Chapter 2: The Bone Man
Sheena was enjoying herself. She, Lloyd, and Zelos were camping in a field, some miles from Sybak.
A trip into the university town had proved profitable when a couple of students were heard talking about how Exsphere research might be reopened. A few questions revealed that someone was selling Exspheres.
Lloyd, of course, had gotten very angry. Sheena figured that was good for him. Lloyd didn't have a chance to brood when he was angry.
Now, a day later, they were preparing to go to bed. Sheena already lay in her bedroll, pretending to be asleep. She liked hearing Lloyd and Zelos's conversation when they thought she wasn't listening.
"I'm surprised you agreed to come," Lloyd was saying.
"Yeah, well, I don't have much to do since they disbanded the office of the Chosen," Zelos said easily. "I was getting bored."
"Riiiight. And the fact that the bandits are using Exspheres doesn't come into it at all?" Lloyd sounded amused.
"I can't fool you, can I?" Zelos said without the least trace of embarrassment.
Lloyd laughed. Sheena felt much better. This trip was easing his worries.
"It's good to have you with us, Zelos," Lloyd said, more seriously.
For once, Zelos dropped his usual act. "It's good to be doing this sort of thing again. I've missed being out on the road. And I've really missed being with the gang."
"Yeah." Lloyd was silent for a moment. "I'm turning in. Good night, Zelos."
"'Night, Lloyd."
Sheena smiled, and really settled in to sleep.
The next morning, Lloyd woke up to find Sheena cooking breakfast and talking to Zelos. Amazingly, she wasn't shouting.
He got out of his sleeping bag. "Good morning."
Zelos nodded. Sheena smiled. "Morning."
He sat down by the small fire. "Which way should we go today?"
Sheena flipped the bacon. "We should go north and through Gaoracchia Forest. They'd be preying along that road to Ozette."
"Sound good," Lloyd agreed.
After breakfast they broke camp and walked the couple of miles to Gaoracchia Forest.
"I've never liked this place," Lloyd said with a shudder, looking at the dark, twisted trees.
"I don't think anyone likes it," Zelos said. "Most people avoid it."
Sheena shivered. "It's an evil place. I'm amazed I'm still alive."
Zelos looked at her oddly. "It's not that dangerous."
"You don't understand. I'm not from Mizuho by birth—Chief Igaguri found me in this forest, not far from where Mizuho used to be."
"I didn't know that," Zelos admitted. "How'd you get there?"
"I don't know. I don't even know who my birth parents are."
Zelos nodded sympathetically. "I'm sorry."
She looked at him. "Compassion? From you?" She demanded incredulously.
He smirked in that superior way of his. "It's just us out here. I don't have to be my usual self, now, do I?"
Lloyd laughed. "All right. Point taken. Let's just get through here."
As always, the forest was sunk into deep twilight. The humid air was cold and smelled of decay. They went through the twists and turns of the forest path. One thing screamed at them by its absence, however.
"There's no monsters," Sheena said. "Where are they?"
Zelos was indifferent. "I'm glad they're gone. Those ghouls always gave me the creeps."
"But I've been in here hundreds of times and there's always been monsters. Something's wrong."
They walked along in the utter, utter silence for a while. Then they heard something.
Cautiously, they sidled along the twisting path.
Up ahead was one of the all-too-rare clearings where sunlight filtered through. Up ahead was a group of about twenty people. Some of them were in mismatched armor and carried well-used weapons, both of which marked them as mercenaries. Others had a caught look to them, and were chained together in a line.
They were all focusing on a man in the center of the clearing. He seemed to be talking, but the dead air muffled sound. Because they were in the sunlight, they couldn't see out into the much, much darker forest.
From their place in the relative darkness, the three watched. Lloyd could see one thing. The glint off of Exspheres, on the back of the hands of the mercenaries, and even on the hands of the prisoners, filled his mind with rage.
He gritted his teeth. "Get ready," he told the other two shortly. "Zelos, you hang back and use your healing powers. Help me or Sheena if we get into trouble." He drew his swords—the blades he had received from his fathers. Their dual glow lit up the ground in front of him.
The man in the center of the group was of medium height. His light armor was obviously custom-made, and twin sheaths hung at his sides, even as Lloyd's did. His close-cropped hair was white-blond. He almost immediately noticed the blue and red glows in the dark of the forest.
"Who is that? Come out here!"
Lloyd advanced with Sheena and Zelos flanking him. "My name is Lloyd Irving, and I've come to put a stop to you," he grated out.
The blond man's eyes widened. "Lloyd Irving? Oh, no." He began yelling orders. "Ribs! Get in front of us! Jan! Get the host bodies ready. We're leaving, now!"
The mercenaries withdrew, prodding the pitiful prisoners along, leaving their leader.
And something else, it turned out. Striding forward through the press of bodies, accompanied by a faint clicking, rattling sound, a walking skeleton came into the sunlight. The fleshless bones were brownish-yellow with age, and it wore no actual clothing—just a pair of beat-up pauldrons, a bandoleer with pouches of varying sizes hanging from it, and a sword belt. Its sword and shield were both dark metal, with various nicks and chips that come from a long time of hard use.
The leader smiled thinly. "Ribs, now's your chance to earn your keep. I've seen how you fight. Take care of these three for me." Something about his voice nagged at Lloyd. The young man put it out of his mind.
