Sean’s voice trailed off as, all at once, a fresh layer of pure-white bone began wrapping itself around every inch of his now purely skeletal frame. The sight of it was like something out of a movie, and he marveled at the unnatural process his own body was undertaking.
Grime, dirt, and blood fell off of his body in small curtains. A smooth layer of fresh alabaster solidified itself over the existing bone in a matter of seconds, hardening to fill all the gaps as if by magic. Which, Sean supposed, it probably was. The sensation of it was strange, though. There was no pain, no tingling, no discernible change in feeling at all… only a barely noticeable impression that his body was steadily growing heavier.
‘Thick bones’, indeed. Sean thought with a grin, twisting around and inspecting the now-slightly-bulkier bones comprising his arms and legs. It was a visible change, but not overly so. Comparing his own thigh to the femur he held in his hand, Sean guessed he was now about a half-inch thicker where it counted, and a good deal cleaner.
Looks like I don’t have to worry about becoming a chonky boi just yet.
Tapping whatever type of bone it was that now made up his forearm, Sean noticed he didn’t actually feel any more durable than before. Not that he’d felt very durable to begin with. He rapped a slightly-thicker knuckle experimentally against the stone wall, hoping to dent the rock inward with his new power. To his disappointment, the action elicited no more sound than a dull thud.
So, tougher… but not necessarily any harder. Sean noted, wondering with building excitement whether he would eventually be able to punch rocks with his bare hands.
Even so, Sean almost gave the wall a right-hook attempt right then, but decided against it on the off-chance he broke his own hand doing so. If he did, that would be an absolutely idiotic injury to walk around with. Especially since that particular reminder would last until he could somehow find a healer willing to work on the undead.
New to this world though he might be, Sean doubted there were a bunch of those just running around. Pulling up his status and tabling his stonebreaker dreams for the moment, Sean confirmed the extra point of toughness had been added from the node.
That’ll have to be enough for now.
"Hey, can you punch through walls now?" Gel asked, unintentionally mirroring Sean’s own inner thoughts. "That would make it much easier for us to get out of here. We could bring his entire house crashing down on our way out!"
"Nah.” Sean responded, doing nothing to hide his own disappointment at the realization. “Can’t do any of that. Should be a bit tougher though."
Nodding to himself, Sean began heading down the hallway where he had found the rats earlier.
"Tougher than whatever delicious meal is around the corner?" Gel asked as they approached said corner. “Because that’s the real question here.”
“We’re about to find out.” Sean said, flexing his fingers and coming to a stop right before turning down the next passage.
It was strange to watch the bones move of what, without flesh, seemed like their own accord. Now that the gore of his earlier fights was gone, and he actually took the time to do it – Sean could see the four bones of each of his fingers. He could even see the three small bones that made up both of his thumbs. It was surreal to watch all of his constituent parts moving in concert. A bit disconcerting even, considering none of his bones were directly connected to one another. At least, not by any means he could see. He still felt a connection… though what exactly that connection entailed, he wasn’t entirely sure.
Questions for later. Sean thought, extending the now-thicker fingers of one hand to their fullest extent in order to form the basic shape of his 'Slash' ability. For now, at least these are damn good backup weapons.
Peering around the corner once more now that he was ‘armed’, Sean didn't see any more rats.
Neither, apparently, did Gel.
"Tougher than whatever delicious meal is around the next corner?" The slime amended, completely ignoring Sean’s hand-staring in favor of continuing their search for food – as if he could taunt the universe into sending another battle their way. “You should probably start running, maybe our food is running from us!”
"Just how many things are you expecting us to come across down here?” “Sean asked as they made their way down the corridor. “I thought this was a pit for discarded bodies, how many things could even live in all this green goop and rot? At least the rats being here make some sort of sense.”
He was basing that logic off the myriad stories connecting rats and plagues and extrapolating to corpses from there, so it was possible that Sean had no idea what he was talking about. But he still couldn’t think of any other kind of animal they might encounter down here.
“You’re half right.” Gel commented as they walked around the piled-up corpses the rats had been eating their way through earlier. “It’s a flesh pit. Necromancers use them to increase the ambient death mana in an area. Makes death abilities stronger. As for the rats… maybe they’re just hungry? Maybe he’s hungry? Do humans eat rats? I only ever saw Bancroft eat off of plates.”
“Not… usually. Not where I come from, at least.” Sean said, pausing right before the next corner again. “Wait, so you’re saying having all of… this--” He gestured back down the hall they’d come down, with piles of chewed bones strewn liberally around it. “-- nearby gives all death-aspected stuff in the area a boost? I don’t remember seeing one on my status. That’s where it would be, right?”
Curious to answer his own question, Sean brought his status up and checked his ability just to see if it was benefitting from anything. It wasn’t, which was a mild disappointment, but it wasn’t like he’d been expecting it.
