Paley flew as discreetly as possible. The men were extremely cautious, turning around to check if they were being followed every few moments. Whenever they'd turn to check, he'd use Illusion magic to make himself invisible.
The men rode for about twenty minutes before they reached a sort of harbor. Except, there was only a small warehouse and a few boats. The boats had slave crests painted on the hulls (the slave crest is two chains in a cross held in a circle).
One man was guarding the entrance to the warehouse; he let the two men in after they settled their horses to a post. Paley flew around to one of the small windows and looked into the dark warehouse.
Inside, he saw twelve slaves, all dark-skinned, chained to pipes. Two of them were children. Three of them were women.
There were three men armed with dull swords, watching the slaves.
"Alright, Daemnegs. Good news and bad news." One of the men sneered. (Daemneg is the slur equivalent to the n-word), "Bad news is that no one wants to buy you here. It'll cost us too much to feed you, so we're going to kill you. The good news is that we get to have a little bit of fun. But there's six of us and four of you. So two of you are going to get double the pleasure."
"You're including the children!?" One of the women yelled.
"Did you just shout at me? A little black piece of shit like you really just shouted at me?" The man grabbed her by the chin. The darkness in the warehouse hid his face, but Paley could make out his scruffy beard and intense laugh lines. As well as his completely insane golden brown eyes.
"I'm sorry..." The woman begged, realizing her mistake far too late. The man sighed maliciously and pressed his nose against hers.
"And I was looking forward to the foreplay too," He mumbled, disappointed.
Something suddenly crunched loudly outside, drawing his attention from the woman. The noise was muffled, so no one could tell that it was the guarding man's neck.
"Lelo?" One of the men called out. There was no response behind the semi-closed doors, "Go check it out," He ordered, and another man walked over to the door. The sound of dripping slowly grew louder as the man approached the door.
The other men weren't paying attention, but when he touched the door, he suddenly flew back and slammed into a metal sheet.
"What the-" The door suddenly burst open, and Paley entered the warehouse. He walked calmly and quickly with a dead, icy, yet furious look in his glowing red eyes. In his hand was the man outside's head, severed at the neck and pouring blood all over the floor.
"A child!?" One of the men stepped back.
"Why're you hesitating!? Attack him!" The man with the scruffy beard commanded. One of them ran at Paley, drawing his sword and swinging it at him. It did hit him but bounced right off. On top of being dull, it couldn't even begin to penetrate his Protection magic.
Paley dropped the head and punched him in the gut. He'd broken his promise to Madella, but these men deserved to die. Yet he didn't kill the man outside; the severed head was an illusion made to scare the other men inside; it quickly dissipated after he dropped it, but the men were too focused on him to notice.
Another one attacked him, swinging his sword high; Paley crouched and made him fall by pushing his leg sideways. He quickly kicked his head down before dodging another attack. This one managed to graze him slightly because he'd lost focus on the protection spell.
He countered and punched him across the face. His knuckles made full contact with the man's cheekbone. Luckily, he used Protection magic to reduce the damage, but a sharp sting of pain followed in his knuckles after the man's jaw jerked and he fell to the ground.
The man with the scruffy beard stepped back, hesitating. He crouched down beside one of the slaves and held a knife up to his neck.
"Stop! Or he dies!" He pressed the blade into the man's skin, making him bleed, "You're one of those fucking abolitionists, aren't you?" He started to cut deeper into the man's neck. "Walk away, kid. You don't want this Daemneg's death on your conscience, do you?"
Paley didn't reply.
"Suit yourself," The man pulled the knife to slice the slave's throat open, but his hand didn't respond to him. Instead, it went limp and so did the rest of his body.
He fell back, hitting his head on the ground. As he lost consciousness, he caught a glimpse of a snaking icicle coming out of the ground. It had pierced into his spine and paralyzed him. He gathered the strength to look at Paley once more.
He was watching the man, with a heartless expression, as he twitched and spasmed.
"Y-You're a fucking monster," He struggled before he lost all motor function in his face.
"I'm the monster? Ironic," Paley scoffed and quickly checked that the other men were still on the ground. Two of them were still conscious, trying to get up, so he quickly grabbed them by the hair and slammed their faces into the ground, most likely completely shattering their noses.
He turned to the slaves and lit a fire, making it float about to shed some light in the warehouse.
"You're black," He commented, slightly surprised. The warehouse was so dark that he couldn't tell what skin colour they were before.
"What about it?" One of the men retorted, panicking.
"Nothing, I've just never seen a black person before." He said and tried to pull the chains that bound them off.
"You can't pull them off."
"Why?"
"They're bound to us by our mana."
"What does that mean?"
"They're always going to be on us and we can be traced no matter where we go."
"Is there any way I can remove them?" Paley asked, still trying to remove it. He tried using a small burst of flame but only managed to slightly char the chains, not break them.
"The only way is to declare us as your slaves," He said gloomily.
"Then, you'll be my slaves. Just free ones. How do I do that?"
"A contract. He should have a few contract scrolls which you can sign your name on and mana." He gestured to the paralyzed man with the scruffy beard. Paley walked over to him and searched him, finding twelve scrolls tied together.
"These?" He asked, and the man nodded.
