Tia woke up when iron bars of the cage she rode in struck her head after a particularly heavy bump on the road. Her neck was stiff, her stomach empty and her eyes wet from a night of crying. All in all -- as a slave should feel.
She was a fresh graduate of the Nirnhall Academy, one of the more prestigious arcane academies in the kingdom of Alamar. As such she was indeed a mage, an enchanter to be precise. She knew how to apply a freezing glyph on a meat merchant's basement or a sharpening enchantment on a soldier's dagger. She didn't however know how to throw powerful fireballs at people or how to apply a camouflage spell. She was not a battlemage, and she never even entertained an idea of harming another human to survive before last few days. Before the village where she went for internship at the edge of her kingdom was raided by northern berserkers, by Itenians.
Now her future as a female slave in the Itennian Empire was between two possibilities: she either becomes a farmer in one of their rural clans or becomes a brothel girl in one of their brothels. When one of the slavers have asked what her trade is, she said that it was sheep herding. The last thing she wanted to do was enchant blades that would take lives of her own brethren, that could harm her own family. She would rather die than do that.
Now, knowing her rotten luck she was halfway sure she would become a brothel girl. From some of the talks she overheard, slavers estimated to reach closest market in three months and judging by her appearance of twenty two year old, five feet four soft skinned but healthy black haired city girl they expected her to be sold at the local brothel at increased price.
Tia hated it, but she also was not the kind of person to just lie down and die. Over the course of the last few days she entertained an idea of applying an enchanted tattoo on her skin. Something that would protect her from catching a transmitted disease in a brothel for once.
There was a caveat though. Even when working with homogenous metals and alloys there was a decent chance that enchantment would fail. Failing an enchantment on a metal item meant that the metal would melt, vaporize, or even explode. Failing an enchantment on human flesh meant that that human would be hurt, crippled or dead. And the more inhomogeneous the material is the easier it was to fail. Human flesh was extremely inhomogeneous and pulling this off in such conditions would make even archmages impressed.
Tia got to the point that she didn't care if she got crippled or dead though. She would rather die trying than not try at all. She bit her own thumb and used simple enchantment to turn a drop of her blood into a needle with scarlet ink. Then she started carefully applying glyphs, runes, and sigils under her skin.
***
After two months of painful and careful procedure all the glyphs, sigils and runes were finally applied. To Tia's content they were not very visible, at worst looking like red watercolor on her skin. She examined every rune final time. The enchantments were very ambitious, easily the most powerful she has ever done, or for that matter seen. Even enchantments on the gear of royal guards were less elaborate.
In addition to protective enchantments against diseases there were enchantments that would increase her muscle control, finesse, strength, flexibility, and robustness almost half a dozen times, there was an enchantment that would make her mind and eyes many times more perceptive in general and perceptive to human body language in particular. She also applied enchantments that made her own body much more adept at controlling her body language. She had seen similar enchantments used in gear of the royal guards and highest-ranking merchants and diplomats.
The most powerful was the enchantment of control though, the one she had developed herself. She significantly increased the agency over her own body, giving herself an ability to control her heartbeat, her metabolism, her hormones even her synapses and then tied this enchantment with other ones through multitude of complicated triggers. If her theory was correct this should make her enchantments multiple times more powerful than the ones the royal guards and high merchants employed and could potentially even increase her lifespan, and if her theory wasn't correct, she would have very quick and agonizing death that would start with her becoming completely blind.
Tia looked at the starry sky, took a deep breath and then activated the enchantments.
The colors of the world became deeper, allowing her to see objects that she couldn't. The movements of slaves sleeping beside her in the cage became slower. She didn't feel any pain, bursting limbs or burning skin. Her body became lighter, the air became easier to breathe. She could hear the heartbeats of other slaves in the cage.
Now it was about finding a suitable opportunity to either escape or acquire the freedom. For the first time in many weeks Tia didn't have trouble falling asleep.
***
The next month was surprisingly entertaining for Tia. One thing she had discovered early was that the enchantment gave her almost preternatural level of grace that briefly attracted attention of other slaves. She could see it in the way the way they looked at her when slavers forced them out of their cages and forced to walk as they do during the day. Tia quickly adjusted herself before curiosity spread to the slavers and avoided unwanted attention.
Tia found it very easy to walk, to breathe, to run if necessary. She found it very easy to foresee the intentions of the slavers and avoid their attention when she wanted to. She noticed things about slavers that she didn't notice before.
Their leader -- a man named Kitto was a very strong fighter and apparently an authoritative leader that put his monetary interest above other things. As the procession continued warriors tended to avoid showing any interest in female slaves. In addition, the slavers took particular interest in making sure that slaves don't suffer from their hands and if any slave had shown signs to aggression this would first get to Kitto and only then would they use any action, be it brief public beating in placed that would not leave any extended injuries but would be painful.
This was a disciplined group of slavers. Which meant that easiest way to escape for her would be after they would sell her, not before. She wasn't a trained fighter, so trying to escape now could be dangerous, even with enchantments she had now.
***
At some point they finally made it to the Edrevur -- one of larger cities in the empire. It didn't take long for the slavers to set up shop. Some of them were taken for wholesale, possibly due to issues with health or behavior, but most were sold individually. She had fallen to the latter category. Tia's group was then forced to run to the closest river and clean themselves. Most of the slaves, Tia included enjoyed the endeavor. Then they were gathered to the market stall and put into a row for presentation.
After some consideration Tia decided that she would rather be taken into a brothel. Large quantity of slaves to oversee might lead to more or easier opportunities to run once she would at least learn local landscape. With benefits that enchantment gave her she might be able to pull off a travelling merchant act long enough to cross the border.
With that in mind Tia shifted her pose and body language. The changes were subtle, in the way her posture shifted, in the position of her shoulders, in the way she caught other people's gazes, but apparently it surprised both the slavers and her fellow slaves. Some of the latter acted as if they had seen the empress herself wearing her rags. Kitto called the man who managed the stall and told him to increase her price from two hundred gold to eight hundred.
People often asked about her, but most of them couldn't afford her. Until a middle-aged woman with red hair and long green dress came to their stall. She was followed by a single bodyguard -- a skinny but high man with a saber. Tia's noted that even with her enchantments she had trouble hearing his footsteps. Dangerous man.
The woman didn't even look at other slaves and didn't trade for long. In the end she was sold for seven hundred gold.
"Come with me," the woman said to her, "Name is Cada by the way."
Tia sensed that the woman was preparing a clever response for whatever next words she would utter. After a momentary consideration she decided to play along.
"Mine is..."
"Your name does not belong to you," Cada interrupted, "You would be wise to remember that. While in the brothel I am the one who decides it, along with many other things and I have not yet decided what it would be."
