The stars wheeled overhead. She’d never quite grasped the meaning of that phrase until now. She had awoken some hours prior but couldn’t move, she couldn’t even feel anything, all she did was stare at the stars. If you tried very, very hard, concentrated like never before in your life and were extremely, extraordinarily bored, you would notice the stars moving in real time. Ever so slightly they would shift in one direction, always one direction, never the other and always tremendously slowly. Like an ant walking across the desert, without the eyes of a hawk, it would be impossible to spot. If one waited long enough, she imagined the stars would trace a circular path across the heavens, hence the wheeling.

When she awoke, she was hysterical. That undead being and her comrade’s corpse were nowhere to be seen and she couldn’t move nor speak. She expected to meet Death at any moment, see him slowly bend over her and reach out an inviting hand, but as time passed it became clear that she really was just stuck here, it wasn’t some sadistic plan on the part of that necromancer.

A thought then struck her, was she really outside that tomb? Previously, while running from her dead friends, she had seen the night sky from an underground window, what if this was just an illusion like that? Off to her right she could make out the swaying boughs of some stout trees. It seemed impossible to grow trees underground so she was likely aboveground…but she had seen plenty of “impossible” things in that crypt. There was no way to really know.

Hours wheeled by and the number of stars in the sky gradually lowered. The short period of placidity had made her almost complacent. Her mind drifted slowly from thoughts of mortal danger to more mundane sorts like taxes, laundry and unnecessary things like that. Which is why her heart nearly jumped out of her chest as the knight’s helmeted head suddenly appeared above hers.

A weight, so light that she had not noticed its presence, lifted off her body. In a flash she was up, the knight made no attempt to stop her. In a swift motion, she simultaneously drew her staff and kicked both legs to launch herself off the ground, or at least tried to. It was only then that she noticed a terrible imbalance in her balance. She couldn’t quite stand up properly, her head was clear, the adrenaline was pumping, she was full of energy…but that was useless now.

She stared down at the stump that used to be her right leg. The cut was clean through her knee joint. An icy sense of loss pervaded her, she could physically feel the ice in her chest, spreading out like a throbbing spiderweb of icicles. She felt violated in a sense. To have some foreign entity so quickly and casually remove a part of her being with near impunity was just…unfair.

She mourned her lost leg only for a brief moment. Her sense of loss was quickly overpowered by an unbridled rage, like she had never before felt. People die in her line of work, it was common. A soldier does not put on a uniform without accepting that he might be buried in it. She was nothing as honourable as a soldier, at least when they died, it was for something, for someone. When explorers, adventurers, die, it is usually at the hands of some devilish creature or beast, little more than an animal, there are no well-kept cemeteries waiting for them, many a times not even a funeral. Adventurers live by the same code as the creatures of the wild, the weak die and the strong kill. It is the way of life. To be an adventurer is to live like an animal, to return to the roots of humanity when we still cowered in caves, hiding in the dark like little children. Death in their field was viewed, at least by other adventurers, as a part of the natural order, as the inevitable outcome of a life of killing (and that includes the killing of more than just the civilised races). But death in the natural world was fair, to a certain extent, you were always given a chance at survival. To die a hard-fought death is seen akin to a posthumous medal in some more zealous adventurer groups.

But this was not fair, they had no chance at all. Her friends were slaughtered in seconds, the one that survived ran like a coward and now she was left here, a cripple. All because it didn’t give a fuck. Why suddenly attack after they had spent so long in the chamber? Why didn’t it just smite them when they first opened the doors or when they first entered the tomb? They might have had a chance of escape if they knew what this place had in store. That skeleton was intelligent, it could speak. A malevolent intelligence was not something she, both as an adventurer and fellow human, could allow to exist in this world.

She spun her blue honeycomb staff in a wide circle and concentrated.

The skeletal figure watched her, the chap he’d just killed stood about a stride from her. He’d seen lots of mages do this in his time, it was a sort of “cleanse and atone” spell. If a necromancer, stitcher or some other similar type of mage made something truly atrocious and dangerous in the university laboratory, they would use this spell to simultaneously fix their mess and atone for their foolishness. Death wasn’t really a problem, if you had paid your fees on time, you’d be revived. The problem was all the construction fees. Since the students knew they wouldn’t really die, they’d go ham and make all sorts of messed up mutilated monstrosities just to see how far they could push the rules of life. Then the university would be left to rebuild the lab after their “experiment”. The costs of repairing the laboratory every time someone was curious eventually got too high and they were forced to shut it down.

…Those were the good old days though.

“She’s gonna fuckin’ explode mate.”, the voice snapped him out of his reverie. Shame, he was having a nice time.

“Yeah mate.” He responded.

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“She’s almost done.”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna stop her cunt?”

“Why should I?”

“You got anything better to do?”

“Nah mate.”

“That’s what I thought.” Retorted the voice, slowly trailing off into nothingness.

With a slight mental nudge, he gave the fallen knight his orders. The air screeched once more as the undead warrior swung his sword down on the woman. His job complete, the knight sheathed his sword.

