“Tom!” Balthazar said with a grin and arms spread open. “Punctual as always!”

The merchant skeleton stepped out from behind the stack of crates, straightening his old brown duster coat and sending a small cloud of dust into the air. With a tip of his wide-brimmed hat, the undead greeted the crab with a toothy grin.

“Hello there! I headed here as soon as I received your message. How’s my favorite exoskeleton? Love the hat, by the way. Looks cozy!”

“Good, good,” the eight-legged merchant said. “And thanks. I was going to—”

The crab’s words trailed off as he noticed more movement coming from behind the crates.

“You brought someone along?” he asked with a cocked eyestalk.

“Ah, that’s right,” Tom said, turning to the pile of boxes and motioning for someone to approach. “Come on, don’t be shy. You already know Balthazar, just say hello!”

Slowly, the other figure stepped out of the shadow of the crates and under the faint light of the bazaar’s lanterns. A skeleton, smaller than Tom and wearing an old set of boiled leather armor, moved next to the undead merchant, its gaze low and body language meek.

Balthazar looked at the skeleton with an intrigued look. Something about her felt familiar. And he was sure it was a her because the bone structure was definitely female—if there was something the crab understood better than skin and muscles, it was bones.

Which was exactly why it did not take long for her identity to click for him. The merchant always had a hard time remembering the faces of humans, but he found it a lot easier to identify them when they wore their skeletons on the outside, like any proper creature should.

“Hey, wait, I know your face! Well, your face structure, at least,” Balthazar exclaimed. “You’re that young adventurer from that one time I visited Tom’s dungeon! The name was… Lisa, right?”

The young skeleton perked up slightly at the crab’s recognition, her skull forming a shy smile as she lifted her empty eye sockets to look at him.

“Y-you remember me?” she said timidly.

It was hard for Balthazar not to. While he was well accustomed to watching adventurers meet their ends—most often as a result of their own poor choices—Lisa’s case left a faint trace of guilt in his shell on that day inside Tudor’s Hall.

The girl was just a low-level novice, fresh off the beach, tagging along with her friend. She was scared and not looking for riches or power when they crossed paths, only to survive. It had been the conniving ice mage, much higher level and more experienced than them, who led the pair into a dungeon with the intention of using and then discarding them.

She had to watch her friend perish in a trap, only to then lose her own life at the hands of the deceitful adventurer, right in front of Balthazar’s eyes.

Despite the mage getting what he deserved in the end, the merchant never quite felt justice had been made for the poor girl.

And now there she was, standing in front of him. Not quite alive—and certainly not breathing—but still… moving.

“Of course I remember you!” Balthazar said. “But… I saw you fall through that floor trap.” He turned his eyes to Tom. “And you told me that drop was definitely deadly.”

“Ah,” Tom said with a nod, pointing an index bone up into the air like someone about to go into an explanation. “And that it was, my friend. Which is the reason for her current state of… Well, unliving. After you left our dungeon, we went down to the bottom of the pit where all the floor traps lead, to retrieve the girl’s body and give it the proper, respectful treatment I promised we’d give her. Lo and behold, we found out that, aside from a very fatal crack to the skull, all of her bones were quite intact! More importantly for our kind, she had a rather strong remnant presence left. That’s the stuff that makes us the charming fellows you know, instead of mindless shamblers like the skeletons necromancers raise. My guess is that her traumatic experience before perishing was the cause of that.”

“Oh…” Balthazar let out quietly, still processing everything.

The undead girl listened to Tom in silence, her gaze back on the floor as she idly made small circles on the floor with her foot.

“Usually, if left unchecked,” the senior skeleton continued, “those remnants turn into vengeful ghosts, revenants, or worse things. But Sal, myself, and the rest of the guys got together, discussed it, and decided that this girl had not deserved what happened to her. So we made the decision to take her into our family! It took a bit of time and work, but now Liz is a proud member of the Tudor’s Hall crew!”

The female skeleton smiled timidly again and gave a quick wave of her hand, gaze still fixed on the floor.

“Uhm… Alright,” the crab said. “That’s… unexpected. But good! I’m glad you found a second chance in this world… Liz.”

Balthazar was still uncertain what to make of everything he had just learned, but even if she seemed a bit shy, the girl at least wasn’t just a corpse rotting at the bottom of a pit anymore, and that had to surely be an improvement.

