“So, you’re not going to tell me who was running it?” Shade asked, the large lucifer dragon towering over a skinny male fairy with pink opaque wings who was chained to a wall. They were in an old abandoned monastery in the middle of the woods that was being used for an underground slave auction. Shade had caught wind of the auction, attended it, freed the slaves, and killed almost everyone who was there as attendees. Everyone except this man. He had stripped the man naked, and was now ‘questioning’ him, trying to find out who the backer of the auction was.

  “I’m telling you; I don’t know who the leader is! I’ve told you everything I know!” The man cried in a panic.

  “But how could that be possible?” Shade replied with bloodlust oozing from his voice. “The slaves were all connected to you, weren’t they?”

  “Yes!” The man replied in a beg. “But I don’t know anything about who’s actually running it! I swear! I only know of the people I report to, nobody else!”

  Shade shook his head like a disappointed father. “I hate liars. You really think I would believe they would leave their slaves connected to some random nobody?” He then started scraping his red and black daggers together so they would make sparks. “I wonder how long you’ll be able to keep this act up for?”

  The man started shaking in his shackles, desperately trying to break free. “Please, I’m telling you, it’s not an act, please!”

  “Oh, I guess we’ll have to see about that.” Shade replied, then looked at the man with fake inquisitiveness. “Speaking of seeing, what are your thoughts on sight? Is it your favorite sense? Mine is taste personally.”

  “Wh…what?” The man replied.

  “Hmmm.” Shade pondered, finger to his chin in mock thought. “I wonder what sight would taste like?” Then he looked at the man. “Maybe you could tell me!” He then took both his daggers and plunged them into the man’s eyes. The man screamed and writhed in pain as Shade pulled the daggers back out, eyeballs stuck on the ends like olives in a martini. He then put both daggers in his left hand, and used his right hand to grab the man’s cheeks and force his jaw open. He shoved the daggers into the man’s open mouth, then forcefully closed his mouth onto them, before slowly pulling the now eyeless daggers back out. He then dropped the daggers to the ground, used one hand to keep the man’s mouth closed, and the other to pinch the man’s nose, so he couldn’t breathe. “You’re going to chew and swallow your own eyes, or you can you suffocate to death. Your choice.” He shrugged casually, though his voice dripped with venom. The man didn’t do anything but shake for a few seconds, but as he began to run out of breath, he started to chew, then swallowed. Shade smiled a razor sharp, evil grin, letting the man’s mouth and nose go. “Good boy. So, tell me, how did sight taste?”

  The man took a couple quick deep breaths before he looked, or I guess now would have looked, at Shade. “You’re fucking crazy!” He yelled, a mixture of anger, sorrow, and pain in his voice as blood dripped down from his eye sockets and into his mouth.

  Shade frowned. “That doesn’t answer my question. Though no matter, it’s not the main issue on hand. Feel like telling me who’s running the show now, or shall we continue?”

  “Please.” The man cried again, hopelessness now appearing in his voice. “I’m telling you; I don’t know.”

  “Hmmm, guess we’ll have to have you eat more of your own body parts.” He then looked down at the man’s groin. “Maybe that one next?”

  The man began shaking desperately in the chains again, somehow knowing where Shade was looking even with his now severe lack of eyeballs. “Please, no, please! I’m telling you; I don’t know anything! I didn’t have a choice! They made me do it!”

  That answer pissed Shade off. He grabbed the man’s throat with his hand, and got right in his face, though the man couldn’t see it now of course. “There were fucking children here, children they were going to do gods know what to. You want to tell me you didn’t have a choice? That you just had to sit here and watch as children were sold to be used like toys? There’s always a choice, always! Everything you do, every action you take, there’s a choice! And you my friend have made the wrong ones! Now you’re going to tell me what I want to know, or you’re going to have a very, very bad time!”

  Shade blinked a few times and groaned as sunlight seeped through his eyelids. “Why with that dream again?” He moaned to himself.

