The dungeon party headed down the south-west-bound road of Ermos until they came upon that familiar Forest of Ermos, past which lay the foot of The Three Brothers Mountains, and their destination: Jorteg’s Dungeon. Of course when one says familiar, it was familiar to Rum and the 4 veterans, but Amez hadn’t been this far south ever before. For most of their journey, the urbanist of a young man stayed quiet, observing the people they passed on the road, and observing the plants and the trees as they entered the forest. Looking at the undergrowth along their trail, Amez became steeped in fascination as if he’d never seen the likes of it before: the spongey brown mushrooms at the bases of the trees, the teal white lichen on the stones, the small red berried bushes, the busy ant hills, that ominous wasp’s hive in a tree, and the intermittent tiny blue flowers poking out of the grass. When his eyes went to the canopy next, an awe rose up in him. In his mind, the high leafs and branches became like a great and foreign lid, sealing off the sky above, and giving the impression of being truly inside a forest. For while Amez had of course seen trees and flowers and mushrooms before, he’d never properly been in a wild natural environment like this. He was a man completely out of his element, and he knew it. Trailing closer to his big brother Rum than even White Rose did, he stuck to that one most familiar thing in sight, as the world of insects, rodents, birds, and plants, surrounded him everywhere.
In front of them was the basic path. It was the one that’d been trodden years prior after the discovery of Jorteg’s dungeon, and the one walked twice now by Rum. As they brushed past the bushes and the branches here, with Amez captivated by the richness of the environment, the latter was eventually approached by Rulli, who came over to chat about body enchantments. The topic stirred life into the social instincts of the normaly quite social younger man, as their discussion soon turned to familiar grounds, with Amez guiding a potential customer about his craft. Rulli talked about his desires of course, and Amez answered about his knowledge of possibilities. Then Amez added recommendations, and finally Rulli asked about pricing. It was quite clear that the dwarf harbored some mild jealousy of the powers of Elrith’s tattoo. Before Elrith’s new ability, the power of his axe runes had been their party’s ace, but now the magic-infused bolts of Martin had taken that position, and Rulli was in the market for an upgrade of his own.
Behind this discussion though, and behind everyone else, Rum had quite a different experience of their forest journey. The wizard was engaged in walk-and-talk lessons with White Rose and Electroblade. For of all the hastily packed things Rum had thought to bring with him, White Rose’s blackboard had been the very first.
“M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N – mountain!” Rum announced, and White Rose scribbled feverishly with zes black gloved bone hands. As ze finished, the skeleton flipped the board horizontally towards zes wizard daddy’s back, and he turned momentarily to read the text.
“Good!” he praised. “Now you do one Electroblade.”
Sitting in her black leather and polished metal harness at White Rose’s cloth-covered front, Electroblade made a grimaced thinking expression.
“Eeeh... slash. S-L-A-S-H. You know what that means?” The little gnome looked up towards the veil. White Rose put zes head to the side. “It means when you do THIS–” she drew the blade from the harness’s side and cut horizontally at the air in one smooth practiced motion, “–and the blade’s edge–” she put a finger to the blade’s flatside and stroked it eerily close to the sharpness, “–touches something soft and splits it open.” The gnome looked thoughtfully along the length of her blade, eyes looking at it as if seeing memories reflected back on the metal. “A slash cuts open a kin’s skin, or an animal’s hide, or anything that is not too hard and made of fibres. Of course your bones are hard, so a slash doesn’t work well on you.”
“Ehem” Rum quietly protested, “I’m not sure that this is the most urgent vocabulary for the child to learn. Maybe we order such words for later?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow at the armless, legless, sword-wielding veteran as they walked.
Electroblade chose not to respond, but only glanced away to the side. The analogous behaviour of looking out of the window of a carriage, except that her ride was the front harness of a human skeleton.
Later, and much deeper within the forest, in fact very close to their destination, they came upon a set of trees that instantly struck Rum as familiar. “Hey” he called out to the party, “I know this place!” Stopping, he turned around slowly on his position and got a good look at each and every tree. “I know these trees!” Eventually he ceased his self-rotation and latched eyes onto one single tree in particular. “That’s the tree that beat me up!” He cast his arm pointingly at it, and everyone else stopped to follow his outstretched finger.
“It beat you up?” Darmon spoke, his voice metalic from under the helmet.
“Yeah, well” Rum shrugged, “I guess it was self-defense, and fair. I kinda hit it first.” The wizard rubbed at his shoulder and glanced away, as if being momentarily gripped by guilt. After a few seconds, he walked over to the tree and glanced shyly at it. “Hey, sorry about last time. I didn’t quite consider your feelings before I struck you, but-eeeh, we’re good right? We’re fine? No animosity, just friends?” The tree did not immediately give off any replies. “Oh yeah, I guess words isn’t really your strong suite. Here, let me...” the wizard closed his eyes, and sought out the magic web of the tree, the structures of magic left behind by the elves who’d awoken it to sentient guardianship. Friendship. I seek friendship. No harm, I will not harm you. Will you be friends? It wasn’t actually thought, but instead Rum using what bits of he’d managed to deduce from watching other mages forge bonds with magical beings. This most often required of the mage to open up themselves up at multiple places, so that the probing and integrating tendencies of the magical being could function. Of course, for a quiet dormant yet vigilant creature like a guardian tree, one first had to stir its probing and integrating tendencies into motion by giving it mana to react to, while at the same time not setting off any of the alarms that would awaken its violent sides. It was process of vulnerability, of letting the magical being of the tree find itself at home within one’s own magical self. It took about a minute for Rum to accomplish this, with a bit of trial and error, but eventually, he could feel, or rather interpret, the positive reply of the tree. Friends.
