Emma was cursing. Herself internally, Oliver out loud. Partly to distract herself from the sting of rope burn, although it was negligible due to her enhanced body, and mostly because of their idiotic assumptions. Honestly, why did they just assume that Aelin was in on their D&D standard procedure? They just figured he would go down, poke them with his bow or something while staying on the rope, and then see how many woke up and test if they were willing to just walk into the hole in the floor.

Then he jumped down on one side, and they realized that he was from an iron age world, and not the fantasy kind, meaning that he didn’t know that anything in a dungeon that stood out could and would try to kill you.

So now their rouge-ranger mix was surrounded, and it would take her at least a couple of attacks worth of time to get down there! And it was all their fault!

Emma glanced down, and while she was happy that he had avoided being pushed into the hole, she was less happy to see him wedged between the floor and a wall, being beaten on by four other skeletons. At least he had grabbed one of the other skeletons and used his physical superiority to force it in front of him to act as a shield, which was relatively easy given that they were only level five each.

Her eyes quickly surveyed the floor she was swiftly approaching, examining what she needed to do to help Aelin on the limited space of three by five metres on each side of the hole. The doorway which used to hold a door went from floor to ceiling, preventing the skeletons that occupied the right side from crossing over, at least until they figured out jumping. There were fifteen skeletons on the left side, with Aelin occupying five of them, and six distracted by a brawl amongst themselves. She didn’t know why they started infighting, but it was certainly appreciated. However, one problem remained. Mainly that the four remaining skeletons were crowding around the place Aelin had landed, clearly waiting for her to make a similar entrance. Her gaze flitted between the form of Aelin, and the crowded landing spot as she evaluated whether or not she needed to take a risk or could wait for a safer option.

“Oliver, swing the rope, I need to jump!” She called as she got an idea.

Before even a moment passed, she felt the decidedly strange sensation of the rope simply deciding to move within her grasp, swinging from side to side with ever-increasing speed and breadth even as her exposed left side was ground into the wall. Thankfully, however, her splinter was not ripped from its dubiously secure position on her belt, where it was tied with rags.

The swinging of her pendulum soon took her beyond the edge of both platforms, and the grasping hands of the skeletons began to reach for her with their admittedly creepy hands. Thankfully, none of them had moved to spread out to where she could land, satisfied to remain where Aelin had first landed. But where should she land? She could perform a copy of Aelin’s manoeuvre, where she jumped off the wall, except with more momentum, however, that risked jumping too far and disturbing the infighting between the skeletons, something she dearly wished to avoid.

Although… Aelin was lying flush against the wall, and she did not actually need to push off the wall, not with the momentum she held, and with how little bones weighed…

When Emma swung back towards Aelin next, she simply released her hold on the rope and allowed herself to fly along the wall until she crashed into and through the skeletons piled around Aelin. Her body was improved enough to be far too sturdy for something as minuscule as a bad landing to prevent her from continuing, allowing her to simply slide across the floor without rolling.

She wrenched her splinter free from her pants, uncaring that it snapped part of what little cloth she had left, before she took a single hard step towards Aelin, bringing down the very tip of her splinter onto the skull of the struggling skeleton, which she promptly cleaved through as it shattered beneath her blade. It was a manoeuvre she would have never dared before the system, as she was mere centimetres from also cutting Aelin’s ear off, yet now it was a simple task with her dexterity and skill level.

The skeleton’s body fell apart into a pile of bones around them as Emma wrenched Aelin to his feet, and he pulled his bow from his shoulder to leave it behind them, leaning against the wall.

“I will keep down the ones behind and an eye on the infighters, you take the four,” Aelin said, before moving from her sight.

But that was fine, she trusted him to cover her back. She simply needed to deal with those four.

They were already approaching, which was perfect, seeing as she had far more interest in staying out of the pit than the mere chance of them ending up inside of it was worth. What was unacceptable was them getting the initiative, which meant that she needed to reclaim it. She didn’t waste her breath roaring, a valuable tool against living opponents, instead simply charging at them with all the speed she could muster without actually jumping.

