The teams of Blackwoods explorers were to be paired down from 12 to 2 apiece and sent no more than a mile’s walk into the furthest reaches of the notorious Blackwoods. This plan was agreed upon and brought forward by the committee of Defender’s Guild agreeables who all determined heavy labor and stone lifting to be beneath them, but throwing blows against immoral immortal walking bones was perfectly acceptable to earn their wages. And Ozzy was among them.

The stragglers turned back as soon as rations were distributed. As expected of the layout of available beds and resources, the Zandanians grossly underestimated the supplies they required to take care of their new recruits on commission. The laborers had the only real guarantee of consistent work and lodging. The adventurers would have to organize to use the beds when the hard work was being done and try to sleep through the noises.

That left Ozzy with the problem of who he would go into the Blackwoods with. He only knew, in the slightest terms, three people very well. Yort and Stenny were an item already. They worked well together and had been Defenders together for over a year. Since they were going in pairs exclusively he couldn’t well join them. As tempting as it would be to join parties together once they were in the woods, it was easier hoped for than done. Finding other people - non-hostile at that - in the Blackwoods was harder than finding a way out.

Then there was Freid. Ozzy still felt awkward being around him after he insisted on staying hidden. However, he did feel a sort of hopeful connection with Freid. He felt like the man was an understanding sort who would take pause and listen if a skeleton started to talk to him. Especially one like him. It was just a faint glimmer, but a hopeful one that Ozzy didn’t want to snuff out by grasping for it straight out of the fire.

The real problem was that the decision was made for him. His partner was Sinch, the hammer-wielding boaster who suggested they start in pairs and work up to larger groups later on. A man who stood with his weapon over his shoulder and an impressively angry eyebrowless glare. He wasn’t Barbarian size, or Stormen size, but still wide and imposing. A perfect figure cut for working on wall building, but with the raw determination to crush skulls. And a bad attitude for doing it without a second thought.

“All right, you,” Sinch said. Ozzy snapped to attention to hear his new partner out. “You scrawny, sorry little sack of bones.” Ozzy gulped. “I hear you’re pretty good at fixing dresses and mending fences back in Farheim, right?”

“Uh,” Ozzy said, “the fences…yes.”

“Well,” Sinch continued as he swung his hammer to his side, head to the ground with a thud which he held by the end of the shaft like a cane, “that ain’t what we’re doing here!”

“Yes, sir!” Ozzy barked.

“Don’t do that!” Sinch demanded. He bent down and got close to Ozzy’s face. Close enough that his hot breaths might push the veil against Ozzy’s featureless skull and root out the hideous truth without even needing to lift the sagging veil. Ozzy retreated in turn, which caused even further aggression until Ozzy was close to a 45 degree lean with his feet stuck in the mud. No muscles meant no tendons, nothing to tear, just weight against his chest from bending backwards too far. Sinch saw his strange form and stood back up. Ozzy had to duck low and squat back up to proper posture.

“You’re not a high earner,” Sinch chastised. “In fact, you flooding the board with all those small time jobs makes us look bad. When people come into a Guild hall they expect to see some impressive postings, jobs that only the Defender’s can do. This far out from the capital, that standard is more lax. The townies in Farheim have taken advantage of the free posting system because they got nothing better to do with their sad lives but wait for the skeletons to come for them when we’re all too tired rolling new wagon wheels up the road to fix their precious rumbling carts so they can run from the first sign of danger with their entire lives hauled by an ass and a half!”

“You mean the carts that we borrowed to get here?” Ozzy said. His pushback made Sinch pucker his face with rage. “I get what you’re saying. But taking it out on the townsfolk - who do you think supplies the hall with food and drink? We’re not exactly running an altruous charity with our lives on the line. There’s no glory in work done for a dead audience.”

Sinch’s sour face relaxed a bit at Ozzy’s heated words. He had a more respectful glare, like he hated the meaning behind what Ozzy said rather than just him for saying it. But he retained an aggressive stance of control and tapped his hammer head to the ground again.

“We’re splitting the rewards,” Sinch said, “10 to 5. That’s 10 for me, 5 for you. Any bonus - that’s for me too. You’re getting paid to take up space in my shadow, weakling.”

Ozzy nodded. “That’s fair.” His immediate reply, without any consternation or haggling or even a huff of the same sarcasm surprised Sinch. He stepped back and looked Ozzy over again with a scoffing laugh.

