“Grab all of the tools and equipment first. We should take the still, the steel anvil, all of the ingots and limestone, and what's left of the sportrell branches.” Lokralda instructed me while she worked at grinding what looked like charcoal into a fine powder in a stone trough. She then waved over at the large series of vats.
“See if you can pull the big vat of H2O, and the jugs of acids. I’d not suffer to make them again. Then as much coal as you might.” She continued, her translator showing off her inexperience with speaking with humans.
Kazek and Kikkelin were over by the model map, while Bomilik was busy scraping up one of the other piles of minerals. I joined in the task as soon as Lokralda refocused on her own work. Bomilik glanced over at me and gave me a nod as I began pulling tools and equipment into my inventory. My inventory had six square meters of space that I could fill after completely clearing out of my normal equipment and clutter in preparation for the Trial.
I wasn’t sure how the inventory worked really. Was it like a storage locker of the same size, a faraway place where everything I pulled into it was digitally stacked and organized into a cube of various items? Or did each object poof away to its own little box where it was weighed and measured before ticking away at my total counter?
“You almost got it with that last guess. This is all holo-goods though, so it’s not like it actually has to physically go anywhere. If this stuff was True-goods it would all be held in the cloud around the Impex, just suspended in a field out in deep space on the border of the Bara’s star system.”
I listened to Max’s explanation and laid a hand on the nearly three foot square vat mostly full of water, then selected the option to pull it into my inventory. Thankfully the weight didn't matter, only the volume. Plus, I didn’t have to lift it off the ground in order to take it because it likely would have taken all of us together to lift the cube of stone and water off of the ground.
I mentally projected a question back at my AI companion as I scooped up handfuls of coal, grateful that he was apparently in one of his helpful informative moods. “So all the stuff that’s been brought into the Links is just floating around out in space?”
“Mostly, it’s complicated. It’s all there, but not really as you understand ‘there’. That’s how they can pack so much stuff in the area as well as keeping things fresh. The mass gets scribed into one of thousands of layers of information fields that the Impex projects around itself that is written into… sort of a two dimensional state. It has no time or volume, only surface area.”
I thought over his answer as I continued to load my inventory down. I had already crossed the two-thirds-full mark on my inventory, and doubted that I had enough room to scoop up all of the coal. I had no idea what he was talking about when it came to dimensional differences and information fields, but the thought that all of the things brought into the Link, every electronic do-dad, pair of socks, or cargo container full of alien grain, all of the trade volume across thousands of planets, was just floating around in space out there somewhere was hard to reconcile.
Max let out an exasperated sigh. “Uhhhg, that’s not… actually, you know what. That’s good enough for you, I suppose. If you ever make it from caveman to kindergartener on my scale, maybe I’ll revisit that explanation.”
The cavern rumbled and shook, the dark stone vibrating under my feet as dust cascaded from the ceiling and walls. Everyone froze in place, then Kazek yelled out. “Stoneshift!” The dwarves all threw themselves to the ground, doing their best to conglobate as well. The stone rose and fell underneath us, and the sound of grinding stone drowned out everything for a moment. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the motion and sound ceased and was replaced by an overwhelming silence.
I was the first to get back onto my feet, and scanned around the room to see if anything had been broken or collapsed. Nothing seemed to have changed though, the ceiling was still in place, and the walls were still the same solid volcanic stone. Bomilik was the one who finally called out what had happened.
“The vents are closed, the ceiling as well!”
He was right. The nearly 15 ft wide hole in the ceiling was now blocked by a smooth wall of stone about twenty feet above the dome of the ceiling. The air had gone stagnant, and the breeze that had constantly been drawn through the chamber with the rising hot gases from the heat vents slowed to a stop. The heat vents themselves were also closed, one of the forges that had been built into the vents was crushed and smashed in between the stones that had slid together to block them off.
The whole thing was suspicious. The only things that closed off were sealed shut by perfectly smooth stone walls, and the rest of the cavern was left untouched?
“Aww, look at you. You’re on a bit of a roll today. No way the elders would risk their entire new brood by setting off a real quake. They do this basically every other month, and it looks like they have it set up into rearrangeable interlocking chunks that they change around each time. The “stoneshift”, as they call it, is a pre planned event. Some other tunnels were closed off, and a couple of new ones opened up as well. Oh…”
His explanation cut off, and he forced my minimap into the middle of my vision, enlarging it again into its full view of the network of tunnels and caverns. He highlighted one of the outer chambers, and showed it filling up with a pinkish color that spilled from the floor and ran up the walls, slowly spilling over and running along the top of the connecting tunnel towards the next room.
“That room is also filling up with helium. Plus it looks like they’re using water to force the scholovian’s to the surface too, so that’ll probably become a problem as well.”
“Damnit,” I thought. “What even is the point of that?”
“Uh, just more hazards? I don’t know, the dwarves did it, not me. Why don't you ask them?”
