A frail young man with dark skin and black hair stood beside a girl of equally delicate build, her skin pale and her hair dark. Both shared the same striking, violet gaze—eyes that were wide and frantic as they flinched in unison at the sound of their names.
They stole a glance at one another for only a heartbeat before snapping their attention back to the leader. Fear, sharp and suffocating, clouded their vision.
"You two! Go find something to burn for this fire," the leader barked. "And hurry it up, or I'll feed you to whatever comes wandering by!"
The slaves scrambled away, searching desperately through the dirt for dry sticks and fallen branches.
As they moved, heavy iron chains dragged through the grit behind them. Shackles weighed down their thin ankles, the links joining into a single, long lead that climbed upward to a heavy metal ball suspended above their heads.
The towering Vescrin held the end of the chain casually in one hand, his chitinous grip effortless.
"Hurry it up," the creature muttered, his lone crystal eye fixed on the horizon with bored indifference. "This metal ball is heavier than both you useless things combined."
From behind a nearby bush, the boy's shaky voice drifted back. "Ye—yes, sir!"
The Vescrin snorted, the sound wet against his internal plating. "What a pair of weaklings…"
He turned his head toward the leader, who was currently crouching over a pile of tinder. "Hey, Boss? Why do we even keep these two around?"
The leader didn't look up as he tried to coax a spark into a flame. "We keep them in case the haul gets too heavy," he said lazily. "Or if we need bait. Yada, yada."
He shrugged, his mechanical arm whirring softly. "Besides, Dezcrin says he wants his money's worth in goods—and he'll want even more if we come back with one of 'em missing."
Not far away, the boy gathered sticks with trembling hands. His fingers bled where the rough bark scraped his skin, but he didn't feel it.
In the dark recesses of his mind, something began to crack. A cold, jagged resolve was splintering through the fear.
All of them need to die for what they did…
All of them.
Every. Single. One.