Ironically, the beginning of the end for slavery occurred shortly after the Golden Dawn of Latarias. Those who engaged in enslaving and selling humans found themselves haunted by a seemingly phantom spirit. Whispers of a white tiger prowling the Caverns of Labyrinth, hunting slavers at night, spread like wildfire.

- The Secret History of Slavery

“Should we fake a sickness or something to bait the guards in here?” The oldest boy nervously asked as the demon boy moved on to picking on the lock of his cell.

“No, we don’t want to risk them raising an alarm if anything goes wrong.” Nia answered for him, adrenaline coursing through her veins in anticipation. “They’re stronger than us, so we can’t confront them directly in this state.”

Currently, the demon boy was trying to get the other captives’ cooperation in fighting back against their captors. If his plan worked, not only would they be free, but they would completely destroy this small hub of the Underworld. Nia knew it wouldn’t affect the Underworld very much, but it felt vindictive in a satisfying way.

“I don’t want to do this!” a young girl started sobbing in fear. Her outburst caused several others to start murmuring as well.

The demon boy stopped picking the locks for a short moment to raise an eyebrow at her. “Do you want to be sold as a slave to some rich man or end up at a brothel?”

Nia noticed that his eyes no longer have the cat-like slits in them and now have normal pupils.

The girl blanched at the thought. “No! I just want to go home!”

“So you don’t care if those human traffickers continue to kidnap people and sell them?” Nia spoke up with a fierce scowl on her face as she crossed her arms. The girl’s fear was starting to spread to the other captives.

“No, I don’t.” A Zahdian boy, one of the few, retorted in response. “Why should we care about them? It has nothing to do with me. Why do you care so much?”

“My brother would never forgive me if I just ran away without even trying to help others.” A sharp pain stabbed at Nia’s heart as she remembered Vivian’s death again. 

Her current predicament had distracted her from feeling his absence so far. She felt like if she managed to return to the palace, she would find him reading those boring old textbooks with a bright smile on his face.

Nia quickly banished any thoughts of Vivian as she blinked back the tears forming in her burning eyes. Her biggest focus right now is to first save herself, so she can then save Roshana.

“Who cares? That’s none of my business.” The girl from earlier retorted. 

Nia struggled to stay patient instead of giving in to the urge to shout some sense into her. It would not do good to alert the guards outside if there were any.

“It’s my business.” The demon boy stood up. “She’s paying me to save you. If you don’t agree on her term, then you can stay and rot here after we deal with the slavers.”

Nia looked at him with surprise. “I thought that thieves only care about themselves? I was afraid that you would just steal the hairpin and run off with it without helping the rest of us.” The demon boy would definitely be able to get away by himself. The rest of them… not so much.

As doubts also started creeping into her mind, Nia suddenly felt like she was maybe a little too overly confident earlier, asking him to destroy this place. Her main motive was mostly to prevent the slavers from coming after them, but maybe it was easier to just slip away passively like rats. Maybe fighting back was the wrong move.

As for eliminating human trafficking or destroying the Underworld, Nia didn’t have high hopes. After all, many of her ancestors have tried and failed to achieve this. She wasn’t sure why she would ask such a thing of a complete stranger either, and a conniving thief at that.

The demon boy shrugged, not even fazed by her rude words. “Well, that’s true. Thieves are selfish and have no honor. But what you proposed sounds awfully exciting, if not a touch insane. So I thought, why not? Sounds fun.”

He flashed a grin at her, making her wonder which one of them was more insane.

“You want to risk our lives to stage a revolt because it’s fun?” The uncooperative Zahdian boy demanded.

“No, not a revolt.” The demon boy waved his hand dismissively as if he was explaining something to a young child. “They outnumber us too much. We can never win against them. We’re planning an ambush.”

“What’s the difference?” The boy hollered, causing all the other captives to flinch at the volume of his voice.

The door flew open, as the slaver who brought them food earlier stormed in. “What’s going on in here?”

The startled captives all screamed in fear and threw themselves to the back of their cells, scrambling to get away from the slaver.

Nia’s heart lurched to her throat. She could barely hear anything over the roaring in her ears. They were going to get caught, they’d never escape, they’d fail before they even started—

“You, you’re awake.” The slaver pointed at the demon boy in shock as he approached him. “How did you get out of your cell?”

The demon boy’s pupils became slitted again as he narrowed his eyes at the slaver. In a blink of an eye, he lunged forward and he struck at the slaver’s neck with his hand, accurately knocking him out in one quick move. The slaver collapsed like a cut marionette and crumbled onto the floor with a soft thud. It was already over before Nia even registered what had happened.

