He was floating in an endless expanse of… nothing. It was peaceful. No concerns. No pressures. Just... nothing.

Then something else comes into being. A presence, introducing hated form on the blessed nothingness. His very soul recoils from that presence. It was wrong. Unnatural. Unwanted.

Chains of will stretch from it to wrap around him, hooking deep into his soul, yanking him from the nothingness. He tries to resist, but the presence is too strong, it’s pull irresistible.

His mind spins with vertigo as the surrounding space implodes into itself. Twisting. Warping. Reforming. It explodes out again into familiar shapes of trees and grass and sky.

Memories awaken in him, images flickering through his mind. The rush making him want to scream, to tear at everything around him. Images of violence, of abuse, of unspeakable acts. Of fire, burning friend and foe alike. His own face, twisted like a demon, laughing.

The chains pull him further, and now he can finally see his destination. A rotting body, lying on a wooden platform. Beside the body stands a pale man, his arms raised, directing the chains. In his fury he tries to strike out at the man, but the chains hold him in an iron grip, inexorably drawing him down into that corpse.

Then he is inside. His soul spreads out to every corner, filling it to its brim, sinking deep into the familiar bones. The chains wrap tighter around him, binding him in place, stopping him from escaping back into the nothingness.

For a moment all goes quiet, then a powerful thought slams into his mind.

FROM NOW ON, YOU ARE TEL. NOW, STAND.

The compulsion is irresistible, and he feels himself moving to obey. Jerkily, Tel rolls off the platform, falling to slam into the ground. Slowly, he stands, his body heavy, the useless flesh hanging off the bones restricting his movement. The compulsion fades once he is standing, and he can take in his surroundings. Nothing around him has any colour, everything just appearing in shades of grey.

In front of him stands a pale man, thin, curly white hair atop a strangely familiar face. Suddenly, a new image flashes through Tel’s mind. That of the same face staring at him, over the shoulder of a skeleton as it leaped towards him. His death.

FREE YOURSELF.

A new compulsion blasts away his thoughts, replacing them with a new image. That of clean bone, free of the rotting, useless flesh clinging to them. He calls to his magic, feeling it rush into him with greater ease than ever before. With a flash Tel’s body explodes into flame. The man stumbles backwards, arm raised to shield his face.

More and more mana races into him, the flames growing brighter. Slowly, the useless flesh begins to melt, sloughing off him. Bit by bit his bones are freed, bringing a joyous sense of lightness. He is free.

FOLLOW ME.

Another compulsion fills him with glorious purpose once again. The pale man strides off, and he follows. Soon they are joined by another pure being of bone, and together the trio march on in silence.

Tel reaches out with his soul, trying to communicate with the other walking by his side. A blast of contempt is the response, enough to shake his soul and cause his body to stumble. He raises one arm, calling mana to summon his flames, only for them to wink out when a new compulsion slams into place.

ENOUGH, JUST FOLLOW ME.

Together they walk along the path through the trees, before emerging onto a wide road. To one side stands a tall wooden wall, the other side opening onto rolling fields. The pale man leads on, through fields of stubby crops surrounded by low hedges, before they arrive at a large barn. The great orb of the sun hangs over head, its colour lost in his monochrome vision. Just past midday.

The pale man pulls open the door, revealing the interior of the barn. A dozen cattle stand within, penned in by a flimsy fence and gate. The closest few spare them a glance, before turning their heads back to chew on the piles of straw stacked to the side.

HIDE WITHIN. WATCH FOR THE ATTACK OF A MAGICAL BEAST. WHEN IT APPEARS, SIGNAL EACH OTHER AND SLAY IT.

The pale man steps to one side, ushering him inside, before leading the other skeleton away. Ponderously, the barn door swings shut, plunging him into darkness. Then, he is alone. For the first time since his return, there isn’t an active compulsion driving him to act.

For a while he just stands there. Something about the whole situation seemed unreal, dreamlike. A missing detail that ruined the whole painting. It took him a while to realize what it was.

There was no smell.

A place such as this should be assailing his nose with the stench of animals and their secretions, but instead there was nothing. In fact, the rest of his senses were similarly lesser than those of his memories. The world had lost its colour and all the noises sounded like they were coming from a great distance. He knew that he should feel sad at this, but for some reason he felt nothing at the realization. Even his emotions were muted, his entire existence a pale shadow of one that his flashes of memory hinted at.

