After all that time waiting for Sir blobsworth to get those legs out for me, I forgot to put those two obvious parts on! They’re the icons of walking for Satan’s sake. I knew I’d forgotten something but this is just ridiculous.

I feel like such a numbskull.

During my breakdown of shame, I forget completely about the girl standing over me and curse myself on my knees.

Not like I had to drop to them or anything.

I let out an internal sigh and get up, becoming conscious of the human standing over me, carrying a bag and looking anxiously at me.

I point down my frame to draw her attention to the stubby extensions of bone reaching from my femurs.

Her eyes moved over my body, finally stopping to stare at my lack of feet.

…

She laughed at me! I’ve never been more offended (ignoring the fact I’ve never been offended before).

When I get feet I’m going to kick your butt!

I really need to complete my skeletal structure. Soon.

So using her body I climb to my stubs and steady myself with her balance.

She locks up momentarily, but after a bit of getting used to we hobble our way onwards. I pick up any and all bones I find while walking, checking where I can put them and attaching them if I have the connecting bone on already.

During a while of walking I have now got an extra finger on my hand, all I’m missing there now is the little finger. I also find a new radius to replace the broken one.

Heading further in our travels, I find that between us, we seem weak enough for other monsters to think we aren’t work the calories burnt, that could be useful.

***

The girl walked on, determined to help this skeleton when it didn’t have the feet to stand on its own.

She felt bad after she had barely stifled a laugh on discovering it had run in without feet. But she’d make it right by finding it the best set of feet it could ever have.

“And now that I think about it, where did your bat ear go?” she wondered as she looked at the flecks of dust on the broken skull.

She kept pushing on, despite being constantly short of breath from carrying the weight of her pack and balancing a skeleton, even if it had a lot of bones missing. She felt even more helpful when she kicked a piece of bone into its field of vision and picked it up.

It hadn’t taken long for her to notice it doing that.

But her thoughts on this were cut short when she heard the sound of a massive crowd of glugging and blubbing sounds in a large open space.

They rounded the corner and she had to put her hand over her mouth to stop from screaming or vomiting. Possibly both.

***

Flesh slime! You never told me you had an extended family!

As far as my eye can see, it’s a veritable ocean of creatures identical to sir blobsworth, slowly working away at a large mass of bodies.

My guess is that from the green tinge and mouldy clothes, it was a fight between zombies and slimes.

And the slimes won. Spectacularly.

Looking at all the exposed bone, I was positively ecstatic about the current situation. All the parts I could need to rebuild myself a few dozen times over just waiting to be repurposed.

I scan the room for any sign of those darned elusive feet. Searching the sea of red for patches of white that resembled digits.

I see it! A good candidate! Come to me my pretties!

*thump*

I leapt forward in excitement. But in my rush I lost my balance, falling flat on my skull.

And what happened to that girl? Wasn’t her purpose in life now to carry me? Well Satan damn I didn’t know it was this hard to come by good meat crutches. I look back briefly to see a pail faced form sinking to her knees and clutching her mouth. Honestly, the youth nowadays.

But anyway, back to the important things.

I did not know that from the point being a beggar I would get to choose from any of these samples.

I assemble myself in the crawling position and navigate through the few small gaps between the flesh slimes, towards my prize.

This is a really strange experience. All this red that I’m seeing, it’s calming. And yet at the same time I think it may be linked to the nagging feeling that compulsion is getting louder. Not much that can be helped about it I suppose.

I guess blood just kind of agrees with me.

And here we are! A preoccupied mind is really convenient. It makes even the boring journeys have some value of interest.

I greedily snatch at the two collections of bone at the end of the long bones protruding from a large mass of sinewy red.

Now I can leap behind the girl at a moment’s notice if there comes a big threat.

So now let see how these bad boys handle.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Whoa, a little unsteady, and very imbalanced. But nothing I can’t get used to.

Let’s start by trying to shuffle back to the girl through all the flesh slimes. Even if it’s a bad investment, it’s something that sped me up considerably compared to crawling, so I’ll keep it until I can outwalk it.

Now let’s get to work on getting used to these feet.

***

The girl had been immobilised the entire time the undead companion she’d gained.

The initial shock of seeing this many carnivorous slime had long since passed, but the stench of rotten flesh filled the cavernous room, and the sight of the rotting flesh disappearing in a fizzling mass of bubbles brought her stomach’s contents to her throat.

It was all she could handle to keep it down.

“Ugh…” *gulp* “ohh”

Her ill demeanour and sickened groans echoed through the entrance of the opening, the threat of attack forgotten.

While she was desperately trying to hold down the last thing she ate, the half-skeleton stood on its own and began stumbling erratically through the crowded group of blood red blobs.

It hobbled along in a parting of the red sea, in the awkward manner of a toddler.

When it finally reached the tunnel that the girl was in, she managed to look up, trying not to focus on the nauseating scene behind the standing skeleton.

She let out a loud gulp before casting her gaze downwards, searching for what was supporting her companion.

As she looked on its femurs the skeletons legs buckled. Shock force some of the sickness away, staring at the muddy green veins creeping up the skeletons shin bones.

The skeleton reached out for her bag, but was too far away to grab it.

It motioned her, miming the movements for drinking, then pointing towards her bag.

She tilted her head like a confused puppy.

What did he mean? How would having a drink help?

Drink… come on think…

Wait I got it! The potions!

She scrambled inside her bag, pulling out a blue potion. She fumbled with the cap of the vial and poured the contents over the green creepers seeping up the shins of the skeleton. To her horror she witnessed the green shoot up faster than before.

