[Coalinga Mines] Child of the Mountain.

[Quzon]

2nd of Summer, 518 A.V.

There was nothing interesting about Quzon as he worked. He was only a simple man covered in tattoos, dressed in a modest loincloth with a belt on to hold his hand axe, swinging a pickaxe into the wall of the mineshaft. The steady and soothing clangor of metal chipping away earth was proving to be the perfect workout for the half-Isur.

He tightly grasped the hilt of his pickax in both hands, bring it up into the air before driving it forward to embed the sharpened tip into the earth. The muscles along both of his forearms flexed from the tension of his grip, as the muscles down his back rippled from powering the downward strike. Quzon grunted as he tried his best to embed the pick as deep as he could to give his shoulder muscles a harder time retracting the nose of the pick. The struggle to pull the pick from the wall caused him to keep his abs contracted as he pulled it back to its starting position. In truth, Quzon was purposefully making the process harder on himself given that he was using the motions as an exercise.

The four members of the Cerulean dig team along side him were not wasting their efforts. All of their strikes were precise, getting the most out of one swing without taxing their bodies. Quzon did not need to join them in digging, but he did not feel like producing any res until they found hard evidence of gems in the area.

“One, two, three, four…”

Quzon started to count his ‘reps’ of swings aloud in common. The mineshaft he worked was filled with a random cacophony of mining sounds until he started to count. “Five, six, seven, eight…” His counting resulted in an unconscious metronome effect which spread out across each of the workers. “One, two, three, four…” They all started to match his pace.

There were no intervals of rest, he simply counted the swings. One set moved into the other, and by the time Quzon actually realized it he was already on the eight swing of the thirtieth set. After many chimes had passed, Quzon would have kept going as his arms swelled with the twinge of exhaustion when a member of the Cerulean called over to him. "Reimancer, come here. I have struck a gem deposit."

Quzon set his pickaxe down to lean it against the wall before going over to check on the discovery. The Cerulean pulled their pick out of the wall where to reveal a deposit of blue raw blue gemstones protruding from the earth. Quzon had never seen the type of gem before which caused him to run a finger along it to feel its texture. "You know, what it?" He inquired to the Cerulean who discovered it. "I believe that it is Akalite." The facially tattooed Akalak answered with some amount of confidence in their tone.

"Everyone, stop. Move to other wall. I will now dig here alone now." Quzon spoke aloud to the others before turning to the Cerulean next to him. "Bring cart closer. Then return to work." His common was not the best, but the Cerulean were all hardworking miners who at least respected that the Isur had not been standing behind them the entire time as they worked. The others did as they were told while the one Akalak brought a wheelbarrow closer to Quzon before returning to their work.

Quzon closed his eyes to concentration on summoning his res in preparation begin digging out the gem deposit. The art of Reimancy was an ironic thing. To lose himself he had to embrace himself, his very being, lose himself to more contradictions, to accept that he would find no answers in his contemplation of self, in logic, and that all he could do now was exist. Quzon focused his mind on one point, the feeling of his finger pressing down against the center of his palm. He used that sensation of pressure as a mental aid while willing his djed into action by emitting the pieces of himself out through his palm in a green ethereally gaseous form. The size of the volume of gas he emitted was roughly around the size of his own head.

words: 710

[Quzon]

Quzon opened his eyes to returne his focus to the earth around the gem deposit to examine the environment that allowed the gems to grow. Quzon said none of this allowed, but thought it to himself as he spoke to himself mentally in his native Myrian tongue. "Interesting. The gems formed within a pod in the stone itself. A fragmented shell of gem-quality material formed a habitat for the interior precious gemstone to grow causing a discoloration in the surrounding earth." He looked around at the dirt to see if the earth had been injected with some type of long absorbed liquid, or if there were other minerals in the earth. The lack of mineral feldspar was apparent, but the ground had two verities of dully gray sand which looked as if a long ago gas of some type proved to be a primary source for the gems growth in the past.

Quzon quickly found himself thinking about joining the Riverfall school of Earth & Life Science to learn more about how the process of gem creation works. "I wonder it is possible to form gems through Reimancy?" The question caused him to glance down at the palm of his hand where the long faded scar of his childhood arcane initiation had taken place. He willed the ball of res flow over to the wall where he smothered it against the surface of the wall, embedding the res into the deep fracture points caused by the Cerulean's pickaxe into the deposit. He pressed the res as close to the wall as possible, not because it was needed, but for safety.

