“What!? That’s worth way more than that!”
“Take it or leave it, lizard.”
Grumbling, she took up the meagre offered portions for her haul, looking over her shoulder to give the disgusting orc a particularly nasty case of stink-eye. The pig didn’t even bat an eye as he continued to serve the next lizardman in line; thin, emaciated and desperate for a decent evaluation.
Not that she was any different, or for that matter, any one of the hundreds of her other brethren.
Life down in the mines was harsh. Not a day would go by that one had to work their hardest just so they could procure enough food to fill their starving mouths.
Age wasn’t a factor either. You either got good or got dead. One way or the other, you would cease being a burden on society.
And that’s how things went down here.
She eyed her minute portion of sustenance with a grimace, a look that was something between coveting and contempt. This was all she had earned today despite hours of working the rocks to draw forth their meagre yield. It wasn’t uncommon for some to go days at a time without a meal simply due to being unable to find anything of value.
A cry of sorrow was issued over her shoulder, no doubt from a haul getting far less than what was expected, or worse, rejected. Curiosity got the better of her and she peaked back over her shoulder just in time to see two of those hog-backed, tusk-faced tubs of lard and muscle drag away the latest in victims from having a rejected haul.
The sorry state of her brethren mirrored that of her own. Ribs poking out from their scaled hide, dull and dusty from the time spent excavating the depths, all peppered with lashes and wounds from previous beatings. He probably wouldn’t survive the following punishment. The repercussions for presenting a worthless haul were harsh.
Sighing, she returned her attention back to her own rations, finding a wall out of the way for her to enjoy her meal, about as much as one can enjoy mouldy, maggoty bread. Picking apart her undersized portion, she started to examine the state of her own body.
Though one might not be able to tell from first glance, all the lizardmen working down in the mines had come from different clans originally. One’s scales denoted your heritage and often placed a hierarchy on the importance of some individuals over others, or so it was said. In reality, the dirt and the dust covered so much that they may as well have had scales made from mud. Her own scales were the same, however, she always managed to avoid the grievous injuries that so often befell her brothers. Good fortune, perhaps?
Mind wandering, it wasn’t until a shout from one of those ugly, wrinkled, pig-headed foreman, that she realised that she’d eaten all her rations. Damn! That was meant to last until tonight. She got up and hefted the nearest pickaxe onto her shoulder. Time to get to work.
~~~
A lot could be said of the Deep Magicite Mines, none of it flattering, but a lot regardless. Twisting miles and miles into the rocky basin, it had become something more than your average excavation shaft and had blown up into one of the biggest large-scale mining operations on the Southern Continent. All on the broken backs of countless slaves.
There wasn’t a day that went by without at least a half dozen cave-ins, sprinkled with a handful of casualties. The wounded were expected to get better on their own time as profit far exceeded the wellbeing of the miners.
Tunnels criss-crossed between each other, a labyrinthine connection of passage ways filled with the smell of burning oil, musty petrichor and the odd stench of rotting bodies overlooked from collapsing tunnels.
A sinister, somewhat foreboding feeling consistently permeated the atmosphere, one never realising when the next moment could be their last. It was a generally accepted feeling.
In particular branches of the mine, miners toiled ever-so-carefully at excavating huge chunks of crystal. These chunks, the aforementioned deep magicite that the mines were named for, were famed for their unparalleled energy output when refined, and their volatility and likelihood to kill you when not.
Only the greedy, desperate and hungry would find themselves working these tunnels. So, naturally, there was a line.
It wasn’t altogether uncommon to find new veins of the stuff, however, those who did rarely survived their explosive discovery to reap the benefits.
This day, for lack of a better perception of time within the mines, was no exception.
An explosion sounded out from one of the many side tunnels, the following shockwave knocking unprepared miners further up the tunnel off their feet.
“Tunnel 319’s blocked again”, stated one of the nearby orc foremen, “That’s gotta be the third vein this month alone. Must be a small bounty o’ magicite down this one.”
“Yeah, I know whatcha mean,” replied one of his colleagues, “but it’s useless if we’re losing miners faster than they can dig the damn ore out. Hang on- OY! GET BACK TO WORK. IF I DON’T FIND THOSE CARTS FILLED WITH DEBRIS BY THE NEXT SHIFT, YOU’LL ALL BE GETTING NO RATIONS!”
The lizardmen who were just starting to recover from the concussive blast scrambled to their feet and set to work dragging the not-so-light metal carts to the source of the explosion; perhaps they’d find something worth salvaging and hopefully not too many bodies.
Once they were gone, the Orcs returned to their discussion.
“Didja hear about Tunnel 47 in Section 14?”
“No, that’s one o’ the older tunnels innit?”
“Yeah, way back before my time. I heard they found some old human remains the other day; trinkets and rags mostly but there were one or two powerful artefacts found among all the skeletons.”
