I will start of by telling all of you readers that this is my first story, so it may not be on par with some of the others you may have read. I am releasing the beginning of the story in hopes of positive feedback so I know if this is something that people would like to read. Because of some *ahem* technical difficulties while writing the first chapter, the trial chapter has been instead split into two separate chapters due to length. In other words, chapter 2 will be like an extension of chapter one. Well, let's begin shall we?

The scorching sun burned the necks of the miners as they shuffled into the mine, lugging their pickaxes over their shoulders. The crowd was completely silent but for the clomping of their boots on the ground. Many of them pulled the collar of the blue, full-body suit up over their necks to try to keep the sun off of them. As the group of over 200 workers trudged the mine, they split into groups of ten and headed down various branch-offs. The miners turned on their suit's built-in shoulder lights as the tunnels grew darker. Every small sound, the scuttling of bugs and rodents and the dripping of water, was amplified in the sil-

"BWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

The laughter broke through the silence like a rock shattering glass. The nearby workers jumped, startled by the sudden noise. The laughter had come from a tall boy with dark brown hair. His mining suit, despite being used the past two days, was almost spotless. The boy almost had a regal feel about him. Next to him walked a shorter boy, blonde hair covering his head. His uniform was torn at the elbows and waist, and his boots were replaced with worn down sneakers. Instead of the lower half of the suit, he wore a pair of shorts that went down to just below his knees, but stayed baggy on him. He had a kind of unruly feel to him, almost the exact opposite of the boy he walked with.

The taller boy slowly calmed his laughter so that he could speak again. "There's no way he believed that!" he said. The boy's mouth was still open slightly with giddiness from hearing the other boy's comment moments before.

The smaller boy looked at him with a grin on his face. "He totally did, I'm telling you." the boy said. "When I told him that the miners had to fight off several Grimm attacks a day down here, he got this really worried look on his face, like this." The small boy imitated the face of somebody who was horrified to give an example. This just caused the taller boy to break out in laughter again.

The tall, dark brown-haired kid and the short, blonde haired kid were called David and Coal, respectively. These two were great friends. They had known each other for years and were both sixteen years old. Normally, those who went to work in the mine were at least twenty-four years old, but these two had special conditions.

David lived with an old couple who lived next door to Coal. His mother had died from a disease seven years ago due to the lack of medicine and medical supplies and knowledge in the small town. This had taken a toll on David's father. His father became an alcoholic and rarely came home. During the day, he worked in the mine until his shift ended upon which he would head to the local bar and stay there until past midnight. One tragic day, while David's father was working in the mine, there was a small earthquake. The tremor shook a support beam loose and a section of the tunnels collapsed. After days of digging, it was confirmed that there were no survivors from that section. Soon after, David went to live with Coal's neighbors. Since the old couple's retirement funds couldn't cover a third person in the house, David went to work in the mine to earn his keep.

Coal, on the other hand, didn't have such a tragic reason to be working in the mines. Coal lived with his parents and his six-year-old sister, Emma. His mother had to stay home to take care of Emma so his father usually was the one to go and earn money for the family. However, Coal's father suddenly became ill. With his father bedridden, Coal was forced to take over as the breadwinner of his family. Coal protested at first, mainly about how he wouldn't be able to do the amount of work the other, older miners did. Coal mainly didn't want to give up on task of planning out how to make the town widely known. He wanted nothing but to make it so the town could support its residents easily.

The town they lived in was named Terraculpin. The town had been built on the ability to sell the coal and ores that were gathered from the mine. But, as the world became fully powered by Dust, the need for the small town decreased to almost nothing. The mines in the town contained no Dust crystals at all. The output of coal from the town was nearly zero percent of what they dug up. The coal they found was used, mainly in the winter, to heat homes. The town rarely had visitors and wasn't even shown on some maps. The few people who still remembered about it called it the "Forgotten Town".

The two boys continued to chat as they walked through one of the many tunnels. When the group they were with came to a stop, the boys walked over to the cart one of the other miners had been pulling along behind him and picked up their pickaxes out of it. They walked over to one of the walls and each took a stance near the other, ready to lift up the pickaxe to swing at the wall of rock in front of them. They both took a deep breath and raised their pickaxes above their heads, bringing it down again with a loud clanging sound. They continued this for around an hour or so before something unusual happened.

They were slowing down with the pickaxes, about to take a break to begin eating lunch when the ground shook for a moment. One of the other miners lost their balance and fell onto his ass while everyone else stayed standing, flailing slightly to avoid a similar fate. Coal looked nervously at his friend. David had I slightly terrified look on his face.

"W-what was that?" David asked with a shaking voice.

Shit. Coal thought. He must be scared to hell after what happened to his father.

Before anyone could answer David's question, the ground shook again, a little harder this time, throwing everyone to the ground. After it stopped, everyone in the group looked at each other nervously. It didn't take long before they heard a noise that they had hoped to never hear while in the mines.

ERR! ERR! ERR! ERR!

At the sound of the alarm, the miners got to their feet and began to run towards where they had come from, abandoning their picks and the cart of rocks they had gathered. Coal and David quickly made it farther ahead than the others, having been two of the highest ranking kids at Fitness Dome, a makeshift version of a gym class that is part of other schools, for their class.

It didn't take long for them to near the entrance to the mine, seeing as how David had somehow managed to memorize the entire layout of the tunnels. As they got to the final turn before the exit, they encountered something that they were utterly stunned by; coming around the corner was a mob of people, running as fast as they could deeper into the mine. David and Coal stopped dead in their tracks.

"Why are there people here that don't work in the mines?" David asked.

"I think a better question is: why are they running into the mine?" Coal responded.

Coal and David began to try to push through the oncoming group as it got to them. Though it was tough, They slowly were able to push past people. Coal made it to the corner at the same time that he reached the end of the group. Coal began to take a step forward before his heart dropped for a moment. He turned and looked around him, unable to see David. He turned and looked at the mob of people who had begun to turn down one of the tunnels and caught a glimpse of David being pulled along by the old couple that he stayed with just before they disappeared around the turn. Coal sighed, knowing that he would never be able to get David out of that group with the couple holding onto him. He took a deep breath and turned around the corner.

What he saw made him stop once again. Coal dropped to one knee, and spat out his breakfast into a pile of mush.

Stay tuned for the second chapter which will continue the trial section of this story, and please, give me feedback so I know how I did.