“You really are a skinflint!” he said. His laughter grew louder, less mocking and more prideful. “Damn! That’s one rumor I thought wouldn’t survive this long. How do you even live off such little money?”

“I don’t want for much,” Ozzy admitted.

“What about food?” he asked. “What about…life?”

“Being alive isn’t so expensive,” Ozzy explained, “that I’d risk it every day just for a chance of seeing tomorrow in a better light. As for food…well, when you work for people who tend to pots of stew all day, they slip in a little reward on the side if you can get the work done.” That wasn’t a lie, though each time he’d been offered food he had to refuse. He did try once. He took bread with him and tried to eat it in the hopes it would somehow vanish and fuel him or strengthen his bones with some kind of glutenous power. It just turned to crumbs as he chewed it in his dry mount and fell all over the floor. He never dared take the risk of seeing what soup would do, but assessed it would be the same story. The offers, however, warmed his heart.

“Huh,” Sinch said. He rocked his hammer back and forth like a lever, teetering his consciousness on it the whole time. “Well…as long as you’re okay with it.”

“To be fair,” Ozzy said as he drew his sword, “you’re much better equipped than I am. This isn’t exactly made for crushing bone.”

“True,” he scoffed. He hoisted his hammer back up over his shoulder and waved for Ozzy to follow. “So it’s fair earnings that I get the bigger share.”

“True,” Ozzy agreed. Though their meeting was tenuous and stressful, they were away as a pair. Sinch strode forward with a braggart stride in his loose brigandine armor. His footsteps carried weight and shook the immediate ground nearby. Blades of grass twitched and leaves fell from branches overhead as they descended off the beaten path and into the shadowy forest.

All was calm, and that meant nothing was well. Sinch maintained a confident stride even as they entered the dark hollow. Ozzy could tell he was too confident, too brash. Not enough of a coward.

“Sinch,” Ozzy whispered.

“Hmm?” he said. He stopped and gripped his hammer. “You see something?”

“No,” Ozzy said. “But -.”

Sinch sighed and put his hammer back up. “Don’t put me on edge like that. I’ll do the swinging, you do the warning. Got it?”

“I will,” Ozzy said, “but I might miss something. Skeletons can attack from underground and in the treetops, as well as around blind corners. They like to ambush when they can, and they’ll know we’re coming if you walk too loud.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sinch said. “I’ll try to walk on the tips of my toes next time.” He sneered. “What do you mean -.” Ozzy put his finger up in front of his face. Sinch looked bizarrely at the signal and turned his head up.

“Oh,” Ozzy said. “No, that means - that’s for being quiet.”

“What?”

“It’s a hand sign,” Ozzy said. “It means lower your voice.”

Sinch sighed and complied. He spoke in a lower voice, but seemingly couldn’t reduce himself to a whisper. “Got any other hot tips to share?”

“N-none that come to mind,” Ozzy said. “Sinch, how many times have you been in the Blackwoods?”

“Enough,” he said. “But usually in a group of four. We lost one of our usuals to sickness a month back.”

“How often did you guys get attacked?” Ozzy asked.

Sinch thought about an answer, then put the pieces together of what the answer did for Ozzy. He was going to associate their bantering, their talking or parading or whistling, with the reason for the damage they might have sustained. He nodded and looked around cautiously. Sinch took the lead with his quietest walk, which was like his regular walk but with longer, slower strides.

The pair passed into the deeper part of the woods. The trail they relied on was gone, grown over by a thin layer of grass. From there they split off the path and stayed at the same elevation. They did not descend and tried not to ascend as they walked in a parameter that circled the deeper pit of the Unmaker’s ruinous hold. Ozzy held out hope that their trek would be fruitless and they would get their walking money once they returned. 5 Stolids was as much as he’d get for a night patrol. Though patrols were far less dangerous. The benefits of payment were being weighed against him staying longer than a day.

Finally, unfortunately, they saw something. A prone body lying in wait slumped up against a tree. Sinch moved to take point but held back. Ozzy moved his finger to signal he would go around and inspect it first. Sinch took a moment to process the plan and nodded. Ozzy crept up in silence until he was just close enough to see the body. Fortunately it was not a skeleton. It was just a normal dead person. Ozzy internalized his gasp for fear of making a noise to alert a waiting ambush from above or below. He turned away and tried to regain his composure without breathing.

