God damnit. Am I really going to die again?
As the archer is pointing at me, the other angels turn, and once they realize that I am not a scattered mess of bones like my late brothers, they quickly stand back up into combat stance with their weapons pointed at me. The small angel starts walking towards me, with his hammer ready to swing, when the robed angel begins talking to him.
"Maghulat, kini nga usa lahi sa uban."
As he gets closer to me, I try to scream out and wave my arms around up in the air, trying to show them that I am surrendering, but I quickly realize that I am still incapable of forming any kind of speech, so it just looks like I am opening and closing my mouth repeatedly, making a chattering sound.
The robed one begins talking with a sense of urgency as he gets closer, and the small angel slows down quite a bit, tilting his head in her direction, but still giving me the death glare.
"Tan-awa, wala man gani kini mosulay sa pag-atake kanato, angay natong dakpon kini nga buhi imbes nga patyon!"
Is she trying to convince him to let me live? I hope so.
The small one stops walking completely, and starts talking back to her, and soon the other angels are all talking over each other, as though they are arguing.
"Kalabera pa siya, patyon na lang nato ug mahuman na."
"Dili, wala pa ako nakakita ug ingon niini, pasagdi lang ako nga gapuson siya ug ako ang manubag kaniya!"
"Sige, pero kung mulihok siya, dugmokon nako iyang kalabera sama sa uban."
Eventually, the robed angel starts cautiously walks over to me, but doesn't seem to want to kill me at least. The short one is still standing nearby and looks ready to swing his hammer at a moment's notice. As the robed angel gets closer to me, I can get a better look at her face. Her hair has a deep red color, almost like blood with a few strands of it covering her eyes which are as equally as green as the gem atop her staff. Her cheeks are garnished with several freckles and she looks even younger than the archer, and cant be any older than twenty.
I don't move as she gets closer to me, as I'm sure any sudden movements would result in the short angel swiftly ending my afterlife with a swing of his hammer. She stops about five feet away from me, and starts digging through her backpack that she unslings from her back. She pulls out a coil of rope, giving me an intense glare. I can guess what she intends to do, and since I'd prefer being handcuffed than dead, I hold out my arms together in front me of, and she quickly ties them together, without breaking eye contact with me, but seems a little surprised that I let her so easily.
Once she's done securing the rope around my arms, she pulls me up to my feet, and upon verifying that I pose no threat to anyone in this state, grabs one end of the rope and walks back to her group, who all have slightly confused faces, pulling me with her.
Was I supposed to fight them like the others? Maybe getting killed by them is how I'm supposed to 'move on' in this stage of the afterlife? Why don't they explain anything to me? If I was supposed to get killed by them, why were my brothers trying to fight back? Nothing makes sense, but I guess I'll just follow them, it looks like I don't really have much of a choice anymore.
"Tan-awa, dili siya kaaway. Ako ang manubag kaniya"
She says something to the others, and it seems to calm them down a bit, but they're still eyeing me suspiciously. After they're done looting the pile of bones, they begin walking out the door into a hallway.
Am I finally going to leave this room? Are they going to lead me to the next stage of the afterlife? Why were they looting them? I have no idea what's going on. I just wish I had a way to ask them questions.
The hallway outside looks similar to the room I was just in, being made up of some kind of old stone brick that looks heavily weathered and dirty. We take a left turn down the hallway, with the larger man in front, holding out a torch, then the archer, than the robed one, who is dragging me along, and the short one in the very back, and I can feel his gaze piercing a hole in the back of my skull.
Eventually, we come across a turn at the end of the hallway, and the one leading us slowly takes a peek around the corner, before whispering something to the group and slowly continues on. As the rest of us slowly step around the corner, I can see some more people up ahead with their backs towards us. They look to be wearing just ragged clothes instead of armor, and they haven't noticed us yet. Something about them seems off though, but I cant put my finger on it yet.
As the knight sneaks up behind one, he suddenly breaks into a sprint, and decapitates two of them with a single swing of his axe. As the same time, the archer shoots one of her arrows at the third one up ahead, the arrow getting stuck halfway in his skull, killing him instantly.
Or he should have been killed, but he just keeps standing there, and begins slowly turning around. One of the severed heads rolls back to me, and as I get a look at its face, I finally figure out what was off about them. Half of the face of the head is swarming with maggots, and his skin is a sickly pale gray. The one still standing begins shambling towards us, and I can see some of his organs spilling out of his torso. His lower jaw is missing and his tongue is dangling down with nothing to support it. As he raises his arms trying to get closer to the knight, maggots and some spiders start falling off him, along with a few clumps of rotten flesh. I can see the tip of the arrow sticking out of one of his eyes, with some dark oozing fluid dripping down from the now empty socket.
They're dead, just like me. They look to be less decomposed than I do, given that they still have flesh. Shouldn't they be more human like than me because of that? Why did I wake up a skeleton and not a zombie?
Before he can take his third step, the knight swings his axe down on him, cutting his torso in two diagonally, and the upper half slides down and lands on the ground with a loud squelch. The group doesn't even bother looting these ones, as the stench is causing them to cover their faces and we quickly hurry along, the robed one in front of me nearly losing her lunch.
Thankfully I can't smell anything. Wait, why can I still see and hear but not smell? I guess smelling would require me to breathe in, something I am incapable of.
After a couple minutes of walking through the hallway, we come across another door in the side of the hallway. It looks identical to the one I've grown familiar with, but this one isn't locked. The knight pulls the door open slowly, ready to attack anything that jumps out.
But nothing does however, and the rest of us get behind him. He walks into the room, holding the torch out in front of him trying to illuminate the room. As he walks in, the rest of us enter as well, and by the time we are all in the room, the knight is in the center, with his light just barely illuminating the whole room just enough to see anything that's in it.
It's empty, just more of the same gray bricks. As we start turning around to leave, I see some movement in the corner of the room, just at the edge of the torch's radiance. The only reason I could notice it was because I can see in the dark. I quickly turn my head, trying to get a better look. As I do this, the short one behind me notices, and says something to the rest of the group.
"Uy, unsa man kana sa suok?"
The rest of them turn their heads, looking to where the dwarf is pointing. The knight slowly walks towards the corner of the room, with the torch in front of him, but there's nothing there. Just more stone bricks.
But something is there, and it takes a few moments for us to figure out what it is. The corner of the room is not like the rest of the floor or walls, which is made up of neatly tiled bricks. Instead, it looks like completely smooth stone, in about a four foot diameter centered on the very corner. Actually, I can't tell where the corner is, there's no edges at all to see.
As we walk closer to it, I move a bit to the side, and my depth perception goes haywire, like I'm looking at an optical illusion. But then I realize that its not a corner, there's an object there that's exactly the same shade as the stone bricks, and it was completely camouflaged because of it. The others notice this too, and they say something to the robed one, while slowly backing away from it.
"Adunay usa ka slime didto. Halos wala nako namatikdan. Marli, kabalo ka unsay buhaton."
The group gets behind her, and she hands my rope off to the knight, who pulls me far behind her as well. She holds up her gem-capped staff, and looks to be in deep thought.
Oh no, I know what she's doing. Wait, I'm way too close to her! I'm gonna fall apart into a pile of bones just like my brothers!
She begins saying some words, and before I can react everything goes white.
