“What the—”
“Good. You speak English.”
Sid immediately pointed at the red-eyed skeleton.
“You’re dead. I brought you back. Existential crisis later. Survival first.”
Kaya buried her face in one hand.
“Sid…”
“I do not care about your tragic backstory right now,” Sid continued. “We are trapped underground in what appears to be a giant magical death labyrinth, and I urgently require industrial progression.”
Silence.
The red-eyed skeleton stared at him.
“…I’m dead?”
His voice was strangely calm.
Too calm.
“Yes,” Sid said. “But through death, there is life.”
“That sentence means nothing.”
“I know.”
Kaya walked farther down the tunnel.
The skeleton looked at his hands.
Flexed his fingers.
Then ran them across his ribcage.
“…Interesting.”
Sid went still.
He turned toward Kaya.
“See? This one gets it.”
She didn’t look back.
“Congratulations. You found the only other psychopath in the cave.”
Sid ignored her.
“Name and former occupation.”
The skeleton looked up.
Crimson light pulsed faintly inside his sockets.
“…Elias.”
A pause.
“Nuclear engineer.”
Sid’s eye lights widened.
“Oh! Right. Introductions.”
He pointed at himself.
“Sid. I think I was a surgeon.”
Then at Kaya.
“That’s Kaya. YouTuber, streamer, something like that.”
Kaya crossed her arms.
“I had sponsorships.”
Elias looked at her.
His crimson gaze lingered for half a second.
“Useless.”
Kaya stared at him.
“Oh, you can both go to hell.”
Elias stepped forward and offered Sid his hand.
Sid shook it enthusiastically.
“Thoughts ar—”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Audible,” Elias finished. “We should avoid emotional outbursts.”
Sid stared at him.
Then pointed.
“Oh, I like you.”
Kaya groaned.
The three continued through the tunnel until it opened onto the vast crystal cavern.
Elias stopped.
“…Is that a dinosaur?”
The carcass still lay impaled among the blue crystal formations.
“Tried to eat me,” Sid said. “It failed.”
Elias stared at the creature.
Then at Sid.
“…Amazing.”
Sid scratched awkwardly at the side of his skull.
“Hehehe.”
Kaya shook her head.
They spent the next few hours beneath the glow of the crystals.
Together, they stripped more hide from the carcass. Elias fashioned himself a crude covering while Sid chipped another blue shard free and wrapped its base in strips of hide, creating something halfway between a lantern and a very dangerous torch.
Elias adapted almost too quickly.
“Disgusting.”
The thought slipped quietly into the tunnel.
Sid stood over a pile of shattered bones. Several had been snapped clean through, fragments scattered across the stone like discarded pieces of pottery.
Elias slid the red crystal shard into the hide belt around his waist.
“What’s disgusting?”
Sid didn’t answer.
He sat beside the dinosaur carcass and cut narrow strips from its hide.
Thin.
Even.
Measured.
Elias watched without pressing him.
Sid picked up the fragment Dud had punched from his skull.
The fracture was still obvious beneath the blue glow of his sockets.
He folded one of the leather strips several times and pressed it into the damaged section as padding, then fitted the fragment over it.
Wrong angle.
He adjusted it.
A little left.
There.
The bone settled into the fracture.
Not perfect.
Sid stared ahead.
“…Functional.”
Kaya watched from farther down the tunnel.
“What a freaky little—”
Her voice disappeared into the cavern.
Sid looked up.
“…Didn’t catch that.”
“Nothing.”
Elias’s gaze settled on Sid’s repaired skull.
“What happened to your head?”
“A Dud.”
Silence.
Elias looked at him.
Then at the runes covering Kaya’s bones.
Kaya noticed.
“What are you looking at?”
Sid had already moved on.
He crouched beside another pile of remains and began sorting.
“How do we move without musculature?” he muttered. “No tendons. No functional joints. Yet the bones maintain articulation…”
A vertebra clicked into place.
Then another.
“Some force must be maintaining structural cohesion.”
Kaya edged away.
“Oh no.”
Elias remained where he was.
Sid stopped.
His gaze drifted toward the dinosaur.
Specifically, its exposed skeleton.
The blue light in his sockets brightened.
“…Fascinating.”
Kaya followed his gaze.
“No.”
Sid was already moving.
“Sid.”
He carved a thick section of bone from one of the creature’s limbs and dragged it across the stone.
“Sid, whatever you’re thinking—”
The blue crystal bit into the bone.
Scratch.
Fragments scattered around his feet as he shaved away the outer surface.
Scratch.
The shape gradually changed beneath his hands.
Smaller.
Narrower.
Almost human.
“Currently unknown whether cross-species integration will result in a…”
Scratch.
“…properly functional life-form.”
Kaya stared at him.
“Sid.”
Scratch.
“Sid.”
No response.
Beside her, Elias watched with unsettling calm.
“I think he’s happier like this.”
“Hehehe.”
Sid’s cackle drifted through the tunnel.
Kaya looked at Elias.
“You’re encouraging him.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“That’s worse.”
Time passed to the steady scrape of crystal against bone.
Eventually, Sid sat back.
The skeleton on the cavern floor was human in shape.
Mostly.
Its frame was broader than Kaya’s or Elias’s, the altered bones noticeably thicker in places where Sid had substituted pieces carved from the creature. The proportions were close enough to be recognisable.
Close enough was doing considerable work.
Sid studied it.
He adjusted one leg by a fraction.
Then the other.
Better.
"Eighty five percent human."
He raised the crystal.
"Fifteen percent dinosaur."
Scratch.
The final rune appeared on the skull.
Sid leaned back.
“Now awaken…”
The crystal dimmed.
Its light vanished completely.
Green fire flickered inside the skeleton’s sockets.
Sid went still.
The new skeleton looked at him.
At Kaya.
At Elias.
Then the cavern.
Then down at itself.
Its hands began to shake.
Sid remained silent, watching from several paces away.
Elias stepped forward and drew the red crystal shard from his belt.
“Name,” he said evenly. “Former occupation.”
The green-eyed skeleton grabbed its skull.
“I—I don’t—”
Its voice trembled.
“My thoughts are…”
Both hands tightened.
Clack.
“OH GOD, WHAT IF I THINK THE WRONG THING?!”
The thought detonated through the cavern.
Elias winced.
Panic flooded the skeleton’s voice.
“No, no, don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think about—”
A beat.
“Poopy buttholes.”
The cavern answered.
POOPY BUTTHOLES.
POOPY BUTTHOLES.
POOPY BUTTHOLES.
Silence.
Kaya broke first.
“AHAHA—”
Her laughter exploded outward.
AHAHA.
AHAHA.
AHAHA.
The echoes rolled into the abyss.
Then something screamed back.
High-pitched.
Distant.
Not an echo.
Everyone stopped.
The scream came again.
Closer.
Then footsteps joined it.
TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP.
Fast.
Sid snatched up the blue crystal light.
“We need to move. Now.”
No argument.
Elias followed immediately.
Kaya grabbed the new skeleton by the forearm and pulled.
Nothing.
She pulled harder.
The hybrid barely shifted. Its altered frame was considerably heavier than theirs.
“Come with us,” Kaya snapped, “or die again.”
Green eyes stared at her.
“I— Ah—WHAT?!”
Nobody answered.
They ran.