Rum spent a week training his little brother, until, on the last day: they completed the enchantment. Rum learned about enchantments too, from Amez and his books. Enchantments were not much different from spells, really there was just a particular spell foundation – an arrangement of the threads of mana – that created a sort-of perpetually spinning reverberation, which when activated released a portion of itself into another arrangement of mana threads that was kept alive by a third arrangement; a self-repair mechanism. Rum really learned a lot from this, but mostly from his own extrapolations though into the domain of people magic. In the end he even learned how to do the enchantment that him and Amez had planned. The one based on his spell Mana Requisition, and whose passive enchantment version they’d eventually named Minor Mana Sponge. After the success with White Rose, he’d also worked on a Major Mana Sponge version out of academic interest, which he had momentarily put on himself, for then to try and hold Amez’ hand. The result had been painful for Amez, who reported feeling like “somebody was sucking my insides out from my hand”. Accidentally torturing his little brother was very much not to Rum’s likings, so he decided that this was the last time he’d ever use Amez as an experimental mana cow again, even if it was just a little experiment.
Sitting on his bed, Rum reflected on these past few days of events. Around him, he lazily observed White Rose undergo a counting frenzy now that ze’s mind had finally been liberated from Rum’s anti-math regime. Ze was counting everything! Door handles, doors, individual angles of door frames, ze was also counting Rum’s toes and fingers, and even started trying to count the individual hairs in his beard. At this Rum eventually lost patience though – there were too many beard hairs and White Rose didn’t know how to be gentle enough!
“Au!” Rum exclaimed, and grabbed White Rose’s bony hand and pushed it away from his beard. “That hurts White Rose! You need to be more careful with beards.” Rum stroked his beard caringly, as if soothing it.
“I think perhaps we should do another reading lesson” he said, and got up, walked over to the room’s storage chest, and fished out their book. He sat back down again on the bed and patted next to him for White Rose to come and join. White Rose stopped counting, put zes head to one side for a second, and then hurried over as Rum repeated his patting.
With White Rose curled up next to him, and covered in zes full black gear; Rum began reading to ze a story of pirate romance: “Now where were we? Oh yes, here”, Rum found the page they’d last visited a couple of days ago. “So you remember what happened last, White Rose? Little John The Lookout helped Lady Mirravel escape The Captain’s wedding? Now they are in a rowing boat together, trying to escape the great waves of the sea” Rum gestured at an invisible expanse of ocean before them. He began reading: “‘Little John paddled like his life depended on it, which it did, as their rowing boat was struggling to not be capsized and buried beneath the waves. Lady Mirravel struggled in her own way; trying to keep the water out using a tankard left behind in the boat by drunk pirates at their last anchor. The two escapees, the prisoner and the deserter – an alliance of love in the making – laboured for hours under a thunderous sky, a wild wind and an ocean desolate of hope. No land, no mercy, just cold ocean water trying to bring them down, drown the free birds in a tragedy. But even so, there seemed as if nothing could kill the spirit of life; the expectations of a future both amorous and free. At the break of dawn the wind slowed, the waves calmed, and the sky cleared just a little to reveal the red golden sun. They may have been exhausted, but the two had won a great battle against the elements, and against the injustice of the world. Captain Marti would never find them again. Nobody owned them anymore, nobody could decide what they could do, what they must do, or what they’d be allowed to say or feel. They had liberated themselves. The two hugged each other, trying to stay warm under the chill, the hunger and the thirst. For two days their boat drifted along the ocean currents, before Lady Mirravel, looking out over the sea; bored, hungry and weak, saw a dot of grey and green on the horizon. It was an island. With what remained of their strength, the two took an oar each, and pulled themselves towards a rocky shore. Somehow managing to pull the boat to safety, they went inland in search of freshwater. When they found a little pond Little John scooped water with the tankard, letting Lady Mirravel drink first, as his thirsty self admired the sight of her satisfying face. Little John then drank, and the two moved further inland. There they found berries for sustenance, while Little John, aided by a lucky grasp and a pirate’s murderous intent, managed to catch a rodent. On the fifth day of their self-liberation, Little John and Lady Mirravel hugged together under a primitive roof leaning on sticks held in place by stones and twinned straws. In front of them a fire sparkled. Fingers clasped into each other, and Lady Mirravel planted a kiss on Little John’s cheek, meeting his eyes with a tender love, but also a hint of tired despair, at the struggle laying ahead of them, and the future–’” Knock, knock. Rum looked up from the book and at the door. White Rose on zes side didn’t share the change in attention though, and instead looked at him, then down at the book, and then up at him again. Ze put zes hands on top of Rum’s head, and tried to press it down. “Hey-hey-hey” Rum went, and swatted away the hand, “you want me to continue reading?” White Rose nodded. When a second passed and Rum didn’t start reading, ze nodded again more energetically, and then started pointing insistingly down at the book. “White Rose I’m sorry, but somebody’s at the door. It’s probably Amez, I’ll go and have a look.” To White Rose’s great frustration, Rum didn’t continue reading but instead got out of the bed, leaving ze behind and at the edge of narrative anticipation. Ze had no proper way to exclaim zes incredible disbelief at Rum just stopping mid-sentence in the story, but ze tried shaking zes head furiously in disapproval. Rum, however, saw nothing of it as he opened the door.
