The teams of Defenders from the Guild went into the Blackwoods to hunt down skeletons. The story of every other day in the plains around the eponymous dark haven of unnatural hunters. An uncommon addition to that story, but on familiar enough to be finished along like the lyrics of a song, was that fewer came back than went in. Such was the case of Ozzy, who started as a pair, and was scared so bad he lost all his hair.

Metaphorically. His skull was completely smooth. His rattling did shift the contents of his padding around a bit, however. Enough that he could feel it sinking down like drooping underwear beneath tight-belted jeans. Obnoxious displeasure all around, and also the least of his problems. Sinch was taken. Picked up like a toy in a crane game to be delivered to the hands of an unimaginable winner. They wouldn’t just break their new toy. They’d tear it apart.

WHAT DO I DO!?

Ozzy was flummoxed. His first move was to pace around manically with his hands up at the sides of his head. He shook his head as he turned and changed direction. Just a few yards worth of pacing in the dark and he felt completely lost. Not just physically.

Okay - okay. Calm. Think calm. Think and calm, me. Do now. Be a good. Be…Damn it. He was right there. I couldn’t - could I? Could I really have done anything? If I’d just shut up and listened I might have heard it. And why didn’t it go for them? Those chatting Cathies over there - why not them!? Do - does Pollerland have some kind of deal with Gozzpek!?

From what he heard about the heinous regime of the Pollermen, the idea didn’t seem too out of place. Same with the Urgods. The Pollermen, while human, seemed to have every single kind of human but themselves and waged many wars spanning a vast swath of years. They would go to war for a generation, get driven back into their defensible homelands, strike up a treaty, then break it a generation later. It was like a twenty-year tide. Everyone Ozzy met hated them. He was in one of the countries they invaded many times, so the sentiment seemed easy to spread. But more curiously, even when he saw their writing, he could not translate it like he did the local scrawl.

Wait- shut up. I can think about that later. I shouldn’t even be thinking about Poller-whomst. Sinch! I’ve got to find Sinch!...And there’s only one place that any skeleton would have taken a living person.

Ozzy sighed. It was back to the lichyard again. Of all the things, for all the reasons, it had to be this and it had to happen there and then. He braced himself and turned downhill. Then he paused and gripped the hilt of his sword hard. He looked in the direction of the fire, the distant glimmer of a warding light, and heard the sound of wry laughter rise up over the forest floor.

…why NOT them?

Ozzy drew up a quick scheme. He turned toward the campfire and ran in a full tilt. His body was weighed down by his armor but he still had speed and heft above the average. His daily chores and nightly patrols didn’t strengthen him. He had no muscles to develop. But they gave him mastery over his strange body. He could run nearly parallel to the ground in long jumping strides without falling over. Even with his armor on, his body’s center of gravity was closer to his chest than his navel. Most of a skeleton’s weight was above the pelvis. It let him make unique maneuvers at the cost of looking unnatural. Which was fine - it would draw more attention from his bait.

Ozzy jumped from the shadows over the fire and landed on the empty side of a camp circle. The women he interrupted all gasped and exchanged confused grunts and unknowable words.

“Et in skeelig!?” one shouted.

“Nis Tahlly, vurt a vahm a veetur!”

“Mim kaae, muusum ah ressravum.”

“Greetings!” Ozzy shouted with a dramatic hat-tipping bow. He grabbed the rim of his cover by the edge to keep it from falling -.

No.

He whipped his hat off with one hand and drew his sword with the other. The three women, clad in armor harvested and scavenged from fallen sets without cohesion, beheld him in fearful awe. The hands that clutched their battered weapons quaked.

“I,” Ozzy announced with a boisterous call, “am…”

I didn’t think of a name!

“KKKKKHHHHH!!!!!”

Ozzy’s strange hissing screech made the flames at his feet waver. He looked up into the treetops for a moment to see if he was being watched. He saw shadows cast by the fire dance eclectically against the black canopy of the leafless branches that wove together like a basket to blockout the muted light of the lich’s storm. He looked back down and kicked dirt onto the fire. It lessened. One of the women, stocky and thick, dove to stop him and he hopped away.

“Vrah seem! VERAK! Mos di valm!”

“Yes” Ozzy said. He waved his hat at the aggravated woman like a bullfighter’s cape. “Catch me if you ca -.”

She dove forward and nearly caught him. He spun away on his heels and had to force himself to stop. He put his hat back on and fled into the woods, knocking his sword against the trees as he carried it out to his side. The knocking led the riotous girls towards him. They growled and made their incoherent threats against him all the way down the hills, over ditches and schisms and slopes too steep to climb back up. He successfully taunted them all to the inner edge where the woods ended and the dreaded lichyard arose.

