SMACK! CRACK! “UGH!”

A body hurtled through the air before violently contacting the ground behind Rum and rolling until coming to an abrupt stop. Rum, his face and brain tired after the day, turned only to see – a wizard? It was one of the dungeon mages, curled up around a rock as the man’s belly had apparently slammed into it.

All the mages and adventurers had come out of the dungeon now, and they’d been marching through the forest for a few minutes.

“Heuh! Heuh!” the wizard on the ground coughed in ugly heaving bloody fits, eyes dazed. Rum’s slow brain was about to react and walk up to heal the man, when another mage came hurtling through the sky at a lower angle. This witch hit a branch, and as she did so it went SNAP! She fell, a “Heuh!” escaped her mouth as she broke the next branch, and then another “Heuh!” as she broke the one after that, promptly falling back-first onto hard soil. There she lay, moaning like as if she was dying, her hands reaching for her back in a display of pain.

ZZZAP-ZAP-ZAP-ZZZAP!

“VREEEHEHEHEHEEE!” sounded a voice.

A long flickering of lightning flashed repeatedly behind in the crowd, while crackling noises filled the air. That weird scream, it was as if somebody couldn’t decide whether they were having a joyous thrillride, or being creatively murdered. Someone’s using magic? Rum’s eyes peered into the light of torches, trying to see what was going on in-between flashes of light. The sequence of flashes terminated.

SMACK! CRACK!

A third mage came flying back-first, and quite involuntarily so towards Rum’s general direction. This wizard came high enough to get his hindbrain knocked hard into the top of a branchless tree, before immediately falling face-first and half unconscious, straight into a low bush, the sounds of SNAP-SNAP-SNAP! broadcasting the results of his impact. However, whether the snapping was of the wizard or of the bushes Rum couldn’t quite tell. At least, Rum consoled his own worries, that tree reset your speed.

Rum’s eyes darted back to the torchlights, working double-time trying to ascertain what was going on. Unfortunately for him though, the series of flying mages had started a massive commotion as there appeared to be several mages actively trying to engage whatever and whoever was sending them violently into the air.

A fourth mage hurtled through the air. A fifth was shot only halfway through the crowd and on that witch’s impact she knocked over three other mages, instantly creating sprawl of limbs and confusion on the ground.

ZZZAP-ZZZAP-ZAP-ZAP-ZAP! came from the hind of the mage crowd.

Whoever was channeling that magic was using it to the effect that the visible parts of many of the wizards and witches, namely their hats, were also disappearing down, instead of just up, like when they came flying along with the mage wearing them. It’s almost like they have two forms of attack?

Screams of terror erupted, as one, two, and then three mages started running from the scene. One of them passed by Rum and Rum reached out and grabbed the wizard by his arm, pinning him in place to force some information.

“WHAT is happening in the back!?” Rum demanded with a voice and expression equally stern and concerned.

“IT’S IN DISGUISE! But I know its enchantment. But – it won’t obey me! It obeys none of us! And there’s a creature...” The wizard’s eyes were wide with fright. “A horrifying creature nests in its belly!” Screams continued around them.

Rum realized immediately the probability of what the wizard was referring to and let him go. Turning towards the commotion, his legs almost jumped into the attempt to sprint while his hands reached forward to shov aside the blocking mages, any and all of them.

“Woeh!” yelled a witch as Rum cast her aside.

His elbows pushed through the condensing mass of people, while yet another mage went flying overhead like a projectile.

“Muscles Grow” Rum mumbled, and began ploughing his way through with superior strength, into the midst of action.

“ELECTROBLADE! STOOOP! WHITE ROSE! STOOOP!” The bald wizard finally shoved aside the last mage in his path, who happened to be Larkoff about to cast some big spell aimed towards a spot.

Rum cast his eyes to that spot, and saw there the crackling blade of a gnome cutting open the torso of a wizard, while a bone hard fist slammed into the face of a witch trying to flank. “STOOOP! STOP THE BOTH OF YOU! THEY’RE NOT ENEMIES!” Rum ran towards Electroblade and White Rose both, the two of them pausing only because before them there was not a single other mage left standing. Instead, there was a small field of cut, electrified, and broken mages. A mass of downed victims before the triumphant fusion of skeleton and gnome. “STOP!” Rum wildly waved his hands as he came in front of them, managing at last to form eye-contact with Electroblade. “They” Rum gestured to the sprawl of limbs about them, “are not enemies! We come together, in peace!” He clasped his hands together for emphasis.

White Rose and Electroblade stood there. The skeleton producing nothing but the blank expression of a – well, a skeleton – and Electroblade giving him this weird grimace, as if not entirely believing him. She raised her blade up, not threateningly, but to point at Rum. “Are you sure?” she asked calmly, composed, but somewhat icely. “They haven’t bewitched your mind or anything?” She gave his face a suspicious, analyzing stare.

“I’M POSITIVE!” Rum’s hands shook with the strain of diplomatic effort. “If anything, it’s the other way around! These are friendlies. Jorteg is dead, and his apprentices are just leaving with us because they don’t want to be killed by the coming guild. Okay?”

