Chapter 50: Mine
“It’s a bastard of a tunnel, Captain,” the foreman said, scratching at his stubble as he led the way through the scaffolds lining the sides of the entrance, patched with steely parts to keep the hinges in place with men working around them, supported by wooden beams like a patchwork of twisted machinery. “It reeks a bloody stench, too, it sure does.”
Valens peered about the primitive inner workings of the mine as Ned droned on. He had a slurpy way of talking, as though there was something stuck deep in his back teeth, and he was trying to chew it away, sloshing the spit in his mouth round and round, hawking it away now and then to give way to the new wave of saliva with little success.
“A terrible reek,” he gurgled, then hacked a mouthful of phlegm down the ground, wiped it down with the heel of his boot as he trudged on. “Some nasty reek, you can be sure of it. Ain’t no sane man would take a step in that place. Only God's men have the stomach ‘or it, I reckon.”
“I’ve been in the pit of a Dreadmare once,” Garran said as he let the Captain take the burn of the miner’s constant babbling and settled a step near Valens. “I was there deep in its belly. The fool swallowed me whole and tried to work me round like a rock. That was some nasty business, alright. All the guts and the acid in the mix. Uh… They give us these plates for a reason.”
Valens arched an eyebrow at his golden plates, feeling a little out of place with his coarse coat and uncomfortable shoes. As it was, he seemed to be another miner here for the occasion. He wouldn’t have said no to a bit of that golden glamor.
“Envious, are we?” Garran grinned at him, patting the shoulder plate with a hand. It thumped loudly. “Trust me, even if you had the strength to bear its weight, you wouldn’t want to be stuck inside of it. They tailor-make these for every Templar. Special delivery from our Blessed Father above.”
“A Godly gift? It’s your turn to jest now, then?” Valens didn’t believe a word of it. It was true that the frequencies of the armor had a different touch to it, but otherwise, they seemed to be more heavy in material than in godly favor. Wrap enough steel around a man’s head, even he could take a bullet like it was nothing.
“Still a Magical Artifact,” Garran shrugged, then reached for the nape of his neck with difficulty, managing barely to lift a little cloth patch from inside the plate that carried the letters ‘GR’ on it. “See? It has my initials on it.”
“It was hollow when we found it,” Ned was saying in front. “Odd that it took us barely a week to dig it through. Not much sense in there, Captain, you can be sure of it. The mountain ought to’ve been wrapped that node with layers of quartz.”
“So you’re saying it’d been dug through before you?” Captain Edric muttered thoughtfully. “How long has your lot been working on this mountain?”
“About a year. A year and a half, if you count the before work,” Ned said. “Takes a bloody long time to see if a mountain has the nodes inside. This one took the company months to make sure it’d be worth it for a big operation. I myself delivered the first blow to its rocks. It ain’t never been touched ‘fore that.”
“But somebody has dug a tunnel inside.” Captain Edric looked over his shoulder to Garran. “That means we will have company.”