‘yelch, I hate zombies.’ Mikajia thought as he approached the graveyard. Of course it was a graveyard full of zombies, why wouldn’t it be?

His previous quest for the odd Mr. Cain had been a little exciting, but this was just bizarre. Apparently the man had been working on a new spell, and according to him, the spell worked…just not how it was supposed to. The man had apparently given an undead skeleton the ability to speak. However, that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that it had started to speak after it had been dropped off at the graveyard. So now it needed to be retrieved.

Mikajia was seriously wishing he’d been working for this guy all along. Most of his previous requests were just a bunch of boring, unimaginative, monotonous tasks. But this guy…he was something else. Mikajia gave a slight grin at that thought.

‘Well, good news is, zombies are slow and sluggish. I won’t have a hard time getting around them. Also, seeing as I’m looking for a skeleton, it should be fairly easy to spot. Especially a talking skeleton.’ He thought as he got closer and closer to the graveyard.

There was a light fog settling just above the ground all throughout the graveyard, the pale moonlight lightly illuminating the wisps of fog slithering through the trees surrounding the graveyard, and the tombstones dotting the earth. It wasn’t much longer till he saw the first zombie, or rather, heard first, then saw.

The quiet moan barely reaching his ears past the gate, the grunt of its voice little more than a whisper. He stopped roughly five feet outside the gate surrounding the area, his eyes scanning the scene before him, searching for the form to which the voice belonged. The thin fog appeared to get much thicker further into the graveyard. The moon wasn’t very bright tonight, so it didn’t do much to illuminate his surroundings, making it hard to discern what was inside the fog. But from the way the fog kept swirling, he could tell that clearly there were multiple creatures moving in the fog.

Eventually he got his glimpse. He had dealt with these guys before, so he wasn’t surprised, but it didn’t do anything to make them less disturbing. The gaunt, rotting skin; opaque lifeless eyes, if they had any at all; hair, if any, barely clinging to the scalp in thin frayed strands. They were disgusting.

He kept searching, trying to see if he could tell from afar roughly how many of the zombies he’d have to deal with, and that’s when he heard something else, a voice. This one though, wasn’t moaning, it was speaking. Whatever it was saying, he couldn’t really tell, it was too far away. But it was clear that it was actually speaking and not moaning. It had to be the skeleton. A few more moments later and he could just make out the tiniest sliver of an image of what appeared to be a skeleton walking around the mausoleum.

He hunched, readying himself to sprint as fast as he could. A moment later, he was vaulting over the fence and darting between the tombstones. He spun around the first zombie and knocked it aside, causing it to stumble into another nearby zombie. The two zombies made a commotion, which is exactly what he was looking for considering the creatures responded to noise the best. The louder the noise, the more they focused on it. His quiet running between the tombstones might as well have been completely silent in exchange.

As he ran, he knocked aside a few other zombies, making sure they stumbled hard and kept the attention off of himself. It was a mere matter of seconds before he was arriving at the mausoleum. He didn’t waste any time responding to the talking skeleton, wanting to get out of this place as fast as possible. He ran up to the thing, grabbed the forehead of the skull and chopped the back of the neck, cleanly popping the skull off of the spine. With the skull in his possession, he turned and darted back out of the graveyard, nimbly avoiding any zombies along the way. A few moments later, he was vaulting back over the fence to safety.

Roughly one hour later, Mikajia was standing in front of Cain once more. He assumed the man was happy to have his talking skull, but it would only be speculation, considering the man seemed to never take off the skull helmet that covered his face. At least while Mikajia was around. Then again, for all he knew, the skull face was permanent. But that didn’t really matter to him. All that mattered was that this was yet another job well done and satisfied client.

Cain handed Mikajia his payment with a nod. He returned the nod before turning around and heading back home.

WC = 818/500