The woman felt insensitive for asking such a question to the girl and continued. “Of course, you wouldn’t be alright. Sorry, that was dense of me. However, it’s better for you not to cry aloud, or else those evil men from before would come back with punishments.”

The girl nodded her head vigorously and pursed her lips. Her last wish was to be whipped by those men’s whip. Once her uncle once also beat her with a horsewhip and she would rather do anything than getting the same pain on her back.

“I’m Arian, what’s your name girl?” The woman spoke gently, not wanting to frighten the girl who looked very fraul at rhe moment.

“I- My na-” The girl covered her chapped lips and coughed a few times in succession. Her throat felt dried up as though sands were stuck in between when she tried to speak.

After two days of riding the carriage, the merchants weren’t any kinder than her aunt and gave her only a mouthful of water a day. She also didn’t eat nothing for two days, making her head feel dizzy. She was used to being forbid from eating and drinking and told to only work but the last time she properly ate and drank, the little girl herself couldn’t even remember.

“Are you alright?” Hearing how rouge she coughed that sounded as though blood could slip out from her lips made Arian to raise her hushed voice slightly.

The young girl rubbed her neck where she could feel it hurts. “My throat is very dry. It hurts.”

“They must’ve been giving the same treatment for us to a young girl like you. ” Arian said with a sloping sad frown.

“My name is Elise. Nice to meet you, Arian.” Elise greeted lightly with the same whisper. She looked around at the other girls who had been laying low without greeting her unlike Arian a bit worried.

The person before in the corridor who had lost her blood to the floor still remained in her head. She had seen someone died out of losing blood and knew that losing blood wasn’t a good thing. Although she knew she could have had the same fate as the woman before, she felt even more worried for them than herself.

Arian read between her expression and comforted. “You don’t need to worry, they’re not dead… yet.” She said the last words faintly but Elise could hear it clear enough to make a startled expression.

“It isn’t a good thing to be alive here too. Perhaps they’re just meeting God a bit faster than us.” Arian hoped that her words could do some encouragement a little.

“Where are we…?” Elise steered their conversation smoothly.

“You don’t know where you are?” Arian replied with another question. Her first thought was the girl must’ve been either kidnapped or sold by her own relative that she didn’t know she had been trafficked to become a slave.

“We are at the slavery trading building, the largest one in Ulriana.”

“U- Ulriana?” Elise’s blue eyes widened.

“Do you also don’t know where Ulriana is?”

“No… I know…” Elise a long time ago, heard the scholars stopped by the village to discuss how large and far the Ulriana was. If her memory doesn’t fail her small head, Ulriana was the closest town to the capital of the land.

Her home, the small village was very far from Ulriana and it took two days until she arrived at the slave cell. Wondering how she could ever go back home, Elise clasped her palms to pray.

“Then, do you know what a ‘slave’ mean?” Arian asked to see the girl shaking her head innocently.

“Slave is us, the person who would be sold until a buyer comes and become our master.”

Unable to sentenced out the girl’s life, Arian broke free from the girl’s large eyes and drew out a few breaths. “If they become our master, we should forever obey them. If we don’t, they would kill us in the worst case.”

“K- Kill?” Her fidgeting hand fell nervously.

“Yes…” Arian replied. Although it was harsh for her to give out a dampening future to such a young girl, it was better than keeping her obliviousness until death. “How old are you, Elise?”

“Eight.” Elise saw Arian sizing her small figure and commented.

“You are smaller for an eight years old. Anyway, there are rules here, if you want to come out alive. I suggest you follow their words and rules here or else they would punish you. Dead isn’t a rare thing here, you got to watch your back before anything happens.”

Elise childish eyes dulled out. She looked down to her knees which was still bleeding and wiped it with her dress only to make it look worse, smearing blood all over. Although everything was painful the clenching on her heart felt agonizing to her.

She couldn’t understand how anyone could be so evil that they were able to take people’s lives easily without any hesitation. Her aunt’s house wasn’t the best place, but at least on her mind, she wouldn’t kill her.

However, her aunt was also the same person who threw her in the place where she could lose her little life.

Just what did she do to angered her aunt? Elise thought to herself and search for possible mistakes that rose her aunt’s fury but found none that could lead to sending her to a hell hole.

Elise looked up across the ceiling of the cell that had green mossed in between the crack. She was a little worried that the underground basement where she was in could break down with a small wind.

