Bomilik faced down the representatives, who all stopped to regard him for a moment. Again, all the dwarves spread throughout the wide domed room turned to look in my general direction. I unconsciously slouched and slid a step farther away from the large dwarv whose broad shoulders still only came up to my elbow.
A small part of me had been turning over the question of why Kazek hadn’t brought Bomilik along to explain to the impromptu council in the first place. A larger part of me had looked away and pretended to not notice.
The truth was, I knew exactly why he had asked his second in command to stay behind. I’d seen it a hundred times growing up, from classmates, teachers, bosses, and coworkers. It was a simple, selfish thing. Kazek was not as impressive when viewed alongside Bomilik, and he knew it.
Our row leader was a serious, devoted, and disciplined dwarv. Yet his family was far enough removed from the founding Galidurn hold for him to not be considered mainline. Bomilik possessed many of the same qualities, but had little interest in being a leader and had only begrudgingly accepted the rank of second. All he wanted to do was take part in the building and ongoing founding of the three year old city, to make his mark on it while the iron was hot and the main structures had yet to be fully finished. Yet something else had turned out to be even more important when dealing with the other dwarves. Bomilik was part of the mainline family.
Kazek, for all of his good qualities, was ambitious. While honor and duty guided much of his conduct, ambition often festers resentment under the shadow of someone more capable and connected. Bomilik had grumbled and complained about his assignment, but he had not pushed back as hard as he could by calling for our own little moot like Jozoic had so early in the trial.
“You are here as witness, not representative.” The host Cerrik Hammerting said from the center ring. “This is not the Grand Forum, but a field moot.”
Kazek’s shoulders settled and his face reddened, but his voice was clear and commanding as he called out to the assembly. “Bomilik is an expert and can explain our situation better than anyone present. I ask him to step forward and enlighten us on the matters of the field in question.”
“I’ll second it, let him speak.” Dorne added with a scornful look at Cerrik, who sighed and looked to the other two speakers.
“Fine, fine. Enlighten us, student of stone.” The Hammerting leader replied, his tone dismissive and eyes angry.
Bomilik walked down the narrow bridge, the rough mushroom-tree planks bending under his bulk with each step and smacking down against the viscous tarpit that the makeshift platform was built atop. Sallis and Kazek parted and nodded at each other before crouching down to either side, making the large dwarv seem even larger by comparison.
Bomilik looked around the room for a moment, pointedly looking at Kazek before turning to face the others. “We are all students of the stone, Cerrik. The progress of my study will not end until I close my eyes for the last time, but I am also a certified rank two tunneling engineer. I passed the test days before the start of the trial. I will keep things simple for those of you who have chosen other paths, and you should ask your own engineers of the details.”
He swept his gaze from side to side over the gathered groups. “However, It seems none of you brought your experts with you today. Where is Serral, Cerrik? I know your cousin is a fine geologist. Sen of house Bassaldourn would see this too, if he had not fallen in our pointless battles. It is as plain as can be. The upper levels are made of porous basalt with pockets of resource, while most of the tunnels linking the chambers are built to function as fractured granite or made of the same basalt. The substrate around the chambers and tunnels is fractured and shot through with cracks, seams, and mechanism. It is mostly water-tight, but not remotely air tight.”
Bomilik cleared his throat, raising his hands and gesturing at the other dwarves to emphasize his point. “The stone and system itself is permeable and will allow the gases to equalize, it will not hold it back. This whole complex is made up of moving pieces with cracks and gaps that the gas will level out within. The gases will settle on the scale of hours, much faster than any natural stone would allow.”
Bomilik looked up at the ceiling for a moment, still dark, distant, and untouched by the scattered splatters of glow goo. “You must have somehow kept your ceiling vent open as well, if your forge is still operable. The air will have a place to rise away through on the scale of moments. Once the rest of the complex below your forge is filled, it will fill your forge chamber as well. We would have to close off the vents to make that chamber a safe vessel for the rising tide, or seal it away entirely and block off both entrances to keep the water out. Yet blocking everything but the heat vents and hiding there removes access to the water we would need to generate our own oxygen. We don't even have the time for a proper seal, you said it yourself. Solid bonds take days on such a scale.”
There was some light murmuring around the cavern, but Bomilik’s authoritative voice rang clearly overtop of the undertone. “The gorge caverns are large, have high ceilings, and are at the very top of the formation.” He held one hand up high as if to demonstrate. “Now, lucky for us, water does not compress, meaning that we do not have to worry over the weight of the entirety of the reservoir…”
He launched into a detailed explanation of the situation, extolling the virtues of pressurizing the lower chamber and using the denser stone and the water itself as a means to seal our environment so that we could actually manage it. He explained it as being like an air bubble in a pipe, no matter how much you pushed you would never be able to force that little bubble out of existence. Yet if you opened one end of the tube, the bubble would be quickly shoved out. Their open forge ceiling vent would be the bleeder valve that allowed the cavern network to purge us from its system.
It all mostly made sense to me, and I was willing to believe Max and Bomilik about the things I couldn’t wrap my head around.
While he went through his explanation I looked between the other representatives, trying to gauge how well Bo’s arguments were being received. With the distance and darkness it was difficult to make out facial expressions or the little details I would normally look for. While studying Cerrik Hammerting’s face for some sign of acceptance or shift from his stony look of determination, a white-lined box flashed around his face a number of times and still-images spread out to either side as my vision zoomed in.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Since the initial burst of mist to do the whole color changey thing, all of them are holding in the pheromones that normally communicate their emotional reactions. It makes them more difficult to read, but the translators seem like they’re starting to turn brain waves into micro expressions like you humans suffer from. I wonder if the bugs actually know about that, they’re probably used to being able to hold their secrets inside. They all can mask as essentially non-reactive sociopaths if they need to shut down their emotional displays for whatever reason. Which–by the way–I think is why Greg played us like a violin. I couldn’t read his intent through all those little tells that most of you have.”
