We left the magician's hut, carefully, Frank waving his search warrant under Podaga's nose. "We'll be back," he promised. “I can smell when perps are hiding something from me.” I stepped through the doorway, backing out into the glade, turned, and found five crossbows pointing right at my gut.

I held up my hands, slowly. "Everybody hold," I warned.

Sage squeaked and bumped into me as she turned. The crossbows were being held by five dwarves. Another twenty flanked them, carrying long axes nearly as tall as they were. They had enormous beards in shades from grey to black to red. They all wore armor and tabards, showing a hammer smashing a skull.

One stepped forward. His tabard's logo had a little crown over the skull. I recognized him from the party the other night. "You lot come out of there nice and slow," he said. "Keep your hands where I can see them. Any nonsense and we'll shoot."

I stepped down, closer to them, keeping my hands level, trying not to look threatening. "Easy," I said. "We don't want any trouble."

I was actually surprised they hadn't started shooting already. They might be trying to avoid triggering the boss before they were ready. It was pretty clear they were here to take him out.

They eyed us suspiciously. "Where's the rest of your team?"

"Not here," I said.

“We could see that. How’d you manage not to wipe completely?” That was one of the crossbow-wielding dwarves behind the leader. She had a lighter voice and a slightly smaller build than most of the others, but her beard was just as luxurious as her fellows.

I didn't answer. Sage piped up, hopefully. "Not everything has to be about fighting. Sometimes you win battles by making friends."

"Easy there," I said out of the corner of my mouth. "Let's try not to incite these guys." The crossbow dwarves followed our moves as we slowly walked away from the bathhouse toward the edge of the forest.

They probably didn't want to fight us as they were getting ready for an attempt on the boss. We could accidentally trigger the fight early, or even though they outnumbered us and would almost certainly kill us all, we'd take more than a few of them with us and that would ruin their attempt.

I cleared my throat. "So, any interest in pooling our knowledge? Maybe joining forces? Sharing the loot?”

“Get out of here, humans," the lead dwarf spat. "Told you already. We don't want any business with you and your kind. A bunch of jumped up locals who think they can come in here and insult our traditions, invite the soulless to play. The sooner you're out of this, the better."

Jones sent me a message. Got my drone hovering about 50 feet up. Send the feed to all of us right back to headquarters.

Great, I replied, then checked the chat channel I had labeled "Too Many Cooks." Grandpa and Juana had both sent me messages in the last 30 seconds telling me to keep my cool and not provoke anything, as though I hadn't thought of that myself. I sent them back a quick note telling them to cool their jets, and we made it to the edge of the trees.

"Go on ahead," I told Sage, Frank, and Annie. "Jones and I are going to hang back and keep an eye out. Jones, hit your camouflage, and we'll creep back here."

"Got it," he said.

"Why can't we stay?" Sage demanded.

"In case they've got scouts looking for a party heading back toward our base," I told her. She grumbled, but obeyed.

Once we'd made it a few yards into the forest, Jones camouflaged himself and me, and we crept back. His falcon drone was still scouting, but I wanted to see this with my own eyes.

The dwarves appeared to have no further interest in us. They were spreading out around the open area beyond the bathhouse, with the crossbowmen and a couple of dwarves carrying glowing wands a few steps back, almost at the water's edge, and the ones with axes up at the front. "Right, everyone in position?" the head dwarf asked. "Starting our countdown timer now. Drink your potions."

Nobody actually drank anything. If it was like how our potion belts worked, they were just queuing things up. I had my Inspect going, and watched a couple of them. It was too hard to see them all at once. I picked out one of the crossbowmen, one of the ones with wands, and the boss dwarf, and relayed back to Kirin and Arjun a list of every buff they were adding.

"Thirty seconds," the boss dwarf said. He had eight different buffs on him. An increase to his defense against lightning, defense against water, defense against striking, and defense against ranged attacks. He also had an increase to his crushing damage and his threat generation. I made a special note of that one.

"Let's go!" he shouted. He pulled a fist-sized round ball from his inventory and lobbed it at the open door. I thought it was a grenade, but instead of exploding, it flattened out into a bright orange paste on the door, which then caught fire and began to burn. The dwarves readied their weapons.

A moment later, the door flung open and half a dozen short, ugly old men poured out of the bathhouse. I caught a glimpse of them while we were in there searching the place. I relayed what we were seeing back to our experts.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Bannik," Gabriel said. “A pretty common Slavic spirit. Bathhouse spirits, frequently old men. Definitely Bannik."

"They have really long teeth," I commented as the first of them swarmed at the leader dwarf. They were scrawny and wizened with long beards, wearing nothing but loincloths. They carried buckets in their hands, whirling them around their heads and throwing them. More buckets appeared from nowhere.

The first two Bannik started in on the leader dwarf as he took a couple steps back, leading them right into the circle of axe-wielding warriors. The crossbowdwarves began shooting arrow after arrow. I threw up a quick Inspect. Most of the arrows were dealing fire damage. The Bannik screeched and yelled, and their health levels dipped.

Beside me, Jones had his binoculars out. “I’m getting snapshots of most of them every couple seconds to send back for analysis,” he told me. “These things are great.”

