“My case?”
“Most nightmares aren’t sturdy enough or strong enough to withstand three blows from Arol’s Sword of Rhamnusia, and they certainly aren’t fast enough to catch or deflect my quills. If you don’t die after about one or two attempts to kill you, you’re more valuable alive than as a meal. No hunter will want to eat an elk that can catch his arrows, when he can showcase it and earn enough to buy a hundred normal elk.” He pointed at me. “In your case, it also helps that there’d be literally no satisfaction in eating you.”
“Three hurrays for being a skeleton… hurray.”
“That was only one,” Arol said.
“Congratulations, you can count.”
The girl stuck out her tongue at me. Wunder chuckled a bit. “The night is still pretty young. What do you say, skeleton? Want to accompany Arol and I as we hunt for dinner? We could explain some stuff you want to know, and in turn, you can tell us how a lone skeleton found himself all the way on this side of the Hlahan Forest.”
“It’s… it’s a rather long story.”
“It’s a rather long night. Besides,” Wunder pointed at my broken left arm. “With one bad arm, it’s a night that you probably don’t want to be spending alone. Erzili has restorative abilities. Once we get to Fort Zyvar – you can have that fixed up.”
“What’s the catch?”
“What?”
“For a group who believe having empathy is bad, you’re showing an awfully large amount of it,” I pointed. “If you’re not helping me out of altruism, you’re helping me because there’s a reason.”
A large grin tore on Wunder’s face. “You’re right. There is a reason.”
“And?”
“… there was a… disturbance out in the forest recently. Know anything about that?”
Arol scoffed. “Wunder, it’s obviously not him. The power we felt was waaaaayyyy too much to have come from this tiny little skeleton.”
They were talking about Apophis. There was no mistaking it. “I did feel a surge of power a while back, and as I’ve already told you about my desire to not dance with death, I did my best to steer clear away from it.”
Wunder locked his gaze on me for several seconds, before sighing. “A smart move.”
“That can’t be the only reason you’re helping me.”
“You’re a paranoid one you know that?”
I said nothing, waiting expectantly at the duo.
“Also a weird one. You… you don’t seem to be afraid of us at all.”
“Should I be?”
“We’re stronger than you. We could kill you without much difficulty.”
“Almost everyone I’ve ever met could make that claim, and they would all be right.”
Wunder gave me a wide, toothed grin. “I like you skeleton.” He said. “Fearless in the face of overpowering adversaries, quick-witted and silver-tongued… with some work, you just might fit in at Fort Zyvar.”
“So… you’re recruiting me?”
“Yes! We’re recruiting you!” Arol whined. “Now can we move? We still have to hunt!”
“Alright.” I said, relenting. “Lead the way.”
“Finally!” Arol said, floating in the air. “You also have to tell us your story. It better be good. I haven’t heard a good story in forever. Only Leader Erzili usually has great stories, everyone else’s is boring. Yours better not be boring.”
“Even mine is boring?” Wunder asked.
“You never get explicit enough.”
“Because every time I do, you start using your –”
“Shhh! Let Mister Skeleton talk.”
“My name is Janus, not Mister Skeleton.”
Arol and Wunder rose an eyebrow at that. “That sounds like a powerful name.”
“Yeah. How’d you get a name like that?”
Cradling my broken left arm, memories rushed to the front of my mind.
“It all began with a strange woman who came to me looking for a job…”
Chapter 5: The Hunt
Neither Arol nor Wunder were what I expected when I envisioned nightmares or monsters. They laughed, they cracked jokes, understood sarcasm and wry humor and were almost always in high spirits. Besides Wunder’s beastly appearance and Arol’s otherworldly strength and abilities, there was nothing remotely monstrous or nightmarish about them.
They were also, as it stood, beyond my abilities and capabilities to defeat to gather experience points. Assuming all of it was some ploy designed to get me to lower my guard, I still did not know how I would go about defeating them should their leader, this Erzili I kept hearing about, order them to kill me.
Arol was a poltergeist that could not be touched. She phased through everything, making her essentially invulnerable for all intents and purposes as there was nothing in my arsenal that could harm her. Wunder on the other hand was not invulnerable, but I knew far too little about his capabilities to even get an accurate read on his power. The friendly giant quill-monster was genial, and at first glance, he almost seemed to act possessive of Arol, like a father-figure to her. This was only at first glance though, as I noticed more and more that rather than a father-figure, it was more or less of a relationship between a teacher and student. Albeit a very lax teacher, and a very hyperactive, talkative student.
I avoided mentioning anything about my being from another world and also did not mention the time I spent as a worm and the struggles that I faced before becoming a skeleton. The last thing I was hesitant about mentioning, was the name of my Nightwitch – Zlosta’s name. It was not something I was willing to drop so easily.
“You’ve been to the Rift?”
Some other things, I did mention, such as the giant wall that had lain on the end of the Final Sanctuary Woodlands – and the gun-wielding humans called Alhamisians that lay beyond.
“The rift?”
“She’s talking about the giant wall that divides the Northern and Southern regions of Alamir. Rumor has it that it was originally meant to keep away the Druid’s Holy Forest and the Pretender’s Forest in the south from the
