by Pirateaba
Pawn. Toren’s keen not-eyes picked out a silent shape, struggling, being hauled by several Shield Spiders into the room from another entrance. It was Pawn! Toren watched with interest as the Antinium was dragged towards a cocoon. It ruptured, and countless tiny spiders swarmed out. They covered the Antinium as Pawn fought, but there were too many and he was covered in webs. In moments, the frantic thrashing slowed. The Shield Spiderlings continued to gnaw at their prey. Pawn was dead.
Toren wondered what Erin would have thought of that. He felt bad for Pawn. But Pawn was dead. And oh, look! Toren spotted another Pawn being dragged into the room. This Pawn was already dead.
Two Pawns? Wait a second. Toren’s eyes would have narrowed had he skin. There weren’t two Pawns. And then he saw more Antinium being dragged in, and more partially eaten, hung in the webbing.
Hold on a moment. More Antinium? Toren thought about that and concluded maybe these weren’t Pawn. They could have just been…the others that sometimes came to Erin’s inn. But they didn’t have names, so Toren didn’t remember them. He stared at all the other not-Pawns and shrugged. What were Antinium doing down here anyways? Didn’t they know it was dangerous?
Toren turned away from the nest of Shield Spiders and noticed something else interesting. Caught in the detritus around the spider’s lair, some other remnants of their victims had fallen. Toren saw a stinger, like the one he’d seen earlier, a crimson pincher, devoid of a body, a rotted arm that seemed far too thin and small to have belonged to a Human, and a head. It stared at Toren and he stared back. Well, there were apparently giant centipedes down here as well.
There were so many monsters about! Okay, perhaps they weren’t popping out every two feet, but the dungeon’s population was clearly actively growing and being cut back down to size as monsters fought with each other and guarded their lairs.
Toren poked his head around the corner again, and eyed the bulging cavern of Shield Spiders and the obscenely glistening eggs hanging from every web. He thought for a second about cause and effect, about actions and consequences, about the nature of causality in general. Then he got bored, threw a stone at the nearest cluster of eggs and ran for it.
Around two dozen angry Shield Spiders had chased Toren down the corridor as he sprinted past all the traps he’d found. He stopped at the intersection and looked back. None of the Shield Spiders had made it to him. They’d all died at the first trap, which Toren had run right past since he could see the magical runes hidden in the grime.
The Shield Spiders, or what was left of them, were sprawled around the trap, mostly in pieces. Toren stared at the runes. They weren’t glowing now, but he was curious as to how it had killed the Shield Spiders.
Toren paused, looked about, and went back to find more Shield Spiders. When he eventually managed to lure a few towards the trap, Toren was treated to a horrific sight.
The Shield Spiders went pop as they crossed over the trapped bit of floor. There was no waiting about, no warning. They just exploded from the insides, as if something had blown a huge bubble of air right into their bellies and made them burst.
It was so entertaining that Toren made eight more spiders activate the trap, until the magic stopped working and he had to stomp the last spider to death with his foot. But though the energy of the spell had been exhausted, Toren could sense the latent magic in the dungeon slowly working to replenish it.
So, the traps were here to stay. The monsters either learned to avoid them, or died. And they tended to thrive, if only on a diet of Antinium and each other. Toren nodded to himself as he walked away from the corridor, making a mental note to come back and have fun exploding spiders at a later date. He took another left, then a right, flattened himself against a wall when he heard a sound, and then saw the corridor turn into stairs.
Not the same stairs that led up to the rooms with traps. The purple flames in Toren’s eye sockets narrowed to a pinpoint as he stared up the short staircase. What was this now? He could see more runes on an overhang where the wall went down to block off the corridor, leaving only a metal door in its place. They glowed above the simple door. Not a spell, but words. A message, etched in stone and enchanted to last forever.
Toren eyed the letters. They were all interconnected. It was a flowing, elegant script. And what was most curious to Toren—they weren’t the words Erin or any of the people around Liscor used. This language was different entirely.