I wonder if we should go back down there and see if sticking around empowers my attacks?
The slime in his chest quickly put the meltdown on those dreams.
“It would,” Gel said. “If the pit were large enough to work yet.”
“It’s not large enough!?”
“Nope. It also hasn’t been around for long enough to make a difference in the ambient mana. Bancroft only moved in fairly recently you see, which is actually fortunate for us since he won’t have any kind of buff reinforcing his magic when we break down his door and melt his smarmy little face off.”
Sean was about to ask just how big one of these ‘death pits’ needed to be to work properly – given the hundreds of corpses they’d already seen – when Gel beat him to the punch.
“Forget about all that though, what are we waiting for?” The slime rattled Sean’s rib cage around as if straining to urge him forward. “Come on! There could be food around that corner!”
The feeling of the slime’s body wrapped around his ribs tickled, making Sean's jaw bounce a bit as he chuckled. The sound that emanated outward wasn’t a laugh, more of a haunting clattering of bones bumping into one another as his jaw moved around. It echoed for only a short distance off the walls, but that was enough. In the eerie stillness that was the pit, it was the only noise to be heard.
Sean paused, waiting to see if the sound had drawn the attention of any more rats up ahead. He readied himself to strike if something approached… but after a tense moment, nothing appeared. Focusing his attention inward, Sean tried to make out anything that his pulse sense may have been trying to tell him while they were talking. Straining what felt like his non-existent ears, Sean found what he was looking for almost immediately.
A faint vibration in the air. One that felt like it was coming from somewhere off in the distance to to his right. After a moment, Sean realized there were actually two. Both so quiet that he could barely distinguish between them, and yet he was absolutely certain that there were two. Two beating hearts moving around somewhere within his sense’s range.
Now if only my ability could tell me what sort of creature those hearts belong to, this fight would be much easier to plan for. Sean thought.
Still, he would take what he could get. A built-in early warning system was still infinitely better than nothing, given how no matter what was over there, chances were they would still have to kill it in order to keep moving forward. They hadn’t found much in the way of ‘friendly’ down here in the death pit yet.
Go figure. Sean thought sarcastically. Death pits are usually such great places to make new friends.
“There’s at least two creatures up ahead.” Sean told Gel, getting his head back in the game. “If I can toss you onto one, can you take it out by yourself?”
“I will do my absolute best to consume it.” Gel responded back in his typical cheery tone. “Just don’t expect it to stick around for long once I start. Most things try to run away when I start eating them, can’t imagine why.”
Sean acceded the point with an inclination of his head, remembering the slime’s status as a parasite and decided he would have to examine that particular trait for more information, but Gel wasn’t finished.
“Not you though, you stood right there and took it. Like a champ.”
The recently flesh-free skeleton decided against justifying that with a response, choosing instead to drop the subject and finally peer around the corner to see what they were up against.
What he found was a series of grime-covered stone stairs leading at least twenty feet up. The ever-present ichor of this place dripped down along the left side of the staircase, which led up to a set of bent iron bars shoved into the wall in a way that indicated the setup might once have been a functioning door, but no longer. There were no rats in sight as Sean began heading up, but their heartbeats grew louder the more he moved forward, telling him their opponents weren’t far off.
As he ascended, his pulse sense began to respond with wild excitement. There were an abundance of tiny vibrations coming from the next room. Far more than just two. Sean redoubled his efforts at stealth Gel continued their silent, mental conversation.
“How was it being eaten, by the way? I’ve always wondered.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Like taking a really intense hot bath. The kind you walk out of with steam coming off you.” Sean answered distractedly as he tried to count the number of distinct vibrations he was hearing.
Two… no, three?... Maybe four?
Sean gave up the effort almost as soon as he began. It was like trying to count the number of strings on a violin by listening to it play from another room. Each sound was distinct, yet they all overlapped one another as if they were beating in harmonious concert – save for one of them. A louder, deeper heart whose every bump beat with a greater finality than any Sean had heard before.
That last one arrested his attention in a way that Sean couldn’t explain. Its tantalizing, rhythmic thumping enough of a distraction, moving about around as it was, that Sean almost didn’t realize the slime was still talking.
“Really?” Gel asked with intense interest. “Hmm… I rather like the idea of being my food’s ‘final cleanse’...”
As the slime continued to ponder his words, Sean finally ascended a stair high enough to see into the next room. Crouching down before his head poked over the top, he decided to scope out the place before going in. Just in case.
Looking past the bent gate, Sean could see a lumbering hulk of a man hunched over one of several tables laid out in orderly rows across the room. On each table were sprawled-out corpses draped unflatteringly over what looked like the remains of a previous occupant. The man deposited whatever it was he was carrying onto the corpse at the table before him, cooing over it like a dog’s owner might. He patted whatever-it-was while shaking his dumpy rear end as if dancing to his own tune, and then moved to another table out of view.
