As the others remained in quiet contemplation, or in increasing stages of drowsiness; Rum shook away his own bad memories and surfacing thoughts. He decided to go back to studying his skull, intensely channeling all his mental focus onto it. Now what to do about you Mr. Skull?

Rum wanted to make some sort of spell that would be useful to their next dungeon dive. Something that would allow him to take care of the skeleton problems. However, Rum didn’t like the idea of killing skeletons. Something inside of him just thought there something wrong about killing intelligent creatures, and skeletons were intelligent. They may not be particularly smart, or even particularly intelligent. Rum’s rib cage tossing had proved how easily one could trick a skeleton. Rum thought the skeletons didn’t take him seriously as a threat because he was unarmed and there were other armed opponents nearby. Also he never directly killed a skeleton, so they probably didn’t register him as an immediate threat. The only thing he’d done was throw them around a bit, and smash them into the ground of course, but even that didn’t particularly hurt the skeletons. Gilda’s axe – that had been the direct method of murdering skeletons. So no wonder the skeletons had continued to focus on Gilda during the fight. But despite this lack of higher intelligence, they still displayed an obvious intelligence allowing them to navigate the environment, block or even sometimes dodge attacks, and adapt to some degree during combat. Particularly did the skeletons show tactical awareness. That circling of Gilda was obviously intentional, and the patience of a skeleton in battle was one of their most deadly features. Also, they never complained, they couldn’t be stressed, they couldn’t be demoralized, and they would happily sacrifice themselves for the greater good of collective victory. They were the perfect soldier in many ways.

But what if… what if the intelligence could be liberated? What if their imperatives, their orders and their connection to their master, could be erased? And their will was made free? No, then the skeletons wouldn’t do anything of course, not a single thing. They had no personality, so they’d just stand there completely disconnected from the world and everything in it. But many people were also lacking a bit of personality, so that couldn’t be the skeletons fault! Sooo… what if I gave them a bit of personality? Just a little bit to get started? Then their intelligence and the environment could do the rest, and they would experience personal growth, and become people! Or, maybe not people-people, but at least they’d attain a degree of personhood that’d make them… what would it make them? Sentient creatures? I suppose that’s what they would become.

Rum pondered for a while. Meanwhile everyone else around the campfire, one by one, decided to lay down to sleep, tucking themselves under blankets and starting to breath sleepy half-snores. As Rum glanced at Elrith, he noticed she went to sleep hugging her crossbow. Glancing at Darmon he had not-so-surprisingly decided to sleep in his armor, which seemed like such a silly and uncomfortable thing to do. Maybe the armor is just such a pain to take on or off it really is worth the discomfort of sleeping in it?

Two questions bothered Rum now the most: first, what kind of personality would be right to give the skeletons effected by his spell? And second, how would he even make the personality? It was obvious that whatever personality he settled on, it had to come from somewhere. If the skeletons were to experience personal growth, maybe the personality should come from children? There must be something about children which makes them able to become adults. Could adults, at least the average adult, even become an adult if they needed to? There were features of children, such as curiosity, emotional receptiveness and an easiness to please, that many proper adults had partially or fully lost, in their strive to conform to the obligations put upon them by society. Things such as work, oh so much Rum hated work! These things – necessary for survival some people argue, a point that Rum would argue against – these things shaped and formed open minds into closed machines that only thought about pleasing customers and bosses, finding somebody to marry, and get a house within which the city could conveniently confine them. These people could never become adults! That has to be the truth of it. Adults are too adult to become adults. Children are the only ones open enough in their intellect and their emotions to grow into an adult. They are the only ones capable of ascending the various stages of mind-alteration that growing up is. An adult would run away and hide, from all the things they don’t know and all the things they’ve not yet learned to love, if one could take away all they’d amassed at their current stage in life. In short: adults might be good at being the ones they have already become, but they are terrible at becoming someone else!

That settles it then! Rum thought with a hint of conviction. The skeletons need the personality of a child, or at least someone with this childish openness towards the world in their intellect and their emotions.

Rum stood up, everyone else near him sleeping around the campfire. Rulli and Gilda shared a blanket, and the couple were holding each other. Gilda even had one of Rulli’s braids in her mouth, which was such an odd thing to see that Rum momentarily lost his train of thoughts to smile at it and laugh with the barest of noise. Rum started to walk a little into the forest, thinking to himself while enjoying the solitude, the quiet atmosphere, and the beautiful starry sky peeking through the trees above. He walked for a bit, taking in the many smells as he did. He watched an owl hoot at him at one point, and then a squirrel disappear into some tree leaves at another. Then it got quiet, so very quiet.

