I will say this about slavery, at least it lets you take your mind off your other problems (not an endorsement of slavery, I'm just saying with my awful life it was nice to not have to worry about something other than you know tilling soil and hauling crap from place to place). I was working all day and sleeping until I got rudely woken up in the morning. It was hard work, but it was honest work, though it was kind of delaying what I'd come east to do! As the days became weeks I started to worry about myself.
It had been fifty years since I'd had magic or done magic, specifically necromancy. Ordinarily this wouldn't worry me, because in my experience using up a life gives you more than their life and I always had the ability to take more. But at that time I was starting to feel my age (which would be fifty not two hundred plus). Bones and muscles hurt in ways that they previously didn't and former just annoying pains started to become excessively more worrisome because again I couldn't simply take a life to fix them (have I mentioned I'm a terrible person? Because I totally am). Which made each day of slave labor putting me more and more at risk of actually dying.
All of that to say I was starting to feel the need to actually get back on track with my actual quest when we had a vistor at the gates of the compound. I say visitor but it was more like a refugee, a very pretty woman who was begging for us to let her in. The men running the compound weren't about to let a new slave go to waste immediately invited her in and brought her up their house. The other female slaves gave each other knowing glances and I kept plowing my field. It was hours later when the sun had gone down for the day and I hadn't seen the idiots with guns that I started to wonder just exactly what had happened.
I was laying down for the night when I heard the scream, it was one of the house servants screaming. I got up from my crappy hay pile (yes the best kind of sleep, a discarded hay pile, I recommend you all try this lavish lifestyle at least once, so you too can wake up with hay in uncomfortable places). The house was dark, which wasn't unusual, except everything was dark. The entire compound normally had lamps lit all night to ward off the evil or whatever but now there wasn't anything. Screaming kept coming from the main house but I couldn't see anything (it was a moonless night as well, and I'll be honest I have terrible night vision). I stumbled in something that I thought was crap (the leaders of the compound when drunk tended to just go wherever and expect the slaves to clean it up, so it wasn't unusual to step in shit no matter where you were), but turned out to be a mixture of a person.
My eyes adjusted better and the entire courtyard was covered in the remains of people. I was wondering what the hell had seemingly ripped itself out of the former occupants when what appeared to be a walking skinless lady came slowly screaming towards me (sadly not the most terrifying thing I've seen in my life, but definately in the top 10, why do I have a top 10?) I'll admit I went to use magic, it had been so long a part of me I didn't even think. Of course I didn't have any magic and the walking corpse kept walking and screaming. Now I had no idea how that corpse had become animated, and to tell you the truth I did not want to find out. So I did the smart thing and ran away.
Well partially smart, I ran towards the house (its not my fault they had all the weapons, including my pistols). Inside was a horrific scene, blood coated walls, body parts were scattered everywhere and the rooms were in dissarray. I didn't go further in, but I'm sure it was actually worse, thankfully one of the idiots in his hurry to commit offense to mankind had dumped his gun belt with my pistols just on the ground, it was covered in blood and had a hand reaching out for it (not connected), but the pistols looked still fine. The screaming was coming on louder my pursuer approached with inevitability.
I drew my pistol, pointed it at the flesh creature and fired. Or tried to fire, there was an unwelcome click from the hammer hitting and the creature kept coming. Frantically I pulled the hammer back and fired again, nothing. I could feel the heft of bullets, so it wasn't unloaded, but perhaps the damage from water logged had messed up something in the pistols mechanism. With my left hand I drew the other pistol and with some thumb stretching managed to pull the hammer back on that pistol as well and fire, or try to, it too was coming back with a click. The creature was approaching its mouth had opened wide like that of a snake, to eat me or unleash something I have no idea. I was pulling the hammer back on both pistols as fast I could, I had 16 attempts between them for a working bullet and I hoped I'd get one before being eaten. Between 5 on my left and 7 on my right both guns roared to life which surprised me with recoil enough to hurt my wrists, but it did splatter my screaming corpse lady. Her extended jawed face about a foot away erupted in blood and flesh fragments as the two bullets found their target.
I breathed a sigh of relief and then got the hell out of the complex. I didn't know if there were other things there, or what in the gods name had happened to the corpse lady, but I didn't want to ever find out. I thought for a moment of getting supplies or more bullets from the house, but the remains of my attempted cannibal skeleton was enough to make me welcome the extra ammo on the gun belt and some vegetables from the garden and be gone. It wasn't exactly a great start to my time east, I'd been enslaved and then damned near eaten, but I at least knew sort of what my enemy was, flesh creatures, joy!
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