Feldspar Mine, Desmond, 10416 P.C.
The echo of metal hitting rock bounced off the stone walls of the dimly lit tunnel, clashing with the sounds of voices and clattering chains. Off in the distance, the crack of a whip preceded the yelp of its victim, both sounds raising the hairs on the back of Matthew Garza's neck. He could practically feel the metal tip of the leather whip digging into his skin, adding another layer of fresh wounds to the crisscross pattern of scars already carved into his back. Shaking away the torturous fantasy — one that had too often been real — Matthew bit his bottom lip until he tasted blood, keeping his head down. Wisps of his greasy brown-black hair dangled about his eyes, and he blew at them to get them out of his sweaty face. No matter how often he had braided back his long hair and tied it with a strip of cloth, it always seemed to slip out and get in his way.
With a grunt, he swung the heavy pickaxe at the pink-coloured mineral deposit in the wall, cracking at it until a small chunk dislodged and fell to the floor. He took a step back, the chain on his ankle clanking on the stone ground as he lowered his pickaxe to lean on it. He brushed the hair out of his eyes as his partner, Abigail Lenox, retrieved the chunk of feldspar from the ground and dropped it into the crate beside them. Since her skinny arms were too weak to wield an axe, she had been assigned to mineral pick up — a task, she assured him often, that was just as tiring. Knowing women, Matthew kept his mouth shut.
"What's wrong?" she asked instantly when he didn't move after she got out of his way. Her voice was pinched, and he bit back a sigh at her worry. She was constantly worried, and he struggled not to get annoyed.
"Just catching my breath, Abby." Straightening up and hefting the pickaxe into his hands once more, he looked down the tunnel. "Don't worry, we're almost done, and we're full enough for quota." He briefly glanced at the crate Abby was leaning on. Yes, it was quite full enough for quota. He turned back to the wall with a dull gaze, knowing he was expected to keep working regardless.
Abby pushed herself up onto the crate, lifting her bare feet and causing her ankle chain to rattle. Both of their chains were connected to the crate, which they would have to push back down the tunnel to be stacked and shipped off. The crate itself was hefty even on four wheels, and being chained to it ensured that they couldn't leave it, therefore making escape impossible.
Matthew set back to attacking the wall, knowing Abby watched him closely. As soon as a chunk broke free, she was off the crate and picking it up; Matthew froze to let her, frowning at how close she had come to hitting her head on his axe. Even several months in, she was a bit too careless — or too trusting. She struggled to pick up the pinkish mineral.
A yell to his left drew his attention. Just feet away, another crate like theirs sat against the wall with two other slaves to tend to it — and they were bickering. A glance into their crate told him why: it was only three-quarters full.
Matthew knew full well what happened when quota wasn't reached. Ages ago, when he had been younger and doing Abby's job, he and his partner Daniel hadn't met quota several times. The reasons were lost to Matthew now, but the punishments were seared in his mind. The first time, Matthew, who couldn't have been much older than thirteen at the time, had gotten five lashes while Daniel, who was over twice Matthew's age, had gotten ten. The second time it was doubled, and the third was doubled from the second. The fourth time, Matthew hadn't been lashed at all. Instead, he had been paired with a new partner.
He hadn't ever seen Daniel again.
Watching the two bickering slaves now, his gut clenched, and he took a deep breath. "Abby," he said shortly as she straightened up, holding the chunk of feldspar in her hands. She looked up at him questioningly, so full of innocence. She had never experienced missed-quota. She had only been brought in a few months ago, and they had been paired almost right off the bat — usually the inexperienced were paired with the experienced, and Matthew was well-experienced. Abby had been so fragile, so soft, so broken up over her parent's deaths. He found himself wanting to protect her despite knowing he couldn't. Over the months she had grown stronger, tougher, but she was still so soft. He guessed that was why she immediately obeyed his nod toward the other two slaves and dumped the chunk of feldspar into their crate. The two didn't even notice.
Abby stood so close to Matthew, he could feel her shivering, see the sympathy in her eyes as she watched their neighbours. "They won't reach quota if they keep fighting," she whispered.