He hated to see it, but was glad to arrive. He had light and room to move around. And more importantly, an out. The Zandanian encampment was on the side of the Blackwoods that faced the wall with the slope for an entrance. He could see it in the distance. His way in - the way in. Even a skeleton with arms long enough to do a 50 man jump-rope line would have to carry its prey in using the easiest option. And the mad women behind him would follow him in if the way was easy enough.

The Poller mercenaries jumped out of the woods and gave chase to Ozzy all the way up to the mound at the wall. Ozzy jumped up and scrambled to the top of the wall. His increased weight made the jump and climb harder. One of his arms dislocated. Then the other. However, his sturdy clothing provided a skin-like lock that kept his bones from fully separating. The magnetic pull to reassemble snapped him up and sent him over the edge. He grabbed onto the other side with both hands close together. The wall dissolved under his weight slowly, turning to sand. As it did he pressed his hands further into the degrading wall and sort of rode it down. His descent was slow and careful, unlike the mercenaries, one of whom flung herself over the side and went quiet on landing.

Ozzy dismounted the wall and went to check on the girl. She drew wheezing breaths and bled from the mouth. The fall crushed something in her chest or stomach or all of her ribs snapped towards her back - it wasn’t pretty. He didn’t hate her enough to be thankful to watch her die. The other girls approached the descent more carefully. One stayed on the other side while the other used her rusty knife to control her descent down the wall. Ozzy slipped away into the cemetery fog and evaded them. They belonged to the skeletons, who would be too distracted with this fresh delivered prey to care about their recent catch.

I hope.

Ozzy jogged through the great graveyard like he was running through a school after closing. It was forbidden, dangerous, almost juvenile, yet he knew the real risks. Every tread upon the ground and yard he covered was a risk of awakening the living wall of terror that was Marrowbane wherever he was self-interred. Any other skeletons were also part of the parcel of horror he was ankle-deep in, waiting to yank him knee deep and further back into the dirt abyss. He wasn’t welcome any longer, not to live or to be undead.

Except by one.

“What-ho!”

Ozzy stopped in his tracks and turned to the sound of the voice. “Hewfarth!?”

“Sir Ozzy!” the familiar leaping skeleton bowman called out. He bound down from the height of a tree and hopped over with his box-spring legs. “You have returned - and with plentiful bounty, I see! Thou hath impressed me greatly, sir!”

“Where is he?” Ozzy asked. Hewfarth cocked his head in quizzical fashion. “I - I just - the one with the long arms - the one he brought is where?”

“Oh,” Hewfarth said. “Hum. I detect a sense of mistake in your voice, sir Ozzy. Is there some sort of error that has been made?”

“Yes,” Ozzy said. “I - there is. The three - I brought three in from the forest just now. But that first one - I didn’t bring him. He was not related to me and my task and I need to make sure that…I can somehow get the credit for it.”

Hewfarth swiveled his body to use his good arm as a thinking stand for his jaw. “I don’t rightly follow, but as you serve a higher power than I, I shall assist you in this unique quest of yours and tarry you forth to the place we’ve held the lad. Come hither, sir Ozzy!”

“Thank you, Hewfarth,” Ozzy said.

He shuffled after his ally on the other side of the wall to a single mausoleum at the end of a row of graves with freshly tilled dirt. He saw a few hands writhing around from underground, lazily waving like they just got up in the morning and wanted to try to turn off the lights. There were dozens of skeletons just waiting to pounce out, and the way out was basically inaccessible. He looked around for any other escape from within. The gate was the only one, yet it remained locked, as if the metal bars were part of the wall itself and not built into it. A mockery of a gate, a front like a Halloween haunted house with cardboard slats tacked onto a garage door.

Inside the mausoleum was a hunched over figure with a hammer propped up against the wall. He looked immobile, but not dead. Ozzy took Hewfarth away. He couldn’t be seen fraternizing with the object of monetary desire, and also enemy of all humanity.

“Where’s the skeleton that took him?” Ozzy asked.

“The long armed fellow went down below,” Hewfarth answered, pointing vaguely to one of the many hidden entrances blended into the mixed menagerie of graveyard fixtures. “He’s not so talkative as you, but seems to have the same mission. I ought have guessed you two were working together, yet this appears to not be the case if’n you’re set to steal his glory for yourself.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Ozzy said, thinking fast to come up with a new lie. “Actually, it’s more simple. I did catch this human. As you can see,” he flipped up his veil for a moment, “my disguise is nearly perfect. No one ever lifts my veil so no one knows my real identity. Including him. He thought we were going into the woods to hunt skeletons together for the people outside - they trade money for still-living skeleton parts.”

