The dwarf I crashed into groaned loudly. Clutching my pocket to make sure the sapphire was still there, I scrambled to my feet to see who it was. It was overseer Tradfast, apparently uninjured, but in some kind of trance. He lay still gazing up at the ceiling with empty eyes, mouthing something silently. All the time I’d known the unflappable, unbreakable, loud-mouthed Overseer he’d been the one standing over me, never the other way around; seeing him like this unnerved me.

“Are you alright?” I asked. Although I didn't have any real reason to care about his well being, in my heart I knew it was wrong to leave him in shock while I made my escape. My conscience pulled me back, told me I should at least wake him up before I went on my way, far from him and the mines. It told me I’d feel guilty if he died.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he groaned.

“You’re fine now, Overseer. You’re alive.” I said. “Get up, and get yourself out of here.”

“Stony, are you alright?” shouted Airon, for the second time today, from the top of the stairs.

“I’ve found Tradfast!”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes!”

He made his painstaking way down the stairs, putting his feet on the beams of wood holding up the structure, rather than the splintered steps I’d used. I briefly wondered why I hadn’t had the same idea, then a hand, big enough to cover a plate, grabbed my ankle and squeezed like a vice.

I yelped; it was Tradfast, sitting up and staring at us.

“Let go of me!” I shouted, trying and failing to shake my leg from his grip.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he whispered again.

“Help him up Stony,” said Airon. I looked down, not quite sure where to grab him, nor how to lift him up even if I did grab him.

Airon was not so daunted, and as soon as he reached the foot of the stairs, he grabbed one of Tradfast’s hands with both of his, and strained to pull the Overseer up. Veins bulged on Airon’s neck and he groaned, nearly tipped forwards, then with a surge of strength wrenched Tradfast to his feet. The Overseer’s back was slumped, eyes still vaguely unfocused.

“Do you think he can get out by himself?” I said. Now Tradfast was up, my urge to survive returned with vengeance.

“We can’t just leave him to die,” said Airon. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Airon put the Overseer’s arm around his shoulders, and helped him down to the rock floor of the cavern. Behind and above us surviving miners rushed away from the scaffold as fast as they could, thundering over the cracked and twisted wood, some dragging behind, slowed by broken legs that they supported on crutches, others by the weight of unconscious friends. Three dwarves plummeted to their deaths from one of the topmost platforms. As more and more men rushed off the scaffold, it shifted and warped. It had been overloaded to start with, and with the earthquake damage plus the dwarves stomping madly across it, I had little doubt it was close to collapsing.

“Let’s get a move on!” I turned my attention from the scaffold to shout at Airon. But he was stumbling, struggling with the Overseer. Tradfast must have been twice his weight, and Airon couldn’t pull the hulk of a dwarf after him fast enough. But he was never one to leave a friend, or even stranger, behind, and he ignored me.

“Damn it!” It was clear Airon wasn’t going to leave Tradfast behind. I had to shake the Overseer out of whatever shock had come over him myself.

I jogged backwards in front of him so I could look dead in the eye.

“Get a move on you idiot! Or you’re going to die!”

His eyes locked on to me, then lost focus again. He began to ramble again.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. They just told me to have Fastpick mine up there and I’d...”

“Get. A. Move on!” I shouted. A crack from behind, loud enough to be from an entire thick log splitting sideways, echoed throughout the cavern.

I wasn’t sure if it was my shout that got through to him, or the cracking timber, but he snapped from his trance to glare at me with hard eyes. Shoving Airon away, he sprinted for the other end of the cavern.

“Ungrateful bastard!” I shouted, and sprinted after him, my aching muscles and ragged lungs forgotten at another snap from the scaffold behind. Airon followed.

Another mighty creak sounded, this time accompanied by the sound of crumbling stone. I turned my head to watch, still running, as the wooden edifice collapsed off the rock wall. The thick base of the structure, where every day for the past five years I had climbed up, dragging my feet at the thought of another day’s boredom, fell in on itself. Its massive wheels splayed sideways or else split in half. The troughs of waste rock, which were dragged out at night by the poor sods who worked in the outside, disappeared beneath the rubble. Behind the scaffold, the rock wall crumbled down, great grey sheets that would have taken us miners a good couple months to get through burying the broken wood. Any dwarf too close disappeared underneath the rubble; I let out a shakey sigh of relief at the fact Airon and I had been fast enough to escape being crushed.

We hadn't been fast enough to escape the collapse's shockwave though. It rattled the ground and sent me stumbling to my knees. A wall of dust, no doubt stone that had been crushed to powder as it had fallen, blew from the disaster zone and I shut my eyes against it.

The rumbling subsided as the last few bits of stone wall cracked to pieces against the ground. A shocked silence followed, broken only by coughing, as surviving dwarves choked up dust. I opened my eyes. Maybe a quarter of the dwarves had survived the collapse -- about two hundred. Every single one was coated in grey, many were shaking, and a few lay on the ground, clutching broken limbs. They all stared forwards at the rubble, their eyes unblinking, like glass ones. Airon was the same. He wore a slightly stupefied expression, mouth open slightly.

“We should get out of here,” I said, shaking his shoulder. “There could be another earthquake.”