His companion gave a low whistle, tapping the end of his shortsword against his left tusk.
“Them’s worth a small fortune themselves, ain’t they?”
The first foreman nodded his head.
“Mmm. Worth more than ten o’ these new veins, apparently. Rare, and powerful to boot. Heard the foreman up there got a promotion for jus’ bein’ in charge o’ the tunnel.”
“That’s hardly fair. Not only does he have the better veins, but loot as well?”
“Aye. Like it’s our fault that the quality o’ the magicite from down here seems harder to refine than the original veins? Something about the stability o’ the stuff, is what I heard.”
“Yeah well, why are they so happy about a bunch o’ old artefacts, anyways?”
The first foreman leaned on the hilt of his scabbarded sword, attempting to recall the rumours he’d picked up in the guard common room.
“From what I heard; the old stuff doesn’t work like our regular artefacts, made completely differently. Unlike ours, where you replace the crystal when it runs out, the Ancients figured a way that the things absorb the mana floatin’ in the air!”
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“Suuuuure. Next, you’ll be tellin’ me y’ave eaten dragon meat before!”
“I have! And the thing about these artefacts is they can drain the deep magicite before them mages find a way to extract the mana. It could kill an entire vein if undiscovered, and if they figure it out, they can refine the already absorbed mana into stable magicite.”
The second foreman stared blankly at his Orc counterpart, a look of sheer and utter stupefaction imparted on his face that would make a brain-dead sack of potatoes proud.
The first Orc foreman, clearly the smarter of the two, reiterated for his companion, “Basically, findin’ them artefacts can make our no-good magicite like the stuff up top or, at least, stop suckin’ the mana outta magicite before we mine it.”
“Oh, that sounds good.”
“Too right, it is.” stated the first foreman, “We’d be lucky if’n we ever found somethin’ like that this deep. Now come on; those lizards seem to be takin’ their sweet time bringin’ up the first load o’ rock.”
“Yeah. Let’s see what those lazy arses are doin’ now.”
~~~
Working in the dark was difficult but, oft times, a necessity in the lower layers of the mines. Air didn’t circulate to the off-shoot branches from the main shaft so one would suffocate from the fumes given off by burning the awful smelling oil used for light.
In fact, the only occurrence of natural light generally came from two things; crystals and ambient mana.
These, generally, walked hand in hand with one another and for the deep miners it was somewhat of a minor blessing to work the new, dark tunnels.
If one were to hit a new vein of magicite, the ambient mana exuded from the cracks in the wall would have been barely perceptible in a lit environment.
“You’ll be workin’ this new off-shoot today lizard. Don’t disappoint!”
The lizardwoman rolled her eyes in the dark.
After what seemed like ages, her pudgy, lard-ball of a guide had finally managed to direct his torch to one of the many tunnels adorning the side of the shaft.
It was obvious to see that he was wheezing hard from his prolonged exposure to some form of light exercise. She had kept pace behind him, close enough to see the sweat trickling down the back of his neck from the ambient lighting.
Over the years she had come to the conclusion that her eyesight must have been a bit better than her brethren, as she had found no difficulty finding her footing in areas of a similar degree of lighting.
Her guide, and a few of her kind around her, were still feeling along the wall and even stumbling every so often.
She shook her head.
The ambient mana down this far was quite enough to see, though the foremen weren’t ever seen without a torch in hand or some sort of concentrated light artefact to light the way.
Moving her way past her superior, she hefted the heavy pickaxe on her shoulder to steady her grip and proceeded to duck into the carved-out corridor.
Down here she could smell the fresh dust kicked up by the digging, the swirling mana in the air highlighting dust particles as the tunnel moved away from the entrance.
Working here had a fifty-fifty chance of working the rock for days and starving or finding a vein a bit too suddenly, and explosively, for one’s wellbeing.
There must have been eye witnesses from the last time she’d been caught in the aftermath of a cave-in.
It would have been a few weeks ago that a vein was suddenly struck and caused a chain reaction, up in the higher tunnels. It hadn’t gone further than the branch it collapsed but there had been casualties.
She knew; she had been the one who hit the vein.
Yet despite that, out of all those crushed by the debris, she had managed to survive. Battered and beaten but alive.
It took several days to tunnel out but even then, she had to suffer the lashings of her failure combined with the hunger that had accumulated during that time.
Perhaps someone noticed her resilience would be put to better use in the deepest parts of the mine?
Pausing somewhat to let one of her brethren move past with a barrow of rock, she took note of her surroundings as the ceiling of the tunnel began to suddenly heighten.
Judging by the mana in the air and the smattering of rocky debris on the floor, this place hadn’t gone too long without a cave-in of its own.
Looking further up, her head craned to see a sudden sheer tunnel of rock that seemed to stretch into nothingness, lighted sporadically by a few crystals too dangerous or too troublesome to get.
