The royal banquet had gone smoothly, or so Edwin guessed from the cheerful prison guards. "I want to claim this was part of the plan," the raccoon said.

Sharing the cell was Alyx, the ferret, who was trying to draw a rune diagram in the floor's dirt. Then there was Elena the puma girl. She pouted, saying, "The others must have a plan, but how am I supposed to wait without my lute?"

Edwin said, "Have you got a way out for us, Alyx?"

"Not yet. This one's practice." The ferret mage wiped away the runes, then frowned at her dirty hand.

A feline guard in fancy armor, with a cape, showed up with four more armed men. "It's your lucky day. We lost some miners, and you've been nominated."

Elena said, "We don't do mining."

"You can learn on the job. Normally we'd leave you to enjoy our hospitality until the King remembers to talk with you. But instead, the new Minister of Production has said to haul prisoners out."

Edwin said, "We're better off here, thanks." Any rescue assumed that their friends knew where they were.

The cat turned to the other guards and said, "We're getting their permission for this, right? Signed and properly paid?"

One deadpanned, "I don't think so, sir."

"Right, then. Seize them."

They opened the cell door and dragged the three out. Edwin gritted his teeth as they hurt Alyx with a painful arm lock. But he'd learned complaining would make it worse, and he had no way to fight back. Fix it later, he told himself.

They got forced onto a cart and carried through the night, away from the castle. At least they'd accomplished something here! They had run a scheme to infiltrate a banquet, involving their friends fetching an enormous amount of fish from the coast. Then as guests with false IDs, the three of them had gathered information, spread a rumor, and cast certain spells on the gates for later use.

"Is everything still in place?" he asked Alyx over the rumbling of the wagon.

The ferret girl nodded. Unfortunately, that didn't help them here.

Of all things, it hadn't been the fake credentials or the sneaky spellcasting that had gotten them arrested. It was an unrelated heist that some other group had pulled off and framed them for.

#

Barrowmist Mine, in a steaming valley, wasn't widely discussed. Guards dropped the prisoners off with a bored foreman just inside a cave network. A heavy set of doors clanged shut behind them.

The foreman was a badger wearing a brass collar and writing in a ledger. He pushed three more of the collars across a rough counter and said, "Dangerous gases down there. Use these if you want to survive the week."

Elena said, "Sir, we're not cut out for digging. If you need help entertaining the crew, or --"

He looked up and laughed. "You're flimsy, yeah. Get yourselves below and find a bunk. I don't care what 'entertainment' you do so long as you make your ore quota."

A hulking badger guard had arrived to usher the trio deeper into the tunnels. Edwin's mind raced and he started arguing to give Alyx time to pull some trick. Alyx just looked around, saw the heavy exit doors, tried to start casting something, then found the guard reaching for his hammer. Her shoulders slumped. Edwin shut up, his ears laying flat.

Down in the mine were living quarters for a dozen miserable badgers. Straw and ragged blankets, a dangling light crystal, and wooden stools.

Alyx said, "We just need to hold out and get rescued."

Edwin nodded grimly. The locals were scarred and hungry, barely greeting them.

#

The first work shift started minutes later. Guards banged on a bell and the enslaved miners trudged from their quarters into a deeper tunnel, urging Edwin's group along. They got handed picks and set to work on a dark rock face, down in the twisting passageways.

Edwin knew more about metallurgy than about breaking rocks personally. His skinny arms wobbled from exertion after half an hour. The air was just cold enough to chill him through his fur. The others weren't faring any better. One of the badgers shook her head as she watched them flailing. "You'll never get out like that."

"We're not planning to break out," Elena groused, though she was even worse off than Edwin.

"You won't make quota, and then you won't eat, let alone earn enough to get free."

He hoped not to be here long enough to pay off some arbitrary amount of punishment.

Each mining team put chunks of shimmering violet ore into wheeled crates that got weighed at shift's end. Hardly half the rock they cut through had any metal in it, so the digging felt like a waste. Edwin was moping and trying to calculate some more efficient way to swing, or at least how to game the system, when the experienced miners sniffed the air.

"Gas!" said one. "You fools, use the collars or run!"

Yellow mist seeped out from a newly cut fissure. They'd hit some gas pocket. The nearest badger tried covering it but sickly fog drifted out.

"The collars protect people?" Elena asked Alyx. She'd been carrying the things on her belt, and now handed them out.

"I didn't get much time to study them," said the ferret. She cursed and tried squinting at hers, waving one hand at it to do some analysis. But she started coughing and Elena got hit a moment later. Edwin tried to grab them and pull them back but the advancing cloud was already stinging his eyes and he rushed backward.

Or maybe he was just not brave enough to rescue them.

