In the deepest depths of the ancient abandoned mines, located just a few kilometres south from the goblin village, a small, weak, golden light illuminated a tiny underground pond. A small child’s face was reflected in the water, his golden eyes burning brightly. Little golden orbs flew out of the pond, fuelling the golden light, its intensity growing brighter and brighter. Soon the entire cavern was lit up, wispy golden orbs soared through the air revealing the stalactites lining the ceiling and shadows darting through the water of the pond.

“Get ready to run,”

“I’m ready,” conversed two people in dead silence.

The golden light glowed brighter than ever and circulated around young calloused hands. The orbs gravitated towards the young demon, gathering at his hands, squinting, the demon struggled to see anything over the intensity of the light. The golden orbs spun faster and faster in the boy’s palms, compressing them into one giant orb the size of a basketball. The boy let out a groan as he pushed out his arms, sending the ball of light into the cavern wall. The ball exploded on impact, temporarily blinding him, sending him backwards into the icy pond.

The demon slowly opened his eyes, fearful of any more bright light; instead all that remained was complete devastation. The entire side of the cavern was no more, entirely erased from existence. Instead a hole that went seemingly forever downwards was present. The edges of the bottomless pit were scorched as if a massive laser had caved through the planet. Red magma dripped off the sides of the hole and slowly made its way over to the boy.

“Well, it’s about time we go I reckon,” said Ash.

“I’ll have to agree with you on that one,” agreed Ashton.

Ashton leapt out of the water and ran out of the cavern, back towards the goblin camp around a kilometre away through a series of maze-like tunnels, following the arrows he’d carved on their way there, but not forgetting to erase them afterwards.

********

“I’d say that was a great success, wouldn’t you?” asked Ash.

“Success?! That was a disaster, we’re lucky that we weren’t found on the way back, what do you think is going to happen when they find it? We’re the only ones here who can use magic!” yelled Ashton.

“Bullshit, they know we can use magic, but only for healing. That does not look like a healed wall. It went much better than I thought it would too. Well, it may have been a bit too much power, but it didn’t blow up in our face like I thought it might,” revealed Ash.

“What!? You said there was no chance of that happening! That was the only reason I went along with this crazy idea! Also, how can you be so sure that they won’t think it was us? I doubt we’re the only ones who have thought of overriding things with mana like that. They’ve been around for who knows how many years, while we’ve only been here for six,” argued back Ashton.

“Listen, we need to do something about this, unless you’re happy with being these things slaves for the rest of our lives, this may be our only chance to escape. While it might not have gone as well as we’d hoped, it’s certainly promising. We’ve learnt that we can practically erase something from existence if we shove enough mana into it. I’d say that’s something pretty good to remember. Sure, we can’t use it to remove the collar for now; I’d prefer to keep our head for the moment. After a while of practice, I’d say we could vaporise that shit from existence!” proposed Ash.

“I… I understand that we need to do something… I just don’t think we should do anything too risky… I don’t want anything like last time to happen as punishment. But… I’ll go along with this one, so you better promise to tell me everything from now on, okay?” question Ashton.

“Okay. You better stop being so wimpy though,” teased Ash.

Grumbling, Ashton pulled his blanket up over his head and drifted off to sleep.

********

“Get up!” squealed a skinny, bony goblin, before chucking a pail of water at Ashton, soaking him from head to toe.

‘Get up’ were two words Ashton had managed to learn in goblin language. He didn’t know many. The short list of words he knew, or rather assumed what they meant were; stop, get up, run, fight, go, work and Morath. He didn’t know exactly what the meaning of Morath was, but it was what he was called by his fellow goblin trainees. Getting up drenched was a normal thing too. They did it to anyone who woke up late for work, so Ashton had experienced hundreds of wet, cold mornings already. After getting dressed into his animal hide chest-wear and his baggy trousers, he exited his humble abode, following the shiny bald heads in front of him; Ashton arrived at the latest worksite.

The mines. They entered them around three weeks ago and had planned to stay for another twelve. They got up early in the morning in darkness, mined for twelve hours straight under the supervision of the ogres, and then went back to their one man tents to sleep, and then repeat. There were no mine-carts or anything of the sort, so they hauled all of the resources through kilometres of twisting tunnels in shadows, all the way back to the village at the end of each week (eight days).

********

After four years of gruelling labour, Ashton’s body had become rather muscular, for a six year old anyway. Well toned arms and legs, even a six pack, which looked rather odd on the body of a child. He was a tall as an adult goblin now, so he’d blend right in with the crowd if his skin wasn’t so dark… and not so… not green. Shaggy black hair covered the top of his head, then ends merging together, forming some rather thick dreadlocks. His pitch black horns curved upwards from his temples like bull, the points as sharp as the tip of a spear. He’d lost the overall pudginess that he’d had as a toddler and there wasn’t an ounce of fat to be found on his body. The most impressive, or interesting thing about his appearance, was the wicket set of tribal tattoos that covered his entire body. His favourite was a simply designed dragon; it came up across his neck and curled around his left eye. As bizarre as they were, he still had no idea how, or why they were there.

“Work!” roared a slightly overweight ogre, spraying bits of spittle all over the back of Ashton’s head, before lashing out with a whip across Ashton’s arms.

Ashton dropped his rusty pickaxe in shock and Ash quickly followed up with a heal. The ogre’s foul stench wafted over to Ashton and he gagged, trying his best not to bring anything up. The last time he did that he received several generous lashings as punishment. Ignoring the pain still burning furiously in his arm, Ashton picked up the pickaxe and continued smashing away in the dark, determined to escape, willing to do almost anything to escape the life of endless labour he was heading towards.