The horses neigh and come to a halt with a few powerful clops. Even when peeking down the laboratory’s windowsill, the beasts seem massive, their polished war plate reflecting the moonlight. A soft bell chimes as the door to the carriage behind them opens.

Out steps the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen other than my Mistress. Her hair is pitch black and the faintest hint of wrinkles has started creeping onto her face. She makes to look up and I catch a glimpse of pure white eyes before I have to hide further back. I continue watching from a safer distance as she reaches up to the side of the carriage to pull a lantern off its metal lasp. Under its light, I see a long black overcoat as well as the blue and white colours beneath it. The enemy’s colours. Two others exit right behind her, one blonde girl and a scrawny guy. They’re much younger in age and smaller in stature, but wearing the same outfits.

My bony fingers clasp shut with thoughts of vengeance. These are the people that killed my Mistress. That brought ruin to my home and shattered the bones of my siblings. I’ll make sure that they end up just like me soon enough. That is to say, dead. As I’m deep in thought, the male one approaches my Mistress, still propped up in the garden.

“Holy shit and spirit. Sir Wilmot really went wild this time. The whole tower is teetering on collapse!” In the dead of night and its silence, it’s not hard for his obnoxious voice to reach my ear holes. Thankfully, Mistress gave us the best magical hearing when she made us, so she could swear at us from really far away.

His words mean little, but when he pokes Mistress with his dirty fingers, I feel the fires of rage swell in my chest. “And such brutality… Nailing the witch to a cross and putting her on display in front of her own home. Truly, the work of an avatar of justice and retribution.”

“Get your tongue out of Wilmot’s ass and round the perimeter, Pete.” The lady walks up next to him, glancing over the tower as she hands him the lantern. “Carefully. We don’t know what magic still lingers.”

Pete, in turn, lets out a “Yes Miss,” with the enthusiasm of a farmer paying tribute to his village’s lich. He starts to round the gardens, holding the lantern high for vision… And steps right into the Vinemouth’s open jaws. His scream is cut rather short as the teeth snap shut around his waist.

[Vinemouth has killed a hostile creature. 50 Experience gained.]

By the hells, it really just did it! Wait. Since I made it, that means I did it. Is that why I’m getting the credit for it? Before I have time to ponder and celebrate, a flash of sickening light fills the gardens, and all the leaves and tendrils that once made up the Vinemouth wilt and wither away.

[Vinemouth has died.]

Goodnight, sweet prince. Though your birth was accidental, your death was glorious. One invader down, two to go. Said invaders rush next to the body of their fallen ally.

“Planes be damned, he’s dead!” The young woman drops to her knees next to Pete’s remains and looks up all wide eyed. “Miss Julia, please! You have to help him. You have to–”

“Help what, Vanessa?” The older mage asks. “That pair of legs? Or do you perhaps mean that pool of blood and guts over there?”

“No… Pete… You still owed me money, you piece of shit. You don’t get to go and die.”

“If you don’t want to join him in the afterlife, I suggest you get back on your feet,” Julia says sharply. “We’re going inside.”

Vanessa looks up, terrified. “W-We’re going inside? After that?”

I look down, terrified. They’re coming inside? After that? I have to prepare! I have to mount some defences! I rush through the lab, only to stop in front of the door as a thought gives me pause. What can I really do? That mage killed the Vinemouth in moments. To have a chance… I need to catch them by surprise. I have to set up an ambush. That’s the only way. But where should I lie in wait? I still don’t know why they want to come inside, so there’s only one place they’re surely gonna use to go around. The stairs!

Stumbling, I rush down the steps, skipping over my cracked brothers until I reach the first floor. Whatever remains of the door creaks open below, and I know my time is running out quick.

“This place is creeping me the fuck out, Miss Julia. Can we go?”

Damn, they’re close enough for me to hear. Just what are they fumbling with on the ground floor? I slow down to make sure I remain silent, before looking around for a hiding spot. Alas, skull-king around I only see skeletal remains and cracked wood.

“Keep your mouth shut and do your job for once, please.”

I hear another exasperated sigh, then footsteps getting closer. My gaze alternates between myself and my brothers. Wait a minute… By the devils! They look just like me! That’s why poor Mistress always confused me and Marcus.

[ Wisdom has been increased by one.]

A small reward for such horrific, terrible knowledge. At the very least, it will serve me well now. I decide to lay down between the others and pretend to be dead. Well… Dead-dead. You know what I mean.

“It’s a pointless job,” Vanessa continues to whine. By the devils, Mistress would have turned her into bone meal within hours. Younglings these days don’t know how to respect authority. “Wilmot is getting sloppy as he rushes about and we have to deal with his mess when our job is supposed to be clearing these places out. That plant thing was first, but who knows what else he missed?”

So they are allied with that bastard! And they’ve come to loot us? How despicable… they’re treating us like we’re some villagers. I won’t let this stand.

“You should be thankful I brought you with me.” I can hear Julia’s voice getting even closer now. “You get first dibs on the tower of a powerful lich and its sec–”

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For a few moments, there is only silence. I don’t dare move from my spot and what I can see from my eye sockets is limited, so I don’t know what’s going on. My hand grips my arm weapon a little tighter.

“Miss? Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Julia responds. “You go on ahead to the first floor.”

“Y-You want me to go up there? Alone?” I can sense the fear in her voice, but something wells up inside me as well. A sinking feeling where my stomach used to be, like a hand pulling strings. Is this what fear was like? I can barely remember.

“If you plan to return to the academy as a student instead of a janitor, I suggest you get going,” Julia commands. Her authority reminds me of dear departed Mistress.

