"Where could they have gone?" Amez looked out across the horizon. Even when the last of the zerg had gone, the rest of their party were nowhere to be found. Walking down the road to where they'd come from, Rum, Amez, and White Rose with Electroblade – the skeleton had a bit of forward-bent gait – they all looked about to their surroundings. Not one of them could see a single other person.
"This is indeed strange" Rum commented. "Maybe the commotion we caused spooked them, and Elrith took them offroad?" Rum gestured to the fields surrounding them. There were very few trees there, mostly just short grass. Still, there weren’t any signs of their party.
"But if that’s true" Electroblade began, "are they behind us, or in front of us? Or hiding in the plains?" There was a slight curve to the land in the distance, but otherwise it was mostly flat. Hiding, they all mentally realized, would be challenging.
"I bet they're ahead of us" Amez replied.
"If they're hiding in the plains” Rum began, “they'd have to lay still in the grass for a long time. If they ever decided to hide, I doubt they'd still be hiding though. There's a limit to how far back they'd go also, so that doesn't make much sense. The zerg would be upon them soon enough that way. No, like Amez said, they probably circled around us. And they're now ahead of us. We should just continue on forward. Try and overtake them." He looked over at White Rose, who looked back at him. He eyed zes body.
"Okay, let's get going." Amez began walking along the road back home.
"Wait" Rum glanced at him, then back at White Rose. "I'm not sure ze can follow if we set a brisk pace."
"If we walk overly slow brother, we won't make it to our party. They may push ahead back to Ermos."
Rum grabbed at his beard, thinking. "If you can carry Electroblade, I can carry White Rose."
"What? Brother, I'm already carrying the loot!" Amez gestured at the sack hanging over his shoulder. The large sack was adjacent to his backpack, leaving little room on his back for another person. Even a short one.
"It'll be fine" Rum insisted, "I'll use my magic on you, and it'll feel like nothing." The wizard turned to Electroblade. "Are you fine with shifting seat for a bit?"
The gnome shrugged. "Where you want me?"
Shortly thereafter, the four continued on their way up the road towards Ermos. Rum and Amez each carried their backpacks, a sack of valuables atop the right shoulders, and, as a new addition to each one of them, a skeleton and a gnome on their necks.
Dangling with her legs down Rum’s shoulder and chest, White Rose held on to the wizard’s head like an overgrown toddler enjoying zes new elevated view. Next to them, Electroblade sat upon Amez. She did not look like a toddler though, in spite of her size. Instead, she had convinced Amez to let her hold onto her sword – unsheated – and was using it to point at their surroundings. Overall, she was looking like she’d acquired a bipedal war mount in Amez.
The contrast in mood was stark. Electroblade scanned the horizon with seriousness, trying to spot their party. White Rose, on the other hand – ze had failed today. Failure, ze was a failure. In zes short life ze had of course made mistakes before. Mere mistakes happened. But failure – that was something else, something heavier. Ze had been invested in trying to prove zeself today, yet ze had failed. Of course, ze didn’t have emotions per se, not in the way that a humanoid had emotions anyways. Ze did not feel shame or embarrasment or depression like a living intelligent being would. Still, an acute awareness of failure had taken hold inside ze. It was an uncomfortable thing to think about. For a long time, ze could not help but think about it, as if entranced by the momentous occasion of discovering zes own hard limits. But then, as they walked and walked, ze managed to suppress that awareness, and eventually found a way to distract zeself. White Rose began counting trees. They weren't very many, so ze was at least sure ze could do that successfully. Trees were comfortable things, comforting to count. 88, 89, 90...
White Rose ran out of trees. Ze waited for a while for more trees to appear, but then that awareness came back, and those thoughts... thoughts of failure...
Ze decided to add bushes. Ze could count bushes too, right? No way ze would fail to count the bushes. And they were sort-of like trees. Tree-like? Like mini-trees. 91, 92...
It took a long, long time of mostly silent walking before the party saw anything, but after four whole hours a figure appeared in the sky. The figure did not stay put where it was though, but flew over towards them, moving smoothly and at constant speed. Electroblade spotted the figure almost at once, but stared for a bit before shouting: “It’s Bresh!” The gnome began waving her sword back and forth like a beacon.
It took a while for Bresh to cover the distance between them. Eventually, the witch started to close, and she descended, finally coming to a soft landing on her feet in front of them, where she dismounted.
“You’re okay” she said, “or, mostly okay?” She glanced over at Electroblade and White Rose.
“We are” Rum answered. “But White Rose will need treatment. Ze took a serious blow towards the end.”