Through the opened door Rum came face to face with Amez. “Hey little brother, what can I help you with?”
“There’s an armed platoon of green-elves outside, Rum!” Amez began, “Did you piss someone off!? Do you know them? One of them calls himself Urvanom, he said that you’ve spoken before.” Amez crossed his arms and looked both worried and frustrated at Rum, as if to also say: what do you have to say for yourself?
Rum gazed into the blue for a moment, trying to recall. “Oh yeah! Urvanom, the old elf at the lemon bar.” Amez raised an eyebrow and uncrossed his arms. “I’ll go see them right away.” Rum turned around first though, looking at White Rose. “White Rose: you stay here. Don’t leave Amez’ shop! You can try reading a bit yourself if you want to, the book is right there in front of you.” And with that, big brother left White Rose and headed out of the shop.
Outside Rum was faced with a half-circle of nine bow-wielding, scimitar-armed and leather armored elves of all genders and ages, with dark green robes and dark green long-tailed caps. Two more elves stood there with merely a bow; no armor or scimitar. One of these last elves was Urvanom, his silvery long hair blowing with a gust of wind, and an unusual smile upon his face. The other merely bow-wielding elf was Royath, not smiling, but not sour either. A mostly neutral expression on his face, but with a hint of friendliness.
“Oh, many of you here!” Rum thoughtlessly exclaimed. “What brings you all here? Except you though Urvanom, I might guess at why you are here.” Urvanom smiled more broadly.
“I am Alkiath” one of the more heavily armed elves said, and stood forward. “I’m the new representative for the newly established Sub-Committee for Dungeon Exploration, of the Committee of the Spruce. Me and my fellow committee members around me decided to established this committee, and we have come to you for guidance. To be brief: Rum The Mage, we want to ask if you would consider becoming our dungeon party leader? Lead us to resist the dungeon lords!” He took a step closer and added, more calmly and with a wink: “And to find dungeon treasure.”
Rum looked at Alkiath for long moment, a contemplative expression covering his face. Rum’s apparent hesitation triggered another well-armed male elf to step forward and intervene: “We have none of our own with recent experience, or the capacity, for fighting the dungeon lords, Great Mage. You have showed us that one may fight in the dungeons and return with riches. We thus humbly request your guidance, Great Mage, for we do not wish to be the followers of a guild. Instead we seek the independence of our Committee. Our Sub-Committee for Dungeon Exploration is our guild.”
As this elf finished, yet another well-armed elf, a female this time, stepped forward and made her intervention: “If our request does not sound tempting, please, make an equal request of us in turn! Our Committee is not wealthy, but we are resourceful, and may be able to satisfy many different requests.” Rum shifted his gaze to this new elf woman, but did not say anything, he merely stood there, soaking in the situation he’d been landed, and casually playing with his beard.
The onlookers surrounding Rum partially held their breath, as Rum continued twirling his beard and merely returning the stares with a thoughtful one. After an excruciatingly long time of thinking, Rum finally gave his reply. It came with humility: “I am sorry to inform all of you, who have come here to make me this honor, that I do not have much dungeon experience. My last dungeon exploration was my first, and we barely made it out alive then–”
“–but you were the one who made your party survive? Were you not?” the well-armed elf man interrupted.
“Well. It was a team effort. My team wore themselves down to exhaustion for our survival. My efforts were critical, perhaps, but only because everyone else had exhausted themselves carrying out their critical roles. I would say I was lucky – we were lucky – that what happened did happen. Were things just a little different, much might’ve been different. I would be dead, for certain. I have little offensive or defensive magic, my role is more supportive than anything else.” In a manner more mumbling to himself, he added: “Although I did pick up that rather useful spell recently.”
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“But you DID survive. Right?” asked Alkiath rhetorically. “And the odds were terrible, so I heard.”
“Yeah sure” Rum concurred, “but luck was certainly a factor too. If this had been an experiment, I can hardly think it would replicate often.”
The other elves did not understand the reference to experimental theory, and instead continued pressing. Alkiath going first: “I at least, and probably many of my companions, would feel much safer having someone who survived that at our sides, as we try our way into Jorteg’s Dungeon.”
“Wait WHAT!?” Rum exclaimed, “You’re going for Jorteg’s Dungeon? Don’t you want to try a weaker dungeon first, maybe? Get some levels.” He paused at his own mention of levels. He looked at them with a question on his face: “What levels even are you guys?”
