Chapter 95: Book 2 Chapter 38: Iron

Steven’s POV

Steven Hashcord was trying his best to sleep. He had never really needed sleep since coming to this new world, but ever since they put this crude iron chain on his wrist he had felt tired constantly, and suddenly the need for sleep had been reintroduced to him. He did not completely understand what it was this chain was doing to him, he simply presumed it was more of the magic of this world and did not think any farther on it.

And so, he was trying to sleep. Trying being the operative word. It came difficult in this dank prison cell, lined with iron bars at the entrance and iron bracing crossing every part of the cell. Well, it figured they would want to brace the walls and floors with iron. There were plenty of people he had witnessed who could move wood to their will. It was not a skill he had ever picked up himself, but it seemed rather common. In fact, he got the very distinct sense that a lot of the locals were looking at him as though he were in some way slow in the head for not having picked up this skill already.

There was another reason he could not sleep though. He was woken up by the cries of what sounded like small children. Or, at least this is what he would have assumed they were if this was back on Earth. In this world, children with small voices like that were an extreme rarity. In fact, he had not seen a single child since his arrival in this world. Instead though, little voices like that seemed to commonly come from smaller pixy-like fairies. Smaller by comparison to himself that is. These wings on his own back getting in the way constantly was another thing making it difficult to sleep. He had never realized just how much they got in the way until he actually found he had a need for sleep all of a sudden.

But, right now, those small pixies crying out in what seemed to be some form of distress was a much bigger issue. It was very hard to make out what they were saying exactly. They were speaking the local language of this world, another thing he hadn’t quite managed to learn yet. Most of the people in this world he had encountered seemed to be able to communicate telepathically, and he found he could also talk back to them telepathically as well. He never really needed to learn the language of this world, and so he hadn’t put all that large an amount of effort into it.

He knew he wasn’t going to be able to understand what they were saying, but as he sat up on the side of his hard wooden bed he decided to strain his ears anyway. It seemed to be a cacophony of overlapping voices, but a large number of them seemed to be saying the same thing as it echoed down the corridor. “Rehta-lye, rehta-lye!” Was the most common thing said. Sometimes they would scream something else as well, but Steven really could not understand what they were saying. What he did know though was that they seemed rather distressed.

In the middle of listening to these obvious cries for help, the lumbering footsteps of the large jailer reverberated down the corridor. Soon, he saw the goat-man himself. A man who was an absolute mountain of muscle, standing what must be 7 and a half feet tall, and that’s not counting his horns he has coming out of that furry head of a goat he had resting on his shoulders. Those horns could probably round off the last few inches and have him standing an even 8 feet in height.

Steven had been stunned since his first time seeing this giant of a man. He felt certain he was looking at a demon when they sentenced him to be locked away in this place. However, the fairies who brought him here had assured him that he was a perfectly normal fey. Something called a Kim or something like that. Apparently, the demonized form of these goat men had wings, that was how to tell them apart. Well, the wingless non-demon forms looked incredibly intimidating even without that transformation.

It might somehow make him feel better if he had goat legs as well, that would at least look like some fantasy renderings of goat-men he had seen before. But, no, he had perfectly normal human legs and he was wrapped in a freaking toga. And then, he just only had the head of a goat. If it weren’t for the fact that the eyes blinked and the mouth moved when he talked, Steven would think it was just a man wearing a mask.

Steven expected he had come to sort out whatever chaos was going on down the hall, but instead the goat man came straight to his cell instead. The large man grabbed the handle to his cell door, and then Steven’s ears were assailed by the most horrible sound he had ever heard. Well, aside from the 4 times he had heard this exact same sound before when he was being brought in here, twice for each of two such iron doors he had to pass through, one of those being his own cell door.

It seemed that this prison had a very strange excuse for a lock on the doors. The doors had no locks. Instead, these heavy iron doors had badly rusted and un-oiled hinges. They were so rusted the hinges were more or less frozen, and it seemed the only person who even had anything close to the strength needed to open these doors was this giant goat man. It was an oddly effective method to keep people in their cells. Honestly though, Steven was not certain which was the thing keeping him inside more. The weight of the door, or the horrible noise it made as it was opened. That sound seemed to send pain through his entire body, and it felt as though it was a direct attack on his very soul.

Steven found himself crying out in pain as he held his hands over his ears, trying to use his voice to drown out that horrid horrid noise so he didn’t have to hear it. Fortunately, the sound only continued for a few seconds until it was open and Steven was able to carefully remove his hands from his ears and look up at his jailer in a daze.

