The pick’s wooden shaft was as smooth as glass. Many hooves had held it in the past, and their labors had worn away any features. What remained was a tool, overused and without identity. The justicar had placed it in Burl’s hooves the last time he’d seen sunlight.
But the pick really belonged to King Sombra. Everything belonged to King Sombra.
Upon arrival, each of the prisoners received a pick, along with a stern warning: .Try and use it on a guard, or the other prisoners, and it would paralyse you where you stood. Once the guards retrieved a rogue prisoner, they would disappear for a few days. Upon return, they were given a new pick. They never complained. They rarely said anything ever again.Nopony could remember any prisoner attempting a second revolt. When Sombra’s guards solved a problem, they liked it to stay that way.
The pick carried a battery of enchantments for strength and durability. It was to be used until completely exhausted. None of them had ever seen it happen, but several of the old-timers said they’d heard of picks just finally disintegrating in a pony’s hooves. But so long as the enchantments held, the picks were used until the legs that held them could no longer swing that day. Broken picks meant downtime, and downtime was inefficient. In the mines, there was no greater transgression.
There was a rhythm to the swings, and it was born of necessity. To work the near pitch-black tunnels, each prisoner received an enchantment at the beginning of their shift. What was once impenetrable darkness became a hazy grey. It was like wandering through the memory of light.
But chromium was luminous. To see it without the enchantment was to look upon hope made physical. The shards glimmered with an internal brilliance that none of them understood. Truth be told, none of them really cared, either. Filling the cart was all that mattered. A full cart meant that you entered the lottery. That was all anyone cared about in the dark.
So they all learned the rhythm. The eyes found a spot. The pick went up, and then back down. The eyes closed. The pick hit and the eyes opened again. Unexpectedly discovering a shard of chromium carried the threat of blindness because the light collection dweomer caused the smallest fleck to glow like the sun. The only solution was to strike the wall with your eyes closed. At least, that was the only solution they were offered.
Picking chromium flecks out of the dross was the only time they were permitted to stop swinging. Two seconds, ideally. No more than five for a splintering. A prisoner was expected to pick the chromium up and toss it into their cart promptly. Work stoppages were inefficient.
Look. Up. Down. Close. Hit. Open. Search. Repeat. All day, every day.
The rhythm broke you, and once broken, it entered you. Each prisoner became the rhythm, a cog in Sombra’s machine. The rhythm became purpose. It transformed into religion. It was not to be disrupted. Disruption was inefficient.
But for a moment, the rhythm no longer mattered to Burl, and the pick fell from his nerveless grip. His guard spat out a curse and stomped around the pair’s assigned mine cart, but pulled up short. Together, they squinted, throwing their hooves in front of their sensitive eyes. They couldn’t look, but they couldn’t look away.
There, buried in the tunnel walls, was the blinding light of hope.