Her companion snatched the vial from her angrily and splashed the remaining liquid over the white bone on his legs that was as yet unaffected.

***

What the heaven was this flesh-bag thinking? I knew she didn’t look intelligent but honestly. WHO. FEEDS. AN INFECTION?

As it turns out zombies are indeed infectious. The infection probably would’ve taken me completely if I hadn’t put the potion over the right section of bone. I mean, the infection is still there but at least it’s retreated a little.

I flick the girls’ nose to discourage her from making the same mistake.

Now that’s not what I had expected. All I did was reprimand her with a firm nose flick, and now she seems to be jettisoning a large amount of fluid and half solid mush. Did these things have a spitting attack I was unaware of?

Using my rich sense- oh nothing to say now compulsion? Realising every time I let you decide that we ended up in more trouble? - I notice the acid green life energies growing duller, becoming a similar shade to the flesh of the zombies they were.

This is an alarming scene, clouds of green are spreading through the red slime and engulfing the sinews inside.

It makes sense since a walking collection of broken bones could be infected, but that isn’t stopping me rattling my bones. This could be a problem.

I turn back to the girl and get ready to try my hand at running again. But to make matters worse she’s still on the floor next to the puddle of whatever it is came out of her.

I shake her and point towards the zombifying flesh slimes. Her face goes from sickly pale to “I wonder if I could pass my hand through it?” in a very little window of time. She leaps up and dashes off, grasping my arm to pull me along.

But of course un-life wouldn’t be that simple. My arm detached at the shoulder and she ran off the way we came clutching a fractured skeletal arm.

Not being able to afford losing such an important piece of the puzzle that is my body, I have no choice but to follow as fast as I can. These feet feel really imbalanced.

Just barely keeping up with the human, that was not this fast before, I stumble and shamble my way along the tunnel, my empty shoulders swinging forward and back very slightly as I move.

I don’t know how long it will be until she runs out of energy, but my next problem is stopping when she does. I may have things to run on now but I haven’t had time to fiddle with how I change speeds.

…

So here I am, I don’t know how long later, and this thing has finally started staggering to a halt.

I attempted to imitate this to slow down myself, but ended up sliding skull first along the floor. I could really use a hand right about now.

Aaand my eye is coated in dirt again, well isn’t that just swell?

I wait to be helped up by the pinkish brown life energy of the girl, and after having some kind of clear liquid pour over my eye (do they bottle what she was leaking?), I gaze at the arm in her hand.

It takes her a while to follow my gaze but eventually she realises that my arm isn’t attached to my shoulder.

She holds the joints close together until it reattaches and I can use my three digits again.

This whole people thing might actually have some benefits, I would’ve been unarmed for a lot longer if not for this thing.

She leans back and her shoulders drop, I guess all that running tires fleshy things out.

She gave a quick check of my structure, and covered her hand to try and hide a laugh when she looked at my legs.

Oh for Satan sake.

***

I thought the balance was off, it could have been the softness of the green infected bone, it could have been different foot sizes.

But no, I have a green hand on the bottom of my right leg.

My guess is that the zombie I took my left foot from was curled up and its arm was close to its legs.

Without a second thought, I rummage around in the girls bag, much to her protest, and pull out another one of those bottles.

While the little human whimpers over whatever it is she protested against, I let droplets of the liquid fall onto my uninfected areas of shin bone. The green retreats from the hand attached to my leg, and after half a bottle the entire hand is entirely white.

Next is the swap, because seriously, who would use two fingers and a thumb when there’s a perfectly good hand right there acting as your foot?

Hum-dee-dum

Swappin’ and shufflin’

I should make a game out of this, I could call it scrabble

And now I have my first full hand, and after a bit of reorganising my original hand so that the fingers face forward and the thumb is backwards where my heel should be, I have a decent amount of balance.

(Authors note (AN) - think bird’s foot kind of shape)

And now that that’s sorted the rest goes over to my actual foot, which unfortunately still has green toes.

But now it’s time to get on the way, labyrinths don’t solve themselves.

Continuing we come across a few small creatures and a weak little rat or two trying to attack, but it didn’t take much to take care of them.

A highlighting moment would be right now, I happen to see a bit of a glint in the dirt covered floor. Maybe some currency? Maybe a magical item? Could it be a secret legendary spell?

A reach down and brush it off.

A dagger.

Well, that’s disappointing, but it’s something I guess. I slide the blade carefully in between a gap made by a missing rib.

Well, now that I have something to fight with, should I get rid of the thing in front of me?

On the upside I’d be able to begin my journey of making a crusade on the creatures more alive than me. But then how much can I handle? How much of my un-life is still around because of this human?

This might take some consideration. I’ll have to sleep on it.

If I needed sleep.

And if I could sleep.

Huh, well I guess I’ll just consider my options later. Right now I have to deal with this thing getting so close to me.

I move to the side, only to be followed. What is it girl? Do you want a treat?

Continuing this exercise in balance and avoiding her, I try take note of the surroundings, but nothing much is going in.

Suddenly I hit something elevated and fall forwards at a worrying speed, only to have the land softened by a meek little thing in a large cloak.

Well this thing really likes making me want to keep it.

How many times is it gonna jump in to save my metaphorical skin before I can’t toss it aside like I should be doing?

I use my arm to roll myself off of her, and feel a strange series of breaks in the pressure under me.

Sitting up I look behind me and I find myself staring at a set of block shapes cut into the stone tunnel, with chains hanging from old wooden posts either side.