The Tales of Prytho
“I must return to my people!” declared an elf. Towering over the other slaves, she was actually somewhat short for an elf. Whoever she was, she had not been in these mines long. Her flowing ginger hair was only slightly dirtied and looked as though it was glowing compared to the ruinous and depressing atmosphere of the caverns. Throwing her recently acquired pickaxe aside, she cried out with determination, “I do not belong here!”
A couple metres to her right, was a goblin. Grumbling, the goblin responded, “None of us belong ‘ere. Just because you’re new, doesn’t mean you’re any different!” He let out a great sigh, his tiredness revealing itself through the great bags under his eyes. They clashed with the wrinkles that coloured his chartreuse skin, wrinkles of hardship rather than age. Listening into the conservation was a nearby aarakocra. Her dirtied and rustled yellow feathers perked up with interest, and her beak became ajar with excitement. With her human-sized bird-legs, she hobbled towards the goblin and elf – despite the refusal of the ball and chain that devoured at her ankle. Like all other aarakocra in these mines she had no wings; removed at birth to keep her from flying. Loudly whispering or quietly hollering, she put her arm around the elf’s shoulders and said, “One day, we will all leave! But we must be patient for now… the time will come soon…”
With a certain elegance, the elf shoved the aarakocra’s arm of her shoulder and exclaimed, “You don’t understand! I’m… I’m not one of you! I’m not like you people! I am not a slave!”
From the rocky ledge, a dwarf, whose face was red with rage – almost matching his thick maroon hair and beard – screeched, “THAT DOES IT! Bonk kill him now! NOW!”
Charging round the corner, in spite of the ball and chain that was almost the same size of him, was Bonk – another dwarf. Licking his lips with excitement, Bonk was held back by the aarakocra and the goblin both grabbing thick strands of Bonk’s midnight blue hair. Picking up her own ball and chain with great strength, the elf made a run for it in an optimistic effort for escape the Thrordon mines. A naïve decision; and alas, it failed. The elf was no match for the human overseers.
“Face it, Phloe,” the goblin muttered to the aarakocra, “your rebellion is never gonna happen.”
After hours of hard work and strain, the slaves were sent to their cages, granted the tiniest scraps of food and abandoned in the dark. This was the life in Mount Thordon, once the bustling capital of the Prythonic Dwarves, now a pointless rock, where generations of slaves spent their entire lives mining for gems, ores and metals that were long gone.
It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, the Dwarves, Aarakocra, and Goblins had all been bitter enemies who fought viciously over control of the mountain and its riches. Now they desperately seek to escape its barren caves. This was Phloe’s dream. Her parents had been executed when she was young – for refusing to mine. After that, she promised she would end the cruel treatment of the slaves. Lying in a pile of rocks intended to imitate a nest, she would spend every night pondering up an infallible escape plan for all the slaves. Tonight – if it was night, she could not tell due to the eternal lack of sunlight this deep in the caves – was no different; escape, escape, escape, how to escape? Suddenly, she was interrupted. Singing.
Singing was the beloved language of the slaves. The origins of their songs were long forgotten, no doubt from a time where their ancestors would have spoken vastly different languages. Today the slaves all spoke one language, their mother tongues long extinct, and they all sung the same songs – together – to remember life before they were enslaved in the war, and about the freedom that they once had and hope they will have again one day. During the long hours of work, singing would be punished severely for its subversive and distracting nature… but the slaves sung regardless. It was their way to hold onto the past and pray for the future – even if they would never see that future.
However, this song was not in a language Phloe could recognise. It was sung beautifully, but incomprehensible nonetheless. It intrigued her. She waddled to the edge of her cave, careful not to disturb her goblin friend Bramble, to get closer to the source of the music. She noticed there was a new cage, next to hers, and in it she recognised the silhouette of an elf sitting at the bars of the cage, with their back turned away from Phloe. Phloe imitated the same position in her cage, so that the only thing separating their backs were the bars of their cages. Unable to understand the language of the elf, Phloe created her own lyrics and sang along with the elf.