Caleb landed in the hold with a grunt, letting his knees flex and help take the shock of the landing. One of his ankles made a painful twinge, but he forced himself to ignore it for the moment. He spun to face the oncoming threats.

The glowing twin spheres created by his Dancing Lights spell threw off enough illumination to show a horror that would’ve given Poe or Dante pause.

Skeletal humanoid forms shuffled forward towards him and Sienna. Caleb had to fight back his sense of disbelief. Anything like this in his world had only existed on celluloid, or in the depths of some fever-dream.

Dammit, this is Jaladri. A world with magical death cults, dragons, unicorns, and griffins. The rules I’m used to don’t apply!

A couple dozen of the creatures advanced, preceded by the smell of decaying flesh. Mottled white bones gleamed where they showed through tattered clothes. Some wore moldering mis-matched outfits, while others were clad in ragged remnants of Sea Viper uniforms.

Each skeleton-thing grasped a rusty sword in hand. The group moved jerkily, as if animated by some unseen force. Pinpricks of red light glinted in the depths of each figure’s empty black eye sockets.

Caleb squeezed the triggers on the pistols in each hand. Twin bangs! echoed in the crowded space. One shot hit the closest creature, blowing a bony hand off at the wrist. Caleb watched as the hand wriggled upon the floor like a fat white spider, its grip convulsing around the hilt of its sword.

The other shot hit a skeleton creature in the second rank at the base of the neck. It collapsed as its skull went flying. Limbs quivered and twitched as if trying to get back on its feet.

Caleb swallowed, trying his best not to gag. He sheathed his pistols and took the cutlass from where he’d held it in his teeth. He only just brought it up in time to block a swing from the nearest figure.

Rust shivered off the creature’s sword. Caleb shoved it back a half step. Instead of swinging or thrusting, he lunged forward with the cutlass blade raised. The cup-shaped guard caved in the skeleton’s nasal bones with a nauseating crackle.

He swung the guard around to the left with all his might. A crump! and he knocked the skull completely off the creature he’d disarmed with a pistol shot a moment ago. Both skeletons sank to the floor, though their bones continued their unearthly animation.

Caleb spun as the two fell, blocking the next incoming strike. Again, he shoved his undead opponent back. Before he could strike again, three more blades slashed at him. He dodged and desperately blocked the incoming swords with his own.

The things didn’t seem to have voices, but the closest one gnashed its bare teeth with a dusty clack. He pivoted, took the thing’s sword hand off at the wrist, then blocked two more strikes. Sweat flew from his brow as he did his best to hold the others back.

New screens popped up at the edge of his vision. He risked a glance at them before swiping them away.

Adventurer's-Level Quest: Investigate the mysterious wreck located on the island. Quest difficulty increased by 120% due to assumption of two additional Adventurer’s-Level Quests. STATUS: IN PROGRESS. Adventurer's-Level Quest: Fight off the horde of undead skeletons animated by eldritch magical force. STATUS: IN PROGRESS. Adventurer's-Level Quest: Rescue member of your crew from a fate worse than death. STATUS: IN PROGRESS.

The skeleton creatures pushed back at him, shoving their swords against his. Their weight and numbers began to tell, threatening to overbear him. He dug in his heels, but the soles of his boots began to slip across the slick deck boards.

“Hold still, Captain!” Sienna shouted.

She grabbed him around the waist and sank to her knees. She reached out and grabbed for the sword that one skeleton had dropped. Then she shook off the disembodied hand still clutching the hilt and stamped on it.

Sienna remained in a crouched position. She swung her newly acquired blade back and forth, hacking at any leg within range. Femurs cracked, knee joints broke apart, and the front row of Caleb’s adversaries toppled over into the second rank.

It gave Caleb a second or two of breathing room.

“Thanks,” he gasped, as she got up and stood next to him.

“Welcome, Captain,” she replied, as the next wave advanced upon them. “Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve?”

He blinked. Until now, his magic hadn’t been the kind that was good on the offense. He’d mostly used it to deceive, escape, or gain advantages in flight.

But that had changed with reaching Level Eleven.

Caleb mentally flicked through his spells until he found the one he was looking for.

Squall Burst

He raised his free hand, palm out towards their adversaries, and concentrated.

Four of the skeletons loomed up before them. Their jaws clenched in fixed toothy grins, their arms brought up a quartet of swords that drizzled red particles of rust. Sienna braced as their swings came down–

–And with a massive FOOOOM, their blows never connected. A blast of air turned the orlop deck of the schooner into an industrial wind tunnel for three seconds. The skeletons before them folded like so much crackling paper in the blast, their forms flung away towards the crumpled bow section.

