The old miner lay face down on the platform, one arm stretched in front of him, the other lying over his pick. A dribble of blood leaked from the hole in his head, more from his eyes, nose and mouth. My panicked breathing turned to hyperventilation, and blood rushed to my head from shaking legs. I’d just killed a fellow dwarf in front of half the miners on my platform, who stood wide-eyed in two long, bunched up lines on either side. The reality of it weighed down on me, pressing like a physical force on all my body.

“Stony...” said Airon.

“Murderer!” shouted one dwarf, and he pushed through the crowd of watchers with both arms. He was shorter than me, but strong with bulky shoulders, and he wore a bushy brown beard. Kneeling down beside the corpse, he straightened the old miner’s beard with one gentle hand, per tradition I’d never really understood. Then he stood up and jabbed a finger at me.

“You’re a murderer,” he said.

“I was just defending myself!”

“Get the overseer!” Bushy-Beard ignored me and banged his pickaxe on the platform. “Someone get Overseer Tradfast, my friend has just been murdered!”

Confused murmurs through the crowd; no one wanted the job of telling Tradfast about a murder occurring behind his back.

“It was self defence!” I pleaded, looking around from side to side, searching for some support. Dwarf after dwarf averted their eyes, only Airon met my gaze, and even he seemed conflicted, his lips pursed in a kind of anxiousness over what to do. For once in my life I wished I’d made more friends. “Tell them he tried to attack me, Airon! Tell them.”

Airon made to open his mouth, but Bushy-Beard cowed him with a hard glare. The small dwarf had remarkably intense eyes.

“It was unprovoked.” Each of his words came out like a punch.

“That’s lizardshit! He swung at me first.” I pointed at the dead dwarf. “He was a mad bastard and I was protecting my own skull. Ask anyone here.”

“I saw it perfectly well. You butchered poor old Jost in cold blood, after you stole something from him.”

“Stole something from him?” My heart flushed with anger. The idiot was just as crazy as his old friend. “I didn't steal anything! He started raving about me having diamonds and rushed me. Tell him Airon!”

“It’s true,” said Airon.

But Bushy-Beard wasn’t listening. Tears streamed down his face as he ranted. “Poor uncle Jost, spent his whole life in the mines down here and ends at the hands of the likes of you. You'll be executed for this!”

I snarled. Did I really deserve death for defending myself? “Your friend was mad, dangerous, and--”

With a grinding roar, the whole cavern lurched to one side and back. My anger changed instantly to terror as I stumbled sideways, nearly stepping off the edge of the platform. One onlooker did topple off screaming all the way down; the rest managed to stay on the platform, but not on their feet. I kept my footing for a moment, until another jolt wrenched me down next to rest of them. I landed on my pickaxe and yelped in pain as I banged my upper arm on the steel head.

“What in hell?” I cried. Confused shouting echoed from all around as dwarves tried to right themselves without falling off the platform edge. I got to my hands and knees, and found myself looking at Airon in the same position.

“That was an earthquake.” said Airon. He blinked in disbelief.

“A what? What’s an--”

The rock above my head, where I’d excavated the sapphire, exploded with a blue flash A shower of rock chips and dust rained on my back. The whole mine jolted again, and again. Each jolt began to blend into the next, and the quake turned into one rolling motion. The scaffold shivered like a beast with fleas, and I pressed myself against the rock wall, the only thing that felt solid. The planks beneath me shifted and I cried out, sure they would part and send me plummeting down. I heard the screams of other dwarves too, all hanging on to something for dear life, or falling, but they were drowned out by the creaking scaffold. Then a dreadful rumble came from the rockface, sounding like an avalanche collapsing and falling against the other side. The once stable stone cracked, and shunted back and forth, but I clung to it anyhow, determined not to fall over the scaffold edge only a few metres away.

Airon screamed wordlessly but even at the top of his lungs, I could barely hear him. I turned to look at him flat against the platform, holding onto the floor with his fingers between the twisting, splintering planks. More dwarves did the same behind him.

“Get your fingers out of there, you idiot!” I cried. “You’ll lose them!”

With a mighty heave, the whole scaffold lurched away from the rockface, and I fell screaming into the gap between wall and floor. My face smashed into the platform below when the scaffold slammed back into the rock. If it had done so a moment later, I would have been in two pieces, caught between scaffold and stone. Pain engulfed my nose and hot blood gushed out, but I was too preoccupied with staying alive to care. I worked my fingers between the planks as Airon had done and Iay frozen as the world swayed around me; I’d gladly run the risk of losing digits if it meant saving my life.

The rumbling from behind the rock reached a crescendo, the sound a physical force vibrating my body like jelly. My mouth and throat hurt from screaming constantly, but I heard none of my own sound. I shut my eyes in terror. The rough planks squeezed my fingers as they shifted. Was I going to die? It seemed likely.

All movement stopped with a sudden silence. I lay there, shaking, unable to move. I knew as soon as I stood up, I might be knocked off my feet by another jolt, and plummet to my death twenty metres below. That fear overwhelmed all else. Eventually though, after a few minutes of stillness, my senses began to recover. Aches throbbed through my whole body. I crawled to my feet, and saw through the haze of dust that the scaffold was intact, but badly twisted, and trembling as dwarves rushed about trying to find a way down. I gulped; the whole thing could come down at any moment.

