THE SOCIAL PRISON: THE OUTSKIRTS.

***In the a place addressed as the Outskirts of 'Eclipse of the Oceans' on planet Gieă.

     As promised, Eleanora bids Old Ning goodbye the next morning. After some thanks and byes, Eleanora leaves Old Ning's humble shelter before even the first rays of sunlight hits the muddy grounds.

     She has been beyond lucky to chance upon someone that not only wanted to help but also had the skill sets to help. If not for her incredible luck to encounter Old Ning, Eleanora and her son would have gone far beyond the doors of the underworld.

     Eleanora has never been too lucky in most encounters with people and would have never expected a stranger to stand their ground for her when she truly needs it.

The Old man has done something massive for her and so the memory and gratitude of this encounter is bound to last a lifetime.

     With this thoughts in mind, Eleanora steps out of the mud House and looks out to the street's and the future that awaits her and her newborn son.

     'Not so bright..'

Because of how early she had woken up, there's almost no-one in the streets and the illumination of the outside isn't anything worth bragging about. The sun is nowhere to be seen for the moment and although covered by thin clouds, the moon gently hangs on the fabric of the grey sky while giving off a faint but reassuring glow that somehow calms the elf's worries.

     With her baby strapped firmly on her back and her entire face and body covered by thick robes, the elves sets out. She begins to find her way around as she looks up at a massive mountail-like structure in the distant horizon. To Eleanora and most in the outskirts, this distant horizon seems to span for eternity.

     The major reason that this parts of the ever-so- prosperous 'Eclipse of the Ocean' is called Outskirts is simply because the Outskirts isn't consider a part of the Kingdom. Infact, this area is completely divided from the rest of the kingdom by a very vast and uncrossable border wall that towers like mountains.

     The walls dividing the Outskirts from the rest of the world are over a three hundred meters in height and hundred meters in concrete width!. Just like a mountain, It is made from a form of concrete that's almost indestructible.

     These great walls encircle half of the Outskirts in the shape of a semi-circle while extending to lengths that leaves anybody on the other side satisfied that except from wind, no other form of life or non-life is allowed to cross over.

     Why were all of these 'tall' measures necessary to enclose the filth ridden outskirts?..

Is the Imperial Court and military of the great 'Eclipse of the Oceans' so scared of a bunch of poverty and filth ridden people that they would go to these lengths?!.

     Of course not!.

     The top powers of the great Eclipse of the Oceans would and cannot care less about a limited number gathering of people whose life and death can be determined with a few words. But looking at these walls, any smart person would realise that the true occupants of Eclipse of the Oceans had to be scared or atleast wary of something much more bigger than the Outskirts but associated with the Outskirts.

     Something big enough to make them isolate the areas and station two hundred thousand battle hardened warriors at the other side of the borders.

Something the people of Eclipse of the Oceans want to guard and fight against from entering the true parts of the Continent.

Something even the powers of the Imperial court cannot completely eliminate but can only control.

What can this thing or event possibly be?.

Well the answers lie in the other half that completes the Outskirts circular cage.

     The other semicircle that enclosed the Outskirts is a mystic forest that seems to span for eternity without stop. The forest seems to measure in eternity with both its length and breath looking like an incomprehensible ocean of trees.

     This forest is a source of a great calamity that almost wiped out Half the Continent thirty thousand years ago. Many records of this dark time has been kept with the event described as the opening of the very gates of hell!.

     Beasts, demons, hounds and even leviathans descended upon the Continent like a sandstorm from the forests. The World has never seen a tide of beasts on that magnitude as it made even the most horrific beast hordes recorded seem like nothing but a trickle compared to the sheer scale of the calamity.

     They say the reason for this sandstorm is because the ancestors of the people enclosed in the Outskirts.

These ancestor are said to have tried to perform a forbidden spell in order to summon a devil. The ritual backfired thus leading to a chaotic spatial rift opening deep in the forests. The results of this tear caused the commotion people referenced to ad Dõmîçøriüs for generations past and to come.

