The east wind was frigid during this time of the year. Walking through the streets of Winterport slums was a young man with long silver hair and violet eyes on his handsome yet haggard face. He was about 6 feet tall with a lean and muscular body. He didn't have a lot of fat and looked a bit skinny in his jacket. As always, the man had a listless expression on his face masking any emotions.
“Morning Cal, up to the mines again?” said the portly old street food vendor while setting up his cart.
“Hmm,” replied Cal.
“Always so diligent if everyone else was like you then we wouldn’t need that many enforcers. Be careful out there, I heard the shades are more violent and restless this time of the year. See you tonight,” said the old man.
“Not tonight. I have to monitor the deep mines.”
The old man gave him a worried look. He knew how dangerous it was in the deep mines during the winter. “Your terms have all been fulfilled, Callahan…. You are no longer a slave, remember?”
“Yes.”
“Then why continue this treacherous occupation? I know the money’s well but there are other jobs which won’t kill you just because you stepped on the wrong stone,” he said in frustration.
“I wonder,” Cal said quietly to himself and hurried on his way.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had done something that made him genuinely happy. All his life he had followed orders. First his mother, then his masters, and now his so-called captain who never bats an eye while sending him to the most dangerous sections of the mine. Not like he can blame the captain as he never objects to any of the orders. To him, he must be the model enforcer. Always on time and never asking any questions.
He could never understand himself or his own actions. Maybe living on the edge of life and death is what’s keeping him alive and distracted from all the pain and grief hidden in the deep recesses of his mind. Or maybe he just likes to fight.
Either way, there was something in the mines that kept calling to him. Something that could move his long cold heart. Maybe it could give him a solution to all the nightmares. Or maybe it would be his end. Well, that was also a solution.
…
He arrived at the mine where he could see his captain handing out orders to the new recruits. All of them had hopeful looks on their faces like they were ready for a new page in their lives. All former mining slaves freed from their previous positions after they awakened their mana. The big smiles on their faces were obvious. They knew that this was their ticket to total freedom and exoneration from their previous crimes. Once they complete the basic service term of guarding the miners against the atrocities that surface from the deep mines for 2 years, their citizenship to the empire would be restored.
‘Naïve idiots,’ thought captain Reginald. ‘If it was so easy then we wouldn’t make former slaves into enforcers when there were so many awakened in the city guards. Only one in ten ever survive past the 1-year mark and out of those survivors, half get corrupted and must be put down before they kill everyone else.’
“Reporting for duty captain,” Cal said in an apathetic voice.
“If it isn’t my best enforcer on call. Why I was just waiting for you to get here. You don’t know how relieved I am to see your face,” replied Reginald with a tone that failed to betray any sort of relief. “I was just teaching these new recruits about the shades and their duties but now that you are here, I was wondering if you had room for a few more enforcers on your patrols?”
“Sir, I am going to the deep mines today they would only get in my way.”
“Come now don’t be rude to your juniors how will they learn anything if they don’t experience the real deal,” Reginald replied with an icy tone daring Cal to object.
Cal looked at the captain’s eyes for a moment and guessed that he must have made a bet with his friends on how many new recruits would survive past the first week again. “As you command sir.”
“Good. Good. Now don’t be that disappointed I am assigning you the three best recruits of this month. I’m sure they can hold their own in a fight.”
Four years of serving under the captain had made him aware that the only way to hide from his attention is to never get under his nose. He had made that mistake once and the captain has still not let go of that resentment to this day. Always finding a way to make his life harder. Not that it mattered to Cal if someone hated him, but it still annoyed him when he had to put up with his whims.
Cal looked at the three new recruits and wondered if the captain was lying to him. One look at them and he could say with certainty that they would not live past the three-day mark in the deep mines. Not like he cared anyways.
“Follow me,” he said before walking past them and going towards the mine shafts. Several of the miners looked at him with awe in their eyes as he made his way to the deep mines. The three recruits following him like lost puppies.
One of the recruits with brown hair and black eyes suddenly spoke up.