One of the axe-dwarves stepped in to get a good swing, and a Bannik which had not yet attached itself to the leader clobbered him in the head with a bucket. He went down. I couldn't see System details about what kind of attacks the Bannik were doing, other than what I observed and guessed, but I could see their results on the dwarves.

The clobbered dwarf lay stunned for a minute, as the ugly, half-naked bathhouse spirits surrounded and began clobbering him. Their health bar dipped. The wand-wielding dwarves focused their attention on him, sending a stream of light from each of the three wands.

The dwarf leader shouted, “Healer! Focus on me!” Two of the healers went back to beaming light at him. What I found interesting was that matched what I had seen during our duel with Mak'gar's orcs. The dwarves relied heavily on their equipment, which seemed to be fairly standardized. Axes, crossbows, the magic wands, and a few consumables, but I didn't see them using abilities the way my team did. I made a note to check with Veda about that.

The dwarf on the ground tried to get up. Another Bannik latched on to him and grabbed his beard, pulling at it. He screamed, dropping his axe and grabbing for the mischievous spirit with both hands. It was a mistake. A minute later, he was gone, dissolving in a stream of light.

But even with a few victories, it wasn’t enough, not against two dozen dwarves. Even when another couple of Bannik reinforcements popped out of the bathhouse, the dwarves took them down.

"Fall back!" the leader panted as the last of the Bannik vanished. "Heal up! Use your--oh, here they come!"

Four armored knights burst out of the bathhouse. Clearly the clients we had seen steaming on the shelves. They wore blue capes. The one in front had a shield which bore an eight-pointed star and a cross.

"Get a shot of that," I told Jones. "Make sure Gabriel can see. Maybe he'll recognize it."

The knight with a shield carried a longsword. The next knight had an axe similar to the dwarves, but with a doubled head instead of a single, and his didn't have a beard, the little flange on the blade, like theirs did. The other two knights were wielding an enormous two-handed sword and a polearm, respectively.

They sent out the shield man in front, axe wielder and swordsman behind him, and polearm in the back, as they advanced onto the dwarves. The dwarves fell back as their leader called out instructions.

He tossed a device at them that started blaring loud wailing sounds, like a siren shrieking or maybe a European metal singer gal in full scream. The knights growled, their attention clearly on their leader.

Must be some sort of taunting device. Despite not having any kind of shield, the dwarf leader was clearly trying to take the brunt of the aggression for his team. "On 'em!" he shouted, and the axedwarves stepped in.

The knights were more coordinated than the dwarves. The dwarves charged in and flailed their axes, crossbow wielders shooting arrows any which way. There was no attempt to focus on any of the targets.

The shield knight was really good at twisting and bending, getting a blow to fall on his shield that would otherwise have hit one of his fellows. They were heavily armored, too. I couldn't see their hit points, but they all had health bars hanging over them, and the dwarves' attacks were barely making them twitch.

The polearm knight skewered an axe dwarf right in the eye, knocking his health down to zero and making him despawn. Then the one with a greatsword brought it down in a huge, crashing chop on another dwarf's head.

The healing dwarves shouted at each other and tried to move their beams, but too late. The dwarf was gone.

I could see their strategy falling apart, but there were a lot of dwarves. Furiously chopping and flailing, they took down the one with the axe, probably because more of them had focused on him than any of the others. I suspected that they were enraged by seeing him wield one of their preferred weapons.

Seemingly cheered by their minor victory, the dwarves went after the one with the polearm, getting inside his reach.

His compatriots didn't react quickly enough. The shield man was still trying to take the blows, but missing more than he got. The greatsword wielder just attacked blindly whoever was closest.

Another three dwarves went down before they got the one with the polearm. The two remaining knights both screamed, and the air around them was filled with a red haze. Some sort of blood rage, probably. They leapt apart, charging packs of dwarves to either side, and cutting through them with their swords.

The knights laid several more low, but now the crossbowdwarves were able to get good aim. They were shooting at the joints of the knights’ armor, at neck and elbows.

A few of their arrows started to get through. The shield man's left arm piece cracked, then crumbled away, exposing his cloth-covered arm underneath. The nearest axe dwarf swung hard at that, and severed it. His shield and arm fell to the grass.

He didn't last long after that. Fourteen or so dwarves surrounded the longsword wielder. He took two more, but they got him down.

The lead dwarf was still here. His hair was frazzled. There was blood in his beard. He had lost his helmet somewhere during the fight. "Everybody catch your breath!" he shouted as he pulled something out of his inventory.

The enchanter emerged from his hut.

The air went cold and still. The occasional birds, which had been chirping in the trees overhead, fell silent.

"You dare invade the sanctum of Podaga, the enchanter?" he demanded. He raised his arms. "You will feel his wrath!"

"Spread out!" the lead dwarf warned, and the others sprang to obey.

Podaga stretched out both hands. Lightning zapped from his fingers. It leapt from dwarf to dwarf around the circle, then back again. The healers were doing their best, switching their beam every second or so from one dwarf to the next, but they forgot to focus on themselves.

They were the first to fall, then the crossbowmen. Then, within twenty seconds of the enchanter appearing in his doorway, the glade was empty. The dwarves were gone.

The enchanter lowered his hands. He looked around, smiling. "That's to any who challenges Podaga, the enchanter," he called. "If you have the mettle, come back tomorrow and face me again, and I will lay waste to you once more."

He turned and disappeared back into his bathhouse.