Chane was already looking grim when we returned. Lurbolg and I laid the grumbling and pouting Korfook onto the ground and explained how we had found him. He had complained and whined about being uncomfortable for the last part of the half hour long journey, and ceased using actual words since then.
Chane’s face went from stony, to red and furious as he looked down at the incoherent youth. Chane started by ordering Bomilik to fetch a “wake-up kit” from the training room's supply closet, from which he removed a small glass ampule which he cracked with a twist. He held the container up to Korfooks face as the dwarv lolled his head and grumbled about bad rocks.
The rest of the class was equally grim faced and silent, we all unconsciously rested at-ease and slowly edged our way into our standard formation as Chane woke up the slobbering problem dwarv.
I stood at the end of the line and was catching some major second-hand embarrassment. I couldn't imagine shirking my duty like he had, and while I was not all that friendly with the dwarv, I didn’t wish him ill. Plus, I had no clue what the punishment for something like this would be. Being late by only a few minutes was the worst of the infractions I had seen so far, which just led to a good ol’ walk of shame.
After a moment, Korfook let out a massive sneeze and broke into a painful looking coughing fit. Chane stood back up as Korfook writhed around on the floor, then curled up onto his side facing us and hacked up a gross gray blob that splattered onto the scarred stone. After groaning for a moment, he opened his eyes and blinked at all of us standing in formation. His head only then turned and he looked up to the tomato colored Chane.
“Korfook, you bring shame upon the whole clan.” He started, his voice low and dangerous, barely restrained. Chane had never really dressed any of us down like I had seen from other bosses. He only raised his voice when volume was needed, and his criticisms were pointed and fair, more of a firm correction than a rebuke or insult.
Korfook full body twitched when he saw Chane standing over him and heard the icy tone of his voice. “Not only have you abandoned your responsibility, you have done so in the most irresponsible manner I have ever seen. Your Initiate ranking is already unimpressive, and full punishment for this would be enough to see you exiled. Explain yourself. Now.”
Korfook opened and closed his mouth a few times and scrambled around to get his hands and feet under him, but he did not rise and only looked up at Chane from a kneeling crouch.
“I, uh. I know it was wrong. I didn't mean to get caught up, Driller Chane. The salts lasted too long, and my hotbox setup was… too good. Please, I had planned to be here for training, it was an accident.”
Lurbolg pulled something from his pocket and tossed a crumpled up ball of the sheeting material to Chane. Our instructor snatched it out of the air and looked it over, unfurling it partially and inspecting the material.
Chane flattened out a portion of the sheet and squeezed some of the goopy glue between two fingers. “This is a foreign material, what is it?”
Korfook, seeing a chance to be useful and to explain himself further, jumped on the opportunity. “I got it from a traveling merchant! It’s a universal gasket, air and water tight. It’s uh, normally used as an emergency repair.”
Chane pulled on the sheet, trying to stretch or tear it with no success. His face was starting to look slightly less red but his eyes still were hard and angry.
“So you smuggled this in? How did you make contact with the outsider?”
Korfook grimaced and looked away as he mumbled his reply.
“I can’t hear you, you soft shelled skidmark.”
There was a hushed collective gasp from the Row at Chane's insult, and Korfook raised his voice and repeated his answer.
“Zel-Benji. I… I asked him to take me to the Clan market and broke away from him for a few minutes. He had no idea, please don't blame him.”
There was some hushed murmuring amongst the Row as he answered, and I overheard Lokralda whisper to Kikkelin next to me. “Grandpa Benji? He’s so sweet though!”
Chane dropped the crumbled ball of sheeting and ran both of his hands through his hair and beard in a stress filled motion as he growled in frustration. Then he started tapping furiously at an invisible UI.
“Alright, Korfook. You will spend a day on the Pillar and your hold will be informed of your actions. As your instructor, this is partly my fault and I will accept…” he tapped at his UI a final few times. “47 percent of the responsibility.”
Chane pulled a mobile-com sized bar of polished stone from his inventory and spat on it before spending a short moment etching a marking into it. He then handed the stone to the still kneeling Korfook.
“You will take this to the Patriarch and tell him what has happened, then you will submit yourself to the pillar until it is time for tomorrow's training session. Do you understand?”
Korfooks face paled, but he nodded and accepted the message with both hands. “Of course, Driller Chane. Right away. Thank you, this won't happen again.”
