They charged as a unit, every lumbering step taken with an inhuman synchronicity. Bone rattled and clacked against the stone, clearing the space faster than even Crow might have managed.

He fought the urge to run, forcing himself still and waiting for them to reach him.

When the nearest was a pace from him Crow lunged. The movement surprised it, his blow turning shock to disorientation as it caught the hinge of its jaw and sent the undead sliding backwards. Crow had time enough to marvel at his enemy’s lightness before the others were upon him.

He struck out with elbows and knees, staggering further into their midst rather than retreating. It seemed to confuse them, for by the time their blows started raining down, Crow had already forced his way in deeper still.

Good luck putting those numbers to use now. He grinned. Unless you can pass through one another like that smoke could stone.

Crow realised his mistake quickly as they pressed inwards, forcing his arms tight against his body and keeping him from moving to generate force. Most used their bodies as the jaws of a trap, yet some remained separate. Given space by their fellows to strike unimpeded while he stood defenceless. Perfect teamwork, and managed without a spoken word.

Steeling himself, he pressed a shoulder against one side of the bony wall before pushing with all his strength.

For a terrifying moment the obstruction held, then Crow felt it shift. His enemy’s lightness worked against them as half their number toppled under his strength.

Crow didn’t hesitate, almost stepping into the writhing pile of enemies and putting the new space to good work. He pivoted, throwing a strike with all of his body and feeling the cracking of bone as his knuckles met a skull.

Rattling told him of enemies rising behind while those already standing closed in from the front. With nowhere to run, Crow guarded and met the charge.

Their momentum proved equal to his own. Yielding only a moment of hesitant rebalancing on both parts.

It took an instant less for Crow to find confidence underfoot, and he didn’t waste the fractional advantage. He struck the nearest skeleton while it still stood unsteady, throwing it down amid another wave of creaking bone. The rest were on him before it landed.

Orange torchlight reflected against smooth bone in all directions, reducing Crow’s world to a mass of burning flashes and clacking movement.

He felt a half dozen blows for each he threw, ignoring them even through the rattling of his teeth and spinning of his head.

The skeletons had neither his strength or mass, that he still stood was testament to their weakness, but quantity substituted for quality.

Crow could feel a dull ache begin to spread beneath his flesh. The damage grew by the moment, making a clock of his resilience and urging him to fight with ever more ferocity and speed.

Time and time again he struck, casting his foes back or to the stone floor even as their kin rained fists upon him. Two could rise in the time he took to fell one, and the skeletal forest before him seemed inexhaustible.

Still the green smoke billowed about them, wafting almost in time with their movements. It might have been a tell, had there been few enough enemies that Crow could focus on any one.

Empty eyes seemed to bear down on him, looking past skin, flesh and bone. He’d heard stories of undead making off with the essence of mystics, surrounded by so many, feeling such inhuman glares upon him, they seemed easy to believe.

Well you’re not getting my soul. I still need it.

A particularly strong hit caught him in the base of his skull, driving the thoughts from his head. By the time they returned Crow was already prone, assailed by stomping feet rather than lunging fists.

He grabbed a moving ankle, dragging its owner off-balance and pulling himself up with the same motion. His scrying slate howled and jittered as he rose, bleeding into the senseless battle.

A punch caught his cheek, and Crow responded with one of his own before gripping the offending skeleton and pulling it airborne. Two more caught its flying body, then fell as Crow swept their feet from beneath them while their arms were occupied.

He fought with fists, fought with feet. Even used his skull as a hammer when no limb was free to serve him. The conflict raged until Crow began to lose track of time, blurred and senseless behind the mad haze of battle.

When the skeletons scattered from behind him, tossed into the air or splintered where they stood without his doing, it barely even caught his eye. Pain-addled mind taking agonisingly slow moments to sift through the sight.

Finally he accepted what his eyes told him as Astra and Unity charged into the fray.

Astra could barely see Crow through the mass of bone surrounding him. Little more than a flash of gold hair catching the light, a glimpse of emerald eyes pulled wide by the frenzy of combat.

It had been enough.

She concentrated her magic, pouring it past the specks of dust filling the air, past the element itself and deeper into the very aether.

Feeling her mind leach into the fabric of space itself, Astra willed it apart- wrenching the curtains of reality open. The Gate appeared at the point of her focus, a fathom high oval rimmed crimson. She leapt through without hesitation.

Skeletons stumbled away, shock driving them back like a great wind as Astra emerged from her gate’s twin in their midst. She lunged before any could get far.

Astra pivoted, throwing a low kick at the nearest knee and grinning with dark satisfaction as she felt the joining snap completely.

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The creature made no sound as it fell, expressed none of the shock or pain a living thing would surely have felt. Its fellows were no more deterred.

Eden reached them a moment before they descended upon her, fingers splayed and hands leaving scarlet contrails in their wake as he ran. He seized the one closest to him, gritting his teeth and widening his eyes madly, releasing magic enough to water Astra’s eyes.

In a flash the skeleton was no more than charred debris falling like snow. The others turned to the boy, empty eyes betraying no thoughts at all, but before even a single step could be taken, Xenus acted.

A blue blur struck the row of enemies. They scattered like sand in a gale, spinning upwards and outwards, clearing an instant path to Crow. Astra met her brother’s eye for a moment, then lost it as he turned to continue fighting.

No time for a reunion. Right.

There were a half dozen skeletons still standing, most remaining focused on Crow. Astra threw herself into the melee before they could adjust.

