Heather the Necromancer

Heather tossed and turned in her sleep as she dreamed about running from hulking green orcs. The encounter left her shaken, and she lay awake in her bed for hours. Thankfully the door could be reset and was once again firmly barred from the inside. Her bone knight stood guard on the second floor now. She no longer wanted to risk anybody smashing their way in and seeing him. He would only react if they came up the stairs giving her time to try and bluff her way out of any danger.

Breanne was settled on the third floor in a tiny guest room. To help Heather sleep, she promised to watch the tower at night. Nothing would be able to approach without Breanne seeing it and alerting the others. This helped a little, and Heather finally managed to get a few hours before the sunlight once again beamed in through the blue window.

Azure rays split the dry tower air, revealing the dust that floated like sparkles. Heather pulled the thin blanket over her head to try and block out the light. She wanted a few more hours of sleep and settled in with a sigh. Even as she did, Quinny called from outside, and Heather opened one eye so that she could roll it.

“Of course,” she groaned. “Frank said we needed to leave early.”

She crawled out of bed, feeling very much like a zombie herself and struggled into a simple blue dress. With a yawn, she stumbled down the stairs to the door and opened it to recoil from the sunlight.

“Are you awake?” Quinny asked.

Heather put one hand over her face with a groaned.

“What does it look like?”

“Breanne told us you had trouble sleeping so Frank said you could sleep in. We will go tomorrow.”

Heather dropped her hand and glared at Quinny with bloodshot eyes.

“You woke me up to tell me I could sleep?”

“Yeah,” Quinny said innocently.

Heather slammed the door and crawled up three flights of stairs to her bed. She flopped face down still in her dress and quickly fell asleep. When she finally woke, the sun had moved, and she felt stiff and sore.

Her morning, or afternoon she supposed, chores would be to send a skeleton to fetch a bucket of water from the stream. She hadn't risked having them fill the tub after the last flood. She stood inside the tub instead and used a rag to wash from the bucket. The tub caught the water and kept the tower dry. Breanne now had the room next door to her washroom. Heather wondered if she could get Frank to move the tub to a higher floor so Breanne could have this entire level.

“Probably not,” she sighed and stepped out of the tub to dress. She went back upstairs to her food table. She noted there were additional dry rations in a small pack that hadn’t been there before.

“Oh, those adventurers probably had some stuff on them,” she said aloud. “Frank must have brought it in.”

A quick nibble was all she allowed herself before going back to the table with the book. She knew the time was coming when she would need to stand and fight. There were two courses of action that made sense to her. One was leveling up, which was apparently going to wait till tomorrow. The other was learning the secrets contained in the book. With option two being the only one she could take at this moment, she settled in just as Breanne came up the stairs.

“Oh good, you’re finally awake.”

“I would have been up sooner if Quinny had let me sleep,” Heather said as she flipped the page over to study the keys on the other side.

Breanne made a tsk noise and shook her head. “I told them you needed to sleep. Did she come in here and wake you?”

“She shouted at me from outside and then told me I could go back to sleep,” Heather replied.

“I will have a talk with her,” Breanne said in annoyance. “She has forgotten what it’s like to need sleep.”

Heather liked Breanne’s motherly nature and flipped the page again as she struggled to match a symbol.

“Is it making any more sense today?”

“Some of it is,” Heather said. She ran her finger along the side and pointed to the five sections. “These are descriptions of the energies that make up our connection to the world. The diagram is a sort of picture of how they overlap around a person.”

“It does make some sense to you then?”

Heather could only shrug. From what she could tell, it showed how a being existed in eight states. What those states were and why they were important was still a mystery. These states were encased in a higher state known as the sorillum. This higher state was then part of three states that made up the verum spatium. She explained it all in detail and tried to make sense of it with the picture, pointing out what she thought it might mean.

Breanne paced the room behind her, trying to puzzle it out while Heather translated more. As they struggled to make sense of it, the need for pen and paper to make notes became apparent. Having to flip pages was a nuisance and resulted in her losing her place often. If only she had some paper, she could make a copy of the key to use. Heather wondered if Moon had some in the town hall, and if so, would she have bothered to take it?

She decided the answer to that question was no. All she was concerned with was stealing the food and as many outfits as she could carry. Or get the others to carry, she mused.

