The Forge of Kings (A Man Made of Glass, Book 1)

24

^^ Dire Rat ^^

The entrance to the Mineshaft that the drill had created was a behemoth of a structure, properly designed for future excavations and mining works; it had been designed and built with the intentions of using it, after all, and even without the drill the top layer of the mountain was still used as a mining operation, so the platform was still busy as the barge floated overhead, having carried the party of Delia, Elias, Duma, Julia, Ethan, Sharron, and Finnegan all the way from the city. The usually day and a half journey was taken in just three hours, thanks to the impressive speed of the hovering barge, and Finnegan was more than pleased with its speed and stability; even on the rough mountainous terrain, there had been no trouble with balance or shaking, and the only problem had actually been the wind-shear, which Finn hadn't taken into effect. Going several dozen kilometers an hour meant the wind was slapping them in face quite strongly, but they made do without too much complaint, considering they didn't have to walk the whole distance. As their party circled the mine encampment, Delia stood up and leaned over Finn's shoulder. "So, how do we get this thing in? This thing only hovers over solid ground, right? The mineshaft's crane won't be able to lower us in, so do we leave the barge out here?"

Finn shook his head at her, pushing the throttle forward towards the opening. "You may want to take a seat and hold on, dear sister. This could become... treacherous." Delia was quick to sit down and grip for dear life the cargo netting that served as the seating arrangements of the metallic interior, readying a barrier spell in her right hand if anything went wrong, but she needn't have worried; as soon as the barge was over open space, Finn cranked down the ballast, and they froze in place before slowly descending down into the pit. Finn's dry, amused tone echoed in the dark, as their eyes all adjusted swiftly to the new lack of light. "Or maybe, I would have accounted for the fact that the mineshaft is, surprisingly, a shaft."

Delia and Sharron both looked over the edge of the craft slowly, then simultaneously pulled away from the edge and shivered. "Noted... how far are we going, anyway? The Drill is two kilometers down, but the shaft it created collapsed behind it around half a kilometer down, after multiple earthquakes and tunneling monsters."

Finnegan idled the engine as they reached the rocky bottom, floating a few meters above the shattered remains of the shaft. "Well, we either go to the First Layer of the Depths and work our way down through the dungeon, or drill our way straight there with magic. Which do you prefer?"

Delia answered dutifully, much of her joking aura gone entirely and replaced with a businesslike demeanor. "Drilling will go badly, as we'll attract every burrowing creature in a dozen kilometers, which never goes well... walking sounds good to me. Elias, hunny?"

The armored giant nodded to his wife's question. "I agree. Drilling out will be bad enough, we don't want to have to fight our way in as well. Duma, Julia?"

Julia, (recently recovered from a rather nasty broken leg that'd prevented her from adventuring,) looked at the barge critically for a moment before answering. "I prefer to walk as well... though the amount of ore we could fit on this barge makes me wish we were here to mine silver, instead. Much more profitable than the ten gold we're getting for this escort mission, -not that I mind the easy payday-... Still, digging with magic would attract some of the closer monsters first, and that would mean fighting less of them on the way out... something to consider."

Sharron spoke suddenly in response to Julia's idea, surprising everyone by her sudden vocality while pointing at the rocks around to emphasize her point. "Digging downwards from here would be a death sentence; the rocks are shattered, and unsettled, which means digging through them, even with magic, would cause them to settle down on top of you and kill us all. If you want to call out the burrowing monsters, do it here and let them get themselves killed with the falling rubble, instead of us."