“Go, now, and because you seem to need a babysitter, Kazek and Bomilik, follow this child and ensure that his commands are carried out. ”
The two called upon initiates stepped forward and shouted their agreement, then Chane waved them all off. Korfook hung his head in shame and the other two ushered him out of the room at a trot. Chane turned to face the rest of us.
“A lack of discipline amongst our Row has come to my attention! You all have seen it, and we have collectively allowed it to grow into a problem. Since no one was strong enough to open their mouths and address this issue before it nearly destroyed us, I think we should work on that!”
Chane fiddled with his UI for a moment again, still one of the rare people who insisted on poking the floating buttons rather than using mental commands. With a final jab, a series of metal bars ratcheted down from the ceiling.
“We’re going to do some hanging drills. Most of you have yet to harden, you're still soft and growing! We will see to it that you gain the strength you obviously lack!” He shouted, glaring at us up and down the line.
“Now, everybody…” He scanned us all over again, his face still a slightly reddened scowl as he paused for effect. “Get your sorry shells up on them bars! I better not see any lazy joint locks or wedging!”
Chane’s shift in demonor was worrying, and I rushed to follow his order even if I was confused about what this exercise was all about. The bars were hanging only a few feet from the ceiling and out of reach even for me. I followed the rest of the line as we hurried to a bank of handholds in the wall which we all climbed up. The stocky dwarves ahead of me all swung along the bars and fanned out until our whole line hung down from the ceiling like drying laundry on a line.
“I’ve heard of monkey bars, but this one’s new. What do we even call this, bug bars? Beetle hanging? Is… hah, is this what you would call a hang out?”
Max broke out into laughter inside my head, and I nearly groaned out loud at his busted sense of humor. I held on firmly, glad for my strong grip and wondering how long we would be expected to keep this up.
Chane stood on the ground below and scowled up at us as he watched over our form. “Now I blame myself for this mess, it’s depressing, and that’s just plain unfair! Loose morals and slack jaws have ruined my day, and seeing all of your smiling faces is making me jealous!”
The angry drill instructor walked over to the storage closet as we all hung there silently. He pulled a training staff out of the closet and walked back over to us, which he waved around in our direction as he continued. I’d never heard him take this tone with us, he sounded unhinged and was still slightly red around the face.
While Chane was distracted, I craned my head around and looked down the line, straining to get a good view around my raised arms. I happened to catch Kikkelin already looking over at me, her eyes quickly darted away from mine and we both looked back at Chane who started yelling again.
“Since you all have displayed a lack of vocal fortitude, we’re going to work on that, and you all are going to applaud my valiant effort to correct you! You just stay as you are Kaninak. The rest of you, hands free, now!”
I looked at him with wide eyes when he singled me out, expecting nothing good to come of having my name called out during a dressing down. I was even more surprised when I glanced down the line again and saw Kikkelin pull herself up and bite down on the bar, then let go with her hands and started to clap her hands together.
The whole row started to applaud as they hung from their jaws, until Chane called for a halt and launched into another tirade about our lack of discipline and failure for letting one of our own lose his way. Then the rest of the row would clap again until Chane started yelling again and the cycle repeated.
I struggled and readjusted my grip, swinging slightly in the process but also getting a better view down the line and seeing that the whole row was now swaying from the line by their jaws.
Chane stepped over to me and paused his angry lecturing for long enough to jab the training staff into my stomach, “Focus, human! You’re the only one who should be smiling up there, you’re the first of your kind to ever have the privilege of running this drill with us!”
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He moved on down the line and smacked one of Kikkelins feet with the staff, causing her to sway back and forth by her dangling grip.
“And you, Miss artist!” He stretched the word artist out pretentiously, pronouncing it like arteest. “Were you busy sketching sculpts when you should have been reporting the delinquent actions of your Row?”
Chane went down the line, poking, smacking, and jabbing at each of us with the staff as he singled each of us out and berated us for the minor quirks each of us had displayed. When he had singled each of us out, he seamlessly launched right back into his angry speech on how badly we had messed up.
My arms were already starting to shake a little when Kazek and Bomilik returned a few minutes later. They both had hard angry looks on their faces and joined us up on the clothesline, causing us all to have to shift around to reorder into our proper places. Normally there might have been some grumbling and chatter amongst the formation during a conditioning drill like this, but this time a heavy silence filled the room between Chane’s outbursts and corrections.
Every half hour or so he would call for a wall-touch, and we would all have to swing across the bars to one wall, then back to the center, all while Chane lectured, poked, and prodded with his inert staff and attempted to knock us down from the bars.
