They arrived in the garden beside the tower in the blink of an eye, Heather and Frank walking into the yard side by side as they talked.
“Well, this is going to make life much easier,” Heather said with a smile. “It’s like our lairs are just a house in the city.” She turned around to see Frank was hardly paying attention, his gaze firmly fixed on her statue.“If you're dreaming about a naked version of my statue, you can forget it!”
“I was just thinking,” he replied defensively as she joined him.
“You have seen enough of my rear for one day,” Heather remarked.
“I couldn’t help it,” he admitted with a shrug. “It was very smooth.”
“Frank!” she snapped. “You can’t tell anyone you saw my butt!”
“He did?” Quinny cried, causing them both to turn about and see her standing in the yard.
“Oh, how can this get any worse?” Heather moaned as Quinny started to smile.
“Well, well, well, Frankenstein has finally gotten on base,” Quinny said as she sauntered closer. “I knew you could do it.”
“Hey! Don't call him Frankenstein; that's mean,” Heather countered with hands on hips.
“Sheesh,” Quinny remarked with a smirk. “What are you, his girlfriend, or something?”
Heather stopped in her tracks as the question hit her. There was a strange stirring inside to be asked such a thing and she quickly glanced at Frank to see his reaction.
“I was just saying it isn’t nice to call him names,” Heather stammered.
“I was teasing him because he’s my friend,” Quinny countered and walked up to Frank. “Besides, hes a big guy, he can take it. Now why were you showing him your butt?”
Heather blushed and had to straighten up and clear her throat. “Let me explain,” she began, but Quinny started to laugh and then ran to the garden gate.
“Breanne, come quick, Frank was looking at Heather’s butt!”
“He wasn’t looking at my butt!” Heather shouted with her face in her palms. She pulled her hands down in aggravation as Quinny strolled back to stand before her.
“I just heard you say he saw your butt.”
“It was a statue!” Heather groaned. “Gwen put one up in the city and decided my marble butt needed to be where everyone could admire it.”
“Can I go see it?” Quinny asked.
“No!” Heather snapped.
“Gwen changed it when Heather got mad,” Frank added.
“Aww,” Quinny sighed.
“Why would you want to see my butt?” Heather asked, honestly lost as to why Quinny would suggest such a thing.
Quinny shrugged and straightened her dress. “Why not? Frank got to see it.”
“Frank wasn’t supposed to see it either!” Heather snarled as Quinny started to laugh.
“Wasn’t supposed to see what?” Breanne called from the gate as Heather looked over.
“This is getting out of control quickly,” Frank said as Heather shook her head.
“No, it's fine. Better to get this out of the way and move on. Yes, Frank saw my butt, but it was a statue Gwen put up that she has since changed”
Breanne walked over in a deep blue gown with eyes searching the two of them. “I seem to recall lots of women did that.”
“Augh! Why?” Heather cried. “Does nobody have any measure of shame in this world?”
Breanne shrugged as Heather explained the statue in the city. She also informed them that the city was named Gwendalhall and that her bookstore was open but very sparse. She explained the conversation with Gwen and the discovery that Gwen could create undead and goblin NPCs.
“Undead makes sense, but why can she use goblins?” Breanne asked.
“Somehow, she gains them from me,” Heather said, not able to explain it herself. “I wonder if I can select goblins?” She rubbed open the panel and held it up so Frank could see as she scrolled through the guard options for her tower.
“You can!” Frank cried. “You can pick goblin warrior, skulker, or shaman.”
“Why?” Heather remarked as she pulled open the options. “What ties me to the goblins?”
“Looking like Hathlisora does,” Frank said. “But that shouldn't give you access to them.”
“And you say our lairs are part of her kingdom now?” Breanne asked.
“Yes,” Heather replied as she put the panel away. “And she can see things in it now. For example, there is a hidden treasure room in the mountain.”
“Where?” Quinny asked. “Is it up those stairs we haven’t investigated yet?”
