Claude had been prepared to leave the room, there were two entrance points. The first was the blank compacted dirt tunnel behind him, the second was marked by a large skull atop an open doorway. He had seen nothing in the tunnel except the torches and their bone-style holdings on the walls.

  Unless he wanted to take break one off the wall and use it as an alternative weapon or a source of light then there was little reason for him to go back there.

  The doorway with the skull above was a different matter. The light which he had seen glowing on Sally was there but smeared around the edges. His vision continued with the same reddish-tint but inside the smaller room with bone walls, floor and lower ceiling every single bone glowed with a red effect giving him plenty of light to see by.

  Night vision. Or infra-red. Body heat? Blood? Can I detect traces of blood now? Doesn’t matter really. I have a location and a limit. Would that be hours or days? How could I keep track of time here?

  The message from Kamryn had given him a little but more to work with. Better than the floating backpack Sally with her threats and insistence that if he returned home then someone would target him because of some virus in his bloodstream.

  Claude decided he truly needed to hold of talking out loud as long as he could. He’d kept the habit when he’d been working by himself on the long-distance operational boat for his contracted job for the Acqua Foundation and the limited artificial support did respond to his questions.

  He stood up and held the book in one hand trying to work out how to secure it when the small bone tooth club had partially detached itself from his hand and stretched out towards it.

  He placed the book around his arm as it wrapped around it, binding it to him. The position wasn’t ideal nor comfortable as he’d just used up the one weapon that he had in exchange for a make-shift carrying tool.

  Claude also took a moment to check out the grey suit he was wearing, the fabric was similar to a body suit but it was tear-resistant, even when he used his sharpened teeth to try and bite through it.

  Good to know. Armour then. Or insurance against an early death. Is an Inheritor-Candidate meant to kill a giant? How does that work?

  The book itself was old, Claude was considering how something so old could remain in good condition but there was far too many unanswered questions already. He was either in a simulation or he wasn’t. Either way he had a specific goal. To escape the place called the Ossuary and Forgotten Catacombs of Remembrance.

  Vaguely he remembered that an ossuary was where dead bodies were stored. He saw bones everywhere but not a single skull. The amount of time and energy spent in layering them and then fitting them together must have been an extravagance.

  Besides, the number of bones inside the human body was vast. Which didn’t explain why he had only seen the same types of bones over and over again. They were all from legs or arms. There was nothing else. Unless they had fitted smaller bones together and he was unable to tell.

  The room itself was chilly but not entirely uncomfortable. Claude supposed that his body had either changed enough physically that the lack of drinkable water wasn’t going to be a factor yet. Or the grey suit or another factor was in play.

  Yeah. Not wanting to eat or drink anything is a clear sign of a simulation but this place doesn’t have the recognisable signs. If this was a video game style place then I’d be seeing screens with numbers pop up in front of me.

  Claude was sitting in the centre of the room as he chose to try and relax himself a little. With the book attached to his arm he was secure inside this room as much as anyway else.

  If there was going to be danger then being stuck in the middle of a room away from the walls and compacted dirt tunnel was going to be a safer bet. He had a relative viewpoint of the entire space.

  In the message Kamryn had sent him she had mentioned something called a drone. Either it was a threat or something that lived here. He had few answers and despite his physical enhancement his mind kept trying to play catch up.

  Training rule for survival situations. When you’re in a relatively safe situation, allow yourself a little time to take stock of the situation and rest a little. The mind and body need rest. Throat isn’t parched, stomach isn’t hungry.

  Probably suffering a little trauma but nothing with immediate effect. I don’t have the desire to smash my fists into one of those images until the bones of my knuckles show through.

  Claude was trying his best to identify the bones in the room, he had initially started counting but stopped in case he got too focused in the activity and further lost track of time.

  The bones inside the room were set into organised layers to form a type of flooring which was directly repeated in the ceiling but there was minor variance. Small patches where bone had been taken way, either through force or repaired.

  Unless something eats them. Like I did. No, like I was fed by Kamryn in her….non-human form. Do I look like that? I could do with a mirror. Shame about my survival kit.

  Besides, he wasn’t a trained biologist and had only a basic understanding of the human skeletal form. He’d recognise a pelvic bone if he saw it but telling it was from the body of a biological male or female human was beyond him.

  Was it hip width? Larger for men? Or was that for woman? I’m losing track of time here. Day, night. My training. Keep moving. Why do I keep forgetting it?

  His arm twitched as the bone tooth club wrapped around the book pulled him a little. By this point, he was considering it as a living organism which had bonded or was living off his life energy or blood like a parasitic creature.

  There was no way at this point he was going to name it. For him it was a weapon and possibly a more versatile tool. If it moved then there was a good reason for it, he half-suspected that it was working based on his own unconscious desires.

  There was a definite reaction as it pulled his arm a little. Claude scanned the room for an alternative place to go. The compacted dirt tunnel was an option, and so was the open doorway with the larger than life skull atop it.

  He could always try to smash apart the bone floor or the walls to see if he could build a type of cave or makeshift shelter. Then he’d have something to eat and a safer place to sit and read. Even for a short time.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Option three it is. I’m not stupid enough to use my bare knuckles though. How strong exactly is this small bone toothed club? It can transform according to my subconscious or conscious will. Maybe. Or the thing is half-alive and responds to what I need the most at a given moment.

  Standing up, Claude willed to himself that he wanted to carry the book in his other hand. Then he wanted a knuckleduster. Something to punch hard with. Or at least to protect his knuckles and fingers.

  The silence inside the bone layered room was peaceful in a sense. Without him talking or making sound outside of movement and breathing there was a near absolute silence of the dead.

