Quest for Justice. Sean Wolfe Fay

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      “I’m going to find some people with stuff that I actually want,” she replied, heading for the woods.

      “Wait up!” Stan yelled, walking after her. “Why don’t you come with us?”

      She whipped back around to face him. “WHAT?” she and Charlie yelled at the same time.

      “You can’t be serious, Stan. She just tried to kill us!”

      “You expect me to come with you noobs?”

      “She’ll turn on us as soon as we fall asleep!”

      “If you think I’ll protect you, then you’ve got another think coming!”

      “SHUT UP!” yelled Stan, so loudly that both Charlie and the girl did.

      Turning to the girl, Stan said, “Look, if you attack people who have better weapons than you, then you’re going to get slaughtered. Come with us to the Adorian Village. They’ll help you get a new iron sword, and then we can go our separate ways.”

      The girl thought about it while Charlie stammered weak protests, which Stan ignored.

      “Fine,” said the girl. “I’ll come with you, but just until we get to the Adorian Village. After that, I’m going to leave you two to fend for yourselves.”

      “Good,” said Stan. Charlie looked at him incredulously, but he could see that Stan had made up his mind, and he doubted that he could change it.

      “Come on,” said Stan. “The path leads this way.” He started walking down the path and the others followed.

      “By the way, my name’s KitKat783,” said the girl. “But you can call me Kat.”

      “My name’s Stan, and this is Charlie,” said Stan, gesturing to Charlie, who feebly raised a blocky hand. With no further words, Stan walked off, followed by the smirking Kat and the scowling Charlie.

      They walked along the path in silence. Stan was followed by Kat, with Charlie taking up the rear. “I don’t trust her behind my back,” he’d whispered to Stan. They kept walking until about noon, when Stan spotted something on the side of the road. He pointed it out to the others. It appeared to be a large hole in the ground, lined by stone, with darkness inside that extended deep underground. He noticed black specs on a few of the stones that he could see.

      “That’s a mine!” cried Kat excitedly. “There are minerals inside it if you mine them out! Let’s go in there!”

      “Are you crazy?” snapped Charlie, still upset that Kat had come with them. “It’s all dark in there. There’s bound to be monsters.”

      “Eh, don’t be a baby,” smirked Kat. “See that black stuff?” She gestured to one of the stones flecked with black. “That’s coal ore. We can make torches out of the coal to see in the dark and ward off the monsters at night. Besides, even if there are monsters in there, we can fight them off. We’ve all got swords. We’re all big boys here, except for me, and ironically, I’m probably the least scared to go in there.”

      Nobody argued with her. Stan was a little unnerved at the prospect of heading into a dark mine after the episode with the Spiders. He did need to make a new weapon soon, though, and it would be nice to have a sword made out of stone rather than wood, though he had no idea how to make one. He also wondered what other kinds of minerals were in there. His desires and curiosity overpowered his fear, and he said, “All right, Kat. I’ll go into the mine.”

      “I don’t care what either of you say, I’m not going in there,” Charlie retorted. “I remember the Spiders. I’m going to stay right here, thank you very much.” And with that he walked to the middle of the path, plopped down a piece of wood from his inventory, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at Stan and Kat defiantly.

      “Fine,” said Stan. “You stay out here. See if you can find any more food; we’re almost out. Kat and I will grab some coal and stone and stuff.” And with that, Stan turned and walked towards the mine.

      “Hold on,” Kat said, and she threw him something that he caught and examined: a pickaxe made of stone. She held up an identical one.

      “It hurts your hand and takes forever to punch through rock, and you don’t get anything from it. You’d be best to mine stuff with a pickaxe.”

      Feeling a little bit stupid for his ignorance, Stan set into the mine, pickaxe in hand, tailed closely by Kat.

      His first stop was the coal ore he’d seen. He took his pickaxe and mined a good-sized lump of coal in a matter of minutes. He saw that the coal ran in a vein, and before long he had collected about ten lumps of it. He brought them over to Kat, who was hacking away at a stone wall.

      “Good,” she said. “Let me see those.” He handed her the lumps. She pulled some sticks from her inventory and fastened them to the coal to make torches. Each lump of coal yielded four torches, so they had forty in all.

      “Now we can go deeper into the mine, where there isn’t any natural light,” she explained. They ventured further, placing torches along the wall as they went. Stan noticed that the torches ignited the second that Kat attached them to the wall, with no matches or lighter or anything. Strange …

      “Hey, look over here!” Stan ran over to a spot on the ground flecked with black. “More coal! I’m going to dig this out,” he said. “Could you get me some stone for a new sword? And get some for Charlie, too.”

      “Whatever,” she said. She started hacking into the wall at a new location, gathering up tremendous amounts of stone chunks. Stan dug into the coal vein. He was about to dig into the eighth piece of coal when Kat said, “Hey, Stan! Come check this out!”

      Stan walked over to her. She had made quite a dent in the wall, and she was staring at a block that was different from the stone all around her. This block was flecked with little spots that looked similar to the coal ore, but were light brown instead of black. Kat stepped back.

      “I’ve never seen that before. Do you think it could be gold?”

      “It might be. Hang on, put a torch up,” Stan said. Kat obliged. Stan pulled out his book and turned to the section on blocks. He found a page describing gold ore and showed it to Kat.

      “No,” she said. “It doesn’t match the colour. Gold ore has yellow flecks; these flecks are tan. Check out the other pages.”

      Stan turned to the previous page. He held that illustration up for Kat.

      “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “What is it?”

      Stan read from the book.

       IRON ORE

       Iron ore is an ore block typically found in mines or mountainous regions. When smelted, it produces one iron ingot.

      Stan looked up.

      “Do you know what an Iron Ingot is?” he asked.

      Kat shrugged her shoulders. “Look it up,” she said.

      He did.

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