Years went by faster than you could possibly imagine. To a timeless skeletal frame, especially one already having lived a century before even being born, aging was simply not something he thought about all that much. He had seen the forests, both young and old, seen animals die from various causes, few succumbing to age itself. Nevertheless, after a century had passed, he had started to notice his bones wearing down ever so slightly, joints not as mobile, bones creaking more than before, and almost imperceptible cracks forming here and there. He had learned so much about the forests already, and now, after a whole century of stalking and observing, he had learned much of humanity too – well, as much as could be learned by staring at them from inside bushes or behind trees. He now understood that the felled wood was used to build houses, carts, and all manner of tools and objects. He saw the process a dozen times from start to finish. He had even seen the great war and its devastation. He had watched the nearby village, Ossaan, burn down and rebuild close to a dozen times. He had seen the midnight moths swarm the forests and skies before the great war started; the war that was still raging on to this day, all because of a feud between the two twin brothers, escalating, like two bucks fighting for a mate only for one to die. It was tragic, but a fact of life, thought Skellington. He had learned more of the language of the humans, how a large party was thrown every midsummer, every winter solstice, and whenever someone had a child or married. He did not understand the latter; what did it mean to be married? He spent many nights pondering his observations about humanity. Yet… in a whole century of living, still, he did not know what, or who he was. A wanderer, an observer, the remnants of a person, stone birthed from water, that was what Skellington thought of himself. However, he admired the humans, how hard they worked, how complex their lives seemed to be. Wanting to be more like the people he was studying, Skellington decided he wanted to build a house for himself, a real home.
It took an entire century for him, with dozens if not hundreds of failed attempts culminating in something you might even be able to call a house. It wasn’t stable by any means; it fell apart every other year, every month and day at first, but it was the first real thing he had built all by himself. He learned how to cut trees, how to saw them into logs, painstakingly with the dull, bent saw he salvaged from the edge of the village. He built a foundation of loose stones, which at first were simply arranged around the logs, but eventually grew to something more stable. The walls took almost a decade to get right, but the roof… the roof was a whole different beast. He tried every method he could think of, from leaves and branches to moss, but nothing worked. Either the weight of the snow collapsed it in winter, or the rain pierced through in summer, rotting the leaves and branches until they crumbled away. He eventually made a solid wooden roof, though the weight of it made the walls unstable, causing the whole shack to crumble to rubble. The trial and error of human imitation took years, but he kept working, he kept tirelessly copying the ingenuity he saw in the people he was observing. He went back to observe, learned, iterated, failed and learned again. Eventually, his roof no longer collapsed, rain no longer came through, and his walls… they remained stable for almost a decade. The shack even had windows by the second century, though he never learned how to make glass, so they remained simple holes in the walls. Since he had never seen the inside of a house, he did not realize they usually had floors. Thus, in place of a floor, he had the grass, beaten down to packed dirt throughout the years. He had no nails or hammers. All he had was his sword, the axe he had picked up all those years ago, and the various small objects he carried with him. He had found a knife left by a hunter, a rusted metal pot, and various pieces of trash left by people wandering the forests. His pile of oddities grew with each passing year, the clam shell still as iridescent as when he first picked it up, resting beside a small amethyst he found on a dead goblin. It was curious, the colour he so remembered from his past, yet so distant now.
It was always nerve-wracking when he went to observe the village, especially since he got spotted by a little girl. She told her parents that she saw a spirit, that the spirit was watching over the forest. Rumours spread like wildfire; some thought it was a ghost, an ill omen, whereas others shared the sentiment of the girl, that it was simply a curious spirit, observing the village. All the villagers knew the trauma of those glowing amethyst eyes through legends passed down by their parents and grandparents, but none were familiar with anything teal blue, like those two dots that still shone in Skellington’s face.
He ran into various creatures within the forest too; the big horned boars that so loved mushrooms, the familiar, cautious deer, the fuzzy mice that skittered about from bush to fern, even some wolves with their grey and brown manes, howling under moonlit nights. He even ran into goblins a handful of times, though they quickly learned that he had nothing tasty on him, no valuables to steal. Even the simple threat to draw his blade was enough to make the green cowards run in fear. After all, he was something they had no concept of, a walking corpse.
One day, four centuries since his eyes flashed blue, he saw smoke rise on the horizon. It was the dead of night—a raid by the Kaligo Empire no doubt. It wasn’t the first time the village was on fire, but this time was different. As Skellington neared the village, the roaring flames came into view. Much like the previous times, there were people screaming, some from being burned alive, some from fear, and others from the brutality of what raiding soldiers do to those they catch. He watched as the flames consumed the houses, as soldiers cut down stragglers and dragged others by their hair. But this time, he was closer than before, so close that the heat of the flames reached him. Then, from the edge of the village, three figures came running right towards him. They were small, frantically escaping from the destruction, three human children.
A girl ran in front, wearing a bright red dress, tears running down her cheeks. Two boys ran right after her, both with curly brown hair, skin dotted with freckles. Snot ran down their noses, tears flowing like waterfalls. The girl stopped first, and the two boys ran right into her, knocking them all down to the ground. They looked up at Skellington, eyes wide like dinner plates. They were the eyes of terror, yet behind them was a flicker of hope, for they saw the teal glow they had only heard about in their bedtime stories. It was him, the spirit of the forest.
Behind them ran three soldiers, red tabards draped over their gambesons, each one swinging a sword. Their faces were wicked, twisted into vicious smirks as they ploughed through the bushes toward the kids. In that moment, something happened within Skellington. As he looked down at the kids, then up at the three approaching men, a flicker roared bright within his soul. He knew, in that instant, that he had to protect them. He did not understand why, but his hand moved on its own, his gauntlet wrapping itself around the hilt of his blade. The blade whispered as he drew it slowly, the children running behind him. His eyes burned bright, as if possessed by all the good of the world.
The men stopped dead in their tracks as they saw him, their eyes immediately landing on his skeletal face, and his glowing teal eyes. Their faces dropped their sneers, eyes widening with fear. It was the same face he saw all those years ago, terror, the terror of facing death. One of the men screamed as he lunged for Skellington, blade glinting with the light of the fires behind. SHLUCK. A spray of blood erupted from the man’s forearm as his hand hit the ground, sword clattering against a root.
“AAAHHH!” he screamed, before another slash cut it short. His body hit the ground with a thud, followed by the two others lunging for him. Two blades pierced right through Skellington’s chest and stomach, getting stuck between his bones and armor. The men looked triumphant, only for it to be very short-lived. The glow in his eyes kept staring back at them with the same cold, analytical gaze, an emotionless being completely indifferent to their lives. Skellington lifted his blade. SCHWIK. Another of the men crumpled, blood spraying. The other man kept trying to pry his sword loose, to no avail. His face twisted in pain as Skellington’s sword pierced through him. In a few short breaths, the man slumped down and hit the ground beside his friend.
Skellington gripped the blades and pulled them out from his chest and stomach, one after another. He let the blades fall onto the bodies, before turning to look at the children. They had witnessed everything. Their faces had drained of colour, a stunned relief mixed with the heaviness of sorrow and terror. They had just lost everything—their parents, their home—yet somehow, the spirit of the forest had protected their lives. They looked up at him in awe, their savior, in the body of something they had never seen before. Unlike an adult, they weren’t deterred by his appearance, more curious and shocked than scared. As Skellington sheathed his sword and began walking back towards the forest, to his surprise, the three children followed after him. Like a brood of ducklings, they followed him into the forest.
The World Stones 