Was this his fate now? A miner? It seemed wrong. Nightfell was not known for mining. That was the thing of Clan Valor, far from this place, closer to his home in the Ashmountains. Closer to cintry range, where the Valorians ruled as the Principal House.
Yet even here, there was a limit. In the distance, he saw the far wall, which was jagged, crude, pocked with round voids that led into further darkness. Ladders crawled from some. Others yawned open without aid, tempting fall or flight. Soft blue gems; the froststones lined the entrances.
But they were too few, their light too faint. This place would not be cooled, he knew that. Not for long, at least. Plus, when his own stone eventually lost its will, the heat would take him.
Burning would be preferable, he thought. Clean.
But then again, most likely there was some Caster in charge of refilling the Froststones.
Regardless, the flow of the cave had its own pace: slaves moving in somber processions, guards flanking on both sides of the company. A movement of the damned. Gresendent Sisters present too, but with little care for those anyway, choosing instead to cut through the flow like blackened blades, escorting the newest slaves to whatever was deep in.
He envied those slaves.
He envied those above, too...The servs. Around, they were floating, translating all despair into some shade of varying color. Blue for the sadness. Black for hopelessness. Their presence confirming what he already knew.
This was ruin.
And he had come to it.
Next, a caravan emerged from one of the wall's gaping mouths. Slaves with hollowed eyes, dragged like things, worthless…Like he was.
Excubitors followed behind them. Different ones. Not the same as the others. Merrin could not name the difference, but there was surely a difference between these and the others in the tunnel--almost like a pressure.
What was it?
A blow came again before he could think further. Square into his spine. He hit stone, the heat was immediate, his unguarded hands finding scorching rock. He yelped. The sound escaping into the clamorous mine.
When he turned, he saw no face. Only his own. Pale and distorted in the silver of a helm.
"Move." The Excubitor said, voice still with that hollow quality. And Merrin dropped nearly into a stance. Instinct again. The words of the guardsmen forced out that conditioning like a whip.
However, unlike prior, restraint was managed. A sigh echoing within as he stood, walking towards whatever this mine had prepared for him. Likely some horror...
An excubitor moved ahead, taking the lead. Trailing down a path formed between watching eyes; lifeless slaves, appraising. They studied the newcomers the way one looks at meat.
Maybe that was the right word for it.
Slaughter would be a kindness. The thought came bitterly.
He walked. Often Tripping on shallow holes in the ground. Each misstep paid for with a sting from the earth's heat.
Eventually, they stopped.
Before them, a spiraling pit. Its rim jagged, worn from use. Lamps hanging along its edges, their light reaching partway downwards and no further. Nothing reached the bottom. To others it was a deep endless blackne.
To him--he stared...It was like a throat. Open. Patient and ready to consume him whole.
What would it mean to surrender to that fall?
"ASSEMBLE!"
The command broke through him, startling. Merrin moved, joining the others, pressing through bodies until he could see the excubitor standing atop a platform of highstone (Any particularly big rock), helm catching the lamp light.
"Slaves." The scremed. "You will be divided into two groups: scrapers and miners. Those here are designated Miners 7, and this pit is yours."
The words had the feel of repetition. Said so many times they had become reflex.
"Every day, you will mine to gather Oredite, Eltium, and Iron. Each metal earns cell marks based on weight." He raised both hands. Dark cloth wrapped around them, but what was held was clear: a small, crude disc of metal, coarse. At its center, a white glow pulsed softly.
"Oredite: ten marks. Iron: five. Eltium: twenty." A pause. "The metal is weighed, then marks given accordingly. A fist-sized amount equals the standard yield."
Mists. Would anyone survive on that?
A second Excubitor brought forward something rusted and black. A bell. He rang it….And it screamed. Louder than anything Merrin had ever heard, the ring piercing into his ears, nearly eliciting a yelp from his lips. The first Excubitor cared little for this, accepting the bell instead without looking.
"One more thing." The words came slower now. "You may, by fortune, be drafted into the Nightsailers. If so, count yourself among the lucky."
