Chapter 13

"I had been walking on the main road for about an hour when the bridge came into view. I had passed caravans coming and going with dozens of military patrols all around. It was as I hoped. They did not consider a single teenage boy a threat."

At this point Christopher is riding Shadow again, and Chaos and Abyss have disappeared into the wild. It doesn't take long for him to figure out why things seem so relaxed around here. In a field just on the other side of the river rests six black dragons. They do not appear to be restrained in any manner, and they seem to keep an eye on the passer-byes as they make their way towards the city another stretch away.

Christopher makes his way across the bridge, and all the dragons turn his way. They do nothing other than recognize his existence, but it is quite impressive and slightly terrifying. Christopher concludes that since they are magical creatures that they have the same ability to sense darkness and maybe intent, but not specifics and who that intent might be directed towards, as did the dark mage Christopher decapitated.

As he rounds a bend in the road and a hill in the roll of the land and starts heading north towards the city, he sees what appears to be a carnival going on. If not for the rushing of the still raging river he probably would have heard the commotion from a league away. This carnival, however, will turn out to be nothing like the ones his family and he went to years ago. The only cheer he sees is from the ones causing misery.

"I hate this country and they will know it very soon."

Like Christopher says, nothing ever turns out quite the way one would hope. Since Sarah had been leaving him alone for a little while, his sanity steadied itself to a raging horror instead of the nightmare it had become of late. Clarity of thought might elude him for his own life, but when truly innocent people are standing at the brink of the horror that he has been living for some time now, he knows something has to be done.

"At first I circled the bazaar, which I had originally mistaken for a carnival, and then slowly and methodically made way deeper and deeper into it. There were soldiers, dark magi, and who I assumed could only be dark priests everywhere. And to top it off on my journey around the bazaar I saw two larger groups of black dragons. It was quite a mixture of colors and people as they came together to embrace horror. The majority of the tents were dark colors of black, brown or gray, and almost all of them were octagonal in shape with the canvas tops going to a point. For the most part many of the people also wore dark colored robes with capes, or if they were militant they wore dark battle leathers with a variety of weapons hanging at their sides, but some were overbearingly colorful."

The deeper Christopher goes the sadder and angrier he becomes. At last Christopher believes he has found the destination for all those slaves. To be sold into all kinds of unspeakable bondage no doubt. In one open area there is a wooden tee structure that stands near ten feet high and tied to it is a wizard long since dead.

"At last I had found a darkness that equaled my own."

A decision was going to have to be made. Christopher came to kill their king, but some of these women and girls are from his own country. He hadn't thought about it much, but since in the town of Herum in his land, where he had met some truly decent people, Christopher's hatred for his kin sometimes gives way to compassion and sorrow.

"Could I continue to blame everybody for my nightmare, when in truth it was but a handful who turned us away?"

To decide on that now would be more dangerous than attacking a group of dragons. At this point, if Christopher was to start feeling true sorrow for some of his actions, he would without a doubt stick out in a place like this.

"And I knew that any effort to come back from the depths I had fallen into would most assuredly break me."

Christopher follows his nose.

Besides a couple of the priests who wrinkle their noses at him, no one seems to care that Christopher is covered head to toe in mud and he smells worse than some of the corpses they had passed half buried in said mud.

Every tent Christopher passes there is some form of a salesperson trying to cram their particular product down his throat. Everything from every day living items to all empowering potions that are supposed to extend life for decades. No thanks. Most of the people speak the same language as is spoken in Christopher's country, known world wide as common, but some are so heavily accented that it is hard to follow.

"I twisted and turned and made my way without rhyme or reason. I followed my nose to a putrid smell of too long enclosed animals. To my left there was a beautiful white horse until I realized it had a single horn sticking out of its head. It spiraled upward in a beautiful glittering design. It was a unicorn. From the story books mom read us kids it was one of the truly magnificent and magical creatures of this world. It looked half dead."

Christopher walks around her cage, as he will find out at the back of the cage, and as he rounds the right side of the cage he sees a line running up to the haunch that has some kind of needle sticking in it. There is a silver looking fluid, which Christopher can only assume is her blood, running down into a glass container.

The owner comes over and asks, "What are you doing? Are you just looking or buying?"

Christopher replies, "I have never seen one before so I was just looking." Then Christopher asks him, "What are you doing with the blood of the unicorn?"

The black haired black bearded heavily tattooed fat man explains to him in way too much detail with way too much enthusiasm, "This is the first step in making a potion with super healing abilities."

The unicorn seems to make eye contact with Christopher as he walks by. Christopher can see the misery in her eyes that he feels it in his very soul.

Further down the row of tents Christopher comes to another crate, but this one has a very hairy muscular man in it with strange feet. He growls at Christopher and shakes his cage with his powerful arms. The enslaver runs over and hits him with a whip. Christopher continues to walk by and he notices the cage also has a horse in it. He stops and looks until he realizes they are the same creature.

