The bones moved back into place… If the skeletons rose again…

Zoe was the strongest in the party, but she would tire. She would fall. Cassy was already down. Joel and Bella were only level one. How long before their bodies lay under headstones? How long until they all joined those who failed to reach the gate?

Fragments of bone crawled like ants and clicked into place. The sound like glass splintering. It should have been easy to win. With advanced strength, advanced instincts, and a myriad of weapons scattered about, the skeletons should be easy to pick off.

Over a dozen skeletons lay broken, but dozens more climbed down from distant crucifixes. They marched toward the living and blocked off access to the gate. They couldn’t make it unscathed. Especially while carrying Cassy.

And try as she might, Zoe wasn’t ready to be the person who left an unconscious girl to fend for herself. Sweat dripped down her back. Cold with fear despite the heat of the false sun.

She refused to run. This encounter had to give something. Her quest dripped like a leaky ceiling. She needed to level up, and running from these skeletons wouldn’t help.

None of the shattered skulls provided an inkling of energy, but now she knew why. They weren’t dead. Should she hit them harder? Burn up more Skein?

Rue said nobody entered dungeons below level 10. Was this why? Was it because her attributes simply lacked?

Three skeletons neared from different directions. She charged one before they could gang up on her. It thrust a halberd rusted to bluntness. Her arm caught the blow.

[Skein 18/58]

She grabbed the pole and swung herself into a high kick. The mirrored skull flew into the distance. She pulled the halberd free of the skeleton’s loosened grip and used the heavy pole to scatter its bones.

Already her Skein sat below half. She parried an overhead chop with the rusted halberd. Even with her superhuman strength, without Skein boosting her Might the blow made her stumbled back. She gained distance and swung a retaliatory blow. The skeleton parried and stepped closer.

Zoe eyed the open gate. Dark waited between the open doors. Was that safety? Greater danger? Zoe threw the pole as the skeleton drew close. It raised the blade to parry. She dashed forward.

[Skein 15/58]

Her fist shattered a mirrored sternum. Too close to swing, the skeleton brained her with the pommel.

[Skein 10/58]

The blow bounced off her head. Ringing like a bell. She clapped her hands around the reflective skull. It crushed like an egg.

Behind her, Joel and Bella bashed a skeleton into the ground. They both breathed heavily, wilting under the exertion. Blood dripped from Joel’s face like a mask.

Zoe grimaced. Her Skein control kept increasing, but she still burned through it too fast. The gate beckoned. Should they make a run for it?

“Boss!”

Anton waved, grinning as he pointed to a statue. A proud angel carved from pink marble standing atop a column. Zoe frowned as her eyes itched at the sight. What was that? Veins of mirror spread from the carved smile to the outstretched wings. Each feather reflected the sun.

The same light bounced off the skeletons advancing from the distance.

“What is it?” she called to Anton.

“I found it!”

“What?”

“The puppeteer controlling the skeletons!”

At her feet, a femur slotted into a pelvis with a snicker of green fire. She picked up the joined bones and threw them into the distance.

“What’s going on?” Joel asked her.

“Don’t let them reconnect,” she waved Bella over. “Go help Anton. We’ll protect Cassy.”

Bella nodded and hurried toward the waving man.

Zoe picked up the club that bashed Cassy. Spikes sticky with blood, but still the most intact weapon around her. She felt the metal like a tingling extremity. An after-effect of incorporating Metal?

The scrap on the ground called to her like a magnet calls a compass. She could incorporate it now. That’s why she tasked Cassy and Joel with collecting weapons earlier. The boost to her abilities, to her Skein, might shift the balance of the fight.

But as slow as the skeletons were, she knew she wouldn’t have time. She didn’t want to be on her knees puking sludge as an axe whistled toward her neck.

Patience. She needed to trust her allies. Until then, she raised her club as the skeletons marched closer. The grim face of inevitability. Zoe no longer saw their laconic motion as easy pickings. It was the apathy of a pit trap, of a trash compactor, of an endless desert wind. A cruel force certain to grind them down.

Hopefully, Anton and Bella found a solution.

And soon.

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

###

Bella swung her stolen sword into the soil. The iron blade broke grass roots and loose rocks. Beside her, Anton dug with his hands. Strengthened fingernails scooped out clods of earth. A cloud of orange dust drifted over both of them.

“Can’t you feel it?” he said with childish enthusiasm. “Feel it panicking?”

Bella ignored him and stabbed the ground.

A sword is not a shovel, but she refused to toss aside the rune-inscribed blade. Bella stabbed and pried up clods.

“They’re coming,” Anton said.

Green fiery eyes fell toward their digging. She couldn’t feel the threads Anton mentioned, but the extra attention from the marching dead confirmed his theory. Something lay under this soil. Something the skeletons wanted to protect.

With frenzied blows, she hacked at the soil. Deeper. Shoulders burning with exertion. She thrust and her sword pierced something squishy. Thick blue blood coated the tip and dripped onto hewn soil like dollops of blueberry cream.

Anton cheered.

“We found it!”

He swept away a layer of azure mud. Something pulsed. A wrinkled mass of pink flesh.