"I never thought that I would be a slave to a child..." One of the other men mumbled.
"You won't be. This is just to free you." Paley used Air magic to pick up some of the blood from the man's spine and wrote his name with it at the bottom of every scroll. Then, he infused it with mana, declaring him as the owner of the contract and the conditions that it stated.
He waited for the chains to fall off by themselves, but when they didn't, he went over and burned them off.
"Now you have to pour your blood onto the crest on our backs," The man said and all of them turned around, showing Paley the Slave Crests they had since birth. (The Slave Crest is just a big circle with a + inside it)
Paley, without hesitation, created a sharp knife of ice and cut himself across the palm.
"Not that much!" One of the women shouted.
"What?"
"Just a droplet is fine!" She flinched at the blood spurting from Paley's hand.
"Just hurry up and do it before you bleed out," The man said, internally questioning how his expression could stay so neutral with a gash on his hand.
Paley stained all of their backs with his blood, each time, the crest lit up white and he felt a connection form with it. "Alright. I'm assuming that there aren't any more guards?"
"There may be a few more on the boats."
"Alright, then, you wait here." Paley left them in the warehouse for about two minutes. During that time, they heard a loud crash, a cut-off scream, and five splashes of water. Paley returned, dusting off his palms.
"Come on," He took them outside where the other guards were floating in the water beside the boats. The only injury they had was a bruise on the back of their necks.
"I've kept one of them conscious and tied him to a post. Make him take you to safety on the boat. Don't ask him for directions in case he tries to take you back to wherever you were enslaved. Don't leave any weapons or anything near him; feed him water and food only if he absolutely needs it, and feed him carefully. If he insults you, feel free to beat him with the stick I left against the wall." Paley explained and tried to rush away to get back to Teerom and Jurie, but one of the children grabbed his sleeve.
"Thank you," She hugged him.
"From the bottom of our hearts!" They all approached him and shook his hand, "Thank you!" Some of them began to tear up. The despair they'd been experiencing was gone, and they felt hope and freedom once more.
Paley felt incredible, filling up with joy from their thankfulness. "You're welcome." He replied.
"How can we repay you?" One of the men asked.
"There's no need to repay me. I've already taken a few gold coins from those men." Paley held up five of the coins.
"You must let us." One of the women walked forward, taking out a golden necklace she was hiding in her mouth, "At least take this." It had the head of a cute panda held by a thin gold chain.
"That must be important to you if you were hiding it like that. I don't want it," Paley tried to walk away, but she pulled him back.
"It's the least I can give." She insisted. Paley thought about it for a moment and finally took the necklace, sighing loudly to make sure she knew he didn't want it.
"Fine. Take care," He quickly pocketed the chain and flew off before they could say anything else. At least two hours passed since he left Teerom and Jurie, so he had to get back as quickly as possible to make sure they were okay.
He got back to the staircase where he saw them kiss, but they were gone. 'Crap' He thought to himself and continued to the mall, looking for them there again and checking the entrance multiple times. Eventually, he found a badly written note by Jurie in one of the plants in the middle.
'To Paley' It read, 'We're gonna head home, so don't worry about picking us up.' She also added a love heart in the corner. He felt extremely guilty for leaving them to go home by themselves and took to the air to go back and apologize as fast as possible.
Paley slowly opened the orphanage door, trying to be quiet. However, once he went in, he saw Madella standing by the still lit fireplace with Teerom and Jurie sitting to the side on the floor with their hands on their knees guiltily. She was furious.
"You're finally home, huh?" She walked up to him, "Where have you been?"
"I-I'm sorry," Paley couldn't look her in the eye. That night, he broke two promises he made to her. The first was to pick up Teerom and Jurie at ten, and the second was to never hurt anyone with his magic.
He thought he was in the right regarding the slave traders but still felt guilty. And that guilt was breaking his twelve-year-old heart.
"Sorry won't cut it. How could you be so irresponsible!? You have school tomorrow and you're- where did you even go?" She would've shouted if the other orphans weren't already asleep and she herself wasn't sleepy.
"I..." Paley tried to think of an excuse and found one when he felt the gold panda chain in his pocket, "I went to get this," He pulled it out and showed her. It was a half-truth. After all, he did get the chain from following the men to the warehouse.
"A necklace!?" She shouted this time, "You spent three hours getting a necklace?"
"I'm sorry," Paley pressed his head against the floor.
"...And you two." She turned to Teerom and Jurie, "I still cannot believe you drank alcohol! Do you know how bad it is for your health?"
"We're sorry!" They apologized for the twelfth time that night. Madella turned back to Paley and found something that caught her eye; a long thin graze on his cheek.
"Mom, I'm really sorry. I will never do it again. Please forgive me." He stood up and hugged her, tearing up. She realized that something must've happened and embraced him back tightly.
"...Sorry, Paley, I didn't mean to shout at you like that." She stroked his hair affectionately. Paley was confused and scared. Scared of himself. He felt nothing when he thrashed those men and still didn't feel any guilt for paralyzing one of them for the rest of their lives.
"Paley, you're a good boy. Try not to get into trouble, okay?" She bent down to his level, "Come on, you should go to bed." She escorted him to the stairs, turning to Teerom and Jurie one more time, "You two aren't off the hook yet!"