The iron door came down, crashing into the dirt, making the whole dungeon shake. Through it came an elf, decked in fur-trimmed chain mail, holding a tall iron shield in front of him, wielding a spear on the other hand. His long blonde hair waving through the dust.
The elf peeked through the door, then an orc pushed him to the side and walked inside the room with a grunt. The orc was a good two heads taller, and twice as wide as the elf, dressed in a long black robe with gold and red trimmings, tied together by a golden belt. A dozen pouches potions hanging from it. A white wooden staff was bouncing on his back as the stomped around.
“Hey, it’s dangerous, don’t-” Tried to say the elf, but the orc was ignoring him and went through the room, mostly barren, just a cave, empty walls of naked rocks. He started banging and kicking the walls.
“Come on Frank, let’s get going. You’re wasting our time.” Yelled the orc, still kicking and punching.
The elf scratched his head and sighed. He tried to speak up “Hey, come on, there could be traps, be careful.” But his tone was meek, and the orcs didn’t bother replying.
Meanwhile, the last member of their party had walked inside the room, a half-elf, wearing a salmon pink tunic with a big hood that covered his head. It was a bit short, reached only to his calves, so his jeans and sneakers under it were visible.
Frank was trying to not look at them, staring would have only caused another fight, but he couldn’t avoid it.
The half-elf walked right behind the orc, placed his hands on his hips, and started yelling at him.
“Good job, dumbass. Why don’t you ask the whole dungeon to ambush us, while you’re at it?”
“Oh shut up.” Yelled back the orc, continuing his inspection.
“No, I’m not gonna shut up. You think that just because you’re the one killing shit you can decide everything? Ok, well, first, if I was the damage dealer, I would be doing a much better job, you keep hitting us with your aoe and-“
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
“and you think I can just heal through your mistakes, but if I have to heal myself, it ruins my whole rotation, so-”
“Shut the fuck up, your positioning sucks ass, you wouldn’t have problems if you didn’t suck so much.”
The orc punched the correct section of the wall, and a metallic clang echoed through the room. A door, covered by an illusion to look like rock.
The orc took a couple of steps back, pulled out his staff and started making gestures and murmuring words of power.
“Careful to not set us on fire again.” Said the half-elf with a smirk.
Meanwhile, Frank the elf was waiting for the two to be done, leaning on his spear, keeping an eye on the other hidden door on the other side of the wall.
The hidden door slid open without a sound. It was a wonderful mechanism, brand new. It opened on a dark corridor, and from it a handful of kobolds came barrelling through, roaring and grunting, bashing their short swords over their shields.
Frank, already between them and the elf, slammed his shield on the ground and readied his spear, ready to protect his less-armoured teammates.
The half-elf, noticing the noise only when they were already inside the room, went wide-eyed and started punching the orc, screaming in panic. “Move it, you bastard!”
The orc pushed him away “They’re just kobolds, whatever. Let me work.”
Swearing under his breath, the half-elf started casting healing and protective spells on Frank, the kobolds swarmed around him and started beating on his shield, but he kept most of them at bay with his spear. Every sweep would throw two or three of them to the ground, stopping them from going past him.
A flash of white light exploded behind him, and the metallic door fell from its hinges. The orc had completed his spell. He and the half-elf were getting through the door and into the next room, the last room, the boss room when a laugh echoed through the dungeon.
From the hidden passage, the kobolds had stopped coming, but something worse had arrived: a medusa. A tall woman, green-skinned, with a crest of snakes instead of hairs, twisting and hissing. In one hand, she carried a long curved sword emitting a deadly green vapour.
Frank turned away, to avoid her deadly gaze, but couldn’t avoid peeking at her for a moment and smiling.
“Go!” He yelled, before slamming his spear on the floor, causing a great tremor that send the nearby enemies to the ground.
