I stared at the undead lord of the tower and his glowing blue eyes stared right back.

The tension in the air grew thicker.

The undead dog let out a long, low growl that made the ground vibrate underfoot.

Then the man placed a hand on the dog’s snout without even looking, and it stopped. “What kind of tea?” he asked.

“Oh, I have milk-thistle which is great for the liver, chamomile for relaxing, and I even have some honey!” I said. “Amaryllis, where’s my backpack?”

“I stored it,” the girl next to me said. “I thought you wouldn’t need it, but I can retrieve it in a moment.”

“O-kay?” I asked.

Stored? Was there an inventory system all along and I had been lugging things around despite it all this time? Why couldn’t I get a handy tutorial that explained all of these things?

“Well, I suppose some tea wouldn’t hurt. We’ll need a pot to boil the water,” the man said.

“I have a kettle in my pack,” I said. “Just one cup though, I’m afraid.”

The man looked at me, eyeing my most earnest smile (it was extra earnest because I had nothing to hide!) and then he looked over to Amaryllis and sighed. “Very well. Come on in. Don’t mind Throat Ripper here, he’s a good boy.”

The man stepped back to allow us to enter the dark halls of his fortress. His slippers made swishy sounds as he walked towards a room just past the entranceway. It was a lounge area, with a nice carpet. and a single chair next to a table that stood beneath a pretty chandelier.

“Chairs, two of them,” he said to a skeleton in a frumpy suit in one corner. The skeleton turned around, bare feet clickety-clacking as he walked off, presumably to get some chairs.

I walked in before Amaryllis, head twisting this way and that to take in the entire room. The fort wasn’t built to be pretty, that much was plainly obvious, but some efforts had been made to make it feel homelier. Banners had been added to the bare stone walls and plinths with simple vases stood here and there, usually close to paintings.

I approached one painting and took in the scene. It was a big skeleton dog, teeth bloody as it smiled towards the viewer while standing atop a pile of furry corpses.

“Do you like it?” the man asked. His voice was flat, but I had the impression the question meant a lot to him.

“Is that Throat Ripper?” I asked. The dog’s head perked up at the sound of his name. “It’s a very evocative image. I wish it was over a more peaceful scene though. Maybe a nice field of flowers or something? This is really well made though, the proportion and perspective are nice.”

“Bah, everyone’s a critic,” he said, but I had the impression he was pleased by the answer.

“It’s horrific,” Amaryllis said. “And I’ve seen better from a drunk amateur in Farseeing.”

“We can’t all measure up, I suppose,” the man said, his voice returning to a flat drawl.

I tried giving Amaryllis a look, but it didn’t seem to catch on. “So, we haven’t introduced each other yet,” I said. “I’m Broccoli Bunch!”

“I’m Amaryllis Albatross. Pleasure.”

The man crossed his arms, then nodded. “I’m Gunther. No last name, I’m afraid.”

Amaryllis snorted at that, earning her a glare from Gunther. I kicked her shin with the side of my shoe. Why was she being so antagonistic to the nice undead man?

“You said the puppy is called Throat Ripper?” I asked.

Gunther shifted, chest puffing out a bit. “Yes. This is Throat Ripper the Marrow Eater. Just Throat Ripper is fine. He’s quite nice.”

“Does he like scritches? Oh! Wait, I have a pet too! Her name is Orange and she’s the best kitten... Amaryllis, where’s Orange?”

“She’s here,” Amaryllis said as she lowered the front of her jacket over her chest a little. It revealed Orange’s fluffy head.

“You carry your pet around with you?” Gunther asked. “In such dangerous places?”

“Orange is a spirit kitten,” I said as I patted her on the head. She gave me a look and nestled deeper into Amaryllis’ chest. “I don’t know what can hurt her, but I can unsummon her if things get dangerous.”

“Ah, I see. That’s quite clever. Incidentally, you may pet Throat Ripper. He’s quite fond of being scratched over his sternum.”

I gasped and moved closer to Throat Ripper and raised my arm up close to his face to present my fist. Usually dogs were smaller than me, but it was okay. He looked at my hand, then nudged it towards the side of his head. What followed was a whole minute of me making cutesy noises at the big puppy until he crashed to the ground hard enough that the entire fort shook, and presented where his tummy would be if he had any flesh.

I didn’t even need to get on my knees to scratch him!

Two skeletons ambled into the room hefting big chairs that they placed around the table before they moved off to stand by the wall. “Can I sit next to Throat Ripper?” I asked.

“I don’t mind,” Gunther said. He was smiling now. I think being friendly with his puppy made him like us a little more.

We sat around the table and I brushed my hands over my skirt to clean them off. I wasn’t sure if using cleaning magic around a bunch of friendly undead was a good idea. I didn’t want a repeat of what happened to Bonesy. “My stuff?” I asked Amaryllis.