“What should we call you sir?”
“Cal,” he replied.
“No, I meant your rank, sir. The captain just said that someone will be here to teach us how to deal with the shades, we don’t know how to refer to you without offending you, sir. Oh, I am Bryan by the way.”
“Nothing you say could ever offend me. And enforcers don’t have ranks. At least not officially,” replied Cal. “The longer you can survive here the more respected you are. Seniority is also determined that way. You are first-years and at your most vulnerable time right now so try not to die.”
“Heh, stop exaggerating I have fought shades with my bare hands before, they aren’t anything special. Now that I have a flamestone sword nothing can beat me here,” said the blue-eyed and black-haired recruit with a grin. “You can call me Phil and that’s Safid,” he pointed at the last recruit with burly build and average looks. “Which gang are you from Cal?”
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“I don’t like gangs,” replied Cal.
“You must be some weakling who no one wanted,” Phil said in a mocking tone. “How about you join my gang? I am going to make a new gang here once I get the hang of things with Safid. We are going to turn this place upside down and become the best gang. Ain’t that right Safid?”
“Yes boss,” said Safid with an enthusiastic voice.
Cal looked at Phil like he was watching a clown. Forget a gang these fools won’t last two minutes in front of the senior enforcers before being slaughtered like lambs. He shook his head and didn’t bother talking with the soon-to-be deceased.
Phil didn’t like how he was ignored. “Your loss, don’t come crying to me when I am done taking over this place.”
“What year are you sir?” Bryan asked after a while.
“Fourth,” Cal replied coolly.
Before he could ask anything else, Cal motioned for them to stop. They had arrived at the deep mines. Before them, everything was pitch black with only hints of light coming from the occasional flamestone lamps that were on the mine walls.
“It's so dark here,” said Bryan. “Why don’t they add more lamps? I am sure our jobs would be easier if we had more visibility.”
“They don’t last,” said Cal. “The shades consume all light. Only warded Flamestone lamps can be used here. And even those don’t last long in the deep mines before being consumed.”
“Consumed?”
“The fames inside the stones are consumed by whatever supernatural phenomenon shrouds the deep mines, that’s why we enforcers always have to regularly change the flamestone lamps. Whatever consumes the flame stops it from recharging,” Cal stopped explaining and said, “No more questions now. There could be shades anywhere, have your weapons ready.”
The three complied with his words and pulled out their swords from their sheaths. Cal started surveying his surroundings before making his way deeper. They didn’t have to walk for long before coming across the first shade.
It looked almost indistinguishable from its surroundings. They only recognized it because of its white eyes and darker-than-black fur. It had a humanoid figure with a tail that ended with a sword-like structure and a height of 1.5 meters. Cal stepped forward and slashed his sword a few feet away from the monster before it could react. A long slash-shaped white light jumped out of his sword and went towards the shade. The moment it touched the shade it exploded into a bright white light which illuminated their surroundings and blinded the recruits for a few seconds. When they could see again the shade was gone. In its place was a small glowing stone. Cal picked up the stone and showed it to the recruits.
“Flamestone?” asked Bryan.
“Yes,” replied Cal. “That’s why the shades try their best to go to the upper mines. The flamestone lamps here are warded so they can’t consume the flames themselves and there are no active flamestones in the deep mines, but the upper mines don’t suffer from the same environmental phenomenon as here so the flamestones mined from there are all in their activated state. If they can somehow break past the enforcers in the deep mines, then they can go up and consume as much flamestone as they can before they evolve into shadows.”
While Cal didn’t care if these recruits survived, he never half-assed his job so he would train them to the best of his abilities. Whether they were capable enough to follow his instructions was up to them.
“What’s a shadow?” asked Phil.
“Something you don’t want to meet,” replied Cal. “The dropped flamestones are how we make our living. We can exchange them for our salary from the mine administrator.”
“Was that light mana that you used with your sword?” Bryan asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“So that’s your aspect. Must be handy in this area,” noted Bryan.