The orc screamed while the half-elf kept pushing him through the door. The three arrived in the boss room, an ample cave with a large throne in the middle. On the throne sat a tall, horned minotaur, black-furred, covered in gold rings and chains. The minotaur snarled and rose from his throne, pulling out a giant axe from behind it. It roared and charged at the group. The orc threw himself to the side, while the half-elf, slightly more collected, cast a protective ward on Frank.
“Block the door with something” Yelled the elf as he jumped in front of the minotaur and raised his shield. The minotaur axe slammed down, making his knees creak and cracking the pavement, but he held, thanks to the ward.
The orc got back up, shaking, and started casting spells against the minotaur. Torrents of flame and lightning poured over the beast, but the damage was minimal. The minotaur shrugged it off and kept beating on Frank.
Normally, he would have started dodging around, dancing between the hits and avoiding most of the damage, but this time he still had a room full of kobolds and a medusa to deal with, and they were coming from the back, a torrent that nobody was bothering to stop. Nothing had been done to stop the door.
A kobold reached the orc and stabbed him in the leg, the orc pulverized the poor thing with a rapid spell and turned to yell at the half-elf. “Heal me, Jackass, what-”
He stopped when he noticed the half-elf was already gone, turned into a stone statue after looking at the medusa without any protection. Frozen with his hands at his side. No fear, only surprise. He had spells that could have shielded him and the rest of the party from her gaze but hadn’t used them.
Frank heard the orc screaming as he was being overrun, behind him. He gathered his strength and threw his best attack at the minotaur. One last hail mary. The spear glowed a bright white, blinding all of his enemies, then he threw it at the beat. Right in the jaw. The minotaur stumbled backwards, stunned for a few seconds. A good move, serious damage, and very good crowd control. But it was pointless.
He felt the cold sword of the medusa slip through his chainmail like it was made of paper, carve its way through his flesh, organs, slipping right through his ribs and coming out of the front in a torrent of blood.
He fell backwards, right into the medusa’s arm. She grabbed him and held him up. The two looked at each other.
“Hey.” He whispered. His forces were leaving him, and he could feel his flesh turning to stone, slowly, inch by inch, but he was still smiling.
She sheathed her sword, pushed his air away from his eyes and placed her hand on his cheek.
“Hey” She replied, softly. “You remembered to order the pizza?”
“Ah, damn, sorry, Been very busy.” He replied.
“I noticed.” She replied, looking at the currently dead orc. “Bad day, uh?”
He tried to shrug, but his arms were already stone.
“Come on, you’ll feel better after you eat something.” Said the medusa.
He tried to reply but died.
The elf soul hoovered for a good minute in the aetheric void, outside of the boundaries of space, light as a feather. A rather pleasant sensation. Shortly after, he felt the familiar drag of the material world calling back his soul into his body.
The elf came back to life. It started with a burning sensation in his chest, as the heart was trying to get back into its rhythm while pumping as much blood as possible into the empty arteries. The blood flooded into his head, roaring like a river as it filled his ears, painfully pushing on the back of his eyeballs.
He was lying down, he could barely feel the stone of the coffin under his numb hands, prickling as if filed with needles. He kept his eyes closed, and allowed everything to settle down. Then, he pulled himself up and sat down, slowly.
Getting up too fast could have given him a headache, even made him puke, and his eyes would take a few minutes to adapt to the light. It was common for newbies to get up in a hurry and throw up on their own armour. Frank had died enough times to drill the correct procedure into his brain.
His newly functioning ears picked up the voices of the other two before he even got out of the coffin.
“And if you hadn’t wasted so much time in the Cerberus room, we would have been done already. You’re just not efficient.” Was shouting the orc.
“We’ve not cleared this dungeon once, you moron.” Replied the half-elf, with the same tone. “Stop rushing ahead and trying to be efficient, if you can’t do the job slow you can’t rush it either. How is it so hard to get?”
