The woman introduced herself as Erina and she would be taking care of us from now onwards. She spoke softly and made gentle hand gestures as she spoke, she never left her seat or made any excessive movements. She asked her men to untie the fabric securing our lips. Once the gags were out, one boy standing two rows behind me cried out loudly.

‘ You dare kidnap the son of Hopkins? Do you have a death wish woman? Have you any idea who I am?’ He looked a little older than I; maybe eight or nine years of age, dressed in fabric so expensive. He looked scared, yet his tone was cocky and arrogant, he trembled in fear yet tried to show confidence. We all anticipated what would happen next, Erina asked him to step forward and he did so.

‘That’s right, if you let me go unscathed right now. I'll let you live’ almost like a taunt, his nose was high in the air. I could see Erina was not bothered slightest, she showed little emotion, her forefinger tapped lightly in rhythm on the arms of the cream coloured wingback chair. 

‘What is your name child?’ She asked 

‘Derrick the youngest son of Adam Hopkins the third’ he replied courtly 

‘It does not matter who you are or where you’re from, what matters now is how you’ll behave. I'll give you a chance to prove your worth. You will stand by the dart board motionless, if you so much as blink while the dart is thrown at you I will place you as a worker in the coal mines. If you pass without fear, I shall let you go unscathed as you wish, she proposed, referring to the dart board on the left side of the hall where a group of men who were previously gaming stopped when they noticed the attention shift. 

Derrick was visibly in fear. Though he could not utter a word, he hesitated. He had no other choice, he provoked Erina with what seemed to be high status of his which did not phase her at all, as well as threatening her resulting in his life being in danger. He might walk out of there with one eye blind, not too big of an injury and spend the rest of his days working in the coal mines like a slave. Or he could try and survive this test without blinking or flinching, which would take a tremendous amount of effort. He held his head high and slowly made his way to the dart board. 

‘I'm ready’ he announced, his hands curled up in a fist, holding his pants for dear life as if it provided some sort of comfort. His shoulder length brown hair was braided behind him , his physique slim build and he had golden tanned skin. 

‘Bay’ she called out one of her man, a ginger haired slender teenage boy jumped down through the ropes that were tied to the ceiling. He wore tweed gray pants and black plain collared tee that had two ripped stripes in the mid of his chest across his packs. His hair cascading past his left eye while the other half clean shaved. He took three pairs of darts from his pocket, smirking at the trembling derrick without a warning he threw the dart across the room and it landed with a soft thud right above Derricks hair. Derrick broke the rules, he flinch and haunched down cowering. Hiding his face behind his arms and weeping uncontrollably. The men in the room broke out in fits of uncontrollable laughter mocking the poor boy.

‘Take him to the coal mines’ two older guys held Derrick and dragged him out by his arms as he wailed asking for forgiveness, and to be given one more chance. Erina was having none of it, she felt no pity or sympathy towards the whimpering child that was being dragged away. This demonstrated that we were helpless in front of this woman, we shouldn’t expect mercy. 

Erina did not say anything else, she only sat quietly and let one of the men take over. It was the guy who kidnapped me. He stepped forward and asked everyone to settle down so we could hear what he had to say. He introduced himself as Flin, he was one of the trainers here who oversaw the new arrivals. He did not say anything more about himself which left me curious, he looked more than let on, this guy was mysterious. 

‘You will all be tested, physically and mentally. On this ship only the strongest survive. Everyone here will start from the bottom, we will be observing you day and night, depending on how you pass each test, you will be moved a level up.’ he talked with an outlandish accent, stopping here and there seeing if all the boys are listening in. He had a round pointed, silver gun hanging from his belt buckle. He wore a green coloured, short sleeved button up shirt that revealed his chiseled chest, and plain knee length shorts with dark ankle boots. He looked like any other ordinary commoner. 

‘Gobble, accompany them to the mines.’ he ordered, Gobble saluted in response who was watching everything from behind us, keeping guard in case any of the boys tried something funny.

‘The coal mines are your starting point boys, there's no limit to how much time you'll spend there. We had newcomers that were brought in a year ago and they're still grinding the coals.’ 

Accompanied by Gobble and a few other men, we were led through the ship down at the very bottom. We passed by three floors before we finally entered the coal mines inside the ship. As soon as we went inside, I was engulfed with burning coal flames, smoke filling the air around making it incredibly difficult to breathe, the temperature of the room heated my cheeks thousand fold. There looked to be about fifty workers, all of them men ranging from as young as ten year old children to men in their early twenties. Children carry coal in small buckets and bring them over to older kids, while they refuel the steamships non-stop.

‘Like I said boys, ‘ Gobble snickered smirking down on us ‘welcome to hell’ he winked. He lifts up his wrist closer to his beefy neck and checks the time on his watch.

