The helot settlement was so barren that Eliah could see where the stone of the Mountain met flat, grassy ground and dropped off into empty air. A few meagre mud huts and dilapidated linen tents clung to an opening at the mountain's base, leaving a wide breadth between them and the edge. She stared at the drop, her stomach rolling with vertigo. She had known that the helots lived below, but hadn't expected it to be at the very ends of their Realm.

Balint caught the worry in her stare. 'You won't fall off,' he said. 'The edge doesn't crumble this far in.'

'Yet,' added Sune, a bitter undertone in his voice, as he led them to the tents.

Eliah baulked. 'Crumble?' she repeated, voice cracking.

'The edge cracks and breaks off every few suns,' answered Sune. 'Most of the settlement has had to move into the Mountain itself. But the dust in there chokes the lungs, so Rhea and the others that are sickly like her will live outside as long as they can.'

'Can't they just move further up the mountain? There are other helot settlements they can join, aren't there?'

Sune shook his head. 'Helot settlements are divided by their work. The Farmhands and Weaveschildren live in settlements a bit higher up where the soil is more fertile, and the Leatherhands and Runnerschildren above them, but they're about as welcoming to the Mountainschildren as warriors are to menials.

'The Smithhands treat them a little more favourably, but they live up at the peak, close to the Arena. If the settlement were to move from here, they'd have to dig new tunnels. Find new veins of ore. That could take months, if not years, and the Mountainselder is not willing to risk the wrath of the Tyrants upon themselves and the Smithhands if the supply of ore, tools and weapons runs dry.'

Eliah bit her lip, suddenly feeling sheepish. 'I... didn't know.'

'You wouldn't,' said Sune with a shrug. He glanced over his shoulder to flash her a thin smile as he entered the cave. 'I wouldn't either if the helots didn't tend to forget that I'm there. They're not exactly keen to talk to warriors. Also watch your head as you come in, Balint. Entrance is a bit low, but the cave gets taller.'

The bigger boy frowned, but followed instructions and shielded his head as he ducked into the cave, with Eliah following behind. Both winced, lightspots dancing behind their eyes as they followed Sune into the darkness.

'It's a bit narrow at the start,' Sune warned, belatedly.

'And dark,' commented Balint.

'It'll get brighter as we get further in. Just keep a hand on the wall and keep walking forward.'

Sure enough, twenty or so paces in, the tunnel grew taller and wider, eventually opening up into a cavern as large as the arena pit and five times as tall. Blue veins of aeonite forked through the ceiling like lightning, branches streaking into tunnels that led deeper into the Mountain as if to point the way to the mines. The veins pulsed steadily, showering the disorderly lines of stick and stone huts below with clouds of twinkling aeonite dust each time it glowed and faded.

Eliah frowned at the clouds, watching them drift, and remembered what had happened with the aeonite statue back at the Temple. She crept closer to Balint. 'Try not to wander off and nearly die this time, Balint,' she whispered.

Balint coughed awkwardly and cleared his throat. 'I will be fine.'

'Mm-hmm...'

Sune gestured for them to hold position as a tiny old man, hunched shorter than even Eliah, with a dirty white beard tottered towards them and waved his walking stick. A doe-eyed girl with pallid skin and a cloth tied over her mouth and nose followed in his shadow.

The Mountainselder squinted as he looked Balint up and down. 'This the one? Good. Looks strong. He'll be a lot of help.'

The girl behind him winced a little. 'You've met Balint before, Elder. He and Sune bring us meat from their hunts.'

'I know that, Rhea!' grumbled the Mountainselder. He eyed Eliah suspiciously. 'What about the girl?'

'That's Eliah, Mountainselder,' said Sune.

'Hmph. And how much help will she be? Warrior quality's really gone down since my day.'

A slight blush went through Rhea's pale cheeks as Eliah tried not to look too affronted. She flashed Eliah an apologetic look over her make-shift mask. 'She's also a warrior-trainee, Elder. I'm sure she'll be of more help than either of us can be. Sune is stronger than he looks, isn't he?'

