Douglas saw only stars. A band of brightness snaked its way across the sky, surrounded by thousands of small lights that formed the firmament.
“Rise up!”
Douglas rose up. He stood, clods of dirt falling from his body as he righted himself in a jerky manner. He spotted other silhouettes in the grey darkness but paid them no heed. The only one that mattered was in front, nothing else was important. An old face, little more than a skull with crumbling skin stretched across deep sockets and protruding cheekbones, stared into Douglas’s eyes for a mere moment. This man needed to be obeyed. That’s all he knew. That was all that mattered.
“Follow.”
Another brief command. A small trickle of content rose up in Douglas’ heart. Walking. He knew what walking was. Faint images of a sunlit road bordered by dense hedges tried to take front and centre of his mind. Douglas refused the thoughts absentmindedly. He was too absorbed in the simple joy of setting one foot in front of the other to bother with something not in the here and now.
His eyes still trained upon the hunched human giving out the commands, Douglas managed to see his surroundings from the corner of his eye. He saw grasslands filled with flowers and a distant tree line painted in greys under the faint light of the stars. Up ahead was a cart with a skeletal horse in front. Black wood and rough nails kept the rickety construction together.
“In.”
Douglas wanted to smile as he obeyed. He followed the other fellows around him with stumbling steps. Trodding on the elevated wooden planks with shuffling steps, he moved into the corner while surrounded by hollow clacking sounds. All the others followed him in, with similar smiles on their faces. Looking forward, he could see the old man sitting down on the cart’s bench and snap rotten leather reigns. Off they went, the cart creaking ominously. Douglas managed to keep standing as the bleached horse started pulling the cart with surprising speed.
One fellow wasn’t as lucky, it didn’t manage to keep standing. The old guy heard the clattering, stood up, and turned around. His face twisted into fury while looking backwards. Green fire illuminated the trees on either side of the road. The ball of mesmerising energy flew from his hand and Douglas twisted his creaky neck in time to see the fallen comrade burn into cinders.
“Keep standing.”
Douglas immediately grabbed hold of the low wooden sides next to him, determined to succeed. The old guy stared him in the eyes when he looked forward once more. Douglas tried smiling again. Belatedly, Douglas realizes that none of the fellows around him had turned to look. Douglas smiled until the old guy stopped glaring at him and sat back down.
The following cart ride was bumpy but otherwise uneventful. The moon moved up over the horizon, illuminating the grey road and forest. The relatively bright light let Douglas see the barest hints of a brown and green. The road seemed little used, patches of fresh growth intruding here and there on the otherwise bare mud.
Another memory bothered Douglas. Something about the cart ride felt too smooth and the speed felt too high. Douglas didn’t bother with the odd thoughts, they have nothing to do with his mission to keep standing.
One side of the sky started showing traces of blue and orange by the time the old guy stopped the cart. Douglas followed him with his sight, watching as the man stepped off the cart and stretched his back making a loud series of popping sounds.
“The things… Alright, in you go!”
The old man pointed to a small stone building made from decaying moss-covered stones. Like his comrades, Douglas started moving towards it but found himself blocked. He couldn’t see a way to go inside the building! The path between him and the dark opening was hindered by a mass of bodies. He started pushing his way through while shoving his fellows out of the way. He fell face-first into the dirt when he failed to step over the cart’s side panel. Surrounded by a cacophony of metal clanking, he got up and made his way inside.
“Down the stairs. Go stand in the back.”
Once again pretty happy at doing as he was told, Douglas walked down the stairs. He didn’t trip a single time and found a large dark room at the end of the long stairwell. Walking ahead, he saw more unmoving and silent comrades standing there. He stopped walking when he collided with the dense pack of bodies, standing still as his way was blocked. Douglas heard his fellow newcomers shuffle inside the barely visible in the grey darkness. Then the last light vanished along with a loud slamming noise, reducing his environment to barely visible silhouettes.
So Douglas stood there, happy to be following orders. Occasionally he had this nagging feeling that something was wrong, but it had nothing to do with his mission. He had to stand in the back, and even though he was not totally in the back, he was as far back as possible. Now he just had to stand. So he mindlessly stood there with all his might.
The faint pangs of panicked confusion never really went away though. Douglas was not sure what to think about that. Occasionally his euphoria at following orders was interrupted by the weirdest thoughts. The darkness around him felt good though, the very air felt fresh and invigorating to his confused soul.
