Near a good sized farmhouse, just off from the barn, a small boy can be seen running through some wheat, towards his home. This boy is young, maybe 12,13 years old, and surprisingly thin and wiry. With solid black hair and pale skin despite the sun, he would almost look aristocratic if not for the wide grin on his face.
As he nears his family home, he catches sight of a middle aged woman, hanging out laundry to dry. He slows down and heads toward her, hugging her at the waist as a surprise. “Hi mom!” She starts slightly, before giggling and turning to her son, kneeling down to give him a proper hug. “Oh! Dear, what have I said about surprise hugs? You’ll give me a heart attack one of these days.”
He laughs sheepishly and ducks his head a little, obviously used to being admonished about this. “Sorry mom. Do you know when dad’s coming back?” She shakes her head and sighs at her sons antics, standing up and getting back to hanging up clothes as she speaks. “He’ll be back from the town any minute now, don’t worry Eredith. I know you’re excited to get those new paints, but until he gets back help your mother, would you?”
Being a good kid, he helps without complaint, hanging up the smaller items on the side of the clothes hanging line he can reach while his mother deals with the larger items. After helping out with a few more chores, it’s only as they’re in the middle of preparing some vegetables that they hear the rhythmic thuds of clawed paws on earth. Perking up, Eredith runs out of the house as his mother watches on, rolling her eyes at his enthusiasm.
Outside, the boy runs towards a man riding what looks like a large, 6-legged lizard, pulling a small cart behind it as it goes. He runs right up to the lizard and hugs its head, giggling when the creatures massive forked tongue flicks out to smell him, before turning his attention to the man on its back. “Dad, dad! Did you get ‘em, did’ya?”
“Haha! Yes you rascal, I got your paints for you.” His father laughs at his enthusiasm, reaching back to pull out what might as well be a large wooden suitcase. From the gaps in the design and the sound of it moving around, it’s clear that it is filled with glass vials filled with various colors and kinds of paint. “Now don’t go bothering em’ just because you got these, put them in your room until night. I don’t want you bothering them just so you can paint all over them if they’re working.”
Eredith groans at the admonition, his father chuckling again under his breath at the scene he was making. “Oh get over it, son, you’ll be exercising your artistic whiles soon enough. Now help your mother load everything in the house while I get Stripes put away in the barn.” He leaps down from the lizard beast, unhooking it from the cart. He starts leading the creature to the barn, ruffling his sons hair as he passes and getting a grumpy pout in return.
The day goes on as you would expect, Eredith and his parents doing chores around the farm. Personally, Eredith prefered the chores related to the animals they kept, but he helped with other things to. Before long they were all sat down around the dinner table, eating a home cooked meal and listening as Eredith’s father ranted about the things going on in town. “I can’t believe the nerve of James, looking me straight in the eye and saying ‘sorry, I can’t go lower than 20 gil.’ As if I’d believe that! I’ve seen him go as low as 5 gil for that sweetheart of his, trying to win her over with cheaply priced bread, but even regular bread should only be, what, 12 gil? It’s ridiculous! I tell ya, it’s because I refused to pity him and give him those extra jade-swallow fruits last week.”
Although his mother listens on as he speaks, giggling at her miser of a husband, it’s clear to both of them that Eredith isn’t paying as much attention as he otherwise would. Eventually, once the plates are cleared and their son is practically vibrating in his seat, his mother relents. “Alright dear, you can go and paint. But don’t stay up-” Before she can finish, he’s already up and out of his seat, going upstairs to grab his new paints before rushing outside. “-too late!” She sighs before leaning against her husband, wrapping her arm around his waist and giving him a squeeze. “He’s going to go far, isn’t he?” “Yeah, yeah he is.”
His new paint set thumping heavily against his leg as he runs, the dark does little to stop him as he heads to the barn. More specifically, to a small extension of the barn, about the size of a single room. He sees a bit of movement just as he turns the corner, seeing the door to the room close. He grins and dashes over, throwing the door open and peering in to what some would consider a gruesome sight.
