The Reason I Knelt (2)
“Six. End of roll.”
Ellen called out the final number.
“Room Five, all present and accounted for.”
At the room leader’s report, the guard nodded and moved on.
“Room Six reporting. One—”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Go eat breakfast.”
Having heard from every cell, the guard flicked his hand with open irritation.
Crunch. Crunch.
“What’s with the bread today? It’s less dry than usual.”
“Still tastes like chewing on hair.”
“If you’ve got time to talk, eat faster. Mealtime’s almost over.”
One piece of bread and a cup of water.
That was a prisoner’s entire meal.
The bread offered nothing but dryness. Hunger, though, had a way of making even that taste good.
The place Proveng mentioned should be…
Ellen tried to think it through while tearing into the bread.
Then a guard strode into the area where the prisoners had gathered.
“Time’s up. Get ready for work detail.”
Already?
Ellen glanced around.
The prisoners set their half-finished bread down on the floor. Their hunger was nowhere near gone—but opening your mouth for one more bite meant going hungry for days. All they could do was cast one last longing look at what remained.
Clang. Clang.
The closer they drew to the dig site, the louder the pickaxes rang.
“Tunnel Three today?”
“That’s right.”
“Ugh. That place is especially narrow and hot. Who are they trying to steam to death?”
“A little Wind magic would take care of it.”
One prisoner flicked a glance at the bracelet on his wrist as he spoke.
If I just broke this thing, could I escape from here?
Clang.
As if mocking the thought, a pickaxe rang out again.
Time to get to work.
Under the room leader’s direction, they each collected their gear.
Magic Stones—minerals proven capable of holding magic. Essential for crafting artifacts. Difficult to refine, so they weren’t yet widely used, but there was no doubt they would leave a deep mark on the progress of human civilization.
Clang.
“Just break already!”
Above all, Magic Stones were extremely hard.
Ellen spent the hours locked in a battle with his pickaxe.
Before long, lunch arrived.
The menu was the same as breakfast: one rock-hard piece of bread and water. Nothing more.
“This time I’m not leaving a single crumb.”
The prisoners who had been forced to abandon their bread that morning wolfed it down now.
After the meal came a short rest. The prisoners clustered together in their usual groups, talking.
“No, I’m telling you—when I graduated from the Academy, I was a full 3rd Circle master. Completely different class from those half-baked 3rd Circle users who just scrape by.”
“And that’s why you studied black magic?”
At one prisoner’s jab, the men around them snickered.
It was idle nonsense, but it was how they bled off the stress.
By the time the sun hung low and hazy, the endless ringing of pickaxes finally stopped.
The signal for the end of the workday sounded.
“Haa…”
Exhausted sighs spilled from every prisoner’s mouth.
“Everyone out of the tunnel. Quickly.”
They wanted nothing more than to sit down on the spot. At the guard’s order, though, the prisoners scrambled to gather their equipment and get ready to leave.
Dinner, unlike breakfast, came with soup added on. The quality was still wretched.
They finished the meal.
At last, the prisoners had time to lie down.
Some took the quiet for themselves. Others traded jokes and laughed. A few even talked magic theory.
“Prepare for roll call.”
At the room leader’s word, the prisoners straightened where they sat.
“Report.”
A booming voice rolled down the corridor.
Thud. Thud.
The guard’s footsteps stopped outside the door.
“One.”
A prisoner snapped out his number at once.
“Six. End of roll.”
“Room Five, all clear.”
The room leader reported, and the guard nodded and passed on.
“Lights out. Sleep.”
None of the prisoners said another word.
They were asleep almost immediately.
Tomorrow would be the same day all over again.
Sleep was the only stretch of comfort they got.
“Hey! Throw it over here!”
“Nice one.”
Prisoners were tossing a leather ball back and forth across the yard.
“What are you staring at? Want to join in?”
Someone approached Ellen, who was sitting in a chair watching the game.
“Just spacing out. Not thinking about anything.”
The man who sat down beside him was Rev—the same man who had thrown a bowl at Ellen on his first day.
First impressions hadn’t been great. Once they actually talked, though, he turned out to be a decent enough guy.
“Come to think of it, this is your first rest day. These days are pure honey.”
“You’re not wrong. After nothing but pickaxe work every single day, just sitting like this feels amazing.”
Ellen stretched hard. His joints cracked into place with a series of pops.
“Was there always a day like this?”
Rev shook his head.
“About two years ago, maybe? The workload was brutal and the treatment was inhuman, so the prisoners rioted. Got put down fast, but a lot of people took part. After that they agreed to give us one day like this a week. The soup at dinner started around then, too, I think.”
The two of them sat in their chairs and talked about one thing and another. Most of it was Ellen asking about the place and Rev answering.
“You bastard!”
A curse ripped across the middle of the yard.
“What did you just say?”
Two prisoners had each other by the collar.
The nearby guards saw it. They made no real move to intervene. One of them was even smiling.
Thud!
What started as shouting turned into fists.
“The guards aren’t going to stop them?”
Ellen asked, watching the guards grin as if they’d found some entertainment.
“Why would they? Dark mages who commit crimes with magic pour in every month. They don’t care—as long as no one openly tries to kill someone out here.”
Ellen nodded at Rev’s words.
Faction squabbles no matter where you go. I guess people just can’t help themselves.
Ellen watched the tangled fighters and thought it over.
From what he’d pieced together here, the factions broke down into three main groups.
“You lowborn trash! Outside, I would’ve killed you for that.”
That kind of talk belonged to the noble-born faction. Most of them hadn’t truly studied black magic; they were political sacrifices more often than not.
Nothing clears out a rival quite like this.
Crossing a magical taboo was a judgment heavy with subjectivity. The punishment, by contrast, was enormous.
Imprisonment on Enis—in other words, a clean multi-year retirement from politics.
Their leader was from the Gronrid family, wasn’t he?
Gronrid was a magic house that stood shoulder to shoulder with the Chedleton family. The head of Enis’s noble faction was one of theirs.
“Outside, you would’ve been the one dead. I’d have used you as a sacrifice.”
The other side were the ones who had actually learned black magic.
Most of them had practiced blood magic in particular.
The last group was the neutral faction—mostly commoners and Magic Assistants.
The man who could be called that faction’s leader was the room leader of Ellen’s own cell.
“That’s enough.”
As the fight tipped toward something uglier, the room leader stepped forward.