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42. Skellies

“We can’t go back to the village. They won’t want to help and Granny will be furious. She specifically said not to go out and I am not going down because our frog friends have been gone for a few hours.”

Thunkar was in the process of convincing his friend not to go back and ask for assistance while he thought of what to do.

“It’s better than doing nothing. We have just been wandering around for a few hours with no clue where they went. Both tracks are cold and there is nothing of interest that could be hiding them nearby.”

The pair argued on top of the large hill that stood at the center of the dead end.

“I have hope that they will make it back before sunup. We still have four more hours before we even need to worry. It’s only an hour's walk back to the village. Relax and help me think of a different solution.”

The boy sat down on the ground and looked over the sea of trees before him in contemplation.

“Whatever. You might be right about the other villagers not wanting to help but that doesn’t mean I really care about making it back before daylight. It’s on you whether we all return or it's just you because, without them, there isn’t any reason for me to go back to that….place.” Her tone was sharp and very obviously annoyed at the lack of progress in their search.

Thunkar bit his nails as he thought about what he would need to do.

The silence between them spoke volumes about their uncertainty.

A loud crash from down below startled them both out of their concerns.

They rushed to the cliff and looked over the side. The tall hill gave them the perfect vantage point into the clearing the frogs disappeared at.

A pair of strange beasts were sprinting wildly from below them in two different directions. Their gaits were long and awkward as they traveled with surprising speed. As quickly as they arrived, they were gone. The expanse of trees ate them up and shrouded them from the onlooker's vision.

“What the hell were those things?” Thunkar squinted his eyes at the place one fled.

“Um, how should I know?” Cinera seemed confused before having an epiphany. “You should be asking where they came from. It might have something to do with the guys.”

Thunkar appeared deep in thought before looking over to the salamander. "Right, let's go check it out! I am sure it’s them. There’s nothing else it could be.”

The pair climbed their way down the hill and worked their way around the side in relative darkness. The cliffside was covered in jagged rocks and spikey plants Thunkar hadn’t seen anywhere else.

The travel was slow but they eventually found their way under the moonlight to the location of the disturbance.

They gawked as they turned the corner to the clearing. A massive tunnel leading into a deep black hole opened up along the side.

“Is that a big ass cave or am I losing it?” Thunakr's mouth hung open as he stared at the strange sight.

“That is a big ass cave, but you are definitely losing it. How did you not spot it the first time we were here?” Her annoyed attitude carried on from before their short journey, clearly unsatisfied with he current company.

Thunkar whipped his head to her as she finished the sentence.

“What do you mean I am losing it? You didn’t see it either!” Their argument carried on as they blamed each other for missing the obvious cave, unaware of the truth.

-

Egosum clawed his way down the spire, dripping multiple hops at a time. The feeling of freefalling for a few seconds at a time gave him the chills but he quickly made it to safety on the ground.

He rubbed the clay floor for comfort before hopping deeper into the cave.

The cavernous hall led him deeper and deeper before the abrupt ending. Egosum hopped along the side before stumbling upon the only thing of real interest to him.

A pile of humanoid skeletons sat cuddling in the corner with no signs of flesh or blood around.

‘What a shitty way to go. No gnawing on the bones, so no animals got to them. Starved to death?’

He hopped over to the pile and nudged one of the legs with his spear only for it to scatter to the ground as it was disturbed for the first time since the previous owners of the bodies had left the world.

‘Huh. And I thought something cool was going to happen.’ The bones finally came to a rest as all of them stop rocking in place. He turned and went to hop on his way out of the cave, following the same wall the entire time when a light noise stole his attention away.

The knocking of the same bones he just left played at his ears. He froze in place as he slowly turned to the pile of calcium. His eyes came to life as he used his enhanced vision to watch the spectacle unfold before him.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Each bone began rolling in different directions, reforming the bodies that he had so rudely disturbed. His sight showed him the strange condition each of them was in as they rolled around.

Long fluorescent pink tendrils filled each bone and pulled at the ground to make its way back to its original position. The spectacle carried on for a bit until they were all sitting with their backs against the wall staring at the toad with obviously blank stares.

“Hey?” His response echoed through the area, bouncing off was after wall. The atmosphere was as strange as could be as he waited for some kind of response. Soon silence overtook the space as he watched and waited.

The skeleton suddenly turned their heads to look at each other in perfect unison like some strange hive mind.

“I think I am just gonna go.” Egosum began to turn when one of the larger skeletons held his hand out in a stopping gesture.

Unsure of what to do in response, he stopped in place and watched the bones try to articulate something.

Its hands danced in various motions with increasing intensity before finishing in a crescendo of grand and swooping articulations.

