Avishraa Reloaded

The overseer, on her infrequent visits, had appeared to be dissatisfied by something. Her behavior had been making Evrith nervous, but she had remained frustratingly unable to see what it would lead to. When the answer suddenly became visible, it was with relatively little warning.

“Wake up! Anuwi!” she hissed. She didn't dare get any louder; it would only make things happen faster. With a grunt of effort, she hauled herself to all fours and shuffled over to An-uxhwi's side, prodding him roughly. “Hurry up!”

An-uxhwi jerked awake, almost striking at Evrith in the motion, his body emulating a fish trapped out of water, if only for the barest instant. He was instantly alert, his eyes wide, his antennae tense, his muscles coiled. “I'm ready,” he whispered, without knowing precisely what it was that he was ready for, but meaning it regardless.

Evrith glanced nervously at the door. “They're suspicious,” she whispered. “They expected me to do something to you by now and they're afraid we're plotting something, so they're going to put you back in the mine.

It won't work if we try to fight them from in here. So let them take you, but the minute no one's watching you, start trying to convince the other slaves to riot - it's important that you do that, because now it's not going to happen soon enough on its own. Get them to come back up into the collection area and attack the gate. You understand?”

The problem with what Evrith was saying was not that An-uxhwi did not understand; rather, he understood too well. His posture reflected his apprehension.

He stared at Evrith, a question visibly at the tip of his tongue - but he forced himself to withhold it instead, deciding that asking someone who could see into the future whether the plan was sane was a pointless effort.

Either he had faith in her judgement or he didn't - nothing she was going to say was going to increase or decrease his chances of survival. If she foresaw his death, if he thought her capable of sending him into that, then she was also capable of lying to him about it.

“I do,” he whispered, his voice full of terror. He brought his right forepaw up to his head, touching the backs of his claws against the tattoo between his eyes, sifted through his own emotions for the necessary strength. “Have you any further advice to give?” he asked, searching her opaque Soaker expression for a hint of wisdom, of knowledge.

Evrith had limited experience in reassurance. Being able to see, laid out in front of her, all the countless ways things could go wrong, tended to have that effect; one had to substitute sheer stubbornness for any kind of optimism. But there were two things that occurred to her.

“If everyone can make it as far as the gate,” she said, “I can help.” She paused, and added, “if it works and you break through, try to keep the other slaves from attacking me, if you can manage it.”

She glanced up at the door again, and then turned back toward the crude bed. “They're coming.” And, only a few moments later, there was the sound of the heavy door being unbarred and unlocked, and a pair of guards entered.

“All right, goblin,” one of them barked at An-uxhwi. “Out. Foreman says you've got the witch fat enough,” he added, which was evidently his way of noting that while Evrith's ribs were still visible she didn't quite look like a xylophone anymore.

It took much of An-uxhwi's willpower not to hiss at being referred to as 'goblin' - nothing good would come of it. Just because he'd had the strange pleasure of being treated as an equal by a Soaker for a while hadn't technically made him forget how most of them viewed him and his people, but it was still a distasteful emotional whiplash.

His tongue twisted invisibly in his muzzle instead, and he lowered his head to gesture, silently, that he would comply. Back to playing the tamed but inherently savage idiot for a while. He slunk in the direction gestured toward, cautious, alert for any abuse the handlers might want to heap on him - or Evrith.

He wasn't altogether sure he could stay out of it if they attacked Evrith. That it wasn't in her interest any more than it was in his to get involved in a scene like that barely put a dent into that thought process. At least he knew in theory that he would have to curb that instinct if it came that far.

The guards herded him along. The fact that he wasn't putting up any resistance seemed to annoy them, but other than one of them unnecessarily prodding him along with the butt of his spear, they seemed not to want to make the effort to provoke him.

Back they went through the gate, and An-uxhwi found himself once more at the collection point. The foreman was there, talking with the other guards. When she spotted him, she gave him a rough laugh. “You did well,” she commented. “The witch'll last for a while longer yet. In a vigil or two, we can put her back on meekleaf and everything'll be back to normal.