The skeleton nodded once, its empty sockets turned on Lloyd. It adjusted its grip on his shield, and assumed a stance. The leader nodded. "Hold them here as long as possible. Kill them if you can. I'll be going now." And he turned and ran down the path, wanting to catch up to his men.
The skeleton held its stance, motionless apart from its eyeless gaze moving between its three adversaries.
Lloyd realized it would let them make the first move—it didn't have to kill them, just delay them. "Back me up," he yelled, dashing at the undead thing. The warrior came to meet him.
Lloyd feinted one way, then dodged to the other, trying to sneak the point of Flamberge around the shield.
The bone man, however, sidestepped and turned, moving its shield to catch the flame blade. Its sword come around in a wicked sweep that Lloyd barely jumped out of the way of.
No sooner than his feet touched the ground than the undead fighter was right against him, bashing him in the chest with its flat, round shield.
While this was happening, Sheena pulled a magic lens out of her pocket, and activated it.
She immediately felt that this was a darkness creature and its reserves of strength were huge. She was reminded of the Hell Knight they had fought—or the final incarnation of the Sword Dancer.
The lens evaporated, its magic spent. "Lloyd! It's strong! Watch out!" She dashed, covered the distance to the battle.
Zelos was advancing more cautiously. This wasn't an ordinary undead. It was too strong. Also, it was too skilled. Lloyd had all he could do to keep from getting sliced by that wicked sword.
Then Sheena joined in, and the skeleton's tactics changed. It became more defensive. Whenever Lloyd or Sheena swung, the fleshless warrior, without much effort at all, usually wasn't in the way of the weapon. When it couldn't evade, it blocked. It even managed to get in a few counters.
Zelos, holding his great sword and his shield, glanced at the way the bandits had gone. "Lloyd!" he yelled over the occasional clang as the skeleton blocked or parried. "I'm going after them!"
"Right!" Lloyd yelled back.
Zelos turned, and began running down the twilight-lit path. He heard Lloyd and Sheena yell his name, and glanced over his shoulder. The skeleton had left Lloyd and Sheena and was running, right at him. Its sword was held purposefully.
Zelos stopped, turned on his heel, and slashed at the warrior. The long blue blade of the Last Fencer was met by the worn and chipped black blade of the warrior. The swords locked. Zelos pushed against the fleshless warrior, looking directly into empty eye sockets.
He wasn't quite sure what happened next. The skeletal warrior somehow slipped his sword out of the lock, and slid his blade under the crosspiece. With a sudden jerk, it yanked the long sword out of Zelos's hand, even as its thin leg snaked around behind his knee and pulled his leg out from under him.
In a trice, Zelos ended up on his back with no weapon, and found himself looking up the chipped and notched length of that black sword as the skeleton set the tip against his throat. Then it turned to look at Lloyd and Sheena, who were only a few yards away. It looked at them, then pointedly at the pinned ex-Chosen. It looked back at them, its skull canted to one side. The meaning was clear. What will you do?
Lloyd snarled. How was the thing so damn good?
"What do you want?" he demanded of it.
The skull tilted further. Its jaw opened, showing the emptiness inside. With its free hand, it pointed at its mouth, then curled its fingers over, fingers and thumb parallel, the tips moving up and down—the crude gesture for talking—and it shook its head.
Comprehension dawned on Lloyd. The thing didn't have a tongue or lips or whatever else needed to speak. It couldn't speak.
"You can't talk, can you?" Sheena asked.
The pointed at her, then gave her a thumbs-up.
"What do you want?" Lloyd asked with less heat.
The skeleton pointed at its torso. Then at Lloyd. Then it made the "talking" sign again.
"You want to talk to me?"
A nod.
"Can you do that without the gestures?"
Nod.
"Let Zelos go, and we'll talk."
The skeleton glanced down at Zelos, then sheathed its battered sword. It stepped back and began digging in a pouch. It pulled out a piece of slate and a pencil. It wrote on the slate, then turned it around.
In a neat, elegantly legible print, were the words I WISH TO JOIN YOU.
"What?" Sheena stared.
The skeleton turned it around, wrote for a second, then showed it again. I WISH TO JOIN YOU. IT IS NECESSARY.
Zelos had gotten up and retrieved his sword. "What's it saying?"
"It wants to join us. It says it's necessary."
"I don't trust it," Zelos rubbed his throat at the memory of that light touch of cold, sharp metal. "It could stab us in the back."
Lloyd grimaced. "Zelos, I hate to admit it, but if it wanted to kill us, we'd already be dead. It was holding back in that fight."
Sheena was watching the skeleton. "You'd betray your group?"
The skeleton carefully erased the words from its slate and wrote anew. BETRAYAL IMPLIES THERE WAS ALLIANCE. I WAS NOT ALLIED WITH JOSEPH. I MERELY TRAVELED WITH HIM AND HIS GROUP.
"Why were you with him?"
THE HOSTS NEED PROTECTION. I AIDED THEM HOW I COULD. BUT NOW I MUST COME WITH YOU.
Lloyd smiled, remembering something. "I guess you can come with us. What's your name, and are you a man or woman?"
Sheena gasped. "Lloyd! He was with our enemies!"
Lloyd grinned. "So were you, and I'd say you turned out pretty well." He turned back to look at the skeleton's answer.
CALL ME RIBS. I AM MALE.