Her strikes were slow and rhythmic, contrasted by the hasty attacks of her brother, doubly so by the almost hesitant engagement from their teammates. It mattered little, seconds of combat made it clear their enemies were outmatched.

Each of Astra’s blows sent their targets stumbling backward or down. She felt bone crack against her knuckles with every other, heard the sound of destruction running from Crow’s even more regularly.

In only fifty heartbeats they stood among piles of bones. Nothing moved but them, save the drifting of pulverised ossein.

Victory tasted sweet on Astra’s lips. Sweet enough, almost, to draw her focus from Crow.

“Fancy meeting you here, Birdie.” She smiled, the words broken by her ragged breaths and adrenaline-shaken voice. The boy didn’t seem to notice.

“Thank you for… you know.”

“Saving you?” She prompted.

“Helping me.” Crow answered.

Astra began to reply, finding herself cut off by Eden as he approached them both from across the chamber.

“Cute.” The boy snapped, his face stonelike, where it was sagged with fatigue,. “But can we save the back and forth until later? I don’t think-”

A great sound interrupted him, just as Eden had Astra. Whatever the boy said was lost beneath the low, grating noise that took moments for her to identify as a cackle. His words turned over and crushed like a boat on violent waves.

“The fool has the measurement of things.”

Astra spun, frantically looking around her for the voice’s source, somehow knowing even as she did that there was none. It came from every direction at once, as though she were surrounded by jeering enemies on all sides.

“Who are you calling a fool?” Eden called out. Astra stared at the boy, seeing no more fear on his face than she heard in his high, whinging voice. “You’re the moron who can’t even get an idiom right. It’s has the measure of things, simpleton. Measure.”

The chamber practically shook with the sourceless answer.

“Courageous, aren’t you? Or, perhaps, simply stupid?”

“Well I’m speaking coherent Jaean.” Eden sneered. “So using you as a metric, it would appear I’m courageous.”

Silence for a moment, then a rumbling reply.

“Do you think it wise to taunt me, boy?”

Astra stared at Eden, silently urging the boy to bite his tongue. She could feel danger enough from the voice without rage adding to it.

The artificial smiled.

“I rarely do what I think is wise.” He answered. “It makes things far too easy, and uninteresting. Though I imagine you don’t have that problem, blessedly incapable of thought as you apparently are.”

Green smoke of a kind as had filled the skeletons began to thicken in a foot-high carpet around their feet. Astra felt a terrible chill run down her spine at the voice’s return.

“Hm. You truly are an irksome boy. If nothing else, it will be fun to see that masquerade shatter as I squeeze your fear out through the eyeholes.”

“Masquerades don’t have eyeholes.” Eden riposted. “Having a syllable phonetically similar to the word mask doesn’t make it a synonym. Pit, do you just regurgitate words you hear at random and hope it sounds imposing?”

The boy’s words cut like a knife, yet their edge was blunted by a flash of fear. Blue eyes flickered constantly towards the billowing gas coiling about his ankles.

It swirled and twisted as if seized by a wind, so intrepid that it almost hid the trembling from below.

“Group together!” Astra called, forcing all her strength into the words, finding them fragile and mewling regardless. She hated the weakness in her, hated its cause doubly so.

“Remain apart!” Eden snapped instead, affixing her with a glare so hot and rageful she thought it might ignite the air. “If he drops a roof on us or attacks out of nowhere, I don’t want to make it easy for all of us to be caught at once.”

He was, she realised, right. The bastard.

Green gas shifted; every scrap moving at once, coiling like a living thing of solid form and decided intent.

“Something’s coming!” Roared Crow, back suddenly to a wall. “This is what happened before the skelet-”

The stone split beneath their feet, cracks running out for fathoms as two great slabs of rock jutted upward and apart like opening doors.

Astra swore as her eyes caught the protrusion of a great limb from beneath the bifurcated tiles.

It flexed, fingers digging into rock for grip as the limb’s owner dragged itself from the depths. Green smoke ebbed around it in wisps, mingling with the pulverised stone clotting the air and obscuring the figure from sight. The debris didn’t clear until its silhouette had already fully emerged from below.

Astra almost wished the airborne grime had remained when she finally beheld their enemy.

Standing half again a man’s height and bearing shoulders twofold wider, it cut an imposing sight by size alone. But the thing’s scale was soon eclipsed.

Armour covered it like the scales of a drop-spider; a black so pure and unbroken that it failed to even gleam in the light. She knew it for metal only by the scraping of lobstered boots against ground.

Chest, neck, arms and legs were all encased in the thick plates as if the apparel were plucked from a war centuries dead, the only chinks she could see were those exposed by the green vapour drifting through them.

One hand was curled tight around the hilt of a great sword of metal as black as the armour, curved and edged bluntly enough to be a cudgel’s kin.

A mystic’s blade, she knew, made thick and blunt so that as not to shatter from a single preternatural swing. It was mirrored by a great tower shield held in the other arm, bulky enough to surely stop even a weapon so big as that.

A visor hid the monster’s face, strips of dark metal seeming to cage the shadow within its helm. Astra could still feel the eyes on her.

Suddenly enough to make her jump, it turned its head to Eden. The grating screech of metal against metal cut through her like a cold wind.

“Tell me, boy.” Came the spaceless voice, ringing clearly from the creature. “Do you have any more jests?”

Whether the artificial had or hadn’t, Astra didn’t find out. Crow interrupted him by charging without another moment’s delay.