Heather the Necromancer

Heather stood by the side of the fallen woman and let out a sigh. She felt terrible that Grettah had died again, but the world and the way it worked was beginning to wear on her. She knew that Grettah would respawn and come back with all new equipment to try again. This concept made her think as she knelt beside the body.

“So, the world must be flooded with the items players start with,” Heather said as she picked up the fallen woman's backpack. “Every time she dies, she adds another backpack full of stuff to the world.”

“Not exactly,” Frank said. “If you notice I bury most people with their gear on. Just like the bodies, the armor and weapons fade away, adding points to my graveyard. If you drop a starter sword in the woods, it will fade away as well after a while. The stuff you take from her will stay as well so long as it's in your tower or possession. Only player crafted or special magic items persist for eons if discarded.”

“Which only makes that tower in the forest all the more strange,” Heather said.

She noted that Frank didn't have a reply to that comment, so she went on poking through the pack. She confiscated the contents of the bag and slung it over her shoulder.

Frank threw Grettah over his shoulder and carried the body away as they worked their way to the trail.

“So, do you think whatever was in the forest is gone?” Quinny asked as they got back on the trail.

“We should stop by your burial mound and see,” Heather said. “I will feel better knowing some dangerous monster isn’t hiding in the trees.”

The found the second body, and Heather had the bone knight drag it behind them. They made their way to Quinny's mound and stepped through the narrow tunnel entrance. Heather ordered the bone knight to wait outside and followed them in.

Inside the mound looked unchanged except for the middle of the right wall. Here there was a set of stone steps that went down into a lower tunnel. This tunnel was made of stone blocks and had inserts for bodies to be laid to rest on. Its walls were covered in cobwebs, and in places, roots and vines hung down from above. It twisted to the right and ended in a stone archway. Here there was a rusted metal gate that Qiunny unlocked with a magic command. Inside was a round room with nooks in the walls to hold even more bodies. The center of the chamber went up five steps to a large stone sarcophagus that had a bronze brazier at each corner. A torch flame burned in each brazier, giving the room a flickering illumination.

Quinny went to the stone coffin in the center of the room and knelt, entering the buffer.

Heather watched as Quinny tapped away, wondering how this all worked. The world behaved in many ways like it was a game, and the players were detached. They all needed some way to change the game from the outside. Quinny and Frank could access that connection in their inner chambers, and she could do it with her panel. It was clearly an illusion of some kind, but it felt real in every other way. The wind blew and caused her hair to fly in her face. The sun shined down and made her sweat. Water made her skin wet and quenched her thirst. She grew hungry at times, tired at others, and could stub her toe or break a nail. Yet here she stood in a burial mound surrounded by the undead, and she felt normal.

“How can any of this be normal?” she asked herself silently. She waited as if some higher version of herself was going to answer and grew irritated when it didn’t.

“I live in a stone tower on the edge of a graveyard so I can be close to my friends, the Ghoul, and zombie.” She smiled at that thought as it passed through her mind. Maybe she had been in a car accident, and this was some kind of coma dream. She tried to rationalize away that at any moment, she was going to wake up, and this would all be a dream.

“There is nobody in the forest,” Quinny announced from the stone coffin. All but two of the bats are dead, and there is only one wolf left.”

“Somebody was here and moved on,” Frank said.

“That or they are in the graveyard or the tower,” Quinny added as she stood up.

Heather snapped her head up at the concept that they could be in the tower. The thought hadn't occurred to her before that her tower wasn't exactly secure. As she began to worry about the tower, Frank spoke up.

“So, this is the room I can connect to?”

Quinny stepped down the stairs as she nodded.

“No, connect to the tunnel outside the room. That way, I can seal this room off and leave the tunnels open.”

“Didn’t you say there was a small side tunnel?” Heather asked.

Quinny nodded and took them to a place on the wall where three stone coffins stood vertically. She pulled the lid of one open to reveal a tunnel of stone behind it.

“A secret tunnel,” Heather said as she looked into the tiny passage. It was as narrow as the entrance to the outside and looked like it was cut from the rock. Its floor was bumpy, and it bent to the left and out of sight.

“I could join the tunnel outside and make a small hidden room to connect to this,” Frank said. “Then I can make a secret door between the room and my tunnel. That way, you have a way to slip out of this room if somebody is attacking your gate.”

“Yeah, do that,” Quinny said.