“Stony, are you alright?”

It was Airon, calling from above. I turned my head up to look at him. He was pressed against the platform above, peering through two gaps down at me. Blood ran from his hand where a shard of wood had found its way in, splattering the planks beside me. I wondered if it’d gone through an artery.

“I’m fine,” I said, although I really wasn’t. The earthquake may have stopped outside, but my body still trembled. Airon frowned down at me.

“What is it?” I asked. I looked down at my body, terrified there might be some terrible injury there, some part of me so ruined I couldn’t even feel it anymore.

“The sapphire’s not in your pocket,” he said in a low tone, probably trying not to be heard by any other dwarves. Although from what I could see in my periphery, they were too busy grasping broken limbs, or else lying in shock, to care.

Tremors, pain and fatigue forgotten, I jumped to my feet, grabbing at my shirt. The hard bulge where the sapphire had sat was gone. My only escape from this miserable existence, slipped from my fingers as soon as I’d found it. Possibly an escape from execution too. There was no way everyone who saw me drive the pickaxe into the old miner had fallen to their deaths, but if I could turn the sapphire to money I'd have enough to bribe both judge and jury.

“Where is it?” I shouted up at Airon. “Did you see where it fell?” He shook his head.

I looked from left to right, up and down, jerking my head this way and that in a panic. All I saw was cracked timber and bits of gravel, all obscured in the haze of dust.

“Did it fall off the platform?” asked Airon.

New anxiety flooded through me. If it had fallen to the ground, anyone could pick it up. Then a flickering light shone up from between the timbers at my feet. I breathed a sigh of relief. The sapphire had fallen to the platform below, and the orange flames from a fallen lamp were being reflected up as green. Did sapphires normally reflect light that way? I didn't know, and I didn't care.

“I’m going down to get it,” I said. Airon bit his lip and frowned.

“Don’t you think it’s too dangerous? The whole scaffold could collapse at any minute. Maybe we should hunt along the platform for some unbroken stairs, and get it later.”

“That sapphire is worth more than every one of us in this tunnel put together. I’m going to have it.” His concern was valid, but my dream of lying in a mansion, never having to work a day in my life again blotted out any difficult hows, whys and what-ifs concerning the gem. I’d worry about those once I’d left the mine.

I looked about for a way to get down. At the back of the scaffold was a wooden support pole. I gave it a tentative shake, the I gripped it with both hands and swung my legs into empty air. The pole creaked, sending my heart into a frenzy, but it didn't move. Gradually I clambered down, the rough wood and my rough skin together creating enough friction that I wouldn’t slide despite my sweat-soaked palms. Hands aching, I reached the next platform, and swung back around, feet hitting the wood planks with a reassuring thud. I stuffed the sapphire my pocket between some spare thread and my wallet, hoping they’d keep it in place if I fell over again.

“Did you get it?” said Airon.

I spun around to face him, he was halfway done the pole to my platform. For a moment his hands slipped and he let out a gasp, but he got his grip back, and swung around to land like I’d done.

“It’s in my pocket,” I said.

“We need to get off this scaffold, it’s going to fall any minute.”

I looked up, and saw he might well be right. The platforms above us leaned back haphazardly, many supports in the upper levels snapped, and some parts had detached completely to lie smashed with their former occupants on the stone below. A sense of vertigo gripped me, and it doubled when I realised the platform we were on sloped subtly. I swallowed.

“Let’s go that way.” I gestured to the left, where the nearest stairs were. They had been neat, easy to climb affairs before the quake, and sturdy to support hundreds of heavy dwarf miners thundering up and down them every day. Now they were warped, half their steps missing, but they were the closest way down and I didn't intend to die in the next five minutes when the whole scaffold collapsed.

“Are you sure?” asked Airon, frowning at where I pointed. “It looks unsafe.”

“This whole place is unsafe. You were all for looking for stairs earlier, and now we have them. Come on.”

“Maybe it’s better to just climb down the supports after all.” Airon could be irritatingly uncertain at times.

“You nearly fell off the damn supports! Come. On.”

I took off without continuing the argument. My disagreements of opinion with Airon usually took a long while to settle, more to do with mutual stubbornness than any skill at debating on either side. And talking made my broken nose hurt. Before long, I made it to the start of the stairs. From here, they looked even less steady, but I had no choice but to descend.

I took one gingered step after another, legs shaking, breathing shallow, eyes glued on the creaking, shifting wood below. With each movement I searched for the most stable looking place to rest my bodyweight. By the tenth step I felt I’d got the hang of it. A tentative grin made its way onto my face. Although the stairs had looked like they could fall in at any second, they weren’t so unsteady. I’d be off the scaffold in no time.

The next step cracked in half the moment I touched my foot to it. I pitched forward, smacking my broken nose against the wood, and I rolled down, my yelps and curses joining with the various shouting, screaming, clattering and stomping coming from the rest of the dwarf miners trying to escape the scaffold. I tumbled over and over until I smashed against something soft at the foot of the stairs.

To be continued.