Sett lost himself to the motion of his pickaxe. Each clash of the pick against the stone resounded like the clash of Thane’s hammer against heated metal. The sight of Thane’s corpse lying on the cold ground, drenched in rain, flashed through Sett’s head with each strike. The memories fueled his rage, which in turn fueled his strength. Sett could feel the force of his swing increase with each hit, the sound reminding him of gunfire.
“Sett!”
He hit with precision, ore deftly pried from stone, as debris piled below him. Sett didn’t notice, however, his mind wandering in the memories of those he had lost. Of those that were taken from him. All the rage that had been built up since he saw uncle Tecc fall was let loose against the stone, as he prepared for the day he could unleash it against his enemies.
“Sett!”
The helmets of Salsai’s warriors, the flash of their rifles, the power of their ships, the condescension in Krakar’s nobles, the chains that bound him, the brutality of Za’ard overseers, the lifelessness in the eyes of those he loved, Sett had carved them into his very soul. He will pay them back if it's the last thing he did.
“Sett!”
The pickaxe stopped. Reality caught up to him and he took in his surroundings. He had gone a dozen or so meters into the rock, carving a human shaped hole in the process. A giant pile of debris cluttered all around him, ore and tailings combined. Behind him, Brec stood wearing a troubled expression, surrounded by three guards with their energy whips deployed.
Sett walked out of his little cave with an eye on the guards, bracing his body for punishment.
“Get back to work kid!” One of the guards yelled at Brec, shoving him with one hand. The boy kept his eye on Sett, but retreated to his own section.
“I’ve seen many of your type, scum. Those with all the rage against us in their eyes, but have nowhere to take it out so they let loose on the mines. That is fine, but we asked you to pile the ore into the carts. This is not for your peace of mind, you bastard. We allow you to work our Grand Duke’s mines, not beat away at rock for your pleasure,” One of the guards sneered, the scar above his lip turning his expression all the more menacing. The two around him wore amused and disgusted expressions. Members of their race as a whole were a significant length taller than him, and they looked down on him, literally and figuratively.
He nodded and began to collect what seemed like ore from around him, but that was not enough.
“Step forward and get on your knees.”
Sett obeyed, trying his best to hide his limp. He winced as he bent his right leg, the knife hidden in there pressing against bone and sending jolts of pain up his body. He saw the guard’s long fingers tighten around the whip as he raised it.
The first strike of the whip caused him to shout, pain erupting in his back. Another crack followed by an impact on his body caused more pain. Sett gritted his teeth and endured, the sting of the whip paling in comparison to the agony of ripping his own flesh apart. The strikes kept coming, one after the other, but he had experienced worse. He allowed the pain, carving its memory into his flesh. This, too, would be added to the debt he was owed.
“That’s enough. He needs to work,” one of the guards stopped his attacker, who stepped back with panting breaths. Sett could smell burnt cloth, and his back pulsed in pain.
“Get back to work, wretch. Do what you’re told or you won't survive the next time.”
He slowly rose to his feet, hoping they wouldn’t notice his stiff leg. He staggered back to his section, and got on his knees to collect ore. He didn’t take his eyes off the ground as he got up and shuffled to the carts, the glowing, silver chunks of ore in his hands.
By the time he had cleared the debris and deposited the ore, the pain had reduced to nearly nothing. He got back to mining, this time taking care not to let out his rage, carefully working his way through the lode.
His arms ached after hours of labour, his injured leg numb. When the call to end finally came, he was on the verge of collapse. He dropped the pickaxe where he worked and made his way back to the living chamber. The Throh twins joined him, Bone barely conscious and being held up by Brec. The sturdier of the duo, Brec’s eyes still looked devoid of stamina.
Sett had a lot he wanted to talk to Brec about but he didn’t have the energy to make a sound. They arrived at the chamber to find a crowd scrambling into two carts rapidly being emptied of what he assumed was food. Sett understood immediately, and sprinted with every morsel of strength he had left, shoving a couple of unfortunate souls out of the way in the process. His battle had earned him three dry spheres the size of his fist, with the color and hardness of the rock that formed the walls. He examined them as he handed them to his friends, who were seated with their backs against a wall.
Brec suspiciously studied the balls with fatigued eyes, while Bone muttered under his breath, “wa..water..”
Sett and Brec moved as one, grabbing an arm each and carrying the nearly unconscious Bone to the murky pond. Sett pried open a gap in the crowd surrounding it and fed the kid handfuls of water. Each splash of the earthen brown liquid seemed to drag Bone back to full consciousness. Once Bone was able to drink by himself, Sett and Brec took long drinks of water, feeling the coarse sand passing down their throats with it.
“What the hell are these things?” Brec asked once they sat down again.
“I have no idea, man. They’re hard as rock though.” Sett spoke while trying to break off a piece of the hopefully edible ball.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Bone squeezed some water soaked up by his filthy clothes onto the orb, softening it enough to crumble at his grasp.
“It tastes like hay. Or like dried bread.”
“How do you know what hay tastes like?”
“You told me. After you ate a bunch cause you thought it’d make you as strong as a bullbeast.”
Brec grinned at the memory, not an ounce of shame at having voluntarily eaten animal feed. Sett chuckled, and then broke out into laughter for the first time in over a month. The other two joined him, and in the middle of this foreign mining asteroid, facing irate stares, three slaves laughed like the funniest joke in the world had just been told.
