I lost a friend that day… the darkness had swallowed him. —Transcribed from a lowly miner, kept in the archives of the Gresendent Sisters.
The ground was dotted with pools of white light—the square lamps carried by slaves moving like ghosts toward the deeper sections of the chasm. By now, the previous calmness had drowned into the relentless, rhythmic hammering of metal against stone. Thousands of groans merged into a single, low vibration that rattled the teeth. None spoke. They were miners doing just one thing/
Time grew vague. Merrin, lost in the passing of moments, realized how unaware he had become of the world outside the reach of his pickaxe. There was only him and the stone. With each strike, he hoped for something, anything. Oredite, Eltium, or even a measly scrap of iron that might buy him a moment's release from the gorge.
But no matter the strength he used or the hours he wasted, he knew only dust.
This is impossible, he thought, agitated.
"Ahh!"
Sudden.
A voice had cried out, shattering his daze. Merrin turned toward the sound, staring out into the left edge of the chasm. A man hung there, his chains held fast to the wall, the leather straps tied around his waist somehow had snapped clean off.
He dangled by his arms like an old rag, a thing that would be blown away by the faintest draft. Black Servs had already begun swarming around him, sensing the sudden spike of hopelessness.
He was going to die.
Even from a distance, aided by the buzzing lamps along the wall, Merrin peered in. The man's chains were rusted, brown. They would snap at any moment; Merrin knew the sound of it now. He looked at the other slaves and realized the congruence shared among them: all their chains, too, were decayed, ready to fail.
All except his.
Was he just lucky?
Mist it! Somebody should help him, he thought, but the thought was just that. The chasm was too wide. No means existed to reach the man, and even if someone tried, the added weight would simply snap their own rusted links. It would be death for both the savior and the saved. The only ones with the strength were the Excubitors or the Caster.
They won't come!
The man's scream silenced the banging of stone and iron. Merrin felt it. Many of the other slaves glanced at the dangling man before shifting their focus back to their tasks, hiding behind the safety of their banging. Anything to avoid looking at the face of their own future.
My future too…
His eyes lowered.
Another death, what does it even matter? Merrin thought bitterly. Maybe it's better. He will get to the Almighty before me.
That was surely better.
The man struggled, his arms dripping blood into the darkness below.
"Help!" he screamed. None answered.
Merrin looked at his own links. They were pristine, strong, and black as Eastos's sky.
If I hadn't taken these, would he have survived? Did I take the only good chain in the pile? The guilt came. Is it because of me that he's dying?
He started to turn his head away when an audible snap echoed through the cave. A short, sharp scream followed, then a muffled, distant thud.
Merrin froze. He would not look down. He would not see the body.
He did something I couldn't, he realized, a cold tear streaming down his cheek to mingle with the grime.
Coward.
He raised his pickaxe and struck the wall. The markings of his previous strikes were rough and steeper than the rest, like ugly scars on the stone. This was his life now: an endless path of nothing but rust, iron, and dust.
——
At the end of his shifts, he sat on a highstone, staring out into the vast conclave of spiral holes and empty eyes. He felt his own eyes becoming like theirs. It was an inevitable waiting. He was a coward who sat in the dark, eating leftover scraps he found in the corners of the mine, an odd thing. One, he just ate and hoped, each day, to die.
Death never came.
Merrin groaned, his hands tensing as he began the long climb up the chains to the rim. Six slaves had died today trying to scale the heights on faulty iron. And here he was, making it safely on his blackened links.
Why don't I just let go? He looked down at the silhouettes of the moving miners and the long shadows birthed by the lamps. It was so far away. The air felt horribly freezing cold.
Coward.
Again, the sameness possessed him. He was the coward who somehow always ended up with the best chains, while better men fell. It felt like a curse to live while others died.
He continued to climb, soon reaching the rim, his hands stretched out, grabbing the blazing floor. Wincing at the sting of the heat, Merrin pulled himself up, panting. His sleeves a ruin of dirt and a sour scent that didn't smell like the clean goodness of ash. It just smelled bad. Different.
His legs buckled, slamming against the floor. He didn't know how long it had been, two days? Three? Was it only fear keeping his energy fervent?
"Stop shaking!" he whispered to his hands. What was the point of trembling now? He wanted peace, but the voice at the back of his mind reminded him of the truth: he wanted the peace of the Almighty, but he was too afraid to die to get it.
I deserve nothing. I can't protect anything. I only take. He looked at the chains snaking from his waist. He had taken the "good" chain, and it had cost a man his life. It felt like a tether that culled the lives of others to keep his own flame flickering.
He knelt in silence for a few minutes before noticing a line forming.
What was it?
He wiped the daily tears from his eyes and shuffled toward it. This was new. Each person who reached the front came away with wet lips.
Water!
He realized then that he was dying of thirst. For days, he had only licked the sweat from his own skin. Dirty! Thus, he joined the line, the scent of musk and unwashed bodies creating the churning of the stomach.
He looked around and noticed a strangeness: No Servs.
They removed the Servs? He winced, repulsed.
The Servs were the eyes of the Almighty. How could they be gone? Then he realized—the Servs were like humans in a way. They grew bored with the same things. Perhaps the sheer, unrelenting bleakness of the mines had finally driven the "eyes" away to find more interesting suffering.
By the side, groups of scrapers gathered on highstones, grousing about their forlorn lives. Dim yellow Servs hovered over them.
Yellow?
They were happy?
He wondered what there was to be happy about in this pit. Perhaps there was a small unity in their shared misery, but Merrin kept his distance.
Isolation was the only way he could protect them from his curse.
Nonetheless, his turn soon came. And standing before the large barrel placed atop a three-legged wooden chair, he noted the froststones embedded around the wood, keeping the water a chilled quality. He took a wet cup from the table and dipped it in.
The water felt warm against his fingers. Then, when brought to his lips, he heaved in the scent.
Nausea!
It smelled like rotten eggs. Sulfur and decay.
Just what I deserve, he thought, and he drank.