The large goat man stared back at him through his horizontally slitted eyes. The yelling voices from before seemed to have all gone quiet. It seemed they couldn’t take that sound either. Whatever they were yelling about, whatever they thought was so important, it was clear the pain from that brutal sonic attack was able to completely override their distress.

Steven stood up in his stupor as he tried to recover from the impact that noise had on him. He heard a snort from the goat man as his nostrils flared, catching Steven’s attention. “Shee heru a' elea lle.” He said. More of the local language he hadn’t learned.

Well, actually, he sorta recognized a few words that time. If Steven recalled correctly, didn’t “lle” mean “you?” Also, he seemed to recall “elea” meaning “see” as well. There is, of course, every possibility he was being taunted right now. However, he doubted it. Could the goat man be saying that there is someone here to see him? Hoping his interpretation was correct, Steven took some cautious steps toward the the open door. The goat man stepped aside as he approached, suggesting further validity to Steven’s understanding of what had been said.

Steven stole a quick glance up at the large goat man. Standing in front of him always made him feel like a small child, and now somehow he felt like a guilty child as well and his eyes submissively drifted back down to somewhere around the huge goat man’s navel.

“Sina men” The goat man said, flaring his nostrils and bringing his gigantic hand down to Steven’s lower back as though he was about to pick him up and carry him like a bag of trash.

“Uhh… wait!” Steven said. He knew the goat man probably couldn’t understand him any better than he could understand him, but maybe with some pointing and gestures he could figure it out. So, Steven pointed down the hall. “Th… they were yelling before! It sounded like they needed help!”

“Rehta-lye!” One of the small pixie’s voices echoed through the corridor once again, almost as though in response to Steven’s statement. “Hentraya y' rauko natula, ric-naa ndengina lye.”

The goat man let out another snort, and started shaking his head like a horse trying to shake off an annoying fly. He turned his eyes down toward Steven in a way that made him feel very much like he was being glared at. But then, the goat man slowly turned his giant lumbering body to face the opposite direction. Somehow, this gave Steven the oddest sense of relief for a moment, right up until the moment he was roughly grabbed and dragged along behind the large goat man as he went toward the source of the screaming. Still, even with that, Steven felt some sense of accomplishment in all of this.

Before long, the goat man had dragged Steven right up to the source of the screaming. He looked up to see what was going on. What he saw was a series of much smaller cells. Really, they were a lot more like cages, and inside each cage was a small pixie. Well, inside all but one of them that is. One of them seemed to contain an entirely different creature, a small dark-skinned and twisted misshapen creature. It had dark skin that looked like some strange combination between leather and rock, and had high prominent eye-ridges, an angular face, and horns that came out the back of it’s head. Instead of the insect-like wings of the pixies, it had leathery bat-like wings and it’s hands were long hook-like claws. It was currently trying to use those claws to reach through the bars at the side of it’s cage to try and attack the pixy in the cage adjacent to it.

The repeated cries of “Rehta-lye!” intensified as soon as the pixies saw the two of them approach. Steven guessed it must mean “help” in some way, judging by how it was being used here. The large goat man let go of Steven as he saw what was going on.

“Har-eller!” He said down to Steven in an almost threatening tone. Steven did not even need to know the language to understand what that command probably meant. He simply remained standing on the spot and looked at the cages in a daze as the goat man opened the door to the cage with the strange creature in it. A second later, that large powerful hand plucked the vicious little creature out of the cage and clutched it firmly as the goat man carried the creature at his side like a small toy he didn’t care much for.

The goat man glared back down at Steven. He looked annoyed. The goat man’s free hand came back down, and this time he actually DID lift Steven off the ground, and then carried him down the corridor in those massive powerful arms.

-

Gailben’s POV

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What is taking Gworon so long! Gailben was tapping his foot in irritation. He had considered going in to see what was going on twice already, but both times he winced merely looking at all the iron in the iron heart. He had, at the very least, left the door open. Gailben could easily follow him in. However, the moment he was surrounded by all that fire-forged iron he would be assailed by all the warding energies sapping at his fey powers. It was not much more than an irritation at his level, but it was still something he would sooner avoid.

As he was waiting, Gailben suddenly began to hear some frenzied shrieking. He sighed and got a grim look on his face when he heard it. It sounded like an imp. That would mean one of their fairy prisoners had succumbed to the arcane energies. They were a prisoner, a violator of the order of the kingdom, but death was not part of their sentence. And yet, now they were going to have to die. Well, this at least explains what the hold up was all about.