It was a curious thing that everyone mostly spoke the same language to Toren, yet they wrote differently. But Toren could read dead languages and living ones with ease. They were just meaning, and his undead mind could translate any meaning.
Not that these words necessarily mattered. These said the usual things Toren was used to reading. He read things all the time in Erin’s inn. They were all the same.
Special on Fish! 2 sp. for all you can eat!
No taking dishes! That means you, Relc!
Horrible death awaits all those who enter this place. Your bodies shall be taken and made part of the Mother of Graves.
It was all the same, really. Toren dismissively walked past the etched warnings on the wall and went up the steps. He opened the door and disappeared through. Ten seconds later he walked quickly back out of the door, shut it, and decided to go somewhere else at speed. Things burst through the doorway, chasing him, but they didn’t follow him far.
—-
And then Toren found the dead adventurer.
She wasn’t any more special that the last ones Toren had met, or so he felt on first glance. There were dead adventurers, dead monsters, dead animals—a few birds, of all things, probably lost from above. But there was something this adventurer had that the other bodies Toren had come across did not.
A cloak.
It was wrapped around her. The adventurer’s flesh was rotted, although Toren could still see her bared teeth, snarling in defiance. She had an open hand, fingers twisted and broken. She had probably been holding a sword, but whomever—or whatever—had killed her had taken it, ripping it out of her death grip to do so.
Toren could also tell she was dead because most adventurers had a throat. Hers was missing.
The other dead people lying around her looked like they’d also gone down fighting. There were twelve bodies in all, fairly well preserved. Toren wasn’t sure if they were freshly dead, really dead, or just old. As skeleton, he didn’t particularly care about the effects of decomposition, since everyone eventually ended up looking like him.
But the cloak. It was wrapped around the adventuress. Toren gingerly bent and tugged it away from the dead woman. He had to undo the clasp at the neck, but then it was in his hands. He hand it in front of him, appraising it.
It was…well, it was a ragged brown cloak, a bit holey, and certainly nothing to write home about. If Toren had a home. And if Erin was alive to write to. But it spoke to him.
There was something in the skeleton’s mind that told him the cloak was important. It wasn’t the [Tactician] bit of him, or the warrior, or the bit that said that he could wash the cloak so Erin wouldn’t complain that it smelled—no, this was something else. A new part of Toren, coming to life, speaking to the rest of him.
It was a vague sense of style. And Toren felt the cloak had style in spades, especially around his shoulders.
Carefully, he threw the cloak around him and put it on. The skeleton looked at himself. He couldn’t see the general impression he made with the cloak on, but he felt it looked good.
Clothing. Fashion. Style. These weren’t words that had ever interested Toren, but the cloak had awoken something in him. Erin had always been fussing about clothes, whether they were ripped, dirty, on or or—she had a big problem with Toren staring at her without clothing.
Maybe this was more important than Toren had thought? The skeleton pondered this as he looked for something to admire himself with. After all, clothing wasn’t like armor. It could barely stop a bad sneeze, let alone a sword thrust. So maybe the val
ue of clothes was simply in…looking good.
Aha! Toren found what he wanted in the dead adventuress’ pack. He pulled out a broken fragment that shone in the darkness. A piece of a mirror, perhaps. Yes, Toren rifled around in the dead adventuress’ pack and found the other fragments, all smashed. He carefully reassembled them on the ground and studied himself.
A skeleton wearing a cloak stared up at Toren. He looked at it in shock. It was a skeleton. With a cloak. That was it.
Not that cool at all.
Toren drooped. He’d really though the cloak would look amazing on him, but it didn’t. It just sort of sagged on his body. It didn’t blow in the wind! Mainly because there was no wind in the dungeon.
He tore the cloak off and hurled it on the ground. For good measure, Toren stamped on it. He didn’t look good. Erin looked good in some clothing. Toren distinctly remembered how she’d looked after the battle with Skinner, her shirt and pants torn, covered in blood and grime and guts. That was a look. Toren could admire that, and that annoying [Knight] he’d fought in Esthelm. If he, Toren, were fighting an opponent that shiny, he’d feel a bit impressed.
