NOVEL NEXT 26. A Lesser Frame
Commander Ikkert exhales. She understands. No easy end. No sudden triumph. Only a long, grinding war until demon dukes, lords and kings fall.
Until rot and corruption burn from earth. They asked for a savior. They received a champion who never claimed greatness, only duty.
It's enough. It must be.
Haven's people accept the message scrawled in colossal letters. Their guardian returns not as a simple skeletal knight, but as something stronger, shaped to confront evils beyond measure.
Yet the essence remains.
A protector bearing burdens that would shatter any living heart.
A calm settles. Orders pass quietly. Stand down. Keep watch. Prepare patrols. Life endures behind these walls.
It is to them another morning, patrolling atop old stones.
Emmy steps back from the edge, toy soldier pressed to her chest. "Thank you,"
She imagines the titan understands. Perhaps its slight nod is real. Perhaps just her wish.
The toy soldier in her hands stirs borrowed memories.
A child's faith kept through years, while I fought and fell and rose again. My bones remember her smaller self, walking fearless beside clicking steps.
Commander Ikkert raises her voice: "Haven endures. With your help, we may push the corruption back, step by step. We have maps, scouts. We can share what we know of demon dukes' domains."
Ikkert's offer pulls at older instincts. Maps. Intelligence. Awareness that guided armies before they fell.
I scrape the letters.
NEED LARGER MAPS. DEMON DOMAINS SHIFT.
The commander nods, already calculating. "We'll spread them on the ground. Our scouts mark corrupted lands in red chalk, demon territories in black."
BRING CHALK. WILL MARK TRUE BORDERS.
These bones have crossed those borders, shattered and reformed. They know where shadow thickens, where rot spreads beneath seeming safety. Knowledge earned through combat must serve Haven's survival.
Emmy steps closer to the wall's edge. "Will you stay? Near enough to see?"
YES. DARKNESS COMES. WALLS NEED WATCHING.
My sword drags deep furrows in earth as I trace.
Crude. Imprecise. Ineffective.
These chosen bones bring greater strength, yet hamper simple connection. Smaller form allowed for smaller gestures, writing with sword tip or finger bone on parchment.
Now each letter requires full arm movements, tearing trenches in soil.
I test smaller motions. The dragon-reinforced joints resist precise control, built for crushing force rather than subtle shifts. My attempts at smaller script result in illegible scratches.
Even kneeling, my skull rises above the wall-walk where Emmy and Ikkert stand. They strain to read messages carved at their feet. This will not serve. Protection requires clarity not this lumbering display of borrowed might.
I must find new methods.
Perhaps arrange fallen branches into letters. Or use smaller bones as writing tools. The Field of Broken Banners holds countless fragments that might still serve.
The mission demands adaptation. Power without precision fails purpose. These bones have learned new forms before.
Within, magic stirs.
The Field of Broken Banners taught me change. Flames of a demon duke forced monstrous growth.
Now I sense another path: to tear loose a part of myself and shape it into a smaller envoy. Not a separate mind, but a separate shape. A piece to walk among them, to speak for me in more subtle ways.
I focus inward.
Bone grinds against bone beneath layered plating. A chest plate of fused ribs and vertebrae bulges outward as something writhes beneath. Magic crackles in empty marrow, the sound of splitting calcified matter.
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My ribcage contorts, sections bending outward at unnatural angles as pressure builds beneath.
The strain intensifies until bones fracture along jagged lines, not cleanly, but in splintered, jutting shards. I lock my stance, sword still rooted in earth, and something shifts beneath my armor plates.
A wet crack echoes across the killing field as my chest cavity splits open. Bone dust erupts in a cloud as fragments force their way outward through the opening. My massive forearm twists violently, ancient ligaments of magic tearing as marrow seeps out like dark oil.
Haven's defenders stare, transfixed by the violation of natural order unfolding before them. Several back away from the wall's edge. Others remain frozen, unable to look away from the abomination being born.
Fragments rend themselves free, scraping and cutting against larger pieces. I feel no pain but the wrongness of it sends visible tremors through my frame.
On the walls, guards recoil, some turning away, unable to watch this self-mutilation.
I continue, unwavering in this butchery of self.
My chest cavity open wider. Ribs splinter, inner support structures collapse inward, and with a sound like breaking timber, I force my fingers into the wound. I pry apart my own torso, reaching deep into the cavity where ancient magics hold fragments in reserve.
Neither blood nor bile, drips from the opening.
My fingers hook around vertebrae tugging until they tear free. Another pull produces a shoulder blade.