There were four of them, in a loose diamond formation after they ran from the middle of the edge. One would meet her first in about two seconds, two and three were side by side half a metre behind one, and four was last, a whole metre behind them. Had Emma and Aelin not been far faster through the system, they would have already been upon them while they talked. She knew she had to avoid being surrounded, and to do that she needed space to retreat to, meaning that contact needed to be established immediately.

As soon as she came within three steps distance, the front skeleton drew its table-leg club back, before hurling it towards her head. Refusing to lose the momentum of her charge, she transformed her next step into a deep lunge, angling her forwards left leg so she could still swing her splinter. Emma peripherally noted that the club flew over her head, even as she swung her blade through its kneecap, shattering the joint with flecks and splinters flying about in a blizzard of shattered bone. The skeleton was, of course, carried towards her by its remaining energy, even if it had only one leg.

She stretched her forward leg to its full length with all the power she had available, the ludicrous amount of force she could apply relative to her weight made her capable of many things. In this incident, it allowed her to launch herself back to slide slightly across the ground, leaving an immobile, even if not incapacitated, enemy behind to form difficult terrain for its approaching comrades as one fell over where she had once been.

The next one bore down upon her with it’s club, a swing which was, to her, pathetically slow with its level only being one level above half of her combined level. She moved her splinter from where it was forming a v with her arms in front of her, stepping slightly to the right as she shoved the club down and left with the tip of her spike. When it reached a point where the skeleton was far too involved with the swing to counter even when she exposed herself, she wrenched her blade up again, striking where its spine met its skull and decapitating it.

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This should have put her in front of two standing piles of bone, situated so she could hold both in her sight and be able to block them, yet there was only one to be seen as the fourth had disappeared. She immediately glanced at Aelin, to ensure that it had not snuck around her to attack him, yet he was simply smashing a skull to the ground.

The third skeleton was however approaching, so she momentarily dismissed the fourth from her mind. In two steps it would be within her reach, while she would be outside the distance it could stab with its… shiv? She began to step forwards with her left leg, planning to put all she had behind her next right step and swing through its meagre knife defence with her whole body behind her. Yet at the exact moment she lifted her left foot, her right leg was impacted by the swing of something hard, reminding her of the unfortunate fact that while her force output was dramatically improved, she still weighed the same. As such, her unprepared foot was sent flinging behind her with enough speed that it forced the rest of her to follow, and she fell to the ground.

At the very least she avoided a head injury due to both her mind and body now being far faster than gravity.

She immediately kicked in the direction of the blow, soon feeling a satisfying impact and hearing bones grind across the ground, giving her the room needed to rise from the ground. She punched the ground to her side, the force of it sending her spinning with enough force that she would face upwards soon enough. During the turn, she left the ground for a moment, during which she brought her knees to her chest and her hands behind her head to reach the floor. She then performed the rest of her supernaturally adjusted kick-up, bringing her to her feet through a motion she had practised for hours around the campfire.

She turned to see the Skeleton only a step away, ready to face her with its knife while her sword lay at her feet. Instead of bringing her fists to a knife fight, she rolled to its right, where the first skeleton still lay disarmed and de-legged, and she came to a stop kneeling in front of where it lay. She grabbed the bastard by its collarbones, turning with her entire body to throw the surprisingly light skeleton at its friend, knocking them both over with a clatter not completely unlike that of bowling pins.

How fun.

She then rushed to take her sword, before she finished off the fourth skeleton which was rising to its feet, and then killed the clustered tangle her throw had made before going to join Aelin where he stood.

“So, what might you be doing? Watching the local entertainment?” Emma asked, looking at the three remaining skeleton infighters battering away at each other at thrice the speed of an average human of the before. Interestingly enough, it seemed oddly slow and stilted to her now.

“No, I’m bathing.”

“Any favourites for victory?”

“Currently, the two taller skeletons with iron clubs seem to be triumphing over the smaller, lone skeleton with a wooden club. Of course, that could all turn around should the smaller one simply hope with more enthusiasm, instead of, perhaps, helping his allies while we fought them, rather than starting an unrelated battle,” Aelin said, practically yelling the final part while looking towards Oliver.

