“Anybody severely hurt?” Elrith called out, everyone gathering to check up on each other. Rum ended up using Restore Body on both Gilda and Rulli this time. For good measure he also used it on Darmon in case he was hiding any bruises beneath his armor. For himself Rum ended up using his full range refreshing spells: Restore Body, Become Clean and Renew Clothes. The result of his Renew Clothes gave him yet a different robe this time. It was white, oh yes so very white! Rum felt strange being so white. But the whiteness wasn’t all, the robe also came with silvery grey stripes and silvery grey embroidery the shape of angle wings dotted across the front of his shoulder areas. All this considered he felt almost holy now, and was wondering about how the spell had thought this new look an appropriate change of robes.

“Quite some spell you got there.” Rulli commented, eyeing Rum up and down. “You just wear magical clothes or something?”

Rum shook his head. “The clothes are magically created, but they aren’t magical. My spell contains the mentality of a seamster trying to repair it, and like any too eager seamster trying to repair something; sometimes they go a bit overboard and just change the entire thing. This spell is like kinda like that. It has so far preserved the fact that I wear robes, but almost every time I use it, some magical power following who-knows-what kind of reasoning is causing the spell to change what I wear. I say who-knows-what because I can’t fathom why it just made me white!”

Rulli just nodded with an impressed expression on his face. The others were also giving him glances that could’ve contained impressed expressions, but Rum wasn’t quite sure. If they were impressed, they were sure hiding it.

“Alright”, Elrith changed the topic, “I think you all will agree with me that this is enough for today. Rum–“ she turned towards Rum, taking on a lecturing tone: “–this is the point at which we try and collect as much value from the loot as possible as we make our way back out. Just grab all the weapons, shields and armor the skeletons were carrying.” She gestured at the surrounding piles of fallen skeletal warriors. “It seems like so far into this dungeon all we’re gonna get is basic combat gear to sell. Not that it won’t give us money for selling, but it’s going to be a bit difficult to carry it all home. We might have to hire some mounts and carts from the nearest villages to be able to move all this stuff to the city.”

Everyone in the party started grabbing items. Rum took all the breastplates, put them on top of each other so that they were nicely stacked and packed, then slid his free arm through all the neck openings and lifted it all up. As he was still affected by Muscles Grow this didn’t feel that heavy. Rulli meanwhile took most of the shields, stacking them atop each other like a tower. Darmon carried the claymores in an embrace, and Elrith and Gilda took most of the swords left, which were a bundle of short swords, long swords, and a couple of falchions. Together they marched out the tunnels from which they’d come. Arriving at the camp they took another trip inside to retrieve the rest of gear, and Rum grabbed another skull with orphaned magic in it for later studying. After they’d finished up they rested, ate and even drank a bit of mead from a flask. It was a good atmosphere, and one by one people admitted that Rum had been important for their survival of that ambush.

“Yeah I think we all have to concur that if you hadn’t joined us Rum; we might’ve lost people in that fight!” Rulli finally exclaimed as the night was approaching, and the flask of mead was starting to empty.

“Thank you Rulli” Rum just gave a little happy smile back, although he was mostly focusing on the skull in his hands. For hours now he’d been probing it with his mana, trying to understand how this magic worked. He was starting to get the general idea. It was kind-of like an enchantment, but not entirely. A feature of enchantments were that they were independent of their caster. They were a piece of mana, put into a self-sustaining pattern, that would run until the mana they contained ran out. For body enchantments like Elrith’s tattoo it would run indefinitely as long as Elrith existed to fuel it, and even if Elrith died, it was the possibility that the enchantment could be powered again if Elrith for instance became a zombie. But that macabre picture out of his mind, Rum noticed it was this independence that this pseudo-enchantment was lacking. Instead it seemed like this skeleton was bound to its caster, which could be Jorteg, and the binding magic was also dependent on receiving the occasional mana recharging. Right now there was mana leaking from the skull though, and within a few hours this skull, which might’ve lasted for weeks if not for the leak; would be out of mana and its spell would completely break down and vanish.