“I need to do something with my towers lower room,” Heather added as she thought of having a secret escape tunnel.

“I doubt you have many options for lower halls,” Frank said. “You will have all your choices inside the tower.”

“She must have something, though,” Quinny suggested. “Like a wine cellar or something.”

Frank shrugged and turned for the doorway. “Let's go bury those bodies, and I will spend some points to connect to your burial mound.”

Heather followed them back as she looked around the tunnel and the burial mound itself. Why was none of this bothering her anymore? Why did talking to a ghoul and a zombie not seem to upset her?

Outside they resumed their trek to the graveyard, and she ordered her bone knight to follow. Once there, Frank dug open the earth of the burial pit and threw the bodies inside before covering them again.

It was one more little ceremony they did that didn't seem to upset her anymore. If anything, more bodies meant more food to pillage. She was living on the dry foodstuffs players had and the cheese and cider she stole from Moon. The goblins brought her apples from time to time, but she was getting sick of those. Sooner or later, she was going to have to look for a better source of food. That might mean going to the city in the north.

“So, what are you going to get for your forest next?” Frank asked.

“I think I want to expand it across the road a little and then go north a bit.”

“You want to make it bigger?”

Quinny nodded. “The more space I have, the more bats and wolves will spawn. When are you going to expand your graveyard?”

“I have more than enough points to expand, but I didn't want to push either of you back. I will save up until I can build a bridge over the stream.”

“I can pull my forest back,” Quinny offered.

“I wanted to go to the other side for a while now,” he insisted. “I have a plan for a big obelisk.”

Heather remembered the garden courtyard and obelisk he wanted to build. She also remembered the grand pyramid he mentioned.

“How can you build your pyramid if my tower is here?” she asked.

“I have been thinking about that,” he replied. “I am not sure I want the pyramid anymore. It doesn’t fit the theme I want.”

“Then what will you build?” she asked.

“A cathedral,” he replied, throwing his hands in the air. “A big gothic cathedral with soaring walls and big towering windows.”

Heather noted the familiar excitement in his voice when he talked about building and smiled.

“So, where are you going to put that?” Surely you don't mean to build it over the stream?”

“I can build around your tower,” he said. “That or we can move your tower back.”

“I can move my tower?” she asked.

“Your tower doesn't earn experience like the graveyard does. Quinny can move her forest, and you can move your tower. If we wanted, you could put your tower on the next hill back.”

“But, you can't move yours at all?” Heather asked.

Frank paused a moment to think of how to explain it. “The graveyard levels up two ways. I earn points I can spend on the graveyard and the tunnels. The graveyard itself earns experience from bodies being buried in it. If I wanted to move, I would keep all my points, but lose the graveyard experience.”

Heather had to think about that for a moment before she understood. She looked back to her tower, covered in blue and black, and thought about moving it.

“So, what happens to the things inside if I move it?”

“They all go into the buffer,” Frank said. “They appear back in the tower when you set it in place.”

She nodded as a thought worked around in her head.

“If I can move my tower when ever I want, why not always move it?” she said.

“Why would you always move it?”

“I mean, like if we had to go on a long adventure. Why not move the tower over and over, so you always had a place to stay? Just take it with by moving it.”

“She is really good at abusing the system,” Quinny laughed.

“She is devious at it,” Frank agreed. “But you and I both know it won’t work.”

Quinny shrugged. “Dare to dream.”

“Why won't it work?” Heather asked.

“You can only move your building once a week,” Frank replied. “I assume to prevent things like that.”

Heather waved him off and looked over to her tower. “Do you want me to figure out how to move it then?”

“No, leave it where it is,” he said. “I want to go over the river first.”

“I can expand my forest as I level to surround the next hill,” Quinny offered.

“I kind of like being part of the graveyard,” Heather replied.

“Your yard fits in with it,” Frank said.

“I had other choices,” Heather reminded him. “Maybe I can switch if I move it.”

“If you want to switch your yard style, I won't complain,” Frank said.

Heather eyed him for a moment and wondered just how true that was. She was tempted to ring the tower with flower gardens full of color and birds just to find out. Still, she appreciated the approval and the desire not to make her move.

“I am going to go see if I can extend down to the bank of the stream,” Frank said and walked off.

Heather watched him shuffle away his arms and fingers so long they nearly dragged in the dirt. She looked down at her wrist and wondered why the visitors wanted her. What did she have that made her special?