“As for you,” she added cheerfully, “you look like you could use some exercise after all that sitting around eating. Old Sky-cloak over there will escort you down Tunnel Seven so you can rejoin your friends.” A male guard with wings of a significantly lighter shade of blue than the rest of him unslouched himself and strolled over, curtly pointing at the newest tunnel downward.

A brief thought flickered through his mind: If you put her on meekleaf, I'll end you. But he knew that if Evrith's plans for today failed, it was only a platitude. He sincerely cared for Evrith, but not to the point of suicide.

Instead, he simply snorted, shrugging as though to pretend it was all the same for him. He started to slink in the direction of the tunnel, trying - successfully, he felt - to hide how much his heart was hammering in his chest.

The biggest danger was in speaking to his people - that was where all realistic threats lay. He had no romantic notions of kinship; they might yet simply take him apart because they could, because they did not know what he did, and speech was a rough and imperfect substitute for experience.

There were too many xtauh in the mine for all of them to know him, even by sight, and new arrivals were not all that common; but as he was escorted into the claustrophobic depths, An-uxhwi was aware of some hard looks from the miners, glittering in the torchlight.

As they went down, they passed a pair of xtauh going the other way, carrying the body of a third. It was hard to tell whether she'd died from undernourishment or disease or some combination of the two. If there was a bright side to this, it meant that the hard looks got diverted to Sky-cloak, who certainly noticed; he tightened his grip on his spear.

At last, they reached one of the active dig zones. Since the silver was nearly straight downward, the tunnel was being dug out in a gentle zigzag pattern, so that spoils could be dragged up and out without too much trouble. Sky-cloak glanced at An-uxhwi and jerked his head toward the team of xtauh hacking away at the rock with picks. “Here we are,” he drawled. “Join in. Bound to be a spare pick around here somewhere. If not, your claws might do.”

Evrith had said he should try to spark the riot as soon as he wasn't being watched, but Sky-cloak just lounged against a wall, apparently in no hurry to return to the supervision of the foreman above.

Hard looks or no, there was at least a familiar face here. An-uxhwi hadn't been the only one captured in the raid that had brought him to slavery, and he recognized Kajilek, a red male of the Pa'irket, as one of the miners. Kajilek, spotting him out of the corner of his eye, gave him a wary nod, but this was practically a hearty welcome compared with some of the other looks he'd gotten already.

The dead body kindled An-uxhwi's resentment for the Soakers. It was no one he had known personally, but it wasn't necessary that it was. If anything, the relative anonymity kept him at a great enough emotional distance not to lose his composure then and there. Still, it certainly helped to nudge him into the mindset of a revolt.

When he reached the kernel of workers, he dipped his muzzle into a gesture part of respect, part of greeting, then scoured the area for a pick. Hypothetically, the fallen xtauh might indeed have left one, even if the thought of using it struck him as distasteful - perhaps not altogether in principle, but quite this soon after death, at least a brief mourning felt more apt.

He was tense, of course, and noticed that in his tension, he was not particularly well-equipped to scheming up a perfect revolt. He hoped an imperfect one would do. He hoped that this current supervision was amongst those that Evrith must have foreseen and factored in when she had asked for him to act as soon as he wasn't watched.

Given the difference in size between his people and the Soakers, taking Soakers hostage to reach the gates was unlikely to work. But the spears were crude weapons and their tips could each kill only one of his people, perhaps damage two. They should be able to break the weapons.

It wasn't a plan that would have occurred to him without Evrith. It was one thing to overpower the guards in the mines, after all - he had never had much doubt that this was possible, that hadn't been the hold-up. No, it was getting out that was the biggest problem.

He was reasonably sure he could inspire his people to seize the weapons of their holders, quite likely without any damage taken as they were far quicker and nimbler than the Soakers and poor targets… as long as he could also convince them that the way out was similarly simple.

This, of course, was where his 'special treatment' gave him an advantage. Most of his brethren had no idea precisely what he'd been asked to do. He could pretend he knew the weaknesses of the gate - it wasn't a complete lie, given that Evrith had suggested there was something she could do about it.

Perhaps he could even mention Evrith, although he would not do so by name; perhaps that was the best way to assure that she wasn't attacked. Referencing a small Soaker willing to help the xtauh, perhaps in a position half-slave, half-slave-driver against her will…? He wasn't sure if it would work, but he entertained the idea for a while.