“The zerg let you go?” The witch raised an eyebrow of minor surprise.
“They did” Amez replied, his lips looking displeased by something.
For a brief second, they all went quiet, everyone waiting for the other to speak. “You probably guessed, but Elrith insisted we hide and go ahead. She hinted that you’d all probably end up in some terrible fate, but here you are...” The witch paused to turn her back at them, looking away and ahead. “Me and the other apprentices insisted on waiting for you” she spoke softly, while beginning to walk, prompting Rum and Amez to follow. She quickly slowed down a bit, letting the brothers walk up next to her. “We weren’t quite sure what we should do when you ran off. First you teacher, then you Amez.”
Amez produced a little sigh. “I suppose I had no idea either.”
Electroblade shook her head atop of Amez. “You should never abandon a team mate. Never!”
Bresh nodded her head carefully. “I don’t know how I could’ve helped, but, it was all very sudden. Elrith was very insistent too. Didn’t really have the time to think, to be honest. I’m sorry.”
“Mmm” Rum said at first, unsure of what to respond, then added: “No, the fault is with me. I left you all without a word. You’re forgiven Bresh. As you say, I didn’t give you time to react properly.”
“I will of course come to your aid in the future, teacher!” she added hastily. “I realize my mistake now. Even with 200 adventurers around you, you still find a way out of it. We students must keep faith in your ability, and the wisdom of your actions.”
Rum smiled, feeling embarrassed at the sincere intensity in that statement. “I didn’t fight them all” he explained. “But for some reason White Rose did. And ze barely survived the end of it. We’re lucky ze is still alive.”
“I understand” Bresh said.
“But if I were to fight 200 adventurers for real, who wanted to kill me? In that case, I give you permission to live Bresh. It would be brave beyond reasonable expections if you’d fight those 200 with me. In this particular situation, we survived because this was all a misunderstanding that ran out of control. Or something like it. I’ll have to get to the bottom of this somehow. Have White Rose use the blackboard to explain zeself.”
“I’d fight those 200 with you” Electroblade stated.
“Yes, I can believe that” Rum responded, “and you’d probably fight them walking with your crutches too. But those who think you might be insane, would probably conclude that you are insane at that point.”
Electroblade grinned. “Look who’s talking.”
Rum felt a guilty smile spread across his lips.
Soon enough, they saw their party, on the road in the distance. Bresh mounted her broom again, and flew ahead. When Rum, Amez and their passengers later arrived at their party, it was only Rum’s apprentices who greeted him.
“Teacher, you are well!” Bun exclaimed when they’d gotten near enough.
“Something wrong with your friends?” Soren asked, eyebrow raised to the people on the brothers’ shoulders.
Rum explained what had transpired.
When Rum was finished, Bun spoke. “We wouldn’t let them leave you, teacher.”
Down at her seated position on the roadside, Elrith sighed. She probably knew she looked much like the bad guy in this situation. However, without as much as a word of apology, she pushed herself up. Brushing grass off her bottoms, she looked at the gathered people with a neutral but tired expression. “Should we go then, since they’re here.” Her voice revealed a hint of reluctance, as if just wanting to be done it all. As she turned around to walk, neither she nor the dwarf couple offered any eye-contact with Rum, Amez, or anyone else for that matter.
It’s almost like she didn’t want us to return, Rum pondered, before he shelved that thought. That’s an extreme assumption, she must just be embarrassed about running off instead of helping us. The wizard looked at the back of their leader and crossbowyer for a long time, staring at her in contemplative beard-stroking.
The rest of the walk back home to Ermos was mostly made in silence. At night’s camp, Rum labored on White Rose’s enchantments together with Amez. They managed, fortunately, to restore White Rose’s ability to draw mana from Electroblade. Fixing zes magically powered locomotion was a much more complex task, but on the final night as they neared the city, Rum loaded himself up with a bunch of magic minds to aid him, and he finally cracked the problem. The next day, the skeleton was back to zes usual motility, and just in time to enter the outskirts of the metropolis by zeself, with Electroblade fastened in front.
“Aaah” Amez breathed in the air. “The city, how I’ve missed it.”
Rum tasted the same air. It stank of horse dung and the smoke from nearby buildings. But I suppose that’s what home smells like, to my brother.
The apprentices, meanwhile, looked around with wide open mouths at the city. And their mouths could only get wider as they passed the outskirts of the metropole and entered into the denser, more urban parts of the city. Here The Tato Streets appeared on their right in full, while The Green Streets started to show itself on the left.