As the shrieking grew closer, eventually the form of an irritated looking jailer appeared in the large doorway and the giant Khim ducked through as he held the shrieking imp in one hand, and a limp great fairy in the other.

Gailben’s eyes shifted from one hand to the other. He was not supposed to cart cooperating prisoners around like that. While the great fairy from the other world was disruptive during the trial of his friends, he had always struck Gailben as a rather straightforward young man. In fact, there were several from the justice faction who had been eyeing him to mentor. In fact, the only reason Gailben had not proposed adopting the young man already is because he was rather certain someone superior would have their eye on him and he did not want to earn ire by stepping on someone’s toes.

He glaired up at the jailer. “Gworon! Why are you carrying this prisoner!?”

The large Khim man let out a groan. “He was slow, he demanded that I should look at the fairies first. They were screaming because of this one.” After saying those words, he held up the still shrieking imp.

“Well, it is also part of your job to remove demons quickly, isn’t it!? In other words, he was telling you to do your job! Now, let the young man down gently, you understand!?” The previously limp young man looked up weakly at Gailben as he was talking. He looked awful. It was the fault of the effects of the iron no doubt. Even the immense energies these outsiders to their world possessed seemed to be no match for the natural weakness of the fey.

The large goat man groaned again, and then tilted his body in order to lower Steven’s feet to touch the floor. After he was released, the young man regained his balance, and fixed Gailben with a dazed look.

Now, Gailben had a troubled look as he considered the imp. This was exactly the reason there was so much debate over moving the great tree before Steven’s friends decided to tell the spirit of the great tree about the merits of their idea, which pretty much settled things when the spirit began siding with them and destroyed all opportunity for meaningful discussion on the topic. It would normally be Gworon’s job to kill that thing, but as the giant Khim was turning to leave and carry out this job, Gailben had a stoke of inspiration. He may not be the young man’s parent, but that did not mean he could not help in his mentoring.

“Wait!” He said, stopping Gworon in his tracks. “Give that one to me as well.” The large Khim looked down at the imp in his hands with a confused expression for a moment, but he still obeyed the order he was given. He extended his arm, and Gailben was quick to get control of the warped fairy the moment it was released. He struggled with it for a moment, but then he slammed it against a wall and bid the great tree to envelop its arms and legs, immobilizing it in the wall.

“Now then,” Gailben said as he got his robes back in order and turned to Steven. “How about we get you out of that chain so you can actually talk.” Normally, he would keep someone serving a prison sentence wearing their iron chain. However, Steven was a special case. He did not know how to communicate in Elven at all. He could only use the spirit speech of the fairies. He pointed to the young man’s hand, and then gestured forward with his on arm in order to indicate what he should be doing. He seemed to get the idea, and promptly offered his chained wrist to Gailben.

Gailben then immediately extracted his handkerchief and used it to grasp the lock on the chain. He took the wood-carved key and got it off with a pop that gave him a small amount of discomfort just hearing it. But then, it was definitely nothing compared to the screeching of the iron doors prisoners were treated to, just having this iron on your skin should render a fairy nearly a walking corpse. Only an elf could stand to be in such a place, which is why they have special cells further in for them that will give their almost half human race the same experience as the fairies.

Gailben carefully removed the chain and then straightened up to look the young man in the eye. ‘Now, can you hear my words?’ He asked in the spirit speech.

“Ahh!” The young man gasped aloud and got a focused expression on his face. ‘Umm... yes! Uhhh... what is going on?’

‘Something has come up in the court. If we play this right, your sentence may even be communed. We are going to need your help with something.’

‘M... MY help? What can I do!?’

‘Well, another person from your world has appeared. For some reason, she was born as an elf instead of a fairy. It seems despite that though, she is even more powerful than you. She was adopted by the queen just earlier today, and she wants to implement the justice system of your world. Lord Faranti decided it would be best to ask you in order to get the most accurate version of your world’s laws as possible.

Well then, time to set in for the long haul.

Subscribers' comments of the chapter

"The only justice in my system is loli"

-NohVoha

"Gailben seems much more reasonable when he isn't muttering to himself like a lunatic."

-Vorquel

"If there is ever an occasion where we'll see Aerien in contact with Iron, I wonder how little effect it will have xD"

-Asekhan

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