Ribs, tibiae, a pelvic girdle, and even a funny bone went flying all over the room with a loud crash as the adventurer’s hammer smashed through Bob’s skeleton, only stopping once it connected with the stone floor.

“What the hell, Tom?!” said Balthazar in a hushed yelp.

The crab did not really know Bob, but to watch one of his friend’s friends be so suddenly and brutally struck down while hiding behind a wall in a dark dungeon felt a little too real for what was supposed to be just some fun act to fool new adventurers.

The other skeleton, however, seemed unfazed by the whole ordeal, simply watching on as the scene unfolded before his eyes. Or rather, his empty eye sockets. Maybe that was the issue.

“Did you not just see what I saw?!” the agitated crustacean said. “Are you going blind like Sal, or something? They just killed Bob right in front of us!”

Tom turned to him with a head movement that implied he would be rolling his eyes, if he had any. “Relax, Balthazar. Did you forget?”

“Forget what?!”

“You can’t really kill what’s already dead. I thought I explained it to you before. These guys come down here all the time, they smack us around a bit, send our bones flying, they feel really tough over it, and then move on. Once they’re gone we just go around, pick up the pieces, reset our traps, refill the loot chests, and put ourselves back together, ready to do it all again. It’s all par for the course.”

Balthazar stared at the other merchant, unblinking. “Oh…”

“There, look,” said Tom, pointing at Bob’s skull, lying on the floor near a stone column on the other side of the wall. “Do you see? He’s fine.”

The crab brought his eyestalks closer to the crack on the wall, and he saw the cranial bone on its side, facing their wall, and giving a quick wink before returning to his motionless pose.

“After this is all over, we’ll go out there, scoop him up, and put him back together in no time,” explained Tom. “Nothing that some bone wrenching and glue won’t fix. Now, if one of them was using arcane fire to burn our bones, or worse, used weapons enchanted with holy magic, then maybe we’d have something to worry about, but the low levels we get in here never have that kind of stuff yet.”

Balthazar stared out of the wall with a distant stare, scratching the side of his face with the tip of his pincer. Despite how long he had been dealing with his macabre friend, there were just some things that would still take some getting used to.

“Did you see that?!” shouted James, standing up from where he had struck Bob, hammer back in his grip. “I one-shot that skelly like a boss!”

“Yes, good for you, kid, very impressive,” said Reagan, sounding bored as he readjusted his vestments. “Shall we move on now?”

“Yes, please, I don’t want to stick around this room for long,” said Lisa, clutching the cryomancer’s satchel against her chest as she carefully avoided stepping on the bones scattered all around her feet.

“Sure, but not before I get that!” said the excited young man, pointing at a wooden chest sitting in a dark corner near the back of the room. “I found our first loot chest!”

Like a child seeing presents, or a crab seeing pie, the adventurer ran towards the chest with glee in his eyes.

“Don’t just ope—” started Reagan, but it was already too late.

As the adventurer reached the chest, he kneeled down in front of it, placing his hammer on the floor and quickly unlatching the lid as he grinned in anticipation.

A rapid unwinding sound came from the back of the chest as he threw the lid back and its hinges clicked. The smile vanished from his face as he gasped, realizing the mistake of his actions, but before the young man had time to move, a short volley of darts flew out of a hole in the wall in front of him, hitting him squarely in the forehead.

After a moment frozen in place, the boy fell backwards, landing on the floor, stiff like a statue.

“Oh, for god’s sake…” grumbled the spellcaster, pinching the space between his eyes in frustration.

“James!” yelled Lisa, running towards him.

She kneeled next to her adventuring partner, shaking his body as hard as she could, but with no response. His eyes were frozen in shock along with his expression, both of his hands still stretched out, in the same position as they were when releasing the latch of the chest.

“Do something!” the girl cried to the mage. “He’s paralyzed! I can’t move him, he's too stiff.”

Reagan approached casually, showing no sense of urgency or care.

“Yes, he’s as stiff as a corpse,” he said in a bored tone. “Because that’s what he is now.”

“What?!” exclaimed Lisa, her eyes bulging out at the man standing over them.

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“He’s dead, kid,” said the more seasoned adventurer, bending down to pick one of the projectiles stuck to the boy’s forehead. “Poisoned darts. Terribly weak, but a handful of them are still enough to dispatch lower levels like you two.”

“No… no, no, no, this can’t be,” muttered the desperate girl, her breathing quickening as she stared down at the dead adventurer.

“What? You two knew the risks,” said the unfazed cryomancer. “Did you think coming down into a dungeon full of traps and undead was some kind of walk in the park? That you could just stroll in, grab some valuable loot and leave without a care? This is what being an adventurer in this world is like, girl.”

Lisa looked up at the man with tears pooling in her eyes.

“You were supposed to protect us!” she shouted. “The only reason James came here, and I agreed to it, was because you assured us we’d be safe with you!”

“I told you not to stray too far away from me, before we came in,” said Reagan casually, while checking his fingernails. “It’s not my fault or responsibility if your friend was too stupid to heed my instructions and just runs off to trigger all the traps he stumbles upon.”

