Chapter 1


	The train of barred wagons rode shakingly across the lumpy fields of the country of Zalbad. Half a dozen captives were chained up in each cart ranging. Some were in tears while others raged and thrashed about in a futile attempt at escape. A few had already come to terms with the situation and settled down into a solemn acceptance. The few that did not fall into any of those groups were still giggly and senseless from the poison they ingested prior to being taken away. The effects were beginning to fade and one-by-one they found themselves in the same Hell as everyone else.

	"Where am I?" asked Drag, a light blue furred creature with a white furred belly and muzzle. He had a big black nose like a dog, but also a pair of stubby yellow horns over his red eyes. Between a pair of long floppy ears was some short red hair. His body was in the shape of a fat rounds ball with a barely visible neck connecting his head, a pair of chubby yet strong arms at the side and a pair of large feet below that did not appear to be connected with legs in between and a short, fat tail that barely reached the ground and had a pair of spikes that made it resemble a double bladed axe.

	"Finally up are you," commented an adult fox dressed only partly in worn and rusted battle armor over his chest and a weathered robe beneath it. Where his body was exposed was noticeable scars including a few on his face. His left ear was also missing a piece of it, clawed off by the way it looked. "Welcome to the slave train."

	"The what?!?" cried Drag as he looked around and saw the numerous other carts with chained up people and then saw that his arms and legs were too. "This is bad! Very, very bad!"

	"No kidding," stated a boar with a mohawk. He was strongly built but had a beer belly. His mouth reeked of booze. He has two yellow-stained tusks sticking up from his maw, both chipped and cracked in multiple places. His right eye was covered by an eye patch and his body was just as badly scarred as the fox. "This is about the worst thing that can happen. Your life isn't yours anymore. You are going to be someone else's property till they allow you to die. We can't even take our own lives now to escape that fate. Our fellow passengers quickly fell to pieces and are just staring at the scenery trying to wish all this away."

	Staring at the other three riders, they were a young adult gorilla, a female gazelle in her mid teens, and a gray squirrel that Drag was unable to determine his age.  They were all marked with the same guild emblem, but the emblems had been ruined by recent cuts in their flesh. They had many would already, but the cuts on the emblem were all identical and in the shape of an 'X.'

	"No way am I dying here," claimed Drag as he pulled against his chains with all his might.

	"I will break these chains and get us all out of here!" The instant Drag's muscles tensed all his strength suddenly left him and he fell to his knees exhausted. "Wh-what happened?"

	"Didn't you hear what I was saying?" the boar stated. "You can't take your life and obviously escape is just as impossible. These chains react to tension in your body. The second you attempt to escape or kill yourself or one another your body will tense up. When that happens the chains drain you of your strength so you can't do anything. These bastards have been doing this business so long they know how to prepare for anything."

	"Best to conserve your stamina, young one," the fox said kindly. "The journey is still far to the Employment Hall and our captors love to have an excuse to assert their dominance over their quarry."

	"When you say Employment Hall, you mean the Slave Auctions, right?"

	"Not quite," the fox continued. "You see, they want to get as much as they can for us so they take us to a Slave Master to break us in and figure out what would be the most profitably way to sell us. They only call it an 'Employment Hall' to make it sound legal."

	"How do you know all this?" asked Drag curiously.

	"We're veteran mercenaries since before the new monarch unified Zalbad some twenty years ago. Back then, the slave trade was worse, dragging half dead soldiers off the battlefield like they were finding satchels of gold and silver. We did business with nobles and when they wished us to do some of their more... underhanded jobs we met at places like the Employment Hall or slave trading centers."

	"Hard to say if those dark places brought out their inner fiends or if their inner fiends drove them towards such places," said the boar. "Seeing their faces so twisted from the ecstasy of corruption, you can hardly believe how noble and regal they can appear when in a public domain."

	"Can't the king of this country do something about it?" suggested Drag.

	"You'd have a better chance gnawing off your limbs to get the cuffs off and then crawl away," the boar grunted. "The slave trade is not just confined to Zalbad. Illuse, Bravie, and all the lands beyond are dealing with the same issue, but they cannot agree on what to eat for lunch let alone cooperate enough to do anything of use. The terrible truth, however, is that it is more than likely some of the kings are also involved in the slave trade and gladly prevent any and all action."

	"Then there really is nobody we can expect to save us," cried Drag. "I can't even hope for my friends to rescue me."

	"Why is that?" questioned the fox.

	"Last week we had a job to guard a caravan through Stone Garden. It was a simple enough task. We just had to fend off any bandits lurking in the area. For most of the trip, it was uneventful, but then out of nowhere a small group of bandits spooked the horses and caused the caravan to crash. We were fortunate not to be hurt and prepared to fight back, but as it turned out, the pile of rocks we hit was in fact a golem and we had greatly anger it by waking it. It roared calling forth its brethren and in mere moments we were surrounded. One of us gave the retreat call and we all fled in different directions to escape getting massacred. I was the neatest to the caravan and was tasked to finish guiding it to its destination. I somehow guided it out, but none of my friends arrived at the same town as us. In waited there for a couple days, but when they didn't show up I decided to go in search for them. I got lost for a couple of days and entered a new town half starved. It was then that I was offered a meal by some of other people there. One was a tanuki and the other a wolf. They appeared rather wealthy by the quality of their clothes, but still not at the level of nobles."