If he activated the attraction while the res floated next to him, then earth from all often the place would fly at him. To avoid stoning himself to death, he made sure the wall would be the primary source of earth it would attract first. Quzon through sheer force of will alone then caused the gas to act like a magnet for earth. The wall closes to the Res began to break away and coalesces like a shell around his his res. The largest mounds of earth clearly brought their trapped contents of gem stones with them as they formed the shell.

The earth Reimancer raised his hand in a slow motion it towards the wheelbarrow as a focusing gesture to better control his the res once it had become a nicely sized floating gem rich planet of stone. And then all at once, Quzon exhaled as he ceased the attraction of his res, resulting in the valuable attracted contents of gems to collapse down into the container. Quzon guided the green cloud of back over to the large hole he had just made to repeat the digging process. It took him several chimes to fill the wheelbarrow enough to where it was overflowing before he finally stopped.

"You. Move it to main area. Have that taken to surface." He commanded quite pointedly at the first Cerulean who he had seen. The man moved with haste, not wanting Quzon to report any issue to Typhus. Quzon then shifted his eyes to the left, finding the second closest Cerulean. "Bring other cart closer. I will dig more."

Words: 535

[Quzon]

Quzon relegated himself back to the meticulous tedium of moving his res to the wall, attraction, sending it back to the wheelbarrow once a new one arrive, and deactivation of the res. The a bell passed with everything going as usual for his workday. That was until his eyes slowly traced over the web of cracked earth he had cast into the wall. He folded his arms across his chest, willing the gaseous ball of res to float to his side as he examined a bit of stone that seemed oddly textured that broke the moments semblance of normalcy. "What is this?" The Myrian thought to himself as he leaned in closer to get a better look at the strange part of the wall within the opening he made.

The inquisitive Reimancer lifted his hand to run his fingers down what he thought was stone, but upon first contact he immediately withdrew his hand. "Flesh?" Was a body buried? A miner trapped? Those were his first immediate thoughts, but something exploded out of the wall before he could call out to the nearest Akalak.

To the Myrian's dismay, an arm erupted out of the wall of earth to grasp its hand tightly around Quzon's throat. A large portion of rubble fell to his feet to expose the head and a potion of the torso of the creature that currently tried to strangle him. The creatures body was riddled with shrapnel of stone... only, it was not shrapnel. No, they looked like natural protrusion that littered the skin of all Yukman. His eyes went wide from the shock, and quickly reached up to wrap both of his hands around its wrist when it grabbed his neck. He wrenched the Yukman's arm upward as he pressed downward on its wrist to impose extreme force on the joint with a wrist lock. The act loosened the monsters grip just enough for him to yank his head back to force his neck from its grasp.

The Yukman struggle free itself since its other arm and lower body seemed stuck in the wall. It struggled wild, only acting on instinct since Quzon was the first creature it had ever met in its new born life. It let out a bloodcurdling shrike which caused all the Cerulean to rush to Quzon's aid. Its strength was immense, but he had its arm in a tight grip. He looked to his floating res, then focused on it to cause a finger sized fraction of it to split off into a secondary mist.

Even in his troubling state, Quzon was enough of a mage to know that he did not want to go into over giving by transmuting all of his res at once in case more were around. That small bit of res floated an inch away from the creatures face. It took him a second focus on the transmutation of his res. He willed the outer portion of it to transmute into a conical shape with a sharp point, then threw the spike forward, then instantly transmuted its internal structure into earth to give it the earth spike mass.

The projectile flung forward with the force of a pointblank brick to the face, fully embedding itself into the Yukman's forehead. However, Quzon then lifted a fist to slam it into the base of the spike that was still visible to guide it deeper. All four of the Cerulean wielded their pickaxes like weapons, each of them slamming them into the creatures body in a wonderful display of overkill and gore.

Words: 593

[Quzon]

"Yukmen?"One of the Cerulean exclaimed as Quzon was naturally forced to recoil from the unexpected outburst. His outward expression changed from that of a Physical being to a Technical one. He did not expect combat, but by Myri's wrath was he always ready and willing to participate. "You, run and tell Typhus Chivan." Quzon pointed towards the nearest Cerulean, poking his finger against the Akalak's chest.