****
Sett spent the rest of their time catching up with Brec and Bone, who now seemed more alive than when he first saw him. They had ended up in the first transport out of Mupnal and were kept in a different section in the main slaver ship, which is why Sett never ran into them. Neither of them had seen his dad or Mitt, though Bone had managed to figure out there were at least three more such sections, each housing tens of thousands of slaves, so Sett’s family could be in any one of those.
He was incredibly elated to be reunited with them. Croh had been his only support throughout this ordeal, and even he only got closer once the invasion had taken place. To meet two close friends he thought he lost forever filled him with enough life to survive in the mines.
“You lot! Twenty of you! You are needed in the crushers!”
Sett was walking back from the latrine pit, a large hole in the corner of the chamber that people stayed clear of because of the smell, when one of the guards shouted at him. More particularly, at him and nineteen others surrounding him. Brec and Bone weren’t in the group, but he knew better than to disobey a direct order just to have a word with them. He followed the guard into the tunnel leading to the adit, grateful for the chance for some fresh air.
This was the first time in the week they’ve been here that there was a change in schedule. The tunnel was long, and as they approached the adit, Sett could feel the air getting crisper. The smell of sweat, rock, and urine was replaced by the more neutral, dusty smell of the surface of the asteroid. Compared to the sweltering heat of the underground, the air felt like winter’s kiss on his skin.
“Down the staircase, twenty first terrace, third adit to your left. Now go!”
The pale faced guard shoved Sett down the stairs, and his injured leg almost sent him tumbling down. He steadied himself, shooting his aggressor an irate glare, but averted his eyes before the man noticed.
Going to the twenty first terrace, meant passing the twentieth, and the sight he saw as he walked past shocked him. There were no adits leading into the mines, instead the platform was littered with poles that reached the sky. Beams jutted out of the poles, and emaciated figures hung by their arms from those beams. A hundred poles, a hundred bodies, hoisted upwards by the chains on their wrists. Sett hoped they were corpses, the thought of hanging like that while still alive, until his skin clung to his bones was horrifying.
A few guards loitered around the platform, one of them noticing the gaping crowd. His mouth curved upwards, the scar above his lip seemingly glowing. Sett recognised the man as his tormentor a week ago, though the man thankfully didn’t recognise Sett.
“You mess with us and this will be you lot hanging from here. Move to where you’re needed before I see you up here,” he jeered, smacking a pair of dangling feet. The body swayed with the hit, and a groan escaped the man’s lips. He was alive.
Sett hurried down to the next terrace, but took the opportunity to shoot a glance towards the interior of the crater. There were about ten more terraces before the abyssal hole at the center. He noticed shafts dug around the hole, and adits dotted along its interior walls. There was work going on in there, though he hadn’t ever heard the drill turn on.
He was greeted at the adit’s entrance by a slave that seemed to be of the same species as his new overlords. He had the same silver hair, cut so short it was barely visible, and his long pointed ears had small cuts across them. He studied the new arrivals with bored eyes, motioning with his head to follow.
Sett obliged, and they were led through a labyrinth of tunnels for what seemed like at least an hour. The monotony of the walk was beginning to bore Sett, so he glanced at his non-human colleague.
“How’d you end up here?”
“Pardon?”
“You look like the guards and overseers. How did you end up here?”
The man raised an eyebrow at him, and Sett began to regret talking. He didn’t know it was rude, he just assumed it wouldn’t be any worse than being put in chains and made to mine.
“My father wrote an article questioning the Grand Duke of Za’ard’s divinity.”
That one line brought up more questions than answers, and Sett took a moment to prioritise them.
“What race are you?” He eventually chose to ask something completely irrelevant, prompting the raised eyebrow to move even higher.
“I’m an Alfen? Was it not obvious?” He asked, seemingly insulted.
“I don’t know, man. I’ve never heard of Alfens.”
“Alfen is the plural. You’re from some remote sector in the middle of nowhere aren’t you? We’re quite common across the universe, I think.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I haven’t seen a sapient species except humans until Salsai showed up.”
The Alfen snorted but didn’t say anything. Sett didn’t waste his opportunity, however, and continued.
“What’s your name? Do your people have names?”
“No, we refer to each other solely by numbers. I’m number 351,564,008.” The man replied promptly. Seeing Sett nod in understanding, he added, “Yes, of course we have names. I am called Taban.”
“I’m Sett.”
Taban nodded but didn’t reply. Judging from the increasingly loud noises coming from up ahead, Sett guessed they were reaching their destination.
They walked through a doorway into a chamber that felt hotter than Thane’s furnace. To his right, Sett saw a line of three cylindrical trip hammers periodically coming down onto a giant bowl filled with ore. Behind the hammers, a horizontal wheel was being constantly spun by five slaves, probably to power the trip hammer. Another slave would load ore into the bowl under the hammer, while removing the extracted, crystalline Etherstone.
Sett saw the pile of extracted Etherstone lying in a cart. The silver, slightly translucent metal glowed with power, the air around them shimmering.
The workers stopped their labour when Sett’s group walked in, and a shout from the guard announced the changing of shifts. Sett hurried to take the place of the person who loaded the crusher with ore, just for the chance to hold the precious metal in his hands.