Frank got out of his coffin and tried to calm them down. “Guys, I think we did a good job out there. We got further than the last two times, so-”
“But we still died!” Yelled the orc. He had already taken off his robe and replaced it with a green fur-lined coat. The half-elf was still wearing his.
“Yeah, but progress is progress. I’m sure next time we’ll get through it no problem.”
“Whatever. I’m about to reach level 50, it will be fine then.” Replied the orc. He grabbed his bag, pulled out his phone, and walked out of the room while starting a call, barely looking at where he was going.
“Next week on Monday, same time, ok?” Tried to say Frank, but he had already left. Frank turned towards the healer.
“Hey, you did well, I liked that ward at the end.”
The half-elf face brightened up “Oh, thanks, yeah, I just through, uh, thanks.”
“But..”
“Uh?”
“I didn’t want to point it out before, but these dungeons are starting to get hard, you have to take them seriously if you want to get through them.”
The half-elf blushed, barely. “Oh, about the shoes? I know, I know, sorry. I’m taking it seriously, I swear, I just forgot my boots home.”
“This is the last silver rank dungeon, it’s a hurdle, ok? Failing it is normal, but if you’re not organized…”
“I get it, I know, it won’t happen again.”
“If you need help organizing, I can give you some tips, there are methods for-”
“No, it’s fine, it’s ok, really. I’ll remember next time. I really have to go now.”
The half-elf was out before Frank could put in another word, still wearing his robes.
Frank took a deep breath. The two had failed that dungeon three times already, they weren’t bad, but they weren’t very good either. There were some personality problems, but the real problem was that they wouldn’t work together.
He sighed and sat down. He removed his armour, and there was blood all over his shirt. He checked the clock, an old, cracked, blue plastic thing hanging on the wall, between a couple of motivational posters.
One read “Check your gear, it may save your life” with a stylized picture of a man holding an axe, and under it a series of safety tips.
The other said “Support, the foundation of any” and the rest was ripped, had been for years. You could still make out half of a phone line and address for some agency.
Seven-thirty p.m. Frank didn’t have much time left before the dungeon was gonna close for the night. Probably not enough for a shower, but he wasn’t gonna go out dirty like that.
The showers were pretty large, clean and nice. Most were occupied by kobolds chatting with each other. In the distance, at the back of the room, Frank could make up the horns of the minotaur, peaking outside the stall.
He scrubbed off the blood and went back to the locker room, his chainmail, shield and spear disappeared into his gym bag, an old battered thing he had received from a friend that used to be a bright red, many years before. Now it was more of a stained pink, but it still did its job.
Frank put back on his civilian clothes: a pair of black trousers, a white shirt, a blue bomber jacket, and a black wool cap. He pulled out his coin bag. Half-empty, flopping around with barely any coin in it.
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The elf went to the reception, where a young orc woman was sitting behind a counter, reading something, with a cigarette in her mouth.
“Hey, Sally.”
“If you want to reserve a dungeon invasion compile this module and leave your- oh, Frank, hi. Crap harvest today, uh?”
“Yeah, we reached the last room but-”
Sally cut him off, grabbed the bag and started counting the coins and weighing them on a scale. The clinging of the gold and silver went on for a few minutes, in awkward silence. Frank just waited, tapping his fingers on the counter.
Eventually Sally scoped a part of the coins and threw the rest into Frank’s bag.
“Ok, here is your cut, after taxes, fees and whatever else.”
Frank grabbed the bag and shook it. It barely made any sound. “Ah, well, at least they’re paying me for helping them.”
“Mh-h, Great.”
Sally wasn’t listening and had already gone back to her reading, some tabloid, on one page talking about popular TV shows, on the other how the Duke of Redreach had been seen with a mysterious woman at the inauguration of a new dungeon, speculations of a new love for the Duke were on TV every other hour.
Frank picked up his meagre reward and went back inside, through the locker room for adventurers and into a barely visible door labelled ”staff”. After a couple of dimly lit corridors, he reached a glass door and walked out of the back entrance.