She wondered if she mistreated the others, especially Frank. Time and again, she went to Frank to deal with her problems. No matter what happened, Frank always stood by her and went forward even when she wouldn't.

She pondered the notion that he should have played a noble knight of some kind. He certainly seemed to have the character for it. She tapped the page with her finger as her mind wandered and saw Frank in shining plate riding on a horse.

“Are you stuck?” Breanne asked, bringing her back to reality, or the closest thing to it.

“No,” Heather said with a yawn. “Just bored. This takes a long time, and even when I can read the words, I don't know what half of them mean.”

“It will probably make more sense when you get further in,” Breanne suggested.

“It would be a lot faster if I could make notes,” Heather argued. Or at least make a copy of the key on a separate paper. Then I won't have to flip pages to compare them.”

“You can buy paper in any major city,” Breanne said. “And they even have basic pens now, though most people use a quill.”

“The closest city is days away,” Heather sighed. “It would take two weeks to get there and get back.”

“I am aware of where the city is,” Breanne replied. “And you're right; it will take about two weeks to get their and back.”

“So unless those traders come back and decide to bring paper and pens, I have to do this the hard way,” Heather grumbled.

“Have you considered that one of your tower upgrades might come with pen and paper?” Breanne asked.

Heather sat back and turned in her chair as the obvious solution made her feel stupid.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” she said with a sigh. She looked at her arm and rubbed at her tattoo, bringing the holographic display to life. Breanne looked over her shoulder as she went to the button with her tower options and started to look through rooms.

“Try the library,” Breanne suggested.

Heather tapped at it and then held her arm high so they could look through the display at the room around them. While looking through the screen, they could see the room as it would look if it was a library. As Heather slowly panned around, they studied the image, and Breanne frowned.

“It certainly has a lot of books, but no paper to write on.”

Heather had to agree though she liked the look of the room. Tall stacks of shelves made of a honey-colored wood reached floor to ceiling. A ladder of the same wood rested against one of them. There was some furniture with green cushions and candles on metal arms between the racks. It looked warm and secluded, a quiet place to study and be alone.

“Look for something else,” Breanne prodded when Heather lingered on the library too long.

“Maybe there is some in the workshop,” Heather suggested as she tapped away. Again they studied the image and looked about the room to see tables and intricate tools but nothing that looked like paper.

“There must be something,” Breanne said as she leaned back “I was told the necromancers had private studies where they did most of their research.”

“Studies?” Heather asked.

Breanne shook her head with a sigh. “I suppose that term isn’t used much in modern dialect. It is an old way of saying the word office.”

Heather nodded as she sorted down the list and smiled to find a study. She tapped it and held out her arm so Breanne could see as well. A large desk with a tall plush chair rested against the wall. To its left was a cabinet with glass doors. There was a second table on the other wall with another chair. This table had two shelves built into it to hold books.

Heather moved around so they could see past the tall chair to the desk on the wall. There on the desk was a feather resting next to a bottle of black liquid. Beside them was a stack of crisp white paper.

“That’s it!” Breanne said with excitement.

“I need to spend a week going through my tower options,” Heather said as she looked over the room. She had some points added from the adventurers she sent to die the day before. It gave her just enough to buy the basic layout for a half room. She tapped away, and the room appeared around them, moving the old furniture to any space that wasn't occupied.

Heather was amazed that the chair under her rump changed whit her sitting in it. It was now a high backed chair with a red leather cushion and arms. It was much more comfortable than the wooden chairs she stole from Moon's town hall. With a smile, she sank back into it and swiveled it a little.

“It’s like an instant Ikea,” she mused.

“You should get up and move around a bit. It isn’t good to sit in one place for so long,” Breanne suggested as Heather sank into the chair.

“Where has Frank been?” she asked as she got up. “I feel like he’s hiding.”

“He’s been down in those tunnels all day. He said he is making them ready for when we go out.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea,” Breanne said. “I haven’t ventured down there myself.”

Heather felt a sudden pang of curiosity and decided to go and see what Frank was doing. She parted with Breanne and headed for the door. To her surprise, her bone knight stood just inside it again.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as it silently ignored her. “I thought I told you to stay upstairs?”

The skeleton didn’t respond other than to reach out and open the door for her.

