Bound and Broken: An Isekai Adventure Dark Fantasy (Melas Book 1) V.A. Lewis (feel good books to read .TXT) 📖

I looked at the flaps of the wagon, waiting for people to come in and begin unloading stuff— or at least give us our meals since we hadn’t eaten since morning. The flaps flew open, and I looked up—

And saw a grinning face.

"Huh, that’s quite the merchandise." A man dressed in plate armor poked his head into the room and stared about, he spun away for a second and shouted at someone else. "Hey, come check out what they brought this time!"

I blinked as the man turned back to face us, with a smug look that was the hallmark of an asshole. As another man came up behind him, the man leaned forwards, and spoke mockingly.

"Hey, animals!" The man spread his arms to his sides, as the second man threw open the flaps revealing an array of towering structures and gargantuan monoliths behind their backs.

"Welcome, to the Free City of Bys."

Chapter 18: Bys, the Free City of Slaves

I had always considered myself to be a good person; if my friends called me for advice, I would help them the best I could; if a homeless man (or woman) asked for some change, I would spare them what I could; and if I somehow struck it rich— if my dreams of becoming a successful lawyer came into fruition— I always believed that I would find the perfect balance between living a life without worries, and a life dedicated to helping those in need.

It was a simple philosophy: it might not have been the perfect philosophy, or even the best philosophy; but it was a simple enough philosophy, one that would let me have a clean conscience at the end of the day

And yet, more and more often, I found myself questioning whether I was even a good person in my past life; because only someone so heinous— someone so maliciously evil— would deserve to go through what I had been going through.

If there was any truly grave sin I had committed as a white girl from Southern California, it was probably the fact that I ate meat! I knew I should have gone vegan! the inane thought crossed my mind. I should have listened to Maddie when she told me eating meat was bad! And now, I was sentenced to suffer in this world as a punishment for it.

Or maybe it was dabbing. I paused, and pondered on the malignance of my actions. Yeah it was definitely the dabbing that led to this.

Maybe I was just biased. Surely there were plenty of people back in my world who went through much worse suffering than me, and did not even deserve a tiny fraction of it; but only because I was experiencing it firsthand now, did I suddenly find the world to be so unjust.

And perhaps, I did deserve this. Not because of any transgressions from my past life, but because of the shortcomings in my current one; because I failed to see the slavers as people.

I only ever considered them to be laughably evil stupid-dumb-idiot jerks; but now I know that that’s not true, and that they were simply laughably evil jerks.

It was not an epoch-making revelation: people generally were not stupid, after all. But it was enough of a distinction to have vastly altered my plans to escape— if I was aware of it.

And that was a pretty big ‘if’ that never came to be, because my judgement was severely clouded by constant stress and anger, from… y’know being a slave and all.

As such, I never once considered the possibility that the slavers— the jerks who had us chained up and locked in cages— would have seen and experienced the same things we saw; reacted to it and formed their own opinions on it; before deciding to alter their plans, which probably were also probably quite arbitrary in the first place. Slavers were people too! Who could have known?

To be perfectly honest, I should have expected this; not anything in specific, just that something would go wrong. Because, let’s face it: nothing had gone my way since I came to this world.

I lost my life, then lost my mom, and was captured into slavery after nearly dying, thrice! That was more times I had come close to death in these last few months, than the entire 18 years I spent on Earth— and that was including the time I died!

So now, as the curtains were drawn, and the stage was unveiled before my very eyes, I was faced with the disconcerting reality that this world hated me as much as I hated it.

"Welcome, to the Free City of Bys."

The flaps of our wagon were thrown open, and a cold chill enveloped me as a gentle breeze blew in from the night sky.

My gaze swept over the city, seeing a network of intersecting streets stretch out for over a dozen miles, lit up by lamps and torches lined up alongside this grid. Roads ran parallel to one another, cutting across streets at a 90 angle from the side, creating a uniformed pattern of lines which formed hundreds of square shaped sections of the city.

It was like looking at a city from back home! (And by home, I meant America of course!)

Unlike Boleria— which was characterized by discontinuous streets and haphazard placement of roads— Bys had a regular layout of city blocks which made navigation within the city far easier. The consistent geography and frequent intersection helped with orienting oneself, giving a far more direct route to one’s destination.

I cast my eyes on the houses made of limestone and bricks uniformly wrinkling the landscape of the city: white structures with red tops jutted out of the ground in overlapping rows, leaving the terrain devoid of any personality, and transforming it