'I suppose so.' The Mountainselder let out a harrumph and jerked his stick at the tunnel as he turned to toddle off. 'Right then, off you go, Warriors. Go get our people out of that tunnel, wouldja.'

Rhea watched him go, her expression torn between apologetic and exasperated. Turning back towards her brother and his friends, she bowed her head. 'I'm so sorry about him. He's just concerned and doesn't know how to deal with it. We're used to stone caving in, but never aeonite. Please just do whatever you can.'

Sune patted her gently on the head. 'We'll get them out, Rhea.'

'I appreciate the sentiment, but Balint and Eliah don't know what we're dealing with. You're not just trying to move rocks. Aeonite's different. It's... got a mind of its own.'

Eliah fidgeted, absent-mindedly rubbing the wraps around her arms. 'What do you mean?'

Rhea hesitated, wringing her hands as she explained. 'It... it's hard to explain. The miners, they'll... they'll find a vein of aeonite one day, and then find it's vanished and reappeared in a different tunnel the next. Iron, copper – they don't do that. Not to mention that aeonite is harder than either of those. The only way to mine it is to use tools that are forged from it.

'Normal cave-ins are caused by the rock around the metal vein becoming unstable and collapsing. But this... it's like a vein of aeonite suddenly grew in the middle of the tunnel. We've tried chipping away at it from both sides, but it's getting harder and harder with the amount of dust it emits. Evander and his crew are still down there working on it, but if they go for any longer, the entire crew is going to end up with shredded lungs.'

Balint and Eliah exchanged a knowing glance.

Rhea fumbled, pulling out three pieces of cloth with loose ends that could be tied. 'These will help a little, but even with them, the dust will clog up enough over time that you'll have trouble breathing. Evander's crew will have tools you can use. Hopefully you're strong enough to make a bigger dent than we have.'

Sune took them from her and gave her a hug. 'We'll do what we can.'

Rhea swallowed loudly, her eyes misty. 'Thank you,' she whispered.

Gesturing for Eliah to turn around, Sune helped her tie the mask behind her head, and then proceeded to do the same for Balint. Absent-mindedly rubbing the back of her right hand with the fingers on her left, she continued to stare up at the ceiling as Balint helped Sune with the ties of his own face covering.

The veins of aeonite pulsed, steady as a heartbeat, throwing the cavern into relief and then back into darkness again. Rhea had spoken about it like it was moving through the mountain – like it was alive.

The light flickered.

Another cascade of dust billowed into the air.

Silently, Eliah reached out to the cloud, heat building in her fingertips and flooding up through the back of her hand as she subtly twisted her fingers to make the dust swirl.

She frowned. It didn't feel alive. The metal shedding it on the other hand –

'Eliah?' said Sune's voice.

Balint smacked the girl on the shoulder to get her attention. It hit harder than he meant it to.

Eliah stumbled. 'Ow.' Wincing, she let go of the heat in her hand and rubbed her shoulder instead.

'Sorry. You weren't responding.'

'Let's go,' said Sune, his tone unusually impatient.

Eyes still fixed warily on the aeonite threaded through the roof of the cavern, Eliah followed him and Balint into the depths of the Mountain.

─ ☼ ─

Evander's crew looked exhausted when they finally came into view. Most sat on the ground or leaned on their hammers or pickaxes, wiping the sweat from their brows with grime-covered clothes as they coughed the dust from the lungs.

The tunnel was dimly lit by an azure blue haze. But even with the low light, it was clear that the miners were more than a few years older than the trio themselves and that each of them was built just as tall and muscular as Balint or Aramir. Scrubbed clean of the dirt and aeonite dust, and given warrior leathers and furs in place of their threadbare shifts, and the dozen youths would have looked more like they belonged to a warrior sun rank than Sune or Eliah ever would – and they knew it too.

