The Heavens Shall Fall

"This doesn't look abandoned at all," Vael said as their group arrived at the mine that should have been closed since the locals had emptied its resources and moved away from the region.

Their journey towards this sparsely populated part of the country had been uneventful, even if it had been the longest among the three groups. Unlike Siu and Seloryn's trip, theirs had taken them much farther northwest, away from the rest, toward the very edge of the Hollow Song's actual administration and borders, towards the mountains that were made to be the Stormglass Pavilion's responsibility. Where they were supposedly the guarding force, patrolling the invisible end of the Hollow Song's claimed lands.

The way the road twisted and turned in the darkness slowed them even further, so the group eventually veered off it, because it would have been a terrible place to get trapped by anyone coming along the same pathway. Instead, they traversed the mountainous side, cutting straight through it, even finding collapsed old workshops and abandoned villages. From their dilapidated state, it was clear they had been ditched decades ago, people simply leaving after the mine closed and not because of the current situation Hilltop has found itself in.

However, when they finally found the opening of the old mine, came over a tall ridge, and looked down at the place, what welcomed them was a new settlement built very hastily. The buildings, if they were something that could be called as such, were obviously built in a foreign style, just thrown together, not resembling any local architecture they had come across so far. They used the old frames left behind and newly mined rock, so their shapes became completely distorted and random. What surprised Vael and the others more was that hundreds of torches burned everywhere as the occupiers built tall braziers along the main path, and not only the one Vael and the rest could have taken to arrive here. A brand-new one stood at the opposite end, leading toward the mountains, out of the country. The moment they arrived, they saw a carriage had just departed, heading out of Hilltop and disappearing into the darkness.

"Something is very off..." Ruben whispered, scanning the land below, looking dead serious.

The old mining tunnel's mouth had been reinforced once again, even widened by a lot, and no matter if it was the dead of night, figures were going down and coming up with carts upon carts. This mine was clearly working in overdrive.

“This place hasn't been abandoned for a while,” Bren added quietly, pointing towards the opening. "They repaired the supports, as the light refracts differently from the new wood. See that?”

“No, but I believe you if you say so," Vael whispered.

"The beams surrounding the mine entrance are much lighter than the wood you can see at some other points or in the houses," He added. "If you want my guess, I would say they have been operating this mine for the past year or somewhere around that."

“Huh," Ruben chuckled, throwing him a look, "You know your stuff for real.”

"I ran multiple mines," Bren gave him a sideways look with a half-smile. "And I lived underground for a long while. I can also tell you that this isn't looking like shifts are being worked here.” He murmured, squinting at the way people were coming up from the mine.

“Just because it is going on in the middle of the night?”

“No, I'm saying that because look at their state.” He shrugged, and soon, the others recognized it, too.

Someone who had just pushed a cart up slumped down into the snow, unable to get up. He was only then looked at by the other figures loitering around. Only when they kicked him a few times did they simply grab the collapsed man's legs, dragging him through the snow into one of the buildings.

"Slavers...?" Vael asked, grimacing.

"Looks like it to me." Ruben nodded, and Bren agreed.

“If you are digging something worthless, why are you using slaves?” Bren asked, looking at the other two. "They are the worst kind of labor you could ask for. They usually don't have any experience extracting minerals efficiently or well enough. Not to mention, just using them on Hollow Song territory is pretty much telling you to piss in the face of the sect's laws. You do this when every hour matters because you know you could lose access to whatever is done down there at any moment... This is robbing the earth, not caring about sustainability.”

"Or more like robbing the Hollow Song..." Vael's expression darkened. "And its tithe... Which would easily mark the whole land as traitors and bring down the Song's wrath."

"That's why they don't care about the people, only what is down there," Bren whispered, looking serious.

"Check that out!" Ruben said as new movement near the entrance caught his attention, now that one of the workers collapsed and the rest were being called up.

A group emerged from the tunnel, probably being ordered by the other guards, who started checking on them. After they were dragged out, exhausted, the slavers examined them one by one. When they found something, some of the slaves were shoved away toward one of the buildings, maybe to rest... or who knows what else, while others were kicked back into the 'hole.' After a hurried count, there were perhaps a hundred people in that group alone, men and women alike. They didn't really care about who they used, as long as they could hold a pickaxe.

“Cultivators...” Vael suddenly whispered.

"Huh?" Bren and Ruben asked, exchanging glances. "Are you sure?"

"Not all of them." He nodded, taking a deep breath, as a faint strand of electricity traveled between his fingers. "I caught a whiff of one of their auras when his anger flared. I am sure there are some between the slaves... Probably the ones with the chains and collars... there..."

“Could be Void-collars,” Ruben muttered, looking where he was pointing.

“Void what?" Bren asked, genuinely surprised.

"It's just the name," Vael explained to him. "They act like someone with a Void affinity; thus, the naming. Put it on a cultivator, and you can sap his essence. Naturally, they won't work on someone in the Second Circle, but cultivators here are not at that stage, are they?"

