“Electroblade, your mother comes through that door all the time, and so have you in the past, don’t you know it’s never locked?”

Dal Mechabrown, as he had introduced his name, sat on a chair across a gnome-sized table. Electroblade sat at the opposite side, while Rum awkwardly sat like a giant at the table’s end, using one of Dal’s smaller and sturdier workbenches as a stool. The room they were in was something a combined kitchen, dining room, and workshop.

“I know, but he didn’t” she gestured with her crutch at Rum, who was silenced by a brought on feeling of humility. “And he reacted to your screams a bit hastily.”

“I didn’t scream!” Dal protested.

“Whatever Dal” Electroblade rolled her eyes.

Silence reigned for a couple of seconds. Dal grabbed a dirty grey red-stained rag on the table in front of him. He’d been using it to clean his face off of blood, but his wounds were still open, and so now he had to continue trying to soak away the red liquid, that just kept on coming in small slow streams.

“Say” Dal eventually broke the silence, putting down the rag again, “who are you actually?” He looked at the one human in the room. “I know you said your name was Rum. A rather unique name, I must say. But, why are you carrying Electroblade around?”

“Ehem” Rum The Uniquely Named Human cleared his throat. “I recently became her employer. I’m a mage. We just came to pick up Electroblade’s things.”

“Oh” Dal turned his eyes to the woman, “you got employment? What–” the gnome mage gave Rum a quick side-eye, “–does he want from you?” The last part of the sentence was whispered, despite the fact that the topic of discussion sat right there, right beside them, capable of hearing everything.

Electroblade smiled. “He wants to take me to a dun-geon.” She split the last word up with a thrilled pronounciation.

Mechabrown’s eyes rose up, surprised. “A dungeon? In your–“ he carefully gestured at her body, “–situation?”

“Yeah” she lost her smile, “got a problem with that?”

Dal looked away, clearly uncomfortable. Besides the ruined looks of skin cuts and partially chopped away hair, Rum noticed the gnome also had that look of permanently tired, as if aged by years of stress.

“He used to be apprentice to a dungeon lord” Electroblade continued nonchalantly, “but he was too soft to fight people like me, so they threw him out.”

Rum’s eyes turned on Dal and became wide with his own surprise. Dal looked down and away, clearly ashamed or embarrassed. “Yeah” he muttered, “I get to be reminded by my past every time I walk out my door, why not remind me in my own home as well.” He avoided eyecontact for several seconds as Electroblade and Rum stared at him.

“How come you’re down here?” Rum broke the awkwardness. “And not in Andertun? NOT THAT I WANT YOU TO BE THERE!” Rum waved his hands in apologetic reassurance. “I’m just, curious, how did you avoid being thrown into Andertun, when you came north.”

“He took part in a limited amnesty thing” Electroblade answered for the now deeply uncomfortable gnome mage. “They let him go, but he had to confess to all his crimes in public, and then people threw rotten fruit at him for nearly half an hour, until they got bored. I threw a tomato–” she half-smiled, “–got him right in the face. My right arm has always been good at throwing.” She glanced down at her still present and working limb.

Dal Mechabrown just sat there, face bleeding freely, looking down into his lap, where his hands gently held his thighs.

“My family knew him from before the war. He was a friend of the family.” Electroblade continued over Mechabrown’s silence. “That’s why he ended up living here, across from us. My mother helped him move in. She also threw a potato at his ballsack, and, let’s just say – I know where I inherited my aim from.” Her smiled broadened-

Dal sighed. The funny mood of Electroblade must’ve eased up his shame a bit, as he moved his hands up on the table again, and grabbed the rag to clean some more. Some sense of personal value returning.

“You know I could fix that for you” Rum offered.

Dal turned to him, face wondering what the human mage was talking about.

“I’ve got a couple of spells that are pretty good for things like this.” Rum gestured at the gnome’s ruined looks. “Want me to cast them on you?”

“Yeah, those are pretty damn good spells” Electroblade vouched from the side.

With a “Trinity of Healing” and “Become Clean”, the gnome mage soon looked much better, and from his state of shame, the gnome turned to a feeling of astonishment at Rum’s magical capabilities.

“I’ve never seen spells this effective” he looked at himself, at his skin, feeling his face with his hands. “Where did you learn these?” He stared up into Rum’s eyes, awe-inspired, hungry with curiosity.

“I created them” Rum produced a small smiled.

“You’re KIDDING!” He objected. Then, feeling a bit self-aware, turned his voice down. “I mean, nobody creates a spell. Spells are divine creations. What do you mean you created a spell?”

Rum lost his smile. “Look, call me a god if that makes it easier to understand, but I very much created those spells. I practice a special art of magic called Person Magic. It has no gods, only yourself, and everyone has to create their own spells. It makes several aspects harder, but also gives you greater freedom to make anything your creativity and working patience can come up with.” The human shrugged. “Best way I can explain it, without a very long introduction.”

