The pickaxe bit into the stone with a dull crack, the kind of sound that doesn’t echo so much as it just… sticks. Minoc’s western mine, same tunnel I’ve worked for three winters now, reeks of wet rock and old sweat. My shoulder ached by the third strike, but I kept at it—rhythm’s everything down here. One good vein, that’s all I needed. I’d already hauled nearly fifty ingots in my pack, their weight pulling at my hips like a nagging conscience. Forty-three stones I was carrying, not that I was counting every step, but you feel it after a while. The tunnel narrowed ahead, the torchlight flickering against the jagged teeth of unworked ore. That’s when I saw it—dark streaks in the stone, iron threaded with something richer. I knelt, chipped away with the pick’s edge like I was carving bread, and there it was: a seam of bronze, cool to the touch even through my gloves.
Back at the mine forge, the fire roared to life with a whoomp that singed my eyebrows. I fed the coals with pitch-soaked rags, then laid the ore in to bloom. The heat pressed against my face, and I remember thinking how strange it was—the way the metal glowed first orange, then yellow, as if it were waking up. I reached for the tongs, the old iron ones with the cracked handle, and—snap. The left jaw gave way like rotten wood. Cursed them under my breath. Had to improvise, use the poker and a pair of pliers just to keep the ingot steady. Felt like cheating the craft, but a smith works with what he’s got. When the pour finally ran clean, I tapped the mold and out came a bronze bar, still hissing faintly on the stone. Solid. True.
I sat on the anvil stump, pack open, and dropped it in with the others. The weight shifted, settled. It wasn’t much, just one more ingot, but it was mine—drawn from stone, wrestled from fire. Minoc’s blacksmith will take them tomorrow, same time, same grim nod. He never smiles, but he never haggles either, and that’s worth more than gold in this game.
Come dawn, I’m heading north, beyond the marked tunnels. Heard whispers of a collapsed shaft near the old watchtower. Might be fools’ gold. Might be deeper veins. Either way, the pick’s still sharp, and my back’s used to the drag.<|im_end|>
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