Once more, bob and I were in the cart, heading towards the den. He had mostly gotten over his fear of Assassins at this point. They wouldn’t do anything to him, there was nothing to worry about. In his words: “Assassins, like all Slavani, err… except you, Ribbee, are stupid and pose no real threat.”

I agreed with tha sentiment. I am the only Slavani worth fearing!

As we traveled on the road, I noticed something in the distance. A lone sister, standing proudly. She wore a luxurious set of white and blue robes, and had a staff made of twisting dark wood with a large orb on the end.

“Ah!” I yelled with a smile as I rose from my seat. “A Caster already?! Out here? What luck! Heeey, sis!” I waved my arm.

“That’s a Caster?” Bob said.

“Yep! You don’t typically see them, since they tend to stay underground most of the time, absorbed in their books or telling the rest of us how best to help the den. Her being out here must be a sign from Master Herself!”

But then the Caster’s staff started to glow a deep red.

“Sis?” I raised my eyebrow.

Her brow was tight, her mouth twisted into a frown. She pulled the staff back, waved it in a circle, then mumbled something too quiet for me to hear from this distance. Then, she pointed the staff right at us!

I grabbed bob and threw us off the cart as it exploded behind us! No explosion, no fire, it just shattered into a billion pieces. The human beast was undamaged, but he was spooked by the sounds of wood splintering and ran all the way back to the estate.

Bob and I fell into a nearby bush, and when we tried to get up, that Caster was standing over us. She held the staff in one hand, with the orb pointed towards me, I saw my reflection in the glossy surface. A deadly seriousness marked her face, she wouldn’t hesitate to use that spell on us.

Bob and I froze.

“Hello Ribbee, hello human.” Her voice was steady, she wasn’t happy.

I gulped, and gave a weak smile, “h-hey, Osothro.”

Bob subtly and carefully waved his arm.

“Quite a few sisters have gone missing from the den recently.” Her cold eyes washed over us, and her tone sent chills across my fur. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Bob shook his head frantically, while I went for a more tactical approach. “Th-they’re not… ‘missing’, per say, I know exactly where they are. I brought them to a mansion in the human kingdom.” I wrapped an arm around bob’s shoulder, “b-bob and I enslaved them!” I showed off a big, forced smile, and gave a thumbs up.

Bob looked to me, his eyes conveying a certain horror.

Osothro’s face didn’t change. “Enslave… you enslaved our sister?”

“Y-yeah! We do it all the time back at the den, right?”

Her right eye twitched, and her orb glowed red again. I felt a sharp slap against the sides of my face, over and over again, left and right repeatedly. Each magical slap was accompanied by a crack of noise to make it sound even harder. Bob was left unhurt from this assault.

“Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot! Stupid Soldier, bad!” She stopped, and I was left holding my aching cheeks. “Enslavement is a bad thing, dummy! Couldn’t you figure that out from context clues? It means you don’t have a choice in the matter. You have one job you do over and over again, no breaks, no days off, and if you start slacking, you’re beaten, or have your food taken away!”

My cheeks felt a bit swollen, “huff muph muuh humgh humfuf mum?” “[But how is that any different from living in the den?]”

“The difference is we’re working for Master, while enslaved sisters work for humans. Totally different. Only an iiiiiidiot could confuse the two.”

“[Okay, well, I’m an idiot, fine. But we need your help! Xeres and Gebbi are leading mobs who are fighting, and they’re threatening to tear apart the whole mansion if nothing is done!]”

Osothro recoiled, her brow narrowed, her lips pressed into two thin lines, and her ears perked. “Huh? ‘Threatening to tear apart the mansion’?” She turned to bob, “what kind of operation are you running?”

“We… my lady and I are the only humans, and letting you Slavani work and sort yourselves out… had worked so far, but it just recently got out of hand.”

“…” her face was blank, she kept glancing between us as if to check that we were serious.

I capitalized on the idea and jumped up, “[yeah! It’s great. We do what we want, we run the kitchen, we have a whole little society over there to help each other! And we sleep a lot, ton of nap times available. How is that slavery?]”

“…huh.” Osothro rubbed her chin.

“[It’s a mansion full of fun an adventure! So,]” I stuck my hand out, “[would you like to join us?]” I gave her a wink, which probably looked silly considering my chipmunk-like cheeks.