“I’m not supposed to know about it yet. How long will it take before one of us should be able to detect it?” I glanced around the room at my unsuspecting team while I finished filling my inventory up with double handfuls of coal.
“The water will be here shortly, but the helium… probably not until most of the outer caverns are filled up. Here.” He brought the map back up and fast forwarded the pink clouds expansion with a predictive overlay.
The gas filled up chamber after chamber, until most of our territory was filled up with the inert yet unbreathable gas over the course of about 5 seconds. The forge room, the squam room, even the bismuth room that was right next to the staircase filled with the swirling gas. The picture froze at the end state once the gas had entirely filled up the chamber it was venting from and created an equilibrium. The only spaces that were free from water or gas were the very lowest caverns centered around the tar room.
“It looks like they want to push us towards each other… this whole trial seems designed to make us fight with the other Houses.” I mused.
“With what we’ve seen so far, that’s a reasonable assertion.”
With a shake of my head, I pulled in the last load of coal and my HUD chimed with a ‘full inventory’ notification. “I guess it makes sense.” I muttered, turning over the thoughts in my head. I’d seen signs of how competitive the dwarves were between houses, even in the scant few hours that I’d spent outside of the Galidurn slice of the undermountain. It seemed that within each House, the dwarves acted as a singular family and cohesive group. Yet the rivalry between each House was actively encouraged even amongst their young during this formative challenge, something that was supposed to prepare the young dwarves for lives within the greater Clan.
What did that all mean? How did they encourage such rivalry without falling into civil war and infighting? In my own experience, the leaders of Arktria were a mostly faceless yet united force that stood apart from the people. They remained aloof and directed through the intermediary bureaucracy of the noble and executive classes. In all my days as a laborer, I heard plenty of groaning and moaning over ‘The Council’s’ decrees, but could count on one hand how many times I’d heard anything associated with one of the individual councilors’ names. I wasn't even aware of all of their names until I was pulled in as a diplomat.
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Now with the dwarves, I was on a first name basis with my House's leader, and had heard a speech from the King himself, who they even claimed was elected. The House's patriarch's daughter, Kazzad, and nephew, Chane, even participated in training of the young, rather than leaving it to professionals or specialists. It was all so different and foreign to me. Yet I had to wonder, if it works for the dwarves, could something else work for us humans?
All that thought between myself and Max only took a couple of seconds before Kazek’s refined voice snapped me out of my rumination.
“We are out of time, we must move! Kikkelin and Bomilik, join with Jozoic and Sallis and start on your count. Kaninak, Lokra, we will take ground and make sure we have a clear path to the stairwell.”
The dust had only just settled out of the air, and we all nodded and refocused our efforts. I caught Lokralda’s eye and we chased after Kazek as he picked up a heavy bronze shield and double marched towards our elevator chamber.
Loud splashing footsteps from behind stopped us before we made it out of the room, and Sallis came running into the soon-to-be-abandoned forge chamber. She pushed through Kikkelin and Bomilik, accompanied by a trickle of water that traced a quickly growing dark line along the floor. “The tunnel is flooding, water is washin’ away the mentha!”
We all turned to Kazek, who let out a lengthy sigh. He pulled his shield into his inventory and wiped his freed up hand down his face before casting a glance in the direction of the modeled map of the underground complex. “Then we all move as one. Where is Jozoic?”
Max pinged my map again, and highlighted a section of tunnel near the stairwell that had a subtle flowing dip and rise to it. “I did some more simulations, and this stretch will fill and hold the water and gas back, provided all of the territories are filling in a similar manner. It’ll drive the pressure up quite high, but not high enough to be dangerous. Hah, see, it's just like one of these.” He pulled up a small image which depicted, of all things, a toilet. The picture appeared next to the map, then zoomed in on the section of curving pipe built into the bottom of it.
“It’s stretched out and on a much larger scale, but if my calculations are correct and the observed rate of flow continues, the water will hold the gas above this point.” He highlighted the tar chamber, as well as the three lowest caverns connected to it. “We’ll actually have more habitable space because of the water, the helium would have no problem compressing and making its way around the p-trap, heh. Water is a much more stubborn material though, you can’t compress it, and it's far too heavy for the helium to force out of the way. Hmm, I wonder if they used helium because of you, actually.”
I yanked a gauntlet off so I could rub at my own face and eyes in frustration, subconsciously following Kazek’s lead with the frustrated gesture. Too caught up with my inner monologue and Max, I missed out on Sallis’ reply about Jozoic, yet Kazek’s loud answer bumped the distracting thoughts out of the way.
“Then we regroup and retreat as one, this chamber’s floor is concave enough to provide some time if the flow rate is but a trickle. The scolovian will continue through here as they seek a path upwards. Our new primary enemy is the water, and is not something we will stand and fight. ”
“We can build up thresholds to hold the water here for longer!” Lokralda blurted out at the first pause in Kazek’s little speech.
“Do what you can. Make sure it will not be torn asunder by the passage of the migration. Everyone else, we move to retrieve Jozoic, and pull a fighting retreat!”
