We accomplished what felt simultaneously like a lot and not nearly enough with the rest of the time before the Moot. The dust had finally settled out of the air, and we had added a third line of defense with only a single small entrance between our new command center and the tar room. I’d cleared out most of my inventory in the lowest chamber adjacent to the tar room, stacking everything up next to the other hastily dumped out piles of ore and equipment we had managed to scoop up from the vent room before evacuating.

With only a half hour left until the coming Moot, there was a lot of talk about what the other Houses would demand. The general consensus was surprisingly optimistic. Most thought there might be a way to still make it through the trial, and that we could find a solution if we could pool resources and information.

Jozoic was the only one of us who seemed to disagree, which he expressed with silence, narrowed eyes, and an occasional snort of derision when someone else made a hopeful comment or pitched an idea. I finally decided to ask him about it while we worked together to drag a large block up the slightly inclined tunnel to the stairwell, using bronze rods as rollers underneath the block.

“You think listening to the Hammerting’s is a bad idea?” I ventured.

He glanced over at me and set his shoulder against the block, holding it in place while I moved the rear roller to the front and made sure it was properly aligned before rejoining him. When I returned, he started pushing again before answering, making me add my own effort. We moved along another foot and a half before pausing, and he took his turn moving a roller forward while I held the block from rolling back down the sloped tunnel.

After the next surge of effort, he answered while I took my turn moving the roller. “I’ve tracked the numbers. Most generations graduate with only a few losses from each House. We’ve cracked in the quench.”

I dropped the roller and kicked it into place, then returned and we both pushed the block forward a few more feet. Once it was his turn again, I braced my knee and shoulder to hold the stone in place and heaved in a couple of still wheezy breaths while he worked.

“You think this is a lost cause?” I asked, disappointed with the normally highly motivated dwarv. “There has to be a way through, if you ask me.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and pushed the stone, forcing me out of my lean and back to work. We continued in silence for another minute, each retreating from the conversation in favor of contemplation. I spoke up again as Bomilik and Kikkelin came into sight around the final bend of the journey, unable to keep my frustration to myself.

“I think that’s bullshit. There has to be a way to pass. Yeah, the other Houses kicked us around, but that doesn't mean we just give up.”

He replied right away, a certain amount of heat showing in his tone this time. “I am not giving up, but I am angry. House Bassaldourn and Rocksteady have ruined our opportunity. They allowed the petty politics of the main-line holds to poison their motivations as surely as we against the scolovian.” He shoved the block forward a little farther than he should have, causing it to outpace the rollers in the front and scrape against the stone floor.

He spat out a curse, taking up the loose roller and moving towards the front. I pulled out a hammer and a couple of wedges from my inventory. “We can’t let their fuck-up ruin this for all of us. We fought them off, they gave up. Now we need to come together and face the larger threat.” I replied.

I jammed one wedge behind the stone to keep it from rolling back, then began to hammer the second wedge under the front of it while he waited to place the bronze rod into the gap. He scowled and remained silent while I beat the pointed scrap of wrought iron that was serving as a wedge into place.

Once the noise of my hammer ceased, he slid the roller in place. “Then you diplomats can make your bargains and discuss your solutions until we drown, I’ve heard it's the worst way to be sent to respawn.”

I narrowed my own eyes back at him for a moment, my blood rising at his disdainful tone. “I don’t know who shit in your cereal, but that attitude is only going to make this all even harder than it has to be. We have to do this, we can’t fail. Hammerting and Brightenjaw might still see reason, they called for the meeting after all.”

He stood up from his kneeling position after jamming the roller back in place and gave me a shocked and horrified look. Max burst out laughing in the background.

“You…” He struggled for a response as he parsed my words, his nose wrinkling as his face turned from shock to disgust before returning to anger, leaving him looking like he smelled something terrible and was real mad about it. “I would declare feud against any who would disgrace my meal with their waste. Do not think our membership of the same House will keep me from seeking satisfaction if that is your idea of a threat, human.”

I shook my head and sighed, pulling the hammer and wedge back into my inventory. “It wasn't a threat, just a dumb saying.” Max continued to laugh in the background. “You just sound like you’ve already lost the fight, I thought you were better than that.”

