondered what kind of lock the one they had put on me was. I had hoped it had been one that opened with a key, but if it was, they didn't have the key on them as far as I could tell. If it was the other kind lock, then only a skilled magic user could remove it and the only ones in Toa Mirr that were taught magic were nobility or Melche born, and all the Melche born in Toa Mirr were forcefully conscripted into the military at birth.

Thankfully, not being able to use magic was not a great inconvenience to me. It would be a pain to start fires now and I wouldn't be able to use my sword's special abilities but aside from those, I was perfectly fine using my bow and the sharpness of my sword to defend myself.

When I was certain I had found everything I could off of the men, I got ready to leave. Strangely, I had gotten my appetite back after rummaging through dead bodies, perhaps because seeing the men that had done those things were dead and suffering on Menein.

After I had finished eating, I noticed that Kitten had disappeared. Since I wasn't sharing my food with the cat, I figured it had gone off to find its own and cleaned myself up.

To my surprise, I found that as I cleaned my wounds they had already healed quite a bit. While I still could not use my injured arm and leg to hold any large amount of weight, I suspected that if they kept healing this quickly, it would only be a day or two before I was back to normal.

This reinforced my theory that I had some abilities of the Berserkers now. I had seen their extreme healing abilities first hand. My healing was nowhere near as fast, but it had improved a lot just from killing four men. Even with the potential advantages of this "gift" the servant had given me, I didn't want it. If it meant having dreams like I had had, then I wanted nothing to do with it.

With myself now cleaned, I began to gather my things. When I tried to pick them all up to leave, I found I could not hold everything with just my good arm. Thankfully, there were plenty of spare bags courtesy of some dead scum and I soon had a back full of bags.

I found myself underway again, with Kitten coming out of nowhere and following. While I was not looking forward to the heat, I stayed to the sides of the canyon where there were many more places to keep myself out of sight.

As the day wore on I made steady progress. I had also seen no signs of any other men and hoped that it would stay that way.

It was around noon when I couldn't stand the heat any longer and I carefully made my way towards the river. As soon as I reached the river I dropped my things and slid into the water as quietly as I could, Kitten following suit.

I did not stay long and as soon as I had cooled myself down I refilled the water flask Servant had provided me and took out a cloth. This cloth was what was left of the clothes I had been wearing the day before when I had been attacked. I had already cut strips of it off to use to bandage my wounds but now decided it would make a nice head rag to keep the sun off of my head and cover the light being emitted from my collar. I also soaked it in the river for good measure.

A few hours after my trip to the river I finally found another group of men, Kitten's sudden disappearance alerting me. There were three men and six dogs, all of them sitting in the shade of a particularly large boulder. None of them were paying attention to their surroundings and one man and several of the dogs were asleep.

I wanted to sneak past them, but my unsteady gait often sent rocks and pebbles down the canyon. I suspected the dogs would easily hear the rocks and would smell me or see me as I moved along even if they kept the noise of my passing from them. I also knew that if I stayed where I was the dogs would probably find me anyway.

I had to strike first. It was only a matter of when the men and dogs would wake up and start moving. If I could use my bow, I could have easily taken out one or two of the men before they even knew what was going on. After that, the dogs would have been easy to take care of too, and maybe even the remaining man.

As I could not use my bow, I would have to use another means. These were the daggers and knives I had taken from the men earlier. While the knives were not weighted properly for throwing and it had been a while since I had even practiced knife throwing, it would have to do.

I approached the men as silently as I could. My leg at this point could hold weight better than in had in the morning so, despite the pain I got from putting weight on my leg, I did my assassin's approach on the men.

Several of the dogs lifted their heads as I padded up to a small boulder a hundred meters away from them. This alerted the men, and they both stood up and looked in my direction.

One man spoke to the other who then woke up the third man. While this was happening the first man said something and motioned to the dogs in my direction.

The dogs immediately ran in my direction.

As I didn't have long until the dogs reached my location, I readied my knives and moved to where I could hit the dogs with them.

When the first dog came within about ten meters, I threw a knife at it, hitting it but only wounding it. By this time three more dogs had come within ten meters and I threw knives at them as well. Two of the three hit, killing one and wounding the other. I then threw my last knife at the dog I had missed earlier, easily hitting it and killing it now that it was nearly upon me.

The last two unwounded dogs were almost upon me so I pulled out my sword and grabbed a large rock with my left hand just in case. No sooner had I done that then the two dogs rounded the boulder, one on each side.

The dogs leaped at me at the same time. I swung at the dog on the right and cut it cleanly across its throat, nearly cutting its head off. The dog on my left I tried hitting with the momentum from my swing, but it was so close I hit it with my fist that was gripping the sword.

The dog's jaws just missed me but its body slammed into me and knocked me onto the ground. To make matters worse, one dog I had wounded came around the boulder.

Thanks to Bench's and Martu's training, I rolled with the blow, ignoring a jolt of pain from my injured shoulder, and pushed the dog off of me. I then recovered just in time to slash at the wounded dog and turned to face the last dog. It impaled itself on my sword with its last attack.

Now all that was left were the three men. I didn't know how much of the fight with the dogs they had seen, but I hoped they thought their dogs had done something.

