The actual mines were located several hundred meters beneath Avrondale mountain, and that was where Morrison took Caspian and Erica.

After stepping out of the elevator, Caspian was introduced to a subterranean world of dark cavern walls. Gray surrounded them on all sides, encroaching and confining. Their footsteps echoed through the tunnel, bouncing off the walls, from which several lamps hung, casting light into the darkness, creating shadows that shifted and flickered. He clenched his hands into fists as the walls seemed to close in around them. Having never been in a mine before, Caspian couldn't deny that he felt trapped.

"Are you feeling a little claustrophobic, Caspie?"

"It's Caspian," came the automatic response, "and it's not that I'm claustrophobic. I merely dislike enclosed spaces."

"Ufufufu, you are too cute when you're in denial."

Caspian grunted, thankful that the low light from the lamps didn't allow Erica to see his blush.

It wasn't long before they exited the tunnel and entered a large mining chamber. It looked like a dome that had been hollowed out of the mountain. Large support beams covered much of the circular wall and extended all the way up to a rounded ceiling. The room had two levels, one that acted as a walkway and another down below, where the actual mining was taking place.

"As you can see, all of our workers are most efficient," Morrison said as he guided Caspian and Erica along, taking them around the circumference of the spacious cavern, "and because of the recent vein we've struck, I have been able to hire several workers to help oversee our operations. They ensure that none of the dwarves slack off or become rebellious."

"Indeed," Erica said, though from her bored tone, Caspian could tell she wasn't all that interested.

Down below, a number of dwarves labored, picking at the walls in their effort to uncover the hidden treasures within; Spirit Crystals, which jutted from the granite faces like tiny glowing spikes. A number of humans stood nearby, dressed in a dark gray uniforms. Attached to their belts was a whip.

"And what of dwarves," Erica said, her tone still bored. "Are they well-cared for?"

"As well cared for as any dwarf," Morrison answered. "We make sure they get plenty of food and rest, and we've allowed them to build lodgings inside of the mines. They prefer living underneath the ground anyway."

"So, I see."

Having never seen a dwarf in real life before, Caspian discreetly scooted closer to the ledge to get a better look.

They didn't appear all that similar to the dwarves depicted in his textbooks—in fact, they looked almost nothing like the depictions he saw in his textbooks. While they were short, barely reaching up to a human's waist, their faces weren't covered in warts, nor did they have any deformities. They just looked like really short humans. A little stouter maybe, but still, kind of human. Most of them had beards and long, braided hair, but a few also sported shorter hair and were bald-faced. His sharp eyes could pick out a few other details, like how their faces were slightly more pinched than a human's, but those were minuscule variances in facial structure; nothing worth noting.

As he continued watching, one of the dwarves, and older one with nearly white hair and a long beard, suddenly fell to his knees, dropping his pick axe and holding a hand to his chest as if he was experiencing intense pain. He coughed several times, a hacking sound that reminded Caspian of someone with lung problems, and several globs of blood flew from his mouth to splatter against the ground.

What's going on here?

"Hey! Get back to work!" one of the humans shouted. When the dwarf did nothing but continue to cough, the man growled and struck the dwarf in the back with his whip.

Crack!

The dwarf stifled his yelp, but couldn't stop a gasp of pain from escaping his mouth...

Crack!

Caspian gritted his teeth as the dwarf's shirt ripped and a large welt appeared on his skin...

Crack!

He thought about the half-elf that had been arrested back in Ashtown, the one who'd stolen from that woman because he needed money to feed his sister. Hated for what he was rather than who he was. Despised. Shunned. Treated like trash by humans simply for existing.

Crack!

Caspian couldn't take it.

Erica's eyes widened when he leapt off the ledge.

"O-oi! Caspian, what do you think you're doing?" Erica shouted after him, but Caspian ignored her.

He couldn't have timed his descent more perfectly if he'd tried. His feet hit the ground, and he bent his knees to absorb the impact, then pushed himself into a shoulder roll. He pulled his sword free of its sheath at the same time that he returned to his feet, the blade arcing as it sliced through the whip just as it was about to lash out at the dwarf again. The end of the whip was cut off, and it dropped limply to the ground like the carcass of a snake.

He cast a glare at the man who'd been doing the whipping, causing the older male to stumble backwards in shock.

"What do you think you're doing?" Caspian's voice sounded harsh and grating, even to his own ears. "Well?!"

The man blinked his wide eyes several times before recovering with admirable speed. He sneered at Caspian, then, his lips peeling back to reveal stained yellow teeth.

"What's it look like I'm doing? I'm teaching this 'ere dwarf about what happens when you don't work. Why do you care anyway? What are you, one of those dwarf loving activists? Out of the way!"

Caspian gritted his teeth but stood firm. The man, so certain that he would move when told, was taken aback when Caspian refused budge and even threateningly pointed his sword at the man's chest.