Some nodded to Sune, attitudes ranging from accepting to indifferent. But as soon as their eyes moved to Balint, their expressions hardened.

'These your warrior-trainee friends, come to save the day?' asked one, getting to his feet to meet them.

Evander Mountainschild was neither the tallest nor the strongest of his group, but the way he spoke and held himself made it clear that he had authority.

He looked Balint up and down with a scoff, and all but laughed when he noticed Eliah standing half-hidden behind him. 'Beard of the Mountainselder,' swore Evander in disbelief. He looked at Sune. 'By Seras, the tiny one's not a warrior is she? Looks like she should 'av been sent here with Rhea. Gotta be one of them menials, ain'she?'

Balint let out an angry growl, and Eliah and Sune quickly grabbed the back and sleeve of his tunic to stop him from lunging to Eliah's defence.

Poking her head out from behind him, the girl cleared her throat and piped up, 'I don't look like much, but I'll be of more help than you think.'

Evander snorted. 'I'll believe it when I see it.' He gestured to the nearest of his crew. 'Give'm your tools. We'll see if the warriors really are stronger than us.'

'I'd be more than happy to prove it to you personally after we free your friends, helot,' said Balint, shaking Sune and Eliah off, and shouldering past Evander to accept a glowing aeonite pick. 'This won't take long.'

Sune winced, reverting to his usual meekness, as Evander shot him a withering look. With a stammered apology on Balint's behalf and quiet muttering about how they didn't have time for wrestling after this, he skittered past Evander to grab a pickaxe of his own, leaving Eliah to face Evander on her own.

Without a word, she removed her waterskin from her belt and handed it to him.

The miner frowned, but accepted it. A trace of relief showed across Evander's features as he pulled down his mask to drink.

With a one-handed gesture for him to share it with the others, Eliah sidled past him, grabbed a pick and dragged it through a cloud of chokingly-thick aeonite dust to where Balint and Sune were.

A solid wall of glowing blue metal stood in their way.

She watched as Balint rolled his shoulders and hefted his pick behind his head. 'Are you just going to smash through it?' she asked.

'We're going to smash through it.' Balint flashed her a sidelong look of concern. 'You said you'd help.'

'I'm here and I have a pickaxe.'

He continued to hold the stare. He held it for so long that Eliah's skin started to crawl with the sense that Balint knew exactly how she was intending to help. He knew what she'd done at the Temple.

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. 'Just hit it, Balint.'

'Alright. Sune, coordinate with me.'

Sune nodded, stepping aside to make sure they each had enough berth to strike the wall, but not each other. One after the other they swung their picks through the air, building up a rhythm.

The wall of divine ore barely seemed to crack. Or rather, it cracked – chipped even – but with each pulse of dust-emitting light, the damage to the vein seemed to disappear.

Familiar heat cascaded up from the backs of her hands as she reached for the wall like she did dust and tried to give it a push.

The dust around her shifted, but the wall didn't move.

Balint glanced at her from over his shoulder.

'Keep going,' said Eliah.

He grunted in response.

Eliah licked her lips. Aeonite dust, she could manipulate with barely a thought. Ore, it seemed, would require proper concentration.

She closed her eyes and exhaled, listening. Her thumbs tapped gently across the pads of her other fingers as she synced her breaths with the strikes of the picks. Slow. Steady. Even the glow of the aeonite behind her eyelids seemed to fall into rhythm.

The thought that Hal and Regis were going to be livid if they ever found out about this little escapade flitted across her consciousness, but she banished it with an exhale. Inhaling again, she let the heat from the hidden marks on her hands flow up and over her shoulders, up to the base of her skull, and spill down her back, until the entirety of Aeon's Blessing was ablaze.

Breathing out, Eliah reached for the wall with her mind again –

And a mind in the vein of divine ore pushed her back.

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All content and illustrations ©Jax L. P. (@JaxCreation) on 𝑾𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒑𝒂𝒅. All rights reserved. Please contact the author if you are reading this on another site or under a different account name.