“Heather?”

She bolted upright with a start from where she slept in the corner. The room was the usually gloomy darkness just bright enough to see in. Frank stood in the center of the room, looking down at her with his head cocked to the side.

“Frank!” she cried as she got up. “You're alive!”

“I’m undead,” he said.

“I know that!” she snapped and took a deep breath. “I was just worried.”

He looked up and down at her and scratched his head. “So you're a necromancer?”

Heather took a moment to think about what he said and then realized he was staring at her outfit. She wore a black outfit from her shoulders to her ankles. It was ringed around the collar with white lace, and the hem of the skirt was tattered.

“Oh,” she said as she flared her dress out. “There were only two outfit choices for default, and the other one was half as much clothing.”

“It kinda looks like your sundress if you made it all black,” he said.

Heather shook the material and realized he was right.

“Did you pick that just to help me?” he asked.

Heather looked up at him and shook her head. “No! I mean maybe, but I was already thinking about it. I asked the panel how to help you, and it told me this was the only choice.”

“So you had no other choices,” he said with a nod.

“That's not what I'm saying at all!” She stopped and put a hand to her face as she calmed her voice. “I picked it because I wanted to help you. I was looking for a class to play alongside you already. They just forced me to pick sooner.”

“Well, you can still change,” he pointed out.

“And what if I don't want to change?” she asked as she folded her arms. “You say you're lonely out here. Why do you keep encouraging me to leave?”

“Because everybody else does,” he said. “You’re not a monster class and the city has more to offer you.”

“The city full of stuck up arrogant snobs who only care about appearance?” she asked.

“Not all of them are like that.”

She shook her head. “I happen to like being out here. It could use a few more flowers and a little color.”

“It’s a graveyard.”

“Graveyards have rose bushes!” she argued. “I will find flowers that look natural.”

He shrugged and walked to the door and picked up the scythe.

“Did you kill one of them with this?” he asked as he held it out.

Heather looked at the blade and then turned her head to look away.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You got experience then,” he asked.

Heather nodded. “I am level two now.” She glanced at the weapon and then stared at the floor. “So they will respawn and be alright?”

“If they were chosen they will be fine except for losing all their gear. If they were players like me, they might have reset.”

“But they are alive?”

He nodded, but it brought her small comfort. She knew this wasn't the real world and that she hadn't honestly killed anyone, but somehow she couldn't convince herself of that.

“You’re upset about it.”

“Of course I am!” she shouted. “I never wanted to be here in the first place.” She took a moment to get control again. “But at least I met you, and that made it nice. I thought I could hang out with you while we figured out how to get me home. You were nice, and I was starting to enjoy some of the things here.”

“But you're still upset about it,” he said. “Why do you feel upset?”

“I don't know. I know that man is alive, but I still feel like I killed him for real. This world feels so real I can't shake the feeling I did something wrong. I feel guilty about the two I tricked into the graveyard, and I feel bad about killing the dark elf thingy.”

Frank nodded. “I feel guilty, sometimes.”

She looked up at him with a curious expression. “You do?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “When somebody super low level shows up, and I know they have no hope of beating me. I let the skeletons chase them off instead.”

“So you're nice about it?” Heather said.

“They just want to have fun. I don’t want to ruin that just because I can,” Frank admitted.

Heather smiled at him and felt a little better inside. It felt good to know she didn't have to be cruel like that man earlier. She could be like Frank and try to be more fun.

She looked passed him and out the door into the graveyard.

“So, are they still out there?”

Frank shook his head. “I know you don’t like seeing that so I carried away their loot and buried the bodies. Speaking of which you should come look at some of it.”

“Some of what?”

“The loot,” Frank said as he walked to the stairs.

Heather followed him down and went back to his room. On the table was a pile of weapons and armor and on the floor was a glittering mound of gold.

“Did you get all this from them?” Heather asked as she gazed at the pile.

“They had a lot of stuff on them,” Frank said with a nod. “We have a bunch of gold now.”

“We?”

“You helped me win, so half of this is yours,” he said.

Heather looked around the pile of stuff and picked up a few items.

“What happened to that sword?”

“That was a summoned weapon. Once he died, it vanished.”

“Oh. So he made it?”

“It’s a death knight ability. He can magically create an unholy weapon. He uses it to absorb power from things he slays. Each person he drains makes the weapon more powerful.”

