It was hot in the deepest pits. Hot magma flowed through the earth in twisting rivers, and the caves carved around them absorbed their heat.

  The gods had likely never intended for anyone to ever see these caverns, and yet they had found their way there because the gemstones that grew around the magma veins were extremely useful to the wizards that slung their spells around on the surface. A single Deep Ruby could provide the magical energy required to raze an entire city, and there were so many of them here.

  The only issue was that there were few who could survive here for long. As a result, no-one would ever choose to mine here, not when they had their slaves to do it for them.

  Dorbin Featherbeard tried to take steady breaths on air that burned his throat. He gathered his strength and swung his pickaxe into the stone wall. He unearthed some kind of gas pocket that spewed a noxious order in his face, and he held his breath and clasped a hand over his mouth and nose. He had seen too many times what happened to the men who breathed these gases.

  He stepped back and leant on his pickaxe. No-one came to scream at him, which he supposed might be the mercy of this prison. Why would anyone use slave drivers, when every slave in the caverns understood the rules.

  Anyone who returned to the entrance of the pits without a Deep Ruby in hand would be executed on the spot. No-one cared how long it took, but the only relief from the heat would come from delivering one. A Deep Ruby would buy Dorbin twelve hours of relief.

  He swung his pickaxe again. He had been here nearly eight hours and knew that he would collapse soon. Others had already found their daily gem here, and there were only a few left at this time. Soon the doors would open and more would descend.

  “Adamin, give me strength,” he muttered. The words hurt to say, the movement of his dry lips cracking them. He wondered if the god he spoke to, the dwarven lord of the mines, could hear him. Even the dwarves never delved this deep.

  He swung his pickaxe again. The stone crumbled, and he saw it. A fist sized ruby, which gave off a faint glow. Its centre seemed to contain a lit flame, which cast a light onto Dorbin’s sweat-soaked face.

  “Aha,” he whispered. He set down the pickaxe and went at it with the chisel, and a few minutes later the Deep Ruby was in his hands. “Thank you, Adamin.”

  He gave thanks to the god and turned to walk back to the entrance of the caverns. It was a three mile walk from the lowest reaches of the caves to the lift that would take him to the surface. The longer the war continued, the deeper miners like him were forced to go.

  Dorbin had never been a soldier. Like many, he had been a victim of place and time, being caught up in the expansion of the two kingdoms that eventually ran into one another. At first the smaller towns and villages like his had been allowed to continue existing, but as their new governors decided that they needed more men in their mines, or for their machines of war, they started to take people from their homes.

  The steep slope and the heat threatened to drive all the remaining strength out of Dorbin, but he was tough. His short legs were made to climb over stone, though his family had long been out of the mining business. It was pigeons where his family had found their money. There was a day long ago when anyone who wanted to send a message to anywhere on the continent would find their nearest Featherbeard house.

  Of course, all of Dorbin’s birds were long gone, released or dead he never knew. The feathers in his beard, once a symbol of his family, were a distant memory. And his hands had not touched something so soft as a pigeon in what felt like an age.

  The lift shaft came into view. It was a solid steel thing, some mix of engineering styles from all over – Dorbin recognised the dwarven pattern of the way the steel plates were layered on top of each other, but everything else could be any style. Were those levers gnomish? Human? Goblin? Elvish?

  The guard at the door to the lift saw him coming, and his hand went to his sword. These guards changed every two hours, and they got plenty of water, but Dorbin knew better than to protest the injustice.

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  He held up his Deep Ruby. The guard grunted. “Two more,” he said.

  Dorbin nodded. He would have to wait until two more slaves were ready, which could be any amount of time. At the very least he could sit down while he waited, and the heat wasn’t quite as intense as it was further down.

  There were others waiting for the lift. Dorbin recognised them, of course – there were only so many slaves, and the cages where they slept were kept close to one another. They didn’t bother speaking to one another. Words were heavy.

  It didn’t take longer than half an hour for the other two miners to arrive and show their rubies. The guard nodded them forwards, then pressed the signal to call the lift. The shaft rattled and groaned, as the lift began to descend slowly into the mines.