Giving Sean a first look at what the man had left behind.
Resting atop the corpse like a large cat might were a trio of bright-pink, foot-long worms bearing inch-long hooks instead of teeth on either side of the wide, circular opening that was their hungry mouths. Each of the larvae-like creatures heaved back before slamming their face into the corpse all at once. Their bodies began to undulate, though Sean couldn’t tell if they were trying to push their hook-teeth in deeper or trying to swallow their meal.
It took a few seconds for Sean to run the nightmarish image before him against the creatures back home that might fit what he was seeing.
Are those… maggots?! Why are they so big?! Sean wondered, trying to figure out why the creatures were enthusiastically chowing down on a corpse like it was a Thanksgiving spread.
Wait… wasn’t that guy just cooing at them? Who would– Sean’s mind froze for a second as his mind clicked an answer into place, and he was suddenly glad he had chosen to remain where he was. He stared, part fascinated and part horrified, at the scene before him, unable to deny the obvious truth.
Those things are his pets!
Less than a moment after Sean had the thought, the man came into view once more. This time carrying another wriggling bundle’s worth of the foot-long maggots in his arms like they were his own kin. He was clearly physically impaired, with some sort of large growth protruding from his right shoulder in a way that made it visible even past his long and thoroughly unkempt black hair. One brown eye – easily twice the size of the other – was shut tight as he brushed his face against one of the maggots, murmuring to it like it was a large cat.
The sight was almost comical. Sean might have laughed, if he had any idea what language the man was speaking. Harsh consonants that somehow flowed together with sounds like no letter or vowel Sean recognized tumbled out of the man’s mouth in a constant stream. Words Sean couldn’t even begin to guess the cadence of boomed across the cavern.
Despite all that, if there was one constant to human speech it was the tones people used to talk to their favorite pets. Whatever strange language the man was speaking, Sean was certain it was the baby-talk version.
“What’s he saying?” Sean asked Gel, just in case his guess that what they were listening to was this world’s version of “Who’s a good corpse-maggot-boy?” was comically incorrect. “Can you understand him?”
“Of course I can.” Gel said, somewhat offended. “I understand you, don’t I? Though, I suppose our ability to communicate is due entirely to our bond, so I shouldn’t be surprised nobody has taught you Peasant.”
“He’s speaking Peasant?” Sean asked, incredulous. “Is that seriously the name of it? How is that not offensive?”
“What’s he going to do about it? He’s a peasant. Nobody cares what he thinks.”
“Your world doesn’t have some kind of ‘Common’, or something?” Sean asked as the man he’d decided to call “Mumbles” walked over to another table. “Something everyone speaks?”
Mumbles leaned his body over the new table, depositing the gigantic larvae in his arms onto the corpse of a middle-aged woman with what looked like practiced care. They immediately began to feast, and Mumbles crowed happily in words Sean couldn’t recognize as they did. The misshapen man punctuated each of his words with a gentle pat on the ‘head’ of each maggot with all the approval of a proud parent watching his children dive into their favorite meal.
“I don’t know what ‘Common’ is, but as far as I know, the humans around here only speak one language. Bancroft excluded, that is. He supposedly knows more.”
“What are the other ones?” Sean asked with interest.
Their conversation was momentarily interrupted as the pair watched Mumbles pivot on one foot with far more grace than his deformity appeared to allow and skipped – literally, skipped – out of sight. The misshapen man snapped oversized fingers to a cheery tune the whole way, humming again in that strange language.
Even Gel took a moment to respond after that. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Nevermind.” Sean said, tabling the subject for later. “What was that guy saying?”
“Something about his ‘pretties’ eating like ‘princesses’, which doesn’t make any sense. What the heck are ‘pretties’, here? And how do I get some of what they’re having?”
“Pretty sure he means the maggots.” Sean said, as if it were obvious. “And I’m pretty sure you already have.”
“What? Maggots don’t have a system of royalty.” Gel swirled his eye up to stare at Sean, who was already looking back down at him. “Do they?”
“I sure hope not.” Sean admitted honestly.
“Uh-huh…” Gel uh-huh’d, clearly losing interest in the topic. “So what do you mean I ‘already have’? What are these maggots eating that I’m not getting a chance at?”
“You can’t see the corpses?”
Gel was silent for a moment. “I can’t see anything but stone down here. I’m down in your ribs, staring at stairs. What are you looking at? And more importantly, can we eat it?”
The sound of a small army of large maggots ripping into a half-dozen bodies of decaying flesh was all Sean could hear in the relative silence that followed. It was then that he finally realized – despite having literally been staring down at the slime a second ago – that the bizarre tableau before him had made him temporarily forget that the slime couldn’t see what he did.
Of course he can’t, he’s still in your stomach, genius. Sean chided himself.
“Sorry about that, here.”