A pause. Something in his tone. Amusement?
"Those who feel the heat are scrapers. Step forward."
He rang the bell again.
Merrin heard the name again in his mind. Nightsailers. Something in it stirred. Not hope, of course, never hope, he had none of that left. Just awareness. The way the excubitor spoke it hinted at something, some means beyond these walls. But Merrin felt none of that in himself. Only the empty.
Then—
Heat?
The realization came too slowly. The brand on his arm blazed. Not flame. Heat. Crawling. Layered. It gripped him like a burning cord.
He yelped.
His jaw clenched. A fist. A breath. Control. An Ashman knew the heat. Control. Others did not. Some collapsed, and they paid for it swiftly, their backs burning under the guards' attention. The pain persisted regardless, like fire in his veins, heat in the bone.
Merrin remained upright.
A helm turned toward him. Featureless.
"Come."
Merrin obeyed. They all did. Slaves moved through a corridor of armored men, some pale, some shivering, until they stood before the excubitor on the highstone.
The guardsman dropped down, feet crunching ground stone. He pointed. There….Chains lay scattered across the floor like snakes.
"Strap yourselves. Take a pickaxe. Scrape the walls."
Nothing more. No explanation.
"Some Eltium or Oredite may remain in the pit walls. Mine it. Hand it to your mine captain." He paused. "You are generously given the right to choose one."
Silence.
Choice?
The guardsman stepped toward Merrin. "Would a problem arise from compliance?"
He trembled. He understood then what his stillness must have looked like. He shook his head, but the excubitor's gaze did not leave him. Scanning.
Merrin looked away first. No point existed in agitation. So with that, he walked to the chains and reached for one. They rattled. Not loudly, but enough. Against the cave's noise, even that was drowned out.
Typical.
So strapping himself in, Merrin noted the way the chains wrapped around his waist; clumsy and imprecise. He had no knowledge of the proper way. No one had shown him. In the mountains, they never wrapped chains on their waist...
But the thought came anyway: he would fall.
And in that, a kind of peace.
Perhaps I should jump.
The padlock clicked shut at his waist. Rusted but firm. Would it hold? Merrin drew breath through tight lips. Bent and lifted a pickaxe from the ground.
The tool had a froststone core. Dim, blue-glowing. Washing cobalt across his hand. Still warm but not scalding, which was still better, somehow, than he had expected from something buried in the earth's heat. The stone needed to be larger, he thought. Or the Earth would melt it eventually. Everyone knew this.
The others watched.
Scrapers like him. Wide eyes. Silent. Something between scorn and contempt present in their faces, but not hatred, something more precise than that. They saw him as foolish. A martyr, maybe. But he had been chosen for this. By himself.
Was it a mistake?
The chains were old. Rusted. They offered the certainty of rupture undoubtedly. But someone had to go first.
Him, it seemed was the one.
What importance does my life have, right?
A bitter smile. Crooked and useless, like he was. Ashless thing.
He slid the pickaxe between the chains at his waist. It rested there for a moment...Like some choice.. His choice. He had no more after this. Only descent. Only the black throat.
Haaa...
He walked to the lip of the chasm and looked down.
A vast hole, carved in an ellipse, its rim worn smooth by time or by will. By casters, likely. The stone edge spiraled downward in rings, layer by layer, like the burrow of a gopher, though those creatures were scarce below the mountains.
Lamps, however, dotted the walls at wide intervals, their light frantic, white, and buzzing. But between them was the Darkness, filling all the space the light could not reach.
He stood there.
Five heartbeats.
He did not move. Fear had his legs.
Just jump, he told them.
They did not.
He looked at the chain trailing from his waist, disappearing into dim black. It did not look strong. Not even close. And wasn't that the point? Wasn't death what he had been walking toward?
A minute passed.
Behind him, clicks of the tongue. Sighs. The sharp scorn. Slaves, it seemed, had no patience for cowardice. They hated it, some cursing him in whatever words they could mutter.
Merrin heard all of it.
He stood at the edge anyway.