The next day after the party with the surface-dwellers, I experienced an unexpected interruption during training.
"Hey, remember me? I'm Neryth. Can I take a break on your pack?" The twelve year old harpy girl flapped her wings and prepared to land on my shoulders. Yuki did not take that lightly. She appeared out of nowhere to defend what she deemed as her territory.
"Mrow!" Yuki yowled. "Talons off my Mochi!"
"Aw come on." Neryth said as she rose in the air and kept pace with me. "I just want to take a short break. I've seen you do it in the wastes. What's wrong with me doing it?"
"Because it's my spot." Yuki protested with her tail straight as a rod and every hair on end. "No one gets to take my spot from me."
"It's not that big of a deal." I commented in an attempt to find a middle ground. The conversation from last night still echoed in my mind. "Why not let her take a short rest on my pack and let her tribe feel more secure about their place here in Dul Vulkhan?"
"It is a big deal!" The catgirl hissed. "First it's a short rest on your shoulders, and the next thing you know she's setting up a nest in our room and getting her feathers everywhere. Not happening!"
"Aww, why not?" The harpy flapped her wings with an empty headed smile. "That actually sounds kinda nice. We can sing and eat together whenever we're not training. Maybe I should move my stuff into the room. It'll be fun!"
This set Yuki off and she devolved into the catfolk version of swearing that should have been heavily bleeped. It sounded like a cat hissing and caterwauling, the racket you'd cross the street to avoid. For once, I was glad I had no clue what she was saying as the nearby beastkin edged away and covered their children's ears.
"Mogrim!" A warrior waved me over in the midst of Yuki's temper tantrum, ignoring her completely. "The Guildmaster of the Warrior's Guild wishes to speak with you."
"The Guildmaster?" I jogged over while Yuki and Neryth bickered in the background. "I don't think I know him."
"Just get to the Stormfall Clan hall." The warrior grunted. "Hurry up. The guildmaster needs your presence urgently."
"Why me?" I asked. "Why now? I'm still training."
I only got a shove and a boot in the rear as an answer. Evidently the warrior lacked the inclination to provide an explanation. So I made my way to the nearby Stormfall Clan hall.
Inside the warrior's hall was a bustle of dwarves moving about and hoarsely shouting at each other with furious spittle flecking their beards. Everywhere I looked, people seemed a hair's breadth away from smashing something, specifically desks and stacks of paperwork.
"There you are, wazzock!" A booming roar accosted me from the head of the hall. Clan leader Gradhogord stood ready to flip the enormous table at the drop of a hat, I could almost see the thunderclouds over his head. "Get over here now. This is all your fault."
"Clan leader." I rushed down the stone hall and bowed respectfully. "I was instructed to come here to see the Guild Leader of the Warrior's Guild. Can you point me to where I need to be?"
"You're looking at the guildmaster." He grunted with an indignant huff. "It's all your fault, wazzock."
There wasn't anything I could do but stare. The position of guildmaster was something conferred with great honor and ceremony; a few days ago Clan leader Gradhogord had merely been a prominent figure in the guild, not its master. Such a sudden change in position would be relatively unprecedented so far as my studies reported.
"Sir?" I cocked my head like Yuki does when she's confused. There was nothing else I could say or do.
"You heard me, wazzock." He gestured to mountains of paper in a fierce motion that would have knocked out a bear in a single blow. "Guildmaster Torikdren Firehelm heard of our mighty battle against the demons, saw our mountain of trophies taken, and was so moved by the tale that he shoved the position on me and rushed out the gate with his clan, and several other warrior clans, to attain equal glory in the Demon Wastes. Now I have to work through not only the paperwork involved with the surface-dwellers, but the transfer of power as well."
"Gradhogord." A reedy voice echoed from a corner of the long table. "Why has the scratching of your pen ceased? This is not the time for a rest." Glancing to the left, we saw the very picture of a nerdy dwarf standing up and approaching us. "Hello again, Thane's son. I wish I could say it was good to see you again but that would be a dishonorable lie."
