The Bandits – Part 4
Seeing the leaders of the bandits take his sword and stagger around looking for whoever had drugged his bandit group she knew she had to take him down fast. The longer she waited the more time he had to both sober himself up and break through the effects of the sleeping potion.
Knowing it was now or never, she hefted her spear and charged. As she neared the man she lunged as quickly as she could straight towards his midsection. But in the flickering light and due to his stumbling stance, she ended up stabbing into his side.
“Arrrgh!” He cried out as her blade slid along his side and created a deep gash. He flailed about and reached over to where he felt the pain. As he did, he swung his sword with abandoned nature, hitting no one, as he came in and out of his drowsy state. With all of his struggling, he ended up tripping over one of the other men, falling into Olivia who had no time to move out of the way.
*Thud* Both Olivia and the man fell to the floor, losing their weapons as they did. Pain wracked their bodies as they hit the ground, as both ended up landing on the armoured men, the rough hard leather and metal cushioning their fall by no means.
Olivia managed to push herself up from the floor before the man, likely due to the drug in his system, but it didn’t take him too much longer.
Both upright, the man turned to Olivia, shaking his head as he did to keep himself awake.
“Where did you come from…. did you do this to my men…” He staggered to the side but stopped himself from falling. “Whatever, it’s not like a monster can understand what I’m saying. All a monster is good for it dying and looking good on my wall.”
At those words he just started running at Olivia, with both hands out front, thinking that he would easily be able to grab Olivia. This obviously was not going to be the case.
.....
As he came barrelling towards her, Olivia managed to duck under his arms and moved to the side, causing him to miss.
That didn’t last long though, as coming out of his failed grab he swung his arms around, catching Olivia in the face, and knocking her down to the ground.
*Groan* Olivia moaned from the ground, hand holding her face. There was no blood that she could see, but it was very painful. As she was recovering, the man, made his way over to her and went to pin her down.
Thankfully, Olivia saw this and in his drunken and drowsy state, she was able to dodge him, rolling out of the way. He continued his path, collapsing onto the floor, which Olivia used to her advantage by reaching up and taking hold of the knife she had and stabbing it down into his shoulders as he was on the floor.
The man cried out in pain, as the metal blade sank in into his body, slicing through skin and muscle. He thrashed around trying to knock her off of him, but aside from a few hits to her side, the angle made it impossible to cause any real damage.
Taking hold of the knife to pull out and stab him again, she suddenly found her side wracked in pain. Looking over she saw that the man had found a large rock and was going in for another swing.
She had the choice between getting another stab in or stopping him from hitting her again. She didn’t have much time to think though as her body took over, causing her to dive across his body, and take hold of his hand.
He shouted for her to get off of him, grunting and swearing as he did. Now completely immobilised, he could no longer attack her, and her body weight held him fairly still.
This gave her the time to shift around, allowing herself to still hold his arm down, but also be in a position to plunge the knife back into his body.
Which is what she did.
Several times.
“…”
Then it all went silent. There were no more cries of pain from the man. All of his struggling ceased.
At that point, Olivia rolled off his body and just laid there. Her eyes closed as the stress and fatigue of it all caught up to her.
…
Olivia groaned as she opened her eyes. She still felt the pain in her face from the hit, even more so when she rubbed that spot on her face.
“Ouch. Note to self, always protect the face.”
As she looked around, she saw the dead body of the man laying a little way away from her. As she looked up, she was met by inquisitive big brown eyes. Looking further up, she saw the flopped over ears of the bunny-kin girl.
“Hello.”
“Hello.” The girl replied in a sweet voice. Turning over her shoulder she called out. “She’s alive.”
Olivia looked over to the direction she was facing and saw the three other girls all huddled by one of the nearby tents. Having heard her, the three girls cautiously walked over to her, eyeing Olivia wearily, and stopping a short distance from her.
Once they were close enough one of the dog-kin girls stepped forward. “T-thank you for saving us.”
“It’s no problem. After having seen what was happening here, I couldn’t just let them continue.”
As she said that, she remembered that the men had only been put to sleep, and she had no idea when they would wake up. Looking around though, she found all of the men still very much in a deep slumber, but they all had ropes tied around their hands and feet.
“Don’t worry. We tied them all up while you were asleep.” The cat-kin girl stated.
“That’s good, I was afraid they would have woken up.”
Olivia slowly rose off the ground and looked around at the scene. She tried not to look at the man she had killed for too long, as bile started to swell in her throat as she did. Like when saving Ameril, while the person she killed was a bad man, the idea of killing someone wasn’t a fun thought for her. She did, however, quickly pick up her knife and wiped most of the blood off of it by rubbing it against the grass.
Looking at the girls, she saw they all had smiles on their faces, happy to no longer having to follow the whims of the bandits. But, as she expected, those smiles shifted momentarily when they saw her looking at them, weary of the monster among them.
All except the bunny-kin though who took no notice and had no response when Olivia looked at her.
Putting the looks she got back aside, she noticed a couple of things when she was looking at the girls. All of them still had the slave collars on. They had managed to remove the rope but had not taken off the collars. Even if they needed a key to do so, surely one of the men had it on them, and they would have found it when tying them up.
There was also the fact that she could lonely see girls. Shouldn’t there be several men with slave collars as well?
“Why do you still have those collars on, and where are the men that were chained up.”
The girls all looked at each other slightly confused about something before turning back to her.
“You do know that slaves cannot remove slave collars right? The magic engraved in them stops them from doing so.”
Well, that was new information. It was also the first real time she had seen some form of magic in this world. For it to have been introduced first by slave collars was just depressing.
Olivia had assumed that the collar was just what it looked like, a metal band showing you were someone’s slave. For them to actually make it impossible to remove a slave collar was just devilish. She now understood why Lyrika had been so fearful that she was hiding one when they first met. Aside from actually being made a slave that is.
“Ah, I see. Did you find the key for it?”
The bunny-kin quickly walked over and handed the key to her. It wasn’t so much a key but more akin to a gemstone with a metal band around it. On the band, there was some form of engraving, but it looked more like symbols than any tangible words.
“Also, in case you didn’t know, having the key to a set of slave collars means a slave collar cannot be put on you.” The bunny-kin quickly said, before bending forward and lifting her head to allow Olivia access to the collar.
‘Huh, well that’s even better information. I was worried I would need to find some way to combat becoming someone’s slave but looks like I already have that.
Some would say it was very convenient, but it actually made sense. If you can figure out how to make a slave collar to stop your slaves from freeing themselves, why wouldn’t or couldn’t you put some failsafe to stop yourself from being made one?
“If that’s the case, why doesn’t everyone just get one so they can’t be made a slave.” was Olivia’s question, even though she thought she already knew the answer.
“They are very expensive. Unless you are a very wealthy person you won’t be able to buy one. I’m surprised this bandit even had one.” the cat-kin said as she looked at the man lying dead on the floor.
If that was the case, then it was very strange. It was possible he stole them, but he may have paid or been given them. That plus the mention of ridding the town of its inhabitants made this whole bandit operation suspect.
These however were thoughts for another day, as right now she had slaves to free and a possibly worried cat-kin girl to get back to.