The pick struck true again, that sharp crack ringing through the damp air of the East Mine like a bell in a silent chapel. I’d lost count how many swings it’d been—twenty? Thirty?—but my arms knew. Every jolt up the handle, every shiver through the worn wooden grip, settled into the meat of my shoulders like an old argument I couldn’t win. The stone here near (2582, 511) is stubborn, veined with iron that hides like a coward beneath layers of grey trash rock. I’d wasted three swings earlier on a pocket that crumbled to dust—mine_ore blocked, I called it in my head, though no one was around to care. Just me, the echo, and the distant drip of water somewhere deeper in the tunnels.
I’d hauled nearly fifty ingots in my pack by the time I trudged up the slope toward the Mining Camp, the weight tugging at my belt, each step a negotiation between pride and exhaustion. But it wasn’t the load that stuck with me—it was the smell of the forge back in Minoc, that thick, sweet iron-heat that wraps around you like a wool coat fresh from the dryer. I’d stopped by the mine forge first, just to smelt a batch quick. The coals were still warm from someone else’s work—maybe Jerek, or that quiet lass with the scarred tongs. I fed the ore in, stoked the bellows, and watched the black rock bleed into molten silver. When I pulled the first bar, still glowing cherry-red, I nearly dropped it. The tongs—I felt it before I saw—the rivet had cracked. Just a hair, but enough. I cursed, shifted my grip, and willed it to hold. It did. Barely.
That bar cooled in my hand as I stood there, the heat seeping into my palms even through the leather. It wasn’t much to look at—just another lump of iron—but it was mine. Smelted, shaped later into tongs that wouldn’t fail, or nails for a widow’s roof in Trinsic, or maybe the hinge for a child’s toy. Something useful. Something real.
Tomorrow, I’ll head back east. Maybe widen the shaft a bit. See if there’s a richer seam sleeping under that cursed trash rock. And I’ll bring new tongs. Forged myself.
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