“I’m 31” Alkiath announced, “my committee members are between 19 and 34, though most of them are in the early 20ies.” He pointed over at Urvanom: “Urvanom is level 64, his power alone should make up for many of our weaker members.”
“Although” Urvanom started responding, “I am not a warrior, and have few skills worthy of war. I may be able to take a stab to my body, but I very much want to avoid that.”
“Yes” Alkiath conceded, “you may not be a soldier, but power is power. You’ll learn soon enough.” Alkiath turned about and pointed at Royath: “Royath is level 38, and he has fought before. He is a veteran from the last days of Ellowen The Colorful. He fought in The Battle for Ermos, when he was young. Even if that is long ago now and he was merely a ranger, he has faced war, and he has learned from it.”
Rum stared into Royath’s eyes. Suddenly they appeared cold and hard, as if memories of pain had just been awoken and disturbed his ordinary calm attitude. Rum looked away, he had experienced bad things too, and didn’t feel like thinking of them. Rather, Rum affirmed the presence of at least some power in the group: “Okay, there are some levels among you. And you all want to go as one?”
“Yes” answered Alkiath, “we are together the whole team. All we are missing is a guide.”
“One person with battle experience” Rum began, “that is still a bit too little though. And me as the second person, and I’m not even that experienced to judge the situation. I just have some survival skills–”
“–but that is precisely what we need of you!” Alkiath exclaimed. “We are not used to having to stay alive, and we know dungeons are dangerous. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve stayed away from them. Do you not think your skills would help us stay alive?”
“Yes, but still. Keeping 11 people alive is a level of challenge I have yet to face.”
Alkiath stepped forward, and put a hand on Rum’s left shoulder, looking him in the eye. “So will you not, Great Mage, face that challenge with us together? If the stories we’ve heard are true, we trust you – we trust Rum The Mage to keep us safe.”
Rum felt something akin to a high charisma working itself into his mind. The wisdom of this elf seeped out of him, conspiring with his luck, to invade Rum’s mind and bend him to amiability. The experience was so interesting to Rum, that he reached out with his own mana, and in his empirical observation forgot what Alkiath was even talking about. This power, how is Alkiath doing this? What enables a person to combine attributes for such feats? It’s like magic, but without mana.
“Rum?” Alkiath eventually said, when Rum had been staring past his close face for a while. Rum returned out of his own little world and came back to Alkiath, allowing the man the attention necessary to influence him. After all, I was leaning towards acceptance anyways. Let him retain his self-esteem instead of knowing just he failed his power.
“Sure. If you are all really insistent upon this.” As Alkiath stepped away nodding, Rum made his voice louder as he began speaking to everyone present: “If you all know that what you are doing is dangerous, and you are all fine with the fact that I am no veteran of dungeons who can be relied upon to always know the best course of action, then I suppose I could help you. At least once.” All the elves smiled, and some even began talking among themselves, relieving the tension of the air with their friends.
Urvanom came up to Rum and put up a small book in front of him. Rum took it. It was not just small, but also light, the pages thick and the cover leather-bindings. The title read “Algor’s Guide To Dungeon Expeditions”. Urvanom looked down at it with Rum, commenting: “I’ve already started reading it. Don’t you worry Rum. We are not all too terribly prepared. We’ve already consulted some other friends of our committee about what we need to think about, concerning a dungeon expedition. We even had a 4 hour long seminar yesterday about it, half a dozen retired and still practising dungeoneers gave us advice and stories from their lives.” Rum smiled, that was a long seminar, even for him, who’d happily sit through many a seminar in his previous academic life. “Say” Urvanom started, “I’m quite nervous about this. But I believe I want it. I want to do something for my people, we are very poor Rum” he looked a little sad, or disappointed perhaps, when he mentioned the fact, “so I want to change our fortunes, to a notable degree. I also want to try the dangerous life” and now he smiled, as if saying it out loud sounded funny, and maybe not entirely believable due to his own history, “I just think I need help. Get my thoughts straight a little, you know? So that I can be the person I want to be, right now. Because right now, I want to be that person who seeks danger, at least danger on behalf of others.” He finished his opening up with a couple of sympathy-demanding eyes.
“You’re asking for me to use the spell again?” Rum said, hoping he’d read the subtext.
“Yes” Urvanom said, an expression of vulnerability on his face.
Rum nodded, and breathed through his nose. “Alright” he said, and put a hand on Urvanom’s shoulder. “Is right now okay?” Urvanom nodded, and around the two of them a few eyes caught that something was going on, and so as Rum said the spell, almost a dozen pair of eyes started watching the magic.