  He ended up never getting any information from the man that night. He spent hours torturing him, but learnt nothing before the man’s body finally gave out. He though would later manage to track down the leader of the slave ring, and learned that the man wasn’t exactly lying. The man’s wife had fallen into a massive amount of gambling debt. The people she owed the debt to were of course the same people running the slave ring. They threatened to kidnap both her, and his children, training them, then selling them as slaves. Or, they offered, he could work for them in order to pay off the debt. He of course, choose the latter. This it turns out wasn’t a unique situation for the people running this ring. They had predicted what someone like Shade would think, that whoever was connected to the slaves must be high up, or at least somewhat relevant in the organization. So, they used this to their advantage. They forced people from the outside who knew nothing of the actual leader’s identity to be the ones connected to the slaves, so that if they were ever caught, they couldn’t spill any information. They also made sure that all the lackeys the people would report to didn’t know their real identity either, only going only by codenames. Not only that though, he found out that after he killed the man, the people running the ring had his wife and kids killed. They of course didn’t know anything more than the man did, but apparently the leaders figured there was no reason to leave any possible loose ends.

  He rubbed his eyes, as he tried to move the memory out of his mind. He then looked to his left and right, and saw he was in a grassy field of some sort. “Where am I? How did I get here?”

  “The carriage dropped us here.” A soft voice said from behind him.

  He instantly shot awake, jumping to his feet and turning around, drawing his black and red daggers from the inside of his robes. What he saw kneeling in the grass behind where he had been lying was a young-looking fairy girl wearing…. were those window drapes? “Who are you? And why were you kneeling behind me?” He said in a panic, having not sensed anyone around him.

  “I am Faylen, your slave, do you not remember?” The girl replied coldly, looking up at him through the hole in her window drape dress.

  “My slave?” He replied, putting his hands in his face as some memories from the previous night started to come back to him. “Ugh, that’s why I had that dream, isn’t it?” He mumbled, then paused for a second, eyes going wide. “Oh gods, how much did you cost me?” He asked, knowing how expensive slaves could be, and now greatly concerned for how much money his drunk self-had spent.

  “One gold coin.” She replied softly.

  He raised an eyebrow. “One coin? Were you on discount or something? Going out of business sale?” He asked sarcastically. She didn't answer though, and he sighed and sheathed his daggers. He stood there, staring down at his oddly dressed slave, contemplating what to do. He had never had a slave before, nor had he even considered buying one. He had no need for one and didn’t particularly care for the whole slavery thing to begin with. It was nothing more than a way for weak people to feel powerful. But he already was powerful, so he had no need to cosplay it. That brought up an important question though. Why would he have bought her? He paced back and forth trying to remember, but nothing came to mind. He remembered the alleys, the hotel, Greg, and buying her, but not the reason he had bought her, nor the reason he even attended the event to begin with. As he pondered it, trying to get into the mindset of his drunk self, the most obvious reason he could think of seemed to be that his drunk self was horny. Buying a slave to use was disgusting, but maybe his drunk self had lost even more morals and values then his sober self already had. “Come on then, stand up, let me get a good look at you.” He said, motioning with his hand for her to stand.

  “Yes, master.” She replied, slowly standing up and getting to her feet.

  Being called master made him feel rather gross, sticky and slimy, but he pushed that aside as he slowly looked her up and down. The problem was, with her ‘eccentric’ outfit, he couldn’t really tell what she looked like. “Are you wearing…window drapes?” He said confused, staring at the bright purple’s drapes wrapped around her.

  “Yes, you gave them to me.” She replied coldly again.

  He sighed even louder than before, rubbing his hands over his face as annoyance towards his drunk self grew ever larger by the moment. “Of course I did. Well, take them off, let me get a good look at what one coin gets you these days.”

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  She dropped the drapes like a magician revealing the bird had disappeared, and he looked her over once again. A fairy, blonde but dirty hair, perfect hourglass body, well-endowed both top and bottom, with brown, dead eyes, and only a small cloth covering both her breasts and waist. “One coin?” He said, now even more confused, walking around her and judging every part like she was a piece of furniture in a show room. How could she have possibly only been one coin? A girl as attractive as this would go for 100s usually, if not more. This though sadly did bring some credence to himself buying her out of being horny. If she looked this good, and was that cheap, maybe his drunk self had thrown his very last remnants of morality away. As he considered that possibility, that his drunk self’s ideals had hit rock bottom, that premise brought even more panic to his mind. Had he gone to a bottom even rockier than he had first thought? He had apparently bought her at a slave auction, and he knew the average age of girls being sold at slave auctions wasn’t very high. A girl with her physique must be older though, right…. right? “So…Faylen, uhm, how old are you?” He asked nervously.

  “I’m not sure.” She responded.