The compulsion tugged gently at his mind, a simple urge instead of the forceful order of before. Looking around he spots a gap in the barn wall, high up against the roof. Striding over to the wall, he makes another discovery. His tiny finger bones are fantastic for climbing. The floating digits, hovering in the place he thought his hand should be, were perfect for hooking into tiny cracks in the wall. His body felt light as a feather, and with ease he clambered up the wall to the gap. There he could peer out and take in the surrounding land. A perfect vantage point. The compulsion temporarily satisfied, he settles down to wait.

***

The day slowly rolled on, turning to night. Then night back to day. Over and over again. During the day he would hide himself away as people came to lead the cattle out to graze. He watched them work the fields, carefully cutting away hedges that strayed outside boundaries, repairing fences, and generally maintaining the land. At night, he carefully watched the surrounding woods, alert for any sign of a beast. Every other day, in the morning, the pale man would come. The pale man would always see him, no matter how well he hid, his piercing eyes flicking immediately to his hiding spot. The man would say nothing, simply stare for a few moments then leave.

Almost a week passed, each day just like the last, each night just as uneventful. He expected to grow bored, but never did, his mind as sharp and focused as the first day he was ordered to this task.

***

This night was just like the others, with thick clouds obscuring the sky, blotting out even the faint light from the stars. Tel could barely make out his surroundings, the familiar trees, fences, hedges, all mere grey shadows in the darkness. In the distance he could feel the other one, the other skeleton. It was out of sight, but its resonance calls to him. It seems still, expectant. Waiting just like him.

Then something new. His head snaps around, twisting his body from where he crouches atop the barn roof, focusing on something large moving through the trees. Muffled sounds of breaking wood drifts through the otherwise silent night as the shape forces its way through the undergrowth. Twin points of glowing light briefly flicker in the night before disappearing behind the trunk of another tree. Eyes.

Tel waits, perfectly still, waiting to see what the thing will do next.

With the crack of splintering branches, it finally steps out of the tree cover. The thing is massive. It may once have been a stag, but now it is engorged, swollen. The thing stands as large as the tallest draft horse, almost twice the height of a man. Thick, matted fur covers its body, shifting and rippling in a way that speaks to barely concealed power beneath. From its head spiral long antlers of sharp bone, twisting and curving in on themselves, sharp protrusion jutting out at odd angles. It opens its mouth, letting out a deep rumbling growl, revealing long rows of serrated teeth.

With the beast in the open he can sense it better. The mana in the air, normally chaotic under the nighttime influence of Vistol, instead rushes into the beast. Fuelling it. Empowering it. This must be the creature the pale man ordered him to slay.

The beast takes a step towards the barn. Then another. Slowly, it begins to move faster. First with a gentle trot, the impact of its cloven hooves slamming into the ground sounding like the beat of some infernal drum. Then speeding up to full sprint, chunks of earth scattering into the air as its feet tear the ground apart.

Tel raises a skeletal hand, fire bursting into life above his palm. Or it should have done, if he could get a hold on the mana. The beast’s influence is too strong, the mana too chaotic, and his magic sputters out.

Before he can try again, the beast hits the side of the barn at full tilt. An earthshaking crash shatters the silence of the night as the beast ploughs straight through the flimsy wall and out of his sight. The entire building shudders violently, dislodging Tel from his perch.

Tel falls, slamming into the roof of the barn. The cohesion between his bones weakens momentarily, the mana storm briefly overwhelming his mind, and he collapses, his body tumbling from the roof to scatter over the ground.

It takes him many long moments to reform his cohesion, forcing his bones from their scattered pile back into the shape of a man. Piece by piece, the bones rush back towards one another.

With a thought, Tel reaches out into the distance, calling to the other one. A curt acknowledgement comes back. Another step in the compulsion satisfied, he focuses inward once again, gripping hold of the rampaging mana. He was the master of the magic here, not some mindless animal. It will obey him. It WILL obey him.

The spell binding Tel to his bones reacts to his desire, aiding and enhancing his magic, raising it to new heights. A portion of the mana flowing into the barn stops, then reverses direction, flowing into him instead. The heady sensation of having such power at his fingertips explodes within him, greater than any he had ever experienced before. If he still had a face, he knew that his smile would stretch from ear to ear.

