The mine was a dark, depressing, dangerous, and bitterly cold place to work. No one liked mining, but it payed well. The Mountains extended far past what was considered the Snow Realm, out into the Wilderness, and in these rugged, stoney peaks explorers had found little of interest, until they chanced on a single mountain, which held an ocean's worth of jewels. On this particular uncharacteristic day, Sven, the senior miner, and Joseph, who was on his fourth day in the mountains, were digging a shaft farther into the bowels of stone.
*CRACK*
*CRACK*
*CRACK*
*CRUNCH*
"Oi! I hit another pocket here." Joseph called out to Sven. Sometimes these pockets exposed more jewels, or sometimes they revealed abysmal crevices waiting to suck any unsuspecting victim to the core of the earth.
"I'm comin'" Sven brought his pickaxe over to the hole Joseph had just made. "Let's open it up. I hope there's plenty in there, the last few hauls have been weak." The miners began their work on clearing the stone. Inside was a small, dark chamber, ten feet across, and almost twice as long.
"Lemme get a torch." Sven stepped outside and grabbed a mining torch. Striding back into the chamber, he rammed it into the wall and light it. Joseph was watching the far end of the chamber, which he could barely make out, and saw a large marble door carved with a winged crest.
"Looks like a door." Joseph muttered uneasily.
"Fantastic!" Sven appeared as if someone had just told him he had the rest of the week off. "Worried are you?" He asked Joseph, "Look, who'd put a door in the middle of a mountain if there was nothin' behind it?"
"I'm not worried about what's in there, I'm worried about who put it there." Joseph disliked surprises as much as a cat dislikes water.
"Wonder how you open it." Sven was oblivious to Joseph's dilemma.
"Could be a force gem."
"Superstitious are you?" Sven asked in a mocking tone. "As if you would need some magical trinket for anything. Start looking for some lever or other. I'm getting another torch." Joseph was irritated at Sven's dismissal of the topic. He pulled out a small, golden triangle and pressed it against a similarly sized triangle carved on the door. With a pulsing glow, the door slid upward without a sound.
"How in the name of sanity did you do that?" Sven asked incredulously when he returned. Joseph decided not to answer, and instead took the torch from Sven, marched through the door, and planted the torch in the cave wall. Sven went to light the torch, grumbling about disrespectful youth, and stopped. There was a crunching sound, a very unpleasant crunching sound. Lighting the torch he and Joseph looked down at the floor.
It was covered in bones.
Sven looked up at Joseph, who was clearly disturbed at this discovery, but trying very hard not to look like a child frightened by a large, pointy stick. Sven was unsettled, but not perturbed. Looking around his gaze fell on a diamond the size of a large apple embedded in the wall opposite the door.
"Well, that's worth all the moldy biscuits we've got back at camp!" Sven excitedly pulled the diamond out of the wall. A circle was etched in the diamond, and inside it was etched an oval, giving the look of an eye.
"You've got your treasure, can we please go now?" Joseph sounded panicked, his resolve to not cower in a corner and weep was quickly deserting him.
"Alright then, we can head back to camp, the shift's almost over anyway." Sven and Joseph left the cave, Joseph fleeing for the safety of open air. Neither man noticed the murky liquid now dripping out of the diamond's former resting place, nor the fact that the liquid was dripping upward.