vox populi, vox dei

it has been fifteen years and you are tired. strong back, calloused hands, head bowed. you grew your hair out on accident because no one thought to cut it off and half the time you see the white stone beneath your fingers through a veil of black. it's summer, now. the quarry is full of dust and fleas (you always hated bugs) and the sun never seems to set. your skin was never white, but now you stand out nut-brown against the chalk and marble. every other worker is the same. flea-bitten and sun-seared and cowed and quiet. the days are long. you work in silence. your lord is not a cruel man, but he does not abide by idle chatter, and your back is scarred from your few feeble attempts to make friends.

sometimes your parents send letters. they are alive, out there, back in the slip. maybe still in cann's post, struggling to make ends meet. for ten years they thought you were dead before your lord relented and let you reach out. just a few words, i'm safe, i miss you, but it was enough to soothe their long-worn fears. you read them over and over by candlelight when you can. you never get paid for your work--not in coin, at least--but you promise yourself that when you get out of here you will support them. somehow. you'll enter the lucrative field of dungeon-delving and make sure they never have to work another day in their life.

it's a fine dream. you're strong, but you flinch at shadows, and there's not a magical bone in your body--not for lack of trying. you found a spellbook tucked into a seam in the stone when the quarry first opened. no words, just symbols in fine ink and gold leaf. you read a page in before your eyes started to blur and you took your candle to it in a fit of frustration. there were always stories back home about how magical things just feel right when you hold them but that book never felt like anything more than dead weight to you.

you learned, after a while, not to let it bother you. the list of things that light fury in you is long enough already without adding your own incompetence to the list. you hate the quarry, and you hate the men that work alongside you, and you hate your lord in his fortress-in-the-mountain that you had to dig out, and some days you hate the sun and the rain and the whole wide world itself. you daydream on those days about thrones and grand crowns and everyone who's ever hurt you bowing at your feet. adoration or fear. you don't mind which.