It had been two years since Alistar’s conversation with his father. He was now nine years old. His next birthday would bring with it his Name Day, a special occasion on which he would receive his second name. This name would be used in all formal proceedings from that day onward. In addition to receiving a second name, there were several other procedures of significance that would also take place on this day, but he was ignorant as far as those were concerned. Knowing them would make no difference for him, anyway. He was a slave, after all.
Being one of the only children in the mines, he came to realize that he was quite the centre of attention for many of the guards. They seemed to enjoy attempting to lead him astray, misinforming him at every opportunity for their own amusement. Having been tutored by his family, he caught on quick that a lot of the things that they said were untrue. By this point, he’d been fooled enough times that he’d grown able to detect their lies just by staring into their eyes, at least most of the time.
Even so, he still learned things here and there from listening in on their conversations, something he hadn’t done in his younger days. In doing so, it quickly became apparent why the people of the Resident Cavern obeyed the guards’ every order, and why they dressed so differently. They were slaves, considered below animals and thought of as useless in any area outside of physical labour. The others were guards, hired by the state to assure that they never left the mines unless permitted. In learning this, he also came to understand the value of coins. In the world outside of the mines, one could exchange coins for just about anything depending on the amount one had.
According to the guards, the workers in the Crystellum Mines had it easy, especially those in their work group. Alistar didn’t understand how this could be the case, as it was common knowledge that if one showed signs of slacking off then they would be beaten as a means of future deterrence. When he’d foolishly talked back to the guard that said this, rather than being beaten for his slip of the tongue, he was told that in other mines the slaves were treated far more harshly. Alistar didn’t want to believe them, but when he heard that there were other mines out there aside from his own it made him think about how large the world must have been.
After learning the truth of things he had begun to wonder why his family was here. Why were they slaves? Why did slaves exist in the first place, and how did one become a slave? They were all people, weren’t they? What made any one person better than another? Didn’t they feel bad treating others so poorly? His father had always said that no person was better than another, but Alistar couldn’t help but doubt his words each time he saw a guard beat one of the workers into submission. At the onset of his contemplations, he’d dedicated many lonely hours to such thoughts. He never found any answers. He ended up deciding that it was best not to think about it, so he put it in the back of his mind. He would probably understand it when he grew older.
The guards only lived in the barracks for a year or so before being sent off to serve somewhere else within the kingdom. If they chose to stay in the army, as most apparently did, they would end up back at the mines in a few years or so. Two days of the week they were allowed to leave their posts and retire to the nearby town of Hatsford, spending their time and money as they saw fit. The ones who used to bet on whether he and Kaila would get lost and die during their explorations had long since relocated elsewhere.
He had learned a lot more from the guards by eavesdropping than he had from anything they had deliberately told him. The only important things they willingly educated him on were the reality of death and what it meant to be a slave.
Things had changed quickly since Kaila’s parents had gone to sleep. Of course, as far as permanent sleeps went, he now knew that this wasn’t the case. They hadn’t lingered within the world of their dreams as he had been made to believe. They had died. Once you died, you were gone forever. You ceased to exist. Dying was the worst thing that could happen to someone, and it had happened to Kaila’s parents and plenty others before them, and many after.
Once she had been left alone with her grandpa, Kaila had stopped playing with Alistar. She stuck close to the middle-aged man, keeping to herself as she watched him work through vacant eyes. Her parents hadn’t been much older than her when she was conceived, but that was a topic of which Alistar was still ignorant.
Kaila ate at mealtimes and slept when allowed. Sometimes she would go without speaking a word for weeks at a time, which worried Alistar greatly. Not only had she stopped speaking, but she hadn’t shed a tear since her parents had passed away. That same Kaila that was always crying and forcing Alistar to hold her hand had not cried once since the passing over her parents. Kaila didn’t cry anymore because Kaila had changed. The shy, companionable girl who used to race through the tunnels with him was gone, replaced by a silent, lifeless shell of the person he once knew. Or so he had thought, until one day she approached him.
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He remembered it clearly. It was the day that his father died.
