Olpasbet, the Prison City
Olpasbet, the Prison City
The position of leased prisoner was unambiguous in Olpasbet.
Considering what leased prisoners were used for—and why they were leased in the first place—that was only natural.
Aslan understood the contemptuous look Harod Claw directed at him. He knew exactly what had provoked it, and what he intended to do about it.
But he didn't bother to correct the misunderstanding. His reasons for the lease were nothing like what Harod imagined, and what he sought was something else entirely. He let the misconception stand.
Correcting it wasn't what he was after.
Harod Claw's tail lifted. Muscles shifted beneath the hard scales.
A punch was coming. Aslan tracked the moving muscle groups and reached his conclusion.
He closed his fist to conceal the seal ring, then nudged aside the guard who had sensed the sharpening tension and was starting to raise his weapon.
Harod's right fist shot forward almost simultaneously.
Whish!
A red-scaled fist tore through the air, closing the distance on a breath of split wind.
Aslan traced the trajectory he'd anticipated, tilting his body and slipping inside to the left—straight into the path of Harod's swing.
"What—!"
Harod froze for a splinter of a second, his body starting to turn.
Into that clear opening Aslan poured the momentum of his advance and swept the leg.
"Guh!"
The unstable posture immediately after a thrown punch, the weight shift as Harod tried to turn—the imbalance was precise. Aslan's kick caught the planted foot cleanly and sent Harod to the ground.
Thud!
The heavy body struck the floor with a resonant boom. Prisoners hurrying past glanced over with bewildered expressions.
"Kgh... hrrrk?!"
Harod groaned and tried to rise, then froze in confusion as he felt his arm seized and pulled. Aslan drew the captured arm around Harod's nape and locked it tight, cutting off his breath in an instant.
"Gkk... kkhh..."
The airway constricted. Death crept closer. Even a Dragon-kin's superior lung capacity meant nothing if he couldn't breathe.
"What is the meaning of...?"
The guards' flustered voices, the gathered prisoners' gasps of alarm, Angie's expression balanced between startlement and curiosity.
Amid the clamor of stares and sounds, Harod's fading consciousness made one last calculation with the dregs of his fighting spirit.
Harod Claw was a warrior.
A seasoned warrior could gauge the gap between himself and his opponent, could estimate victory or defeat, knew who would die and who would walk away.
Now, feeling his own death drawing near, Harod thrashed his free left arm.
He couldn't reach. The trapped arm restricted his movement too much.
His yellow slit-pupils began to roll back. Harod's death stood within arm's reach, beckoning.
"Kek, khu-huk... koff, khoff!"
The arm released. Oxygen flooded into his lungs in a great rush, and Harod doubled over, hands braced against the ground, gasping.
Freed just before suffocation, dragging in ragged breaths, coughing violently—as light slowly seeped back into his consciousness, bewilderment took hold.
"...Why would you..."
"If I'd simply told you, you wouldn't have listened."
Harod turned his head. Only then could he meet Aslan's cold eyes.
Chillingly cold, teal eyes.
A quiet, spreading fear rippled through Harod, and he lowered his gaze.
Aslan was right. No matter what was said, Harod would have dismissed it as an excuse.
Relief washed through him at the realization that this wasn't what he had assumed—and fear alongside it. He couldn't fathom why anyone would do this.
Aslan murmured evenly.
"I'm not here to give you the humiliation you imagined."
"...Then what... what do you want?"
"The mines."
Harod Claw lifted his lowered eyes. Aslan dropped into a crouch to meet his gaze.
The chill from moments before had vanished. Only deep-seated weariness remained in that stare.
"You're going into the mines with me."
Harod already knew he had no say in the matter. Aslan didn't wait for an answer, which only confirmed it.
***
A labyrinth of mine tunnels twisted through Olpasbet.
Their primary purpose was to extract white iron, but they also served to keep the things dwelling in the depths from climbing up too easily.
"Captain, are you sure about this?"
"I am."
Every entrance to those tunnels was heavily fortified and watched by guards. Entering or leaving meant, inevitably, passing under the garrison's eyes.
Enduring the guards' uneasy scrutiny, Aslan observed the group a short distance away—checking over padded armor and weapons forged from crude iron.
One was Harod Claw. The other two willingly called themselves his subordinates.
With Angie in the same padded armor, one-handed axe at her side, and Aslan himself among them, the tunnel entrance was unusually crowded for once.
Angie stood beside Aslan, looking over Harod's group with a faint smirk.
"They're completely terrified."
As Angie's quiet observation noted, Harod visibly stiffened every time his eyes met Aslan's. It was a stark contrast to how the girl had reacted when they'd attacked her—far from cowed, she'd met them with ferocity.
Aslan understood the reason well enough.
Unlike Angie, raised in poverty and lacking education, Harod Claw was an experienced warrior. And that warrior had exchanged blows with Aslan, however briefly.
He would have felt the gap in ability—a gap no trick could bridge. There was no need to worry about a knife in the back.
That was why Aslan didn't bother watching Harod even with a heavy single-edged greatsword in his hands.
Aslan checked the weapons at his belt and stepped forward.
"Open the gate."
He addressed the guard manning the door. The guard glanced briefly over Aslan's appearance, then nodded to his fellow beside him.
The two exchanged a look and began turning the large pulley mounted beside the latticework iron gate. Each gripping a handle, they turned together, and the iron bars rose with a grinding shriek.
Beyond the lattice, the damp mine tunnel revealed itself—a long passage stretching into the dark.
As the grate slowly lifted and the darkness opened its maw wider, Aslan stared into it and drew out a torch.
"Ignition."
Whump!
A spark leapt, caught the torch, and flames roared to life.
