Chapter 13: Augustus (14)

As the two of them walked up to the master’s room, they noticed something. Such as, his usual guards that stayed up during the night looked shaken. It was rather weird; these men were very well trained as far as Aisling knew.

But all in all, it wasn’t the weirdest fact. The simple matter of them being here at this hour of the morning meant something was fishy. At first when Aisling only knew that she had been called, she thought the master had finally decided he wanted to experiment with his slaves.

But as soon as she met his personal butler, she knew that had been wrong. She looked over to the man in question and sighed. It wouldn’t be the first time she had seen the master have a threesome; well, she hadn’t seen it. But she had heard it through the walls. But that was a matter for another time. She knew that her lord didn’t invite people that weren’t slaves to such things.

But getting back on track. She wanted to know why she had been called here. She again looked at her walking companion, he surely wanted to know why he had been called at such an hour. He seemed out of it still, even after she had told him that he should be happy to be getting paid, but never the matter.

As they neared the door, the guards raised their short spears and looked at the two of them as the butler opened the door. He gestured for her to go in first, but she simply stood there, unmoving. He frowned at this and entered first instead. As she followed him, she couldn’t help but realize the sudden stress in the room.

It was filled with an odd tension. It was as if this was sudden to even the duke. Now that she was thinking about it, it was probably like that. Her master’s sudden call at 12:30 was surely a strange one, even for him. After all, he was usually asleep by now.

She wondered what could have gotten him so tense and stressed. She looked over to her master and noticed the stack of papers that never dwindled had been toppled to the floor. On the desk that he sat at and usually used when making love to the head maid was a singular piece of paper. On it was something that Aisling couldn’t read. Sitting on the other side of the room was that man.

When one got into the room you would step in looking at the master’s desk. On the right side of the room was a hearth. The glow from it made the small room feel cozy. Behind the master’s desk that slotted into the wall was a surprisingly small bed. This was his work room, not his office. He slept there when he was too tired to go to his normal bedroom.

Next to the hearth, on the door’s side of the room was a chair, in it was that man. He was leaning back in it, and he looked very tired. She looked back to her master as if she had any right to ask questions.

“Bartholomew, stay where you are. Doll, come here, I need you to pick up these papers,” her master ordered as a familiar pain seeped into her.

It didn’t even need to do that. The collar just liked to do that to her, as if mocking her molded will to cooperate. She was just fine with being a slave, guess her past life’s experience just made her like this. It was as if her life being a big sister, teaching and loving her little sister and niece was nothing in the face of the chancellor’s molding and conditioning.

She was a little upset right now; she didn’t even get to sleep at all when her lord had told her to come here. And all he wanted her to do was pick up papers. She was not in a good mood at all.

“Is that her name? her name is doll?” the man asked.

She had already gotten on her knees and began picking up her master’s papers when he asked that. She had nearly forgotten that her master only ever called her doll. Or he called her slave, or servant, or anything along those lines.

It was rather strange to have such a man from her past life ask her own, new master that question. It didn’t feel like déjà vu, but it did give her a funny feeling in her gut. Like she was being watched even though they couldn’t follow her. Or maybe they could? Maybe that was why he was here?

Did the chancellorship find her past family’s guardian spirit and somehow interrogate it? That would be very frighting. If they could do that, then they could do anything. They could find her; they could kill her. But most importantly, they could murder her family.

That was impossible, it was very bad to be thinking about that. She could slip up and be punished for it, and she didn’t like that one bit. What frightened her even more was that he seemed to like beastkin more than human women. After all, he seemed more intrigued by her than anyone else.

“No, her name is… wait,” her master turned to her, “slave, what is your name? It seems like it has slipped my mind,” he asked.

She got up from the floor and straightened her uniform.

“My lord, this humble doll name is Aisling,” she told him.

He nodded at that and looked to that man and then nodded again.

“You heard her, her name is Aisling,” he reiterated her own name. “But getting back to the topic at hand, about this letter you have given me lord Felix Wilhelmsen. Is it really just an invitation to the young prince’s birthday?”

“Yes duke, it really just is. And yes, I know, it’s weird that I came here to deliver it when a normal messenger could have been sent. But I really like beastkin, and I heard that you like them as well. That is why I came here, I simply wished to know where the best spots to buy them are, as well as talk about them in general,” he told the duke.

That seemed to shock him a little.

“Really? I was under the impression that you did not have beastkin in the world you came from?” he asked.

