The first skybreak Ozzy saw in the new, hellish world was dark and cruel. A vast swath of impenetrable grey hung over the sky from horizon to horizon, and was blocked off from below by high walls of cobbled granite and darker patches of stone. The ground was spotted with stone shrubs and petrified trees. Rocks grew up from the sodden dirt like great pustules that pierced the surface of the skin to ooze evil into the air through their bleak carapace.

It was just about right for what he expected. A graveyard, or cemetery. The very face of a sunward necropolis, bumpy earth littered with stone markers and patrolled by a menagerie of skeletal fiends. And he was one among them, abolished to the surface as punishment. Instead of a hole in the ground or a cell in the deep crypts, it was more fitting of his disposition and the great Gozzpek’s rebuke for him to be under the open sky.

That indicated to him just how dire it had to be. The heavy doors of the crypt shut behind him. Storm doors which laid slightly flat against the ground and masqueraded as the metal plates of an illustrious grave marker. He turned with a shock as they slammed shut and made a reach to try and take them. But he relented and drew his hand back.

Obviously I don’t have the strength to do anything. I’ve got no meat on my bones. No muscle. I don’t feel weak, but I definitely don’t think I’m strong.

Ozzy reached down and picked up a stone the size of his palm. It felt twice as heavy as it looked. He tossed it up and caught it, and his whole arm sprung downward from the force of the gentle landing.

Yep. Nothing but bones. Those skeleton warriors were using spears and stuff, though. And that other guy, collecting body parts - Gozzpek’s body, fused together - that sharp guy who got his entire head disintegrated -.

Ozzy stroked his bony finger against the rough of his chin.

There must be a way to get stronger as a skeleton.

Maybe I should try drinking a ton of milk….

He looked down at his body. He had a much better sense of appraisal under the dim light of the surface world. He could finally see what the orange and red lights sometimes obscured within the cryptic tunnels below.

He was, in fact, a hollow skeleton. A simple skeleton in structure. He tried to take a peek at his own face in the reflection of the storm doors, but they were tarnished and rusty with age and exposure. He sought out a different plate, something brassy or easy to clean, to take a look at his face.

Maybe there’s something off about my looks that got me in trouble….

He wandered close to the entrance of the false tomb and inspected the rocks in every place, but found none. No carvings or runes or engravings at all. Each stone was bare, as if they were placed there as mere props with no purpose. Or, also likely, that there was no stone etching in the strange new world’s culture.

If people can make golden jewels and accessories like those, they can probably carve a name into a rock.

Ozzy dismissed his own conjecture as soon as it developed. He was used to talking alone, and frankly, was terrified of talking to anyone or anything else.

“What ho!” a charismatic skeleton shouted.

“KKKKKHHHHH!!!!!” Ozzy hissed as he jumped with both arms up, curled around his head for protection. He jumped a clean three feet in the air off of just a startle and landed on one foot mid-spin. He saw the voice which called to him belonged to a skeleton of bizarre proportion and design.

The skeleton waved at him with his one, only arm, which was located in a re-adjusted shoulder pivot just behind his back. His chest was completely rearranged and opened up into a sort of cross-shaft ballista with a sharpened bone loaded in and slack against a bowstring made of a much longer, bendy femur.

“A-ha!” the skeleton bowman remarked. “A new arrival from the depths below! You must be confused. What name were you given?”

Ozzy uncoiled himself and calmed down. The unique design of the mangled-looking skeleton perplexed him for a moment. Then he realized he was staring at, what was essentially, the skeleton’s chest. Manly voice or no, he felt a bit ashamed and made the sound of clearing his throat to readjust himself.

“I was called Ozzy,” he replied.

The skeleton bowman tilted his head. His bright gold eyes somewhat flickered, one dimming as the other stayed sparklingly brilliant, as if he was pressing one eyebrow down in an inquisitive look.

“Ah-ha!” he remarked. “That is the Dead Language, methinks. Hmm. I, myself, was given a more modern name, and took to it quite gladly, I should add!”

“Well that’s good for you,” Ozzy said. “If you like your name, that should make it easier to get along and, you know, live with all of this.” He motioned around the graveyard. He’d explored mostly out of the center and didn’t realize just how vast the space was. It was as big as a superstore parking lot, from end to end.

“I am Hewfarth!” the gentlemanly skeleton continued. He made a bow. The bolt in his chest slotted forward and clattered against the crunched-together loading mechanism. The ribs that were cross-patterned in his chest bent and stretched with his motions. When he stood up, they held fast and came together to press the bolt back in place.

“Hello, Hewfarth,” Ozzy greeted. His eyes, and therefore his entire eyeless head, kept wandering down to Hewfarth’s bizarre feature. Ozzy grew to curious to stay silent, and approached the topic with a polite caution. “Did you do that to yourself, or….?”

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Hewfarth looked down. His reverse-jointed arm patted his own back as he gave a light, polite laugh. “Ah, indeed. I am one of the few who developed soon enough to come up here with such a willpower. Ordinarily, these modifications are discouraged, though never outright forbidden. For you see, I was made in an image of particular note and purpose, as were you and all of us. But I was made a little different, just a bit, and that difference has positioned me hence, to the Lichyard, where I act as the guardian of great Gozzpek’s domain!”

“Well,” Ozzy said, “I guess I’m here to help. He, uh, decided this was where I belonged best.”

“Indeed,” Hewfarth said. “You do seem like an utter reject.”

“Hey!”