Then he found a pickaxe and an unclaimed stretch of rock to hack into, and began to, for the moment, blend in.

As An-uxhwi worked, Sky-cloak continued not to be in any hurry to move on. Or, then again, maybe something else kept him here; for all that he seemed a phlegmatic sort, he didn't really seem to want to be here either. Even as leaned against one of the tunnel walls, presumably to hold it up, his eyes shifted around nervously and he kept a tight grip on his spear.

After a while - An-uxhwi lost track of how long - another guard strolled down to join Sky-cloak. He glanced at the latter's pose. “Looks comfy,” he said dryly.

Sky-cloak twisted his head in a shrug. “Out of the boss' sight. Y'know, I heard old Hazy say that Stone-scales has been shagging her, and I wonder how he can manage. Prob'ly orders him when to thrust.”

The other guard sniggered, then glanced up the tunnel before adding, in a low voice, “You fill up those flasks?” Sky-cloak just grinned, raised a wing to reveal a small bag, and jerked his head up the tunnel. “Let's have ourselves a little business meeting, eh?”

He glanced at the xtauh, and raised his voice a little. “Be good, boys and girls. Me and Bright-claws here won't be far off, so don't go causing trouble.” The two of them turned and strolled up out of the tunnel.

Almost as soon as they were out of earshot, there was a subdued chorus of muttering, curses, and choice insults of the guards' ancestries and sex lives.

For a moment, An-uxhwi found his conviction faltering now that the opportunity was upon him; as much as he had told himself he had been expecting it, it had somehow appeared quite suddenly, and he felt unprepared.

Even before the mutterings fully quietened down, however, he twisted his hold on the pickaxe so it no longer looked like a wielded weapon, and slunk over to Kajilek. On the way, he gestured to the others to pay attention - not all could see the gesture, but enough could that it mattered.

Then he addressed Kajilek and anyone who else might be in range in a low voice bordering on hushed whisper, his expression part determination, encouragement and pleading:

“These Soakers are gluttons, murderers and idiots. Let us seize this opportunity and put an end to this. I have learnt how to get us out past the gate, but it requires all of us and a show of force to get there.”

Kajilek, at least, seemed willing to listen; but then, he knew An-uxhwi better than the others, most of whom seemed profoundly skeptical.

One of the nearest xtauh paused to lean on her pick and glare at him. “Fine. And how, exactly, will you get us out past the gate? Did you steal a key or something while they were feeding you up?”

The question nearly crumbled An-uxhwi's resolve - he did not know how he was getting the others past the gate, not in any such detail - but with an extreme force of will he succeeded in letting so little of the panicked emotion show that it was easy to miss, especially in the tense circumstances.

For a moment, he thought about inventing a structural problem that would take time to exploit and required the Soaker guards distracted to take advantage of, but he dismissed the idea - it gave him no room to include any assurance of Evrith's health once she surfaced.

But to speak of a user of magic was no alternative - while such things might be considered within the realm of the possible, to claim to have witnessed such a thing was still to invite extreme scepticism. And amongst the possible powers to speak of, insisting on the existence of one who could see the future was the least likely to find acceptance.

Instead, An-uxhwi decided to approximate the truth as much as he dared.

“Has curiosity not driven you to ask yourself how these Soakers always lead us to plentiful sources of the metal they seek?” An-uxhwi asked, but did not wait for an answer. “I have found out - they hold one of their own captive who knows of these things.” He let the implication that it was simply one knowledgeable in geology stand.

“So as to be able to help them, she has been granted more freedoms than we have,” An-uxhwi continued; speaking the opposite of the truth, but convinced it would be the only statement that would help him. If Evrith truly could get them out of here, it would be impossible to disprove, so the only risk was in their escape plans failing altogether.

Which they still might, he thought to himself, grimly, but again forced himself past the budding panic. If he died in a failed uprising, or was lynched afterward, or died a slow death of malnutrition, it was all the same; he would die here, unless he and Evrith were successful, and they could only be successful if he pressed on.

“But they do fear her. They usually keep her on meekleaf, but her recent illness forced them to leave her with an untampered volition. Now she is back to health, but they are not sure yet, and so yet remain wary of resuming her subjugation - she can get us past the gate, she has had plenty of time to analyse the weaknesses of this entire setup.”

