I’ll tell you, the walk back from the Minoc mine forge with a pack near full feels heavier than sin. Not that I’m complaining—well, not much. I’d spent the better part of the hour chasing seams in the rock face, pickaxe ringing like a cracked bell each time it bit into the stone. Felt good, that first strike after a rest—solid, clean, like the mountain owed me something and finally paid up. I pulled fifteen good stacks before the vein pinched out, but the real fight started at the forge.
Standing there, sweat stinging my eyes and the stink of sulfur in my nose, I fed the first pile of ore into the flames. Six tries to smelt—six—and half blocked by that cursed inefficiency. Felt like the bellows were laughing at me. On the seventh, the metal finally gave in, glowing like angry embers as it pooled and set. Two ingots. Two. After all that. I remember crouching there, tongs in hand, watching the last dregs of heat fade from the anvil. The iron was good—clean, no slag—but my arms ached like they’d been borrowed from someone else. I counted what I had: nearly fifty ingots rattling in my pack, half of them still warm from the last round. Enough to eat for a week, if I played it right.
It’s funny, though. You spend all day wrestling rock and fire, cursing the blocked smelts, the dull pick, the way the tongs slip when your hands are slick—but then you hear that clink of ingots hitting a vendor’s counter in Minoc, and it all makes sense. I passed by old Hildagarde at the smithy on my way out. Didn’t say much, just nodded when I slid the stack onto her bench. She handed me a few coins, lighter than the ore, but they jingled like music.
Tomorrow, I’m back at first light. That mountain’s got more in it. And so do I.<|im_end|>
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