The Tato Streets were so named because they’d once been potato farmland. As Ermos had grown from town, to city, to metropole, it had become a sea of lower class suburban homes, along with manufacturies owned by the city’s rich and military facilities operated by The Council of Ermos. Mostly humans lived there, along with some dwarves and urban elves. In contrast, The Green Streets – where Rum had gone many times on his way in and out of The City Forest – it had a much less industrious look to it, with more spacious houses, wider streets, and crafts instead of industry. Many elves lived here, along with humans, and both kin could be found lounging out in the streets with chairs and tables, drinking tea and juice, arguing and reading papers and books.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“There are so many people” Farklend commented, astonished by the traffic volume along the southern highway of Ermos.
“Never been to a city before?” Amez spoke conversationally. Now that they were close to home, his mood improved with every step on the way.
“I’ve been to Nara a couple of times. But the cities of The Desolate Lands are nothing like this, I think. At least Nara does not feel nearly as full. And everyone is looking so busy!” Farklend’s analysis was a little biased, seeing as he was walking on the right side of the road where he mostly just saw The Tato Streets and the traffic around him. The carefree attitude that pervaded on the other side of the road did not find its ways to his eyes.
The southern highway had humans, elves, dwarves, a few gnomes, all of them walking along two long and wide columns – the right side ogoing up and towards the city center, while the left one went down and towards the outskirts. As they moved up the highway, wooden buildings got closer and closer to the highway, at last hugging it with storefronts and balconies of bored observers. While Farklend, Larkoff, and Meti looked at the people on the ground, Soren, Bun, and Bresh glanced at the people above. A woman was hanging up clothes to dry on her balcony, while an elf man beat a carpet on his, his neighbor chatting him up from the house next door. Below them, large blackboards in front of the shops welcomed strangers to the city, offering them to try out rare foods and unusual clothes. Moving a little further ahead, and in the distance to their right, the apprentices all gazed at The Iron Towers in the distance, tall and wide and imposing like they’d never seen before. And behind those, and much further away, their gazes wondered at The Little Mountain, which occupied a large chunk of the horizon, but whose details of numerous carved-out dwarven homes was barely visible.
“Isn’t my first time” Soren commented, “but it’s been a looong time. Very long.” His eyes wandered off the mountain and ahead, to the busy highway.
“This brings back memories.” Meti gazed around at the peoples of the highway, at the balconies and the side-streets, going from one point to the other, slow, and purposefully. Her eyes were filled with time, with recollections that Rum and Amez would have no idea about. “Where are we going, by the way?” Meti eventually looked to Rum, and then at Elrith.
“We usually visit The Iron City first” Elrith said, her voice sounding unusually weak among the noise of the city. “Need to sell our gear, and stuff. Pay our taxes.” She didn’t look at them.
“I actually wondered if we couldn’t drop off the apprentices first.” Rum countered. “Don’t want to take them to The Iron City, not yet at least. Want to reduce all chances for someone to ask the wrong questions. And as I am talking about it–” he looked at all his apprentices, who looked back at him, “–don’t talk about the before-place, not out openly anyhow. Let’s not let slip any words that may reveal your previous occupation.”
Farklend, Soren, Larkoff, Meti, Bun, and Bresh, all of them nodded their heads once or twice at him. They all got it.
“Well I and Larkoff are from here” Meti said, “we’ll have no problems blending in.” She glanced to their surroundings again. Larkoff merely nodded in agreement.
“We have no issue with you heading off to find places for your new friends” Elrith turned to them at last. “We don’t mind, do we?” She glanced at the dwarves.
“No” Rulli hastily mumbled, with Gilda hastily agreeing. “No.”
“Why don’t we make an appointment?” Elrith continued. “Two o’clock at the middle of the square, just inside The Iron City main gates? It’s noon soon, so that should give you enough time to drop them off. Unless you intend to put them up somewhere far away from Amez’ shop?”
Rum reflexively stroked his beard. “Not far no.” I have all the space I need inside, after all.
“Alright, see you in approximately three hours” she turned around and pointed ahead. “We’ll go straight to The Iron City to sort some things out. The entrance is not far away from here” she spoke to the apprentices, “so we can go on together a little longer.”
And so they did. In some ten minutes time they had arrived at The Grey Strip: the neighborhood sandwiched between the southern highway they were walking along, and The Iron City. The neighborhood consisted of mostly stone-basement buildings, with curved streets leading off the highway. Dwarves and mecha-gnomes largely populated the houses and shops here, serving the huge adjacent mecha-gnome community. From the first buildings along The Grey Strip, the party soon came upon the side-street Elrith had hinted at, the one leading away and towards The Iron City, whose expanse of iron constructions hid behind the neighborhood.