“Oh, it’s you two?” Darmon’s voice unintentionally broke the confrontation from behind Rum. The wizard cast a quick glance to his rear: there Elrith, the dwarves and Amez all stood in a half-circle behind him, their force wielding their weapons alongside their new artifacts of power. Each weapon was ready, and aimed generally towards the duo of metal and bone.

“What are you doing?” Elrith asked in an almost exasperated voice as she lowered her big Martin, loaded as it were, Rum had noticed, with an extremely sharp-looking bolt.

“Saving you” replied Electroblade, who hadn’t quite yet lowered her weapon, instead her eyebrows betrayed a persistent distrust of the situation. “Jorteg is dead?”

“Yeah” Elrith replied, putting Martin restingly onto the ground. All around them there were moans of pain, and the sounds of mages struggling to breath, and the sight of them coughing blood. One man Rum noticed had in fact had his throat cut, and was trying desperately not to breath amidst his own arterial bleeding.

“Okay!” Rum threw out his arms, calling for attention. “White Rose, Electroblade, you two stay put while I try to save these people. It looks to me like some of them are about to die if I don’t help.”

But as Rum was about to head towards the throat-cut man some few meters away in a patch of low grass, a sudden sound of hard feet rushing on soil caught his attention. Turning to the noise, he saw a massive collection of skeletons, the whole of the dungeon’s remaining skeletal army, who’d apparently dropped all their things to come over, gathering as they were in a large imposing circle now around the scene. And with them, from outside of that encirclement, in stepped a certain witch.

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“Stop Glarith!” Rum waved his arms franticly. “There’s been a misunderstanding. Don’t attack them! These are my friends. They merely thought you’d taken us hostage!” From the circle’s edge Glarith eyed Electroblade in her black harness. The gnome met the witch’s eyes with a cold fixation of her own. A violent electric crackle erupted at the gnome’s blade, casting a moment of blue light over her menacing face.

Glarith continued to look across the battlefield at the gnome with wary, but did not order an attack. Instead she paused, glancing at Rum, and back at the gnome.

“Why does the gnome then look like she’s about to try and kill me?”

Rum turned to Electroblade, pointing an accusing finger across the terrain of bleeding bodies. “Stop looking so dangerous! Lower your blade! Truce. We need truce!” Rum’s hands cross cut through the air twice for emphasis. “People are dying on the ground here, and I can’t spend time introducing you to each other, just the both of you – ALL OF YOU – wait and let me save these people!”

Electroblade looked for a moment to consider ignoring Rum, but when the wizard did not wait for her to comply and instead rushed to save the blood-gurgling wizard who had his throat cut open by her, she lowered her blade nevertheless.

The atmosphere remained tense at the site of battle, as Rum and others with healing potions started spreading out to treat the downed people, whom Rum counted to be as many as 13 mages. Damn Electroblade... What kind of a killing machine did you two turn into while I wasn’t looking?

Nobody died. Barely nobody, Rum mentally corrected. He’d discovered three people who were only minutes from bleeding out, as well as the first person to have been downed, he’d fared worst of all. That person had his heart stabbed all the way through. It’s only luck that Electroblade didn’t use her lightning magic on that one. His heart would’ve stopped for sure.

Electroblade and White Rose stood on the sidelines, watching the rescue operations unfold. The skeletons no longer surrounded them, and no weapons pointed their way. Yet, Glarith’s army of skeletons were conveniently parked in a formation of rows and columns just a few meters away. Available if need be, but not activate.

When the last Trinity of Healing has been cast, Rum came over to his child and zes murder-capable nanny.

“They all survived” he stated, before sighing.

Electroblade nodded with somewhat of a neutral expression. White Rose shifted zes feet and glanced away briefly to look at the nearby trees, the bushes, flowers – practically anything except Rum and the mages.

“I understand why you sought fit to act as you did, but–” Rum touched his forehead lightly, feeling exhausted and psychically strained, “–it would’ve been nice if next time you tried to free us less violently. In case you mistake friend from foe again?”

Electroblade took a moment to only stare silently into Rum’s eyes. Some tense five seconds passed, but she nodded. “Just... try and patch this up. I don’t want them afraid of you.” Rum turned and gestured to the crowd of nearby resting mages, most of them talking calmly with each other, some feeling for lingering pains and producing light moans, and some eyeing their trio with an obvious intimidated interest. Rum turned back to Electroblade. “This is my mission for you: go and talk to Glarith” Rum pointed to the witch who was waiting nearby with the formation skeletons, directing a portion of them to pick go back and pick up the items they’d been carrying earlier. “Explain yourself to her, to all of them, and ease out the situation. Before people go to bed, I want you to have convinced them all that you aren’t silently plotting to stab them after nightfall.” Rum’s eyes looked Electroblade from toe to top. “Because you aren’t, right? You are convinced I’m not enthralled or something?”

“Yes” she responded quietly.

“If I need to prove it to you, please tell me how. Because I can’t have any misunderstandings here.”

