Book 3: Chapter 12 (1/2)

”Ah, you should have seen it. The leviathan comes up for breath only once every one hundred years.”

“A leviathan is real?”

“Of course, and it earns that name. When it pulls out of the sea, it causes massive tidal waves that threaten the coasts. Mages with a strong water talent all around the world are recruited to deal with it. He’s so large that he blots out the sky. Fortunately, he’s a passive creature, and after breathing air for a few days, he sinks back below the surface to slumber for another hundred years.”

“What is it all for? “ I asked. “Like, what about food and… um… procreation.”

“Few monsters concern themselves with survivability.” Angela shrugged. “That’s for animals to worry about. Monsters are about upsetting the balance, not maintaining it. That Leviathan, he’s the last of his kind, you see? His life is just on a completely different scale than our own. I suspect he’s just waiting down there to die, breathing his last few breaths…

“He’s not the only modern monster wonder though. There is the phoenix colony to the northwest. It’s where the last family of phoenix lives. When a mother dies, she bursts into flames, and her child rises from the ashes. Except, that environment isn’t very inducive towards expanding your population. It was a big deal thirty-some years ago when the mother ended up with twins. First and last time the population increased.

“Then, there is a massive golem. He lays dormant as a mountain. Actually, he is a mountain now. Years of dirt covered him and if you actually want to see any part of him, you have to look where to excavate. People live on his body now. If he ever woke up, it’d be devastation.”

“Kind of like living on a volcano, huh?”

Angela snorted. “Nothing like it. We can use magic to tame a Volcano. No one of this modern era knows how that great golem was built nor how he functions.”

So even volcano’s were no big deal in a world with magic. I was learning all kind of interesting things talking to Angela. Once, she had freaked me out and I had been a bit scared of her. However, after being locked in this small room in the dark for three days, she was the only company I had, and my opinion started to change. We passed the time by conversing in this manner.

As a pirate, she had sailed across the world and had as many tales as one would expect. I was once again realizing this world was much bigger than I ever expected. That was literal. The way she described it; this world likely had twice the landmass of the earth. It was no wonder I didn’t crash over an ocean, as oceans were much smaller things in this world. For example, this Leviathan she spoke of was the size of an entire ocean. Although it was also possible that the Leviathan was just far larger than I could imagine.

Her stories reminded me a bit of Rose. However, she made even Rose seem inexperienced by comparison. I felt part of this was because she was happy lying and exaggerating. She didn’t let a little thing like facts ruin a good story, where Rose would always tell it like it was.

Time wore on. Twice a day, a handful of snack bags and cans of juice would be tossed in the room, and we’d eat potato crisps and candy to pass our time and satiate our hunger. I told her my story, a complete fabrication of course. It didn’t matter, I suspected a lot of what she told me was I lie as well. It was simply the sort of relationship that the two of us shared. It was one of necessary companionship.

Fortunately, I hadn’t been revealed to be a man thus far. Furthermore, my face was definitely not one that she had recognized. She didn’t know Prince Caleb’s face. Even if she determined I was a man, she’d never be able to tie me back to that boy she had kidnapped some time ago.

“What happened after your ship went kablooey?” I asked, finally driving the conversation in this direction after days of patience.

Of course, my primary concerns were Brooke and Charlie. If anyone knew anything about what happened to either of them, this woman was my best chance.

“If a ship went down with a simple boiler explosion, no one would fly.” Angela snorted, her arms closed and looking distantly as she spoke. “Many died in the explosion. We landed to make repairs. By that time, I realized that boy I told you about had escaped. I had received reports that a few stowaways were causing trouble around the engine room. I reckoned it was sabotage. It took a while to realize it was actually that boy who had caused all that. Most the guy’s I know are pretty dumb. They’d never be able to get up to that much trouble. Well, he wasn’t much smarter. He was burned up to a crisp.

“Where….” I choked for a second but absolutely had to find out the answer to this question. “Where did you bury the body?”

“Body?” Angela raised an eyebrow. “He was the delivery. So, I delivered him. Of course, he was supposed to be alive. The pregnant one broke into tears, saying it was all my fault. The other one… she started ranting about how I destroyed all hope for humanity. The next thing I know, my ship is blowing up, and I’m being thrown into the sea. When I washed up, I was in chains. As to what they did with the boy, who knows?”

“Was he alive?” I asked carefully.

“Who knows?” Angela shrugged as if she didn’t care.

I fought to keep my cool. It wouldn’t do good to act foolishly in such a confined space. However, her information had been infinitely helpful. Two people had ordered to have me delivered to them. Things went bad. I died. There was some kind of altercation and the ship got blown up. Now, I was here. That meant my body couldn’t have been too far from this location when I died. What were the chances?