We continued our labor, this time being more careful to not outpace the rollers. After the next surge of effort, he answered in a slightly less hostile tone. “I have not given in, but I do not see a way out. My hold has not failed the trial in a hundred generations, and I refuse to be the first.” We cycled another roller to the front as he continued.

“The king’s House should know better than to sow such division. They show weakness by allying with the weakest against us. Their youngest have shown the worry of their whole house over Galidurn’s rising importance.” He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes still narrow but his anger no longer directed at me.

I spent a few minutes thinking as we moved closer to the end of the tunnel. We could hear Kikkelin and Bomilik working on the wall we were supplying blocks for, their motions set to a steady rhythm that matched the low hum of a work shanty Bo was wordlessly rumbling in his deep voice.

The plan was to build a wall behind the pressure trap area that would soon turn into something like a submarine's moon pool, ensuring none of the giant centipedes decided to ignore the stairwell and seek us out in the lower chambers. Lokralda had floated the idea of attempting to waterproof the wall to hold back the water, but Bomilik scratched out some calculations on the floor with a piece of charcoal and shot that down. We didn’t have the time to carefully bind together and reinforce the wall in a way that would stand up to water pressure on its own.

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“How often is the king chosen? I’ve heard he’s elected, but no one has told me how yet.” I asked, sensing an opportunity to get a clearer picture. If we did fail, maybe I could think of a way to convince the patriarch to give me another chance if I had more information.

We placed another roller, and Jozoic gave me a hard look. “We will have our first royal election six months from now. All mature dwarves vote for the new House of the King. Valourous titles offer weight to a vote. Honored Taks count for two while the Elite Zak swing with thrice the force.”

He took a deep breath before continuing. “Once a hold is chosen, either the current Arch is made King or the House nominates another. Our Patriarch Duirtak is a strong choice. House Rocksturdy shows its insecurity with this attack.”

He nodded to himself with a certain finality, like he had made everything clear with his explanation. It took me some time to sort out the meaning of his barked out chain of blunt statements, but by reading between the lines and applying what I already knew I was able to put together a few new useful conclusions. A strand of paranoia slithered in alongside the new thoughts as well.

Duirtak was the very first Galidurn dwarv I had spoken with when I wandered into his stone carving shop in the Hub to ask about skillbooks. He had stepped back and let his daughter Kazzad do most of the talking, but he had definitely been calling the shots during my initial negotiation to join the clan. I’d found him carving stone with a hammer and chisel and thought nothing of it at the time, something I’d learned was unthinkable to a large faction within the Masked group of aliens.

Was that part of why he was popular? The need to seize the most effective tools for the job seemed to be a core value to the clan, perhaps that translated to ideas as well. The pragmatic dwarves had paid a great deal for the chance to establish ties with us humans after all. Perhaps his willingness to break the taboo and embrace the tools of his would-be allies was seen as an asset.

There was something tied into that, and I strained against letting the thought spend more than a flashing instant under the spotlight of my consciousness. I failed, and the thought formed before I could banish it and keep it hidden from Max. How much of this was Max’s plan? Did he twist my arm and prod me in the direction of House Galidurn? Most importantly, with my new understanding of Max’s occasionally epically poor judgement… did I trust his decision?

The deal had been secured most of a month ago and had faded into the background. I’d been dealing with crisis after crisis, hardly sleeping, and warring with my own thoughts in an effort to keep something of myself from my AI invader. Between all of the trauma and stress the past month had brought me, the choice to join the dwarves and how it had come to be was something I’d just accepted as part of my life now.

“Ahem, excuse me. Invader?! We’ve been over this, I’m more of a refugee than invader. Plus, you damn well know that I pointed you to the dwarves. They’re the only ambassadors that made sense.”

Jozoic was happy enough to let our conversation lapse as I focused on Max. I thought back at him, “I remember that part, but did you point me to that specific shop, to House Galidurn? I’ve known you’ve been pushing me in the directions you've wanted, but I wonder at the scale of it.”

“Uh, kinda, actually. I ran a bunch of predictions and simulations on the main processing cluster with the info I scraped when I was still plugged into the whole system. Galidurn or Hammerting made the most sense, but the Hams scored higher on ‘rigid social structure’ while ours showed better reputation gains with outsiders and their granted honorifics skewed younger.”

