The march to the mine took a few hours at Tristan’s sluggish pace. It felt longer due to Luke’s probing. How many times would he have to deny his desire to consume souls?!

  The Caldera was larger, nearly a hundred miles from end to end with more than fifty thousand people living in it. Six different cities with their own means of production and infrastructure were supported by the steel from this mine. Tristan had expected it to look more impressive.

  Conni led them to the entrance, which was little more than a hole descending into the dirt at an angle. On the surface, a huge furnace to melt the metal into ingots stood. Three long, sandstone buildings ran parallel to each other. They lacked windows and the door was made of pine wood.

  As they walked past, Tristan was able to look inside. Rows of bunks ran along the walls, each one with a straw mattress. He grimaced, it would be a major step down from the woven mattresses he was used to.

  Only one building stood apart from the functional set up of the mine. A brick home with a wrap around porch was built off to the side of the mine entrance. It had windows with floral curtains and a slate roof that would work substantially better than the sandstone’s thatch roofs. It had a chimney that was pumping out smoke and the smell of something cooking drifted out the open front door. Conni was the foreman, it was only logical that he would have better accommodations than the standard miner.

  The people here weren’t all prisoners. Tristan wasn’t and he suspected Luke wasn’t. Any one who wasn’t a criminal could go home, but even with good legs that would take an hour. Tristan sighed, even if he healed well, he would have trouble exerting himself with one lung, so he was currently looking at his new home.

  “So, this place sucks,” Luke said, getting a chuckle from a few of the older men.

  Conni nodded at Luke, “Well said, young man. This place does suck. The pay sucks, the air sucks, and the work sucks. However, I am a simple man and cannot tolerate bad food. Those who work hard, and by that I mean get results, will eat at my table in addition to the soup and bread that you would normally get.”

  Tristan raised his hand, and when Conni nodded to him he said, “What about those of us who don’t know how to use our kern yet?”

  “Normally,” Connis said, “I wouldn’t care. I need you to handle pick axes and shovels, not light things on fire or breathe underwater. However I need you to be our compass, so we will find a way to train you.” Tristan almost gave a sigh of relief, but Conni continued, “If I can’t, you will be swinging a pickax like everyone else.”

  Tristan was at a bit of a loss. Normally the freshly sifted would be trained by a family member with a similar kern. That was not an option for him, metal kerns were illegal, so even if he somehow found a teacher, who would be willing to risk their lives for a stranger?

  “Alright everyone, “ Conni said, “Let’s get the tour underway.”

  He proceeded to walk around the base camp to show them the different facilities. Some were not evident with a cursory inspection. A sandy field was cleared behind Conni’s home. The security team would use it for practice and it was available to the miners as well.

  There was a small tool shed beside the mine entrance filled with carpentry items and odds and ends needed for the maintenance of the surface buildings. A row of tables set end to end ran the length of the property with benches on either side. Presumably that was where the soup and bread were served.

  After the brief tour, Conni led them below ground. Tristan hesitated, there was no visible lighting. He clenched his fists and marched after the group, this was his only chance. Failure would mean a visit to the temple.

  They marched downward for fifty feet before the tunnel cut back on itself. Another fifty feet down deposited them into a cavernous room that had a nearly thirty foot ceiling. It was massive, by Tristan’s standards, but then again the largest room he had ever been inside was a grain silo. This cave was slightly larger than a grain silo that had been tipped over, for one simple reason. It was square, not round.

  Along one wall were tools, some of which gave off the faint sense of artifacts. Tristan could see several shovels that looked like they had earth affinity and what looked like a wind affinity saw. All were most likely of tier one. Tristan frowned, how could he tell that? They looked for all the world like well maintained tools.

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  Along the other wall were wheelbarrows and above them was a large map of the tunnels drawn in chalk on the wall. Most of it looked like scribbles to Tristan, but he supposed that the map was invaluable to people working down here. Some areas were marked off with a red X and others with a yellow X.

  All of it was lit by glow stones anchored into the vaulted roof. The light was a blank white and would have been hard on the eyes if the rest of the room was not an earthy brown. All the new people were allowed to gawk for a minute before a loud whistle pulled their attention to the far side of the room.

