The sun set on Tsem’s first day in the ruin’s basin. Sludge flowed off his body, the crashing water from above proving very effective at scrubbing it from his body. Four rounds of cultivation done, he was feeling a little shaky. It had been a long day.

  The place was teeming with danger. Demonic beasts, some nearly as strong as the ascended bladebear roamed the sunken island. It seemed the beasts were drawn here. Some probably for the abundant spiritual herbs, others simply had a thirst for blood. Regardless, Tsem needed to be alert at all times. Even cultivating here was a risk, one he felt he had little choice in though.

  There were going to be fights he just couldn’t avoid. The boartubko earlier had been a good example of that. When those fights came, he would need to be ready. Then there was the ruins.

  Standing on dark stone pillars, the ruins towered three stories into the air, taking up nearly a third of the area in the basin. The top didn’t reach above the waterline, not even close, but it was still his best lead to find a way out. He’d need to scout the place out. There was so much to do. Tomorrow, he’d start laying divine formations around his campsite, a warning system of sorts against demonic beasts. He’d sleep in one of the trees. Build a nest of sorts. It would keep him safe from most…

  The sun finished its descent somewhere. Tsem had lost sight of it, the basin growing dark in their shade long before normal. He knew the very moment it dropped though. The fool’s whisper sang to his mind, far more powerful, more insistent than ever before. Before he knew it, he’d taken a step forward then another.

  Tsem stopped himself. His steps were taking him to the ruin. The fool’s whisper still sang from above, in the direction of the mountain’s summit. A part of it, a small part, called to him from the ruins right here though. Tsem held against the tug for a while. Eventually though, even knowing it was a bad idea, he began moving forward.

  He was curious. The first time he’d felt the fool’s whisper, he’d been alone. Not just like he was now. He’d had nothing and nobody anywhere in the world. The whisper had called to him when he’d felt most hopeless, given him an objective, hope. He had the opportunity here to understand its source, something of its, at least.

  Tsem was cautious in his approach. He didn’t give in to the call, he was fully under his own control. He was here to do some scouting, nothing else.

  The ruin’s entrance was set at the top of two sets of curving stairs, each meeting at a grand doorway. Just a doorway, no door. Tsem climbed them, his feet moving quietly. When he reached the top, he peered through the door.

  There was a grand entryway, perhaps a third of the entire first floor in size. The same dark stone pillars lined the room in evenly spaced rows, looking almost too thin to support anything. They provided light to the room, glowing from within a dull blue, their curves resulting in plenty of blind spots and areas cast into shadow.

  Across the floor was a tile mosaic, but it wasn’t cohesive. Depictions of dozens of different divine beasts frolicked playfully near the entrance while the beasts depicted on the tiles further back seemed to look increasingly ferocious. Throughout, the beasts whether playing or hunting, chased each other around in spirals.

  By the back wall, various pedestals were placed, each with cranks clearly positioned on top. They were the kind of thing Tsem had always imagined being used for opening or lowering a castle’s gates.

  The fool’s whisper came insistently from above, but there were no stairs, no openings to other rooms. Again, Tsem’s eyes fell on the cranks. They had to be there for a reason.

  With a breath to make sure his qi was well under his control, Tsem moved in, moving quietly behind a pillar in the first row. He wasn’t sure why, but he could feel something was off. He wasn’t alone here, not entirely.

  A bone white claw burst through one of the tiles making up the floor, a portion depicting the tail of a fox. A white forearm followed, and Tsem took an unwilling step backward. The entire monster that pulled itself from below was bone, no flesh at all. A moment later, Tsem realized it wasn’t a monster. The bones were human.

  The skeleton looked at him despite a lack of eyes. It didn’t move like a human, and it seemed to be put together in completely the wrong way, resembling a beast on all fours in stature. The only reason Tsem knew these bones were human was because of the skull.

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  This was nothing like what Tsem had heard of undead raised by necromancers. Those always acted human, at least in their movements. Tsem shuddered, confirming his grip on his trusty spear and net. They gave him a measure of comfort against this horror.

  The skeleton rushed at him, to Tsem’s surprise, it burn qi to do so. How that was even possible without a meridian or flesh of any kind, he didn’t know. He reacted, burning his own qi and moving to the side, throwing his net.

  The skeletal monster skittered to the side, its bones making light tapping noises against the floor. Tsem pulled his net back in. It was faster than it looked for being so misconfigured. Then again, it had managed to punch its way out through what felt to Tsem like fairly solid stone.

  Still, it didn’t seem too difficult to deal with, more like an interella in strength and speed, and less like the gold pinfish or boartubko he’d fought earlier.

  As if on cue with his thoughts, three more clawlike appendages broke through three other tiles nearby, pulling more monsters out. None of these had human skulls, just seeming to be made from demonic beast bones or some such, but regardless, they held the same structure, moved the same way.

  Tsem moved as quickly as he could, charging the first somewhat recklessly, his decision to deal with it before the others could join the fight. He threw his net again, this time predicting the skeleton’s sudden evasion to the side. Caught, it was a simple matter for Tsem to run up and…there was nothing to stab with his spear.