“Positive Mind!” Rum yelled towards Urvanom, and sent a powerful burst of mana through his hand and on towards Urvanom’s shoulder, where the golden-yellow misty magic poured out like a cold gas, and shot upwards Urvanom’s neck, before settling into his head. Urvanom’s eyes started glowing with a golden-yellow light, and a wide grin shaped across his face.
“That’s so much better” he said through his smile, and turned around, walking back to his buddies and standing on their flank, like he’d done before. Everything the same, except for a warm glow of golden-yellow light emanating from his eyes, and the attention of the rest of the platoon on him.
“Just a useful bit of magic” Rum announced to all the eyes fixed at Urvanom. They moved over to him, and then seemed to lose their particular interest in the event, even though Urvanom continued to receive some glances. “So” Rum started, looking at Alkiath. “when do you guys want to head over. I already have a commitment, I think, with my current dungeon party. But I haven’t received any words from them after we separated last time, and I don’t know when they’d want to go exploring again.”
“What about tomorrow?” Alkiath said, and Rum’s eyebrows shot up with surprise.
“Tomorrow? So soon. Don’t you need to prepare?”
“We already have.” Alkiath said, smiling. “All that we were missing, as I’ve said, was a guide. We were just missing you.”
“Oh” Rum said, nodding. “Then what time would you want to meet?”
“What about noon?” Alkiath suggested.
“Where?”
“What about the parallell street west of the city gates, on the outside. We can easily find each other then, and it’ll be a short walk to the main road.”
Rum nodded. “Alright, I suppose we have an agreement then. Tomorrow at noon, on the western parallell street, on the other side of the city gates.”
“Yes!” Alkiath smiled.
When the platoon of elves soon after left, Rum went inside the shop, only to come face to face with Amez. “So”, Amez started, “why were they here?”
Rum went around Amez while collecting his thoughts, trying to figure out what he needed to do before tomorrow. Yeah, White Rose! What should I do about ze? Rum turned around before coming to the bedroom door. “So you know that dungeon party I went with?” Rum started.
“Yeeeah?” Amez answered, cautiously.
“Well” Rum began, “now I have another party. I just agreed to becoming a guide for the green-elves of The Committee of The Spruce, they’re setting up their own dungeon force.” Amez looked surprised, but a positive form of surprised. Rum added: “Like a guild I suppose one could call it.”
“That’s good!” Amez said. “My brother, getting another job! Moving up in life!” Amez suddenly appeared happy. “I’m proud of you! Maybe we should celebrate at the tavern tonight?”
“Well” Rum began, “I sort-of agreed to go with them tomorrow for their first dungeon expedition.”
“TOMORROW!?” Amez exclaimed, “Already? Just after you agreed?”
“Yeah”
Amez looked at the cushioned table in front of him and appeared to think. “Well damn. That’s fast moving. My brother out to see danger again so soon.” Amez almost looked depressed at the thought.
“Yeah” Rum said, adding: “And you’ll probably have to take care of White Rose meanwhile, maybe for a couple of weeks even.”
“WHAT?” Amez exclaimed, and an angry look quickly came upon his face. “I can’t take care of your magical skeleton! I have customers to serve! Sleeping to do! Besides I know nothing about White Rose, what if something happens? You must be here to fix it!”
Rum stroked his beard, trying to think. “Are you sure” he said, “that White Rose can’t just sit in your shop, count stuff and try reading zes book?”
“YES!” Amez replied. “I’m sure something will come up that I don’t want to handle. You can’t drop ze on me like you did earlier. You’ll have to take ze with you.”
Rum sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to then.”
Rum finished talking with Amez about the expedition, and managed to wriggle himself out of “just a small drink before bed?” when Amez tried to make him visit the tavern and meet Amez’ friends. Whom Rum was sure were all nice fellows, just not the kind of people he felt like meeting right now.
Instead he sat in bed, watching White Rose stare at the letters of the book, and occasionally point at some words, at which Rum pronounced them, letting ze know how the words sounded like. Rum spent some such time with White Rose, thinking about the expedition he was about to go on, before his mind wandered into thinking about Alkiath’s actions and the curious use he had made of his wisdom and luck attributes. It was as if he created a new, combined attributes. Like if charisma was an attribute of its own.
With those thoughts swirling about, Rum eventually went to bed, where he slept rather well. In fact one may say, and probably should say, that he slept too well, as when he went out the next morning to get water from the well in the backstreet, he once again looked up into the sky, only to realize it was already noon. “Oh to hells!” he said, and ran back into the store. There he shouted “Muscles Grow!”, his shoulders bulging with new strength, as he picked White Rose up on his shoulder. He stopped for just a second, breathing hope. Then he went outside, past Amez, through the front door, and onto the busy streets.
There, with White Rose hanging over a shoulder, and just after breathig a major sigh of frustration, he yelled: “Self-Running Legs!”