The next morning it’s announced after a sparse gruel breakfast that we’re going to be working with our oldies for the first couple of hours today. We are all going to run errands throughout the mines. The oldies job is to make sure that no one gets lost. I wonder briefly how this will work for the oldies who have two or more newbies, then I dismiss that thought. It doesn’t really matter to me, and I have enough on my plate as it is. There are things that I need to ask Vol today, Golik might try to push me down nearby mineshafts, and I need to remember where everything is.

Our first assignment is to deliver a request for supplies to one of the storage rooms. Later someone on the carts will fulfill it and bring the delivery back to the necessary area. But there are so many demands that they can’t waste carts toting messages to and fro, so we have to run them around.

Vol and I are mainly silent as we begin our run, I guess he isn’t really a morning person. After around half an hour of delivering orders though I get bored of waiting for him to break the silence and speak up first.

“So Vol,” I say, “why did you choose me? You seem to hate Elves, but you volunteered to tutor me. Why? I honestly thought no one would want me, even with Bakken’s praise.”

Vol looks at me, his beard and mustache covering his mouth enough that I can’t read his facial expression. I don't know what he is thinking. We keep running in silence until I think that he will just ignore my question, but eventually he does answer it.

“You’re interesting.” He says, and for a moment I think he will leave it at that. Then he adds, “You are lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to have survived this long. You seem clever, I’d guess you are the type to always be plotting something. I appreciate the fact that you are willing to speak up if you notice something wrong. You are also an accomplished liar, distracting the others with the obvious falsehood so they don’t pay attention to the other lies. Based on all this, I thought that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have you in my debt.”

“That was very…” I hesitate, hoping he won’t take this wrong, “straightforward.”

“It’s a trait that I appreciate myself and desire in my acquaintances.” Vol shrugs. “You’re rather straightforward too, you know. Why else would you start up a conversation with a question like that?”

I glance at Vol, and then quickly turn my gaze back to the path ahead of us as I nearly trip on some loose stones. I never thought of myself as straightforward before. But I suppose I am when he puts it like that. I’m not sure I ever was at the palace though, perhaps it is something that I have picked up during my years in captivity. Most Dwarves that I have met don’t like beating about the bush after all.

“Which way do we go now?” Vol says. I hesitate, realizing that we have come to a fork. “Which way?” Vol repeats impatiently, wiping the sweat off his forehead. I hurriedly scan through memories of our travels yesterday and mentally pull up a map.

“Left?” I hazard, glancing at Vol to see if I’m right. He just sighs.

“Left? Left? Well, which is it, Faladel? You are supposed to answer me, not ask me.”

“Left.” I say, this time trying to sound more sure of my answer.

“Correct, now let’s continue. We don’t want to be late.”

The next day, muscles aching, I run without Vol. That one day of training was all I got. With Vol I was mainly ignored, the people we needed to interact with just talked to him. But now that I’m alone the ones who ignored my existence gather around me like flies, buzzing insults in my ears; and the ones who would only talk to Vol, now sneer and wrinkle their noses as they are forced to interact with an Elf.

It gets so bad that four days after I arrived, when I’m running in between mine shafts delivering yet another report, I’m not that surprised when five Dwarves pop up from a nearby cave. They begin following me, and quickly catch up, surrounding me. Normally I could have outrun them, but they’re obviously fresh and I’ve already been running for hours. So, instead of trying, I stop.

“What are you doing here?” I ask them.

“What are you doing here?” One of them echoes in a whiny high pitched voice. His buddies encircle me. I try to keep a wary eye on them, but I can’t watch all of them at once.

“If it is just making fun of me, would you mind leaving? I have work to do.” I step forward, but the Dwarves don’t budge.

“I have work to do.” The group choruses, and then they burst out in derisive laughter. They begin circling me, a pack of hyenas on their prey. I try to keep an eye on as many as possible, a sick feeling in my stomach. I don’t know what is happening, but whatever it is it isn’t good. Most of the time the Dwarves just jeer at me, they’ve never prevented me from continuing my work. I don’t even recognise this group of jerks from all the ones that torment me. I try to walk out of the circle they’ve made around me, but their leader just shoves me back.

“Don’t leave yet, Elf, we were just getting started.” He snarls.

“You might have been, but I’m finished, and I have work to do. So, if you’ll excuse me...” I say, starting to move forward again, determined to continue my delivery. Hopefully they will let me leave. I feel a surge of relief as their circle opens up before me, and I let out a breath. I can’t believe they let me go.

Suddenly, something blocks my foot, and I trip and fall, hard. My chin knocks one of the rocks on the ground and I feel dazed. What had I tripped over? I glance back and see one of the Dwarves, a nasty smirk on his face, has his foot out right where I had been walking. Did he just trip me?

“Did you see that lads? This nasty little upstart elf kicked my foot!” He says grinning. “He assaulted me!”

