Ribs, tibiae, a pelvic girdle, and even a funny bo flying all over the room with a loud crash as the adventurer’s hammer smashed through Bob’s skeleton, only stopping o ected with the stone floor.

  “What the hell, Tom?!” said Balthazar in a hushed yelp.

  The crab did not really know Bob, but to wate of his friend’s friends be so suddenly and brutally struck down while hiding behind a wall in a dark dungeo a little too real for what was supposed to be just some fun act to fool new adventurers.

  The other skeleton, however, seemed unfazed by the whole ordeal, simply watg on as the se unfolded before his eyes. Or rather, his empty eye sockets. Maybe that was the issue.

  “Did you not just see what I saw?!” the agitated crusta said. “Are you going blind like Sal, or something? They just killed Bht in front of us!”

  Tom turo him with a head movement that implied he would be rolling his eyes, if he had any. “Rex, Balthazar. Did you fet?”

  “Fet what?!”

  “You ’t really kill what’s already dead. I thought I expi to you before. These guys e down here all the time, they smack us around a bit, send our bones flying, they feel really tough over it, and then move on. Ohey’re gone we just go around, pick up the pieces, reset our traps, refill the loot chests, and put ourselves back together, ready to do it all again. It’s all par for the course.”

  Balthazar stared at the other mert, unblinking. “Oh…”

  “There, look,” said Tom, pointing at Bob’s skull, lying on the floor near a stone n oher side of the wall. “Do you see? He’s fine.”

  The crab brought his eyestalks closer to the cra the wall, and he saw the ial bone on its side, fag their wall, and giving a quick wink before returning to his motionless pose.

  “After this is all over, we’ll go out there, scoop him up, and put him back together in no time,” expiom. “Nothing that some bone wreng and glue won’t fix. Now, if one of them was using are fire to burn our bones, or worse, used ons ented with holy magic, then maybe we’d have something to worry about, but the low levels we get in here never have that kind of stuff yet.”

  Balthazar stared out of the wall with a distant stare, scratg the side of his face with the tip of his pincer. Despite how long he had been dealing with his macabre friend, there were just some things that would still take some getting used to.

  “Did you see that?!” shouted James, standing up from where he had struck Bob, hammer ba his grip. “I one-shot that skelly like a boss!”

  “Yes, good for you, kid, very impressive,” said Reagan, sounding bored as he readjusted his vestments. “Shall we move on now?”

  “Yes, please, I don’t want to stick around this room for long,” said Lisa, clutg the ancer’s satchel against her chest as she carefully avoided stepping on the bones scattered all around her feet.

  “Sure, but not before I get that!” said the excited young man, pointing at a woode sitting in a dark er he back of the room. “I found our first loot chest!”

  Like a child seeing presents, or a crab seeing pie, the adventurer ran towards the chest with glee in his eyes.

  “Don’t just ope—” started Reagan, but it was already too te.

  As the adventurer reached the chest, he kneeled down in front of it, pg his hammer on the floor and quickly untg the lid as he grinned in anticipation.

  A rapid unwinding sound came from the back of the chest as he threw the lid bad its hinges clicked. The smile vanished from his face as he gasped, realizing the mistake of his as, but before the young man had time to move, a short volley of darts flew out of a hole in the wall in front of him, hitting him squarely in the forehead.

  After a moment frozen ihe boy fell backwards, nding on the floor, stiff like a statue.

  “Oh, fod’s sake…” grumbled the spellcaster, ping the space between his eyes in frustration.

  “James!” yelled Lisa, running towards him.

  She kneeled o her adventuring partner, shaking his body as hard as she could, but with no response. His eyes were frozen in shock along with his expression, both of his hands still stretched out, in the same position as they were when releasing the tch of the chest.

  “Do something!” the girl cried to the mage. “He’s paralyzed! I ’t move him, he's too stiff.”

  Reagan approached casually, showing no sense ency or care.

  “Yes, he’s as stiff as a corpse,” he said in a bored tone. “Because that’s what he is now.”

  “What?!” excimed Lisa, her eyes bulging out at the man standing over them.

  “He’s dead, kid,” said the more seasoned adventurer, bending down to pie of the projectiles stuck to the boy’s forehead. “Poisoned darts. Terribly weak, but a handful of them are still enough to dispatch lower levels like you two.”

  “No… no, no, no, this ’t be,” muttered the desperate girl, her breathing quiing as she stared down at the dead adventurer.

  “What? You two khe risks,” said the unfazed ancer. “Did you think ing down into a dungeon full of traps and undead was some kind of walk in the park? That you could just stroll in, grab some valuable loot and leave without a care? This is what being an adventurer in this world is like, girl.”

  Lisa looked up at the man with tears pooling in her eyes.

  “You were supposed to protect us!” she shouted. “The only reason James came here, and I agreed to it, was because you assured us we’d be safe with you!”

  “I told you not to stray too far away from me, before we came in,” said Reagan casually, while cheg his fingernails. “It’s not my fault or responsibility if your friend was too stupid to heed my instrus and just runs off ter all the traps he stumbles upon.”