Skeletons. Five undead creatures, standing still and facing the wall, not moving an inch and staring into the distance with their blank, dull white-fire eyes. Arm, hand, feet and leg bones covered in small bits of dirt and mud, these skeletons are used on the farm as manual labor. They’d been in the family since his grandparents had still been alive, his grandmother had bought them after her own father died and left her a sizeable inheritance, so he’d known these five since he was a kid.
“Hey everyone! I’ve got a surprise for you all. I got some new paints so I can reapply all of your colors!” Although they did not respond, it was clear to see what Eredith was talking about. Each skeleton had different colors and patterns on them, obviously worn down and scuffed away in areas thanks to the work they did.
Eredith walks in front of one of the skeletons, putting down his painting case to look them over to see what he needed to fix up. This one was Martha, he could tell it was a she despite her broad skeletal structure because of the shape of her pelvis, as well as the fact that she has a rounder, soft feeling to her bones. She has a brown base of paint, on top of which there are jagged lines of a light blue, branching off like lightning all across her body. She’s always the most difficult for him to touch up the paint on, since the lightning always chips away and it takes a while to paint them back on the way they were.
After that, there’s Ramsey, the shortest skeleton of the group. Even though he draws little food dishes and cooking tools all over his bones, he’s actually easier to deal with than Martha since he doesn’t care much what drawing go where, he’s just happy to have them. Martha is a lot more picky with how exactly the lightning on her is painted.
Next is Ironjaw the largest and broadest skeleton, who got his name thanks to getting the front part of his jaw snapped off by an errant scanillion bucking around and kicking in a panic. He got his jaw bolted back together with some iron plates, and Eredith’s parents even got some fake iron teeth to put in place of the ones lost during the accident to complete the look. He likes to have his bones painted like they’re made of metal just to play it up, since it’s kind of his thing.
Fourth is Shade, who is a very dramatic skeleton, at least in Eredith’s eyes. He demands that his bones be painted like the blackest night, and his teeth and distal phalanx be painted crimson red, so that he can blend in with the shadows and scare away his foes. Personally Eredith thinks he just likes how warm his bones get in the sun with all that black paint on, but that’s just his opinion.
Finally, there’s Steve. Steve is a very simple skeleton, doesn’t ask for much, and painting him is probably the easiest time of the bunch, if uninspired. All he ever wants is a coat of white paint with a clear coat on top, so he can be nice and bright white with a smooth, shiny finish. Not much goes on with him, but he’s a great listener.
After nearly two hours of cleaning the dirt off them with a wet sponge and re-painting them where they needed some touch-ups, Eredith bids them all a goodnight and heads back to his home. Maybe it was weird to want to hang out with and paint on skeletons, but Eredith thinks of them as close friends, even if they can’t speak or emote, or even really move without him asking them to.
After a hug and a kiss goodnight from his parents, he goes to bed, excited to get to painting again tomorrow. Maybe he could combine it with his blooming wood carving skills? Maybe he could make some little painted charms for his parents, or decorations for the skeleton crew…
He awakes in the middle of the night to a loud crash of breaking wood. He sits up in his bed, startled, and listens for any other sounds. Slowly, he can hear more bangs and crashes, coming both from the barn and from the first floor of his house. Hearing his door slowly start to open, he nearly screams, but seeing his dad at his door calms him down. Leaping out of bed and running up to him, thankful of the fact that he never makes a sound when moving around, he hugs his father by the waist, nearly in tears.
“D-dad? What’s happening?” His father quickly shushes him before speaking himself, barely breathing enough to get the words out. “Some people are on the farm and in the house. Mom’s already hiding at the window, come on, we need to get out of here.” His dad took him by the hand, leading him to the other side of the second floor hallway as quickly and quietly as he can, where Eredith could see his mother anxiously pacing in front of the window.
“Oh thank the gods you’re alright dear! How do we do this, honey?” “You go out first, I’ll pass Eredith down after you so you can catch him. Then I’ll jump down-” Before his father can finish his explanation, heavy thuds can be heard from the stairs, as well as a chilling, greasy laughter. “HA! You think yer getting away. Ain’t gonna happen, Sentorian scum!”