Everyone fell at some point, either from fatigue, bad grips, or Chane’s harassing jabs. It was not too much of a drop for me, only a few feet. My aching forearms appreciated the short rest that a fall granted, but Chane turned his staff into a motivational baton and rained blows down on whichever of us had fallen. Battering any initiate who fell as they scrambled back up the handholds to rejoin their position in line.
The dwarves seemed to have a harder time from the falls, and I was amazed that they could hold themselves up just by biting the bar. They were heavier than me and had farther to fall. Anytime they fell and happened to land on their back it would take them an extra moment to flip over before they could get away from Chane’s staff and climb back up. The view of the whole row hanging above me made my jaw ache in sympathy, if only for a moment before Chane refocused me with a series of blows from his staff.
The attacks from Chane were annoying, but taking damage in-game only really stung and did some in-game damage. The real punishment was the screaming agony of my forearms and shoulders as I was put through the worst workout of my life.
After a full half day, nearly 5 hours of hanging, falling, climbing, and being smacked around with a heavy metal pole, hardly any of us were able to hang for longer than a few minutes at a time. I was drenched in sweat and shaking, my arms numb and tingling and aching all at the same time. Jozoic and Kazek were the only two who were able to keep their grip consistently anymore, and even Chane was starting to show signs of getting tired of beating us with his staff.
Finally, after I had fallen for the hundredth time, dry heaved a few times, and had just struggled my way back to my position on the bar, he called an end to the tortuous routine. “Alright, Row. Fall in line! Get your scruffy arses down here and form up!”
I dropped down instantly, my grip slipping when he shouted as I swung back into place. Yet because I was still mid-swing when I lost my grip, I stumbled as I fell to the floor and landed in an exhausted heap. I had only a split second warning, seeing the blur of a dark form above me before someone else landed on me.
I’d landed on my side with my arms forward, and was starting to push myself up onto my hands and knees when all of the air was crushed out of me. My chest slammed into the chipped stone floor and I felt my ribs compress as Kikkelin unknowingly dropped down onto me.
I struggled a little as she righted herself and climbed off of my back, but we both made it to our feet and into formation after a moment. I caught a glimpse of her face and noticed she had turned a bright pink color, but everyone was a little flush from the effort of the day so I thought nothing of it.
Chane threw his training staff on the ground and stared us all down in silence as our exhausted group came together, ragged, sweating, and breathing hard.
“Alright, larvae, I’m tired of smelling you, I need a break! You have 15 ticks to get some liquid intake, and then I want you formed up with your equipment in the courtyard. Row-Lead Kazek, you and your first, make it happen.”
The still bristling Driller spun on a heel and stomped his way out of the training room, leaving us all to recover for a few minutes. As soon as he left the room about half of us, myself included, collapsed onto the ground.
I laid against the clammy stone floor on my back and stared at the ceiling, my chest heaving with the deep needy breathing of marathon effort, stretching my arms out to the side and wincing as my muscles screamed.
“That was brutal, even by my standards. Lucky for you, I got your back. I doubt you would have lasted more than a few hours without the little tweaks I gave you.”
I hated when Max reminded me that he had fundamentally changed my body when he forced his way into my life, but at that moment I was too beat to muster up any anger. So instead of anger, I responded with the feeling of curiosity.
“Oh, you want to know what I did?” he asked. “Well, it’s quite complex really, but if you want me to break it down into terms you can comprehend; as far as your strength is concerned, I tuned down some inhibitors when I first showed up, and you’ve been slowly getting stronger since then. Plus I refolded a couple of your proteins into something more efficient and resilient. Evolution does some beautiful work, but often it’s a total ‘if it works, don’t fix it’ kind of situation that leaves some really wacky design artifacts. Hah-hah”
I had closed my eyes as I listened, but I sensed a shadow of someone leaning over me and blocking the light that caused me to open my eyes. Kikkelin stood over me, with a nervous frown on her face.
“Hi. I’m sorry I fell on you earlier. I didn't break you, did I?” She had a surprisingly small voice, much different from the boisterous and loud enthusiasm that most of the others displayed.
I shook my head and sat up to talk to her. “No, I’m fine, just sore and tired. No broken bones or anything serious.”
Her face lit with a subtle excitement at my words. “Oh good! I’m glad your bones are okay. It’s so cool really, you humans are so different. Soft yet crunchy, and so tall.”
I shrugged, remembering first hand just how different we really were under the mask of the game, not sure what to say back at first. “Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.”
There was an awkward moment of silence between us and a hushed yet heated argument between some of the other dwarves pulled our attention back to the group.