“You… you’re a bastard!” said the girl, tears running down her cheeks as she let go of her friend.

“No, darling, I’m just someone who’s been around long enough to know how to survive and thrive in this world, even if it’s at the expense of fools like you two.”

Lisa stood up, her breathing shaky as she wiped the tears from her face. “I need to get out of here.”

“Wisest decision you’ve probably made since we met,” the mage said, a smirk forming in the corner of his lips. “Unfortunately, with your friend gone, it falls on you to cover the rest of my payment.”

“What?! James is dead and you’re talking about money? We don’t have coin! All we had we spent hiring you and getting supplies for this. We were going to cover your payment with the loot we’d get from this place.”

Reagan’s smirk grew. “Sounds like you’ve got some looting to do, then.”

“You’re crazy!” said the panicking girl. “I’m getting out of here!”

She stepped forward, towards the doorway the three of them had entered the room from, but the mage stepped to the side, placing himself in front of her.

The girl froze on the spot, staring at him with wide eyes. She didn’t need to hear or see more beyond the cold glare in Reagan’s blue eyes to know he had no intention to let her go until he got his payment.

With a sudden turn, Lisa took off running the other way, heading through the doorway past the trapped chest and down a set of stairs, disappearing into a dark corridor.

Reagan laughed as the sound of her footsteps echoed away below. “Really smart. Just head deeper into the dungeon full of dangers. I hope you get plenty of loot by the time I get there.”

After quickly rummaging through the dead adventurer’s pockets for a coin purse, the cryomancer calmly followed the girl down the stairs.

“This guy is trouble,” Tom said, as he turned to Balthazar.

“Yes, he’s way too high level to be in this dungeon,” said Sal, still sitting in the merchant skeleton’s hands.

“He’s also a jerk,” added Balthazar with a frown.

“Seems like you’ve grown a soft spot for adventurers lately, crab,” the other merchant said.

“I got little love for the fools, and if their bad decisions get them in trouble that’s on them, but this guy is cruel and uses those weaker than him like playthings.”

Tom nodded.

“I get your point. It would be fair game if those kids just came in and got hurt trying to loot our stuff, but this mage is breaking all the rules of how we do things around here.”

“They’re heading down to Jim’s room next,” exclaimed Sal. “We need to warn him!”

“Right,” said Tom, looking down at the skull. “Balthazar, please take that door over there, it’s a shortcut to the next chamber, warn Jim to abort and get out of dodge while I go get the other guys so we can come up with a plan to get rid of this guy.”

“I can do that,” the crab said.

While Tom and Sal ran down a different dark tunnel, Balthazar skittered through a cramped corridor, filled with stacked boxes, buckets, a few brooms, and some bone piles he did not even want to know the origin of.

After a few twists and turns, the huffing merchant found another wall with a small barred window overseeing a room full of stone coffins, barely visible under the dim light of a small brazier at the center of the hall. Finding the spot on the wall that opened the secret passage to the other side, the crab quickly started looking around for the skeleton.

“Psst, Jim,” he whispered. “Are you here?”

“Balthazar?” a voice whispered back. “What are you doing out here?”

The skeleton stepped out of a dark corner, his rusty hatchet in hand again like when they had first met. And just like then, he was also completely unclothed again, the bright green shorts from before gone from his hip bones.

“I was lookin—Oh, what the hell!” said the crab, averting his eyestalks as he saw the skeleton’s lack of modesty. “You’re naked again!”

“Oh please, don’t get your bristles in a twist!” said Jim. “I ain’t got no dangly bits to be embarrassed by no more, and there’s just no way an adventurer will take a skeleton in lime swim shorts seriously.”

“The adventurers!” Balthazar said quickly, remembering what he was doing. “Jim, we need to get back behind the walls, Tom wants to regroup because—”

The sound of running footsteps came from behind the door on the other side of the room, and they both turned to look at it as the old wood started creaking, pushed by someone on the other side.

“Quick, hide!” whispered Jim, as he quickly ran behind a pillar.

“Are you kidding me?!” muttered the crab. “Look at me, I’m way too wide to hide behind a pillar!”

The adventurer girl ran into the room, closing the door behind her as she struggled to control her breathing.

Balthazar tried skittering his way behind one of the stone bases holding the coffins, but the clicking of his pointy legs against the stone floor in the dead silence of the crypt alerted the human, making her turn with a gasp.

They both froze, gazes locked on one another.

“Uhhh… Hi?” the crab said with an awkward smile.

Lisa let out a yelp before pressing her back against the door. “A skeleton that talks!”

“Alright, first of all, I have an exoskeleton, I’m not—”

Before Balthazar could finish his sentence or take more than two steps forward, the girl threw her baton at him, which flew over his eyestalks.

“Hey! Don’t do that! I’m trying to—oh no.”

As his eyes moved back from the baton behind him and back to the adventurer, he saw she had already drawn a hand crossbow, and was pointing it directly at him.

“Stay away from me!” Lisa yelled as she pulled the trigger.

With no time to react, Balthazar’s gaze crossed inwards as he watched the tip of the bolt hit him right between his eyestalks.