The rock wouldn’t move. Liss had been pulling, pushing, lifting, and even staring death at the rock. The rock did not move, and neither did her hands pinned beneath it. Seemingly having gotten bored by the lack of rock throwing by its pet skeleton, the crystal was off floating near one of the cave walls, green tendrils of power poking around.

This was the closest she had gotten to feeling frustration since getting her new calcium abundant body, and yet the emotion would not stick. When the crystal helped her, she was able to increase her strength and lift the rock. It also seems like should work without the crystal giving her a constant stream of energy, seeing as it lasted for a long while after the crystal stopped touching her.

Trying to replicate the feeling of energy gathering through her bones, she was able to feel something moving, like pulling water through a straw. However, no matter what she did, where she tried to move it, nothing happened. There was no glowing green lines on top of her bones, no sudden increase in her strength. It felt more like she was just moving the energy between her bones, not really using it for anything.

As if to mock her attempts, the crystal again floats over to her, and drops another damn rock next to the current one. This new rock is only half the size of the existing one. Maybe the crystal is taking pity on her and giving her an easier rock to attempt lifting. Not that it matters, as she can’t even activate the power, let alone control it enough to have an easier time with a smaller rock.

Again green tendrils flows out of the crystal and starts poking at the energy flowing in her. This time however, it doesn’t simply activate the power for her. She can feel the way it’s trying to move her energy. Not simply moving it to the bones which need strength, but moving it up to the surface of the bones. Strengthening not only the bones, but also whatever invisible force is binding them together. The green lines starts to glow again, showing a path along the bones from her arms and down to the hands.

So it’s like pieces of thread binding the bones together, providing them with extra strength when moving. Am I a puppet on strings then? Oh, or maybe it’s like a powered exoskeleton suit.

As the crystal releases its hold on the energy, it starts to fade away. Liss picks up the threads of energy, and tries reproducing what the crystal did, moving the energy into lines roughly emulating where muscles and tendons would normally be. Forcing the energy into the shape she wants takes a lot of her focus and time, but once there they almost seem to settle into place. Once settled, maintaining the energy lines becomes much easier, keeping themselves locked into the pattern.

Wishing to be rid of the clingy rock, she gives a heave with her powered arms. Instead of the rock flying up into the ceiling as she expected, her skull smashes face first into the rock. Force, meet equal but opposing force. All she accomplished by pulling with powered arms on the dense and heavy rock, was to pull herself towards it.

Of course, I probably should put some muscle on other parts of my body too, like my spine. Her thoughts are accompanied by a wage memory of shame.

Putting most of her focus on creating some muscles for her back, her arms loose their glow, the pattern winking out completely.

This is more difficult that I expected. The arms were easy as I could see them both, and just mirror them. I can’t see my spine. Well, I can look at it through my own rib cage. But even my skeleton head has limits to how much it can tu-

Liss is surprised when the expected resistance doesn’t appear at her neck, bending her head down to look through her rib cage. She can turn her head completely upside down. She can even turn it around 180 degrees and look behind her. Apparently the force keeping her bones together is very flexible.

In the end she ends up in a position which would make most yoga masters envy or fear her flexibility, and putting down green threads of power through her spine and back. With that in place, she tries to keep it going while also putting back the empowering green threads on her arms.

It’s almost like it is taking the power from my back to create the threads on my arms. However I was able to empower both arms, feet and back earlier with the help of the crystal. Is it a power limit, or maybe I’m just trying to do too much at once?

After spending a while experimenting, Liss finds a method that works. Setting up the pattern first on her hands with a small amount of power, she moves on to her back and feet and puts down a pattern there. Once the patterns are locked into place, she then pulls the energy from her bones and into the threads. The key is to create the patterns first with a small amount of power, then empower them afterward.

Much more cautiously this time, she tries to lift the rock. She can feel the power adjusting itself throughout her empowering patterns, flexing around her bones to accomplish the movement she requested. The rock lifts from the ground, freeing her glowing hands to shift their grip around it. She can feel its weight in her arms.

Liss stands up, still holding the rock, and tries putting more energy into the pattern on her arms. The load there lessens, while the one in her back remains. Shifting even more power into her back and feet, the rock starts feeling light as a feather. If she wanted to, she could throw it with the same amount of power as earlier, creating another dent in the wall. However, she also feel a potential drain, like doing so would cost her a lot.

Locking on to that feeling, she tries to wave the rock about a bit. Shaking it up and down, left and right, but not letting go of it. There is a distinct drain of power. A slow trickle of energy flows out of the bones just to keep the rock afloat, but actually moving it around causes it to feel more like a fully open tap. She would eventually run out.

Conservation of energy? I wonder if my bones are heating up. Hot female skeleton, coming through. Right.

If she wants to continue experimenting with her newfound power, she would need to find a power source. Looking up, she tries to find out where the crystal ran off to, this skeleton needs a recharge.

Looking around, Liss finds the entire cave floor covered in rocks. Many of them are of the same size as she lifted, but a few are also larger. The pile grows as an additional rocks are created out of mid-air and plops down to the floor. Along the cave wall, the crystal is happily consuming a large part of the wall, absorbing it into itself, and then creating another rock.

