Chapter 59 The Jerrica Mines (1/2)

The morning after his lesson, Rassa glimpsed the Jerrica Mines for the first time. They were not somewhere he was eager to stay in.

Jerrica itself was built like a military fort, only there was no fort, just a tall and menacing wall that seemed to swallow everything around it with its dark aura. When the carriage pulled up at the gates, Rassa would have told them to turn around if not for the mask secured to his face.

What made it worse was that despite never seeing their expressions, Rassa knew his captors were nervous as well. Clearly, every scary story he'd ever heard about the Jerrica Mines were absolutely true.

The Guards at the gate looked shady. Like they would take bribes at the drop of a hat and frame an innocent just for the fun of it. They leered at Rassa through the bars, and despite the cool expression he'd learned to adopt since leaving Cordon, he was terrified inside.

The Guards waved them through, and the gates opened slowly. The gates themselves were huge, at least eight metres in height, and wide enough to allow three carriages to pass through at the same time. Rassa watched as they entered, registering the clicking of wheel cogs as someone winched the gates open. As soon as the carriage passed through, the gates began to close once more behind them, but Rassa was no longer focused on that. He was focused on what lay beyond.

In a word, desolate.

There was nothing but a vast, dry field between the gates and what seemed to be the main entrance to the mines. Seeing it, Rassa couldn't help but wonder what they hoped to achieve by having so much space free. Perhaps the original builders had intended to use it as space to build a village, or use as a sorting area for what was mined. But now? Nothing but space. Not even a tree in sight and mountain cliffs at each side.

Jerrica was a prison mine...so was the space used to deal with prisoners that attempted to escape?

That didn't bode well.

At the far end of the space sat the mine entrance. It was rather large for an entrance, and had clearly been built that way for a reason. But what was more intriguing to Rassa was the fact that it seemed the residences, no doubt for the officials and not the prisoners, were built into the side of the mountain above the entrance. It looked like a castle had been half swallowed by the mountain. If it did not appear so dark and intimidating, Rassa might have called it beautiful. But now, it was terrifying.

The carriage crossed the great expanse before it was stopped right at the entrance by more Guards.

Behind the Guards stood a man in a long beige coat with a prideful look on his aging face. He had a grey beard that was short and scraggly, and on top of his head sat a pair of eye glasses that looked homemade to say the least.

Despite his lack of weapons or intimidating stature, Rassa was immediately unnerved by the man.

The leader of his captors stepped forward to address the man, but the latter spoke first.

”It was done as requested?”

”Of course, not a trace left behind,” the leader replied, a small tinge of annoyance at being underestimated.

”Good”.

The man in the coat stepped forward and approached the carriage, peering in to look at Rassa like he was a something to be picked apart. Rassa thought he'd disliked the looks of disgust and fear more than anything else. He was wrong, he hated this more.

”When was the last time it fed?”

Surprisingly, Aegin was the one to reply.

”He,” Aegin corrected, ”HE fed two nights ago”.

”I see,” the man stated, looking at Aegin with curiosity, ”You seem to have formed some kind of attachment to this creature”.