Chapter 1
A voice from behind whispered into Zeth’s ear as he walked through the tunnel. “If you go down there, you’ll die.”
He spun around, searching the mineshaft for the person who'd made the ominous statement, but only found a bustling crowd of his guildmates.
“Huh?” he asked. “Who said that?”
They continued pushing past him, none paying his words any heed.
“Hey!” a voice ahead of him shouted. He turned to see the leader of his mining contingent beckoning him forward to the rest of the group. “C’mon. Boss is gonna kill us if this cave-in crap delays the guild even one more day.”
With the shake of his head, Zeth kept moving. It must’ve been a dumb prank or something. And who was to say the person was even talking to him? He might have caught a snippet of someone else’s conversation.
As he caught up to his seven-man team, Nestor looked over to him and sighed. “Sorry to make you do this job last minute. It’s just, you know how Garon is. He heard how long my estimated completion time was and his whole face turned red. Started screaming about how we’re gonna get fired and how our incompetence is gonna cost the guild however much coin. I’ve learned to tune most of his rants out, at this point.”
“Yeah, I know how Garon is,” Zeth scoffed. “He’s a jackass. People like him could benefit from being tied to the back leg of a racehorse and dragged through the street for a few hours.”
“Didn’t you get put on unpaid leave for a week last time you threatened to kill our manager? And don’t you have parents and a sister you provide for with this job?”