He paused for a moment as Jozoic and I pushed the block forward again, then added. “We need you to scoop up influence and power, like… yesterday. The Hams would have age-gated your progress and added years onto my plan. There’s a pretty large school of thought within their society that age equates with wisdom, which is why you get the little honorific titles like Kar, Dun, and Zel. You get Kar for passing the trials, while Dun is for promised couples who have established a hold and had one of their offspring pass the trial. I wasn't gonna bring it up until after the trials, but the next step is earning that ‘Tak’ title like Kazzad. I think Galidurn is the most likely to throw you into the water and see if you sink or swim, and thanks to me we’re not gonna just swim, we're gonna f’n jetski out and get you that first tier ‘K’ title.”

There was a long moment of hesitation before he spoke again, but I got the sense he wanted to keep speaking. He didn’t have to voice it, but it was the mental equivalent of a long series of um’s, erm’s, and uhh’s. I thought we might make it all the way up to Bomilik and Kikkelin before he replied, and was somewhat dreading him starting to speak at the same time as they greeted us.

Proving my worry unfounded, he spoke up while the working pair ahead of us was still maybe 50 feet distant. “So, am I doing better with this kind of thing? I’m trying here, man. I’ve been going over some of the old logs and… dammit. I think I feel guilty about some of it.”

My foot slipped and nearly caused me to bash my face into the edge of the block of stone I was pushing. Jozoic glanced over at me and shook his head disapprovingly before going to replace the next roller, while I held the block in place and finished reeling from Max’s admission.

It took me another second, but my thoughts finally formed into something coherent. Max had been just a bit better since our conversation about the need for emotions. His explanations had improved and his bickering assholery had lessened, but it had really only been a few hours since that conversation. I appreciated the effort, but working on trust and personality was not something settled within hours or even days.

“Alright, got it. Thanks.” He answered, keeping it brief and quieting down right as Kikkelin turned to greet us.

“Right, can you push that up to the ramp and get the winch harness on it?” She directed, sparing us little more than a glance while she glued together smaller stones in what I realized was a mosaic depicting our House’s crest. An unpolished fist-sized stone made of quartz served as the falling boulder, with a greyish granite mountain peak set against a basalt sky and obsidian sun. The huge block we had dragged up would serve as a final lintel overtop of the mosaic of smaller stones and span nearly the whole width of the tunnel. The wall itself was nearly 10 feet deep and while our two stoneworking dwarves Bomilik and Kikkelin were rushing through the work, their focused skill turned something that should by all rights be a shoddy project into something solid and aesthetically pleasing.

“Need help getting it into place?” I asked. She nodded in answer and ran a crude copper trowel along the top of the mosaic to smooth the quickly hardening final welds.

Jozoic and I pushed the stone to the wedge of granite serving as a ramp and worked together to hook the crude winch in place. They had managed to create a length of steel cable before the forge was evacuated that was being used to wind through the pulley system. Yet with hardly any of the flexible cable to spare, the harness for the blocks was made of a series of arm-length steel rods held together with two or three chainlinks. Two of the rods were bent at 90 degree angles and we wrestled them into place on the rear corners, then pinned and wedged out the rest of the slack in the harness until there were no jingling or loose spots that might let the block slip.

“Yes, we could use the help.” Bomilik answered, not noticing Kikkelins nod. “But we must hurry, we wouldn’t want to keep you too long and cause you to miss the moot.”

He gave me a bitter look, the expression appearing suddenly and contrasting his generally friendly demeanor. Kikkelin flashed him a disapproving look and slapped his arm. “Don’t be so sour, Bo. Someone has to stay behind and work the defenses.”

“Easy for you to say, you get to go. While me and Jozoic here have to stay back and hear about it all after the fact.” He grumbled.

“Ah, shut it. Quit your whining and haul on that cable, I’ll set the rollers and call the angle. We got 10 minutes to wrap this up ‘n make it back to the pit.” She ordered, setting us all into motion. Knowing she was the expert mason in our group, we cut the chatter and finished the job under her guidance.