Mary stumbled through the forest, cussing under her breath about the situation, “stupid bloody Merchant.” She swore as she thought about how she got into this mess.

Mary Thorps had been so excited to be going to PortCon that year but, when she found out that Jonathan *Jonny* Sims The writer and main character of her favorite horror podcast series The Magnus Archives would be attending that year.
It made her all the more excited to attend and to pull out all the stops when it came to her female cosplay of Jared Hoppworth, so that is just what she did, from loose baggy gray pants to the cloak and hood that obscured her face to heavy green boots like those you would see your gardener wearing well tending plants, and she even went to the trouble of creating prosthetic moving limbs that moved underneath her clothing to give the illusion that her flesh was roiling and writhing underneath her clothes, but sadly she was missing the one piece that brought it all together that being The BoneTurner’s Tale The book that caused Jared Hoppworth to be like this in the first place, and what gave him the title of The BoneTurner.

As soon as Mary had gotten to the convention center she immediately ran to the celebrity section to try and get an autograph from Jonathan Sims.
After doing that she started to wander around all over the place before stumbling across a table that was seemingly being manned by the merchant from the resident evil franchise, but that wasn’t what Mary cared about what she cared about was the fact that on the front table of this vendors booth was a exact replica of The BoneTurner’s Tale, and Mary felt she had to have it as it would finally complete her cosplay.

“How much for the book?” Mary asked not caring if she came across as rude.

Luckily the merchant didn’t seem to mind as he answered her saying “ how much are you willing to pay for it?”

“ $50-$60 is as high as I’m willing to go.” Mary replied,

“What if I throw in a guest for Mr. spider, The Book Of The Trapped and Ex Altiora?” The merchant replied,

“ $200-$250 but no higher as otherwise I wouldn’t have enough money to pay for transit home.” Mary replied,

“Fair enough and you know what just because this has been some fun haggling I will let you pick one item for free my treat.” The merchant said with a slight grin on his face,

“You sure these all seem pretty valuable.” Mary said,

“Oh I thank you for noticing the craftsmanship but yes I’m sure.” The merchant said,

So Mary paid the merchant and began to walk away, tucked away The book of the Trapped, Ex Altiora, and A guest for Mr. spider in her backpack that she had underneath her cloak while she clipped The BoneTurner’s Tale onto her belt, and clipped a pair of rather ornate pruning shears to an empty clip on the other side of her belt, no sooner had she done this that she fell unconscious but, when people ran over to see if she was OK no one saw anything except for a small pile of dirt.

And that about brings us back to the present where Mary is now running through a forest trying to find a way out while cursing up a storm as large wooden wolves chase after her, Mary thinks quickly ‘ what can I do to lose these things’ because Mary was 90% sure that these creatures weren’t wolves even if they looked visually similar, she just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about these creatures she could feel it well funnily enough in her bones, all 412 of them, Mary mentally stowed away the fact that she had double the amount of bones that any human should ever have, as a thought to freak out about later.

For now having double the amount of joints was very useful to have as she could take much sharper turns than her pursuers. As she finally reached a forest clearing as she noticed that over the last week that these beasts of timber would never stray too far into the sunlight, and when one had it was not a pretty sight.

As Mary caught her breath and took a mental stock of herself she noticed two very important things one she still had her backpack which was good and two she was twice the height she knows she had been for all of her life mentally storing that thought away to freak out about later she took tally of the supplies in her backpack, some granola, the other books she’s gotten from that merchant, her pruning shears, an extra set of clothes, A large set of butchering tools, and approximately 364 tiny bones from what creature she couldn’t figure out.

what she did know is that she had no idea what to do, but, then got an idea that she really hoped it worked, Mary began to carve the largest bone she could find from her backpack which seemed to be the femur bone of some sort of canine.

Several hours later Mary had finally finished the flute she had been carving and really hope to high hell that this was going to work, she began to play first slowly and softly but then faster and faster as she did so she noticed the Earth around her began to move as bones of long dead creatures began to claw and drag their way out of the ground flesh starting to grow over their bones, but no skin, and blood starting to flow through their newly forming hearts, as Mary continue to play the song of blood and Bones and Flesh.

Now with an impromptu army in case wooden beast wanted to attack her at night.
She began carving again this time on as many of the small bones in her back pack as she could carving tiny talismans that glowed with bloody red light.

After she had finished carving all of the talisman she began to place them around the perimeter of the clearing, first by taking a small hole and dropping one of the talismans in before covering the whole thing with dirt once again she repeated this process over and over and over again until all the perimeter of the clearing was covered with tiny freshly sealed holes each with the talisman sitting waiting for one of the beast to just try to get inside.

Then Mary just burned time going about living her life here in this clearing for uncountable years, and began to tend a slowly growing garden, before the strangest thing happened, A creature appeared (One she would learn was of a species called a pony) and started talking.

Author's Note

For those of you who can guess what entities Mary here is the avatar of, I mean other than The Flesh