The warm air inside the dungeon gave place to the evening cold, there was a chill wind that made Frank skin tingle, crawling past his clothes, and his breath condensed into large clouds, dispersing silently into the half-empty parking lot. The Dungeon shared it with a nearby supermarket, so it was ten times larger than it had any need to be, separated by the busy road only by a metallic fence. There was a lot of traffic, central location, cars went back and forth at all times of day and night.
In front of the gym was a group of people, just standing around, talking. Some were smoking. Most of them were kobolds, so the two taller ones stood out. One was the minotaur, cigarette in his mouth, wearing only a shirt and cargo pants. With his thick fur, he needed more than a big of wind to feel any cold. He was holding a large three-headed dog on a leash. The last person was the medusa.
Frank approached the group and got next to her, putting his arm around her shoulder. One of the dog heads barked in his direction, while the other two were scratching each other.
“Hey, Diane.” She leaned her head against him. “Hey, look, the statue has arrived.”
“Ahah, hilarious. Did you really have to stab me?”
“Yes. I already called for the pizza, by the way.”
“Thanks. Really slipped my mind, sorry.”
“Difficult team, uh?”
Frank rolled his eyes. “Please don’t make me think about them any more than I need to.”
One of the kobolds, a short one with a wide snout and grey scales, turned towards them and spoke out “The mage wasn’t bad, the orc.” The little reptile stood out between the others, most of them with red scales and long tails that dragged on the ground.
“Too greedy.” Replied another kobold “Yeah, kept running ahead and wasting spells” said a third. “I think he did well.” Argued the grey one. “The others were going too slow. No offence Frank but I’ve seen a competent party clear it in half the time.”
“Exactly. They’re not a competent party.” Replied the elf.
“I agree, you’re not a competent party.” Replied the minotaur, most of the kobolds started laughing.
“Ah, fuck off Joe.” Replied Frank with a smile. “We’ll get you next week. And besides, I get paid anyway.”
“Yeah, you probably will. Despite everything, they’re getting better. I think they’ll make it to gold rank. Anyway, I gotta bring the dog to the vet before they close, bye everybody.”
Joe the minotaur flicked his cigarette in the darkness of the parking lot and left.
Frank and Diane left. The night was cold, and the medusa was wearing a black turtleneck under a white overcoat that reached down to her calves. The two lived nearby, so they came and went on foot.
The city was busy, especially at that hour. It was already getting dark, and the sun had disappeared behind the skyscrapers for a while. Day shifts were ending, and night shifts about to begin, the people that worked during the day were walking and driving home, or stopping somewhere to eat, while the dark dwellers were just leaving to start their day.
Traffic was terrible, cars piled up, moving a few inches at a time every few minutes. The luckiest ones were flying above all of it, a vampire in a three-piece suit flew above the couple, sitting on a chair while reading a newspaper, paying no attention to the crowd.
The Meat Hole was an old store that had been there since before the couple had moved it, run by a family of ogres from South Hampton.
The place was crowded, but mostly because the majority of clients were other ogres and just a handful of them was enough to occupy the entire building. The store was large, doors tall enough that a giant could go through them with ease, chairs, tables, everything sized to be comfortable for an ogre, but space was expensive, and nobody could afford as much space as they would have wanted.
As a result, the place felt claustrophobic, tall walls and narrow corridors, suffocating in the warm, greasy air of the fryers, bubbling puddles of unknown substances pooling in the corners and between the cracks of the sticky ceramic tiles. The walls were yellow and spotty, Frank was fairly sure they were supposed to be some other colour, under decades of oil, sweat and tallow.
The air was nauseating and Frank always got a slight headache the moment he walked in, he loved it, and plenty others did: there always were a couple of people waiting.
“You know, Diane, I’ve been coming here since I was in middle school.”
“I know, you’ve told me, many times.”
“Did I ever tell you about that time a friend of mine got kicked out trying to-”
“Yeah.”
