When I woke up, I was once again reminded why I hated sleep. I checked my neck, and there was no damage to it nor to my wrists. I knew it was just a dream, but it seemed so real to me. The marching was long and painful, and the dehydration was tough on me. I still had no idea why I got these dreams or where they came from. I felt like they gave me important information, and there was some set of rules that triggered them. Yet, there was no going backward in the dreams, so I wanted to say that it was all happenstance that I dreamed when I did.

Blink and I headed out when I came across a series of low mounds all in a row. It was kind of odd to me that there would be what looked like a hundred ripples in the ground. They weren’t moving but they were all just bumps. The grass in this area was also short, which I also found to be kind of on the odd side. I had a feeling that these were the graves of those who were here, and so I figured that I would leave them be.

I passed out of the village richer than when I came in by dozens of copper, a handful of silver, and one gold coin. What I could use this for, I had no idea, but I figured that since metal did a better job holding magic than wood or stone, then I would if nothing else, figure out a way to use it for my protection. I was about fifty feet out of the clearing that the village was in when the sounds of the forest stopped. I stopped to listen, but all I could hear was nothing. Then, Blink started to act like something was wrong, in that she vanished. I could feel that she was moving up a tree but other than that, she was gone.

Blink sent to me, “feels offs. Bait,”

I shook my head ruefully. Of course, once I got down to Essex, I needed to build my defensive items just so that when I was “bait,” I wouldn’t be as likely to die. But, of course, we didn’t know what was here, but I got to find out by being attacked. So I did what every good piece of bait did I kept moving.

I kept moving downriver with the prickly feeling on the back of my neck going off. That sixth sense of approaching danger, like someone, had been watching me and was wanting to climb out of the trees to get me. I hated horror movies for this feeling, that, and the dumb kid walking alone in the woods. Of course, everyone knows, even those of us who never watch the things, that the kid you first see is going to die.

After about 10 minutes of feeling every bit, the first victim in a movie, Blink, confirmed my fears. While my fears were amorphous, her warning of what was coming fit right into my expectations.

“Skeletons, hunts bigss,” she hissed out through the bond to me as she sent an image. Dozens of skeletons, perhaps even hundreds, were rambling through the woods towards us.

I was good against a dozen, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to take out more than that without getting overwhelmed. The great thing, however, with these was that they didn’t seem to have weapons. These were just animated skeletons, perhaps with sharper claws. Still, I wasn’t happy.

I thought back to her, “How far?”

“Now” was all she got to me as I turned and saw them.

Skeletons cheat, well, most undead cheat. That is why they are undead. But no, skeletons like these truly cheat. No clothes, no armor, no weapons. The only thing they had that made a sound was stepping on a twig. So when I turned, even with the warning, I was surprised to see that they were less than ten yards away. It was at that moment that I hated being bait more than anything.

I dropped my bow out of my hand and shucked my rucksack. I drew my sword and stepped forward. I knew the dance I was going for, and I knew that it would have been better with a blunt weapon. Right weapon for the right job, but I could only carry so much with me, and I only had blades.

I focused on my skeleton death dance and let the movements take me. Five yards wasn’t long, eight steps, and the distance would be closed. Two steps more, and I would be to their left flank. A skeleton dies when enough of it is broken or its head is removed. Either one would work. The problem was you couldn’t cleanly slice their heads off as the magic that animated them would pull the head back on.

My 6th step took me within range of the first as they were moving at me. The dance had me spin to my left, and I felt my whole body spin like I was on top. As I turned, I shifted my sword from my right hand to my left and grasped it by the blade. As I came out of the spin, my sword extended out with the pommel first. With a great crack, the first head went flying to the side.

I took an extra two steps and tripped over the bones that were lying in front of me. I dipped for a moment out of the dance like the skill had thought there was going to be more resistance to my blow. The one to my right reached its silent hands toward me. Its jaw moved open like it was yelling, and I stepped past.

As I moved past the skeleton, the dance led me to reach through and grab the vertebra just above the hips and yank. As I did, the top half fell off the bottom, and the whole thing collapsed. I shifted my sword back to my right hand and felt the dance call up my Tae-kwon-do skill as I left the ground into a sidekick. The ribcage of the next one caved in as the blunt force of my body impacting it overcame the magic holding it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Blink was wading through the moving bones like a scythe through hay. Knowing she was fine removed some of my worry. My next step, I sliced an arm off and back-fisted another head off. The hand-to-hand, while effective, was painful.

I felt my dance trying to grab at other skills, and as it did, I would move in different ways. My sword went back in my sheath as I rolled forward and came off the ground with two short sticks, each a couple of inches thick and twoish feet long. Then I started moving forward through the skeletons hitting their heads and looping their feet.

I loved the death dance skills because of how powerful they were. However, I hated that I didn’t get much control over them until I hit level 15. So I rode the skill as it dominated a 10-foot by 10-foot area. Each step I took brought me into range to strike and out of range to be hit. Yet, for how great the skill was, it was a fragile thing to use this way.

With each blow I took, I would fall out of the dance and have to focus again to get back into it. When the stick in my right hand broke and I dropped out of the dance, I staggered forward as I was hit from behind at the same time.

I rolled forward and looked around. I had put a dent in the skeletons. The problem was it was a small dent as only roughly a dozen were stilled around me. Blink had twice that number, but there were still so many more.

I started to spin the skill up again, and this time it seemed to have found that I was a shaman. As the dance moved me taking over each of my skills as needed, I saw that I was dancing the Large Lay-to-Rest dance. That dance would take 10 minutes to spin up. I had only been fighting for a few at this point.

On I moved, the death dance took on a flair that it didn’t have before. Then, it had been a brutal crash of my body against the skeletons. Now, the fight seemed to become the secondary part of the dance. I was touching the ground with my hands and spinning where I didn’t need to for the fight. I would jump and shout at the oddest of times.

I had danced the Large Lay to rest a few times just to see what it looked like, but this wasn’t it. I could feel the mana in the area building, and I could even see the spell being cast was Lay-to-Rest, but the steps seemed off. Now it could have been that I was passing the magic through another skill to make it happen, or it could have been that the other skill understood something that I didn’t.

My dance went on past the ten-minute mark. The metronome in my head started up after about two minutes of the dance. I was still fighting the skeletons, but now when they ripped at me, I didn’t fall out of the dance. Instead, I kept moving through it like they were part of it. As the dance moved into the 15-minute time frame, the mana had condensed enough that the spell was being slowly powered.

I danced on, and as I did, the skeletons around me started to dissolve. First, their bonds broke, and they fell, then the bones began to yellow and bubble. A few more steps and the spell snapped into place. I felt the magic race out around me as the field started to glow. My actions didn’t slow but rather picked up in speed. I was trying to drag more mana in to keep powering the spell.

I saw racing out a group of glowing images that looked like me heading out in all directions striking down the skeletons. As they got further from me, I felt more mana drawing. I downed my mana potion as I kept my dance going, and then I reached out for more. I felt my body siphon off mana out of the magical items I had. Then it was all over; I was out of mana.

“Hunts goods!” Blink all but yelled at me over the bond as my knees dropped out from mana burnout.