One brow went high as she looked at the skeleton and then out the open door. She wanted to say something but decided to let it go and walked outside. The sun was high above at noon still, but she was sure it would move anytime now. Her normal skeletons were respawned and standing in the yard as always, and Franks skeletons meandered about the graveyard. For a moment, she thought about walking the path that looped around his graveyard. It was a pleasant walk for a sunny day, but she noted a zombie shuffling around the back corner. Not wanting to smell the creature as she passed by, she decided to head for the nearest mausoleum.

The doors were never shut, and she crept inside. Nothing seemed different here. It was a simple stone room with a stairwell in the center that descended into a strangely lit chamber below. There were cobwebs in every corner and a stray bone laying along the wall. She headed down the steps to the lower tunnel and found her first change. This room used to have only one exit that led to the middle room where Frank lived. Now it had two exits, and these were brick tunnels with polished walls.

“Alright,” she said to herself. “So which way is Frank’s lair?”

She got no answer, but as she listened, there was a faint tapping noise coming from one tunnel.

“Good enough reason to choose this one,” she guessed and wandered off.

It went on for thirty feet or so before coming to an actual door. It was made of wood and bound by two sturdy metal straps. It took a little bit of strength, but she managed to push it open to find a room she didn't expect. The doorway emptied onto a small ledge with a flight of stairs leading down. The room itself was beneath her, but directly across from here was another narrow ledge and a series of metal bars. She could see a tunnel beyond the bars but saw no way to reach it. The gap between her and the other side was easily twenty feet and could not be jumped. With no alternatives, she descended the stairs to the lower room.

This room's floor was bare moldy earth, with strange luminescent mushrooms growing in one corner. The walls were rough stone bricks held together by a dingy mortar. The room bent to the left in a long curve with a stone tunnel at either end. The only other exit was another door on the wall just beyond the stairs. This door was the same as the one above, but it had a hole on the bottom. It was big enough for a cat or a small dog to crawl through, and the ground beneath it looked disturbed.

Carefully she crept up to the door and pulled at the handle. It opened with a slight creak, and she was able to peer inside. This room was like the others, rough brick walls, and earth floors. It wasn't very big and didn't appear to have any other exits. Curiously what it did have was piles of trash. Old rotting timbers were stacked against one wall, and broken chair rested in another. There were three distinct mounds of material made up of sticks, rotting cloth, other debris. As Heather watched, a black rat as large as a cat crawled out of one and hissed. It was quickly followed by a dozen or more as they spilled out of the mounds.

She slammed the door and looked down the see the hole. Backing away, she was horrified to see a rat's eyes appear in the hole and slowly poke it's head out. Her heart began to beat rapidly as she backed further away. To her relief, the rat sniffed at the air and turned around, heading back into the room.

“Why would you add rats!” she growled as she turned around to face the hall behind her. Now she wondered if she wanted to find him. She had no idea what changes he had made down here, and if any of them were dangerous.

“What if theirs a pit full of spikes?” she argued with herself. “Or one of those blade things that swings down and cuts you in half?”

She crept up to the tunnel and peered down a hall that was dark and foreboding but still illuminated by some strange light.

“Don't be a chicken,” Heather said to herself. “Frank wouldn't put in a trap that could kill you.” She repeated that several times as she crawled slowly down the hall.

This tunnel arrived at an arched opening that emptied into another dirt-floored room. A pile of bones and skulls as tall as she was filled one corner, a large stone urn rested in another. The wall on her right had a strange fountain built into it. Water that glowed with a blue light spilled out of a skull near the ceiling. It poured down a channel cut in the wall to a basin built into the floor. She was entranced by the fountain and the light it gave off.

The light of the water made her deeply curious as she inspected the out of place fountain. She wanted to touch the water but then wondered if it might be dangerous. Maybe it was acid or some kind of poison?

With a sigh, she left the fountain alone and looked around. There was a second doorway blocked by iron bars just down the wall. A quick pull on the bars failed to move them at all. She tried pushing and then put a leg up on the wall to pull with a loud groan. It was only then she heard the noise behind her.

A clattering of bones echoed in the tiny room as something moved. Slowly Heather turned her head around to see a dark-furred dog with blazing red eyes. It stood menacingly just a few feet behind her after coming out of the pile of bones.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Heather groaned and put a hand over her face. Frank's grave hound let out a slight whine as it sat happily on its hindquarters. “I really should go back. Who knows what's down here now.”