The man nodded with a giddy smile on his stupid face. It was as if he had found his soulmate, or well, a brother in arms. The duke also seemed to be rather intrigued by the man from her past life. The man continued:

“But they do come in our fiction. In fact, it has been my dream to meet one if I had the chance. But it seems that they aren’t rare in this world!” he exclaimed.

“Yes, that is true. While beastkin are native to Poland, they were brought to the rest of the world as slaves for the most part. But a long time ago, the then king of Ireland freed a large group of them in his lands. Since then, you can find them free there,” her master explained to the man.

Felix, the man who had broken her will to actually continue to work in the army for her chancellorship, broke into a goofy smile. It was uncanny to see such a man who seemed to hate the default human race so much that he dived into the fanaticism that was her past life’s government.

He was a man of pure, unadulterated contempt for the common man so much, that he wished for it to become something else unrecognizable. In her past, he had tried to get her life, and her men’s lives taken by telling high command that they were dissenters.

When the chancellor had decreed that she would turn man into something greater, he jumped on it. When she had told them all that their children would not have to fear disease, but the disease that they feared would rather run form them after her reforms; well let’s just say he seemed to find no flaws in that statement.

The next generation was slightly smarter, stronger, and faster in most ways than the previous generation. But some things were noticeably different with Aisling’s past neighbors. Their kids had ever so slightly furry ears. The tips now pointed. The chancellorship had said they were introducing gene therapy to pregnant mothers if they so wished; and he was the head of it.

She had hated him for it. she did not mind the stuff about building a better generation, the Earth’s magnetic core was about to flip, mother nature was literally about to kill them, they needed to adapt.

But that didn’t have anything to do with genetically engineered cat girls.

…

She looked around the carriage, her master was sitting beside that man and the head maid was sitting beside Aisling. In front of Aisling was the man to whom her entire last life was broken by, and in front of the head maid was her master.

It was all rather confusing as to why she was here. Well, not really; her master wanted to bring his butler along because he didn’t want the king to do anything fishy to his darling sex slave. The whole reason she was even in the meeting in the first place that had occurred, was because that man liked her uniform and wanted to meet her.

Again, let’s remind the readers that she looks fourteen, is 10, and is mentally thirty-seven years old. It was all rather strange, the sequence of events that she went through to get here. The man she hated with all her might thought she was fourteen and was just good with staring at her ears and wings.

To mention her tail, it would grow in when she hit puberty. She had a feeling deep down in her psyche that her tail would look funny, or maybe that was all in her imagination. Who knows what will become of her in the future, only the author knows, except he doesn’t because the plot is kind of just falling apart.

Back to the matter at hand, she was stuck. He was looking at her, and she didn’t like it. Not that her mind set as a slave helped. She was nothing but a doll, and dolls were meant to be played with. That was simply the rules of slave hood.

But the thing is, the more he was here, the more that shell of her doll hood was cracking. She was already sick of his face. She didn’t like that analytical look in his gaze either. It was as if he was undressing her with his eyes. She knew he probably was just thinking of the anatomy of her body, but still.

Her lord had been, of course, invited to the prince’s birthday party. Why may you ask? That was simple, for royalty and nobility, birthday parties weren’t celebrations. For them, they were times to meet each other and make new allies. It was all rather simple if you thought about it at all.

Though he himself didn’t want to go, he wanted to stay at home. She didn’t know why at all he didn’t, but hindsight is 20/20. And we all know how the year 2020 went. Aisling had heard from the head maid that this was going to be the largest birthday party since the prince’s actual birth.

And the king, from what the head maid and really everyone else said… well let’s just say that he makes the Hapsburgs look sane and well adjusted. It was said by the rest of the servants that came from the mainland that he was nothing but a wall of flesh. That he held nothing but contempt for those not born in Francia itself, and even then, he only held love for his direct family.

That was really scary to think about. His description also matched the wall of flesh that her sister had told her about once, when she had one of her dreams. It was all rather strange. She was more confused as to why she was even allowed to come at all. But then her gaze went back to the man in front of her.

He was so infatuated with the idea of catgirls that he let it blind him. He was a rather strange and aggravating man to think about. Especially his gaze, the look in his eyes. But she had seen this look before, she had talked about it before.

As the carriage they were in trailed along the path to the harbor and port, she couldn’t help but really feel like her life was about to fall apart. She had had a pretty good time all things considered in the manor, and now her good luck had ended with the meeting of him.

