Quest complete!

  The Trials of Change, the quest for adulthood.

  Prove yourself capable of standing amongst a long line of heroes. Showcase your skills and worthiness to serve alongside your peers and persist through the rigors of society.

  [X] - Join the House formation

  [X] - Proceed to the gathering hall

  [X] - Explore, Equip, Entrench

  [X] - Survive the migration

  (bonus solo objective)

  [Slay 10 Scolovian - 10/10]

  [Collect 10 sets of mandibles - 10/10]

  Bonus objective completed!

  Reward: Elevation to Kar Rank and accompanying title, acceptance into adult society within Clan Theedrite as a Brother of House Galidurn, first cycle dividend payment of 500 glitter, a vote within all open Moots before the clan, a private room within the barracks.

  Bonus Reward!

  Five levels of Diligence

  1,000 credits

  80 hours of training of time from any House instructor (Dun Rank or lower)

  One piece of gear of your choosing from the House Armory (Rare rank or lower)

  I pushed myself up to my feet, and quickly rejoined the rest of my cheering row. Almost everyone’s faces were overcome with some kind of emotion as they gripped their row members' with handshakes or back-slapping embraces.

  “We did it!” Kikkelin screamed over the roar of the cheering crowd, she raised her hand up high and offered me a high-five. I slapped my hand against hers and smiled back, then Sallis leapt up and nearly bowled me over with a flying hug. I stumbled a half step back as she latched on to me, but managed to keep my feet as she reached up and messed up my hair before dropping back off of me.

  “Welcome home, Kar Kananiak! Don’t let anyone ever tell you you didn’t—” she started, but a loud clunk reverberated through the chamber. All of the activity stopped as we scanned around for what had made the noise.

  The room filled with bright light from the distant center of the ceiling. The floor shook and vibrated beneath our feet. A section of ceiling over the center of the pit cracked and started to slowly fall with a deep grinding noise that reminded me of the landslide I’d caused on Rosso’s mountain.

  The shifting section of stone revealed itself to be a viewing platform that made me think of an upside-down air traffic control tower. The bottom of the platform was made from the same rough stone as the cavern, but each of the five sloped sides of the thing flashed and shifted texture and color to show wide panoramic windows. A crowd of well dressed or gleaming armor coated dwarves waved excitedly from inside the brightly lit room as surrounding vents hissed loudly and the world continued to rumble.

  I smiled up at the platform, and my ears popped. The dwarves around me continued to celebrate as we congratulated each other and waited to see what would happen next. An extending ramp began to slowly lower from the overhead viewing platform that led up to one of the windows. More cheers went up, despite the glacial speed of the mechanism that was lowering the ramp down towards us.

  Each of my surviving row members shouted something at me in turn, but their words were lost in the noise of the crowd as we congregated in the direction of the lowering gangway. I smiled and nodded eagerly at each of them, screaming my own congratulations at the blur of short and solid forms that stretched around me.

  It was a little strange, being back in a pressed crowd of dwarves. I towered above all of them, leaving me in a sea of dark haired forms only occasionally broken by a bright smiling face when one of them craned their neck up to look or yell something at me.

  After a few minutes, the cheering finally began to drop off as we watched the ramp still slowly lowering down towards us. Our way out had not even dropped down a quarter of the way towards us, and the vents off the side of the inverted tower continued to hiss and cause my ears to pop again. We all stared up at it, and I saw a few of the well dressed dwarves in the viewing platform laughing and giving exaggerated shrugs as if in apology.

  “Well, would you look at that. They’re delaying the whole thing just for you, haha.” Max injected a mental image of me inflating like a balloon until I popped in a confetti and candy filled explosion. “Kind of hilariously too, they could have just delayed starting to lower the ramp until the pressure leveled out. This is way better though, I didn’t think the king had such a sense of humor.”

  Some of the dwarves were looking around, clearly confused by the slower than expected process. A murmur with a questioning tone began to overtake the cheering before a booming loud-speaker voice blasted out from the platform.

  “Welcome, Brothers! You have completed your trial and will be welcomed home as the steadfast and determined citizens you have proven yourself to be.” King Kanduirik’s face appeared on one of the windows as it transferred over into a screen. “We will have you out of there soon enough, but must take some extra time before opening the doors to let you out. Fear not an extra few moments, your trials are over and the judging is complete. When the field is reset and the ramp touches the stone you will be brought back into the fold to slake your thirst, rejoin your elders, and begin your lives as adults in the manner you see fit!”

