Elias was slow to climb off the pile, instinctively not wanting to disturb it too much. His hands and feet landed on various parts of cold bodies on his way down that he was quick to notice were all too small and slender to be adults. It was as he climbed that he also became aware of his own nakedness and realized he was in a child’s body like the ones he was climbing over, his hands too small and new limbs not reaching as far as his old ones had.

  The realization gave him the brief but disorienting feeling that, while he moved and breathed like a living person, he was actually still one of the cold little corpses.

  Once his feet were firmly on the ground he turned around to take a look at his previous resting place, staring in silence at the monument of death before him. The pile of bodies was taller than he was, and every one of them a child.

  Elias had seen many terrible things in his life, yet his heart still gave a tremor at the sight as he met the gazes of his former companions. All their eyes were open. They were all as naked as he was, their bodies gleamed luminous under the moonlight and twisted together like the world’s most depraved gordian knot. It was impossible to tell how they died from looking at them, their bodies whole and pristine like perfect marble, staring out at the world with clear, gem-like eyes, as if to innocently ask why their bodies weren’t working. Why he got to blink and get up and walk away when they had to stay and stare only at the stars forever. Their quiet inquiry lent a serene beauty to something inherently obscene. A haunting profanity the would could not ignore or erase.

  There was something strange about this place, some power that held a firm grasp here and lent the terrible sight an eerie, otherworldly beauty. The bodies didn’t smell, none of the usual decay or leaking that abandoned corpses were prone to. He could feel that unnamed power keeping them from rotting, obvious and not even trying to hide its intentions. The children would stay as they were for years and years, maybe even centuries, never decaying, staying always as they were right now.

  This absolute knowledge felt odd to him. The only way he should be able to tell something was strange was all the days of his life where he didn’t feel this way, but there was more to it than that. An instinct that recognized something here even though he didn’t.

  Standing there puzzling over it, his mind began making him aware of other things he had only subconsciously noticed before.

  First, his eyesight was too good. It was night but he could see just fine, the clarity almost like it was daytime just in a more monochrome spectrum of color. Compared to how well he used to be able to see in the dark it was a huge leap in visibility.

  Second, and by far the weirdest, he realized he hadn’t just known he was lying on bodies because he felt them under him and smelled their cold flesh. He could feel them in a way that went beyond touch or any of his other known senses. He had felt them under him, felt the blood of little dead things beneath his body without consciously recognizing what he was sensing. Looking at them, he could clearly tell he now had another sense he hadn’t possessed before.

  Even if he didn’t entirely understand it, it told him things he had no way of knowing. He knew with certainty that most of the children didn’t have any blood left in their bodies. Neither did they have any wounds that would explain where it went. As for the rest of the kids, only four of them, he knew they died of internal trauma because the blood still in their bodies painted him a picture of the way they were wrecked on the inside. They might show no damage externally, but he knew they died terrible deaths and that whatever killed them was not the work of any normal means.

  The knowledge came so naturally and in such completeness he couldn’t question it, feeling as reliable as any of his other senses. He could only let it settle in his chest with the weight of a sorrow he had no memory of. He wondered if the feeling was a remnant of his new body. It had likely known these children. Or at least suffered the same.

  Or maybe, some of it was Elias’s own feeling, the sight touching on an old wound. No child should’ve had to die like they did, and they didn’t deserve to be thrown away like this.

  It was then, caught in thought, that Elias heard the sound of something moving behind him.

  All his wonders and worries went out the window as he immediately began assessing his situation. It was night, his body was too small and in pain. He was alone and defenseless in a clearing in the woods next to a pile of bodies, and the movement sounded like an animal creeping through the trees at his back. Not near enough yet to be an immediate danger, but given how far some beasts could leap, an imminent one all the same. Even more so if it was a monster instead of a normal animal.

  Quickly forming a plan of action, he chose his direction and burst into motion.

  His new body immediately screamed in protest, but he still managed to move with reasonable fluidity as he sprinted to the nearest tree. His limbs pumping with everything he had as he listened to the animal behind him take notice and give chase.

  A part of his mind recognized the sound as that of something with four legs and paws rather than hooves, confirming the danger he was in.

  Then he was leaping up the tree, scrabbling to get a hold of the trunk and work his way up. There weren’t any branches low enough for him to get an easy hold, but he had enough experience climbing without them that it hardly slowed him down even as the rough surface tore at his skin.

