Life was mostly good for orcs that worked the Deep Magicite Mines. As foremen, it was their duty to keep the rabble in line, and those who did, admittedly, lived quite generously.

However, those who failed to meet expectations, otherwise known as the daily quota of beatings and bashings to be doled out to the miners, were soon assigned to less than desirable jobs.

Latrine duty, guard duty in the lower tunnels and even the dreaded evaluation station’s examination desk.

These weren’t seen as punishments from their higher-ups per-se, more like an opportunity to increase their enthusiasm to do better; what better way to encourage aggressive action than a “better-them-than-me” mind set?

The mines didn’t just weed out the weak amongst the miners.

~~~

“Next.”

The lizardman shambled forth in line; his look of tired weariness was reflected by his countless colleagues and seemed to be the general consensus among them. Tattooed on his face was an etched grimace of apprehension, as he hefted his rock-laden satchel onto the desk for inspection.

Lizards. Vile, dirty, scaly cretins, the lot of them.

The orc in charge of the current inspection shift was none other than the 2634th in line for succession to the throne of the Orc King Booraaz, Boroboro Boro Boroboros. After a night of indulgence in his favourite pickled wine, he had been remiss in his duties to report in for the early morning shift and subsequently shackled with his current loathsome and tedious job.

Boroboro examined the hunk of dirt laid out on the table before him.

Pathetic.

“This damn thing’s more soil than anything of value. Take him to be reprimanded.”

The lizardman standing before him paled, an impressive feat to be noticeable since there was thick layer of muck coating his scales.

“No, please. I jus-”

THWAK.

That was going to leave a mark.

A pair of guards quickly moved to shift the unconscious form over to the side for further “reprimanding”.

These greedy lizards didn’t deserve their charity if they didn’t provide the bare minimum to cover the cost of food.

Sighing, he turned back to the line.

“Next.”

Looking at the approaching miners, Boroboro’s eyes lit up with a spark of recognition, a rarity considering how many of these damned lizards looked the same.

Approaching his desk were the forms of two unusually distinct lizards.

The first was short and had scales the colour of blood. It was the same sort of colour one might see staring into a pool of the stuff, deep and rich.

The second, towered over its companion, which Boroboro had recently discovered was apparently a female. A very tall and very pissy-looking female, but female nonetheless.

These two again. Figures.

He had seen them around somewhat during his regular shift work and couldn’t help but notice their unusually increasing alacrity in mining the deeper tunnels. After all, nobody willingly worked the new tunnels of the Deep Magicite Mines.

“So, it’s you two. What have you brought this time?”

Each one looked at the other with a look of unspoken communication and presented both their satchels simultaneously.

They were both full to bursting with fragments of ore and crystals of raw magicite.

A trickle of sweat slowly ran down Boroboro’s temple as he stared at the highly explosive materials that had been haphazardly spilt across his desk.

“R-right. Here’s what you two get.”

Pulling out an ample serving of rations, Boroboro carefully moved the mined goods off to the side. How in the world were these two pulling in so much quality magicite? They should have been dead by this point!

However, against all odds they seemed to consistently come back with more and more each time.

It wasn’t as though this had gone unnoticed either. Many fellow miners had tried to follow the pair to the place where they were digging but to no avail.

And even if they finally pinned down the tunnel, they would just show up elsewhere!

It was infuriating!

Boroboro scratched his chin hairs absentmindedly as he pulled out a chunk of food of less-than-stellar quality.

These two had to have been pulling some sort of trick. No way they were deserving of anything more than this.

Coming back to the desk, he re-examined the faces of the two currently waiting lizards.

The red lizard, partially hidden by his companion, seemed to be squirming on the spot under his baleful gaze, a natural reaction to someone as superior as himself.

The female, however, seemed…confident. Boroboro frowned. That was never a good sign.

Placing the chunk of food dead centre on the table, the female’s assured mug metamorphosed into one of immense dissatisfaction.

“Hey, are you pulling a joke? ‘Cause it’s not funny. Where’s the rest of it?”, she accused.

Her raised voice caught the attention of the guards but a subtle head gesture from Boroboro stopped them from coming over.

The little lizard seemed to shrink in on himself from the potential prospect of confrontation with the guards, but the tall one seemed completely uncowed by their presence, perhaps oblivious to her current danger?

While he could let them do their job and beat the living daylights out of the scaly scum, they were still by and far the most efficient miners currently working the lowest tunnels of the Deep Mines to date.

A more refined approach was needed. Boroboro carefully scooped up a crystal from the pile that had been deposited by them.

“You’re already gettin’ plenty from those hauls, based off what you brought in today,” he mentioned, pausing to see if his statement had any effect. It did not.

“Ya see, we only have so much food ta go ‘round. Added on to that, the fact these crystals are so dangerously unstable means we’d be lucky to refine them at all. So, their worth drops to considerably less.”

The female’s face betrayed a flicker of surprise before reverting back to a less-stern and more-dour countenance.

That took the wind outta her sails.

The same, however, couldn’t be said for the scarlet lizard behind her. His face had gone from a shy, fearful composure to a slightly confused and choleric one.

He was definitely trouble. If he knew the true value of what they presented and told the female, he might end up with a few dead guards and get blamed for the whole fiasco.

Thankfully, the little squirt appeared to be wiser than his apparent age suggested and kept his toothy yap shut.

Time to get them out of here.

“You’re holdin’ up the line. Take it or get lost, lizard.”

Suddenly brought out of their individual reflective reveries, the tall one swiped the food from the counter and began walking away with her shorter companion in tow, breaking off a piece of the food and handing it back to him.

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“This shift promised to be a long one,” he thought watching them both probably trudge off to find some nearby cesspool to nest in.

“Next.”