  Conni stood under the map with his hands on his hips, “Alright, the tools of the trade are fairly self-explanatory, you all know how to use a shovel, right?” Everyone nodded, so he turned and pointed towards the map, “This is your best friend. Memorize it. Getting lost in the tunnels can be deadly, especially in the untraveled sections.”

  “If you have a glow stone or someone with a light kern with you, then you will be able to use the signs left behind by previous workers.”

  He went on to explain how hundreds of chalk marks had made it relatively easy to get back to the entrance. The miner’s debts were paid off by the metal they extracted from the ground, so each would leave a distinct mark making travel between the entrance and work sight easy. Any new person would only need to follow the markings to find their way out.

  Tristan nodded, nothing about this mine seemed to warrant the reputation it had gained. He was not naive enough to think it would be that simple. The elders would not send their problem citizens here if it was both safe and easy.

  Conni held up two fingers, “There are two rules of paramount importance. If you break them you will be killed. First and most obvious, never go anywhere alone. These tunnels are dangerous, collapses happen, sometimes we stumble across a pocket of toxic gas. In either case a companion with an air kern will save your life. They exhale breathable air and that will save your life. You may be indentured to the mine for now, but if anyone tells you to go anywhere without a partner I expect you to refuse.”

  There’s the danger, Tristan thought. He swallowed a fistful of air through a tight throat. Still it was nothing more than a logical result of working underground.

  “Second,” Conni pointed at the map, “Don’t go anywhere you haven’t been before. Any tunnel marked with an X and any ore pockets. The red X’s represent unknown tunnels, we did not make them and have not explored them. The yellow represents tunnels we have deemed unstable.”

  It was just as Tristan had assumed. The red X represented restricted tunnels, but he was unsure how you would even go about opening up an ore pocket. Was it like a box? Tristan had assumed that it was like a mass of metal in the ground that they would eat into like a swarm of metal eating termites.

  Conni met each one the new miner’s eyes, “You may be wondering, how will mining ore kill me? After all, that is the entire point of a mine. The answer is simple, I don’t allow threats to my people. I will kill you if you choose to become one by breaking this rule.”

  Everyone took a step back from the foreman’s hard glare. Conni had not looked threatening before, but now that Tristan thought about it, he had no idea how powerful his kern was. For all he knew, Conni could be a tier three with an earth affinity. Underground, he could execute anyone he wanted.

  “You may think that this is an overreaction.” His dark eyes went from man to man, fixing his gaze long enough to ensure that each one met his eyes. “Remember, this Caldera is sitting on top of an ancient civilization, presumed to have been wiped out by mythical beasts,” Conni had a dark expression, “What do you think happened to their kerns upon their sudden and untimely death?”

  Tristan’s eyes widened in horror. Most people were ignorant of what could happen to a corpse right after death. The Temple normally took care of the body, making the spawning of an elemental an uncommon phenomenon. Everyone knew what an elemental was, as the temple could not be there for solitary deaths, but that was not the same as knowing the origin.

  “For those of you who haven’t been born into pious families, an elemental is a nearly immortal being made of pure essence that acts on the regrets of the recently deceased,” Conni explained the gravity of their situation, “This is how it normally works…a father with a flame kern died, wishing he had spent more time with his children. A flame elemental could be born that wanted to do exactly that. Only, flame and children don’t mix, and the elemental would not understand it was harming the child.”

  Not every death would create one. However, the death of a civilization would create hundreds. Their regrets would also be violent. I wish I could have defended my family. I should have fought harder for longer.

  Tristan shuddered at the idea of contending with potentially hundreds of nearly unkillable elementals. That would be enough to give the mine a bad reputation.

  There was just one question Tristan had to ask, “Conni?”

  The mine foreman nodded, his eyes coming to rest on Tristan. “Yes, Tristan, what is it?”

  “What is the average tier of the elementals?”

  Conni gave the group a smile, like he was trying to take the edge off of his next words, “At least there is someone smart here. The average seems to be around tier four.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath That was the same tier as the once in a generation prodigy at the sifting. Tristan swallowed, how could they survive an army of immortal prodigies? His breath picked up to the point his lung started aching, Conni said four was the average. That meant some were lower, but also that some were higher.

  As if he was reading Tristan’s thoughts, Conni continued, “The lowest we have ever seen down here, not from a miner, was a tier three,” he paused to gauge their reaction, “The highest was estimated to be at tier seven.”