Chapter 39: Ch. 039 – (Then) Daily Grind

The days that followed were exhausting and identical, blending seamlessly together into a long dusty haze that Jonathan was looking forward to forgetting. Every day he woke up aching from the exertions of the day before, and he never really got any cleaner. He did get skinnier though. He noticed one day in the reflection of his beer that his face was starting to look almost gaunt. No matter how much he ate it couldn’t keep up with the labors he endured though, so no matter how sick he grew of mushroom stew and roast sausage he forced himself to choke it down. Steadily those bland and uniform days blended into nearly identical weeks. It was the only time he missed the random assortment of leftovers that Maxom had brought him every day. There was something to be said for variety after all.

He spent most days in a sort of trance. Walking mechanically back and forth while he practiced removing very small amounts of heat from himself. It might not be much hotter here than it was in Khaghrumer, but with this much exertion and not enough breaks for water it could become downright lethal. Erkom told him that the guards and a couple of the other prisoners had started a betting pool on when he was going to keel over from heat stroke. Apparently they’d never seen a man last this long - even at the edge of the deeps. That doubled Jonathan’s resolve to see this through to the end, no matter how many sweaty 90 degree days he had to endure. So, every day he bled fire from his body to the mine cart he was pushing several times an hour until he could do it practically without thinking about it.

His new boots held up surprisingly well. The same couldn’t be said for the rest of his clothes. The prisoners were occasionally given access to cauldrons of hot water to clean themselves, but even with harsh soap and a little hot water he never really felt clean - just scrubbed raw. After two weeks he took to working without a shirt, for the heat as much as the fact that his only shirt was just a few steps above a rag at this point. That was when he noticed that for the first time in his whole life he had something resembling definition in his muscles. The work he’d had to endure down here might be hard on his body, but it had some benefits at least.

At the halfway point in their sentence Erkom commented idly before bed, “I’m surprised that yer friend Fedon hasn’t tried anything else.”

“Maybe some of the dwarves he works with down here finally talked some sense into him,” Jonathan countered

“I tell ye - he’s smitten with ye lad.” Erkom said, repeating it in dwarven a second time to get a few laughs. Without a pair of dice it seemed like all the dwarves did in their cell block was laugh and tell stories. Jonathan could pick up a few words now though. Gobbler. Train. Rail. Piss. Beer. Axe. To owe money. To drink. To get drunk. Their language no longer sounded alien to him, merely foriegn.

“Let him come.” Jonathan shrugged. “Only one of us still has scars from our last fight. If he tries anything, I’ll make sure that he regrets it.” Erkom looked at him for a long moment - evaluating the strength behind the words. Jonathan didn’t talk tough very often, but he approved of whatever he saw, so he asked no questions and went back to his other conversation.

On his endless trips to and from the depths of the mine Jonathan had spent plenty of time coming up with a plan. He knew that he could never hope to win in a fair fight with an angry dwarf - not even with all the muscle he’d put on in the last few weeks. Just like last time he needed an edge of some kind, and between Fedon’s dwarvish blood and the salt all around them magic was unlikely to be the answer this time. What he needed was a weapon - something he could hide easily until the moment it was needed. After spending a day walking back and forth through a mined out area that was just salt and gravel now Jonathan finally found something he could fashion into a weapon: sand.

Over the course of dozens of trips he’d tried several times until he’d finally succeeding in fashioning a few pieces of glass that were long enough to hold and thick enough not to shatter easy. Though he broke most of them in the process, he’d managed to sharpen two to a deadly point, and though they might only be good for a single strike, he had no doubt that either one would penetrate Fedon’s thick dwarven skin if the need ever arose. That was one of the reasons he’d stopped wearing his shirt - the sleeves had been torn to shreds and wrapped around one side to form their hilts, and bunched up around the other so he wouldn’t cut himself with the improvised weapons in his boots. It turned out that channeling enough heat to melt sand into glass was the easy part of the whole thing though. The hard part was spending weeks with knives in your boots waiting for the guards to punish you, or for you to trip and cut your leg wide open.

Neither happened though, thankfully, and Jonathan hoped that in a couple more weeks he would be able to throw them away without hurting anyone. Sadly that was not to be though.

On day 26 Jonathan rounded the corner thinking about just how ridiculous it was that he’d only been here for 22 days by his count when he almost ran right into Fedon pushing a cart in the opposite direction. By the black expression on the dwarf’s face Jonathan could tell that he was spoiling for a fight.