"I do not know much about dwarves," Caspian admitted softly, but with a hint of steel in his voice. "I do not know much about dwarven society beyond what I've studied at the academy. However, if I am being honest with myself, I don't really care."

His words seemed to give the man strength. "Then why are you protecting this thing?"

Uncertainty clouded Caspian's mind. Really, why was he helping this dwarf? He had no reason to... or did he?

"You're all a bunch of hypocritical, greedy bastards! You lock me up in prison because I'm stealing from you, but it was all of you who made me resort to stealing in the first place!"

Caspian closed his eyes as shame filled him. He clenched his sword all the tighter, feeling a led ball of guilt drop into the pit of his stomach.

If only I had found some way to help him...

"I..." Caspian swallowed and tried again. "It's not... I mean, I don't really care about dwarves or anything, but..."

"Caspian!" Erica hissed as she marched up to him, having floated down to this level using one of the Spirits she was known for calling upon. "What do you think you're doing?"

Caspian was startled to see Erica's face mottled with anger, real anger, not the exasperated kind that she usually displayed with Derek. Her eyes were sharp as daggers, and her lips were set into a thin line. She was clenching her hands, as if resisting the urge to grab him by the nape of his shirt and shake him.

"I was just..."

"Out with it!"

"I just wanted to..." Caspian glanced at the dwarf that he'd been shielding, noticing several scars lining the dwarf's back where the shirt had been torn by the whip, signs that this hadn't been a singular event. He looked back at Erica, whose smouldering gaze seemed ready to set him ablaze. "I wanted to..."

"Never mind," Erica snapped, cutting him off. "I don't really care about your reasons. Just get back up here and don't cause anymore problems."

Caspian was about to do as told, however, at the last second he turned around and attempted to help the dwarf that was trying to stand up back.

"What are you doing, Caspian?" Erica asked behind him and was ignored.

His hand was swatted away with contempt.

"I don' need yer help," the dwarf spat, his tone filled with spite. "Keep yer hands off me, ye filthy human."

"Caspian!" Erica shouted. "Stop fooling around and get up here!"

Caspian glanced at the dwarf one more time, watching as the dwarf picked up his pickaxe. He gave Caspian one more look, an expression filled with so much loathing that Caspian was taken aback. Then the dwarf turned his back to Caspian and resumed working, picking at the walls with renewed vigor gained through rage.

"Caspian! Get up here, now!"

Knowing better than to ignore Erica for any longer, he turned away and climbed up a ladder set into the wall.

"A most unusual Knight you have acquired, My Lady," Morrison said in what seemed to be a mixture of shock and false gaiety. Beside him, Erica looked like she wanted to spit acid.

"So it would seem," Erica responded cooly.

***

The tour continued after Caspian's little stunt, however, Caspian himself paid little attention to it. His mind was locked on what happened with the dwarf, and his reaction to it.

Caspian couldn't help but remember the look of hatred on that dwarf's face, as if he'd been barely restraining itself from trying to kill him, like he wanted to strangle Caspian with his bare hands.

After the tour, Erica told Morrison that she was tired and would like to freshen up before presenting herself to him again. Morrison had blushed, especially when she had leaned over and gifted him with a view of her cleavage. He then made Elric show Erica and Caspian to their room, a single room, which they were going to share.

"We only need one room," Erica had declared. Unlike her normally playful voice, however, this one held none of its usually impish quality, but instead seemed to be boiling like a hot pot. Caspian had actually shivered at the tone in her voice.

Almost the moment they entered their room, Erica called upon a Spirit.

"Spirit who knows words, I call upon thee to quiet this room. Benzaiten, cast this room in blessed silence."

Her form glowed a bright blue, the color pulsating, waves of energy traveling from her like ripples in a pond. The walls, floor and ceiling was soon covered in the same light blue color, an ethereal wall of arcane power that, if Caspian had heard right, would keep those outside of this chamber from hearing them.

Her spell cast, Erica whirled on Caspian and verbally ripped into him.

"What in the unholy Spirit's name was that?!" She asked, her voice louder than he'd ever heard it. She didn't give him a chance to answer, and instead continued her tongue lashing. "Do you have any idea what you've just done? Do you know what kind of problems your actions could have caused if I hadn't smoothed things over with that dirty old fool?"

In the face of such anger, Caspian couldn't do much. However, he still tried to defend himself, even if he wasn't sure how to go about doing so. "I don't think—"

"That's right, you didn't think," Erica snapped, interrupting him before he could come up with a feeble defense. "You didn't think about the consequences of your actions at all. Honestly..." she rubbed her forehead. "How stupid can one person be."

