Chapter 12: Augustus

          As the two of them walked up to the master’s room, they noticed something. Such as, his usual guards that stayed up during the night looked shaken. It was rather weird; these men were very well trained as far as Aisling knew.

          But all in all, it wasn’t the weirdest fact. The simple matter of them being here at this hour of the morning meant something was fishy. At first when Aisling only knew that she had been called, she thought the master had finally decided he wanted to experiment with his slaves.

          But as soon as she met his personal butler, she knew that had been wrong. She looked over to the man in question and sighed. It wouldn’t be the first time she had seen the master have a threesome; well, she hadn’t seen it. But she had heard it through the walls. But that was a matter for another time. She knew that her lord didn’t invite people that weren’t slaves to such things.

          But getting back on track. She wanted to know why she had been called here. She again looked at her walking companion, he surely wanted to know why he had been called at such an hour. He seemed out of it still, even after she had told him that he should be happy to be getting paid, but never the matter.

          As they neared the door, the guards raised their short spears and looked at the two of them as the butler opened the door. He gestured for her to go in first, but she simply stood there, unmoving. He frowned at this and entered first instead. As she followed him, she couldn’t help but realize the sudden stress in the room.

          It was filled with an odd tension. It was as if this was sudden to even the duke. Now that she was thinking about it, it was probably like that. Her master’s sudden call at 12:30 was surely a strange one, even for him. After all, he was usually asleep by now.

          She wondered what could have gotten him so tense and stressed. She looked over to her master and noticed the stack of papers that never dwindled had been toppled to the floor. On the desk that he sat at and usually used when making love to the head maid was a singular piece of paper. On it was something that Aisling couldn’t read. Sitting on the other side of the room was that man.

When one got into the room you would step in looking at the master’s desk. On the right side of the room was a hearth. The glow from it made the small room feel cozy. Behind the master’s desk that slotted into the wall was a surprisingly small bed. This was his work room, not his office. He slept there when he was too tired to go to his normal bedroom.

Next to the hearth, on the door’s side of the room was a chair, in it was that man. He was leaning back in it, and he looked very tired. She looked back to her master as if she had any right to ask questions.

“Bartholomew, stay where you are. Doll, come here, I need you to pick up these papers,” her master ordered as a familiar pain seeped into her.

It didn’t even need to do that. The collar just liked to do that to her, as if mocking her molded will to cooperate. She was just fine with being a slave, guess her past life’s experience just made her like this. It was as if her life being a big sister, teaching and loving her little sister and niece was nothing in the face of the chancellor’s molding and conditioning.

She was a little upset right now; she didn’t even get to sleep at all when her lord had told her to come here. And all he wanted her to do was pick up papers. She was not in a good mood at all.

“Is that her name? her name is doll?” the man asked.

She had already gotten on her knees and began picking up her master’s papers when he asked that. She had nearly forgotten that her master only ever called her doll. Or he called her slave, or servant, or anything along those lines.

It was rather strange to have such a man from her past life ask her own, new master that question. It didn’t feel like déjà vu, but it did give her a funny feeling in her gut. Like she was being watched even though they couldn’t follow her. Or maybe they could? Maybe that was why he was here?

Did the chancellorship find her past family’s guardian spirit and somehow interrogate it? That would be very frighting. If they could do that, then they could do anything. They could find her; they could kill her. But most importantly, they could murder her family.

That was impossible, it was very bad to be thinking about that. She could slip up and be punished for it, and she didn’t like that one bit. What frightened her even more was that he seemed to like beastkin more than human women. After all, he seemed more intrigued by her than anyone else.

“No, her name is… wait,” her master turned to her, “slave, what is your name? It seems like it has slipped my mind,” he asked.

She got up from the floor and straightened her uniform.

“My lord, this humble doll name is Aisling,” she told him.

He nodded at that and looked to that man and then nodded again.

“You heard her, her name is Aisling,” he reiterated her own name. “But getting back to the topic at hand, about this letter you have given me lord Felix Wilhelmsen. Is it really just an invitation to the young prince’s birthday?”

“Yes duke, it really just is. And yes, I know, it’s weird that I came here to deliver it when a normal messenger could have been sent. But I really like beastkin, and I heard that you like them as well. That is why I came here, I simply wished to know where the best spots to buy them are, as well as talk about them in general,” he told the duke.

That seemed to shock him a little.

“Really? I was under the impression that you did not have beastkin in the world you came from?” he asked.

The man nodded with a giddy smile on his stupid face. It was as if he had found his soulmate, or well, a brother in arms. The duke also seemed to be rather intrigued by the man from her past life. The man continued:

“But they do come in our fiction. In fact, it has been my dream to meet one if I had the chance. But it seems that they aren’t rare in this world!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, that is true. While beastkin are native to Poland, they were brought to the rest of the world as slaves for the most part. But a long time ago, the then king of Ireland freed a large group of them in his lands. Since then, you can find them free there,” her master explained to the man.

          Felix, the man who had broken her will to actually continue to work in the army for her chancellorship, broke into a goofy smile. It was uncanny to see such a man who seemed to hate the default human race so much that he dived into the fanaticism that was her past life’s government.

          He was a man of pure, unadulterated contempt for the common man so much, that he wished for it to become something else unrecognizable. In her past, he had tried to get her life, and her men’s lives taken by telling high command that they were dissenters.

          When the chancellor had decreed that she would turn man into something greater, he jumped on it. When she had told them all that their children would not have to fear disease, but the disease that they feared would rather run form them after her reforms; well let’s just say he seemed to find no flaws in that statement.

          The next generation was slightly smarter, stronger, and faster in most ways than the previous generation. But some things were noticeably different with Aisling’s past neighbors. Their kids had ever so slightly furry ears. The tips now pointed. The chancellorship had said they were introducing gene therapy to pregnant mothers if they so wished; and he was the head of it.

          She had hated him for it. she did not mind the stuff about building a better generation, the Earth’s magnetic core was about to flip, mother nature was literally about to kill them, they needed to adapt.

          But that didn’t have anything to do with genetically engineered cat girls.

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