Riley jumped away from the skeletal fingers before they could fully close around his wrist. All around him the lanky skeletons, six in total, rose from the slabs with a click and clack of mould-encrusted bones. A horrid green light shone from the empty sockets of the skeletons, shimmering along the carved jade masks.

  He froze where he stood, glancing all around him with his torch raised high. He quickly realised that each skeleton had a head on him in height, and their fingerbones were inhumanly long and sharp. Like avian talons.

  In the past, before his first death, Riley had found the idea of ‘scary skeletons’ to be ridiculous. Whether they were monsters in movies, or enemies in video games, he couldn’t take them seriously. A skeleton was just the frame upon which the muscles were built around. Those were what allowed the body to move, and a skeleton moving without them had seemed foolish to him.

  Now, seeing several of them shamble about in the murky darkness with his own two eyes, there was nothing foolish about them at all.

  One lunged at him with uncanny speed, and Riley only barely avoided the claws as they punched into the wall behind him. The second set of claws from the next skeleton hit closer, grazing his side and cutting though his coat. Riley hissed and jumped away, blood oozing from the fresh wounds. His torch swung around, an arc of flame in the blackness, and slammed into the ribs of one skeleton. Several of them exploded into dust on impact, but the undead scarcely noticed.

  More claws swept at him, sharper than steel, and Riley pushed toward the doorway to get some space. Nicks and cuts grazed his skin, but none of the creatures could grab him.

  A hard swing of his staff knocked the skull clean off of one, which rolled across the temple floor with a clatter. Yet the body remained standing, striding awkwardly toward him.

  “Course it’s another damn thing that doesn’t have a body for plague magic to effect!” Riley growled. The tip of his staff parried away an incoming swipe, sparks flying from the Noxium spike. His staff swept outward, striking the nearest skeleton in the spine and cleaving clean through it.

  One by one the skeletons came his way, and one by one they were beaten away with sharp swings of Riley’s staff. Once the initial shock had worn off, they were slow and mindless in their movements. The room was left filled with bone dust and cracked jade, while blood seeped from a few fresh wounds on Riley’s body.

  He huffed for breath and picked one of the masks up.

  Pictish Mask

  A mask carved from solid jade, said to resemble the great Bird Spirit the Picts worshipped in the age of antiquity. Worn by an acolyte in life and death.

  It is said the Picts knew when their end was coming. Many chose to fight to the death. Others stayed behind so they could fight beyond death.

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  Grunting, Riley placed a few masks in his Inventory. Surely they had to be worth something. But, ultimately, the text of the mask’s description stuck in his mind. There were bound to be more undead lurking in the catacombs.

  Are you well, sir?

  “Just... worried is all, Mesquard,” Riley said, looking to his pocket. “Can’t take any corpse for granted in this place.”

  He pressed on, exploring the various musty chambers that filled the catacomb, helping himself to anything glittering that caught his eyes. Coins and discarded jewels, mostly. He checked each room in passing, his torch held aloft and still burning with all the intensity Fagan had promised. Many of the rooms and corridors had bones scattered about, rotting and overgrown with lichen. He poked them with his staff in passing, just in case, but they did not stir.

  Deeper inside he found stone arrowheads and rusted blades that had been left strewn about the place. Signs of a battle that had passed by centuries ago.

  Riley lifted a hatchet from the dusty floor and quietly examined it and the small skull-shaped charm that dangled from the leather-wrapped handle.

  Pictish Hatchet

  An ancient stone hatchet once wielded by a Pict, sporting a queer religious charm. So old and ill-treated that it will likely crumble to dust if used as a weapon.

  As their kingdom was destroyed by the Vergollese, bit by bit, the Picts found that their gods did not answer their prayers. In her mounting desperation, the Pictish Queen prayed to any divine force that would listen. One did.

  Riley set the hatchet on the dusty ground. A sense of dread loomed large in his mind. When genocide had come for the Picts, their despair had driven them to something truly dire.

  The scenes of death and conflict became more pronounced as he ventured deeper inside, and he soon found skeletons that had been left to rot in their rusted, knightly armour. Religious scenes had been hewn into the wall, depicting lanky figures (who Riley presumed to be Pictish) raising their hands in prayer to the sun.

  Then, on other carvings, he saw images of armoured figures with swords cutting down the Picts. In another a group of Picts, led by an even taller figure in an ornate headdress, were offering prayer to something else: A carved miasma of blackness, upon which dwelled a myriad of silver skulls.

  And then a sound hit his ear that made Riley freeze in place, and sent a shiver down his spine. Singing. A soft, mournful aria that echoed through the corridors.

  Ye gods, Mesquard whispered in his mind. What madness awaits us now?

  Riley steeled himself and moved deeper through the winding corridors, the path leading him closer to the heart of the catacombs. He only barely heard the skitter of footsteps behind him, and turned jut in time to see a hooded figure rush at him. The torchlight made the blade gleam in the figure’s hands, and highlighted the face beneath his hood: A monstrous apelike visage, like the beastmen he had encountered in the mountains.

  Yet this one was no half-catatonic thrall. This one’s eyes gleamed with malice, and an uncanny intelligence. The blade grazed his shoulder, an arc of fresh blood spurting onto the wall.

  “Shit,” Riley hissed, wheeling away from the figure. In the firelight, he got a better look at the figure’s cloak as it fanned behind him. The leather, Riley grimly noticed, was human skin that had been tanned and stitched together. The eyeholes and nostrils and mouths gaping up at him made that all too obvious.

  He jabbed his torch forward, aiming to jam it in the wildman’s face. But, to his shock, the beastly swordsman backflipped away from him and landed neatly on the balls of his feet.

  “What the hell?” Riley mumbled, dumbstruck as the creature reached for something on the raggedy cord of his belt. A one that had been hollowed and carved into a blowgun. Riley grunted and jumped through the open doorway, avoiding the blown dart as it whistled through the air and pinged off he archway, breaking off large chunks of stone.

  Already he could hear the pattering footsteps coming at him through the darkness, into the broad chamber he had backed into, while the wildman’s blade scraped the wall. His growls were guttural and beastly, his soul brimming with malice.

  And all the while, the mournful song echoed through the desolate halls.