The Accidental Necromancer

I drove Jill to the airport the next night, and it was hard to say goodbye.

“You keep yourself safe from all those rampaging orcs and trolls and things,” she told me. “Or I’ll come back and kill you myself.”

I smiled at her. “Well, as long as you come back.”

“I will,” Jill said. “And what a glorious adventure! And I love all your lovers. I know they’ll keep you in line.”

So we kissed, and then she vanished into the depths of the TSA security line.

I drove back, picking up a few things on the way from a hardware store that kept late hours, and had time to do some thinking in the car.

I’d dated outside my age range a few times, and learned some things from older women and, more rarely, enjoyed the vivacity of younger ones. In the end, I’d decided that younger, at least, wasn’t for me. There was a power imbalance that felt like it got in the way when I dated someone ten years younger, and they didn’t catch my references. The reference-catching thing was present with all my lovely friends on Amaranth, of course. Jill filled a need I had momentarily forgotten I had, for someone in my life who knew where I was coming from and still wanted me. In my current circumstances, wanting all of me meant wanting Abel and Abby.

I hoped Jill came back soon. No, I hoped she came back to stay. That was probably greedy of me, but I felt greedy right then; I also couldn’t wait to get back to Amaranth. Sure, the adventure of a whole new world was part of that, and my smoking hot body there was part of it too, but above all I wanted to be with my other-worldly lovers.

Love is infinite – time is not. Time with Jill meant time away from the others. There wasn’t enough of me to go around sometimes, but that was a good problem to have.

When I got back, though, only Valeria was there.

“Where is everyone?”

“Gren, and Lesseth are at the troll orgy,” Valeria said.

“Ah. Right.” Fair enough. I got to have plenty of fun, and multiple partners, there was no reason they shouldn’t. I dismissed the faint twinge I felt without feeling guilty about it. To be jealous was human, but it was an emotion that didn’t get to be in control.

“Xyla is in the forest. Inka is with the orcs, preparing to take orders tomorrow for our shop there. Gruush is sleeping in the troll village outpost, because it doesn’t make sense for him to go back and forth now that we have a bed there. Talos and Kathy are on Earth. And Kendala is just out of sight, down the east path – last I saw, she was crying her eyes out.”

“She what? Did you ask her what was wrong?”

Valeria nodded.

“And?”

“I think you should talk to her yourself,” Valeria said.

I nodded. I put on one of my black dresses, quickly, not bothering with underthings, and went to wear Val indicated. Sure enough, Kendala was there, sitting on a log. She wasn’t sobbing, just staring into space, but when she turned to see who was approaching, I could see the streaks tears had made on her cheeks. She wiped at them with a hand and tried to throw me off with a sudden smile.

I sat down on the log next to her. “What’s wrong?”

Kendala shook her head. “Wrong? What do you mean?”

I sighed. “Valeria told me you were crying. I can see the tears still.” I used my thumb to wipe a spot she’d missed. “So tell me what’s up?”

“Is that an order?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to keep ordering the orcs like they were, well, slaves. But at the same time I really valued emotional transparency. I felt I could be a safe space. “It’s a strong suggestion.”

“Is a strong suggestion related to an order like an employee is to a slave?”

“Sure,” I said, imagining it as an SAT question.

“Alright.” She sighed. “I’m never going to get laid again, am I?”

I blinked. “What? Why?”

“Well, my body belongs to you. But apparently you won’t have sex with your employees. So I can’t have sex with anyone else, and you won’t have sex with me, so I guess – well, I might as well just be sexless, huh?” She groped her boobs. “No point in these. Or –”

“Whoa, back up.”

“It would be better to be a slave. Sure, you would just use me for your own pleasure, but I might steal a little here and there.”

I sighed. Earth ideas weren’t translating well to Amaranth sometimes. “Well, first of all, I never said you can’t have sex with anyone else.”

It was her turn to blink in surprise at me. “You didn’t? But…”

“I didn’t. Who do you want to fuck?”

“Besides you?”

“Besides me.”

“Talos.”

I should have seen that coming, but for some reason I figured that anyone who wanted to have sex with me would be more interested in women. I shrugged. “Well, if you want to, and he wants to, I don’t have a problem with that. But you should be open with Kathy about what’s going on.”

Everything I said matched with my values, and it came out automatically. But if Kathy got upset, how would our little community deal with that? It could even endanger the whole secret.

“Kathy is a big scary dragon who would tear my heart out,” Kendala said.

“You want me to sound her out?”

“Would you?”

“Sure.”

“My options are kind of limited.”

“I don’t see why. You could go into the orc village and find an orc you like. You could go to the troll orgies, if you like. If you’re into women, then you could see if one of my wives are interested.”

Kendala shook her head. “Trolls are ugly, even their own women think so. And it couldn’t be an orc. What would happen to your reputation?”

“I don’t know, what would happen to it?”

“They’d think you couldn’t control your slave.”

“You’re not my slave.”

“That’s not what they think.”

I nodded. Just because it made sense to me, didn’t mean that it would make sense in a different cultural context. Heck, polyamory was pretty misunderstood even on Earth. Not that this was that, exactly, because Kendala wasn’t a lover. She was an employee.