The inevitable question would be, And why would we trust a Soaker? An-uxhwi pre-empted it: “She cannot escape on her own, but she does wish it as fervently as we do.

“The weaknesses she has identified, by themselves, will not lead her out of here, nor would they do the same for any one of us, as one cannot exploit them without a violent distraction to make the necessary time.”

Then what is the trick? We can just escape on our own, no need to involve a Soaker. But if that objection truly came, he had a response ready - the benefactor would have to place much trust in the xtauh to reveal her tricks and risk being left behind for her generosity, after all.

The female who had sarcastically questioned An-uxhwi appeared to chew on his answer for a while. Her ruminations were interrupted by a male voice from slightly further away. “We should do it anyway,” it declared. “You all saw Hijar get carried out of here just now. That's how we're all going out, if we don't do something.”

The female glanced over her shoulder at the voice. “That's how we're all going out anyway, if we try it and fail!” she snapped. “You do realize that, don't you?” She seemed about to say more, but other voices started piping up. “Then I'd rather die jamming a claw into a guard's eye-” “They'll never let us go, if we-” “They'll never let us go at all! Don't be stupid!”

The sound of the argument did not go unheard; Sky-cloak's voice rang out over the noise. “Hey! What's this babble?” He, and the one he'd called Bright-claws, marched down the tunnel with spears leveled. “Back to work, this isn't a social occasion!” He glared at the bulky female, who had fixed him with a pugnacious stare. “What're you looking at? Put that pick to use!”

An-uxhwi could very nearly hear the female's temper snap like a taut string. She nodded, hefted her pick, swung at the rock - once, twice - and then, as the sneering guard began to relax, changed her aim, whirled the pick around, and buried it in Sky-cloak's neck.

There was a very, very brief moment of shock, but the miners recovered before Bright-claws did, and they jumped on him with claws and assorted tools. As the guard's panicked screams were drowned out, the female stared at Sky-cloak's body, and she muttered, “I was getting sick of this anyway.” She looked up and glared at An-uxhwi. “You had better know what you're talking about.”

Some of the slaves had run toward neighboring tunnels. Shouts of anger and surprise started to echo up the passages.

As the tide abruptly turned, a strange, disconnected emotion swept through An-uxhwi, part terror, part euphoria. As always, speaking of conflict and death in theory was quite another to seeing it transpire - to hear the crunch of metal cracking against bone, to see blood spatter across the stones.

I did this. For a moment, the realisation threatened to paralyse him, even though he could trivially recognise it as false - the Soaker captors had pressed the matter. He might have given the required spark, just as Evrith had intended, but the misery the Soakers had perpetuated would have likely spawned this revolt on its own.

Just not 'in time', whatever that meant.

You had better know what you're talking about. Did he? And yet, on the other hand, did anyone? If a fellow xtauh from a friendly clan had promised him a way out, would he feel any more confident in his escape plans?

He wished Evrith had explained them in greater detail, but there had been no time. It had all unravelled more quickly than anticipated. They hadn't used their time together for optimal coordination. But there was no use agonising about it now. Either he trusted it would work out, or he did not.

Regardless, he was fully lucid that Evrith's visions of the future did not grant him super powers. Just because he might trust her that he likely existed as a free person in the future did not eliminate the risk of stumbling into his own death.

But it was done. The stone was rolling. All he could do was follow the momentum.

He brandished his pickaxe as a weapon, put on his best menacing expression, and spoke a vow: “I swear it by my life,” which, in the circumstances, was a vapid platitude, but thankfully not lessened in effect for it.

Then he hurried forward with more fervour than he felt, heart pounding frantically in his chest, knowing that if he tried to linger in the back of the froth, he'd have far too much time to introspect on the mess he'd just made.

The female didn't look like she entirely believed him. Then again, it didn't look like she was all that concerned with the truth of the matter, either. After all, compared to their current misery, what did it matter? She looked gaunt and bitter; she probably didn't have much left to lose.

