Frost strayed from the bars as one of the guards got close. He was a tall, ugly looking man with messed up teeth. At his side was a trusty looking sword, and on his person was chainmail topped with a tunic and leather gloves. He looked like a medieval guardsman. This was the first of many things that led Frost to question exactly where the hell he'd ended up.
"Traitor!" A voice called through the chaos.
As the plates of slop were distributed through little slits in the cell doors, the guard drew his sword and rapped it against the bars of Frost's cell, ignoring the remarks. "Everyone! It 'as come to my attention this morning that we have two freshies in stock."
[Checkpointer20: Just keep quiet if you value your tongue.]
"Let me out of here, you bastard!" Frost slammed himself into the bars with all of his body weight. He did this three times until his body hurt and he fell to the floor. A chorus of raucous laughter rang out around him. Frost's head drooped. He couldn't bear to lift it anymore.
"The loud one befitting of 'is 'air colour is Sixty-three," the guard explained. "And the quiet gentleman over yonder is Sixty-four." His voice got further away as he walked down the hallway, but he eventually doubled back. "Right. I digress." He stopped in front of Frost's cell. "Welcome to The Killers… Best diamond mine on Dragonsfold." A smile broke across his face looking at the beaten down Frost on the floor. The cheering of the other inmates followed closely behind.
The guards started the process of guiding the inmates to their 'shifts' from there. Frost watched them go with eyes that had quickly lost their hope.
"It gets easier," Fourty-two said from the back wall.
Frost doubted those words. He forced himself to say something more befitting of his character. "I won't be staying," he said. "I'm getting out of here, regardless of what it takes."
Somehow he needed to get to the person in charge. From there, he could sort it out.
Frost was extremely grateful he'd kept himself in good shape by the time he was six hours into his "shift". That wasn't to say it didn't hurt swinging a pickaxe constantly for six hours straight, but he assumed it would've hurt a lot more if he was a fat bastard. Even so, every time he faltered, the guards made sure to hit him as hard as they could. This was the cause of more pain than the mining itself.
He stumbled his way along, following Fourty-two towards the lunch room. They'd made up over the last few hours, and the older man had agreed to be Frost's guide until he got the hang of things. That meant giving a guided tour around the tunnels, advice on which slaves to avoid, and finally guidance to the lunch room. Frost did not thank him verbally, but he was grateful to have someone on his side in these ridiculous times.
Frost had pieced together a few things since arriving here. He'd been stabbed and fallen through some sort of portal which – presumably – took him to this world. Those men had found him and sold him to a slave master that he had only met by proxy of guards beating his ass. Wherever he was wasn't the Earth he knew. Gravity felt noticeably lighter, the natives were a bit taller than average, oh, and how could he forget about the magic?
He couldn't believe his eyes the first time he saw it, but it probably wasn't that far out of the question after everything that had happened. One of the guards had snapped his fingers and produced electricity to shock one of the other slaves. It used a latent energy that he could feel making up just about everything. The lights specifically throughout the mines seemed to be powered by it.
[Checkpointer20: Welcome to Dragonsfold. Land of utter insanity.]
Right, and then there was that. This was the only thing he couldn't explain, and so he continued to ignore it.
"Fights are common in the lunchroom," Fourty-two was saying. "And now that a freshie is here… Well–"
"I should expect a fight," Frost said.
"Just be weary," Fourty-two specified.
Be weary. Frost wasn't sure he'd ever had things go his way after hearing that phrase. He'd already had one of the other slaves spit on him in passing earlier. White hair – as luck would have it – was considered a bad omen on Dragonsfold.
They entered the lunchroom. Frost swore it was exactly like a scene from an old western. Every single eye in the entire place turned to him, and all he was missing was a spitoon to absolutely slam with a snipe of spit. He did the next best thing and just lobbed a wad of spit on the ground. In retrospect, this was definitely not a good move. Indeed, if it was a ridiculously stupid move if ever there was one.
"Who the hell do you think you are!" Someone called out.
A few people were up in his face already, yelling at him loudly enough that the words criss crossed over each other and eventually faded out entirely. Frost just smiled, and that was truly what he was feeling.
"Silence!" A voice called out from the back of the crowd.
All of the hecklers went silent immediately and parted ways. Frost was shocked to find a small, ratty looking man standing in the gap. The ringleader. Classic. He was chewing loudly on something, swallowed, and then spat loudly to the side to mimic Frost's motion. Frost, however, didn't yield even an inch as the smaller man stepped up to him.
"I'm Fifty-seven," he said. "You must be Sixty-three." He dug his foot in the dirt that made up the floor of the lunchroom that was essentially a mud pit with wooden tables. "A word of advice, kid. Be careful who you make enemies with around here."
"Meaning you?" Frost asked. "I prefer to avoid the subtext, if you will. Why don't you just say it. Don't fuck with me. I'm a macho man." He stepped forward until he was chest to chest staring down at Fifty-seven.