  He could hear the animal reach the tree trunk below him and make a leap of its own, but he stayed calm and kept working his way up as its claws scraped the bark just below him. It took a couple more leaps at him, but it didn’t seem to have the type of limbs that would allow it to follow him up the trunk and he continued climbing until he finally reached some branches. There he heaved himself up with shaky arms and sat on it while hugging the tree trunk, gasping for air. His arms and legs burned both from exertion and fresh abrasions.

  Trying to get his breathing under control he looked down at the thing trying to eat him, only to freeze at the sight of what looked back up at him.

  At first glance it could’ve passed for a giant wire-haired wolfhound with pointed ears, if not for the glowing cyan colored eyes and its body being half made of black smoke. It sat at the base of his tree, looking up at him with the slightly accusing eyes of a scavenger encountering a fraudulent corpse.

  A part of Elias’s mind immediately began muttering unkind things about Mercy. Yes, she had told him there would be monsters, but did she really have to drop him right on top of one? It looked so scary too.

  Using his newly acquired vantage point and improved eyesight, Elias checked to make sure his guest was alone. He didn’t have any idea what it was, but it looked like a canine and those tended to hunt in packs. He could see he was in a clearing, the dead end destination at the end of a slightly overgrown path by the look of things. The trees here were old and mature with moss and lichen growing on them, but he didn’t see or hear any more smoke-dogs out there.

  More than his sight though, it was his new sense that reassured him it was alone. In the same way he could feel the corpses, he could feel a faint something from the smoke-dog that might be the real reason he had noticed it was there rather than having heard it. Whatever that feeling was, he didn’t feel anything else nearby.

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  That and, well, he was in a clearing with a pile of what would ordinarily be a very tempting pile of bodies for monsters to munch on. Bodies that had been left here and yet had remained untouched. He suspected the cause of that was the same force that was keeping the bodies preserved. Even now the smoke-dog wasn’t paying the bodies any mind, its sole attention focused on him.

  Safe for the moment, he took stock of himself. While his new body was in pain there didn’t seem to be any major concerns other than his small size. He wasn’t thrilled to be a small child again, as all he had really learned the last time was how helpless children were. He had almost made it into adulthood when he died, just to find himself back here again. What a pain.

  Also, it was more than a little disturbing to be moving around in a dead child’s body, but at least he didn’t take it from someone else. So he guessed there was that.

  Upsides.

  Not wanting to think about Mercy’s newest form of recycling too much, he instead focused on more immediate concerns. Staring down, he met eyes with the maybe-a-dog. Also known as his number one immediate concern.

  First problem was that he couldn’t fight that thing. He was a naked, recently-dead child and it was a ghost wolf with death eyes. If he had a weapon, like a high powered rifle he could use from a snipper’s nest (or maybe a grenade?), that would be one thing, but he didn’t. What he had was his new body and maybe a stick if he could break a branch off the tree he was sitting in without falling out of it. In his opinion, trying to strangle the thing with his skinny kid arms seemed a poor strategic choice.

  Going by the way it was just sitting there, it appeared pretty committed to sticking around and having him for dinner. So their “fight” might come down to how patient it was compared to how long he could stay sitting up in his tree.

  Stumped, Elias stared at it and it stared at him and he couldn’t help wishing he knew more about it, though whether knowing more would-

  His grip on the trunk tightened in surprised when words appeared in his mind.

  Grave Hound Lv. 8

  They were like the words that welcomed him to this world. It felt like he could see them with his eyes, but they blocked none of his visibility, being entirely within his own mind. Like a head-up display that put the information directly into his mind in a way that he could “see” if he wanted to but wouldn’t distract him if he didn’t let it.

  His staring at the words seemed to send them the message that he wanted to know more because more words soon appeared in his mind.

  A semi-corporeal spectral hound best known for guarding the graves of the unjustly killed and only appearing at night. Usually non-aggressive, the grave hound will relentlessly attack any who approach the grave it guards. Solitary by nature, it doesn’t require food to sustain itself, attacking purely for the sake of that which it protects. The higher level it is the more intelligent it becomes, eventually gaining the ability to speak via telepathy.

  Taking a deep breath he thought over the new information, somehow feeling sad. He wasn’t sure what it meant by level, but 8 didn’t strike him as very high. It was a bit pitiful to realize this monster was only here to protect the resting place of these children. Their weak little guard doing the best it could to do for them in death what no one had done for them while they lived.

  If it was smarter then perhaps it would realize he wasn’t there to debase this place, that mere minutes ago he had been one of its charges. But it wasn’t, and now they would likely have to try and kill each other.