There were a number of shafts leading into the latest area Evrith had pointed the mine toward, and the clamor was already spreading to the rest of them. An-uxhwi emerged into the main tunnel just in time to nearly be bowled over by a guard, fleeing from the enslaved xtauh and frantically ringing a bell; in hot pursuit were some of the fresher, stronger slaves, wielding picks and shovels and one armed only with teeth and claws. This one, less burdened than the others, leapt forward and clamped his jaws around the guard's leg, slowing him enough to be swarmed by the others.

More xtauh were boiling up out of the shafts at a somewhat slower pace, though the way many of them were stained with blood suggested that at least some guards had not escaped them. The looks on some of their faces suggested that some of them, in turn, had failed to escape the guards first.

Up at the head of the tunnel, more shouts and ringing bells suggested that the guards concentrated there were regrouping to prevent the xtauh from breaking out.

By now, they had lost the element of surprise, but they still had superiority in numbers, and their work tools meant that they were not unarmed, as the nearest guards had fatally learnt.

To what degree should he be participating in the slaughter? He had a personal urge to, given all the wrongs the Soakers had hoisted upon him, his friends and his people in general, but the more he engaged them, the more he was putting himself at risk. He resolved to cast the point of his pickaxe at any guard that he encountered henceforth, but not seek them out actively.

He pushed forward, acutely aware that the rule he'd only just set up for himself would likely put him at odds with a frightening wall of guards, hoping that he would manage to inspire enough others to do the same as that it wouldn't be a solitary suicide. (Indeed, even collective suicide was far more appealing.)

In either case, he had to get to the gate, that was the way to get there, and the guards wouldn't likely just let him saunter past, anyway.

An-uxhwi was perhaps fortunate in that, though he was near the front of the crowd of slave, he wasn't at the front; the fastest of them were already moving ahead. On the other hand, this was little consolation, since the ones that reached the head of the tunnel too early found themselves facing the hastily assembled guards without backup; by the time he found himself approaching, there were already a few corpses littering the ground.

If nothing else, the guards looked profoundly unenthusiastic, especially when they began to realize how many xtauh were coming toward them.

Somewhere in the back, the foreman was bellowing to the guards to fall back in an orderly fashion to the gate, to prevent the slaves from simply getting around them and escaping; the young and frightened-looking guard that An-uxhwi found himself facing backed away from the swings of his pickaxe, but, packed together with the other guards, struggled to thrust accurately with his spear.

Meanwhile, the guards outside Evrith's room, having heard the commotion, ran down the tunnel toward the gate. Evrith, her eyes closed, waited as the chance of their immediate return dropped away, then extended a finger. With a faint, crackling hiss, a line appeared in the air, extending out from the tip of her claw.

She took hold of the chain that bound her collar to the wall, and, wielding the glowing blue line like a scalpel, cut through the chain as if it were moist bread. Then she did the same, one by one, to the chains between her collar and the various limbs (for the one between her wrists, this involved some awkward twisting).

The shackles themselves were still in place and trailing chains, but removing them properly could wait. She stood up, stretched in relief, and shuffled over to the heavy door; considering it, she generated the line again, and smoothly carved a hole in the door.

Then, remaining just inside the hole, she waited. Not quite time yet.

There was no time for rational thought to guide him - the biological machinery that An-uxhwi consisted of knew it had to fight to survive. Rational analysis was excellent but slow - heuristics would have to do, mental short-cuts that were likely to work, and most importantly could be executed in time.

And so he dodged the poorly aimed spear, diving toward the guard with his muzzle distorted in a soundless snarl, his motion curving upward rather than downward unto his prey, the pickaxe heaved against the pull of gravity, but with fervour, to strike optionally either the guard's neck or ram itself through his jaw.

The guard jerked his head back, but not fast enough; the point of the pick stabbed upward through his muzzle, pinning it shut. His muffled scream was cut short when another slave bashed his head in with a rock and seized his spear.

The guards at the rear, including the foreman, had already backed through the gate, but the ones remaining in the front seemed to be increasingly of the opinion that they weren't being paid enough to face off against angry, armed slaves, and began trying to force their way through as well.

One of them, seeking either to get as far as possible or to get reinforcements, somehow managed to push his way through the crowd of guards to the back and begin fleeing up the tunnel. Evrith, from her observation point, felt him coming. She curled her forepaws as if holding an object between them, held her breath, and then, when the fleeing guard was nearly level with her, made a gentle twisting motion.