~~~

She was pacing back and forth slightly while trying to digest just what the runt had told her.

Stopping suddenly, she threw her hands up in the air.

“What a pile of orc shit!” she exclaimed, her self-righteous fury finding a not-too-willing but still captive audience in the lizardboy.

“That stuck-up, wart-faced, troll turd of an orc not only gave some weak excuse as to the half portion he gave, but you’re saying that that magicite was worth almost double that again?”

The lizardboy shied away from his irate companion’s sudden outburst before gathering enough courage to speak up again. Her tail tapped rhythmically on the ground in rapt attention, awaiting his explanation.

“W-well, the last lot that we brought up seemed to get a lot more. Going off that, I thought that maybe we’d get twice as much as before. It doesn’t make sense…”

It did to her.

Sighing, she leaned back against the wall and stared across the cavern at the upper echelons on the mine, watching the ant-like figures of countless other lizardmen scurrying back and forth.

Honestly, she wasn’t mad at the runt, just using him to vent her pent-up aggression. It was by far the healthier option, considering the alternative was smashing her fist against the solid stone walls as a more painful method of release.

She was still pissed but had accepted the situation for what it was. After all, it wasn’t the first time she had been cheated out of her rightful rewards by an entitled orc higher up in the food chain, who thought the sight of a devastated lizardman was the height of jocularity.

One thing was for sure, she wasn’t laughing.

“Hey runt,” her abrupt call bringing the young lizardman out of deep thought, “for what it’s worth, don’t get too hung up on it. The orcs are pretty big jerks about rationing so it makes sense that this sort of thing would happen every so often, especially if they think you fluked a big haul.”

The boy before her scrunched up his face in distaste at her suggestion before pouting and averting his gaze from the older lizardperson.

Heh. Cute. This runt kept on reminding her of a younger version of herself.

“Oi, you two! Quit slacking. I can see you’re not eating so get back to mining!”

The sudden orders from one of the foremen caught the attention of both miners and the taller lifted the shorter to his feet, but not before whispering something in his ear.

