He was floating in an endless expanse of… nothing. It was peaceful. No concerns. No pressures.

Just... nothing.

Then something else came into being. A presence, introducing hated form on the blessed void. His very soul recoiled from that presence. It was wrong. Unnatural. Unwanted.

Chains of will stretched from it to wrap around him, hooking deep into his soul, yanking him from the stillness. He tried to resist, but the presence was too strong, its pull irresistible.

His mind span with vertigo as the surrounding space imploded into itself. Twisting. Warping. Reforming. It exploded out again into familiar shapes of trees and grass and sky.

Memories awakened in him, images flickering through his mind in an unending torrent. The rush making him want to scream, to tear at everything around him. Images of violence, of abuse, of unspeakable acts. Of fire, burning friend and foe alike. His own face, twisted like a demon, laughing.

The chains pulled him further, and now he could finally see his destination. A crumpled body, lying on a wooden platform. Beside the body stood a pale man, his arms raised, directing the chains.

The source of his pain.

In his fury he tried to strike out at the man, but the chains held him in an iron grip, inexorably drawing him down into that corpse.

Then he was inside.

His soul spread out to every corner, filling it to its brim, sinking deep into the familiar bones. The chains wrapped tighter around him, binding him in place, stopping him from escaping back into the blissful nothingness.

For a moment all went quiet, then a powerful thought slammed into his mind.

FROM NOW ON, YOU ARE TEL. NOW, STAND.

The compulsion was irresistible, and he felt himself moving to obey.

Jerkily, Tel rolled off the platform, falling to slam into the ground. Slowly, he stood, his body heavy, the useless flesh hanging off his bones restricting his movement. The compulsion faded once he was standing, and he could take in his surroundings. Nothing around him had any colour, everything just appearing in shades of grey.

In front of him stood a man as pale as everything else, thin, with lifeless hair atop a strangely familiar face. Suddenly, a new image flashed through Tel’s mind. That of the same face staring at him, over the shoulder of a skeleton as it leaped towards him. His death.

FREE YOURSELF.

A new compulsion blasted away his thoughts, replacing them with a new image. That of clean bone, free of the dead, useless flesh clinging to them. A pure form. He wanted that form.

He called to his magic, feeling it rush into him with greater ease than ever before. With a flash, Tel’s body exploded into flame. The man stumbled backwards, arm raised to shield his face.

More and more mana raced into him, the flames growing brighter. Slowly, the useless flesh began to melt, sloughing off him. Bit by bit, his bones were cleaned, bringing a joyous sense of lightness.

He was free.

FOLLOW ME.

Another compulsion filled him with glorious purpose once again. The pale man strode off, and he followed. Soon they were joined by another pure being of bone, and together the trio marched on in silence.

Tel reached out with his mind, trying to communicate with the other walking by his side. A blast of contempt was the response, enough to shake his soul and cause his body to stumble. He raised one arm, calling mana to summon his flames, only for them to wink out when a new compulsion slammed into place.

ENOUGH, JUST FOLLOW ME.

Together they walked along the path through the trees, before emerging onto a wide road. To one side stood a tall wooden wall, the other side opening onto rolling fields. The pale man led on, through fields of stubby crops surrounded by low hedges, before they arrived at a large barn. The great orb of the sun hung overhead, its colour lost in his monochrome vision. Just past midday, maybe.

The pale man pulled open the door, revealing the interior of the barn. A dozen cattle stood within, penned in by a flimsy fence and gate. The closest few spared them a glance, before turning their heads back to chew on the piles of straw stacked to the side.

HIDE WITHIN. WATCH FOR THE ATTACK OF A CHIMERA. WHEN IT APPEARS, SIGNAL EACH OTHER AND SLAY IT.

The pale man stepped to one side, ushering him within, before leading the other skeleton away. Ponderously, the barn door swung shut, plunging him into darkness. Then, he was alone. For the first time since his return, there wasn’t an active compulsion driving him to act.

For a while, he just stood there. Something about the whole situation seemed unreal, dreamlike. A missing detail that ruined the whole painting. It took him a while to realize what it was.

There was no smell.

A place such as this should have been assailing his nose with the stench of animals and their secretions, but instead there was nothing. In fact, the rest of his senses were similarly lesser than those of his memories. The world had lost its colour, and all the noises sounded like they were coming from a great distance. He knew that he should feel sad at this, but for some reason he felt nothing at the realization. Even his emotions were muted, his entire existence a pale shadow of the one that his flashes of memory hinted at.

