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Gray ran through the woods at top speed. Trees, bushes and boulders blurred past him. Branches whipped at his bare torso and arms as he shot past. Water splashed up as he ran through a stream, the bottoms of his worn and filthy pants getting soaked. He pulled two saplings apart and vaulted between them, jumping over a large rock. The movement made the heavy chain binding his wrists together clank loudly. The bottoms of his feet pulsed with agony with every step. His soles had been ripped to bloody tatters by sharp rocks and tree roots and the pain was intense but he didn't dare slow. He knew his captors had to be close behind.
Stupid Natsu. This was all his fault.
If Gray survived this he was reading through every possible job with a fine tooth comb before agreeing to join him on a job. Especially if Erza was off doing a solo mission for one reason or another. Only Natsu would accept a job involving missing wizards and suspected slave trade and think it had to do with food.
He was just grateful it wasn't Lucy or Happy who had been drugged and kidnapped from the Inn they had been staying at, that they hadn't had to wake up with chains around their wrists that suppressed their magic. He was glad they hadn't had to endure two weeks of back breaking forced labor and abuse waiting for a rescue that never came.
By some miracle, he'd been able to escape. Now he just had to make good on it, he had to bring word of the camp to the others. Or at least the Blue Pegasus guild. He was pretty sure it was the closest to his location. At least if they hadn't taken him out of the country while he'd been drugged.
Natsu would probably call the mission a success. Technically they had found the missing mages.
Gary would have to disagree.
No way was he going to let the fire mage try and spin this positively.
He was going to kill Natsu when he saw them next.
He tripped over a tree-root, one foot catching in the raised loop of wood and caught himself against a tree trunk, falling heavily against it with a grunt. He let out a hiss of pain as the rough bark scrapped the palms of his hands.
He stiffened and his head whipped around, eyes widening in horror. That was the sound of dogs barking and voices shouting in anger.
The slavers! They'd found his trail!
He groaned as he pushed himself off the tree and threw himself back into a ran. The forest blurred around him once more. His feet flew under him. He ignored the pain, he ignored the exhaustion laying heavy in his veins. There was only the desperation to put some distance between himself and his rapidly gaining pursuers.
The snarls and shouts were growing louder behind him no matter how much speed he forced from his body.
But he couldn't stop.
He didn't have his magic.
He didn't have his friends.
He was alone and half-starved and injured.
But he'd be damned before he'd let himself be dragged back to that camp. He wasn't going to mine one more pebble, make one more brick or build one more wall for them.
He just had to keep running, had to keep moving.
Just keep moving.
Just keep moving.
Keep moving.
Lost in his desperate efforts to keep putting one foot in front of the other without losing speed, Gray didn't notice how the trees thinned around him. He didn't notice how the ground in front of him abruptly seemed to drop away. He did notice when his foot suddenly met open air instead of solid ground.
“Whoa!” Gray cried out, his arms pinwheeled rapidly in an effort to regain his balance. His efforts were hampered by the heavy chain on his wrists. His heart was in his throat as he watched pebbles, knocked loose by his foot skidding on the edge, go tumbling down, down, down to the valley below. He took a quick step back, gasping loudly as he stumbled. That – that had been too close. He inched carefully forward and looked over the edge cautiously. He felt a little queasy at the drop that must be touusands of feet down. The cliff was too sheer and the rocks too unstable, he couldn't possibly climb it.
“Boy!
Gray whiped around and paled in horror. The foreman of the slave camp, a very tall and muscular man with close cropped graying brown hair and beard who was more then twice as wide as Gray about the shoulders and with a definate pounch, stood several feet behind him. Nine of the guards from the camp spread out on either side of him, five of them holding viciously growling salivating dogs on short leashes and the other four holding guns pointed at Gray.
Gray was suddenly aware of the fact that the section of clifftop he stood on jutted out like a paninsula. The way the slavers had arranged themselves cut him off from any chance of escape.
He was trapped.
“You led us on a merry chase, boy.” the foreman man, loud voice conversational and amused. “But it's time to go home now.”
