Here we are, anonymous abandoned mine shaft number...whatever number its currently at since I have no clue how many of these damn things are dotting the landscape.

It only took my dogs an hour to strip the outside of the mine shaft of everything of value, going so far as to even to strip the surrounding trees and rocks of their homes to create a makeshift stockpile of wood and stone for us to use.

After an hour has passed the scouts that I had sent into the mine earlier came back and all of them have returned unharmed, but a few seemed spooked as their tails were between their legs and were shaking in fear. I don't know what is causing my dogs to be so scared but whatever it is I am sure that it can be solved by either a good application of force to the head if its monsters or squatters or an exceptional application of logic and reasoning if its people that can be reasoned with.

Once the dogs have situated themselves with those that were spooked calmed down by their friends and their loved ones I had them debriefed and they all said the same thing about what had them so scared.

There were voices in the mines, and they were coming from deep within its stone-carved recesses. Another thing of note was that there were not a single sight of bones belonging to any animals or people nor long since mummified corpses of the previous owners or occupants but there were still plenty of old mining equipment that has been left behind in the form of minecarts, pickaxes and shovels.

This left me with some wondering what exactly it could be or whom it could be.

"Well, it definitely isn't Old Man Jenkins, that is for bloody sure since that old fucker is back home and is about as mobile as a brick shithouse cemented into the ground, so that leaves him out of the question. It can't be a diamond dog clan because they would have stayed here and continued to expand outwards all the while claiming the surrounding surface area as their own and we would have seen their banners by now...and bandits would have claimed this place as an excellent hideout." I said mostly to myself as few dogs stayed close to me to keep guard as I stood outside the mine entrance, a hand stroking my beard as I tried to think of probable reasons as to why this is happening.

'So what the hell is causing this disturbance? Old moaning sounds and whispers in the halls, maybe this place is actually haunted and that ghosts are real in this world because it was all fake bullshit back home.'

For a time, I stood there trying to think of reasons for this mine to be abandoned other than it simply ran out of resources to dig up and send off. At first, I thought it simply was that it ran dry and everyone left which was the most logical reason for it to be abandoned, then came the idea that maybe diamond dogs showed up and scared everyone away before realizing that this place was dead and retreated as well and left the mine to its current fate, after that it was naturally went to something stupid like it being haunted by ghosts of the miners who probably died while on duty. After a while my mind started to drift and started pulling reasons out of my ass that made no sense whatsoever.

'Maybe it was kobolds or goblins? No, wait, wrong fantasy setting...unless they actually do exist in this world, but then again, I would have heard of them by now from the griffons and ponies that lived here. Or perhaps a dragon? It is a deep, expansive mine, maybe there is another entrance that it could fly in and out of and leave us none the wiser? Nah, that is also stupid because we would have definitely seen a dragon flying around during the three months I have been here. So, what in the flying fuck is this mess!? I need answers damn it!'

I was like this for a while until one of the male diamond dog scouts came up to me and tugged on my shirt, signaling to me that they wanted to say something.

"Alpha, we found griffon alpha's room, but door is locked." the diamond dog said as he scratched his head with a meaty paw, the damn thing looked like it can easily fling a pumpkin without needing much in the way of assistance.

"Has anyone tried breaking it down?" I asked as I began to wonder what could possibly still be in the room, hopefully a bed with an actual mattress and a nice fluffy pillow and blanket. In fact, I think I would be even happier if they had a fireplace and a wool blanket just waiting for me in there.

"No, we don't want to break your new room." the dog said and with that I knew that whatever was inside is still undisturbed and that it should still be in whatever condition they were in when the original owner all left in a big damn hurry.

Dragging my hands through my hair I tell the dog to take me to the room they found, turns out it was near the entrance to the mind, they just didn't notice it because the handle for the door fell off and that cobwebs was covering up where the hole was.

When we arrived at the lead foreman's room I finally noticed just how concealed it was from the rest of the tunnel we are in and why the dogs had a hard time finding it, the door itself is the same color as the stone around it and that it was perfectly placed to match the natural curvature of the stonework, there wasn't even a sign stating it's the foreman's office.

'I am sensing that someone either didn't want to be bothered while working or someone was skimming off the top of this little business.'

Placing my hand on the door I gave it a gentle push at first to see both how heavy the door is and if its stuck, and I would like to say yes to both of those because the door is not only stuck but that it is also really fucking heavy.

