"Hey, I am Arun."

Introducing oneself was nomally, a very normal thing to do when meeting someone for the first time. But, neither was this a normal situation and nor the parties involved adhering to the standard of normalcy. The yellowish skeleton eyed Arun, and in a very civil manner grabbed Arun's skull, and started pulling at it.

"Whoa. Dude, the hell?"

As his kin tried ripping his head off, Arun did what any sensible adult would do in this situation.

*BAM*

Bone met bone, as a fist landed on a skull. The other skeleton was in daze, it felt dizzy from the punch, although it was questionable whether a skeleton was capable of feeling dizzy. But it didn't discourage him from going for Arun again, as A's it raised its hands in an attempt to repeat its action, and *BAM*, another punch, which was followed by another, and another, till the skeleton had two new cracks on its old skull, and Arun nearly lost a finger or two.

After it had enough, the skeleton ceased its attempts at his skull and walked off. And Arun did what the most appropriate course of action would be, followed him. They walked through the forest before arriving at a clearing.

The skeleton merged into a group of skeletons, mostly humanoid, who were gathered here forming a circle. In the center of which was a slightly sturdier member of their kin, with heavier bones and an inch or two taller than the rest. It held a rusty old sword in its hand, as it made simple gestures towards the rest of them. Though it was questionable how much of that the skeletons could understand.

Then with a raise of his sword, all the skeletons felt a command of 'go' and started marching in a haphazard manner towards the direction its sword was pointing at. Arun too followed them as he couldn't think of anything better to do.

Again he mindlessly walked through the forest before the landscape changed to that of a marsh, which Arun found quite surprising, thinking that he hadn't walked much. Then again, he also understood that he had no means of keeping time, a biological clock or a natural indicator like a rising sun or moon, to tell him the duration of the march. Though the more startling thought being how did he even know about a thing like 'indicator of time'.

But before he could introspect any further, some disturbance ahead of his squad came to his attention. He saw that in the distance, in a shallow swamp, a few brown figures were dancing? While most would be unable to discern any thing in this eternally clouded dark jungle, the skeletons saw the brown figures had singed flesh in place of their eyes, sharp fangs from their mouth, and wierd smooth yet wrinkly flesh. The wounds of these bald abominations showed white flesh, oozing darkened pus. As for where the wounds had come from? The answer lay in the fact that the Ghouls the group of skeletons had spotted were "fighting" not dancing.

As the group of 'bones' neared the fleshy monstrosities, the skeleton with the sword, raised its hand in a stoping gesture. Following which, the majority of the squad kept walking towards the on going conductor. Only a dozen stopping, the rest kept walking towards the Ghouls.

The ghouls too, stopped their infighting and gave a shrill cry, with wide open mouths, their spittle spreading with the foul air they exhaled.

Arun watched, among the stopped dozen, as the skeletons unperturbed by the screeching, engaged in a brawl with the ghouls. It looked more like a gang fight to him, than a proper battle. Although he was still perturbed by the sudden terms popping up in his head, he eventually stopped wondering about the additional vocabulary being supplied to him.

He watched two ghouls trying to bite through a skeleton, while the same kept pounding their heads. While another pair of skeletons was trying futilely to dismember a ghoul by pulling at its limbs. Similar scenes of clumsy fighting could be seen all over the place.

The scene in front of him elicited a few thoughts from the curious Arun, and as he kept watching, a thought came to his mind.

'This looks fun.'

And although the only voice he was capable of producing was cluttering of jaw, he did his best in conveying his thoughts to his companions,

"This looks fun."

The only response he got, was the 10 or so skeletons that had stayed behind, with the exception of the leader with the sword, turned to look at him silently, and after sometime, returned to watching the brawl. As Arun kept watching, he saw numerous skeletons being dismembered and moving around handicapped, most intriguing being the ones walking without a head, while some of the ghouls lay still with missing limbs and pulped out heads.

After watching this, another thought came to Arun, which he voiced out in the group.

"But it also feels really unsafe."

In the response of which, again the watching skeletons turned their head. But this time they responded with a, "*Clack* *clack* *clack*" , as if agreeing with him in unision.

Soon, despite the general consensus, declaring the brawl as "unsafe", the group of the dozen smarter skeletons moved when the sword holder made known its intent on charging through, Arun in tow. Though at a point he separated from the charging group as he gave in to the impulse of trying out a brawl with a ghoul, and held locked hands with one. With both their hands interlocked, they looked like wrestlers in a deadlock. Then Arun started head-butting the ghoul, which caused it to lose its posture. And with a swift movement he got out of the ghouls hold and hurled a nearby skeleton towards it. With the skeleton and ghoul both losing balance and tripping over each other, Arun found a limb lying from one of his squad members and bludgeoned the ghoul to after life.

Soon, he felt a command of 'block' coming from the sword holding skeleton, to which Arun only reacted with,

"Block?"

As he watched a ghoul bigger in size, appearing from another side of the marshes and smashing a few skulls to smithereens, ending the skeletons permanently. And lashing out, the bigger ghoul ran towards the sword holder, with the intent to do the same with it. But before he could reach the skeleton, it was blocked by half a dozen smarter skeletons, who by sacrificing themselves were able to stop him for some time, which was used by the sword holder to lodge that rusty sword in the ghouls head.

"Oh! Block that.!"

As the biggest ghoul died, the rest retreated. And none of the skeletons gave pursuit, as the stood there. The skeleton with the sword, pierced the head of the ghoul it'd killed and retrieved a mud colored miniscule crystal. Then with another hand, again pierced the bigger ghouls body with his claws, and started a process of 'absorbing ?'.

Arun watched as the ghoul withered a bit, and he could have sworn that the leaders bones had thickened, even if in the slightest, but it had changed. Then sword holder gave another command for the skeletons to 'collect' and 'return', of which the former was only followed by the smarter ones, six or so.

And soon,all the skeletons started marching again, the direction of their march, all but known to the jolly Arun.