Before Ozzy was a field of destruction. The remains of buildings, mortared bricks and layered wood, was scattered as if it were crag in a mountainside foreboding travel further up the steepening slopes. And before him, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, rose such a mountain: one of Ruins.
He felt compelled to climb it, yet could not reason as to how. He had not muscles to ache, yet the impassible remained impassible by nature. Then he saw a path in the rubble, a coincidental flattening that led upward in a winding manner. The remains of roads torn apart and thrown around like stone confetti became stairs for him to ascend.
The further up he got, the more the dread of the lightless world around him thickened the air. It was as if the air itself was ruined, unbreathable, though no problem for a skeleton. A miasma of dust danced around and through his exposed bones. He noticed he was naked - or just unclothed - and halted. He wasn’t sure how ashamed he should be, having nothing to hide but his actual bones. He checked himself over and saw the dust evade his leg bones and skirt around some invisible force that seemed to form the framework of invisible thighs.
And he had hands. He couldn’t see them, but like before, he felt them. The comfortable warmth of skin depressing into itself as he cupped and gripped his phantom fingers stirred him. He didn’t care so much about the mountain any longer. He turned inward to think, and to fashion the strangeness of his new world.
What is this
KILL
Ozzy snapped his head around. The world was empty, though the fog of dust was thick. He could hardly see back down the path he came up, as if the plains of destruction no longer existed. All that remained was the mountain and its climb. There was no source for the mysterious voice that echoed in the same place where he kept his inner thoughts.
Hello? Is someone trying to…
He didn’t want the answer to the question.
KILL
After receiving the answer, he jumped and started back up the path again.
WAKE AND MOVE
“KKKKKHHHHH!!!!!”
Ozzy’s hiss felt real, as if the sharp breath was crowded along the back of his throat in a real mouth. The bounding upon hard surfaces as he climbed also felt real, like his bones were finally aching from his travels. No pain ever visited him but the unreal variety, but he also never broke a bone before. He’d dislocated them, but they always snapped back into place. He kept his climb going, up and up, jumping higher and higher as the stairs turned to platforms and then to great divides.
Finally he was stopped. The gap above him was far too high. He tried to scramble up the rough sides but couldn’t get a grip with his gripless finger bones. He fell flat down onto the ruins below and pushed himself up to recover. His eyes met a wooden sign which was splintered around the edges and darkened with a damp stain like it sat in the rainy mud for far too long.
It read “Defender’s Guild Field Office of Farheim”
MOVE AND KILL
Knock it off! I’m not -
KILL THEM ALL
No! Killing is…
Was it wrong? Even as a man, in such extraordinary circumstances, was his condition in another world justification enough to take life? Or at least weigh it differently, in accordance to the times? What about the skeletons? He’d “killed” a few of those. Were they not life made by some other hand worth preserving?
They’re monsters. They’re made to…but I’m not. Am I? Is this what Hewfarth and the others put up with all the time?
Ozzy stood up again, but he did not deserve to. His legs buckled under him. He looked down and saw that his shins were crumbled, broken apart in so many ways they folded like paper - like paper off a drinking straw that was squished down, but it did not expand back out with a drop of water. His feet were piles of dust, which then blew into the wind and disappeared into the omnipresent mist.
Then there was a new voice in his head.
“What is your name?”
It was a voice he’d never heard before, but he could tell it spoke with a regal dignity above anyone he’d ever heard. The voice of a ruler which echoed through his whole being. Ozzy’s own voice came from the “center” of his mind, and the nagging detrimental voice coaxing him to murder came from the back. The new voice came through his eyes from beyond the mist.
“O-Ozzy,” he said, uncertainly.
The dust coalesced into a visible shadow in the air. A shadow of the imprint of a skull, with sinister furrowed eyes, and within those eyes were brilliant, diamond-like dots of white.
“What is your real name?”
Ozzy woke up. In as much as he was asleep, he roused out of his trance like state and sat up and alert on the blanket covered hay-pile bed. He looked at his gloved hands and searched beneath the fabric and fluff for what they hid. Bones, nothing but. His legs were fine and all together. Any trace of his dream-like pain was gone. He was back to normal - skeletal normal. But the sensations of the dream still lingered.
What was -
Ozzy paused as if expecting the other voices to interrupt him. Like he just shut his door and wasn’t sure if someone would knock on it to ask if he was okay, or to tell him to kill. He waited but nothing happened. His focus made him more aware of what was happening around him, the bustle of the downstairs indicating the hall was filled back up with folks.
What was that all about? It’s way more vivid than any dream I remember having. It somehow feels like…like that place is so nearby. Like I might slip back there if I’m not somehow careful.
He looked around and realized what that closeness meant. The building he was in was part of the dream. It made up the ruined ground he walked on. Probably nothing, but a strange omen to recall. Ozzy stood up, brushed himself off, replaced his glove and decided to steal away some of the excess hay that fell from the sides of the mattress to refill his sagging form.
