Story in the works. Probably will update after I have a bunch more chapters written.
Let me know if this is something you'd like to read! Believe me, reviews are about the most encouraging things I could receive, and the updates will definitely come faster.
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The Predecessor
Satirrian
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HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE 1341 C.E.
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He felt like he was suffocating, so he took a breath. His chest rose, he gasped for air, and instantly the smell of blood was sucked into his body. He shivered and coughed and placed his right hand on the ground, trying to get up, but then he felt the sensation of gravel and rocks and he flinched, snatching his hand away.
He cracked his eyes open, one at time, and saw a canopy of green trees arranged in a halo of his body. The sun was just rising in the east and cast a shadow on his face. Using his left hand this time, he pushed himself into a sitting position.
In a tree clearing he found himself lying in a circle. It was a beautifully aligned alchemic array, artfully positioned with the sun that even now continued to rise. But something was wrong.
It was then that he realized that he was lying in a pool of blood, inky in the half-light. The circle itself, hard to see with the angular lighting, was etched with this very substance.
Suddenly recognizing the symbols, he started to hyperventilate. He brought his hand up to his mouth but found it was crusted over with brown and instantly snatched it away. He twisted his head, looking everywhere at once, eyes wide, taking in the trees, the small alterations in the seal he knew like the back of his hand, the bone-blue sky.
Suddenly, he couldn't take it anymore. He tried to stand up but failed. He glanced down. He was completely naked, devoid of scars, and missing his left leg. For some reason, he did not find his missing leg as odd as the reason he still had his right arm.
He did not know why he thought these things.
He fell onto his back and screamed, his hysteria finally getting the better of him.
In the sudden silence after his yell, he was finally able to make out the call of the birds in the forest over his rough breathing. The wind picked up and a couple leaves blew into his face, mere annoyances that he shook off. Except one wasn't and it landed near his ear with a thunk. With a shaking left hand, he picked it up.
It was some type of animal hide, easily too heavy for the wind to carry. Yet the wind carried it. Turning it over, he caught his breath. It was a note.
Edward, my son, remember that I love you. Please find it in your heart to forgive me for my weakness.
I am so sorry I could not bring Alphonse back. My life is only worth so much.
—Your Father
He dropped the note. He didn't want to think about it.
Ed closed his eyes and cried.
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He did not know how long he slept, but when he woke, the sun was setting. He was hungry, thirsty, and tired of being useless. Using his arms, he crawled out of the circle on his belly and set himself up against a tree. He rested there a moment.
He slowly became aware of a change in the atmosphere. The sky bled to twilight, and the birds stopped tweeting. He stilled, searching out the most minute sounds, and found the crunching of feet in a forest.
His desire to see somebody won over his suspicious nature.
"Hey! Hey! Is anyone out there?!"
The footsteps stopped and immediately resumed with haste.
It was two men, one in a brown tunic with a whip tied to his waist, the other, a younger man, seemed to be subservient to the first, dressed more humbly with matted dark hair.
The whip man reached the clearing and didn't seem very taken aback by it. The younger man was completely flabbergasted and fell onto his ass with a screech.
"Get up," the whip man commanded. "This was the place your village spoke of?"
"I— I— Yes. My ma had seen strange lights in the forest and she— but what happened here?!"
"That's none of your business."
The younger man swallowed and got himself to his feet only to sway and vomit into the bushes.
The whip man strode around the clearing, leaving the younger man to his vomiting, and reached the spot where Ed laid against a tree and immediately stopped. They looked at each other. Ed did not like what he saw.
Ed clapped his hands and brought them to the ground in one decisive movement. The blood sprinkled earth rose up to his will and buried the man up to his shoulders. Now all Ed had to do was run, but he couldn't, he couldn't think.
The whip man saw this and began to laugh, buried in the ground.
"I don't care what the hell you are, you little maggot," the man said, "but I'm going to make you pay for what you've done to me."
"I'd like to see you try," Ed hissed.
With a few muttered words, the whip man was suddenly flung out of the ground, crouching right next to the hole he was trapped in.
Ed blinked. "How did you—"
But the man ran at Ed full pelt. He tried to clap his hands together again, yet abruptly Ed found his entire body frozen in place.
The whip man stopped in front of Ed and unwound his weapon. "Not so tough now, eh?" He slashed the whip across Ed's chest and Ed could only grunt. The man did it again. And again. And again. Pretty soon Ed's chest felt like it should've been minced to a pudding, but it was miraculous. The instant after every gash, the wound would heal like new.
A minute after that discovery, Ed passed out from the pain.
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Ed studied the mark on his right palm, a red dragon biting its own tail. He slowly closed his hand, as if it pained him, and leaned back against the wood wagon, rocking with the motion of the horses, squinting from the glare of the sun at it's highest point. He shifted his right leg, moving his stump of a left into a better position, and caught the dark, slanted gaze of a short manish creature with the head of a globe, long fingers clenching the wood cage of the wagon.
"I'm Ed," he said to the pale creature.
