Wait for Mi Iau to return

Tally waited. And he waited, and he waited. He was powerless to do much else really, since he was tied down to the ground and under the constant gaze of the guard. And since Mi still had all his stuff with her, including his sword, Tally was pretty much defenseless. He could only hope that Mi managed to shake off her other responsibilities soon. After a while, he noticed the guard becoming restless. She kept looking around, as if expecting to find someone, then groaning and leaning her head back against the bars of the gate.

“Something wrong?” Tally asked, in his first attempt to make conversation with her.

“My shift is over,” the guard complained. “Ance is supposed to have come to take over for me by now. She’s late… again…”

“Oh no,” said Tally sympathetically. He hadn’t expected to have a successful exchange with her, and now he didn’t know what to say next.

“I’m tired of waiting,” the guard grumbled. “Hey, human, I want you to tell her, whenever she decides to show up, that I’m not going to cover for her anymore. The gap in security isn’t my problem, it’s hers. I’m going home.” And with that, the guard trudged off, leaving Tally completely alone, standing around, tied by the neck to a stake in the ground. He twiddled his thumbs.

Around ten minutes later, another of the invaders passed by, and much to Tally’s dread, he seemed to catch her attention. The woman walked up to him, her impressive height becoming more apparent the closer she got. She stopped at about ten feet away, just outside of Tally’s reach.

“What are you doing here, human?” She asked.

“Waiting…” Tally replied.

The woman’s eyes followed the path of Tally’s neck restraint tying him to the ground. “What for?” She asked.

“The general was taking me out to use me for hunting practice,” Tally said, robotically repeating the same cover story Mi had come up with. It was only after he’d finished his sentence that he realized he should probably start sounding scared, to ram home the effect.

“Really,” the woman said. She looked at Tally for a long moment; she didn’t leave.

“Anything else I can help you with?”

“Yeah,” the woman said, “I think I’ll take you home with me.” She began to approach.

“Uh, wait, no, I don’t think you should do that, I-ugh!” She grabbed hold of Tally by the neck and pushed him against the gate to keep him still, while she wrenched the iron bolt out of the ground with her other hand. Unfortunately, Tally was still wearing his metal helmet, denying the skin contact that he needed for Brim to administer her mind-control magic.

The woman began to walk away, holding the bolt in her hand, and forcing Tally to follow her to keep the leash slack. “Where are you taking me?” Tally demanded.

“I’m gonna keep you as a pet, I’ve decided,” the woman said nonchalantly. “You can call me Quelm. I already have one human, and I can’t pass up another one just lying around unattended.”

“Pet!?” Tally choked, trying to keep up with her long stride. “No, you don’t understand- the general is going to come back expecting to find me, she specifically ordered that no one else do anything to me. You’re gonna get in trouble- ack!”

“I think you overestimate how much we care about your kind,” Quelm shrugged. “I doubt the general would miss you. There are plenty of other humans around here for hunting practice, after all.”

Quelm dragged Tally by the neck through the streets, attracting much attention from onlookers, both human and not. Tally closed the visor on his helmet, to protect what little scrap of dignity he had left. Quelm took him up a sloping hill, and Tally noticed the houses getting more and more destroyed, with fewer and fewer people: this was the part of the town that had been completely overtaken.

The occupation was based from a relatively small encampment at the far end of town, where the invaders lived either in stolen houses or in the large, conical, open-topped tents that had been erected. Quelm, it seemed, had one of the tents, for it was in there that she dragged Tally. There were two straw beds, a spot for a fire in the center, several storage chests, a couple barrels, and a rack full of spears and axes.

“Oh, perfect,” Quelm sighed, “My roommate’s not here. Right, you, human, welcome to your new home.” She pointed over Tally’s shoulder, and he looked around.

To Tally’s horror, he followed Quelm’s point to discover a metal cage, barely six feet to a side. Even worse, he realized, was that the cage was already occupied: An elderly human woman in her seventies who looked like she hadn’t been able to bathe in weeks gazed dejectedly out at him.

Quelm rummaged in one of the storage chests- still holding onto Tally’s restraint, so he couldn’t escape- until she found a key, which she used to open the cage. She shoved Tally inside and locked the door.

“Hello, young man,” droned the woman in the cage with him, “Welcome to Hell.”

“Fear not, civilian,” Tally said as bravely as he could, “I’ll soon get us out of here.”

“Good luck with that,” the cage-woman scoffed. “I’m Sarah. I see you’ve had the misfortune of meeting my captor.”

“My name’s Tally. How long have you been here?” Tally asked, lifting up his helmet visor to speak to her. He soon came to regret that decision, as her odor began to infiltrate his nostrils.

“About a month and a half,” Sarah replied.

“Quiet down in there,” Quelm snapped, who was currently sitting down on one of the beds and kicking off her boots. She appeared to be unpacking for the day, hanging up her utility belt, putting away her axe on the weapons rack.

“What are we supposed to do?” Tally asked, “just sit in here?”

Quelm shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. Just entertain yourselves or something, I don’t care.”

“You keep human beings as pets and you’re not even going to take care of us?”

“To be fair, she does give me her leftovers almost once a day,” Sarah said.

“Well what am I supposed to do?” Quelm called from over on her bed. “Just… do your thing.” She waved her hand vaguely.

“You don’t sound like a very responsible pet owner,” Tally observed.

Much to Tally’s distress, he found that despite all that talk of defiance, there really wasn’t much he was in power to do about his current situation. Quelm started writing on a wooden crate being used as a desk, and soon the only sounds were the scratching of her quill pen. The crushing weight of boredom began to bear down upon Tally as he leaned against the wall of the cage opposite from Sarah, who was chewing on a heel of bread that sounded as if it were at least a week old. Even Brim was bored, swimming in circles in the air above Tally’s head. It seemed Quelm’s level of interaction with her pet humans was roughly comparable to a human’s level of interaction with a pet goldfish.

Tally only had two possible means of escape: For Quelm to leave the tent, so he could try to **** his way out of the cage without being watched, or, ideally, for her to get close enough for him to make the physical contact he needed to brainwash her into opening the cage for him.