Thus Rum was captured by a bit of alarm when he suddenly heard some loud rustling. He looked around. Was it a squirrel? Was it a bird? Then he heard it again, a little bit louder this time. And then there was talking. The sounds came from ahead, away from the camp. Rum looked in the direction and suddenly saw a red pom-pom on a red string dangle from behind a bush. Wild-gnomes? Here? So close to the dungeon? Rum took a few quiet steps in their direction, pretending he hadn’t seen anything, then, when he was a little bit closer, he spoke:

“Come out little people of the burrows and the bushes, I know you are there! What brings you to these parts? I’ve never heard of any wild-gnomish communities around here.” In fact Rum had very little idea where any wild-gnomish communities resided whatsoever, but so close to a dungeon of skeletons was indeed a strange thing to see. Though it could be that the dungeon, as recent as it was, was in fact an incursion upon a wild-gnomish community that had always lived here?

The pom-pom stopped dangling and disappeared behind the bush. Rum wondered if they’d run away if he came any closer. He just stood there for a second, listening to the excessively quiet environment and peering at the bush the gnome, or gnomes, had been hiding behind.

“Hey, I’m a friendly fellow. I just want to know why you are here. Can I come over?”

The bush didn’t respond. Rum waited for a brief moment that felt like an eternity, then he just announced: “Okay, I’m walking over to you. I just want to talk a little, okay?” and then started walking. As he came up to the bush he was just quick enough to spot that no gnome was hiding behind the bush, but that the gnomes who had been hiding had been crawling over to and behind a nearby tree, a pair of little legs visible for but a moment before the whole gnome that owned them was entirely hidden again. Or at least so the gnome probably thought.

“I still know you are here, gnome.” Rum sighed and walked over to the nearby tree. As he peeked behind it there was indeed two little wild-gnomes. In fact they were a little smaller than even most wild-gnomes, these were probably wild-gnome youth, maybe the equivalent of twelve or thirteen year old girls in maturity. As Rum studied them he noticed some feminine characteristics, though it could sometimes be difficult to tell gender across the peoples, especially among the more androgynous ones like the green elves and wild gnomes. But their height revealed their age: adult male wild-gnomes were normally around 3/5th of an adult human male, with their mecha-gnomish cousins reaching up to 1/10th taller than that. Male dwarves meanwhile were closer to 4/5th of a human male. These wild-gnomes though, were just about half the size of an average adult human male, making them less than expected of an adult wild-gnome. So whatever gender they were: they didn’t appear to be adults. For clothing these wild-gnomes wore greenish-brown lightly camouflaging shirts and pants, and thick dark brown woolen boots. On their heads were red liberty caps, a kind of softened pointed hat, with the red strings at the end with red pom-poms that’d he’d initially seen. They had long braided blond hair, round cheeks, and just slightly plump figures. Their apparel was relatively common for wild-gnomes living in the wilds, but the wild-gnomes of Ermos City would usually drop the camouflaged top- and bottom wear for plain robes and bare feet if they were in their greenish quarters, otherwise sandals or simple shoes in the stone streets. At this observation Rum supposed these gnome-girls might live out here in the wild, unless of course they had decided to go traditional for a trip outside the city.

Rum stopped thinking and knelt down to two sets of eyes that seemed to exclaim damn, he got us! as if Rum had just won against them in a game of hide-and-seek. Rum took out his hand: “Hello, my name is Rum. Will you shake my hand and tell me yours?”

The wild-gnome girls were sitting, the first one leaning against the tree, the other leaning against the first gnome, the first one embracing the other like they were still in a hiding pose, trying not to be seen. At Rum’s suggestion though the other wild-gnome gave an expression of defeat and decided to stand up, reaching her little hand out to shake Rum’s.

“I am Esmili” the gnome-girl said, then glanced at the first gnome, “She is Ereisi. We are friends.” At that the gnome-girl named Ereisi smiled warmly, and stood up also, reaching her hand out to Rum too and shook hands.

“What are you two little gnomes doing out here? Spying on our camp are you?”

Ereisi shook her head, “No, we were not here for you. We just wanted to look at the dungeon entrance.”

