The pickaxe bit into the seam at 2517, 506 with a dull clink that I felt up my arms and into my shoulders. Minoc’s morning sun hadn’t even crested the ridge yet, but the air was already thick with the smell of damp stone and iron-rich dust. I’d been at it near an hour, muscles warm, sweat tracing lines through the grime on my neck. Sixty-odd strikes in, and I’d filled my pack with nearly fifty ingots’ worth of raw ore—most of it iron, a few stubborn chunks of copper mixed in. My knuckles were raw from gripping the haft too tight, but every solid crack gave me something to lean into, something real. Then it happened—three times in a row I tried to step forward and swing, only to bounce back like I’d hit an invisible wall. Someone else must’ve been working the same vein. Felt like a slap. I stood there, breathing hard, staring at the untouched stone, the pick trembling in my hands like it was insulted too.
I trudged back to the mine forge near the south slope, the weight of the ore pulling at my hips. The little stone hut smelled of old charcoal and scorched metal. I fed the flames, stoked them high, and dropped the first lump of ore into the heart of the coals. That moment—when the rock softens, glows, and yields to the bellows’ breath—it still gets me. Thirteen times I pulled bright ingots from the fire, each one hissing as I quenched it in the barrel by the door. But on the fourteenth, the tongs snapped clean at the hinge. Cheap things. I cursed loud enough for the rabbits to hear, staring at the glowing ore I couldn’t safely grab. Had to improvise with a bent iron rod, nearly burned my forearm doing it.
Sitting on a crate outside the blacksmith’s shop later, I counted gold from selling daggers and tongs to the armorer. Not much—just enough to replace the tongs and buy a heel of bread from the provisioner. But it was mine. The sun was warm, the weight in my pack lighter, and my hands, though cracked and stained, still knew their work. Tomorrow, I’ll be back at that vein. And if someone’s blocking it again? I’ll wait. Or I’ll find a new seam. This mountain’s deep, and so am I.
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