A man shouted loudly by his ears.

Ru Meng wanted to go back to sleep. He was tired.

Another voice spoke, softer but firmer than the other man. Ru Meng understood nothing, perhaps because he was still drowsy and rousing from his sleep.

It was noisy and uncomfortable. Ru Meng wanted to cover his ears with his hands. He tried to pull his hands up but they didn’t listen to him. He decided it was too much effort to try any harder and let the sleep take him again.

Something pointy kept digging into his stomach, rudely hauling him out of the murky waters of his dreams for brief moments before he sank back to its comfortable depths.

This went on for a while until Ru Meng felt a strange weight lifted off his body, almost as if he was breezing through the air. It lasted for less than a second before the colossal mass of the totality of the earth crashed into the young boy, expelling him from his slumber as violently as it wrenched the air out of his lungs.

Ru Meng gasped desperately. He breathed as hard as he could, but it felt like no air could enter his lungs. His eyes snapped open, to the sight of a man he didn’t recognize kneeling over him as he shouted at another man he didn’t recognize. He had an audience; he could hear the shuffling sound of footsteps and strange clinking noises.

The man patted Ru Meng lightly on the cheeks and helped him sit up. He was still gasping and spluttering like a fish on dry land, the corner of his vision blurring and black on the edges. The man was saying something to him. He couldn’t understand. He shook his head.

“Are you okay?” The man finally said in Mandarin.

Ru Meng nodded gingerly, even though it felt like his insides were on fire and the ceiling was spinning and nothing was okay.

The man continued patting him on the back while giving out instructions to someone. A young boy, perhaps only one or two years older than Ru Meng, returned with a cup of water. The man took the cup and put it to Ru Meng’s lips. He sipped the water, choked, and spit most of it out again. He took another sip after he recovered and finally felt well enough to take in his surroundings.

He looked around and saw the man who was taking care of him. He had tan skin, jet-black eyes and was dressed in loose clothes made out of cloth. His pants were dusty from getting on the ground.

“Feeling better?” he said softly.

Ru Meng nodded and the man said, “Don’t worry now. You’re safe here.”

Ru Meng wracked his brain trying to understand what was happening. Safe? But where had he been before this? He had saved an old woman and her granddaughter and they went back to her home and then he ate and then he fell asleep. What did he mean safe?

Ru Meng looked down and found his hands and feet bound in chains. Long, loose chains that ended in shackles, just like those on the child slaves at the market. He cried out in surprise and scrambled groggily onto his swaying feet. He reached for his knives, only to realise he had been stripped of all his belongings except his clothes. Panic rang in his mind. Adrenaline coursed through his veins.

He spun around, only to find an audience of similar bony, pale-skinned young boys not much older than himself. They were all cast in chains, staring at him with eyes as wide as marbles and black as shadows. Another man, the one who had thrown him against the ground, simply smiled at him.

His breath quickened, his lungs wheezed.

His legs moved before he told them to. He turned around and sprinted down the closest tunnel, the metal chains rattling between his heavy feet. He had not taken more than five steps when a sharp pain stung him across the crook of his knee. His knee crashed to the ground and scraped against the rocky floor.

A short, grizzled man with dark, weathered skin stepped out into the light. He flicked the rattan cane in his right hand as he grabbed Ru Meng by the scruff of his neck and dragged him back to the group.

Ru Meng shuddered, thinking about how easy it would be for these slavers to crush them under their boot. A pair of soft, warm hands grabbed him by the shoulders.

The first man, the man who had helped him when he was slammed into the ground, turned him to face himself. He lifted up Ru Meng’s face and asked worriedly, “You’re not injured, are you?”

Ru Meng’s head went blank. He couldn’t understand the incongruence in this man’s behavior. He was acting kind to him, as if he wasn’t part of these people who had put these chains on him. He had stood by and watched his companions throw him to the ground, hit him and drag him across the earth, only to ask him if he was okay.

He stared into the man’s jet-black eyes and found no comfort in his gentle expression. Only fear.

The man stared at him in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time. Ru Meng’s wanted to say something, anything, to end this chilling quiet, but his teeth only chattered.

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The man finally said, “Please don’t do that again. I understand you’re feeling frightened and scared, but we don’t want to hurt you. These chains—” he lifted up the chains around Ru Meng’s feet, “—they’re just to make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

He placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“What is your name, boy?”

“R-Ru Meng. Song Ru Meng.”

“Meng, as in ‘dream’?”

Ru Meng nodded stiffly, paralyzed by fear. He wanted to do something, anything, but his mind was blank. He had never felt so helpless, even when those bandits cornered him.

“That’s a pretty name,” the man said with a smile. “You can call me Uncle Rayyan. Ru Meng, the unfortunate truth of our world is that we drew the short end of the stick. We live in a place where beasts might eat us while we sleep and where there isn’t enough food for anyone. I don’t like to do what I do, but it’s the only thing I can do to protect the people I care about. These chains are not very nice, yes, but we will give you food and shelter and make sure no harms comes to you and that’s a better deal than most people can ask for. All you have to do in exchange is do a little digging. Isn’t that fair?”

The man who threw Ru Meng to the ground grunted impatiently and rolled his eyes. Rayyan shot a glare at him and looked back at Ru Meng, who was still trembling on the spot.

