A New Roommate

After the 3 men introduced themselves, Fat came forward to speak.

"Now normally we would have killed you all, but you see. We have a need for you, so if you're obedient, you will get to keep your life and have enough food to eat and water to drink, a place to sleep, as well as a place to live, after all we are not savages, so how about it."

"And what happens if we don't?" One of the children asked.

"What would happen indeed?" Fat stroked his chin. "Why don't you give it a try, and then we will find out."

The children remained silent, it was clear that Fat would kill them if they ever dared to disobey.

Fat was happy, it seemed like the children had understood. So he wouldn't need to kill any more of them. After all they were precious resources, and each one killed was a loss of man power, but there will always be some unfortunate soul who thinks that they are special and try to do some useless things. He would have to weed them out when the time came, but for now, it seemed that his current action would suffice.

Lifting his hand, a portal opened up upon his gesture.

The children stood in a single file and began to enter the portal one after the other.

Abel also entered the portal without hesitation.

The man looked at him intently, his hair colour was particularly eye-catching.

When the children arrived, they were placed in an open hall. They stood according to the arrangements they were given. They were grouped by their hair colour, skin, gender, height, and size etc.

Muscles stood before them on a high stage waiting for the commotion to end.

♣︎♣︎♣︎

A high-pitched shrill spewed into the air.

Most of the children collapsed to the floor, screaming in pain. Blood pouring from their eyes, and puss seeping out through their ears. They began to emit a foul stench.

What they had just experienced was a test for those who did not have a blessing.

Not all the children whose hair colour had changed usually had a blessing, while some whose hair colour remained mousse brown had been granted a blessing. It was indeed a rare phenomenon, so most children, and their families usually went to a tester at the temple to check for a blessing. Therefore this method wasn't commonly used because it was dangerous. Whereas, muscles didn't have the time of day to check each one of the kids who had been kidnapped. He would rather get it over with in one fell swoop. Not to mention he was neither a tester nor was he a blessed.

"All the kids who fell, get the fuck out of here, you worthless freeloaders. If I catch sight of you in the next half a second, I'm going to blow you all to smithereens."

The already disordered children began to stumble their way out of the gathering as quickly as they could. Luckily, Muscles didn't make due of his threat.

"The rest of you move up, I can barely see you all from the back."

Soon the sights of children scrambling to fill in the spaces left by the others ensued, causing commotion and pandemonium, after all they would rather not be the ones rolling on the floor like the other kids. After the pandemonium had died down, muscles came forward.

"From now on I will be your Nestor, you will listen to me and obey me."

"Your reply?"

"Yes Nestor." The children chimed.

"Do you oppose?"

"No Nestor."

. . .

"As you know, us beings have been blessed by the higher beings with the blessings, and only the cursed few out of us do not possess them, those that left just now were the cursed. You all here are the blessed, from now on you will be demonstrating your blessings according to your order."

"First up is Purple."

Gasp.

Gasps of surprise echoed from around the field, "they have a Purple?"

 "How?"

"Isn't that Royalty?"

"They managed to kidnap someone from a royal family."

This revelation left quite the shock on the children. Who were these people?

'If even The Royal Family could not defend against them, what chance did they have?'

The Nestor who knew there thoughts smirked.

He had no intentions of answering them.

'At least with this there spirits would be crushed a bit more.'

 The three children had light purple hair and walked towards the stage.

"Oh my! It's Light Purple, they must be illegitimates."

The Royal Family, family of Cirā, was known for their precious stones as well as their blessings, which manifested as the jewelled colour, Purple.

They walked up to the stage and made their way through to the garden behind the Nestor.

"What!"

"Nothing happened?"

"The hell, so anti-climactic."

The children murmured. It seemed they were adapting quite fast.

Muscles called over the next batch of children in the order of, Gold, Pink, Green and Yellow. They were all illegitimates from the 5 royal families of The Blessed Land.

"Next up are the Blues, in a single file get your asses up here."

The children assembled in a single file and began to walk forward, as they reached the stage, most of them fell to the floor and began to scream, some were foaming at the mouth

"Hmm . . . Weak."

