What am I?

The loner skeleton, without purpose or inherited drive like the others - the Thinker - wondered to himself as he was left alone in the middle of the great crypt of judgement. The adjudicators of the Lich Gozzpek held positions in upright sarcophagi as they judged the lesser beings who came before them in service. The Thinker waited with the Stranger, his once-helpful, now distant sympathizer, and the hunchback whose body was warped in an odd and seemingly incurable way.

The only real positive thought I’ve had was that I wanted to be a hero. That….is that what an unclouded purpose is? Is that what I want to be? I need to get this straight. Hero is probably not something a bunch of skeletons serving a Lich would be okay with. That’s the opposite of what we’re supposed to like, I think. So what can I be? What should I be?

…..If this is a job interview, then I just need to lie and tell them what they want to hear. If this is underground, maybe there’s a surface. If there’s anything like that -.

“Step forward!” the herald announced. The Thinker looked up and noticed that the five former spots were unoccupied. Two of the robed priests led the other skeletons out through a wide passage that led into even more darkness. The remaining three were therefore left to be tested by the three priests on hand.

The Thinker stepped forward immediately, fully aware of what objection was met with and how easily he could be erased. He stood before one of the red skeletons. The juiciness of its exterior was much more noticeable up close. The Thinker couldn’t help but behold it, from the exposed sternum up to the dripping teeth.

“Now,” it groaned, with a voice that could only be described as ancient, leaving columns of sticky spittle forming between its teeth as it opened its mouth, “we will begin.”

“Yes,” he replied, with an affirmative nod. He tried to smile reflexively. He felt his jaw tighten and sink back slightly, forming a small overbite.

“I behold you,” it spoke, with a wave of its hands at either side of the Thinker’s shoulders, “pale shade, unborn, unliving. Your form given to signify the end of what once was, and the permanence of what it then becomes. You are ruin, given form, to the fearful eyes of man. Be blessed at your existence. Though you are created, you shall serve the cause of ruin.”

“Absolutely,” he replied, with a positive arm swing. “I’m your man! Ready to….ruin anyone’s day, absolutely anyone, no day too small to be ruined. By me. For you! For….the great and powerful Gozzpek!”

Need to get on their side. Toady up as much as possible. No wrong words. Just be generic, vague and positive.

The priest reached its hands out and touched the sides of the Thinker’s head. He could feel the slick fingers around his temples as they lighty traced down and held his jaw by the hinges.

“You are eager to serve your purpose,” it spoke, “yet you do not know what it is. Your use comes to us at the behest of a higher power, a fate beyond the Lich and his doings. Your calling, born into you, as a ruinous reflection of what once was. This dead ideal inside of you - do you know what it is?”

“Uh,” he stammered. “T-to...um - Could you give me a hint?”

The priest sucked in a great deal of air with a seething hiss. The Thinker stared straight ahead into its eyes, waiting for them to flare up or explode out like heat beams, but nothing. If anything, the spark of deep sunny-orange within them stabilized as it breathed in the air between them. Like it was sucking in his very words.

“When you awoke,” it spoke, “and you saw the world around you, and you took your first steps from the unseen space between spaces, from the dirt of the world’s ignorance; what was it that you did?”

“....I helped another out of their wall,” he answered, timidly.

The hands came down, and the priest seemed to calm as its hands lowered. Its head was bent down in a state of intense thinking. The Thinker stayed still and waited for a sign of movement. He got one, to his side, where the stranger stepped down from his platform and was escorted away by his judge. Then, on the other side, the hunchback was also taken away, who gave one stray look back as he passed.

Even the herald didn’t stay. With only one skeleton left and the judge seemingly catatonic, he gave up and returned deep into the dark. Then, the silence set in, and the Thinker did all he knew he could do more than the other skeletons could. He worried.

What’s the worst possible thing that could happen at this point? Patrol duty through the labyrinthe, I guess. But then, we’re patrolling to guard it against something. Someone. The stranger said he scavenged stuff from people. That means humans, right? Which means maybe, just maybe, I can talk to them. And….

The priest gasped in another deep, long breath, shaking the Thinker from his thoughts.

“There is,” it spoke, “a power deep within you. One that requires….deeper inspection.”

“Is that good?”

The priest threw out its hands, and a gust of power emanated from beneath its robes. “You shall be inquisitioned by a higher order. As one of the spark-ed few, a potential is within you to be revealed unto Gozzpek in his service.”

The winds died down, as did the fervor of the priest, who slumped backwards into the stone sarcophagus.

“That sounds good,” he said, nonplussed. “Where do I go?”

The priest simply pointed to a hallway - a different one than the others used, the same way the herald went when it was obvious the selection process was taking too long.

“Go thence,” the priest spoke, “and you shall be assessed with utter fairness in the presence of the arcane. That within you may become a boon unto Gozzpek.”

“I told you,” he said, “I’m the man you need!” The Thinker set off with a bit of a hop in his step but only managed to step off the stone lid that was his platform before he was stalled again.

“Or it may become a bane.”