“What about when I tried to eat a plate of pepper on my own?”
“No, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.”
“Ah, it was great, Larry, you remember Larry? From the repair shop? He- oh, we’re up. Hi, we should have two pizzas, name is Diane.”
The two grabbed their pizzas and walked out. The cardboard was still hot when they reached their house, an old apartment complex at the corner between 5th and Dead Street, a road that took its name from the old cemetery at the end of it.
A group of young necromancer passed by, walking in that direction. Black pointy hats and black skirts that barely reached to their knees, knapsacks on their back. Unlike most other students, their lessons started only when the sun went down and stopped at dawn.
The couple reached their apartment, two rooms on the second floor, decently large for the central position it offered, and when they had bought it, not too expensive, due to an old ghost haunting problem that had been mostly solved.
“Hey, uh, Frank I wanted to talk to you about something.” Said Diane.
“What’s it, hon?”
“Have you heard they just opened a new dungeon in town?”
“Yeah, I’ve read it somewhere. Downton, I think. Bunch of them are popping up recently.”
“Right. I’ve heard nice things about it. It’s called the Hell Crag.”
“Alright. So what of it?”
“Well, I was kinda, I was considering applying for a job there.”
“WHAT? Why?”
“Oh, you know. It’s a higher ranked dungeon, and very big, better pay, better work. The usual.”
“I dunno, Diane. Seems kinda… it’s a big risk, isn’t it? It just opened, you don’t know if… plus you already have a good job, you don’t like the Caves anymore?”
Diane leaned over the table, holding her head with a hand. She seemed tired.
“No, no, Frank, it’s not that. It’s a nice place, everybody is nice.”
”Well that’s fine then, right?”
“I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life there, ok? I want, I dunno, the routine is getting at me, and I feel like I’m not getting anywhere. This new dungeon seems like a big place, could be a way to get into even better places, you know?”
Frank leaned back on his chair. “Yeah, I guess. But I mean, you think you can?”
“What, you think I’m not good enough?”
“Come on, we both know it’s not about being good, it’s all about connections and favours and knowing the right people.”
“Ah, don’t be a jackass. Why do you always gotta be so cynical? They’re hiring a lot of people, it’s a big dungeon, I think I have a shot. And even if I don’t what’s the risk?”
“Losing your current job?”
“Oh please. I don’t have to tell them right away. At least I can look into it, see how it goes, and if it seems promising we can consider taking the next step.”
“I dunno, Diane, I dunno, it seems like a bad idea. Have you considered-”
“I have, Frank, I can guarantee you I have thought about it for a while, and no offence but I’ve been doing this job for two decades, I think I know it better than you.”
Frank threw his hands in the air. ”Well do it then, if you know everything what do you need my advice for?”
“Because you’re my husband, for fuck sake, and I would like some support, ok?”
“Ah, you moron, of course I support you. I’m just worried for you, Diane.”
“I know. I also know you’re kind of a chickenshit.”
“What? I’m not!”
“Yeah you are, I knew you would say no regardless, you never take risks, so, may as well rip the bandage off early and get it over with.”
“Well I did say no, but I’m just worried for you, ok? I don’t want to see you go back to work with your sister, running dungeons for kids.”
“I know, I know. And I appreciate it, but I would like it even better if you had some faith in me, Frank.”
“I do, honest, it’s just…”
“It’s just you’re a chickenshit. I get it. I promise you, Frank, I want to get back to that job less than anybody else. I mean, it’s nice to have a fallback if shit goes wrong, but come on, it’s not we’re moving town, the Cave is always there. Plus, the Crag pays very well, you know? Like, twice as much as what I do now.”
“Oh” Was all Frank could reply. He got up and started cleaning up the table. That was a lot of money. More than he was making.
“Why do so many medusas work with kids, anyway?” Asked Frank. It seems like everybody in your family is in that circle.
“Cause when you petrify people, there is no blood. Very safe.”
