“First a zombie and now a skeleton,” She voiced her frustration. “Are ghosts coming next?”

Leaning forward, Ria picked up her torch as bones cracking sounds reverberated around her. She pushed the naked man’s back with her foot to wake him up; to her surprise -unlike the dead body from the first tunnel- the man moaned and grunted in his unconscious state.

“Mom,” he said groggily in half-sleep, “let me sleep for a few more minutes…”

Surprised at his liveliness, Ria hurried to her knees and started slapping him left and right, whilst keeping her ears open. After a minute of being brutalized the man finally woke up: completely unaware of his situation.

“Mom, hey-” he said grunting. His face showed signs of struggle before expressions of clear terror adorned his face. “Who are you? Where is that thing? That coat wearing crocodile- where is it? Help me, you have got to help me!”

“I-” She tried to explain but heard a small landslide of bone to her left and swung on her heels to face it. A small round bone fell in front of her, right at the moment she faced it, and bounced away, leaving her breathless.

“Get up,” she said looking around. “We need to leave. Your life is in danger.”

“What danger? And why can’t I move.”

Unperturbed by his emotional display and crackling voice, she peered at him and saw no ropes binding him. The man was trying to move, but noting below his neck was moving. She checked his neck and saw a deep cauterized wound there. A look of sympathy washed over her face before she stood up with her back to him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why- why are you sorry?”

“I think you are paralyzed below the neck.”

“Wha- how can that be? How could that- oh, that Croc- he- he- hit me with a machete. He did this –I-I,” he trailed off for a few moments before he stopped shuddering and looked back at her. “You- you can help me? You can,”

Ria bit her lip but didn’t respond. She had nothing to say to him. She was in a situation of her own. And now with his untimed revival… she was finding herself quickly sinking into a quagmire too deep for her, emotionally and mentally. It would have helped her much if the man hadn’t woken up or had simply been dead from the start. But the sewer clearly had its own plans. It wasn’t about to let her off easily. No. it had to bring her morality into question. This shitty place had to make her question her own self. The skeleton hiding in the shadowy depths wasn’t her only enemy. One shouldn’t forget the real task of this stage- the retrieval of the Croc’s stash. And the stash being a living man… the sewer wanted her to save herself by sacrificing an innocent man.

Does the Croc want me to sacrifice a man to save my own life? Is this also the conduct of a leader? What kind of leader knowingly kills a man to save his own skin?!

Mounds toppled and a jaw cackled. Not knowing how many stupid skeletons surrounded her was hard on her psyche, but she held her spot. The dread of being put through the choice to hand over the man to the Croc slowly chiseled at her sanity, but she held her spot. Where would she run to anyways? A grunt came out of her mouth as the liveliness got louder around her, making her step away from the man.

“What is that? Are we not alone? Is that monster still around?” She heard the man ask and clenched her knife tighter than ever. She felt constricted. The skeleton was still running around the circular opening; whether it was waiting for something or simply trying to get into her head, only it knew. It wanted to scare her, to make her fear the unknown. And its antics were working. She was trembling.

She had somehow faced and defeated the zombie, but that incident had happened as brisk as a gust of wind. The zombie hadn’t given her the time to think. It had chased her to the end of her stamina and attacked her without any delays. But the skeleton was stalling. It was giving her time to think. It was forcing her to think about all the scenarios which could, should or would happen. And if her headache was any indication, its tactics were working. A body of bare-bones without a brain had her in its clutches. Every little sound it created made her jump. Its every cackle haunted her breaths.

“Hey,” The voice brought her out of her thoughts. It not only made her remember that she wasn’t alone, but that she hadn’t lost yet. She still had a chance. Whether she would win or not- time would tell. But for now, she was still alive. She was alive and she could resist.

I’m still alive.

“I’m talking to you lady? Although I can’t get up, you shouldn’t ignore another human like that. At least tell me what’s out there, please? I can hear it moving you know, even if I can’t see it.”

“It’s a skeleton.” She said.

“What now?”

