Elwen the Conquered

“Alright, time to go.” A man in a black outfit said. Elwen wasn’t happy to see in the morning when he came to get her, remembering the bald man from the night before, but after a little coaxing, and getting the nice nurse lady, he managed to get her up and out of the room. She didn’t like the chain that he attached to a ring in the front of her new collar, but she was too exhausted to complain. The slight trembling through her core certainly didn’t help.

Still, that didn’t stop their slow march through the halls. They were new to her; she hadn’t seen them on the way in due to the blindfold. They were a little narrower than she had seen in the store in Ravensburg. They were also made of stone, with decorations between the doors. It seemed that they tried to theme them after the coastal nature of the town, as there were many paintings of ships and a couple wooden anchors nailed to the walls.

They turned down an offshoot of the hall, entering a shorter, wider hall. There were crates stacked up neatly to one side, waiting to be moved into more proper storage. At the end of the hall, there was a large set of plain double doors. Just as the man was reaching out to open one of them, the door swung open. The man barely had time to pull his hand back before the door slammed into the wall. The hall was filled with a bright light, and Elwen was forced to close her eyes due to its intensity.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” The man screamed at someone Elwen couldn’t see. She didn’t realize that the door led outside, but now that her eyes were starting to adjust, she could just barely make out the side of the building next to them.

“I was coming to get you! The ship’s leaving in half an hour! We need to get moving!” Another man responded.

“I know! Why did you break the door?!” The man she came with yelled back. Only now could she make a few wooden splinters that seemed to emanate from the door.

“I didn’t break it! It was just stuck!” The man cried. Elwen looked up at him, her eyes finally adjusted enough to make him out. He was wearing the same black outfit as the other man, except he was also wearing a leather chest piece. He had a short sword at his waist and a set of keys on a large ring on the other side.

“It opens the other way, you idiot!” Elwen was tugged forward as the first man started out the door. There was a ramp on the other side that slopped down to a small courtyard with an alley leading to the street. In the middle of the courtyard was a large wagon. The man led her to the back of the wagon, where the other man unlocked a large padlock on a door.

After the door was opened, the man lifted her up and into the wagon. He pushed her down onto a wooden bench, before locking the chain connected to her collar to a metal loop in the wall above her. Then he left, making sure his colleague locked the door behind him.

At this point, no one had explained to Elwen what was going on. She was annoyed that they didn’t tell her what they were doing or where they were going. The nurse told her last night that they would be leaving on a boat soon, so she assumed that this wagon was going to take them there. Still, it would have been nice if they told her what was happening. At least they were nicer than the man from last night.

She looked around the inside of the wagon. It was rather spacious, much more so than in the room she had been stuck in all night. There was a bench against both walls of the wagon, facing each other. They were boxy, being solid wood both on the top and in the front. She didn’t like it as her heels would hit the wood every time she swung her feet, which were just barely off the ground. Metal rings were evenly spaced on the walls above them, every two feet or so. There were also similar rings on the ground, running down the center of the wagon.

Elwen noticed that there were a couple of other people in the wagon with her. She didn’t notice them at first because they were in the middle, while she was right next to the door. There were two girls wearing plain clothes, restrained similarly to her. One of them smiled at her and gave her a little wave, which looked a little awkward because her hands were tied together. The other girl was slumped over, seemingly asleep. She had no idea how one could sleep here.

There was also a third girl, at the very front, which she wouldn’t have noticed if it weren’t for her trashing about and screaming into a cloth that cut into her mouth. She was far more thoroughly bound than Elwen was. Her arms were behind her back, in a pair of manacles with a single chain loop between them. Her feet were similarly shackled, with a longer chain running through the loop on the floor between the thick metal cuffs. She had many leather straps crisscrossing her body, further restricting her movements. Elwen wasn’t sure what she did to deserve that level of security, but she was glad she didn’t have to endure it. She was almost relieved that the girl was bound that way, her bloodshot eyes communicated her desire to tear anything and everything apart that she could get her hands on, which was nothing, thankfully.

After a couple of minutes of waiting, the wagon started moving forward. She couldn’t see them, but she could hear the heavy clops of their guard’s horses and their loud voices whenever they yelled. The ride was very bumpy, especially when they started going downhill. She almost fell off her seat a couple of times.

Fortunately, it didn’t last very long, as they stopped not even ten minutes after leaving. The door to the wagon swung open as another man in a black outfit stepped. She was starting to wonder how many of these guys the company had, as they all seemed almost identical. He walked to the middle of the wagon, searching for a certain key on a ring he pulled out from a bag on his waist. Once he found the right one, he used it to unlock the smiling girl’s chain from the wall and told her to stand up. Then, he took the chain and pulled her by it to the door, where he handed it off to another man standing by the door. Then, he went back and did the same to the sleeping girl, this time attaching her chain to a small ring on the back of the smiling girl’s collar. Then, it was her turn.