Next, he left the room to rejoin his recent and future guildmates. The main hall meeting place held many purposes to it. People were eating, looking over maps and reading books all in one place. Like a college campus lounge. Except everyone also had deadly weapons at their sides or holstered on the walls nearby. Weapons no doubt made for breaking apart exposed bones.
As soon as Ozzy crossed the threshold into the room proper he felt eyes on him. A few were familiar - the greasy haired man and his female companion waved at him. The rest were strangers and shared their leers with him for what he wore. Apparently the sentiment against the Tartarians was more widespread than he anticipated. Ozzy avoided wandering into the crowd of conversations and went straight for the desk.
He knocked on the counter and a middle-aged, fine figured woman wandered up to him. “Hello there, sir. Are you here trading?”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Uh, no,” Ozzy said. “Actually - it’s a long story but, the short version is I was with Stormen - tall, strong old man - the other day to do my, I guess, practical examination as an entry to the guild. And I passed. Or he said I passed, and he’d pass that along to whoever…passes people. Uh, my name is Ozzy.”
She nodded along until he stopped talking and looked around. “I’m not quite sure what to do about all of that, sir.”
“Oh,” he said. “Is there not a…card? Or tag or some kind of badge that I should be wearing to show that I’m in the Defender’s Guild as a member? As a Defender?”
“As far as I know, not really,” she said. “I can check the ledger and see if your name was added recently. If it was yesterday then maybe it was…” She lowered her tone to talk to herself as she rooted through the supplies behind the wall for something. She produced a book and leafed through it to near the middle. “Oh! I wasn’t expecting - yes, sir. You are in our books. By letter of recommendation, under the termination clause of all things.”
“Is that bad?” Ozzy asked. “I’m completely new - never heard of this place until yesterday and it sounded like a perfect thing to do. So catch me up, if you could.”
The lady blinked in surprise. “Well…all right. Uh, you do know what we do, right? As a guild?”
“Hunt monsters,” Ozzy said. He felt a sudden arm wrap around his neck and restrained himself from making his usual sound.
“And protect the innocent,” the greasy haired man said. He winked at the woman who rolled her eyes and tilted her head back at him. “You’re a Defender already! I’m sorry I missed it! Thought you’d be gone longer. Like, a lifetime longer.”
“Y-yeah,” Ozzy said. “Well…I lived.”
“I’m Yort,” he introduced, using his other arm to wrap around and shake Ozzy’s hand. “Whether your a Tart or not, welcome to the Guild.”
“Thank you,” Ozzy said. He was completely subjugated by Yort’s firm and excitable shaking.
“Come here with me,” Yort said. Ozzy had no choice but to comply as Yort was simply stronger and more insistent. He brought Ozzy to face the notice board with papers nailed all across it in haphazard fashion. “This is what we do: whatever the ailing, wailing, failing people of the nearest town want us to do. Farheim’s been a bit of a staging ground as far as the Guild is concerned. Aside from the Blackwoods and occasional Poller sightings, it’s just a one-well village with some seedy farms around the bend.”
“I noticed,” Ozzy said. “It’s a peaceful place. Aside from, you know, the Blackwoods.”
Yort finally unlatched himself from Ozzy and reached up to snag a paper off the board. Ozzy glanced at it to try and read it, but his eyes weren’t fast enough. The words of another world’s commonplace writing were only readable if he could stare at it for half a second. If the text moved too quickly it became like a magic-eye puzzle. He could see there were shapes like words, but they meant nothing to him.
“This is what we’re usually doing,” Yort explained. “Collecting moving bones. Bring them back here to store and sell. The Guild makes money, splits it with us, we spend it - and the cycle goes on.”
Ozzy looked up at the board. The words came in clearly as he stood and read them all. A few of the jobs were skeleton related, which he wanted to avoid. All of them had different style to their writing, penned by different hands making the same approach to their request. Then there were the odder jobs. Literal odd jobs around town. Someone’s fence was broken and they want the culprit found, with extra pay involved for fixing the fence payable even if the investigation failed. So they just wanted house work done.
“What happens if the board is empty?” Ozzy asked.
“It isn’t,” Yort said. “I left a couple days ago with the last post, came back later that same day and there were ten up here all crowded on the edges, plus a notice warning against fighting mercenary companies found in the woods by order of the Baron. It’s their job,” he pointed toward the main desk, “to keep us busy. Someone higher up bids for jobs and has a scribe write them up to send out to the most relevant spot. Hence skeleton jobs all coming here. If we were down south we’d get more Riverman jobs, and far west there’s Masker jobs.”
Those are probably things I’m supposed to know about. Monsters, sounds like. I better just nod and pick -.
Ozzy spotted a job in the corner. He reached up and picked it down with his fingertips. The paper was flimsier than the rest, of a different make. He checked the price against the other listings. Skeleton jobs offered between 20 and 30 Stolid - represented as coins with triangle markings on the inside, some of which looked like inked imprints of the coin face itself. His job only offered four.