“Lord Felix, my I ask how you came to learn of my work and hobbies? I don’t really leave the house much at all, so I was simply pondering it,” her master asked.

That was a good question, he really never left the manor at all. In fact, she had never seen him leave that place. But thinking back to it, she had never left either. It was all rather weird in fact. She didn’t know the first thing about Francia, other than it was a place where slavery was fully legal.

She herself of course was a slave. But in England and Ireland, Slavery was outlawed. This was due to the fact that the current king’s mother had been a slave, and the King’s father had fallen for her. That in and of itself was weird, but in an act of pure love and devotion, he had made all the slaves in the country free.

In fact, that was why… actually, that line of thought can wait. It would spoil the fun of the plot. No, you can’t just ask the author later. You have to wait for the plot to thicken.

“I was thinking about that just now actually,” the man looked to her master; they were like two peas in a pod, “I was researching the bodily anatomy of the races of the Europe continent. That was how I found your father’s work on the subject of beastkin. I didn’t even know there were beastkin on this planet until I found your father’s work.”

“Ah yes!” her master exclaimed, “there are no Beastkin in the royal palace, correct? Or has my current knowledge plateaued?”

“That would be correct. Or rather, that would have been correct unless I hadn’t learned of them. I purchased some from the slave market earlier this year. Though, they are not really all as productive as I wanted them to be,” he looked ashamed of himself.

“I think I may have gotten a bad deal,” he finished.

Her master nodded. It seemed he understood the struggle of finding high quality slaves like he had. It was rather surreal to see two grown men talk about slavery like this in front of two slaves themselves.

“Yes, I understand that struggle. But I do know some places and markets where good value slaves can be found,” he continued the conversation.

The other man simply gave him a rather small, head tilt of confusion. As the tilt said, the man was rather confused and intrigued.

“The Norse from Denmark breed slaves for their own purposes. The leftover slaves are sold as merchandise and are quite high quality. If you want good working slaves, check there,” her master continued, “but if you are looking for good pleasure slaves, go get some Irish slaves, Paddy here was born from captured Irish slaves. They aren’t the best workers, but they are rather lovely.”

After he said so, he turned to the head maid with a rather seductive look on his face. She returned it. Aisling was about to turn her head away from the soon to be make out session, but the man interrupted them.

“We should be just about to the dock, could this wait till then?” he asked.

…

As the group of four exited the carriage, Aisling had to hold back a look of shock from coming upon her face. What was docked at the port wasn’t a mere ship, it was a royal passage boat. The whole thing was massive, easily dwarfing the ship she had been brought to this island on.

Its purple, wooden frame was made from a special type of wood, one found only in the capital of Francia. What was really spectacular was the parts that seemed to be underwater most of the time. It seemed to her at least that they had a special type of waterproofing that used an equal part of magic as it did chemical reactions to stay dry.

She looked at the rather large staircase that somehow wasn’t a ladder, despite being nearly vertical. Her eyelids had to pull themselves over her eyes just by a slim margin so as to avoid looking like a anything, but her doll-like existence suggested.

Her master seemed shocked at this as well, as if he had only seen this type of boat in fairytales. She then looked at the head maid; she seemed just as shocked as her as well. Only that man seemed too unbothered by it. And why should he?

The Chancellorship had boats five times this size. Sure, they were nothing but outdated hunks of metal, but at least they had function. This boat seemed to want to capsize, and it was in the port. The boat itself seemed to be about 750ft long, and 250ft wide. She couldn’t tell how tall it was as some of it was underwater.

That man walked up to the staircase and looked back at them as if they were the ones being slow. Aisling wanted to push her master forward, but knew that was unproper. Instead, it was the head maid the seemed to be shaken out of it first.

“My duke, we should follow the messenger. We have to go,” she urged him on, only to be shocked by his response.

“But Paddy, the only reason that this boat is here is because one of the members of the royal family is here. And that means we he might be here,” her master told the head maid.

She seemed shocked by this, as she hadn’t the knowledge of the ship’s status beforehand. It was like a bucket of cold water had been poured all over her, only for that man to grab both of their arms and haul them over to the staircase.

Aisling walked with them, suddenly acting as though she hadn’t got a spine to stand with. It was as if she had been splashed with cold water as well, and she hated cold showers. That man seemed intent on getting them up the steps.