Walking up the stairs is a grimy trio, looking more like bandits than anything else. Despite that, they very clearly have the symbols of the Enteran militia on their chests. His father seems to take on a different aura as they show themselves, taking a firm stance with his fists in front of him, body angled to the side. “Alison, get Eredith out the window, now. I’ll stall them.” Despite wanting to argue, his mother gives a grave nod and turns to her son, stepping between him and the ensuing fight to keep his attention on her.
“Dear, I need you to jump out the window, ok? It’s not too far, but try to land on your side, then run as far as you can, to the village if you can.” Before he can put up any protest, she grabs him by the shoulders, looking him in the eyes with her Serious Stare to show she isn’t taking no for an answer. “Do you understand me?” Despite the tears welling up in his eyes once more, he nods his head resolutely. She gives him a smile, kissing him on the forehead and giving him one last hug. “Good boy. We love you, alright? Don’t let anyone else say otherwise.”
As he climbs out the window, he can hear the ensuing fight. Just before he jumps out though, he takes one last look behind him. He can see his father, a golden-steel light flowing around his arms up to the elbows, hands covered in blood with several scratches along his face and chest. At his feet lay two of the bandit-militia, gaping holes in their torsos, with several more coming up the stairs as his mother pulls out some of her own hair. The strands of hair start to dissolve, energy flowing from the disintegrating hair and into the rug underneath them, causing the threads of the rug to come to life and entangle around the invaders.
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With that last glimpse of his parents, he falls to the dirt below. Although he tried to follow his mothers instructions and land on his side, his leg ended up getting caught underneath him. Although he didn’t break anything, he heard a distinct ‘pop’ sound from his foot, and now it hurts to move it, so he already knows he isn’t going to be able to run away.
Taking in his surroundings, he sees that most of the odd bandit-guards, nearly two dozen of them, are going into the house from the ground floor. The fields and trees around the farm are either burning, rotting away, or covered in a sickly green fluid that he can smell even from where he is. Deciding in his fear-struck mind that hiding somewhere he knows is safe, he slowly limps towards the extension of the barn, unaware that dragging his injured foot across the dirt was creating the perfect trail right to him.
After closing the door to the skeleton closet, the adrenalin starts to fade away, allowing Eredith to really take in the situation at hand. With so much going on, and no idea whether his parents are safe, he starts to hyperventilate, only broken up by teary sobs from the pain in his foot. He crawls into a corner, next to Shade, hoping that all of this will be over soon.
After a few minutes, the sounds of fighting die down on the farm, and for a moment Eredith feels hope that his parents beat the bad guys and would come to get him. Unfortunately, when someone opened the door to the room, it was another of the bandits-and they surely were bandits, not militia, not with what they had been doing, right?-followed by two more, and a much more well-dressed and armored man.
With the moonlight coming in from the door, they were able to spot him easily, the bandits giving evil grins while the well-armored man simply staring dispassionately at the scene. The bandits fan out, knocking the skeletons over like puppets without string, the undead simply getting back up and standing still once more. With their non-aggression orders, they wouldn’t be of any help. One of the men grabbed Eredith roughly by the front of his shirt, picking him up and glaring at him like he’d crapped on his food.
“You’re real sneaky, eh? Think you’re smart?! Your damn parents cost me most of my men, then you got us looking around for you too?!” The vagrant seemed to be building himself up, getting more and more angry, which only served to scare Eredith even more, before the well-armored man spoke up with a lazy roll of his eyes. “Oh stop it, just kill the boy so we can leave and help the others.”
The bandit scoffed before roughly tossing Eredith to the ground, inflaming the pain in his ankle and making him cry out in pain. This only made the man laugh as he drew his sword, readying himself to end the child’s life. “Say hi to your parents on the other side, brat!” Eredith closes his eyes, desperately hoping for someone to save him, a bubbling feeling of fear, dread, anger, and something...else making him cry out just before his imminent demise.
“HEEELP!”
The sword stabs down-
Thunk-crack!
And is blocked by a set of black painted radius and ulna, the sword digging into and getting stuck in the space between the two bones. The bandit, along with the others in the room, gasp at the move, quickly intimidated at what caused the maneuver. Standing in a much more active stance then any worker skeleton should have, jaw chattering angrily and eye-fire turning into a blazing, angry crimson red.
