Kuro: A Land in Eternal Night

Chapter 4.1: Marauders

When Mina came to, the ground was moving under her. She heard the sound of creaking wheels, the axles groaning as they turned. Her body ached and her head throbbed. When she tried to stretch her arms, her fingers brushed against the warmth of another body. She heard groans all around her. Mina opened her eyes gradually. In the low-light darkness, she could make out moving bodies, other prisoners coming to. She surmised she was in a large moving container. By her count, at least thirty girls were crammed into a tiny twenty-by-twenty foot space. A good number of them had regained consciousness, looking around fearfully, some taking longer than others to get over their disorientation. A few began to whimper softly as they realized the fate that had befallen them. They all appeared to be young women, though some barely – a few looked like little girls. Mina looked around, searching for an opening, anything that might be used to facilitate an escape. Without warning, the containment unit came to a sudden halt, sending a few girls crashing into its walls where they unceremoniously bounced off and fell to the floor of the unit.

A door opened slowly a few feet away. A light shone through the door, blinding Mina for a few moments. An armored Marauder peeked through, his blocky metallic armor dull but nonetheless imposing in the darkness. He looked around at the fearful faces, his gaze lingering on a few, before proceeding to survey the rest of the containment unit. The Marauder started laughing. "Okay, girls, listen up. Right about now is when the more imaginative ones start having bright ideas reckoning they can escape from here. If you start having those, don't. The last little girl that thought she was smart didn't end up very well. And if you think I'm bluffing, by all means, try. We want one of you to try. It's always fun to see what happens to the smart ones." And with that speech, the Marauder went away laughing, as the door shut once more.

The darkness that took over was unsettling. Between the relentless squeaking of the wheels and the jarring movement of the containment unit, punctuated by the whimpering cries of the other girls, it was very easy to get discouraged. "Oh, Joab, I think I really got into a pickle this time," Mina thought. "How am I ever going to get out of this?"

As Mina turned her thoughts toward finding a practical means of escape, her attention was drawn to a sound, the soft sobbing of a child. There, only a few feet away from her, was a little girl she hadn't noticed before. She couldn't have been more than ten, the youngest girl by far in the containment unit. She was pale, with long, curly hair that was tangled in several places. Scrawny arms peeked through her shabby blue gown as she wiped her tears away with a small hand and stifled her crying. Mina's heart went out to her. Before she even realized it, she had moved in, closing the gap between them as she touched the girl on the head.

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To be continued

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