He'd backed off, but there was no escape short of fleeing the mine. He pulled on the brass collar.

It seemed to set him on fire. He yelped and wobbled, slumping against the nearest wall to cool off. It made him feel heavy, off balance, squashed shorter. But he wasn't coughing anymore. When the world stopped spinning, his friends were gone...

No. They were stocky, black-and-white badgers in badly fitting clothes, staring at each other.

Their dusty clothes had strained and torn as they got reshaped, leaving them bulky with muscles. Elena had some strength from being a cat but now she was built like the experienced miners. Alyx already had somewhat short limbs on a slinky noodle body, but she'd grown wider and had a blush visible through her fur.

Edwin gulped and felt the metal collar brush against his neck. He didn't have the calloused hands of the long-term prisoners, but even flexing his fingers made them feel like gauntlets. Yellow haze still stung his eyes but the initial pain of it had become only annoying. He coughed once and found he could tolerate the sour stench. When he said, "Are you all right?", his voice rumbled in his chest like gravel.

Elena said, "At least we're still breathing."

Alyx shuddered as she flexed one arm. "After the harpy incident I'm a little jaded, but this... isn't my favorite shape."

A miner said, "Back to work, if you want dinner!" They'd already started again.

"Damn quota," Edwin said. He grabbed the pick he'd dropped, and wobbled backwards. It weighed nothing!

Alyx caught him and they spent a moment hefting the tools and their group's cart. She said, "Is it any easier?"

Edwin swung his pick at the stone face they'd been working on. It struck with terrifying force, cracking fist-sized rocks loose.

So they dug. Suddenly they were much better at it, cleaving their way ahead and finding bits of shiny ore. He tried to calculate how long it'd take to dig to the surface, but didn't like the answer.

It was surprisingly long before they needed a break. His new muscles ached and his tail had gone numb. No, it was gone! "My tail!" he said, discovering he'd lost his magnificent raccoon brush to get a useless stubby thing.

His friends, long-tails by birth too, felt around behind themselves. Elena said, "They're an accident waiting to happen down here."

Water was free, anyway. When the guards came with dirty-looking buckets of it, Alyx waited for them to leave and then cast a spell. The flecks of magic that she sheared off from reality swirled and flowed back together in the form of glittering, clear water that filled their standard-issue canteens.

Edwin drank gratefully. One of the miners said, "A wizard!"

"The best in the land," said Edwin.

Alyx scoffed. "Someday. Listen, what keeps you all down here? You have strength and picks."

The enslaved miners murmured, making sure the guards were really gone far up-tunnel. "Sturdy iron doors they can drop. And they inspect our digging anywhere nearby. How good *are* you?"

Alyx stammered something, but Elena put a heavy hand on her shoulder and said, "She can figure something out. Or Edwin can."

#

Dinner was hard bread and vegetable soup, and it cost them a pile of violet ore. Worse than their friends' cooking. Edwin sat down heavily on a straw pile and wished the others -- Marcus and Azalea -- would bust in and save everyone. He could lecture people about the history of mining and metalwork, but that knowledge didn't come with the ability to do anything useful about it. He looked at his alarmingly big, tough hands.

Alyx said, "Ideas?"

"That's just it. I've never had to work like this before. I can't reason with *rocks*. That's a wizard's talent."

"Pretty new for me, too. I can't just explode a hole in the wall, though."

"Can you cast something to detect the biggest ore deposits?" He blinked, then tried asking the people who'd actually become unwilling experts. "How do you find them?"

"It's pretty random," said one. Another said, "We're on the right height level for it; haven't found much in our digging one floor down."

He searched his memory for everything he remembered about how ore deposits worked. The stuff they'd been mining was called thaunum, often made into magic items where size mattered more than precise enchantment control. "Large magic-sealed walls and ship hulls, right?"

"Not that we could afford any," groused one guy.

He didn't have the knowledge to refine metal in a cave, anyway. He paced and banged into a wall, feeling his weirdly bulky, brawny arm brush against the ragged stone without being hurt.

Elena stopped him from wearing himself out with more useless speculation. "You'll figure this out better with some rest and work."

"*Work* would mean sitting in a library and figuring out plans, not chipping rocks off of other rocks."

The miners turned to Alyx again. "And you can't teleport or something?"

"Sorry, no."

The badger-folk grunted and gave up for the night. They let Elena tell them a story and then tried to sleep. There was plenty of toil ahead.

#

Edwin went back to hacking at rocks when the guards showed up just long enough to give them bread rations and claim that it was morning. He could barely keep his eyes open, but Alyx and Elena had dragged themselves up and he didn't want to look worse at this than them. Within an hour they struck another pocket of the yellow gas and it flowed over them, but only made them all cough and rub their stinging eyes for a minute before it faded.