Unknown to Eredith, when he screamed for help, a wave of something bled out of him, quickly suffusing into the skeletons around him and giving them new purpose and, oddly enough, new powers. Although Shade was the first, each of the skeletons quickly seemed to become more animated, glaring at the intruders around them and moving to attack.
As Eredith opened his eyes once more, He saw the incredible sight if his skeletal friends fighting the people who were determined to kill him. Shade twisted his arm, breaking the bandits grip on his sword, and grabbing the handle for himself. Instead of trying to yank it out and potentially damaging his arm even more, his arm bones instead gained a foggy look, as if they were made from actual shadow, and the sword came free as easily as moving through air. While the bandit was still gawking at the sight, Shade cut him down with a single swing.
Steve and Ramsey went after the well-armored man, distracting him while Martha and Ironjaw took on the last two bandits in the room. Martha simply glared at the bandit in front of her, before stomping a foot covered in sparking lightning down on the floor. The current traveled to the vagabond, but instead of electrocuting him, it burst out of the ground in the form of jagged glassy spikes of fulgurite, piercing through his feet and sending him howling to the floor. IT only took one more stomp to send another set of spikes through the downed man’s chest.
Ironjaw simply charged forwards at his bandit, the daggers thrown at him doing nothing at all to his metallic bones, ricocheting off with several tings. Rather than do anything fancy, he simply shoulder tackles the bandit, continuing on through the wall of the room with nothing but a new meat shield in front of him. Even from here, Eredith could hear how Ironjaw continued to fight several more bandits outside.
Unfortunately, the well armored man was made of stronger stuff then the bandits, and with a warhammer instead of a sword or daggers, he was much better suited to fighting the skeletons. Eredith choked back a wail as Ramsey and Steve were broken apart, several bones pulverising into dust with each blow, until the fire left their eyes and what was left of their bodies simply stopped supporting themselves. Although Martha put up more of a fight, she only managed to get off one more fulgurite spike before the lightning surrounding her pettered away, leaving the man unharmed and with an easy target.
With three of his best friends blown to dust in front of him, he could only whimper as the man set an angry gaze on him, running at him to try and end Eredith quickly. The quiet whistling sound of a swinging sword stopped him, bringing up his warhammer to deflect the blow from Shade, who quickly disappeared back into the shadowy corners of the room. A standoff started between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. The man had too much armor to be easily killed by a stealth kill, and Shade was to fast to be brought down by his blunt weapon.
Soon enough however, the man noticed a pattern. Any time he took a step closer to Eredith, the shadowy skeleton would attack more, giving him more openings to strike. He slowly made his way towards the child, weathering the attacks from the skeleton with relative ease, before fainting a blow at the child. When the skeleton appeared to defend the child, the man smirked, thinking the battle was over, but he forgot about on important thing.
Ironjaw was still outside.
With a thundering clang and the sound of meat and organs being pulped, Ironjaw brought a metallic bony fist down on the top of the man’s head. His head actually seemed to sink into his torso from the force, a spray of blood and gore erupting around the iron skeleton’s hand. After another heart-stopping moment, the dead man falls to his knees, and then to his side, the invasion over.
Heart racing, ankle aching, and grieving for the loss of so many loved ones, Eredith cries himself to sleep the night, hoping when he wakes up that this will all be a nightmare. As he sleeps, Ironjaw and Shade look to each other, a silent conversation seemingly passing between flames, before they both take a guarding stance on the left and right of their young master.
Come morning, Eredith blearily woke up to the sound of many approaching footsteps, along with the sound of several different species of mounts. As he remembers the night before, and the ache in his foot returns, he panics, starting to hyperventilate once again. Unknown to him, Ironjaw and Shade take more tense positions next to him, ready to fight once more.
The first people they see are an older man in a grey robe, along with another well-armored soldier. This time though, they both have vestments that show them to be apart of the Sentorian Empire, which immediately helps him not to freak out. At the sight of the dead bandits and the oddly behaving skeletons, the soldier and the older man have quite different reactions.
