Aleph took the time to slightly move aside the cabinet, taking a tactical peek outside the door.

He immediately regretted it.

The door was slammed it back into place upon an unnaturally sturdy, bony hand.

"Skeletons! Fucking skeletons! In an irradiated barn!? AS THE MOON IS ON FIRE!?" He half shouted, half nervously laughed, pressing his back against the door. "WHO-" He began shouting until his skeletal assailant redoubled their efforts.

With time, he felt joints and sinew give way, its hand sharply snapping out of socket as he awkwardly slammed his full weight against the door. The wood cracked slightly, but held strong. The intruder then began repeatedly tackling the door, but they couldn't put much mass into it without meat on their bones. Small mercies.

Or, so he had thought. Quickly grabbing his bag and his spear, Aleph was about to make a run for the library when he felt something crawling up his leg. Looking down, his eyes went wide at the skeleton hand currently making it's way up his body. He reached to grab it with his free hand, but it simply hopped atop his arm and onto his shoulder, leaping onto his face before he could put up any resistance. It scratched it's decrepit, dusty fingers across his face and into his nose, jamming it's thumb into his throat. It lacked leverage where it was, but even so, it was possessed of the same vice grip and durability the skeleton had before, painfully digging into his mouth.

"GHmghmf!" When Aleph began struggling to breathe, he well and truly began to panic, madly prying away it as best he could. It was just as he felt his strength beginning to leave him that the hand's faltered entirely, falling off of him, its fingertips stained with his own blood. Blegh. That was... disgusting. Grabbing some makeshift scrap-gauze from his bag that he barely remembered making and stuffing it into his mouth, Aleph hastily made for the open doorway to the bathroom, panting with the effort.

When he heard the sound of wood being smashed behind him, Aleph didn't so much as look back, starting the precarious descent to the next floor. Tentatively stepping onto one bookcase, he slid down the back of an overturned bookshelf that leant on the previous, falling up against the one beside it. Pushing away at it with his legs, the second bookcase fell over and dominoed into at least two more tall shelves, leaving Aleph wincing at the noise. Sluggishly removing himself from the awkward position, he saw another skeleton step into the room, tattered rags and even clumps of desiccated flesh near the spine decorating their modest bones. They locked eyes for a moment, his nervous but unflinching, the skeletons devoid of any semblance of emotion, before it charged at him noiselessly.

Firmly grasping the metal pole- now without the Geiger counter on it- he batted the rod into their ribcage. He could feel the sound of bones cracking under the weight, but it wasn't anywhere near sufficient. It pulled at his weapon, and Aleph made the split second decision to kick it as hard as he could in the shin. It didn't break, but its leg gave way easily. He discovered it worked a little too well when he found himself falling along with the attacker. From then on, Aleph futilely grappled with the skeleton to get his weapon back, accumulating bruises as the two of them rolled to and fro across the floor. The skeleton had far more grip strength than he did, but Aleph had far more mass and tried to use that to his advantage. It didn't work. Well and truly tired at their undying grip, as well as the pain from the hand that had attacked him, Aleph had a new idea. One born more of a kind of spiteful rage than reasoning. "Fucking fine, then. If you want it so bad, I'll give it back!" He shouted, pushing more than smashing it into their skull. Tears reopened in his mouth. "AND BACK!" It's grip slackened. His mouth tasted like bitter iron. "AND BACK!" He snarled, smashing it into them again. "AND, BACK, YOU DAMN-!" By the third strike, it had completely let go of the weapon. He struck it a fifth time. Aleph was covered in blood.

Hands and face slick with blood, he began to gag at the rotting stench that suddenly overwhelmed his senses, "Why- Why am I-" He stopped at the pain he felt from just speaking. The gauze was somewhere in the pool of blood on the floor.

Aleph looked upon the corpse, and this skeleton had a brain left inside it's cranium. Well, until he... with how aggressive it was he didn't even consider the notion that it good intentions, even as it only ever tried to get ahold of his weapon.

Did I... no, that's not possible. The hand tried to choke me. But then, it could have gone for my eyes...