  As they waited, Dorbin heard running footsteps. He turned and saw one of the other slaves running up the slope towards them. He was a young human man named Tristan, still newer than most to captivity. Regardless, he was thinner than most – Dorbin knew that Tristan’s wife was heavily pregnant, and that he had been giving her almost all of his food to give her the strength she needed.

  The guard turned towards Tristan. “You have it?”

  Tristan shook his head and pointed an accusatory finger at the man next to Dorbin, who had been the last to arrive, a fey-kind named Root. “He! Took it!”

  Root shrugged and held up his Deep Ruby. “I did,” he said. “But it’s mine now. I don’t expect our captors care much who it came from.”

  Tristan looked to the guard, who couldn’t have looked less interested in the whole affair. Dorbin rounded on Root. “Does fairness mean nothing to you, lad?” he asked.

  “Should it?” Root asked. “Was it fairness that bore me to this fortress and these caves? Was it fairness that burned your home, Dorbin? It seems that the world hasn’t extended much fairness to me.”

  Dorbin frowned. The minds of fey-kind were notoriously unchangeable, and he knew that he would have no chance of convincing Root. He looked at Tristan and his crestfallen face, which was realising that he would be spending even longer down here.

  He thought of Tristan’s wife and made a decision. He stepped forwards and pressed his Deep Ruby into Tristan’s hand.

  Tristan shook his head. “Dorbin, no.”

  “Yes,” Dorbin insisted. “I’m a dwarf, I was meant for mining. I can spend a few more hours down here. You need to get some rest, lad.”

  “I really can’t accept this,” Tristan said, but Dorbin shook his head.

  “It’s done now,” he said. “Your wife will be needing you.” He turned to the guard. “You’ll accept his price for mine, I expect.”

  The guard shrugged. Once again, Dorbin understood that he didn’t care either way. Whatever happened, one of them would be left behind to continue the work.

  “I’ll make this up to you,” said Tristan. “I swear it on Tiagem.” He named the law god, and Dorbin nodded at the gesture.

  “I know you will, lad.” The doors of the lift shaft slid open, as the lift finally arrived. “Now, get yee up there before I change your mind.”

  Tristan nodded and went for the doors. He gave a dirty look to Root, one that was shared by the rest of the miners and nodded in thanks again to Dorbin as the doors closed behind him.

  Dorbin sighed and hefted his pickaxe.

  “Idiot.” He turned to the guard, who was watching him with an expression that said he still didn’t care about anything.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Idiot,” the guard repeated. “How long have you been down here now? You’ll die before you even find another ruby. Noble but idiotic.”

  Dorbin nodded. “The thing is lad; I don’t believe that you’re wrong.”

  “No skin off my back,” said the guard. “Get out of here.”

  Dorbin turned and began the walk back down into the cave. The steep slope made each step a jolt on his knees, and by the time he reached the bottom he was almost stumbling. He needed rest, for sure, but he would have none here. He had seen what happened to those who fell asleep in the caves.

  Other miners toiled close to the magma veins and didn’t even look up to acknowledge him. Dorbin didn’t bother attempting to greet them and went to the same wall that he had been working on before. It wasn’t so uncommon to find a second Deep Ruby where the first had been, and he had no better ideas as to how to search.

  He swung his pickaxe. It carved a chunk out of the wall, and he swung again, sending a prayer to Adamin for another miracle.

  But it seemed that today, Adamin’s attention was all spent. On Dorbin’s second swing, the head of his pickaxe snapped off the handle and dropped onto the ground in front of him. The handle had splintered completely in two with no hope of repair.

  Dorbin stared at it. He couldn’t use this broken pickaxe to continue mining, which meant the only option he had was to return to the lift and get a new one. He knew that he would never make it that far.

  He sat down against the stone wall. Many dwarves would have given an arm to die like this, deep in the earth, but that had never been the dream of any Featherbeard. Dorbin had wanted to die watching the clouds. He looked up, squinting in the low light, as the stalactites that hung from the ceiling. Perhaps they could be clouds.

  As he slowly drifted off to sleep, he imagined the stalactites coming to life and dancing across the roof of the cave, twisting into a thousand patterns and then parting to give him a final glimpse of the sun.