My hands were raw flesh, I had fought so many hands-on fights with those damn skeletons. I was down in this eery green light for who knows how long. I had been beaten up, scratched, stabbed, bitten and I was tired, oh so damn tired. But I had not seen an intact skeleton for a long time. I had ambushed and fought the betrayers nonstop, always up close, wrestling them down before I smashed their heads with the pommel of my sword against the wall. It was the smashing of heads against the stone wall that had injured my hands.

All my muscles were shivering in exhaustion. I was spent and not quite sure what had made me go one more, just one step further. It was a balance of security. Do I dare another fight? Do I dare to leave, sleeping in the feeding trough of predators out in the cave? Do I dare rest in one of the rooms with roaming skeletons around? I had chosen the path that resulted in the most secure place of rest and that had taken its toll. And I regretted it. The last fight had been too close.

In what I was now sure to be the edge of the labyrinth, as far away from the entrance to the cave as possible, I fell against a door I deemed sturdy enough. I listened but soon lost my patience. What was I waiting for? The chance to overhear skeletons talking about their lunch? I just opened the door and slipped in. It was a rather small room, cubic in shape, and lighted as any other place down here. There were a number of boxes, crates, and chests lined up against the walls. Groaning, I got behind one and shoved it in front of the door, barring it. I heard a click.

“Oh shit!”

Several darts impacted my back, fired from a trap I had sprung with a careless step. Pain bloomed along my spine like ink spreading through water. Poison. I fell on my face like a tree cut, paralyzed, and quickly losing consciousness.

[Level up! [Margrave of Ravenrock] level 5!

New Skill gained: a Murder of Crows]

I woke to damp twilight and just felt stiff. Groans escaped my lips while I tried to move my muscles, and the raw skin on my hands burned like fire. I could feel dried blood tugging at my skin, where it had glued cloth to flesh. But I grinned. Grinned because these were inconveniences, nasty and uncomfortable, but I was alive. Alive to tell the tale of how a man who went to war with enemies of the past and came out on top with another honest level under his belt. And no Twice-Born stuff either! I seemed to have shaken off whatever that dart-trap had done to me.

I had received 38 more notifications about slain skeletons yesterday. A good day of bloody work in my book. I fumbled a bit with my backpack but soon found myself emptying the waterskin I had filled with water the day before. The cold flooded and awakened my dry lips and organs, reinvigorating me thoroughly. I splashed some out of the other skin over my face and hands to wash some of the grime away.

Next up was my least favorite part of the day: Breakfast. I cut and chewed a maggot-worm thing as big as my forearm. It tasted like a leather boot worn on a grueling campaign through sulfurous swamps and the armpit of the week-old corpse of an ogre, filled with chunky vomit and puss. But it also tasted like surviving another day.

And so I endured disgust and the desire to hurl and chewed and swallowed stone-faced and mechanically. To not focus on the fight of my Essence-fuelled stomach against the foul and toxic worm, I jumped and limbered up, so that the pain of my aching muscles would distract me. I gave myself a good stretch, washed the taste away with water, and felt like a human again, however disgusting I might have looked and smelled. My blood-soaked shirt was so stiff, I knocked it against the wall until I could move again wearing it.

The wounds on my back hurt like hell when I tore the cloth from it. Should I spend essence to heal myself again? I thought long and hard but decided against it in the end. I was battered and beaten, but all right. I had to grow as a Twice–Born. Every little bit would help in the long run and I couldn’t be sure when I needed every bit of Essence for my next near-death experience. I was as ready as I was going to be. So, what was in these boxes and crates? I looked carefully over every inch of ground for mechanisms and traps, but other than the one at the door, that was already empty, I could not find any. I took my sword and went to a crate, stemming it open.

Gauntlets, Vambraces, Shoulderpads, belts, tents, bedrolls, backpacks, weapons, picks, shovels, tinder, matches, and so much more stuff. Some of it personal. Lockets with images of women and children, carved figurines of gods and saints, diaries and letters, small booklets, and jewelry. Again I was faced with an impossibility. It seemed to be all the stuff the 7th Cohort of the Ravenguard was no longer wearing or carrying.

