We rested in that room until I recovered my mana. I didn’t have any food, but I did have some water I drank.

“Do you want any water?”

“Blood good,” Blink thought back at me.

‘Well, I guess that settles that,” I said as I stood back up.

“Let’s see what is behind door number two!” I said as I opened the second door.

There was no clicking sound, and no swinging mace of death came crashing down. Instead, when I looked into the room, it looked the same as the one that I came out of, right down to two skeletons at the table.

The difference was that the skeletons were already dried and dead. A quick search of the room netted me a single copper coin. The weapons in both rooms were too rusted to replace what I already had and weren’t magical. Blink and I pressed on.

Most of the rooms were in some sort of disarray. Broken beds, knocked over shelves, or even just the doors hanging off the hinges. We engaged with two more sets of slow-moving skeletons. These, however, didn’t come back to life or unlife like the first set. Instead, they went down and were lootable.

I found as we went a smattering of coins but mostly just random junk. As we hit the second hour of this section, the dungeon changed again. It went from run-down to creepy and run-down.

Half of the torches started to sputter, and I could hear the sounds of skeletons walking. They almost sounded like they were marching the way that they moved in perfect sync. We eased up the hall till I could just see where the sound was.

There lined up, and marching patrols were four skeletons. Where the ones we had fought so far had weapons, these also had armor. Each one was wearing a breastplate and helmet. The helmets were long in the back and sloped to protect the neck.

The inside two skeletons each had a long knife on their hip, and in their hands, they carried crossbows. It even looked like they had hip quivers with more bolts.

The outside two carried halberds out in front of them like they were about to charge. When they reached their turning point, the outside guards switched sides while the inside two did very poorly executed about-faces.

Blink snuggled up to me while we watched the skeletons for a few minutes. Just past the guards on the left was a large treasure chest; on the right was a room with a golden glow from under it. Between those two points of interest was a closed portcullis with a set of stairs behind it.

I pushed across the bond to Blink, “How did you do this last time.”

“Not same”

Great, the floors changed on us. It made sense when Blink came through; she was by herself, and now there is a group. If the dungeon made things fair, it wouldn’t make it so she couldn’t finish without hands.

We watched the guards make three passes before I spoke again. “Okay, so they are doing the same thing repeatedly. If I can get the timing right I could drop a large lay to rest on them. The only thing is that is ten minutes of dancing to generate that kind of mana. If they catch on to what I am doing then they will charge us and that would be bad. Got any ideas?”

Blink looked up from where she was lying. She slowly turned her head to the right. Once her head was perpendicular to me, she pivoted her right eye to look at me and then slowly, ever so slowly, closed the eye. She must have counted because it was the perfect slow blink, three counts coupled with a slow sigh. Then she turned her big head away and sent through the bond one word. “Bait.”

“NO,” I hissed out at her. Bait worked only with that spider because of the type of monster it was. Besides, I was too weak to be good bait. I pushed myself up and started my dance.

I had practiced all of my spells over and over. I used this one every time I killed something. But, I could never get them to level. I didn’t even know what would happen if they leveled only that; so far, it hadn’t happened. I could guess that I wouldn’t have to dance for 10 minutes to get the dumb spell to fire off.

At the 8-minute mark, everything was going perfectly. It took them about 60 seconds to go from one side of the area to the other. Thirty seconds for a turn, and they had two of those to get back to where I wanted.

It was going to work perfectly; right as I got to the 10-minute mark and my spell came out, everything changed. The four skeletons kept walking, and four more came right on it. So there were now eight, and only two of them were in the target zone.

My Lay to Rest nailed two of the crossbow skeletons. They withered and fell, but as they fell, the rest were alerted to my presence. The four with halberds turned toward us and created a line. The crossbowmen let loose their bolts at me as I was diving to the ground.

Our little party just got bigger, perhaps because we waited. The stepping became louder as they moved towards us. I knew the crossbows would take a while to reload, and maybe I could move back and force them to bunch up.

“Blink, take out the back row!” I yelled as I scrambled to my feet and started to back up.

The skeletons weren’t running at me, but they were advancing with speed. None of these seemed faster than me, but they weren’t slow shambling monsters like the very first fight. I started to back down the hall watching for piles. I knew that there was a mess about twenty feet behind me and that just beyond that was a room.

If I could get them to group in the entrance to the room, then I could drop a small Lay to Rest on them and get two, maybe three of them at once. It all just depended on how they moved and if they got me first.

They were moving faster forward than I was backwards, and so they were closing at a rate that would catch me before I got to the room.

I turned and ran for all I was worth. That action broke the formation that the skeletons had been holding to, and their commands or programming or something broke down. They charged at me.

Yeah, the skeletons were faster than I thought they were. They had just been moving at a rate that was set, and now they were sprinting. For some reason, at that moment, I wondered how stamina worked for something like a skeleton.

Yet, even with that odd thought popping into my mind, I knew that I was about to get into the room. They would be right behind me, but I was hoping they would give me enough time to cast.

I reached my arm out and snagged the door frame as I turned into the room. I had been in here just a few minutes before and knew that this was one of the single rooms. It had a bed and chest but no table. I hadn’t been able to open any of the chests, which angered me. The first couple, I tried to break with a mace, but it didn’t even dent the thing.

When I came into the room, I jumped up and over the bed and turned to face the door. I started my cast right as I landed on my feet which was a good thing. At the door, trying to come in, were all four of the skeletons, but they didn’t know how to pass the doorway.

They had no commands or something for who was to get through first, so they were all trying to follow me. Which let me drop a Lay to Rest right into the mess of them. I caught one right in the middle, and two of the others lost parts of themselves.

The fourth one was in the back and plowed through where the first skeleton had been. The back skeleton knocked the other two out the way as one lost their left arm and the other their right. Mr. Pike came right through the door and turned toward me.

I didn’t have the magic needed to drop him right away, but I did have my sword. Also, I had my dagger in my off hand; I figured that this mess I was in could handle being paused if I got that close.

I hadn’t thought far enough ahead when I turned into this room. But, unfortunately, I had nothing in here that would give me cover as it was all stuck in place. Sure there was a bed, but it would only slow me down as I was the one that needed to close the distance.