The gnomes are behaving like tourists. Not in a bad way, like some self entitled caricature of a person. No, they are just… staring around, some of them had their hands on their chins, head swiveling from left to right. Just looking around, some of them walk around glancing at the statues, others take their time staring at a single one.

One of them was looking intently at one of the statues of Asterion, this was one of the lone ones, just Asterion poised to attack an unseen enemy. The gnome stared at it for a few seconds, then a weirdly pleasing noise came from its head.

It sounded like a metallic whistle, strangely whimsical, as it touched the statue with its finger.

The statue changed, the form of Asterion melting as if a great heat came over it. The details of the statue became washed out, the musculature, the edge of the claws, the point of the horns all became rounded and featureless.

Smooth rock, with weird pieces of rock coming out of it, like stalactites of all sizes.

The gnome manipulated the stone under its feet, creating a perfect rocky clone of itself, pointing its finger at the smoothed statue.

I hear steps, hurried steps coming to meet the gnome.

Soon the owner of the steps is revealed, a skulldwarf. The dwarf looks at the deprecated statue, looks at the gnome statue and then at the gnome, and back to the statue.

Then the dwarf points at the gnome. I say that yes, it was the gnome that did it.

The gnome for its part just points at itself, like it’s asking ‘Who, me?‘.

The dwarf clearly does not find this funny. The statue of the gnome is attacked, the dwarf cracking his pickaxe against it. The face of the gnome is almost cracked in half, the dwarf stops and then turns to the statue of Asterion. I watch as he takes out sculpting tools made of bone from his belt, something pretty much all the miners have nowadays.

He begins quickly restoring statue Asterion to his glory, remaking its muscles and fierce claws, with one alteration, one of the arms of Asterion was changed. Its position now going forwards, the claws digging into the gnome statue, just where the pickaxe was.

A few other dwarves and skeletons appeared, all of them looking at statues together with the gnomes.

The vandal gnome nodded its head, seemingly satisfied with having its own statue destroyed.

Then it moved again, and together with it, all the other gnomes.

I watched as all the gnomes moved at once, like a storm they started to devastate the statues. It took less than a minute, and they were done.

The gnome statue has moved a few steps backwards, and with it pulled Asterion's arm out of its socket. With its two little hands the small gnome statue is holding the torn arm, and I can’t help but feel it has a smug expression on its face.

Which is weird, because it has no actual changing features on its face.

All across the floor, similar changes have been made to the statues. The gnomes created one of themselves defeating one Asterion.

For a second there is silence, as if the undead need a moment to process the audacity of these gnomes.

Then they counter attack. The sounds of stone being manipulated and sculpted fill the floor.

They take longer to make their changes, unlike the gnomes who seem to have an incredible control of stone. Still the gnomes wait, seemingly content in simply watching.

I take a look at the first statue, the one that started it all. The change was pretty simple.

The arm the gnome tore off is now draggin and partially fused to the ground.

The gnome statue has clear trouble carrying it with its heavy weight. Right behind the gnome, the other claw of Asterion is coming out of the ground, straight for its head.

The gnome hums, creating a weird echoing sound throughout the cave.

One of the groups had a different idea. Instead of changing the Asterion statue, they simply tok some other dwarf statues from nearby and had them surround the gnome statue, gaining up on it.

I think of all these statue games, that one is my favorite, it looks like a shakedown.

The gnomes now attack again, moving and changing the statues once more.

For a brief second I wonder if these guys are good at fighting, or if this is going to be the trial.

I think I prefer this, an artistic contest seems like a pretty nice change of pace for these guys, they deserve it after all the digging they have done.

The statues change again. Once more I take a look at the statue that started it all.

The gnome statue is not holding the torn arm anymore, it still has a gash in its face though. The nimble gnome is now jumping over an emerging Asterion, its feet touching his head.

The dwarf goes on and changes the statues again, a simple but powerful change.

Asterion has his head inclined upwards, and right above him on the ceiling there is a gnome, half its head lodged into the cavern roof.

This… goes for a while. My undead make a change, the gnomes respond. The statues are all sculpted one after the other in an epic battle, a battle with rules I do not understand.

Before I notice it, all the gnome statues become surrounded by the undead statue.

There is something quite frightening seeing all the Asterion statues side-by-side like this. They make a large circle, completely cutting off any escape from the gnome statues.

The actual real gnomes are actually animatedly clapping their hands and congratulating the undead sculptors, who seem to be quite proud of themselves.

And then they are gone. No explosion, or bright light or even a ripple. They just vanished, disappeared completely.

… I’m not quite sure what happened here, and when I ask the competing undead they just send me the impression of ‘you wouldn’t get it’. I guess it’s an artistic thing.

Well I’m happy thai ended without further bloodshed. Not that any elemental had blood at all.

Trials Passed!

You have gained four magic books!

Blood elemental, Miasma elemental, Ash elemental and Grave elemental gained!

I see four books pop out of nowhere and fall on the ground, right in front of Merlin.

He kneels and looks at them. One book has an orange velvet cover, another one is made of obsidian, a third book is made of ossified feathers and the last one is made of some type of iridescent shell. They are also pretty thin books, can’t be more than 50 or so pages.

Well I guess Merlin has more homework now. Actually, now that I think about it.

I look at the orange book and see the waves of fire mana coming out of it.

Gorger, this one is yours. Time for you to seriously try to learn spells.