The vanguard pushed forward, weaving their way through the now-silent Muscle Warrens. The winding, pulsating corridors that had seemed alive only hours ago now felt like the still, oppressive quiet of a tomb. As they walked, the walls no longer pulsated with that maddening, unpredictable rhythm. The air was thinner here, filled with a strange, almost sterile quality.
Ahead, a deep chasm yawned before them, a vast precipice that opened into a cavernous abyss. The walls of the cavern stretched upward, but they were no longer muscles. They were bone massive, impossibly ancient bones, stretching for miles in all directions, like a colossal skeleton frozen in time. Towering spires of bleached ivory jutted from the ground, their sheer size dwarfing even the largest dragons in Artorius' army.
But it was not the sight of the bones that unsettled Artorius, it was the absence of any real sensation. The Bone Realms felt… empty. Dead. Still. But not in a comforting way.
It was an immense place of rib, spine, and other bones. Its emptiness was profound; there was no pulse here, no heat, no steam to fog their vision. The air hung heavy with the scent of calcified blood, dusted with millennia of decay, a scent that felt like history compressed into the stillness itself. The army paused, wings and talons frozen in awe. Even the dragons, creatures born for flight and battle, hesitated as if the sheer scale of the place, the immensity of bones stretching into the misted void, humbled them.
Artorius continued forward, lance in hand, and the crunch of his feet across the ossified floor seemed almost sacrilegious in the oppressive quiet. Here, the laws of the Muscle Warrens no longer applied in the same chaotic way. Randomness existed, yes, but it was deliberate, ancient, calculated; it was the rhythm of death remembered in bone. Every step they took echoed through corridors of vertebrae as large as mountains, and the walls caverns of bones standing like spires resonated faintly with each movement.
The environment itself seemed to judge the army. Winds stirred through hollowed bones with whispers that played on fear, turning confidence into hesitation. Even the strongest dragons flinched at the faintest creak of an ancient limb or the sudden echo of a claw tapping against a vertebra.
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The first hazard appeared before they even realized it was a hazard. A long stretch of ground, paved with gleaming, interlocked bone plates, stretched forward like a well-maintained road. A few soldiers exhaled in visible relief after days in the unpredictable Warrens, anything stable felt like a blessing.
Artorius narrowed his eyes, Draconic Vision sharpening to a razor edge. At first he saw nothing. The bone was smooth. Clean. Perfect. And that was the problem. No cracks. No wear. No signs of age. Something dead should have imperfections. Dust. Decay. Damage.
"STOP!" he roared. "Do NOT step on the bone plates!" But it was too late for the scouts at the front. The moment their feet touched the flawless bone, the entire plate flashed with cold white light.
Then reality buckled. A soundless implosion collapsed inward, swallowing the scouts whole folded into a point of impossibility and vanished without even a scream. The perfect bone was perfect because nothing had ever survived stepping on it. Artorius exhaled shakily. "Wonderful," he muttered. "The road itself eats you."
Then they soon got to meet the creatures that called this home. Their bones, brittle yet unyielding, were lined with thin, glass-like tendrils of crystallized marrow. Any contact could shatter them with a sound like distant thunder, and the resulting shards were sharper than any sword, capable of slicing through dragon scales or armor alike.
The vanguard moved carefully, the soldiers' claws and talons scraping along the floor with precision, while Artorius' Draconic Eye traced the faintest vibrations, mapping the integrity of the bones ahead.
Then came the Ossified Choir, clusters of skulls fused together, mouths permanently open. They sang without sound, producing waves of metaphysical pressure that weakened willpower and caused dark memories to surface involuntarily. Entire squads broke formation when exposed too long their songs.
Next was the Bone Sentinels, massive, serpentine creatures composed entirely of vertebrae and jagged rib fragments, fused together with sinew-like ligaments that still held tension. They were slow but deliberate, stalking the corridors with terrifying patience. Each segment of their bodies could extend like a spear, puncturing through formations or ensnaring dragons in a vice-like grip.
There were the small, winged constructs carved from infant dragon skulls and fused wing bones. They floated silently, watching. Harmless until someone attacked them. Then every Cherub in the region screamed simultaneously, summoning far worse things.
The terrain was merciless. Collapsing bones fell from the ceilings from time to time unpredictably, often caused by residual magical flux from the Emperor's ancient power. As they moved deeper, the silence grew oppressive. It wasn't a lack of sound, it was the absence of something else he tried to see or feel for. Only after days did he two and two click, it was expectation. As if every step brought them closer to a predetermined point. A certain outcome.
It was here that they found more parasitic monstrosities. Bone Maggots creatures that fed on marrow energy slithered from fissures in the spires. They were translucent, yet their insides glimmered with a ghostly, amber light, like captured fire. They struck with surprising speed, burrowing into scales or under armor plates, weakening dragons from within. Artorius commanded squads to sweep ahead with blades of crystallized flame, scattering the maggots before they could do lasting harm.