Is this what people mean when they talk about a visceral reaction to seeing a dead body? I don’t want to laugh but I don’t want to, like…I feel sick. I can’t vomit even if I wanted to. I just - I’ll just - can I just make the sounds in my head? Will that soothe me? HRRGH! HRRRGGGGKKKKKHHHHH!!!

Ozzy couldn’t quite soothe himself in time. Sinch wandered up and poked his head around the tree to inspect the finding. He poked the body with the pommel of his hammer until it slumped over and its helmet clattered to the ground.

“Just a stiff,” Sinch said. He huffed the bad, stagnant air out of his nose in a hurry. “Damn shame.” He looked over and saw Ozzy leaning against a tree. He perked an eyebrow and left the scene, not issuing a word in mockery. Ozzy returned a moment later with his hat and veil straightened out.

“You good?” Sinch asked.

“Yeah,” Ozzy said.

“You haven’t seen many dead bodies, have you?” he asked.

Ozzy plainly shook his head. “No.”

“Well you took it well,” Sinch said. “Rufella threw up the first time she saw one. On the spot. Half choked on her own spit. It made Deller want to puke as well. The only reason I didn’t join them was because I’d gone ahead and never spotted the stiff until we were on the return trip home. Swallowed it all in one gulp.”

“It’s good we checked though,” Ozzy said. “Skeletons…are smart enough to use dead bodies as bait for their traps.”

“And evil enough to dare it,” Sinch lowed.

“Yeah,” Ozzy agreed. Being in the Blackwoods reminded him of his dream. The prodding voice that told him to kill was somewhere waiting in the trees. The magnetic grip of Gozzpek’s domain felt just an inch away from seizing him after his long, long tenure away from the part of the world that bore him. It wasn’t just a danger of his life, it was a danger of his mind and soul.

They wandered further on and still went without spotting a proper skeleton out of disguise. Little did Sinch know he had a bonus walking by his side the whole time, watching and waiting to keep him safe from attack. Not that he’d care. A skeleton was a skeleton to those who were hungry for money. The good deed of skeleton slaying evaded them even further. Instead they encountered more disturbances they weren’t on the payroll to deal with.

A fire was lit far in the distance. The darkness of the Blackwoods made any light stand out, even in fog. Sinch and Ozzy lowered themselves and made a stealthy approach until they could hear something. It sounded like chatter. Sinch interrupted it with a whisper.

“I’ve never seen a skeleton make a fire,” he said.

“I’ve seen some people do it,” Ozzy replied. “They tried to kill me.”

“Why?” Sinch asked, incredulously, as if the prospect of killing Ozzy was more of a waste than killing anyone else.

“I don’t know,” Ozzy admitted. “I couldn’t understand them.”

“Did they soundjuh likeum diskey?” Sinch said in a mocking imitation.

“...a little?”

“Pollers,” Sinch sneered. “Mercenaries, probably. They kidnap kids during invasions and raise them to be slave soldiers. Teach them to hate the world and kill for pleasure. Take away their humanity, any trace of it, then give ‘em weapons and thrown them where the sun don’t shine to kill anyone not like them.”

“Not our problem,” Ozzy said.

“In a way,” Sinch said, “it is. But damn if I’m gonna take the first swing. You’ve got the human-killing weapon right there.”

“True,” Ozzy said. He looked down at his saber, undrawn since days ago when he used it to bore a hole in a piece of wood to help repair a table, then had to sharpen it during the night with a stone he found near the town’s stream. It had long since been a weapon and became a tool for keeping the peace. And he wished he could keep things that way. “Let’s head uphill,” Ozzy said. “We’ll come out and mark where we -.”

Ozzy turned to address Sinch directly. His ally was looking down to meet him, about where he thought the eyes were behind the veil, so he didn’t see the long hands drop down from above. Ozzy didn’t see it until the last moment. He tried to shout but the hands wrapped around Sinch too quickly for him to resist. He was ensnared in a rope of bones which reached all the way up to the treetops. The long-armed ambusher from before found them and took Sinch. Just abducted him and ran away with a big human-sized wrecking ball suspended in its grip from on high. Ozzy was so stunned he failed to move until Sinch was already out of sight, just a faded blur among the myriad of shadows.

He was alone in the worst way. Without an ally, but surrounded by enemies. His teeth chattered loudly, and the rest of his bones rattled like a wooden wind chime. Would he stay alone or dare the dark to rescue his colleague?