The compulsion tugged gently at his mind, a simple urge instead of the forceful order of before. Looking around, he spotted a gap in the barn wall, high up against the roof. Striding over to the wall, he made another discovery.

His tiny finger bones were fantastic for climbing.

The floating digits, hovering in the place he thought his hand should be, were perfect for hooking into tiny cracks in the wall. His body felt light as a feather, and with ease he clambered up the wall to the gap. There he could peer out and take in the surrounding land. A perfect vantage point.

The compulsion temporarily satisfied, he settled down to wait.

—

The day slowly rolled on, turning to night. Then night back to day. Over and over again. During the day, he would hide himself away as people came to lead the cattle out to graze. He watched them work the fields, carefully cutting away hedges that strayed outside boundaries, repairing fences, and generally maintaining the land. At night, he carefully watched the surrounding woods, alert for any sign of a beast. Every other day, in the morning, the pale man would come. The pale man would always see him, no matter how well he hid, his piercing eyes flicking immediately to his hiding spot. The man would say nothing, simply stare for a few moments, then leave.

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Almost a week passed, each day just like the last, each night just as uneventful. He expected to grow bored, but never did, his mind as sharp and focused as the first day he was ordered to this task.

—

This night was just like the others, with thick clouds obscuring the sky, blotting out even the faint light from the stars. Tel could barely make out his surroundings, the familiar trees, fences, hedges, all mere grey shadows in the darkness. In the distance he could feel the other one, the other skeleton. It was out of sight, but its resonance called to him. It seemed still, expectant. Waiting, just like him.

Then something new.

His head snapped around, twisting his body from where he crouched atop the barn roof, focusing on something large moving through the trees. Muffled sounds of breaking wood drifted through the otherwise silent night as the shape forced its way through the undergrowth. Twin points of glowing light briefly flickered in the night before disappearing behind the trunk of another tree.

Eyes.

Tel waited, perfectly still, waiting to see what the thing would do next.

With the crack of splintering branches, it finally stepped out of the tree cover. The thing was massive. It may once have been a stag, but now it was engorged, swollen.

The thing stood as large as the tallest draft horse, almost twice the height of a man. Thick, matted fur covered its body, shifting and rippling in a way that spoke to barely concealed power beneath. From its head spiralled long antlers of sharp bone, twisting and curving in on themselves, sharp protrusion jutting out at odd angles. It opened its mouth, letting out a deep rumbling growl, revealing long rows of serrated teeth.

With the beast in the open, he could sense it better. The mana that hung thick in the air, pouring down from the moon that hung in the sky, the domain of Vistol, rushed into the creature. Fuelling it. Empowering it.

This must be the chimera the pale man ordered him to slay.

The beast took a step towards the barn. Then another. Slowly, it began to move faster. First with a gentle trot, the impact of its cloven hooves slamming into the ground sounding like the beat of some infernal drum. Then, speeding up to full sprint, chunks of earth scattering into the air as its feet tore the ground apart.

Tel raised a skeletal hand, fire bursting into life above his palm. Or it should have done, if he could get a hold on the mana. The chimera’s influence was too strong, the mana too chaotic, and his magic sputtered out.

Before he could try again, the beast hit the side of the barn at full tilt. An earthshaking crash shattered the silence of the night as the beast plowed straight through the flimsy wall and out of his sight. The entire building shuddered violently, dislodging Tel from his perch.

Tel fell, slamming into the roof of the barn. The cohesion between his bones weakened momentarily and he collapsed, his body tumbling from the roof to scatter over the ground.

It took him many long moments to reform his cohesion, forcing his bones from their scattered pile back into the shape of a man. Piece by piece, the bones rushed back towards one another.

With a thought, Tel reached out into the distance, calling to the other one. A curt acknowledgement came back. Another step in the compulsion satisfied, he focused inward once again, gripping hold of the rampaging mana. He was the master of the magic here, not some mindless animal. It would obey him. It WOULD obey him.

The spell binding Tel to his bones reacted to his desire, aiding and enhancing his magic, raising it to new heights. A portion of the mana flowing into the barn stopped, then reversed direction, flowing into him instead. The heady sensation of having such power at his fingertips exploded within him, greater than any he had ever experienced before. If he’d still had a face, he knew that his smile would have stretched from ear to ear.

Fire exploded into life around Tel’s body, outlining his bones with incandescent, flickering flames. He didn’t need the other skeleton. This beast was his to slay.