That foreboding delivered by the cracked, stony voice, halted the Thinker dead in his undead tracks. He’d already seen what happened when an assessment was deemed a failure, and there were few worse “failures” he could consider than being judged as a “bane” to the all powerful and all important ruler of the catacombs he inhabited. With that in his mind, he treated lightly forward, unbroken in his gait but completely shaken in his hollow heart-cavity.

The Thinker carried on until he saw the shape of the herald ahead, creeping along through the halls in a hunching lurch. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to pass the obviously superior creature, the one that wordlessly obliterated another upstart skeleton beforehand. One with promise, too. It meant that the system he worked in was okay with losing hopeful talents as long as there were more to replace them later.

They ended up walking together, with a distance between them, and passed across a corridor where more mindless skeletons waited with weapons in hands. The guardian skeletons wore no armor, but there was a long column of them, all armed with tall wooden shields and long, simple spears. They had no lights in their eyes, and stood completely still. True skeletal guards, unthinking but mobile at a moment’s notice.

Finally, there was light. Deep, red light, strobing from fierce flickering which danced shadows across the high walls of the domed inner room. It was a sort of amphitheater, more built up and lively looking, like a room that was meant to host actual people instead of just a fancy two-story crypt. Still underground, though, and seemingly deeper. In the center of the room was a pedestal with a font of silvery water inside. Before the pedestal was another priestly looking skeleton, adorned and bedazzled with jewels hewn directly into its bones.

The herald moved past the gemmed skeleton and disappeared into another annexed tunnel, leaving the Thinker without an incidental guide and to face the gemmed skeleton by himself.

“Approach,” the fancy specter called. It spoke with what sounded like many voices whispering together. The Thinker stood across from the pedestal, a step away from its rim, at utmost attention. Arms snapped to the sides, heels clicked together, and balance rigid, a good soldierly look for his new assessor. The gemmed skeleton positioned its gold bangle-covered wirst over the silver water and pointed down. “Reach.”

“P-put my hand over it?” he asked. “Or in it?”

The gemmed skeleton let out a plaintive sigh and hovered its hand flat over the surface of the liquid. The liquid seemingly responded in kind and turned brassy in response. The Thinker therefor followed up. He carefully hovered his hand closer. His wrist shook and ended up quaking through his fingers. He brought his other hand to steady it and positioned his bones over the liquid. Then, they both waited.

The liquid faded back to silver. The gemmed skeleton hovered over and stared down from overhead. Its tall palpal hat jingled as the gold and pearl chains shifted forward. It stared into the odd liquid and waited for a response. The Thinker stared as well, curiously, lacking the knowledge as to what was going on but still sensed a disturbance in the air as if something was wrong.

Do I have to do something else? Is there something missing here?

Though thoughts filled his mind, the Thinker could not reach a conclusion. He continued to wait along with the skeletal pope for agonizingly tense moments as the silence grew more and more deafening.

God, I just wish something would make sense soon. I just want….

And so, he thought, and he wanted, and his wants resonated through his bony body and produced a reaction. His sense of vision faded - he “closed” his “eyes” - and when he opened them he was met with a sterling blue light. The liquid shone brightly and filtered up past his hand. The face of the regal bejeweled skeleton was coated in the bright blue light which reflected off of its many gems in blinding glimmers.

And it screamed.

“AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!”

“KKKKKHHHHH!!!!!”

The Thinker held his hand still as the bright blue light exploded out in a solid column. He didn’t think to pull it away, or of how to stop it. The agonizing many-throated roar of the regal skeleton persisted alongside the Thinker’s grit-teeth guttural hiss. Deep cracks started to appear from the regal skeleton’s face.

Then it all fell apart. The skeleton in fine robes, studded with gems, obviously a being of incredible power and in a position of great welfare within the tombs, crumbled to pieces from the head down. The skull fell apart and gems splashed into the deep liquid. The Thinker finally stepped back and retreated like he was encountering splashes of hot oil. The light persisted and filled the room. It drowned out the sinister reds of the braziers overhead and coated the gemmed skeleton’s body, which quickly corroded away. The bones were reduced to dust and the high priest of the crypts was destroyed.

The Thinker was left alone in the end with an ominous, possibly forbidden fate ahead. He looked at his hand, the source of the disaster, curiously. At first, he couldn’t see his own bones. The light was so intense that it coated him and formed into a hand, a familiar one. Like nothing was different. Like he was back to normal, however briefly, and the surface of his body was comfortably uplifted away from his bones.

Then the light diminished, and the vision with it. He was all bones again, starch white in a room tinted red. The sound of gems jingling around on the floor as they settled from the dust pile was his only accompaniment.

I think that’s bane.

Then, soon after, he was surrounded from all sides and all tunnels by the sound of clattering bones that marched in step. He met it with a tired sigh, a slight “kkkkkhhhhh” that rolled grittily over the top palette of his mouth and out his teeth enough to disturb the dust pile on the ground. The liquid settled back to muted silver and reflected the crimson red from above.