"You're from the Featherhand Clan?" I recognized the runescribe as the one who had turned me away from my father's door a few days ago.
"Dukror Frostbuckle is my name, youngling. Now if you could stop interrupting my work we might get along better." He said in a petulant voice before turning to the new guildmaster. "Guildmaster, please continue with filling in the documents for the transfer of power. We must file them before the end of the week and submit them in duplicate to the Historian's Department. You will then need to properly file the backlog of reports we discovered in triplicate to the Historian's Department, the Battle Bureau, and Lore Keepers. Afterwards, we require a full and complete census of the surface dwellers for the Matron of the Hold as well as the Lore Keepers."
Guildmaster Gradhogord's fist twitched through the entire speech. I had to fight the urge to run and hide as his warrior spirit swirled like a raging typhoon barely suppressed. He held his peace and turned to me. His glare struck like a hammer and his voice steadily climbed in volume.
"You see, wazzock. This is your fault. If you had not brought home the beastkin girl, we would not have allied with the beastkin and harpy tribes, the Stormfall Clan would not have achieved such a great victory, and my clan would still be simple warriors instead of dealing with the responsibility of handling the Warrior's Guild. Your. Fault." He paused for breath. "My father, Elder Wevrik, says you are good with runes. Sit down. Get to work."
"Ahem." Runescribe Dukror cleared his throat. "Thane's son Mogrim is neither a member of the Warrior's Guild nor the Stormfall Clan. He has no place in the hall today."
"Can he at least work on the paperwork related to the surface dwellers?" He requested with a twitching brown. "They have sworn their allegiance to him, they are his responsibility."
"Hmm." I was inspected through inch thick spectacles. "I've heard of you from your teacher, Thane's son. Your handwriting is crisp and clean… Very well. Sit next to me, but be aware that I have minimal time to train you. Keeping these meatheads from eating the paper instead of writing on it requires all my attention."
"Grrr." The guildmaster growled, but could not retort against the accusation.
A spot at the table was prepared for me and I was confronted with a mountain of paper. "It's all blank." I was used to proper forms to be filled out, this was just blank printer paper.
"Of course it is, youngling." Dukror muttered with petulant annoyance. "Crafting blank sheets of parchment into neat paperwork that can efficiently convey information is the mark of a true runescribe. The straight lines, the perfect boxes, the data, all coming together to record history for the ages, it is true beauty!" He caught himself during his paroxysm of ecstasy. "Ahem. Use this document as an example and craft your own form. I will inspect it at the end of the day."
For the rest of the day, I labored with hand writing paperwork. More than once I wished for a computer, a printer, or even a typewriter. Anything to make this just a shade easier. Guildmaster Gradhogord and his warriors seemed to have it worse as their swears at the unfamiliar task ranged from profane to blasphemous. Fortunately there were no runepriests present to reprimand them.
When I exited the Stormfall Clan hall, I was nearly tackled to the ground by a familiar catgirl. "Mochi! Where were you all day? I missed you!"
"Boss-dwarf. Can I come home with you? We can set up a nest and play with shiny stuff all night long." Neryth smiled as she perched on the head of a dwarf statue depicting a mighty warrior.
"No! Go away!" Yuki hissed as she clung to me with a steel grip that belied her twelve year old figure. "No one wants your shiny stuff except other harpies. One of them was just a stupid rock, birdbrain."
"Another time, Neryth." I tried waving the harpy off. "I've got work to do and no time to play."
"Aww. That's no fun, Boss-dwarf." She fluttered her wings and flew from the statue. "You should find more time to play and find shiny things. Bye!"
"Are you ok, Yuki?" I asked as we entered our room. She was riding on my back like a baby koala and was liberally using her claws. "Can you ease up on the sharp hooks?"
"Mrhh." She only tightened her grip on me. If it wasn't for my thick dwarven skin then I'd probably be bleeding by now.