“Bye!” Elrith let the words out in a hurry, and she and the dwarves abruptly split from Rum, Amez and the others, taking off into the side-street.
“Hmpf” Electroblade sounded, as the remaining group of people continued up the highway to the inner city. “Something’s off about her today. She and the dwarves have been acting strange almost as soon as we began our journey back from the dungeon.”
Rum did not comment.
“If they’re anything like me, it’s homesickness” Amez said. “I can’t wait to sleep in my own home in my own bed. Brother, I wanted an adventure, and I think that I got one? Not sure to be honest. There was much less death than I’d expected, besides the undead of course. Though when you think about it, not even they died. In fact, I think the only person who died was–”
“–Amez!” Rum barked. Amez snapped over to his big brother, who motioned a finger to his lips.
“Ah. But you know, only that person” Amez cut a finger across his neck and weirded up his eyes like a dead man. “I won’t go as far as to call it boring. But when I think back to all the things that I’ve been told by others about adventuring, it felt perhaps a bit... ehm... non-standard?”
“Hahaha!” Soren burst out laughing, and the other apprentices smiled widely over at Amez as well. “Understatement of the millenia!” The sailor-son broke over in a laughing fit lasting several seconds. Somehow the sailor-son managed to walk and nearly fall over laughing at the same time.
“Amez” Bresh started, “I’m fairly certain your dungeon dive was not just non-standard. What happened in there might as well have been unheard-of.”
“I can’t imagine anything like it ever having happened” Farklend joined. “Or ever happening again. Unless our teacher decides to make another trip south?” Farklend smiled over at Rum.
“Don’t have any plans for the moment” Rum replied, a hint of a smile on his own face.
Up the highway they went, in passed the inner city gates, and through the various streets that lead to Amez’ workshop in the Southwall district.
“So, you really intend on having them all stay inside there?” Amez finally asked with a raised eyebrow, as they started to near his neighbourhood. “In the place where the witch slept?”
“That’s the plan” Rum nodded.
“Well you are feeding them” Amez stated. “It’s my shop, but I can’t take care of half a dozen apprentices for you. I have my customers to take care of.”
“Don’t worry, I will” Rum assured. “With all this loot we got, I can bring them over to The Belly Filler every day, and we can visit The Flipped University park after that. We won’t be a disturbance.”
“We’re going to The Flipped University!?” Farklend had an excited expression growing rapidly on his face.
“Outside the university, but yes” Rum smiled at the other wizard. “I took Veish there, and White Rose, and it’s a really nice place I think. They even got an open doors library for you. Not the best books that the university can offer, but good stuff some of it.” The mood of the apprentices all grew with that statement.
They arrived at the street where Amez’ shop was. “Uuugh” Amez suddenly complained. “I kinda want to go right home and rest. Please be quick about it Rum” he looked miserably at his brother, “so we can go to The Iron City and finish this and go home.”
“I will” Rum promised.
As they arrived, Amez went in the front door, taking a chair and resting in his shop room. Meanwhile, Rum and the apprentices walked down an alley and into the backstreet, heading for the backdoor. “There’s the outhouse, if anyone of you should need it.” Rum pointed to the communal toilet standing at the end of the backstreet. “And there’s the well, if you need water.” He pointed to the center of street.
They stepped inside, and Rum led them passed his bed and over to the closet immediately, opening the door and stepping inside. “Mesh’thoo!” he commanded, and The Vum Door opened inside, revealing an infinite darkness in the distance, and a nearby weakly illuminated wooden floor, with lots and lots of furniture. Animated furniture.
“HE HAS RETURNED! THE GREAT LIBERATOR IS BACK!” Axel The Chest screamed with excitement. The other pieces of furniture joined in with excitement as well, though none acted as extreme as Axel did. Rum’s number one fan.
“Yeah yeah. Hello everyone” Rum stood in front of the crowd of sentient furniture, his apprentices forming a semi-circle behind him as they came through the elven door. “Please welcome your new closet-mates” Rum gestured to the people behind him. “These are my apprentices of magic, like Veish.” Rum turned to his apprentices. “Mages, new friends, meet the furniture who lives in Amez’ closet.”
Rum didn’t spend long explaining, although his apprentices were very curious about what they were introduced to inside. “Where does it end!?” Farklend asked, taking several long steps towards the infinite dark.