	"Don't you know the golden rule?" asked the boar. "Never accept handouts from suspicious people."

	"I know that, but I was so hungry my gut was calling the shots. Even so, I was close to passing out. They could have taken me afterwards, but this way I earned myself a meal."

	"Very true," laughed the boar heartily. "That actually makes me feel better despite how crappy a day this has been."

	"So how did you two get caught?" asked Drag.

	"We were working for a noble," explained the fox. "The job we had to do was tough, but the reward was going to be more gold than we ever owned before. We completed it and were on our way to collect the pay when we were ambushed by the slave traders. Apparently, the noble decided to save some coin by sending them after us. We were barely able to defend ourselves due to the fatigue from the job and that's how we ended up here."

	"This is so messed up," said Drag. "And we're going to spend the rest of our lives as slaves?"

	The sky rumbles as dark clouds joined together and the smell of moisture entered their noses. "Damn," grunted the boar. "After a month long drought now it decides to rain."

	"We'd best get under this," instructed the fox as he lifted up a dusty, old tarp. "It's the only bit of comfort they allowed us. They don't want us catching cold and if we do it will only serve to earn their wrath."

	"What is it like being a slave?" Drag asked again as he got under the tarp.

	"It depends what kind you become," the fox explained. "Old warriors like us have only two choices that aren't even ours to make."

	"We could become laborers," the boar continued. "We'd spend twenty-five hours a day toiling away for no pay and getting lashings when we stop due to exhaustion. Still it is better than becoming a gladiator. We'd be forced to fight bloody battles against other gladiators and savage beasts. Even death might not be enough to free us. They tend to hire necromancers and medics to resuscitate those defeated. I have heard tell some have been revived dozens of times, their bodies riddled with some many scars they are completely unrecognizable. When limbs and body parts are beyond salvage they replace them with ones from dead gladiators monsterizing them further still."

	"And to refuse to fight is impossible as well," added the fox. "All combatants are forced to down a brew to force upon them a fierce rage. They lose all reason and restraint and viciously attack one another. Meanwhile their own spectates the entire thing, having his cock pleasure by a concubine while he gets off on the blood and gore. He'll probably invite others to earn some coin as well."

	"Will I have to do that as well?" whimpered Drag fearfully. He couldn't stop shaking as he imaging everything they said.

	"I doubt you have to worry about that," ensured the fox. "It depends on what your master wish, but those positions are typically given to the older, worn ones. You are still young and rather innocent if you don't know this stuff already."

	The rain quickly went from a drizzle and became a fierce downpour. The tarp's protection did very little as rain got in through the holes and soaked the floor of the cart. The ground became very muddy making the wagon train shake and stop more as the wheels sunk into it.

	"Then it won't be so bad?" asked Drag feeling a bit of hope.

	"Heh," snorted the boar. "It will be much worse for you."

	"It will?" cried Drag nearly tearing a bigger hole in the tarp.

	"Did you have to tell him that?" groaned the fox rubbing the throbbing vein on his forehead. "He would find out before long anyway."

	"Then he might as well find out now," retorted the boar. "Kid, listen up. There are three things that masters truly desire in a slave. The first is for them to be young and healthy, the second is for them to be an exotic species, and the last is for them to possess magical ability. Just looking at you, you fulfill two of those things. You are young and uh, some weird kind of dog hybrid."

	"I'm part dog and part dragon," he admitted.

	"Damn," the boar whistled. "Dragon slaves are some of the most desired. Even a half breed. They are rare since dragons are quite difficult to acquire. I take it that means you possess magic too?"

	"Y-yes," Drag admitted turning pale and curling up.

	"What my friend here is getting at is that you may be the most valuable slave here," explained the fox. "You will probably be sold for a small fortune."

	"Wh-why?" cried Drag. "What kind of slave will I be?"

	"More of a plaything that a toy," explained the boar. "It won't be like anything you can expect because there is no telling what you will be expected to do. All kinds of sexual acts that will violate every hole you have and turn you into a slut. And over time you will be taught to submit and love it. It will be like a drug to you and your master will only continue to introduce you to more of his fetishes, using them as punishments to discipline you or just for fun. And before long they will be as much fun for you. It might sound odd, but you will cease to be a slave the instance you grow to embrace it."

	"That doesn't make any sense," replied Drag. "I don't want anything like that to happen to me!"

	"Nothing you can do about it now," the boar told him. "The second you were put on this wagon train, your fate was sealed."