  There was another roaring cheer at his words. The screen flipped back to being a window, and a moment later it became clear the king was finished speaking. The murmur of chatter rose in volume as everyone started talking amongst themselves. I looked around, finding it difficult to judge just who I was standing next to. Most of what I could see was just shaggy dark hair and uniformly wide shoulders draped in scraps of dirty rags and leather straps. One of the faces turned up to look at me, and I recognized Hodak.

  He yelled something at me, but I couldn't make it out and shook my head at him. He reached up and grabbed me by the shoulder, pulling me down so he could shout into my ear. “What comes next for ya?”

  I grinned and shrugged, turning my head so I could yell into his ear in turn. “I’m not sure! What pays the best?” I asked, half jokingly.

  My plan with the dwarves was still vague, and needed to change in the wake of the fallout of getting kicked out of my previous nation. Before, I’d thought I would just use my diplomatic position to broker deals and leverage Max’s assistance to make well timed investments or trade deals or something along those lines. I’d heard that's what rich people did, and figured that’s how I’d have to behave to follow Max's plan to build some kind of huge space station landing pad thing and steal the Impex.

  As soon as I had that thought, I realized just how naive and unprepared it sounded. That wasn't a plan, it was a direction. Things would be harder now, and I’d need to find my own value to offer the clan beyond my connection to my ex-faction. What could I even do beyond being another set of hands breaking rocks? I still needed to find the time to think this through.

  Hodak laughed and squeezed my shoulder, still hanging onto me and keeping me leaned over so he could yell back into my ear. “Fightin’ or tradin’! If all you’re after is glitter and credits. Might be something to blowing stuff up too.”

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  I laughed and pulled out of his grip so I could look him in the face, and saw the wild look in his eye he had held closely within the trial had only grown. I shook my head and replied, not having to shout quite as loudly as the crowd around us was starting to disperse and quiet down again.

  “I don’t think the whole clan is ready for explosive mining yet, I don’t think I want to go that route anyway,” I said, and I meant it. There was no way either Max or myself would be content to spend our time down under the mountain blasting holes in the stone.

  Hodak shook his head, and flashed me that slightly unsettling grin of his. “Mhmm, I didn’t say blowing up rocks, did I? There’s all sorts’a things need’n blowing up.”

  “Dude has a point, you know.” Max’s whisper cut through the noise. “Their version of bombs are all chemical or energy based. They’re still pretty nasty though. Imagine a missile that doesn't explode, but acts more like a huge syringe that punches through the hull of a ship and injects it full of plasma or corrosive cloud of something tailored to be as nasty as possible.”

  I nodded, listening to Max. Hodak and I were standing near the edge of the pit on the Brightenjaw slice of the ring where the ramp was slowly dropping down, but the rest of the dwarves had dispersed from the packed clump that had come together in the premature rush to leave.

  I had a thought, and gave the dwarv a glance. “Have you ever heard of shaped charges? My friend Tevin…” I paused, a pang of guilt catching me off guard as I said his name. I shook my head and coughed, pushing past the feeling. “My friend used to talk about using them to blow through doors, walls, and even armor. I guess you can do a lot even with a small blast if you focus it correctly. Sort of like how we were using the caps around the fuse.”

  Hodak’s grin returned, but he shook his head. “Nope. Never heard of ‘em.”

  I waited a beat, expecting him to elaborate on his answer a little more. He stared back at me for a moment before he shrugged and started to turn away. I laughed and thumped his shoulder to signal him to stay. “What about the grenades? You guys have to understand at least the basics if you put those together without me. There’s at least some kind of understanding about directing explosions.”

  He turned back to face me, squaring his stance. “I’d never heard the word until I agreed to your plan.”

  I blinked in surprise, and started to answer when Kazek stepped up next to us and broke into the conversation. “The grenades were Kikkelin's idea. She found the recipe during her studies of your culture and realized we had all of the necessary materials.”

  His statement came with a serious look, and all three of us glanced over at the smiling dwarven lass as she spoke to another group of dwarves slowly walking back towards where we had been waiting on the outside of the ring.

  “Then she’s the one who saved our collective asses,” I said.

  Kazek nodded, and Hodak let out a single bark of laughter. “Hah. Brightenjaw would’a been just fine. It’s better that more of us pass though.”

  My row leader gave him a skeptical look. “This room would be filled with water if we had been knocked out entirely.”

  “So? We’d have found a way.”

  “No sense arguing about it,” I interjected. “We’re here now, it doesn't matter who did what or what was more useful.”

  Hodak grunted. “It kind of matters.”

  Kazek nodded in agreement, which gave me pause. “How?” I asked.

  “Because the elders were watching and judging. Now that we are finished with basic training and the trial, we will need to seek out work. There are only so many skilled masters of any given trade, and they can only take on so many apprentices,” Kazek answered.