  He hesitated for a moment, unsure what exactly to do. The moment cost him, the other three arriving. He dodged one pounce, blocked a second, and took a third claw to the side of his head. By fortune, the ‘claw’ wasn’t made up of sharp bones, so it didn’t cut him. It hit hard though, forcing Tsem to stumble away, blinking his eyes in an effort to be rid of dark spots.

  The skeletons didn’t give him the space he would have liked, one jumping and skittering around a column to get an angle at his right side, another taking a looping run around to his backside. The third moved directly forward, pressuring him so he couldn’t deal with the other.

  They were working together. That wasn’t good. At least the one trapped in his net wasn’t able to join in the assault. Even so, its efforts to escape were tugging Tsem along by the attached rope. He was forced to slip it off. There’d be no recovering it until the end of the fight.

  He swung his spear in wide sweeps, the likelihood of a thrust missing in the gaps between his opponent’s bones too high. It didn’t take him long to realize his weapon was poorly suited to facing these odd foes. Still, he held his ground.

  Crack. Crack. More tiles breaking. Tsem didn’t know where exactly, it seemed there were four or five more, dispersed throughout the hall.

  There was no time to deal with his current opponents, they needed to be gone before the next wave arrived. Unfortunately, their relentless attacks already had him on the backfoot. It was all he could do to spin his spear around him and move his feet in an odd dance to defend himself from multiple angles.

  Bone dug into Tsem’s arm as he blocked at the last minute, burning speed just to keep up. He winced, pulling back. There was nothing he could do against so many. Already, the next wave was running towards him. They’d all be on him in seconds.

  Tsem tried to break free, burning a ton of qi for speed in an effort to retrieve his net. He was cut off though, a new arrival he hadn’t even noticed jumping at him from a pillar above. He managed to smack it away with his spear, but had to stop and plant his feet to do so. It was back up again before he could make another move.

  Left with no other option, Tsem desperately fought his way backward, taking little wounds here and there. His spear was weaving a defensive pattern around him, but it wasn’t enough by itself. He used his elbows, his knees, his feet, anything he could to block or repel his attackers. Each blow had to be aimed carefully and backed by qi.

  If there was one upside to fighting these things, it was that they were far lighter than they appeared, allowing his blows to send them flying backwards a good distance. Unfortunately, that didn’t make them any less durable, his spear failing to crack bone on impact, even those few moments were he could counterattack, dropping his speed in favor of strength.

  Eventually, Tsem made good his escape, stumbling out the entryway and backwards, falling over the railing between the two curved staircases to the ground below. He flipped himself back to his feet, expecting pursuers, but though he could hear the clack of bones moving, nothing leapt after him.

  Cautiously, Tsem moved up the staircase, ready to use his spear on anything that moved. The skeletal creatures were waiting, standing guard at the entryway to the ruins, but going no further. Some were already peeling off, crawling up pillars to maintain their vigil there. Four of the largest creatures though, sat directly in front of the entrance, their collection of skulls following his movements, waiting.

  If they wanted to keep waiting, Tsem would let them do just that. What burned though was the net left behind on the floor. It was only a dozen steps away, but that felt like an eternity with the small army of warped undead standing guard.

  From above, the fool’s whisper still reached him, tugging insistently at his heart. He wasn’t going to blindly follow it though. He was outmatched by these new foes. There was no way he’d attempt the ruins again, not anytime soon…is what he would have liked to say.

  Tsem needed his net back. Without it, he would struggle with the demonic beasts outside, beasts that with the dense qi here, were likely to sneak up on him again. He needed a way to deal with these skeletons, something better than his spear. He wasn’t exactly spoiled for choice though. It wasn’t like there were any weapons around.

  Tsem cursed himself. He’d grown complacent. He’d felt stronger, more confident from fighting demonic beasts head on, feather to feather. He should have anticipated the possibility of the bladebear returning. If he’d taken the time to setup a divine formation searching for any nearby bladebears before he’d fought the pinfish, he would have felt the ascended beast coming. He could have left in time. Now he was stuck here, in an inescapable basin filled with strong demonic beasts and a ruin filled with undead and who knew what else.

  Tsem returned to his nest, ready to put this whole horrible day behind him. He wiped his cheek, one of the skeletons had nicked him there and the blood was trickling. He felt something odd on his face, along his jawline. He didn’t really ever grow much stubble, so the sensation was odd. Tsem yanked at it, feeling a pinprick of pain. A small, mutilated blue and brown feather sat in his palm.

  “Caaawhaahaa.” Tsem wheezed out a laugh. He must have stuck a feather to himself while he was butchering and trapped it against his skin good with the sludge from his cultivation. Odd that it hadn’t come off when he’d washed, and it looked smaller than most ghalri feathers, a little poorly formed too. Nothing to worry about though. Tsem tossed it away, climbing up a blue sap tree to spend the night.