Sometime later, the darkness around him turned from nearly black to merely dark grey when Douglas heard muffled talking. Then he heard metal clanking and feet walking on stone. He wanted to turn around and look, but lacking any orders to do so, he didn’t. Pretty soon the sounds stopped and it was near dark again. This repeated a few times as Douglas stood there, happily whiling away the time. Each time the brightness and noise were interspersed with long periods of dark stillness.
“Out in orderly lines, all of you.”
Douglas was pretty happy at hearing that voice again. He will be happier if he can get out in orderly lines, though. Douglas decided that he needed to turn around to see how to get out, so like most of the figures he shared this dark space with he turned around. The area from his spot to the door was entirely filled with new colleagues. They started moving up the stairs with rhythmic steps, Douglas following the moment he could do so.
He saw many more figures standing around the moment he emerged from the dark door. The old guy was there, his arms crossed with an angry sneer on his wrinkled face. Douglas wasn’t really sure why, but he felt like he should go stand at a certain spot. Standing still, he noticed others stopping around him. Douglas now found himself at the back of a neat square formation. Sometime later he saw the last of his brethren emerge from the stone building.
The old man started walking and Douglas followed, marching along with the fellows around him in step. They walked for a rather long time, cutting through fields and forests while occasionally following the road. The stars had moved across half the sky when Douglas felt he needed to stop. A small village was in front of them. Douglas felt he should run, so he did. Some shapes emerged from the buildings ahead and a lot of noise and screaming followed. Douglas found himself in the frontmost square, walking across some squishy forms.
Some of the fellows ahead of him fell down and Douglas found himself on the front. A large thing with white and black markings on its side, was suddenly in front of him. He moved his hand forward, stabbing the thing with the sword he had all this time.
[ Cow lvl 1 slain; 1 xp earned (2 syphoned) ]
Another shape tumbled in front of Douglas and he stabbed again.
[ Farmer lvl 16 slain; 1 xp earned (24 syphoned) ]
And then Douglas stopped. The silence that followed was only broken by the shuffling of leather-shod feet. The old man walked by, his hands glowing with green power. The shape in front of Douglas jerked when the green glow flowed into the form, eyes previously shut opening and shining with a sickly green radiance. The new colleagues were used to make up for the fellows that had fallen, then they went running again.
More running later, they stopped again. A small tower was in front of him, surrounded by a grass clearing. They only waited long enough for the rest to form a circle around the tower before running again. Loud and bright flashes of lightning struck from the tower, followed by fireballs and shards of ice. Some blue flashes turned patches of manicured grass into slippery traps but Douglas knew what he must do and wasn’t about to get distracted.
Being one of the few remaining to reach the tower, he started bashing against the thing. Douglas diligently raised his sword and brought it down upon the stone building. Magical traps and spells turned his environment into a storm of death but Douglas kept chopping at the stone wall. A little while later his sword snapped, leaving him with only a rusted hilt. Douglas proceeded to smash the remaining scraps of armour against the barely damaged stone.
The rusted gauntlet on his left hand broke first. Douglas felt he should go towards the entrance before he managed to break his sole remaining shoulder plate. Walking across the charred remains of his brethren, he made his way to the entrance. Seeing the wooden door half splintered as his colleagues threw themselves against the barrier, Douglas went and waited for his turn behind the group. Runes flashed across the wood before flashing bright, disintegrated nearly all the colleagues blocking his way.
Some of the new figures that joined their group entered first, only for them to be destroyed one by one as Douglas followed them up the stairs. Entering the room at the top of the tower, Douglas saw another old man. This one was wearing a bright robe and a white staff instead of the dark stick and dirty rags the first old man had.
Douglas looked at the panting man with passive eyes, not having received any new order yet. Stumbling footsteps behind him told of the arrival of the first old man. Lightning flashed once more, only for it to be stopped by green fire.
“You will be hunted down, you wretched scu-”
“I will have my revenge!”
Douglas watched as the two old guys rushed each other, their magic forgotten in their blind hatred. The two fought a bit in a rather inept manner before the one with the long white beard pulled a shining rock from his robes.
“No! Get that stone!”
Douglas started moving, the broken hilt of his rusted sword still clutched tightly.
“Activate emergency tele-”
Douglas reached the new old guy just when his old guy managed to tackle him. The old men were once again rolling on the floor, Douglas and his colleagues jumping on both of them. Douglas managed to fumble the stone free, but not before the second old man said one last syllable.
“-port!”
And everything went white.