I touched my face and glanced at my brown-skinned hands. Am I even who I think I am? I had seen what Hannah could do with the right magic. I was hardly a skilled magic user. If someone wanted to, they could decorate me out to be the prince. The question was simply, to what end? Was I dead and reincarnated? Or was I burned to a crisp and then dressed up to look like this Prince.

The Mother, the sister, even the daughter were all convinced I was him. The disguise would have needed to be perfect. They told my family that I wouldn’t remember anything. Perhaps they were in on it? However, why did they think I wouldn’t tell them? The second I opened up to my mother and started talking about being from Amaryllis… well, knowing the woman who called herself my mother, it could end with my throat cut and another rolled up carpet. Perhaps that wasn’t the brightest idea.

At the very least, I should tell someone who I really was. Looking at the only woman across from me, I grimaced. Well, certainly not her. Perhaps Lyra would listen. Perhaps.

The door slammed open, and a bright light came into the usually dark room. I shielded my eyes, unable to see as about four people walked in.

“Take them down. Put them with the rest. They demand more workers.”

“Yeah… might as well. Neither is pretty enough to be a sex slave.”

Angela rose up and bared her teeth, but someone punched her in the gut. It was the last thing I saw as a bag was shoved over my head and I was bound roughly. Soon, we were walking, but this time I couldn’t see a thing in front of me. I had the feeling we left the warehouse and even traveled outside for a while, but the truth was that even if my eyes were open I wouldn’t have been able to see anything.

“Two more workers,” a voice said.

It sounded like were being passed off to someone else. Hands grabbed me roughly and pushed me into a building. I was waiting for a chance to escape, but it was clear that none came. A few moments later, we were shoved into some cold tight space. I felt the floor drop. We were in some kind of elevator, but it moved rather noisily. As we moved, I could hear rushing water, and the area became damper and cooler. This went on for about five minutes until we were finally pushed out.

I could hear the distinct noises of metal against rock. It sounded like a stone mason working or something like that. I was shoved down to my knees, and only then the hood over my head was removed. Breathing in some fresh air, I glanced around. I could see more women. Angela was there, forced into a similar kneeling position, but we were just two of a dozen women who were on the floor. Around us were other women, with pale skin and slightly harsher looking bodies. In my old world, many of these women would have looked average, which was downright ugly by this world’s standard.

Many of them had guns, and they had an expression on their faces that said, they’d think nothing of aiming those guns and taking us all out. I kept my head lowered and didn’t struggle, instead, using the opportunity to get more acclimated to where I was.

It was dark, with only a few small light sources to go by. We appeared to be in some kind of underground cavern, with very little of it looking manmade.

“Welcome to your new home, ladies.” A large woman with big tits stood up.

She had something kind of like overalls on, her hair tied back, and a large board on her shoulder.

“You are all now slaves of the Royal family.”

What? She just said Royal family. As in, me, Prince Caleb! How could I be a slave to myself? More than that, why did I have no clue this country had slavery?

“I-I’m not a slave!” A woman cried out. “Please… I have a child. They took me when I was walking-“

The big woman nodded, and someone behind her kicked the woman. She let out a cry and fell to the ground, still trying to protest and plead, but this only earned her more kicks. The remaining eleven could only remain on our knees and listen as the woman sobbed and bellowed. It was only long after the bellowing and crying ended that the kicks stopped. As for the woman, she didn’t get back up again as the punisher sneered at the group.

“As I was saying. The Royal family has… acquired you for a certain job.” The big woman continued again. “In essence, for the near future, and also likely the remainder of your short lives, you will be digging.”

“Digging for what?” Angela snapped.

A woman took a step forward, but the big woman held up her hand and stopped her. “Good question. I don’t mind questions here, as long as they’re to the point. You will be daggering in search of a lost artifact. The royal family would really like to have it back. That is all you need to know. You will dig and dig, and if you find something noteworthy, you will tell us. Understood?”

Other than Angela, who still had her head up, everyone else was too afraid to say anything. I had to admit that I was one of them. My thoughts were probably a bit different than everyone else’s though. I kept going back and forth on whether I should reveal my identity. After all, I wasn’t just a man, I was the prince. There was no way the royal family, particularly my mother, wouldn’t rectify this situation in an instant. Once I was back in the castle, I could also use my connections to question Angela more severely, and truly learn the fate, my friends.

However, that made one really big assumption. These guys were honestly under the employ of the royal family. It was very possible that they only said that to diminish fighting back. If we thought that there was no one we could run to for safety, we’d be less likely to run, or something like that. In that case, if I told them my true identity, that was the quickest way to get me killed.

It didn’t take long before they started sorting us out. The big woman left to go do something else, and it was now a bushy woman with much darker skin than most of the woman in this country. She had a permanent sneer on her face, and her words struck like a whip.

“You… you look weak, go to line 5. That way! Fool!”

“You… you’re probably stupid. You can do well here.”