Bound and Broken: An Isekai Adventure Dark Fantasy (Melas Book 1) by V.A. Lewis (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕

Thunk. The man collapsed to the ground, his skull cracked open, and blood slowly dripping from his head.

I flinched at the brutality of it, and averted my gaze from the corpse. Did I think that he deserved it? Yes, he did. But I was still not used to such… casual violence. That was why I kept trying to lighten the mood with jokes— even bad ones.

This was criminal justice. We were slaves trying to reject the fate we had been given, and somehow, that was considered a crime. I’d prefer to think of it as vigilante justice, but that was not true— definitely not in the Free Lands, at least. It was a terrible place with a terrible sense of morality, which made for terrible acts of retaliation in return.

Shang grabbed the man he just killed and dragged his body back to our room and piled it up amongst the other corpses of guards. Rin entered this new room, and I followed after her. We found ourselves in what appeared to be a break room. It was small with a table full of half eaten food pieces and dirty plates; there were some glasses of beer and ale, but they were completely empty. Perhaps the guards had been drunk— or at least, not sober— which contributed in the ease of our escape attempt so far.

There was a cabinet full of thin drawers sitting in a corner of the room. I began pulling it open, rummaging through the pieces of paper and writing tools, searching for a key.

"Do you see anything?" Rin asked, peeking her head over my shoulder.

"No," I said. The Cat Beastkin could not help me in my search because the manacles in her arms gave her no fingers to open things with. However, I did appreciate her company because she made me feel safe. "Nothing," I sighed. "This whole cabinet is full of documents, but no keys."

"Eh, guys!" a voice called out from the hallway. The Rabbit Beastkin from earlier popped through the doorway. "We found it."

"You did?!" Rin and I exclaimed at the same time. We rushed out to the hallway, following the Rabbit Beastkin into a room; he could not move fast, because of the special manacles around his feet, however he could still walk, and that was good for me since I did not want to run either.

Once we reached the room on the other side of the corridor, Rin practically shoved the Rabbit Beastkin aside to get in. I hesitated behind her, as I looked at Shang, standing in the middle of the room.

The Dog Beastkin turned around as I heard the clatter of chains hit the floor. I stared at him, his face free from the muzzle, and his arms and legs unbound. He held the keyring with over a dozen keys in it up, and smiled.

"Now—"

Rin ignored him and snatched it off his fingers. "Yoink," she said, the metallic ring in between her teeth. She paused, staring down at her arms. "Uh, could someone help me?"

Shang sighed, "You’re an idiot."

"And you’re a meanie!"

I smiled. And half an hour later, we were all finally freed from our bonds. We were not free from slavery just yet, but this only increased our chances. And it made the Beastkin only more efficient.

We cleared out the rest of the hallway, entering each room and killing the guards inside of it. Rin knocked on a door, and waited for it to open. An unarmored man came out, rubbing at his eyes. "What is it—"

He was cut off as Rin jabbed a finger forward. She immediately silenced the man, slicing his throat open; he collapsed with a gurgling noise, choking on his own blood.

The Cat Beastkin lowered her hands, blood dripping off of her claws slowly. She flicked her wrist, cleaning the blood from her claws, before they slowly retracted back into her fingers.

Wolverine? Is that you?! I didn’t know you were an X-Men, Rin!

I tried my best to ignore the dying man on the ground, and focused on Rin’s ‘super power’. I watched as each of her nails slowly shrink from four inch long daggers, back into normal looking nails.

Well, by ‘normal’ I meant normal for a Cat Beastkin. They were actually quite long and sharp even in their reduced state; they protruded out by about an inch from each finger, and unlike Human nails, they looked sharp enough to draw a lot of blood. Like a cat’s claws.

As they were now, they were like Shang’s nails; in fact, both Dog and Cat Beastkin had sharper than normal nails, but Rabbit Beastkin had normal nails. And by that, this time I meant regular Human nails.

Rin must have noticed me staring, because she began to proudly explain herself. "Cool, right? It’s something only us Cat Beastkin can do! We got these claws that are as sharp as any knife— sharper even! Shang wishes he can do this—"

"I think she gets it, Rin," Shang cut off the catgirl. "Now please be quiet. We don’t know if there’s anyone else in the other rooms."

She pouted. "Stupid Shang, you always ruin the fun."

One by one, we checked the rooms in the hallway, starting from the ones all the way at the end, slowly making our way back to the corner rooms.

Most of the rooms held boxes and crates full of chains, manacles, and other similar bondage equipment. But one of the rooms in the middle had half a dozen guards, sleeping in their beds. I struck up a conversation with one of the two Rabbit Beastkin as they were quietly disposed of.

"So… got any cool powers?"

"Powers?"

"Rin has claws, and Shang has fangs. Do you have… anything like that?"

"Eh, our kind doesn’t really have anything special like that. We just