“What?” I splutter, but the other Dwarves hurry to agree with him.

“Nasty Elf!”

“Doesn’t know his place!”

“Someone should teach him!”

“Kicking the boss's foot like that!”

The Dwarf whose foot I ‘kicked’ smiles. “I agree, we should teach him a lesson of what happens to Elves who don’t know their place. Take him to the pits!”

My thoughts race. This isn’t good, there are five of them and only one of me. I’m on the ground and slightly dazed. I’m weak after being in prison for all those years. Once I might have been able to take them on, especially if they are untrained, but now if I try I will probably get seriously injured while doing so. Then again, they might injure me even if I don’t fight back. I don’t know what to do. What are these pits? Can’t be anything good. My mind rushes to calculate everything.

But my thoughts take too long, before I can decide if I want to try to defend myself, a boot crashes into my side. I try to get up, but feel a heavy weight land on my back and someone restrains my arms. A Dwarf ties my wrists together behind my back, another one gags me with a dirty cloth. Then they force me to my feet, and begin to lead me somewhere.

I don’t know where they are taking me, they backtrack along my route for a while, one of them grabbing a torch, before they lead me off into a side cave that I don’t know. They drag me down a tunnel, some shoving me occasionally for laughs. Eventually the path that we are on starts sloping down sharply, and a horrendous stench fills the air. Bile climbs up my throat, but the gag forces it back down.

“The stench gets me everytime.” one of the Dwarves mutters.

“Don’t be a sissy.” the ‘boss’ says. “It’s just a bit of dung.”

Dung? Wait, they didn’t mean the refuse caverns by ‘pits’ did they?

The tunnel ends sharply, and the stench gets worse as we enter a cavern. We are quite above the floor level if one can call it the floor. Layers of manure, rotten food, and other filth -all somewhat solidified- cover whatever used to be the ground far below us.

The Dwarves move me to the edge, and I turn to look at them.

“Hey, think of it this way,” The ‘boss’ says to me. “Elves are creatures of earth right? Well all this disgusting stuff will one day be prime soil won’t it? So we’re just returning you to your natural habitat!” All his cronies laugh at his joke, I just glare. Death by drowning in dung was never at the top of my list of favorite ways to die.

I can swim of course, but only for so long, not to mention it’s hard to swim with your hands tied behind your back. Also, I don’t know how to get out of here, as far as I know there are no outlets at ‘ground level’. And once I fall down there, if there are no outlets it will be pitch dark.

The ‘boss’ Dwarf glares at me. “You didn’t laugh at my joke!” He accuses me. “How rude of you!” I resist the urge to roll my eyes. He knows why I didn’t laugh, besides the fact that it isn’t funny, I’m gagged. I physically can’t laugh. I don’t know why he is bringing it up.

“I’ll have to teach you a lesson then, Elf.” He says grinning and rolling up his sleeves. He throws a ridiculously slow punch at my jaw. I dodge it easily, but end up with my back to the edge of the cliff that leads into the cavern. The Dwarves gather up behind their leader edging closer to me, cutting my dodging space to half of what it was.

“Two of you, untie him and hold him still!” shouts the leader. I can’t do anything as they converge on me, untie my wrists, take out my gag, and position me for their leader to punch. I give him a withering glare as he sets up his next punch carefully. When he swings, I jerk my head to the side, avoiding a direct hit, but the Dwarves holding me suddenly let go. I stumble backwards from surprise and the force of the glancing blow, and trip over another foot.

Too late, I realize how close to the edge they had maneuvered me.

As I fall through the air I hear the Dwarves’ leader say. “What a bunch of heroic patriots we are, taking on a dangerous elf, even though we’re just civilians. The army should give us a medal or something!” The Dwarves' laughter echoes through the cavern as I land with a splat in the dung.

Thankfully I did find an exit, although it wasn’t fun diving into the muck to swim through the entrance. Eventually I make it back to the dens. I’m covered in all sorts of things that I don’t want to think about and I probably smell like a rotting corpse, but I’m alive. When I enter the cavern that holds all our huts though, something is going on. Through the flickering torch light I see a large group of Dwarves that have gathered near the center hut. I hesitate for a minute weighing the pros and cons of going to join them.

Bakken might be there, in which case I can ask for permission to wash and directions to said washing area. There must be one, afterall, everyone would stink to high heaven if there wasn’t any, and as far as I’ve noticed, I’m the only one who stinks like that. However, since it is a crowd, practically everyone will realize quickly that I was dumped in the ‘pits’ adding to my humiliation. Washing up takes precedence over pride though, so I go up and join the crowd. More than a few noticeably step away from me.

To my surprise, the Dwarves here aren’t gathered around Bakken, instead they are gathered around someone I don’t know. His clothes are even better than Bakken's, and his beard is actually combed. He isn’t wearing a guards uniform, just plain old clothes like the rest of us, but his doesn’t have any holes. As I watch, Bakken and some of the other supervisors come out of the central hut, and a murmur runs through the crowd. The strange Dwarf runs his gaze over us, and it halts at me. Great.

