There was a punishment passed down through generations of Tartarian people who failed their nomad brothers in the art and act of trade. They had to walk. It was grueling and exhausting, harkening back to their great lineage of wanderers who trekked strange lands as faceless strangers, to help them bond together with the origin of their kin. For Ozzy, it wasn’t even a punishment. He had no meat in his legs to get tired. In fact, it was easier to walk beside the horses. They wouldn’t try lifting his veil to see what he hid from his hosts.

Their destination was in the path of their lost customer, into the town on the fringes of the established lands that bordered the Blackwood. The town of Farheim, known and named for its distance from the capital of the local lands. It was Ozzy’s first venture into civilization since his incarnation into the accursed world. He wasn’t sure what to expect.

They neared the town and all became clear. The homes were subtle, spars and dotted the land without order, connected by dirt roads trodden down by hoofed feet. The establishments were all central and upon a cobbled stone road that depleted very shortly outside of the town’s surrounding walls. The tallest building had a tower with opened walls, a sentry post to observe the coming traffic from out of town.

The Tartarian caravan stopped just outside the walls. Roth and Marman left their carriage seats and rounded the way to speak to their guest. Ruder helped himself out of the back of his carriage and took his cane to the ground to wander freely.

“See there?” Roth said. “That’s Farheim, like we told you.”

“The Defenders Guild operates out of there,” Marman said, “and they are likely to share whatever rumors they find out in the open fields.”

“Rumors, perhaps,” Roth said, “about a smart mouthed Tartary caravan turning people away from their goods.”

“Uh…huh,” Ozzy nodded.

Would they have been okay if I gave away their firewood axes and cooking gear for a chipped up sword? I don’t get how these people operate.

“Here’s what you can do for us,” Roth said. “If you want to stay a while longer. We are not against that. The horses like you, and they are as much our family as our children are to us.”

“I wouldn’t want to leave the horses sad,” Ozzy agreed.

“We cannot set foot inside their walls,” Marman explained. “That is the way things are.”

“Why not?” Ozzy asked.

“The laws of Renalia dictate it,” Roth said. “As do many other lands. Which is fine for us. It is our culture to live without permanence, to be transient and freely wander. But our history with these people is not a kind one. And they have chosen not to forget it.”

“Oh,” Ozzy said. “I wouldn’t know. I’m from…quite a lot further away, even from Renalia.”

“Where was it?” Ruder mentioned. “Somewhere south of Croat?”

Roth and Marman balked at the old man’s wilings. He tried to exchange a sly look to Ozzy, who lacked all physicality to exchange one back.

“S-something like that,” he said.

“A foreigner is a foreigner,” Roth said. “But in either case, you are not Tartary. You can explain that to them, that you have bought our clothing from us -.”

“Which is not wrong,” Marman added.

“-and are seeking the one who was turned away to offer them another deal.”

Ozzy nodded. “I’m not good at sales or trading. What kind of deal, exactly, should I offer him?”

“All you need to do,” Roth instructed, “is let him know there’s no ill will, and that we will hear out his offer in full if he has one.”

“And what if he has nothing?” Ozzy asked. “He was asking for -.”

“You bring him out,” Marman said, “and let us deal with him. The main thing is, it’s not our apology to offer, but yours.”

“Indeed,” Ruder said. “And if you bow your head too deep, try not to let it get stuck in the ground.” The men turned to him in a snap with shared glares. Ozzy picked up on the real meaning behind their kind, cultured words.

They’re sacrificing me. Expecting one of the Defenders to come and beat them up for declining his crappy sword as payment for perfectly good tools. Well…I owe them at least that much.

Ozzy fiddled with his fingers in his gloves. He turned away and tested his body out again. Though born as naught but a skeleton, he still did not understand the true limits and intricacies of his design. He pulled his finger until he was sure it snapped off, then released it and let it snap back into place with magnetic propulsion.

