The slave house was nothing more than a hut dug into the coarse stone and covered with wooden planks. The elf slave masters crammed thirteen people into each hut, probably ten more than should have been in the small space. Dane was shackled with a more permanent slave collar that limited access to the system and assigned to his new hut. The metal bit into his neck, and he clawed at it, trying to get some relief.

  An older slave named Jeremiah was taking up most of the room with his hulking muscles. Clearly, he wasn't on the same regimen for food or rest time as the rest of Dane's new holocaust roomies.

  "It gets better," He said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Soon you won't feel anything but the ache in your hands."

  They heard a bell start dinging. Back in the slums, that sound meant school was in session, but Dane followed the crowd as everyone in the small hut exited with their pickaxes in hand. Everyone who didn't have a tool was handed a pickaxe, and the silent guards led them to the mines on the first floor of the dungeon.

  The dungeon was a dark, cavernous space that extended for miles. Everyone struck the purple glowing rocks buried in the hard iron deposits. An old slave who was barely able to heave the pick into the ground looked at Dane and smiled.

  "These are a precious resource for the war effort. We were told that we were luckier than most. Some mining slaves had to travel into the more dangerous parts of the dungeon, but fortunately, we still have plenty of purple rocks to gather on the first floor." The man said moments before the guards dragged him away.

  "That old fool knows better than to talk; he'll spend time in the hotbox and be back later," Jeremiah told Dane so quietly that he could barely make out the words.

  Dane put his head down and began to strike at the purple crystals. It was hard swinging it with one hand, and the pile of crystals in his work area was much smaller than anyone else's

  On his seventh day, he finally saw a guard who looked more curious through the visor than menacing.

  "Why haven't I been given my magic test. This is a mistake." Dane said to the guard, who only gave him a slight shake of his head and pointed at Dane's small crystal pile, then to Jeremiah's massive pile.

  The next time Dane asked about the test, he received three lashes for speaking. The guard who gave him the whipping raised one finger as if he were counting his infractions. He was whipped four times when he tried to ask for details about their capture from one of the slaves taking a break. The final infraction was gained when he apologized to an old woman whom he accidentally hit with the flat of his pickaxe when he cocked back too far. That landed him in the hotbox.

  In there, all the time seemed to slow down. The heat was definitely artificial, as it would increase every hour. When Dane finally returned to his hut, all of his belongings had been parcelled out. Apparently, people didn't make it back from the hotbox.

  This, of course, made him very popular with other slaves. They acted as if they would be punished for their camp conversations if they associated with him. He had no other choice but to accept his solitude.

  One night, just before he was about to go to bed, it clicked that had to be it; everyone on the first floor was an anomaly and, for some reason, was being discarded in these mines.

  During his second back-breaking week, he saw some elf recruits coming down the tunnels. These men and women weren't wearing collars and were instead wearing tactical gear. If he had to guess, they were training in the dungeon.

  "Get back to work, earthbound", the unit commander shouted at Dane.

  The man in perfect mythril armor made a beeline for Dane. Before he could react, the pickaxe was snatched out of his hands. He must have stared too long at their entrance because the commander began to hit Dane with the flat side of the tool brutally again and again.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  This lasted for twelve short minutes, but to Dane, it felt like an eternity. He lay there in a pool of his own blood, the left eye sealed shut. He was half-dead and could barely move. The silent guards picked him back up and handed him back his tool. Gesturing to the pile of crystals, urging him back to work.

  Something broke inside of him as he went back to swinging the pick. His broken thoughts came out in incoherent broken pieces.

  What did I ever do to deserve this?

  Why did my Mom leave?

  Where was Dad on the first night?

  And finally, Why wasn't I good enough?

  The only conclusion that he could draw was that nobody cared. Nothing had a more significant meaning; the strong would take from the weak. If he were ever to get out of here, he needed to get stronger.

  Dane couldn't be sure, but he put all his eggs in the basket that his pickaxe would give him levels of axe proficiency. Every strike, he put his soul into it, picturing his captors in the stone; the days he trained the hardest, he pictured the commander's face.

  He slowly began to find the best way to transition from one move to the next, developing an efficient style. He practiced the same three-hit combination 14 hours a day for 600 days.

  Lateral slash in an 11 to 4 o'clock position with his left foot as lead, then he switched his feet with a 4 to 11 strike, and finished with a 12 to 6 overhead chop. The rations were nowhere near enough to sustain his daily efforts, and he was now gaunt. Dane probably looked more like his opponent from the combatant match than he would have liked. With the atrophy of his muscles, He had to use gravity and the weight of the pickaxe to keep up the long days.

  On the second anniversary of his enslavement, it was a typical day. Dane ate his rations in the chow hall and was escorted to the section of the mine that they visited day after day.

  He began practicing his strikes, swinging at the rocks in the three-hit combo he had perfected. Every swing felt good; he could have sworn that the ground shook under each blow. That can't be right. He started to slow down, but the rumbling persisted.

  He raised his head to see that everyone in the area had fled. Then he heard a crashing sound, and the floor beneath him opened up.

  When Dane landed, he was in the fetal position, looking up to see falling stones from above coming straight for him. He struggled to get up, but his legs wouldn't move. A boulder that was about six feet by six feet lay directly on his legs, crushing them almost into a paste.

  The loud crashes from the collapse were finished. He was safe now, but still had to figure out what to do about his legs. He tried to move the stone, but it wouldn't budge. He scanned the immediate area around his fall, but the only thing beside him was the rubble that had fallen alongside him, and the now broken pickaxe; the only thing remaining of it was the head.

  He lay at the bottom of that hole for hours, waiting for someone to come back to the area where he had taken his fall. Once again, he was reminded that he was weak and worthless. It felt like another day. However, his usually strong sense of time was skewed. He saw movement at the top. And through dried, cracked lips, he tried to call out. The only response to his horse cries was the boards being laid down on the slivers of light that could make it down to the bottom.

  "Jesus fuck, why am I always stuck in the dark?" He began laughing hysterically; he didn't even recognize it when the laughter turned into sobs.

  Dane grabbed the pickaxe head and knew what he had to do. Like a coyote caught in a trap, he struck his legs with the new handheld pickaxe, it was like a version of gnawing off his leg to free himself.

  Most of the area was numb, but on the third strike, he learned that if he hit too close to his knee, there were plenty of nerves alive and well in his legs. Over the last couple of years, Dane grew more indifferent to pain than he would like to admit, so even though the scene was gruesome and he should have been hesitant, he wasn't.

  After a few hours of hacking away at his legs, Dane was finally free.

  "Shit, I forgot to tie a tourniquet," He said while starting to feel woozy.

  Dane ripped at the rags that he passed off as clothing and braided three pieces together. When he used one piece, the cloth was too dry and rotted, and just shredded when tied hard enough to stop the bleeding.

  He crawled and began to slide his body across the floor, refusing to accept fate. As he army crawled across the jagged floor, he began to hear what sounded like a heartbeat, badump. It grew louder BADUMP. As he crawled, the noise became more rapid until, all of a sudden, it stopped.

  The floor beneath him began to glow blue, a familiar stone platform he hadn't seen since the combatant match. The blue light transitioned from the familiar shade of blue to a deep, royal purple.

  "Happy Birthday." The system rang out in his head.