“Anyway,” said Tom, placing his hands on his hip bones. “Liz over here volunteered to come along when she heard I was coming to visit your pond, Balthazar.”

“She did?” the surprised crustacean said.

“Y-yes,” Liz said quietly. “I… I wanted to come to say hi, and… and to thank you. I know you tried to help me, back when I… you know… And also that you were the one who made sure that cryomancer bastard wouldn’t be hurting anyone else anymore.”

“Oh, uhm…” Balthazar muttered awkwardly, before his eyestalks perked up and turned to Tom. “Wait, the mage. He also fell down one of those traps into the pit. Did you guys also…”

“Oh. No, no, no!” Tom quickly assured. “No way. We wouldn’t want anyone like him on our crew. Besides, that guy had barely a bone left intact when we retrieved his body.”

The crab let out a sigh of relief.

“But so, let’s get back to the reason you called me here?” the merchant skeleton said with a big grin as he clapped his bone hands together, producing an unsettling sound.

“Right,” said Balthazar. “I want to show you my own dungeon, and a few fellows who dwell inside. I want to hear your take on them as well as the place itself.”

He turned and started heading inside the bazaar.

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“Come on, let’s go there. On the way I’ll tell you about my adventures since we last saw each other, and how I got Bouldy and Madeleine back. You’re not going to believe the stuff I’ve been through!”

***

After an unhurried stroll through the bazaar, around the pond, and into the dungeon tunnel, Balthazar, Tom, and Liz arrived at the Halls of Semla.

“So anyway,” the crab said, “after I came back home and the eruption happened, that’s basically what I’ve been up to.”

The trio came to the end of the tunnel and entered the large atrium of the dungeon, which extended into endless halls both to their right and left, all bathed in white light from above.

Tom lifted his dusty hat off his skull as he looked both ways and let out a low, appreciative whistle—something Balthazar had no logical explanation for, given the skeleton’s complete lack of lips.

“Damn,” the undead merchant said. “This is one huge crib you’ve got here, Balthazar. Honestly, it kind of puts our little hall to shame. I’m envious!”

The crab led the other two through a row of pillars as he continued talking.

“That’s the thing, though,” he said while brushing away a cobweb. “I have no idea what to do with it. I’m a merchant, not a dungeon manager! I thought of calling on you because you have experience with Tudor’s Hall, and, well… Because of them.”

As they walked around another pillar, the trio came to a stop in front of two savage skeletons, standing motionless in the middle of a hall, staring emptily into the distance. One held a hammer in its hand and wore a party hat half crooked on its skull, while the other had nothing save for a party horn stuck between its yellowed teeth.

“Huh…” Tom let out, approaching one of the skeletons while rubbing his angular chin. “Interesting.”

“They’re not like you and the other guys at Tudor’s,” Balthazar said. “These guys are savage skeletons. They don’t talk or seem to understand any form of communication.”

“Oh, yes,” the skeleton in a duster said. “I know the type well. Always a bit embarrassing to witness. I mean, really, would it kill them again to wear at least a loincloth? What’s with the party accessories anyway?”

The crab shrugged.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing from the start. Do you have any idea why all these mindless skeletons would have these things?”

“Not really,” the two-legged merchant said. “Usually, skeletons turn savage after a long, long time in isolation. If this dungeon was sealed for ages like you suspect, maybe these guys’ remnants withered away, and they slowly became mindless shamblers, forever stuck performing their last duties. As for the party paraphernalia… I have no idea. Perhaps they were throwing a party way back when whatever sealed this place happened and these fellas were still alive?”

Balthazar stared emptily at the floor, thinking. “Uhm…”

He didn’t know why or how, but he felt like something about what Tom had just theorized made sense. Like he could almost remember something. Something important.

And then his stomach rumbled.

“Anyway,” the hungry crab said as he retrieved a jar of Madeleine’s biscuits from his backpack. “You think you can help me with them?”

“Hmm…” the pondering skeleton said, tapping on his jawbone. “These guys seem to be really deep into their savage state. Usually you can coach them, and bring them to a slightly more… civilized state, with enough patience. But it will take time.”

Balthazar chewed and swallowed before addressing the skeleton again.

