Grunts rang out from the others. We had to catch up or they'd come back and hurt us. I just knew it. I'd deal with whatever blow they might give me, but I couldn't bear for them to hurt Firion.
That was all it took for me to shake myself off, regroup, and find a way to move forward.
We rejoined the others and continued down a slope that grew even more narrow.
I tried to tell myself we weren't being swallowed by an alien beast.
Chapter 10
Firion
Iwas so proud of Talia. She was clearly frightened but she’d tightened her spine and pushed herself through a place that clearly terrified her. I wanted to hold her hand. Squeeze her fingers. Hold her and tell how brave she was. But I could not do anything to draw attention to her.
We reached the end of the passage and exited out into a small cavern with a warren of narrow chutes, and the guard barked out orders. A hole nearby slid into darkness, and I suspected before the day was through, one of us would have to climb inside and dig.
“It's simple,” I told Talia softly, translating the gist of what the Veerenad guard said. “We need to fill eight buckets each. We stay here until we've finished. Once we've each filled four, we'll be given lunch and water.”
She jerked out a nod, her eyes spiraling wildly. She wasn't the first person I'd met who was afraid of tight places. I'd do all I could to make this easy on her,because I couldn't stand the thought of her being afraid.
The air hung with the scent of damp earth and something metallic, and the dirt underfoot felt soft, glistening here and there with crysthron flecks. I didn't know much about the crystal other than that the Veerenad lizards treasured it above almost everything else. Discovering why might give us a clue to how we could escape.
The harshness of the mining site seeped into my bones, but I shrugged it off. We'd find a way to speak with Brax, and hopefully we could come up with a plan and get out of here soon.
“Work,” one guard said, striding back up the passage, leaving other armed Veerenads behind to watch us. A distant bang rang out, telling me they'd locked the door at the bottom of the stairs. We truly were trapped here for the day.
I handed Talia her pickaxe, my worry growing when it was clear she could barely lift it. Her soft hands would be blistered within minutes. That strengthened my resolve to work harder so she wouldn't have to.
“Four buckets.” She took one from me along with the second tool that she hefted. “What do we do with this?”
Brax sidled over to us and explained, and I shared the information with Talia as he moved off to get started.
“Use the ax to break up the soil surrounding a crysthron structure, then use the smaller tool, called a pryer, to gently ease it from the wall. Be careful. The crystal’s fragile and the larger the structure extracted, the more value. Place each clump in your bucket and move on tothe next in the vein. They commonly form in a chain, so if we're fortunate, we'll extract them quickly. Once the bucket is overflowing, it'll empty itself.”
She frowned at the bucket. “Alright.”
Already, fatigue had etched itself into her face. She was still recovering from a serious wound. But with a tight spine, she strode over to the wall on our right and studied it. Finding the glint of a structure, she put her bucket and pryer on the ground near her feet and started digging away at the wall with her ax. The ache in her arm was evident as she swung, and I didn't like how she winced with each blow.
I joined her and worked on a vein peeking from the wall a bit away from hers, determined to put in a solid effort to fill all our buckets.
Once I'd filled my first, I topped off hers.
“I can do it, Firion.” She sagged against the wall, the ax thudding on the ground by her feet. Exhaustion had already started to drain her, but I admired her determination.
“Yes, you can,” I said, “but we need to be smart about it too.” I rested my hand on her shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze, and I could see she drew strength from my touch. “Let me help. I’m bigger than you. Stronger. I wasn’t injured.” Fortunately, the pain from the blow to my head when they captured me had faded.
“Just today. I’m getting better, and I need to do my share, or they’ll be angry.”
A guess on her part, but she was probably right. They wouldn’t feed anyone who didn’t work hard in the mine.
Our full buckets emptied on their own.
“Freaky.” She shook her head, staring down at the one by her feet. “There's no such thing as magic. I have no idea how this is possible.”
“I suspect this might be related to an unknown god. Remember, my stone god gifted me with a weapon and it’s feeding us. Brax just told me that the bucket absorbs the crystals and takes them to where other prisoners process them, though he didn't say what they're doing with it.” I stooped down and studied the bucket itself. “Metal. I haven’t heard of metal gods, but why not?”
Could I commune with them? It wouldn’t hurt to try. Maybe they could help us escape.
“What do they do with the crystals?” she asked.