“Oh, for the kids, I see.”
Diane laughed. “For the families. The kids love violence, at that age. They have no concept of danger and are up for anything. It’s the parents that lose their mind when they see their little angels getting cleaved in half, so most of the dungeons for young people avoid anything squeamish. God, you lob a kid arm off and everybody loses their mind, you should have seen it. We got complaints in the mail for years.”
Frank shook his head. “They’re coming back to life anyway, who cares how they die? Besides, what do they think it’s for? If you want your kid to become a dungeon delver, that’s part of the experience.”
“Right?” Replied Diane. She seemed to be getting a bit more lively. “You can’t say you’ve lived if you’ve never been cleaved in half, I think. But you know how people are. It’s stupid but they’re the clients, so…”
Frank nodded. He knew exactly what she was talking about. Meanwhile, Diane had gotten up and was digging through her things.
“Talking about kids…” She said.
Frank didn’t like how that sentence was starting. Diane pulled out a flash drive.
“My sister sent this. Instructional video, for the kids. Asks if we can get a look at it, give opinions.”
“Feel free.” Replied Frank.
“If we can get a look at it. Collective, plural. ”
“Feel free.” Repeated Frank with a smile. “I won’t bother you.”
“Come on, Frank. You’re the one with experience delving, you know more than me. Besides, she asked for you and I remind you, technically you work for her.”
That was true. Diane’s sister ran a grouping agency, connecting parties missing a member with adventurers looking for a group, finding instructors like Frank for less experienced people, and organizing experiences for younger adventurers.
The two collapsed on their couch and started watching the video.
Cheerful music, followed by some animation presenting the whole thing, then a medusa in a suit walked in. Diane’s sister, Elvira. Taller than her sister, her scales were black and red with yellow stripes. She was pointing at a blackboard with a ruler.
“Okay kids, first question: why are dungeon important? Do you know?”
Cut to a group of confused kids sitting down, who were probably supposed to be looking at the camera, then back to Elvira.
“The answer is simple. Money. Do you know where money comes from kids?”
Frank laughed “Oh, wow, I’m sure that’s what the kids care about. Talk about taxes too, while you’re at it.”
The video continued “Money comes from monsters. When you kill a monster in a dungeon, you get money. That means with no dungeons, there would be no money, and nobody could buy or sell anything.”
Camera cut to the kids again. One, a gnome in the second line, is visibly picking her nose.
“When you go to a dungeon, you’re playing an essential role in the economy. And once you leave, the government takes some of your money in taxes. It’s necessary to make everything work.”
The blackboard changed to show a graph. Taxation rate changes over the last thirty years. Diane laughed out loud, Frank chuckled then started choking and coughing, from the surprise. “Holy shit they actually did it.” Said Diane. “Who the hell is gonna care about this? Can a kid even read this?”
“if there are too many taxes, people won’t do dungeons enough, but if there are too few, people won’t do all the other jobs that keep society moving. The government must perform a fine balancing act that-”
“Ok,” said Frank, still red in the face, speaking over the video. “I think this is for the parents, no way a kid will stay awake during this.”
Diane dropped on Frank and let her head fall on his lap. Half of her snakes were already sleeping. “I think the same. But I doubt parents would care either. It’s a weird video.”
Frank nodded. Elvira was still going on about the importance of the dungeons in the economy, how new ones were opened, regulations and other boring nonsense.
Then an animation appeared “Chapter 2 – Death, a mild inconvenience”
Diane laughed again “Ok this is definitely aimed at parents.”
They kept watching, dozing off, then waking up for a few seconds, on an off for they had no idea how long,
Frank woke up to the voice of his wife arguing on the phone. He opened one eye, and the blinding light of the window carved its way through his brain like a beam of fire. He recoiled and dug himself deep beneath the sheets.
There were sheets, so he was in his bed, he realized. He recalled watching the video and passing out on the couch. Probably Diane had woken up and thrown him on the bed, at some point during the night.