An invisible string brushed across Bella’s face. It recoiled, and she tasted fear. Anger. The skeletons screeched. Their first sound besides the clacking of their mirrored bones. Six undead warriors charged toward her with rusted weapons raised.

Anton dusted off his pants.

“Give me your sword.”

“What?”

He reached out his hand.

“We can’t gain levels fighting those skeletons. They aren’t even real. This is the puppeteer, let me kill it and the skeletons will stop.”

“You just want to kill it and get all the levels for yourself.”

He shrugged.

“How about we hold the blade together? Share the experience and we both level up. Sounds fair to me.”

The skeletons were close enough now Bella’s reflection warbled on their bones. Did she look afraid? Resolute?

What was the best thing she could do for the party? If she thrust into the creature below her, then it might die, but at what cost? If they didn’t all grow stronger, would more of them end up like Cassy?

She turned away from Anton and straightened the grip on her sword.

“We level up as a group.”

Anton stared at her. His curious eyes dead and flat. His fingers twitched. Would he try to take the sword from her? She angled toward him, bringing the blade into a defensive position, but he already stood in front of her. Face to face. Stale breath and boring gaze. His grip tightened around her wrists.

“Don’t forget,” he said. “I’m faster than you. I see more than you. Call over the others, but I’m only doing this because I want to get out here alive.”

He stepped back and skipped away a dozen feet to kick out a skeleton’s knee. The creature folded to the ground. Bella’s hand trembled as the other skeletons turned on Anton. Their weapons raised.

He glared at her as he weaved between blows.

“Hurry!”

She watched him. Her sword weighed heavy, so how could he move so fast? So freely? She still smelled his breath.

Below her, the puppeteer pulsed in the ground. What was the best thing to do? She couldn’t be sure. Could never be sure. So she turned to where Zoe and Joel crouched over Cassy.

“We found the boss,” she called. “Let’s kill it together!”

###

Bella’s shout filled Zoe with anticipation for that cold rush of death spawned energy. The only problem was the thirteen skeletons standing between the split party.

Seven marched toward the angel statue and the boss they dug up. The other six continued toward Zoe, Joel, and the unconscious Cassy. Could Zoe make it past the skeletons? Could she do it carrying Cassy? She glanced down. Cassy’s impromptu bandages dripped blood.

Selfishness warred with the desire to help, to heal. She shouldn’t move her, but this wasn’t a hospital. This was a life-or-death situation, and it wasn’t just her patient's life on the line.

She needed to protect everyone.

The back of her neck prickled. She looked up, and met Joel’s gaze.

“Go,” she said. “Run wide around the skeletons and reach the others. Kill that thing, it’s the only way to keep Cassy safe.”

Joel’s eyes widened at her words, but he nodded. He leaned down to kiss Cassy’s hand.

“We were going to get married in Queensland. It was all —”

“Go. Now. You can both tell me your story later.”

He ran.

A wide circle past the skeletons. One lurched after him, but the rest continued toward Zoe and Cassy. It seemed they wanted to finish the job they started.

Or maybe they knew Zoe was the greatest threat. She grinned as anger curled up inside her. Anger at the stacked odds that sent her into this place. Anger at the decisions that lead to Cassy’s coma. She would make the skeletons pay.

No need to wait for them to reach her. She gripped the mace and charged. The distance between them evaporated. She swung toward the nearest skull.

Before her blow connected, a brilliant green light flashed. She leaped back. Black circles burned in her vision. She backed away, swinging blind, hitting air.

Her body tensed for the inevitable blows. She swung again as her vision slowly cleared.

The mirrored skeletons lay loose and scattered on the ground like a disassembled art project. Zoe wiped away tears as the burning circles faded from her sight. Was it over?

A shout cut through the momentary calm. She whipped around and saw Bella sailing through the air. The Australian woman thumped into a tall headstone and sagged to the ground. Her sword still in her grip, but she moved weakly. Head lolling, stunned.

What did that?

The answer grew before her eyes.

Myriad bones snaked over each and snapped into place. An ungodly construction. Serpentine, multi-headed, long arms flailing about with wounded rage. A blunt fist with snapping skulls for fingers punched forward. Anton tackled Joel to the ground. The fist smashed into the angel statue. Pink marble shattered. A cloud of rosy dust obscured the skeleton, but it grew higher. Taller than a house. An asymmetrical monstrosity of bone.

“No,” Zoe whispered.

The bones in front of her rattled, before shooting off across the grass toward the monstrosity. She leaped, trying to stop some, but hit the ground empty-handed. The last bones snapped into place.

Skulls collected at the head like a bunch of grapes. Fire lit up in a green crown from each burning eye socket. A jaw of a dozen jaws. The monstrous head surveyed the graveyard.

Oozing under the bones, squeezing between the cracks and joins in the head, a pulsing pink mass. Blue blood dripped and where it landed green flame sparked. Six arms outstretched with snapping claws. The jaws rattled. A clattering sound like perverse laughter. Two dozen burning eyes fixed on Zoe.

It stepped toward her. The raw tonnage shook dust from the earth. Another step.

Drawing closer.

Faster. Charging. Arms wide as the horizon.

Zoe readied her mace. The weapon now felt worthless in her hands, but it was all she had as she faced the monstrosity of doom and bones bearing down upon her.