  “Well, if you had to guess?”

  “20, maybe.”

  He let out a huge sigh of relief. Maybe he was a slaver now, but at least he wasn’t a pedophile. It also might have answered why she was so cheap. Most female slaves are bought young, usually around 12 or 13 so that their ‘owners’ can have them before anyone else did. Older slaves don’t sell as well as they’re considered ‘used’ goods. He had always found that prospect to be rather silly. It assumed that every girl who was of age had spent their lives sleeping around, yet it also assumed that every girl under that age hadn’t. Those two things never seemed to make sense together in his mind, but that was just the way these people seemed to think. As he continued to circle her though, the price still didn’t quite fit the product. Even if she was 20, a girl like her, with her looks? One coin?

  He shook his head. Trying to get into the minds of slavers and how they managed their finances wasn’t something he felt like doing right now. He had done that enough in his past, and it had been a significant part of what sent him drinking for the last decade. Really, him thinking about it was just him trying to delay having to ask the real question he was dreading the answer to. He sighed once more, as he stopped his circling in front of her, looking her in the eyes. “After I bought you, what happened? Did we do anything?” He asked sheepishly, like a teenager talking to their crush.

  “Do anything?” She asked back, staring at him flatly with her dead brown eyes.

  “Oh, come on.” He replied, sheepishness turning to annoyance in the blink of an eye. “You know exactly what I mean. I’m sure a slave with a body like yours has received quite a bit of training in it. Sex, did we have sex?”

  “No.” She replied, her emotionless face still somehow showing annoyance at being reminded of her training.

  No? While that answer did bring him some relief, it also brought even more questions. He rubbed the top of his head now more confused than ever. If it wasn’t out of being horny, then why did he buy her? “Ok then…. Tell me everything that happened after I bought you.”

  She paused for a beat before answering. “We took an elevator out of the hotel; you punched a window and gave me those to wear.” She said with that same emotionless, yet cold voice, pointing to the purple drapes now lying in the grass. He looked down at them, shaking his head in disapproval toward his drunken self. “Then you got us a carriage and asked for them to take you home, though you seemed to not know where it was. While traveling in the carriage, you began throwing up everywhere. The man driving the carriage pulled over and kicked us out, then took some coins from your pouch for clean-up.”

  His eyes went wide as he quickly put his hand into the pouch, empty. “Oh, gods damnit!” He yelled. “He took all the money, cleanup my ass!” He said, throwing the empty pouch onto the ground.

  “I apologize master.” She said, bowing to him. “I was never trained on what to do in that situation, I will try to serve you better next time.”

  “It’s not your fault.” He said, then mumbled “It’s my drunk self’s fault, stupid motherfucker.” He sighed once more, then began to look around, trying to figure out where he was exactly. The dirt road the carriage had been driving down was a few dozen feet away from him, and he saw a large pine tree a bit down the path that he recognized. They were actually rather close to his home, at least his drunk self had taken its time in getting kicked out of the carriage. With one problem now solved, he once again turned to the other one. He looked back to Faylen and pondered what to do with her. He looked her up and down once again, staring at every part of her perfect body. If he didn’t buy her because he was horny, and nobody else bought her for her looks, what was wrong with her? He remembered earlier when he had first woken back up, she didn’t reply to his joke about being on discount. He had figured a slave probably wouldn’t enjoy a joke about being sold, but was there more to it than that? “You didn’t really answer earlier when I asked if you were on discount.” He prodded.

  She bowed to him once more. “I apologize again master; I wasn’t sure what the question meant.”

  “What I meant was, why was someone with your…. features.” He said, vaguely gesturing at her body. “Why was someone like you so cheap?” Now, for the first time, she showed some real visible emotion on her face. Fear? Anxiety? Anger? Frustration? He couldn't quite tell. But clearly the question had brought back some sort of feelings, or bad memories. “Well? I asked you a question.” He said pointedly.

  “I’m…evil”. She whispered under her breath, looking towards the ground with clenched fists.

  His eyebrow raised. “Evil? Explain.”

  “They say my soul is evil, corrupted by demons.” She replied, with some tears welling in her eyes and her face beginning to redden.

  “And why do they say that?”

  “My wings. And my echos.”

  He looked at her wings. In all of his circling around her, he somehow hadn’t noticed them for some reason. Maybe he was horny, having only really looked at her body. Now that he was focused on them, they were quite odd. Her wings were as black as the night, like a vampires would be. “Care if I touch them?” He asked.