Heather considered that a second. “So he has a weapon that becomes more powerful, but he stupidly left it behind?”

“He was being mean because he thought he'd already won,” Frank said.

“And it cost him,” Heather said with a satisfied tone. “That’s what he gets for being a jerk.”

“He must be raging angry wherever he is,” Frank said. “His armor had to be expensive. It’s all custom made.”

“You can get armor custom made?” she asked as she picked the skull-faced helm.

“I told you their were tailors. There are crafting classes for everything. Armor, weapons, potions, furniture, food, artworks, alcohol, books, containers, and a bunch more.”

“I would like to get a few outfits made,” she asked.

“You can alter that one a little. I think you can change its default color palette.”

“I can?”

“There should be a little wheel next to the image in the panel. If you click that you get a color wheel and a list of the items whose color you can change.”

Heather looked at her black dress and thought a little color was in order.

“Oh, I hid my panel in your room here.”

“I found it already,” he said. “It’s sitting on the urn.”

She looked to the corner by one of the purple lights to see her panel sitting over the rim of one of the tall ceramic jars.

“So those are urns?” she asked as he retrieved the panel.

“They don't have anything dead in them. I use them to store gold,” he replied.

“Did you buy them?” she asked.

He shook his head. “When you have a building class, and you spawn a lair, you can spend a certain amount of points on decorations. Players can break them, but I can restore them with a tiny amount of points.”

She just accepted the answer even though she didn't really understand it. She tapped at her panel and went back to her currently equipped outfit. Sure enough, there was a little wheel next to it. She tapped and was presented with a color wheel with every color of the rainbow.

“Ooooh,” she said she adjusted the dress. In a few taps, she chose some colors and hit the apply button.

“I don't think that suits you,” Frank said as he scratched at his chin.

Heather pulled up the hem of her new pink dress and spun around. “What’s wrong with it?”

“You’re a necromancer,” he said.

“So?”

He shrugged. “I guess I expect necromancers to wear black.”

She looked down at her pink dress with white trim. “I like the color.”

“So long as you’re happy,” he said. “You can buy more outfits with your share of the gold.”

She set the panel aside and looked at the table again. “What are you going to do with the other stuff?”

“I was going to give the weapons to the skeletons unless you want something,” he said.

“What about the armor?”

“The skeletons can wear helms, but armor doesn't do them much good.”

“So what will you do with it?” she asked.

“I dunno. Pile it in a room, I guess. I can't sell it.”

Heather pondered that a moment. “Why can’t you sell it?”

“I can't go into the city. Well, I suppose I could, but I would probably be killed long before I sold anything.”

“Is there nowhere else to sell?” Heather asked.

Frank tossed his head a moment as he considered it. “There are smaller towns all over, and some player-made towns and keeps. You can pick a mundane class that allows you to build a guardhouse, and if you keep spending points on it, you can grow it into a castle.”

“You like to build things, don't you?” Heather asked.

He shrugged. “I suppose I do. I used to love to play blockcraft.”

“So can you build more?” she asked as she looked around. “Can you make this bigger?”

“I was saving up for the dungeon heart,” he pointed out. “I have enough to make some tunnels and a few more rooms. Maybe even an underground crypt area, or a nest.”

“What’s a nest?”

“It’s a room that fills with piles of sticks and trash and spawns giant rats,” he replied.

“Rats?” she asked with a shiver.

“I think you can upgrade it to be spiders,” he offered.

Heather didn’t think either idea was good. She looked down at her tablet and sighed.

“I wonder what class I could play with a necromancer so I could build things.”

Ding!- [Acceptable classes are: Baroness. Crypt keeper. Dark Watcher. Grave dancer. Dungeon lord. Under Queen. Tomb master. Recluse.]

“You could be a grave dancer too,” Frank said as he moved to look over her shoulder at the options.

“What is a crypt keeper?” Heather said as she pulled it up. It showed her a dozen options for rooms and corridors all done a marble theme and decorated with bone motifs.

“I like that one,” Frank said. “Oh, look at Baroness. You can build your own town, and people could live there. It even spawns NPC villagers.”

“But that looks like a medieval village,” she said.

“You can select the Gothic theme to give it more spikes and a gloomier feel,” he suggested.

“What about under queen?” she asked as she tapped. This showed caves and caverns. Some had forests of giant mushrooms in them, and others were twisting passages.