“Heather?” Frank called out from someplace.

“I'm here with your dog,” she called back as she spun around, looking for the source of his voice.

A moment later and she saw a dark shape in the tunnel beyond the bars.

“What are you doing down here?” he asked as he arrived behind bars.

“I wanted to see what you were doing. I feel like your hiding from me.”

“I was making my tunnels harder to navigate,” he said.

“Did you have to add rats?” Heather asked in annoyance.

“Oh, you found the nest!” he said excitedly. “It's cool, isn't it?”

“They’re rats,” she insisted with a stern voice.

“It’s a crypt,” he replied in defense. “And the rats make a good addition.”

Heather let out a long sigh and shook her head. “Fine, I suppose they do fit the theme.”

“Did you want to see my lair?” he asked. “It's really nice now.”

She smiled at his boyish enthusiasm. He always got excited when he talked about building his tunnels or the graveyard.

“I would love to,” she said with a nod. “But the door doesn’t open.”

“Oh!” he said and scratched at his head. “Did you tell if you're a friend?”

“Tell the door?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied with a nod that caused droll to fly from his fanged teeth. “You have permission to pass through them all, but you have to tell them you're a friend.”

Heather tilted her head in confusion, so he continued.

“Just put your hand on a bar, and say I am a friend.”

Heather did as he instructed and grabbed a bar.

“I am a friend,” she said firmly.

There was an audible click, and the door swung freely in her hand.

“Well, that's interesting,” she said as she passed through.

“I made the locked doors magical, so you and the others can open any of them,” he said.

“Why lock them at all?” Heather asked.

“I want people to get stuck in the room with the dog,” he replied.

“Oh,” she said as it made sense.

He led her around a bend to a large circular room. The floor was paved in white tiles except for the very center where an earthen pit was exposed. The walls had stone columns running down them equally spaced around the room. Between them were stone walls, but in four places was a sort of opening that exposed the earth behind it. They were larger than a man, and each had a partially buried coffin exposed as if embedded in the wall.

The table that Frank used was here, as were a few of the urns. The two purple lights were replaced by an iron ring that hung in the center of the room that held a dozen candles all lit and flickering.

“This is better?” she asked as she stepped into the room.

“It's much better,” he said excitedly. “The room is bigger now, and it's protected.”

“How is it protected?” Heather asked as she looked around. She saw nothing that would indicate there was any danger at all.

“All my treasure is buried in the middle,” Frank began. “If anybody digs in the pit, a skeleton spawns in each alcove and attacks them.”

“Four skeletons?” Heather asked. “If anybody was strong enough to get passed your dog, four skeletons aren’t likely to stop them.”

“The skeletons are only a distraction,” Frank said. “I have my first wild ghoul. He is in the pit under the soil. About ten seconds after the skeletons spawn, he will burst out and attack. I am hoping whoever is down here will be paying to much attention to the skeletons to notice.”

Heather was rather impressed by the plan. The skeletons were sure to get the attention of would-be adventurers. The ghoul should be able to take them by surprise and gain an advantage. His plan was clever, but it raised a question.

“How did you afford all this?” she asked as she looked around.

“I have been saving points since level one,” Frank said. “I wanted a dungeon heart, remember?”

“I remember,” Heather replied, still not sure what that even was.

“Well, since you are here to make us binding stones, I figured it was safe to spend some points and make a better tunnel system.”

Heather smiled that something she could do for him enabled him to do some building.

“I am glad I could help,” she said.

“I have a few secret tunnels that connect to Quinny’s burial mound,” he added. “I can show you where they are.”

“I think I have had enough of the tunnels,” she said as she looked around. Her eyes fell on the earthen pit, where Frank knelt to make his changes. An idea crossed her mind as she considered the things she was reading about.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” he replied, coming to stand beside her.

“When you're in the pit making changes, you're in the buffer, right?”

“Yes,” he replied, now glancing at her curiously.

“What do you see when you're in there?”

“A display like yours, but with fewer options.”

“You don’t see anything else? Do you ever look around?”

“Look around, how?”

Heather wasn't sure how to explain it. She had seen him and Quinny use their connection before, but from an outside viewpoint, they were just typing in the air. She wasn't sure at all what they actually saw or how to ask him more accurately.