“They sure played us alright, that one’s on all of us.” I thought back sarcastically while studying the blown up images. “Also, I think it’s supposed to be ‘fiddle’ instead of ‘violin’.”
Cerrik looked to be showing some worry and apprehension now that he was faced with Bomilik’s credibility and more thought out reasoning. More pictures popped up, showing the faces of the other leaders with tiny expression markers circled and highlighted.
“I’m way too classy to be a fiddle.” Max replied with a haughty tone, but I got the sense of a smile with his words. “And you’re more like… an ukulele, or something equally as undignified.”
I looked over the images as Bomilik continued hammering his point in, but Max’s unfamiliar pronunciation caused me to pause. “What’s so undignified about ukuleles?” I answered using the mental pronunciation that was more ‘yew’ and less ‘eww’. I felt the tiniest of grins tug at the corners of my mouth, despite everything. Our banter finally coming together as something more fun than serious was a huge morale boost.
“Nothing, when wielded properly. When was the last time you saw one played in a serious manner though? They’ve gone the way of the kazoo and lost their air of dignity in most of your twisty little cultures over the last few decades”
I perused the images that were slowly filling up most of my field of view. The two raiding clans’ representatives looked angry, Fedrick of Bassaldourn even bared his teeth in the slightest of snarls in one of the pictures.
Dorne showed anger in his eyes as he nodded along to Bomilik’s speech, but his mouth was pulled into a tense grin as our tunneling expert schooled the assembled dwarves on just how clueless their previous plan had been. I knew nothing about the Brightenjaw dwarv, but he looked like he would be happy to back our plan as long as it also meant sticking it to the Hammertings.
The silent dwarv next to Cerrik on the center ring leaned in and whispered in his ear. I thought about seeing if Max could read their lips or something, but he brought his hand up and blocked his mouth. Whatever was said caused the hosting row leader to grimace and nod.
”I could do that dirt-side probably, but not through this connection. The translator wouldn’t have any reason to send us the data if we’re out of range of the proximity system. It might work on other humans or non-masked sophonts back in the Hub though.”
Bomilik clapped his hands once and held them together at chest level. “...so you see, the water itself will seal the cracks and gaps that would allow the gas to filter through, allowing us to harbor ourselves within this grand chamber at the heart of our collective domain. We have no use for a forge moving forward. The migration has found its egress. The unknown has been explored. The in-fighting has ceased. Now is the time to unite within the middleground that this very cavern represents.”
The air hung silent and empty for a moment after Bomilik finished his speech, and everyone's eyes turned to Cerrik. I smiled again, just for a second, glad to not be the one everyone was looking at again. He had asked for this attention and scrutiny by hosting this whole thing and attempting to steer it like the King might in an actual moot between all five houses.
“Thank you, Bomilik, for your words of wisdom.” Cerrik’s voice had lost much of its earlier confidence. “I think it would be wise to recess for a time to confer among ourselves.”
That got my attention, and snapped me out of my slowly growing realization that I was probably doomed to a fate similar to his. To constantly be looked to for guidance, expected to make the decisions, and to keep a growing group of friends and allies all focused on Max’s ridiculous plan. I didn’t have time to think about any of that now though.
I glanced at the clock in the corner of my HUD, and Max appeared in a small outlined box in the corner of my field of view next to the numbers. It looked like he was seated at a desk with a bunch of posters and toys on a shelf behind him, and had some kind of multicolored glowing headset with a mic strapped across his perfectly round gray head. He leaned in towards the…camera? making direct eye contact with me through the little virtual screen.
“I’m on the same page. We only have an hour and a half before the water blows past the p-trap and flushes us all out of the trial, heh. We need to have their water tunnel filled before then too. That’s not when we need to start working on it. He said their blockage is 20 head deep? That’s damn near a hundred feet of tunnel you all need to clear out before you can even start working on balancing the water level with the other four, erm, reservoirs.”
“Flushed? Real classy…” I muttered to myself, catching Kikkelin’s attention from a few feet away. The dwarven girl looked over at me and raised a questioning eyebrow. I shook my head at her and rose from my don’t-look-at-me slouch. “You’re gonna have to back me up here Max…” I thought, before I called out and cut off Raktaur Rocksteady from his agreement to the recess.
“Wait! We can’t waste any time!”
Again, all of the dwarves turned and looked at me. Kikkelin gave me a look that shifted from surprise, to horror, to apprehensive amusement.
“You’ve already had an expert!” Fedrick countered, jabbing a finger at Bomilik.
“I won’t be lectured by some soft-handed primate, there is no chance he is an expert on anything under the mountain.” Raktaur added, his face turning an obvious red despite the darkness and distance between us.
Kazek gave me an almost confused look, but Bomilik boomed out in his deep voice before anyone else could speak. “Kaninak may be a ceiling scraper, but he’s more capable than he looks and full of surprises. We should hear him out.”
Kazek nodded his assent, and Dorne jumped on the opportunity to countermand Cerrik’s call. “I second, let the human speak.”
With that little spat out of the way, the dwarves again all turned to me. Cerrik let out a sigh and nodded. “Step forward and let us hear what is so important then, Kaninak, was it?”