Welcome to Legends of Aventris. I'm Derek Hudson and you're listening to Icebound.

Eighty-nine days.

89 days since you were all captured and imprisoned.

A little more than three months by the calendar you all share.

89 days on the outskirts of the river city of Wuzay,

the largest urban center of southwest Yulong.

89 days, confined in the sweltering heat of the Wuzayan labor camp you now call home.

5,287 days left to go.

Serving your 16-year sentences for crimes you were unjustly framed for.

16 years.

Stoned.

Imprisoned in the golden egg.

The brazen name given to the quarry in camp you've come to know over the past three months.

16 years gone, but still yet to endure.

It's hard to say what's worse.

The brutal, foul, cruel conditions, the exhausting drudge of each day's work,

the blistering heat that infuses even the isolated knife,

or the shared glances of your peers, desperate and hopeless.

A few simple innovations have made the golden egg as inescapable as it is profitable for its other governors.

There are no cells, at least not in the traditional sense.

Macquarie is dug down layer by layer.

So too are the fresh holes mined into the damned and stony earth.

...