THE LAST GIANT BOOKS , INSIDE THE GATES OF THE MINES OF BLACKSPIRE

Excerpt from the book
On the third day, the ground changed.
The carts began to climb a slow, grinding slope of black stone. Ahead, looming out of the dust haze, Nathaniel saw it.
A wall.
It rose from the earth like the spine of some buried titan, built of dark, rough-hewn blocks, its surface spiked with iron and bone. Watchtowers jutted up at intervals, fires burning along the ramparts. Silhouettes moved against the flame. Orc sentries. Waiting.
At its center, between two massive towers, stood a pair of doors.
They were enormous, iron-bound and carved with symbols Nathaniel could not understand. Runes curled like claws, spiraled like storms. Horns sounded from above. The doors shuddered, then opened inward with a groan like grinding mountains.
“Gods preserve us,” Elias whispered.
The wagons rolled through.
Inside the walls lay a vast encampment, and a prison.
Scaffolds climbed the rock faces. Guard towers bristled with spears. Fire pits belched smoke into the sky. Tents and crude barracks sprawled across the ground, broken by cages stacked two and three high.
Humans moved among them in chains. Lines of prisoners shuffled forward, iron links clinking with every step. Others huddled behind bars. Children clung to mothers. Old men sat with their backs to the iron, staring into nothing.
The sound was constant. Chains scraping. Low sobs. Orc shouts. The crack of a whip and the cry that followed.
The caravan rolled past it all.
They were taken toward a yawning opening in the rock, a cavern mouth framed by rough-hewn pillars. Torches burned along its edge, light dying quickly in the dark beyond.
“This is a mine,” a farmer muttered.
No one answered.