I flopped into my desk chair and Yuki made herself comfortable on my broad dwarven shoulders. She could curl up into a surprisingly compact ball that could fit into and onto any surface when she wanted to. As I settled into working on a magical tech that could help with the paperwork, I heard Yuki muttering in her sleep.
"I'm not giving you up. You're all mine and I'm not sharing."
There was a lot I wanted to talk about, but there wasn't time as I had to get this done before work began the next morning. I had an idea that perhaps I could utilize runes, demon cores, and magic to effectively create a scanner printer device. Hopefully one that could run without needing cyan ink all the time.
At the break of dawn I emerged from my mental work mode buzzed but exhausted, and with more than a few scratches from the restless Yuki, but I held in my hands a functioning scanner/printer device. It was far from an industrial model, only able to scan one page at a time and copy it fifty times before the magic circuits began overheating due to the cheap materials available to a minor, but by the ancestors it worked!
"Yuki, you can let go of me now." I said as I tried shaking her off for morning training. "If you don't get off, the warriors will get mad at you for trying to shirk training."
"Mrhmm." She made a cat-ish noise and refused to get off. No matter what I did to dislodge her, she remained latched onto me like we were magnets through first light push ups and a few beginning laps.
"Mogrim! Yuki! Going for extra weight training?" Warrior Rursak commented with a cheery grin peeking through his beard as he matched pace with us. "Excellent work! Yuki, put these weights on your back to further challenge your arm muscles. Mogrim, strap these to your legs. We'll make true warriors of you within the decade!"
I was now seriously weighted down, and it was only the start of the day.
"Warrior Rursak, can't I just run with Yuki on my back?" I pleaded.
"What about her training?" He retorted as he tightened the ropes. "Yuki has chosen to follow the path of a dwarven warrior, we cannot ignore her training just because she wants to cling to you. No, this is a problem for the two of you to resolve. May the ancestors motivate you!" With a vigorous shove, he set us moving again.
Once in motion and regaining my momentum, I turned back to Yuki. "Is there any chance I could convince you to run on your own?"
"Nya." She growled. "I'm staying right here. If I leave for even a minute, those bird-brains will try to steal you from me."
As if on que, Neryth flew overhead. She circled above us once or twice before matching our speed and lowered in altitude until she was just a few feet above the ground. "Hiya, boss-dwarf. Hiya, sharp-claws. Great day for a flight!" Her Durinn was surprisingly good, if a bit imitative and littered with grammatical errors, like a parrot who can almost hold a conversation with humans.
"Good morning, Neryth." I said with a grimace as I felt Yuki's claws come out. "Would you mind flying just a bit higher? You're making Yuki jealous."
"Aww. Why be jealous?" She smiled without a care as she rose by just a few feet. "Life is short, it should be fun and friends should be shared with everyone!"
"Not a bad philosophy."
"Phi-loos-apy?" Neryth cocked her head at the unfamiliar word. I did my best to translate and explain what I meant, but she quickly lost interest. "You're overthinking it, boss-dwarf. Life is life, fun is fun, it's all meant to be shared with friends and family."
I tried holding a conversation with the harpy girl, but she was unfortunately just a bit bird-brained. She got distracted easily and changed subjects randomly at the drop of a feather. I could be talking about dwarven words and she'd switch up to discuss her dinner the week before then go on a tangent to gossip about one of her nest sister's exploits against demons, most of the time she forgot to speak in Durinn and just whistled. It all left my head spinning.
Later that night, once the training was finally over, I trudged to the Surfacer's Hall with Yuki still clinging to me for dear life. This could not continue, something had to be done!
A squirrel beastkin woman, who introduced herself as Irish Rivers, answered the door and guided me to where Chief Haiku was practicing writing out runes in the ashes of a fireplace.