A hemispherical chunk of floor rotated in place as the guard's feet fell on it, pitching him to the side; he fell down in front of Evrith's door. He had only a moment to look up at her in horror before she smiled benignly and brought the shackle on her left wrist down on his head; he slumped, unconscious.

Evrith crawled out of the hole in the door, and then, her chains trailing behind her, started toward the commotion at the gate.

An-uxhwi dislodged his pickaxe from the guard's head with a lurch, the gesture bringing with it a freshly moist, sickening sound of death. Some part of An-uxhwi quietly whimpered - he was no warrior, regardless what he might have once sought to train for. This was far too close to combat death for his liking, even if in this case it wasn't his.

There was no time to think about it, though - his rational mind had yet to return to the fray and his instincts guided him onward, that mix of terror and euphoria driving him forward, after the fleeing guards, becoming part of the faceless menace that was the mob of xtauh slaves rising up to violently claim their freedom by wrenching it from the dead hands of their oppressors.

It wasn't a question of good or bad. Those were concepts for intellectual discussion. This was survival, pure and simple, driven by mental engines not designed to differentiate on morality. Maybe he'd regret killing a terrified Soaker later, once he could stop to think about it.

Or maybe he wouldn't.

With the guards' front collapsing and most of them through, the foreman eyed the approaching slaves - many of them looking enraged beyond reason - and came to a quick decision. “Close the gate!” she bellowed. “Or else we'll have them out here with us!”

Those closest to the gate were all too happy to comply, and the thick grating was slid shut, those still passing through being either pushed back or pulled through at the last minute. As it fell shut with a clang and was locked and bolted, those still inside - a scarce ten or eleven - found themselves left with no other options.

Most of them hammered at the gate or tugged fruitlessly at the thick bars on either side of it, pleading for help before they were set upon by their vengeful captives. The guards already outside stabbed between the bars at the xtauh, spearing several, but ultimately were not able to protect their comrades.

One or two, having nothing left to lose, instead charged directly into the thick of the slaves. An-uxhwi found himself suddenly in the path of a guard, already being attcked from either side, with a spear leveled in front of him and a look of hopeless determination on his face.

Instinct did all the work for An-uxhwi - he pulled back in an asymmetric motion, the spear glancing his shoulder as the guard tried to correct its path, whispering along his wing, thankfully without tearing the membrane.

At first, the pickaxe's momentum was moving it into the wrong direction to strike at the guard, but An-uxhwi corrected its motion as quickly as he could, swinging it around in an attempt to strike the guard in the gut as his fervent focus lurched to a different xtauh.

The guard's momentum, and the press of bodies, did not allow him to avoid the blow; the pickaxe dug deep into his side. He stumbled and fell, the spear jamming into another slave's leg before being broken by its wielder's weight falling on it; the guard was promptly swarmed under by his other attackers.

The remainder of the guards inside the gate had, by now, been slain. The guards on the other side had backed away at the sight of the massacre, and to stay out of range of any weapons swung through the bars.

The slaves nearest to the gate, having run out of enemies and feeling the adrenaline draining from them, had stopped to assess the situation, but some of those coming up from behind attacked the rock around the bars in frustration, while others banged fruitlessly against the gate. It seemed unlikely to get them out anytime soon; the gate held easily, and it would take hours to remove just one of the bars, even with concentrated effort, which the disorganized hacking certainly wasn't.

The guards on the other side visibly tried to calm themselves after their narrow escape. The foreman pushed her way to the front and snarled at the slaves. “It didn't do you any good, you little monsters! By the time you're able to get through, you'll be half-starved and we'll have enough guards to rip your tools away and make you dig up silver with your damn paws! Give up now, and you might get to live!”

Evrith, now a dozen meters or so behind the guards, had thus far gone unnoticed, transfixed as they were by the slaves' attack. She carefully gauged the distance to the bars, and squinted at them in concentration.

An-uxhwi was narrowing his eyes, ready to whack at the nearest guard through the bars with his short weapon, when he spotted Evrith. Evrith, prominent predominantly due to the chains decorating her body like crude jewellery. Evrith, clearly, unmistakably out of place, even amongst the Soakers.