"What the hell is that door made out of?" I asked nobody in particular as the diamond dogs behind me all shrugged, apparently none of them knew the answer and I wasn't expecting them to since they too didn't know that this door existed until this very moment.

Giving the door another push, this time I was putting all of my strength into it to the point that I thought I was about to pop a blood vessel with how heavy the door was and when it finally budged an inch did I realize what it was that I was pushing.

It was a solid stone door. Not a wooden door, not a wooden door that was unnaturally heavy for how thick it was or if it was bound in iron to make it more durable, no it was a solid as fuck stone door on some really fucking strong hinges. If this place had dwarves than they would most definitely approve of this since they love everything that is rock and stone.

After about a minute of pushing on the door and another minute of getting one of the larger diamond dogs to push the door with me, the door finally opened up much to our surprise instead of it falling off the hinges it was placed on. As the door slowly slid open with a loud, ear-piercing squeal of metal on metal it got to the point that the dog helping me pushed stopped pushing and covered his ears alongside his fellow brothers in paws, me on the other hand kept pushing till the gap was wide enough for me to go through.

The room's interior was dark as all hell aside from the numerous cobwebs that I could see and after ducking out of the room for a hot minute to get a torch to both see in the darkened chamber and to burn away any cobwebs that got a little too friendly with my face, I saw what was hiding in plain sight.

This was indeed the head foreman's room but what makes it stand out so much more than that is the fact that this room was also a vault. In all I can roughly say that the room itself was about fifteen feet by twenty-five feet in width and length and as for height I can say its maybe ten feet high so sadly for me I can't touch the roof even if I tried jumping.

On one side of the room was a single bed, the sheets are for the most part still in pristine condition despite being here for god knows how long, a wooden desk and chair off to one side with no hint of rot or mildew on them and lastly there was a small bookshelf that was partially filled with books and papers, something for me to look through at a later time. That was all on the right side of the room, the left side though, that thing was the vault half as it was sealed off by iron bars that showed no signs of rust or grime, the gate on it was still in one piece and that it too had no hint of rust on it, but what truly got my attention was what was behind the gate.

Sitting within the safety of the vault was small rectangular crates, easily the size of a suitcase each, and every single one of them was stacked high enough to almost reach the ceiling of the room which was impressive onto its own but what has my absolute attention, however, is the crates themselves as I don't know what exactly is inside each of those crates. Walking up to the vault I tested the gate out to see if it was locked, and indeed it was, the lock on it was made into the gate itself and the damn thing looked like it will either take a crew of dogs to break it down with mallets and a spike or the key that was made to fit in the lock.

Taking a step back from the vault I gave the room a once over again, going to the bookshelf and grabbing the books that laid within its wooden confines and gave them all a good shake, trying to see if one of them was hollow and was holding the key with its carved pages but alas it wasn't that easy. Nothing ever was so easy for me it would seem.

'Can't live on easy mode forever, if only the people back home would get off their ass and do something with their lives instead of wasting it away on stupid shit.'

"Well boys, we got some good news, this looks like some sort of secret vault for the mines and that they left behind something valuable behind some bars, the bad news is that the gate is locked. If we have any mallets and a large enough metal spike to break the lock off, we can try that, otherwise we will have to try to find the key, if it's still here anyways since this place looks like it has been left to rot for ages. If you find any keys just bring them to this room and place it on the table so we can figure out which key goes where to what lock and to what door or chest and do, try to be gentle with these keys because I don't know how fragile or how rusty they are." I said this as I showed my dog crew what I found and even went far as to rattle the gate to show them that it is indeed locked and not just closed.

The assembled dogs all gave the collective head nods with a few barks of approval before letting the other dogs in the scouting group know about the new plan, to find keys and to stick together, can't be too hard to do unless they somehow think that the keys are food eat them.

While the dogs went their separate ways to diffuse the information to the scouting parties, I went over to where all of the books were and placed them on the desk and got to leafing through them, hoping that one of them was a ledger of sorts to tell me what this place is and what they were mining. As I started to go through the books a thought came to me and I added one more thing to my search list, the name of the mining company that previously owned this place as I really didn't want them coming back poking their beaks where it doesn't belong or worse demand the mine back after we fixed it up.

Going through the books and pushing several of them off to the side after discovering that they were merely just books about stories, things to read while bored and to pass the time with only one of them, strangely enough, was a booked called 'Griffon selfcare for Dummies' and I couldn't help but laugh at the title before realizing that this book could help me with my own griffons at home.