“Say, if they think this was a fluke, why don’t we show them how wrong they are.”

~~~

Boroboro sat hunched over the table situated in the guard room. Pure Greygrove ash. A thing of beauty really, wholly unsuited for its current purpose of holding the leftovers of the morning slop.

His mind though, was currently ruminating on another complicated and highly delicate situation.

After those two lizards with the ridiculous haul came and dumped their load on his desk at the evaluation station, there had been a minor uproar at the quantity of pure crystals gathered in one load. Administration was frothing itself into a frenzy.

No one had really paid the miners a second glance. Except Boroboro, that is.

Coming from the esteemed line of succession to the Orc King’s throne, a lofty position attained through countless hours of toadying and no small amount of bloodshed, Boroboro had made a habit of identifying any interesting, or troublesome, individuals that caught his eye. These two definitely qualified as both.

He had taken it upon himself to schedule his next shift to coincide with the new tunnels, the place where those two lizards had last been seen heading. With any luck, he would find the massive vein these two had been hiding and subsequently promoted for reporting their treacherous behaviour.

After all, only the mine was allowed to have a monopoly on resources.

Unfortunately for Boroboro, he was successful in tracking the two through the numerous twisting and winding tunnels, though it had taken the better part of a dozen attempts and countless redirections of other miners.

Tracking through the dark with minimal light was difficult as the tunnels beared no glow from any apparent magicite. Even his rare and valuable ancient magicite artefact, coveted and reserved for emergencies only, could barely squeak out the dimmest of lights from the ambient mana. A dead tunnel.

That was until he heard voices and saw an unusual glow coming from up ahead.

Sneaking very unorcishly, he crept closer to the source of the light and noise.

“…are you sure we weren’t followed here? I thought I heard a noise,” came the voice a young boy, probably the shorter one.

“Hey, focus on the task at hand, runt. Keep looking for that vein.”

The second definitely belonged to the female.

Peering around the corner, careful not to draw any attention, Boroboro observed the two lizards before him.

And his face promptly blanched in horror.

The source of the light hadn’t been one of the oil lamps found normally adorning busy mine tunnels; it hadn’t even been a stolen artefact he could have reported. The light was coming from the short lizard’s hands!

This was bad. This was very very bad.

“Magic.”

Boroboro started sweating profusely; his mind shifted into overdrive thinking of ways to escape the situation but remained stock-still lest his movements give away his position.

The reason for his panic was simple.

The last time there was a recorded incident of a magic-user, the miners had eventually gotten it into their heads that their power was sufficient to overthrow the chain of command and subsequently caused a riot. The number of dead miners was not insubstantial and ultimately set the mine back months.

But this wasn’t what frightened Boroboro. Most importantly, the overseer in charge at the time had went to the effort of executing the foreman in charge of the tunnels in order to make an example of any who neglected to report said events.

And Boroboro was the foreman currently in charge of these tunnels.

Even if he reported the situation to his higher-ups, they would still investigate him and his activities. Given his very small and very illegal stash of artefacts they would eventually uncover, they probably wouldn’t believe that he’d only just discovered the information and kill him for treachery anyways.

Backing away, he began slowly retreating back into the darkness, clutching his trump card in his left hand. These two were trouble…these two…these…two…

Boroboro had only just realised that in his panic, his attention had been solely focused on the magic user and he had lost sight of the currently missing female. Was she a magic user too? Did she spot him? Where was she? His instincts were screaming at him and without a moment’s hesitation, activated his trump card; an invisibility device.

Unlike the light artefact, the invisibility device recharged from one’s own mana and not the surrounding mana in the air. Due to his small pool of mana, this meant the time between available uses was considerable. A ripple spread out from the centre of his left hand, erasing his presence. The field had barely just covered the entirety of his body when a familiar head peeked around the corner.

Not ten inches away, staring directly into his eyes, was the piercing, almost luminescent gaze of that damned female lizard.

“Hey lady, what’s happening over there? I thought you said we’ve got to focus!”

Her gaze lingered on him for a few moments before she turned back and responded to the short one.

“Just hurry up runt. I had the feeling we were being watched. We’ll finish up mining and abandon this tunnel. It reeks of orc in here.”

Looking over her shoulder, she returned to her companion’s side. Boroboro could swear that she knew exactly where he had been.

Staying still and barely breathing, he waited until they had finished mining, packed their ore and left the tunnel for several minutes before he dared attempting to undo the invisibility cloaking.

It was an experience that had left him shaken.

Sitting back in the guard room, having relived the horrid experience in his head, he would have to think of a way to make them stop continuing to be his problem, without showing his hand to the overseer as to the true reason. For now, he would watch them as closely as he dared.

Over the next several days, he observed that both miners were working hard detecting, excavating and delivering magicite for his fellow foremen with unusually increasing frequency. He was unaware that as this time went by, the elder lizardperson had also started allowing her junior to mine the veins under her supervision, lest he blow themselves both up.

Working together, they soon began efficiently collecting more and more rations. Too efficiently.

It wasn’t long before their work was starting to be noticed by the other foremen. Damn. He could see this devolving into an investigation far too quickly.

However, an idea formed just as rapidly as he was contemplating the situation. If these two were so good at mining magicite, perhaps the overseer would see fit to reassign them to even deeper than the new tunnels.

And if his recommendation just so happened to be the perfect opportunity to advance his status in the mine, who was he to complain?.

Yes. That’d be perfect.