“You knew he was using, this is as much your fault as his!” Argued Kazek.
Lurbolg crossed his arms as he stood across from him amongst a group of still-able-to-stand dwarves. “Half the class has dusted before, if everyone reported anyone who played around, half the hive wouldn’t make it through the trials!”
‘That's no excuse! You heard Driller Chane. He claimed almost half of the demerit, and I’m sure Kazzad won’t let that stand and will take some on herself. This hurts all of us, it could hit the House standing!”
“Exactly, it's on all of us! Why do any of us use the stuff? It’s an escape that some need, but I wouldn’t expect a Bloodline brat like yourself to understand why. If things were better for the lesser holds, it wouldn't be an issue.”
Kazek let out a growl in reply and visibility started to shake, and Bomilik put a restraining hand on his shoulder, shaking his head.
The large dwarv broke into the conversation and tried to calm down the escalating fight. “We shouldn’t be fighting, we are Row, we are House. Chane and Kazzad are our commanders. They’ll sort it out and we’ll get through this. All of us.”
Kazek, a serious and reasonable dwarv, nodded and seemed to calm down a little. Lurbolg however still looked heated and pushed the issue one more time. “Yeah, Korfook is a bit of a bent-bolt, but he pulls his weight for the House. I believe him when he says it was an accident.”
Before replying, Kazek looked over at Bomilik and Jozoic, who only nodded once but did not speak.
“Fine, now is not the time to hash this out. Everyone, get your fluid intake and flush as much acid from your systems as you can. We’re only halfway through this cascading disaster.”
He clapped his broad hands together loudly, forgetting for a moment the hours of clapping he had already done today, and winced slightly.
The tension hanging over the bunched up dwarves gradually dissipated as everyone spread out and started pulling various drinks from their inventory and sitting down to relax, or stretching strained muscles in the case of the more serious amongst the Row.
After the fireworks calmed down, I looked back to Kikkelin who was still standing near where I sat on the floor. I remembered that she was tied up in the troubled dwarves' reason to dislike me, so I wondered if she knew anything else about what was going on with him.
I kept my voice low and got her attention, “Hey, so, do you know what the deal with Korfook is anyways?”
She looked down and away, shrugging. “He likes me. He’s asked for my promise a few times, and gets upset when I tell him no. And I… yeah.” She paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “His Hold has struggled since his elder brother's failure. He’s had a rough time lately.”
I pulled a bottle of broth from my inventory and cracked the lid, which started an exothermic reaction within the bottle that heated my pseudo-lunch.
“Maybe you dwarves are a little more similar to us humans than I’d thought. I saw the same kind of story happen a couple of times when I was in school.”
That really got her attention and she smiled over at me. “Really? What was your school like?”
Laughing, I replied, “Hah, nothing like this. It was before we even had the Links.”
Her eyes shined with wonder. “It must be weird for you to be back in school, being an elder.”
That made me laugh even harder. “An elder? No way, I’m not even middle aged.”
“Oh!” She exclaimed, which caught the attention of a couple of other nearby dwarves who looked towards us. She reeled in her excitement before she continued. “So, you are young then, for a human?”
I gave her a slightly confused look and took a drink of my steaming broth. “Sort of, I’m only 27. I’ve been an adult for a few years, but I’m like a quarter into my lifespan, if that makes it make sense.”
She smiled and bobbed her head up and down again. “Oh, okay! I’ve read about your life spans. It’s pretty wild.” she let out a nervous laugh and watched Sallis and Jozoic, who were walking over towards us.
Sallis flopped down on the ground across from me, forming a circle between the four of us. “So, you were in on the pickup, ‘aye? Lurbolg is still annealing n’ don’t wanna talk about it, what the fook happened?”
I debated with myself over telling the story for a moment, but decided that they should know. If we were getting punished as a block, it only made sense to me that we should all know why. I went over what I knew and explained my perspective, and the three dwarves listened with sour-faced silence.
“...He couldn’t even form words by the time we had him halfway out of the service levels, and just babbled like a baby for the rest of the way, and well… you all saw what happened when we got here.” I finished my story to the small group.
“Two ticks to shields up!” Shouted Bomilik from where he was standing with Kazek and a few others near the door.
Realizing our short break was almost up, everyone grumbled and started to prepare to leave the training room. I chugged the rest of my broth before strapping on my armor and joining the rest. There was a nervous energy amongst the whole group as we all prepared to face our shame in the Houses courtyard.