I guess I don’t have to worry about being broken into pieces. Unless that’s just my joints doing that and not the bones themselves. I’m not testing that out.

He hissed a quiet “kkkkkhhhhh” out of nervousness.

“We’re counting on you,” Roth said. The men stood, hands together, and bowed at him to leave. Ozzy bowed back daintily and walked toward the gates. One was open, the other shut, leaving the road half exposed. He slid right into the town only to be met by the sideward glares of the guards. They stood in light garb, studded leather and pleated skirts, like brown Roman legionnaires, but with flat skull-hugging helmets. They wielded long pikes at their sides which held flags on them, which were furled and crumpled down from the lack of wind.

Ozzy turned at the sound of a horse huffing in protest. He barely saw the side of one of the caravan carts as they turned away to leave. He was abandoned in town, the black sheep of the caravan, sent out to his doom among strangers in the world. He sighed and walked forward, chest out and shoulders back, as positively as he could.

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At least I’m not back in the catacombs, he thought. Already a silver lining with the deep grey clouds firmly behind him. He could still see it, the dark spot of a static maelstrom ever over the lichyard in the far off distance. Like a smear in the sky, but only thumb-print sized from where he stood with his back to the town. He was miles and miles away. No pain in his feet or legs at all. No lungs to make ragged breaths or eyes to strain against the light.

Being a skeleton had more advantages while he was disguised. He suffered no human pangs, no familiar inconveniences that made him suffer lightly the constant pressure of life. He felt light as a breeze and walked with half a skip in his steps through town. Utterly in ignorance of the hateful stares that came his way.

Oh, right, he recalled. People hate the people that I’m dressed as. He made less of a prideful show of his gait and hurried into the nearest building that turned out a public parade of foot traffic. And he came face to face with the mounted skull of some long dead creature with great goring horns grown above its eyes. He was fully immersed into the den of his own undoing. The Defenders’ Guild Forward Office.

That’s what the sign above the notice board said. One he could, to his shock, read.

This isn’t English, he realized. Or whatever I saw in the crypts. I guess I have some kind of…inherent language understanding? Sort of?

He walked up and read a few more things. All the fliers posted were asking wantful of of someone to take on a task. A list of jobs that were as odd as they were dangerous made around the town. And nearly all of them had some pitch related to traveling waist-deep in the halls of the dead.

The guild hall had a moderate attendance. It was staged like a restaurant, with round tables and high chairs to sit at. There, the tenants could spread out maps of the land and plan their routes to their jobs, or review the details and read through reports made about the surroundings to formulate some kind of order of operation. There was an upstairs to the lodge, at least two more stories from how the building appeared from outside. A fair portion was dedicated to a walled off administrative area where workers bussed papers and bags around.

Ozzy looked around and took the whole place in. He glanced over at some of the Defenders, hoping not to see the man he apparently wronged. The stranger wasn’t there, and those present looked far less strange than he. They were well dressed, for one matter. Mostly. He did see a man of incredible, hulking mass in the corner with nothing but a fur kilt with half of a bear’s face still attached to it that wrapped up around his shoulder. A plain barbaric looking man who sat next to what looked like a massive shaven tree log fashioned into a club.

The rest of the patrons were an odd mix of well prepared and casually garbed, chatting with drinks in hand over their jobs and hauls in recent days. Ozzy quickly felt like an odd man out doing nothing but standing and watching. He took to a seat and tried to blend in. The most garish dressed, strangest man in the place that chose to sit alone. And unarmed.

Maybe I should go somewhere else.

Just as Ozzy understood the awkwardness of his position, he was at once set upon by a social assault.

“Ho, there,” a man said. Ozzy felt a hand reach over to steady him in his seat as a gentleman with a full beard of blondish hair sat next to him. “Haven’t seen you around.”

“Of course not,” another said. A man with slicked back, black hair and a jutting jaw. “He’s a Tart.”