Nia stared at the unconscious heap on the ground. For a moment, she had flashbacks of her parents falling to the ground in a similar manner, but she pushed it to the back of her mind before it could take root in her mind.

“Well, ready or not, it’s time to act.” The demon boy shrugged his shoulders, his face stoic and emotionless. He took one quick glance outside to see if there was a second guard.

There wasn’t.

“You there.” He pointed to the oldest boy. “Take his clothes and stand outside in his place so they don’t get suspicious. This man might be the night watch guarding the human goods.”

The boy started in surprised. “But—but—they’ll find out—”

“They won’t.” The demon boy replied, already stripping the unconscious slaver. “Buy me some time until I can free everyone.”

He finished off what he was doing and threw the slaver into his old cell and locked him in. Nia couldn’t help but feel satisfied at the irony of the captor being locked up now.

The boy nodded meekly in agreement as he took the clothes from the demon boy and started changing into them as quickly as he could.

“Now,” The demon boy swept his cold eyes across the cells, finally landing on Nia’s near the very end of the barrack. “Are you all in or what? We need to find a way to take all these slavers down or they will chase after us and recapture us again easily. Mostly you people, because I’m too fast for that. By the way, I highly doubt that alerting the guards will earn you your freedom.”

They shuffled reluctantly before everyone except for the unconscious two answered, “We’re in.” Even the two objectors from earlier gave in begrudgingly. Everyone’s faces appear taut and scared under the torchlights.

“Good. First, I will go out to scout out the area. I’m going to find those sleeping drugs and take out the rest of those night guards. It’s pretty late, so most of them are probably already asleep.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“Then, I’m going to set up a trap with blasting sand and set it off just before we leave.”

Blasting sand was a highly flammable powder that would explode when ignited. It was widely used to make explosives before it was banned in Zahdi and Saraja for being too dangerous and creating fires that were hard to put out due to the dry climates.

“How do you know there’s going to be blasting sand?” Nia questioned without thinking.

“Rich girl, there’s always blasting sand being sold at a black market. It’s a popular contraband.” He laughed in her face. “One of the things that all thieves know.”

Nia resisted the urge to retort back at him. Now was not the time to argue.

“I’ll be handling the blasting sand. It’s too dangerous for you people, especially with torches around this place. I don’t want to get blown up by accident.”

“Do you know the way out of these tunnels? You were unconscious the whole time when we were brought to this place.” Nia asked in concern.

“No, but there should be fresh dirt tracks on the ground that we can follow.”

Nia face-palmed herself. “Of course there would be.” She sighed. It seemed that living a sheltered life had left her with fewer common sense.

“Zahdian boy,” he called out to the dissenter from earlier.

The Zahdian boy frowned as he looked back at the demon boy suspiciously. “What do you want?”

“You’re from Zahdi, right? You should be good with horses.” Zahdian people were people of the prairie. If any of them was good with horses, it would be him.

“Yes, I am.”

“Wonderful. Find the stable where the horses are and prepare a caravan for us.”

Nia glared at the demon boy. Judging by the cool smirk on his face, she knew he was doing this on purpose. He knew the Zahdian boy didn’t want to help them, but he was making him do it anyway. She wanted to kick him for adding unnecessary trouble to this already risky plan.

“Fine.” The boy grumbled after a while. “I’ll do it.”

“Prepare two, in fact.” The demon boy flashed an aggravating smile at him. “I don’t think we are going to the same place since I have better places to go than to follow you.”

Nia did kick him this time.

“Enough,” She hissed at him. “Let’s get moving. And take me with you.”

She had plenty of experiences with sneaking around in the past. She often scaled up the walls of the palace to climb onto the roof to watch the stars or shimmied down from her balcony to sneak into the kitchen for a late-night snack. This shouldn’t be anything different from her experiences.

The demon boy rubbed his shin where she kicked him and frowned at her when he registered her words. “Wait, what?”

“I’m good at sneaking around. I can help.” Nia insisted, crossing her arms across her chest as she stared him down. Or up, rather, as he was taller than her.

He gazed at her for a long, silent moment, his expression unreadable. Nia’s courage was just starting to slip away when he finally answered.

“Alright,” he crossed his arms as his eyes glittered with something that seemed to be a mix of curiosity and amusement. “Just don’t get us caught.”

He then turned to the rest of them. “The rest of you can wait here so you don’t get in the way.”