You let out a groan. “Do you want out or no?”

With eyes like morning embers Landry steadied his gaze and then, as if proclaimed guilty by the judge, he sighed and lifted his hand pick.

“So?” he repeated.

You tilted down your head “I’ll go on the left wall, you’ll be on the other side. Let’s take turns a-probing the ground for steady and safe parts.”

He scuffled dandruff off his hair. “I don’t reckon that’s the savviest of ways to go about it … but if you want it to be fair.” He stepped forward.

You dismissed the man with your glare. Sliding your forefoot a smidge forward, you swung your pick at the floor, splintering the granite. Dusty pebbles spluttered from where the metal of your ghostly pick bit into. You shifted your weight onto your back foot, but no crack, shatter, or explosion followed suit. You swept the spectral sweat off your brow and stepped ahead. Landry’s luck weren’t the same. On his first strike, the granite soil ruptured into jagged pieces like he’d bashed a puddle. As he cussed and jumped, the barbed stones tore through his birches and into the flesh of his ankles. He stumbled back and grit his teeth. He glared at you; all you could do was reply with a shoulder shrug, which you did.

The two of you forged on. You reckoned the tunnel tried to even up the score, for the next fragile stone that bursted into smithereens was yours. The chunk was smaller than the one hit by Landry moments ago, and brought you nary a scratch nor pain. You moseyed through the crumpled tunnel of solid real and exploding phony grained stone. The raving miner was right, even with all your trying it was downright impossible to tell the difference between the two. You had a sharp eyes, but it didn’t amount to a lick of good.

During your progress plenty of the stones you struck showered you with slicing shrapnel—you’d hit four and Landry … well, he hit at least nine, and one of them was the size of an arm. The shattering blast sent a hail of hundred shards into him, burying deep all the way up to his neck; a fistful grazed and sunk into your skin, but his body took the blunt of them. Landry slammed the pick down.

“What in tarnation?! You holding out on me, Aug?” With each of his ragged breaths, the phantom flames of his soul swirled around the embedded stones. “Let’s swap sides. Come on. Let’s.”

You raised your hand to stop him, silent-like. “Hold up, Landry,” you said. Hold up.” You squinting your eyes to confirm what you’d catch a glimpse of: an outlying spoil. Sunken into—and likely beneath—the blackened stone were petite veins of gleaming ore shining back the bluish-green of your pickaxe. Landry followed your eyes. He scowled and then scratched the underside of foot inside his boot.

“Tell me that’s the iron.”

“That’s the iron,” he nodded. He backed a safe distance away. “Ain’t the tiniest of lodes. Go get it.”