Fedon stopped pushing his cart and stood in Jonathan’s path instead. Jonathan tried to go past him, but the dwarf pushed hard on the other side, stopping him in his tracks. “I told ye.” Fedon shouted, pushing hard enough on the cart that he knocked Jonathan back a few steps. “Accidents happen all the time here. I wonder if they ever find ye body after I am through with ye.”

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“I don’t want any trouble, Fedon.” Jonathan said backpedaling, but the dwarf wasn’t interested in talking.

“Trouble? Ye nothing but trouble!” the scarred dwarf yelled, charging at Jonathan, who ducked behind Fedon’s full cart. He seemed to be de-escalating the fight, but really he was just getting some breathing room to pull one of the crude knives he’d made. No sooner had he pulled it than Fedon managed to rush him from his blind side and send both him and his weapon flying towards the center of the tunnel.

Jonathan crabbed back for a few steps looking for the shard as much as a chance to get to his feet, but his enemy gave him no breathing room. As soon as Fedon was on him, he kicked the human hard enough in the groin to make Jonathan gasp for breath and dry heave. He had no idea anything could even hurt as bad as Fedon’s kick hurt at that moment.

“Ye think yer going to burn me again?” The dwarf stomped on his chest even as he asked the question leaving Jonathan gasping. “Can’t cast your man spells if ye can’t speak, can ye cold blood?” Jonathan was less concerned about trying to channel anything than trying to breathe, but even as he struggled for air Fedon straddled his chest and reached for his throat. He was going to crush his windpipe Jonathan realized with a sudden cold certainty. He was going to do it as simply as if he was cracking his knuckles and let the human he hated die a slow and painful death by suffocation, and there wasn’t anything he could do.

Jonathan had been so confident that this fight wasn’t going to happen that he’d let down his guard, and so certain he’d gotten stronger since they’d last crossed paths that he’d be able to win if it did. Now that he was faced with his enemy he understood the real problem. Brutality. It was never about their gap in strength - it was about their willingness to inflict pain on the other in order to achieve victory. Fedon had it, and Jonathan didn’t. It was as simple as that. As he flailed around looking for something - anything that he could fight the dwarf off with, he knew he didn't have that sort of brutality in him. The last time had been a fluke - a single desperate moment that he’d done without thinking.

At least that’s what his heart told him while he watched Fedon ignore his struggles and reach for his throat with a smile on his face. Then his hand closed around the glass shard that had been sent flying with him - or at least part of it. It felt like it hadn’t even made it to the first blow, but even the broken end sticking out of the cloth should be enough, Jonathan thought. He’d heard it said before that when you’re about to die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but in that moment the only thing that went through Jonathan’s mind was all the arguments against taking a life, even in self defense. He wondered if he could live with himself afterwards, but that at least turned out to be an easy choice. He would rather live and be unable to live with himself than die with his hands clean.

In the seconds before he was murdered by Fedon he grabbed the paltry weapon and drove it hard into the dwarf’s neck. For a moment the dwarf was stunned. He knocked Jonathan’s hand free, dislodging the blade and sending a spurt of arterial blood flying against the tunnel wall. Jonathan used the distraction to push his small attacker off of him and then rose shakely to his feet, kicking Fedon a couple times for good measure when he started to rise.

“Damn giant,” the dwarf growled, angry that the boot was on the other foot. With one hand holding his bleeding neck to keep from bleeding out Jonathan now had the upper hand, and even with his aching groin the dwarf couldn’t do anything to stop Jonathan from stomping him to death if that’s what he chose to do. Instead Jonathan grabbed the rim of the nearby cart, yanked it towards the two of them and then pulled the dump lever, pinning Fedon underneath the heavy weight of the steel car.

That’s when the alarm started to sound in the distance. Someone was pounding the giant brass gong at the entrance to the mine, and the giant thing was sending waves of sound through the walls that were loud enough to make his teeth vibrate. Three hard blows, then a few seconds of silence, then three hard blows and more silence, repeating over and over again. That was the signal for everyone to evacuate, Jonathan remembered as fear washed over him. Did this have something to do with him?

“Remember that I could have killed you, but I didn't,” Jonathan said, standing over his enemy for a long moment. He could hear the sound of people coming from all directions, and was torn. Should he let Fedon up and try to pretend this never happened, or should he make a break for it and try to pretend he was somewhere else. He wanted to think about it - but thinking was the last thing he had time for now that everyone was trying to leave the salt mine at once.

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