“No, it’s right next to my bedroom,” Heather laughed as she motioned to the tower. “Why don’t we go find it and see how much we have. From Gwen's little screen, it looked like a lot.”
Heather led the way into the tower and up to the sixth floor. She carried Webster the whole time, the lazy spider dangling from her arm as she opened the hidden door from the tower. Once in the upper caves, it was simple to navigate the tunnels to the kitchen and then the bedrooms beyond. Her bone champion turned its head as she waved to him while passing before going to the wall and setting the spider down.
“It was right here, wasn’t it?” Heather asked as Frank stood at her side.
“It should be; it was at the end of the hall,” he said as they looked at the wall. “Now we have to figure out how to open it.”
“It’s probably easier on the other side,” Breanne said as she began to fade, assuming her banshee form. She flew right through the wall and was gone for only a moment before the bricks simply vanished, forming a perfectly round hole, like a window large enough to step through. Breanne appeared on the other side with a smile.
“A magic door, the command word is written on this side of the wall in runes. It’s Naomi.”
“Oh, I like that,” Heather said as she examined the magic opening. “I want more of these.”
“Holy cow!” Quinny said as she looked into the room. “This is more treasure than the hag.”
Frank leaned into the dark space, his undead vision allowing him to see the contents. Heather had to cast her spell as colors muted, and the darkness became more of a dim shadow. She stepped through the opening and gazed on a room piled high with treasure.
“No wonder nothing has any treasure; it's all right here,” she said with a laugh.
“This is a great deal of wealth,” Breanne agreed, as she resumed her solid form.
“I could triple the size of my forest with a tiny portion of this,” Quinny added as she flung open a chest to see it contained hundreds of small gemstones. “We could buy our own kingdom.”
“None of us has the character to manage a kingdom,” Breanne said. “And I am pretty sure you could do far more than triple your forest. You could probably extend it around the rim all the way to the keep.”
Heather went directly to the red cloth and lifted the object crafted by Hathlisora. Pulling the material away, it revealed a dark metal shaft covered in spiraling runes that were carved into the surface. It was a little longer than she was tall and began to glow with a gentle blue light as she held it up.
“What is that?” Quinny asked as she tried on a necklace of red stones.
“Something Hathlisora made for me,” Heather replied as she held it up.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
“How do you know that?” Breanne asked with concern apparent in her voice.
Frank stepped closer to Heather as she held it out for him to inspect before he responded for her.
“Gwen used her heart to show us this room, and it focused on this staff, giving us some information about it. It said it was made by Hathlisora and attuned to Heather.”
Breanne made a deep frown as Quinny dropped the necklace and moved closer, the room now bathed in blue light.
“This is what you do when you overuse your power,” Quinny said. “You glow just like this.”
Frank ran a finger over the staff as Heather held it out, still considering what it was.
“Gwen’s heart said it was a crafting ingredient,” Frank reminded as she turned it over in her hands.
“I know what it is,” Heather said in reply, her eyes looking up to meet his. “It’s a handle for my scythe.”
“How can you be sure?” he asked as she held it in both hands as if about to swing it.
“Look at how long it is. What other weapon besides a spear needs a shaft this long?”
“I guess it could be for your scythe. I know there is a way to use crafted items to augment player weapons.”
Heather nodded as her eyes fixated on the shaft. “You told me about that a long time ago, and the book mentions doing it, but I think I can even do one better. I can use the necromancer focus to combine the two with a higher degree of power.”
“Are we sure this is wise?” Breanne asked. “We don’t know what that thing does.”
“It was made for me and left right beside the bedroom that was also made for me,” Heather remarked as she finally looked away. “I see no reason not to use it.”
“What if this is some kind of trap?” Breanne asked. “If she knew you were coming here, this might all be an elaborate way to snare you.”
“Why would she go to all this trouble to trap me?” Heather asked, but nobody had an answer.