He was used to Abby stating the blatantly obvious. He nudged her, and she backed off, returning to their crate and perching on its edge as Matthew returned to work. As another piece of feldspar hit the ground, Matthew heard voices at the end of the tunnel. He recognized the slave masters' voices anywhere. The workday was ending. Even as Abby hefted the feldspar into their neighbour's crate, he knew that it was a lost cause. Turning away from them, Matthew went back to his mining, letting bitterness make his strikes a bit stronger and dig a bit deeper.
Before he knew it, Umair, one of the slave masters, was walking down the hall toward them, ordering the slaves to load up and move out. Matthew had known Umair for years. The man was a bit aloof, but he was at least border-lined friendly enough to initiate a conversation with. The whip rarely left his belt, which was also a great bonus. Some of the other slave masters were too whip-happy, lashing slaves on a mere whim.
"You know the drill," Umair mono-toned as he passed Matthew and Abby, not giving their full crate a second glance. His focus, Matthew knew, had been drawn to the not-quite-full crate of feldspar their neighbours had salvaged. Umair stopped for a moment, giving it a pitying look before ordering the two to take it out of the tunnel. At the tunnel's end, Matthew knew, the two would meet their fate.
Tossing his pickaxe into the crate with their feldspar, Matthew flexed his sore arms before helping Abby push it down the tunnel. Or, rather, Abby helped him push it down the tunnel. Ahead of them, another two slaves pushed their crate, and beyond them, others. It was a slow, steady train that weaved down the tunnel. It felt like hours before they reached the end, surrendering their crate to the two shippers while the key man, as he was called, unlocked their chains in two blinks of an eye. The crate went to the right, Matthew and Abby went to the left, joining the line of others for their supper meal. The line shuffled along into a smaller tunnel, where they were given wooden bowls full of what truly looked like sludge and mushy tomatoes. Matthew knew that it contained something strong that kept the slaves alive on so little somehow, but he wasn't sure what that could be. Someone had once told him that their food was spiked with something in the mornings and afternoons that gave them energy, while at night it made them sleepy. He didn't know what it was, and he wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen the effect of it on his fellow slaves; however, it never made a difference on him, and he had nearly given up wondering why.
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The small tunnel opened into a large room — the eating room, they called it — where many others were already sitting and devouring the food they had been given. Matthew headed for the nearest wall and sank down to the floor, careful not to spill any of the sludge in his bowl. Abby joined him, sighing deeply as she did. He ignored her, used to how she followed him everywhere. Instead, he fingered the sludge into his mouth, watching the rest of the room and noting that the two who had not met quota didn't come in to eat. He wasn't surprised.
"You okay?" Abby asked him, scratching at her bushy head of hair. Like all the others, her hair had been buzzed off when she had been brought into the mines. Already, it was a couple inches long and matted. They were only permitted showers once a month — it was how Matthew kept track of time — and it had been many days since their last one.
"I'm fine." His usual response to her usual question.
She fell silent as if contented with his lie and set to eating her supper. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her gag. The taste wasn't very pleasant, even a bit bitter, so he didn't blame her. He was convinced his taste buds had shrivelled up and died ages ago. They could feed him dirt and he probably wouldn't care. After scraping his bowl clean, he sat in silence, watching their fellow slaves. Some murmured, talking among themselves, and some even had the indecency to converse at a normal volume. Others were silent, rather dumb expressions on their distant faces as they stared off into space. Sunken eyes, dirty faces, short and spiky hair — those were the normal sights around Feldspar Mine. Matthew often entertained himself with judging how long a slave had lasted in the mine due to the length of their hair. Some of the men had shoulder-length hair, and those men he recognized at a glance. Only a couple women had managed to last that long. Matthew knew them, too. The newest ones had bald heads, and those were the faces he didn't really know.
But they knew him. They all knew him. He encountered too many stares and closed his eyes.
He wanted to sleep. Forever. To close his eyes and never have to open them to this place again. Once, he had dreamed of waking up somewhere else, until one day he forgot what somewhere else might have looked like and his memories of elsewhere merged with stone walls and chains and screams. He had long since stopped dreaming. When he slept, it was dreamless, for any possible nightmare was nothing compared to reality anyway.