From within the barn, the panicked bellowing of the cattle mixed with a wet tearing sound. Walking to the ragged hole in the wall, Tel looked inside. The beast stood over a twitching body of a cow, its maw buried into a vast gash disembowelling the animal. The other cattle were pressed up against the far wall of the barn, their eyes wide in terror.

Raising his hands, Tel pulled the flame on his body down to a single point. A tiny orb of destruction, floating in the air before him, emitting a crackling roar. He took a moment to marvel at the magic. This was powerful. Far beyond anything he managed before when he was…

What was he? Who was he?

The memories slipped away as he grasped at them. No matter, he was sure this was beyond anything his past self could have managed. It was dangerous, deadly, and it was all his to command. Pointing it at the beast, Tel released his hold on the far side of the orb.

The moment his hold weakened, the flames within surged out. A ray, no more than a hand span wide, blasted forth. It slammed into the upper shoulder of the beast, cleaving straight through and out the other side, continuing on to slice a long gash through the wall of the barn.

Tel stumbled back, the intense recoil from the spell sending him reeling. The beast, however, did not give him any chance to recover. Letting out a furious braying cry, its glowing eyes focused on him, filled with nothing but hatred and intense hunger. With a roar, it span and charged towards him, head lowered.

It slammed into him, once again scattering his bones apart. His ribcage caught on one of the beast's antlers, his skull bounced off its back, his limbs span away across the ground.

The beast roared again, raising its body up onto its hind legs. He watched the towering beast kick its legs in the air, his vision spinning as his skull bounced along the ground. The beast slammed itself down onto his fallen pelvis, shattering the bone into fragments. No pain accompanied the destruction, merely a slight bump in the ambient drain of the magic keeping him whole. A futile gesture on its part.

However, he wouldn’t stand for such a treatment again. Those were his bones. His body! This… thing would not get away with destroying him. It would pay.

It would BURN.

With a thought, mana rushed into Tel again, before exploding out as fire from all his bones. The ribcage on its antlers, the pelvis beneath its hooves. All the scattered limbs. His skull right beneath his chest.

All of them ignited simultaneously.

The beast roared once again, this time tinged with pain. Shaking its head violently, it tried to dislodge the ribcage searing its skin. As it flailed, Tel pulled his bones back together, the scattered limbs rolling along the ground towards him.

The beast bucked, slamming desperately into everything around it, floor, walls, fences. Finally, it managed to free itself of the blazing bones, sending them flying. They arced through the air, called back to Tel, striving to make him whole once more.

The beast turned to him again, lips peeled back in a savage snarl. Thick blood ran from the gash in its shoulder, the cauterized wound torn open by its frantic flailing. Pawing at the ground, its eyes blazed brighter as it pulled even more mana into itself. Little by little, the wound on its shoulder began to knit itself back together.

Suddenly, a figure sprang out of the darkness. He’d almost forgotten he had called to the other, and now here it was. Stealing his moment.

The other dashed forward, a long blade raised before it. Its legs moved so fast they were a blur, but despite that almost entirely silent. Before the beast could react, the blade carved a long gash into its side.

Blood sprayed out onto the ground as the beast roared in pain. It charged forward, straight towards Tel, ignoring the other.

Stupid creature.

Roused from his reverie, Tel jumped to the side, falling into a clumsy roll. The beast snapped its head around and its charge shifted, instead dashing towards the other. Tel sprang back to his feet, raising an arm. He just couldn’t give up an opening like this, no matter how much he would have wanted to see the other get crushed beneath its hooves. A great gout of flame spewed out from his palm, engulfing the beast's exposed back.

The beast roared again and twisted, only to expose itself to the other's blade. A flash of steel glinted in the night, and another spray of blood covered the ground. The beast swung back again, only to find flames washing over it once more.

No matter where it turned, fire or blade would strike it from behind. Little by little, its movements slowed as its life drained away through a thousand small wounds. When it caught them with an antler, they would just collapse, only to reform as strong as ever. It had no chance, its dumb animal mind unable to realize that its only hope was to flee.

Finally, the beast collapsed, barely even able to lift its head. The other stepped in, ramming its blade through the beast's skull.

Then, it was truly over.

A wash of satisfaction flowed through him as he completed the compulsion, filling him with euphoria. The was no drive, no pressing need to complete something. He felt empty, yet peaceful.

For the first time since his return, Tel didn’t miss the nothingness.