For a moment, all Seven could do was stand there in shock. She let go of it and backed away, stunned, as it hung in the air over the cluster of dice chips. A system window popped up over the pickaxe, powered by the dice within, and Seven swore faintly.

  UNAUTHORIZED USE OF COMPANY PROPERTY. 367 CHIPS WILL BE DEDUCTED FROM YOUR WAGES. PLEASE ROLL YOUR AUTHORIZED DICE BEFORE USE.

  “Luck take me, I can’t believe it. Those bastards really have thought of everything.”

  Pocket hummed faintly against her shoulder, glowing warmly—as if proud of himself for being right. “Told you.”

  Sighing, Seven peered at the d100 inside her dice bag, holding the bag a bit like a dead animal. It still shone from inside the bag; clearly there were thousands of uses left in the thing. So many, in fact, that she was fairly certain Rook had paid big money for the privilege of terrorizing his new miners with it. Of course, no glow would last once she placed her hands on it, and over time, even her gloved hands would pull the glow from it.

  “If it comes back empty, do you think they’ll fine me?” she mused.

  “Why would it come back empty?”

  “Nevermind.”

  She held the d100 loosely in her gloved hand, wincing at it. It was pathetic and worn, and barely resembled a proper dice anymore. It was more akin to a curious lawn ornament at this point. And she only had three chances. Three out of a hundred to succeed. Luck take her, she didn’t even know what succeeding would do. The stupid dice had no information pop up when she jiggled it in her hand, and everyone at Lucky Mining Corp had been mum about what the mandatory authorization dice actually did. Cheryl had mentioned something about luck in her orientation, but Seven couldn’t figure out how her luck could get worse at this point. Surely a d100 would have little effect on anything at all. Maybe it would just make her boots wet.

  But still. She hesitated, turning the thing in gloved hands. Three percent. Three out of a hundred. Any rational person would have walked away.

  But she’d never been rational when it came to gambling. That was the problem. Even now, staring at what was certain failure, she swore there was a sort of hum in her veins. The familiar rush of possibility. She could win that roll.

  “66, 55, 44,” she whispered, turning the dice in her hands. “A three percent chance.”

  “Terrible odds.” Pocket pointed out.

  “I’ve won worse.” It wasn’t completely a lie, and she’d certainly lost more hands like that than won them. But she couldn’t exactly bluff here.

  Still, she’d come here to take back what was hers, not to cower in the corner of the abandoned mineshaft. Determined, sick, and elated all at once, she let the dice slip from her fingers. The possibility of winning, however slim, was better than the certainty of forty-nine years in corporate servitude. And she had a feeling she would need to win a lot more rolls than this one to escape Rook’s clutches.

  The dice tumbled across the uneven floor with a clatter, the worn edges catching on every rock and divot in the ground. It was easy to see why the thing was so battered. Seven watched it roll, her heart speeding into double-time. The d100 bounced and spun, its faded numbers blurring together.

  Any of the three, she begged, watching it. Any of them.

  The dice slowed, wobbled, then settled onto the rock.

  Sixty-seven.

  Seven stared at the number for a moment, feeling the familiar crash of a lost best. More proof that her luck had obviously run its course. Her pickaxe came crashing down, and Seven caught it, narrowly missing her face with the rusty metal.

  “Well,” Pocket said cheerfully, “at least you’re consistent.”

  “I don’t think that’s—”

  But Seven’s words cut off when an information pop up dinged next to the pickaxe:

  AUTHORIZATION SUCCESSFUL. PLEASE COMMENCE MINING. AS A PENALTY FOR ROLLING OUTSIDE OF YOUR AUTHORIZED RANGE, 59 CHIPS WILL BE DEDUCTED FROM YOUR PAY WITH 2 PERCENT INTEREST. LMC IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR AUXILARY EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE AUTHORIZED LUCK DICE. MINE SAFELY, AND REMEMBER—AT LMC, WE’RE FAMILY!

  “Luck dice?” Seven whirled on the tiny dice as if it could hear her.

  “Those are banned a few kingdoms over,” Pocket added, bouncing on her shoulder. “Too dangerous.”

  “Of course they are,” she snapped. “And for good reason, too.”

  The tunnel shuddered.

  Seven looked up just as the first crack appeared in the ceiling, a hairline fracture that spread like a bolt of lightning across the stone. Dust rained down, and somewhere in the darkness, something groaned—the sound of rock and timber giving way under impossible weight.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Oh,” Seven whispered, watching the ceiling overhead. She swung at the vein of dice shards in the wall anyway as hard as she could, then swept the lot of them into a bag before tucking them away in her belt and darting for the luck dice. Panic flooded through her as she snatched it, then slung her pickaxe over her back again and looked up at the ceiling.

  The support beam directly above her head—this one held together with several nailed boards, no less—began to buckle. The ore in the walls flashed brighter, as if responding to the chaos, and the tunnel filled with a low groan.

  Seven grabbed her lantern and sprinted towards the entrance, Pocket holding on for dear life with his stubby arms. The chunk of ceiling crashed down where she’d been standing just seconds before.

  She scrambled towards the tunnel mouth, partially on hands and knees, as more dirt rained down, panic making her fingers icy with dread.