She brought her hands up, revealing a ring around the base of one talon. With a deft flick she did something with the ring and with a poof, a pen and a piece of paper appeared on the table.

I stared. So did Gunther, but he didn’t look surprised at all.

Amaryllis picked up the pen which looked like it had been shaped to be held by taloned hands and scribbled something on the page. Then she tapped both to the ring, and they poofed away. She stretched her arm out to the side, and a moment later my pack poofed into existence on the ground.

“Wow! That was great! What did you do?” I asked.

“Are you not from a city?” Gunther asked.

“Not one that has magic rings like that,” I said as I stood up to fetch things out of my pack. The kettle came out and was placed on the table next to a stack of cups brought in by the skeletons who had left once again.

“It’s a banking ring,” Amaryllis explained. “For a small transaction fee you can store things at a bank in any proper city. You can send a mana burst through the ring requesting pen and paper, which of course is free. Then you request whatever it is you want withdrawn from your storage and they’ll teleport it to your ring. They sell certain items too, but the mark-up is exorbitant.”

“So it’s not like a dimensional storage pocket linked to your ring, just a sort of teleportation beacon?” I asked. It still sounded awesome, but not as great as a personal pocket dimension.

“What? Dimensional storage? That’s not possible,” Amaryllis said.

I shrugged as I poured water into the kettle and then added some herbs to it.

“Actually,’ Gunther said. “It might be possible. Dungeons certainly don’t care about things such as limited spaces. If you could learn how that functions and tie it to an item... I suspect you would make a killing.”

Amaryllis scoffed. “Impossible. And the only killing that would happen is your own when the banks find out you’re cutting into their margins.”

I poured out three cups of tea, making sure not to spill any, then looked in my bag, and found some bread and a bit of cheese I had bought for the trip. It wasn’t the best of either, with the bread going hard and the cheese being a bit strong, but it was better than nothing. “Alrighty,” I said as I placed my jar of honey in the middle of the table.

I took a sip of my tea, and licked my lips as I savoured the taste. It was really quite good. Amaryllis, after a bit of fumbling to grab her cup with her talons seemed to think so too, and Gunther made an appreciative noise.

“So, what brings you girls to this swampy backwater?” Gunther asked as he lowered his cup and took a piece of cheese to nibble on.

“We’re with the Exploration Guild,” I said. “We’re both new, so they sent us here to map the area around the fort.”

“I see,” Gunther said.

“An area that belongs to Deepmarsh,” Amaryllis said.

“If they want it back, they have but to ask,” Gunther said. “But seeing as this area has been unoccupied for some years I don’t think that is likely.”

“How did you come to live here?” I asked.

Gunther looked at me over the rim of his cup. “It’s quiet. I don’t mind the wildlife, and the nearest people are a day’s walk away.”

“That must be so lonely. You would need so many hobbies to pass the time,” I said

“I have Throat Ripper,” Gunther said before patting the big dog on the head. The creature had laid itself down on the ground next to him.

“You must be very close then,” I said.

Gunther paused, cup held halfway to the table for a long time before he looked up and gave me a wry smile. “Throaty here is why I am the way that I am. When he passed... I couldn’t accept that. So I embarked on a self-imposed quest to correct what I saw as a cruelty laid down upon me by the world itself.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing too extreme. I was once a well-regarded arts dealer in Cinderrun. I gave all that up in order to change my class and become the seed of what I am now. It allowed me to bring back my one true companion, even if it meant cutting ties with neighbours and... well, I didn’t truly have any friends, or family that I cared for.”

Throat Ripper stood up and booped his master in the side with his head.

“And so we set to travelling the world. Unfortunately any class with a penchant for undeath is generally poorly regarded. Either by superstitious fools or those who know what death mana can do in a region if left there too long. We go from place to place, finding quiet little areas to settle down in for a decade or so before moving on. We have only been in this fort for a year and change. The skeletons you see around us are surprisingly easy to find. Throat Ripper has a knack for digging them up.”

“You poor thing,” I said. I pulled the collar of my blouse out from behind my gambeson and dabbed at my eyes with it. “I’m so sorry that people are mean to you. But sacrificing everything to bring a friend back is... it’s beautiful.”

“I... thank you?” Gunther said. He looked a bit uncomfortable, which I guess was normal after sharing such an intimate story. “You mentioned that you were here to scout out the region?”

“Yeah. We’re supposed to map the area around the fort, and explore it a little. We won’t do that, of course. The exploring the fort bit, I mean. It would be way too rude to just trample around your home. But if you don’t mind we’d like to see what’s around and maybe map that out. Is there a way to do that without bothering your skeletons?”

“You don’t mind the skeletons’ presence?” Gunther asked.

“Should I?” I asked right back.

Amaryllis covered her face with her hands. “My partner is an idiot, and yet the world conspires to keep her alive,” she said.