Ozzy felt the end of his scarf get touched. He quickly reached up to reclaim it. One wrong tug and it would come undone. “Ooh, sorry,” a lady said. She sashayed herself across from him, her long hair bound back behind a bandana. “It looks so precious I had to see if it was real.”

“Ah, yes,” Ozzy began, nervously. “I am new - but not from Tartar - and it is real.”

The bearded man looked to the other three. “Now that’s how you tell a story under duress. Quick answers, all facts.” He laughed a bit and patted Ozzy on the shoulder once more. “Not a Tartarian, eh? But dressed like one. How’s that figure?”

“We heard a caravan was skulking around the Blackwoods,” the slick man said. “You meet them?”

Ozzy’s mind flickered with many thoughts. It was as if the inside of his hollow skull was the scene of a private fireworks festival. He understood precious little about the world, but he did understand humans. They were humans from another time, another place, in a world where talking skeletons roamed nearby and the history of people’s cultures was fairly different - and everything was medieval - but they were people. Like him.

So he came up with the best lie he could on the spot. And spoke it like a lie - rushed and stuttered.

“Uh - well, yes. I saw them - I met them, in fact. On my way out of the Blackwoods - back from, where I went there. And into the lichyard - to run from. Because it was too dangerous. But not before I could got this from them.” He pointed to his clothes, and coincidentally, the thickened fabric underneath.

“Say what?” the lady asked enthusiastically. “You came from the lichyard?”

“N-not out of it!” he said. “I just…into it, and then back out. And I got these - I bought them. Traded, for what I found there. I was down in and - I had other clothes, of course. Armored clothing. And weapons. But I got attacked by skeletons. And I could only carry so much out -.”

“Much what?” the bearded man asked.

“Can’t even believe this,” the slick man said, losing interest. “What man reaches the lichyard and comes out with nothing but rags?”

“They’re very nice clothes,” Ozzy said.

“I agree,” the lady added.

“You and your fashion-addled brain,” the dark-haired man said. She stuck her tongue out at him playfully. “All right then, what was in the catacombs? Under the lichyard?”

“....skeletons,” Ozzy said with a confident nod.

“Even Tarts wouldn’t trade you fine clothes for some chattering jawbones and gripping skeletal hands,” he argued. “What’d you really find down there?”

“Uh,” Ozzy stammered. He mostly recalled horrors and atrocities through every hall and corner, but he did remember one thing. One hall of glimmering wealth and value that stood out from the dust and death of the dread halls. “Just some gold,” he said. “Just a bit of gold. Not very much but…some -.”

“Hah!” the bearded man laughed, with another solid pat that nearly sent Ozzy’s skull off his spine. “And you lost that gold to the Tartary caravan!”

“Well, it was all I had!” Ozzy complained. “It - I didn’t want to return to society naked with a…bracelet. I needed clothing. I lost mine underground. From the skeletons.”

“You’re lucky,” a droning, gruff voice said from behind. All four turned to see a gray haired man, with a long thick beard like a storm cloud - like the lichclouds above Gozzpek’s evil home - and thin sheets of plated armor down his shoulders and gut. “To lose only your clothes, and not your skin down to your bones.”

Ozzy made a gulping sound, manually. “Yeah that’d be bad if I did that.”

The grizzled man turned and reached his foot to the floor. The seats were high enough that even the full adults had to hop onto them, but he was taller than most. Nearly seven feet when he stood. And he loomed over their table like a storm.

“And you say there’s gold to be had in those cursed depths?” he rumbled.

Ozzy nodded just slow enough to keep his veil down.

“Then prove it,” he said. He squinted his storm-gray eyes down at Ozzy. The three friends all slowly parted ways from Ozzy’s table as he was bored down upon by the oppressive gaze of the stranger.

Ozzy had a faint idea of what the man had in store, but curiosity pulled yanked at his non-existent tongue.

“How?”

He already knew the answer.