I’ll tell ye, the pickaxe sings a different song when it’s you and the stone and nothing else. Out there near the road north of Minoc, where the hillside cracks open like a dried-up wound, I found a pocket that rang true—eleven strikes in, and the ore came loose with a shuddering crack that traveled up my arms and into my shoulders. Felt like the earth itself exhaled. I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my glove, gritty as sandstone, and stared at the raw chunk lying in the dirt. Not pretty, not shiny, but solid. Real. I kicked aside a bit of rubble and saw the faint glimmer of more—veins running deep. That’s the moment, isn’t it? Not when the coin changes hands, but right then—when the rock yields and you know, bone-deep, you’re not wasting your breath down here.
Back at the mine forge, the heat wrapped around me like an old coat. I fed the coals, bellows groaning in my hands, and waited for that sweet orange glow. The tongs—I’d been meaning to fix them—snapped halfway through the second ingot. Just ping, like a snapped harp string, and there I was, cursing, dancing back as the half-formed bar clattered into the ash. Took me near ten minutes to reforge the tongs themselves, working quick with what little temper I had left. But once they held? Once the iron flowed smooth and the hammer sang true on the anvil? Forty-seven ingots in my pack, nearly fifty, all born from fire and sweat. Heavy, aye, but a good weight. The kind that settles low and says, You earned this.
Minoc’s cobbled streets felt softer under my boots on the way back, though my shoulders ached and the sun dipped behind the Warrior’s Guild spire. I passed the Provisioner, nodded to the tinker setting up his cart, and thought about tomorrow—how the vein won’t last, but there’s talk of richer seams near the old tunnels beneath the mountains. Might need sturdier tools. Might need a partner. But tonight? Tonight the weight in my pack buys me a seat by the fire, a tankard of something strong, and the quiet pride of a man who wrestled stone and won.
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