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Chapter 15: Cracking Bones
🕑 Added 2022-03-24 18:36:53 +0000 UTCHeadless’ thrown head found Brad right in the chest. The man looked down. The head smiled. He screamed.
More screams kept coming from the forest. Through the treeline, bandits jumped out in panic, running away from something. Behind them, a massive tree branch appeared. Axehand easily held it aloft with both axes, wielding it like a gigantic bat. Jerry blinked. He’d had no idea that the skeleton was so strong.
The bandits darted around like frightened children, but Axehand gave them no quarter. With an annoyed grunt, he swung the branch into two of them, sending them flying away as if swatting flies.
Another bandit had managed to sneak in. His sword met Axehand’s augmented ribs with a dull thud, barely denting them. Slowly, the skeleton turned around. The man defecated right then and there. Then, the branch came down and gently smashed his head in, granting him a messy death.
Meanwhile, Boney had grabbed Jerry and was running away for dear life. With speed worthy of a Milarympian runner, he reached the half-made fence and leaped over it to land in relative safety.
“Oh hey, nice!” said Jerry, who had been carried along. “Good job, Boney. Have you considered becoming an athlete?”
“This is hardly the time for jokes, master,” replied the skeleton. “If we aren’t careful, these people might tear us bone from bone!”
As had become obvious, Brad had not come alone. Skulking in the shadow of the trees, another dozen bandits had been close by, preparing for an ambush. If Jerry refused to join them, they were supposed to kidnap him.
What actually happened was that the bandits ran into Axehand, who had been mentally called over by Jerry. And while the skeleton wasn’t aggressive, his massive, hulking, axe-handed form was beyond horrifying, sparking panicked attacks from the bandits. Then, Axehand did what any good skeleton would do and slapped them with the tree branch he’d been carrying, leading to the present scene.
Jerry stood up and looked beyond the fence. It was pandaemonium.
A dozen bandits ran around like headless chickens—some of them equally dead—trying to escape the branch-wielding maniac in their midst. Axehand simply stood there, swinging his branch in the air like he just didn’t care. At some point, he’d realized that these people were enemies of his master, so his attacks carried a bit more oomph.
Brad had backed away to the trees, holding his chest and dry heaving. Headless’ head lay where Brad used to stand, completely unable to move on its own and trying to bite any passing bandits. Headless’ body was similarly useless, flailing around behind the fence. In his haste to help, the zombie had forgotten the cardinal rule of fighting; never lose your head in the middle of a battle.
At that moment, the rest of the undead arrived in force.
A bony foot stepped on the fence and Shorty jumped above it, his bone jaw cackling madly and his finger blades glistening in the morning light. From the forest, out came Boboar, oinking in anger as it rushed at the bandits. Foxy was right behind, ready to wreak havoc.
Seeing his menagerie of undead about to go ballistic, Jerry almost felt bad for the poor bandits.
“Hey, Boney,” he said, turning to the skeleton, “do you think we should—”
A colossal bang from beyond the fence interrupted him. The tree branch fell to the ground with a massive thud while Axehand’s massive body sailed through the air, over Jerry’s head, and crashed against the tower’s wall.
He turned around in shock.
In the middle of the bandits, where Axehand used to stand and joyfully play with his branch, now stood a bare-chested mountain of a man. Long, dark hair framed his square face, accentuated by bright emerald eyes and a wide nose stronger than a bull’s. He must have been at least six, seven feet tall, easily towering over everyone else, and his hands were the size of shovels while his feet were bare—an insult to all shoemakers! As if his titanic stature wasn’t enough, dense muscles filled his chest and arms; truly a monster of a man.
He was also unarmed, though an unnatural green light surrounded his hands and bare feet.
Jerry’s mouth formed into an ‘o’. Magic?!
Boney gasped. “Oh no.”
Boboar harrumphed, enraged at Axehand’s defeat, and charged straight at the newly-arrived man. He did not dodge; instead, with the green light around his feet and right hand brightening, he extended said hand to meet Boboar’s charge. The double-boar rammed against the man’s open palm—and went perfectly still.
With a loud, heart-wrenching sound, a crack ran down Boboar’s skull, and the skeletal animal stepped back in confusion. In its entire short life, nothing, no human, animal, or tree had ever stopped its charge.
The man grinned. Behind him, Foxy moved to attack.
Jerry’s heart clenched. This man would obliterate them, but these weren’t simple undead; they were his friends!
Fall back, he ordered them mentally. As one, the undead immediately dropped what they were doing and sprinted back towards the fence. It was only half-complete, but thankfully, the completed half was the one facing the bandits. Not that it would help much. Jerry began to suspect that maybe, possibly, Brad had been lying when he said they wanted no trouble.
At Jerry’s command, all the undead returned; with the exception of Shorty.
Shorty, you see, was an odd one.
Souls were intrinsically linked to the body they inhabited. They are bound in deep, esoteric levels, to the point where one is a part of the other.
When Jerry had removed Shorty’s torso prior to animating him, he had also crippled a large part of his soul, leaving him with a couple of screws loose, for lack of a better analogy. He’d later caught on to that fact, but there was nothing he could do; it was the same reason why Axehand, who had gone through a similar body-altering process, could only grunt instead of speak, and why his mind never worked quite as quickly as it should.
In Shorty’s case, what happened was that a part of his soul was missing, and missing souls instinctively seek to fill themselves. When Jerry enacted all those modifications on Shorty, the incomplete soul drew inspiration from its master’s actions and filled its gaping hole with battle lust. Of course, other things were lost in the process, including a measure of capacity for reason.