I only had a little time to plan my next action. As I had not seen what weapons the men had had, I would have to guess.

"What have you done to my dogs?" A tall, well-groomed man said. His hand was held out and had several spears of ice floating around him, ready to impale me. The two other men appeared soon after and moved to surround me.

"I thought they would kill me so I defended myself," I hoped to buy time to think of a way out of this.

"I find it hard to believe you did this," The man kept his eyes on me, paying no mind to the dogs he was speaking about.

"Is this the Terran we are looking for Lord?" The man to my right said.

Lord? Had one of the Toa Mirr nobility come to kill me personally? I had heard many of them liked to hunt.

"To think our prey came to us Lord." The other man said.

"Take off your head wrap and drop the sword and rock." The man on my right said.

I did.

"So you are a Terran." The Lord said after he saw my long hair fall from the cloth. "Your hair is more grey than I expected, but your skin and features are unmistakable."

"What are we going to do with her Lord?" The man on the right said.

"I had been looking forward to a chase." The Lord dropped his hand, the ice spears shattering on the ground. "Do you feel like a chase, girl?"

"Sure," I said, hoping he was being serious.

"Sadly, I do not." The Lord said, giving me a smirk.

Then why ask? I thought.

"I tire of this heat and would very much like to return to my land. Fortunately for you, Terran, the price on your head means nothing to me and instead I plan on making you one of my possessions."

The good news was he didn't want to kill me. Bad news was I would have to become his slave.

"You don't want to touch me," I told him.

"What you think does not matter anymore, only what I think." The Lord motioned to his men.

The man to my right sheathed his sword and pulled some shackles from a pouch he was wearing.

"I do not know who collared your magic, but this has made things much easier." The Lord inspected my neck.

The two men started moving towards me.

"It looks like they hurt you, which is a shame, but we will take care of your wounds."

The men had neared me and when they were about to subdue me I punched the man to the right as hard as I could in the stomach. As I had expected, I felt his emotions as I did whatever I was doing to him.

When the first man fell to the ground, I turned from the man with the shackles, scooped my sword off of the ground, and sprinted as hard as I could away from him. Since the Lord wanted me alive I hoped that he would not use his more deadly magic on me and headed towards the nearest boulder I could.

I heard a whooshing sound behind me and just as I turned to see what was making the sound I saw the remaining lackey of the Lord swing what looked like weighted chains at me. I tried to get out of their way but it was too late and the chains found my legs and wrapped around them, tripping me.

"A fine attempt," The Lord said when he and the man reached where I lay, "Knocking one of my servants out in a single blow. Amazing. It makes me desire you even more."

The remaining man knelt next to me and grabbed my right arm. As he lifted it into the shackles and began to secure it I pulled as hard as I could at his emotions seeping into me, hoping it would speed up whatever was happening. The effect was immediate, and the man collapsed without a word.

"What have you done?" The Lord said, a mix of curiosity and surprise in his voice. The Lord leaned over and shook his servant. When the man failed to respond, the Lord backed away from me and readied his bow. "Is your collar not working properly? Only a mental attack or something similar could do something like that." The Lord thought for a moment. "I loathe to do this to a lesser person but if I am to find out what skill you used and prevent its use on me…"

I felt a poke at my mind. Thankfully, it only took magic to induce a mental attack or probing and could be defended against with just the strength of mind. Therefore, I could fight Pie Can when I had known little about magic and didn't have the control needed to induce a mental attack.

I easily pushed away the Lord's initial mental probe.

"I see you have some skill at mental defense." He said.

I soon felt a strong push at my mental barriers. Strangely, I felt more than simple force and could feel the Lord's emotions coming through. After all my training I had never known for the attacker to transmit emotions like this as they were generally trying to get at their target's emotions, memories, and thoughts, not the other way. It was possible to transmit thoughts once mental barriers had been taken away but mine were still easily holding.

"What are you doing?" The man said, clutching his head. "How are you taking…"

I had no desire to steal this man's emotions if it meant having to go through another night like the one last night, but if I didn't want to become a slave, I would have to. I had already taken at least one full person's worth of emotions, maybe two, so I would have a bad night anyway.

Like the man that had tried to shackle me earlier, I pulled at the emotions instead of letting them come in slowly. They rushed into me.

When the Lord fell I quickly unwrapped the chains from my legs and checked all three of the men for signs of life. They were all dead, even the man I had punched. I had expected to have weakened him at least, but somehow I had killed him faster than I had the other two. Did intent to harm take their… essence faster?

Another mystery to solve at a safer time.

With the threat of the dogs and men gone, the last wounded dog having bled to death, I collected my spoils and move on.

Kitten came back too.

I had struck it rich this time. Having just taken out someone of Toa Mirr nobility, many of the things I found were of high quality, and I found a large sack of coins on the Lord's body. I happily took an ornate dagger, two gold rings with impressive gemstones, a small yet fine sword, silk(!) clothes (which would be sold later), and even a communication crystal. This was just on the Lord.

The other two men were worthless in comparison. I only ended up taking a few more daggers, another magic sealing collar(to sell later), and a few coins.

The only thing of worth I found in their camp was some good food fit for a lord. Everything else was just garbage or things for the dogs. Even the bedding material wasn't as good as the one the Servant had given me.