“Ye gads!” Hewfarth gasped.

“Yeah it’s honestly creepy,” Ozzy continued. “But this guy - he’s big, right? He’s got a big skeleton inside him. So he’s valuable. And he’s strong. He’s been through the woods before so I knew I could trick him into following me if I promised to let him keep most of the money. So he did - but as we neared the lichyard, he got taken from me unexpectedly. And now I didn’t want to come back empty handed, so,” he motioned towards the corner, blocked by fog, where the three mercenaries were.

“Ah,” Hewfarth mused. “Even when you have been upsetted by failure you persevere and triumph above the call of your station. Sir Ozzy, I am proud to know you, and honored to aid you.”

“And I you, Hewfarth,” Ozzy said, putting his gloved hand on Hewfarth’s shoulder. “I need you to deal with those three while I…I need to take this guy down myself to explain the situation. He still thinks I’m human. And he had plans of fighting Marrowbane and going into -.”

“Ah, yes!” Hewfarth exclaimed. “Marrowbane! The old chap is up and about now! If you want to see him.” The ground quaked. “Or if not, then you shall!”

The ground shook again. A mass of fog moved in the distance, as if it were water being parted by the prow of a great ship.

“Where’s the nearest way underground?” Ozzy exclaimed.

“Tis there,” Hewfarth pointed to the shadow of a skeletal tree. “Betwixt its roots is a narrow gap which slides down to the first of five levels of the great underhalls. I shall away - and so ought you, sir Ozzy. Marrowbane has not yet forgot you!” Hewfarth sprung himself away in a rapid dash of hops to the other side to help Ozzy with his fake agenda. Ozzy could see a great shadow taking form in the mist, like a hill growing out of the ground that slowly rose and gained steeper slopes each passing second. He ran for the mausoleum door and yanked it open on its rusty hinge.

“Sinch!” Ozzy shouted. His first cry to was for catharsis. His second, to get a reaction. “Sinch!” The body moved. He was alive, if shaken. Ozzy grabbed at his shoulders and started to shake. “SIIIIIIIINCH!”

“Guh-GAH!” Sinch awoke with a terrible start in the dark. He saw the wide brim of Ozzy’s hat and thought he saw a face smiling back at him. Ozzy realized a moment too late his veil was lifted up and hurried to pull it down. “That you, Ozzy?”

“Y-yeah,” Ozzy said. “Get up. We need to go.”

“Where?” he asked. “I got picked up and…” The memories came back like a lightning bolt and struck a forest fire of rage into Sinch’s heart. “Boney bastard - where is he? I’ll kill him!” He got his hammer on his way out while Ozzy hurried him to the side.

“We’ll kill him tomorrow,” Ozzy said. “Right now we -.”

Oh.

Sinch joined Ozzy back under the cursed light. Before them stood a giant, a walking mass of undug graves. Hundreds of skeletons were strung along to form one mighty body, wider than it could be tall, which crawled on a procession of many feet like a great centipede with arms as wide as mighty beetles. Between those arms, which were layered over the top by a lattice of ribs and legs bent over one another, in the middle was a wreath of heads like the mane of a lion, all of which centered around a single skull larger than the rest by average, yet still not large enough to possibly match the insane bulk of its body.

Marrowbane stood. It looked down at the two inferior shadows that stood in its way. One was a human, made distinct in his monumental vision. The other was like a blur covered in clothes, under which were white branches. Though every skeleton that composed its body were similar, he knew they were none at all the same. Marrowbane knew every skeleton to ever surface in the graveyard he ruled. And he knew what few of them escaped.

“Ozzy,” Sinch whispered.

“Yes,” Ozzy answered, pre-empting his statement.

Sinch’s excitement got the better of him. He turned, grin wide and eyes near to closing from his pushed-up cheeks. “That’s the Walking Graveyard!” Ozzy was speechless in the face of Sinch’s maddening enthusiasm. His eyes twinkled. “WE’RE RICH!”

“KKKKKHHHHH!!!!!”

Marrowbane lifted one of its tremendous arms, which pressed the other deep into the ground, enough to splinter the dirt and break up the topsoil like shattered glass. And it roared. Its hollow, thousand-throat bellow reached up and rippled the clouds. The wave shivered the sky’s submerged surface like a rock had been thrown into the surface of a pond.

Or rather, like a skull was sunken into a well, with the air bubbles from the hollow eyes following soon after with two deep ploobs.