‘If you want to have dinner tonight, you must earn it. Dinner is going to be at two am in the morning, you have an hour to start working. Children under the age of twelve will follow Trinkle, a dark skinned man who looked around seventeen approached with a shovel in his hand. He gathered all the younger kids and left with two other guys helping him. 

‘The rest of you, will be tending to Marfusha’ a slightly overweight white man drinking something that is definitely not water strolled in from our rear.

‘You brought more pests I see’ he blurted between gulps, his hair all falling off only leaving a little patch right in the middle of his head, he had tooth gaps in between his fatty lips and only wore a black stained white singlet with brown shorts. I could smell the awful stench of alcohol five feet away. 

‘You will be training them’ Gobble covered his nose in disgust and moved towards the door. 

‘Good luck then’ he left swiftly, shutting the metal iron door with a loud bang.I heard a click of a key meaning we were locked up in here with this awful looking man. 

Marfusha scanned the nine teenage boys standing before him, looking down on us as if we’re nasty insects he had no choice but to touch. He yawned, drinking more of his ‘water’ , wiped his lips with his forearm and did a “follow me” motion with his fingers. I could see the boys were visibly nervous, scared even. No one dared to make a noise or even ask questions, we did not know whether we were even allowed. Marfusha led us through the narrow hallways of the coal ship into a bigger room with better air quality. It looked like it was a lounge room, one metal table in the middle with chairs around it. Large brown sofa in the corner, it had scratches and the leg was broken as it was tilting sideways. He opened a door across the launcher room and it had a series of small lockers inside. 

“You will be provided with clothes suitable to work in the mines inside the lockers, get changed and come out to the lounge room. I expect you to finish changing in five minute”  he shut the door behind and left us in the changing room. 

“We need to get out of here” the silver haired boy who shared the same carriage as I spoke first. 

‘Yeah? And how do you suppose we get out of a ship crowded with six feet tall, serial killer men surrounding us? “ a brown skinned foreigner with an accent argued, it looked like he had already accepted his fate. 

‘My father is the prime minister of Olta, he will be sending out search parties to look for me. All we have to do is get to the border of Olta’ 

‘You’re Philip? Philip Rocini?’ Pale, overweight red headed teenage boy asked, pushing through the crowd. 

‘Yes. I am he,’ he answered. 

‘I’m Prince Shahbad of Delada,’ the foreign boy introduced himself. 

How did such high ranking people of our continent get kidnapped by these men? I know for sure nobles like them are always surrounded by guards. It makes me laugh that the security of our country has become so weak. As if reading my thoughts, Philip asked Shahbad the same question. 

‘My car was attacked on Bilgram road while I was trying to attend the Marquis Fidel’s funeral’ 

‘I attended the same funeral, though I was attacked while heading back home,’ Philip added 

‘Who are you guys?’ Shahbad asked, eyeing the rest of us. 

‘Let’s leave the introduction for later, we need to get changed and head out in 3 minutes’ an Asian looking kid with black coloured bold square shaped glasses informed. We immediately began changing, since I did not have a shirt on, I only changed my tattered shorts into the long wide black shirt and white undershirt they had provided. The smell of clean clothes hit my nostrils, and for a moment, I thought maybe living here wouldn’t be so bad. As soon as we were done changing, Philip gathered everyone last time before we headed and asked us to memorize whatever section we’d be assigned to, so that we’ll be able to escape later on. 

We walked into the lounge room once we were done, Marfusha was eating biscuits with milk green tea, dipping his biscuits into the tea and then devouring the biscuit. I wonder if it tastes as good as it looks, it made my stomach growl with hunger. My insides churned and it felt as if there was a lump on my throat I couldn’t swallow until I tried that biscuit. 

“Laddie” he called out, a boy no older than eighteen walked inside the room. He had dirty blonde hair and his face was covered in freckles. He was tall and skinny, yet he seemed to carry a bit of an arrogant aura around him. He looked haughty and mischievous, I couldn’t tell whether he’d be a friend or a foe. 

‘From now on you will answer him, you will follow whatever he says. If I hear one complaint, you’ll be punished’ Marfusha nodded at Laddie to take over, he grabbed his small plate of biscuit and cup of tea and walked out the room. 

‘All right guys, welcome. I know you must be devastated but it’ll all be over before you know it. There is some good stuff going on here too, think of it as an adventure away from your family’ he seemed awfully cheerful, I knew he was trying to lift the mood but it wasn’t working. Especially when we didn’t even know why we were kidnapped except from being enslaved. 

‘Surely you jest’ one of the commoner kids retorted at his ludicrous behavior. 