Muscles didn't seem to mind, he simply had the other children walk over the others and continued with the procedure. As Abel walked through the pile of unconscious bodies on the floor, he reached the stage.

Sharp slashes were made on his body and he felt a searing pain. Instinctively, he grabbed the sides where he had been cut, but there was nothing. He moved forward again and the same thing happened, each step induced a new cut. His hands were cut, next his legs, then his ears, his mouth, his tongue, his lung, even his eyes were stabbed and exposed.

"Ahh! I see, this is a test for us, it must be an illusion cast by the Nestor." The pain was real, he was blinded in both eyes, his entire body had been cut, he could feel himself losing blood, the stickiness, itchiness and gooeyness, of his destroyed eyeballs were all real. He was nauseous and felt the urge to throw up. The flies that swarmed into his eyes, and his wounds, were all too real. A strange numbness encroached him. It was enough for anyone to pass out from such shear horror, even more so, mere children. 'How did those Royals avoid it?'

'Or did they avoid it?'

'They had walked much too quickly instead of fumbling around like everyone else.'

Abel was in such pain, yet his thoughts kept spinning wilder.

'Were they in cahoots with the Nesters?'

'Did the royal families plan this?'

'What was going on?'

None of Abel's thoughts had answers.

No.

Could he ever hope for them to be answered?

He had been constantly shot at, by arrows. He didn't want to continue, but if he gave up now what would happen to him? He trudged forward a bit more.

'I need to return to mother.' Just when he thought he would die, he tripped and fell forward into the garden, bringing his suffering to an end.

The Nestor observed him, "Hmm! I guess there are some lucky bastards this time."

Abel shuddered.

He got up and moved on immediately, not wanting to spend another second in the arena.

His sight was greeted by a pigsty, but judging from the size, it seemed it was going to be used for a different purpose. "Are they going to ask us to look after pigs next?" Abel's guess was half right.

The outer layer of the building had a few pigs, well just one sow and her 8 piglets, the remaining 3 pens were empty.

Walking inside Abel could see locally made, wooden bunk beds.

They were made by tying pieces of wood together, and a bit of Yack gum was used as an adhesive to prevent them from falling apart.

Each room was about the size of 10 by 5 feet, and had six bunk beds. In order words a glorified pig pen, with a chamber pot by the corner, and some leaves for their business.

'Is this where we're going to live?'

Tsk.

It seemed his effort to get in wasn't worth much.

Abel walked around a little and discovered that all the rooms were the same. The building consisted of 50 rooms on each side, for a total of a hundred. After making his way to the very end, Abel decided to stay there, since he didn't have the will to walk back. He figured that as more people entered the rooms it would get noisy, so he decided to take room 2W250L, the last room on the left. Opening the door, he found a red head seated on the lower bunk by the window. 'I'll avoid the window since it could be dangerous.'

The red head had probably come in before him. While he was stuck in his illusions, other groups must have been called.

The children began settling in and chatting as if nothing ever happened, like regular school kids. It was nostalgic.

Abel mounted the bed. 'It's best if I stay here, I can get an optimal view of the entire dorm from here, and gain assessment of the situation.' He stayed a top of the bunk behind the door of the room. From there he could also get a view of the hallway, from the opening between the walls and the roof, supported by the pillars.

'Perfect.'

He had considered various factors and picked out the best variables he could come up with. If anyone were to attack and opened the door he wouldn't be the first target, so he would have sometime to react.

He closed his eyes to get some sleep. As he had settled down and was about to get some rest, the girl beside the window called out to him.

"Hey you. Can't you even say hello?"

"Don't you just love the view from here, and the fresh air too?"

. . .

'What fresh air?' The room smelled like a pile of shit. Abel scoffed.

"I'm your new roommate shouldn't you say something?"

. . .

The red head was visibly ticked.

"You're the guy right? The one who didn't drink the potions?" She smirked, arm folded against her bosom.

Thump!, Thump!, Thump!

Abel's eyes shot open as he sat up on his bed, staring at the mysterious girl, who had a knowing smirk on her face.