CHAPTER 30 - BONEHEADS

If I was looking for undead, I’d come to the right place for sure. That cemetery held a swarm of skeletons. Better still, they were unarmed. They wandered about aimlessly, following the fence like they were looking for an escape but couldn’t find one. From where I was at, I was safe. But I couldn’t attack them either, not unless I got closer to the fence, anyway.

The fence itself wasn’t high. It was wrought iron, painted black, and came up to my sternum. I could climb over it, but the fence was made of a series of connected vertical bars, and each bar was pointed on the top. I’d need to cross that barrier very carefully. It wasn’t something I could do fast, or I’d end up impaling myself.

“Gonna have to be careful,” I told Hope. “Climb over, and I might not be able to climb back out before I’m overrun.”

Plus, I doubted Hope or the zombies would be able to climb over that fence, so I’d lose some of my biggest assets. Rather than risk it at all, I figured I’d cruise around the outside edge of the fence and see if I could find a gate. It took some time to work my way around to the road side. On the forest edge, the trees grew almost right up to the fence, so the going was slow. Once I was out to the road, progress was easier, but the skeletons started paying me a lot of attention as soon as they saw me. I quickly had a small pack of the things following me around the fence line.

There was a gate. As it turned out, there were two of them, one on either side of a looping, circular driveway inside the fence. But I was confused as heck, as I approached them, because both gates were open!

Yet even as I got near them, the undead shied away. They didn’t come within twenty feet of either gate.

I examined the things from a little ways off. It looked like there was an invisible wall keeping the skeletons away, but I didn’t want to trust it, and I didn’t want to be on the run from a couple hundred suddenly-free undead, either! There were gates which could be closed and locked, but they were wide open. As I neared the gates I saw inscriptions on the metalwork. It was some language I didn’t recognize. Heck, even the characters were weird. They looked something like Hebrew, but it could have been that or something else entirely, for all I knew.

People have been scared of cemeteries for probably as long as we’ve buried our dead. I’d read stories about all the things we used to do to make sure the dead stayed that way. It was all nonsense, of course! Everyone knew that the dead couldn’t climb out of their graves and start walking around.

Oh, yeah. Well, maybe everyone was wrong about that.

People came up with all sorts of inventive ways to keep the dead inside these places. I’d always assumed it was just interesting folklore, but after all I’d seen, and then this? I had to wonder. Maybe something like this had happened before, sometime? Maybe those people from thousands of years ago knew more than we thought, and the traditions they passed down had roots in real magic that had once been more common.

Whatever the case, those open gates were still somehow holding back the skeletons. Even when I moved to stand directly in front of the wide-open gate, the undead still wouldn’t come within twenty feet. They saw me. They wanted to piece of me, for sure. But they stood there at the closest point they could approach, gnashing their teeth at me for a minute or two, and then wandered off.

Interesting. I needed to experiment more. “Rosencrantz, I want you to go into the space, and then come back to me.”

The zombie did exactly as I ordered. He walked forward through the gate, marched out about halfway to where the very interested skeletons stood, and then returned to me. No problems at all. Whatever was holding them all back, it wasn’t impacting the undead under my command.

Next experiment: I reached out with a Drain Life spell, but they were too far off. I couldn’t reach twenty feet with the spell, not yet anyway.

“Gonna have to go in there,” I said. “You guys ready?”

Hope barked, and the zombies shuffled from foot to foot, about as eager as a zombie could be. With my little army beside me, I stepped into the cemetery, moving to about where Rosie had walked. That seemed safe enough.

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I had gained some serious attention by that time. Several dozen skeletons surrounded me like a half-moon, all of them ten to fifteen feet away. They absolutely wanted to eat me for lunch, but some power held them back.

“My turn,” I said, picking one nearby undead from the crowd as my first target. I hit it with Drain Life and it staggered, almost collapsing entirely. My Drains were hitting a lot harder than they had when they were still tier one! But the spell felt like it was taking more out of me as well.

