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  [colpse]Chapter One Hundred and y-One - Please Be Quiet in the Library

  I was feeling pretty useless.

  Not super-useless, but like... like watg someone doing something and wishing you could help, but then you learn that they’re way better at it than you. Like wanting to help someoh their homework, but they turn out to be the top of the css. That kind of useless.

  Carrot was boung around, smag down any stray skeleton with whoops of joy, punctuated by rocky explosions whenever she hit the earth and used it as a on to destroy even more skeletons. When a few ghosts came around, I thought that was my ce to be useful, but then Carrot just bsted them with balls of glowih.

  If I had pockets, I would have shoved my hands in them.

  Fortunately, I was saved by an inquisitive Bastion. “ you tell us about this boss?” he asked.

  “It’s not the main dungeon boss, obviously,” Peter said. “Not sure if you’d actually call it a boss under normal circumstances, but we’ve been calling it that for a while.”

  “So a challenge fight, then?” Amaryllis asked.

  Peter scratched his . “Something like that. The creature is called the Bone Lord. About level twelve? He’s this skeleton in a tweed jacket who summons more skeletons and undead. He’ll never fight you head on, which is what makes the fight tricky.”

  “Does he drop anything good?” Amaryllis asked. “ you get a level from him?”

  “Sometimes he’ll drop a book, or a jacket. It’s nothing too special.”

  I nodded along. “So, what’s the strategy then?”

  “I run in, kill the miniboss, then we up the few monsters he had time to summon,” Peter said.

  My shoulders and ears slumped. “Oh,” I said.

  Momma noticed, and I know she noticed because she had a little smile. “How about we let the children take care of it?”

  Peter eyed her. “You sure?”

  “We’re there if it gets too dangerous, but they’re all at about the right level, and as young as they are, it’ll teach them a lot. If we o rely oer, this little bit of added strength might e in handy,” Momma said.

  Peter sidered it, then nodded.

  “So, if we are going to take this Bone Lord on, what are good strategies?” Amaryllis asked.

  “Hardly fair to tell you if it’s meant to be some sort of test,” Peter said.

  “She never said it was a test,” was Amaryllis’ quick reply.

  Momma chuckled. “You’re right, I didn’t.” She cleared her throat. “sider it a test.”

  Amaryllis didn’t look amused, so I rubbed her back a little to make her feel better. “, it’ll be fun. This way we get to keep all the fun loot too.” She huffed, but it wasn’t a disagreeing kind of huff.

  The door leading into the floor was missing. In its pce was a rge root passing through a wooden gate and f it ajar. The more we moved in, the uglier the roots got, this one included. It was covered in nasty thorns and I had the impression that it ulsing whenever I wasn’t looking right at it.

  “These things are a bigger blight than I had imagined,” Momma said as she approached the root. “Perhaps ing here so soon was for the best.”

  Amaryllis tugged on her goggles, the same ones she’d gotten in that gss dungeon a while ago. “They’re magical. Or if they’re not magical, then they’re filled with magic, which I suppose is merely a semantic difference.”

  “Iing,” Momma said. “Let’s move on. Carrot, are you ing?”

  We crossed the doorway and into the floor.

  I wasirely sure what to expect. The first floor had been a city road, the seore city with a graveyard. Now we stood before a rge building surrounded by an open courtyard where dying trees were being weighed down by climbing vines.

  The one building was big and imposing, with gargoyles at the ers and a grand, peaked roof. I thought it was a cathedral at first, but it cked the belltower and the religious stuff.

  Then again, maybe it was a cathedral of a sort I wasn’t familiar with.

  “Watch the bones,” Buster said. He gestured to the ground where, upon a cursory iion, I could make out boig out from between patches of dying grass. The few bushes dotting the courtyard had piles tucked uhem, the occasional skull watg us from the shadows.

  I expected it to stink, but ihe air smelled like very old post and upturned dirt with a faint, musty odour, like rotting paper.

  “Where does the Bone Lord hide?” I asked.

  “Ihe building, of course,” Peter said.

  I could probably have guessed that. “We should get ready here, then, before we actually start fighting or anything.”

  “A pn wouldn’t be amiss,” Bastion said.

  I agreed. “Alright, so the pn is, I approach the nice Bone Lord, and try to make friends. And if that fails, we all fight him.”

  “Perhaps not having a pn could be a nice ge of pace,” Bastion said.

  “You’ll learn to get used to it,” Amaryllis muttered. “How about we allow you to go to the front. Bastion, you’re fast a with that sword. You intercept. Awen, your job is to she Bone Lord when Broccoli iably fails to soothe it. After Broccoli, I’ve got the magic best suited for taking e numbers of skeletons. I’ll try to buy you time to face the Bone Lord and take it down.”

  “Him. It’s a Bone Lord. Not a Bone.... uh, what’s the gender ral for a lord or dy?”

