I'm in pieces right now, emotionally and, unfortunately, physically. You heard that right. Battered and broken bones -- MY battered and broken bones -- are currently sitting on the ground, each one in an average of six pieces, and an average of three feet apart. Except my fingers, the notable outlier. Those are significantly farther away, and frankly pretty well preserved. Go fingers! My skull is also pretty well put together, likely on account of the fact that it landed on a rabbit. Poor rabbit.

It actually doesn’t hurt much, so that’s pretty cool. Looking around, I see the battered and broken (albeit a little less so than mine) bones of several other skeletons. There are either red lights in their eyes or no lights, and pooling around the ones with red light are pools of nasty magical gunk. Probably the condensation of their magic, dripping out of the bones it was stored in. There’s none coming out of me, but that’s probably just a matter of time.

So I wait, but nothing happens. Every so often another skeleton gets thrown down into the hole, and I see it crack apart on impact. A little later the gunk starts to flow. Again, I’m confused. I should be gunking, but I’m not. It doesn’t make any sense. Alas, it's what’s happening, and I can’t change that.

Although most of the magical pus evaporates, some of it manages to reach one of my bones. The bone it touches begins to soak up the mana, and slowly but surely it repairs itself. Soon enough my left femur is whole again.

As I wait for more magical gunk to seep into my bones, I should probably take stock and determine my next action after this. Assuming I’m fully repaired after this, I should be able to climb out of the pit. It's mostly dirt, so that should work just fine. However, if and when I do get out, there may very well be a necromancer waiting just above my prison to control me, or knock me back in.

Another skeleton falls into the pit.

Why are they collecting skeletons anyway? That man had said that a green was “good enough”, what kind of criteria are they looking for, then? And why? I’m assuming it's some sort of plot to overthrow the king and establish a new monarchy, because that would be fairly exciting, but I could be completely off. They might just want a bunch of indestructible super soldiers to - no it's definitely a military overthrow.

Another skeleton falls into the pit.

My legs are all repaired, and some gunk is getting pretty close to my torso bones. I don’t want to get caught in a war with undead monstrosities, especially since I would be one of the undead monstrosities.

Another skeleton falls into the pit.

Being a skeleton sucks. Sure, I’m not dying or leaking (for some reason), but I can’t really… feel much? More than as a ghost, sure, but it's like going from being fully colorblind to being able to see the faintest colors. I was overjoyed that I could feel anything, the slightest sense of pressure on my bones was a cause for celebration, but now that the novelty of it has worn off, it's not that great.

To pass the time I try levitating some of my bones into the gunk. It's hard. Like I said, my magic is just about worthless. But, I do manage to slightly accelerate the speed at which I’m repairing, so that’s something. My mana pool is quickly exhausted. Because I can barely use any at a time, I have never really trained my mana pool. It's probably the smallest you could find anywhere.

Hm. By now another skeleton should have fallen into the pit, and yet here I am, skeleton-less, inside of the skeleton pit. My torso slots together with my legs, and I walk over to my head. I put my head back on my body, and I’m good to go. It’s crazy to think I could heal from that.

Wait, I couldn’t move before, could I? No. No I could not. The only reason that would work is that the raspy old man left, and I’m outside the range of the spell. I’m free.