“You serious?” Yort asked. “Need a rest or something?”
“Yeah,” Ozzy said. “I may as well…I’ve only been in this building the last two-ish days and I was sleeping under the stars before that. I kind of want to see the rest of the town. This seems like a great way to do that and make a little money, too.”
“Yeah,” Yort said. “Even a Defender needs a slow day now and then. But watch it - these are first come. If a job stays up on the board for too long, it’s usually not worth the money.”
“Sure,” Ozzy said as he curled up the notice and pushed it into his bodice. “But you can’t be a hero every day.”
Yort shrugged. He didn’t get what Ozzy found so enthralling about searching for a lost cat. He watched Ozzy leave as the newbile Defender put a swing in his step out onto the dirt road.
The sun was shining for the first time that Ozzy recalled. It was either magically gray or cloudy. It was still cloudy overhead, but not overcast. The clouds that did exist all seemed to crowd together as they went down toward the great drain in the sky over the lichyard. The sun felt great to look at. Even if it looked a little faded from what he recalled sunlight to be like.
He could also look directly at the sun without issue. No eyes to burn meant nothing to lose. When he stopped he still got some spots in his vision but they faded - sort of disintegrated away, like swept up piles of dust being chased off by a breeze. Ozzy took his time going through the town, taking in the architecture of old rustic English-style cottages and family homes which were cobbled together with more mortar than stone. Every other roof was thatched. Those that weren’t had sturdy wood holding ground up dirt like unheated asphalt. Simple stylings for a simple village that just so happened to sit at the edge of oblivion.
Maybe Gunn knows the history of this village. I should ask him next time I see him. Why build it here? Or did the Insmen, long ago…
Ozzy grinned. The very feeling of his grin was enough to keep him positive, even though there was no evidence of a smile without lips to show it. He continued his search and came upon the house of the requester, a poor and homely looking woman who looked haggard from taking care of too many children, yet her house only had the one little girl.
“Pardon me,” Ozzy said. “I’m one of the Defenders and I’m looking for your cat. When did you last see him?”
The mother stepped outside and gently pushed the girl back in. “Four days,” she whispered. “And I know the cat is dead. Probably eaten. Might’ve gone away with the caravaners and been their lunch.”
Ozzy clenched his jaw tight.
“Sir?” the girl asked. “Will you get Fissy for me?”
Ozzy looked to the mother and then knelt down to the girl. “Did you make this poster?” he asked. He pulled the paper out and unfurled it. The cat drawing was no doubt the scribblings of a well developed child, using colored wax and ash and ink as crude medieval crayons.
“Yes, I did,” she said. “I saved up four Stolid from the holidays. Fissy was a gift to me and I want to make sure she’s okay. Can you get her?”
“Audry, come inside,” her mother said. “Sir, thank you so much for offering to help. If it’s a bother to you, I can get you…half the pay just for trying.”
“I heard Fissy!” Audrey said. “I did!”
“Audrey, hush.”
“Miss,” Ozzy politely said, raising a hand. He turned to the girl to cool her temper. “Where did you hear her?”
“On top of the long house,” she said, pointing up the road to a covered grove and mossy lane paved away from the main street. “I called her and she answered me. I know it’s her, I know her voice. But she can’t get down!”
“Right,” Ozzy nodded. “I’ll go right up and check.”
“Thank you, sir!” Audrey exclaimed. Ozzy nodded to her, trying to show how positive he was without a face, and was off. The way there was quick and short. The house was indeed long and had a thatched roof covered with leaves from the nearby trees that gave it shade. Ozzy crouched down and jumped up. He made the roof in a single bound and looked around through the grass.
“Fissy?” he said.
A round cat raised its head from under a dug-in and shady burrow that it made for itself. It looked just like the drawing, with a single long stripe on its left side and yellow eyes.
“Here, girl,” Ozzy said. He made some tongue-clicking, chirping noises as he neared her. He did what he thought was right to get a cat’s attention, and being a skeleton which carried no scents he figured the cat wouldn’t get alarmed or run off into a tree or fall to the ground.
Fissy stood up and made a silent jump straight at Ozzy’s arm. Its claws dug in and raked open his sleeve. Stuffing and hay leaked out like dry, soft gore. Ozzy suppressed a loud hiss of his own for fear of scaring the cat back off and used his other hand to keep it steadily on himself.
The first thing I need to save up for is some new clothes. Preferably something armored.
Ozzy hopped back down with Fissy firmly hooked onto his arm and returned to Audrey. She jumped and giggled with excitement and took Fissy back over her shoulder into the house. The mother was shocked and elated. She added two Stolids, as promised, to the four that Audrey came out with as her silent thanks. Ozzy accepted the money in his non-ruined hand and cleverly hid his torn up arm from their sight behind his back as he left.
He felt like a hero. Just a little more than he did before.