“You’ll come around,” he said as he rubbed Ru Meng’s head, almost affectionately. Ru Meng froze, as if a venomous serpent was touching him.

“Hakimi will explain how things work around here,” Rayyan said as he waved his hand. The same boy that had brought Ru Meng water earlier stepped forward. Suddenly, he raised one hand and the boy stopped.

“I’m sorry, you only speak Mandarin, yes?”

Rayyan turned around before he could reply and shouted, “Lan!”

Several of the other boys seemed a little restless upon hearing this. A skinny Chinese boy that seemed eager to hide his head behind his body came forward.

“Show him around for me, will you? You can have extra meat for dinner tonight.”

Lan’s eyes seemed to brighten up a little at the promise and he eagerly grabbed Ru Meng’s hand.

“Get back to work, everyone. Keep up the good work,” said Rayyan. He exchanged a few words with the other two men and walked away, leaving them to watch over the children.

Ru Meng could feel the two men’s gaze burning a hole into his back.

The children vanished, one group moving into a tunnel and the other crawling down a mine shaft.

Lan pulled Ru Meng over to a cart with no wheels and shoved a rusty pickaxe onto Ru Meng. He took out a match and lit a small lamp, which he also shoved into Ru Meng’s arms.

The boy didn’t say much. He just picked up a large piece of ore with pieces of glowing stones in them and pointed at the stones. Just to make sure that Ru Meng understood, he pointed at the pickaxe in his hand and back at the stones again.

He then waved his hand and made Ru Meng follow him into the tunnel where the other boys had gone. They walked by the boys and Ru Meng was quite sure he heard a few of them click their tongues.

Lan seemed to have flinched a little when that happened. Ru Meng said nothing. His mind finally seemed to be working now that that unsettling man had finally left.

One thing was painfully clear to him: he had to escape. He absolutely had to go back to his father. How did he end up here? Why did it seem like he was moving further and further from his simple, simple goal when he was already giving it his best?

How did he end up here? The thought of that snapped Ru Meng back to focus. The old woman. Did she have something to do with this? An indescribable feeling bubbled in the back of Ru Meng’s throat. Sadness, despair, disappointment, revulsion at himself. Ru Meng didn’t know what to think. She seemed so nice and kind too. They were starving; maybe she had no choice but to sell him to these slavers.

A strange thought appeared in his head: he wouldn’t have cared if she had sold him off to save herself and her granddaughter; it would have made someone happy. If only he didn’t have a father he needed to take care of. Yet, above all else, that same vile, putrid feeling Ru Meng had always felt permeated his entire being once more. Bitter, bitter self-hatred.

He let himself be put in this position again. He let his guard down. He got too comfortable and now his father was going to suffer for it. He would never escape from these slavers.

No, he told himself, he would find a way to do it. Somehow. He still had his magic.

Lan led him to a dead end and motioned at the wall. He then started swinging his own pickaxe, taking off chunks of dirt at a time. Ru Meng stared at his own pickaxe, feeling the weight of it in his wands. It could be a weapon. The tip of the pickaxe was dull, but it was made of metal. He could use a Spell of Sharpening on it. Perhaps…

A heavy blow to his back cut Ru Meng’s thoughts short and knocked him flat on his chest.

“Best get started working, kid.”

It was the man who had carried Ru Meng all the way here. He flashed a nasty grin at Ru Meng. He had long, lanky arms and wore a loose singlet that hardly covered the lean muscle underneath. He didn’t have a weapon in his hand, but Ru Meng had no doubt this man could cave his head in with very little effort.

He silently picked up his pickaxe and got to work. The man watched him, stretching his neck forward as he hurled abuse after abuse without pause.

“Put some muscle into it! Have you not eaten?” he would yell and push Ru Meng around, “Oh, that's right! You haven’t had anything to eat, and you won’t if you keep doing such poor work!”

Ru Meng lowered his head and gritted his teeth, pouring all his strength and focus into tearing apart the wall in front of him. Silence always helped when he was taking a beating. It gave the other person no satisfaction.

At last, the man seemed to have gotten bored of his new toy and walked away to find someone else to torture.

Ru Meng didn’t stop working. He didn’t know if that man would come back around again. He followed Lan’s lead, trying to improve his swing and learning how to free chunks of rock and ore that were too hard to carve out with the pickaxe. He would watch the other boy swing and try his best to do the same. Yet, despite the other boy’s small frame and hunched back, the pile of earth beside them revealed that Ru Meng was working far more slowly than his reserved companion.

Bad thoughts threatened to flood his mind, but Ru Meng had been in bad situations before. He let the soreness in his muscle numb himself. No time for pathetic whining. As always, he needed a plan. Just like a hunt. First, he needed to follow the tracks. Information.

What seemed like hours passed them by. When Ru Meng was sure no one was watching over them, he took a deep breath and spoke.

“Your name’s Lan?”

The other boy ignored him and continued digging at the wall.

Ru Meng wasn’t sure what to do. He had never talked to anyone else besides his father and when his father ignored him, nothing would get him to respond. If he pushed it too far, his father would get violent.

Ru Meng put down the pickaxe, forced his mouth into an awkward smile, and repeated his question, “Your name’s Lan? Nice to meet you.”

The boy turned his head away.

Defeated, Ru Meng pursed his lips and went back to work.