Esmili grabbed her friends mouth, whispering almost inaudibly into her ear: “Don’t say that out loud! Our parents might hear us! They might be watching us right now after noticing we ran off.” Esmili proceeded to let go of Ereisi’s mouth and started looking around suspiciously about the bushes and the trees. Rum, out of curiosity, did so as well, though nothing appeared out of order with the trees or the bushes, so he returned his eyes to the gnomes in front of him.

“The dung…” Rum started, then corrected himself, trying to play along: “that place, why would you like to go there?” as he finished his question, Rum switched from kneeling to sitting with his legs crossed. As a consequence he became basically at eye-level with the gnome-girls, as small as they were.

Ereisi leaned forward to answer, whispering as if trying to conceal her conversation from the nearby bushes and trees: “Because that’s where the monsters are! We wanted to know what they were like!”

Rum smiled, then chuckled a bit. “The mon… they don’t come out of that place, not to my knowledge. I was actually in there today, and we had to walk for a bit before we even saw anything. And what we saw, it wasn’t that thing, not the m-word, but living skeletons – UNDEAD!”

The little gnome-girls both gaped at this revelation, awe and shock in their expressions.

“The undead are unlike monsters. They don’t have desires, they only have imperatives – orders from their masters. They are intelligent enough to interpret orders and carry out most of them that aren’t too complicated. However, they can’t speak or make produce any sounds of the mouth, or communicate much at all to my knowledge. They are soundless, except when we can hear their bony feet clatter in pitch dark against the rocky ground of the mountain. Then we can hear them coming, before they strike! But otherwise skeletons are patient creatures with no sense of morality, only a cold brutal intellect trying to figure out the most efficient way of performing their orders. Because of that, I guess they can be more terrifying than monsters. At least monsters behave in ways predictable for living creatures: they eat, they sleep, and they have temperament.”

Rum noticed the little gnome-girls grabbing each other, almost hugging, as if the story itself was about to manifest and come after them this instance.

“But let’s not judge the skeletons too much! Do not think them evil for instance. It’s not their fault that their masters didn’t give them any personality! Or an ability to grow into something else, gifts that we should be glad that we have! Imagine if you Esmili, didn’t have the capacity to love, like I would guess you love friend here, or the ability to be curious, like when you two girls came here to check out the dungeon entrance? Without the abilities to find affection for things, or be curious enough to want to seek deeper knowledge and insight about things ourself; how could we ever expect to grow or to become something of our own, or to be capable of valuing the life and the happiness of others which we have come to know?”

Rum let the conversation stop at that, closing his eyes and nodding to himself slowly, while the gnome-girls remained attentive and said nothing. Then, leaving his previous train of thought; Rum abruptly changed the subject: “Where are you two little gnomes from by the way? Is there a gnome burrow nearby?”

Ereisi answered: “Yes!” and then she pointed into the woods, “We live over there, or just a bit far in that direction. Our families live under an old broken tree. We have a big home there.”

“Why do you ask?” Esmili, the other girl, added. A hint of suspicion in her tone.

“I just thought it a little strange to see wild-gnomes so close to the dungeon. Many wild-gnomish burrows escaped The Desolate Lands after all to come to Ermos and avoid the dungeons. Seemed strange that someone would choose to live near one, after all the wild-gnomish burrows who have suffered dungeon presence in the past.”

“Our families have always lived in this burrow.” commented Esmili.

“Oh? That explains it a bit more then. I guess you wouldn’t want to move unless you absolutely have to. And since the guilds are currently targeting this dungeon, I suppose you don’t absolutely have to. Though it’s not entirely safe still.”

Rum stroked his beard in apparent thinking, though really his head had just finished thinking and he was just pretending to be thinking so that he could hopefully find something more to ask them while they were still here.

“May I ask you gnome-girls for a favor?” he finally said.

The gnome-girls looked at each other and synchronously shrugged in response.

“Would you say that skeletons deserve to have a personality?”

The gnome-girls looked at each other again, and then started thinking out loud, both “hmm”-ing and “eeeh”-ing into the blue like the pair of teenage philosophy class students Rum had just secretly made them.

“Eeeh, yes?” Esmili finally responded after a while.

A few seconds later and Ereisi added, “Yes.” as well, her voice less unsure and more firm of conviction.

“And what would you think would be the best personality for a skeleton to have?”

