Heading North

One of the men beside the cages came forth. He had the largest spike club and his robe hung around his waist, leaving his wide chest bare.

Half of his hair had been cut clean. The remaining half, plaited into a heavy braid that stopped at his waist. Zero assumed him to be the brute force of the group.

The giant man took three large steps and the distance between them was covered. With a hand alone, the giant of a man pulled Zero by his bony and rotting ankles.

The young man did not struggle, resigning to his fate as new merchandise for these exotic traders. He had no chance against them anyway.

The leader of the group, with his beards that danced above his grand belly, stared at Zero in curiosity and disgust.

"Stone, does it speak? Has it made a noise?"

Stone, the giant man with the large club grunted, threw Zero unto the cold snow and kicked him. The latter held in a pained groan and clutched his chest tightly, guarding the peculiar scroll he had found.

It looked ordinary at first glance, but who knew what else could interest these merchants.

Again, he was kicked and he bore the pain diligently.

'After all, I went through the worst of pains in that void. Nothing else could hurt more,'

Zero thought and found that he was weirdly delighted at how the kicks felt like nothing. Compared to what he had gone through in the pool of darkness, the hits where minuscule.

A small but innocent smile crept on his face and he curled into a fetal ball. Stone kicked and stomped to no avail. In the end, Zero was laughing to himself while stone stood far off, wide eyed and panting.

Their leader was very much interested by this point.

"Put him in the cage! I shall make good profit off him." In his hand was a wine skin. He lifted it up to his mouth and took a huge gulp, feeling quite merry.

Another man jumped down from his place on a certain cage and joined Stone. Together, they tied up the decaying creature that was Zero and threw him into a cage that was covered in vomit.

Zero landed face first on the vomit. It took a while to turn about so he lay belly up instead. He sighed and a bit of the vomit seeped into his mouth. He didn't bother to spit it out.

He stayed like that, watching the cage men though the bamboo bars till the cloudy sky darkned. Till the snow came pouring down much faster.

Then he turned to the side, face sticking to the drying vomit, noting how many people were in this cage with him. All together, they were only five.

A woman with an extra arm, a young boy without ears, a wide blob of flesh that must have been human once and a girl with long body hair that covered the grimy cage floorboard. Then him, a living dead.

'Quite the company, indeed' Zero thought sarcastically. There was a deprecating smile on his face as he observed them all. Weaklings, all of them. A weakling too, he was.

"Have any of you unfortunates got an idea where we are headed?" Zero asked, eyes on the blob of fat. He wondered if the thing could still move its lips.

' What in the world did it eat?' He wanted to laugh at the state of such a being.

He wanted to laugh at each of them. Including himself.

"Do you think yourself fortunate then? That you would call us unfortunate?" The Three-armed woman asked bitterly. There were scars all over her body and blood streaks on her legs.

"Do I think myself fortunate? Of course I do! I was taken away just in time. I could have frozen out there." He smiled as he said, " as you can see, I can't move much with this body of mine."

The woman scoffed and itched a leg with her third arm.

"You did not answer my question though. Do you know where we are going?" Zero asked again. Even if he was told, he had no idea of the geography outside of Qiqi. However, it was better than being completely ignorant.

This time, Hairy girl answered him. She sounded as though there was hair in her throat as well.

"They have travelled this path twice now," she said then coughed. "Evading the Corruption and its shadowbeasts, I heard them say once." Her voice came out a whisper.

The cage men had left their posts as the convoy began slowing down for a night's rest.

" What is the Corruption?" Zero asked, remembering a familiar liquid shadow. The smile on his face faded instantly as the reminants of fear creeped over him.

The whole cage was silent. Even the deaf boy who had no idea what was being said sensed the shift in the air. Blob person made a gurgling noise.

"No one knows." Three-armed woman had a quiver in her voice. It was obvious she had witnessed the power of this Corruption. "But it is a vile, vile thing. Turns humans to mindless, twisted monsters, and beasts into sentient demons. I have never seen anything like it."

"I have heard rumors of a mad cultivator that opened the gates to the underworld. How true it is, I am not sure. There's even talk of things worse than the Corruption and its shadowbeasts running amok." Zero felt a chill run up his spine at these words. He was too weak.

What was he to do if this Corruption came after him again? And from what the woman said, there were things much worse than it. Before he could dwell too much on this thought, Hairy girl spoke up.

"The traders are heading north. Towards the Jin lands, the imperial city of gold. Most influential people are heading there as well. " A cough. " My father was heading there too. They have the highest population of Qi masters and even a few full fledgedcultivators. These traders go where the business is moving." Her voice broke when she mentioned her father. No one asked. No one cared enough to ask.

"So we are heading to the land of the royals?" Zero asked, but to himself.

The very royals he had been told to worship all his life. When the plague broke out, Zero was only three. It was decreed by the emperor that a pit should be dug in every village and city and all the sick should be thrown in.

His father had blamed him many times for giving his mother the illness, for he fell sick first. It was her last wish before she was thrown in, that her son be hidden from the vigilantes that inspected all the homes. The only reason he had lived was his mother.

A woman whose face he could not remember.

And now, he was heading directly towards the land of the nonchalant rulers that had tossed their subjects away like dirt.

Humans...

He couldn't help but sit in anger. Hatred brewed in his heart and he could not do anything but wish he was stronger.

He could wish but could not act. He was far too weak.

He remembered the scroll and the eye sitting in his chest then. He still had no idea what it wanted from him, but he was no fool. He could sense the raw power begging him to have a taste.

He needed to be stronger. What or where the Core of Naraka was, he couldn't answer. He only knew one thing, consuming the eye would change his life forever.

His body was a rotting mess and he was in a slave cage, heading to slaughter in the capital. What did he really have to lose?

So when the traders stopped for the night, and all was dark and quiet, Zero who was driven by hunger and power greed, took out the eye and swallowed it in one gulp.

This stupid, clueless boy had decided to play a game with the gods. With Samsara itself.

Mother fate seemed to sigh.