Hands moved together in the dark, shivering, cupped to catch water that pooled in a wide opening deep in the mines.
The skin on them was broken in places — blisters from years of forced labor, calluses layered over older calluses. A dark elf knelt at the edge of the shallow pond, filling his palms with water that was murky and fouled, unfit for anything a body should put inside it. He looked at it for a moment anyway.
His eyes had stopped arguing with this a long time ago.
This was what there was. He drank, the water catching in his throat, gurgling as he swallowed. Beside him, a small girl drank from her own cupped hands — his daughter, young enough that her body had not yet learned to accept what the rest of them had accepted.
She coughed the moment it hit her throat.
"It tastes weird," she said, loud enough to carry.
Her father's hand shot to her mouth too late. "Don't say that, or they'll—"
"You think you deserve this?"
The overseer's voice cracked across the open space before the father could finish. His whip came down across the man's back, once, hard enough to drop him to his knees.
"Please—" the father begged, both hands up, his daughter already crying behind him. "Please, I'm sorry, I—"
"You should be thankful you're getting this much," the overseer said, circling him slowly. "And be glad I didn't hit your daughter instead. Thank me."
He struck him again.
The other slaves watched from where they sat, unable to do anything but watch, the other overseers around the pond laughing at the spectacle. Near the back, a few voices murmured quietly together — a prayer, half-formed, asking their angel when any of this would end. Another whispered that the water had never been cleaned, that no one knew where it even came from, that they were all going to die drinking it eventually anyway.
Off to the side, a girl with a scar across her face sat with her knees pulled to her chest. Almond hair, eyes the color of honey, skin a shade darker than most around her. She looked at the dirt in front of her, jaw tight.
(When,) she thought. (When will it end.)
The father finally choked out a broken "thank you," and the overseer stopped, satisfied, his pride restored. He walked to the pond and set an iron boot directly into the water — right beside another slave who had been quietly trying to drink.
"This is about what you deserve," he said, grinning at the others. "Look at you. Miserable lot."
The other overseers laughed with him.
"Now get back to—"
Three bodies fell from above.
The water exploded upward, drenching the overseer standing in it, his armor and clothes soaked through with the same filthy water he'd just been mocking everyone for drinking. He coughed, spat, cursed, wiping his face with the back of his hand as he turned to see what had landed.
"Who the fuck was that!" He shouted.
Bram. Allen. The purple-haired boy.
All three soaked to the bone, all three completely unbothered by it.
"Both of you alright?" Allen asked, already scanning the room.
"Yeah," Bram said, pushing wet hair out of his eyes.
"Yeah," the boy muttered, less enthusiastic about the landing.
Above them, through the opening they'd dropped through, Crass's face appeared, twisted with rage.
"Don't let them get away!" he shouted down. "They're mine — all three of them!"
The overseers around the pond were already moving, spears coming up, closing the distance.
"What do we do," Bram said, his voice tight.
The purple-haired boy's grip tightened on the sword he'd carried from the shed.
"We fight—"
"We fight," Allen finished, already stepping forward.
The boy shot him a look — he hadn't needed help finishing that sentence — but there wasn't time to be annoyed about it. They were surrounded, water dripping from all three of them, spears closing in from every direction.
The war that had started at the shed with a rock and a shout had just found its first real battlefield.
Across the cavern, the slaves watched.
The girl with the honey-colored eyes stayed very still, her gaze fixed on the red-haired man standing between the overseers and the three dripping figures who had just fallen out of the ceiling.
(A human,) she thought. (Fighting for us?)
She didn't look away.
To be continued...