⁂
[ Name: Douglas ]
[ Race: Lesser skeleton ]
[ Level: 1 (2/100) ]
[ Class: None ]
[ HP: 19/23 ][ HP/h: 0.05 ]
[ MP: 20/20 ][MP/h: 3 ]
[ STR: 11 ]
[ AGI: 7 ]
[ CON: 3 ]
[ VIT: 1 ]
[ INT: 2 ]
[ WIS: 3 ]
[ Skeletal Constitution (Human) ]
[ Darkvision ]
[ Universal Language ]
[ Frozen -10 con, -10 vit ]
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
[ Controlled -8 int, -8 wis (16h) ]
[ Congratulations, UNKNOWN discovered; calculating rewards… ]
⁂
Douglas sees only stars. A band of brightness is painted across the sky, snaking its way behind the thousands of small lights that form the firmament. A gem-studded hand floats in front of his bony visage, globules of blood slowly freezing and trailing behind it. Pieces of bone, wood, stone tumble in front of Douglas’s empty sockets, scattering papers and boiling liquids floating off to the side. The two small flames residing inside the hollow spaces are the only indication that the unmoving skeleton is something more than merely bone.
Douglas feels pretty good, to be honest. He got that stone as good as he could. The last command he has been given is fulfilled the moment Douglas pulled the shining gem free and no new commands seemed to be coming. So Douglas doesn’t do anything.
His white bones turn slowly, showing the glowing sparks in his skull more stars. And then some more stars. Then he sees a particularly bright star. And then more stars.
Douglas doesn't know much, but he knows that there used to be a lot fewer stars just moments before. Content with watching the sparkling weave tumble by, the newborn undead floats through space. He doesn’t know or cares how long he floats there, silently content with the fact that he needn’t do anything.
Then things happen very fast.
[ Controlled; ended ]
The fog lifts, his mind clearing like he emerges from deep waters and wakes up at the same time. Only seconds before, he was in the blissful ignorance that comes right after sleep. Then all the problems and issues come crashing back down. Like taking a deep breath, his screaming lungs finally getting the air they need and clearing his oxygen-deprived head.
Then a storm of metal and spaceship fragments fly by. A small piece of metal smashes through his outstretched left hand, reducing the small bones to powder.
Confused at the sudden change in mental state, Douglas is unable to react as a large section of spaceship swallows him up. The remaining few bones of his left arm are separated by a floating fire extinguisher, his lower arm bones, radius and ulna, spinning away and splintering into fragments against a metal wall.
His pelvis is smashed by a fastened bench milliseconds later, his leg bones splintering into smithereens against a collection of secured tool benches. His sight flips as he makes half a somersault. He then flies into a small medical kit meant for setting bones, which turns three of his neck vertebrae into white sand. This causes his ribcage and remaining one-and-a-half arms to fly downward while his skull shoots upwards. Douglas manages to catch a glimpse of his ribcage turning into splinters as he bounces off a metal sheet, leaving a grinning imprint. He then crashes through a thin metal grate, metal shards tearing deep grooves in his tumbling cranium.
His skull lights up with a web of green lines originating from his forehead, illuminating a small room with many pillows floating around. A fragment of the crumpled grate manages to snag on his jaw and rips the bone free from his skull. The green light intensifies as he loses relative momentum with each pillow he collides with, finally hitting the unyielding metal wall while spinning rapidly.
Then Douglas sees a chaotic display of riotous colours and white snow as the pillows started bouncing around the cabin, one of them having torn and bleeding white fluff throughout the room. The green glow fades and so does Douglas’s consciousness.
“…ough the nano-molecular cleaning power of Spill-All, you will never need to clean anything ever again. Order now for only forty-nine ninety-nine credits. Please ask for terms and conditions.”
A jingle plays through the small cabin as a rectangular tablet lights up a piece of the painted wall. It slowly floats around, kept tethered to the wall by a cable stuck in a socket. No audio propagates through the cold hard vacuum present in the room, but Douglas hears what is being said anyway. His entire being spins slowly, allowing him sight of the flickering light that the tablet shines throughout the room.
“And welcome back to Planet News, the only reputable source of news. Brought to you by GalaxNet, the best and only legal way to keep in contact with your close friends and family light years away.”
Douglas can’t get angry. He has faint memories of being angry and knows that he should be fuming mad right now. It just isn’t happening. He has heard the same hour of news for at least a hundred times now. His slow and uncontrolled trajectory through the cluttered room guarantees that he only occasionally sees the moving images displayed on the tethered item, but it has been playing long enough so that he has seen the entire hour of video multiple times.