“That is... frankly difficult to believe.” The gnome paused a second, trying to be careful with next his words. “But, gods aside, you’re saying only you can have these spells?”

“Possibly, somebody else could find a way to make something very similar, to the point of crude identity, but it would for sure be a full journey of discovery and, surely, a very difficult attempt at mimicry. But, let’s not talk so much about me, I get to talk enough about this with my new apprentice back home everyday nowadays. I’m more kind of interested in what you were doing here. Why is there an earth elemental standing in that corner” Rum pointed to the far other end of the room, behind Electroblade’s seat, where the creature of stone and earth stood like a statue – whose equivalent of skin or bodily surface shifted every handful of seconds.

“Oh, Pebble? He’s from the past.” The reply was somber reminiscence. “The dungeon lords demanded of us mages that we go recruit elementals for them. I found Pebble in The Ormar Dungeons, and he’s been my friend ever since.” Dal gazed over at the earth elemental, with a hand to his chin and elbow to the table. Eyes dreaming of times past, though his dream gave him no smiles.

Rum gazed at the elemental as well for a short moment, then followed up with another question. “And the thing you crashed to the ground.” Rum turned in his seat to look at the metal creature, laying where it had landed, behind the human, and in the middle of the floor of the big room.

Dal Mechabrown, shifting which arm was leaning on the table and holding up his chin, eyed the former menace. “The Autocutter” he gave a long drawn-out sigh. “It’s for The Iron City. I want to give to the people, to the public, so they can have free haircuts. And I was attempting a trial just before you came. But right now I think it should be called The Earcutter instead, because it nearly chopped my ear off.” The gnome brought a hand up to tap at his right ear, near the faint traces of a lingering scar. The wound on the gnome was gone after Rum’s healing spell, but the place where the scissors had struck him earlier could still be traced.

Silence reigned again. A long moment of thoughts and staring. Dal at The Autocutter. Rum at The Autocutter and Dal. And Electroblade at Rum and Dal.

“Okay then. You are, currently, okay, Dal” Electroblade stated, “Rum, maybe we should go over to my mum and sister now?”

Rum gave a slow nod, and stood up. Mechabrown watched as the human mage went around the table and picked Electroblade up. Then the human turned in his place, and walked towards the entrance.

“Wait!” Mechabrown shouted. As Rum had just crossed 2/3 of the room towards the door, the human stopped, turned, and raised his eyes at Dal, who suddenly looked uncomfortable again. “I...” the gnome began, then looked away for a second. “I was wondering, if... well. You said you have an apprentice?” The gnome dared to look up and meet Rum’s eyes.

“Yes?” Rum replied, right eyebrow raised even higher.

“Well, Person Magic, I might find it odd, and even a little difficult to believe. But – it sounds amazing, frankly, and, I was wondering... if” the gnome gulped, and closed his eyes as if to muster the courage, the audacity, “could I... would you consider... making me–”

“–my apprentice?” Rum finished.

Dal Mechabrown, eyes still closed, nodded fervently.

Rum took on a thoughtful expression, looking out into nowhere, as Dal opened his eyes to look at him, and Electroblade in his arms looked up beyond Rum’s beard into the wizard’s thinking face. “Hmm... no.”

Dal’s eyes fell. He breathed out a held breath, and his whole posture fell like an instant depression.

“Not right now. But sure, later, why not.”

Dal’s posture shot up. But Rum didn’t wait to see the intensity which Mechabrown sure was to bring at him, instead the wizard turned around and proceeded to walk to the broken door.

“THANK YOU!” Dal shouted after Rum.

Rum opened and shut the door to leave the room and enter the hallway of the 9th level. Though this didn’t really work to cut their communication, as of course there was a foot-sized hole in Dal’s door. The gnome simply ran up to the hole.

“Thanks a lot!” The gnome mage shouted through the hole. “Hope you’ll come by sometime soon! It would make me really happy to get to learn magic again! And also, don’t worry about the hole, it will be fixed! No problems!”

Rum simply gave the gnome in the hole a nod, and marched over to the door of Electroblade’s home.

“This door you don’t have to break open” Electroblade sassed the human. “It doesn’t even have a lock!” And as Rum looked down, he noticed indeed there were no locks on this door. It was just a door. The plainest of doors. A rough natural texture for sure, but otherwise just a couple of simple iron hinges, and a simple iron handle. Rum grabbed the latter, and tried to pull – the door wouldn’t budge. Electroblade took the effort to put her crutch in her lap and slap her face with her palm. “It’s push, not pull” she said through her fingers, and cracked a wide smile, shaking her head. Rum pushed.

