George just sat and watched as seven lizardmen charged the four ‘intruders’ as they called them. He himself contemplated about joining them but then another idea popped up in his mind.

What if he joined with the humans instead?

Whatever this Guardian thing was, it was clearly not benign. And he was basically more or less a slave. These guys came here to destroy it. Perhaps helping them destroy the Guardian or whatever he was would set him free.

This line of thought continued for a while as George absentmindedly watched lizardmen exchange blows with the two humans in the front.

But how sure was he that the humans wouldn’t kill him? The lizardmen seemed to take him as almost one of their own just because he had the tattoo on him, who was to say the humans wouldn’t kill him for having one?

George watched as the human in the back, the one with a bow, shot an arrow at a lizardman and hit one of its legs.

George knew extremely little about where he was. Way too little to start switching sides, especially without knowing what the sides where.

The guy with the staff did… something, like a chant, similar to what George did when he cast his spells, and a literal ball of fire started moving from the tip of the staff towards the group. It hit the ground between them and even George could feel the eruption of rock and heat that followed.

This was bad, but George had to make a choice, and he had to make it quick.

To hell with it. Better with the people that didn’t kill you at first sight.

George was still not a fighter, but he thought about what he could do.

He had but a few options. The spear was probably the worse one, as he was sure he would get his eye out faster than anything else.

He had a book with spells. He might as well try to use it.

He remembered what Holy Light did against the spiders. Maybe something similar would work here and now.

He crawled to the nearest lit torch. He needed a piece of a flame, but it was never specified how literal that had to be.

He started powering up the spell, focusing on the staff of the robed person, a wizard as he dubbed him. Holy Light required a stationary target, so if he could wait until he set the staff down…

No, he could do it while the ‘wizard’ was casting a spell! Maybe.

The ‘wizard’ started chanting again, putting his staff forward. That was the precise moment he could strike. Well, figuratively. George released the spell, focusing on the tip of the staff and imagining a small sun. If he was going to do it, might as well go all in.

Before the wizard could stop chanting, a blast of light erupted from the tip and irradiated the cavern, blinding even George. Everyone present closed their eyes in shock.

Luckily for George, the lizardmen seemed to get a hold of themselves first, getting back up and continuing their assault. One of the armoured humans was overwhelmed by lizardmen and George opened his eyes just in time to see the lizardmen digging spears into the breaks in armour.

Horrified, George backed down behind the stalagmite. He just helped kill someone.

He killed the Dog Spiders just a few hours before, and he was threatened even, but this was something different entirely.

He tried to clear his head. This was apparently his life now. There was no longer going back. In fact, he was sure that there was no going back as soon as he opened his eyes for the first time in this darn cave.

George took a moment to take a deep breath. In and out. In and out. It was time to get back out there.

He wasn’t sure what more he could do. The light was still shining, although not in full force, but the fighters seem to have adjusted.

He saw a lizardman lying down in a small pool of red and another sitting down with arrows sticking out of him.

Well, that made it pretty obvious what to do.

George grabbed to book, as if that would do him any good, and ran to the lizardman with arrows sticking out of him. He powered a healing spell and started pulling on the arrows to get them out of the lizardman. At that point, he looked like a scaly pin cushion and George was determined to solve that.

He hoped that Heals weren’t speciesist and focused on the opened wounds. He had to do a few separate Heals since it quickly became apparent that one of them would only cover a small area at a time.

He heard shouting coming from where the others were fighting and turned to look. The bowman nocked an arrow and George was pretty certain he was the target.

Luckily for George, he provided enough of a distraction for Gaz’Ruk to leap onto the bowman, making him miss a shot as an arrow whizzed past George’s head and into the distance.

Looking to the other side, the rest of the lizardmen were making short work of the remaining armoured human, and the wizard seemed to be impaled on a spear of his own already.

George went over to one of the lizardmen with a nasty gash across his chest and started healing him.

Soon, though, he felt short of breath. Any attempts to focus on the healing would result in dizziness, and he could barely walk. He tried to talk to the lizardmen, but just dropped down and lost consciousness.

The Dungeon at Skull Mount was really happy at the progress. A lot of the people were cut down by its ingenious placement of traps, and some have lost their lives by trying to be cocky and make their way through the unstable ground it purposefully placed.

The fleshbags seemed useful, taking out what it counted to be three separate groups of invaders. It was maybe wrong to call them overwhelmed just yet. One of the groups even seemed to have lost only one fleshbag to the invaders. That was a wonderful boon, and it wondered how it could make the others do the same.

Soon enough, every invader would die and the Dungeon could feast on the life essence they left behind.

Then, it would try to create more traps, and make itself even more secure. Maybe it was time to start making a new eastern core.

George could feel a jolt on his forehead and winced as he opened his eyes. He had hangovers before and this was worse than any of them. He barely managed to sit up.

He was back at the lizardman camp, and several lizardmen in cuts, some bandaged, were in front of him. A few of them were missing an eye, or a hand, or a part of the leg. But it seemed all would survive.

He tried casting a Heal but a large pang inside his head notified him that would be a terrible idea at the time.

He finally looked up.

Kr'thra and Gaz’Ruk towered above him.

“You didn’t tell us you could cast spells,” Kr'thra said with an inquisitive tone to her voice.

George winced and smiled. “You never really asked.”

Kr'thra smiled back. “So, the book…”

“It’s mine,” George answered curtly, and Gaz’Ruk tossed it back at him.

“Good job, you lived,” was all he said before walking away.

George turned back to Kr'thra. “How long was I out?”

“A few hours,” she responded. “We lost a total of seven people. Good people. We will mourn tomorrow.”

George sighed. He helped kill a person. Or four actually. And one of the people he fought alongside died. Is this going to be the rest of his life now? Endless fights in which people died?

He looked back at the book and opened the first page.

To the glory of ___________

Please choose a Domain

Please choose a Deity

He turned back towards Kr'thra. If he was going to play the game, he better learn all the rules. Back to square one.

“Do you know anything about Gods?”