"I'll contact my family when I can," said Polestar. "Now, about your brother, he seems all right. But I'm a bit worried he'll try to take over."

Tazo scoffed. "He has to be reminded to go eat, sometimes." It was one of the habits that had carried over, through the painful events of last spring.

Polestar said, "Mad scientist type, huh. Just make sure he doesn't go thinking that because he's smart and he knows a lot, nobody's allowed to disobey."

"That's not him, at all." Her ears lay back and she glared at this outsider who didn't know any of the work she'd been through.

He nodded and said goodnight, and she left. The village elder himself was tending to the healer-Mage, so that put Tazo alone in the woman's house for the night. She lay down and dreamed of metal rails turning the landscape into a maze.

#

In the morning, they had their second test. The nearest of the mine tunnels waited for them. Tazo came along with the team hauling that iron bar northeast in search of trouble. This time they came with picks and had a donkey-drawn cart.

Polestar said, "Why is the village so far from the mine?"

Kotta answered. "This is the new mine. There's an old shaft, long exhausted, but the smelter is hard to move."

One of the locals added, "And as you can see, the soil's bad here where it gets rocky."

Urika knelt and crumbled a pinch of soil in his claws, sniffing it. "I think in terms of construction more than farming. I have hardly planted a turnip. So I know more about the dirt's stability than what riches it holds."

"You need to know both in our area," one man boasted.

"Your sister villages seem to struggle with rocky ground, too. Would you be interested in sharing what you know of the best methods? My friends are trying to spread learning."

"Maybe, but it's less important than the mine."

"Of course."

Still, a few people asked Urika about his experience in the war. The Smith had been involved in an impressive bridge project to get troops across the river at a seemingly impractical spot. Then he'd been away from the battles, finding ways to produce armor and weapons with great speed. A few of these people had heard and saw the connection between projects like those and the new rail idea.

They were in distorted, tainted ground now, and the conversation trailed off. Nothing immediately came to kill them. With weapons ready, they went into a tunnel braced with wood.

The sunlight didn't reach into this west-facing tunnel in the morning, so they were relying on crystals and lanterns. The dungeon had built a distorted echo of the real mine, modified by the horrible shrine it had become. The passage ran straight and sloped downward.

"Where do we put this thing?" asked one of the men carrying the iron bar.

Urika said, "Behind us when you find any ore."

A more experienced Miner shined his light ahead and said, "The wall around where I'm pointing looks like a good spot. Why not place the bar to block off the passage ahead?" The tunnel became a T intersection where the man had proposed to dig.

"Because if anything leaps out, we run."

The group fanned out, keeping watch at the intersection with wooden shields and assorted weapons. Tazo and two of the recently trained villagers hung back and installed the rail. It ran down the middle of the tunnel and she was able to start pushing Mana along it. "I feel some resistance," she reported. "But it seems to work."

One of the spell-workers said, "Be ready to have people rushing to get behind you." He crouched and switched off with her, getting practice at using the magic and at the handover process.

Having a plan gave everyone more confidence. The men with picks began their painstaking work. She'd never learned much about Mining as a skill or subclass. The people here had abilities to make it something more than a terrible slog. For one digger each successive blow to the same spot seemed to cut especially deeply. For another, one had some basic earth-shaping magic that helped him to soften and crumble the walls.

"Why not just use magic for the whole process?" she asked, continuing to crouch by the rail. Somebody scuttled forward every so often to clean up the small pile of ore and rock at the digging men's feet.

The lone female Miner was Human but built like a badger. She'd just switched off from guard duty, relieved by Dad. She stretched and said, "We'd run out. And just nicking the stone with a spell is about all you can do without devoting tons of work to learning it."

Tazo frowned. In Grandbridge she'd been rebuffed by the local Mages who didn't want to share their knowledge freely. The real teachers were the ones without a guild to protect. That idea from Selen, about printing guidebooks to put a teacher everywhere, made more sense now that she'd seen another place where they'd be useful. If there were enough literate people.

The lookouts at the intersection called out, "Blob!" The miners did what they'd practiced, rushing back down the entry tunnel, followed by the guards. She had to duck as they ran haphazardly past her, grazing her ear with one pick.

"Ow!" And now Tazo was stuck at one end of an enchanted iron beam, her vision tinged blue with drained Mana, while a horrible wobbling mass of slime slid into view. Its wavering eyes seemed fixed on her.

"Hold!" said the heavyset gal, pick and shield in hand. A Kobold man belatedly joined her, filling the space right in front of Tazo. As Tazo watched, a wisp of red smoke coiled away from her nicked ear as the dungeon claimed a few drops of blood.

The slime beast burbled and sloshed. Her protectors shouted defiance. She kept the magic flow going, charging the rail with extra power. Between the two villagers one glowing eye regarded her and the mass of bruise-colored ooze flowed forward. But then it hissed. Some limb of it lashed out but recoiled, giving off smoke.

"It can't get us," the woman said.

"Stay put," said the man beside her.

The monster lashed out again but the charged rail repelled the blow from even passing above it. One of the villagers said, "Well, now we have a problem. How long is it going to sit there?"