He said, "Why does being badgers help against that?"

One miner said, "They told us badgers are just that tough. I used to be a rabbit."

Alyx used her moments of rest to look at the collars. "It must be more than that. The spell looks sloppy, like the protective part was slapped onto the transformative slave collar part."

"Can you separate them?" Elena asked. She'd been speaking little, embarrassed at the loss of her singing voice.

"Not without more study. And I'd rather focus on getting out."

All day, Edwin dug. His cheeks burned with shame. He was supposed to be the one with an obscure idea to apply, or at least interesting trivia to share. But his knowledge of this ore was too limited and he had no library, no laboratory. Even asking Alyx questions about the magic didn't give him any bright ideas. He was just manual labor here, like their captors wanted him to be!

"Careful!" Elena said. Edwin had swung his pick especially hard and gouged a hole a little too close to where the bard had been.

"Sorry!" He backed off.

"Haven't heard a word from you in hours," she said, drinking from her canteen.

He drank too, wetting his dusty throat. "All I'm contributing is digging."

"Even if we just hold out, that'll be enough. The others will find us and kick down the door."

It wouldn't be the first time he'd been rescued. What could he accomplish from in here? He tried to find a pattern in how the ore chunks occurred. Maybe there was a second band of the stuff farther down than they'd searched. He crouched and felt along the tunnel floor. He hadn't known that this material came in small globs, or that it clung to the ordinary stone a certain way.

"Tools down!" shouted the badger guards. The miners grumbled and looked at their little carts full of ore. The foreman and two others came down, armed and crudely armored, to herd their captives into the living quarters and inspect today's haul. There was some back-and-forth lying and cursing about exactly how much the crew had dug and whether it was worth a good dinner.

While that was happening, Edwin watched the foreman. He was the one inspecting the closest tunnels for signs of escape or rebellion.

The man, a badger like the rest of them, hardly spared Edwin a glare. He didn't seem to have any magical tools. He made quick rounds and was gone again, leaving the other guards to take the ore, complain about it, and hand over rations.

While they ate, Edwin conferred. Alyx said, "If I helped loosen the rocks in that direction it wouldn't leave much of a magic trace. But the ore tends to dissipate anything I cast at it. Not sure if they know I'm a caster and are just assuming the ore thwarts me."

"I'd rather they not know how much you can do."

Elena offered, "I could distract the guards while we just rush them."

The miners grumbled. "We did try fighting them once, but they just retreat, drop the iron gate and leave us without food for days. They put a couple of guys up above the tunnel."

"I'm not much for fighting anyway," Edwin said.

One of the old timers said, "Are you kidding? You're nearly as big as the rest of us. You just need practice. Unfortunately you might get it."

The scholar looked himself over again. Down here he was as dirty as any common laborer, but he'd also been changed into something as burly as one. That wasn't all bad. With Alyx creating pure water and Elena trying to keep them all sane, he could actually tolerate swinging a pick for hours. He just didn't want to make a career of it.

#

It was after dinner that Edwin had an idea. "Alyx, the ore spreads out your spell effects so you can't just crash a wall down, right?"

"Right." Even so, she'd been able to loosen a general area before hitting it, making the rough surface glow and fracture. It had made their work easier.

"Maybe we can't blast our way out instantly, but..."

The mage's ears perked up as she listened.

They found the strength to dig some more. This time, it was at a little-used side tunnel. Edwin swung, Alyx cast, and the heavy impact of iron on stone shook his arms... in near-total silence. She had not just weakened the rock face but let a spell dampen the noise, spreading it into the depths where no one could hear.

"Again," said Alyx. Edwin swung the pick gleefully and gouged out another little rockslide. Not even the falling gravel made a sound. He turned around and found the other prisoners staring. They had a plan!

#

It took lots of work. Edwin was contributing muscle, getting his fur damp with musky sweat and relying on Alyx's spells to wash off somewhat. They were working now at a steep upward tunnel.

Elena had come up with a crucial part. Since she didn't have her lute along to use her powers effectively, and her singing voice was unimpressive as a badger, she'd been forced to think about other performance ideas. And one of those, with Alyx's assistance, was stage magic. The team piled up loose rocks at the entrance to the hidden escape tunnel, then had a spell of force cast to hold them up like a solid wall. Not effective enough for flinging rocks to pummel the guards, but good enough to spread the force effect and keep it steady for a few minutes.

So when the guards returned for their cursory inspection, they didn't seem to notice the hidden tunnel in progress.

Edwin tried not to watch them so he'd give nothing away. But the food came, the day's ore went, and the workers returned to their bedding to eat in sullen quiet... until well after the guards were gone. Then, they quietly celebrated.

