"I knew you were lying back then, but I'm not gonna pry about it, your past is yours to keep, but I want to know what happened today, we have been searching for you for over two hours now." Sylvic asks, his eyes full of worry.
I sigh, "Am I really that bad?" He stops for a moment and bursts into a warm laugh, "Yes Kurayami, you are that bad."
'I guess I need to learn how to lie better.' I think with disappointment sucking at my thoughts. All of a sudden, Sylvic's face gets serious again, almost scarily serious, "Now tell me what happened." I then begin to explain that I was with Elva and how I was exploring, the screaming girl....wait. I all of a sudden jump up, "The girl! I forgot about the girl!" Sylvic's face turns darker than before as he gets up. He grabs motions for me to follow as he begins walking out the door.
I follow him with haste, making sure to throw my coat on from my ring and immediately putting mana into it to begin repairs, making two holes in the back for my wings. As we walk out, Sylvic points at the nurse, "Sign us out for me please, will you?" She nods and crosses our names off, slightly confused. As we walk out, my dad turns around, "I want you to fly us to her location immediately."
I stand there with a confused look, "How?" 'I'm sure as hell not turning into a full dragon.' Sylvic looks at me confidently, "I want you to hold me while you fly to the location."
I stand there and contemplate, before reaching one thought. "I can try..." All of a sudden, I grab his sides, extend my wings, and launch into the sky, dust flows around my launch location like a tornado. I hear a few cuss words escape my dad's mouth as he looks down before closing his eyes.
When we reach the max altitude, I use shadow manipulation to create a rope that wraps around his body and my hands that basically holds him to me. I look down at him as I extend my wings and lean forward, causing us to glide. "You can open your eyes now."
He has stopped cussing and slowly opens his eyes. His face fills with awe at the beautiful scene in front of us. The sun is creating an orange hue in the sky as it sets across the snow covered hills and plains. The snow falls lazily around us as we glide through the sky.
'This is definitely something picture worthy, I wish I had a camera.' I think. But then in the corner of my eye, I see the house and slowly float down, softly touching the ground, just like the snow around us.
Just from the surroundings, you can tell that a battle happened, the crater, the corpses, the red snow, and the girl is passed out on the ground, her arms tied behind her back, and her eyes pink and puffy from tears.
Dad runs over and immediately feels for a pulse, and his face floods with relief. He then looks back at me while gazing at the surroundings. "How did this happen? Where did you learn to fight?" I shrug, "In all honesty, I just reacted with my instincts."
He gets up and looks at me with a fire in his eyes, "You need to start telling me the truth, no more lies. What else are you capable of?"
I sigh and slowly transform back into my human form. 'I guess this was inevitable. I give up lying to him, last times I did that, I made myself look like a fool.' I then continue to explain the fight, telling him everything, excluding the shadow soldiers and the system.
"I am able to transform into another form, but I refuse to do it unless forced to. I don't know where I came from, but I just want to explore this world."
He stands there and closes his eyes, contemplating for a moment, then opens them. "Then I am gonna help you gain the power to do it. This world is dangerous and full of peril, but I will help you get strong enough to survive it, be prepared to learn a lot of knowledge tonight, because I don't think I will be able to teach you later."
I stand there shocked, "Your not even gonna question about the bodies? Not even a little?"
He stands there and shakes his head, his face taking on a solemn look, "I have seen many things as a doctor, some you couldn't even fathom, it is shocking that you did it, almost unbelievable, but I have seen worse things."
I watch as Dad picks up the girl and began to carry her but for some reason, he stops....and a tear runs down his cheek.
I walk up to him with a worried look on my face, "What's wrong?"
He looks up to me with a sadness in his eyes and points to a mark on her neck, it looks like a circle with black lines closing towards the middle before stopping jaggedly.
"This is a slave marking, this girl is under a slave pact. She is practically done for already."
I look at him with shock in my eyes. From what I read in my room, Slave pacts are forbidden in the Restard kingdom because they invade the person's mind and practically become a parasite that they can't fight against. Their body isn't theirs anymore as long as they are under the contract, they can only do what their told by the slave pact user.
My eyes fill with another sadness, "Couldn't we break it for her?"
The person's mind is seemingly raped until they can no longer take it, the longest a person was said to be able to handle the effects and recover was a year.
He shakes his head, "We need a slave merchant to do it, and Restard has forbid them from entering, but even then...." he trails off.
I put my hand on his shoulder, "The least we could do is try to get it removed, we have a king with us after all. So our main goal right now would be to try and salvage her sanity, right?"
He nods and wipes away his tears, "We can try, but I can't make any promises."
'This world is definitely a cruel place. I need to become stronger to survive this, and I don't want to just scrape by.' I think as we walk down the sidewalk, leaving the bloody war zone behind.
We eventually come home and enter the house, I see Elva and my mom walking side to side, seemingly worrying about me. As they hear the door open, they see my dad walk in and eventually me trailing behind.
All of a sudden, I am tackled by 3 different bodies and almost fall. Elva was first, starting to hold me close and squeezes me tight.
"I thought something terrible happened to you....." she says as she smiles at me with a sad smile. All of a sudden, I feel a weight behind me as a giant shadow engulfs me and Elva, and suddenly, a big furry mass grasps me with its four arms and I start to laugh as she licks me. "Hi Blossom."
She chirps happily as I acknowledge her actions and affections. I hear a ploop and suddenly feel a gelatinous being on my head.
"Hi Winter. How have you been?" I say as I rub his jello like head. 'I missed these two, I felt lonely without them.'
My mother goes to hug Sylvic but stops, staring at the girl. "Who is that?"
Sylvic sighs, "She is in a not so good situation currently, so I brought her here to try and fix it."
The girl's eyes slowly open at this moment and her face is blank, not even a tinge of emotion on it.
'Is this the effect of the slave pact? It's scarier seeing it in person.'
Dad takes her over to the couch and sets her down, and she slowly sets herself up and puts her hands down on her lap. She sits there silently, emotionless, making her look like a doll.
Dad then crouches down a bit, looking her in the eyes. "Can you remember your name? Who you are? Or where you came from?"
She stares at him with dead eyes and shakes her head, she would be mistaken for a human sized doll if no one knew she actually was a person, but is she a person if she can't feel anything? Make her own choices?
I shake my head and stare at her with sad eyes.
'I couldn't imagine what this does to a person for them to be like this.'
All of a sudden she speaks, her voice devoid of emotion. "My old master was killed, so I am no longer under the slave pact." She then gets up and bows towards me. "Thank you." A tear rolls down her cheek, but her face stays as solid as ice.