I ran back towards the narrow sliver of light, trying to remember where the hole in the portcullis was. My memory was inexact, and the rusty metal carved bloody furrows deep into my flesh as I forcibly wriggled myself through the opening. I fleetingly wondered if I was current on my tetanus vaccination. Then, I was through the hole and charging towards the sunlight. I don't know why I thought I would be safer or more capable of fighting in a boxed in canyon, but when the creepy crawlies of the night come calling, I think it is a basic human instinct to try to banish them with the light of day. Yeah, that’s my story and I am sticking with it.

I stumbled back out into the light of the canyon and continued a few feet farther forward until I got my momentum under control. Then, I spun towards the entrance, my eyes casting back and forth over the floor of the canyon looking for something to defend myself with.

I didn’t think my rapier would be particularly effective against animate bone. It was designed to wound soft tissue, not to pulverize the hard stuff underneath. The staff I had taken from Levan certainly would have fit the bill, and I had been using it as a walking stick as I fled Sleetfield, but I had left if propped up against the side of the canyon when I had my last gunfight and had neglected to grab it when I made my escape. All I could see around me were some fist-sized rocks. They would have to do.

I waited, and then I waited a little more, but no skeletons wandered out into the canyon to kill me. I was confused at first, seeing how intent they had been to do so earlier. Maybe they couldn’t abide the touch of the sun? No, wait, that’s vampires isn’t it? Anyway, I soon lost patience and started creeping back towards the entrance in the side of the cliff.

Peeking it, I realized that sunlight wasn’t keeping the skeletons back, but the rusted remains of the portcullis were, at least for the moment. Arms in front of them, the skeletons were pushing against the bars trying to force their way through. From time to time, I could hear ominous cracks and pops as the deteriorated metal gave way, but neither of them had made a big enough hole to pass through yet. They demonstrated a surprising amount of strength, given that the human skeleton only weighs about fifteen percent of the average person’s weight, but my experience with the severed hands had proven that things like leverage and mass and physics in general seemed more like suggestions in this reality instead of rules. And that’s why they call it magic, I guess.

Right now, I had them at a disadvantage. I was free to move, to attack them without fear of reprisal unless I got too close. Quickly, I formed a plan. Dropping the rocks I was carrying at my feet, I ran back into the canyon to grab more. Lots more. After several trips, I had amassed a sizable collection of stones. The skeletons had not been idle either, however, as one of them had made a big enough hole to push most of his upper body through.

Where I grew up, summers were baseball season. I see a whole lot more kids playing soccer now, but back in my day baseball was still king. I wasn’t very good at it. I usually got stuck in the outfield, usually right field. I was a contact hitter and the contact that I made was usually pretty weak. I wasn’t particularly fast in the field or around the bases, and from time to time I would misjudge a fly and looked like I was playing on skates. I did have one noteworthy tool, though, and that was my arm. I had a strong and accurate arm for an outfielder, able to make good throws to the bases or cutoff man. Even though I hadn’t played baseball for a long time, today it was time to put that tool to use, even though it hadn’t worked well when I was trying to use it to hunt small woodland creatures.

One real problem I had was the lack of uniformity in the rocks that I had chosen. Some were bigger and weighed more than others. None of them were shaped with aerodynamics in mind. But perfect is the enemy of good, or at least good enough. Stepping forward into my throw, I sent a heavy rock skimming towards the skeleton that had almost broken through, only to see it crunch against one of the bars to the skeleton’s side, spinning it off course. Undeterred, I transferred the rock I had in my right hand to my left and tried again.

I missed more than I hit, and the hits that I did land did not have the spectacular results I envisioned in my mind’s eye. Slowly, though, I began to whittle the skeleton down. First, it was knocking loose a chip of bone here and there, but eventually I found my rhythm and was hitting more than I missed. As damage amassed, my target grew more frantic to bust through the portcullis to reach me, ceaselessly trying to wriggle and push its way through the hole. Even as my arm started to tire, becoming leaden and aching in a way it never had when I was a kid, I kept up my rate of fire as if my life depended on it, because it did. Finally, I managed to land a shot directly to the skeleton’s skull. The green fire emanating from its eyes flickered for a moment, then steadied as it renewed its assault. I did not stand idle either. Bend. Scoop up more rocks. Fire them as hard as I could. Bend again. Repeat the process.

I was starting to panic a little as my pile of missiles, one that seemed so plentiful at first, was rapidly depleting. Eventually, though, I got lucky again. Driving forward, I knew it was a good throw the moment the rock left my fingertips. The ergonomics of my motion just felt right as if there was an invisible string between my hand and the skeleton’s skull. Once again, the rock flew true, skimming along that line to smash into the thing’s noseless face, pulverizing the front of the skull. This time, when the green fire faded it did not return and the creature collapsed into a heap, the skull rolling back away from its body.

I exulted for a moment in my sweet victory, and then it dawned on me that there was still one opponent remaining. It had not stood idle while I was dealing with its companion, creating quite a hole in the portcullis five or six feet to the right of where my first victim had fallen.

Looking down at my ammunition, I could see that I only had a handful of rocks remaining. I stood still for a moment, wincing as I rubbed my fatigued arm. I didn’t think I had enough time left to go out and gather more rocks, and even if I did, I wasn’t certain I had the strength remaining to repeat my last performance. My arm would fall off. If this were baseball, the manager would come out of the dugout and bring in a relief pitcher, but unfortunately I had nobody warming in the bullpen. I needed a new plan because being torn apart by one skeleton would leave me just as dead as being ripped apart by two.

Springing over towards where the first skeleton had fallen, I scrambled around on the ground and grabbed the remains of of one the bars from the portcullis. Seeing me move closer, the other skeleton did not stand idle. Instead it withdrew from the hole it had made and moved in my direction. When it reached me, I reared back and swung the bar overhand, as if I were chopping wood. I was amazed at how light the bar felt, thinking that my strength had clearly improved since I made it to this world.