All these culminated in the fact that, when Jerry commanded Shorty to return mid-battle, he did not heed the instruction. Not because he didn’t want to—undead cannot disobey their master—but because he couldn’t comprehend the order’s contents. In his mind, retreat was not a concept.
And so it was that, unlike all of his brethren, Shorty alone charged forth. His bone jaw cackled in manic glee and his finger blades rubbed against each other, producing shrill, harsh sounds. The enemy turned his head to stare at Shorty’s charge.
“What is this supposed to be?” he said, snorting in amusement. Shorty jumped, preparing his blades to cut through flesh and bone. He reared a hand back.
But Shorty’s greatest strength in battle was his intimidation factor, while this man was not at all intimidated. A rough hand met Shorty’s skull in mid-air and grabbed it, while his limbs flailed wildly, striking and failing to penetrate the man’s skin. Raising another hand, the man grabbed Shorty’s waist. Then, pulling in two directions, he tore Shorty’s short spine apart, holding the skeleton’s head and shoulders in one arm and his legs in the other.
He let the bones drop, and they did, flopping motionless on the ground. Jerry looked on. Nothing moved.
“How amusing.” The man laughed savagely, his voice deep and wild. “Is this the limit of necromancy, I wonder? Or are you just weak?”
Behind the fence, Jerry gazed at Shorty’s remains sadly. He could just reanimate him later, of course, but watching one of his dear skeletons get ripped apart filled him with gloom. He sighed, shaking his head.
“No idea,” he responded. “I’m pretty new to this necromancy thing.”
Next to him, Boboar and Axehand stood side by side, both of them cracked to a degree but still willing to fight. The axe-handed skeleton even seemed to want to attack the giant again, his empty eyes staring over unmovingly. Getting knocked back this easily had left him feeling sour, Jerry could sense that much. Apparently, Axehand was a competitive one.
Over on the bandits’ side, the fighting had stopped. They simply stood behind the ridiculously strong man, tending to their wounded and ignoring their dead. Brad walked to the man’s side, remaining one step behind.
“I can tell,” the man responded, pointedly staring at Jerry’s undead. “Necromancers are supposed to control entire armies of undead… What could your little ragtag bunch possibly hope to achieve besides making the enemy die of laughter?”
His entire body screamed of gory violence and yet his words were calm, spoken as a pure observation, not an insult. It was as if he barely constrained his violent side, masking it behind a layer of refined elegance. It struck Jerry as weird, like a tiger wearing a mustache. A tiger that could crush you in seconds if it wanted to.
“Are you a wizard too?” he asked curiously. If the man wanted to talk instead of kicking Jerry’s ass, then Jerry wouldn’t mind.
“I am.” the man nodded. “A biomancer. Well, kind of.”
He raised his hands, green specks of light rising from each of them. “More like an earth spirit, but that’s beside the point. Can I come in?” he asked, looking up and raising a brow. “I wouldn’t mind some tea.”
“Master,” Boney whispered quickly, “I suggest you run. Let us slow him down. That man is Jericho the Green, the leader of the Greenskin bandits. He’s invincible!”
“Hmm.”
Jerry considered it for a moment. Escaping would doom his undead friends, while Jericho seemed polite. Why not treat him to some tea? There was just one problem.
“I’m afraid you won’t like my tea,” he responded. “It’s quite strong.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
“Alright then, be my guest. Boney, fetch us some tea, please.”
Jericho smiled.
“Master!” Boney hissed. “He wants to kill you!”
“Death is no big deal, Boney, you should know that. Calm down. And besides, he seems quite friendly; I’m sure it will be fine.”
“Master!”
Sighing, Jerry turned back to the bandit leader. “Hey, are you going to kill me?”
Jericho raised a brow in amusement. “Probably. But I haven’t decided yet.”
“See?” Jerry regarded Boney, who seemed positively flummoxed. “It’s fine. Now go, the tea won’t brew itself.”
Meanwhile, Jericho turned to Brad, who skulked behind him. “Brad,” he said calmly, yet this calmness hid mercilessness. “You have failed, but I will decide on your punishment later. Wait here.”
“Yes sir.” The bandit shivered, but to his credit, did not whine. Perhaps whining in front of Jericho was quite bad for one’s health.
That said, the giant walked forward, reaching Jerry’s black fence and politely stepping through the door. The skeletons all stood still, Axehand specifically brimming with the desire to fight, but Jerry’s will kept them from acting up.
“They are all fairly… unique,” Jericho commented, inspecting the undead like items on a shop window. Foxy, Boboar, Headless, and Axehand all stared back, while Boney had gone to prepare the tea. “Each has their own special features.”
“Yeah, they’re all pretty nice,” Jerry said with pride.
“Are the humanoids all mine?” asked the bandit leader, pointing at Axehand. “That one feels like Lom.”
“Was he the one wielding twin axes?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
“Oh.”
Jerry looked at the undead again. “Yes, they’re all yours, or at least they used to be—now, they belong to nobody but themselves. I do have a few spare bodies in my basement, if you want to take them back. I mean, that would make me sad, but you can.”
“Hmm.” Jericho cupped his chin. “I don’t particularly care. If I do kill you, then I will have my subordinates carry them all the way back. It will be a fitting punishment for losing to a few skeletons and a bodiless head.”
“It’s technically a headless body, but whatever. Tea?”
“Tea.” Jericho nodded and stepped inside the tower, his head almost bumping against the door’s top. Jerry followed.
