A Different Story - Wil ii

        Some answers were easy to come by. Others not so much. Some were answered by questions, like "why am I blindfolded?" kinda answered "am I still in the woods?". I tried to remove the cloth on my eyes.

        Chains. Of course.

        I struggled to my feet and tried to leave. I managed to shamble a couple steps.
        Chains. Should have known by then.

        I got on my knees and crawled away. Maybe the chains weren't holding me to a wall.

        They weren't. So came the whip. I preferred the chains.

        Thinking back now, I don't know how I wasn't worried. Probably shoulda been. Then again, they could have killed me whenever they wanted, bit they didn't. I had some purpose.

        I thought of mother. She probably thought about me too, for the split second before she realised she'd only burn half the wood now. I wondered what I had gotten into.

        I walked to what I found to be the entrance of a cave, where the chains at my feet came off. "The two of you, left", came a harsh voice, followed by a punch to the ribs. "The old dogs, with me."

        Not knowing what in hell left was (love ya, mom), I took a chance.

        Whip.

        Left hand is what you use to hold the heads you'll cut with your right hand. Don't think I'll ever forget it that way...

        Iron doors closed behind me. The chains on my wrists fell, so I took off the blindfold. Not that it changed much. The world was grey and black. Brown, when you were lucky.  The close walls were a greyish-brown. The far end was black. The people around me were grey, dirty from years of earth and dust, although their hands were black. The muddy floor stank of all things that came from, or were, human. 

        A bitter "Welcome to the iron mines" was the warmest thing I was offered. "There's your pickaxe, and there's your timer" was not as bad as a "try not to get killed when you go for the wood or I'll have to hire someone to go get it". The timer was a white stone, right under the only hole that connected to the surface. "When you can't see the stone anymore, they come and take what you cut out. They give you some food, according to what you got", an old man told me when the huge serjeant looked away.

        There were a lot of people in that mine. Boys and old geezers, strong men at their peak, all cowed under the flogging.

        "And if I don't want to?"

        The sound of clashing metal and falling rocks was everywhere.

        "Ah, just do like Andrah Seih. Andrah didn't feel like working too hard either." Though I never met him, Andrah looked like an amazingly lazy fellow. He didn't work, he didn't exercise, he wouldn't even eat. He was also a skeleton, his flesh picked almost clean by the worms. "But I tell you, boy, I'd rather work."

        Chopping resources for others, rotting corpses, food that even an ooze would balk away from... If not for the low light, one could call that place home.

Where did this come from?                                                                     Then what?

Original work C Pedro Nunes. Split according to OP's vision.