Inside was a considerably smaller main room than the one they’d come from. It had a kitchen to the right, and at the other side in front of them, a table, 5 chairs, and then a rough stone brick wall. There was a magical lamp in the ceiling, spreading white light everywhere. A thoroughly used carpet was in the middle. The rest of the floor was dry dirt, the same as Dal’s room. There were 5 other rooms connected to this one, along the 3 walls that weren’t adjacent to the tunnel. 1 was doorless, and stood on the left, opposite the kitchen. At the far other ends of the left and right walls were doors to 2 other rooms, and at the wall directly opposite Rum in the doorway, at either side of the table and the chairs, were 2 more doors. The doorless room was clearly a storage room, a pantry of some kind, along with a few other things besides food. The doored rooms Rum supposed to be bedrooms.

In front of them, staring at them with an open mouth from the kitchen table, was an older gnome woman sitting with thick needles in her hand, knitting what appeared to be a little sock. “My child, who is that human with you?”

What followed, after a couple of minutes of explanation, was then a near hour of gnome mom fuzzing over her daughter and being very angry at Rum for potentially bringing her back into a dungeon. Rum tried to explain that her babygirl wouldn’t be doing much fighting at all, and that Electroblade’s job wasn’t primarily to go into dungeons, but mommy gnome wouldn’t have it. Only a few minutes into the argument, Electroblade’s sister, coming out of one of the presumed bedrooms, was quickly conscripted by mommy gnome to be an illustration and ally against Rum’s terrible ways. The mom pointed out that Serlia – the sister’s name – had all four limbs intact and a normal violence-free regular part-time job as a shop assistant. Soon Rum was verbally attacked from 2 fronts and pretty much had to stay silent in order not to aggrevate the ferocious and protective gnome women. Eventually, it was Electroblade who – figuratively speaking – stood up, and spoke.

“YOU 2 JUST SHUT IT!” She pointed a hand at mommy gnome. “Mom, please leave us alone for a moment.” She moved her hand. “You too sis. Leave us to talk.” She gestured with her hand for them to go away. “Please let me talk to him, alone, at this table. There’s no table in my room, so please, can you go into yours and leave us here?”

Red-faced and under mumbling protest, mommy gnome left to one of the rooms. Sister Serlia was less angry, but as she left, she glanced at Rum with little but displeasure, before giving her sister a concerned glanced next.

Finally alone, Electroblade sighed, deeply. “Family, huh.” Rum gave a small nod. He hadn’t spoken for a while, too busy being berated. “I’m sorry about that. They’re just concerned about me, I mean, obviously they are.” She leaned forward a little, and started to whisper. “I didn’t want to tell it to their faces that I have no intention of backing out. Now though, they hopefully believe I’m having second thoughts.” She smiled at Rum. The human mage, still a bit overwhelmed by the verbal onslaught, was not immediately capable of returning the smile. Instead he just breathed out with relief, mostly over the 2 gnome women having left the room.

“That was... something” he comment.

“Yeah” Electroblade nodded.

“Somewhere in that rant I lost contact with what was being talked about.” The wizard admitted. Electroblade smiled. “But... so, you have a mom, a sister... dad?”

Electroblade shook her head. She turned her eyes into the table. “Mom was just some surface man’s secret girlfriend. At first, he spent some time with me and my mom, but then he got bored of my family, and stopped coming. Last time I heard” she sighed, “he was married, with 3 new children, and managed a department at Gnomiture.” She looked into her hand for a moment. “Heard the place was attacked recently though. But mom says he’s okay.” She looked up.

“Okay” Rum nodded, and tried to ignore the thought that he could possibly be the one attacker mentioned. “And the family friend we just impromptu visited?”

“I was very young when we fled. I don’t remember him there. But, he grew up on a farm, half a day from the entrance to The Great System. My family and I lived near the entrance. Grandpa was responsible for The Oakwoods forest, outside of The Great System. He was sort-of a diplomat to The Committee of The Oak there. We, my family, hid in the city during the siege, and escaped with everyone else, when the city had to be abandoned. I don’t really know what happened to Dal, but somehow he was recruited to a lower dungeon lord, a former ally of Shoss. He wanted to learn magic, and they offered to teach him.” She shrugged, and become silent. Apparently she had nothing more to add.

“Huh” Rum let out. “What a story you have. And, what a story he must have.”

Electroblade shook her head. “There are many like him, too many. Tempted by the promise of magic. I mean” she eyed Rum, “magic is cool and all, but it’s not worth sacrificing your home, your friends, your family. That I may never understand.”

Rum put a hand to his beard, stroking it. “War makes strange choices.” Electroblade looked at him with an empty, neutral expression. She said nothing, and Rum said nothing. At least for several seconds. Then Rum moved his thoughts away from the matter, and looked at the 2 suspected other bedrooms that hadn’t been walked into by either mom gnome nor sister gnome yet. “So. Should we get your things, your weapon, your blade?” He pointed back and forth between the 2 remaining doors. “Which one’s your room?”