Chapter 2 - Hours Before (2)

Chapter 2: Hours Before (2)

“Ralogolar!” Rolozuthen screamed as her face contorted with fear.

“Be quiet, wench!” Inspector Liadan yelled, coiling his whip around his palm.

Rolozuthen held her tongue, despite the wall of roots and glass separating her from Inspector Liadan. After all, her life still rested in the hands of the Elves. Yet as she stood still behind that glass, Inspector Liadan approached Ralogolar’s unconscious body. 

“You vermin scum,” Inspector Liadan commented, pressing his boot into Ralogolar’s back. “If you weren’t one of our highest performing slaves, I would have killed you where you lay.”

Despite Ralogolar’s bones cracking audibly from the pressure of Inspector Liadan’s boot, his body neither moved nor produced any other sounds; it was almost as if he had already become a corpse. Nevertheless, his skin remained its usual pale tone as the grassy green hue covered his body once more, repairing the damage done by the Inspector.

“Tch. No point in playing with something that’s broken.” Inspector Liadan scoffed, lifting his boot off Ralogolar’s back. “And Rolozuthen, you may have special privileges, but remember that they can vanish into thin air with just a single word.”

“Yes, Master,” Rolozuthen replied, bowing to Inspector Liadan as he walked toward the dining hall’s exit.

A dreadful silence filled the dining hall as Rolozuthen stared at Ralogolar’s body. As the grassy green hue dissipated from his body, his chest slowly began to heave with each breath. Rolozuthen sighed with relief upon seeing him move once again, yet her fears had not been fully resolved. She stepped toward the sturdy wooden roots that separated the kitchen from the dining hall.

She cleared her throat and placed her hand on the largest root in the bunch, sliding her hand along it as she spoke.

“Renzaluth!” 

As the word left Rolozuthen’s mouth, a multitude of intricately designed yellow circles inscribed themselves into the air, with three runes that rotated along the outermost circle. The magic circle vanished from sight just as quickly as it had appeared; yet as it did, the roots in front of Rolozuthen began to quiver and contract, creating a passage that connected the kitchen and dining hall.

The clacking of Rolozuthen’s heels echoed across the dining hall as she walked toward Ralogolar. A bead of sweat began to slide down her face with each step she took, until she finally stood right next to his body.

“Ralogolar,” Rolozuthen asked softly, kneeling and nudging his form. “Are you awake?”

As she poked and pushed Ralogolar’s body, his muscles began to twist and contract, and a sudden clank echoed through the hall as his pickaxe escaped his grip. His once-bulky frame deflated, shrinking until every bone, tendon, and sign of malnourishment stood in plain sight. His cheekbones could be seen through his pale skin, and his eyelids seemed to sink into his face as if they were hollow pits.

Rolozuthen’s fear quickly morphed into shock and confusion. She had witnessed his Skill transform his body in the past, but never had she seen him deflate in such a manner. Out of all the humans who resided in the hellhole known as the Mythril Encampment, Ralogolar had always been and looked the most well-fed, often displaying a level of vigor comparable to their Elven tormentors. 

“How much have you been suffering like this?” Rolozuthen mumbled to herself, running her fingers along what little muscle that remained on his bony arms.

“I’m not suffering,” Ralogolar said calmly with his usual cold monotone.

His eyes opened slowly, and Rolozuthen yanked her hand back and yelped in shock, stumbling backward and falling on her behind as she stared blankly at him.

“Jeez, you were awake?” Rolozuthen asked as her face flushed with embarrassment. 

“I wasn’t asleep, I was acting,” Ralogolar replied, pushing himself off the ground into a sitting position. 

He groaned, stretching his tensed muscles like pulling apart a plant's fibrous stalk. With each movement he made, his scrawny size became more apparent, as his bones and veins could be seen poking under his skin at certain angles. 

“Well, you could have said something,” Rolozuthen complained. “I thought you had been killed for a moment there.”

“Didn’t you notice my Skill was still active?” Ralogolar asked, turning his body to stretch in the opposite direction.

Silence fell between them, as if an unwritten taboo had been broken from one sentence, only being broken by Ralogolar’s groans as he continued to stretch his fatigued body. For several minutes, Rolozuthen sat in silence, wanting and trying to speak her mind, yet the words wouldn’t leave her lips. It wasn’t until Ralogolar broke the silence that Rolozuthen felt able to speak.

“You’re wondering about my Skill, aren’t you?” Ralogolar asked, halting his stretches and returning to a regular sitting position.

“Yes…” Rolozuthen replied timidly.

Skills were the foundation of one's strength, and revealing the details of one's Skill was tantamount to exposing oneself to the whole world. Even in this isolated cave, exposing the details of your Skill to the wrong person could very well get you killed.

“Since it’s just us, I’ll tell you,” Ralogolar said, grabbing the pommel of his pickaxe and dragging it between them. “I trust you won't say anything to anyone.”

“I won’t,” Rolozuthen promised, staring intently at him.

“My Skill is called Toolhandle.” Ralogolar started, running his hand along the handle of his pickaxe. “It improves how well I can use any tool I hold, no matter how inexperienced I am with the tool.”

Ralogolar gripped his pickaxe’s handle tightly, lifting it into his lap, clearly struggling with his thin muscles. However, despite him holding the pickaxe, his body did not morph, as if he had chosen to stay in this weakened state.

“I can choose if I want to activate it, but I can’t use it on multiple tools at once. It’s only after I activate it that my body experiences the changes you saw earlier.” He continued, activating his Skill in the process.

