The guy that Cataleya threatened only laughed at her before he gave a dismissing wave for them to leave.
Cataleya still tried to thrash wildly from the tight grip of the men, dragging her in a certain direction. It didn't take long before she saw a carriage waiting in a rough road. She tried finding any family crest at its door to determine who dared do this kind of stuff, buying women from the bandits in that forest.
But she didn't see any indicated crest anywhere in the carriage. Clearly it was used often for this sole purpose. She gasped when her head was covered with a black and thick bag and it tightened around her neck. She can still breathe but it was very much constricted.
Having a tied hands behind her made it impossible for her to remove it off her head. Then she was shoved inside and heard the horses neighed loudly and snorting our air off their nostrils. As if they perceived a threat coming into their direction.
Cataleya had been around horses a lot and she could tell that the beasts were agitated and…scared.
The coachman tried to calm down the horses when it kept on standing up and kicking the ground.
"What in the hell is happening?" Asked the guy in whom Cataleya first saw making transaction over the leader of the bandits a while ago.
"I don't know, sir. They wouldn't move." The coachman said.
Cataleya couldn't care less about what they were saying. For unknown reason, her heart started to pound her chest, knowing by the books that there were a lot of unaccounted monsters roaming around the whole country.
So few of them were caught from their hiding place and once it was displayed in a plaza by the knights who caught it. It was four times larger than an elephant and their teeth were likened into a crocodiles. It was known that a lot had died trying to bring down just one beast.
Maybe the place was plague by those monsters that she had seen in the plaza. It had been many nights since she had a nightmare about those animals. Along that nightmare, duke Adelard was there, shirts stain with bloods with an aura of a ruthless killer.
Cataleya's nervousness shot up high when horrifying screams suddenly escalated.
"What is happening?" one man asked in shaky tone of voice and Cataleya knew it was the same guy who purchased her.
Cataleya stiffened when it came from the den of bandits and the screams just getting louder and louder. Her eyes widened upon hearing an unearthly growl in the atmosphere. She squirmed in the floor, wanting to be free from constriction on her hands. She can't even scream when the guy shoved a cloth on her mouth a while ago when she won't stop cursing them out.
"Should we help them, sir?" the coachman asked nervously.
"Are you nuts?! Let's go!" the guy said in urgency and Cataleya couldn't agree more when she herself wanted to leave that place badly.
What if her suspicion about the roaming beast was right?
It would be a terrible way to die then.
'I shouldn't have taken this bloody shortcut!' Cataleya fretted over herself. While she was continuously berating over herself, her body was body bouncing up and down on the hard floor of the carriage and sometimes, her head was hit hard on the wall and the floor.
She can't even grit her teeth with the shoved cloth on her mouth. So, she suited herself closing her eyes whenever her hit hard on the floor. The ride was certainly unpleasant but it was better than to be the meal of whoever was attacking the people in the den.
One thing she was only sorry for, was those captured women with chains on their feet. If sucks being a lowly person in a world where noble factions were esteemed high in the society. The slavery existed and they were sold like goods in the market.
In her world and time, it was already abolished and forbidden. At least in the Briston estate, the marquis see to it that everyone serving the family was given ample benefits along with their monthly salary. That was one good things that she saw about her father. Or at least Cataleya's father.
The servants could live a decent and honorable life in the estate and that only existed in the Bristons.
Personally, Ruby wanted it to be on national level but she was a woman in a woman's body. A villainess if she could add. No one will listen to her wishes if it was about reforming the state of the country. She would only be dismissed in seconds.
Her train of thought was abruptly halted painfully when she hit her head again on the seat's supporting leg.
"What is that?" the guy inside the carriage demanded and was only answered with an earsplitting scream of a coachman.
"Werewolf! Werewolf!" The coachman said and it was as if he abandoned his post and ran for his life instead.
"Hey! Where are you going?!" The guy asked in horror.
The door suddenly opened and the guy went flying off the carriage when a hairy hand grabbed him out from there. His screamed stopped and Cataleya realized that the cracking sound came from the breaking of bones for the man.
Her heart pounded painfully on her chest, waiting for her doom to come in the hands of a creature she never knew existed still.