It was late afternoon before Yore spotted the peaks of the Farntara Mountains. The mage’s shorter stride had slowed them a bit, but not as much as Yore had been expecting. Now that he was no longer injured, he had a great deal of tenacity. He walked without complaint, hour after hour, and he didn’t once ask for an extra break.

That was typically true of most slaves but not, in Yore’s experience, expensive Companions. They were trained to obey without complaint, but they were also usually very much not used to those kinds of physical demands being placed on them.

Yore stopped walking and frowned as he looked out at the mountains and then back at the mage. He had been thinking all day about how he was going to do this, and the only way he’d come up with was one he hated very much.

“We have a problem,” Yore said.

The mage already looked scared. “Yes, sir?”

“I can’t leave you on your own because you might run away and get into trouble again, but I also can’t take you where I’m going. Not yet.”

The mage nodded along as he listened.

Yore sighed. “I want to tie you to a tree. And blindfold you. It wouldn’t be for long — maybe half an hour. I just need to go and get a friend of mine.”

The mage was silent for a long moment. “You want to tie me up?”

“Yes.”

“With... with, um. Do you have rope, or...?”

“I have a shirt and the know how to turn it into something resembling rope.”

The mage didn’t say anything. He was staring at the ground.

“Is this not going to be okay?”

The mage shook his head. “No—I mean, I—It will be fine, sir. I ran away last time. You can’t know that I won’t do it again.”

“Thank you for being understanding,” Yore said as he started taking his shirt off. “I wouldn’t do this if you really had a problem with it, but I’m not sure what other options we have.”

“I know,” the slave murmured, his eyes flicking over Yore’s bare chest. 

Yore cut his shirt into strips and then tied and braided them together until he had something resembling a rope. Not a very long one, but he could make it work.

“Here, come and sit against this tree,” Yore said, pointing to a small tree of about the same thickness as his arm. “I don’t have enough rope to tie you around your chest, so I’ll tie your wrists behind your back around the tree. Hopefully the tree’s small enough that the angle won’t be too uncomfortable in the time I’m gone.”

The slave sat down against the tree and obediently put his hands together behind his back. This didn’t feel right, but Yore didn’t know what else he could do at this point.

“I don’t think you’re going to try to grab me again, but fair warning: I’m much stronger and much faster than you. You only got me last time because I didn’t realise what was happening until it was too late. Unless you can do what you did in a split second, it’s not going to work.”

“I won’t,” the mage said. “I promise I won’t. You don’t have to be scared of me.”

“I’m not scared of you,” Yore said as he began tying the mage’s wrists together. “I’m respectful of you.”

Though, what he was doing just then didn’t feel very respectful. It felt awful and wrong. The mage dropped his head and stayed silent and still.

“Thank you,” Yore murmured when he was done. “I need to blindfold you now.”

The mage gave a minute nod of his head.

Yore folded the piece of his shirt he’d set aside a few times until it was thick enough to fully block the mage’s vision, and then he tied it around his head so that it covered his eyes.

“How’s that? Are the ropes too tight?”

“It’s fine,” the mage whispered, but Yore was close enough to hear the hammering of his heart and he wasn’t so sure it was.

Yore sighed as he stood. He had to do this. There was no other option that wouldn’t put someone at risk. “I promise you’ll be safe here and I’ll be back soon, and then hopefully we can get some things sorted out.”

The mage nodded.

“Okay, I won’t drag this out. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Yore didn’t bother walking very far away before shifting this time. Just far enough that the mage wouldn’t hear the sound of him taking off the rest of his clothes and sprinting off on four legs.

He didn’t bring his clothes with him. He would move faster without them and he could get clean ones at The Inn.

Yore preferred being on four legs these days. His body still ached, but the structure of a wolf distributed his weight more evenly and put less pressure on his back. He played it tough and pretended that it didn’t matter, but the constant pain wore on him. Carrying the mage for so long, as light as he was, had made the whole situation flare up even more.

If everything turned out fine with the mage, he would ask Hamish for a massage when he dropped him off. He always felt a little guilty for asking because he knew it got Hamish wanting things Yore could no longer deliver. Hamish had stopped asking, but Yore could smell his desire.

