The slave-trading party moved in a crowded manner, but in a certain order: Five riders in front, five behind, and carts in between, with the prisoners in the front. They moved slowly and at a relaxed pace, so that we still had a couple of minutes to prepare for an attack after making our decision.

"Well, look." — I said, at the same unfolding the automatic rifle, removed from its holder, and passing it into the tender maiden hands of the resolutely determined warrior for bloodshed. — "I'll go in the open, and you'll cover from here."

She is, of course, a very inexperienced marksman: you can't count the two dozen rounds she fired under my supervision while we were resting in the shelter as experience. But she's certainly got talent, and the distance here is easy-about twenty meters to the road. And I'll be safe for her life if I leave her here.

"Okay." — Twitching her ears in impatience, Chloe takes up her weapon and lies down, taking aim at the rider riding ahead of everyone. She does it right. I have little ammunition and nowhere to replenish it, but my lessons with firearms were not limited to that. Within a week Chloe had easily learned the necessary minimum.

"Leave those to me." - I squat down and redirect the barrel of the gun from the beginning of the column to the end of it - "Cut off those who jump to help them or try to escape, but in the direction of the front cart better not shoot - there are hostages."

[Should I turn on  recording?] — My electronic roommate inquired.

[Go ahead.] — After a little thought, I give my consent and a time counter appears in the corner of the eye interface, among other parameters.

— [Tear them up.]

That was the end of the instructions and we set about waiting for the enemy to get closer.

"It's time" — I pat the pixie on the shoulder as the head of the procession reaches our position and immediately, taking a low start, I charge forward, activating my blade as I go and leaping at full speed out of the forest, leaping onto the crest of the closest horse.

The rider, not thinking straight, loses his head, and I'm on my way to the next.

No sooner had the poor animal, toppled onto its side by the force of my legs, fallen to the ground than I caught up with it. Neither a sword nor a chainmail helped the man: the blade, vibrating at a thousand vibrations per second, sliced the upper half of his body clean off, along with a chunk of the weapon. This time I jumped not on the horse, but past it, just far enough to hit him, so I landed calmly on the ground at the same time as the two bandit's bodies I'd killed and turned to the others.

"Who the hell are you?!" — Yelled at me bearded big man, dressed, unlike the others, in a full cuirass and a thick gray cloak of expensive-looking fabric - the explicit leader of the gang. — "Who do you think you're messing with?"

There was a touch of fear mixed with rage in his voice. He'd just seen two of his men torn to shreds in a second, which was understandable. They might even have been friends... but who cares?

"I don't talk to dead people." — The last thought flew from my lips and my interlocutor's face twisted in anger, he was even going to answer me something aggressive, maybe even pathetically ordering my subordinates to kill me, but then Chloe made herself known: the automatic shot, so close, stabbed the unprepared ears of horses like a scalpel, immediately stirring up the animals and making them panic.

And while the men tried to cope with the frightened animals, I took advantage of this and began to act.

The first in line was the head man, and I simply yanked him down by his leg and knocked him out with a blow to the jaw with my elbow.

The dagger I found on his belt left its scabbard and flew into the head of the other victim. The blade went straight into his eye, leaving the bastard no chance of survival.

The last of the front five riders was terrified. He could do nothing as the sword entered his lungs from below in an oblique trajectory. Spitting out a clot of blood, he fell face down on his horse's back, and the animal, left unchecked, ran off wherever it could see.

All the while, gunshots sounded from the side of the thicket, accompanied by screams of pain and falling bodies.

"Die!" — I turn around and see another suicidal man coming at me at full gallop, pointing his spear at me. Idiot. He has lost his last though ghostly chance to hurt me.

At the last moment I remove the body from the line of attack and, grasping the shaft of the spear, throw the fool to the ground. I didn't have to do anything else: his leg was stuck in the stirrup, and a frightened horse and a pleasant ride with his face on the ground would finish the job as well as I did.

I hear the crack of the bowstring. The body itself comes into motion.

[Behind you!] — the warning sounded at the same time as my own reaction. I do a somersault forward, letting the crossbow bolt pass over me, which, not finding its target in my face, flies off somewhere into the bushes.