"For now, I suppose." The wagon hit another bump and Ed swayed to the side. The creature broke eye contact and glanced at another man, completely naked and shredded to bits, curled up in the far corner. Ed had seen him stop breathing a while ago.
"You're not human," Ed said.
"Well, neither are you."
"Is anyone?"
The creature stopped looking at the dead man and focused on the green plains on either side of them. "Who do you think put us in this cage?"
Ed went silent. A large bearded man easily three times Ed's height was forced to walk behind the wagon in chains, and the silence was filled with the sound of his huge limping steps and the clinking of the metal. A spindly creature, smaller than the creature Ed spoke to, with a too big head and too big ears, coughed into the caged air.
"He couldn't be human. He used this invisible power— he—" Ed held up his two forearms and tried to bring them together, only to fall short barely a fingernails width from each other. His teeth ground, his face burned red, but his hands could not touch, no matter what he did. It was the most bizarre version of handcuffs he'd ever encountered. It's purpose was not to keep his hands together, rather, apart.
"He is one of those cursed humans. Born with power. Our power."
"I don't understand."
"You will."
"But I need to understand now."
"If your understanding could buy your freedom, no wonder it isn't free."
Ed punched the wooden cage with his right hand, nearly sending the entire wagon on its side. "My understanding will buy everyone's freedom," he snarled, brandishing his bloody fist.
Sudden silence. The giant had stopped walking and the horses had been brought to heel. The slave caravan leader hopped down, dressed in a brown tunic and leather, whip attached to his waist. He strolled over to Ed's position leaning against the side of the cage.
In a loud voice, the whip man commanded, "I said no talking." His eyes needled Ed's back.
"I wasn't," Ed muttered.
Suddenly Ed's entire arm was on fire and he opened his mouth to scream only he forced himself to snap his jaw shut, strangling himself and his emotions, so the only thing that escaped was a high pitched whine as he felt his flesh liquefying to the point that he felt nothing.
The next moment the fire was gone. Ed didn't see his blackened twig of an arm, but he felt the flashes of red lightning under his eyelids, the excruciating feeling of layers and layers of cells rebuilding themselves.
Behind his heavy breathing, the whip man said, "Follow the crippled veela's lead and you know what's coming." Ed's nose was filled with the scent of burnt flesh.
After that, nobody spoke.
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Hours passed and the glare of the sun reached the mountain-line by the time the slave caravan reached it's destination. It was the town of a feudal lord, stone tower found directly in the center, surrounded by rows and rows of decrepit hovels. Despite that, the streets were made of stone, and the market was bustling with peasants.
The caravan was treated with much fanfare, almost like a circus that came to town. Ed saw women and children drop what they were doing to marvel at the huge bearded giant who was limping on a broken ankle behind him. The guards at the gate momentarily spoke to the leader, but after that, they were soon heading for the center tower.
Ed took a moment to wonder what he must've looked like to the peasants lining the streets. Blond and wild-looking, wearing only the rags he was able to steal off the dead man in the corner, missing a leg. Covered in his father's blood. But Ed was also the most humanoid slave of the bunch, like a monster wearing the skin of a man.
Ed turned his back on the people of the village, suddenly wishing he wasn't paraded around like a prize horse.
Arriving at the castle gates, the whip man spoke to a man with a red bald face who appeared to be a herald of some sort and was always fiddling with his hands.
"I really wasn't expecting you so soon, milord," the herald said.
"You'll take them?"
"As I said, milord, it was very unexpected."
"Lord Dominus put out a notice that he was accepting magical creatures of all sizes. You'll pay me for them."
"I— I would like to, milord, but I am not sure of my authority in the matter..."
"Then get someone who is."
The bald man disappeared into the gates and returned with someone who appeared to be capable and was dressed in green silk. The whip man and him soon worked out a deal that left both of them unsatisfied and guards were summoned who led the horses, and thereby the wagon, into the castle's courtyard. After that, Ed watched warily as a few guards approached the cart with the key to the cage door.
"Now all you bastards better not move an inch or you'll get ten lashes before the master can even reach ya," the guard warned. Ed obliged by shuffling closer to the door.
None of the guards seemed to register his movement, or, if they did, they didn't comment on it. The green silk man from before who argued with the whip man came over and watched the proceedings. The guards wrenched the door open and someone immediately hopped up into the cage. He grabbed the spindly creature with the bat-ish ears that reminded Ed of something he couldn't remember and threw it out to another guard who was equipped with metal cuffs; he professionally clipped them on.
The green silk man appraised the creature.
"Typical servant-elf. Very common these days."
"Yes, but useful. They'll do anything without complaint," the whip man responded.
"Master Dominius already has quite a few."
"Another can't hurt."
The guard in the wagon had grabbed a very pale and lanky humanoid with protruding fangs who looked dead and acted like it. He had stunk very powerfully during the entire time Ed was stuck with him.
"A vampire, my lord?"
"It was very difficult to capture. I expect special compensation," the whip man said.