“A skeleton is a skeleton,” she said slightly uptight. “What do you want from me? To give you a proper explanation of what a skeleton is? It’s a pair of bone and it can move-Happy now?”

“Good God. What are you going to do? It’ll kill me. I can’t move!” he said ignoring her angry tone. This man either knew his priorities or he was absolutely stunned.

“Don’t worry. You have been sleeping under its eyes for who knows how long. It hasn’t hurt you until now. So it’s possible that it won’t hurt you.”

“You don’t know that.” He said opening his eyes wide.

“Well, your crying is not helping my situation. So you better shut up and let me-” She trailed off looking at the fringe of the open area. She could see a figure standing there just outside the coverage of her torchlight. As she squinted, it cackled and something churned inside her. It was the same feeling which she had felt before pulling the knife out of the floor while facing the zombie. It wasn’t a sense of urgency or hesitation. It was an onslaught of calmness and freedom, of utter and unfounded confidence. And before she knew it, she this feeling had her running-running directly toward the skeleton.

“It is our situation. Not just yours. Hey-Are you listening to me? Where are you going? Don’t leave me alone, man?” The man’s shriek rang behind her, heard and forgotten without a second thought.

It has finally given up on stealth. It’s my chance.

The skeleton was finally in the open. She didn’t know whether she had the strength to deal with it, but she ran without care. She didn’t run like her life depended on it, but like anything was possible if only could just reach the skeleton. Her mindset was changing. Thankfully, she wasn’t completely doubtless about her situation. Her hesitation about the stranger’s fate tells a wide tale of her personality. She had made up her mind about the monsters. She now understood what to do about them. She understood that the monsters were her enemy and that hesitating against them wouldn’t do her any good. Her thoughts, however, weren’t completely set in stone, yet. Though she understood it in her heart, she hadn’t stopped hesitating. This time, her body had acted while her mind hesitated. Next time, she might not even get the chance to act.

She heard her heart beating crazily inside her chest. She could feel her heart rate increasing. Her breathing wasn’t out of her control though. She thought she needed time to make up her mind about the stranger. He was a done case after all. He was paralyzed and broken. There was no way to save him inside the sewer.

Other than the fruit, She thought. She had felt the fruits effect on her body. She knew what it could do. It had not only closed her wounds but had also repaired her body and refreshed her mind. The fruit had worked its wonders on her and it surely could help him too. And it’s not like she would have to drag him around! She was sure the garden elf would help him just like it had helped her. These thoughts however only worked as stones to drag her feet. They didn’t present her with a solution about how to deal with the Croc but tilted her decision toward going against it. And the reason was very convincing too.

If only I had a way to deal with the Croc.

As she ran it cackled jovially. Well, she was also happy. She didn’t want to fight the skeleton between the mounds. The mounds were its playground. While out there, in the open area, she was at an advantage. At least she wasn’t at a disadvantage. As she neared the skeleton –its bare form almost visible- she heard a bone crunch behind her back. The sound came unspeakably suddenly. It got her attention. And as her attention slipped, something caught her feet. She tripped and fell. Everything happened in the blink of her eyes. The reaction window was so small Ria only noticed her fall when she saw the white ground nearing her eyes. She hurriedly put her hands forward to protect her face and shrieked in pain when a few bone shards pierced through her left hand. And the roll next really pushed her understanding of pain through a threshold. A few more shards of bone punctured through her collar and back, poking out of her bloody skin like she had broken her own bones.

The pain brought Ria out of her rushed state of mind. The newly formed wounds burned. The hurt came suddenly and way worse than some thorny prickling, and it stuck with her for a long following while. The silence rushed at her like a binding globe of discomfort. It tightened around her, making her breathless and hazy.

While she was still in shock, that something holding her feet crawled up her leg and over her body like a snake. It wriggled up her back, held her hair and brutally tugged them back. The pain multiplied instantly, making her coherent. The thing tugged her hair hard enough to curve her spine and raise her head from the ground, making her look directly at the skeleton which finally came into motion and lunged at her with its jaw open.