I look where the shot came from and see the charioteer, shaking with his hands, reloading his crossbow. I've seen that somewhere before...

— [Thank you.]

The spear I hadn't let out of my hand went flying, ending in the shooter's chest.

I listened: there was no sound around, except the sound of the remaining horses and the sobs from inside the wagon. Activated thermal vision confirmed the absence of new foes. The timer froze at the one-minute, eleven-second mark. That's how long it took to kill twelve people, taking into account the time I'd spent running and talking to their leader.

The first thing I did was to tear off a piece of harness from a horse I had caught there and tie up the commander tightly. After that, I checked the bodies of the bandits for survivors: there were no survivors, I had hit for sure, and those who were shot by Chloe, those who did not die immediately, had time to bleed out and take their breath away. By this time the girl herself had managed to come out to me and help with the inspection. A fleeting glance at the next wagon showed a bullet-riddled chaser with legs sticking out of the wagon and bags of unidentified contents. Either slavers' belongings or loot, or more likely both. We'll look inside later. We should look at the prisoners first.

"Oh." — I burst out as I stared into five pairs of frightened eyes. Bound hand and foot, the five dark elves stared at me with fear as they lay at the bottom of the wagon.

[Fixing multiple signs of violence.] — Martha was the captain of the obvious.

[Of course it is.] — It didn't take a genius to figure out what was happening to them from the moment they were caught. Torn, dirty clothes, sticky hair, bruises and abrasions all over their bodies. They hadn't even bothered to wash them after they'd been abused.

Sons of bitches.

No, I guessed exactly what I might see here, and I thought I would be ready for it. But reality showed me I was wrong. I'd never regretted killing anyone... too quickly. Even when we were sent to sweep out the Cultists, who had suddenly decided that mollusks were God's punishment and were rioting and sabotaging cities in their name, I didn't feel that angry. They simply killed their victims, thereby, in their mind, bringing them relief. Here we have the result of the actions of fuckheads who think they can get away with anything.

But they forgot there's always a bigger toad in any swamp.

"Oh, gods..." — Chloe froze for a second when she saw what I saw, and then she rushed to untie the restraints.

"Hush, hush..." — she whispered as she cut the ropes with her dagger in the arms of what looked like a young teenage girl. — "You'll be all right... you're safe."

A sharp U-turn on my heels and in two jumps I get to the tied up bastard.

"Wake up, little fella." — I give him a good slap, and that's how I bring him to his senses.

"А?!" — The would-be corpse twitches in my hands, trying to get his eyes together. A little while later, he succeeded. — "YOU?! What did you do to me, you bastard?! You... K-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h...!"

His jab on his solar plexus made him bend in half and gape like a fish, goggle his eyes, and gasp for air.

"Look." — I put my hand over his mouth and turned him to face the corpses of his associates. — "Your friends are already in the land of eternal hunting."

"Mm-mm-mm-mm!!!" — Muttering, the slave-trader mewled and convulsed in a futile effort to break free as soon as he saw the others' fate.

"Soon you will join them. But first..." — I made him look at my face and turned on the light in my eyes. — "You and I are going to have a productive talk."

In a little while. Chloe.

The time since Kay dragged the captured slave trader away for interrogation, Chloe has spent caring for the rescued girls. Having hastily treated their abrasions, washed them with water found in the wagon, and dressed them in the clothes she found too, she tried to gently ask the former captives about what had happened to them.

The girl, more than anyone else, understood how they were feeling, but it was necessary. First of all, for the victims themselves, so they could speak out and not keep everything to themselves.

Tears and hysteria welled up as the two elves vied with one another to vent their frustrations. Even screams, sobs, pleading, and strange noises were enough to hinder the pouring out of tears from where her partner had gone. The bastard's cries, however, caused only joy and gloating satisfaction in Chloe's soul. If time and opportunity had allowed, his fate would have been shared by his accomplices, but they were even lucky, because corpses can't feel pain...

The story of the rescued, meanwhile, was not original: one of the many villages on the edge of the desert was raided by slave hunters, all the male population was put under the knife, as well as most of the women, and those who remained awaited a much worse fate. Once upon a time, when Chloe was a little girl of twelve, the same thing had happened to her home. She wished she could forget that time like a bad dream. She wanted to, but she couldn't. And the unfortunate people she saw before her now only added fuel to the fire that had been slowly devouring her from within for three decades...