  I’m going to die, she realized. I’m going to be buried alive on my first day.

  But there was little she could do but force her way forward. She scrambled towards the tunnel mouth, halfway on hands and knees, the world coming apart around her. Rock fragments slammed into her back, and the glowing veins disappeared as she ran, that glowing wealth swallowed by the wall.

  “Expensive pancakes!” Pocket wailed in her ear. “Expensive pancakes! We’re about to become expensive pancakes.”

  “I didn’t even have pancakes this morning, you luck-forsaken thing.”

  “I’ll never taste a pancake,” Pocket wailed, hysterical now. “They’re so fluffy and golden.”

  “Don’t talk to me about breakfast foods I’ll probably never taste again right before I die,” Seven snapped. “I can’t believe I ate that paste this morning. My last meal.”

  She skidded to a halt near the tunnel entrance and banged on the metal cage to the lift. She tried her card again. Nothing. Not even a beep this time. Seven finally kicked the thing, swearing.

  “Who designed this place?”

  Panicking, she looked for another way out. Behind her was blocked, but there was a tunnel to her left that she’d overlooked on the way in. She darted into the adjacent tunnel without thinking and held her breath just as the main ceiling gave way in front of her, burying the lift. The crash was deafening, a thunder that seemed to shake the entire mountain. Seven threw her arms over her head and scrunched her eyes shut, waiting for the rumble to pass.

  The ground shook. The tunnel filled with dust, the rocks falling with such force that her ears rang. For several seconds, Seven was aware of little else besides the d100, pressed into her cheek as she clutched her head, Pocket wailing in her ears, and the rumble of the ground beneath her feet, shaking with such force that her stomach turned sour. Then, there was silence. Her harsh breathing now seemed unnaturally loud in the tunnel, the only remaining sound besides a few errant rocks which tumbled across the tunnel floor near her feet.

  When it didn’t seem like she was about to be imminently crushed, Seven squinted in the darkness, trying to survey her surroundings. Her lungs burned, her mouth gritty and filled with the tunnel dust. Coughing, Seven tapped her lantern and swore faintly at the mountain of rock that appeared in front of her. The passage had become a solid wall of rubble.

  They were trapped.

  Then she unfolded her hand from around the d100. Valuable. Expensive.

  Dull.

  “Shit,” she breathed. In the chaos, she’d obviously pressed it against her skin. She’d never explicitly tried that before, but apparently any part of her was cursed, not just her hands. How much had that dice been worth? Millions, perhaps, if it was really a luck dice. She tucked it back into her bag, both relieved to see it gone and panicked all at once.

  For a moment she sat there in the sudden silence, her breathing coming in thick rasps, the taste of dirt and rock in her mouth.

  “Well,” she said, her voice hoarse. “That could have gone better.”

  Pocket’s glow was fainter now—a bad mood, perhaps? Well, who could blame him for that? When he spoke, his voice was small and sullen. “No more pancakes,” he said quietly. “No more anything. They won’t send the lift again after that. And if they do, they’ll charge us overtime for it.”

  Seven flinched at the mention of cost again. What would this cost her? Dusting off her clothes, she stood and tugged her pickaxe from her back.

  “We’ll get you your pancakes,” she told Pocket. “One way or another.”

  Pocket flickered back into life on her shoulder, and she spotted what she was pretty certain were little eyes wedged in his gelatinous form. “Even if they charge you interest?”

  “Especially if they charge me interest,” Seven said, smiling grimly. “If we get out of here, you can have as many stacks as you want.”

  Pocket inhaled deeply and glowed a golden hue—perhaps the color of urine, or of gold coins. Seven wasn’t sure which. Regardless, he seemed pleased, and she turned back to her pickaxe, tapping at the authentication dice wedged within.

  “Emergency mode,” she muttered, looking for the switch. “Emergency mode...ah, there!” She twisted the dice in its casing to a one, and a pop up flashed in her vision.

  EMERGENCY OVERRIDE SOS ACTIVATED. A TEAM WILL ARRIVE SHORTLY TO EXTRICATE YOU FROM YOUR PREDICAMENT. PLEASE NOTE THAT ANY FEES ADDED TO YOUR EMPLOYEE NUMBER WILL BE QUADRUPLED IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY RESCUES WILL BE BILLED TO YOUR ACCOUNT UPON REACHING THE SURFACE. PLEASE HAVE A PAYMENT PLAN READY.

  Sighing, Seven swung her pickaxe just to be sure, but it let her do so, just as Cheryl had mentioned in orientation. It wasn’t ideal—she was pretty certain she’d be charged a fee for each swing without the authentication dice that she’d left in the rubble—but she could try to find something while she was trapped down here, at least.

  “Come on,” she told Pocket, though he’d bared budged from her shoulder. “Let’s see what else we can find while we wait for help.” His golden glow faded to an angry red.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  Pocket considered this, tilting what amounted to a head to study her. “You look like someone who tried to mine dice with wet cardboard.”

  “Things can only get better from here.”

  She shouldered her pickaxe, adjusted her pack, and walked deeper into the Seventh Fold. Pocket sighed, the sound like air leaking from a balloon.

  “Famous last words,” he muttered. “Again.”

  Seven took one step, and a glowing pair of eyes glinted from within the darkness.

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