Home. The camp wasn't home. It was a prison. Tremors started in his hands and spread up his arms, helpless fear tying knots in his gut. Gray knew exactly what awaited him if he went back. His bare back twinged in remembered pain, the barely healed scar criss-crossing his flesh feeling like they were burning ever so slightly. At best he'd be strung up on that pole in the center of the salve camp courtyard again. At best he'd be whipped until his blood soaked his pants and pooled around his feet. He'd be left there for three days as a lesson to the other captured wizards and then assigned the worst jobs. If he had survived the inital punishment, of course. At worst . . .
At worst, he'd be strung up on the gates to die a slow death. That was actually the better fate in Gray's mind. It would be painful and it would be humiliating but it would eventually end.
He knew he'd survive the first possibility, even weakened as he was. He was stubborn like that. He knew that the foreman knew it too and that that would be the punishment he would choose for Gray's escape attempt.
He couldn't rely on a rescue coming.
The only way forward meant continued suffering, worse then before.
Forward . . .
What about backwards?
Gray glanced back at the cliff, staring at the distent treetops far below.
“Dragging this out will only make it worse for you, boy.” the foreman called and Gray slowly looked back up at him. “You have no where left to run. Surrender now and come along quietly.”
Nowhere left to run. That was true. But he wasn't out of options.
“No.”
The foreman startled at the softly spoken word, features twisting in bemused fury.
Gray slowly straightened, rising out of the slump he'd been in for the past two weeks. He'd curled in on himself in an effort to avoid the slavers' notice. 'Don't look at me,' his body language had said, 'I'm already beaten.' Now he drew his shoulders back and lifted his chin in defiance. He stood tall and stared them down without flinching. Reaching up, he swiped his fingers across the right side of his chest in a harsh clawing gesture. The movement broke through the thick layer of grime and filth covering his body, leaving five lines of pale cleaner flesh visible across his torso. For the first time in far too long his guild was visible. The symbol of the the Fairy Tail Guild flashed dark blue of his chest, bold and vibrant on his right pectoral amid the dull grays and browns covering him. A sudden wind blew, swirling around him and kicking up little clouds of dust between him and the slavers. It caught his limp and dirty hair, lifting the tangled strands up and ruffling them wildly. It gave the appearance of how his hair had looked before his capture.
“Don't call me 'boy' or 'worm' or any of your little nicknames ever again!” he shouted at the foreman, voice strong and defiant, dark blue eyes bright and furious as he met the foreman's gaze and didn't look away. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I am Gray Fullbuster, member of the Fairy Tail Guild and former student of Ur Milkovich! I am not a slave! You don't own me!”
The foreman stared at him, shaking with rage but struggling to respond. Never, never before had one of his slaves, wizard or not, dared to defy him to his face. It never happened before. The carefully curated fear that kept them submissive and subservient to him had never failed him before. He had thought it impossible. This was intolerable.
He was filled with a sudden hunger, a desperate need to see this little impertinent insect torn apart. To see him bloody as he was torn apart, to hear his screams.
“Release the dogs!” the foremen snapped in command.
The guards dropped the leashes in response. The dogs sprang forward, snapping and snarling as they charged, fangs bared and claws digging groves into the dirt, hellfire bright eyes fixed upon the young man standing on the edge of the cliff. The howls and snarls and growls were deafening, muscular canine bodies propelled forward with murderous intent.
Gray stood still as the dogs ran at him. He stared at the sharp teeth, sunlight reflecting off of the yellowed fangs eager to tear into his flesh and spill his blood, and felt a sense of peace come over him. He met the foreman's gaze, calm and unbothered by the imminent destruction heading for him.
Then he smiled.
And he took a step back.
The foreman's mouth fell open in shock, unable to believe his eyes.
Gravity took hold of Gray and he dropped sharply.
One of the dogs snapped its jaws shut on the empty air he'd occupied a second before, skidding and scrambling as it struggled to come to a halt before it went flying off the edge of the cliff. It let out a panicked yip as one of the other dogs ran into its rump and nearly sent it tumbling off the edge, pebbles bouncing as they were knocked loose.
The last thing Gray saw as he fell was the dogs bunched up on the edge of the cliff, watching him, the sounds of the slavers' enraged shouts ringing out through the air.
He smiled in smug satisfaction, air whipping around him as he dropped in a free fall. 'You don't own me.' he thought, viciously pleased. 'You don't own me.'
Then terrible pain tore through him and the world went black.