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Narrated by Aaron
Written down by Jaz

No, this hasn't been the best week in my life... not at all.
You might not be interested in hearing about it, but I remember somebody saying that 'to speak about a matter makes a burdened soul feel better' (must have been one of the sect loonies, I guess). Besides, in your current state you won't be able to do anything about it, so listen carefully and you might learn something after all.

My streak of bad luck started with this idiot shadow - bite me, but I can't remember his name for all it's worth. Telling from your looks you surely won't remember him; I guess he arrived in the barrier only recently, one of those eager youngsters with their honest faces who usually don't last longer than one or two days.
Bah.
Anyhow, this idiot shadow walked over to me after having exchanged a few words with Snipes - right, the idiot digger, you might know him.
"Ian wants to talk to you," the youngster said, but he couldn't tell me what Ian wanted of me.
My boss is Asghan, but Ian is the mine's administrator - or most probably, was, Beliar have mercy on his soul-, and he's quite agreeable as far as shadows go. That he wanted to talk to me completely out of order didn't sound good; on the other hand, it didn't sound like impending doom, either, and even though I'm not your average good-goody reason told me it was better to humor him. So I left Snipes and the youngster to their own devices and marched down the ramp to meet Mr. Old Mine himself, the grand and haughty Ian.
Those ramps were broad enough to have two guys walk across side by side; despite that I always had this silly fear of looking down, just in case I might feel the irresistible urge to jump, if you know what I'm talking about. In the light of recent happenings it might have been better not to resist this urge...

Anyhow, I crossed the ramp without looking down into the mine shaft and soon arrived at the 'office'. Ian was there, of course, along with the usual horde of people who were scratching their packets and staring holes in the air and generally doing all those things administrative staffs everywhere had dubbed 'work'.
"Hey," I said, "you wanted something of me?"
Imagine my amazement when Ian gave me the fish eye before exploding straight into my face.
As it turned out, he hadn't been expecting me at all, and he didn't want to talk to me, either. He gave me one of his famous tongue- lashings instead. It was a long sermon, studded with verbal gems like 'lazy bum' and 'sluggish ass' and 'neglecting duty' and a host of other unkind things I didn't care to remember.
"...and now get your lazy hide back to your post," were his final words on the matter. "Okay," was all I said; perhaps I should have said something less civil, but somehow I never managed to badmouth Ian - something in his bug-eyed stare always held me back. When I turned around, however, there was this idiot shadow coming down the ramp and whistling away merrily, just as if he hadn't pulled a stunt on me at all. I didn't feel too merry myself, especially not with the guys laughing behind my back, and I guess I just blew a fuse. Blood rushed into my face as I drew my sword. This gave the idiot shadow a start; he goggled at me and froze in place while the giggles behind me stopped.
"You," I snarled, "don't you ever take me for a ride again, or..."
Calm down, I thought, calm down.
Sheathing my sword, I took a deep breath. Right, I would have loved to kick his butt right then and there, but the nagging little voice in the back of my head told me to let it be good at that. The eager youngster had taken a good scare, and that ought to be enough.
For now.

"Sorry," he said, sending me an embarrassed little smile. "It won't happen again. - By the way, I chanced upon your key." With that he stretched out his hand, and well, there it was - the key to my chest, you know, the one where I stashed my personal belongings. So far, I hadn't missed it.
My first reaction was to reach for my pouch, although I knew that the key wouldn't be in there anymore. I wasn't even mad at the guy; there just was a sinking feeling in my stomach that told me that it had started, that the end was near and that the world had finally begun to fall apart all around me.
"I don't even wanna know how you happened to find my key," I weakly said and reached for it. Of course, he drew his hand back just enough to get across that he wouldn't give it to me for free. Had I been smart, I should have hacked off his thieving hand, but at that moment I felt too feeble to do more than stand and stare at him. "How much?"
You heard right. In the end I bought back my very own key for the outrageous sum of twenty ore. A dreamlike state enclosed me while I trotted back to my post; unlike all those times before I didn't even notice the ramp I crossed, and I chose to ignore Snipes' sniggering laughter. Unfortunately I didn't even feel the need to kick Snipes, though the idiot digger had well deserved it. All I felt was this dreadful numbness...

When I had finally gathered enough courage to take a look into my storage chest - much later that day -, my worst fears had come true. The idiot shadow had taken off with my belongings1, and since he had already left the premises there was nothing I could do about it, except hope that he would return sooner or later, and that nobody else would look our way when I cut this throat. The really bad thing was that the little bugger had single-handedly exterminated the Minecrawler queen on that very day; not only did this imply that his fighting skills were considerable, to say the least, it also meant he was in Ian's (and for that matter, Asghan's - I'm still not sure if they didn't have something going on, you know exactly what I mean, not that I cared) good books.
At that time I thought it couldn't get much worse. How wrong I was.

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1To be true, it is what you'd expect from a shadow. The whole bunch of them consists of habitual thieves, and those who are not sticky-fingered right away will become so after a while of peer-group indoctrination.

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