A slight blast of air rolled over the starlit plains, pushing on the swaying grass as all the energy the woman had gathered dissipated. The broken pieces of her staff fell to the floor a few moments later. Her shock did not last long, immediately she began weaving the same spell, but without the use of a proper weapon it was tantalisingly difficult for her to grab hold of threads of mana from the never-ending stream that flowed across the world. It took her a few tries to succeed, more than enough time to lop her head off but the skeleton simply watched, it was what he did best after all, but she didn’t know that. Seeing the skeleton simply stare at her as she fumbled with the spell, a flash of confusion then anger painted her face. But she did not stop working on the spell, without a weapon, the amount of energy she could gather was severely limited. Instead of blowing her surroundings to smithereens all she could manage was a tiny explosion that might just about blow your fingers off. So, she did just that, throwing her hand-crafted spell at the skeleton’s silver finger whereupon it detonated. There was no light, just a slight ‘whomp’ and then a shockwave that spread outwards. The skeleton remained unaffected, the only sign that the spell had ever existed was his still swaying robe.

This was the right moment he judged, now he should say something, do something. He knew when to speak and when to remain silent, and now was the time to speak. So, he spoke, and this is what he said.

“If you are fin-“, a thundering explosion cut him off, the shockwave overpowering his speech like a tsunami rushing against the waves.

“If you ar-“, Another shockwave drowned out his speech.

“if y-“, another explosion. He began to feel slightly foolish and realised that the time to speak had not yet arrived.

He waited, and waited. The explosions kept coming, and coming. Each achieved less than the last. Finally, the girl put her hands on the ground and met his gaze. It was one of reluctant acceptance, acceptance of defeat.

“I take it you are finished?” Asked the skeleton. A defiant gaze met his but she remained silent.

“Good, very good. Now tell me woman, what should I call you? What is your name?”

Her eyes drifted, she refused to meet his gaze.

“I offer you a chance at life, at freedom. A privilege your friends were not given. Will reject me and scorn them? Would you rather die a nameless fool?”, it had been a while since he had spoken to anyone. It was far more draining than he remembered. The fact that it was an interrogation made it all the more draining.

Something in her seemed to snap. “What would you know about friendship?! You’re a monster that kills without a thought! My companions are dead because of you, you killed them!”

“If a thief came into your house and started ransacking it as you were eating dinner, would you let him go without punishment?” The skeleton could not understand her sentiment, what was so wrong about what he had done?

“But to kill them? We didn’t know you were alive, we-.’”

“You never bothered to check.”

Her voice caught at that. He wasn’t entirely wrong but that didn’t mean he was right either.

“Nothing excuses wanton murder.” She said.

“You have not killed then?” asked the skeleton.

At this Ealea remained silent.

“As I thought.”

The skeleton moved for the first time since she spoke to him. Taking a step forward, he continued, “Your little archer friend, you will let him go? You seem to me a woman of strong morals, it would be uncharacteristic.”

“Stop saying that like you know me.”, she hissed in an undertone.

“My apologies, perhaps I was being too familiar.”

The girl stared at him for a second with an uneasy, shocked expression. Why would this thing apologise? What need did it have to apologise when it could just kill her at any moment.

“You’re apologising to me in front of my friend’s corpse.”

“Begging your pardon.”, and at this he swished his hand and the knight’s corpse fell to the ground, limp and cold. “Shall I bury him?”

“No…no, I will do that myself. Nobody should be buried by their own murderer”, She said. The skeleton seemed entirely unoffended by her words.

“And how will you achieve that?” he asked, managing a look at her amputated foot even without eyeballs.

“This is your mistake, shouldn’t you fix it?” she retorted.

At this the skeletal figure moved towards her, reaching out with his hand, looking just as she imagined the reaper does when someone’s time is up. She scurried away as fast as she was able but two legs are better than one and the skeleton caught up with her easily. He grasped her mutilated leg with a bony hand, a little too hard. She winced at the pain and was just about to pull away when she noticed the dirt under her leg. It was wriggling and writhing as though a thousand earthworms were just underneath it. The animated dirt slowly rose and accumulated around the stump of her leg, forming a pseudo-leg. It looked very similar to the creation of golems.

“Be careful when using it, dirt is not very stable, if you stomp too hard it might crumble.”, advised the skeleton. The somewhat gentle words contrasting terribly with his rumbling voice that seemed to herald doom.

“Why are you doing this? Is this some elaborate plan to satisfy your sadistic desires? Why haven’t you killed me?”, she asked, now genuinely bewildered at the skeleton’s behaviour.

“I am bored.”

“…bored?”

“Yes, and when one is bored, it is common sense to try something new. For me, that includes not killing people.”

Her apprehension still remained, she doubted it would ever go away. One does not just implicitly trust someone who has murdered their friends. But…he wasn’t the cruel monster she made him out to be in her head. He was more like a fucked up god, or a robot thoughtlessly executing commands. He didn’t really seem to get humans. She just needed a different perspective, if she thought of it as working with an alien or a different species or something like that, it could work…maybe. Because he was right, she wasn’t just going to let Ellis get away with this.

Slowly, she got up off the ground, trying to place most of her weight onto her hands while getting up. The pseudo leg couldn’t feel and it wasn’t included in the spatial awareness of her body, but it worked, she could move on her own to a moderate degree. She wouldn’t yet risk running though.

The skeleton loomed over her, up close it was gigantic, easily eight feet tall. But she had nerves of steel, she slowly extended her hand.

“I am Ealea.”

Grasping her hand, the skeleton replied in turn.

“I had a name but time has worn it away. I am now The Scholar.”