I counted to fifteen before I felt the timer lapse this time. Longer cooldown period for sure. That was important to know. I cast the spell again, hitting the same skeleton, and this time it just collapsed in a heap of bones. The energy flowed back into me, but it was nowhere near enough to offset the drain from casting a tier two spell twice, back to back. I panted and almost sat myself down on the paved driveway. The new version of the spell was twice as strong, and it was hitting me twice as hard. I wasn’t going to be able to cast it three times before burning out, like I could before. Two was my cap, now.

Getting that Will crystal slotted was taking on new levels of importance. I debated taking out the Agility and replacing it with Will, but I held off. Agility had kept me alive more than once now, and I didn’t want to risk shattering a tier two stone. The stuff Alfred said about stacking up stones ‘setting a course’ returned to me. He was right; with crystals sometimes breaking, nobody was going to want to switch them out, especially as they got ranked up.

I could remove it. I just didn’t want to.

One skeleton down, like two hundred more to go. Worst part was, I couldn’t recover the crystal from the one I’d killed right now, because there were a bunch of other skeletons surrounding the spot. I’d have to clear them out, first.

I stood there a few minutes, resting and not taking any offensive action. About half of the skeletons watching me lost interest, leaving only a dozen in a loose perimeter. Being as careful as I could, I walked toward one of the things. It reached for me, clawing at the air with bone hands, but it couldn’t take even a single step closer, from the looks of it. I came forward until I was only a meter or so away.

More skeletons joined it, a half dozen of the things all reaching for me, but so long as I remained outside their reach, they couldn’t get me. I got just a little closer and swung my axe at the nearest arm. The axe head lopped the thing off at the wrist. I hacked again and took off the arm just above the elbow, but two other skeletons reached for the axe head and almost grabbed it before I could drag it back. Killing these things was going to be tricky. Not super dangerous, unless I screwed up. But tricky.

I cast Drain Life on the one I’d injured and it went down in a heap. The other skeletons redoubled their frantic efforts to reach me, but they weren’t getting anywhere. Once the spell reset, I cast it on another skeleton, wounding it, and then managed to dart in and land a quick blow on the wounded undead’s skull, splitting it and killing it. I dove back before the others could grab my axe, or worse, my arms. I’d had to get pretty close for that one.

Three down, a zillion more to go. I backed up a few feet again and sat to rest.

But the skeletons weren’t quite as mindless as I hoped. They looked at the three piles of broken bones, then at me, and promptly wandered off again, leaving me to my devices. All of them just took off, walking away from the gates. They’d figured out that they couldn’t get me, but I could get them, and they weren’t having it, I supposed.

It let me get close enough to quickly tap the three dead bodies for their crystals. I snagged three new black stones and shoved them in my pocket.

Getting more of them, though? That was going to mean going past the protective area of the gates. I could always just cast Drain Life twice on each of them from the outside of the fences, I supposed. But if they were smart enough to vacate the gate area when they realized I could hit them but not the other way around, I figured they’d probably do the same thing with the fences. Just stay outside of Drain range, and they’d be fine.

Besides, that would take forever. If I managed to kill one of the things every ten minutes that way it would be a miracle, and there were hundreds of them. To clear them all out would take days. I wanted something faster.

I left my pack near the gate, inside the safe zone, and ordered my undead to my side to support me. Then I marched forward, down the driveway and into the danger zone. Almost as soon as I passed the point where they could get at me, I caught their interest again. Six of the things stumbled in my direction immediately.

“Let’s do this, guys!” I called out, and my undead went into action.

Hope sprinted at the skeletons, taking out one’s leg just below the knee. It toppled, but didn’t die right away. The neighboring skeletons tried to grab Hope, but she was too fast for them.

The other three came on at me, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern met them partway, blocking their path. The knives they carried weren’t very effective against bones, but they were a good barrier. I dashed in, axe held high, and smashed one of the boneheads. Another had slipped past Rosie and grabbed my arm, bones cutting slices into my skin. I twisted my wrist, breaking the painful grip, and cast Drain Life on the creature. That made it slow, and healed my wounds—a good combination.

Rosie finished it off.

But there were more of them closing in now. The brief melee had gained a lot of attention. Dozens of additional skeletons walked toward us. A few chased Hope, and she led them away from me, but the majority came right at the zombies and I, ready to tear us apart.