They had style. Toren did not. He kicked at the cloak, stared at it, and then picked it back up and lovingly stroked it. It was a good cloak. It spoke to him. Yes, it wasn’t the cloak’s fault; it was Toren’s! He just wasn’t wearing enough to make the cloak look good.
Toren looked around. There was a group of dead adventurers here. They all had clothes. Toren bent down and began claiming it. He didn’t know why he was doing it. It was just a thought.
Erin had worn clothing. So Toren would too. Just to see what it was like. Because anything that reminded Toren of Erin hurt—but it hurt more when he tried to forget.
So Toren dressed himself for the first time since he’d been created. It was hard. Not because he didn’t have a surplus of garments to wear, but because it was so hard getting it off the dead bodies without ripping anything! Toren had never learned what buttons or belts or clips were. He ruined a good deal of pants before he realized they were attached to the waist and that pulling too hard would just pull the pants and the legs straight off the corpse.
But he did have clothing. Toren claimed most of it from the dead adventuress, for the sheer reason that if she was fashionable enough to use a cloak, she probably had good taste. She had been wearing leather armor, pierced in some places, over her clothes. Toren ignored that at first, and began slipping on her clothes.
They hung on him. Toren stared at himself in the mirror and picked disconsolately at the very loose, very ill-fitting clothes. The adventuress hadn’t been that big, but she had skin. Toren didn’t.
But still, he persisted. Toren grabbed the shirt off of someone else and tore it up to pad out his body so the shirt would fit. He began assembling the garments, putting them on. Tattered cloak, pants, shirt…Toren had to put the stiff leather armor underneath the clothes to pad out the clothing on his thin frame. That made him sufficiently bulky.
Actually, Toren considered himself normal and everyone else obscenely fat and heavy. The depths of anorexia wouldn’t come close to Toren’s frame. At least, not until the end.
Now looking somewhat decently Human-shaped, Toren attempted to figure out where the rest of the clothing on the dead adventurer with. He’d seen Erin use a bra—and seen her naked for that matter, much to her displeasure—but he couldn’t see the point on his body.
Still, there wasn’t much point to clothes to begin with, so why quibble? Toren stuffed some rags into the bra and patted them to make everything look right. Then he realized he needed something for his head. Because if he was going to look like a Human, like Erin, he had to get rid of the grinning skull that stared back at him in the mirror as well. Toren thought about how to do this.
Hats were no good. He had a hood on the cloak, but from the front Toren’s features would be fairly obvious. Toren thought about this and eyed the dead adventuress’ face. He could cut it off, but faces probably weren’t that easy to fake. Plus, was already rotting, which didn’t bother Toren, but the flies did.
A…mask. Yes, that was the thing. Toren looked for a mask, but none of the adventurers had one. Slightly put out, he wondered where he might make something to hide his face and had a brilliant idea.
The dead Shield Spiders had lovely carapaces. True, many of them were in pieces from the trap, but the wonderful thing about spiders was that they had webbing. A bit of work and Toren came up with a mask that covered his entire face. He gingerly stuck it to the front of his skull with some web and trooped back to the mirror to inspect his new look.
The skeleton held his breath as the skeleton on the ground stepped into vision. Only, in the mirror, there was no skeleton at all.
A slim, female figure stared up at Toren. She was female because she had bulges in the right place, and because she had some curves that Toren had worked really hard to get right. She was wearing dirty clothing, ragged and tattered, wrapped and held in place with cloth fragments. The look actually wasn’t that bad and the bindings added to the ‘warrior’ look in Toren’s head.