‘Fancy words coming from a commoner’ if looks could kill, the commoner would be ten feet below ground. He bore the expression of a lunatic, his eyes looked incredibly scary as they looked upon the commoner without blinking. 

‘Laddie, we appreciate you trying to lift the mood but I think It’d be better if we moved along and did our job. No one is in the mood for a talk at the moment.’ Prince Shahbad tried to lighten the environment by seemingly being appreciative of a complete stranger who’s trying to sympathize with us. Of course he must’ve been in the same situation as us before, but he’d know what not to do to a frightened, kidnapped couple of teenagers. Yet he did the exact opposite, almost laughing to our face. 

‘You’re right, sorry about that. Let’s get moving,’ he led us out the hall back to the warm coal mine continuing his speech as we pass by a narrow hall with several doors 

‘You will be sharing the rooms here with other boys, we can usually fit three or four boys in one room.’ He opened the door with a number 78 on it. It was a small cramped room with blankets and pillows scattered all over the floor, it was clean as I saw no insects. He closed the door and continued leading us through the narrow hallways into the heating coal mine of the ship, the low buzz of people chatting with each other as they worked filled my ears

‘working here is pretty simple. You’ll be loading and unloading coal inside the machines, don’t stand too close to it or you might catch flame” Laddie flashed a smile to the boys as he said those words, Dante thought maybe someone did get caught up in flames. Once he thought about it, he couldn’t shake off the image of a person burning alive. Dante couldn’t imagine the pain the person must’ve gone through. 

“I will need you all to write down your names and age in this paper, I will collect in two minutes so please hurry up, we want to finish work so we can sit down and have dinner” he handed us a parchment with a quilt. The boys began noting down their names on the paper, Dante stood far behind the line feeling embarrassed. He was illiterate, he never learned how to read and write, this task would be difficult. It would be humiliating to ask one of the boys to write his name for him. But did he have any other choice? Seemed like there was, maybe he didn’t need to write his name there. All the boys knew how to write, even the commoners. Which was worthy of a praise. 

“Did everyone write their name?” Philip asked, picking up the piece of paper, running his eyes over the names and ages of the boys he’d be working with for who knows however long. 

Otto 17

Atticus 14 

Jude 16 

Silas 16

Philip 15

Shahbad 16

Arthur 17 

Ezekiel 14

“There’s one person missing here, who did we miss?” Philip asked scanning the boys as they only looked at one another searching for a face that wasn’t included, one teenage boy shorter than everyone else in the room with hair as dark as coal shrinked behind Shahbad without saying a word. It was common in Olta for many children to not know how to read and write, perhaps he felt embarrassed he was the only one who was illiterate. 

“What’s your name boy” Philip questioned tilting his head quizzically to the side to get better view of the boy, Shahbad seemed confused at first until he stepped aside and saw the young child hiding behind him; by now everyone's focus was on Dante and he despised having so many eyes peering down on him, judging him. He lowered his eyes to the floor and mumbled his name which wasn't very audible. 

“Pardon me, could you say that again?” Shahbad asked putting an arm on his shoulder, the boy was so timid and shy, Shahbad pondered how could a man be so cowardly. It was only right for kids their age to learn adequately and act their age, yet this boy was tarnishing the reputation of all men and Shahbad did not associate himself with such figures. 

‘Dante. My name is Dante’ the boy finally spoke. Philip did not waste a second and noted down his name and age. Dante was also sixteen. How peculiar was this boy he thought. Laddie came back in exactly two minutes, and read out the names of all the boys. He assigned each boy a job judging from their physique. Otto, Jude and Silas who were taller and looked stronger were assigned for coal delivery, they’d be carrying bags of coal, throwing it in the cart and pushing it up towards the guys who poured coal into the steams. Philip, Shahbad and Ezekiel were would be working with the other guys as coal passers shoveling coal while Atticus and I would be working as a firemen. Their job was to move the fire to one side of the furnace and clean out the coal ash from the other side. They were also responsible for keeping the coal evenly distributed wherever it was burning, because the coal had to be burned quickly and evenly. Once these tasks were assigned and job descriptions were given, Laddie put them to work for the next hour until it was time for dinner. 

None of the boys had ever worked in coal steaming ships, they had much harder time then the rest of the men, it seemed the two noble men from esteemed families, Shahbad and Philip were especially working with much difficulty. They never had to lift a finger when they lived in the mansion, sure they had assigned duties as the heir of their respective families, though labor was an arduous task for them. They got tired very quickly, their muscles burned and they couldn’t get used to the smell of burning coal nor the heat it distributed. Their cheeks flushed red, they were covered in coal and dirt, and they couldn’t even get a proper bath. This was an absolute nightmare to those two.