  She looked up from the ground, her red watery eyes showing some sort of confusion. “You are my master; you may do as you like with me.”

  “Right….” He said, feeling rather gross again. But after a moment, he reached out and slowly rubbed his hands up and down the wings, trying to see if maybe she was in fact part vampire, but they felt like fairy wings, smooth and soft. Typically, fairy wings were opaque, while some of the more powerful fairies had pearlescent wings, and the strongest had rainbows wings. But all black? He had never seen it before. Not only that, but she had mentioned her echos were also a reason why nobody wanted her. When he felt their connection through the collar, he couldn’t feel any echos at all coming from her. So, he closed his eyes to try and sense them the old-fashioned way, but felt nothing still. She had no echos, not a small amount, not a minuscule amount, he sensed absolutely zero. That explained why he hadn’t sensed her when he first woke up, there was nothing to sense.

  That also did answer some of his questions on why she would be so cheap. She was an ‘older’, ‘used’ woman who had no echos. So, she wouldn’t be useful in a fight, or as a battery aiding a fight. She was ‘used’, so her body wasn’t as valuable, and with this apparent rumor she was cursed, it just wasn’t worth anyone’s time or money. Though that still didn’t answer why he had bought her. So, as he continued to study her wings, he continued prodding for more answers. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this, and I’ve seen a lot. You said you’re around 20, right? If so, I imagine people have run tests on you in the past.”

  Faylens head once again dropped to the ground, as her frustration with who and what she was became ever more apparent. “I was brought to many priests, curse breakers, shamans, trainers. Nobody could ever figure out what was wrong, and eventually, everyone would throw me out.”

  “So, you were an orphan on the streets, and eventually slavers picked you up?” He said, and she nodded, still looking at the ground, with tears now coming from her eyes once again. He nodded himself in acceptance. While he didn't understand how she had no power, or why her wings were black, her story did bring him some of the answers he was looking for. This was probably the reason he had bought her; his drunk self was curious about her wings and lack of power. Though it didn’t really answer why he was at the auction to begin with.

  He felt rather bad as he watched her stare at the ground, clearly trying, and failing, to hold in tears. He had always struggled to relate to weak people with how powerful he was, and she was literally as weak as it got. He gently picked her head up with his hand, and looked into her eyes. “Listen, Faylen, I don’t believe in the gods, or fate, or any of that nonsense, and neither should you.” He said softly, but sternly. “The people who believe that crap are the very same people who kidnapped, trained, and sold you. All a bunch of liars, racists and hypocrites.” He said, then paused for a moment as he got lost in her eyes, red and glossy from crying. He recognized the way they looked, a look he had seen many times before. The eyes of a person who had given up. In a flash, the horrors he had seen in slave training facilities passed through his mind. He recalled the stories girls who had been saved told him, and stories he had heard from others about girls who weren't as lucky. He knew this girl in front of him had been through more than he could ever imagine.

  Hi sighed again as he looked around the grassy field. He couldn’t just leave her here in the middle of nowhere, she wouldn’t last a day. Maybe he could take her to a town, drop her off at an inn and give her some money? Oh, wait, the carriage driver had stolen it all. He chewed his cheek, looked at her again, sighed again, and came to a decision. “Come on then, let’s go to my home.” He said, then thought about the fact there was no path leading to his home. He didn’t like returning back to his true form, but he wasn’t going to make this girl walk through the woods like he did. “Come on, we’re going to fly there.”

  Just as he was about to release his ability, she spoke up. “I can’t fly.” She said frustratedly.

  “Of course not, you have no echos.” He replied, rubbing his hands over his face again. He had forgotten that flying actually required echos as it was a pretty standard thing for beings with wings to do. As she and him both had wings, in theory they should both be able to fly, but their wings don’t actually flap like birds, the actual flying was from using echos. “Well, I can just carry you I guess.” He said, taking a quick look around himself to make sure nobody was nearby. He then closed his eyes, trying to sense if anyone was around him that he couldn’t see, and again sensed no one. He then took off his black robe and released the transformation ability he was using to disguise himself as a human, revealing his true form. Standing in front of Faylen was an 8-foot tall, all black dragon, with bright red eyes, two red horns, huge red wings, and a long black and red tail that sprawled out behind him.