Skellyboy

Skellyboy is a nice guy, tidy and respectful, but he lives in a crypt with other, less nice skeletons. While Skellyboy sweeps up and keeps the braziers burning, the other skeletons are setting traps for adventurers and pushing each other over so they fall to pieces. Skellyboy also has a secret. Where all the other skeletons – and probably any skeleton you’ve ever met or heard of – are a plain, whitish grey, Skellyboy was pure glitter. Not just a bit shiny, or sprinkled in a handful of sequins, but solid, brilliant glitter. He’d checked one time by snapping his pinky bone to see inside. Sure enough, he was diamond-sparkly right to the core.

As you can imagine, this presented a problem for Skellyboy. To call the other skeletons in the crypt a community was a bit generous, but even so, they were a group of sorts - even if they didn’t share any particular affection for one another - and they were all the same. Plain. Skellyboy was already enough of an outsider by not joining in with their mean-spirited activities, like fighting any adventurer who made their way into the crypt. So he hid the glitter. Covered it up with a kind of paint he made from a mix of various alchemy ingredients and bits and pieces he found around the place. Although it made him feel a bit strange to think about, and he didn’t want to wonder too long about where exactly it came from, bone meal worked the best for this (probably for obvious reasons), and it was fairly plentiful, with new jars seemingly popping up on shelves every few days.

Usually when adventurers came through the dungeon, Skellyboy would hide himself in a corner, wanting to keep out of the fight, and hoping the adventurer wasn’t the sort to feel compelled to closely inspect every nook in the hopes of hidden treasure. On this particular day, the other skeletons were all in their assigned positions, lying in wait in the dark for the adventurer they knew would be entering the room at any moment, and Skellyboy was tucked into his usual corner, hoping to avoid detection. But when the adventurer entered, she did so with such stealth that the skeletons didn’t notice her until she fired off her first arrow, aimed at a flaming pot suspended from the ceiling. She missed the pot, but her arrow hit Skellyboy as it landed, cracking off some of his paint from an arm bone. With the flaming pot still intact only a short distance from Skellyboy, his exposed glitter caught the light, dazzling brightly in the dim crypt, and immediately catching the attention of the adventurer.

The adventurer, now fighting through the first wave of Skellyboy’s bony brethren, started keenly making her way towards his corner, hoping for a shiny treasure or hidden secret. The other skeletons hadn’t noticed his glimmering arm yet, too intent on attacking the adventurer as soon as her arrow triggered them, but it wouldn’t take long for this to change. Unable to move from his corner without getting caught in the fray, Skellyboy tried covering up the gleaming patch on his arm with his hand, but his skeletal fingers were woefully inadequate for the task, failing to effectively mask the bright, reflective sheen. One by one, the other skeletons fell to the adventurer’s sword as she came ever closer to his corner, driven by that dancing light. Moments before the last skeleton was struck down, it looked straight at Skellyboy and saw the glitter, its eye sockets seeming to narrow in a vicious grimace of realisation. Just as the adventurer lifted her blade again, to bring it down on Skellyboy, he cried out “Wait!” and brought his arms up to cover his face. The adventurer, not used to skeletons speaking to her in dungeons, much less begging for mercy, stopped in her tracks. The two engaged in brief dialogue, with Skellyboy explaining he didn’t wish the adventurer any harm and offering to point her in the direction of the real hidden treasure. Unable to offer more assistance or to give any explanation as to his glittery form, Skellyboy wished the adventurer well and the pair parted ways.

After some time, the other skeletons respawned and the one to see Skellyboy’s glitter quickly got to telling the others about it. By now, Skellyboy had managed to repaint his damaged arm, hoping to continue his ruse, but it was not to be. The skeletons descended on him in a rage, furiously hacking and tearing at him to expose his true form. In the kerfuffle, Skellyboy somehow managed to slip out from under the mob (a pile of writhing bones gets pretty confusing, after all) and run away. By the time the attackers noticed, Skellyboy was already almost at the boundary of their crypt. Knowing (or thinking he knew) that he’d soon be stopped by an invisible force, but having no other plan in mind, he kept running anyway. As he reached the threshold of the area that he and the others weren’t supposed to be able to leave, the gang of murderous skeletons close behind, he took one more step through the ancient doorway and somehow kept going. Step after step, running blindly, certain that if he was able to move further through the dungeon, surely the others would also follow.

Eventually, he realised he couldn’t hear the clanking of bones and rusty swords anymore. There was no furious hoard behind him. Skellyboy had escaped! To be safe, he continued until he reached the entrance and could see the sky. No other skeleton he knew of had ever been this far from their own crypt. He walked out from the covered entryway and into the cool night, where it had just started to rain. He felt the droplets softly falling on his bones, and watched as the remains of the paint paste he was covered in slowly trickled away, leaving only his brilliantly gleaming body behind, now sparkling in the moonlight as the clouds cleared. Feeling cleansed and soothed, Skellyboy took a look around him, noticing the flowers and trees and grass. He’d never seen growing things before, except for the occasional mushroom that popped up in his damp crypt. He’d never seen the moon or the stars, or felt a gentle, fresh breeze. It was all indescribably lovely to him. He knew now that this was where he was meant to be. Where he was always meant to be.

Skellyboy went back into the covered entry, a small stone porch of sorts, sheltering the door to the dungeon complex, and surveyed it for what he thought it might need, in order to become his new home. He didn’t need much, after all, but he decided to light the brazier here, and resolved to keep it burning with a warm familiarity he knew. Some of the purple and orange flowers he’d just seen outside might be nice, too. So he dusted off a small urn and gathered a handful of the blooms to place in it. Skellyboy sat down on a chair someone had placed here long ago, a beam of moonlight streaming through an opening in the porch wall and striking his glittery bones, and let out a long, contented sigh.

If you pass by that dungeon entrance today, Skellyboy is still there, sparkling silver in the moonlight and almost golden in bright sunshine, ready to greet you. “Hello, Adventurer!” he’ll say, and if you choose to greet him back, he’ll warn you of the dangers inside, but also describe just where to find the best treasure. If that’s the kind of thing you’re into.