Caspian twitched. He might have acted without thinking, but he wasn't going to put up with someone insulting his intelligence. "Look, just because I acted a little recklessly doesn't mean—"

"A little recklessly." Erica's scornful laughter filled the air. "Acting a little recklessly is jumping down a flight of stairs in Dorehan Tower. It's running around in a Spirit Crystal refinery without wearing the proper protection. What you did back there—" Erica gestured toward the door with her right hand "—was the dumbest thing anyone could have ever done. Stupid doesn't even begin to cover it."

Caspian gritted his teeth. There were so many emotions warring inside of him that he couldn't even begin to figure them out. One stood above all the rest, however, and it was this emotion that he latched onto.

Anger.

"So you're saying that I should have done nothing? That I should have just continued to let that man abuse an old dwarf who could barely defend himself?" With a scowl marring his face, Caspian crossed his arms and glared at the Sorceress. "I don't see how trying to defend someone who clearly couldn't defend themselves can ever be considered a bad thing."

Erica shook her head, as if amazed by the stupidity he was displaying to her. "It's not what you did, boy. It's who you were defending that's the problem. Dwarves are not people, Caspian. They are slaves, objects, creatures to be used however their owners see fit. And you just defended one of those slaves from the just retribution of its owner."

"But he was helpless!" Caspian exploded. "It's not right to beat on someone who can't even defend themselves!"

Erica sighed deeply, as if trying to expel her frustrations. "I just told you, Caspian, that dwarf is not a person. It is not 'someone.' Just as an object can never be considered as anything but an object, a slave can never be anything but a slave."

"But that..." Caspian clenched his hands into fists, his knuckles turning white. "That isn't... it isn't right... is it?"

Seeming to take pity on him, Erica gave the boy a look of mild compassion. "Right or wrong hardly matters in this instance. The dwarves stopped being considered people the moment they lost in the Upheaval War five centuries ago. We tried bringing them prosperity once, but when they rejected our teachings out of hand and tried to kill us, we fought back and won. In doing so, they gave up their right to enter our society as citizens and became slaves instead. Nothing you or I do can change that. Even your beloved Sylvia de Floresca cannot change that."

Caspian knew of the Upheaval War. Five-hundred years ago, humanity destroyed the goblins and tried to form an official alliance with the dwarves. However, the dwarves were not a race known for their benevolence. Greedy and spiteful of those who were different, they committed an unspeakable crime against humanity.

When Cecelia el le Blanc, a powerful Sorceress known as the Lightning Princess, went to negotiate a peace treaty between their races, the dwarves killed her and sent her corpse back to the Sorceress Council. It was the act of killing her that started the war. The dwarves brought down the wrath of the entire Sorceress Council, and in the span of three months, the war had ended and the dwarves were enslaved as punishment for their crimes.

There had been several rebellions since then, but after sixteen failed attempts, the dwarves had finally given up. The last rebellion had been one-hundred and sixteen years ago. Erica had actually been the one who personally stamped that rebellion out, destroying an entire dwarven city by calling upon Izanagi, a Spirit whose powers of destruction were said to be on par with Odin's, and using it to annihilate an entire mountain, which the dwarven city, Runehiem, had been built under.

Caspian looked down at the ground. "I know that. I understand that they're not really, well, that they're not a very kind race. But still, it just feels wrong somehow..."

"No one ever said it was right," Erica told him, her tone surprisingly gentle. "Despite what has happened, I cannot say I approve of treating others cruelly simply because they cannot work. However, the dwarves brought this upon themselves. There are few dwarves in this world who are willing to bridge the gap between us, who are willing to put aside our differences and work with us. Those dwarves are currently working with Karen in the advancement of new magical technology. However, the ones you see here in the mines are the dwarves who refuse to change, who continue to hate us for reasons only they can understand. If they are not willing to outgrow whatever petty hatreds they have for us, then there is little we can do but treat them as slaves."

Caspian clenched and unclenched his hand. He didn't know what to think. He didn't know what was right and what was wrong, not in this situation. It seemed wrong to treat another living being so cruelly, but Erica had made a point—these dwarves were not good people.

What should I do?

So lost in his own thoughts, Caspian was surprised when a pair of arms suddenly wrapped around his head, pulling him into Erica's waiting bosoms. Caspian stiffened, his spine freezing, even as the warmth of Erica's hug engulfed him. He was so shocked that he could do nothing but stand there, stalk still like a mannequin, even when a set of fingers tenderly ran through his red hair.

"You really are a gentle child, aren't you?" Erica said, her tone almost maternal. "I think I'm beginning to understand why Sylvia demanded that you be allowed to attend Arcadia's Knight Academy."

"Erica..."

"Don't speak," Erica shushed him, continuing her ministrations to his head. "Just relax."

Caspian had no idea what to do. He couldn't think of how to respond. In fact, he could barely think at all.

So he stood there, allowing a Sorceress who seemed to be a mass of contradictions hold him.

For some reason, he felt guilty.

Although he couldn't for the life of him figure out why.