“Huh, well… I like fun… very well.” She straightened her back and brought the staff behind her, “I will permit you to take me to this mansion. I’ll stop the fighting, and I’ll judge for myself the truth of the matter.” Her staff glowed red and the shattered splinters of the cart flew back together like a puzzle. “Let us be off.” She said as she hopped in the back, her tail wagging in excitement.

“Uh,” bob said, “our horse is gone. We can’t use the cart.”

“I see.” Osothro’s orb glowed green, and she touched me with it. This gave me a huge burst of energy, which let me get in the horse’s place and push the cart all the way back to the mansion with no issue.

The mansion, upon our return, was a mess. Windows broken, exhausted Slavani sprawled out on the steps and front lawn, huge chunks ripped out of walls and the floors. Fighting was still going on inside the mansion, sister grappling and throwing each other about, or just punching each other as hard as their frail arms could muster.

“You people really can’t function without us Casters, can you?” Osothro hopped out of the cart and walked to the mansion, with bob and I following behind.

She entered through the busted open doorway, and I saw the lady of the mansion sitting on the bottom step, her head in her arms, despairing over the state of her home. Sisters brawled around her, but she remained undisturbed in her spot.

Osothro sighed, then her staff glowed green. From the orb came a green mist of light green particles that spread throughout the mansion. When a particle touched a sister, it was absorbed in her fur and she instantly dropped limp on the spot. Thud, thud, thud, it wasn’t long before the mansion was silent, save for the lady, bob, Osothro and I.

“What are you Workers doing?” She rolled her eyes.

Each sister screamed out a response. Their jaws were paralyzed, so it was nothing but a torrent of rumbles and slack jawed responses. What I could make out was ‘putting these fools in their place’, ‘fighting for Master’, and ‘I dunno but it’s been fun’.

Osothro used her magic to levitate Xeres and Gebbi, setting them before her and holding the two in place. “I was told you two were the ring leaders of this. What happened?” She used magic to unparalyze their mouths.

“We were trying to stack bookcases properly and this fool wanted to put them in a color gradient pattern.” Xeres said with clear disgust.

“I have had to restock those bookcases a hundred times now, and this anti-Master heretic keeps trying to arrange them by page count. Disgusting.”

Osothro’s eye twitched. “Do you two have any idea how inefficient that would be? No, you don’t, since neither of you read. The proper method is to split the books by genre, then stack them alphabetically. That way you can actually find the book you’re looking for.”

The lady of the mansion perked up, “that’s what I said.”

Osothro looked at her, “shut up, you’re a human, nobody cares.”

I tapped Osothro’s shoulder and whispered in her ear “actually she owns this mansion.”

“…oh. Well, my point still stands. You shouldn’t try to corral such a large group of Slavani if you don’t know how to manage them.” She let Xeres and Gebbi fall limp to the sides, then she walked forward and put a hand out for the lady. “Don’t worry. These sisters are good, passionate Workers. For a small fee, I’ll keep them in check for you.” Osothro smiled a toothy grin.

“…” The lady narrowed her brow, “what’s the fee?”

“You’ll find out in time, hehheh, ha ha ha, HA! HAHAHA!” The Workers slowly began to recover from their paralysis, and they joined in the laughter as well. Some sisters only joined the laughing as to be polite, some sisters giggled, while others found it to be a real hoot, and laughed so hard they began coughing.

But regardless, the lady was pressured into accepting Osothro’s deal. Without a Caster in the leadership role, a brawl like this would just happen again and again, an unorganized mob of sisters can only accomplish so much.

But with that, my story is basically done with this whole affair. I went from guarding the Minruube den against all threats, to being recruited to maintain a human’s mansion, to attracting other sisters to help maintain the mansion, to being promoted by Osothro to guard once more. The rest of my days have been spent patrolling the territory between the lady’s estate and the Minruube den, a passive observer to Osothro’s administration.

Osothro’s first order of business was to fix the mansion, which only took a day since she unified us all behind her vision. Next, she ordered the construction of an office space for her, centrally located behind the foyer, with multiple doors so couriers could deliver her orders across the estate.

Then, Osothro coordinated with the lady on her family’s various businesses. I don’t know much about that, but the lady ended up inviting many partners and friends in other neighboring estates to lavish parties held in the mansion. Under Osothro’s watchful eye, the parties went off without a hitch, and the other business-humans were charmed by we Slavani, and expressed interest in obtaining us as servants for their estates too.

But before that could be done, Osothro ordered the expansion of the dens under the lady’s mansion and even closed the mansion’s staff quarters so we all had to move below ground. That kinda sucked, I liked my little bed space, but orders were orders.