Some of it made some kind of sense. They had been an elite order of heavy shock troops back in the day. The skeletons I had killed would not have been able to move under all that armor. But the implications were scary. Even more scary than the undying warriors themselves. Who organized this? Who had ordered it? Who made the decisions, the labyrinth, equipped the skeletons as optimal as possible before the rest of the gear was stored away neatly behind trapped doors? Where had the wood for the crates come from? Nothing of this could be explained within the realm of mortal rules. That left…the rest. The immortal and supernatural. If that was the case, exactly what was I in the thorough process of antagonizing down here?

Whoever it was seemed to be obsessed with order. All skeletons were equipped the same way, everything that did not fit the template was stored here. Even if it was detrimental to the fighting ability of the soldiers, in my opinion at least. Different weapons for example. I found a large crate filled with knives and daggers, but some maces, morning stars, flails, and war hammers as well. I took one of the war hammers and gave it a few swings. It was a beautiful, If old and weathered, piece of work.

Back home warriors who identified strongly with the Ravenrock would often choose to show their dedication to their home by proudly wearing a war hammer. One side was blunt but the other side, meant to pierce armor, was tapered and shaped like the beak of a bird. They were even called Ravenbeaks in the jargon of the Ravenrock. The hammer I held went a step further and even had the feathers and head of a raven sculpted into the hammerhead. I took it to smash skeleton skulls, but the reminder of home was nice if you ignored the whole betrayal and king murdering thing. But I wasn’t about to let an advantage slide for some misplaced pride.

I completely outfitted myself. A new backpack, a belt knife, a bedroll, and a tent, stuff to make fire and other bibs and bobs. Sacks, pouches, rope, everything gold and silver, waterskins, sharpening tools, a pot, some cutlery, sewing needle and yarn, a few rations. Rations?

Wait. Why was nothing rotten here? Why was everything as good as new? Why was no steel rusted, no wood broken? It was as if some soldiers had stashed their stuff just yesterday. It was wrong, but just about everything down here was. I mean, the biscuits and jerky could last a year under normal circumstances, but it had been over a century.

I took the deliberate decision to not lose my mind that very second. This was an accept and advance, take what you can, worry about it later kind of situation. Because I had just hit the jackpot and you don’t look horses in the mouth or some such. I pretty much hated myself for eating that damn worm earlier that morning, only a few feet away from delicious jerky. But if that had been the price for this abundance of equipment and food, I would pay it every morning for the rest of my life. I would eat all of the worms, just for the armor.

I contemplated a lot on this, but in the end, I decided to keep it light. I took a single gauntlet for my left hand and a pair of vambraces to give me more options to defend myself. If I could have figured out how to attach them, I would have taken shoulder pads as well. But they would have to be fastened to a breastplate and I didn’t want one of those. Instead, I chose a shirt of chainmail that would not be a hindrance to me at all and might catch a stray sting or strike. I took only one gauntlet because I wanted the dexterity in my sword hand, but needed the protection on one fist to smash and grab skeleton bones and skulls. But I took a sturdy pair of leather gloves for both of my hands.

I changed my cloth wherever possible, but I kept my cloak. It was singed and dirty, but it was mine. And it used to be kind of a symbol of the ruler of Ravenrock back when…well then. I was ready.

It didn’t take long for me to find one of the rooms the skeletons were guarding again. The hallways were silent and empty. It seemed as though I had gotten them all, the day before. But as I peeked into the room, empty in furniture but for a few burning braziers and a richly engraved stone door, my task of the day seemed daunting. There were eight of them. I could take two of them for sure, but these eight would surround and overwhelm me quickly. I also could not lure them away so easily, because they were so much faster than me. Any traps I could lay for them would have to be right here at the entrance. Fighting them in the hallways, where they could not count on their superior number, seemed smart, but maybe I could do more. I took a few hours to prepare myself.