She was talking with somebody in the other room, he couldn’t quite make out her words.
After a few minutes, Frank dried to roll out of the bed. His back hurt, and his knee hurt, and his torso hurt, where he’d been stabbed. He pushed himself out of the comfortable warmth of the bed and into the dreary, cold wasteland of the waking world, first one leg, then the other. They were swollen and itchy.
Slowly, he dragged all of himself out of the bed and walked to the bathroom.
Dungeon delving could be a hard job. Healing magic could cure any wound, but it caused all sorts of side effects, and the more you received, the worse you would be the next day. Death and resurrection, especially, could hit you like a bag of bricks to the face, in the morning.
He recalled, when he was young, a meagre level 25, he was out with friends for an all-day event, half-drunk, he’d died a dozen times and barely felt it, then he had gone to bed and hadn’t come out of it for the next three days, with a high fever and his stomach couldn’t keep down anything more than plain water.
Winning helped, clearing a dungeon gave some nice bonuses and cleared most of the negative effects. A luxury too often denied, especially when he had to babysit idiots.
The memories of the previous day were clumping around his brain, crawling out of their holes. He splashed his face with cold water and tried to push them away, he didn’t need those two to ruin his day. He knew he would have just spent the whole morning thinking about them and ruined his mood for nothing.
Frank brushed his teeth, then he took a look at his statistics and sighed.
He was 63, and he was pretty sure he was never gonna get much better than that. The’60s, the plateau. Most people peaked in their ‘50s or ‘60s, getting ahead from there was hard, the experience required increased drastically and it was nearly impossible without doing high-level dungeons, but few people had the talent, money and time for them. Professional athletes reached the ‘70s and ‘80s, only a few world-famous talents went past 90.
Frank was already past his prime, and he didn’t have the body or time required for the amount of dungeons necessary to progress much. He was pretty sure he would have retired before ever hitting 70. He thought he had accepted it and made peace with the idea, but it always came back, gnawing at him. Maybe he could have got there, with more effort, if he had started earlier if he had made different choices. There were many things he regretted.
Frank was above average, barely. Somehow, that stung even more. He felt like he had let the chance to do something real slip through his finger. Had he been just mediocre, if he never had a chance, it would have been easier to accept it. Or so he told himself.
Frank went back to the living room, Diane was on the phone.
“It was good, it just seemed a bit weird, I don’t… The government? I don’t think that’s a good idea, sis, are you sure that.. No, I’m not saying… yes, yes.... yes but still, contributions don’t mean that… well yeah, sure, but it does sound like it’s just propaganda for the- hey, sis, Frank is up, he can explain it better. Frank, tell my sister about the video.” She concluded as she passed him the phone.
“Hi, Elvira. Yeah, it was great, the part about taxes was very good at fixing my insomnia-”
Diane ripped the phone from his hand with one hand and slapped him on the back of the head with the other. “No, he was joking, of course not, I was with him, it’s not-”
Frank chuckled and went to make himself something to eat. He was too hungry to care about what exactly. He poured himself a bowl of milk and saw Diane had made some coffee, so he threw some of that inside. He grabbed a piece of cold pizza left from the night before and went to the couch.
He turned on the TV, news, rerun of old movies, cartoons. He started watching the cartoon, barely understanding any of it. He really just wanted some background noise.
Diane was already dressed and ready to go.
“Hey hon, I’m leaving. You don’t look great, you don’t have work today, do you?”
Frank raised two fingers.
“Seriously? You sure you can pull it off?”
“Don’t worry Diane, I’m just the off-tank in both, and they’re good groups, just needed someone to fill inn.”
“All right, but take care of yourself. When are you going?”
“One at two and, uh, towards midnight, the other. Group of dark elves.”
“Ugh, fine, we’ll see each other for dinner again. Pass by the pharmacy whenever you can.”
“Will do. Bye.”
She let, and Frank remained alone in the apartment.