The mines of Gollund are stifling, and the slave girl can only imagine how much worse they will become when the summer sun is overhead.
Carefully, she peers her head over to the one slave boy as he hacks away at the rocks. Gods, even with the grime and dirt and sweat, he is just as gorgeous as the first day he had arrived.
His hair, though greasy, holds a golden sheen to it. It falls flatly over his eyes, giving him an air of mystery. Even with the scarce meals they get here in the mines, his arms – goodness – his arms are thick with muscle, along with his legs, and undoubtedly his abs – if she ever got lucky enough to see them. His thick column of a neck bears a necklace of a small sack that hangs just over his heart, and she notices a thin gold band around his ring finger he had managed to sneak past and keep away from the guards. His face is sharp and sculpted, his eyes an unearthly bright blue, ringed with gold.
He keeps quiet, and to himself, which is fine; the guards don't want any socializing between prisoners. They're lucky enough the guards tolerate their singing while working.
And gods, he can work. She'll never forget after his first month here, when a guard had ordered him to dig a chunk of stone out from a dangerously unstable location of the mine, they had all laughed when he looked at the spot and then looked back. They had promised him an early day off if he could do it.
Of course, they didn't think he could. Until –
The slave girl, as well as the other slaves of the shaft watched in awe as the boy had effortlessly climbed up the stone with nothing but his bare hands and feet, his pickax between his teeth. He climbed up high, and then higher, and then higher still until he was well past the point of where the guards wanted. He then picked away at the stone like it was nothing, dangling one foot over the edge of a ninety foot shaft until he picked out the stone the guards had wanted.
When he climbed down, the boy didn't mock, didn't boast, he didn't even smile. He simply handed the guards their piece of rock with a face as blank and as . . . bored as if they had asked him to fetch a fork from the kitchen drawer.
Without waiting to be dismissed – the guards too dazed – the boy went back to work in his normal area. He didn't even get his day off.
He has been in the mines for six months – longer than anyone else had ever survived, he's been told.
Her mother, grandmother, and little brother did not last a single month. Her father hadn't even made it to the mines before Kerwon's butchers had cut him down, along with the other know rebels in their village. Everyone else had been rounded up here.
As she hears the heavy footsteps of her sentry approach, the girl turns her head back to her work.
The boy had arrived alone, and for five and a half months now; alone, yet surrounded by thousands. He can't remember the last time he's seen the sky, or the grasslands of Ivalice undulating in the cool breeze.
It didn't matter though, not like he is ever going to see them again. He gave up hope the moment he had been dragged from his prison wagon. At least in here he didn't have any connection to the outside world. Though he misses the fresh air and open spaces, he does not miss, however, the problems and politics and power struggles that had buzzed around his head whenever he was free to walk the streets.
And yet . . . something keeps him going. He still holds out, he keeps drawing breath even though his life has no meaning anymore. He doesn't think he'll ever make it out. He'll never be able to bury his dead, nor endure the mourning months until they are over and return to life.
And what was he supposed to do if he did make it out anyway? Of course, he never lets himself think that far, but it's a question that he contemplates when he lies awake on nights he is supposed to have been sleeping.
What am I to do? Join the rebels?
As he swings his pickax at the unforgiving stone, he thinks of what he would do if he accomplished even that. With every Kerwonean life he took, he would say the names of his dead again, so that they would hear him in the afterlife and know they were not forgotten.
The slave boy swings his pickax again, breaking apart a large stone. The slaves around him flinch.
He'll never make it out.
His breathing is ragged in his parched throat. The overseer lounges against a nearby wall, sloshing water in his canteen, waiting for the moment when one of them will collapse, just so he can unfurl that whip of his.
He keeps his head down, keeps working, keeps breathing.
Gods damn this man with his whip and water. Gods damn this whole mine, this continent and its king, and this world!
He doesn't know how much time passes, but he feels the ripple go through the mines like a shudder in the earth. A ripple of stillness, followed by sighs of relief.
He feels it coming, swelling up towards him, closer and closer with each turn head and murmured words.
And then he hear it – the words that changed everything.
King Sephiroth has defeated one of Tifa Lockheart's forces. Ambushed them and captured their Kerwonean soldiers.
The words are past him before he has time to swallow them.
There is a scrape of leather against rock. The overseer will tolerate the pause for only a few seconds longer before he starts swinging.
King Sephiroth defeated one of Tifa Lockheart's forces. King Sephiroth is fighting for the freedom of his people.
He stares down at the pickax in his hands.
King Sephiroth this. King Sephiroth that.
All this soft cheering and silent tears of joy for this man, and he couldn't even spare his time to come and visit his trial. When really it was his capture and sentence that was the talk of the month.
The blond-haired slave boy turns, slowly, to look into the face of his overseer, the face of Valendia. He cocks his wrist, pronged whip ready.
You are nothing more than a coward. When will you say enough? What will make you stop running and face what is before you?
The boy feels his tears before he realizes they are falling, sliding through six months' worth of filth.
Enough. The word screams through him, so loudly he begins to shake.
Silently, he begins to recite the names of his dead.
"Enough." The boy says hoarsely.
And as the overseer raises his whip, he adds his name to the end of that list and swings his ax into the man's gut.