Shifting my weight against the pillar, the damp hemp rope bites into the skin of my wrists, drawing a thin line of blood. Yet the moisture has yielded a microscopic fraction of slack. Twisting my right hand, I violently compress the bones of my thumb as tightly as possible.
"You underestimate the High Sovereign." I maintain a perfectly even tone, entirely masking the frantic, agonizing pull of my wrist against the bonds. "He does not walk into traps. He engineers them. When he finds this warehouse, he will not negotiate with your lord. He will leave your head on a spike."
A harsh, arrogant laugh tears from the lieutenant's throat. "Let him try. You will be deep in the market before his scouts even pick up the scent of the cart."
Pivoting away, he snaps his fingers at a massive, heavily scarred flesh-handler standing near a stack of wooden crates.
"Tighten her bindings and replace the ropes with iron." Tossing the thick manacles to the handler, the enforcer issues his final directive. "The transport caravan leaves for the central block in ten minutes. I want her gagged. I am tired of her voice."
The lieutenant strides across the floor, vanishing into the warehouse office.
The handler bridges the distance, a mountain of brutal, unrefined muscle wearing a stained leather apron over his bare chest. A thick, serrated hunting knife rests in a leather sheath at his belt. As his dirty boots splash through the foul puddles to reach my pillar, I execute the bluff.
Shutting my eyelids, I let my head loll forward, my chin dropping limply to my chest. Yielding the tension in my knees, my entire body weight slumps against the ropes, flawlessly mimicking the profound, sudden collapse of a mortal succumbing to a secondary wave of the root-sedative.
"Worthless surface-filth." Completely unsurprised by the faint, the handler reaches around the pillar.
His massive, dirty hands fumble blindly with the intricate knot of the damp hemp rope to prepare my wrists for the iron manacles. The exact moment the tension on the hemp vanishes, I violently snap my compressed thumb through the final loop of the slack.
My right hand pulls free.
Refusing to waste a single fraction of a second, my gaze is on the towering stack of dense wooden crates resting precariously against the pillar. Throwing my entire body weight sideways, I slam my shoulder directly into the bottom crate.
The stack groans, toppling entirely forward. Dense timber crashes directly onto the handler's shoulders and head with brutal kinetic force. A sickening crunch echoes in the gloomas the wood splinters. Stumbling backward under the sudden, crushing weight, the handler cries out, his hands flying up to protect his face.
Dropping to a crouch, I ruthlessly ignore the ringing pain in my own battered shoulder. Though my left hand remains bound to the trailing end of the rope, the slack grants me enough reach. Lunging forward, my small fingers wrap securely around the hilt of the serrated hunting knife at his belt, ripping the steel completely free from the leather sheath.
Blinking through the blood, pure shock registers on the handler's face as he processes the stolen weapon. Reaching for me with a massive, meaty hand, he exposes his stance.
I completely bypass his chest, knowing the leather apron is too thick and my physical strength entirely insufficient to drive a blade through an immortal’s ribs. Instead, I drop low against the damp stone floor, slashing the serrated blade horizontally with vicious desperation. The steel buries deep into the unprotected, fleshy back of his calf.
Tearing brutally through muscle and tendon, the strike forces a deafening, agonized roar from the handler that shakes the very dust from the ceiling. Incapable of supporting his massive weight, his leg buckles instantly. He crashes to the floor, clutching his ruined calf, his frantic screams echoing wildly through the cavernous warehouse.
Scrambling backward until my spine hits the pillar, my chest heaves, the bloody hunting knife locked securely in my right hand.
The chaos of the handler’s shrieks entirely shatters the brutal efficiency of the staging floor. Dropping their branding irons, the flesh-brokers near the cages instantly draw their crude weapons. Bursting from the shadowy office with his longblade already unsheathed, the lieutenant tracks the bleeding handler before anchoring his lethal, plum-colored focus entirely upon me.
"Restrain her!" The lieutenant sprints across the stone floor, his directive violently cutting through the warehouse.
Pressing my back firmly against the pillar, I raise the serrated blade. I am a single, fragile human trapped inside a reinforced warehouse surrounded by armed dark elf mercenaries. Surviving them all is a mathematical impossibility, and escaping through the locked iron doors is an unviable sum.
But I refuse to yield to the slaughterhouse.
Tightening my grip on the hilt of the stolen knife, my ragged breathing matches the erratic spike of my adrenaline. I will not be dragged to the auction blocks quietly. I will make them bleed for every singular inch of stone they force me across, and I will buy Zhetrin the precious fractions of time he requires to break the world.
18
ZHETRIN
The Sector Four broker warehouse stands sealed shut, fortified by thick, rusted crossbeams and the foul magic of the lower flesh-markets.
"Stand clear." A demonic, vibrating rumble tears from my throat, shaking the foul, damp air of the subterranean tunnels.
As Tharion and the vanguard step back with their longblades drawn for slaughter, I approach the massive doors. Pressing both of my calloused palms flat against the rusted iron, I drag the raw magic from the deepest well of my chest and push it entirely into the metal.
A thick sheet of blinding white frost races across the iron, freezing the ancient metal until it becomes as brittle as glass. Drawing my foot back, I deliver a singular, devastating kick to the center seam.
The dense doors explode inward.