A faintly glowing blob of blue light glowed inside its eye sockets. She saw its focus set on her. The sight of death rushing toward her sent shivers snaking down her spine. She gave up. She remembered the zombie and decided to give up struggling. She remembered the Goblin and gave up on the thought. She remembered her family and forgot them the next second. She went through her memories one by one to give her a reason to struggle, to act. Then she remembered Nicky and she found herself liking the idea of meeting her again. She found herself closing her eyes forever, she remembered her brother. She remembered thinking that going against him was impossible- a mountainous task. And remembered sticking a knife into his chest, right where his heart rose and fell, right where he had asked her to strike if she wanted to be freed from him.

“Only kill me if you have the strength to face life on your own, all alone. If you can’t even oppose your big brother, your own flesh and blood, then how will you face a lifetime worth of strangers? Won’t they simply eat you alive?” And she had acted. Right then and right there she had killed him. She had used a knife polished to mirror finish, a knife used to slice butter, to slice him out of her life. She had done that. With her own two hands. She had protected herself once. She had faced oppression and rioted. She had done it once.

“I can do it again.” She made up her mind. Be it the goblin, the croc, the zombie, the skeleton or a stranger, she would do anything to protect herself. If surviving meant defying the Croc and stealing his last food, she would do it. If surviving meant stealing the life of an innocent stranger-

“THEN I’LL DO IT TOO!!”

Pushing on the ground with her right hand she dodged away to her left. The skeleton fell amidst the man’s cries and rolled away toward him with a bustle of bone shards and bone-rattling.

Standing up she got a hang of the thing holding her hair and pulled. It, however, stayed stubbornly latched on to her hair no matter how hard she yanked. And to her dismay, the skeleton stood up. It stood motionless for a moment then lunged for her again. The man cursed in the background. She decisively pulled the critter holding her hair above her head and sliced the length of hair it held with her knife, gaining freedom. In the next moment, the skeleton was right upon her. It had a single hand –with pointed fingers- which it sent slashing at her neck. Left to no devices, she swung the critter she held and smacked it at the skeleton's skull, cracking it in one swing and flinging the skeleton away. A scratch grew visible on Ria’s neck as the skeleton dismantled into pieces from the strike and its skull rolled away into hiding. The threads of her arm length hair slowly fell around her, glowing dimly under the torchlight.

The skeleton went into hiding once again leaving her with the knowledge that its limbs could move separately from its body. The critter which had wormed over her body had been the skeletons missing arm: the remains of which she tossed away into the darkness with her back to the man who was snarling behind her.

“Holy shit, what was that? It was only bones! How did that thing even move? I saw that white arm stalk you. At first, I thought it was a snake. I froze. I’m sorry. I should have warned you. And then you smacked it with its own arm. That was hilarious.” Finishing his words, he started laughing. She, however, wasn’t in the mood to listen to him. The danger wasn’t over yet.

And if her condition was normal then she would have noticed how jovial the paralyzed man was. His was not the recovery speed of a normal human. He should have been acting all cooped up and broken, not laughing and screaming.

“It is not done yet. It’s going to attack soon. I want you to keep your eyes on my back. Warn me if something pokes out of the dark again. Our lives depend on you.”

She didn’t wait around to hear his agreement. It was about to attack again. The pattern was right there. The skeleton was building momentum. Its echoing rattling was the sign. Putting her knife into her back pocket she picked up the femurs left behind by the skull. Holding them, she positioned to defend the middle of the circular arena with her legs spread wide and knee bent. She was ready.

Bone shards crunched in front of her. It was coming. A bead of sweat trickled down her face. She didn’t run for it this time. I’ll intercept you right here where the light shines. I’ll see how you run this time. The noises increased. Her heartbeat rose. Just when she was stiffening up, one of the mounds to her right toppled toward the arena. The bones tinkled into the boneless ground stopping a few inches from her feet.

“Oh no,”

It was just the start.