~~~

The wind howled down the old and twisted tunnel, wailing like a banshee. Both lizardmen had been given the death sentence by being sent to work in these corridors, and while their entrances were farther up, their depths were near abyssal.

There were places in the mines that branched out far farther from the main shaft than any other area, like the ever-growing roots of a vast oak tree. It was these places which dove so dangerously deep, that their overall depth surpassed that of the new tunnels in both their distance from the mine’s entrance and the overwhelming risk to those who worked in them.

The deepest tunnels of the Deep Magicite Mines ran thick with the presence of the mist-like mana, so much so that a veritably sickly haze obscured everything in sight. Due to barely being able to see one’s way no more than several feet away, these places were aptly called the Devil’s Cataracts.

This was the first day working their newly allocated area and they had already run into a snag.

“I…I can’t find a vein.”

“…What?”

“The mana’s too thick here. Everything is blending into one another.”

Damn. This was going to be a problem. It was too dangerous to just start mining blindly in these parts of the caverns; anywhere could trigger a chain reaction and cause a cave-in.

A thought suddenly occurred to her; they were far enough up to possibly search for those. Grinning she turned towards the boy.

“Alright then, simple; let’s just try to find another area where the mana’s less thick.”

Seeing through the fog, she could barely make out the boy’s unimpressed face and rolling eyes. He gestured around him.

“You see somewhere that fits that description, lady? Because I sure don’t! Maybe your giant butt will simply absorb all the mana in the air, huh? How ‘bout tha-”

Her eye twitched and she approached the little runt. Before he could react, her fist had already slammed his head into the ground. Cheeky bastard.

Letting him lie on the cold stone ground for a bit, she then knelt down and picked the short lizardboy up by his tail. Dangling like some sort of novelty prize, he was still somewhat dazed from the impact.

“Oi runt, keep talking like that if you’d like to experience what it’s like to wind up mute. I meant, do what you do but in reverse. Try to find an area with a lack of mana.”

There was now a considerable lump on the lizardboy’s head, probably due to her prompt head-up-ass removal technique. With teary eyes, the sulking lad flexed his hands in front of him and attempted the colossal task of tuning out all the mana around him.

“Don’t expect this to work, you know. We’ll be really lucky if we can even find that sort of place around here.”

That’s what she was counting on. This boy had ungodly amounts of luck.

It took less than five minutes before the boy’s eye flew open again. The surprise was evident in his face and voice as he declared his findings in a near incredulous tone.

“I…I can’t believe it. I-I found it.”

Excellent. Time to get digging.