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With a well-developed sense of self preservation, the skeleton lifted its right arm overhead to block the blow. Metal met bone with a solid crack. The bar I was holding sheared off a few inches from where I gripped it, tumbling to the ground on the other side of the portcullis. The blocking arm was not unscathed, though, as the monster’s radius and ulna sheared through, sending its right hand weakly clattering to the ground.

I was overbalanced by the swing, and went stumbling forward. It recovered before I did, reaching out with its other hand and grasping my right shoulder. Pulling me towards it, I smashed into the remains of the portcullis, inadvertently helping widen the hole as several more bars splintered.

Gathering my feet under me, I stood up and threw myself backward with the strength of my legs. The concept of leverage was mutable in this world, but not abandoned altogether, as I overpowered the skeleton causing it to smash face first into the remaining bars, loosening them more. The bars weren’t the only thing that loosened, however, as my shoulder seared in pain as it was pulled free from the skeleton’s grip.

Backpedaling, I took off towards the skeleton’s original position. Like a trained dog, it followed me, mirroring my movement on the other side of the portcullis. And just like that, instead of playing baseball we were playing tennis.

When I moved right, the skeleton moved right. When I stopped, it powered forward towards me. I dropped the stubby remains of the bar from my hand and swept around on the ground trying to find a replacement, but couldn’t find anything that I thought would do the job. The bars were all too long, too short or too dilapidated to be of any use to me. Finally, I realized what I had to do.

First, I moved as far away from the downed skeleton’s position as I could. Then, a few feet from the bars, I stood stock still. The remaining skeleton immediately pushed into the bars trying to force its way to me. I stood there, gathering my energy, while it crunched its way through this previously undisturbed portion of the portcullis. I waited patiently for what seemed like half an hour or more as the destruction continued. Then, just as I though the skeleton was about to burst through, I charged off toward where the first skeleton had fallen.

Arriving at the location well before my opponent, as it had to extricate itself from the hole that it had made, I reached through the bars and grabbed one of the downed skeleton’s femurs. Pulling back, I ran over to the spot I had recently vacated.

I knew that femurs are the strongest, most durable bone in the human body. Even though these skeletons didn’t look fully human, I had no reason to doubt that was true of their bones as well. I didn’t have to wait long as my skeletal nemesis returned, once again pushing into the bars.

I sprung forward and began pummeling it with the femur while it tore at me with its remaining hand. I kept my chin tucked to protect my throat and tried to ward off its remaining hand the best I could, but otherwise I hung in there, dishing out and taking punishment. I had been deluding myself earlier when I gloried in my newfound strength, Recovering from the fall had eaten a lot of my muscle mass away. I eventually grasped the femur in both hands as striking with one hand had not been very effectual. It was kill or be killed.

And eventually kill won out. I wobbly stood over my downed opponent, blood dripping down the side of my face, my body aching as if I had been stomped on all over.

After the adrenaline faded, I almost cried as I thought of my body’s precious moisture splattered haphazardly on the stone floor. I was so very thirsty.

Maslow had it right when he came up with his hierarchy of human needs. Until your basic physiological needs are met, nothing else matters a whole lot. Food, water, sleep, protection from the elements, you have nothing until you have those things. I was not meeting these needs.

Even though I had vanquished a couple of skeletons, I had no reason to believe that they were the only things lurking in this building. My ability to climb out of the canyon was, if anything, worse than it was when I entered this chamber. My body, especially my right shoulder and left arm, was so sore. For me, there was only one practical route, and that was forward.

Retrieving my gear once more from the floor of the canyon, and armed with an undamaged femur with another tucked in my belt, I made my way back to the guardroom. The open doors the skeletons had entered through yawned wide, beckoning me forward. I still felt the increased humidity in the air, giving me hope that there was water available somewhere in the complex.

Gathering my resolve, I stepped forward into the endless darkness. Once again, as I stepped through the doors, a faint light illuminated from the swirling sigils threaded on the ceiling. This casual use of magic was pretty intimidating to me. When I glanced back towards the guardroom, I noticed the light there had extinguished.

Looking around the room that I had entered, I quickly realized that this had been a barracks. The rotted and splintered remains of bunk beds covered the floor of the large room, which was about forty feet deep and thirty feet wide. There was a set of double metal doors in the middle of the wall to my left and a single wooden door directly to my right.

Turning to my right, I approached the wooden door. Listening at it, I heard nothing, so I attempted to open it. It didn’t open as much as it came apart in my hands. Stepping through, light once again illuminated the area. I stood in a long hallway. At the other end of the hallway was a single wooden door. On the left wall, there were three doors and on the right, approximately twenty feet down, I could see a stone archway. I crept over to the archway and peeked into it.

Five feet in, there was a stone wall blocking my view. There were openings on both side of the wall. I stepped in, and the trick with the lights happened again. Creeping to the rightmost opening, I peeked into the main part of the chamber.

Jackpot! This was clearly the locker room for the guard barracks. There were sinks and a long stone bench with holes at regular intervals. Walking over to the sinks, I noticed that they were fed by a pump of some sort, which promptly fell apart when I tried to use it. Moving to the bench seating, I glanced in one of the holes and noticed that there was no bottom. Listening carefully, I heard the sound of trickling water far below me.

Was this place fed by an underground stream of some sort? Deciding to test the depth of the hole, I dropped the remains of the pump in it. After a fraction of a second, I heard a faint splash.

Alright, so there was water here, but getting to it was going to be problematic. I could maybe fit in the hole, but due to the depth would likely never be able to get back out again.

Then, I remembered the coil of rope that I had found earlier.