Hot. It was dangerously hot.
A myriad of slaves were perspiring under the heat of the mines, and the heat of their labour. Some slaves were passing through, hauling barrels of cement while the others were propped up to half-finished buildings by machines that couldn't care less about their safety.
The slavers could, however, they couldn't have a working slave dying after all. Alix Vineyard, a frail, black haired boy, was carrying a barrel of cement with a girl that looked like she was about to pass out.
His feet were blistered, his breath came out ragged, and the salt from his sweat insisted on stinging his eyes. It wouldn't be long before he could drop the barrel, he knew, and that short moment of relief would allow him to wipe his face.
But the girl beside him looked like she was about to collapse at any moment.
"Come on, Leesa," Alix said to her. "We're so close. You've got this!"
"Alix…I can't. I'm—I'm so tired…"
A veil of panic shrouded Alix's heart. "Leesa, you can't fall now. You can't! The slavers, they'll whip you again. They gave you thirty lashes last time. This time it'll be sixty."
"I…I know…but I can't. Alix, I'm sorry."
There was nothing Alix could do to help. He couldn't carry the barrel alone, and he most definitely wouldn't take Leesa's lashes for her. That's what the mothers and the fathers often did for their children who couldn't handle their workload.
The crack of the whip made him shudder. So did the slavers, especially when they were raising their voices at the 'slackers' or the 'tamerless.' That's what they always called all of them.
There was nothing they could do against the slavers. A slave had tried to stab one with a sharpened rock a few months ago. The slaver had given him one hundred lashes prior, and so the slave only wanted to pay him back by ending his life.
The slaver, being the tamer that he was, summoned a giant komodo dragon that swallowed the idiot whole.
Alix hated to admit it, but the slaves actions gave him a shred of hope, but his violent end served to remind him that the tamerless, those without the ability to tame beasts, only had two paths. Indentured servitude or death.
Alix had known the two his whole life. He was born as a slave, and raised as a slave. It made him strong, lean, and muscular, but what was human strength against tamers who could summon magical beasts from thin air?
Leesa had finally collapsed, turning Alix's guts to soup. She was panting heavily, and wiping the sweat from her face in between breaths. Her blonde hair was cut short by the slavers so it wouldn't interfere with her work, and the brown rags she wore—that all the slaves wore—was damp with perspiration.
"I-I'm sorry, Alix," she croaked.
"You, girl!" A man roared, hurrying towards the two. "Get up! On your feet!"
She didn't.
The slaver looked menacing. His pockmarked face made him look all the more crueler, and the whip by his side only added to his ferocity, ragged and torn to mark its overuse. He raised it and cracked it against her body incessantly.
The girls scream tore at her throat, and a flood of tears escaped her eyes as she begged and pleaded for him to stop.
For a moment, Alix thought the slaver was crying too, but that was only the sweat pouring down from his face, and his wet, brown hair sent more flecks to quench the ground's thirst.
Alix flinched with every lash, and closed his eyes so he didn't need to see the scars that the whip would conceive. His legs were wobbling and he had to eventually drop the barrel. As he did, his heart crashed into his ribcage
I'm next
But before the slaver could inflict some level of violence upon him, a voice called out, pleading for the man to stop, forcing Alix's eyes open.
What! Another slave! He's speaking out!?
The slave was a tall man who looked to be no older than thirty. His mud-brown hair was long and dishevelled, with streaks of grey and black that made him stand out from the others. Alix wondered how he had never noticed him. Even his features made him seem very…strange.
His mismatched eyes were glinting with amusement, and a wide smile had washed across his wizened face long before he approached the two slaves and their new-abuser.
"I'll take the girls' lashes," he said, removing his torn-up shirt. "Let her go, she's earned a break."
The slaver's brow furrowed. "Who are you, tamerless? What's your relation to this girl?"
"I do not know her," the man said, matter-of-factly. "I will take thirty lashes for the boy, all that I ask is that you allow me to help him carry the barrel."
The slaver paused to look him up and down. He snarled and then spat out a ball of spit. "Goddam masochist. On your knees then!"
The man did as he was told.
Alix closed his eyes and covered his ears, even then he could still envision the scars and he could still hear the sound of a whip cracking against skin and bone. It wasn't the sound of the screams that disturbed Alix, it was the eerie silence as the whip kept working away at the flesh.
But Alix realised something strange. There was no screaming, no pleading, no grunt or moan. He could still hear the whip cracking however, but the man didn't make a sound.
Out of curiosity, he opened his eyes and found the man had indeed taken on both Alix and Leesa's punishment without so much as a complaint.
What!?
When the slaver was done, his breath came out ragged, and the sweat made his face glisten under the artificial lights that had been fixed into the rock above.
"G—go! Go!" The slaver demanded, rapidly breathing out his frustration. And his shock, too.
The man got up. He was still smiling, somehow, even with all the scars that littered his back. He lifted up the barrel and winked at Alix, prompting him to add his unneeded strengths to the man's efforts.
If effort it could even be called. He was lifting the barrel up with both hands like it was nothing. Alix placed both palms underneath it so that no slaver could say that he was slacking.
"Who are you mister," Alix whispered as they began hauling the barrel away.
"A slave," he replied.
"I-I know that, but what's your name?"
"No one."