“Yeah Rum!” Elrith suddenly said after a moment of group silence. “Your fighting in the dungeon almost makes up for all the food and all the drink you’ve been consuming from our backpacks.” Rum looked up from his skull, sensing something wrong in the air. It might’ve been greed, or as Elrith was probably hinting at: literal payback time.

“Yeah” Rum acknowledged, “again sorry about that. I will make it up to you!“

“What about if we take some of your loot share? As a payment of course, for all the sausages and mead that we paid for, and which we carried here, and which we shared with you since you were starving.” She had a bit of a devious smile on her face. Rum must admit that it was disappointing having to surrender some of his first loot share, but then again Elrith was making a fair point. However, maybe I could compromise?

“Elrith.” He responded, taking a trader’s diplomatic tone. “What if I could pay for all the food and drink by other, alternative means.” Elrith raised her eyebrows, a skeptical smile forming on her face.

“Does it involve casting a spell on us? If so then probably no.”

“No-no-no!” Rum chuckled suddenly a bit nervous. “It would involve a spell, but I’d cast it on myself! You remember my spell: Beast of Burden, right? I was thinking that maybe I could carry at least most of the loot. I’m not sure, but I might actually be able to carry so much we don’t even need to go by a village on the way back, or hire a horse and cart at all. Of course this depends on how much more loot we’ll be taking with us in the future, but I don’t think it would be much of an issue. What do you think?“

The Heart-Piercer stared into the fire for a few seconds, hmm-ing and eeeh-ing like she was thinking. “Sure. That could work for me. IF, and only IF, we don’t have to get a horse and cart though. If you could save us that money I guess it’d be fair payment for the food and drink. What do you guys think?” She asked the group. People gave their agreements to that plan. And as such, Rum had just promised to become the group’s official Beast of Burden, at least for the trip home.

“Where” Gilda suddenly asked Rum from the other side of the bonfire, “did you even get that spell, Beast of Burden? Didn’t you mention something about it being good for making slaves? You need to explain how you got that spell!”

Rum put aside his skull, and started stroking his beard while looking at the bonfire. How am I gonna tell this story? he thought to himself. Then decided to start with a bit of background:

“Well, as Elrith overheard when she first met me: I’ve been away for a few years, travelling. Many things happened out there while I travelled, but this story, of my personal enslavement; that happened 3 years ago, in the far away great mountain plateau known as Agadeya, part of The Kingdom of Meya. I don’t know if you know anything about Agadeya, but its landscape consists of numerous scattered villages surrounded by great stretches of marshland. The marshland has concentrated the travel routes there, and a network of roads connects all the scattered villages. Because of this interconnectivity it’s a stretch of land easy to conquer, but difficult to manage becomes there are no towns, and too many small villages. In these circumstances there’s an issue of groups of bandits taking control of many of the villages, operating from their hideouts out in the marshlands. And I was travelling through Agadeya one day when the village I was residing in came under a raid. Me and several villagers were all taken captive and forced to work as slaves. We were sent to a hidden quarry where we helped to move valuable stone cut from the mountain, and also the useless rock and dirt surrounding the stone before it was cut.”

Rum sighed heavily, as if remembering something painful, then continued: “The work here was literally backbreaking, as I saw many slaves carry stone with partially broken backs. Every day those slaves would moan of great pain, or collapse under the weight of what they carried. At the time I was fortunate enough to have the spell Muscles Grow, but that said: no amount of muscle can make up for the damages inflicted over time to the body in trying to endure the heavy lifting, the long days and the long walks. With Skin Toughen I endured more than anyone the whipping and the beating of the slavers however. Something which allowed me to get away with relaxation more than the other slaves. You’d think they would eventually kill me for that apparent laziness, but I was kept alive because I was so strong when using Muscles Grow. But my back was aching, and my body like everyone else was dying under the daily heavy burden. And so I tried to figure out how to live through this, and I neglected many precious hours of valuable sleep in making the spell Beast of Burden, relying on the spirit of the slaving minds and the animals used for transport, and mixing it in with ideas of muscle growth and bone strengthening. Once I had created it, I found myself promoted to a position where I no longer had to carry stone, but was ordered to use the spell on as many other slaves as possible. The result was a drastic increase in productivity. I had, and not for the only time in my life, become a bit of a golden goose for other people who desired one particular very useful spell from me.”