“And do you think that they could ever do what you and the other guys at Tudor’s Hall do?”

A grin spread across Tom’s skull.

“Is the merchant crab planning to run his own dungeon now?”

“Weeeell…” the crustacean started. “This place is right here, next to my pond, and nobody’s doing anything with it. Adventurers are lining up to go in every day. There’s business to be made, and I’d be a fool to pass it up! But… I’ll need help setting this up. From someone who has experience with dungeons.”

The merchant skeleton placed a cold, bony hand on the side of Balthazar’s carapace and smiled.

“Buddy, you’ve come to the right skeleton,” he said. “We will turn this place into the best damn dungeon Mantell has ever seen!”

Tom spun away from the crab and snapped his fingers at Liz, who had been quietly waiting a few paces behind them.

“Liz, notepad!” he said, triggering the other skeleton to hastily retrieve a block of parchment notes from her satchel. “We are going to need a long list of things to start working on bringing these skeletons back to working shape. How many bony fellas will we be working with, Balthazar?”

“Uhm… 206 skeletons, I think,” the crab replied, chewing on his biscuit as he watched the skeleton pace around.

Once again, Tom produced an unexplainable whistle.

“That’s a lot of skulls to crack into! But I love me a challenge! Write that number down, Liz. I’ll need to get to know each and every one of them.”

He stopped and looked around the halls.

“And this place… So much potential! The fun things we could set up here for exploring adventurers! The mazes, the traps, the random encounters! But we need to find the light switch first, though. All this light totally ruins the dungeon mood! I need to create an ambiance!”

Tom raised a clawed fist into the air dramatically, as if trying to grasp something invisible. Balthazar found his artistic pose slightly exaggerated, but he appreciated his enthusiasm.

“Liz!” the older skeleton exclaimed, spinning around. “You’ve been learning well at Tudor’s Hall, so this is your time to shine now. This place is a blank canvas. We are going to turn it into a place of dread and ambition for adventurers. I need danger! I require spookiness! I demand deadliness! How would you use this place? Give me your best artistic flair!”

The timid skeleton girl seemed to grow increasingly riled up with each of Tom’s words, a smile growing on her face as her empty eye sockets seemed to grow larger with excitement.

“A… A dungeon full of ways to kill adventurers?” she said.

A concerned frown formed between Balthazar’s eyestalks.

“Hey, Tom, given what happened to her, I’m not sure if that’s the best subject to—”

“Spike traps!” Liz blurted out. “Lots of them! And spiky balls attached to chains that swing around those pillars when an adventurer turns the corner! Oh, and boxes full of tiny spiky balls too, that fall on adventurers as they walk under them!”

The eight-legged merchant turned to her with wide eyes. “What the…”

The young skeleton started walking around the hall, notebook in hand, like someone prancing through a dream, her gaze distant as it wandered around.

“The ceiling is so high, we could hide all sorts of deadly traps up there, to drop on the adventurers when they least expect it! Do we have the budget for acid pits?! One of those would be awesome! Oh, oh! Pendulum axes! I've been asking Sal for some of those for weeks! Too bad this place is so flat, we could have so much fun with a giant rolling boulder to crush adventurers! And bear traps!!”

Liz’s shy smile had fully morphed into a deranged grin, her expression manic as she moved around listing all sorts of sadistic ways to hurt and maim adventurers between giggled cackles, the sound bouncing between childlike delight and something far more twisted.

Balthazar leaned in closer to Tom without taking his eyes off the girl and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Hey, Tom?”

The dusty merchant turned to look at him. “Yes?”

“That girl scares me,” the crab muttered. “And I’ve been face to face with a red dragon.”

His old skeleton pall let out a short chuckle and a half shrug as they watched the novice continue to prance around in a world of her own, rambling about traps and ambushes.

“Heh, Liz seems to have developed a grudge against adventurers after what happened with that ice mage,” Tom said. “We try to let her mean streak manifest itself in productive ways. She finds it… therapeutic.”

Balthazar looked at her with concern still in his eyes.

“But you do know that I’m trying to set up this place not to kill adventurers, but rather to make money off them, right?”

Tom let out a more hearty chuckle before patting the side of the crab’s carapace in a reassuring manner.

“I know, friend. And don’t you worry—we are going to make this place a dungeon you will be proud of!”