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Tired, afraid, cold, and filled with doubts, Aleph briefly forgot where he was. At least until he heard more sounds of frantic footsteps echoing loudly from the floors above. Blinking out the tears in his eyes, he pushed himself onto his feet, using the metal rod for support. Dimly, he wiped the blood off of it with some of the scrappy clothes he had stolen. He would aim for the bottom floor, get far away from this weird place. The stairs in the middle would work, but they could easily be swarming with whatever the hell those things were by now.

Could I distract them? I don't have half a fight left in me.

Stepping into the doorway, he saw dry, barely alive bushels of wheat scattered on the ground. It must have been doing something with them before it aggroed onto him. Briefly musing why, he turned back to the library behind him, and made a useful discovery; the floorboards were cracked and broken where the bookcase fell. He could make it work.

His arms felt like they were on fire by the time he pushed a third shelf down, but that was enough. He had to hold onto a nearby candle fixture to keep from stumbling as the floor caved in, collapsing into the next. He retracted his hand at touching a flame, however, almost causing him to fall regardless.

Ow, what... wait, it still works?

The fact that the these blue flames were the only working lights in the entire house wasn't something that went unnoticed, but there was simply not enough time for Aleph to let himself get distracted. Still, he made the rash decision to smother the flame and pocket the candle as he hurriedly made his way out of the room, he paused to try and remember where he needed to go, but soon made his way to a small nondescript room opposite the central staircase entrance.

Soon enough, footsteps rose up the stairwell, and the sound of bones came marching in. Headed towards the library, they trailed off after a few moments. Half a beat later, Aleph peered down the corridor. There was one left, but they weren't looking in his direction. So, he stepped past the corridor and made his way down the stairs.

The wood was in shambles, and he occasionally had to step past a gap in the, well, steps. There was actually a supporting frame, but there were always nails where the wooden steps had broken or gotten removed somehow. He had made the pleasant, if ill-timed, discovery that these shoes were steel-toed. Otherwise, would have punctured his foot the first time he had used these stairs.

The entire farmhouse was in a stir, and that included the bottom floor. The "farm" "animals" were acting strangely. Besides the inherit strangeness to being a moving pile of bones, the animals had seemingly all collectively decided to not leave the broken and unkept pens in which they were held. Not even the most rabid of them, like a kind of five armed ape that he had confused for several normal skeletons on his first passing. It climbed up and down its cage, clacking at him with bared fangs, but did not move from the confines of the broken cage.

At least, in theory. The monkey looked at the bar in his hand, and then to the hole in the cage, somehow visibly confused in spite of being a moving composite of floating bones.

Not going to be testing that.

He walked out the front door of the dilapidated building more tired and wounded than when he had initially entered.

If his mouth wasn't still raw and bloody from the abuse it just endured, he would have let out a remark of indignation. If this was what every building he comes across is going to be like, this was going to be a pain in the ass. There were too many unknowns, if the skeleton poss... What was I doing, again? Wasn't I running away?

A strange fog had briefly settled over his mind, and he only noticed that it was there at all because of it's sudden dissapearance. Aleph immediately turned to see if he had been followed.

What he did not expect was a figure in robes twice his height to be standing there.

"Ah, shit." He spouted, slowly stepping away. He was still covered in blood, which was definitely not a good look. Looking up to the figure he sought out a facial expression, maybe a gender, but there was nothing except an inky void beneath their cloak. Already, an undead legion surrounded them from as comfortable a distance as a skeleton army can be. Or, more accurately, just outside of his weapon's range. It seemed rather passive. Aleph proceeded to do hand signals, blink hard at them, shout, and even get so bold as to toss a stone in their direction. As short and inaccurate as the arc was, as soon as it left some invisible bubble around Aleph, a bony hand was thrown in it's direction to stop it's momentum. It was woefully innaccurate itself, but an attempt was made. This seemed to provoke a reaction from the figure, but only so long as it took for Mr. Darkness to raise an arm and somehow reattach the hand to the unlucky skeleton from a distance.

They then turned to him, and pointed at his bag. Pausing briefly, they spoke, and their words carried an echo that he felt in his bones.

"You do not belong here."

Aleph took in a sharp breath, "I- I'm sorry for... what I did that skeleton, I'll return what I took and- wait-?"

Silently, he felt himself rise into the air by his fists, blue streams of light appearing in the air around him. He began to form a pained shout, but before he knew it, Aleph was gone.