But what really drew the mysterious figure together were the mask and the cloak. The dark brown cloak swirled around the female warrior as she lifted one gloved hand to adjust the mask on her face. The mask was dark black, the surface shiny and rough. It covered her face, leaving only two narrow slits for eyes—
Toren’s admiration halted as he realized the eyes on the figure in the mirror were glowing. Dismayed, he bent and saw two purple flames flickering in the eyeholes of his mask. Toren cursed. Those gave him away! He thought hard. Could he get away with closing the gaps in the mask off? No, but then he wouldn’t be able to see. What about making the flames dimmer? Could he do that?
In the mirror, Toren saw the flames in the figure’s eyes slowly dim. They grew smaller and smaller and then, quite suddenly, went out.
Toren jerked back. He felt at his eyes, looked around. He could still see! But when he looked in the mirror, only dark slits on the mask were visible. You couldn’t tell who was looking out. Anyone could have been underneath. A Human, or a Drake—no, Drakes had tails. Or a Gnoll—but Gnolls were bigger…
Okay, there could be any kind of Human underneath. Or a half-Elf! The figure straightened up. She admired her ragged look, her masked face, her thin but not undead-thin frame. She struck a pose and felt the innards of her ‘body’ shift, held in place by sticky Shield Spider webbing and the clothing she wore.
And she smiled. She traced a finger over her mask in a smile.
Toren grinned. She had style.
—-
An hour later, Toren had to concede that style had its disadvantages. When she’d gotten bored of running about the dungeon, posing and admiring herself in the mirror, she’d begun testing out the limits of her new form.
Because it was a new body, or as a good as one. Toren felt as though this new shape was person unto itself. Herself. This new Toren was more Erin-like, more Human. She had more weaknesses like this, but Toren felt as though she understood more of Erin this way.
And one of the things she understood was how annoying clothes were. Toren had the opportunity to skirmish with a few creatures in the time after she’d dressed. The first opponents she’d found were some rather unpleasantly large maggots, as high as Toren’s midriff and wider than she was, coming to feast on the bodies.
Toren had killed them, if only because she felt he owed the dead group of adventurers that. But it had been considerably harder than she’d expected. She’d tried to roll and dive as the maggots leapt blindly at her, trying to bring her down, and found she was slower, less nimble.
Fighting with clothes on made Toren feel like she was moving in slow-motion. She couldn’t roll and dive out of the way, and she wasn’t able to bend at crazy angles to slash his foes like normal. She still killed the maggots of course; they were slow blobs and once you punctured their admittedly thick hides they spewed their guts.
Bu
t that led to the second problem, which was that Toren’s wonderful clothes were now dirty! She brushed at the slime covering her arms, quite upset about the sudden change in her appearance. So this was why Erin kept telling him not to bring dirty things into her inn! She could only imagine how hard she’d have to scrub to get the stains out.
But Toren was happy, in a way she couldn’t describe. She ran through the dungeon, happily hacking at things, running away, and in general enjoying herself. This was something new, something exciting! It was a challenge to fight without damaging her clothes, and it was amusing to think that no one had any clue that there was a skeleton stabbing them to death, rather than a regular living being.
Only, there was no one to share that knowledge with! Until Toren met the group of adventurers, that was.
It was some time after Toren had dressed herself. She couldn’t have said when, only that she’d acquired a good splattering of blood on top of her clothes, and leveled up. Time was hard to tell in the dungeon. But as Toren was walking down the halls, reflecting that she would need a new blade soon—hers was quite dull from use—she heard a sound.
Immediately she stiffened and got ready to fight. Or run. It was impossible to play dead, dressed as she was. But these sounds weren’t the noises a monster would make. Toren turned her head in disbelief as she heard voices.
“—Freezing my beard off here, Insill! Why in the name of forge fire are we down here without backup?”
“You don’t have a beard, Dasha. And the magical food that [Innkeeper] fed us only lets us use one enchantment at a time, remember?”
“Huh. She didn’t know that.”
“But she gave us back our coin, and we’re set for the next eight hours. Deal with the cold. Only a few groups know about her magical cooking, and so we have a chance.”
Toren listened with fascination to the two voices arguing. People? Down here? Then a growling voice, soft and commanding, interrupted.