At least the attire would make it easy for the other xtauh to recognise her as a fellow (ex)captive - An-uxhwi might not even have to actively intervene in that matter.

Assuming the gate ever fell. Right now, it was An-uxhwi's fondest wish, hammering in his chest more strongly even than the earlier fight-or-flight reflexes, though still framed by them.

What would a clairvoyant Soaker do with the situation?

Though it was hard to tell at this distance, Evrith appeared to briefly meet An-uxhwi's gaze; then she pointed near the top of the bars, and made a sweeping motion with her foreleg.

A faintly glowing blue line swept through the air, and neatly sliced through the tops of several bars in a row. Evrith adjusted her aim downward.

While the line had made little noise, it had been visible enough in the dark of the mine to cause a certain amount of stir among those not too preoccupied to notice. The foreman had spotted it, and, her suspicion roused, whirled around in time to see Evrith lowering her foreleg. Roaring, the foreman charged toward the witch, even as the latter made another sweeping motion.

Sliced off at the top and the bottom, the bars abruptly fell out; one narrowly missed hitting An-uxhwi on the head and another knocked a xtauh to the ground. There was a very brief moment of shock on both sides, but the xtauh, suddenly having a path to freedom, began to surge forward to use it.

The foreman had drawn a heavy mace and flailed at Evrith with it, but the small witch, despite the weight of the chains and shackles, seemed to be very good at avoiding being hit. She and the foreman circled each other, snarling, as she ducked and dodged further blows.

In that drawn-out instant, An-uxhwi realised there had been things that Evrith had not told him.

In a brief state of shock, he simply held still - a (lack of) motion made possible by his placement not to the centre of the crowd but more to the side, jostled a bit as others passed, infinitely less fazed by the miracle that had just been bestowed upon them.

Then he thawed out of his state and ran straight for the foreman, knowing that any attempt of his to deal with the Soaker in Evrith's stead was ridiculous - but perhaps he might distract her long enough for Evrith to slice through her as she had through the bars of the gate, or otherwise disable her.

Distantly, some part of him yelled in triumph - his promise that the gate would be no lasting obstacle to the other xtauh had come true! His faith in Evrith had not been misplaced! He could, of course, still die in this tussle, but she had done a remarkable thing and she had done it without deception or cruelty to his people.

A different part of him pointed out that withholding that she could cut through metal was, perhaps, a kind of deception, but it was drowned out by the adrenalin-muddled elation he felt as he hurled himself into the scene, ready to potentially ditch his pick-axe for nimble bare claws and teeth to better dodge the foreman's own weapon.

Evrith, keeping her face carefully blank, moved so that the foreman would have to face further away from An-uxhwi to watch her, and slid aside to dodge another blow before slamming one of her shackled wrists into the foreman's limb, stunning the mace from her paw.

A rather longer version of the planar blade popped into existence near her fist, and she swept it toward the foreman; but the weight of the shackles kept the movement slow enough that the foreman was able to stumble back out of its reach.

And, as it happened, directly into range of An-uxhwi.

An-uxhwi was surprised by the turn of events. Fortunately, his instincts were not. >Whack< went the pick-axe, slamming at an unusual angle into the foreman's neck. It was a poor blow, not lethal, lacerating muscles more than arteries, but the pain would be enough to disable the Soaker from doing much other than flailing for a few crucial seconds.

Evrith smiled grimly as the foreman stumbled back. She moved forward and to the side as An-uxhwi the foreman's neck with his pickaxe, and as the latter fell down in pain, she landed at Evrith's feet.

Evrith swung downward with her strange blade, and sheared the foreman's head in two. (It also - provided one could notice over the unpleasant quantities of brain that were exposed - cut a long but narrow notch in the floor.)

Evrith was breathing hard; she was still not in the best of health, and moving around with the weight of chains on her had been a burden. Carefully avoiding looking at the foreman's body, she glanced around. Most of the other guards had been tackled and killed, but some were already running toward the distant exit. The slaves not still pouring through the removed bars were already following, either in pursuit or just heading in the general direction of freedom.

