Rhiannon staggered forward from an impact into her right shoulder.

Clank!

The mace hit one of the rock slabs on the ground, slipped out of her fingers that kept convincingly grabbing the air. Her eyes jumped down for a moment as her mind was still catching up. Then the pain hit her and hit hard. Rhia hissed, calculating the trajectory from the pain and the short sound she had heard, and ducked.

Where her head had just been, a dark streak swished and then shattered as it hit a wall in a cloud of wood chips. Rhiannon broke into a cold sweat in addition to the battle sweat and the pain sweat she already had (or didn't have for being a manikin).

Hidden behind a corner of a strangely whole arc leading into a building in shambles, the woman was shortly safe. She bit her lower lip and touched the arrowhead protruding slightly from her shoulder with her shaking fingertip. Instantly she knew it missed bones. Finding the tip of the shattered arrow with a glance, Rhia gauged its shape, size, put her shield down, and inhaled.

It's gonna hurt.

She pulled. A deeper, stronger hiss came out of her mouth, and purple blood streamed down from the lip bitten through. Agonizing seconds that seemed minutes later she tossed the bloodied arrow aside and grabbed her shoulder in silent suffering.

Focus, Rhi, keep your focus.

Her whole concentration was on her ears, full expectations on an impending ambush. Fortunately, the gamble paid off: Rhiannon had judged correctly that any melee skeletons would have joined the earlier scuffle and the bow-armed bastard had only a bow, just like any other bony bastard had only one weapon.

Soon pain started to subside. There was not much blood either. Such was a perk of her manikin body: if not killed outright, Rhiannon had the tenacity of a cockroach.

Covering herself with a shield, Rhia showed in the entrance once to get the mace back. With a thud, another arrow hit the shield. Following a sudden thought, she remained in her half-crouching position.

Thud, thud.

After a few hits, Rhiannon caught the timing, tossed some gazes inside the building, and retreated to clear her Lion shield from two stuck arrows.

One skeleton, no surprises here. One staircase upward, who knows what monstrosity dwells there. What else she had noticed was that the building, a medieval house made of poorly shaped bricks, was in a better condition than most of the ruins. Rhia even noticed old furniture. It all meant but one thing.

There are memories here, enough of intact karma.

It wasn't a Chinese-styled house but Rhiannon wouldn't spread her despise for her father onto his distant ancestors. She wasn't a child and was too busy designing a strategy.

Soon she had one.

Leaving two fire seeds from her later booty still, the woman shoved her shield out in the entrance. The empty head (literally) shot its arrow in its ever predictable disciplined manner and Rhiannon tossed herself into the house.

One wide step, two wide steps. Floor wooden planks bent and creaked under her feet. Her eyes were on the bow and the arrow in the archer's fingers. She already knew it was quite a sharpshooter and she wouldn't reach in time.

Rhiannon almost did, having underestimated her own speed. The skeleton notched and pulled the arrow just one and a half meters from a mace swing. Where it was pointing was ridiculously easy to block with how big the Lion shield was.

The woman crashed into her bone foe with barely any impulse shoved off by a hit and toppled it easily. Bones without all those 80% water of the human body weighted surprisingly little. Stepping onto the bow, Rhiannon brandished her mace and suddenly paused.

"Lie still for me, will you?" she kicked the skeleton as it tried to grab the weapon.

Bones could show a person's sex and age to an experienced doctor and many more things after a detailed analysis. Yet Rhiannon couldn't see anything certain in the wallowing skeleton. There were both male and female marks here and there. There was no discernible age and no traces of any past traumas. The subtle grey flesh here and there could barely pass as human's.

Of course, she couldn't start real vivisection with such a volatile subject.

"Are you really that stupid?" Rhiannon wondered as she kicked the skeleton again. Then the woman rolled her eyes when it got entangled in its own cloak.

At first, she had been mildly cautious of it, but the empty head had been only trying to grab the bow for a while now. Rhiannon had treated scratches, bites, burns, a great number of injuries in her life, and none of them the skeleton tried to inflict onto her. It seemed to have a single attack type programmed deep in its wires or whatever substituted a brain.

In short, it was quite a lousy undead without its weapon.

Can I use the bow if I tie it up and toss somewhere? No, there is only a single arrow left. For a moment, a crazy idea appeared and got dismissed. Besides, Rhiannon conjectured it would take an awful amount of fire seeds to become more than a half-assed archer for any decent distance, plus arrows had the same stabby problem with skeletons as spears. Too many holes.