"Sir Mogrim." The wolfman half stood when he saw me. "We didn't expect to see you so soon, I'm afraid we haven't prepared anything for you." He paused when he saw my predicament. "Ah, I believe I see what's going on." Chief Haiku called for someone in his language. A few minutes later, the chief's wife and Irish Rivers approached. Somehow, they managed to peel Yuki off of me and escorted her out of the room. I collapsed into a chair after answering an urgent call of nature. Yuki hadn't left my side for a literal second.
"I don't know how in the ancestors' name you managed it, but thank you." I gratefully accepted the cup of watered down beer offered to me and massaged my painfully sore shoulders. "Chief, do you have any idea what's gotten into Yuki?" I asked. "I've never seen her like this before, it's like she's an entirely different person."
Seriously. Did they slip her catnip or something?
"Hmm." The chief worked to find the right words in a language not his own. "The Nekoran race, especially females, are very selective and cautious when deciding who they like, often depending entirely on instinct. This means that when they find someone they can fully trust, whether that be friend, pack, or mate, they can become deeply jealous and territorial over those relationships." He paused to tug at the hairs on his chin. "I don't think I've ever seen a case this bad before."
"Can anything be done? I don't want to go through any more of this than I have to."
"Hmm." A much longer pause ensued. The fireplace crackled and sputtered as he contemplated the options. Eventually he called for someone else. Chief Zeliphis fluttered down from the rafters.
"What is it, Haiku?" She grumbled. "I've been flying in circles all day with weights on my legs and I need some rest." He attempted to rapidly explain in their language and she caught on quickly.
"Heh. So your catgirl has become a little too attached." The harpy chief made an odd sound that seemed like a bird sarcastically laughing. "What do you want me to do about it? She's your problem."
"She's only like this because Neryth and other harpies keep trying to move into our room. Can't you ask them to ease off a little?"
"No. The council knows we can't seal the deal the traditional way until you're a little older, but they won't wait a moment longer than necessary. They want one of us to be a companion to you. Playing, working, fighting, and living next to you."
"Is there any way we can compromise on this?" I asked with a grimace. While I was grateful they didn't expect a twelve year old to get busy with one of the harpies, there was no way I was going to have a kid with someone just out of obligation even when I was old enough. "I'll even fly circles around the hall if I need to."
"There may be one way." Chief Haiku spoke before the harpy could. "The Wing Oath."
"That's only for promises between harpies!" Zeliphis retorted with a clawed foot stamp. "Besides, the boss-dwarf doesn't have feathers."
"What's the Wing Oath?" I inquired. Chief Haiku explained that it was a traditional method to make formal promises between harpies. The respective parties would trade feathers from their wings and wear them in their hair to show the world that the oath was still in effect. If one of the participants broke their word, it was rumored that the harpy gods would afflict the offender with a disease that would make all their feathers fall out.
"It's no good." Zeliphis grumbled. "The boss-dwarf has no feathers to trade."
"Maybe not, but would something with my personal rune work? I'll wear some of your feathers in my hair in exchange."
"Hmm. I'll need to speak with the priests. We will speak again in a few days, boss-dwarf." She fluttered off with a visible frown, leaving me and the wolfman chief by the fire.
"They will take their time about it." Chief Haiku commented. "My tribe never entered into an alliance with them, just a casual friendship, but I've spoken to those who have, and the Brown Feather Tribe are surprisingly unwavering when it comes to their traditions. I will tell the tribe's matrons to ready earplugs for us when their council meeting takes place, it will likely get loud. For now, rest by the fire. My wife and Rivers will do their best to help Yuki relax and will bring her back here when they are ready."
An hour or two passed before I knew it. Chief Haiku, despite his limited grasp on the dwarven language after only a few months underground, was an excellent conversationalist. There was a significant amount of translation, word guessing, and lengthy pauses as we tried to find common ground, but it still was a stimulating evening. If he had lived in my previous world, he would have made an exemplary middle manager, the type of person who fights tooth and nail for his employees but never lets it show.
When it was time to go, the chief's wife and the squirrel woman brought Yuki to the door. She seemed calmer than before, and when she latched onto me again it was no longer painful. I hoped whatever they had said would stick.