  Claude put his hand palm up just under the book as it dropped off as the small bone tooth club uncurled and flattened, shifting to his wrist and then covering his knuckles on his left hand. The other clutched the book tightly in a strong grip so he wouldn’t drop it.

  Good, like a wrap. Shame that my knowledge about punching things came from minimal combat training. I have a rough idea about where to position my feet and angle my body but I’ll give it a go.

  Walking up to one of the plain walls, Claude noticed that there was no carved images inside this room. He tried to grab for the bones which had been compacted and aligned in neat rows from the floor to the ceiling.

  There was nothing there for him to grip, not even an edge. It was as though the bone had been melted together to form a smooth pattern. If he hadn’t seen Kamryn tear through the bone on the ceiling and throw down chunks of it as she ripped it apart then he would have considered it as one fixed solid piece.

  She broke it. Before maybe, but now? I’ll try it once. Then I’m going to leave this room. Something is here. On the edge of my senses, there’s something here. I can’t see it but it’s there.

  As he drew back his fist and pivoted on his foot to throw a quick punch before he decided against it. If he was going to try and break a chunk of bone from the wall then he’d need more than this.

  Taking more steps back he allowed himself a run up before Claude leaped into the air and threw his left hand forward, clenching it into a fist as he smashed it directly into the bone wall in front of him.

  His knuckles, covered with the bone tooth club, scraped along it as he stumbled into the wall on his side and avoided falling onto his arm still holding onto the leathery book.

  He stood up and saw that he had inflicted negligible damage on the bone wall. The barest marks of white could have been from the flattened bone tooth club which covered his knuckles and was wrapped around his hand.

  There was a deep ache inside his wrist though, he had injured it due to incorrect punching technique and the impact had caused damage. He shook his wrist a few times as the bone tooth club peeled itself off his knuckles and wrapped around the damaged area as a type of support.

  I’m not going to be able to punch, dig or do any physical stuff for a bit. Why did Sally say that I’d want to be a superhuman back on Belphus?

  Claude decided to give up on the idea of trying to break bone off from the surface inside these rooms, he’d have a better chance in the compacted dirt tunnel of digging out a space for himself and then filling it back in behind him.

  His immediate concern was the complete lack of food, drink or any form of sustenance. Kamryn had ripped out large chunks of bone and his body had become animalistic and devoured it to feed an appetite he didn’t know existed.

  Not going to the toilet nor the physical urge to do so wasn’t necessarily a good sign he knew. His body could have been suffering severe signs of dehydration of malnutrition but he didn’t experience any weakness, his limbs didn’t ache. Not even a headache.

  He supposed he could wait until his body was hungry and then see if there were any physical or mental changes once more. With his transformed body he didn’t know his own limits.

  He could see through relative layers of dim light, blood, flesh or something glowed in his vision. He was faster, stronger and took less damage. The impact of the run up punch and the height he leaped into the air was far beyond his previous abilities.

  I wish I had regeneration powers. Then I could slice off parts of the flesh on my arm and….and….wait. Why am I thinking that? Who in the name of the forgotten gods would ever eat their own flesh? Note to self. I’m suffering a mental breakdown. Think positive thoughts.

  Trying to distract himself, Claude bit down on the sleeve of the grey body suit he had been fitted in. The texture was tough and it shifted a little when his teeth tried to grip it.

  He was certain that with his changed tooth structure he could eventually chew through it or even rip a small tea.

  After having ripping out his own freshly grown new layer of teeth a while back in the compacted dirt tunnel in front of Sally he didn’t want to risk them growing back if he overly used them.

  His mouth was a little more sore now, all traces of blood flowing had stopped a good while ago but there was a deep heat inside him which wanted something to bite. To tear into. To crush and allow to settle within.

  An ache came from his wrist once more as Claude saw his skin around the affected area turn light grey before it returned to its normal flesh colour. The knuckles on his left hand had visibly hardened. Just a little but enough for him to notice the change.

  He clenched a fist, ignoring the ache and he ran his a few fingers while clutching the book still across the knuckles to see that there had been a hardening of the bone there.

  Bone density. Is that an effect of the scones and tea or the unknown virus which was dumped into me? What about the fungus? I was fed fungus which was growing inside bones. I need to throw up.

  Claude observed the room he was in. Little had changed, there was no dimming of light. No alarms raised when he had hit the wall. Just an empty space filled with the partial remains of the dead, all polished, stacked and compressed and then turned into smooth surfaces.

  He had two realistic choices. One was to go back into the compacted dirt tunnel and dig out himself out an area to hide, rest and at least have a minimum of security. The other was to head towards the open doorway with the overly large skull above it. There was darkness beyond it but nothing else.

  If Claude was lucky then he could encounter something to eat along the way. The thought struck him then that the torches in the tunnel were mounted on walls with brackets made from bone. He might not be able to smash into the walls, floors or ceilings of the ossuary rooms but he could break those off and try to eat a portion.

  Think Claude. Survival situation. What do I need. I have something which I can roughly use to carry things. I need something to contain liquid. Any liquid to drink. Think.

  If he stayed in this room longer then Claude knew that his death was going to be eventual. Slow but eventual.

  in any survival situation, according to the training he’d had back in his employment at the Acqua Foundation it was important to have a focused goal.

  Then Claude looked at the slightly oversized skull atop the open doorway leading out of the room. He had something which could loop through the eyeholes and despite not being able to break the bones compacted into the walls he could take on a skull surely.

  A skull cup. Use the adaptable bone tooth club as a belt, loop the book and skull cup around it. Then go to the tunnel to take a torch or two and break off a few of those bone mounts holding them in place.

  I don’t have liquid yet but….the tunnel smelled of mildew. That fungus needs water, moisture to grow. I have my goal.

  Claude began walking towards the open doorway.

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