So, the crystal consumes rock, and shits out a smaller but more dense rock. Conservation of matter I assume. It also seems to have a limited amount it can have absorbed at any time, or maybe it just likes to create rocks.

Another chunk of cave wall disappears, another rock falls onto the floor. The cave has actually been enlarged by quite a bit while Liss was testing out her power. Even the ceiling seems to be higher, not escaping the gluttony of the glowing floating crystal.

At this rate it will consume the entire mountain, or wherever we are. Maybe we’re just underground somewhere?

That thought also sparked another, more important one. What the crystal was doing was essentially mining, and she had heard of caves collapsing as part of mining operations. Would she suddenly find herself buried under the cave ceiling if the crystal continued like this?

As if her thought had reminded physics to do its job, a sudden crack resounds through the cave. A piece of the ceiling, close to where the crystal had absorbed part of the ceiling, falls down next to the crystal. It shatters into smaller rocks and mixes with the existing collection of rocks on the ground. Liss feels a lurch in her mind as she considers the crystal might be damaged by the falling ceiling.

The crystal stop its enlarging of the cave, and curiously poke at the newly fallen ceiling pieces. Then it flies up to the ceiling and prods around with a few tendrils. Pulling back it seems to consider the situation, giving no clue to what it’s thinking through the link to Liss. Having reached a conclusion, the crystal flies to spot in the middle of the cave, absorbing rocks from the ground as it goes.

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Liss walks toward the crystal as it reaches its destination. Getting a closer look, she can see the crystal is focusing its tendrils on the ground. Slowly, much more so than when it creates rocks, a part of the floor start flowing upwards towards the cave ceiling. After about a minute, a very rough approximation of a pillar stands in the middle of the cave. It looks more like a stalagmite has grown up to reach the ceiling, rather than an artificial construction.

A sense of accomplishments flows through their link, and the crystal starts flying around picking up more rocks, and creating additional pillars at seemingly random locations around the cave.

Liss lightly hits the pillar, and she can feel it is just as dense as the rocks lying around on the ground. She could probably break it if she put all her power into it, but there is no fear of it breaking by itself any time soon.

Is the crystal intelligent enough to realize it needs to build supports, or is this some kind of instinct? There probably isn’t many living crystals in the world if they all go around causing cave-ins.

Done with putting up pillars, the crystal floats up to the ceiling, and starts creating a kind of reinforcing grid between the pillars, holding the ceiling up. Then it floats down to the floor and starts working around the sections where the cave have expanded.

Where the crystal has dug into the wall and expanded the cave, there is an uneven flooring of rock. The initial section of the cave however, has a completely flat floor. The old floor doesn’t even seem to have a dent, scratch or crack anywhere, even with all the rocks landing on it. It almost looks like the floor is created of the same dense reinforced material the crystal creates its rocks with.

Liss bends down and brushes her hand along the floor where the old blends into the new floor which the crystal is creating. It looks and feels identical. Same color, same toughness, same perfection.

Noticing her presence, the crystal breaks off from its work and floats over to her. It goes straight up to her rib cage and snuggles into her chest and under her bony chin. Liss puts her hands around the crystal, and feel the warmth flow into her, filling up the energy she spent with her experiments. A strong sense of happiness flows through the bond from the crystal and into her, proximity and touch apparently strengthening it. If she wasn’t already a grinning skull, she would have smiled.

The crystal seems content to stay with Liss for now, even though she is already full of energy. The feeling of warmth is still there, but no longer flows into her bones. She decides that this might be a good time to experiment some more with her power, seeing as her power source is just snuggling into her without a care in the world.

Is it resting? Maybe it got tired of eating and shitting rocks. I wonder if skeletons need to sleep.

Liss had no idea how long it had been since she first woke up as a skeleton. In some ways it just feels like an hour had passed by, but in others it feels like days. So much had happened, and yet she is totally awake and rested, especially after the recharge of energy.

Standing up with the crystal still snuggled up to her chest, she moves over to one of the walls. Creating the pattern of muscles on one of her arms, she pushes some power into it. Immediately she feel the crystal top up her energy, a sense of curiosity seeping from the it, watching what Liss is doing.

Liss tries to take the energy back from her arm, and for the first time since she awoke as a skeleton, she feels pain. A slight pinching pain as she tries to push more energy into her bones than they can contain. A spike of worry from the crystal makes her end that experiment for now, putting the energy back into her arm pattern instead.

Punching the wall in front of her, she burrows her arm into the stone up to her elbow. More energy is needed just to get her hand back out. Putting double the energy into the pattern, which now blazes green around her arm, she punches another part of the wall. This time she also tries to stop her punch before it goes too deep into the rock.

Like last time, her hand continues into the rock like a hot knife through butter, but when she stops her hand the excess green energy continues, and seems to blast into the rock. The rock around her hand begins to glow, and she has just enough time to pull out, turn around, and shield the crystal before the wall explodes outwards in a burst of green energy.

Well, I did not expect that. I need to be more careful with my experiments I think, that could have damaged the crystal. I have no idea how fragile it is.