The next days were slow work. They spread out between the hidden passage and the main workings, and had to be seen digging in the usual places when the inspections happened. Another pocket of the awful yellow gas washed over them and left them all coughing, but the badger form or something else in the enchantment kept them alive.

Several nights later, they reached the last inches of stone. Edwin could feel dirt and roots resisting his swings of the pick, above and ahead in the steep tunnel. He'd gotten to know the feel of bare stone versus metal-rich ore, and how it rang under his strikes or against his claws. He whispered, "When?"

The badger behind him nudged him aside enthusiastically to look for himself. Before all this a push like that might've sent him flying, but Edwin only staggered and grunted. The miner sniffed the stonework and said, "It's damp and it sounds like rain. Might muffle the noise if we go now."

Everyone gathered, getting their picks and shovels ready. Alyx walled off the passage behind them for now to delay their discovery. Then the best diggers came up and went to work. Dirt rained down and skittered along their feet. The moon was dim through clouds.

Edwin suppressed the urge to cheer even as he got drenched with cold rain. He could endure it! In a minute everyone was outside. The valley around them had gone to sleep. But there was no time to dawdle as they shuffled away from captivity.

"Where to?" he asked.

One of the long-timers scowled. "There's a village in the mist over there, but they'll rat us out. We need to get out of the valley, but there'll be no water supply till we get to Milltown."

"Got that covered," said Alyx, wiggling her fingers.

"Ah, right. Can your magic change us back so we're not obvious escapees?"

"For that I need a proper lab, and maybe meeting up with our friends."

They started hiking up from the valley, farther from the mine entrance. It'd be good to see Azalea and Marcus again. But to his surprise, there'd been no need for those two to kick down the door and save him. Even if the guards came after them now, there was a chance to fight back with these picks and claws and muscles. That was a new thing for him!

"I still want my proper body back," he grumbled. He said to Elena, "You must be eager to get uncursed too."

She nodded sadly, but said, "It's been practice at another key, anyway." She sang a few quiet notes, looking away.

"I'll fix this," Alyx promised. "Or help find someone who will."

"You changed the least, didn't you?" asked Edwin.

She looked surprised. "Me? I've still been able to do my spells, so it hasn't been so bad. I --"

One of the more experienced badgers had called a halt. In the woods to their left, something moved.

Without an order given, the lead scout charged and everyone else followed. Edwin raised his pick.

The men who burst out from the woods were big cats, hurling nets. Two escapees tripped and went down. Another of the ambushers hurled a pair of darts and caught somebody in the neck and shoulder. But the slave collar blocked one of these, and the enchantment had some anti-poison effect, so his intended victim rushed up and slammed the thrower.

But after throwing another net and slowing a badger down, one of the attackers said, "You'll go back quietly!" and lashed out with a telescoping rod. On the end of it was a spreading clamp, meant to grab someone by the neck, and it was sweeping right at Alyx.

Edwin leaped and battered it down with his mining pick. He yanked it toward him to make the leopard behind it stumble, then rushed up and slashed. The blow was awkward, untrained, but the sheer force of it drew blood from the enemy's arm. The leopard hissed and rammed the man-catcher staff around like a club. Edwin took the blow on the side of his head but kept going, swinging the pick again. This time he couldn't help but connect, gashing the man's chest.

Alyx fired off a flash of mystic force that sent two of the felines tumbling. "Time to go!" she said.

The miners hurried to yank the nets off of each other and get moving. They cursed, saying, "They'll sound an alarm. We need to move!"

Elena helped up a badger who'd fallen. Then they were off again, faster now but worn out. The feline party wasn't obviously chasing them across this increasingly open ground at least.

But someone stood up from a distant campfire, saw them, and waved. "Hey!"

Elena said, "It's her!" The other escapees wanted to flee from this new encounter, but she told them, "It's our friends."

They hurried over to the camp, where they found a collie-woman hurrying to put out the fire and wake up her tent's other occupant. That was a wolf man, who got up groggy but dressed with a mace at his side. "We heard there were new prisoners brought to the mine, and went to investigate. Did you break out? Did you see a raccoon, and --"

Edwin said, "We've got people after us, Marcus."

"How do you know me?"

Alyx pointed to the collars, then grabbed Edwin around the shoulders with one big arm. "This tough guy here just beat up a leopard for me. And the mighty gal beside me is Elena. We can save explanations for later."

Azalea the collie joined Marcus in hastily packing up. Edwin didn't pay attention. He'd never been called a tough guy before. Timidly he patted Alyx's back while the group worked out a plan to keep escaping. He wasn't the idea guy at the moment, and that was all right.

For now, he was content to be part of the party again, with a weapon in his hand and people to protect. The rest, he could figure out later.