Содержание

"Ahem... Well, pleased to meet you... lady."
"A bit hard to tell it by my looks now, huh? Well, that's okay... I haven't been feeling myself too feminine all these years anyway. Hanging on a tree is not a pleasant way of killing the time, you know. So, let me get on with the story now..."

Edwin listened very carefully. At first, it seemed, there's nothing unusual about the story. Charline was just a peasant's daughter, living in a small village nearby. Everything around had been rather quiet and calm... until one night the brigands came.
There were several dozens of them. Dozens of ruthless cutthroats, ready to kill for gold. The villagers were not rich at all, but the bandits didn't care - that merciless band just swept over their homes, as would a blind ocean wave - taking everything, torturing and killing everyone brave (or foolish) enough to stand on their way. Of course, they could not pass by a young peasant girl without satisfying their animal needs.
"I knew, that my village won't survive that dreadful night, - she continued, - and I also had no hope of surviving it myself. I was quite sure, that they would just kill me after doing with me all they wanted to do. So,                                                   

when one of those bastards grabbed me, I just spitted right into his grinning face. That was my fatal mistake..."
A few hours later, they hung her, violently beaten and completely broken, on a tree branch. As she closed her eyes, feeling her life slipping away, hoping to end this agony at last, she suddenly heard a sinister laugh nearby.
It was him. Red-faced bandit, looking at her with an exultant air, laughing like a jackass... and there also was some strange greenish glow, emanating from his wrinkled hands. She grew cold with terror from a sudden thought... but it was too late: that eerie light was growing brighter, floating off from the bandit's hands, and surrounding Charline. Before falling into darkness, she felt something ice-cold touching her skin and proceeding inside... That bastard was no ordinary brigand. He also turned out to be a necromancer.
When the darkness suddenly let her go, she knew, that she was dead. But she was cursed to retain her mind forever, to hang on that tree, slowly becoming a lonely, helpless skeleton, losing any hope of, at least, finding some peace in death...

The slow, sad voice of the skeleton finally