  “You… you’re a bastard!” said the girl, tears running down her cheeks as she let go of her friend.

  “No, darling, I’m just someone who’s been around long enough to know how to survive and thrive in this world, even if it’s at the expense of fools like you two.”

  Lisa stood up, her breathing shaky as she wiped the tears from her face. “I o get out of here.”

  “Wisest decision you’ve probably made since we met,” the mage said, a smirk f in the er of his lips. “Unfortunately, with your friend go falls on you to cover the rest of my payment.”

  “What?! James is dead and you’re talking about money? We don’t have ! All we had we spent hiring you aing supplies for this. We were going to cover your payment with the loot we’d get from this pce.”

  Reagan’s smirk grew. “Sounds like you’ve got some looting to do, then.”

  “You’re crazy!” said the panig girl. “I’m getting out of here!”

  She stepped forward, towards the doorway the three of them had ehe room from, but the mage stepped to the side, pg himself in front of her.

  The girl froze on the spot, staring at him with wide eyes. She didn’t o hear or see more beyond the cold gre in Reagan’s blue eyes to know he had no iion to let her go until he got his payment.

  With a sudden turn, Lisa took off running the other way, heading through the doorast the trapped chest and down a set of stairs, disappearing into a dark corridor.

  Reagan ughed as the sound of her footsteps echoed away below. “Really smart. Just head deeper into the dungeon full of dangers. I hope you get plenty of loot by the time I get there.”

  After quickly rummaging through the dead adventurer’s pockets for a purse, the ancer calmly followed the girl dowairs.

  “This guy is trouble,” Tom said, as he turo Balthazar.

  “Yes, he’s way too high level to be in this dungeon,” said Sal, still sitting in the mert skeleton’s hands.

  “He’s also a jerk,” added Balthazar with a frown.

  “Seems like you’ve grown a soft spot for adveely, crab,” the other mert said.

  “I got little love for the fools, and if their bad decisiohem in trouble that’s on them, but this guy is cruel and uses those weaker than him like pythings.”

  Tom nodded.

  “I get your point. It would be fair game if those kids just came in and got hurt trying to loot our stuff, but this mage is breaking all the rules of how we do things around here.”

  “They’re heading down to Jim’s room ,” excimed Sal. “We o warn him!”

  “Right,” said Tom, looking down at the skull. “Balthazar, please take that door over there, it’s a shortcut to the chamber, warn Jim to abort a out of dodge while I go get the uys so we e up with a pn to get rid of this guy.”

  “I do that,” the crab said.

  While Tom and Sal ran down a different dark tunnel, Balthazar skittered through a cramped corridor, filled with stacked boxes, buckets, a few brooms, and some bone piles he did not even want to know the in of.

  After a few twists and turns, the huffing mert found another wall with a small barred window overseeing a room full of stone coffins, barely visible uhe dim light of a small brazier at the ter of the hall. Finding the spot on the wall that opehe secret passage to the other side, the crab quickly started looking around for the skeleton.

  “Psst, Jim,” he whispered. “Are you here?”

  “Balthazar?” a voice whispered back. “What are you doing out here?”

  The skeleton stepped out of a dark er, his rusty hatchet in hand again like when they had first met. And just like then, he was also pletely unclothed again, the bright green shorts from befone from his hip bones.

  “I was lookin—Oh, what the hell!” said the crab, averting his eyestalks as he saw the skeleton’s odesty. “You’re naked again!”

  “Oh please, don’t get your bristles in a twist!” said Jim. “I ain’t got no dangly bits to be embarrassed by no more, and there’s just no way an adventurer will take a skeleton in lime swim shorts seriously.”

  “The adventurers!” Balthazar said quickly, remembering what he was doing. “Jim, we o get back behind the walls, Tom wants troup because—”

  The sound of running footsteps came from behind the door oher side of the room, and they both turo look at it as the old wood started creaking, pushed by someone oher side.

  “Quick, hide!” whispered Jim, as he quickly ran behind a pilr.

  “Are you kidding me?!” muttered the crab. “Look at me, I’m way too wide to hide behind a pilr!”

  The adventurer girl ran into the room, closing the door behind her as she struggled to trol her breathing.

  Balthazar tried skittering his way behind one of the stone bases holding the coffins, but the clig of his pointy legs against the stone floor in the dead silence of the crypt alerted the human, makiurn with a gasp.

  They both froze, gazes locked on one another.

  “Uhhh… Hi?” the crab said with an awkward smile.

  Lisa let out a yelp before pressing her back against the door. “A skeleton that talks!”

  “Alright, first of all, I have an exoskeleton, I’m not—”

  Before Balthazar could finish his sentence or take more than two steps forward, the girl threw her baton at him, which flew over his eyestalks.

  “Hey! Don’t do that! I’m trying to—oh no.”

  As his eyes moved back from the baton behind him and back to the adventurer, he saw she had already drawn a hand crossbow, and ointing it directly at him.

  “Stay away from me!” Lisa yelled as she pulled the trigger.

  With no time to react, Balthazar’s gaze crossed inwards as he watched the tip of the bolt hit him right between his eyestalks.