Fourty-two was cringing in the background.
"My name. Is Frost Direshard," he said. "Remember it."
"You don't have a name, slave," one of the guards cut in.
Fifty-seven smiled slyly.
"I don't recall addressing you," Frost said, still keeping his eyes locked with Fifty-seven.
He got cracked over the head with a baton and lost his balance. His whole body decided that it was tired of obeying him. Before he knew it he was plunging towards the floor. Fourty-two dashed forward with surprising haste and caught Frost before he hit the ground, sliding his knees in the dirt and grunting in pain.
"He's deeply sorry for this infraction!" He cried, placing his hands together in what seemed to be a prayer.
I'm not, thought Frost, his head resting in his mentor's lap. His world spun around like a top, and he thought better of his words for once in his life. If it was just him, it would've been different. Fourty-two, however, didn't deserve whatever trouble would come from Frost speaking out.
Fifty-seven scoffed. "I don't even need to lift a finger," he said. "You'll get yourself killed at this rate." And then he marched back to where he'd been sitting, bringing all of his goons with him.
Frost eyed the guard that had hit him with a spiteful tone. Yeah, yeah. I see you, big man. Then he turned his head to Fourty-two. "Be weary," he said jokingly, head aching with pain.
"This is not my definition of it," said the older man, clearly exhausted. "Come, let's sit you down and get some chow."
Frost watched as the makeshift gang of slaves sat down in the far corner of the room. He so badly wanted to pick a fight that he couldn't win. For today, he nodded. "Alright. Can you help me stand?"
And he found himself sitting at a table with a bunch of men he didn't recognize. One of them was a giant reddish thing with four arms, and another was what looked like a dragon in human form, like strange cosplay he might have seen back on Earth. The rest were normal people if ever he'd seen them. Every single one of them turned their heads to look at Frost as he sat with a plate of fresh slop.
"This is Sixty-three," Fourty-two said. He had a strange air about him now that Frost interpreted as shame. It wasn't entirely unlike a child embarrassing his parents. The men accepted Frost well, and with no mention of the earlier commotion. For this he was grateful.
"Call me Hulk," the four-armed man groaned. He didn't groan in the traditional sense, rather his voice was so deep and gravelly that every word came out like a groan. He wasn't wearing a shirt, so his ridiculously chiseled chest could be seen. His arms, too, were massive, each sporting more muscle individually than Frost was likely to have on his entire body.
Nicknames, it seemed, were allowed. Frost first smiled at the accuracy of that name, even if Hulk himself was clearly unaware.
"Liz," The dragon-man was close enough to Frost to reach his hand out. Frost took it, watching as the creature made his attempt at a smile with his long snout, tongue dancing over his lips like a Snake.
"Don't mind me," Frost said. "Carry on."
"Did they tell you where the last Sixty-three went?" Liz shifted his weight and leaned into the table, which creaked uncomfortably. Everyone was looking at him now, cautioning him not to continue. "Right–" he said shamefully. "Thirty-six was just–"
"Before I was oh-so-rudely interrupted," the man called Thirty-six joked from the other side of the table. He wore what was probably fragments of an old shirt as a bandana, and seemed to be around the same age as Fourty-two.
"Don't be crass now," said Fourty-two. "You heard what the man said, you oaf. So carry on as you were."
"Right," Thirty-six said. "I was saying that there's talk of a wyvern on the outside."
"Oh ho!" Liz boomed. "Reckon it'll come in here and put us out of our misery?"
"Big monster save us from small monster," Hulk said, crossing his lower arms. "I not complain."
Frost was familiar with the depictions of a wyvern in some fantasy works. Generally, it was a dragon with only two legs, more like a bird. The prospect of something like that being real – let alone the content of casual conversation – was terrifying to Frost. Even so, he nodded along. It probably wasn't a good idea to go on a schizophrenic rant and try to convince these men that he was from a different planet.
"I saw a wyvern rip some poor sod in half on the outside," Liz explained with a shocking lack of remorse. "Not a fun way to go, I imagine."
"I don't imagine there are many fun ways to go, Liz," Thirty-six noted. He'd already finished his slop awhile ago, and was now spending his time harassing the rest of the men.
Liz shot him a glance. "I'll let you away with that snarky comment only because it's true, you whoreson."
"Whoreson?" Thirty-six asked, throwing his hands up. "I never understood that insult. How does it reflect badly on me if my mother was a whore?"
"You're exhausting," Liz conceded. "You're exhausting, and I need to eat."
"Shame."
Frost just kept his head down and focused on devouring as much slop as he could, ideally tasting it as little as possible and trying to imagine a delicious steak as he did. There was no world where he would be able to get used to this, he thought.
Then again, it didn't seem like he had a choice.