One by one the other mounds started falling upon Ria. Bones rained at her from above. A sea of abrasive shards flushed toward her. Bones broke upon impacting the floor. A mass of sharp shards flew all around. She somehow managed to cower into safety underneath the only mound left standing. But she didn’t come out of it unscathed. Her flesh was gorged in many places. A few of the sharper pieces had managed to draw blood. The man, on the other hand, fared much better than her. He only suffered a few shallow scratches at best, and a bone poking his arm was his worst wound.

Ria feared being buried with the stranger under the mound. She knew they wouldn’t survive if it also fell. But it didn’t. Bone dust-colored her sight in grey. She, unfortunately, lost her torch to the tsunami. If it wasn’t for the natural luminance, she would have been left completely blind. For now, she could at least distinguish between the shades of dark. Left to no choice, she dumped the thought of running away into the back of her mind and watched the newly formed trench with squinted eyes.

“What-what are we going to do now?” The man said, stuttering and coughing.

It didn’t take long for her immediate surroundings to calm down, but the skeleton was still in her vicinity. She could almost hear it inching toward her. She didn’t know whether it could breathe or not, but she was sure there was a stinking breath in the air. And what else could produce such a nauseating breath other than the skeleton which possibly hadn’t brushed ever since its revival?

As she closed her eyes to take a breath, something light fell on her back and bit her shoulder. She staggered and gasped as a pair of legs –the skeletons lower half- dug out of the bone mess and kicked her in the gut. Everything happened so quickly she had no time to defend herself. Pain stole her breath as she fell and sprawled back onto the ground. The man said something incomprehensible behind her but she had fallen too awkwardly, whipping her head at the fall and becoming incoherent.

Lights flashed past her eyes while she groaned and grunted under the skeletons scrutiny. A kick to her gut brought her back into the present and stabbed by something long and sharp on her thigh woke her up completely. She saw something white and segmented dancing above her thigh, trying to drill inside her flesh. Screaming, she tied to move her hands but found them tightly bound in a hug by a pair of bony arms. She panicked as adrenaline coursed through her veins, slowing her vision and giving her the necessary time to think. The legs jumped upon her gut again. She barred through the pain and holding the bonny arms, pulled harshly. Screeching, she tore the arms right out of the shoulders of the skeleton and smashed them on the ground to her side: breaking them. Almost manically she pulled the snake-like thing trying to bore into her thigh and threw it away. Her conscious started drifting and pain started taking over. But she held on. She kicked the legs away and stood up in the same motion, right before she jumped high and fell with her back to the floor. The impact broke the skeleton's torso and sent its cracked skull rolling away toward the trench. She coughed blood.

The man said something behind her. She didn’t hear his voice. She got on her knees favoring her right leg and retched through the screeching headache. Although nothing came out of her stomach, her drifting conscious settled soon after. Whispering laughter echoed inside her ears reminding her of her childhood. A few moments later, a constant ringing sound replaced the laughter and she pushed herself up from the ground, unaware of where she was and what had happened.

“Your shoulder isn’t looking good.”

She heard the voice, but her surroundings were tumbling around her. Even when she tried to focus on the man, he kept moving about and rotating around her at a slanted axis. She knew the skeleton wasn’t done yet. Somehow losing its limbs didn’t harm it much. It could generate or gather a new set of bones. Finally, the world slowly settled around her and returned balance to her feet. She stood up laboriously wheezing, dragging her right leg up and her right shoulder pulsating with pain. The slightest of movements burned through her stamina and mental capacity, but she used the pain to stay conscious. Her life depended on it.

Blood trickled down her various wounds shallow or deep: painting a vivid picture of her struggles. The fruit will help me recover. It was hope which kept her moving. Her hands and feet were badly shredded. Her body trembled out of her control. She was at her poorest condition yet. But she hadn’t come out from the hassle with a loss. She had learned something about the skeleton form it. She had noticed the crack adorning its skull. Unlike its limbs and other bones which it had been replenishing limitlessly from the mounds, it hadn’t repaired its skull.