The female who had killed Sky-cloak back in the mine, and who was bleeding heavily from a leg, limped past. She paused to give An-uxhwi a kind of nod, then aim a very suspicious look at Evrith, and then continued on without a word.

Evrith turned to An-uxhwi, glancing briefly over his wounds. “Good job. But we should be leaving - once the city finds out that everyone's escaping, they'll send the militias out. We don't want to be here when they do.”

An-uxhwi had survived the uprising with only minor damage - the shallow cut on his shoulder from the spear and a few equally shallow bruises, invisible under his scales, from getting jostled about in the crowd or from ultimately light impacts.

“Thank you,” he said, even as he nodded in acknowledgement. “You've done my people a great service. You may freely consider me in your debt; I have no doubt that were it not for you, I and many others would simply have perished in those mines.”

Solemnly spoken, he moved to slink after her.

Though An-uxhwi could not interpret the expression, Evrith was visibly embarrassed by the praise. She wondered if she should mention that quite a number of the slaves were likely to die in any case - attacked by militias, or from the harshness of the desert, or just from not having been fed enough for too long and not freed soon enough to make a difference.

She decided not to. At least they were free, and at least slightly less likely to die out there than in here. Who knows?

“You're welcome,” she replied instead, “though none of us would have escaped if all of us hadn't.” She paused abruptly by the guard who she had stunned by the door of her prison. It appeared that, still unconscious, none of the slaves had taken any notice of him. She rummaged around under his cloak and withdrew a well-hidden gourd attached to a strap, which made a faint sloshing noise.

She hung it around her neck (which bowed her head a bit - she really needed to remove the collar and shackles when there was a chance) and continued on. “We'll need to find some food and water,” she added. “We can't travel near the river, because no one will think we're supposed to be wandering around free, so we have to go into the desert.”

An-uxhwi, still pumped with adrenaline, had no means of stopping his body language from expressing his displeasure at the idea, despite his thoughts being quick to correct his first impression. Evrith had gotten him out of the mines with only a few scratches. Evrith could probably get them through the desert, even while Daxelh's Burning Eye scorched the ground.

He believed it. After what he had witnessed today, he believed Evrith absolutely knew what she was doing - as such, if she wasn't deliberately lying to him, all would be well.

“Is there a best way to get food and water?” he asked. He could imagine several fruitful avenues - finding nearby stores of food previously used by the guards, daring a brief journey to the river (but not lingering along it) to hunt for fish and fill wineskins with water, in an extreme pinch carving up one of the fresh Soaker corpses for meat.

Maybe not that last one.

Evrith considered An-uxhwi's question. The possibility of butchering one of the corpses had come to her independently, but she dismissed it. The meat wouldn't travel well.

“The other slaves will have already reached the nearest food stores,” she said, “but we're both slightly better fed than most of them are; we can afford to go a bit further.” She added, “You may want to shield your eyes.”

By itself, the light reflecting off the curve of the tunnel wall just ahead was nearly blinding after so long spent in the dark. But once around the curve, they found that the sun, low in the sky, was shining directly into the mouth of the cave. Vigils yet before it sank beneath the horizon, but at least the desert crossing would not be as hot as it could be.

The harsh light rang An-uxhwi's emotions like a bell. He struggled with it, bringing up an arm to keep the brightness from blinding him - and still it managed to fill him with both terror and joy. Here was Daxelh's Burning Eye, gazing upon him - this once not as if in indifference, but like a spotlight, as though She chose to be aware of this moment in particular.

If Her Burning gaze was to measure the rest of his trials within the desert's reach, he would bear it gladly and humbly. For a moment of private rapture disconnected from anything any other sophont would think to tell him about the circumstance, or any specific words of religion that made it plausible, An-uxhwi felt a part of a cosmic plan.

And just as he had blindly trusted his life to Evrith he would blindly trust his life to the unspoken plan. Perhaps the two were indistinguishable, at any rate. The trust he'd placed in Evrith had skipped him across the waters of mortal peril. It all filled him with terror, awe and determination.

For a brief moment, he closed his eyes to a shapeless amber world behind their lids. Then he drew himself out of his reverie. “I'm ready,” he said softly, nodding - meaning both the journey to the food and the path thereafter.