Osothro started sending caravans back to the Minruube den to bring more and more sisters, and eventually, she went to the lady. “Hey,” she said, “it’s getting to be a pain to send caravans all the way around and through the forest to bring more sisters here. I wanna build a tunnel that links the den under your mansion with our Minruube den. It’ll speed up efficiency by a lot.”

“Hmm, I can see the wisdom of that. Very well.”

So, in a few weeks of digging, both spaces were linked, and the den under the mansion was officially incorporated into the Minruube den.

Then, a few weeks later, Osothro came up to the lady again. “Morale is being lost due to the lack of iconography dedicated to Master.”

“Really? I’ve witnessed no such thing.”

Osothro nodded, “that’s because you aren’t a Slavani. Trust me, there’s a depressive stench in the air around my sisters, and it’s costing your estate money. To fix this, I’ll take that fountain in the front garden and add a marble statue of Master, designed with pipes so water can flow down Her divine form. Do you want Master’s first, second, third, or fourth incarnation?”

The lady was taken aback by this assault of information, “I’m… not sure. I don’t know much of your Master. Which would look the best aesthetically?”

“Master’s second incarnation would look the best.”

“Good! Do that then. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Osothro.”

But it didn’t stop there.

“Oh, lady, we want to hang up this artwork dedicated to Master!”

“Hey, lady of the mansion, look at this grand, flowing tapestry of Master we created. Isn’t it a work of art? I’d like to place it in your mansion.”

“One of the Workers was struck with a burst of inspiration and chiseled this statue to Master. I think it would look lovely in the hedge maze.”

More and more icons were set up to Master until the mansion basically became one large museum dedicated to Her. Human artwork came down to make room for Slavani crafted ones, each painting or statue nothing less than the highest quality. Each time business-humans were invited to the mansion, they too were in awe of the expert craftsmanship of each work of art.

It was here that Osothro started signing contracts with those other business-humans. For a large sum of money, Slavani would be sent to their estates to maintain them. Just Workers, and a Soldier or two to protect them. These business-humans weren’t told of the necessity of a Caster until much later, when the estates were dependent on Slavani labor and couldn’t disagree with whatever changes the Caster deemed necessary to improve efficiency, like connecting dens via tunnels, or erecting statues to Master.

By this point, Minruube den was growing more and more, spreading beneath the human kingdom via tunnels and outposts under mansions.

Sadly, the lady of the mansion was old, so she got deathly sick and began to die.

Luckily, Osothro was there and offered her a way out of her limited mortality.

“Allow me to take you to the Minruube Spawn Pits, and I can turn you into a Slavani, like us. No disease will affect you, you’ll be surrounded by your sisters, Master’s love will keep you warm forever. So long as you return to the Spawn Pits every few years, you can even live forever. What do you say?”

The lady made the correct choice, of course, and she became a Slavani.

She chose her name to be Caster Ruth Barnaby, Former Human Convert of the Minruube Spawn Pits on Disputed World Gedri.

Did she change her name or was she always Ruth? I have no idea, and I’m a little embarrassed to ask since I’ve known her for like a year at this point.

Bob, similarly, followed his lady and converted. He became Soldier Gregory Valentine, Former Human Convert of the Minruube Spawn Pits on Disputed World Gedri. Apparently, Ruth saved his life some years ago and he was completely devoted to her, so conversion wasn’t a question for ol’ Gregory.

Wait, was his human name not bob then? Oh well, I guess it doesn’t matter any more.

All I know is that Ruth’s estate is coming along great, and we’re sending more and more sisters to work on neighboring estates. Some humans got spooked when they saw her become a Slavani, and then cancelled their deals with us, but enough didn’t care that they’ve become prime recruiting grounds! Not only will we expand the Minruube den to their mansions, but we’ll convert their human staff, and even their leaders!

Sure, Osothro might be the one in charge of this operation now, but I was the one who started the process! If I didn’t let myself be shoved in that sack and thrown in the back of the cart, none of this would have happened.

I deserve at least 80% of the credit. Osothro even got mad and slapped me when she found out what I was doing!

But regardless, hopefully by this time in a few years, your territory around the Minruube den will have grown exponentially! All thanks to me, of course. With a little help from Osothro.

Forever your most danger-observant servant:

– Soldier Ribbee Kourt Dusari, First Daughter of Soldier Grug Debdo Sugurat and Soldier Kithk Venerg Fedrid, Born of the Minruube Spawn Pits on Disputed World Gedri.