It wasn’t uncommon to see lower shafts connected to higher ones but this seemed to stretch on into eternity.
Probably something fell from a great height with great enough force to cause a chain reaction in the magicite.
Setting aside her wandering mind, she took the pickaxe from her shoulder and chose a spot next to the wall to get started.
However, just as she was set to lay into the wall she was promptly assaulted with a loud noise, or what would pass for one in the echoing tunnel.
“Hey, get your own spot! This place is mine!”
Slowly, she turned her head, pickaxe poised to strike, only to find a short, diminutive, stunted, dwarf of a lizardman face her with a creased forehead, hands on hips boring his gaze directly into her eyes. Her mind struggled to process the scene before her. Did she mention he was short?
“Huh?”, she replied with all the elegance of a seasoned debater.
“Mine. My place, my digsite, mine! Go find another patch of wall. I’ve worked this wall for two days and I won’t have you sweeping this big load from underneath me.”
Ah. Now she understood.
The only people sent as fodder into the new tunnels were only classified as two things; those who could be trouble and those who were trouble. Clearly, this guy fell into the latter group.
Though, despite processing all this in her mind, two questions still bugged her.
“Why is your voice so high and why are you so short?”
The small lizardman squirmed under her scrutiny and blushed through the light coating of stone dust, which she only just now noticed had a darkish blood colour unlike most who had worked the tunnels for any significant period of time.
“Because I’m just a kid, you fat fatty!”
Oh? Oh, no. Nonono. Her eye twitched and she placed her pickaxe down head first into the ground with just the slightest amount of extreme force, causing the tiny lizardma- no, lizardboy to jump at the sudden action.
Before he could react, she reached over and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, lifting him up until his eyes were level with hers.
“Look, runt. I don’t know what you did to be put down here. I don’t really care. If you’re working the wall then don’t leave it. You’ve got nobody but yourself to blame.”
And with that, she dropped him on his arse.
Stunned, the lizardboy blinked a few times before his eyes began to water.
‘Ah, great. Just what I needed; tears.”
Before she could say anything though, the boy picked up his pickaxe and ran off further down the tunnel.
~~~
After some time, she breathed deeply and let out a big sigh. Ones that young didn’t normally last that long if they didn’t wise up, and fast.
She wiggled her pickaxe out of the rock and proceeded to chip away at the wall were the kid declared he had previously worked for two days prior. Might as well not let his work go to waste.
Though said work, simply put, was just shoddy.
Small chips, barely pebbles, were all that had been dislodged. The chances of anything that close to the surface were slim and at the rate the kid was going, it would have taken him weeks to find anything of value.
It’s not that she didn’t understand. Swinging gung-ho could have caused a rupture in any nearby magicite, causing delays and punishment for those responsible.
Results here were achieved though caution tempered with experience, as the other way around often led to too many frequently dying. Working this deep, the kid had the right idea but didn’t have enough real experience to back it up.
The only other method to survive was simplicity itself. Get lucky. Get stupid lucky. That and mine like a madman, hoping the next pickaxe blow won’t be your last.
It seemed that the kid had luck in spades.
Just before her 50th hit from her pickaxe, the cracks in the pulverised rock began emitting a fluorescent mist-like substance that shifted between a vibrant bile green and a vivid orange. It twirled and danced through the air as it seeped from the cracks in the rock.
Thankfully, it seemed, she had stopped just short of a major vein. If she had gone any deeper any quicker, she might not have seen the slight ethereal wisps emerge.
The mana seemed to be flooding forth from the rockface now. Carefully working around the vein, she removed a decent sized chunk of ore containing the magicite and deposited it into her satchel; all miners had one as it was proof of what one mined during that day.
It was slow going, however. This close to this much magicite would’ve been far too much for the kid, assuming he didn’t blow him self up by initially finding the vein. She’d seen many go down in a blaze of glory, some quite literally, as the greed and desire to pry the rock from the earth’s bosom had fractured the crystal and set off the stone.
Patience, provided by many years of careful excavation, had allowed her to survive this long and she wasn’t about to let all that go to waste.
A few eyes moving behind her caught a glimpse of the vein she was working, as loads of rock and other miners passed through the tunnel behind her. Many of them would pounce on this vein the moment she left to stake a claim on its bounty.
Well, all she needed to make sure of is that when she was done, satchel full and pickaxe in hand, that she promptly rushed out of the tunnel with the mined ore, her hands protecting it to discourage would-be thieves from stealing her bounty.
Things though, were rarely so cut and dry. She was bound to lose a few pieces from roaming hands.
She proceeded to pack up her mining tools just as a clamour was starting to build behind her about a new vein being discovered.
Soon it would be too packed to move anywhere, so she promptly squeezed through the building crowd in the tight tunnel and headed back up to the upper levels for her most recent evaluation.