Involuntarily, Chloe compared herself and the girls rescued today. Unlike her, they had been enslaved only recently and could still return to normal life. Probably. At least, in their eyes there was still mind and will to live, unlike that broken doll that Mistress Olga had once found. In time, it got better, but a subconscious sense of her own depravity and a maniacal thirst to wash off the dirt accumulated over the years of torment haunted the girl, not wanting to let go. Only an equally fanatical devotion to her mistress prevented her from shamefully laying hands on herself. But even that oasis of stability in her life could have been lost if not for...

"I'm sorry." — Chloe was distracted from her heavy thoughts by one of the prisoners - Eisha, already a grown woman and mother of a girl named Mitra, who was huddled at her side. As the one who most steadfastly endured the ordeal, she assumed the role of a kind of leader among the rescued and actively helped Chloe to bring them into relative order. — "That man... he's not going to hurt us?"

"No." — Tougher than she should have, judging by the trembling lips of the woman, Chloe answered, which she was surprised herself. — "He's... a friend."

A friend? Yeah, Chloe guess. Although, at first, Chloe took the unexpected savior with a fair amount of mistrust, after all, he was human, and she hated humans more than anything else in the world. Besides, he was something subtly similar to herself, according to his reservations, was also deprived of freedom and subjected to torture, was also broken. But, in contrast to Chloe, he didn't seem at all burdensome about it, rather proud and humorous about his past.

[I once had half my skull cut off in order to install a brand-new neuro-implant directly into my brain,] — his recent words came to mind. It was said so casually, as if it meant nothing at all. A trifle, not worthy of attention. The things he said were so disconcerting, they made her question her sanity, but the wonders he demonstrated demonstrated that it was all real. The music alone was worth it.

Another thing that won her over was his attitude: he was not rude, did not treat her with prejudice, talked to her as an equal, not paying attention to her race, was always interested in problems, and was open. Chloe herself did not notice how she began to reach out to him and seek attention, because next to him she felt ... complete?

"Excuse me." — The woman bowed, clearly afraid to anger her saviors. — "I meant no offense, it's just that when he looked into the wagon, he looked very angry."

"Calm down. His anger was not directed at you, but at those responsible for what happened to you." — The girl stood up to defend her companion. — "He would never hurt you, you can be sure."

"Thank you for your kind words, Chloe." — came from behind a familiar voice.

"Kay?" — Abruptly turned on the spot girl. — "Have you already finished?"

"Yes, and our new friend told us a lot of interesting things before he died suddenly." — The man smiled, taking a step closer.

"I hope that scum suffered before he died." — One of the dark elves said angrily.

"Oh, don't doubt it, gorgeous." — Kei turned his attention back to the speaker. — "And I'd entertain him some more, but time is of the essence."

"What's to become of us?" — Asked Aisha, glancing warily at the man.

"We won't leave you in the lurch. But your appearance has slightly disrupted our plans, so we need to consult our superior." — Kay answered and reached into his pocket and pulled out a communications device. He had a second one of the same kind in front of Olga. — "So, it seems that we have not gone far and should get ..."

He grumbled, manipulating with the object in his hands under the incomprehensible looks of the elves, except for Chloe, although she was curious to see how the thing works, which allows to speak at a great distance.

There, the box emitted an intermittent hiss, which after a second was replaced by a voice:  — I think that's it... Can you hear me?

"Crystal." — Kei grinned, twirling the thing in his hand at chest level, and Chloe giggled to herself, noting the reaction of the other girls.

"It's..." — whispered one of them perplexed. — "Magic?"

"Hush..." — Chloe put her finger to the elf's lips.

"You said it was for emergencies, you have something wrong?" — The box, meanwhile, announced.

"Well." — Kay looked up at the sky and grinned. — "We found a transport."

— "That fast? But you weren't supposed to get there until this evening."

" And we didn't. We met a party of slave hunters."— Kay clarified. — "We have their horses and wagons now. Along with five dark elves."

"Now i want to hear details." — Her voice came out of the box, and instantly it took on a steely tone, typical of the queen.