So Rhiannon crashed its foot instead.

There was no reaction from her bony testee. No screams of pain, no twitching beyond the norm. Then she crashed another foot, then its hands, then a number of other bones in its limbs until all that remained was the ribcage, pelvis, and skull connected by the spine.

It was not the scientific curiosity, she had done it purely for practical reasons.

Even this amount of damage is not critical enough? I must target the spine or the skull, huh.

So she did.

As the skeleton dissipated in dust, Rhiannon looked around the house carefully. The first floor was spacious, basically one big room with a single entrance and a thick column as the support for the ceiling and roof. There was an oven in a corner, quite big, a dusty table and broken seats. On the shelves, she found rotten food and some bones.

Bones? They were no humans and Rhia was an M.D., not a biologist. She recognized cat bones and a mice skull though. The rest were bird bones judging by their structure.

I have a bad feeling about this ancestor of mine.

Finding nothing more of significance, Rhia slowly went up to the second floor after getting morally ready for jumping horrors.

She met none. But there was more history. An old bed with a sheet filled with holes. A spider web on the gable roof – with a prominent lack of spiders. Holes on said roof, letting some light around. A cabinet without doors, packed with dusted dresses. 

There was also that.

A white circle. Sacrifices or maybe charms in four cardinal directions: a gem, a ring of weeds and petals, a piece of a dried liver, and a skull.

Rhiannon walked slowly, not entirely sure she wanted this kind of karma. Her eyes were on the skull. Bitterly she read this one as an open book.

Child. Boy. Five to eight.

Her gaze glided upwards and met with goat eyes. It, no, he was painted in red with rough strokes. He once stood in flames of a black brazier, now full of old embers.

Everything seemed so feeble, so ancient. Dust covered all, except a few traces.

"The skeleton was standing here, guarding," Rhiannon murmured, trying to ignore the hellish goat and especially the skull. "An excellent position for sniping, I suppose."

The only problem, old wooden blinds. They were quite shut and bore markings of fingers. With force, a conjured sword as a lever and crackle, Rhia pushed them open and let more light in. Two jet-black wings flashed.

"You were quite successful, young lady," cawed Muninn and his only eye glimmered. "This is it, I suppose."

"Yeah. One of my less savory ancestors."

"In every seed of good, there is a piece of bad."

Rhiannon didn't reply. The memorial of Itotia, the tombs of knights were objects closely connected to 'death'. If it was true...

The woman touched the edge of the hellish picture.

 

The fire burned, and burned, burned. Her flesh on a cross amidst screams and scourges, yet much darker, scarier flames had consumed her soul long ago. The poor feared her, red hair, cackles, the strangely shaped charms, and vicious spells. The poor needed her, charms to cure livestock, spells to curse the lord.

Dionora was her name and she regretted nothing for being born a lowly peasant she had thirsted for the power of kings, wished nothing but to revel in love and despair. She followed the old book of human skin, she gathered the bloody sacrifice on a starless night. To rise above, to call for otherworldy will. Old speak fell from her accursed tongue, the words long forgotten, the bringers of evil and blight.

And the will answered.

.

..

...

With a scream, Rhiannon broke away her fingers and fell. The eyes of the goat, two slits, two strokes of red, seemed to follow her amidst silent laughter.

"Ha. Ha. Ha..." she breathed hard, her eyes still seeing the other side... the other side...

What? What happened? Rhia couldn't remember. Disgust, yes. Terror, plenty. Echoes of sinister witch powers crept inside, spooky enough.

Yet what was that? What stepped in and then left her memory?

"Humans long have been trying to reach the powers beyond the vanishing myths of Earth. They called and called in the dark forest you know as the universe. Some met success, unfortunate as they are."

"You see my karma?"

"No," the raven shook his beak. "I only know the past. Nothing of Earth is a secret to me, remember?"

"Then this place?" Rhiannon met his eye.

"No," Muninn shook his beak again. "I don't know yet what is this place, this world if you allow me the term. It's not an expected guest, nor an unexpected visitor. Something else... something else..."

In his scattered words, the woman could perceive confusion, even panic, but only for a moment before the raven turned to her the empty eye socket.

"You wanted to see for yourself, young lady. The other window."

Rhiannon glanced back. Indeed, there it was. Another window closed by blinds, turned south.