Dear diary, I miss my parents.

We wake up nice and early today, or what I think is nice and early. At least, I think it is early, but there is still no sun, so it is kind of hard to tell what time it actually is. After I packed away my things, which is not a whole lot, I still have my school bag, but besides a few notebooks and pens, it does not hold anything useful. So, I am carrying a part of the guy's stuff to lighten their load at least a bit.

“How do dwarfs tell the time?” I ask once we start moving again, the question still grinding away at me

“What do you mean?”Gimdar asks.

“Well, how do you know it is morning or evening? This place is lacking in the whole sunlight thing.”

“You see, we dwarfs are special. We can tap into the geo oscillations of the earth to come up with an exact measure of timekeeping.” Gimdar explains

I look at Glinknor in confusion. “That means he made it all up. We dwarfs don’t have a need for timekeeping since we don’t go to the surface. There is no such thing as day and night.” He explains

“Ooh, I see that makes some sense, I guess, but if you have no concept of day and night down here, how do you know what it is?” I ask, even surprising myself with the question.

“Stories mostly, they say that we used to live on the surface a long time ago before the dragons took over most of it,” Glinknor says

“Dragons,” I say excitedly. I guess it should not be that odd that dragons are real, considering all of the things I have seen the last couple of days, but being a princess riding a white dragon awakens the inner child in me.

“Yes, foul and evil beasts that eat anything and anyone they can get their hands on,” Gimdar says.

“Right, that sounds bad,” I say, putting my dream of riding dragons away for another day.

It takes us most of the day before we reach the clan. It is clearly visible from some ways away, its light shining far into the tunnel. Suddenly, the cave gives way to tiles as we enter a lit-up room with a big gate closing off access to the beyond. The door is made out of brass-like metal, depicting what I assume is a dwarf war or fight.

We stand in the room, waiting until a voice can be heard. “Gimdar, Glinknor, you are back, but who is the person you brought with you.” The voice says.

“Nothing to worry about. The lass is lost; he said that he wanted to go to the surface of all places, so we thought bringing the lass to the clan head would be wise.”

So, I did not get the concept of gender completely into their heads. Turns out dwarf children are made by putting a special gem into a mixture of molten metal and mud. All dwarfs created this way have always been male, so there has never been something like a female dwarf before. And when I tried to explain the difference, they just got confused. The different languages also did not help; their languages did not have a proper way to address something as female either, so I guess I am a he for now. Not great.

The other side of the door stays quiet for a long while, but eventually, the door opens into the room. And we head inside. I am unsure what I expected the dwarf city to look like. There is a lot of metal, giving the city a factory look. But outside? No, not outside; we are still underground. But it does not feel as confined as the cave had felt. Maybe it is all the light or the laughing and singing coming out of the various pubs.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Gimdar and Glinknor stop at one of the bigger buildings, dropping off their packs before we head further inside. I am taken to a big room where some of the older dwarfs are, or what I think are older dwarfs. They are all standing around a table filled with papers with various designs on them.

As we walk closer, their discussion stops as they all observe us.

“Gimdar, who have you brought with you?” the dwarf at the head of the table asks.

“Clan leader Balgur, this is Cestla. We found him wandering the caves.”

The clan leader looks surprised, and I can hear quite muttering among the gathered dwarfs. Then the clan head turns to me. “And why have you come, esteemed Cestla.” He asks

I turn back to Gimdar with confusion, but he just has a broad smile on his face. I turn back to the clan leader. “Well, I did not come with any goal in mind; I just kind of came here by accident.”

The dwarf nods “Well, that is good to hear. If you came here with the bad news, that would have been more of a concern. So, is there anything you would need?”

I sigh. My plan had been to go to the surface, but something told me I was no longer on Earth, so that might not be a good idea, especially with dragons roaming around. No, the man had said that the amulet would recharge, so that meant I just had to wait.

I nod to myself. “I would like a place to stay until I am charged. I don’t have any money, but I could work.”

“I see. Well, there is an apprentice house free in the Iron District,” the clan leader says. “As for work, are you skilled at anything?”

I blush. “Not really, I can read and write, but I never had a job before.”

“Oh really,” the clan leader looks surprised. “How did you manage that? You are like 50. Not working for such a long time is impressive.

“I am twelve,” I say to the dwarf.

There was more muttering in the room. “Twelve, that would mean that you are still a child. But you are already so tall,” The clan head exclaims in surprise.

“I am a child,” I say, then I try to raise my hands high above my head. “Adults tend to be this tall where I am from.”

Even more, muttering in the room as one of the other dwarfs in the room steps forward. “Cestla, should you not have an apprenticeship by now.”

Apprenticeship. I searched my memory for the word and realised it is something we used to have in our past; we had discussed it during history class. It was like a type of schooling. “Yeah, I am learning at the moment but I am a bit too far away for that now.

The dwarf nods. “Well, I don’t know what you were supposed to learn in your clan, but my forge has laid empty for months. If you like, I can teach you the basics while you are here,”

Forge, like a blacksmith? That sounds cool. I nod enthusiastically. “I would like that a lot,” I say, then I rethink it. “Why would you help me?”

The dwarf chuckles. “Old dwarf tradition, we help any stranger with the name Cestla,” he says.

I turn back to Gimdar, who has a big smile on his face. I see that's why he gave me that name to help me. I turn back to the dwarf that offered me a job? Apprenticeship. “Well, it would be an honour to learn from you, master”, I hedge.

“Bah, don’t bother with the whole master stuff. Just call me Dur,” Dur says.

“Well, Dur, it seems like we have to table the discussion about hydraulic compression for now. You should let your new apprentice settle in first.” The clan leader says

Dur turns to him “I am sorry, Bulgar. I’ll make it up to you all later with some ale.”

With that settled, we head out. I say goodbye to Gimdar and Glinknor and thank them for everything they have done for me. Then Dur takes me to his house and shows me around. He has a big forge, several bedrooms, and a bathroom. It turns out smithing is dirty work, and Dur has me swear an oath to the ever-shining pearl that if I enter the house from the forge, I bathe first.

He shows me my room and then leaves for a while to grab some dinner. The room is nice, very industrialistic, and has lots of weapons on the wall. I feel like my parents would not really approve.

“Mother, Father, I miss you lots.”