It didn’t take the gnome-girls long to shrug at this point. But Rum had mostly just asked the question to make them wonder, to grip their curiosity about the subject, and not so much in expectation of a meaningful reply.

“Well I’ve been thinking, and I think maybe the skeletons should have your personality?”

At this the gnome-girls looked at each other again, and then one after the other burst out into cute girlish laughter.

“Us!?” Esmili said between her laughs, using her sleeves to wipe her left eye for laughing tears.

“Why us!? We are just kids!” Ereisi added through her own laughing tears.

“But that’s precisely why I think you’d be great candidates for a skeleton’s personality! Imagine if every skeleton was as capable of loving, and as curious about the world, as you two are? Don’t you think this would make the skeletons rather harmless, and with the potential to grow and to become their own persons at the same time? Imagine a skeleton wanting to protect, to nurture and help someone it loved, and imagine if it had the curiosity – and the independence – to even defy its creators – its parents – like you seem to have done, in search of the independent investigation of the truth? What if skeletons could make friends? With each other, with people like you and me? They could become part of our community, loyal members of society. They may perhaps be unable to speak as of yet, BUT, they could learn to read and write. In fact they could even go to school!”

The gnome-girls fell onto the ground laughing now, their wild screams of laughter filling the forest. Upon noticing the loudness of their own laughing they each grabbed their mouths, but continued laughing rather uncontrollably, their mouths spitting out the noises they were trying to keep inside. One of them might even have laughed so much she farted, at least Rum did recognize a noise rather similar to that of a fart briefly entering the atmosphere of noise coming from the chuckling choir duet.

Rum just smiled and quietly waited for the gnomes to expend all their stamina. It took some time but eventually the girls just lay on the ground smiling broadly, but possibly unable to sit up, their stamina exhausted from their laughing.

“Is the idea of skeletons going to school really that funny?” Rum finally said, but he shouldn’t have, as this just produced another series of never-ending laughter from the gnome-girls, and Rum recognized he might had waited another 2 or 3 minutes before the little ones were finally completely spent of stamina, possibly unable to laugh more even if they wanted to.

“Okay, I take it that it’s a bit untraditional. But think of it like this: there was a time before when even wild-gnomes didn’t attend school, not even home-schooling like you – not even for a single day. Every sentient being of some intelligence have had to invent school for children at some point, and if we got a new category of sentient being on our hands, then we’d have to invent school for them!” Both the gnomes snorted, but their stamina was really spent, and so no seemingly unending flow of laughter erupted this time.

“But anyways, I think you would be excellent blueprints for a skeletal personality. And I want to make a magical spell – because I am a mage you see – and I want to make spell, right now – tonight – that’ll infuse itself into the reanimation magic used to create a skeletal warrior. I want to use the magic in this skull–“ and Rum fetched the skull he had been carrying around from behind him, letting it rest in his open right palm for the gnome girls to look at, who barely managed to sit up now as to stare at it in fascination, “– and turn the magic that made its whole skeleton become intelligent, animated and capable of following orders; into a skeleton that is still intelligent, still animated, but with a free will that’ll develop independently through acquiring affection, and learning from its environment and anything else that its mind can grasp. It’ll learn to ask itself questions, and it’ll learn to seek answers for them. That would be amazing, wouldn’t it?”

The gnome-girls continued to stare at the skull, their smiles gone now. Rum stretched his hand out a bit more, gesturing that they could look at it closer if they wanted to. The gnomes didn’t take it from his hands, but they poked the skull, touched its surface as if to know its texture, and stared at it closer.

“I have a spell which would allow me to make a copy of your personalities, and from this copy I would be able to make the spell.”

The girls looked hesitantly at each other, so Rum added: “I believe, sincerely, that copies from you two would be some of the best starting gifts that a newly independent skeleton could ever want!”

“You want to cast the spell on us?” Ereisi asked, severity and curiosity both mixed on her face.

“Yes, I want to ask for your permission first though. I have been receiving a lot of criticism lately for not seeking permission first from people I cast spells on.”

“What would the spell do to us?” Esmili asked, also a little worried.

“Whatever it does to you, it lasts for but a very brief moment. You might feel like something is taking hold of your actual being in that brief moment, but I promise you it is very brief, and there are no consequences to you afterwards. It’s just a simple copy of you made into mana, I call it a mana ghost.”