“Can we test it or something?” Quinny asked.
Frank shook his head as Heather handed him the shaft. “It’s a crafting ingredient. We would need somebody who can craft things to identify it.”
“Legeis!” Quinny cried in excitement. “He can craft all sorts of things. Maybe he can identify it.”
Heather noted Frank's gaze come to her, so she nodded her approval before looking around the room at the rest of the treasure. She wanted to dig through every chest, urn, box, and book to see what they contained, but in her heart, she knew the staff was more important.
“Alright, let’s take it to Legeis and see what he has to say,” Heather replied. “We can come back and divide this up later.”
Together they went down a level to the workshop where they found Legeis hard at work setting up her gear. He was surprised by their request and hastily took the shaft to a worktable, carefully examining it.
“So this is attuned to you?” he asked while running some kind of box with green and red lights over it.
“It is,” Heather said as she sat on a chair nearby with Webster in her lap. “Can you tell us anything about it?”
He took out a small tuning fork and tapped it, producing a gentle hum that caused the staff to glow blue. “I can tell you it isn’t dangerous. It’s magic related, some kind of focus or channeling device for magic power. It looks like it was meant to act as a sort of lightning rod for magic, storing the power for something.”
“And that isn't dangerous?” Breanne asked, skeptical of his assessment.
“It can’t hurt Heather because it’s attuned to her,” Legeis replied. “It’s probably designed to boost her power somehow.”
“So you can’t actually tell us what it does?” Breanne pressed as her arms folded over her chest in concern.
Legeis rubbed at his chin and finally shrugged. “It stores magic so she can use it later and boosts any spells cast through it. I can't get a full reading because I'm an engineering class. I can only identify engineering components fully. You need an enchanter or magic crafting class to get full details.”
“Thank you for trying,” Heather said as she stood up and walked to the table. She had to pick her way around the clutter filling the space as Legeis stepped back to begin sorting through a crate.
“Settling in?” Heather asked as she nearly tripped.
“This is kind of a small space for my workshop. I could use a lot more room to spread out.”
“Make it bigger,” Heather said. “You did claim this space as your workshop?”
Legeis looked up and shrugged. “I can’t. Somebody already owns it, and I can’t lay claim to it.”
“Well, claim a space outside the room and cut new rooms into the mountain,” she suggested.
“I can’t do that either. I need an existing space to lay my anvil on. Then I can claim around it and modify it. I would have to move into an unoccupied area of the mountain. That's why my original workshop was under that keep. There was already a cave.”
“Of course,” Heather sighed. “Nothing can ever be easy.”
“Maybe it is,” Frank suggested as he stepped closer to Heather. “This is all claimed by you now.”
“Only the tower is claimed by me,” Heather replied. “We are just occupying the rest of the space.”
Frank shook his head and pointed to the pouch at her waist. “No, this is all yours, as part of Gwen’s kingdom.”
Heather smiled as she understood what he was getting at and reached into her pouch, pulling out the lesser kingdom heart. She held it in the palm of her hand like Gwen did, her smile growing wider as it floated up and began to glow.
“This is amazing,” Heather said as she stared into the light. “It's like I am looking at a computer desktop.” She began to tap at things with her free hand, the wonder apparent on her face. “There are hundreds of options and a dozen more tabs than my panel.” She tapped at something and made a frown when it denied her access to the options. “Apparently, Gwen still has the final say on a lot of it.”
“That only makes sense,” Breanne said. “She can’t let you run wild with her kingdom.”
Heather pressed on, searching for a way to effect changes to their region of the world. It took her twenty minutes to figure out how to use a map and another thirty to zoom in on their lairs. Then there was a dizzying array of options and information, most of which didn't make much sense. Eventually, she found a way to see ownership and zoomed in on the tunnels. It was of no surprise at all that Hathlisora was the one listed as the owner.
“I found it, and I can remove the owner, I think.”