“Understood,” Vanessa grumbles again. The footsteps draw ever closer to me, and I finally catch sight of the fleshwearer up close. There is a small white gem floating over her head, illuminating her features as she surveys the ruined floor, eyes eventually resting on the laboratory. She fixates on it, carefully drawing closer. A grave mistake.

“Ew…Gross,” she says after sparing a single glance at my fallen brethren.

She dares mock them? And thus, by way of similarity, me? This shall not stand.

I ready myself to attack, and as she takes a long step to pass over the remains I snap upward, driving the sharp bone straight to her belly. There's a crashing sound as the air around her shatters like a window, and a flash of light as a force knocks us apart. I can feel the wind rush through my bones as she stumbles and shrieks, fumbling away on all fours away from me.

“Help me! There's something alive up here!” Her back finds the stone and she raises her fingers.

“Nonsense, Vanessa.” Julia's calm voice reaches me from below as I steady myself. “I sense nothing alive other than you.”

The girl turns to me, and I can see the fear and trepidation in her eyes. For a moment, a new feeling wells inside my cold dead chest. Curiosity. Mistress always said that death was a blessing, an eternal gift. So why was this one shaking at the prospect of it?

“Don't move!” She cups one hand in the other and raises a finger at me.

“The only person who could order me around is dead,” I tell her. “And I lack the tendoncy for mercy.”

Vanessa closes her eyes and I can see red light gathering in the tip of her finger. A bolt of fire goes right through my hand and skull, making them dark with soot. The heat is uncomfortable, and it reminds me of those times Mistress had me clean the furnaces while they were still cooling down.

I descend onto her and stab every soft juicy bit I can find the way Mistress had taught me. The screams die down and she falls still rather quick. I don't understand why Mistress was so keen on strangling with intestines. The stabbing is so much quicker!

[You have killed a hostile creature. 75 Experience gained.]

I stand with pride, only to see Julia's face right next to my skull, disturbingly close. I never heard her approach. For some odd reason, my bones feel ticklish and the cold magic from the core in my chest sluggish and apprehensive. Was this it? Had the invaders won after all?

“You're different,” she says.

My gaze is locked straight ahead, but luckily I need no movement to speak. “Yes, I'm a skeleton.”

“I can see that.” Julia circles me, shining gray light over my ribs and observing the trepid crystal inside me. “But even among the dead, you're an anomaly… Only living things are known to have successfully attuned to cores.”

“Well, that’s very deadist of you,” I retort. “I’m guessing you want the core then, considering you’re one of them?”

“No. A cracked core has no value to me.”Julia smirks and takes a few steps forward, stopping just shy of Vanessa’s lifeless corpse. “I am among those who understand that just as not all of the living have your best interests at heart, not everything hidden in the dark is out to hurt you. Some things simply want to exist.” She bent down and picked up a coin pouch out off Vanessa’s pocket.

“So you have no desire to destroy me even after I killed two of your followers?” That’d be unlike the living who only seek to invade and ruin, for sure.

“Two?” She asked perplexed. “You created that plant outside?”

“Indeed.” I paused, seeing an opportunity. “And if you let me move I’ll tell you how.”

“Sure,” Julia responded.

All of a sudden, I felt the weird pressure being lifted off of me. “I am a skeleton of my word,” I say, turning to her. “I emptied a bucket of magical stuff in the garden.”

Julia stares at me, waiting.

I stare back.

She chuckles. “That was a horrible deal. Why don’t I suggest one instead.” Julia starts moving towards the study, her shoes clacking against the stone. “I pick out a few books of interest, and in return I report this mission as a success with casualties. What do you say?”

I ponder for a moment as Vanessa studies the back covers. Almost all of them are gibberish and funny drawings to my eye sockets, but Mistress would want them if she weren’t dead. Then again, if someone from the city came it could spell trouble. “Okay, deal accepted.”

“Smart thing.” Julia places the books she was already holding in her satchel and begins perusing Mistress’s erotica section. “By the way, you might want to get that fixed sometime soon. You’re leaking.”

I cover my mouth and reflexively look down, before realising she simply means the core. “I don’t know how.” I sit on the study’s experiment table and observe her some more. The colors on her uniform seem dulled compared to the other two, but there are many more blue stripes to it. “I know it’s what keeps me moving.”

“You need to find an arcane tug-free manifestation that can resonate with…” She trails off, glancing at me before moving to the next bookshelf. “An object that has the same kind of mist, essentially. You should feel its essence draw you. Then, you need to find a glassworker you trust to fuse the two together and patch that hole of yours.”

“I see.” What in the blurry devils is a glassworker? People can work glass now? We certainly didn’t have that in my era. “I’ll try to find both at the same time, I suppose.”

“Good luck,” Julia said after losing interest in the last bookshelf. All in all, she only chose five books before starting to walk away.

I contemplate speaking to her, perhaps asking for more aid, but some part of me innately knows that she won’t bother. Looking down at the mist trailing from my core and pooling around my feet, I can see the strange liquified essence inside almost halfway drained. I don’t know if it is because of my experiences or my newfound stats, but I know what I am.

A skeleton with a dead-line.

[Arcane Core (Severely Damaged)] Specialisation: Wizard (Necromancer) Mana Levels: 314/500 Minions maintained: 1

Warning! The core's outer shell has been shattered. Until it is repaired, mana regeneration is impossible and mana will leak out at a steady pace.

Time until core becomes mundane: 124:49:26

Properties:

Biomass Transmutation...