     Through great sacrifices, the rift was sealed and the beasts were slaughtered with some of them on retreat. It took over eight centuries for true order to return to the lands but the offspring's of everyone even remotely involved in the opening of the rift were ruthlessly sealed behind the borders and left to depravity.

This is done as a punishment to them and a lesson to others or atleast,.. this is the story know by the less enlightened people on both sides of the walls. The powerful and more knowledgeable ones would probably have a different story but to the same result seen today.

     Eleanora navigates the streets as she seems to walk towards the distant mountain walls with its grandure becomes clearer with each passing step. Even in a place as lowly as the Outskirts, there still stands an hierarchy.

The few ones lucky enough to have Cultivation breakthroughs despite the lack of resources sits at the top of the food chain. Strong cultivators stands at the very top of this hierarchy with a good standard of living maintained by their power.

     But even these few powerful cultivators needs others for chores and entertainment and so, the qualified few that gets this position can be called the middle class.

These Middle-class people can live a good life and enjoy benefits while under the wings of their Cultivator masters but in exchange, they must put these masters before themselves.

     Finally, the Outskirts hosts the bottom class who were the significant ninety percent of the population and these people were in some cases worst than animals. The major source of food for everybody at the Outskirts is meat but the meat of over ninety percent of the animals in the outer parts of the forests are not edible.

     Even with the might of cultivators, hunting is difficult and so, meat is gold and the lower population will have to fight for the scraps and bones left in the plates of the satisfied upper and middle class.

     Eleanora falls in the position of the middle class as she is a 'Geisha' who serves in the guesthouse of the upper class. The job of a Geisha is normally to entertain the guests, laugh at their jokes, hum or sing them a tune and promote the sales of alcohol but when you live in a system where the only available cultivators were regarded like gods, who is to stop them if they wanted to cross more than a few lines.

     Most of the time, the crossing of these lines is consensual and for the benefits of both parties but in some cases, the extreme happens while the guesthouse turns a blind eyes in exchange for subtle benefits.

     Eleanora has been through the ups and down of working in this system for years and she has always gotten special attentions.

Elves were known for their purity and for a young orphan elf like her, there's just something twistedly pleasurable to to some cultivators about defiling her sacredness!.

     At first, she hated life.. but slowly, she got used to it. At a point, she even stared using it as a weapon and as a banter to her own benefits. It isn't something she's proud of but considering the system they lived in, it isn't something she's ashamed of either.

     Although with some bumps, life became liveable for Eleanora until one day, she finds herself with an enlarging stomach. At first she thought or wanted to believe that she've put on some weight but a check-up quickly confirmed it.. she was pregnant.

     Because of their high affinity to life, elves could carry pregnancies for years of nuturing with this period sometimes even reaching up to a decade!. Delivery usually starts from the third year upwards but it isn't considered wierd if an elf gives birth after nine years of being pregnant!

     Because of the job she does and the absurd timing of elves pregnancies and deliveries, there's absolutely no way to determine the father of the child. Even if she did find the father, there's no telling if he would want to play a part in her child's upbringing and so, it's better to consider him- whoever it is.. dead.

     Not knowing for how long she had been pregnant, Eleanora finds out that that she's about to deliver just two months after finding out she's pregnant!. This of course came as a shock to her as she slowly counted the days down to her delivery but then,.. she caught the eyes of a monster!.

     A very powerful cultivator with a twisted and beyond depraved fetish for pregnant women on the course of delivery!. She have heard and she knows more than a little about this man and she knows how much of a heartless sadist he can be!.

     Most of his victims and their unborn children don't make it out and as for the ones that do, they are left with permanent disabilities. Eleanora isn't stupid enough to believe that the guesthouse would protect her as it's heartless owner would be the first to sell her out for the right price.

She cannot hide anywhere in the upper areasof the Outskirts as that is cultivator's domain. If she had stayed there, it would only take a bit of effort for that beast of a man to find her and so, Eleanora makes a brave but reckless decision.

     She fled!.