“What are you doing? You sleep whenever you could, they would always give us some work at noon, you have to preserve your energy or else you would pass out.” Arian warned the little girl before crouching back to sleep.

While counting the mosses on the wall, Elise eyelids gradually weaken to a sleep.

Not long after their conversation, the frightening men who beat the girl in front of her came back once again. This time, his face was blank as he unlocked the iron doors and knocked the handle to his whip giving a cold clinking sound to wake Elise from her dream.

“Stand up! All of you!” 

Elise jumped back from her short nap. Her dream was warm, but it gave her a sense of solitude to see the place where she hoped to be a nightmare wasn’t what she hoped to be but a reality.

Arian stood up the third after the other lady inside the cell, because of the dark she didn’t notice the presence of the other girls, but there was quite a lot of older ones inside her cell.

“Come with us.” Arian beckoned her with a palm.

Elise nodded to her whisper and took her hand to follow the rest of the slaves. Stepping out, she saw other girls forming a line to the corridor and screaming made by the slaves’ guardsmen. Her blue eyes couldn’t bear to see the rest of the view and glanced down at Arian’s legs as a lead.

At the same time, the guardsmen outside the cell rounded up in front of the noble slave merchant, Turisk who had a round belly. Gold rings stacked on his meaty fingers with a long brown goatee that reached his chest. Seeing some clouds on his rings, Turisk blew them before wiping it again and turned to see his subordinate gathering up.

Tursik wasn’t exactly a patient man and didn’t bother to beat around the bush between his lowly servants to order without sparing them a single glance. “There would be a new and bigger auction to be held in Afgard tomorrow. How many learned slaves do we have now?”

A tall skinny man replied quickly. “About 30.”

Tursik slammed his hand on the table as he stood up. “Only 30? For what sake did I pay you all?! That is barely enough. Many nobles, elites, and sorcerers would be coming in tomorrow!”

The subordinates couldn’t give out a single reply as his order was too sudden to them.

“What about the fresh ones?” The fresh one Turisk mentioned was none other than the one the slave traffickers had just attained.

“40 including the one we got a day ago.”

Tursik thud down to his wooden chair with a screeching creak and pointed his finger. “Round everyone, young and old even the newest one you just took in!”

The loud voice thundered around the whole tent, making the subordinates exit the tent while rubbing to their ringing ears.

The guards who came back after receiving Tursik’s order to the cell saw his friend hanging his arm on his hips and shouted with a sigh. “Null! We got an order from the beer man.”

Elise stole a glance to Null who had to pull down his hand from the whip and walk toward his friend. “What kind of order?”

“A slave auction will be held in Afgard. Forget about schooling them to a slave. He wants all of them to be clean for tomorrow.”

“They haven’t yet been taught into a loyal slave. If the nobles complain what about our necks?” Null ruffled his head from the sudden order.

“How would I know? It’s his order and job. If they got to complain, they could do it with him.”

The other guard looked across his side to one of the women and pulled the collar on her neck to chide. “I don’t see the need to worry anything though. This thing here is made by the sorcerer, they couldn’t run away even if they want to.” He narrowed his eyes to the frightened woman. “If they do, your head would be blown to bits. I have seen them enough before.”

Elise held her hand up to the collar the guards were talking and examined at the ancient writings carved in the metal in silence. She never heard anything about a sorcerer before, but her aunt always cursed them for stealing a normal person’s job with their magics.

Seeing Elise drowned in her thoughts, Arian who had walked a few steps away once again cued her to fasten her pace to enter a small cloudy room with wells and buckets. Steams covered the whole room, but it wasn’t the steam from warm water but rather a haze from cold water.

The guards scurry each girl inside the room by groups. It was an open bath for them to go inside, and after the group in front of them finished throwing water thrice, it was her group’s turn to go inside.

The wardens didn’t bother to hold back and stared at the view of naked women. If it wasn’t because of the rule that came to not lay a hand on virgin, he wouldn’t have bothered to restrain himself and bed them to cover his lust. Licking his lips in his mind the man was assaulting them as he like.

Elise looked around and followed the other’s lead in grogginess to threw the cold water, sending prickling shivers to her bones. Arian often looked at the girl, checking her condition under her eyelids.

It comes with a reason for her to be worried about such a small girl in the slave-trading with leering guards who took people’s life. Lives here is hard but that never meant living with the buyers would be easy, it’s plainly torture. Truly the name of Hell on Earth was something that suit the place the most.