Looking around the room to make sure that I was alone, once that I was securely alone in this room I began to divine the secrets of this book, hoping that the knowledge within its pages can help me when it comes to assisting Gilda and Greta with their wings and talons, after all a happy griffon is a good griffon, and one that isn't going to claw me in my sleep because they were upset at me for nearly dying on them a second time. There were several pages that were illustrated with some rather well-drawn artwork of griffons in various poses in regard to what the page was talking about. Griffons in posses with their wings fully extended with arrows drawn around the wings pointing at certain points to detail on what should be touched and what shouldn't, how to properly remove dead or old feathers, proper wing care in general.

"Hmm...so that's how you take care of their wings...really? Thats it? Just go through the wings and take out the dead feathers one at a time? Gods above that will take forever, but if it's how these griffons do it for their mates or friends then I guess I got to do it like that as well...too bad there isn't a vacuum cleaner or something for this task yet." I said mostly to myself as I kept leafing through the pages, getting to talon care it was easier than expected, just get a nail filer and just shape, grind and smooth out the talons until they are nice, shapely and uniform.

But as I got deeper into the book did things start to get a bit spicy and that was when I realized that this book was meant to be for the male readers due to it constantly trying to hammer in ways for us to please our spouse, namely because we are dense motherfuckers who miss signals constantly being thrown our way. I am no exception to this rule because I know for a fact that I have missed several of these signals when Gilda and Greta were trying to attract my attention the many times we went out drinking at the local pubs back in Griffonstone.

As I continued to read the saucy book on griffon care, I got to the point where I was starting to feel hot and bothered until I went to flip through to the next page, several of them went together as if stuck together.

Stuck.

Together.

I immediately threw the book away from myself as I realized what it was that was making the pages glued together and it sure as hell wasn't glue, more like organic nut butter and it's been like this for ages.

"Oh come the fuck on! Really? The bastard couldn't fucking aim elsewhere when he nuts? He couldn't fucking point it downwards under the table? Fucking dirty bastard I am glad he is probably dead, ruined a perfectly good smutty book."

Standing up from the desk that has been defiled with someone else's seed, I started to read standing up the remaining books and found that none of them were ledgers for the mine nor was there a journal or diary detailing what happened to render the place inoperative. Looking at the bed I started to think that it too has been ruined and my guess is that since working in this easily sealed room the guy can just rub them out and not have to worry about someone easily barging in unless they have herculean strength.

Leaving the room behind I looked around and saw that my guards were still waiting for me, all of them sitting on the floor, three of them asleep while the other two were talking about something, probably about food, and when they saw me one of the two pushed the sleeping dogs away and stood up. The three sleeping dogs had some trouble standing up as they were caught in a tangle of limbs and bodies since they were on top of one another, probably didn't help that they were pushed and made the tangle worse, but after a few seconds they pulled themselves together and got back in formation, slightly embarrassed that they were caught like that.

"Alright pups, time to inspect the rest of the mine. Here is hoping that the griffons that previously owned this place left some things behind for us." I said with a tone that sparked no confidence as it was all drained from me when I found out the self-help book was defiled by someone's baby batter.

Traversing the halls was a boring affair but an easy one thanks to how smooth the floor is, the light from our torches also was going far so we did not trip over our feet so that is a blessing n a half.

As we moved through the tunnels, stopping at each intersection to chisel in a marker and sign of what level we are on. As it turns out there are five levels of depth for the mine and that first level was living quarters, kitchen, barracks and storage chambers alongside the latrine system of all things.

Turns out that the latrine system is just four latrines with four large buckets underneath them, and when it's time to clean them out they are dragged onto a lift then brought to the surface to then be dumped into a pit to be burned. Ingenious for the griffons who thought up and implemented this idea, and even better for us because it still seems to be in working order.

Looking at the chains lining the walls and the system it is a part of I saw little signs of rust and that none of the chains are broken, the lift itself appears to be not rotten aside from the pile of leaves and sticks that have dropped from above. Giving a few chains a good yank to see if they were still intact, I then told one of the dogs the order to start cranking as I moved over and stood on the lift, and it took a solid minute of cranking before the lift began to move and thankfully it didn't fall apart with me on it. After about a minute of waiting the lift stopped and I looked around to see that I was in a shed of sorts, the door or doors that was supposed to be here have long since fallen over and looking out of the shed a small dug out stone pit that has charred marks all over it.