Electroblade remained quiet for a bit. “I believe you” she eventually said. “I did–” she hesitated, “–misunderstand things earlier.”

“And how do I know that you know that I’m not enthralled?” he suspiciously probed.

“You’re too much Rum-like” she responded. And the mildest of smiles came over her lips.

Rum raised his eyebrows at that, but nodded. “Good enough.”

Rum walked off to gather the mages. A few of them helped Glarith to order the skeletons, and then, finally, they all got moving towards the camp again. Electroblade, to her credit, did slowly mingle in with her victims, which she started to apologize to, one or two at a time. Rum watched her a few times as they moved under the canopy of the forest, and her sincerity was mostly, though not all the way there. It was detectable that she still viewed the dungeon mages as potential enemies, even when the other adventurers clearly did not.

When they arrived at the camp in the forest, the skeletons were ordered to stack and pile up the items from the dungeon, while the adventurers put away their weapons and excess gear. After that, they all kinda came together, one great question on all of their minds. A question which Rum, flanked by the adventurers behind him, and with the crowd of former dungeons mages in front of him, saw fit to put into sound.

“What are you going to do now?”

“We don’t know” answered an older witch, and glanced around into the faces of her people. Her peers, her community.

“We have no dungeon lord” voiced a younger witch.

“Don’t need one” spoke a middle-aged wizard.

“He’s right” Rum said, and all the dozens of eyes converged onto him. “It’s up to you, but I sincerely hope you’ll not fall into the hands of another master. Be your own masters. Use each other to learn, be each other’s teachers. Find knowledge in books. Maybe ask or trade knowledge with strangers you encounter, if you need more than books. But don’t become the tools of a master.” His eyes wandered over all the gathered people.

“But without a master, where will we live?” wondered the younger, sounding concerned. “And how can we stay together?”

“We’ll build a home!” suggested a spirited wizard.

“And where?”

“Mmm...” the wizard produced, putting a thinking finger to his lips.

“The forest” Rum offered, and the eyes came back onto him.

“The forest?” the young witch echoed.

“Aye. The Forest of Ermos has some settlements to the north and north-west, and in the west Luk’s Twin Dungeons are not far away, but the east should be relatively free of settlements, and no dungeon lords are found there. Although caravans run up to Wintershield Stronghold in the mountains I believe. But if you want to build a new community, the eastern part of the forest should be a good location.”

Quiet contemplation befell the gathered mages. Many of them looked out into the forest, tired eyes trying to imagine a life there.

“It’s not a bad idea” Glarith was the first to speak, and she did so without looking at Rum or the others, instead she stood as one of several people looking into the forest interior, partially lost in a contemplative wonder.

“We won’t have anyone to help us though” the younger pointed out.

“How we will we get food, tools, and other things we can’t make ourselves?” The older witch from the discussion’s start pointed out.

“In the beginning” Rum started suggesting, “you might want to trade with the closest villages without revealing anything about yourselves. If you are so able. But if you get a small settlement up and running, I suggest that you send a delegate to Ermos. Try and become an affiliate to their alliance. After all, you would want to do that sooner rather than later, because the guilds might think you’re with the dungeon lords if they find you hiding here in the forest practicing magic, and dressed like that.” Rum gestured and nodded pointingly to their red mage hats and robes.

“Ally with Ermos?” a fourth witch grimaced with a displeased expression at the idea.

“Yes” Rum replied, “maybe you can offer to serve as a forest outpost for them. Someone who will look out for and report dungeon lord incursions into the forest.”

The witch’s grimace changed a little, but remained firmly sour at the notion.

“What about our clothes?” another wizard querried. “We have to get rid of them? I don’t have any other clothes. Most of us only have two sets of identical robes, and three sets of underwear and socks. That’s all Jorteg allowed us.”

Rum smiled and lifted a hand, curling his fingers as if to cast a spell. “I’ll solve that problem for you. But first–” he put his hand down, “–you’ll have to decide on your next identity. You’re a big group” Rum gestured to their many faces, “I think you all should have a name. Something to know your collective by. It could be easier than saying something like Jorteg’s former apprentices, and also I doubt you can interact with Ermos calling yourselves that.”

The statement brought many thinking expressions to the gathered. But it was too late for such a discussion to go on much longer. Everyone, it was becoming increasingly clear, were getting too tired to make any such big decision. Yawns starting spreaded, drowsy eyes became endemic, and Rum himself started to feel just how spent he was of the last of his wakeful energy.

“I need to sleep” the younger witch announced. “I need my bed.”

Many heads bobbed in agreement. And so the last and only decision of that evening near the adventurer’s camp was made. For the last night in their lives, these former dungeon mages, including Rum’s new apprentices and the skeletons, they all would head back into the dungeon. Crawling, as they’d do any night, into their familiar beds (not the skeletons of course).

The adventurers, Rum, Amez, and the others, they made a campfire and ate with hungry stomachs. Gilda sharing the last of an open keg of mead.

Rum lay down into his bedroll, a light meal in belly, as he looked up into a clear, starry night sky.

Tomorrow, some very big decisions are going to be made.