Ep. 677 The Great Escape Part 3 (Patreon)

After putting my wings away I head straight to the sheds located behind the main house. Inside one of the sheds I find eight male elves, which surprises me a little. As I free them, they inform me that they are warriors and are kept to fight in gladiator style matches.

They also inform me that there are ten elven women kept as slaves inside the main house. Leaving the men there temporarily, I enter the house through an unguarded door. However, they didn't know where the women are being held, so I start searching room by room.

Luckily, the situation isn't as bad as the last mansion, the women are chained up but don't show signs of torture. I quickly free them and lead them outside without alerting anyone in the house. When we return to where the men are waiting I find that they have armed themselves.

It probably means there are more dead guards somewhere, but I don't really care. At this point it is more about speed than worrying about not attracting attention. So I lead the way out the back gate and toward the fifth and final mansion.

We run into and kill two more patrols before we reach the walls of the mansion. The two guards at the back gate die before I can even reach them, the warriors are venting their rage. Under different circumstances I might even feel sorry for the humans, but not right now.

This time we are in luck, there are only five elven slaves and we find them in a shed. Once they are freed we quickly leave and head back to the third mansion to pick up the others. Now we just need to make it to the docks, with almost a hundred people.

This time, instead of trying to sneak, I just set a straight path and then move ahead of the group. Any patrols that are along the way, I deal with quickly and quietly. Despite having to deal with the patrols I am still the first one to reach the docks.

Once I reach the docks I head straight out onto the pier to signal the ship. Using mana I create small flashes of light until I see the rowboats leave the ship. By then the elves have caught up to me and I explain the plan to them before I leave.

While they are waiting for the rowboats I head towards the holding area in this part of the docks. Before I can get there I hear a commotion and then alarms on the south side of the harbor. From the sounds of it they have discovered the escape from the first holding area.

When I reach the second holding area I find six guards instead of two, but it doesn't change anything. As soon as the guards are dead I rush inside and start freeing the slaves. Again I free the humans and let them run off, hoping they will cause a distraction.

As soon as the elves are freed I lead them to join the others on the dock. With the addition of another thirty elves it is going to take multiple trips to get them on the ship. Luckily, Silverstream comes over with the rowboats and starts organizing everyone.

"Silverstream, can I leave this to you? I still have two places to hit and soon the entire town is going to be on alert."

Silverstream says "Go! I've got this!"

Taking her at her word, I turn, spread my wings, and take off towards the slave market. As I am flying I hear more alarms going off, this time in the area of the mansions. Every patrol I see is rushing in that direction, that should help keep them busy for a bit.

By the time they track us to the docks everyone should be on the ship, hopefully. The slave market is a good distance from the mansions so there shouldn't be any patrols nearby. However, the slave market has its own guards and I doubt they ran off anywhere.

As expected there are around fifty guards at the slave market, but they are all grouped up. It would seem they are busy discussing the commotion in the city, which makes things easy. I drop into the middle of them, draw Blitz, and use whirlwind attack, which kills most of them.

Then I just have to kill the few that were outside the reach of my first attack. That only takes a minute and then I start opening cages and freeing the people inside. I don't care if they are human or elven, I free them all, at this point I don't have to worry about traitors.

Even if one of them runs off to turn us in, by the time a patrol gets here we will be gone. A lot of the slaves in the cages are injured or sick, so I heal and cure them as I free them. Halfway through I have to stop and pray to refill my divine power, but it is worth it.

A lot of the humans stop and take weapons from the dead guards before they run off. Of course, the warriors among the elves also grab weapons, but they don't run off. In fact, once they are armed they move ahead of me breaking open the cages.

While they can't remove the collars, it does save me a little bit of time, which helps. There are several hundred slaves in the slave market, but most of them are humans. I imagine that the capital is going to be quite chaotic for the next little while.

When I have freed the slaves in what I think is the last cage I start organizing the elves. However, before I can lead them away I hear a strange mewling sound. When I follow the sound I find a small cage placed off to the side and inside is a pure white foal.

While I find it strange for a foal to be in a slave market I am not about to just leave it here. As I break the cage open I notice the foal is injured so I use my healing spell on it. When I do, its coat suddenly glows white for a few seconds, but the injury does heal.

It is definitely curious, but right now I don't have time to figure it out, so I just pick up the foal and carry it. Then I lead the ninety or so elves out of the slave market and towards the docks. There is one last holding area left to go and then we can finally escape this city.

It is a good thing all the patrols have been lured away, it allows us to reach the docks without issue. I am planning to lead the elves onto the pier and then go get the ones in the holding area. However, it turns out there are some elven warriors already at the pier waiting for us.

They immediately take charge of the elves I am leading, but I am not sure what to do with the foal. On the walk down here it fell asleep in my arms and I am reluctant to wake it up. One of the female elves notices and comes over to take the foal from me, allowing me to head for the holding area.