Sean moved up the staircase a bit, showing Gel a room full of small dog-sized maggots happily gorging themselves on flesh all while gyrating back and forth in a way that looked eerily close to tail wagging.
From his new vantage point, Sean could now see more of the room. It was clear that Mumbles had left, probably through some door leading him upstairs judging by the sound of heavy feet slapping stone that had followed his departure. If Sean had to guess, the misshapen man was probably a caretaker of some sort, which meant he was probably in line with Bancroft given that this flesh pit belonged to the necromancer. Seeing as how Gel intended to kill Bancroft, it was thus equally likely that this strange man was also their enemy.
Even if Mumbles wasn’t potentially out to get them, Sean highly doubted any human – even one he found down here – would take kindly to a random skeleton just popping up from the flesh pit to say hello. Not that Sean could even say ‘hello’ right now, much less in the man’s own language, but the point was still valid.
“Hold on. Let’s just make sure he’s not coming right back.” Sean said cautiously, not quite ready to fight a necromancer’s servant amongst a small horde of flesh-eating maggots.
Even if he didn’t have flesh anymore, that still didn’t seem like a great plan.
“Hold on?” Gel echoed, indignantly. “If he hasn’t noticed your bright, shiny skull and haunting, crimson orbs by now, I doubt he’s going to notice me. I’m practically invisible! So, just… just put some of me on your head. Then I can see, and you can see, and nobody will notice us peering in on them. It’ll be fine.”
“Orbs?” Sean scooped some of the slime’s body up with one hand and deposited the mass atop his head. “What orbs? Are my eyes red?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Crimson orbs. Like two terrifying balls of hate burning inside the very face of death.”
The slime wiggled around a bit on his head before apparently creating a pair of eyes to see with. Sean only knew Gel had done so because of the suddenly outraged voice that echoed across mind as the slime surveyed the scene.
“Hey, they’re eating my food! Stop them!” Gel cried out with supreme indignation.
“The… maggots?” Sean asked, as one of them tore its way through the abdomen of an old man, showering the floor in gore. “Why would you care? We passed like two dozen corpses on the way here.”
“Not those worms--the crabs! In the corner!”
“Crabs?” Sean asked. Tearing his eyes away from the maggots, Sean looked beyond the gut-wrenching display on the tables for the first time.
At the far end of the room were a pair of crabs easily double the size of the maggots on the table. They had to be at least two feet tall and half again as wide. Sean wondered why his pulse sense hadn’t told him about them – only to realize that it had. With Mumbles’ loud heartbeat now gone, the smaller, pulsing hearts inside the pair of shelled monsters were now audible through the chorus of maggots.
I should really pay more attention to that. Sean thought, staring at the room’s other occupants.
Both oversized, green crustaceans were currently tearing apart a bloated maggot each with loud snaps of their large claws. Dark, viscous blood and some kind of black, chunky substance spewed out of the maggots’ interiors as they died – the vast majority of which was immediately shoveled straight into the crabs’ maws.
The scraping of hard claws against harder stone echoed throughout the room as the massive crabs tearing into their feast. Watching the scene, Sean was glad he no longer had a nose. The odor in this room must be truly foul by now. Given that it was also located above the ‘flesh pit’ probably didn’t help.
“You want the maggots?” Sean asked, though even as he said the words, he realized the idea made perfect sense.
Plenty of the ‘earthly-living’ folk back on Earth ate maggots, along with a whole host of other bugs. Crickets, locusts, even scorpions were considered delicacies depending on where you were from. They were a good source of protein, and Sean had even tried each of them on more than one occasion thanks to a few friends with ‘wilder’ tastes than his own.
“Of course I want them. Look at how big those things are, they’ve got to be practically bursting with flavor!” Gel’s excitement was almost palpable before the slime added with mild surprise. “Oh hey, that one actually did.”
The pair watched another of the corpse-maggots pop open in a crab’s claws like a gruesome pinata, and Sean found himself relieved he no longer had a stomach to turn. Despite his history of not turning down food, the thought of eating one of Mumbles’ ‘pretties’ was almost enough to make him shiver.
Yeah… Going to have to pass on that one. Sean thought.
Gel, of course, had no such reservations. The slime’s gleeful laughter reverberated around Sean’s mind as the crabs both began stuffing large, blood-soaked pieces of the recently burst maggot into their mouths one at a time.
“Ohohohh, yes. Okay. That looks amazing. You have GOT to get me one of those. Please? I promise I’ll share. The mana, that is. That’s the only part you want, right? ”
“Yes.” Sean confirmed immediately, just as a small shiver did pass through him – though this one worked to reduce his inner revulsion rather than represent it. “You can have the rest.”
“You are the best skeletal carriage a slime could ask for.”
“Call me that one more time, and I’ll pop you open like one of those maggots.”
“... Duly noted.”