"Hold this. Stay close."
Aslan handed the burning torch to Angie, then pulled out another and lit it.
"Take it."
"Ah. Yeah."
He pressed that torch into the hands of one of Harod Claw's subordinates and moved forward. Angie fell in behind him, and the large Dragon-kin, the bald man, the dark-skinned man—one by one, they pushed themselves into the dim tunnel.
Clang!
The moment they'd all passed the iron gate, it slammed down with a thunderous rattle. Both men flinched at the noise, but Aslan kept walking without a backward glance.
Four gazes followed his cloak. Aslan led those gazes deeper into the dark. The column of torchlight cleaved through the shadows like fireflies with glowing heads and tails.
The thick path of earth and rock descended gradually, then rose again. What seemed an ascent would settle into a decline. Boulders jutted from the walls and stalactites twisted into strange, warped shapes.
After advancing for some time, Aslan turned abruptly. Angie's eyes went wide in surprise, but she didn't flinch. Only Harod startled.
"Do you know what we're doing here?"
At the sudden question, Angie folded her arms and raised an eyebrow.
Days had passed since Aslan subdued Harod Claw. In all that time, the only explanation he'd offered Harod and his men was a brief statement: the lord had ordered them to retrieve something from the depths.
Angie, perhaps drawing her own conclusions from what Aslan had told her privately, kept quiet. Harod's subordinates just looked confused.
One of them—the dark-skinned man named Ekul—answered.
"We're lookin' for something. Isn't that what you said?"
"Do you know why I leased the three of you for a full month?"
Harod was silent a long moment before he spoke.
"You told us the trolls coming out of the tunnels were too many and too fierce. Said you needed people who could fight."
Having been thoroughly put in his place once already, Harod answered with careful deference, addressing Aslan formally.
Aslan's gaze moved between the subdued Harod and his men, who looked puzzled but kept to the story they'd been given.
"From now on," Aslan said, "we're escaping."
"...Excuse me?"
This time the bald one—Karlsen—responded. Still gripping his two-handed club studded with spikes, Karlsen twisted his face into a queer expression.
Aslan regarded that expression calmly.
"What, you don't want to leave?"
"No, it's not that, but... are you serious? They say no one's ever broken out of Olpasbet..."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"...No."
The men shifted uncomfortably, rolling their eyes. Harod closed his and murmured.
"I did wonder why you packed so much food and camping gear. So that was the reason."
Only then did Harod's men seem to understand, exhaling soft sounds of realization.
Aslan let the ripples of comprehension settle through them.
"This is a deal."
Three pairs of eyes fixed on him. Aslan extended his hand. The tattoos trailing across the back of it pulsed with a faint, flickering light.
"I'll give you freedom. In return, you fight for me until we're out—at least until we break through these tunnels."
"Then what about the restraint collars around our necks..."
'Remove Magic.'
The flicker across Aslan's forearm and shoulder intensified, then burst outward as a ripple of force.
The wave of light shone white and pale blue, tearing through the magic in the collars fastened around Angie's neck and the three men's. The restraints shattered, scattering fragments across the floor with a soft hiss. The man who'd been about to press the question shut his mouth.
"As you can see, you're free now. Temporarily, at least."
Karlsen rubbed his liberated neck. His gaze sharpened with suspicion at the added words.
"If you walk back now and tell the guards your collars are broken, the only thing waiting for you is death. You'll be arrested for conspiring in Olpasbet's first escape attempt and executed."
Karlsen's face went pale. Aslan turned his back.
"I can escape without you. If I only had to worry about saving myself, it wouldn't even be difficult. The reason I'm bringing you along, the reason I'm offering you freedom, is to conserve my own strength."
That was partly true. And partly posturing.
It was true that escaping alone would pose no real problem. The problem was Angie's safety. Aslan wasn't confident he could break through the tunnels alone while perfectly protecting her.
He drove the point home.
"You'd be wise to take this chance while it's being offered."
Harod Claw's face had stiffened to a degree even a human could easily read.
Beside him, Harod's men exchanged uneasy glances. The sudden cascade of information, persuasion, and ultimatum—they clearly had no idea how to respond.
Aslan looked at them, wondering what else to add, how best to convince them.
Gr r r r r r.
A low growl rumbled through the tunnel.
His eyes narrowed. His hand went to his belt.
Angie glanced between the source of the sound and Aslan, her fingers tightening around her axe. Aslan drew his weapons—a mace, and the single-edged longsword taken from the mercenary band, now held loose in his left hand. A weapon in each grip, hanging relaxed and ready.
"If you're going to decide, decide fast. By the time you're screaming for help while dying, it'll be too late."
Harod and his two men had worked these tunnels a long time. They knew what kind of monsters emerged from them, and they knew how hard those creatures were to handle under normal circumstances.
So they swallowed hard at Aslan's warning-edged urging. Grim looks settled across their faces.
Aslan marked it from the corner of his eye.
"I'll do it for you just this once. Call out when you've made up your minds. Angie."
"Uh. What?"
"Throw the torch."
Angie frowned, then cocked her arm back and hurled it forward.
The torch spun through the air and struck the ground, rolling and flaring as it tumbled. Down the shallow slope it bounced, firelight spilling across the uneven floor. Slowly, something took shape in the glow.
A grotesque life-form.
A spine bent sharply forward, arms so long they nearly dragged against the ground, skin eerily pale to match.
It was a creature that deserved the word monster—a twisted, malformed thing. It rolled its gleaming red eyes, scanning its surroundings.
Aslan knew them. Mud trolls.
Four of them slowly walked into the firelight, sniffing the air.
Aslan studied them for a long, quiet moment, then stepped forward.