“Miss Aisling, help me bring these two up the steps. The only royal family that came with me was the First Prince, Augustus. And that kid is currently seasick,” he told her, and her master and the head maid suddenly became much stiffer.

She nearly became as stiff as they were, but the familiar pain in her neck helped her in that regard. She grabbed the hand of the head maid and walked up the first three steps. She was very careful with her skirt, so as to not become indecent. That man also grabbed her master’s hand as she had led the head maid up the first couple of steps and now there was room for him.

As she looked up and around the top of the ship so she could better walk and get a grip of the place she was to stay, she noticed how it was laid out. Ther was just over twenty masts coming from the ship, all of them had their sails up and furled. There were also many sailors all over the place. There was also well over twenty of them.

As they made their way up to the top of the rather tall staircase, she noticed something. It was a small boy, perhaps ten, maybe eleven years old. He had the same eyes as that hunter that had tried to take her and Sylvia. This was such a shock that she nearly didn’t notice that the head maid had come too.

“Thank you doll, bringing you has come in handy already. But could you-,” she stopped halfway, she had noticed the boy hiding behind the steps up to the captain’s quarters.

It was at this moment that Aisling guessed who that was. After all, who would bring a child to this place and not have them be around the adults working, the only children that Aisling could think of would be here were the apprentices, but they would be older than this boy. This noble boy was in fact the only royal on this ship at the moment, the first and only prince. He was Prince Augustus, the first of his name.

…

The young prince in question could do nothing more than gawk at the girl in front of the steps. She was so strange, there was a tamped down fire in her eyes. What he knew about her right away about her, was that she was a slave, and she was a beastkin.

He had lived in the palace for his entire life, so he had not even seen a beastkin slave ever. That was until the otherworlder had purchased some and he had seen them with his own eyes.

They were… different from what the strange man had said they were. They looked pretty human, and walked pretty human, and even talked pretty human. So, it was rather strange to see the man he had come to see as an uncle in a rather short time frame, talk about them like they were the manifestation of an angle or a god on earth.

He thought that they just looked funny, but that was just him. What was more was that his dad didn’t like the fact that they existed at all. He talked about them like they were a plague on the ground that all of God’s children walked on.

But when he looked back at his father’s ranting it always ended with him getting slapped in the face because he was asking questions his dad didn’t understand in the first place. His dad was pretty dumb if he was being honest.

Venator looked at them with like he looked at everyone, like they were people who weren’t him, and he was better because of that. His mother just responded to them like any other slave, with a jealousy that they could move about without the use of a chair or magic.

But this girl was, well, different. She had wings, and pretty eyes. They were like cloudy emeralds, unpolished but still beautiful. Her gaze was like she was staring right into him, the young boy that would be king had seen many girls.

They all chased after him. Of course, their parents told them to. But they were all, for lack of a better term, ugly. They all had something wrong with them, barring only a few. Some had pointed chins, others had differently sized eyes. Venator told him it was because they were all inbred, whatever that meant.

Augustus just thought they looked ugly, so he avoided them. His dad also said that they were nothing but bugs underfoot, just like commoners. But then again, the young boy had never been to the capital itself before, so he had no point of reference.

The more he gazed at the young preteen, the more he noticed something was off about her. She walked like a slave, she seemingly talked like a slave, but it seemed to him that she was putting up an act. The prince was simply good at telling if people lied with their actions or not, he didn’t know anything about his gift, nor did he know no one else had this power.

The boy simply thought the girl in the maids’ uniform was strange and pretty. After all, he was a child at the end of the day, he was also the same age as the young lass. Though, he didn’t know of the strange ageing of beastkin. He thought she was older than him.

After the girl helped another woman up the steps, she noticed him and seemingly shrunk in on herself. It was as if she was a dog that was scared of getting hit for stealing food. The older woman also looked at him and straightened, like she was servant of the palace.

He also saw the uniform she wore, and the scars she had. He thought to himself that these were strange people, but then again, he had not met many people. Only girls and boys his age; that was the kind of people he had met. Well, he had met scheming nobles trying to curry favor with him when his dad wasn’t around.

But they shrunk down and deflated when he was. It was honestly kind of scary watching his dad look at them like they were nothing but a lamb that someone put in the way of the door. The only person his dad didn’t do this to was Augustus himself and Venator.

Turing back to the outside world and not his mind, the young boy saw his surrogate uncle and smiled.