His scrawny figure began to bulge and morph in unnatural ways. Rolozuthen watched as, beneath his tattered clothes, his shoulders swelled, doubling in width, while thick chest muscles stretched over his exposed ribcage. The veins and tendons in his arms surged beneath his skin, pressing outward before settling back into place.

“Woah…” Rolozuthen uttered in disbelief, leaning forward to observe closely. “And what was that super buff state you were in earlier? Was it also part of your Skill?”

“Yes, it was,” Ralogolar answered as his body settled into its new muscular form. “That was me pushing the Skill to its maximum, which I can only do while being healed rapidly. Otherwise, I’ll end up pulling my body apart in seconds.”

“I see…” Rolozuthen said, returning her gaze to Ralogolar’s face. “But if you can put up that good of a fight against a guard, why haven’t you broken out of here yet?” 

There was a subtle pause after Rolozuthen’s question. Ralogolar looked around with a wary expression. It was only after a moment of checking his surroundings that he answered Rolozuthen’s question.

“Because I can’t harm living beings with the tools I wield with my Skill,” Ralogolar said coldly, resting one hand on the head of his pickaxe. 

“So that’s why your pickaxe stopped midair during your fight earlier?” Rolozuthen asked, having found some clarity from Ralogolar’s answer. 

Ralogolar nodded to Rolozuthen’s question, and despite his usual cold demeanor, a deep sense of regret seemed to linger in his eyes. Noticing this, Rolozuthen began to speak, but was swiftly interrupted by Ralogolar’s rumbling stomach. There was a moment of silence between the two, not out of broken taboos or lack of conversation topic, but rather pure embarrassment.

Rolozuthen stood up and dusted off her dress. Her eyes locked onto Ralogolar as a cheerful grin spread across her face.

“You sound hungry. I’ll make you something that's better than the slop that’s been put out.”

“Thank you,” Ralogolar replied, using his pickaxe as a crutch to stand.

Ralogolar turned to a nearby table and took a seat, resting his pickaxe against the table as he stared forward with his usual blank expression. After a moment of silence in the dining hall, the clanks of metal striking metal and the sizzles of meat in a pan erupted from the kitchen. Yet Ralogolar didn’t move, as only a single thought paced in his mind.

‘I couldn’t tell her everything…’

Despite his trust in Rolozuthen, he couldn’t bring himself to speak about every detail of his Skill. Whether it was from his natural emotionless state or from his twisted mentality born from two decades of torture, he couldn’t speak about the last details of his Skill.

‘I just need to wait… Don’t cause another scene, or they’ll catch on…’ Ralogolar told himself, clasping his palms together and resting them against his lips as if he was pondering the secrets of life.

As Ralogolar sat motionless and lost in his thoughts, a single human walked into the dining hall. His slumped-over posture, starved and frail body, and pale, lifeless skin made him look like a troll born in a wasteland. His tattered clothing barely covered his upper and lower body, with holes and gashes that could only be caused by their Elven enslavers. 

His face was littered with scars, with one in particular that stretched across his face. From above his eyebrow, skipping over his dark brown eyes and across his nose, down to the bottom of his left jaw. There was only one distinct similarity between Ralogolar and the man, their bleached white hair.

The man did not speak, and as he hobbled past Ralogolar, neither person acknowledged the other’s existence. The hunchbacked man limped slowly to the row of food resting on the long metal counter, which now extruded through the opening between the glass pane and wooden roots. His arms trembled from fatigue as he grabbed a stone plate, and its chipped and jagged edges dug into his palm under the weight of the barely edible slop resting on it.

As the man limped to a nearby table, with his plate of slop in hand, another person walked through the dining hall’s entrance, followed by two more. With every passing second, another human stepped into the dining hall, with each and every one looking decrepit, broken, and starved.

Before long, every seat in the dining hall had been taken, except for the one directly in front of Ralogolar. Nevertheless, despite the overly crowded dining hall, there was a deafening silence that permeated, almost as if the room had been empty all along. Only the occasional clatter of stone plates against the table and the rhythmic clanging of metal from the kitchen broke through the stillness.

It was only after the kitchen had grown silent that the final seat in the hall was filled, as Rolozuthen sat in front of Ralogolar, placing two plates down on the table. The steam that drifted from the freshly cooked meat filled the air, filling Ralogolar’s lungs and waking him from his trance.

With glistening beads of salt and pitch black flakes of pepper protruding from the squishy pink skin, the meal looked divine to any slave who laid eyes upon it. The crisp, fresh salad resting beneath gave a sense of dignity to the dish, as if it were meant for a more luxurious atmosphere. 

“Eat up!” Rolozuthen beamed, her grin so infectious that even the downtrodden faces nearby softened.

Well, except for Ralogolar. But despite his lack of expression, he appreciated the meal in front of him. Without skipping a beat, he grabbed the tender meat off the plate and took a bite, as if he were taking a bite out of an apple. In a single bite, he chewed the meat in half. Although it was small in size, it was still a far cry better than the alternative.

However, savoring the flavor was no longer a luxury he had. Before he could even chew the mouthful of meat once, a loud crack echoed through the dining hall from the entrance. Every pair of eyes turned to where the sound originated from, only to be met with the sight of twelve Elves standing in the entrance, with Chief Inspector Ascal Sanev Zylnan at the lead.

“Line up scum!” The Chief Inspector exclaimed, winding his whip around his palm. “It’s time for the sermon. Anyone caught trying to sneak food out won’t be permitted to sleep for three nights!”

Smirks of cruel amusement spread across the Elves’ faces as the entire room of slaves, one by one, rose from their seats in cold, mechanical obedience. The cheery vibe that had been spreading across the room was smothered in an instant by the reminder of what they were.

Slaves.