“It has no end, at least none I can determine” Rum answered. “And for that reason, you should never walk too far off. Or you might never find the way back. There are no landmarks ahead to navigate by, your only chance of finding the way back is the light here. And it grows very faint in the distance. I know, I’ve tried.”
“It’s kinda scary” Bun looked out over the darkness.
“Sure” Soren agreed, “but we will never run out of space though.”
“Both true” Rum said. “Well, I’ll have to go. Amez is impatient, and time’s running out for my meeting. It would be nice to get rid of some of this loot as well.” He gestured to the large sack he’d been hauling all this way. “For now, there’s the bed” Rum pointed towards Veish’s previous but very spacious bed. “You’ll have to share it, until I can get some more beds.”
“You can sleep on me too!” a couch yelled out. Rum looked towards the furniture. It wasn’t very large, and would only be able to accomodate a woman’s length. As he studied it from afar, he judged that the men would likely find it too short.
“I can take her–eh, it?” Bresh said. She raised an eyebrow at the item. It had a feminine quality to it that brought Bresh to assume its gender. But really, what was gender to a couch? This one looked like it belonged in a waiting room somewhere, not in the living room where people would sit on it for extended periods. It was tall on its legs, and looked ornamental more than comfortable. Purple pillows covered its seats and back, while its frame was a silvery wood. Bresh looked at the couch. “What do you prefer to be called?”
“Hmm” the couch thought, a couple of silvery wooden eyes showing at the top of its frame, while its central seat-pillow formed a mouth at the base with which to emulate speaking. “Oliva, yes, that was my name at Gnomiture. But I prefer a different name, I think. You may call me Grape. I remember a people saying my pillows had the look of red grapes. And that sounds nice to me.”
“And gender?” Bresh asked, coming a bit closer. “Any preferences?”
“You might treat me as you would yourself. A woman. Though you might have to teach me what that means. I have never quite understood this division of people.”
“Grape” Bresh nodded. “Maybe Lady Grape then?” Bresh smiled. “I’ll teach you.” She stepped the rest of the way over, and carefully sat down in a corner of the couch, where the two may would still be able to look at each other.
The other apprentices found themselves dividing up the huge bed after that, and Rum realized he could leave them to it.
“If you have any more questions until I return” Rum said after opening The Vum Door to leave, “just ask Axel or any of the other furniture.”
Rum found Amez in the workshop room, and the two brothers joined up and hauled their loot down and across the streets, to the inner city gate, down the southern highway, and over into the side-street leading up to The Iron City. There Rum was met by the familiar low-standing gate, over which hang an equally familiar plaque, featuring a handsome, smiling, caped mecha-gnome with open arms, and the text “Welcome Strangers, To The City of Iron!”
“Ever been here before?” Rum asked his brother as they stepped under the sign.
“Not really” Amez responded, as his eyes took it all in. The Iron Towers, the other large wooden buildings with metallic frames, the mass of gnomes. “Been nearby on visits, but not inside. Never here.”
Rum looked up at the sky. “We’re on time I think.” They walked into the stone-crafted square where they’d promised to meet. Strolling into the very center of it, where they would easily be visible, the brothers stopped, having found a suitable spot. Here, each of them dropped their loot and began looking around at all the caped gnomes walking by, back and forth, busier than any other kin in the city. The hustlers of hustle.
They waited... 5 minutes... 10 minutes... 20 minutes...
“I figure they’re late” Amez eventually said.
A large band of similarly-dressed and armed mecha-gnomes came jogging their way. When Rum noticed them, he saw that their leader was looking directly at him while jogging, while holding a scroll in his one hand. The gnome man had the air of formality about him, also a blue cape and finely embroided white shirt made him stand out as above in station. Someone moderately important.
“What do they want?” Amez asked when he too saw them.
The leader gnome jogged in front and up all the way to Rum, before abruptly stopping. Behind him a rippling wave caused each consecutive gnome to stop in turn. Rum could see helmets on their heads, body armor, and dozens of spears in their hands, as well as a few mages with wands.
“Are you the wizard known as Rum Warmhud, guild member and adventurer of The Mecha-Gnomes’ Revenge?”
Rum’s eyes widened. He answered cautiously. “Y-yes?”
The leader gnome waved a hand hastily. At least three dozen spear-wielding gnomes and eight mages spilled out across the square to form a circle around the brothers. When the gnomes had finished their encirclement, spears lowered rapidly, and wands raised to point.
“Mr. Warmhud, you are hereby under arrest on the strong suspicion of being an agent of the dungeon lords, and an enemy of Ermos. You are going to prison.”