The Quests of Fable

Ch. 11: Bones Malone and the Spooky Boys

Jin was the first one up the next morning, and she decided that apparently if she was up, everyone else should be, too. Fable didn't enjoy this, but she certainly wasn't as salty about it as Kieran. When Jin shook him and told him to get up, it took nearly half an hour for her to actually make him get out of his makeshift bed. While Jin dealt with that, Fable helped Barley make breakfast. He seemed to be more used to Jin's go-getter attitude.

After a quick meal of fruit and bread, and once Kieran had finally gotten up, they headed into the crypt to see what artifacts they could find.

Inside it was very dark until Barley pulled out a lantern for Slight to carry and a jar of some kind of liquid that he spread on Jin's shield to make it glow. The elven knight took the lead, peering suspiciously around corners and poking stone coffins with her sword. Slight walked right at Fable's heels, holding the lantern between his horns to light her way.

Fable was in the middle of the group, with Kieran next to her and Barley bringing up the rear. No one else seemed to notice, but she could hear clacking and cracking sounds, like someone clicking their teeth together or stretching to make their joints pop. It was unsettling, but it seemed like she was the only one who had heard the odd noises. Fable figured it was just her imagination, or else the elf or the rogue would have pointed it out by now.

In retrospect, Fable really wished she had mentioned it.

Jin turned a corner in the crypt and stopped dead in her tracks. Fable and Kieran peeped out from behind her, and Barley watched over their heads as the stone lid of a coffin began to slide. Fable heard the cracking again as small hairline fractures started to appear in the carved rock. Then, once it had moved completely off of the coffin, a skeleton warrior arose.

Its milky bones were minimally protected by stiff, rotting leather armor. It had a bleached skull under a rusted metal helmet resting on its shoulders, and a triangle with a horizontal line through it was burned into the skeleton's forehead. In its skeletal hands it held an ages-old iron sword covered in rust that should've been too big for it to lift.

Fable pulled out her hunting knife, ready to attack, but Kieran pushed her to the back of the group.

"Ranged attacks stay at the back," he explained, drawing a pair of matching thin swords that looked like grey-tinged bone. "Mages aren't great in hand-to-hand fights."

Fable was a bit put out, but she wasn't about to try and argue for her right to fight a skeleton. It seemed she didn't have any choice in the matter, though, because as the group moved into a defensive position, at least four more skeletons started to rise from the shelves of the crypt.

Jin drew her sword with a shing and stood in front, ready to attack.

"I will take two, and each of you shall take one," she said. Then, she attacked.

Fable held her hunting knife out and whipped around to face the skeleton that had risen behind her. It had the same mark on its forehead as the other, although it held a blunt, cracked hammer in lieu of a sword.

Her first thought was to use flames, but Fable pushed it down. There was a chance it would burn the others, which would be very bad, but Fable had a strange feeling that it was an awful idea. It was as though someone was whispering in her mind not to do it. Seeing as how she already had a proper reason to abstain, Fable decided to follow her gut and use vines instead.

"Mahswikor," she muttered. Twisting her wrist, she pulled the thick green vines out of the ground beneath her opponent. They cracked the stone and wrapped themselves around the skeleton's legs and torso, rooting him to the spot. It twisted and squirmed, whacking the plants binding it with its old hammer, but to no avail. The vines simply constricted and started to creep up the bone warrior's arms.

With it properly restrained, Fable stepped forwards and lifted its head off of its shoulders. With whatever magic had kept them in place severed, the bones all disconnected, still held vaguely in place by the thick vines wrapped around them.

Fable turned to the others and saw that the rest of her new party had beaten their opponents, as well. Kieran had chopped the head off of his skeleton, leaving it crumpled on the floor. Jin had done the same, although hers were significantly cracked. Barley seemed to have knocked the head clean off, most likely either with his fists or with some sort of gadget.

Kieran came over to admire Fable's handiwork. "One-spell oneshot? Not bad, mage!"

"I try," Fable said, smiling.

"So, what are we gonna do with Bones Malone and the Spooky Boys?" Kieran gestured to the piles of vines scattered across the dusty stone. "Do we leave them there and take their stuff, or...?"

"I doubt their belongings will be of much use." Jin nudged the remains of her opponents with her gleaming sword. "Their armor and weapons are in very bad shape and I will be quite surprised if they carry any-"

"Gold!" Kieran exclaimed. "Look, there's gold in the belt pouch!"

He picked up the pouch, shook it a couple times to make the coins clink, then stuffed it in his backpack. They each collected the money from our own enemies.

"Are we going further in?" Barley asked.

"I'm down if you all are," said Fable.

"Wait, where's your little demon thing?" Kieran looked around, confused.

"Oh, right!" Fable gave a short whistle and Slight popped out from behind a coffin. He unwrapped his scarf from its place around the lantern where he had put it to snuff the light, and wrapped it back around his shoulders. He toddled over to Fable and stood by her heels.

"I told him to hide if we had a fight," she explained. "I'm not actually sure yet if he can fight, but he usually just guards my stuff so I'm not taking any chances yet."

"A logical decision." Jin sheathed her sword and led the way back through the crypt, resuming the path they had temporarily been pulled off of.

It took three more rooms before they encountered another group of skeletons. This time a few of them had axes as well, and there were at least seven. Fable used her vine spell again to take down two that were standing particularly close together, but she wasn't sure how many more spells she could do before one went wild. She'd been getting better at working with whatever her magic gave her, but it was still rather unhelpful sometimes. There was no use in having a loaf of bread if you wanted a fireball, or causing an explosion instead of making a flower bloom.

As they traveled further and further into the crypt, the number of bone warriors they had to face just kept growing. Barley used some sort of grappling ropes that came out of the telescope he'd been tinkering with. They wrapped themselves around the skeletons, effectively tying them up so their heads could be easily removed. Jin slashed through their necks left and right, sending the dry bones clattering to the grimy stone floor. Kieran stayed behind Barley and Fable for the most part, watching their backs and making a quick slicing motion towards any skeleton that came near. Fable never saw the strike, but a few seconds later the skeleton would crumple to the floor, decapitated.

As for Fable herself, she used her vine spell to trap all the skeletons she could. She tried using ice and light as well, but ice didn't last as long and light was fairly ineffective against a creature that no longer had eyes. She still didn't use fire, though. Every time she was about to, her eyes would be drawn to the carved sigil in the forehead and some base instinct would stop her from casting. She was beginning to wonder if the sigil itself had to do with fire. Fable did remember that the triangle was the alchemical symbol for flame. Still, this was obviously necromancy, not alchemy.

After an incredibly long time making their way through the seemingly endless rooms, they came across yet another set of skeletal enemies. Jin readied her sword, Kieran drew his blades and moved behind Barley, who pulled out his rope telescope, and Fable prepared to cast. Then, she felt a familiar and very unwelcome sensation.

The magic was heating up before it left her hands, building up a chaotic charge as it started to deviate from its intended purpose. Instead of vines, Fable got something else completely unexpected, something she wouldn't have used in a million years.