The Skeletal Blend easily dodged the punch as it jumped to the side and swiped the greatsword at Steven’s head. He was able to move his head enough to avoid the cutting edge, but the thick blade still clocked him pretty hard and he went reeling to his side.

Garth distracted the monster, drawing it away, with a series of Light Shots to the skulls while Steven collected himself.

“It appears that the monster cannot protect its weak points with the shield,” Garth shouted as Steven found his feet.

Steven looked at the Skeletal Blend to see the monster holding its shield downward, but it only covered a small area of its ball-like body and couldn’t reach the heads. He watched for a moment as Garth peppered the skulls with little yellow balls. The areas of the skull that had targets and were hit by the subsequent Light Shots resulted in tiny explosions that left blackened scorch marks behind. The monster stood there attempting to shield its skulls with the ineffective arm.

“Focus on its right skull,” Steven shouted back. He noticed Garth shift his aim slightly and was focusing the shots on the right-most head. “No, its right. Your left!”

The monster had started moving forward towards Garth, who was trying to keep his distance while firing. Steven was nearly forty feet away from the Skeletal Blend’s shielded side, and ran forward to attack the monster from behind. Sensing his approach, the closest skull to Steven locked on and followed him with its glowing eye sockets. He gave up on his plan to attack the skull from behind when the monster turned slightly and thrust its shield out at him.

He jumped back a few steps and noticed that Garth had stopped firing the little yellow balls of light. The small explosions caused by hitting a target didn’t do much damage to the bone other than scorching it, so he assumed Garth was leaving the targets for him to hit.

His blades, combined with his attributes, could cleave and break the bone, but getting close to the monster was harder now than it was before. After losing a skull, and seemingly a third of its mass, it was much faster with swinging the greatsword and shield. It didn’t move across the ground any quicker, but Steven couldn’t assume that it didn’t have that capability.

He felt an unusual surge strength that he would normally attribute to absorbing a monster, and grinned. He didn’t know why he was just standing around just watching the monster slowly advance on Garth, when he could be taking it apart.

He dashed forward as he cast Partial Mimicry: Rat Tail on his entire left arm. The Skeletal Blend thrust out the shield, and he hooked the tip of his tail over the top of the shield, pushing downward to force the shield into the ground. Using his momentum of the dash and the tail in contact with the shield now flat on the ground, he vaulted forward, extending the tail to its maximum length at the apex of the vault, when time stopped.

He was looking at the Skeletal Blend during his maneuver, but now it had turned dark and blurry with enough detail, however, for him to make out the monster. Disorientingly, he also could see another vision of himself, superimposed over his actual sight. He could clearly see that he was seemingly balanced on the rat tail extending from his shoulder, five feet above the flattened shield being forced into the ground. He also saw the monster was bringing the greatsword over its body for him to fly into and impale himself on the tip.

He quickly focused on his own vision of the greatsword, pointing almost directly at him, when time started slowly moving forward again. He watched the tip as it lowered until pointed directly at his chest and he started pulling up his own hand. It moved slowly at first, but was speeding up until his hand made contact with the flat of the greatsword.

As he was pushing on the flat side of the greatsword, the effects of whatever he had been under vanished completely and he flew over the top of the skeleton, missing the greatsword as it was pushed away, and landed hard on the stone ground on the other side of the monster. He heard a loud crash as he rolled to a stop. Glancing up he saw the monster raising the sword from the stone a few feet away, which had a small gash with cracks around it.

He could feel his surge of power waning, and wanting to do something while it lasted, he ran forward again and jumped at the arm holding the greatsword. Grabbing onto one of the bones in its forearm with his left hand, it was still committed to an attack and continued to raise its arm up, pulling Steven’s feet from the ground. He raised his right arm above his head and swung it downwards as he cast Mimic Growth: Greatsword on the arm.

Steven’s entire arm burst into a red cloud of dust as it turned into a greatsword and cleaved through the joint in the skeleton’s arm, causing him to fall a couple feet to the ground. He heard the skeleton’s sword clatter to the ground as he looked at his arm, covered by his own greatsword growth.

The blade of his sword met the hilt where his shoulder should be, with the rest of the hilt sticking out behind his head. He let his arm relax and the greatsword fell to his side flat against his body with the hilt sticking straight up, the tip of the blade barely scraping the stone ground. Raising his arm like he was miming a bird flapping its wings, he hit the side of his head with the handle. He could still feel his arm inside the blade of the greatsword. Without the proper focus, it was like he had made a sword shaped glove that fit him perfectly, except for the hilt that would knock himself out if he wasn’t careful.

He felt something slam into his back and was thrown forward, cutting his foot with his new arm as he tried to control his tumble. As he dismissed the growth on his arm he heard the clattering of bones on the stone ground, and he turned to see Garth running away from a cascade of skeleton parts.

He got up and limped to Garth’s position while the skeleton monster reformed itself.

“Which one did you get?” Steven asked.

“I don’t really know, I just stabbed one with my staff after I pushed you away,” replied Garth, breathing heavily.

“Sorry. I lost focus in multiple ways.”

They watched as the skeleton completed its reformation process. It still had the tripod legs, but now from the top of the smaller ball of bones a singular arm stuck straight up, hefting the greatsword.

“Where’s the skull?” Steven asked.

The question was answered immediately when two small orange glowing spots appeared in the middle of the body of the Skeletal Bend. It was now protecting its remaining skull with the mass of bones that made up its body. Thankfully, there were more bones strewn about the ground than there were in the monster.

The monster stomped down its bony middle foot and the bones that were scattered along the ground rattled. It stomped again and the bones then stood on end. A third stomp from the monster, the bones completely lifted off the ground and pointed at Steven and Garth, wavering slightly mid-air.

Steven and Garth watched the monster for a few moments. It seemed to be completely on the defensive as it never attempted to approach or attack the two.

“You said you stabbed a skull with your staff,” said Steven, holding his hand out. “Can I see it?”

“Uhh. Sure.” Garth handed it to him.

Steven inspected the pointed end. It didn’t seem to be blunted from the bones. He bounced the staff in his hands, feeling its weight and balance.

“I’m confident in taking this thing down. That skull is covered with targets,” said Steven as he leaned the staff on his shoulder. “One good hit, and it’s gone. Run back to the Red Eye and be ready to reset the floor or teleport out. If you teleport out, come back and distract the thing while I respawn.” He looked over at Garth and grinned. “I don’t want to get stuck.”

“You have my weapon though,” Garth said, gesturing at the staff.

Steven focused on his left forearm and cast Mimic Growth: Heater Shield. The red dust obscured their view of the monster for a moment, but it still didn’t seem intent on attacking.

“The Red Eye is on the other side of that thing, I’ll throw it to you. Just run wide.”

Steven started off at a slow jog without any further warning, ignoring the pain in his leg and foot. He lifted his shield in front of his chest and just below his eyes, holding the staff like a javelin. Not seeing Garth in his peripheral vision, he had to assume the man would make it to the small statue.

The skeleton started throwing the floating bones at Steven. One after another, he felt thunks on his shield. As he got closer the flying bones began to hit him from all sides. He felt a few bounce off his body, and grimaced in pain as the sharper bones dug in. At a sprint he closed the distance to the Skeletal Blend quickly, and threw the staff at the center of the monster. He screamed in pain and fell forward before he could see if the staff struck true, as he completely lost vision in both eyes. He reached up and felt bones sticking out of his eye sockets, angled downward towards his mouth.

He vomited onto the ground, feeling warmth splash over his hands, as the pain in his face and eyes grew to be overwhelming. Then all sensation ended as the black took him.