"My mom had described a centaur to me only once, but there was no mistaking it."

Two more tents further, and Christopher hears a great commotion. As he goes to peak around the corner to see what is going on, a man goes flying by him and hits hard onto a boulder. Something definitely breaks. Christopher looks around the corner and there are ten men trying to get a huge beast into another cage. The beast is chained and bleeding from many wounds. The capturers don't seem to be faring much better.

Christopher stands there and watches for some time until they finally get the beast into the massively thick cage. The beast lets out a roar that makes him cover his ears.

Christopher is still in awe when the great beast looks at him and says in Christopher's own language, the human common tongue, "Just what the hell do you think you are looking at, boy?"

Christopher involuntarily takes two steps back as he awkwardly apologizes. His apology seems to calm him momentarily, so he asks, "Excuse me, sir, but what are you?"

The creature proudly informs Christopher, "My people are the minotaurs."

"Wow, very impressive." He has to be easily seven feet tall, if not taller, for the cage makes him stoop over and his horns are getting caught up as they stick out the cage. Christopher mouths, "I'm sorry." to him as he continues his walk around the bazaar.

Christopher hears many tiny voices all trying to speak at once in very excited tones. He looks across at the next tent and sees dozens of little flying creatures in all kinds of mystifying colors reaching out for him. Christopher walks over to them and again is amazed to find that they speak in the common tongue, but with a sweet musical accent to it.

"How could this be? I certainly had led a sheltered life. Maybe I just didn't pay enough attention to the stories told to us kids by mom and dad. Again I remembered mom's reverence when she spoke of such things. Sarah, however, hung on her every word she spoke and asked endless questions."

"Hello"

"Hi." says a scaled down version of a human.

Besides being able to fit in the palm of his hand, and for having a pair of pink see-through wings, she is a naked little woman. She seems to blush when Christopher studies her intently. He does his best to make eye contact with her.

"My name is Christopher."

"I don't know why I gave her my real name, but it just seemed wrong to lie to something so amazing."

"How are you today?" Stupid question.

"My name is Katarina." she speaks in an almost inaudible voice. "I'm okay, I guess, but we are cold and miss our home very much." The last is said with a little tear running down her exquisite milky white skin face.

"Hey, you get away from there!"

Christopher looks up at the short stocky black haired clean-shaven man and asks, "Why, aren't they for sale?"

"Oh, yes, they are. They are forty blooms each."

Christopher reaches into his pocket and one of his several pouches that hang from the same belt Christopher has two daggers tucked away in and pulls out some of the money he has taken off his victims from earlier, the dark mage seemed to have the most. The vendor's eyes widen and a sadistic smile crosses his face.

"How many will this buy?" Christopher asks holding about a tenth of his coins.

"All four cages. Do you need that many?"

"Yes, and I'll take the cages also." Christopher straps the cages to Shadow as best he can so they won't get thrown around, and goes to find a semi secluded area to talk with them.

As they are walking he hears one of the fairies, as he will learn they are, sigh in desire at a pretty strip of red cloth hanging from another tent. Christopher buys it and throws it across the saddle of Shadow. They walk for another couple of minutes and he sees no end to the tents and storage areas, but the city is getting closer.

The bazaar seems to be set up in a honeycomb beehive pattern to where there aren't very many straight lines. The only true straight line that Christopher has seen is the road that leads up to the capital city of Torrent, and which splits the bazaar. Finally Christopher comes to a dark brown tent that seems empty, and before he can wonder about it a woman in the neighboring tent comes out and says, "It would be for rent you know, if you so desire it."

Christopher replies in the same thick accent. "Yes, most definitely, sister." The thirty-year-old chunky squat woman smiles at Christopher. "I'll take it for two weeks."

"It was big enough to walk Shadow right into it. I carefully unloaded the cages with the fairies in them. I walked over and closed the flap of the tent and then I released the fairies."

They aren't sure of his intentions, so they linger in their cages until Christopher says, "Fear not, little ones, you are now safe."

Christopher takes one of his knives out and lays it on the only table and secures it between two crevices so it won't move.

He then sets the red cloth on the same table and cuts it into fifty or so pieces and tells the fairies, "You may make clothes from this for yourselves if you so desire."

That gets them out. They all fly over to the table except one. It seems to have a hurt wing and can't fly. Christopher walks over and holds his hand out for her and she walks onto it and sits down.

While the fairies are doing that, Christopher unloads the rest of the supplies and saddle from Shadow and wipes him down. By the time he is finished all the fairies are staring at him. Christopher grabs a chair and pulls it up to the table they are standing on and sits down.

"Little fairies, you have nothing to fear from me. If you want you can even fly away back to your home now."

Altogether there are thirty-two fairies, but Katarina seems to take on the leadership roll, as it is her who first speaks, "There is a magical spell encompassing the bazaar, and plus the dragons would see us. We cannot get away like that."