Alix felt a little annoyed that the man was being so cryptic, but he played along anyway. "Okay then, No one. Thank you for helping us, but…I don't understand. Why? Why would you do that?"
The man shrugged. "Why does one do anything?"
"Uhh, well…to benefit themselves. I guess?"
The man beamed at that answer, and looked down at him with a smile that was even wider than the last. "Good answer. That's exactly why I did it."
That puzzled Alix greatly. "W-what? How would taking our lashes help you? I mean, look at your scars. They're—"
Alix craned his neck back to inspect his scars, but there were none to be found. His back was slick with sweat and only a pristine white canvas of skin glared back at him.
"Your scars. They're—they're gone! Mister, don't tell me, are you a tamer? Do you have powers?"
The man did not respond, he was too busy staring into the distance, and smiling at nothing. Alix followed his eyes and saw a giant fortress that was close to completion.
"Tell me, boy," the man suddenly spoke. "Do you know why the empire is building these strongholds underground?"
Alix nodded. "For the great reset."
"Aye. Do you know what the great reset is?"
Alix paused. His knowledge was surface level at best, but there was one word that simplified the great reset entirely.
"War."
The man chewed on that and then shrugged. "Your knowledge does not break the surface. The great reset, for many people, is their freedom or their deaths. For five hundred years many empires will fall, civilisations will burn, tamers will perish, and new ones will arise with ambition burning in their eyes. There is so much that your ears have not yet devoured."
"Mister, you know a lot. So, you are a tamer?"
"Yes," he said, slamming the barrel onto the ground. "A worm tamer."
Alix couldn't help but smile. The boy couldn't believe he was speaking to a tamer so casually, he had only known those who scowled at him or despised him for being tamerless. Just who was this man?
"That's so cool! So you can control worms to do whatever you want! But, mister, why are you a slave if you're a tamer?"
"One eventually grows tired of fighting," he said, vaguely. "I'm surprised you didn't mock me for being a worm tamer out of all the beasts man can control."
"What!? I'd never! I love worms. They're my best friends. My parents died working in these same mines, and my sister was taken away by tamers and I've never seen her since. All I had were the worms. I talked to them, cried to them. I even named one of them after my missing sister, Raina!"
Alix's words had seized the man's legs, suddenly coming to a stop. "Perhaps…this is why I was so drawn to you, Alix. I have lived far too long, seen too much, and feel so little. I am tired, so tired," he sighed.
A morose expression washed across his face, and Alix couldn't help but feel sorry.
"War is upon us soon, Alix. And I no longer wish to fight. So, I ask you, take my place, become a tamer."
"What…" Alix mouthed. "…me? A tamer? But I'm a tamerless… I ca—"
"Tamerless you will be no more, my power is calling out to you with glee."
"But…the slavers, the empire! I'll be a runaway! They'll kill me."
"Killing a tamer would be very tough, Alix. Our lot are valuable, the empire enslaves and kills the powerless like you, but they wouldn't dare lay a hand on future soldiers."
"You!" A man roared in the distance. it was the same slaver who had beaten Leesa mercilessly. He was watching them, observing, noting. A bunch of other slavers were hurrying towards them with suspicion dripping from their eyes.
"Mister, what did you do?" Alix said. A modicum of fear crept into his voice, but only a modicum, he felt safe and protected just by being beside the tamer.
"I forgot to put on my shirt," the man laughed.
The scars. They know.
"The worms call to you, Alix. You can either live as a slave or die as a tamer. For my final act, I will show you why you should choose the latter."
The man raised his arms as if he was in a choir, then, without warning, a myriad of thick humongous worms bloomed from the ground and swallowed the slavers whole.
They spat their bodies out in disgust, revealing mangled, bloody corpses with snapped limbs that made them look like human paperballs. For the first time, the slavers knew what it was like to be brutalised.
The world rumbled, rocks were falling from the surface, threatening to crush the souls below. A black worm wrapped itself around a slaver, and strangled the soul out of him before he could summon his own beast.
The rocky sky collapsed, crushing the slavers and slaves indiscriminately, and Alix could do nothing but stand there, frozen, befuddled, waiting for some rock or beast to slaughter him.
The rocks claimed him first. They rained down on him like a violent hailstorm, crushing him and burying him in a make-shift grave. Alix heaved, felt his bones being crushed, and the blood pouring from his body like a stream. He was dead.
Or so he thought
[TAMER WINDOW]
[Name: Alix Vineyard]
[Status: Alive]
[Tamer-Type: Worms]
[Creatures Tamed: 1]
[Evolutions Made: 0]
[PERSONAL WINDOW]
[Name: Alix Vineyard]
[Status: Alive]
[Tier: Slave]
[Class: Fledgling]
[Natural Attributes: Regeneration, Secretion]
[Evolutionary Attributes: None]
[Resets: 0]
[Tamer Soul Fragments Claimed: 0]
[Soul Fragments Claimed: 0]
[Soul Fragments Until Next Personal Evolution: 0/100]
[CREATURE WINDOW]
[Raina]
Evolution Capacity: 3
Evolution Lines: None
Abilities: None
Soul Fragments Until Next Evolution: 0/50
Description: Raina is nothing but a simple flatworm, bound to crawl under the earth for life. Her tenacity knows no bounds, however.