This time, I managed to participate in the loud, “Rock and stone!”, that the group let out before we all charged towards the migration.
We found Jozoic only a hundred feet from the entrance, his situation foreshadowed by echoing grunts, curses, and metallic scraping noises that bounced down the tunnel towards us. He had produced a shield similar to the one Kazek carried, a round plate of solid bronze that reminded me of a common man-hole cover. The things must have weighed at least a hundred pounds, and Jozoic was scraping the bottom of it through the water covered floor as fought backwards step by step.
I was near the middle of the pack when we met the tide of bugs, with Kazek and Sallis ahead of me and the rest of the surviving row behind me. Kazek linked his shield with Jozoic’s to block off the bottom half of the tunnel, while they both fought over the top of the shieldwall with their free arms. Kazek jammed a pry bar into the mouth of one of the scolo as it tried to break over the top of the formation. He pushed it back into the tangle on the far side of the wall, while Jozoic cracked another of them in the face with the pointy end of the pick he now held.
A split second later, I found myself tangling with one of the beasts as the next surge of them came over top of the last. I used my gauntlets to grab its mandibles and prevent it from biting down at Jozoic, and Sallis pushed it back with the long handle of the sledge hammer.
“One pace back!” Kazek shouted over the scraping rattle of the horde and labored breathing of the dwarves.
As one, we all moved backwards in a one-two-three cadence. Sliding our back feet backwards first, then repositioning our cores and following up with our lead foot as we settled into the new position. I punched another of the things in the face and slammed its head into the stone wall, before pushing it back into the small gap we had created. Sallis spat out a spray of the peppermint breath over the wall of writhing insects that caused some of them to curl up, and others to break into a berserk flurry of activity.
They splashed around in the quarter inch of water that was running through the floor, which seemed to cause some of them to recover while fresh beasts struggled to climb over them. For a brief moment, the tide was stalled.
Kazek and Jozoic surged forward. “Pull it in!” Kazek shouted, and Jozoic used his pick to roll one of the curled up monsters between the shields before linking them back together. Sallis and I caught eyes for a moment, and then stepped over the beast. I turned around, bracing my back against Kazek’s and pulled another of the mining picks from the pile of tools in my inventory, this one a larger two handed version. I handed it to Kikkelin, who stood behind me looking lost and scared.
She took the offered tool. “Finish it off, and get the mandibles!” I told her.
After taking a shaky breath, her eyes focused and she nodded. “Got it.”
I felt Kazek push back against me and braced him in place for a second until the pressure backed off. I watched as Kikkelin brought the pick up and then down into the center of the curled up creature, then quickly spun back around and pulled a blacksmith's hammer from my inventory that I used to club the next monster to try to climb over the shield wall.
“How many more of those shields do we have?” I asked, not having to raise my voice all that much to rise over the surprisingly quiet battle.
“Only the two.” Bomilik answered from his position next to Kikkelin.
“Great.” I replied, hearing the familiar sound of cracking chitin as the now dead scolovian had its mandibles removed. Bo then stood the rolled up body of the monster on its rounded edge and rolled it forward. As a group, we pushed it back to the frontline.
“One pace back!” Kazek called out again, and we repeated the movement in lock step. This time we left the harvested monster on the far side of the shield wall, our two shield bearers expertly parting around the body of the creature as they gave ground. Two breaths later, the horde of insects crashed into the wall again and Bomilik let out a spray of the peppermint mist to halt their advance. Our frontline kicked another of the rolled up and disabled beasts back to us, and we repeated the process. Step by step, we cycled out dispatching and harvesting the beasts, then retreated one pace at a time.
We all took a number of small injuries, scrapes and pokes from the long mandibles of the persistent creatures as we fought them back from the bulwark of the shieldwall. Luckily our manner of fighting and the poor footing of their poisoned brethren seemed to prevent any of the long creatures from bringing their stingers to bear. The creatures were far less dangerous in the cramped confines of the packed tunnel. The way we were all packed together, none of the creatures could maneuver enough to wrap and sting like the lone beast Sallis, Jozoic, and myself had faced during our explorative outing in our training.
I stopped thinking, and my training and reflex took over as we continued. Time stopped mattering, the horror of the creatures no longer registered, and my hands knew what to do. Step, fight, spray, and slaughter. I lost count of how many steps we gave or how many mandibles we harvested, but recognized Lokralda’s wide eyes when I turned to the rear and helped roll one of the dead beasts. We had already been pushed back into the doorway of the forge room.
We had backed up to a three inch high ledge that crossed the bottom of the entrance to our besieged headquarters, and I hadn't even realized that the water had started to deepen slightly as the level tunnel filled around our feet.
“Lok! Take this, you’re up next!” Kikkelin said, pressing the pickaxe into her hands.
Despite her wild look, Lokralda’s voice remained controlled and serious as she accepted the pick. “Two inches of water in ten minutes, my ledges should buy us a few more minutes here, and maybe an hour before it spills over into the elevator chamber.”