Riven leaned over the edge of the skyship next to Draxl. “So what are we supposed to be doing exactly?”

“Just make sure nobody dies,” Draxl said. “It should be a pretty easy job. The air space gets cleared by dragons twice a year, so there aren’t really any monsters. When’s your arm going to grow back.”

“I … don’t know, honestly,” Riven said. She looked down at her dagger. The glowing red runes along the blade stared back at her. Her reflection wasn’t her own, but Ace’s. Riven blinked her eyes and shook her head. Ace vanished from the surface of the dagger. She tightened her grip on the dagger.

“Look what they gave us!”

Riven and Draxl turned around toward the voice. Halvor shook several packets of the devil’s finger lollipops in his hands. Galina followed closely behind, a white stick protruding from between her lips.

“What is that?” Riven asked.

“Snacks,” Halvor said. “They gave them out to everybody.”

“A lollipop is hardly a snack,” Riven said.

“It’s quite good,” Galina said. “You should try one. It’s the right amount of heat.”

“What do you mean the right amount of heat?” Riven asked.

“It’s a spicy lollipop,” Galina said.

“Who the fuck wants a spicy lollipop!” Riven exclaimed.

“I’ll try one,” Draxl said.

“Catch.” Halvor tossed one of the packets to Draxl.

Riven looked at Draxl disappointed as he popped the lollipop into his mouth.

“What?” Draxl asked.

“Fine.” Riven sighed. “I’ll take one.”

Halvor tossed another packet toward Riven.

Riven cracked open the packet but paused before reaching inside.

“Something wrong?” Halvor asked.

Riven pulled out a pale white finger on a stick from her devil’s finger packet.

“Is that a real finger?” Halvor asked, disgusted.

Riven shrugged and pulled the finger off the stick. “I’ve seen weirder.” She tossed the finger over her shoulder and off the ship.

Suddenly, Riven felt a hand on her shoulder. Her back was up against the ship's railing, but somehow the hand was behind her. She was being pulled off the ship. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the irisless eyes of a cloaked figure with porcelain white skin.

“[Quickdraw]!”

In a single fluid motion, Draxl drew his blade and sliced off the figure’s arm.

The figure reached out and grasped Riven’s cape. The instant Riven felt a tug on her back, she spun around, then sliced off the figure’s other hand.

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Without a sound, the figure fell off the side of the skyship; the howling wind surrounding the ship ripped them away and out of sight.

Riven brushed her shoulder that the figure had latched onto. “What the fuck was that about?”

“Excellent question,” Galina said.

Halvor’s hand started to tremble. He looked down at his still unopened devil’s finger packet. The packet was bubbling.

Before Halvor could throw it off the edge, the packet exploded into a mass of rapidly expanding muscle, bone, and white skin. Another cloaked figure burst into existence. Before their feet had fully formed, they pressed their hand against Halvor’s neck.

The figure flicked their wrist; a bone karambit dropped into their hand. They thrust the blade up toward Halvor’s neck, but it shattered against his stone skin.

Galina levitated her staff, then drove it into the chest of the assailant, pushing them to the edge of the ship. The figure grasped the railing to stop themselves from falling over the edge. They looked up to Halvor, just as he drove the heel of his foot into their sternum with a brutal front kick, sending them flying over the edge.

Halvor breathed a sigh of relief. “Glad that’s over with.”

“Yeah, about that,” Draxl said, pulling the dagger from across his chest out of his sheath. “Remember how you said everybody on board got a snack.”

A blood-curdling scream tore through the mundane small talk aboard the ship.

All across the deck of the ship, cloaked figures with porcelain skin exploded out of small packets. From underneath their cloaks, each drew a weapon made entirely of bone; no two had the same weapon.

At the center of the skyship’s deck, a figure unlike the rest—their cloak snow white as opposed to jet black—brandished an enormous bone scythe, the length of the handle longer than their body. The air around them was thick. Their essence was magnitudes heavier than that of their companions.

The ghastly figure wound their scythe back. “Be put to rest, [Cleave].” Like a cloud condensed into an edge, the scythe split the air as the figure swept it around themselves, aiming to bisect everybody that surrounded them. However, they felt their blade immediately come to a stop.

Peering over their shoulder, the figure saw the scythe’s edge caught against Halvor’s stone arm.

Halvor grasped the scythe’s blade with both his petrified hands. “Turn to the dust, [Fracture].” The bone scythe became riddled with cracks, then shattered into pieces.

“[Flash Strike].” A blur of white streaked across the deck. Draxl slashed through the figure’s torso. He stumbled to the edge of the deck, barely catching the railing and preventing himself from tumbling off the ship.

Draxl turned around to look at the figure, expecting to see their midsection sliding off their legs. Instead, he saw a massive smile on their face.

The figure’s cloak stitched itself back together. The wound stretched from one end of their torso to the other sealed shut. The shattered blade of their bone scythe fused back into one blade.

Halvor went to grab the blade again, but the figure quickly pulled it out of his reach.

“They don’t die if you kill them!” Everybody looked up toward the voice. Flying above the deck of the skyship was Cili. “Kai said to throw them off the edge!”

One of the other cloaked figures turned to the figure in white. “Wight, what should we do now? Do we retreat?”

“Have you forgotten what we are?” Wight asked. “A revenant persists only for the sake of vengeance. If we retreat now, then we abandon our reason to live.”

“Then find a new reason to live.”

Wight turned to Halvor upon hearing his words.

“Words of the living mean nothing to the dead.” Wight planted the butt of his scythe next to him. “Though, I admit, you are not the target of our retribution. As it stands you will be an unnecessary casualty. Surrender this ship, and the only people aboard we will kill are those deserving of death.”

“Nobody is deserving of death,” Halvor said.

“I disagree,” Wight replied.

Halvor brought his petrified hands up to his head. “Then I guess we’re fighting.”

Wight grasped his scythe, the rough texture of the bone handle digging into his skin, and snapped it into pieces, tiny shards of bone sinking between the cracks of the ship's deck into the hull beneath. Picking up two of these small shards, he tossed his scythe to the ground, then impaled each of his wrists with a tiny bone shard.

Wight placed one hand on their chin and the other at the top of their head. “I guess we are.”

Wight pulled as hard as he could. The sickening crunch of his neck was Revenant’s battle cry, permitting each cloaked figure to act. To strike. To kill. To seek revenge.