Piece by splintered piece, I arrange these shards before their horrified eyes.
Smaller vertebrae snap together with nauseating clicks. Ribs meant for my titan chest bend and distort as they form a slender torso.
Joints form where none should exist, bones fuse at impossible angles, creating limbs that bend wrong.
The process is violent. Deliberate. Horrifying.
Haven's defenders watch in silent revulsion. Some turn away, retching. Others stare, transfixed by primal terror.
Commander Ikkert's jaw clenches tight, her knuckles bloodless on her sword hilt. Yet none intervene. This abomination serves their need. Their survival depends on what they can barely stand to witness.
I set the fragments together, each connection producing wet sounds no lifeless bone should make. A rib punctures through another bone, magic sealing the unnatural fusion as marrow oozes from the junction. A jawbone grinds against a split skull piece, teeth scraping until they lock together with an audible snap. Blue fire flickers in eye sockets that form too early, watching its own birth.
The half-formed creature twitches as I flex its incomplete limbs. Splinters and fragments fall away, unnecessary, clattering to the ground where they writhe briefly before going still.
At last, the smaller figure stands complete.
It is wrong in every way a thing can be wrong.
Too tall, too thin, joints bending backward and sideways. A chipped horn protrudes from its skull.
Blue-white magic pulses through its malformed body, some bones still sizzling from the violent separation.
With a final tearing sound, it pulls free from my titan frame, leaving a ragged hole in my chest that slowly closes as remaining bones shift to fill the gap.
The wound seals itself, but evidence remains in the thinning of armor plates.
To Haven's defenders, abomination appears.
It stands before them, proportions all wrong. Its skull bears fragments of different creatures, fused together in ways nature never intended.
As it takes a staggering step forward, bones grind and scrape against each other.
The sound triggers fear.
I remain the titan, towering above, but now I see through the smaller creature's hollow eyes as well, vision doubled, perspective multiplied.
Two bodies, one consciousness. Division without separation.
My larger form stays locked in place, sword embedded in earth, while this violated piece of me approaches their level. I have committed an atrocity against myself, but necessity demanded no less.
Emmy gasps. "What have you done?"
Guards raise weapons instinctively, then lower them, unsure if this new horror is enemy or ally. The skeletal envoy's wrongness scrapes against instincts.
Commander Ikkert holds out a hand, commanding calm.
Her face betrays no fear, only the calculation of a commander who accepts any tool that serves Haven's defense.
The malformed creature extends a limb that bends. Its finger bones, too numerous and jointed like insect legs, scratch against dirt. The letters come easier at this scale.
The message is simple, a justification for abhorrent creation.
CAN PARLEY BETTER THIS WAY. SHARE MAPS. EXCHANGE PLANS.
The silence stretches, broken only by the soft clicking of settling bones as the creature adjusts its unstable form.
Commander Ikkert's shoulders remain rigid, her expression locked in grim determination. The guards stare, unable to reconcile the horror before them.
Death has violated itself to help them, ripping out its own essence to create something that can speak more clearly.
Even seeing it, they struggle to accept.
A monster is still a monster.
Emmy leans over the walls, her voice unsteady. "It's still you, right?"
The creature taps its malformed chest, then points to the titan, its arm bending unnaturally as it carves again:
SAME PURPOSE. SAME WILL. ONE BEING.
A murmur rises. They understand, though the understanding brings little comfort. Not two monsters, but one consciousness split between forms. The same guardian who once fought for them, now capable of entering their gates through horrible division of self.
Ikkert's gaze hardens into resolution.
She nods. "Then let's talk," she says quietly, beckoning the creature to the sally port.
A guard works the chain, metal groaning, and a small door opens.
The abomination steps forward.
Blue light pulses in its mismatched eye sockets, the same glow that fills the titan's skull.
Proof of shared essence.
Chalk and slate are fetched. Scouts and scribes approach, though they keep their distance from the bone horror.
The creature kneels, its joints folding in directions that make some onlookers flinch. Once more to them I write:
WILL ENDURE TOGETHER.
The malformed envoy passes through Haven's gate, each step a profane mockery of human movement. The titan remains outside, massive frame standing sentinel over the killing fields, blue flame in hollow sockets fixed on distant darkness where threats gather.
My consciousness exists in both, the monstrous guardian and the walking abomination. Each serves purpose in its way. Each sacrifices normalcy for function. The price of protection has always been transformation.
One being, two forms, single purpose.
Protection requires adaptation.
These bones will reshape as needed.
Until final rest is earned.