These were my assumptions: They were unnaturally fast, but they lacked body mass. That meant it was hard to defend against them, but it was easy to push them around. They would come in fast, too fast for them to easily switch directions. I could do this.

I started stage two of me taking revenge against the knightly order of betrayers by simply walking into the room, whistling a little tune to catch their attention. There was a moment of nonplussed silence, while all of their eyes flared up and their gazes swiveled to me as one. Then they moved and chaos descended upon me.

I jumped back into the hallway, nearly catching steel with my face. A second leap took me back farther into the darkness. The first skeletons did not leap. Their foots entangled themselves in the ropes I had spanned across the ground and went down, driven into each other by their magic-infused momentum, and crashed in a tangled mess. Before they even fully touched the ground I threw my improvised net. I had sown together ropes and pants, weighted at the edges with pauldrons, daggers, and sabatons.

My throw was not perfect, far from it, and the net wasn’t either. But the net covered a good part of the chaos, and the mindlessly thrashing skeletons entangled themselves more and more. The moment of satisfaction I allowed myself, while proudly observing my work, almost was my last, as two of them, who were behind the others, shot over the mess, swords first, barreling through the air in a spiral as fast and straight as an arrow.

They nearly caught my throat, but I barely fell away, the sword instead piercing my skin with a sickening squelch somewhere in my shoulder. We stumbled backwards. I found myself gripping his ribcage, steadying myself as well as keeping his biting jaws away from me. As soon as I had the balance, the Ravenbeak smashed his skull and the bones tumbled to the ground. I blinked in confusion while still holding the ribcage, but time was not on my side. I caught the next lunge in the ribs, his sword scraping over my chain shirt. I pulled the sword aside.

We had a moment there, I felt: Me staring into his burning eye sockets - he snapping wildly after my flesh with rotten teeth. Without further resistance, tempered steel met brittle bones. I smiled with grim determination as I collected the Shards of Essence. This day was mine.

[Betrayer Skeleton defeated! Reward: 5 EP]

[Betrayer Skeleton defeated! Reward: 5 EP]

Killing the bound skeletons was not much of a challenge, but I took my time nonetheless. I would not risk my life while a victory was all but assured. I took, well I had lost my sense of time… damn long to grind out the rest of the groups. I improved upon the net and the construction of the tripwires as I went along. In the next fights, I had more ropes spanned, higher up and farther back, so I had something between me and the skeletons and their freakish assault jumps.

It made the next fights much safer. I was scratched and beaten a few times, but the wound in my shoulder remained the only real injury of the day. As I was exhausted, I sat in my little shelter of wooden boxes after barricading the room and enjoyed my meal of military travel rations. It was a good day of honest and hard work.

After counting the notifications, which Lily had provided, I had hunted and killed 62 Skeletons so far. Which was a good haul, I felt, considering how manageable the risks had been. My totals were 313 Ep and 80 Shards. If I crushed these Shards, I would have enough for a major project in the Demesne. Like a Gate or a Skill. I desperately desired a Gate. And I could not decide. It felt like I had the skeletons figured out, and that I could spend a chunk of Essence on something else than survival. But that were the kind of thoughts that would get you killed someday, right?

I knew that I would get more skeletons to train myself up. Well, It was a guess. I was trying to remember what had led to the demise of the betrayers, but I did not know how many of them survived the struggle, just to be sentenced to death. So, I did not now how many of them had been thrown down the Abyss. A cohort of a knightly order had around 400 lay brother warriors, and 50 knights with squires or so. Give or take a few. I reckoned that there was a high chance that I would meet more of them. And I had not met knights yet, let alone the Regicide himself. And of him, I was sure that he had been the first to fly.

In the end, I stood firm with my initial decision to put survivability above all. I had a lifetime to plan and scheme. But I had to taste rain again to do that. I planned on mending one of my greatest flaws. I had no defensive Skill to use in single combat, no trump card to play. I would try to learn [Stonehide].