The gnome-girls looked at each other, doubt and insecurity forming on their lips. “What do you think, Ereisi?” Esmili weakly asked her friend. Ereisi looked away for a bit, her lips taking many shapes as if she was waiting to say something, but in the end she replied: “Yes.” and she nodded to herself slowly, “It would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?” And the other girl Esmili nodded softly in reply. Then Esmili, on behalf of them both, answered Rum: “Yes, okay. You can cast the spell. You promise it won’t hurt though?” she said, biting her lips.

“I can’t tell you if it’ll hurt or not, but nobody I have used it on yet have complained about pain, so probably it won’t.”

Ereisi, joining the conversation, nodded in reply. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Rum began, questioning as if to give them a last chance to back out, “I will cast the spell then. I’m thinking that in order to not make the skeleton too much of a pure copy of either of you, I will use my Mana Ghost spell on both of you, and mix your personalities together into one. So the skeletons won’t be either Ereisi nor Esmili, but it will perhaps be… Ermili?”

Ereisi smiled at that, but Esmili was still too worried it seemed to take the joke. However, Rum didn’t wait any longer and just pointed at worried Esmili, saying the words: “Mana Ghost”. And so the mana flew out of him, catching Esmili and freezing her for a moment. For maybe ten or twenty seconds the Mana Ghost spell worked its way through Esmili, trying to study her memories and her configuration in order to catch the essence of this girl. And as it finally stopped, Esmili collapsed into the arms of Ereisi, breathing heavily.

“It’s over. How are you feeling Esmili?” Rum asked. While waiting for a reply he worked on storing the mana ghost away within his mind.

“It was terrifying.” she finally said, and Rum was about to open his mouth to reply, but she continued, heavy breaths between the words: “But I didn’t feel pain… and I’m fine.”

Rum let Esmili rest in Ereisi’s arms for a minute, until Esmili seemed to have normalized her breath and regained her strength.

“Can I do you next, Ereisi?” Rum asked, trying to be polite.

Ereisi firmed her lips, then nodded vigorously, saying “sure”.

Rum pointed his hand at her and simply repeated “Mana Ghost”.

For another ten or twenty seconds he waited until the girl was done, collapsing into the expecting embrace of her friend.

“Thank you girls. This has been of great help. I’ll make sure that the next time I enter dungeon, which will be tomorrow, the first Ermili skeleton of love and curiosity will be born.” Rum smiled after his reply, and both the gnome-girls smiled back, Esmili briefly laughing now as it was over and she was the only gnome currently with the strength to laugh at the Ermili-joke.

Following this conclusion to his problem for the night, and the natural end to a conversation that had left the two gnome-girls weakened; Rum left. Barely a few meter away though from the gnomes he had to chuckle himself, as he heard the voices of what must’ve been the girls’ parents, sternly talking to their gnome daughters after at last discovering their whereabouts.

Throughout the rest of the night Rum worked to put together the two mana ghosts he had collected into a spell. Though the mana ghosts weren’t enough. He also needed to add in a lot of other mechanics to the spell in order to sever the magical link between the magic fueling the intellect and the animation of the undead creatures, and the master who commanded the creatures and gave the undead a will, manifested through the master’s orders. But, with the aid of time in the end Rum was successful, and the spell sealed into his mental spellbook.

But what should I call you? he now wondered. What do you call a spell that takes the binding magics of bones, hijacks it, and infuses it with the abilities of little gnomish girls to have affection and to be curious?

He paced back and forth for many minutes, taking time also to stare into the fire. He looked into the eye sockets of his skull. He smiled, “Of course!” he exclaimed to no one in particular, “Bones… bones that are curious. Curious Bones? But they will also have affection, they will love. Bone Love?” he tasted the name for a second. No, he thought, then as the final idea surfaced into his head, he exclaimed into the dying bonfire, into the silence of the night, and into the starry sky so visible above: “Bony Love! This spell is called Bony Love!” he chuckled to himself. Then, so drowsy it was as if he’d never slept an hour before in his life; he cast “Magical Blanket” by habit and went to sleep in his dedicated open spot around the fire. He felt content with everything now – with the day, the evening, himself. It had a been a good day overall.

As hours passed, and the night went from deep darkness to early light: Rum dreamt of skeletons going to school, skeletons skipping along holding each other’s hands, and skeletons trying to kiss each other’s bony cheeks. He had some very weird dreams.