Deep underground in ever snowy Elcon there are many mines. You get things like potato mines, sugar mines, mines around fruit veins, you even get mines for metals and precious materials. Now, while some of these mines are basically mining settlements, or have a settlement above them, some of them are a lot smaller in scale and nature.

Yes! That one group of beings just about as lunatic as adventurers, prospectors!

In a series of tunnels we join two prospectors investigating a possible pear vein. Thus far they had found a lot of black rock, but not much pear was apparent, in fact, no pear had appeared. These two prospectors were taking a break from their labours.

They were both seated on a red and white cloth, grimly consuming some of their rations.

One was a fairly common black bat wearing an overly large green scale satchel on his back. Beside him within wing’s reach was a pickaxe. The weapon/tool was shaped like a horned beast with a very big smile. The horn was the pick, the smile was the axe.

The other prospector was some creature with its body wedged into a steel pot that was vaguely drill shaped.

A two-limbed creature called a frulid. They commonly wear pots to protect their tasty fruit-like bodies, which otherwise are quite desirable to things that eat flesh. The only parts the expose to the elements and denizens at large are their vaguely feline mask-like faces and their long fingers that seem more like the legs of an insect.

The mask-like face is quite black, and the whiskers of the face disturbingly seem like antenna.

The frulid went by the name of Rhone and the bat was called Nark.

“If we don’t find the vein soon, we’ll be out of rations” Nark narked.

“It has to be here though! Remember we even found a leaking of pear juice!” Rhone objected.

“I didn’t say that it wasn’t there, said we gotta find it soon, or we’ll have to leave empty handed”

“We’d not have this problem if there was more wildlife in this area”

“Yeah, then the wildlife would be the problem”

“Is being eaten worse than starving?”

“I don’t plan to do either, come on, back to work”

They returned to their labours, Nark swinging away with his pickaxe while Rhone rapidly span his pot, drilling through the rock. They got increasingly nervous as the pear vein continued to fail to appear. However, Rhone suddenly stopped as he was drilling and scuttled back from the wall.

“Watch out!” he cried.

Nark scrambled out of the way as the wall began to rumble, and with a crash, it collapsed. When the dust cleared what was revealed was the glittering pale white flesh of pear! They had found the vein!

“Hahaha! I don’t care how big it is, at least we found it!” Rhone did a little dance.

Nark also laughed, but he climbed over to the vein and hacked out a lump of pear, then tearing that in half he ate one part.

“So good! Come Rhone, taste the fruit of our labours! Ehh? Rhone? Something wrong?”

Rhone’s joy had frozen, and he was staring at something behind Nark.

The bat himself clutched his pickaxe harder and span around, and what greeted his eyes…

Where he had cut off the pearflesh a small bit of something that was clearly not pear was visible. It was the colour of the skin of pear, but fruit-veins often lack any skin, and even if they do have skin, it’d be on the outside not the inside of the vein!

“What is that?” Rhone wondered.

“Dunno, let me dig it out, make a few rock pots for the pear would you?” Nark asked.

As has been noted, prospectors are almost as crazy as adventurers. Most discerning individuals would suspect that unearthing(unpearing in this case) unknown objects isn’t the safest of things to be doing in a world of wild magic.

Rhone gathered a few appropriately sized rocks (they had to be able to slip past the mouth of Nark’s satchel) and began to hollow them out with his drill pot. As he was doing so, Nark worried away at the pear around the object. In short order he had extracted the mystery object from the pear.

He placed it on the cloth he and Rhone had been sitting on earlier.

“Isn’t this an egg?” Rhone observed.

It was shaped like a pear, and only a little smaller than Rhone’s pot, but it did seem to have an eggy air to it.

“Its warm to the touch” Nark said.

“How about you sit on it and hatch it?”

“I’m a bat. Bats don’t lay eggs”

“How about you sit on it anyway!”

“Rhone”

“Ah, ok. Its just that I can’t sit on it, what with the pot and all”

“Rhone”

“What?”

“We’re not going to hatch the egg”

Rhone looked doubtfully back and forth between the egg and Nark.

“What are we going to do if we don’t hatch it?”

“We’re going to cook it dumdum, help me find some stuff to burn”

So began Nark and Rhone’s quest to collect anything that looked like it could burn. They tore vines of fairybulb from the tunnel ceiling, pulled roots from above and below and hacked down a lone unfortunate young upside down tree.

Following that, they gathered together four rocks and placed all their fuel in the middle. Rhone hollowed out a large boulder and together they shifted it up on top of the other rocks.

“Hmm, can’t really make an omelette with this” Rhone considered.

“We’ll just boil it, gotta use pear juice, we don’t have enough water, help me juice some pearflesh”

The pear that they had collected into rock pots earlier proved useful. Soon what with the large pear vein nearby they had enough pear juice just in case too much boiled off.

They lit their burnables, and in short order the pear juice was bubbling merrily.

“This egg looks like it will take a while to cook” Nark narked.

“Hey, watch the boiling pear juice”

They managed to slip the egg in without getting scalded to death, from there it was just a matter of waiting around and keeping the fire going. However, as they thought they were cooking the egg, something seemed amiss.

“Isn’t the juice getting fiercer in its bubbling?” Rhone questioned as he and Nark backed away from the pot.

In the next moment, there was a cracking noise, and then a mighty squawk! Arising from the pot was a bird made of pears, whose feathers were boiling pear juice! It could only be one creature!

It was that being of revival(when boiled in pear juice), the Phearnix!

“Thank you noble strangers for reviving me, for your kindness, I will grant each of thee a wish within my power!”

Nark and Rhone both thought it best not to mention that they had intended to eat the egg.

As for their wishes? Well, merchants and adventurers both became aware of a new mining kingdom that had a large number of pear golems. Their symbol was a Phearnix. There was also tell of some kind of massive underground drill ship that belonged to the kingdom.