Chandra sat at attention. She already knew that the job she’d done at cleaning her space was not enough and would earn her a bit of abuse from the master, but at this point, not being ready to receive him would be much worse.

He didn’t come early, and he didn’t come on time. It was hardly unprecedented for him to skip the morning inspection altogether, but neither was it unusual for him to simply be late. When finally the factory whistle blasted, signaling the start of work, she allowed herself to move on.

As a jackal Halfbreed favored by the master, her work was easy, if lonely. She walked a careful path through the dark, empty space beneath the factory floor, picking up ingots and stones which had once held essence, and moving them to a set of boxes on each end of the work area. If a stone still tingled in her hand, it went in one box; if it was entirely flat, it went in another. Ingots, if any were dropped, went in a third. All throughout the day, the workers above would drop more through the many gaps in the rusting steel floor.

Today the workers were sluggish, as they usually were not if the master was not around. Once or twice, she completed a walk from one end of the factory to the other with nothing to pick up at all. Worse, someone near the middle of the factory almost struck her with a discarded stone--uncommon, as she chose her route to be away from danger. She didn’t know which language he spoke and she did not understand his words, but she did recognize the mocking laughter from above, and she could easily tell when she picked the stone up that it had far too much essence left. In spite of her standing orders never to look up, she risked a glance at him, hoping she wasn’t obvious.

He was watching. His eyes burned, angry, twisted. There was a light in his eyes, a violet light that sometimes flickered to a corrupt-feeling red or a blackness somehow deeper than black itself. Chandra had good sight in the dark, but those eyes seemed to drown out all else in the moment she dared look at him. It was a terrifying, but a common sight; if he couldn’t hide the taint, he’d be disposed of very soon. The master would set things right.

By the time she got to the end of the work area, the stone in her hand tingled a bit less than usual. She hadn’t known that essence could leak out of stones, but then, she’d normally only handled ones with the very last traces of essence in them. She risked a glance at the stone, seeing that it was one with a pale blue glow, a color much lighter than the worker’s eyes.

After a moment’s hesitation, and seeing that the guards above were not watching closely, she turned around and headed back to the other side of the factory, still clutching the stone in her hand. She picked up another discarded stone on the way, and dropped it in the opposite bin. But the stone in her hand remained there for two, three, five, seven, ten laps across the factory floor. And the tingle in her hand got less and less, until it eventually died down, and she put the stone in the bin with the others.

She noticed quickly, though, that the hand which had held the stone could no longer tell the difference between a stone that was empty and one which had a faint trace of essence. And she was terrified, because if she made any mistake, the master would be furious. She might get beaten, or worse, disposed of.

Her other hand, though, retained its sensitivity, so she tested every stone with that hand, focusing discreetly on each so that there would be no mistake. By the end of the day, she was sure she could continue her work.

When the whistle sounded the end of work, there was still no sign of the master. It was rare that he would not show up at all, but not unheard of. The master would return soon to set things right.

She made sure to make her space extra clean and did all she knew how to do to make sure the master would have nothing to complain about tomorrow. She hoped that nothing would change.

But in the piece of broken glass she sometimes used as a mirror, she caught sight of her reflection. And in the almost pitch blackness of her sleeping space, the reflection of her eyes had a very faint light, where just last night there had been none.