  Amaryllis smacked me with a wing, which was very rude. I was just getting the undead lord’s pronouns right. “Stop being an idiot. A rge part of this will rely on you. Your ing magic is the closest we have to Holy. So you o work hard to take the Bone Lord down, uood.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  We formed up in a diamond. Bastion took the lead, with Awen behind me and Amaryllis to my left.

  Momma and the other buns cheered us on--well, Carrot did at any rate--as we stepped into the cathedral.

  The interior of the grand building eter had said, a huge library with t shelves to the sides and a great big opening in the middle with benches and desks. It would have been a majestic pce where the books on the shelves were not moldy husks, if there weren’t roots sliding around the ns decorating the room, and if there weren’t dozens of corpses strewn all across the floor in big bony piles.

  “Oh, yuck,” I said as the smell hit. Mold and dust and rotti. I began to let my ing magic out as an aura to keep the worst of it at bay. It helped a little. It also made my friends bunch up a little closer, though that might have been the phting.

  There was some light, of course. The walls had big stained-gss windows on them, and the wide-open doors behind us let in light and wind. Better yet, the ceiling had some pretty rough looking holes in it that let ns of dusty light pour down from above.

  “There,” Amaryllis whispered as she pointed ahead.

  At the far end of the room, sitting at a rather ordinary desk, was a skeleton in a brown jacket with shoulder patches. He had a dried up husk of a book set before him, and his head was tilted down as if he’d passed away while i of reading.

  He looked... lonesome, and quiet.

  “Insight,” I muttered.

  The Herald of Newbining, Bone Lord, level 12, Quiet

  What did ‘quiet’ mean?

  Swallowing, I slowed my pace down a little as I reached the middle of the room. There were more bones around, and the floor, once marble and inid with plex patterns, was cracked and broken, roots occasionally bulging out from beh it.

  I gestured for my friends to stay back, then with a series of dainty little hops, moved closer still to the Bone Lord.

  When I was some meters away, I calmed my rag heart and cleared my throat. “Hello,” I said.

  The Bone Lord raised his head, slowly, like a heavy crypt door ing opeurned, and I noticed that part of his face was missing as a tangle of greenish roots had taken hold of his visage.

  “My name is Broccoli,” I said. “Broccoli Bunch. I’ve been a friend to skeletons before, and I’d love to be friends with you too.”

  I waited, but Friendmaking didn’t do anything.

  “Do you want to be a friend?” I asked. Maybe I had to be a little more specific?

  Still nothing.

  The undead rose to his feet, roots, thin and still green, snapped behind him as creaky bones worked t him to his full, unimpressive height. “Um, you uand me?” I asked. “Amaryllis, I don’t think he uood me.”

  “I did,” she said.

  I put two and two together and came to a hat was expected but not wanted. “Oh, shoot.” If Amaryllis could uand, then I wasn’t speaking skeleton.

  The Bone Lord spun around and started to hobble away. He would have been faster, but a bunch of roots were tahrough his hip and legs, turning his run into an ungainly hop.

  “Wait!” I called as I rushed after him.

  The skeleton swiped a hand through the air, and I stopped, breaking so hard my shoes squeaked on the marble. I was expeg some magical attack, and had my ing magic ready to try and ter it, but nothing happened. Nothing obvious, at least.

  “Awa!” Awen awa’d loudly.

  A gnce back revealed that the skeletons around her were beginning to rise, clig and g as they stood up and came together from the borewn around. There were only a dozen of them, but there were enough bones on the ground to have ten times as many attag us.

  “Broccoli, focus on the boss!” Amaryllis called. She punctuated that with the zap-bang of a lightning spell that tore a skeleton asunder.

  “Right!” I said before bolting after the Bone Lord.

  The skeletoured ahead of him, and three of the bodies before us rose and jumped out towards me.

  I ducked o the first and smacked it with my spade, the wo I hit with a pair of ing balls that sent them stumbling back. Only one of them colpsed, the other, while , wasn’t taken out entirely.

  That wasn’t a good sign.

  A smack from my spade in passi its head flying across the room. Behihe skeletons I’d hit started to melt away.

  The Bone Lord bounced around a er, and I charged right after him.

  I squeaked when a small skeleton ambushed me the moment I came around the er. It was wearing a checkered dress, and it cmped right onto my legs like a limpet. I bsted it with enough ing magic to wash away the dust on the shelf behind it, then wiggled my leg to unta.

  The Bone Lord was getting away.

  I growled and flung a trio of ing balls after him. He ducked uhe first two, but the third spshed against his bad sent him careening into a shelf. That wasn’t enough to take the mini-boss out. He tinued running, off into a little room set to the back of the library.

  I charged after him, then discovered that the room only had a spiral staircase within. Boung up the steps, I could hear the ctter of bo on stone just ahead of me. I was catg up.

  The stairs ended, and I found myself on a long wooden walkway that ran around the edge of the main room of the library. There were more shelves here, and a go the side showed my friends f a triangle and smag down more and more skeletons with magic, hammer and sword.

  The Bone Lord was fag me, ao him was an abomination.

  I tightened my grip on my ade and got ready to fight.

  ***

  RavensDagger

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