Fire explodes into life around Tel’s body, outlining his bones with incandescent flickering flames, making him feel invincible. He didn’t need the other skeleton. This beast was his to slay.

From within the barn, the panicked bellowing of the cattle mixes with a wet tearing sound. Walking to the ragged hole in the wall Tel looks inside. The beast stands over a twitching body of a cow, its maw buried into a vast gash disembowelling the animal. The other cattle are pressed up against the far wall of the barn, their eyes wide in terror.

Raising his hands, Tel pulls the flame on his body down to a single point. A tiny orb of destruction, floating in the air before him, emitting a crackling roar. He takes a moment to marvel at the magic. This was powerful. Far beyond anything he managed before when he was… What was he? Who was he? The memories slip away as he grasps at them. No matter, he was sure this was beyond anything his past self could have managed. It was dangerous, deadly, and it was all his to command. Pointing it at the beast Tel releases his hold on the far side of the orb.

The moment his hold weakens, the flames within surge out. A ray, no more than a hand span wide, blasts forth. It slams into the upper shoulder of the beast, cleaving straight through and out the other side, continuing on to slice a long gash through the wall of the barn.

Tel stumbles back, the intense recoil from the spell sending him reeling. The beast, however, does not give him any chance to recover. Letting out a furious braying cry, its glowing eyes focus on him, filled with nothing but hatred and intense hunger. With a roar it spins and charges towards him, head lowered.

It slams into him, once again scattering his bones apart. His ribcage catches on one of the beast's antlers, his skull bounces off its back, his limbs spin away across the ground.

The beast roars again, raising its body up onto its hind legs. He watches the towering beast kick its legs in the air, his vision spinning as his skull bounces along the ground. The beast slams itself down onto his fallen pelvis, shattering the bone into fragments. No pain accompanies the destruction, merely a slight bump in the ambient drain of the magic keeping him whole. A futile gesture on its part.

However, he wouldn’t stand for such a treatment. Those were his bones. His body! This… thing would not get away with destroying him. It would pay. It would BURN.

With a thought, mana rushes into Tel again, before exploding out as fire from all his bones. The ribcage on its antlers, the pelvis beneath its hooves. All the scattered limbs. His skull right beneath his chest. All of them ignite simultaneously.

The beast roars once again, this time tinged with pain. Shaking its head violently, it tries to dislodge the ribcage searing its skin. As it bucks and flails, Tel pulls his bones back together, the scattered limbs rolling along the ground back towards him.

The beast bucks, slamming desperately into everything around it, floor, walls, fences. Finally, it manages to free itself of the blazing bones, sending them flying into the air. They arc through the air, called back to Tel, striving to make him whole once more.

The beast turns to him again, lips peeled back in a savage snarl. Thick blood run from the gash in its shoulder, the cauterized wound torn open by its bucking. Pawing at the ground, its eyes blaze brighter as it pulls even more mana into itself. Little by little, the wound on its shoulder begins to knit itself back together.

Suddenly a figure springs out of the darkness. He’d almost forgotten he had called to the other, and now here it was. Stealing his moment.

The other dashes forward, a long blade raised before it. Its legs move so fast they are a blur, but despite that almost entirely silent. Before the beast can react, the blade carves a long gash into its side.

Blood sprays out onto the ground as the beast roars in pain. It charges forward, straight towards Tel, ignoring the other. Stupid creature.

Roused from his reverie, Tel jumps to the side, falling into a clumsy roll. The beast snaps its head around and its charge shifts, instead dashing towards the other. Tel springs back to his feet, raising an arm. He just couldn’t give up an opening like this, no matter how much he would have wanted to see the other get crushed beneath its hooves. A great gout of flame spews out from his palm, engulfing the beasts exposed back.

The beast roars again and twists, only to expose itself to the other's blade. A flash of steel glints in the night, and another spray of blood covers the ground. The beast swings back again only to find flames washing over it once more.

No matter where it turned, fire or blade would strike it from behind. Little by little, its movements slow as its life drains away through a thousand small wounds. When it catches them with an antler they would just collapse, only to reform as strong as ever. It had no chance, its dumb animal mind unable to realize that its only hope was to flee.

Finally, the beast collapses, barely even able to lift its head. The other steps in, ramming its blade through the beast's skull. Then, it was truly over.

A wash of satisfaction flows through him as he completes the compulsion, filling him with euphoria. For the first time since his return, Tel didn’t miss the nothingness.