Later at the camp, Arilee was lost in her thoughts trying to figure out the best course of action next. It was Chip’s voice that brought her attention back to the world infront of her.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

The group looked at him perplexed from the sudden outburst.

“Get what, Chip?” asked Leela.

“The Dwarf King Ghost. Does that mean ghosts real? How does that work?”

Leela responded, “Well in the Caravans, we worship the Goddess of Light, and believe we all multiple spirit selves within us. There is the higher-spirit, the earthen-spirit, and the shadow-spirit. Sometimes, not all of the selves move on when they are supposed to. There’s stories that the ancient woods we used to call home have been overtaken by the spirits of the long dead who died in that war. Such anguish and turmoil they suffered in that defeat that they were unable to move on. It’s said they protect those woods still.”

Chip looked to think on what she said. “I was raised in the Imperial Religion. It mostly came down to ‘This world is all you get, so make the most of it!’. There was never any talk of spirit-selves or ghosts. I just don’t understand it. What exactly is a spirit? What’s it made of? Does magic affect it? Arilee, do you know anything about it?”

Arilee shook her head, “Only a little bit. My guardian taught me about the Light Goddess and would sometimes tell stories about the world before the Flood, but I don’t think he knew very much about all of it to be honest.”

Leela smiled and exclaimed with glee, “Don’t worry! If you want, maybe I can ask the Priestess if I can bring you for a lesson. It’d be fun.”

Tallus cleared his throat. “Gnomes have a different belief than the elves on how that all works.”

“We don’t just believe the Light Goddess exists, Tallus. We know she does,” replied Leela.

“Have you met her yourself, then?”

“Well no, I haven’t. But there’s stories from before the Flood of elves who have,” Leela replied confidently.

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“Us gnomes know a thing or two also about how things work. We might not have it all down. But we know some things too.”

“That’s interesting, Tallus. Would you mind telling us about it?” asked Chip.

“Of course. It all comes down to the Skill Scrolls and Level Up Scrolls.”

“How so?”

“So you know how with magic, every spell has a rune, phrase or motion you have to perform in order to cast the spell. Let’s call them symbols for now.”

“Right, but why symbols?” Chip interjected.

“To us gnomes, those motions, phrases and runes, represent a “something” that tells the World to perform that action. And the way Scrolls work is no different. Scroll-forgers, like myself, learn the right symbols to imbue into a scroll so that it performs the right action. One symbol sets the scroll to become a Level Up Scroll, while a different symbol makes it into a Skill Scroll.”

“That’s interesting. How my symbols are there? Could you make a scroll both a Skill and Level Up Scroll?”

“There’s hundreds, if not thousands of symbols, and we are discovering more still. For instance, every Level-Up Scroll has five basic components. First, a symbol that represents yourself. It tells the scroll who is on the receiving end. There is a symbol to represent there current level, a symbol to represent the level they are progressing to, and there is a symbol to represent there talents and skills, which we call a class symbol. And it only gets more complex from there. There’s also ‘if’ symbols for when you want the scroll to only work in specific circumstances.”

“So, this is all very interesting, but how does it relate the ghosts?” asked Chip.

“Sorry, I went off on a bit of tangent there, but it was necessary to paint a basic picture. Gnomes believe that this world is kind of like a big scroll, and we’re all just symbols on it. Tied together, constantly updating and being redrawn. Ghosts are just symbols who had something break somewhere. Like that Dwarf Ghost maybe had his symbol linked to a different symbol, but the connection didn’t break when he died.”

Arilee’s head hurt from trying to process what he was saying. It didn’t make a lot of sense to her. But Chip smiled and responded.

“So we’re all just interconnecting symbols on a big complex Character Scroll for the world itself?”

“Yes.”

“Cool. I appreciate the explanation.”

Slicks hissed. “So all the bad symbols just piled up on the LizardFolk then? The magic symbol got lost along the way? Too many connections, couldn’t handle another?”

Tallus looked hurt. “I didn’t mean it like that Slicks. And to be honest, I just don’t know. The LizardFolk are a new race and us gnomes are all but gone now. There’s not many of us left to think about such things. We didn’t get the best deal in this either.”

Slicks stood up, and Arilee did not recognize the look on his face. It was on she had never seen before. His eyes were fixed on Tallus. He walked towards him.

“Hey Slicks –“ she started, but then something happened she never would have expected.

Slicks bent down and grabbed the gnome in the biggest hug she had seen.

“I am ssssorry. It is not you I am upset with. Life has been unfair to many of usssss.”

Tallus hugged him back.