I glance around hopefully, perhaps he is looking at someone else? But the space around me is practically empty because of my smell, and the Dwarves nearby shuffle away nervously at the strange Dwarf’s stare. I’ve already been dumped in dung today, and now a strange Dwarf is staring -nope, make that glaring- at me.

“What is an Elf doing here!?” The Dwarf demands in a deep voice, turning his gaze from me to glare at the supervisors.

Bakken steps forward, a strange look on his face that I can’t define. “He was assigned to me, Sir.”

Sir? So this Dwarf is definitely above Bakken. Is he an Overseer then?

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why you let him live, nor why he appears before me in such a disrespectful getup. Nevermind that, it actually suits one of his kind. Filth covered in more filth.” The Dwarf says with a sneer. He shoots a quick glance at me to see my reaction. I just glare right back defiantly. I’m fed up with being insulted and belittled because of my species. If I just continue to take it, they’ll continue to give it, so the best option is to stand up for myself and show I’m not a pushover. This Dwarf’s opinions mean nothing to me. We are both prisoners now, but back home I am a prince and he is nothing.

“Look at that uppity little snot. I’ve a mind to put him in his place.” The Overseer snarls, cracking one of his knuckles. “Some of you guys in the crowd hold him down for me.”

I only have half a second to prepare as a pile of Dwarves tackle me from all sides, grappling and straining to do as the Overseer says. I fight my hardest, but there are simply too many and soon I am face down with my arms and legs immobilized. I hear heavy footsteps come closer.

“Yuck what’s that smell?” the Overseer’s voice says. “Turn him over boys, I want to see his pride break as I beat him.”

The Dwarves around me roughly twist me into the Overseer’s desired position. I narrow my eyes at him. Suddenly though, my eyes widen then water from a sudden jolt of pain in my side. Another follows it, and then another in my leg. This is far worse than the earlier beating I recieved. At least then, I could mostly avoid some of the abuse. But now every blow hits exactly where it is supposed to. The Overseer's grin broadens as he kicks me. Side, stomach, arms and legs. He even kicks me in the head. And I can’t stop it. The nearby Dwarves all hold me still, forcing me to accept the buffeting. Blow follows blow turning into a rain of pain that swallows me up, but I won’t scream. I won’t give him the satisfaction. I won’t give them the satisfaction.

Eventually the strikes begin to slow, and then it halts, and the world blurs into focus again. The Overseer stands above me, panting with exertion.

“Thravic, Sir, we do need to get back to work.” Bakken says, taking the opportunity to break in now that the Overseer has paused.

“Huh! How dare you call me by my first name underling!” The Overseer, Thravic, spits. “Maybe I’m too lenient with you, and that’s why you allow transgressions such as this to happen in your crew. Is that it?” He pauses sucking in a deep breath. “I mean, you have the audacity to allow an Elf to live!? That is unacceptable and brings down the integrity of your whole crew!”

Thravic continues but I tune him out, focusing instead on Bakken’s expression. His head is down, but from my position I have no trouble seeing his face. Angry, resentful, perhaps with a touch of rebellion. As Thravic finishes he quickly hides all that though, and it returns to the same expression as earlier, subservient and blank. But in his eyes there is still a hint of anger that he can’t hide. Thravic leaves, and I feel the Dwarves who were restraining me leave as well. I lay on the ground, resting for just a bit so my body can process all the new wounds. “Why did you have to look at him?” Bakken growls under his breath at me as he leaves, kicking me as he goes by. I glare after him as he goes, then pick myself up from the ground. Anger at my entire situation wells up in me, but I don’t have anything to do with it. I wish I actually did some mining instead of just running. Then I would have an excuse to hit something. Hard.

My whole body aches as I make my way to our hut. Cuts, scrapes, and bruises on bruises on bruises. I will probably hurt like hell tomorrow, but for now I need to wash off and make sure my wounds won’t get infected. Maybe I can find someone in the hut who can point me in the direction of whatever water we are supposed to wash in. Someone is probably in there taking their lunch break, it is that time of day after all.

When I enter the hut, grimy and badly bruised, Vol is the only one there. He is sitting on the edge of his bed eating some of the gruel that we all get for lunch. When I come in he looks up at me, stares for about three seconds, and then says, “You can have my shower slot for this week. You certainly need it, you reek. Exit this cavern, take a left, go straight for about thirty meters and it will be on your right.” Then he glances down at his gruel again and takes another bite. I stare at him befuddled. Did he somehow read my mind? I glance down at my sorry state and realize that he could have just probably guessed it.

“What are you waiting for, Faladel. Go on! Shoo!” Vol waves his spoon at me. I grab my blanket from my bunk and hurry out.