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 home. Closer to the ashMountains
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. Not for long. And when his own stone lost its will, the heat would take him.
Burning would be preferable, he thought. Clean.
Regardless, the flow of the cave had its own pace: slaves moving in somber procession, guards flanking on both sides of the company. Gresendent Sisters cared little for those anyway, choosing instead to cut through the flow like blades, escorting the newest slaves to whatever was deep in.
He envied those slaves.
Above, servs drifted. Dim lights translating all despair into some color. Blue for sadness. Black for hopelessness. Their presence confirmed what Merrin already knew.
This was ruin.
A caravan emerged from one of the wall's gaping mouths. Slaves with hollowed eyes, dragged like things, worthless…Like he was.
Guards followed behind them. Different ones. Not the same as the others. Merrin could not name the difference, but something in him registered it. Almost like a pressure.
What was it?
A blow came again before he could think further. Square into his spine. He hit stone, and 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, 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 something unknown to him.
An excubitor moved ahead, taking the lead. A path formed between watching eyes; lifeless, 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. Tripped on shallow holes in the ground. Each misstep paid for with a sting from the earth's heat.
Eventually, they stopped.
A spiraling pit. Its rim jagged, worn from use. Lamps hanging along its edge, their light reaching partway down and no further. Nothing reached the bottom.
He stared into it. Blackness. It resembled 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. 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. You are designated Miners 7. 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 them, but what he 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 guardsman brought forward something rusted and black. A bell. He rang it….And it screamed. Louder than anything Merrin had ever heard, the ring pierced into his ears. The first guardsman accepted it 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, he had none of that left. Just awareness. The way the guardsman spoke it hinted at something, some purpose 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. Deliberate. He pointed. There….Chains lay scattered across the floor like snakes.
"Strap yourselves. Take a pickaxe. Scrape the walls."
Nothing more. No explanation. No indulgence.
"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.
Strapping himself in, Merrin noted the way the chains wrapped around his waist; clumsy, imprecise. He had no knowledge of the proper way. No one had shown him.
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. Firm. Merrin drew breath through tight lips. He bent and lifted a pickaxe from the ground.
The tool had a froststone core. Dim, blue-glowing. Washing cobalt across his hand. 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. The Earth would melt it eventually. Everyone knew this.
The others watched.
Scrapers like him. Wide eyes. Silent. Something between scorn and contempt in their faces, but not hatred, something more precise than that. They saw him as foolish. A martyr. But he had been chosen for this. By himself.
Was it a mistake?
The chains were old. Rusted. They offered the certainty of rupture like the way old things did. But someone had to go first.
Him, it seemed.
What importance does my life have, right?
A bitter smile. Crooked. Useless, like he was. Ashless thing.
He slid the pickaxe between the chains at his waist. It rested there like the final made choice. His choice. He had no more after this. Only descent. Only the pit.
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. Casters, likely. The stone edge spiraled downward in rings, layer by layer, like the burrow of a white gopher, though those creatures were scarce below the mountains.
Lamps, however, dotted the walls at wide intervals, their light erratic, buzzing. Maddening in its persistence. Darkness waited between them, filling all the space the light left behind.
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 openly, some cursing him in whatever words they choose to.
Merrin heard all of it.
He stood at the edge anyway.