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“Are... you... okay?” Elrith carefully asked the wizard.
Rum opened his eyes and returned mentally to the world of matter. He looked back at the party. “I’m great!” He announced. “I suggest we camp here. This–” he glances around, “–is where I camped with the elves. The trees here are guardians, they will likely protect us if Jorteg’s forces decides to descend upon us from the dungeon.”
“Wait–” Amez interjected, “–that is a thing that is likely to happen?” He made a concerned face as he sought reassurances to the contrary in the faces of the others.
Darmon was the first to answer. “It’s been known to happen.”
“Me and the elves” Rum added, “we met 2 halves of 2 parties the time we walked the south-bound road. They were what was left after a night-attack on the camp in these forests.” Rum gestured around them. “There was originally 3 parties too. The last one did not live to see dawn.”
“Really?” Gilda asked, wide eyes on her expression.
Rum nodded.
“Well that’s somewhat alarming” Darmon concluded.
“We’ll need to be vigilant at night then” Rulli commented, his expression firm and unafraid.
They all went quiet for a bit, many faces processing the information with variable degrees of concern.
“So, camp here?” Rum gestured to the tree behind him.
“We can do that” Elrith agreed, before swinging off her backpack, which had big Martin strapped on top of it. And with that, the other backpacks soon followed.
It took about half an hour for the group to have the beginnings of a campsite, and all that time, Amez glanced around and into the woods. Not staring very long or very hard, but clearly affected by the news and responding the only way he knew how: instinctive vigilance.
Rum, who’d notice his little brothers behaviour, walked over to him, while waving over White Rose who was no longer carrying Electroblade. The latter currently sitting bored on the ground on a conjured magic blanket. “You okay, Amez?”
Amez quickly cast his focus over from some trees and to his brother’s eyes. “Hmm? Yeah, yeah I’m okay.”
Rum bit his lips, and glanced over at White Rose who’d arrived to stand next to them. “White Rose, can you watch our surroundings at night, and wake us up if anyone gets near. Like other people, other skeletons, or any creatures that are taller than this?” The wizard bent down to hover a hand halfway between his kneecap and his ankle.
White Rose puts zes head to one side, and looked at the hand for a few seconds. Then ze nodded.
Rum glanced back at Amez. “Don’t let the stress get to you. You’ll need to sleep, but White Rose doesn’t. Let ze watch over us. And the trees of course” Rum turned to gesture back at his new friend – of sorts.
Amez glanced around them at the forest one last time, as if not sure if that was enough, but then he gave Rum a firm decisive nod. “Sure.”
With the camp finally set up, the party departed to take Amez for a first glimpse of the opening to the dungeon. Left behind to guard the campsite was White Rose and Electroblade. The latter begrudgingly.
“That’s it” Rulli gestured from the end of a clearing they stood in, and Amez just stared at the primitive opening of 3 slabs of stone: 1 horizontal above, and 2 vertical ones on either side. It was narrow, and too dark to see anything, even if there was still daylight enough.
“Not that impressive, huh?” Elrith offered the silently staring man.
“No” Amez responded, without lifting his gaze. “It’s just a hole in the mountain.”
“Yes” Rulli answered, “but inside that hole are hundreds if not thousands of skeletons, and dozens of witches and wizards. Not to forget Lord Jorteg himself.” The dwarf eyed Amez standing beside him, but the human didn’t notice the dwarf’s eyes.
“We’re better prepared this time” Rum comforted, standing tall and trying to radiate some assurance. “I’ve got a powerful spell that’ve worked well enough the 2 last times, I’m sure we’ll make it just fine. And you, little brother” he glanced at Amez, who for the first time in a while took his eyes off the entrance, “you’ll be an adventurer.” He smiled in an attempt at reassurance, and Amez tried and mostly succeeded at smiling back, but it was a little forced. Obviously the idea of entering that place weighed heavy on the younger man.
Then night fell, and nothing at all happened. Absolutely nothing. No attacks, though Amez took a long time to fall asleep, and Rum took a little extra longer too, being slightly anxious about Amez’ anxiousness. But in the end, they all slept, and they’d all went to bed early enough that the sun barely had to force them awake when the time came to rise.
And when that happened, and they’d eaten breakfast, then they went to the dungeon, and like that, suddenly Amez was an adventurer. An actual for real adventurer, in an actual for real dungeon. A serious, deadly, party-annihiliating dungeon.
A dungeon whose powerful lord recognized EXACTLY who had set foot in his realm – and not for the first time, not for the second, but a third.
In his study room deep within the dungeon, Lord Jorteg, eyes closed and his mind in sharp remote focus, sighed at the distinctive magical signature he was picking up. “Eeaah” he moaned to himself, and his dark ginger-tinted moustache rose slightly to the annoyed twitch of his upper lip. “No...” he complained to the air, “not that pest of a wizard... not again.”