The soldiers face grows grim, leaning back out of the doorframe to shout at others on the farm. “Hey we’ve got a live kid in here, get a healer here stat!” He takes another look around the skeleton closet before turning to the older gentleman, who looked oddly entranced by Shade and Ironjaw. “Sir, it’s all clear here, I’m going to check out the barn interior with the others.”
The grey-robed man waves off his words in a daze, slowly walking towards Eredith and his skeletons. “Yes, yes, secure the perimeter and all that...” As he gets closer, Shade steps in front of his master, sword in hand, while Ironjaw steps forward, braced in an almost sumo-like position to try and grapple the man to the ground as he gets closer. Instead of being intimidated by the motions, he seems to brighten up, smiling at the display.
“Marvelous, simply marvelous!” He steps to the side and tilts his head a little to get a look at Eredith, giving him a comforting smile. “Did you do this to these skeletons? When I felt myself lose my connection to them, and considering all the attacks, I thought they’d simply been destroyed.”
Still looking at the man with a little fear and a lot of confusion, his skeletal friends seemed to feel that the man isn’t much of a threat, standing down and returning to his side. He looks at them with even more confusion and not a small amount of awe, on just now recognizing that they are acting on their own without orders. It was like a dream come true! Well, except for the fact that it happened in the middle of a nightmare come true.
“Um...maybe? I don’t know, a lot of stuff happened last night...” Before he can get too caught up in the remembrance of what happened the night before, someone else comes into view, a younger woman in a butter yellow set of pants and a shirt. She seems a bit haggard and pale-faced, but at the sight of Eredith she seems to both sag with a sigh of relief and stand up stronger at the same time. She approaches him, barely even acknowledging the undead next to him, and kneels down to start looking him over.
“Oh, thank the gods we found you! Are you hurt anywhere? Anything in pain?” It takes a minute of prompting from her, but eventually she gets him out of his own head. With an idea of what needs fixing, she pulls out a small pouch of powdered healing herbs, focusing on his ankle and placing a gentle hand on it as the herbs start to dissolve. Before he knows it he’s good as new, thanks to her, and he’s walking out of the skeleton closet with the two adults.
Following only a step behind him are Ironjaw and Shade, though Shade seems to glare at the morning sun like it personally offended him. It definitely puts the Sentorian militiamen on edge as they haul bodies onto a set of carts and gather reports on the damages to the area. Eventually they stand in front of Eredith’s front door, with the two leading him hesitating before turning to him. The yellow-dressed woman kneels in front of him, looking at him with soft eyes.
“Hey, kid, this is...tough to say, but do you know what happened to your parents?” Eredith looks at the ground, tears already in his eyes, but blinks them back and takes a deep breath before answering. “...They died, didn’t they?” The woman simply nods solemnly, the gray-robed man looking quite grim in the doorway as they speak. “Yeah, they did. Do you want to see them, before we leave?” With a stiff nod, they enter the house, walking through the first floor and up the stairs feels like it takes an eternity and only moments at the same time for Eredith.
The stairs had been cleared of the bandits, though the bloodstains and ruined rug were still visible. When he finally sees his parents, Eredith gasps, slowly walking up to them. His dad had slumped over his mom, several swords pierced through his back, trying to protect her in his last moments. It likely didn’t help much, since he could see her blank eyes staring up at him, a gash across her throat showing how she died.
It takes a few moments, a few heart-rending moments, but eventually the child collapses to his knees in front of his mother and father, sobbing like he’s never sobbed before. The grey-robed man looks like death warmed over while watching the scene, and the yellow clothed woman lets out a few silent tears of her own. “Gods damn you, Astenia...”
It isn’t until noon that the farm is cleaned up as well as it can be considering the mess. The corpses of the bandits have already been sent ahead, and now it’s just Eredith in a carriage with the older gray robed man. He’d introduced himself as Gerald, a necromancer in charge of monitoring some of the areas around the capital of Sentoria, All-Heart. He was going to take Eredith there to go to an academy thanks to his Powers. They had accommodations for orphans, which would help immensely, even though thinking about it like that...hurt. He’d get to keep Ironjaw and Shade though, so that was good.
Just the start of a new chapter in his life, he guessed.