  I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek as I thought. Who would take me on as an apprentice or worker? Did I even have time to deal with that kind of process? I couldn't afford to spend the time proving myself as an intern or apprentice.

  All of a sudden, I had a whole new thing to worry about. Hopefully I’d impressed someone by my antics down here in the trials, someone who wouldn't balk at my new status as a wanted man with my old faction.

  “Think any of those masters will take on a ceiling scraper who missed half of the damned trial?” Some of my worry leaked into my tone as anger.

  “You don’t know what you know,” Hodak answered.

  Kazek nodded in agreement, which only confused and angered me more. “What does that even mean? I thought you were some kind of engineer, not a philosopher,” I said.

  The pair exchanged a look, and Hodak's grin returned. “I am, but not a tunneler like Bomilik.”

  Kazek grimaced, and I sighed. I liked Hodak, but his tendency to not explain his thoughts was getting on my nerves. “Care to explain that a little more?”

  “I think you’d call it applied mechanics.”

  I raised an eyebrow, rolling a hand to try to coax more out of him. To my surprise, it worked.

  “I want to build new tools, we should reach for the best solution and not become complacent,” he eyed Kazek as if expecting him to push back. “Most think we are here to make friends and allies by slowly trading our ideas for human labor and allegiance. I think there are things we could learn in return. You humans are more clever than your reputation suggests.”

  “Oh, well… thanks, I guess,” I replied.

  “Bah, I was generalizing. You’re more a man of action, not of science.”

  Kazek laughed, and I deflated slightly. That was probably the most I’d heard Hodak speak in one run, but he still hadn't really explained what he was getting at.

  “Then what’s it have to do with me?”

  They both looked at each other again, and this time Kazek answered. “I think what he is getting at is that you get things done. You also take a lot of things for granted.”

  Hodak nodded. “Do you even know your reputation?”

  I blinked, and took a moment to think over what he meant. I had not spent much time examining humanity's overall place within the linked worlds, other than noticing we were more divided than most and at the bottom of the pile.

  “I’ve been dealing with a lot lately, haven't had much time to think about the big picture like that,” I finally replied when I noticed Hodak was starting to look like he might walk away again.

  “You humans are known for a few things,” Kazek supplied. “Inner turmoil and disagreement, being frail but adaptable, and… how should I say this,” he paused for a moment, scratching the stubble on his chin. “You're war-like nature. There are few societies within the two thousand worlds that fight amongst themselves as you do.”

  “Mhm.”

  “That isn't a very flattering reputation,” I answered. He was right, and I knew it, but it didn’t feel good to be told that’s how we were viewed from the outside.

  “But it's a useful one. It gives you an edge here in the war games.”

  “I’d never heard of grenades, but I have seen clips of missiles and bombs. You humans have real imagination when it comes to sending death to your enemies,” Hodak said. “We mostly fight in tunnels, with shields we carry around ourselves. Our homeworld has had little success with fighting anywhere other than our homeworld, and we’re still adapting to the surface and skies.”

  I could sense there was more meaning buried under his statements, but I was too tired to dig out the implications. I rubbed my hands through my hair, relieved to finally not have my gauntlets ruin the gesture by getting caught.

  “I don’t know how to build missiles, or any of that.”

  “Eh, you don’t know what you know,” Hodak repeated.

  I was saved from further frustration with the dwarv as the ramp finally touched down against the stone at the edge of the pool with a ringing clang. My ears popped again, and I realized a slight headache had built up during our conversation.

  The rest of the dwarves swarmed back around us, and our conversation was quickly forgotten as we jostled and pushed to be amongst the first to climb the ramp. I didn’t fight as hard as I could have to make it to the front of the group, but did hip-check Kona out of my way as I moved to join Jozoic and Lokralda when I spotted her red hair in the press.

  Kazek followed me through the throng, and we all linked arms through straps and elbows to lock ourselves into a single block before pressing the smaller Bassaldourn group out of the way. Finally, we climbed the ramp out of the depths. A rush of excitement took over again as the window slid out of the way at the top and the sound of music and cheering washed out of the inverted control tower.

  “Those two had a point, but they don’t even know the half of it. We’ll be fine when it comes to finding work. I have a plan, and all it’s going to take is a little bit of hobnobbing. So don’t worry, just be cool. We got this.”

  I clenched my jaw. I knew Max meant for his words to be comforting, but I remembered too well the last time he had a plan. Still, what other choice did I have? At least I had more friends now, this bright group of young dwarves that surrounded me. I just needed to make sure I didn’t take them down with me if we ended up crashing and burning.