There is no true day or night cycle down in the Pit. At least not as far down as we worked. After three months of not seeing the sky, nor a single ray of natural light, I began to forget what they looked like. I tried to picture the sky in my mind every day and all I could see was rough-hewn rock lit by greasy lamplight. The world is a miserable place down in the Pit, but then prisons are not meant to be cheerful.
We worked, slept, and ate in shifts and I lost all sense of time. I relied on the internal clock of my body to wake me for work and learned early on not to be late. The foreman's punishments were particularly harsh, and the mouldy arsehole was not shy in handing them out.
Josef and I were assigned to different teams, though by sheer luck we kept the same shifts. At night we would curl up together, as we had many times back in the academy, and pull our dirty, threadbare blanket over us both. Everything down in the Pit is dirty, covered in layers of grease and rock dust. After a while I forgot what it was like to be clean. After just a little longer, I stopped caring. There are no mirrors down in the Pit for good reason.
I always woke just a little before Josef. Each morning— and I called them mornings for lack of a better term— I would wake and roll away from him. I would stare up at the rock above me and hate. Anger has always been one of my strongest passions. Some say it grants strength when reason and will fail. I think maybe those people are right. It granted me a fire burning inside when hope failed me. I didn't so much desire to escape, as I needed to visit my burning wrath upon all the bastards who had put me there. I had a great many enemies to kill, and most of them didn't even know I existed. There is little that is as maddening as being beneath the notice of those you wish to murder.
I hated the Terrelans, every single one of the fuckers, for putting me down in the Pit, for winning the war and even letting me live. I hated Prig, the rotten cunt of a foreman who drove our team deeper into the rock each day. I hated my team, broken workers for the most part, for not standing up and fighting Prig. I hated the cock-faced overseer, even to this day I don't know his name, for trying to break me once a week. I even hated Josef for helping in my capture and for giving up. I could see in his eyes every day that he had given up. But I think most of all I hated my own damned self.
No! Most of all I definitely hated Prig.
"Up! Get up, scabs!" Prig bellowed, punctuating his order with a crack of his leather whip. Nasty things, whips, perfectly suited to inflict terror on a person as much as pain. I hate to admit it, but I came to dread the sound of that whip cracking. I wanted nothing more than to take it from him, shove it up his arse and drag it out through his mouth. Just a few months earlier I would have set the shit-sniffing bastard on fire for talking to me that way. Instead, I rushed to my feet and stood ready along with the rest of my team. Josef let out a groan and sat up, already rolling our blanket into a ball. He would find some little nook to hide it until we returned. It wasn't much, but the other inmates would happily steal nothing much. I've heard it said there is honour amongst thieves, but down in the Pit honour was a commodity worth shit. Down there, there was nothing so valuable as food and fear. Well, and shoes.
The whip cracked again and Josef cried out as it lashed a bloody trail along his leg. He scrambled backwards against the rough stone wall, clutching at the limb. I have found there is little in this world quite so horrible as a loved one's pain. It carries with it a certain hopelessness. A knowledge that there is nothing you can do but watch them suffer.
"Always sniffing around this one. Heh!" Prig snorted, a crooked grin revealing brown teeth. His rot-breath could have felled a particularly vicious tiger at twenty paces.
I took a step sideways, putting myself between Prig and Josef, and locked my knees, trying to stop the trembling in my legs. I have said fear was valuable commodity down in the Pit, and it was one Prig was rich in. I refused to add to his hoard of riches.
"Fuck you, Prig," I hissed. "He's not on your team. He can sleep wherever he likes."
Prig was not a small man and I was still a girl. He dwarfed me both in height and bulk and I had already learned the hard way, more than once, that he had no qualms beating a young girl. I think he enjoyed it as some men do. I think it made the rotten fucker feel powerful being able to dominate a woman, even one as young as I, and there were no others on his team. Without any Sources, without any magic, I had no way to stop him from doing whatever he pleased.
In a flash he was on me, a meaty fist slamming into my gut. I staggered, feeling air rush out my lungs and bile rise in my throat. I think I must have closed my eyes. It would not be the first nor last time Prig had beaten me unconscious. Fingers like iron wrapped around my throat, hauled me back to my feet and bashed me against the wall of the cavern. I smelled that rotten breath, so vile it made the urge to vomit even stronger. Honestly, it smelled like the bastard regularly dined on shit.
I struggled against the grip, clawing at the fingers digging into my neck. It's hard to describe the panic of suffocating. Prig had already driven the air from my lungs and his iron grip stopped me from breathing. I couldn't even make a sound as I struggled, pawing impotently at his hand, eyes goggling with terror. Prig was worse than anything the Terrelans ever did to me. He made me helpless.
Just as my vision started to dim, Prig let go, dropping me to my knees in front of him. I gasped down air, clutching at my throat and shedding shameful tears onto the rock below. There were eight other people in the little cavern we slept in and not a single one of the fuckers helped me, not even Josef. I hated them for that, even as I realised I didn't blame them. Prig was chief of this little part of the world and he did not brook defiance. That didn't stop me from hating them though. I think, looking back now, I still hate them a little.
I felt a hand grip hold of my hair and my head was wrenched back forcing me to stare at Prig's leering face. "Just for that, cunt. You get to hold the marker." A violent shove sent me sprawling onto my back and Prig turned and strode away, cracking his whip against the floor. "Heel! All of you."
None of us hesitated to jump to his command; even I, still shaking, sobbing, and coughing. The shame of that terrified obedience burns me still. I spared a glance back towards Josef and he gave me a nod. His own shift would be starting soon enough, and his rot-brained foreman was almost as unpleasant as Prig. Almost.
To this day I still do not know the purpose of the Pit, Terrelan's largest prison sunk deep into the ground. The inmates spent their sentences digging and transporting rock to the surface. Then that rock is dumped elsewhere. We weren't mining, there were no seams of precious metal. I once heard of a team who found coal, but that tunnel was quickly collapsed and the team reassigned. It seems to me we were there simply to dig. What a fucking waste of time. I sometimes wonder if the purpose was to break us. To crush the prisoners' spirits. Maybe it was just punishment; never-ending, pointless toil down in the dark. The sure, unwavering knowledge that nothing we did or said meant a damned thing. A punishment worse than death. Irrelevance.
I guess I'll never know the truth since I eventually flooded the damned place and everyone in it. I sometimes imagine Prig drowning down in the Pit, struggling for air in the pitch-black, icy water flooding his lungs and dragging him down into a forgotten grave. Such thoughts bring a smile to my face even now. Age and wisdom have done nothing to quash my thirst for vengeance, even against those long dead. But even those we've vanquished leave their marks upon us, and Prig certainly left his on me.