"Everyone, sign of one is one of many." His tone became dire as he glanced around to the others. The look on all of their faces proved to him that they were no strangers to Yukmen. The Myrian had face Yukmen before in the Jungle of Falyndar when he was in the Taloban army. The false imitations of Myrian life made those jungle dwelling monsters imposing foes when left unchecked.

"We keep digging. It is job, but now we dig to find monsters in ground. Root them and destroy." The prospects stumbling into a search and destroy mission gave all of the Miners a newfound surge of energy. "You two, dig to right of the hole. And you, dig to my left." Quzon spoke while using nudges of his head towards the wall to guide the men where to work. The all started to break into the earth with focused efficiency as he guided his green mist of res towards the dead Yukman in the wall. He reactivated the attractive nature of his res by willing his djed into motion, in this instance, the activation caused his res to move in a circular pattern as he pressed it against the earth while using his anger as focusing lens to enter a state of concentration.

The earth that kept the monster body trapped within the wall started to peel away to reveal its lower body until there was no earth left to keep it upright, causing the body to collapse to the ground from its own weight. A dead creatures meant nothing to Quzon, however it did surprise him to know that the rocks and soil embedded in the Yukman's corpse were able to be pulled out by the attractive nature of res. "Earth is earth." The Myrian thought to himself before shifting his attention back to the wall.

Twenty chimes had gone by before three individuals lead by the Head of Coalinga Mines arrived. "Move." Typhus Chivan stated in his consistently commanding tone of voice. Quzon deactivated the attractive nature of his res, returning the cloud of res into its natural orbit around over his head. He moved over to stand behind the rest of the miners as they all watched Typhus rip into the wall with Reimancy. It was an impressive feat that he wished to be able to preform someday.

Typhus unearthed ten more landspawn Yukmen who laid gestating in the ground. "Kill them." The Cerulean used their pickaxes to slay their targets while Quzon approached a half writhing Yukman on the ground. It hardly looked like the thing which had choked him, but more like a grown fetus. It was a pathetic sight which Quzon ended swiftly. He reached behind his back to retrieve his trusty handaxe, then swung it down to slam the axe into its neck to remove it head from its shoulders. There were ten Yukmen and eight miners, minus Typhus who were left to clean up the mess.

Quzon moved over to the last one which just started to grasp onto the fragments of consciousness, like a baby who had just been born. It looked like a fully grown man as it started to stand up. Quzon caught it in the middle of that process by slamming his handaxe into its shoulder at the base of the neck. The strike was mainly used to force it down to its knees as he retracted his weapon for a second blow. The creature shrieked in pain as it swung an arm out to punch him in the thigh. It hurt like getting hit with a sack of bricks, but he quickly swung his weapon in a downward arc to embed the blade deep enough to sever its spine. "The cut wasn't clean." He thought to himself as he used his axe to completely remove the head from the corpse, then picked its head up to stare into the expression it made during its last moment. He watched it until its facial ticks stopped moving, then decided to keep the head as a small memento.

Typhus watched the entire time Quzon preformed his beheading. It was as if he had finally seen the Myrian side of the worker he hired. The rest of the Cerulean chuckled at Quzon's sudden display of needless brutality and several of them were inspired by it to take a few head of their own for posterity's sake. When all was said and done, the workday was still not over as they returned to digging.

Word count: 820

[Quzon]

Grading

Quzon

• Bodybuilding: 1
• Endurance: 1
• Mining: 2
• Leadership: 3
• Meditation: 1
• Reimancy: 4
• Observation: 4
• Geology: 1
• Wrestling: 1
• Unarmed combat: 1
• Weapon (Handaxe): 1

Lore

• Bodybuilding: The Pickaxe Swing.
• Bodybuilding: Mining as an Exercise.
• Leadership: Counting to set a group work rhythm.
• Geology: Akalite.
• Geology: habitat signs of Akalite growth in soil.
• Reimancy: form gems through Reimancy?
• Reimancy: Moving res as a Gas.
• Reimancy: Danger of attraction, self stoning.
• Reimancy: Deactivation of attraction.
• Yukmen: Underground Dangers.
• Yukmen: Landspawn born in the ground.
• Wrestling: Two handed wrist lock.
• Reimancy: Earth Arrow head.
• Quzon: Keeping heads as trophies.

Item:
+1 Yukman Skull