“That's all caves,” Frank replied. “I looked at that when I was making my character. I was told there are labyrinths of tunnels underground made by players.”

Heather selected dungeon lord and was presented with a series of clean masonry walls and wooden doors. It looked like how she would imagine any castle dungeon would look in a fantasy game.

“Dark watcher allows you to build a haunted forest. I think it comes with a perk where you can move from shadow to shadow in the forest invisibly,” he pointed out.

“I suppose I could put the forest outside the graveyard,” she said as she looked at the dark, twisted trees.

“If you took Baroness I could be the graveyard for your village,” he suggested.

“Ha. So I could send my villagers to the haunted graveyard to be eaten by ghouls,” she laughed. She pulled up the tomb master, and her eyes went wide.

“Now this is pretty,” she said as she looked at Egyptian style tombs with walls of blue, gold, red and white.

“I almost picked that one,” he said. “But you can’t build that one outside a desert.”

“Oh, I can’t?”

He shook his head. “You can select the Aztec theme to build in jungles. There is a nordic theme that is a bunch of mound and chambers. You can build that almost anywhere, but it's not near as colorful.”

“There is nothing else?”

“There is a gothic theme for that one too,” he said. “You can build that anywhere.”

She toggled the option, and while it was less colorful, it had a certain charm to it. It used a lot of metal spikes and gargoyle looking faces and came with a variety of colored lighting effects. She marked that one as a maybe and moved on to the recluse. This option gave her a magical tower that grew in size. I got taller as you spent points on it and eventually became magical, so the inside was larger than the exterior.

“There are too many choices in this game,” she sighed. “I wish their was a way we could team up and build something together.”

Beep! - [Player base sharing options]

They both glanced at one another and then back to the panel.

“We can both share the one class,” Frank said.

“Or I can pick a different one, and we can both use it,” she said.

“We can pool our points to build something bigger!” Frank added excitedly.

“But what class should I pick? Which one will go with the graveyard best?”

“I like the forest idea,” he said. “A dark forest with a graveyard at the center.”

“But you want to expand your graveyard,” she said. “The forest will be in the way.”

“I think we can adjust your forest outwards to make room,” he said.

“What about the recluse?” Heather asked. “We could build the tower in the center of the graveyard. As the graveyard got bigger it would become the first line of defense around the tower.”

“But I want to build down and make a maze of tunnels underneath,” he said.

Heather understood but didn't like the idea of living underground. The tower called to her, and as she looked through the images, she saw that it included rooms with actual beds and furniture. The thought of sleeping on the floor underground made her sigh, and she looked at Frank with pleading eyes.

“You want the tower, don't you?”

“Pwease?” she said. “You can have a room to sleep in.”

“I hardly ever sleep, and when I do, it has to be in the earth.”

“But you could sleep in a bed, can't you? It will be more comfortable.” She folded her hands up under her chin and gave him her biggest eyes and chewed on her lip.

He sighed. “If you want the tower, I won't say no, but build behind the graveyard and I will expand around you.”

“Yay!” she said with a jump.

He shook his head at her. “If you picked the baroness we could sell the armor off in your village.”

“Why can't we sell it in somebody else's village?”

“I don’t want to risk going into them,” he said.

Heather smiled. “Then, I will do it.”

“You want to sell the armor for us?”

“You said that custom armor cost a fortune, let’s go get our fortune,” she replied.

He scratched his chin and looked at the table full of armor. “I suppose we could visit a village and try. I will help carry the stuff until you're close, and then you will have to take it the rest of the way.”

“Perfect,” she said with a pleased look. And we can use the money to buy us both some things to decorate with.”

“You want to decorate the graveyard?” he said with a moan.

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You are letting me decorate, or I will pick the golden sprite and build a giant flower house right out front!”

“Fine!” he cried and threw up his hands.

“So how close is the nearest town?” she asked.

“There was a small one about half a days travel to the north,” he replied. “A player there was just starting to build it the last time I saw it, but that was months ago.”

“So it might be bigger by now?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It might be gone.”

She understood and looked to the doorway outside. The sun had moved, and the little sky she could see was dark. It was clear that night had fallen, and it would all have to wait until morning.

“Then tomorrow we build my tower so I can see what I need, and then we go find the town,” she said. She felt pleased with herself and looked back to her panel to look at the rooms. Soon she would have a proper space to call her own. As she looked at her options, she dreamed of sleeping in a bed.