“Can you see the room around you as you make changes?”

He sat on his heels and scratched at his head for a moment. “Not really,” he said. “Everything sort of blurs out and becomes a gray fog.”

“So, you do see the fog?”

“I see an orange illuminated display a lot like yours,” he replied. “Looking in any other direction is like looking into a cloudy night sky. It’s nothing but rolling darkness.”

“Have you ever seen anything else?”

“Why are you so interested in what I see?”

Heather wasn't sure why. It was something to do with how the book described the connection to the world. She hadn't translated enough of it yet, but she got the vague idea that reality, or as close to it as this world could come, existed in layers. She was curious if the buffer was one of the layers the book was describing. She wasn't sure, though, and once again, she had no idea how to explain it.

“I was just curious,” she replied.

“That's part of why being a chosen is so cool. You can make changes anywhere. Everybody else has to go to a specific point to make changes.”

“What if you want to move your lair?” Heather asked.

“I already moved it.”

“No, I mean, what if you wanted to move the whole thing, graveyard and all, a thousand miles?”

“Oh,” he replied and tapped at the ground with a nail. “There is a command word we can use to establish a new connection, but it erases the old one. “It would create a new graveyard there, and the old one would begin to decay.”

The thought of the old graveyard looking older and more decrepit was amusing to Heather. This made her wonder what Moon's town looked like by now. How long did this process of things fading away really take? Could there be variables that might alter the outcome like in the distant tower? Frank said a ghost player could haunt an abandoned location, and it would stop decaying, but what did that mean, and could there be other ways?

“Are you alright?”

“I was just thinking,” she said when he broke her thoughts.

“Have you learned anything from your book?”

“That's what I was thinking about,” she admitted. “It's describing the nature of our connection to this world. That they understood it at this level of detail is amazing.”

“So, this might help you?” he asked.

Heather wondered just what it might do. If they knew the very nature of how the world worked, what was beyond their ability to tamper with?

“It might,” she said after a moment. “Honestly, I am still translating the first two pages.”

“Well, I hope you find what you're looking for,” he said. “And I hope it helps you enjoy this world a little more.”

She smiled at the sweet sentiment and let out a sigh.

“Why didn’t you play something else? Why pick the ghoul?”

“I like the ghoul,” he said.

She laughed. “You are such a good guy, though. Didn't you even think about playing a paladin or something similar?”

He shook his head, causing drool to fly. “I always wanted to play a monster class, and I knew it would be some kind of undead. Besides, why does a nice guy always have to look like a knight?”

She had no answer to the question and decided to let it go.

“What will you do if you get trapped in here?” she asked to change the subject.

“One of the secret tunnels I talked about is in here,” Frank said. “But you can’t see it.”

“There is one in here?”

He walked over to the far wall between two of the pillars. He pressed at a brick, and a grinding noise echoed in the chamber. Heather watched entranced as the wall pulled away, revealing a round earthen passage.

“I was willing to spend points on the door, but I didn’t want to spend any on the tunnel,” he said.

“How did you get the tunnel then?” Heather asked as she walked closer.

“I dug it,” he replied.

“You dug this?” Heather asked as she looked around the dark passage. She didn't realize until she was closer, that the passage lacked the familiar gloomy light. It was just a hole cut through bare earth that vanished into darkness some ten feet back.

“I’m ghoul,” Frank said. “We can dig really fast. This tunnel goes to Quinny’s burial mound.”

“And you two can see in the dark, so it works for you both,” Heather said with a nod. “Hmm, Can you dig a tunnel to the basement of my tower?”

“If you want,” he replied with a nod.

She did indeed want a tunnel. As she looked around, she realized where she was. In a crypt underground, talking to a ghoul as if he was just another person. None of this alarmed her anymore, and she realized it was being replaced by a new sensation, excitement.

There was a magic and mystery to it all that was beginning to seep its way in. Though in the back of her heart, she still longed to go home, the wonder of it all was undeniable. From building her tower to the secrets of the necromancer kings, she had so many things she wanted to do now. The realization that the magic of this world could be learned unlocked was tantalizing. What could she ultimately become as she grew in power and understanding? Maybe Frank and the others were right, maybe being a chosen was a great gift.

“Heather?” Frank asked.

“Just thinking again,” she said with a smile. Maybe it was time to find out what she was chosen to become.