Moldy-smelling dust obscured their vision for a few moments. Caleb blinked and kept his sword at the ready, waiting for the particles to settle. A quick check of his stats showed that his use of Squall Burst had used up more than half of his magical stamina.

Coughing, Sienna set aside her rust-colored cutlass and ran forward a few steps. She knelt by a long, flat box that had lain half-buried in the broken floorboards. With a heave, she yanked it out and dragged it back over to her captain.

“Look!” she said, between coughs. “It’s got a golden lock!”

The container turned out to be a long, flat, double-handled wooden chest. It was perhaps two feet long, half as wide, and eight inches deep. As Sienna had noted, it was held tightly shut with a bright gold mortise lock.

“Definitely worth taking,” Caleb said. He craned his neck and shouted back up to the berthing deck. “Donal, Regan! Are you going to throw a damn rope to us, or are we going to die of old age first?”

“It’s coming, Captain!” Donal shouted back. “We can’t find anything up here to tie it to, or it’ll bring the rest of this ship down on our heads! We’ll have to pull you up without securing it.”

At those words, the same slithery sound Caleb had heard before came from the bow of the ship. At the very edge of his bobbing lights, he saw the shattered bones starting to reform, linking up again joint by joint. His insides curdled to watch the creatures’ steady progress.

“Oh, Lir and Danu preserve us,” Sienna gasped.

Finally, a length of rope appeared over the side of the hole. The end, which had been knotted into a loop, dropped onto the floor next to them. Caleb knelt, grabbed it, and shoved the loop under the sole of Sienna’s boot.

“You’re leaving first,” he said. “Captain’s orders.”

Before she could object, he snatched up the wooden case. The solid weight of the thing surprised him. He turned it so that she could hold the container by one handle.

Sienna wrapped her fingers around the handle. Then she used her free hand to hold onto the rope as tightly as she could. She leaned into Caleb, her eyes intense.

“Captain–” she breathed.

“Later,” he said firmly, before calling up to the next deck. “Donal! Haul her up!”

With a scratchy sound of bones on dust, the first rank of the skeletons reassembled back to their original eldritch glory. They groped on the floor, grabbed the closest of the dropped swords to hand, and then advanced forward in a mass. Caleb mentally went through his spell list again, desperately searching for something he could use.

Squall Blast had drained enough of his magical stamina so that he couldn’t use it a second time. Instead, he conjured up two more glowing orbs with Dancing Lights. Then he flung all four orbs at the skeleton creatures.

The light spheres didn’t faze the oncoming horde at all. Two in the lead rank slashed at the orbs with their rusty cutlasses. To Caleb’s surprise, contact with the spheres caused them to gutter and wink out like failing candle flames.

Sienna vanished over the lip of the hole above. In seconds, the rope was tossed over the edge once more. The looped end landed at Caleb’s feet. He slipped the toe of one boot into the loop just as the first skeleton reached him and raised its sword to strike.

A clang as his cutlass blocked the incoming blow. Once more, he lashed out with the hilt, punching the creature and knocking two more back. It only gave him a moment’s respite.

“Donal!” he shouted. “Anybody, get me out of here now!”

He grabbed onto the line with his free hand just in time. The rope went taut and he was yanked three feet up. Caleb managed to block two more of the skeletons’ swords as they swung at him. A third blade whistled through the air, barely missing the rope and glancing off the heavy leather of his boot toe.

With a second heave, and he ascended two more feet. He swung desperately down toward his feet, but he couldn’t block easily anymore. One of the rusty blades bit into his calf, slicing through the side of his boot and drawing blood.

A third heave lifted him high enough to see the upper deck. All three of his crewmates strained at the line to lift him. Tavia remained in back, her horn glittering, her hooves firmly planted, and her teeth firmly affixed to the rope’s far end.

The fourth heave pulled him bodily out of the hole and left him lying belly-first on the berthing deck. Caleb felt a viselike grip clamp onto his ankle. He looked back over his shoulder and had to force himself not to scream.

One of the skeletons had latched onto his leg. It scrabbled like a mindless thing to climb further up his leg. More bony fingers appeared at the edge of the hole as yet more creatures clambered up the first’s body to gain access to the upper deck.

Regan released the now-slack rope. He unlimbered his rifle and shot it one-handed. A bang! and a hole appeared in the forehead of the skeleton gripping Caleb’s leg, but nothing else happened.

Tavia also let go of the rope she’d had in her teeth.

“Keep down, Caleb!” she shouted.

