Gold

“My name is Pax.”
“No” the Empress responded, never looking up from the scrying mirror where she tested the future of the quivering pearlcatcher in front of her.
“Your name is Gold.”
With four short words, the Empress stripped away his past.
Your name is Gold.
“Your eyes are...acceptable. Your genes are dull, but fair. Your form is unsatisfactory, but this one time I shall make an exception.”, the Empress had hissed, “You would make a good….Treasurer. A worthy Jeweller.”
Her “guards” had sneered at the pearlcatcher, cruel grins as they laughed at an inside joke while he shrank back.
No, the pearlcatcher wanted to whisper, please.
No, the guards had replied as they dragged him towards the Vaults.

The Empress cared only for the strength of her warriors, not the welfare of her Clan. Wealth slipped through the Empress' claws like water. Jewels and gems were common in the Spires, the miners toiled day and night to pry them from the earth, sometimes with bare talons. The Vaults were seemingly endless tunnels underneath the Spires, leading straight towards the Catacombs. Whatever little light had breached the clouds and Spires were devoured by the darkness of the tunnels, swallowed by the endless and bone-numbing cold. Gold had thought the Southern Icefield to be cold; he had been sorely mistaken. It couldn’t hold a candle to the sheer bitterness of the Spires, laced with so much pain that Gold thought he would choke on it.

The entrance to the Vault had slammed shut, and locked Gold inside the darkness. For days he had clawed at the doors, begging to be let out, screaming until his voice was hoarse.
No one ever came.
Surrounded by all the riches, Gold had laughed. He was buried alive with countless gold and gems, yet they were all worthless to him. What was treasure to a dead soul?
Slowly, ever so slowly, Gold began to work. Sorting the treasury, organizing centuries old files. He catalogued the gems, sometimes making a few pieces of jewelery from the gems and ores he had been provided with.
Food and water were brought to him on request, but Gold never saw the light ever again. The Vaults were airtight, but what was the laws of necessity to the very Spires who ripped reality itself? Time trickled past, perhaps years or days. He learned to navigate the blinding darkness and biting cold of the Vaults by touch alone. Surrounded by gold, Gold remembers the rumors of Midas the last Treasurer, Midas whose scales were transformed into gold. The entire lair had heard his screams. The Emperss had punished him, punished him for neglecting his duties. Now he resides as a golden statue, frozen in a silent scream of agony.
Gold fumbles through the shelves, half-blind from the darkness and relying on memory and touch alone. The Vaults were dangerous, steep drop-offs and high crevasses littered the crypts, each one lined with skeletons at the bottom. Gold was perhaps lucky, or maybe he was simply stubborn.
The darkness suffocated the once gleaming treasure. The mad Treasurer, forever entombed in the darkness of the Crypts, the guardian of the jewels. Allowed out only on rare occasions, the pearlcatcher is a withered beauty. His scales still shine with gold, but the pearlcatcher has changed. He moves with an eerie precognition, relying more on feel than on sight. Gold attracts the eyes of the Clan, shining in all his luster as the Empress lavishes jewelry and golden chains upon the Treasurer. The pearlcatcher only grins and nods, far too happy to press his horn against the scorched ground of the Spires, or to hand over his pearl to the Empress and watch it against her scarred and nightmarish scales.