Minoc’s forge was humming like a hornet’s nest when I stumbled in yesterday, shoulders aching and pack straining at the seams. Nearly fifty ingots weighed me down, each one jostling against my spine with every step from the mines near the mountain pass. I’d spent the better part of two days chipping away in that damp, echoing dark—pickaxe biting into stone, sparks flying like startled fireflies when I struck just right. The rhythm of it gets in your blood after a while: swing, clink, shift, repeat. But it’s not the work that wears on you, not really. It’s the silence between strikes, when you start hearing things—your own breath too loud, the creak of the tunnel above, the whisper that maybe this vein’s played out.
I remember one strike in particular, deep in the second level. My pick rebounded with a dull, brittle clang, not the solid thunk you pray for. Felt wrong in the hands—too light, too hollow. I crouched, scraped away the loose shale, and there it was: a seam of dull, flaky iron, barely worth the sweat on my brow. Two days. Two days I’d fed that hole, chipping, hauling, feeding the furnace at the mine forge just to keep my tools hot. And for what? A few paltry bars that’d barely cover my tab at the anvil. I stood there, pick in hand, listening to water drip somewhere in the dark, wondering if the ore was getting thinner or if I was just getting slower.
But then this morning, old Jerek at the blacksmith shop on East Trinsic Road took one look at my haul and grunted—same as always—and laid out six gold coins without a word. His tongs were cracked, one handle bound with leather cord, and the fire behind him roared like it had something to prove. The heat on my face, the weight lifting from my pack, the sound of coin hitting palm—it reminded me why I keep going back. Not for riches. Hell, not even for glory. But for that one clean strike, that moment when the rock yields and the ore gleams like promise in the torchlight. I’ll be back in those tunnels by dusk. There’s still a vein in me yet.
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