The female voice once again changes from the well practised and rehearsed spiel to a less controlled timbre. The slight hint of panic that is present in the voice is so perfect that even Douglas feels he should go do something. Douglas realised a couple of dozen broadcasts ago that he wasn’t hearing this through his ears. Even back when the old guy was giving orders, he barely heard anything. These words somehow arrive in his mind through something else than sound.
“The evacuation of Evengi’s moon is complete and the ships will return to evacuate Evengi’s citizens as soon as they have delivered our dignitaries and officials in uncontested space. The Histaff infection is being halted by our courageous military and they are making great progress. Code red is still in effect so please stay inside your homes and don’t go outside for now. Remember that it’s mandatory to recycle your waste and keep your home supply filled.”
Douglas almost wishes that he could return to his previous state, blissfully unaware and content with doing nothing. That is not the case, however, his new mental faculties allow him to fully experience each slow collision with the wall, the bed, the small washbasin or one of the many floating objects.
“The Empire’s spokesperson has promised aid, a full military fleet will be dispatched soon and will liberate us from this heinous threat. All citizens only need to hold out until then.”
The picture of a cat comes slowly into view as Douglas’s skull starts another long and slow journey to the other side of the cabin. He idly observes that the amount of cushioning filling in the air is lessening - he has seen many of the small fluff balls float away through the ragged opening - when he reads the words below the fluffy animal again.
‘You c-nyan do nya-it!’
The anger is once again glaringly absent. The malformed words beneath the cute critter make him want to rip the poster to pieces for reasons unknown, but Douglas is suffering from an unfortunate lack of limbs to do so with.
“In other news, the singer Arnita Golash has announced that she is having a carrier baby with the boyband Deep Space Fine. The latest developments in gene therapy by the company Splice have allowed her to conceive and remotely carry a baby with the genes of all seven singers.”
Douglas stops listening to the soft chatter. He had memorised the entire hour of broadcasting by heart at this point and feels like he is slowly going mad. His slow mind can no longer think of new ways to entertain himself. There was a faint impression of a blue screen filled with information that had been haunting his memories. Pondering this odd and unfamiliar concept, he had discovered a series of mental commands that allowed him to freely access the blue treasure trove of distracting information.
He now only needs to think and beg hard enough for a blue screen to pop into view. The actual screen doesn’t have any effect on the world around him, the dark room not lighting up in the slightest under the influence of the bright rectangles. Concentrating his newly unlocked mental might on his status once again, he can bring only the information he wants to the forefront. Mentally begging the system to give him a basic overview of his status, he sees four blue lines pop into view.
[ HP: 1/10 ][ HP/h: 0.0003 ]
[ MP: 100/100 ][ MP/h: 11 ]
[ Frozen; -10 con, -10 vit ]
[ Shattered; con max 1, vit max 1 ]
His forehead bumps into the ceiling of the room, his skull coming to a near standstill as it collides against one of the many floating pillows on the rebound. The narrow blue blocks don’t cast any light upon the pillow nor do they collide with it. Narrowing his mental focus upon the frozen panel, another line appears in front of the weightless skull
[ Frozen; you are currently NAN degrees, making your bones brittle. -10 con, -10 vit ]
He wonders what the ‘NAN’ means for the thousandth time. It isn’t likely he’s about to suddenly discover something new anytime soon - he had already spent many hours pondering this question - and gives it a mental command to close. Instead, he focuses upon the other effect.
[ Shattered; you are missing over 90% of your body mass, limiting health regeneration by 90% ]
Douglas will be back at full health in over a thousand days or just under four years. It had taken him literal hours to slowly do the needed mental math, losing track of his progress and having to start over many times.
Focussing his attention on the individual parts of his display screen allows him an odd feeling of certainty about their meaning. A foreign force keeps giving him subtle hints about the words he can somehow read until their meaning is ingrained in his mind.
‘HP’ means his health or physical body. ‘MP’ stands for his mana. He doesn’t yet know what mana is, but he is making eleven of the things an hour so he’s bound to find out soon, right?
Douglas is really tempted to search out the old guy again. Following his orders in blissful contentment will surely be better than having to spend years tumbling around weightless through a room with that poster on the wall. Or that woman chattering his non-existent ears off.
But Douglas has a plan. His mana had been three-quarters empty by the time he had managed to bring those blue screens back up again, a couple of hours after waking. He remembered seeing two blue lines when he walked and stabbed his way through that town and he recalls a flash of his screen showing full after taking the crystal. He had started testing ways to bring that information to the forefront again when he had heard the entire audio track twice.
