The Dead Men Tales: Part 2

They walked swiftly through the castle, staying away from the busier corridors and ducking out of sight when ever someone passed. They reached a heavy wooden door and Skulduggery swiftly picked the lock,

“Stay here and guard the door” said Bone, slipping into the room. Not even three minutes later, a bell started to clang an alarm. They had found Bones’ handiwork at the outside gate. Ghastly pushed open the door and called out

“Bone, we need to go, now!”

“Thirty more seconds” Bone was rifling through a stack of papers at a feverish pace “Where is it? Where is it? GOT IT!” she stuffed a pile of papers in her coat pocket and ran out of the room, Ghastly hot on her heals. The little group managed to get through the corridors without being spotted, but when they reached the front gates, a small army of mages waited for them.

“Stay behind us, Bone” Erskine warned, but she sank into a fighting stance nonetheless. “Of course…” he muttered before the enemy mages attacked. Skulduggery and Erskine clicked their fingers and sent fireball after fireball into the sorcerers’ ranks, Ghastly and Dexter fired punches at whoever got close and Anton prepared to let his gist out. Bone just stood there, smiling faintly at the chaos that raged around her. An elemental charged her with fire in both his hands and her smile grew wider, she dodged to one side and lightly tapped the elemental's outstretched arm as he rushed past her. The bones in his arm shattered and he screeched surprisingly high.

“You’re a bone breaker?” asked Dexter as he applied a painful-looking arm lock on a mage

“Among other things” Bone said as she tapped the elemental's head, his skull shattered in the rather messy way skulls tend to do while shattering, she stepped away from the mêlée and closed her eyes. Spikes of something white erupted from Bone’s fingers, turning her hands into claws and her arms grew protective ridges. Spines shot from her shoulders in such a way that looked not unlike wings and her face was covered in plates of the stuff that Dexter now realized was bone.

“Impressive” he said reluctantly as she snapped off a spine of bone from her shoulder and hurled it into the back of one of the three men Ghastly was fending off at once.

“Look out everyone!” called Anton a second before he released his gist. It screeched and tore around the battle field, causing almost as much damage to the enemy ranks as Bone was. The gist flew around, tearing out the throats of as many people as it could as Erskine, Ghastly and Dexter each took a few steps back so they could catch their breaths and Bone joined them, panting slightly. Skulduggery kept throwing punches and fireballs to equal effect. The gist started screeching awfully as Anton reeled it back toward his body and within seconds the battle field was quite.

“That was fun” Bone said cheerfully, wiping gore from her face (she had been standing to close when the gist tore through someone)

“You have… a very… twisted… idea of fun” panted Anton, still trying to ketch his breath from the effort of pulling the gist back into him. Bone shrugged and Skulduggery –who had been inspecting her shoulder spikes- jumped back to avoid getting skewered.

“Sorry,” Bone closed her eyes and the bone spikes retracted quickly

“How do you do that?” wondered Skulduggery and Bone shrugged again

“I dunno... I’ve always been able to do it, but with practice, I got really good at it” she shrugged for the third time.

“But doesn’t it hurt?” Ghastly asked and Bone smiled a gorgeous smile

“It’s excruciating” she said cheerfully “let's get these reports back to Corrival"