“Stand.” He commanded. She obeyed, a little fearful of his tone. She didn’t have to move very far before she was right behind the sleeping girl, who was yawning right as the man grabbed her collar to connect Elwen’s chain to it. That startled her, turning her yawn into a little yelp, and washing away the tired look on her face.

“Alright. That’s all of them.” The man in the wagon said.

“Hang on, what about the one in the back?” The man standing just outside the wagon asked.

“She’s not going. We’re taking her to the guard station after this.” The wagon man responded.

“As long as she isn’t my problem. Have fun with that.” The other man joked.

“You know I won’t.” The wagon man complained, “Damn hunters not finishing their jobs. It’d be so much easier if they took their criminal catches to the guards and let them sort it out…”

“Hah! As if those guys would want to make anything easier for us!” The chain man replied. “Well, time to go. See ya later, man!”

“Yeah. Drinks are on you!” Wagon man declared.

“Haha. Sure.” Chain man responded as he turned around and gave the wagon man a wave. “Let’s get moving.”

The girls in front of her started walking forwards, and a tug from her collar sent her forwards, following them. They walked down a ramp that was placed at the back of the wagon, making it possible for them to leave without help.

On the outside, Elwen could see the ship. They were pretty close to it, only a few dozen steps away from another ramp that let to the deck. It was a small and narrow ship. Well, at least it looked small in her opinion. She had only been on a ship once, and that was when Ben’s family took her on a cruise when they were little. For all she knew, this was a large ship by the standards of this world.

Soon, they were at the ship’s ramp. She was a little concerned because there was no guard rail on the side. What if she fell? Still, at the encouragement of her collar chain, she walked across it, making sure she was directly, and safely, in the center of the plank at all times.

Once they were on the ship, the man led them to the back of the ship, where they went through a door and down a set of stairs. After a short walk below deck, they arrived at what she could only describe at a massive cage. There were at least twenty other people inside, huddled on the floor into groups of four or five. They were led inside and the man disconnected them from each other, before pushing them down and connecting them to the existing groups. Then he left, slamming the door behind him.

“Hey! I’m Skye. What’s your name?” A big girl asked her as she got up, looming over her.

“I-I’m Elwen!” She sputtered more than a little intimidated by the girl’s appearance. She was tall, even standing on her knees she towered over her. It didn’t help that Elwen was sitting on the ground, slowly sinking back as the girl’s green eyes bored into her. Her strong face was framed by short brown hair, just barely enough to touch her shoulders. She was only wearing a black crop-top like woolen sweater and a pair of leather pants. She was tanned and toned, evidence of her long days of hard training.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.” She laughed, “I just got a little excited. We’ve been stuck in here for the past couple of weeks, so it was nice to see a new face.”

“O-oh…”

“This is Evelyn,” she stated, pointing to a blonde-haired girl who was lazily laying up against another girl. “That’s Lydia,” she continued, pointing at the black-haired girl she was laying against.

“Hey.” Lydia called out, giving her a small wave.

“And this is Yusha.” She finished, pointing at another black-haired girl laying down facing away from them. “She’s not very talkative.”
“I’m trying to sleep!” Yusha responded, throwing her makeshift pillow at Skye. She dodged, letting the pillow fly past her and hitting the wall behind her.

“Well, that’s everyone! Now we can spend the rest of the trip getting to know each other better!” Skye declared, clapping her hands together.

“Umm… sure…” Elwen replied, a little overwhelmed by her cheeriness.

Varian had spent the last few days tracking down the group of adventurers sent into the Deadwoods. At first, he had very little luck, finding just a few footprints or a faded sign of activity here and there. And plenty of scorpions. But, after collecting enough clues, he finally managed to track them down. Unfortunately for them, he only managed to find their corpses.

Their bones were all strewn about in a small area surrounded by large boulders. By the look of it, they had picked this place to make their camp, but something had ambushed them and slaughtered them. It was a rather grizzly sight, but he didn’t mind it much. Something about only seeing the bones made it more palatable. There were gnawing marks on a couple of the bones he found, giving him a clue as to the size of whatever attacked them. It also ruled out bandits or other outlaws. Whatever it was, it was large, like a lion. Still, whatever it was didn’t leave enough evidence for him to identify what it was, even with [Appraise].

He did find a book in a bag that was set against the wall, spared from whatever carnage occurred. It looked to be a journal, so he read it, hoping to get some sort of clue about what the adventurers were up to, and what they found.

It was pretty much useless, as whatever they found, if anything, clearly happened at the end of the journey, just before they were killed by… whatever killed them. It did, however, point him towards a set of ruins they saw poking up out of the mountains as they surveyed deeper into the former forest.

“Yeah. That’s definitely not suspicious…”

Closing the book, he decided that he would go looking for those ruins. Even if they weren’t related to the Deadwoods forming, it would be a good idea to explore them. He might find valuable ancient artifacts, or maybe something to boost his power. And even if he didn’t find anything, it would provide a good vantage point to survey the area.