Which brought the question of what Oliver had been doing to the forefront of her mind. She had never actually seen him participate, so she quickly turned to ensure that he hadn’t fallen into the pit or something

When she finished her turn, she was met with… a peculiar sight. Oliver was sitting in a loop at the end of his rope, his other rope stretching out from his arm to snake around the legs, spines and hands of the skeletons on the other side before he tore them back towards him and into the hole. It was certainly effective, even if it was a little annoying that he had just decided they would be fine while he did his thing. He was even whistling a disharmonious little tune while ‘fishing’

“Well, it is certainly effective.”

“For him? Perhaps. But the point of any strategy is to ensure the survival of the team, not one person” Aelin glowered.

“He thought we’d be fine and figured that he should do what he could to soften the other side in the meantime,” Emma shrugged.

“That’s the problem, he didn’t know we would be safe, he just hoped so. And if you almost being stabbed in the neck is any indication, he was almost critically wrong.”

Emma sighed as she realized that he still didn’t get it. “Knowing and hoping are the same things to Oliver,” she said, before turning back to see that the lone skeleton had brought one of the taller ones to the ground. It was scampering towards the head so it could bash it into the ground, but she could already tell that the tall one left standing would smash its cranium in from behind before it got there.

She dashed over so she could do the exact same to the standing one, just before it completed its swing, in order to maximize the experience their group got. And experience did seem to be shared, given that Aelin and she were both equal at levels, at least in their classes. He still wouldn’t tell her his profession level.

Once they were dealt with, she threw both of the iron cylinders with leather-bound hilts to Aelin before she charged ahead to the other side. All the skeletons were gathered in the corner closest to where Oliver sat on his little swing, so she had plenty of space. She jumped as far from the skeletons as possible, far enough, in fact, that they ignored her arrival. From there, she then proceeded to take her blade horizontally in both hands and ram as many of them into the pit as she could. The seven left were soon dealt with, as Aelin and Emma wielded their weapons against skulls and bones, while Oliver pulled the stragglers into the pit, preventing them from being surrounded.

Which, she could admit, would have been very useful on the other side.

When Aelin marched up to Oliver, prepared to argue the same points with him once again, Emma made the tactical decision to ignore them and investigate the pit instead.

Looking down through the hole in the floor first left her confused. The reason for said confusion being the horizontal metal bars taking their place just beyond the exit of the hole. Her confounded state lasted until she realized that they were not, in fact, horizontal bars meant to be a ladder, but were stairs observed from a strange angle. Emma then looked through the stairs and saw both a metal path with handrails, and the many offshoots from said central path leading to… something she could not quite see, along the walls.

“Find anything useful?” Aelin ground through gritted teeth, a habit he would need to set aside should he wish to remain with Oliver, lest they turn to dust.

Emma told him what she had found, after which he began to look for cracks they could ram Oliver’s knife into.

Before long, Oliver’s steps were heard as he walked up to them, “Aelin, I hope peace has been restored between us, but, if it has not, then worry naught, for I have brought with me gifts of knowledge that promise to amaze and reunite friends who once were close as can be.”

Emma then heard a strange sliding noise, prompting her to look between where she and Aelin knelt, and be met with the sight Oliver, hands behind his head, sliding across the floor as he lay on his white cloak until he came to rest with his head over the edge of the pit. She looked down to his legs, which were arranged in a 4 position, in curiosity, and saw that he was using a rope wound around his outstretched leg to push against the wall, moving him along the ground.

She really should have expected that his already caricatured movements and body language would only become more expressive with magic.

Aelin breathed deeply before he asked, “what did you find, then?”

Oliver smiled brilliantly as he answered, “I carry both the fantastically fascinating fact that the only thing which seems to sustain everything here, except perhaps the building itself, is our belief that they are real. Meaning the creatures, the weapons, and perhaps the furniture, though I am admittedly unsure on that point in particular.”

Emma could not help but look at Oliver in surprise, tearing her eyes away from the pit as she processed what Oliver said.

But he continued before they had the chance to ask about what he just told them, “Secondly, I also bear a far less exciting, rather far more sombre story with me. You see, if the bone structure of the better-armed skeletons compared to the worse-armed ones is to be trusted, which they can be, seeing as an extra pair of ribs is rather damning evidence in the world of biology, then all indications predict that we have found ourselves within the remnants of a racial prison… Which was incidentally eradicated in the middle of a riot.”