It seemed like mere moments after he shut his eyes before he heard a barking order from one of the slave masters and had Abby's elbow in his side. He resisted the urge to growl at her as he pushed himself to his feet; he stayed silent as he followed her and the others out of the eating room into another side tunnel. This one ended in a large door, which was opened to reveal a giant room — it was the sleeping room. The only light came from the torch one of the slave masters held where he stood in the middle of the room. They all filed inside silently.
Matthew retreated to the nearest right corner of the room, stepping over those who chose to sprawl in his path. He slid down the stone where the two walls connected. It was a familiar corner and one that no one else had ever taken, for they all knew it belonged to him. It had belonged to him ever since he had been dumped into this room for the first time, sobbing and screaming, clawing and pounding at the wooden door until his fingers bled. Someone had tried talking to him and had ended up with a bloody nose. After that, he had crawled into this very corner and collapsed in a heap, crying until every tear was dried and his head was light and the world a haze around him. Ever since then, that corner had belonged to him. However long ago that had been, he didn't know. He didn't know how long he had been in this place. It felt like forever; the outside world was lost to him, fragments of memories the only pieces he had left of an old life before it had become this. He knew it had been many years because of how long his hair had become: down past the tips of his shoulder blades. He kept it braided, but that didn't make it any less obvious. It awed many, for very few survived more than two years in this place. There was a reason the slave masters — and many of his fellow slaves — had taken to calling him, in hushed whispers, the Boy Who Won't Die.
Matthew watched the slave master's flickering torch with a dull gaze, wishing the drug in the food would, for once, work on him. Abby, who had yet again followed him, was already nodding off beside him, her eyes fluttering as she fought sleep. She lost, slumping down the wall as her head lolled to the side. His tender, caring side made him gently reposition her so she wouldn't get a kink in her neck, telling himself it was because he didn't feel like listening to her complain about it the next morning. Then he spread out, breathing deeply as his muscles ached. It was a dull pain, but consistent and a nuisance regardless. Lying still, he watched the roof, the way the slave master's torchlight sent flickering shadows across it and how it died away when the man left and the door was shut behind him. The next few minutes were full of rustling and quiet whispers as the slaves settled down for the night. The drug worked quickly; in just minutes, the room was deathly silent except for a few noisy snorers.
Matthew wished he could fall asleep as effortlessly as they did. With the drug being useless on him — and he never could understand why — it could take hours for Matthew to find sleep, depending on how quickly he could manage to shut down his thoughts. He was tired, but never tired enough. He wasn't in incredible pain, but it was still enough to chase sleep away. He was either always too much or too little of something; there was always some sort of barrier between him and sleep. Tonight, it was his thoughts, and he tried to relax and even his breathing and think about nothing at all.
Like the stream to the river and the river to the sea, his mind wandered, trying in vain to remember what life had been like before the misery, before the dull, painful routine of slavery. There had been a time before it. A time he had been happy. A time he had been free.
A wave of bitter feelings swept over him. Those times were dead. His family was dead. He had lost his freedom, and the only one he could blame was himself.
Rolling onto his stomach, Matthew squeezed his eyes shut, regretting letting his mind wander into the past. What was done was done. The past was gone, and those he had loved with it. There was no hope for any of them. He had accepted that — or, at least, he tried to. Some held onto the hope that King Motch would have mercy on them and set them free, eventually. Eventually had passed ages ago, and Matthew knew the dragon didn't care about them in the least.
Others... well, others believed in the legend of the Immortal One, the Creator, in the hope that His son would come and save them. His parents and Lily had believed in that, but it was only after their deaths that Matthew decided for himself that it was a vain hope and made no sense. Why would they need the Creator's son? If He was powerful enough, why couldn't He put an end to the tyranny Himself? It was all stupid fairy-tales. Matthew set himself among those who scoffed at the ones who clung to hope. Resistance was worthless. There was no hope for them.
Matthew's hope had died along with his freedom.