The morning sun rises
The sun was rising, deep orange against the pale sky and Skulduggery sighed. It had been a long, tiring night. Looking over the battlefield, strewn with dead bodies, he spotted Ghastly Bespoke, sat back to back with Dexter Vex. They looked exhausted. The air was heavy and silent, the weight of what they had done on everyone's shoulders.
"Skulduggery," Larrikin's voice, right next to him. "This can't go on." The skeleton turned his empty eye sockets on him and Shudder.
"What can we do, Larrikin?" his voice was as hollow as his empty chest. "There are just ten of us left, including the seven Dead Men. We can't flee from this position; there's nowhere to go." Turning his head back to the battlefield, Skulduggery saw Hopeless supporting Saracen Rue who looked dazed and woozy. The silence had fallen again. Heavy hearted, the ten regrouped, inspecting injuries. Saracen had taken a hard blow to the head and had a vague concussion; Ghastly had re-broken his knuckles for the third time; Dexter was bruised and battered; Larrikin had a large gash down his arm; Hopeless had a broken nose; Shudder was mainly unharmed and Skulduggery of course, didn't have a scratch on him.
"What do we do?" asked Ghastly quietly, looking down as the weakness of his voice scared him.
"We keep fighting. As we always did. As we always will do." Much to everyone's surprise, these words came not from Skulduggery's mouth but Anton Shudder's. He looked exhausted, but what scared the group the most was the look in Shudder's eyes. Utter hopelessness and loss, greater than anything before and yet exactly what they were all feeling.
"We should rest. We're no use to anyone like this," murmured Dexter and Skulduggery nodded.
"Sleep. I will keep watch." The fighters lay down, closing their eyes and dropping into dozes and the skeleton returned his gaze to the sun rise. Deep, glowing orange against the blood red morning clouds in the pale sky. The battle sun rises.