It happened during the working hours of the day just several months after he and Kaila had found his strange stone. Alistar had been sitting a couple paces away from his parents, practicing his numbers in the dirt and sneaking longing glances over at Kaila. It pained him that she no longer wanted to be his friend, and he missed exploring the caves with her. He hadn’t been able to understand why she had changed so drastically. All he knew was that the days passed by much slower than they used to. He hadn’t explored the tunnels in a long while, instead devoting all of his time to going over the contents of his nightly lessons. He had a very good memory, so good that he could visualize the maps his parents had drawn out for him, and could even multiply and divide numbers in his head with ease.
Although his father’s appearance had been deteriorating in recent years, for a while he had begun to look like his usual self. Brimming with life and self-confidence, each swing of his pickaxe had been heavy and accurate. But with time, his condition worsened. Not long after their talk he had reverted back to a state of continuous exhaustion, and eventually his breathing had become eternally laboured. A couple weeks after that, after coughing up a mouthful of blood, his mother realized that his father had contracted an infection of the throat and lungs. Alistar’s mother was very knowledgeable about these things.
It seemed that his father had been hiding his sickness for some time. Soon after, his limbs would come to shake by the end of the day, lightly at first but with increasing severity as time trickled by. It had eventually become known in the Resident Cavern that Alistar’s father was sick, after his apparent illness had reached a point where one would have to try hard not to notice. Even with his condition as such, the guards still denied him reprieve, albeit some doing so with a frown. Not all guards disliked Alistar’s father, but still he had been forced to work under threat of physical punishment if he failed to meet his daily quota. This was because of the red-haired man, who had returned to the mines with the latest batch of guards.
One day, after all but Alistar’s family had retired back to the Resident Cavern, his mother and his uncle pleaded his father’s case to the stocky guard and his lackeys, who had personally stayed back to make sure that they met their quota. They argued that it was too unreasonable to expect such intense labour from someone in his father’s condition. Ignoring their pleas, the guards had eventually struck them down before either of them could react.
The moments that followed were burned into Alistar’s mind forever after. He’d stood there, fear and shock rendering him immobile, helplessly watching the people he held most dear being beaten bloody before his eyes. That was the first time he had genuinely experienced anger. That was also the first time he remembered truly hating the guards. Before long the beating was interrupted, when a few clanking sounds had caused the guards to turn and look behind them. There, weak-kneed and letting out hoarse, rattling breaths, stood Alistar’s father. He paused once he had gotten their attention and then turned back to continue his struggle. Although he looked weak, the fire in his eyes burned hotter than ever before.
The guards, led by the man with the fiery beard, reluctantly put an end to the abuse. His father’s body had been terribly thin, his face pallid and his breathing haggard, but still he had struggled on. He had protected Alistar’s family in his own way. When recalling the terrible situation, Alistar truly felt that he had an outstanding father.
Aside from many outside of their work group, Alistar’s father had always seemed well respected among the other slaves. The abuse had become more frequent, and even at his weakest that respect was fully visible on their faces. After a public scene with the guards, some had tried to aid in his collecting of crystals so as to lighten his burden, but they too were punished. The specific group of guards at the time were merciless. Nobody tried to help Alistar’s father after that. Many in this group of overseers had a particular dislike for their family, though he didn’t know why.
And then it had happened.
After the work bells had echoed throughout the tunnels and they had half-filled their bellies with cold porridge, his family had laid quietly on their tattered blankets in their spot midway up the set of rows. That day, the slaves were to be given a few extra hours to rest, and the overlapping break periods had doubled the usual amount of people present. Despite the Resident Cavern being so full, it was very quiet. Nobody lost a moment when it came time to rest, but even so, the usual low-leveled chatter was painfully absent.
Alistar and the rest of his family had given part of their servings to his father, who later lost his hold on his stomach and retched violently in the silence. A light trace of blood was mixed in with his vomit. With thousands of people scattered throughout the cavern for the first time in memory, the only sounds that could be heard were his father’s retching and the gasps of pain that followed. It seemed that there was not one person who wasn’t listening. Even those on break for mealtime dared not utter a word, as if abiding by some unspoken consent to hold their peace in the face of his father’s foreboding condition.
After his father had finally managed to calm down, silence seized the cavern. He laid quietly, Alistar and the rest of his family sitting by his side under a cloud of worry and trepidation. His mother patted his father’s cringing face while his uncle fussed about with his blankets. The two of them had looked nothing but worried for weeks. Many a time Alistar had overheard his uncle mumbling things like ‘if only he didn’t have his blasted bracelet on,’ a phrase which he had uttered again once the vomiting began.