id: 478
name: Delrik
author: RolandTTG
date: 1st August 2021
text len: 3300
views: 85

>I find myself at an open pit coal mine deep in the forest, here high elves use their innate magical ability to mine coal at an industrial scale
>I interviewed a young (by their standards) man by the name of Delrik, a mine engineer and mage who specialises in concussion based magic, he’s also an ex-mercenary and has even been to our world before, but prefers home. 

>”My parents knew I had a knack for magic when I was young, around four or so, so they put me in a mage academy when I was eight, I studied there for around a decade and a half before graduating, made okay grades but academia wasn’t for me.”
>”I was scouted by a merc group over a century ago. I was an ex- journeyman at the time, having left the guild over not wanting to pay dues. I must have fought in a dozen brush wars as y’all would have called them, but damn was it good money.” 
>He paused for a moment as we walked down the sloping path deeper into the mine. The miners had blasted a dugout where most of them stayed during their multi month long work periods.
>”When the calamity happened I was still a merc, the same company too, made it all the way to Captain before some ‘North Korean’ unit came and killed almost everyone at the town we were guarding.” 
>”I got shot twice but thankfully our medica was alive, he pulled the bullets out and healed me with magic, she didn’t make it though, poor girl ran into a hail of bullets trying to save some civies.”
>Delrik gave a sigh before sitting down on his cot and lighting up a pipe, the smoke smelled of hashish mixed with an herb native to the area. 
>”After that battle the company was disbanded, we didn’t even have enough men to bury the dead on both sides it was a fucking nightmare.”

>”How long have you been a miner?” I asked.
>”A few decades on and off, we take breaks in the winter time because of the snow and if the price of coal bottoms out for some reason we head home until we’re needed again.”
>”That last one rarely happens nowadays, we’ve been at this pit for over five years and the price just keeps going up, slowly sure but it still keeps going up.” 
>”Any idea why?” I asked. 
>”Well yeah, it's efficient for heating and the wood elves buy it by the ton every year so they don’t have to hurt a tree to stay warm in the winter time. Plus the foundries love the stuff in comparison to charcoal, and from what our human geologist Ben said this pit has more coal in it than I could blast in a lifetime, my lifetime.”

>”Do you ever plan on retiring?” I asked before coughing a bit.
>”Sure, in another fifty years I might, I’ll have enough coin by then to have a small castle and a couple hundred acres of farming land.” 
>”I’ll probably even settle down, have some kids, you know the work of getting to be a real adult.” He chuckled before taking another hit from his pipe. 
>“But who knows, maybe a landslide will kill me first, wouldn’t be the first time one of us has died that way.” He motioned towards a wall in the dugout with several polaroid pictures on it, around a dozen, all men of different races with the dates listed in the margins. 
“It’s why I don’t have any plans, I almost died once and death is a fickle mistress, wouldn’t be surprised if the bitch had a price on my head.” He chuckled before taking another hit from his hash pipe.