"It was not I who commissioned the capture of these creatures."
"Yet you're the buyer."
"It is not my business how the capture went."
"It's a special piece, worth much more than you could pay."
There were three women with faces that were hideous to look upon and eyes that were completely black. Their lower faces were bound very tightly with cloth and leather and, Ed suspected, some of the stuff that bound his arms apart. That power. When the guard grabbed them, they convulsed and twitched and arched their backs as if they wanted to scream.
"Banshees?" the green silk man questioned, sounding genuinely impressed.
"Three," the whip man said proudly.
Finally the guard had cleaned out the left of the cage and turned to his right, immediately setting his eyes on Ed. Ed gave him a little smirk, just to be polite, and gestured to his missing leg. The guard winced and turned toward the dead man first. The dead man was actually perfectly human-looking, except for the dead part. He tossed the corpse outside and nobody caught it.
"What is this, you bring me dead merchandise?"
"It was a werewolf," the whip man grunted, "but he couldn't handle it."
The green silk man nodded but seemed vaguely dissatisfied regardless.
Finally the guard took the dome-headed creature Ed had spoken to before.
"It's dangerous to accept goblins these days," the green silk man hazarded. "Especially with the war."
"I'll give him to you half-price."
"Quarter."
"No less than half."
"Let us discuss this later."
Ed held out his arms like a child asking to be carried, as he was the last person in the cage. He gave a mischievous grin. The guard picked him up and Ed felt his muscles stretch from not having moved for so long. As he was roughly passed out to another man, Ed elbowed the guard in his stomach for the trouble. The guard immediately dropped him with a muffled "Bastard!" and Ed crashed to the ground. He laid on his back and refused to move.
"What type of creature is that?" The green silk man was sounding incapable for the first time since Ed had met him.
The guards set Ed up, cuffed him, and then dragged him over to where the other creatures were waiting in a line.
"I believe it's a veela."
"It cannot be; veelas are all female."
"A very rare offer then, I give you a male veela."
"I am telling you, that is not a veela. For all I know, it is a regular human. You are trying to sell me a regular human at a veela's price."
"I assure you, it's not human."
Ed cut in, "Yeah, listen to the guy." The guard smacked him in the back of his head with the hilt of his sword and Ed shut up.
The green silk man wrinkled his nose with displeasure. "This one has much impudence. You have not beaten it out of him?"
"I was going to explain, but perhaps I'll show it instead." The whip man detached his lash and stalked forward. Ed flinched but forced himself to keep eye contact, eyes defiant. In one quick movement, Ed's head rolled back with a crack, the serrated tip of the weapon slashing across his face from ear to ear. Blood showered down into his mouth before the wound stitched itself together in a alchemic flash. Though the wound disappeared, the blood remained.
"Though the healing is unusual," the green silk man said, clearly very interested, "we are still unsure of his species, and therefore he is not worth that much."
"There is more—"
"Enough. We will discuss value over dinner. For now, we will transfer the slaves to the pens." The green silk man turned away, the whip man in stride.
Ed spat blood at their retreating feet.
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Ed was one of the many slaves who couldn't walk. He raged at his powerlessness, at his disability, at the fact that he could heal any wound in seconds but it didn't matter because he couldn't make a leg, but that didn't fix the issue. So he swallowed his bile and let himself be helped.
However, he would much rather have accepted help for an escape attempt than for a trip to his jail cell.
The slave pens were actually just wooden structures reinforced with iron jutting out from the castle on the east side. There were perhaps dozens of cages lined up in three rows, where one could see clear across one column to another because the cages were only made of iron bars. The cages sometimes held one creature, sometimes more; it all depended on creature type and amount of space available, Ed decided.
The banshees were all put in a single cell, whereas the vampire was placed with what could only be a black emaciated horse with wings. Ed completely lost track of the goblin and the servant-elf. He himself was given his own cell, which he would've been more happy about if there was more privacy. Directly to his right was a large creature that was easily more than twice Ed's height (which wasn't very short, thank you very much) and had feet with two toes. To his left was an unidentifiable black shroud that made Ed uncomfortable.
Ed made careful note of the guards. All of those who escorted Ed and company left right after the cell doors were locked. There appeared to be one ring of keys that unlocked all the doors and it was kept in hand by the one guard on duty. Ed was unsure if that guard had other duties or was the permanent jailer.
Directing his attention towards his cell, the floors were made of stone, a conglomerate mix of limestone and something else that Ed would work out, and a wooden bucket was placed in the corner. Other than that, nothing.
He wondered if they ever cleaned out the bucket. He wondered if they would ever bring him food or water.
He wondered if he could use a broken rock to scratch a transmutation circle in the ground.
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I do plan on continuing this story up to Harry Potter's timeline (with many timeskips of course, as that would take a hella long time. DO you see what time period I am starting this story in?).
Anyway.
You probably want to leave now.
Disclaimer: Each franchise is owned by their respective owners. I would list all the owners here, but quite frankly, I don't have the motivation.