  If it was only there at night then his best course of action would be to wait in his tree until the sun rose. It was the smart thing to do. The careful thing. He liked doing smart, careful things.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t think he would be able to last that long. Elias’s current body was tired, the limbs still trembling from his earlier exertion, and would soon begin suffering from exposure. He had no clothes (sitting naked in a tree hurt) or equipment to make his tree-stay easier and without it he wasn’t even sure he would be able to stay awake all night, much less keep himself from falling out of the tree.

  So he could either stay up there and try to see how long he lasted, in which case he would likely either fall and break his neck or get torn apart by a monster. Alternatively, he could confront it in the faint hope that he would be able to escape on his weak little legs before the glowering monster below tore his throat out. Elias was not fond of his options, but he needed to make a choice soon because if he thought about it for much longer he wouldn’t even have the strength left to die bravely.

  He idly wondered about how important the semi-corporeal part of its anatomy would be in a fight. Maybe that meant it was only corporeal at night since it sure made plenty of noise chasing after him for something that was only supposed to be half there.

  He really didn’t want to fight the grave hound, much less try to kill it. The idea felt repulsive. Not that he would likely have to suffer from those feelings for long, since he couldn’t envision a way in which he was the one to walk away from this.

  And Mercy sent him here why?

  A sudden, intense feeling of frustration briefly surged past his practiced equanimity before he managed to suppress it, leaving the bitterness it brought behind. When Mercy told him she was going to give him a second chance at life, he was more than a little interested. It was a new life after all, one away from all his previous troubles. He thought he could be done with this kind of fight-for-your-life-against-ridiculous-odds bullshit. Start fresh. Instead he woke up among the dead and moments later had to run for his life from a monster he’d never seen before but was apparently kinder than most people he’d met.

  He died, and he died on purpose. Why was he here, having to do this nonsense all over again?

  Elias took a breath, centering himself. He hadn’t been sure what to think about Mercy and what she’d done for him earlier. There had hardly been the time to figure it out, but now it seemed clear to him that whatever her motivations or talk of wardship, her gifts were of the poisonous sort.

  Full of unpleasant feelings he stared down at the grave hound. He wished there was a way he could kill this thing quickly and be done with it. Dying and getting forcibly reincarnated by a cosmic midget was tiring business.

  As if in response to his stifled emotions there was an answering something from the corpse pile, making plain its willingness to help him. It was as if he just realized he had another limb he hadn’t been using, just dragging it around and leaving it behind, and now he both remembered he had it and could use it, despite it being so far away. It was the strangest feeling he’d ever experienced. It only got stranger when his “new limb” whispered to him, promising to help him if that’s what he wanted.

  And that’s when he realized it was the blood talking to him.

  He knew he should probably be more suspicious of anything with that level of intent, yet it didn’t feel like a person’s intelligence. More like that of a pet, obedient and eager to please. His well-honed caution wanted to ignore it, wary of any helping hand he didn’t understand the reason for, but before he could quite stop himself he found himself accepting what it offered. Just a whisper of thought, only half intentional, but the blood heard him anyway.

  And then everything happened at once.

  The corpse pile churned and writhed, giving the optical illusion that the bodies themselves were moving. The true culprit revealed itself as the blood from the four children who still had any, looking black in the moonlight, began flowing out of them and up into the air. Its escape let the bodies return to their eternal stillness once more as the viscous liquid formed a black orb in the air above the bodies.

  He knew night turned the color red black so he shouldn’t have been able to tell, but somehow he still knew that despite it being the blood of dead things, it was still unnaturally bright red. Death, time and decay having done nothing to desecrate it.

  The floating sphere hung eerily behind the unsuspecting hound, silently thrumming with a foreign power only Elias could feel and with a life that was not life. It hung there for only the briefest of moments before twisting itself into several thin spiraling spikes that zipped through the air towards the hound like airborne predators.

  It all happened so quickly the grave hound had no time to respond, barely even registering the attack before impact, the spikes piercing deep into its body that was, apparently, just corporeal enough to matter. All the grave hound could do was yelp at the sudden pain, its body jerking and falling to its side before it died with a quiet whimper. The blood that killed it stuck out of its body like iron spikes, wisps of black smoke rising around them.

  Elias stared at it, uncomprehending, until a sense of exhaustion unlike any he’d ever experienced flooded through him. Then, too weak to hold on, he fell limply from the tree. He lost consciousness before he even hit the ground.