ꜱᴜʙᴊᴜɢᴀᴛᴇᴅ | [ᴛᴏᴊɪ ᴢᴇɴ'ɪɴ 𝙭 ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ 𝙭 ᴠᴀʀɪᴏᴜꜱ]

Captive

Trigger Warning: character taken hostage.

Toji hoisted up the limp body of the girl and slung her carcass over his shoulder. She was out cold and would be for another couple of hours probably. Wading through the high waters of the rice fields, he took on a different direction so as to avoid the village - it would not bode well if someone caught sight of a him hauling around the body of an unconscious girl.

Girl.

Toji frowned, his thin brows knitting in heavy thought. The Zen'in leaders had been very vague about that. She definitely wasn't a kid. More like a young woman. In a sense, it was a relief though. She was destined to be subjugated to their will and be bound to them in eternal prostration, catering to their every whim - a servant of a sorts. Though more like a slave.

At least she wasn't a child...

The thought of it caused him to feel sick, his stomach clenching in repulsion. Rumors traveled fast within the world of sorcerers, they were so few that everyone seemed to know one another. And of course, since the three major clans, the Gosanke, were all in open rivalry, they utterly hated each other. So strife and hatred was borne and ran thick like congealed blood - muckraking was a common strategy to spite someone, it was all part of the dirty political games the higher ups played. And Toji knew all about the facets of vilification and malicious defamation. He himself was a victim of it.

But living on the edges of society also allowed him to gather a lot of information. Word was, some exponents of the Zen'in clan had a thing for innocent flesh. Hence his mission to retrieve the girl that lay unconscious across his broad shoulders, her head lolling back and forth with every step he took, a rivulet of blood dripping in his wake.

If he could, he would have them all strung up by their balls. It had a pleasant irony to it.

But at least she wasn't actually a kid. That was a relief.

In about an hour, dawn would break through the reticence and the fields would be thronging with farmers hard at work. Toji debated on whether it was wise to take the initial route he had chosen to get here, but he decided against it. What he would do would be to traipse through the fields for roughly a half hour and then sneak into an adjacent village - steal a car perhaps and then get the hell out of this godforsaken place. If he was fortunate, he would encounter neither shamans nor curses, though the likelihood of that occurring was low.

Lands like these were always abundant with rampant curses and malicious entities - it had something to do with the villagers constantly hailing maledictions to each other and to the lands which bore them fruit. Sometimes it would rain too much and their cultivation would be destroyed by the heavy deluges.

And they would curse.

Other times, the blazing sun would hail upon the earth it's vehement heat, burning everything it touched.

And they would curse again.

And then other times, they were just jealous sods and their cursed energy would flow rampant of its own accord and take form, manifesting a consciousness of its own.

Toji eventually reached the borders of the field, the lights of a small country side town flickering in the distance. The outskirts of this place seemed fairly desolate, there seemed to be no one in the near perimeter.

Reaching a beaten track, Toji strode over to a willow tree on the side of the road and crouched under the fall of lance shaped leaves. Finally, he was enshrouded and far from prying eyes. He knelt down and lifted up the fragile frame of the girl, laying her down gently on the hard packed earth.