Hewfarth threw his head back and laughed. The clamp of his rib bone ballista flexed against the bolt with a grinding sound as the bones pressed together. “I jest! Ah, tis but a lark at myself. I, too, felt abandoned to be without Gozzpek’s direct presence. Up here, I can only feel the whispering inkling, the dry and dusty sense of purpose which was so strongly apparent in the dark down below. You, too, must feel that way, removed from his presence and given less concrete purpose?”

“Honestly, I’m just confused,” Ozzy admitted. Hewfarth, to him, was just eccentric enough to be worth talking to. He seemed to know more than his station may have allotted, which was probably what put him topside. He was still bizarrely loyal to Gozzpek, which seemed to make up for his other defect - if it was such a thing. The sharp-edged skeleton had plenty of combat potential, but his disloyalty and pompousness got him killed. Liking Gozzpek seemed to be more important than having an actual purpose in the group.

“Can you tell me,” Ozzy asked, “are there any other skeletons up here besides us?”

“Oh, surely,” Hewfarth said. “Quite a many. Though, without drive or direction, many wander off over the walls and spill out into the Blackwood.”

Ozzy looked off to the nearest wall. Just under the veil of the blanketed grey patch of sky he could see a dark, uneven outline of treetops.

“They pity many,” Hewfarth continued, “serve as the unintended bulwark of defenses for this, the Lichyard. They meet the straggling and adventurous hunters from beyond the border and serve for them a dire warning that this way lies great danger for mortal men. We more thoughtful few remain behind to stand at station and sincerely protect the secret passages into the catacombs below.”

“More than one?” Ozzy responded, with a focus.

“Indeed!” Hewfarth declared. “All manner of ways there are to enter, and for us as well should we defeat the invading mortal malcontents so their goods may be forfeited and lost unto the Ruin beneath us.”

“We can get back inside?” Ozzy asked, hopefully?”

“Ha-ha!” Hewfarth laughed confidently. “No! You were sent up here by Gozzpek’s order. You’ll be obliterated if you try!”

“Oh,” Ozzy said. “So….what do we do now?”

“We wait, my friend!” Hewfarth said. He gestured his arm out as if to sweep it across the dull panorama. “Wait for the Humans to come.”

Humans?

“And kill them!”

Hewfarth gave off a much more cocky, raucous laugh, which was then joined in by a host of other clattering, chattering bones. Ozzy saw skeletons rise up out of the thick grass all around. Some remained entangled by the grass that clung to them, so long they’d been lying down that their bones mingled with the plants around them like rotting green strands of carcass. The lichyard was then full of the sounds of rattling laughter.

Then, the earth shook. A deep rumble drowned out the laughter and interrupted the cackling skeletal choir. Ozzy caught sight of a great stone near the wall moving and rising out of the ground. It stood and dropped great tufts and clumps of dirt as it rose to full standing. It was shaped like a man, but quickly revealed itself to be a skeleton of sorts.

It was huge, as big as Gozzpek. Ozzy even dared to believe it could have been bigger, but dared not voice it for fear that saying so would be a punishable insult. However, its body was much different. It had limbs like powerline towers - latticed and criss-crossed engineering marvels which formed trunk-like legs. Its chest was like an umbrella of ribcages carefully propped up on a wiry column of spines. It looked like a massive computer had been gutted and its cables were all left to hang out and dangle down to a shared ball of pelvises. The arms started thick, and were in fact many arms that held each other together in giant knots which tapered down into single normal-sized hands that gripped great cleaving knives as big as a human body.

“Oh dear,” Hewfarth declared. “It appears we’ve woken the old guardian.”

“He-he’s on our side, though, right?” Ozzy asked. Hewfarth turned to him. Despite his skinless face, he struck an apprehensive expression, telling Ozzy that the answer was a bit too complicated to just settle with one or two words.

The behemoth of skeletons, an entire graveyard’s worth of reassembled body parts or more, approached. Ozzy could see that its head was one complete skull with beaming red eyes that was surrounded by the fractured, cracked, split and otherwise separated skulls of dozens of others in a protective bone mane.

It stopped its procession and stood, eyes glaring down at Ozzy. A sick, heavy wind blew out of the monsters midsection. Its very movements caused the air to split and sunder against the hundreds of bones that scraped together, like a sigh out of a mouth that never knew water.

“And what are you?” it asked, with a voice like Gozzpek, loud and commanding, but a little bit angrier and less stoic.

“Uh,” Ozzy began. Hewfarth offered him a hand and turned him away.

“Be careful of Marrowbane,” Hewfarth said. “He is far estranged from Lord Gozzpek, and fancies himself the true Lich against the great one’s wishes. He was cast out for his arrogance but preserved for his power and is maddened by centuries of Gozzpek’s neglect.”

“Which one is he?” Ozzy asked.

“None that joined him live,” Hewfarth declared. “He is made of those who have fallen in the forest or are routed from the human brigands that lost their will to fight. He kills them and adds their bodies to his to grow his power.”

Ozzy looked up at the mountain of bone that had a name and an agenda. It was utterly uncomforting to see what appeared to be an objective scope of the power he previously sought, an answer to the question of how he could get any strong at all.

If he was a first time gym-goer with the objective of getting a little bit of muscle while mostly focusing on heart health, Marrowbane was a bodybuilder with muscles too big to look pretty, so big his arms couldn’t even reach his pants pockets.

“I,” Ozzy declared, with resolution, “am a Hero!”

There was a silence over the lichyard that was creepy, even for a cemetery. The beams of Marrowbane’s glare intensified as they focused downward onto Ozzy.

Oh. I just introduced myself to the first boss as a Hero.

Oops.