A Song of Askaldenfirsts and Dragons. Book one: The outlanders (Part I-IV)
Chapter 20: Laylith

Laylith stood next to the bushes on the plantation. The cartkh bushes spread out their huge fruits, like giant nuts, if you squeeze the stem on which the fruit grew, the fruit will open and inside it you can replace fluff used to create clothes, bedding and other things. Laylith was just squeezing the stems and gathering the fluff when her father, Arel and Arinella entered. Laylith turned around.

“Daddy!” Laylith ran to him and jumped onto Edelmer’s neck, he answered with a mutual strong hug.

Then Laylith hugged Arel tightly and ignored Arinella. Laylith turned to her father, “I knew that you would replace me!” Laylith said excitedly. “If I’d escaped from here, I doubt I’d have found you by myself, so I decided to do my civic duty because someone blames our ancestors…” she rolled her eyes and grinned.

“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Edelmer asked.

“No,” Laylith replied, “I was the one who hurt one tukhtaash man by magical orbs... They are a strange people, living on past grievances, using slavery as an excuse for their plight, though they could have gone out and asked our people for compensation and perhaps got it. But if our peoples refused to return their lands, to compensate moral harm by something valuable, then they would have the right to revenge.”

“Get to work,” Slu Tis’s voice was heard from behind, “we’ll gather in the dining room exactly at eight p.m., but for now, help your daughter, Edelmer, and you too, don’t just stand there, come on.”

Slu Tis and the guards left them. Laylith took each a basket, giving one to her father and one to Arel, she then deliberately held out the third basket to Arinella but released it before Arinella took it. The basket fell.

“Sorry,” Laylith smiled slyly.

Arinella picked up the basket, glancing down at the northerner’s daughter. Laylith and her father went to the cartkhs bushes, Arel and Arinella separated and went to collect fluff nearby.

“Laeltilat, I’d like to apologize–”

“Dad, it doesn’t matter now.” Laylith interrupted him, Listen, the mechanisms automatically go up after someone is brought here. We need to be in the right place at the right time when the mechanism will bring someone down. And after we leave the state of embittered tukhtaashes, we’ll ask my mother to convince our king to remind the tukhtaashes how we were against slavery!”

“An interesting plan, but they keep slaves inside the city walls, and I looked at the walls, they are well guarded.”

“I’ll enchant someone,” Laylith smiled.

“Um, hmm,” Edelmer said, “dinner at eight in the evening, we just need something to eat and we can sneak out. Looks like a nice plan, I think. I’ll go and tell the others.”

He left Laylith gathering the fluff, and he went to Arinella, talked to her, and then went to Arel and told him about the plan.

Shortly before eight p.m. various enslaved laborers were led to the dining room... The gigantic dining room contained two, maybe even three hundred tables, at which about a thousand laborers are sitting, and had already begun to eat and rattle with spoons.

Arinella, Laylith, Arel and Edelmer found a place to seat. Eder went to get a large wooden tray to bring food to everyone. Laylith felt that magic was blocked, that it was impossible to cast spells in this place. The others felt it too.

Some big blond northerner with curly hair walked next to Laylith and, pushing her, said, “Nasty half-blood!”

Arel jumped up and just wanted to punch the snunorf, but the blond hit him with a tray in the face and Arel fell. Laylith also jumped up and was about to attack when she saw her father running, pushing everyone in his path. Edelmer was instantly there, and with a chokehold, he grabbed the blond by the neck in a choking grip and began to squeeze his hand around his throat.

“Apologize!” ordered Eder.

“Fuck you!” the blond barely spoke, unable to free himself and beginning to choke.

“Apologize to my daughter! Now!”

“Kpa…ha…pwa…hr…shr..hr…”

No one moved from the crowd to help the blond northerner, none of the guards began to react and breaks up the fight.

“Dad!” Laylith screamed in fright.

Edelmer saw her look and let the blond man go. Eder walked away from him. The curly-haired young big snunorf lay coughing.

“Your daughter is skarkeshuh,” he insulted Laylith. Eder held his temper. “Your stupid mother was skarkeshuh”

Eder continued to ignore, holding back his anger.

“I’m going to fuck your daughter, like I fucked your mother, right in every hole!” the blond rasped, “and to make the hole bloody bigger, I will cut off her ears!”

The northerners were calm people, but everyone has his limit. Eder exploded, he grabbed the tray and began to beat the blond’s face with such force that after three blows the tray was already stuck in the curly-haired man’s skull. The wooden tray was made of very strong Ermir wood.

And at that moment the guards ran up and grabbed Eder. Laylith rushed to her father, but she was stopped, and Arel had just regained consciousness. Arinella stepped back into the crowd and disappeared into it.

Slu Tis ran into the dining room, saw a dead snunorf with a tray sticking out of his head, and glared at Edelmer. Laylith was held, and Edelmer was dragged out from the dining room, his hands were tied with a rope.

“Laylith, don’t worry,” her father shouted, “I’ll figure out something!”

“He provoked him,” cried Laylith, “he was insulting me, my father got angry.”

“This is not a reason to kill anyone!” Slu said sharply.

“This blond bastard pushed me first, and hit Arel with the tray!” Laylith did not calm down.

“Your father guilt will be determined by the court,” Slu summed up.

“The court of offended slave owners!” the half-elf snapped and stopped crying.

Slu didn’t react and followed the escort that was leading Edelmer.