The costs were easily paid. It was a base cost of 500 EP minus 160 for the 32% cost reduction for the unity of my Demesne. Also, the Skill would be easy to integrate into my unity, because I could just anchor it into the rocky cliff my tree stood upon. That meant that my unity wasn’t likely to go down after learning that Skill.

On to the process itself. First, I read carefully through the tome of Skills, making myself familiar with it, once again making sure I was not about to make a grave mistake. I had a rough understanding of the workings of [Stonehide], translated by Lily to the parchment of the book. To the surprise of no one, it would turn my skin into a resemblance of the stony hide of the magmaworms by drawing upon the Dogma of stone, thus being real stone made flexible and not some weird skin texture.

It would limit my ability to move, and it would greatly increase my weight. The Skill had two settings: A single cast and a sustained cast. The single cast would take as much Mana as I wanted and would create a thick shell, depending on the amount of Mana, that would disappear as soon as it had withstood a certain amount of punishment, relative to the Mana invested, or 5 seconds had passed, whatever would come first.

The second setting would take one Mana a minute and provide a constant, but weak, layer of protection. This is why I valued that Skill so highly and why I bought it even over a Gate to a trading hub or a quest board. Because it had a modicum of flexibility. It could serve as a second layer of armor or protection, but I could also fuel it to the max in case of dire situations. And it would not lose its usefulness, as it scaled with Mana.

The process of creating the Skill was different. I still was weaving Essence, but it was on a much smaller scale. I had to weave minuscule patterns of woven Essence, everything incredibly difficult and intricate. In a way it was easier than weaving my Core Skills, because I had gotten a kind of blueprint when I unlocked the Skills. It was like carefully pouring a liquid through a small opening, which I managed to do quite consistently. After I handled that part of the weaving, I watched it fill out in the forms and patterns the blueprint had determined. It left me with a fractal of glowing Essence, beautiful and strong, and I integrated it as planned into the cliff.

Now, this was something else and I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. When I was weaving the layers of my Core Skills, I anchored the layers of woven Essence here in Limbo, but they were bound to my body. Thinking of my metaphysical space in Limbo as another location, the layers were in reality but grounded in Limbo. The Skill I just…built…was anchored in Limbo but reached out to reality with little more than a trigger.

So, Core Skills were improvements to my body in reality, while Skills were divine powers requested and triggered in reality but originating in Limbo. In a way it was easier imagining buying and learning Skills, because I could envision it as expanding my Demesne. It was harder imagining to strengthen a body that wasn’t really here, even if I could see the patterns of Essence around my metaphysical body here in my Demesne.

But I was done and anxious to try out my new Skill.

Back in the darkness of my storeroom, I scrambled around a bit until I had lit a lantern with some oil. I was still hurt and tired, so I decided to spend a few hours here to get back to fighting strength. I cast the Skill and watched in fascination as my Skin turned to stone. Movement was indeed limited, and the feeling was more than strange, but the stone seemed to be sturdy.

Out of sheer boredom, I found myself going through the personal stuff of the soldiers whose remnants I was hunting. I was hesitant at first, I did not want to hear excuses or reasons as to why one of the most famous and revered knightly orders of our little kingdom turned traitor and murdered one of my ancestors. And I didn’t find much of the sort, to be fair.

I mostly read about normal people worrying about their day to day, asking about wives, relatives, and children. Some of the diaries were long and detailed, but even they did not mention the treason. Whatever had made them king killers was not a long time scheme, it seemed like. Granted, I only skimmed the surface of the material. Disgusted I threw the books back.

Whatever happened to them was no sign of their strength as sworn men of my family. They were weak and had paid the price, no matter what they might have been before, or who was left behind crying for them in secret. I did not need to load the struggles of long-dead traitors onto my conscience. They were long dead. Their lives didn’t matter anymore. Finally, I caught some real, honest sleep on a bed of cloaks, pants, and bedrolls. I had never slept better.