That thought sends an shiver down her spine. Having the crystal damaged would be bad, as in REALLY bad. Liss releases the crystal from her grip, and starts checking out its surface for scratches or indications of having been hit by splinters of rock. The crystal just floats around her, enjoying the attention.

Suddenly the crystal freezes in place, and its attention focuses behind Liss. Turning around she sees something crawl out of the hole in the wall.

Two large pincers in front, a body covered in dark chitin reflecting the green glow of the crystal, and at least a hundred disgustingly crawling legs. The largest fucking insect she has ever seen in her life, crawls into the cave. Two antenna as long has her arm wave about the air in their direction, and Liss takes a step back away from it. The feeling of pure disgust is fighting a valiant battle with whatever force is constantly emptying her mind of emotions.

Finding this new moving creature interesting, the curious crystal floats over to it. The insect, its head as large as a medium sized dog, open it’s pincers and stretches towards the glowing crystal. Only as it stretches does the other end of the long insect leave the hole in the wall.

Liss’ yaw is stretched open as far as it can go, the still air conveying an unheard scream. The feeling of a thousand ants crawling inside her bones, urging her.

Move.

Green energy bursting out in wild untethered patterns, constantly shifting along her bones.

Move!

Her body falls down to hands and knees on the floor. The raw feeling running through her almost unbearable.

MOVE!

The patterns solidify into their customary muscle patterns along her feet and arms, the green energy like a living flame around her. Her hands and feet dig furrows into the floor which was previously unmarred by anything. Then she kicks off towards the insect threatening her crystal.

She flies, literally, towards the insect. Her kick having contained enough energy that she doesn’t touch the ground even once before reaching it, and flies straight past it. Crashing into the wall next to the hole, she ignored her many cracked and broken bones, and puts more energy into empowering her them. The horrible feeling of crawling in her bones is still there, still urging her, commanding her to move.

Another leap, this time a little better aimed, puts her on top of the disgusting thing, its many legs wriggling between her bones as they tangle. It’s utterly disgusting, but nothing compared to the force urging her on. Her first flight was enough to initially distract the insect, and the crystal had thankfully pulled away a bit from the insect. Noticing this, Liss felt the force urging her on subside quite a bit, allowing her to think.

Two pincers wrap around her chest and one arm, pinning it to her. Lifting her free hand, and thinking only of getting rid of this disgusting thing, she puts all her energy into her remaining arm and fist, and punches into the insects head.

With a disgusting crack, the insects chitin buckles and her fist goes through its head, spurting fluid and whatever passes for brains in insects around her hand. Her punch is only stopped as it reached the floor beneath. Then the remaining energy in her hand moves down and into the insects body, which starts to glow.

Uh oh.

This time Liss doesn’t have the time to turn away after realizing what is about to happen. One second she is arms deep in insect brains, then next she is covered in a fluid mix of brains, chitin and other things which should be on the inside. A shock-wave of green force flashes out from the spot she punched, ripping and splatting the insect guts all over as it goes.

In the floor, an indent after her fist is still glowing green. Around it patterns of green energy weave all over the floor surface like veins, having become visible as the shock-wave passed through them. As Liss just sits there, enjoying the sudden stillness and lack of sensation, the glow fades and finally disappears, leaving only the indent in the floor from her punch.

Liss feels exhausted, another first since becoming a skeleton. She tries to lift her hand, and almost fail, feeling as if shes trying to lift a thousands rocks. Looking around for the crystal she sees it in a corner of the cave. She reaches her hand in its direction, she doesn’t have any chance of reaching it, or even standing up.

The crystal flinches, moving away from her. A feeling of uncertainty, of fear, creeps through their link. Liss freezes in place, hand outstretched. She can feel a cold creeping out from her chest, moving out towards her limbs, it is a frightening sensation. She is so tired, she lets her hand drop. The cold sensation continues to spread.

Then the crystal is next to her, a tentative tendril of energy connecting to her, warmth flowing back into her body. As she is filled with energy, she once again raises her hand, touching the crystal. It doesn’t flinch away, but moves towards her, snuggling into her chest.

What she feels though the link is a mix of confusion and fear. And as she feeds on its energy, hunger. As that hunger grows, the crystal eventually starts moving away, looking for something to absorb. Liss figured it would absorb one of the rocks it created earlier.

Wait, how would that work? Energy is used to create the rock, can that be absorbed back?

That, or go absorb more of the cave. Instead the crystal heads over to one of the larger pieces left from the insect.

No, it can’t possibly…

And starts absorbing it. Once one of its green tendrils touches the insect, there is a sudden flash of white light. It flows, bursts more like, from the insect and into the crystal.

As the white light finally dies down, the insect remains are gone, and the crystal is glowing like a flashlight. It’s almost painful to look at it, and Liss feels like she could reach out and gain more energy from it even at this distance, without touching.

A surge of pleasure flows through their link, and the crystal practically bounces in the air with energy, sparks of green flying out from its surface. Noticing another large piece of the insect, it flies over to it and starts absorbing.

Another surge of white light, another burst of green energy, and then there echoes a crack, as the crystal literally gains a large crack down its side.