“What does special even mean?” Heather said softly.

“What?” Quinny asked.

Heather turned to her as the thought tumbled in her mind. “Being chosen. Frank says it means I am special, but what does that mean?”

Quinny sat on a grave and swayed back and forth as she thought about it.

“I suppose it means you have something to offer the world that somebody else doesn’t,” she said.

“Quinny, all I do all day is take classes, study, and read tweets. I like to watch television and movies, mostly online and mostly while hardly paying attention. I can’t imagine what role somebody with absolutely no knowledge of a fantasy world has to offer one.”

“Maybe that’s what you have to offer,” she said. “A whole new perspective.”

“What good will that do, anybody?”

Quinny tossed her head. “Don't most big changes start with somebody seeing things in a new way or with a new perspective? Isn't that what think outside the box means?”

Heather laughed. “I think just like everybody else. I learn my points of view from social media and never rock the boat.”

“That's part of why I came in here,” Quinny said. “All that social media nonsense was getting too hard. My friends were always fighting about something over social media. There was always something to be mad about.”

Heather had to agree that it did seem to be the case. She missed her phone and her streaming videos but had hardly thought about it since coming here. Her mind was so preoccupied with what was going on here that she hadn't had time to consider it.

“Hey! I saw his graveyard change!” Quinny said as she hopped up. She ran past Heather to the edge of the yard by the stream. The fence had moved down the slope of the hill and was now ten feet from the water's edge. As the two watched graves began to appear out of a white mist and a steep, uneven path wound along the slope. A dark tree with barren branches grew in one corner, and a boulder with a pickaxe and shovel laying on it appeared in the other.

“This is so fun to watch,” Quinny said.

A tall grave with a cross enclosed in a ring appeared near the center. It looked weathered and cracked with mold growing on one side. Heather took note of this and pondered the distant tower from the other day. Graves in franks yard looked like they were a hundred or more years old, so why not the tower? Was it so odd that the contents appeared to be ancient?

“There's a gate by the stream,” Quinny said, disrupting her thoughts.

Heather looked up to see there was indeed a small iron gate that could be used to exit the yard by the stream shore.

“People could just come in that way and skip most of the forest,” Heather said.

“Most people wouldn't think to look for it,” Quinny said. “From the road, all they see is the forest with your tower in the distance. Most of them follow the trail instead of looking for a way around. If it became a problem, I would just spread down the road more.”

“Good, you're still here,” Frank said as he came up behind them.

“I like it,” Quinny said, pointing down the slope.

“I added something for you,” he replied.

Quinny smiled and looked around the yard. “What did you add?”

“The tall cross thing,” he replied. “It spawns zombies.”

“Ha!” Quinny laughed. “I can blend in. Nobody will ever suspect me.”

Heather wasn't sure that was true. Although Quinny's skin was white with dark blotches and her face and mouth had deep scars, she looked very normal. She even wore a simple white dress that did more to highlight her curves than scream zombie. Even as Heather made the observation, the soil around the gravestone started to move and out crawled a hideous rotting corpse. An eye hung down over green and black skin that hung loose on a twisted frame. It looked as if dogs had attacked and chewed on it for all the wounds it had.

“Oh, you will blend in perfectly,” Heather laughed.

“I didn’t want to be a disgusting looking zombie, Just a dead person,” Quinny said. “Maybe it will spawn some less terrible ones.”

“I doubt it,” Frank said. “But maybe.”

“How many does it spawn?” Heather asked curiously.

“Only two,” Frank replied. “But I can upgrade it or add more spawners.”

“Now we have skeletons, wolves, bats, and zombies,” Quinny said.

“And Heather’s bone knight,” Frank added.

“And your dog,” Heather added back.

“And the dog,” Frank agreed.

“Yah, but people won’t fight those normally,” Quinny said. “All we need are more players.”

“We seem to be getting some,” Heather said. “There are people in the forest every couple of days, and Grettah has come back a few times.”

“It would help if there was a town nearby, but we can always go on adventures on slow days,” Quinny added.

Heather nodded her agreement as they began to walk around the path. She wondered if taking the flower singer was a poor choice. Maybe she should have taken a class that could build a town.

“Umm, why is there water coming out of your door?” Quinny asked.

Heather stopped and looked across the yard to her tower, where water was slowly dripping out her front stoop.

“I think your bath is full,” Frank laughed.

Across the graveyard and forest was heard a single scream of frustration.