Isu’s presence came with little more than a thought of her. Magic tingled in my fingertips, and it suddenly felt as if my soul had taken a step out of my body, leaping into the skeleton. My soul felt like a stretched-out sinew, still firmly attached to my body but pulled partially out into the skeleton’s.
A sudden rush hit my brain like a blow from a dwarven steel mace. At the same time, it was perhaps like the high of a shaman’s most potent mushroom, but more real than a hallucinogenic trip. Like reality had been kicked up a notch to some sort of hyper-reality, and my senses had doubled in intensity.
In a way, they had; I could now feel everything the skeleton felt, see what he saw. I focused every ounce of concentration on my bony companion. I imagined its limbs and joints being under my complete control.
I took an experimental swing in my mind: a solid right hook. I was pleased to see that the skeleton performed this move in complete synchronization with my imagining of it. Isu be praised, it was working!
There was a large rock near my skeleton’s feet, and it looked like it would serve as an effective, if primitive, bludgeon-type weapon. When I tried to reach for it, the skeleton simply refused to obey.
Damn it. I figured the whole puppet master thing wasn’t as easy as it had momentarily seemed.
“Enough of this dallying!” the paladin yelled before charging at the skeleton.
I willed it to move, but it was just a little too late, and the paladin’s golden sword sheared its left arm off and cut through a few of its ribs. A sharp pain tingled in the left side of my own body and up my arm. Was there some inherent danger in what I was doing?
There was no time to mull over such a question, because the paladin was taking another swipe at my skeleton, trying to lop its head off with a backhand slash, and I was only just able to get my ally to duck. I counter-attacked as if I was standing where the skeleton was, coming out of my crouch to drive an uppercut into his chin with my skeleton’s bony fist. The force of the blow snapped his head back and sent him reeling, but the paladin, for all his pompous righteousness, was a tough bastard. He spat out a mouthful of blood and bounced on his knees in a combat stance, his greatsword at the ready.
“This sinful creation is no match for my sword!” he yelled. “After I smash it to pieces, you will be next, fiend.”
I remembered how strong these skeletons were from my last fight and figured I should try to make maximum use of its abilities. Instead of slugging it out, blow for blow, with this paladin, I was going to trap him.
And then steal his soul.
To goad him into an overzealous attack, I darted forward—my skeleton did, that is—and aimed a jab at his face. He evaded the punch easily enough and followed it up with a slash to my skeleton’s ribs, which I had left wide open. His greatsword smashed through my minion’s ribs, and again, a stinging pain tore through my own side, but my skeleton was tough. A few smashed ribs did nothing to stop it.
Instead of either jumping back or diving in for a swift and brutal counter-attack, I aimed another jab at his face, this time managing to crack his nose. He staggered back, cursing, as pain ripped through his skull and blood trickled from his nostrils. Rage seethed in his eyes.
This was what I’d been waiting for.
“The Lord of Light guides me!” The paladin charged at the skeleton with his sword raised high above his head, aiming to bring the heavy blade down onto its skull and split it in half.
As I’d predicted, his sword came whistling down in a vertical arc, and I waited until it was almost at its head before I made my skeleton sidestep the blow. Through my skeleton’s body, I moved at breakneck speed as I spun on my heel, crouched down, and exploded forward, surging under the paladin’s right arm and around his back. Stepping with a dancer’s grace, I glided behind him, and before he could spin around and counter my move, I’d already hooked both of my skeleton’s arms under his underarms, after which I locked its fingers behind his neck, holding him in place.
The paladin struggled and kicked, but he was helpless against the skeleton’s strength. As quickly and as easily as I had slipped my soul into the skeleton’s body, I retracted it, leaving the skeleton to operate independently. It knew to simply hold the paladin there, trapped.
I walked slowly up to him. “It appears, my holy friend, that you’ve lost the game.” I twirled Grave Oath in my right hand. “Any last words?”
“You will pay for your evil deeds, sinner. The Lord of Light will punish you most severely for the foul things you have done, and verily will he rain down his righteous wrath upon you, and your tainted soul will spend eternity in torment in—”
I stabbed the dagger through his ear, burying it up to the hilt in his skull, and watched dispassionately as his head shriveled up and his body deflated.
“I asked for last words,” I muttered, “not a last lecture.”
As soon as my dagger had drunk in his soul, a strange jolt rushed up my arm into my heart, and once again, Isu’s unseen presence electrified the air around me. This time, a wind rushed across the ground and dragged with it whatever dry leaves, broken twigs, or other debris lay in its path. It swirled up in a little tornado, the stuff it was carrying forming the constantly whirling familiar shape. Isu’s boobs and ass looked a bit weird when made out of dry leaves, dust,
