Eventually, Isaac brought Jack to a bare rockface, just like the one he had seen the Dalton brothers working on earlier that day. There was nothing that Jack could see that differentiated between the surface in front of him and the passage walls that had led them here.

“Is this where we’re going to mine? It all looks the same”, Jack remarked to Isaac as he took the lantern from Jack and placed it off to the side.

“It does, doesn’t it? Because it is all the same”, Isaac replied, far too cheerful for the situation. “But yes, this is where we will be working today”.

“But why here?”, Jack persisted. “If it’s all the same, why not just mine near the entrance?”

“Why not here?” came the fatalistic reply. “The Earth Element we’re seeking is not an ore that one can find in an easy to follow vein. It cannot be sensed, or delved for. It is all around us, scattered like seeds in the wind for us to find”, Isaac waxed poetic.

“That makes no sense, but whatever”, Jack thought.

“Pick a spot. Any spot. Let us see if you have any luck!”, Isaac pointed to the rock around him.

Jack rolled his eyes, eliciting a chuckle. Closing his eyes, he chanted “Eeny meeny miny moe” pointing at random on each word. He opened his eyes, watching Isaac hefting the pickaxe as he moved to the spot that Jack was pointing at. “So what do I do now?”

“Now, we work as a team! This rock is very hard, and when it breaks it comes off in a large chunk. Your job is to further break down the chunks - what we seek is often not much larger than a grain of rice, so that’s how small you’ll have to go”, Isaac explained.

“Sounds like we’re looking for a needle in a haystack”, grumbled Jack.

“That would be far, far easier”, quipped Isaac. “Here, take these”, he handed Jack two small pieces of bundled cloth, stuffing a similar pair into his ears. He braced himself, before taking a measured swing with the pickaxe.

CLANG

Jack was thankful for the makeshift earmuffs. Even with them, the sound was deafening in the enclosed space, but without them he was sure he’d actually go deaf in short order.

CLANG

Isaac took another swing at the same spot. There wasn’t even a scratch where the first blow had landed.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

“Wow. He wasn’t kidding when he said it was hard”, Jack thought over the steady sound of Isaac hitting the rockface.

After a good few minutes, a hairline crack appeared where Isaac was aiming. With a more definite target to aim at, Isaac focused on the crack until a fist sized slab of rock fell to the floor at his feet. “Now it’s your turn”, he said as he pushed it towards Jack.

Jack took the hammer he was carrying and eyed the slab. How was this hammer supposed to do anything if it had taken so much effort just to chip out this small piece?

“Like this”, Isaac gestured for Jack to hand him the hammer, and proceeded to rhythmically tap, tap, tap at the center of the stone. “Let the weight of the hammer do the work”.

Jack took back the hammer and copied the action Isaac had used. Tap, tap, tap, lifting the hammer and just letting it fall from about shoulder height as he sat.

Nothing happened. The rock just lay there, shifting slightly under each blow, showing no sign of damage. “Go on, you’re doing fine,” Isaac said encouragingly.

After what felt like an age - but was probably only two minutes - the rock cracked and split apart into four smaller pieces. Faced with the featureless pieces, Jack looked at Isaac for guidance.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing, until the pieces are fine enough for you to make sure there isn’t any Earth Element hiding in there”, Isaac said. Anything you find, goes in the smaller bag.

“And the large bags?”, queried Jack.

“What do you think happens to the rock we mine?”, Isaac pointedly asked, waving a hand around to show the lack of loose stone lying around.

“Oh”

His joints popped and cracked as Jack stretched. He had been breaking up this cursed piece of rock for what felt like an eternity, but had finally reduced it down almost to dust. The bag came in useful, allowing him to clear away and seperate the smaller pieces of rock that clearly didn’t contain any of the Earth Element they were hunting for.

He felt disappointed. Isaac had told him how elusive their quarry was but he’d still been hopeful.

“You get used to it”, Isaac said from where he was leaning on the pickaxe. He’d managed to break another slightly larger slab off while Jack was pulverising the first one, and was taking a breather. Swinging that pickaxe looked like hard work.

Both men took a swig of water, and sat for a few minutes before Jack asked “So how much Earth Element do we need?”.

“A piece the size of a grain of rice is roughly equivalent to a week’s supply of food and water”, Isaac answered. “Something the size of your thumb, that will pay off almost a year of your sentence, but you need the gods themselves to be looking out for you to have such luck”.

“I don’t even know what my sentence is, or why I’m here!”, cried Jack, overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation. He buried his face in his hands as tears threatened, not wanting to appear like a child.

“That, my young friend, I cannot help you with”, Isaac said as he awkwardly patted Jack on the shoulder. He was no longer smiling as he went back to the arduous task of rock breaking.

“Friend? I barely know you”, thought Jack as he composed himself. “No point in crying”, he eventually said after a miserable minute.

“That’s the spirit, my young friend. I think you’ll be just fine”, Isaac thought as he watched the young man pull himself out his justifiable misery and crack on with the task of, well, cracking rocks.