'Huh, they took their shit out here and burned it, and since everyone is below ground, they won't smell the scent of burning shit, nice. Gotta give it to these griffons they know how to make their mining operations comfortable.'

Getting up was the hard part, getting back down was easy as all hell. Turns out when the griffons built this place back when they owned it, they wanted this place to be as efficient as possible all the while being easy to maintain as well. To get down I had to pull a lever and the chains that were being held taut at the bottom of the lift were released as they went in reverse, lowering the lift back down safely in half the time it took to reach the top.

When I got back down the dogs were sitting again, but this time they looked more relieved than they last were when I was gone for a minute, and it didn't take a genius to figure out why.

"So, boys, took a load off? Do they still work as intended?" I asked my dogs as they all quickly back up, trying to act like they weren't all caught with their metaphorical pants down.

My dogs gave me thumbs up and extremely satisfied nods, knowing what I was asking and figuring out that I wasn't reprimanding them for doing what they did,

"Well good, because we got several more areas of this mine to explore and this might be the only bathroom break you are going to get unless there are more of these placed deeper in the mines for the sake of convenience." and truth be told I am seriously hoping that the griffons were smart enough to build more bathrooms in this place because I really doubt the workers are fast enough to make it from the bottom of the mine to the top to take a shit in time before they shit n piss themselves silly.

Exploring the upper level of the mine took us the better part of an hour of mapping it all out, it was all one massive square with miniature squares at evenly spaced sections of it. From the entrance of the mine the tunnel went forward for about 100 feet at a gentle twenty-five-degree slope before opening up to the left and right and fifteen feet in either direction there was two new tunnels going down at the same twenty-five-degree slope and this repeated four more times till it gets to the bottom.

Exploring the entirety of the mines took the better part of a few hours, finding all that it had to offer me, and this is what I had found and documented.

First level of the mine had it all, kitchens, guard barracks, the vault combined with the head foreman office, the main storage of processed goods and materials, bathroom, and strangely enough a mail room. The second level was general sleeping quarters for the workers and rooms for either guests or children, I couldn't tell if I was correct, but they seemed a bit more personal and smaller when compared to the larger rooms with dozens of beds that lined the walls, and most importantly a general bathroom and bathing chamber. Then the third level and fourth level were considered processing as all of the rooms was filled with large chunks of granite and marble stone with parts of the third level being packaging as they had several dozen empty crates waiting to be filled up.

As we were about to come back up to tell the rest of the dogs that our home is secure and safe to start entering, one of the scout dogs came running up to me, panting and placing his paws on their knees before speaking up about finding something strange at the end of the mines. I really wanted to tell this dog that he must be seeing things that he needs to rest because we are all tired, but when someone says that there is an issue it is most of the time an actual issue and not someone being lazy, cause if they were being lazy then I get to introduce them to potato peeling detail.

With a sigh and sagging shoulders, I followed the scout to where this 'disturbance' is located, best to nip this in the bud now before it blows out of proportion and becomes an annoyance in the future.

At the bottom of a mineshaft was a wall of a strange obsidian like material, almost akin to the walls that one would find in a xenomorph lair, and it was making my skin crawl to the point that it was starting to unnerve me.

As I started to turn around to walk back and order my dogs to place rocks against the wall so that whatever made it doesn't try to come in through this way so easily. I stopped in my tracks as the light from the torch illuminated something on the floor partially embedded in the wall, something that walls normally shouldn't have.

Taking tentative steps towards the obsidian black wall I crouched low to see what was being lit up and my eyes widened at the sight that lay before me.

Reflecting partially from the low glowing gloom of the torch was a skeletal hand of what could only be a diamond dog or a griffon, since both have three fingers and a thumb, a hand that looked like it had either punched or dug its way through the wall, and in its hand was a rolled-up parchment.

The dogs that came with me that discovered this wall were growling at the wall, their spears pointed at it as a few took up defensive positions near me as I reached down and gently pried the parchment from the mummified hand and very carefully unrolled it to see what was written on it.

I am positive the dogs around me started to whimper as they saw just how pale I have become as I read the single word that was printed on the piece of paper, the letters were forged in blood and faded emerald splotches was covering the letters.

"Run."

New chapter for the new year! Lets go 2023! Be better than the previous year!