“Don't!” Frank cried. “If these rooms were bought with points and you remove the owner, they will vanish, and you will lose the circle.”
“Then maybe I can add Legeis as an owner?” she suggested and tapped at more options. “It says I am a controller but not the owner. I can remover her as the owner, but I don't see any way to add him to the room. It says Hathlisora has to do that.”
“Well, it was a good try,” Legeis sighed.
“Wait,” Heather said as she turned to the side room. She walked inside, carefully picking her way around piles of Legeis’s stuff as the others followed. She went to the back wall and paused as she tapped away and then hit submit. The wall changed, becoming an arched doorway large enough for Legeis's armor to pass easily. Beyond was a rectangular room three times the workroom's size with a high ceiling and glowing white lights set into the walls. “Will that work?” she asked with a pleased smile.
“You changed the mountain?” Breanne asked as she stepped into the new space.
“Hathlisora's ownership ended at the wall, so I modified it with a door and created a new space beyond. It looks like I can shape almost anything provided it's inside my home radius. If I want to change something outside of it, I have to submit the changes to Gwen to approve.”
“You don’t need skeleton labor now,” Frank said. “You can change anything you want.”
“Well, almost anything,” Heather said. “I still can't change permissions on player spaces or take ownership of them.”
“I bet Gwen can,” Frank said. “I bet she could take control of the workroom and give it to you.”
Heather nodded; it was certainly worth investigating, but this would work for now.
“Hey, can you change this space to work for me a little better?” Legeis asked as he looked around.
“Sure, just tell me what you want,” she said and went back to the heart. What followed was two hours of careful changes, some of which went wrong and had to be fixed. Legeis now had a huge workshop that was one continuous space that formed a square. It was only twenty meters wide, forming long hallways that left the center a solid core of stone. The ceiling soared up twenty meters to a gently curving arch, held aloft by pillars of metal every ten meters along the walls.
In a back corner, they hit an underground stream, but Legeis was delighted. He explained how to shape the floor, so the water flowed down the tunnel in a trench, a metal grate over the top to walk on. They took a back corner and rounded it off to build his steam boiler there, using the water to power it.
A modest bedroom was added at the very back behind a stout metal door. She added work tables along half the walls so he would have plenty of space, and he set about making a proper workshop. The rest he would do himself, excited about how much more he could add, thanks to Heather saving him a ton of points.
“This is fun,” Heather said as she poked at the stone. “I feel like I am building a world.”
“Well, a small piece of it anyway,” Breanne said.
“Hmm,” Heather said as she looked at Breanne. “Your island is rather small. Why don’t we make it bigger.”
“What?” Breanne asked as Heather turned about and headed out, leaving Legeis to his work.
“Common, I want to see what else I can do,” Heather said.
“Surely there is some limit to this,” Breanne suggested. “You can’t make such changes forever.”
“I already thought of that and looked it up. I have a pool of points gifted to me by Gwen. Making Legeis’s workshop didn’t even make a dent.”
“Wow, can you make me some stuff?” Quinny asked.
“I’m sure I can,” Heather said as they passed through the caves. Once outside, they reached the earthen berm that was the walkway to Breanne's small island. Heather started there, turning the berm into a stone bridge with delicate arches underneath to allow the water to flow. The island grew significantly larger until the mausoleum looked tiny by comparison. She added willow trees along the shore and a small, clear pool of water inside the island. The pond was filled with colorful fish and lily pads growing white and pink flowers. She added more graves around the mausoleum, but around the pond, she placed stone benches and a cobbled walkway. A low stone wall circled the island with a thick hedge in places to provide privacy. She added a single target archery range for Breanne to practice and a wide branching tree with fragrant white flowers to drive away the smell of the swamp.
“There, much better. Frank can use some of the gold to add more rooms under the mausoleum for you to use, but of course, you always have a bedroom in the tower.”
“This is very kind of you,” Breanne said with a smile. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Heather said. “I owe all of you a lot. Thank you for putting up with me.”