"Could be good news," Bren muttered after surveying their enemy once again. "It means those that the king sent to retake that Watch weren't actually killed. They caught them and are now worked to death here."

"Is that good news? I don't want to know what you think of as bad news then!" Ruben said with a morbid chuckle.

"They can be saved," Bren argued back with a half-smile.

"If they captured cultivators, that means... There are also enemy cultivators below..." Vael whispered, taking a deep breath, "They are probably hiding their presence at the moment, but we must treat every guarding member here as a potential cultivator. I wouldn't want to leave the enemy's warriors here without overwhelming force, even if they are wearing a collar. And if a hundred slaves rebel, regular guards with their numbers may not be able to stop them."

“They're not weak either,” Ruben added, going along with his thoughts. " Otherwise, suppressing a rebellion couldn't be swift, and they would lose the mine very quickly."

As they tried to make sense of the situation, another cart came out of the mine, quickly followed by a second one that rammed into the first, spilling its contents into the snow. The scene sparked loud shouting, which was then followed by a vicious beating, but Bren's attention immediately locked onto the contents, glittering in the snow, ignoring the cries from below.

“What?” Vael asked, noticing his flinch, but then he also caught the reddish glow that wasn't the reflection of the fires burning around the mine, but came directly from the stones.

“Is that... CC?” Ruben asked, watching with the same shocked look as the others.

"Just by the color," Bren added, not even blinking, "those are Ember-grade crystals. I don't know the actual quality until I hold them in my hands, but I'm fairly certain of it. Those bastards are mining CC! No wonder they are using slave labor and cultivators. You need the latter to separate it from the earth; mortals wouldn't be able to do it."

"Can we get a quick explanation? I never mined anything in my life." Ruben asked, smiling a little while he added, "I know, shocking."

"CC veins need specialized tools to break down and harvest," Bren began, still looking at the carts, trying to count while the slaves were made to pick everything up and clean up the spill. "You can use mortals to clear away the rocks surrounding the vein, but if a mortal hits the thing, they wouldn't be able to chip it at all. A cultivator, on the other hand, with the right tool, that's different. You need refined bones to withstand the force needed to make a dent; otherwise, you may break your arms when you hit it."

"So, you can smack a pickaxe into it and... mine it, if you cultivated a little?"

"No, not at all." Bren said, shaking his head, "I said they still need specialized tools. Hit it with a mortal's tool that is usually made from iron, and it will shatter. The tool I mean. You need precision cutters, formed and created from CC itself... Don't ask," He added, looking at Ruben. "I don't know how they are made either. It is specialized; it's in their designation, and ours were given to us by the Elders."

"Which means," Vael said with a heavy shrug, "A sect is operating this..."

"Yours?" The two asked, turning towards him at once, because that made sense.

"I hope not..." He said after a long pause, his voice betraying his feelings and letting them sense his fear. "Leaving a new discovery like this, hidden from the Hollow Song and trying to exploit it... That's... suicide."

"If they wanted to do that," Ruben began speaking after a brief thought, patting his back, trying to reassure him, "They wouldn't have done it this way, drawing our eyes onto the issue. Your people couldn't be this stupid, even if you murdered an Elder. Which I still don't know how you managed to do."

"I don't want to talk about it." He answered, not even looking at him, his face fixed on what was happening below.

“This isn't a small vein,” Bren said suddenly, interrupting their discourse, making Vael's mood even worse.

“How do you know?” He asked, not wanting to hear the answer, yet he had to know.

“I spent years watching CC come out of the outers' mines.” He began with a flat but certain tone. “One of our main shafts could produce tens of thousands of Ember-grade crystals over one cycle, with Flame and sometimes Sun-grade mixed into the yield. I don't know how deep they dug here, or how many shafts they opened. Or how thick the vein is... But those two carts? That is not embarrassing compared to what we mined.”

"What?" Ruben blinked in shock now, gulping. "You don't mean that..."

“It is comparable, yes. This is a good vein...”

"From one glimpse? Can you tell all that? Nah, you're joking..." Ruben hissed, but Bren continued speaking while biting his lip a little.

"It is not easy to produce that much... So they are either worked to the bones, or this is a considerable vein, comparable to what is under the Outer Disciples' territory. However, if they don't rotate and try to exploit it before being chased out, they may ruin it entirely... and there is no recovery from that. Once a vein is injured and cut off from its natural regeneration, it can very well ruin the land itself. It's like cutting the earth's essence flow, crippling it and sapping the region dry. It could be devastating!"

Ruben slowly turned toward the mine again when he heard him finish, feeling his heart aching and bleeding. A mortal kingdom with a CC source capable of producing enough wealth to matter to a sect like the Hollow Song...? And they are ruining it?! All that money... possibly wasted... This was the worst possible outcome.

“Fuck,” Vael muttered, and Bren and Ruben could only agree with him. "Let's go!" He began backing off. "We saw everything and more. This is no longer a mission we can do; we must ask for help! As soon as possible."