Rum paused his storytelling for a second, taking the opportunity to drink the last of the mead, and also taking a great sip from a waterskin. “In the weeks that followed this I tried to run from the slavers, but at this point I was so valuable to them that they would send all of their best forces to catch me; their one golden goose who could make a single slave do the work of 5 broken slaves, of which most of us were.”

Pausing again for another sip, he stroked his beard, the words feeling heavy as he continued: “After being caught running away over 4 times, I finally decided I needed a magically enhanced escape. I had to outrun them, because I was terrible at running, and they were great at tracking. My only chance was to get out of the Agadeya mountain plateau entirely, and escape into the towns and cities at the heartland of Meya, where the bandits dared not to go. And so I created another spell, which you’ve already seen: Self-Running Legs. The spell didn’t properly work on the first iteration, and so I was caught at yet another attempted escape. But on the second try, oh it worked! Too well! I ordered my legs to run all the way to Ordonbur, a large town at the end of Agadeya. I’d never been there, and actually I need to know the place I’m running to in order to be able to use the spell, but I knew road that would take me there. And so my legs they ran, and before half a day had past I was unconscious from all the running. But my body continued to run, carrying my unconscious self all the way to Ordonbur. I was told by the guard who woke me up after my arrival that I’d been sleeping for a whole day just lying in a mud pit outside the town. I was starved, and I mean severely starved, and not from the slaving, but from the running! My legs were so weak I might had been partially paralyzed from my waist down. If not for the help of an old lady there, I might had slowly starved to death since I couldn’t walk properly, and my body was running out of fat reserves.”

Rum stared quiet into the bonfire. Then he looked up and around into everyone’s eyes. They were all intensely focusing on him.

“Story finished.” Rum finally said, with a bit of an awkward smile.

Everyone took their eyes off of Rum and started looking at each other, waiting to see who was the first to comment. It seems it was going to be Rulli: “That was some story, Rum.”

“Yeah” Gilda followed, “I can understand how and why you got that spell now.”

“Yeah” Rum just let out weakly.

“What happened to the other slaves?” Darmon was the one to ask a question, which must’ve been circulating on people’s minds.

Rum didn’t respond immediately, but just sighed heavily while continuing to stare into the bonfire, a bit of tenseness, or perhaps nervousness, was seeping into the social atmosphere.

“I-“ Rum tried to respond, “I don’t know.” He gulped, almost as if confessing to a horrible crime. “I told the town guards at Ordonbur, the mayor and the nobles. I was told they would deal with it, but I can’t say for sure. I was not someone prepared to go fight the bandits at that time. Today, maybe I’d handled it differently. But I was not prepared at that time. And one of the reasons why I never went back, never tried to deal with it, is because if I was captured I would have to serve them to stay alive. And if I served them as I did, I could end up making them very wealthy, and the result of this would embolden them to keep me on a tighter leash, and maybe worse, they’d expand their operations and try and get as many slaves as possible while attracting ever more fighters with the money they were making, allowing them to guard more slaves and run more raids. On top of this they might try a strategy that might actually had worked on me, because up until then I had tried not to show affection for any of the others slaves. I knew that caring about anyone was the way for them to control us. If they’d figured out that I would have cooperated to save the life of someone who might’ve been punished for my actions, possibly even put to death, then my entire existence there could’ve been sealed. One of the guards actually hinted that if continued running away they might have to try killing the least profitable slaves until I stayed there. And, if such a thing came to pass, then in the end I would have no way of escaping, and no way of stopping the tremendous aid I was giving their slaving operations and which would allow them to expand to enslave ever more people. No… I regret not being powerful enough to save those people. But when I think about, and I mean really – deeply – think about it, I realize that the best way at that time was to escape. I can’t be sure, and there are nights when I might remember something bad from that time: like the sound of a whip, the daily pained moans of an old man, or the crying of the newcomers who yet had emotions to spare for sorrow. Still, those memories, some of them real, some of them just nightmares; I will just have to live with them. That’s what it means to be a survivor.”

Everyone fell silent after that. Sitting together, staring at the sky or the bonfire, everyone in deep thought for a long, somber moment.