But the real terror lay in the ancient stillness. The Bone Realm was patient. It did not strike at random; it calculated. Shadows of the long-dead Emperor's body coalesced into skeletal wraiths, animated by memory and residual magic. They were silent hunters. A single misstep could summon a dozen, each blending seamlessly into the ivory spires until they moved with lethal synchrony.
The vanguard moved like a thin blade cutting through an immeasurable corpse, their formation stretched and compressed by terrain that seemed determined to remind them how small they were. Every march ended with aching limbs and frayed nerves at the end of the day, every rest taken with weapons in hand and wings half-spread, because there was always something waiting in the ancient silence of the Bone Realm.
Even the environment itself was a predator.
Bone Gas rose from decomposed marrow and ancient chemical residues, was suffocating and could rot scales in minutes. There were bone dust storms which sought to make them into new shapes.
At one point the land dropped away into a vast basin filled with powdered bone as fine as ash. Waves rolled across it in slow motion, driven by deep tremors beneath the surface. When stepped on, the "sea" behaved like liquid and solid at once swallowing the careless, grinding armor to dust. Beneath the surface, shapes moved. Enormous. Slow. Waiting.
They crossed fields, where the ground erupted into spiraling spears of ivory at the slightest provocation. Blood made it worse. Magic worse still. Entire battle formations were abandoned and reorganized in favor of slow, deliberate motion.
Marrow Lightning storms turned the sky into a lattice of blue-white arcs, leaping between exposed spires. Anything caught between them was reduced to clean skeletons in seconds.
Grief Wells appeared without warning, perfectly round pits descending into darkness. Soldiers who looked too long felt an overwhelming urge to step forward. Some heard voices they recognized. Those who jumped never returned.
And always there was the fog. Ossification Fog crept through valleys and hollows, pale and silent. Scales stiffened. Flesh hardened. Weapons grew brittle. Victims became statues mid-step, eyes wide, slowly assimilated into the terrain. Artorius ordered constant rotations, constant movement. No one stayed exposed for long.
Treasure was interspersed amidst the horror. Crystallized marrow, when carefully extracted, could be refined into rare reagents for elemental amplification. Fragments of ossified nerve tissue contained memory imprints, allowing the extraction of spells or combat techniques that had been wielded by dragons long dead.
Besides that they also say some strange sight down below in the Bone Realm that they bore witness to. From old giant bones at irregular intervals, rising from where they were and marching in a single direction, ignoring all obstacles. They did not attack unless obstructed.
No one knew where they were going. No one dared stop them. If Artorius had to guess, the dead dragon's body was still trying its best to revolver itself and different body parts were heading to the areas they were needed in.
From time to time, the sky would darken without clouds. A sound followed; soft, almost gentle like hail against stone. Then fragments began to fall. Not shards, but complete bones: finger bones, vertebrae, ribs, even skulls, descending at terminal velocity. They had no idea where these parts were coming from but the rain lasted anywhere from minutes to hours. No pattern. No warning.
In several regions, moments had calcified. A dragon frozen mid-breath. A battlefield suspended in the instant of impact. A spell half-formed, eternally glowing. These were not illusions. They were real moments preserved by overwhelming authority. Touching them was dangerous. Disturbing them was worse. They did their best to avoid such strange areas.
At irregular intervals, the landscape simply… ended. The ground ahead would slope gently upward, then flatten into a perfect, pale line where sky and bone met. No cliffs. No drop. Just a boundary that looked painted onto existence.
Scouts sent forward never reached it. They walked. And walked. And walked, yet from behind, they appeared frozen in place, shrinking slowly until they were no more than pale silhouettes, then smudges, then gone. Attempts to fly fared no better. Dragons approaching the horizon found themselves circling back without turning, wings burning with fatigue while the horizon remained eternally distant. They had to turn their heading afterwards into a totally different area after that.
The army moved slowly but relentlessly. Casualties mounted. Dragons vanished into fissures, corrupted organs, and parasitic ambushes. As they moved deeper, the silence became oppressive. Even the dragons' wings, normally a blur of sound, made no more than a faint rasp against the fractured bones. Artorius could feel the weight of the dead dragon.
If there was any silver lining in all this then he was making plenty of progress.
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Race: [True-Blood DragonMen] → Lv. 33
Stat gains: +1 STR, +1 CON, +1 DEX, +1 Per, +1 CHA
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Archetype: [Leader] → Lv. 33
Stat gains: +1 INT, +1 WIL, +1 CHA
Congratulations! You have leveled up. Class: [Storybook Squire] → Lv. 33
Stat gains: +1 Str, +1 Con, +1 Will, +1 Char, +1 Luc!