“Yeah, sorry. No idea.” His blunt reply sent the shoulders of all of the skeletons slumping down as he responded. “If that's all, I will be heading that way.” He flicked his head to the side before taking his first hop.

The sound of a dozen skeletal feet hitting the wet clay drew his attention back.

The six skeletons were standing up and staring at him. Egosum took one step forward with the skeletons mimicking the same thing.

“What are you doing?” He questioned them through his side eye as they watched his every move.

The largest of the skeletons made a hand gesture of what Egosum could only describe as him hopping and them following along.

“So you want to follow me out or something?” His question received an upheaval of motion from the small crowd as they all gave simultaneous thumbs up. “Cool. Just stay a little back okay?”

They nodded their skulls and waited for him to continue.

‘They don't even have ears, but they can understand common. It's more interesting than the shirt I guess.’

The group followed him through the winding tunnels pass, the stalagmite, and around the trap to get progressively closer to the exit.

They stared in awe at the dead bodies and bright lights of the moss like they had never seen such sights before.

The strange convoy traveled up and down the small cliffs on the way out with the boney boys using each other as scaffolding to traverse the gaps.

Egosum watched them work with morbid curiosity as he saw the pink worm things grip each other and lock them in place as they moved.

He shook his head to get out of the trance he found himself in watching them work and continued down the tunnel with them rapidly funneling in behind him.

A weird noise similar to a mixture of gagging and swallowing from ahead stole his attention away as he hurried to reach it.

He hopped around one of the cave's bends and saw the same green rat creature that he had freed from the stomach earlier in the day. Its head and front arms were sticking out of some other beast that appeared much too small to swallow it.

The darkness of the cave and overlapping auras dampened his sight from identifying the other beast. Egosum unsheathed the hook and hopped towards the struggle with his weapon at the ready.

“*gawk gawk gawk*” The loud choking noise from before filled the area as the unknown beast tried to swallow the beast deeper into its gullet. It reached up with its hands to push it inside.

The arms were small and webbed at the fingers with light green mottling.

‘Amphibians hands?!’

He walked around to get at the unknown assailant only to balk at the sight.

His dull friend, Coyotl, had his mouth open to nearly one hundred and eighty degrees with the rat doing its best to force its way out.

“Really? You cannot eat that thing. It is almost as big as you are. Spit it out! Do you hear me? I said spit it out.”

He hopped over to his friend and began to push the furred creature out while his friend kept trying to get it deeper and deeper to no avail. With no progress being made and both parties struggling like their life depended on it, the toad took his spear out and abruptly thrust it into the rat’s head.

It twitched for a few seconds before going limb and sending Coyotl into a frenzy to get it in him.

“Nononono. We aren’t doing this!” He pulled at Coyotl’s jaws and forced the soaked rat out despite the intense protests from the frog.

“Meep!” The loud retort made him flinch as his friend lunged for the rat once more, only to miss by a small margin and chomp into empty air.

Egosum forced Coyotl’s back down and pushed the dead creature out of sight for his friend to calm down.

After a few seconds of intense struggle, he finally calmed down enough to realize what was happening.

He lifted his hand off the frog's back and watched him sit up to his natural height and look at him in the eye. The dull look that was normally plastered on him was missing completely, replaced with wet crystal eyes and a quivering mouth.

“What?” Egosum fell from his crouched position as he was tackled from his hind legs and into the ground. “Woah, calm down now okay?”

He rubbed his friend's back as he grappled with him. The frog eventually calmed down enough to allow them both into normal sitting positions with a hand firmly on Egosum’s back.

“We have been apart longer than this before. You just need to relax. It’s not like you saw me die or anything.”

A sudden squelching noise drew both the toad's attention away and toward the small crowd of skeletons nearby.

He flinched as he saw what was happening. The dead rat was having its guts pulled out of its lower end like a never-ending rope before finally popping out and spilling the contents of its stomach on the clay.

The acid smell burned his nose with each second he stayed nearby.

The gruesome sight didn’t end there as the newly bloodied skeletons wrung its body out like a wet cloth and lodged it onto the largest of the bony boy's hands.

His mana sight showed everything in great detail as the pink worms that infested the bones transferred to the corpse and appeared to reanimate the flesh.

Its small green arms twitched sporadically and one eye blinked halfway when a quiet hiss escaped its lips.

The first sign of noise caused the crowd to nod their heads before they all turned to the pair of amphibians.

“Testing, testing, one, two, three. Six million parasites sitting in a tree, all of us eating. First comes inoculation, then comes growth, next comes reproduction, and last comes a new host. What a lovely tongue twister!”