The unicorn curled her head in and grasped one of the very last beads that had been braided into her mane. She crunched down as if biting into a piece of hard candy. Then she flung the bead towards the opening.

Caleb tried to flatten himself against the floorboards. The bright blue bead sailed over his head and down into the hole. A crackle of blue sparks, followed by the fzzzzzt! of arcing electricity.

The skeletal creatures grabbing at the opening or clinging to Caleb fell apart like the spilled contents of a catacomb. He scrambled to his feet and got away from the opening as quickly as possible. Tavia spotted the droplets of blood he left as he limped over to them.

“You’ve been wounded!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, we can treat it outside,” he panted. “I just want out of this place, right now!”

A skin-chilling howl came from deep within the bowels of the ship. Once again, the bones began to quiver. No one in Caleb’s group said a word in argument. Instead, they just made a beeline for the outside.

They didn’t stop until they’d reached the forest line at the high point of the beach. The schooner still loomed, dark and brooding, less than a hundred yards away. But Tavia insisted on checking Caleb’s wound.

“There’s dark magic involved here,” the mare said, as she sniffed the cut. “As well as trismus. If I don’t use my magic, your neck and jaw muscles will lock up, and you may die.”

That wound was caused by a rust-covered sword, Caleb realized. Sounds like trismus is another name for lockjaw. Tetanus.

“Do what you have to,” he said.

Tavia lowered her horn to the wound. A golden flash made Caleb wince as the sensation of heat ran through his body. The trickle of blood slowed to an ooze, and the cut didn’t hurt as badly anymore.

“You’ll still need Harper to stitch that up,” Tavia warned, before her horn swung over towards the chest that Sienna had dragged behind her from the wreck. “And that...that’s the source of the light magic. There could be an artifact in there!”

“That’s good, right?” Caleb asked.

A faint, chilly moan came from within the schooner.

“That would depend on how you define it,” Tavia said hurriedly. “This artifact likely kept the dark power inside at bay. Now that we’ve removed it, I suspect that it shall be free to roam once the sun has sank.”

“Okay, that’s not so good,” Caleb concluded. “Everyone, back to the ship!”

Luckily, the path that they’d hacked out of the forest on the way to the haunted schooner provided a quick and direct return path. Donal and Regan shared the burden of carrying the oddly shaped chest back, while Sienna insisted on helping Caleb over the most difficult spots in the terrain.

They arrived, gasping, back on the long crescent of beach they’d started from. The Arrenmar were stowing their weapons after the target practice and were about to prepare lunch. Just offshore, the Spitfire sat at anchor, looking uncommonly good to Caleb’s eyes.

“Captain!” The eldest Murray brother exclaimed, as he looked up from cleaning one of the rifles. “You’re bleeding! What in Lir’s name is going on?”

Caleb looked down to see that indeed, the cut had started bleeding again. The entire side of his boot was stained a dark crimson. He waved it off for the moment.

“Rory,” he said, still huffing and puffing from the swiftness of their journey, “Is there anyone still ashore aside from your trainees?”

The young man shook his head. “Prayer’s up, I think not. The herb-gatherers and water carriers got back to the ship half an hour ago.”

“Good. Call everyone over here, immediately.”

With that, Rory turned, put his fingers to his lips, and gave out a shrill whistle.

“Oy! Captain Ledger’s got an announcement!” he bellowed. “All of you, get your bones moving like the Myrkur were after you!”

Great choice of words, Caleb thought. Ironic, too.

“We just got back from exploring that wreck Shaw spotted,” Caleb said, once everyone had gathered round. “In doing so, something powered by dark magic was released. It probably won’t come after us until nightfall, but we’re not taking any chances. I want everyone packed up and back on the ship within the hour. As soon as we’re back on board, we’ll signal Shaw to return as well.”

A ripple of murmurs ran through the assembled crewmen. One, an older man with a gray beard, waved his hand before speaking.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Captain. But did you find anything at the wreck?”

Caleb gestured towards the chest.

“We found a source of light magic.”

“What about the wee beastie?” the man pointed over Caleb’s shoulder. “‘Less I’m mistaken, we’re in luck, because that’s a splashcat!”

Caleb turned to see Breena sitting on a rock nearby, calmly cleaning her calico fur. Suddenly, she leaped from the rock and into the water. She dove into the surf and swam out to the sloop.

Before everyone’s astonished eyes, the splashcat grabbed hold of the ship’s anchor chain. She then effortlessly shinnied up the links before making it aboard.

“Well, we didn’t really find Breena,” Caleb admitted. “I think she found us.”