But it was Hamish, so Yore didn’t feel too bad. Hamish could always find someone — or multiple someones — to take care of his needs. Though Yore had never given a reason for turning him down, he was fairly sure Hamish had guessed what the issue was by now.

The Inn stood tall, nestled in the embrace of the mountainside. It was a large, sturdy structure built from stone from the mountain and wood from the forest around it. Yore never failed to feel fond at the sight of it.

Though it stood on dwarven land, Yore had partial ownership of it. His people had helped to build it. Lucas also shared part ownership of it. He had helped source some of the harder to come by materials.

There was a dwarf cleaning the windows outside, and she gave Yore a nod of acknowledgement as she held open the door for him. He nodded back and entered The Inn on four legs.

It wasn’t yet night, so The Inn wasn’t too busy. There were several dwarfs getting an early start on drinking alongside a sprite around half the size of a normal person with purple wings that glittered even where the light didn’t hit them.

A strange creature sat at a back table. It had grey skin and was completely naked, but it seemed to be lacking in genitals or even a rectum to cover. Also, eyes. It didn’t have them, either. Or a nose. It did have a mouth, though, and it was slowly emptying an entire jug of beer into it.

And there was Lucas, sitting on a stool at the bar. Yore approached him and prodded his thigh with his nose to get his attention.

Lucas looked down and his face immediately lit up. “Yore! I wasn’t expecting you, buddy.”

Yore enjoyed the fingers Lucas was scratching against his ear for a moment and then tilted his head towards the stairs.

Lucas drained his cup and stood. “Okay, let’s go.”

Yore followed Lucas up the stairs and into the room they shared ownership of. Once the door was shut, he began the painful process of shifting back into human form.

Lucas sighed and shook his head. “Doing that in front of me is such a tease.”

Yore straightened up onto two legs and stretched out his back. “You don’t have to watch.”

“Don’t I, though?” Lucas asked as Yore went to get clean clothes from the wardrobe in the corner. “I get the feeling this isn’t a social visit. What’s up?”

“I found a Companion in the woods.”

Lucas’ eyebrows lifted. “Around here?”

“No, back…” Yore struggled to come up with a landmark Lucas would be familiar with in the area he’d found the mage and failed. There wasn’t much out there. “Well, a few days walk on two feet to the West, anyway. He won’t tell me anything about how he came to be there and I don’t feel safe telling him anything until I know he doesn’t have any tracking chips or anything in him. Please tell me you have the device with you.”

“Of course, always,” Lucas said. “We only have a few. Lynna would kill me if I didn’t take the responsibility seriously.”

“And rightly so,” Yore said. “Okay, grab it and let’s get walking. I left him tied to a tree, so I don’t want to leave him waiting for too long.”

“You tied a Companion to a tree?”

“Last time I left him alone he ran away, and then when I caught up with him he grabbed me and knocked me unconscious somehow by pulling energy out of me, so there’s a bit more going on here.”

Lucas grabbed his jacket and followed Yore out of the room. “Wait, he pulled energy out of you? Companions can’t do that. I don’t think any mages can, at least not that I’ve ever heard of. Even more so with you not being human. I can’t even take energy from you passively.”

“I know all of that, believe me.” Yore gave Eltran, who was working the bar, a nod on his way past. “He admitted to doing it, though, and I can’t think of any other explanation for what happened.”

“May explain why he was out there.”

“It may,” Yore agreed. “I’m not sure how, but I’d bet money it’s not unrelated.”

#

Fanner had been determined to do as he was told, to just sit and wait and endure the situation. Yore would be back soon. This wasn’t so bad.

He fidgeted his legs just to remind himself that he wasn’t completely restrained, but it wasn’t enough. His hands were tied. He couldn’t move. His breathing came fast and panicked as he tugged against the ropes binding his wrists. Logic had vanished. He was sure someone was going to come and hurt him and there was nothing he could do because he couldn’t move.

And then, suddenly, his wrists fell free as the rope snapped.

For a moment, Fanner was just relieved, and then fresh terror filled him as he caught the smell of burning fabric. He brought his wrists up in front of him and felt the loose end where the rope had snapped. It was still warm to the touch.

What was he going to do? Yore was going to think he’d done this on purpose, and even if he didn’t, this was yet another dangerous power Fanner was not supposed to have. The fact that it was out of his control only made it worse.