As she stepped forward, a red light suddenly flickered just beyond their own light’s reach. It quickly spread to cover a circle on the floor, with five points around the edge of the circle glowing particularly strongly - and then lines started to connect those five points to form a pentagram.
“Another trap!” Latoya shouted unnecessarily as the two of them dashed forward. The five glowing points were crystals embedded in the floor, and their light revealed more runes and markings in the floor around the lines that already were glowing right before the red light spread to fill them as well.
Before either of the two could get close enough to do anything, there was a bright flash of red light. When it faded, the light had vanished from the circle, and an armored skeleton armed with a rusty longsword was standing in the center of the circle facing the two girls. It made a hissing noise as it raised its weapon. As if that wasn’t bad enough, red light started to flicker in the crystals again.
“You break the circle before it summons more, I’ll take the skeleton!” Miriel shouted. She pulled her machete, sheath and all, off of her belt, and braced the sheath with her left hand as she charged forward, trying to push the skeleton away from the circle.
The skeleton just raised its sword to block. Miriel punched forward with both arms as she approached, drawing out a loud clang as its sword met Miriel’s machete, and the skeleton’s sword arm shattered from the impact. It slowed Miriel enough, though, that she only managed to lightly bump against the skeleton’s breastplate without moving it at all. It clattered at her as she fell back a pace, and then punched out with its remaining arm; Miriel attempted to parry, but missed and was hit in the stomach. She stumbled backward into the wall of the corridor, gasping for breath.
“Stop playing around and just take its head off or something!” Latoya shouted at her as she crouched behind the skeleton. She hammered away at one of the crystals in the circle, knocking it free, but that only caused the red light spreading through the circle to flicker briefly; Latoya cursed and glanced back and forth at the other crystals. The skeleton paid her no heed, though; it walked closer to Miriel.
“Working - it!” Miriel coughed out. She dodged to the right as the skeleton punched out again; its blow missed her head and cracked one of the stones in the wall behind her. Miriel still didn’t bother with drawing her machete. She just spun to the left and used the sheathed weapon to hammer at the skeleton’s shoulder. The brittle bone shattered, and the skeleton’s other arm fell off.
The skeleton hissed again, but couldn’t do much more than that. Miriel reared back and aimed for its head this time. As the skull went bouncing away, the headless, armless corpse fell apart in a clatter of bone and metal. At almost exactly the same time, there was a loud sizzling noise as the red light competing with their lantern abruptly vanished.
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