“It has its perks,” replied Cal. “But that’s enough babysitting. You are gonna fight the next one.”
“But we can’t release our mana yet,” Bryan said.
“I’m sure you learned how to use that sword in your training camp,” Cal said.
“Yeah, stop being a wimp it's only a shade, boss could handle that with his bare hands,” said Safid who had been quiet for a while now.
“Even if we can’t release mana our internal circulation is enough to considerably increase our strength from ordinary humans,” Phil said with some disdain in his voice.
As they were arguing with each other Cal heard some noise in front of them. “Quiet,” he said. “Get ready it's coming.”
All three took up proper stance and looked ahead. ‘At least they aren’t completely amateurs’ Cal thought as another adolescent shade approach them.
Phil was the first to lunge forward and slash with his sword, but the shade jumped back before he reached it. It growled before swiping its claws towards Phil. Phil reacted quickly and blocked with his sword, but the claws were just a distraction as its tail swung from behind and hit his side. Phil screamed as blood dripped down from his abdomen. It was cut by the sharp tail sword.
‘Tch, not even a few seconds.’ Cal was about to step forward when Bryan stepped in and stabbed his sword directly into the head of the shade while it was distracted with finishing off Phil.
“You alright?” Bryan asked Phil.
“Just a small scratch I will be fine. I would have got him if you didn’t step forward,” replied Phil.
“You were never hit by a shade, were you?” Cal asked.
“No,” Phil replied.
“Well then pray to whatever deity you believe in that you don’t get infected.”
“Aren’t we immune to that after we awaken?” asked Bryan.
“Not weaklings like you no,” Cal replied. “Only once you have fully assimilated your mana onto your blood vessels are you immune to that. You only have internal mana circulating in your veins. You have to slowly assimilate mana in your blood vessels so that you can fight off invaders entering your blood.”
“I won’t die just because of some fucking scratch,” Phil said though with some uncertainty.
“Patch yourself and get ready to move we still haven’t reached our patrol area,” Cal ordered.
They began moving again once Phil took care of his wound. After an hour of walking and three more encounters with shades which Cal took care of due to Phil’s delay, they finally reached their patrol area.
It was a fork in the road. One of the caves lead to a large cavern while the other went deeper into the mines.
“We will set up camp here. That cavern to our left has already been fully mined so there aren’t any flamestones over there. Hence more young shades are born over there. The lower the amount of flamestone, the easier it is for the deep mines to affect the surrounding environment. But the shades aren’t as strong since young shades don’t have any flamestones in them,” Cal explained while placing the flamestones picked from the previous shades around them to provide a better view.
“So, the ones we fought earlier were very strong. That must be why I had a hard time dealing with the first one,” Phil said regaining his previous confidence.
“Just one step above the weakest. The more flamestone they drop the stronger they are,” replied Cal. “We will be guarding this fork for 18 hours before the next shift takes over. Don’t let your guard down just because you will be facing weaker enemies. Shades are very smart and will group up when they are young. We can’t let them go deeper into the mines or towards the surface.”
Bryan raised his hand. Which was weird as he didn’t do that before.
“Yes,” Cal said letting him know that he could ask what he wanted.
“Why can’t we let them go down?”
“Because they will be a nuisance and distraction to the other enforcers up ahead,” Cal replied.
“There are others down there?” asked Phil.
“Where there are flamestones there are miners. Even if they are in their inactive state here. You are lucky I was told to patrol this section of the deep mine today. Young shades can’t infect the awakened. If we went deeper, you would not survive for long,” Cal said.
What followed next for the recruits was an excruciating hurdle of disposing waves of shades for hours upon hours until their bodies started to give in. Cal watched from the sides while taking care of most of the shades. Even still the recruits were having a hard time staying alive. Most of their bodies were covered in scratches. If they were ordinary humans they would have already been infected, maybe even corrupted. Cal was slightly impressed and realized he had underestimated them.
‘Huh. They could at least survive five days rather than three,’ he thought. However, he shouldn’t have tempted fate as it turned out.