“I never quite believed it,” came a whisper from beside me.

I turned to see Tradfast, his eyes transfixed on the rubble like the rest.

“Believed what?” I asked.

“Look,” said Airon, pointing. Behind the broken rock and wood, half obscured by a cloud of dust, was a cavern. Bigger than any chamber I’d seen before, it stretched into the distance seemingly without end. It was supported by gigantic pillars, many times the thickness of anything I'd seen before, carved into strange figures. Multicoloured lights swarmed around them like firebugs around a tree-trunk, green red and blue, providing kaleidoscopic illumination.

I stared for a good while with the rest of the miners, watching the glowing dots spiraling around in their bizarre dance. But as stupendously monumental, surprising, shocking and world-flipping as it was, I had no interest in it. I felt the sapphire at my breast, and imagined it turning into a mountain of stamped marble and gold tetras. Tetras that would buy me a house, servants, good food and beautiful women. I turned to slink through the crowd, who stood too hypnotised by the cavern to notice me.

A hand grasped my shoulder. It was Tradfast, and he fixed me with a predatory stare. I glared back.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

An expression of malice, but half crossed with irritation and consternation, came across his face. It seemed half of him wanted to strangle me, but the other half knew that without me, he’d be crushed under several tonnes of wood and rock right now.

“Thank you for saving me. But I can’t permit you to leave. We need to have a discussion, face to face.” Apart from the thanks, he pronounced each word slowly and meaningfully.

“We don’t need to have a discussion. I saved your life back there. You’d be buried if it wasn’t for me, and you know it full well. Let go of me.”

“I’m not letting you go.” His fingers dug into my shoulder. “You found something, didn't you? Something you weren’t supposed to find. Stay here, or you’ll regret it later. Run out of this mine and you’re a dead dwarf.”

He looked at my pocket. I clutched my hand to it, then wrenched myself from his grip.

“Fuck off. You can keep the rest of the dwarves here, but you can’t keep me. I’m leaving.”

“Fine.” He scowled. “But you’ll just end up back here. You have a contract. You can’t run away from the company forever.”

“Oh yes I can.” He ignored that.

“Let’s get moving,” he shouted striding out from the crowd to address all the miners. “There might still be men trapped under there. Ten of you, look after the wounded. The rest, come with me.”

The miners ignored him and continued to stare blankly. I began to push back through the crowd.

“Your friends are still trapped under the rubble," said Tradfast. "Do you want to save them or not?”

He used the same tone he had with me, giving emphasis to each word. Some of the dwarves shook their heads and blinked.

“Do you want to save them? Are you so lazy as to leave them to die?” Tradfast roared, his old spirit returning with vim.

Slowly, the mass of miners seemed to wake, and pressed forward, a new determination on their faces. Unlike me, most of them had long friendships with their fellows, a reason to risk their lives digging through the undoubtedly less than stable rubble. Tradfast turned to lead them back towards the remains of the scaffold.

I pushed backwards through the crowd, jostling aside the dwarves as they advanced on the rubble to save their comrades. I made it past three layers before someone else grabbed me. Airon.

“Come on,” he said.

“No, wait!” I pulled him back. “This is our opportunity to get out of here.”

“I’m not going to leave all those men to die. Neither should you. You’ll be arrested within a week for killing that old man if you run away now. Save a few men’s lives and maybe you’ll get a pardon.” His eyes were filled with concern, and he spoke in an earnest tone.

“Yeah right.” I spat the words out. “The law is the law, you and I both know the only way to escape it is with money.”

“You won’t get any money! Do you really think you can just sell that thing at the local pawn shop for a few thousand marble tetras and be on your way? You’ll be shanked for it before you even get to the bank, and even if you do get to the bank they’ll arrest you for theft!” His fists were clenched in exasperation. “Dirt poor miners don’t come across gems like that sapphire without stealing them from whatever mining company employs them. They’ll take your money for themselves, and turn you over to company to be broken and hanged. Or if any of that old miner’s friends are around to testify, crushed for murder.”

“Bullshit.” I said, although I knew he was right. The hope that’d come over me when I’d first set eyes on the sapphire still burned within me, obliterating the cold logic that told me I was running not to riches, but to an ignoble death.

Airon grabbed both my shoulders and shook me.

“I’m not leaving for some pipe dream that hasn’t a hope of working. Just hand the gem to Tradfast, and come with me. I’m going to help our friends.”

“Our friends? You didn’t even like them!” It wasn’t strictly true, Airon got along with quite a few people, but I was too focused on myself to care. I shoved him away. “I’m leaving, whether you stay and live your life as a dirt poor miner, or come with me and become a rich man, is up to you.”

"Stony..."

I stalked away from him, guilt overwhelmed by frustration. I ground my teeth. Although Airon was my only friend in that awful place, if he was going to try and deny me the opportunity to finally live a life worth existing for, no matter how slim it was, so be it. With my head held high and eyes straight forward, I strode away from him. The wounded and dying behind the crowd looked up at me, some dazed, others with anger.

“Aren’t you going to help the others?” asked one dwarf, clutching a hopelessly mangled arm, blood dripping through his white fingers.

“I’m going to help myself.” I left the mine without looking back.

To be continued.