Have an Autumn

"So, you're finally done running? About time. I was starting to worry that you'd spend the rest of your days slinking in the shadows, killing my men off one after the other," said Skull, the sneer audible in his voice.

He painted a grim picture, his bone-white mask (Nikolas suspected it was actually made of bones) in the image of a laughing skull and his dark robes armored with what he was certain was the bones of humans and animals. His hair was hidden below a black hood, and his green eyes were narrowed with joy at finally having a chance to squash this thorn in his side.

A ribcage wrapped around his torso, plated with the thick skullcaps of rhinos. Each shoulder bore another such skull cap, morphed through some arcane ritual to conform to his body. Arm bones were held together by flexible spines to protect his arms, and his legs were similarly armored. In his left hand, he held an orb as dark as the void, swirling with ethereal screaming faces.

Nikolas, Autumn, and Maya were currently in Skull's lair. A dark, wide catacomb miles underground, the walls were lined by the bones of the deceased, buried partway into the dirt so only bits and pieces of them were visible. A rib here, a foot there. Only the skulls were left spotless.

The eye sockets in these skulls were lit by ghostly blue pinpricks of fire, which followed the trio with sinister intent. Nikolas knew that if they could, they would tear him and his friends apart, for the simple fact that they had something the skeletons didn't. Life.

The trio stood near the entrance of this catacomb, a full mile away from the dais upon which Skull stood at the back of the room. The room was a mile long and half as wide, and rectangular. Despite this, they could hear him as if he was only a few feet away.

"This is the guy you brought us to kill, Nik?" Autumn asked, sizing the man up. "He looks like a complete pushover. Not to mention he's the same Level as us."

"Remember what I said about him being a necromancer?" Nikolas responded.

"Even if there were twice as many of you, I would still come out victorious," Skull boomed.

The sound of his voice shook the catacombs, dust falling from the ceiling a thousand feet above and down from the walls. Along with it was the incessant sound of rattling bones, the half-buried skeletons in the walls moving their exposed parts in a futile attempt to break free.

"With what?" Nikolas shouted across the room. Unlike the enemy Personification, Nikolas had no way to amplify his voice. "All I see is a sad old man that thinks wearing a bunch of bones will make him look scary."

"He doesn't even have the zombie army you were so worried about," Maya commented.

"It was more skeletons than zombies," Nikolas replied.

"What makes you think I'm alone?" Skull cackled.

At once, the catacombs rumbled again, the dirt walls crumbling and releasing the hundreds of skeletons within. The space went from a rectangle to a perfect square one mile by one mile, and the newly revealed walls behind the skeletons were made of concrete.

Within the mass of jostling bones were many skeletons twice the size of their fellows, their bones plated with black metal and their eye sockets glowing with angry red flame. Nikolas recognized them as the mass-produced soldiers he had found in that factory that also happened to be in another catacomb all those weeks ago.

"I suppose you weren't there when I took care of these things last time," Nikolas muttered. He didn't like shouting.

Reaching out with his Manifest Power, he grasped for the minds of the giant skeletons… and found nothing. Frowning, he tried again, with the same result.

"I may not have been there, but I saw the results," Skull laughed. "I've enchanted their skulls to make them immune to your treacherous Manifest Power."

"I see. What about the little ones?"

"Well, ahem… I didn't have time to finish those ones—Wait, no, I did have time!" Skull caught his mistake and rectified it immediately, but Nikolas wasn't a fool.

The white-haired man grinned, his black eyes turning from the giants to the normal-sized boneys around them. With a flex of his Manifest Power, their eyes changed from blue to white, their fiery gazes turning from the trio to their commanders. With a battle cry that came out as a rattle, they charged at their giant cousins, swinging their bony fists at the behemoths.

Unsurprisingly, it did nothing to them. It did, however, give Autumn ample time to run to each giant and take a Divine swing at them. Each one toppled with a single punch, the defensive enchantments of a Death Embodiment not standing a chance against the power of Destruction.

Skull growled in frustration when the last one toppled, glaring down as his creations marched toward them. His mask hid his facial expressions as his frown turned to a smug smile, his arms waving out as a ripple spread throughout the room. The white flames in the skeletons' eyes dimmed before blazing in a bonfire of blue, engulfing their bodies as they pivoted back around to face Nikolas and his friends.

"Unfortunate that the enchantments prevented even me from controlling the giants, but you'll find I have no such restrictions with these ones," gloated the Personification upon his dais.

"So you have an army? What of it? We have an Autumn," Maya said with a smirk.

Autumn dashed forward, punching over and over as the skeletons exploded in rains of bony shards and dust. Any skeleton that managed to make it past her was dealt with by a quick usage of Nikolas' Divine Reach.

Able to exert nearly five thousand pounds of force across its entire surface, it was more than enough to shatter the boney men into powder. Maya crushed a skull here and there, her Divine Reach not nearly as strong, but still more than enough to do so.

Within an hour, they had reduced all of the skeletal soldiers to dust or chunks.