An empty sort of irritation at the repeating sounds had set in by the time his mana was back at a hundred per cent. Then he had felt something wrong with his skull, an odd glow trickling from the middle of his forehead. He had seen the room light up with a faint green light. Back then, he had been going pretty fast still, his momentum not yet lost to the myriad of soft items tumbling through the room and he was able to see himself in a small mirror in the wall once every hour or so.
His forehead had been glowing. His eyes had also been glowing, two small flames rimmed by pitch black sockets. Another thing that had been glowing was his jawbone and something at the base of his skull. Both places had been empty except for the faint outlines made from green power.
Two hours later he felt something click into place. Half a broadcast had passed before he saw himself in the mirror again. A piece of his shattered jaw was back into place. Sluggishly, an idea had emerged in his mind. Trying to get a better feel for what was going on inside his skull, he had started paying attention to the flow. He felt two streams, one going to his jaw and one going to the back of his head.
Recalling how his colleagues looked, he then concluded that a working jawbone would be a lot more useful to him in this situation than a single piece of his spine. Two broadcasts, and thus two hours later, he succeeded in stopping the glow from going towards the back of his head. He had been trying to force the flow to stop, willing it all to go to his jaw. He only succeeded when he followed a single piece of the flow, guiding it from the moment it emerged from his forehead. Taking all the emerging power, he then had guided it to his jaw.
He knew he was completely successful when he felt his neck becoming smaller and a cloud of bone fragments started floating around him. Unable to do anything else, he patiently waited for his jaw to fill in. Now, many hours later, the realisation that might never happen starts to creep in. He has come to a complete and utter stop.
His violent entrance into this cabin had thrown things into chaos. Small knick-knacks, items of furniture and a lot of cushions had started a weightless dance through the small room. The bone fragments accompanying him inside had made a soothing form of rhythm, their unpredictable collisions fighting against the predictable repetition of the broadcast.
The only time he had some peace and quiet to himself was when he flew into a cushion, blocking his sight. The perfect darkness was accompanied by perfect silence, leading Douglas to the weird conclusion that he was currently hearing through his eye sockets.
“…drive is fifty per cent faster than our competitors. Take back your freedom, stop waiting for transfer windows and go boldly your own path. The new iShuttle X three thousand forty S is now available at selected retailers.”
Douglas knows the words by heart and unconsciously starts talking along, an odd instinctual habit from his forgotten past.
“No active connection found. Please connect to any available network. Reminder, it is illegal to be disconnected from the GalaxNet for more than twenty-four hours while using a free account. Your current fine is nine nine nine nine nine credits. Replaying buffered broadcast.”
Then there are a few more seconds of precious silence before the entire thing starts again.
“…ough the nano-molecular cleaning power of Spill-All, you will never need to clean anything ever again.”
Douglas freezes as his vision bobs up and down while the pillow in front of his starts drifting off. He was mouthing along with the words in a dazed state when his skull suddenly started moving. He was actually moving his jaw! Douglas spends the next ten minutes furiously clacking his teeth together in elation.
What follows is a lot of trial and error. He first directs the flow of power to his neck, hoping that the last few fragments of bone inside the small room will be enough for him to reform more bones.
The only way to move available to the skull is his jawbone. He thus starts frantically flapping his mouth as hard as he can when objects float near. This works, but he has little control over the direction he is being bounced towards. An hour later, he has the idea to start jerking his mouth open at strategic moments. He waits for a wall to be below his jaw and opens wide just before impact.
He spends the next few minutes bouncing around the room, smashing against everything while out of control. He then sees something that scares him. Shooting past the mirror, he sees his jawbone full of glowing cracks and missing splinters.
The idea of losing his single mode of moving actually manages to scare Douglas. He immediately moves the stream of power back to his jaw. Most of his momentum is bled off when he floats past the mirror again. The diminished amount of glowing cracks in his jawbones allays his dim anxiety.
He spent the following three broadcasts testing out how to move in an open space without gravity and with only a jawbone.
[ New skill generated; microgravity manoeuvring lvl 1 ]
Dismissing the small prompt, he continues practising without noticing a difference. He opens his jaw with just enough force to spin with a slow rotation, passing by the mirror. His jawbone looks nearly whole again, his teeth starting to regain their glossy sheen instead of the fractured bone they were before.
Douglas decides to try aiming for the opening he came in through next. His repairing jaw has picked up all the small bone fragments in the room and he is getting pretty sick and tired of hearing that same broadcast time and time again.
His mind made up, Douglas calculates the force needed to reach the ragged opening from his current position and shoves off the wall. It only takes him two hours to actually hit the spot he’s aiming for.