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(Blue, get Hegatha. We’re about to leave. Extinguish the fire. Recall everyone, and all the sub-skeletons. Cover up the dirt molds. Wipe every trace we were here and gather every bone.)

While Jay used the host skill, Blue had already recalled his four sub-skeletons. Together they entered Hegathas shack.

The other skeletons all abruptly moved, throwing firewood into the swamp water, smothering the embers and throwing them in too, and filling in the mold holes.

Jay entered his house and stuffed Leeches into his bag. He added his bedding into his inventory, leaving Asra lying on the bone bed frame.

Asra sensed his panic before she had awakened, and found herself being jostled and carried in his arms with the noon-leather blanket on top. As Jay stepped off the ramp, the single-room house she slept in disappeared into a wave of necrotic gas.

(Leave the bone bridge.) Jay ordered, seeing that they were ripping bones out of it and either eating them or tossing them into the depths.

Jay sensed that Red’s guardian skeletons had went to the other shore and were likely sweeping away any signs of them being there.

“Grah!” Hegatha called, being pulled out of the shack, “What is this?! We had deal! You promised not to hurt me if I don’t hurt you!”

“We still have a deal. Heal Asra right now or the deal’s off.” Jay ordered, and a surged of killing intent came from him and the skeletons currently clasping each of her limbs.

Hegatha’s eyes widened. The roof of her shack, covered in sentient leaves, shuddered in response and pointed up like hairs across cold skin, but none of them left their place.

“I—Yes. I will. Just let me get ready.” Hegatha grunted, and shook the skeletons clutching her body. Jay nodded, and they released her.

“Bob? What’s going on?” Asra said, and pushed herself out of his arms and stood up.

“We need to leave. Here.” Jay said, checking the blood compass one last time before handing it to her. “You will guide us while I attend to other matters.” Jay said, knowing he would be using the host skill to monitor everything from his throne when they began to march.

Asra was still waking up, and furrowed her brows as she softly took the blood compass, while Jay glanced at Red, who nodded in response, accepting that Asra would be their navigator.

Jay rushed across the bone bridge. It had surfaced after the storm, and now the swamp\'s water levels were returning to normal.

Reaching the end of the bridge, he held out his gauntlet and carefully channeled them into his gauntlet while backing up towards the island. In moments the bridge disappeared, and he went to the other side of the island. Bones spewed forward from the gauntlet, splashing down and making a haphazard bridge in the direction the compass had pointed until he reached the other shore. It was about four times as long as the first bridge, and took some time, but he sped up the construction by neglecting to make a flat top layer with smaller bones.

Jay scanned the other side of the shore for enemies, but as it was shrouded in heavy fog, and he guessed the firelights were also active here, attacking whatever moved with unhealing, scorching fire. But as he turned, something caught his eye gleaming amidst the darkness.

A white feather, unstained and untouched by any grime, was poking up from the soil like a flag begging him to pluck it. Jay froze, and checked around once more, looking into the sky too, but it was perfectly silent. This was the third feather he had found, and he wondered how whoever placed it here knew where he was going. He felt like he was playing into the hands of a higher intelligence, walking into an unavoidable trap, but nevertheless he grabbed it, and analysed it before stashing it away.

< [Ritual Companion Feather] >

< [Waking Wrath] >

[(Hidden through sacrifice)]

[Created by (Hidden through sacrifice)]

Jay wasn’t sure what the [Waking Wrath] skill would do, but he wasn’t inclined to try it in the slightest. Besides, if it were useful, he only had three of these strange sparkling feathers, and he had other priorities to deal with.

With the bridge constructed the bone reserve in his gauntlet dropped by a few percent, but it was still negligible.

As he ran back across the newly formed bridge, he saw Hegatha standing outside of her shack, holding a clay jar over Anya’s body, her hand on the lid, about to open it. Jay’s eyes widened in disbelief, his fury raging.

(Stop her! Don’t let the jar open!) His willful telepathic command swept through the skeletons like a wave, and all of them dropped their tasks, rushing towards Hegatha with swords raised.

Hegatha froze as blades rested against her neck and claws latched onto her skin, threatening to tear it all asunder.

Blue had dropped its sword, its hands placed around the jar and holding it shut before Hegatha could try anything.

Jay arrived, his eyes narrowing as he fixed a piercing gaze on Hegatha. He didn’t want her knowing that he knew about the jar and what was in it, but that much was probably obvious by now.

“You will heal her without the jar.” He said lowly, a sense of threat in his voice.

“I need it to heal.” Hegatha replied, and shifted her eyes around to look at Jay; she wasn’t willing to turn her head, not with the ring of swords surrounding her neck.

“You never needed it before.” Asra said, squinting as she lay on the noon-leather blanket.

Jay pulled out a breaking shard. Hegatha\'s eyes locked onto the shard, her gaze filled with a sick desire as he held it in the air.

“Do it the normal way.” Jay said, pulled his arm back and lobbed it into the swamp water. Hegatha’s heart sank and her neck gently pressed against the swords at her throat.

But Jay pulled out and held another in his palm, “Or you’ll never see another one again.”

Hegatha frowned, “Fine!” She gave one last glance at the ripple from the breaking shard he tossed into the water, trying to remember its location.

As for Jay, he had no more time to spare, no more patience, and he wouldn’t hesitate to force her into submission through pain if necessary, and trying to wound Asra with one of those unhealing flames was the final insult that he scarcely tolerated.

Blue removed the jar from her trembling hands and kept it sealed, and Jay made up in his mind to seal Hegatha’s fate.

Jay let Hegatha move again, but kept Sweeper, Blue and the sub-skeletons close to Hegatha as she grit her teeth and resentfully started the final healing process. Their keen eyes watched her every movement as she crushed leaves and ate them.

Asra’s wound turned from reddish inflamed skin into the pale white hue like the rest of it, and Asra nodded as the pain finally subsided.

“Good. Now, return to your basement. The skeletons will bring you the shards after we leave.” Jay said.

He had Sweeper and the sub-skeletons escort her, nudging her into her shack and making sure she didn’t try anything while the other skeletons brought the throne over.

Hegatha presumed to be safe, however, Jay wasn’t finished with her. She had broken the deal when she tried to burn Asra, so he was free to enact whatever retribution he could dream up, whether it be to drown her or have her cut down in a quick death.

But like the fire-lights she had stashed in clay jars to slowly burn out and extinguish, Jay decided that a slow death would be a more fitting punishment.