“Oh, you were no bother to me. It was Frank who had to carry all the heavy stuff,” Breanne laughed as Frank rolled his eyes.
“So, can you add stuff to my forest?” Quinny asked.
Heather closed her palm and ended her use of the stone. “I did that for Breanne because she can’t do it herself. You can add whatever you want with your share of the treasure.”
“Yeah, but you can add things I can’t buy,” Quinny replied.
“Well, if there is something you want that you can't buy, then sure,” Heather said and turned to Frank.
“Don’t you want anything?” she asked.
“I already have everything I want,” he said.
Heather smiled and stepped closer, coming right up to his chest. “Is that so?”
“I will put a few more levels to my tunnels, and if I have enough, get a dungeon heart.”
“You have been talking about that since I met you,” Heather said. “Didn’t you say it gave you all sorts of new options?”
“A lot of new options, like I can't be reset outside my lair so long as I have the heart. It will take longer to respawn, though.”
“The whole kingdom is your lair now,” Heather reminded him. “And I want you to have the heart.”
Frank shrugged slightly as he considered the possibility with a scratch at his head. “I will have to see how many points I have left.”
Heather smiled and tapped him on the chest. “You can have my share of the treasure. So long as you promise me you will buy the dungeon heart.”
“He can have my share if he needs it,” Quinny added.
“Mine too,” Breanne said with a smile. “That should be more than enough to add ten levels, hundreds of special chambers, and a fully upgraded dungeon heart.”
Frank looked up in shock as the three women smiled at him. “You guys mean that?”
Heather took one of his hands that was so large she could only hold a finger.
“Frank, you deserve this. Please build your dungeon just how you want it.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked, his eyes looking sad.
“Because you have been nothing but nice to all of us, and it's time you got something back.
He looked embarrassed as the three waited but finally cleared his throat and spoke. “Why don't we see just how much gold we really have. For all I know, I won't need any more than what you plan to give me. Besides, I would feel terrible taking everybody's shares. I know you all want to buy things too.”
“Alright, but if you do need more points, I want you to take some of mine,” Heather insisted. “I have the kingdom heart anyway. I don't need a huge boost of points right this second.”
“This is going to be awesome!” Quinny laughed. “And it works out great for all of us.”
“How so?” Breanne asked.
Quinny tossed her head and pointed at Frank. “He is our main line of defense to keep Heather safe. If he has a huge graveyard and extra powers, it will make it ten times harder to reach the tower unless the enemy flies over it.”
“Most enemies will likely enter your forest first,” Breanne countered.
“Yeah, but my stuff is all low level and won't slow a group like that last one down. At best, I will be an early warning system so you guys can get ready.”
“Hmm, and Heather could flee into the tunnels underneath where he would have tons of extra options,” Breanne added. “We all could if needs be.”
“Oh!” Quinny said with wide eyes. “You should put the door to the city down there. If anybody chased us into the tunnels, we could escape into the city if need be. Then Gwen could protect us.”
Heather tossed her head, rather pleased by the idea. “That sounds like a good plan, but what if people from the city come the other way? There is nothing to keep them from entering my tower there.”
“Bah! You’re right,” Quinny said.
They were all disappointed by that idea until Frank spoke up. “Why don't we make a secret passage from my lower tunnels to the cliff beside the portal. If we make a one-way door to the outside, then we can escape out, but nobody can come in that way.”
“That could work provided an enemy wasn’t smart enough to guard the portal,” Breanne said.
“Then all this will be wonderful,” Heather said with a smile and looked to Frank. “Let’s go see how much gold we have and how far it takes you.”
Frank nodded as Heather pulled on his hand, taking him back to the tower and the hidden treasure room. For the first time, Heather had a purpose other than finding a way out. She wanted to help Frank realize some of his goals and build like he had never done before. Together they were going to achieve his dreams and create a truly magnificent graveyard.