And if I am right, She thought, looking into the dark trench where the skull had rolled into with hateful eyes, the skull is its weakness.

She took a thoughtful few steps toward the trench while grinding sound came from the piles. She dragged her right leg behind her at first, then clenched her jaw and started running.

“Where are you going, oye?”

She left the man behind; He didn’t concern her, being the only one safe from the skeleton. She left her pain behind. She left her concerns behind. She left her last shred of doubts behind too.

Bones exploded around her. Hands and legs rose from the piles and surged for her life. They came one by one. She smacked the hands with her bone clubs and shattered the legs by kicking them. A segmented spine slithered toward her. She thought of jumping above it but it coiled around her foot, halting her steps. A leg kicked her back. She staggered but managed to stay afoot. An armless hand tried to chock her neck, but she held its fingers and snapped them out. As the bones from the hand fell out of her grip, a rib cage with sharp and pointed ribs fell or was flung at her head. It tried to swallow her head and shear it off her neck. She could only pull her arm up and let it cage around it. It shredded the flesh of her arm but she steeled through the pain.

She saw another arm rising from the mound to her left. She pulled it down and kicked on it, breaking it into two. A headless torso jumped at her from her right and she heard something running toward her from behind. She jumped just in time to roll out of their range and saw the torso and lower half seamlessly join together and run after her in one fluid motion. It jumped at her once again for the tenth time, and she sent it flying into the dark trench by holding it from the arms and kicking it on the hips at the exact right moment. She was wheezing. Her body was torn apart. But she held on. Her destination was so close.

Just a few more steps and it will be over.

She saw the headless skeleton fall and roll on the ground, breaking into hundreds of pieces before collecting around the skull and rising once again as a single body. The skeleton stood up soon looking neat and proper. Its only flaw was the missing jaw and the large crack rising from its temple to its crown. She had already decided what to do. She ran for it. The skeleton removed its hand and threw it at her. She saw a femur sticking out of the pile and pulled it out; swinging it at the hand like a bat she destroyed them both.

As it stood there staring at her with its ghostly glowing orbs, a bone arm jumped out of the pile and connected to its shoulder. She already knew it could replenish its bones but seeing its skull look the same as before only strengthened her suspicion. It could move is body parts freely and send its limbs as live projectiles. However, it wasn’t impossible to defeat.

It answered her charge by lunging at her. It seemed to have given up on running away or had taunted itself into confronting her directly. Copying her, it held two big wide bones in its hands. They both collided. Its bone club connected with her ribs and cracked one. Her femur struck its skull and smashed it into pieces. Her scream pierced the area and the skeleton bones scattered behind her like thrown away garbage, never to rise again. She finished her swing above her head as the broken skull collided with the trench wall and rolled to a stop. She watched the bright globes of light darkening inside its sockets until they completely extinguished, and she fell to her knees so exhausted she couldn’t even cry.

The world changed around her as she cried. The valley of endless mounds shrunk until only a few of them remained standing. The man whom she had left tens of meters away appeared right next to her: right next to an open door.

Calm returned, bringing the news of an upcoming storm. It gave her invaluable minutes to make up her mind. Then the storm struck.

“I knew jou would succeed, girl.” The voice came surging. It brought along a wave of metallic panic, an end to her ongoing decisions. Hearing it mean a conclusion to her physical struggle, but also the start of her mental punishment. But she had already made up her mind. She didn’t know how, but Ria stood up on her feet and pushed the man through the door.

She knew her actions would bring a devastating consequence. The goblin had told her so, the Croc had explained it to her, and in the garden, she had seen the consequence of her forceful meddling. It’s possible that the Croc wouldn’t act kindly to her next time. But she had made up her mind. Nobody had tried to save her from the demons of her childhood. She knew that feeling. She knew what it felt like being left behind all alone.

I can’t become one of them.

She was stepping onto the harder route, but it was her decision and she was fine with it.

“JOU FOOLISH GIRL, WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

The Croc raged behind her as she closed her eyes fell through the door. Silently, she allowed her pain to bring the gift of unconsciousness.