Kendala stood up, suddenly, and pulled the band of leather that held her breasts in place up, letting them bounce free. She tossed it over her head.

“What are you doing?”

“Seducing you,” she said.

“Look, Kendala, you’re a very attractive woman, but –”

Her skirt hit the ground a moment later, and she started dancing for me. It was a little like a belly dance, with lots of hip moves that sent the rest of the body swaying. I wasn’t lying to her about her being attractive. Her body was toned with muscle from hammering at anvils, and yet she had plenty of womanly curves, too. She wanted me to take her, and that was sexy in and of itself. Bodies are lovely, but desire is intoxicating.

It would be wrong to have sex with an employee – and an employee who had very little choice about who she worked for, when it came right down to it.

From her point of view, it probably made me a bad boss to not have sex with her. I’d given her other options, and yet she was dancing for me, trying to seduce me, the moonlight filtering through the trees and lighting first a toned shoulder, then a soft breast, then an outthrust hip. She had no music to dance to, but her moves had a clear rhythm that almost made me imagine a beating drum. Or maybe that was my pulse, hammering in my head as my cock got hard.

There was no doubt I had enough love and sex in my life. But still, I desired her, and I couldn’t help my body’s reaction. And I also cared for her enough that I didn’t want to push her away and hurt her.

Why couldn’t things be simple and clear? But of course they rarely were.

She moved closer, almost touching, her breasts and belly inches from my face.

I pushed myself to my feet. There was no way I could do that without brushing against her, and I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea, so I tried to back away, forgetting about the log I’d just been sitting on. I fell over. She reached out to catch me, and I instinctively grabbed for her arms. She pulled me into a tight embrace, and I knew she could feel my hard cock pressing against her belly through the dress; if I had any doubts, they were erased by her sudden grin.

“You want me,” she said.

“Anyone would want you,” I told her. “But you’re still off limits to me.”

“Because I am an employee?”

“Yes.”

“I’d rather be a slave,” she said. “Why won’t you let me be? Claim me, Mistress. I don’t need to be a wife like the others, I just want you to use me now and then. I’m so wet for you right now.”

I grabbed her shoulders, and moved her back. She looked at me as if she was wondering whether I was going to kiss her or push her away. I didn’t know, myself.

But then I heard footsteps, and we both backed away from each other.

And I fell over the log again.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything?” Gren asked.

“You’re back from the orgy?” I asked, picking myself up with as much dignity as I could salvage.

Gren nodded, taking in Kendala’s nudity. Kendala was scrambling for her clothes, and her cheeks were a darker shade of green.

“Yeah,” Gren said. “It was fun for a while, but it was crashed by a poncey elf. And Lesseth – well –”

Lesseth came in after her, her body a transparent amber and full of curves. “I was very popular,” she said.

“You were very popular,” Gren agreed. “And you started a fight over whether it was gay or not to have a girl stick her finger up your ass.”

Lesseth shrugged. “The consensus was no.”

“Well, yes, and who cares really, but you were kind of influencing the vote, I think.”

Lesseth grinned at me. “I turned myself into bourbon. Want some?”

“Um, no, I’m good.”

“I could use a drink,” Kendala said. She’d gotten her skirt on, but she was still topless.

“Come and get it,” Lesseth said, sashaying toward the orc. They met in the middle, and their lips met right after that.

I decided not to worry about the fact that Kendala was soul kissing the boss’s wife. “Wait, alcohol gets absorbed super quickly through the walls of the –”

“So it would seem, Gren said, “And that made all the guys hard, so even if they thought it wasn’t their sort of thing, their physical reaction said different. They were all over her. But it was the elf I wanted to talk about. He is apparently a special emissary from the Queen.”

“The queen of the elves?”

“Well, of the nearby ones, anyway. Not all the elves, I suppose. Anyway, the Queen requests and requires your presence at her royal palace.”

“Me?”

“Gavabar said the naked girl on the shell came from you, and I think she wants more. Covetous Queen. The elf emissary talks in such flowery fluff that it’s hard to understand what he’s saying sometimes.”

I shrugged. “Well, I can always just say no.”

Gren nodded. “You could do that. But the elves will make trouble, and they use a lot of magic. Also, if you don’t go to them, they’ll probably come looking for you.” She pointed off to the crypt.

The elves built the crypt. And they have records.

That raised a disturbing thought. Maybe this had nothing to do with the Botticelli at all. Maybe they had found out about the gate, or at least knew something strange was going on.

They hate me. Which is ridiculous. I didn’t kill that many more of them than I killed of anyone else. Just because I put them on pikes and used them for banners so I could see my zombies move around the battlefield easier… it’s not my fault that they are more decorative than orcs and trolls. And slime demons just slide right off.

I glanced over at Kendala and Lesseth. Kendala looked over at me. “Wanna join us? Hic.” She wobbled in my direction, and then sat down. “Oops! I’ve had a little to drink.”

From behind her, Lesseth winked at me. Then she walked over, and gave me a kiss. I didn’t deepen it, because I just wanted a taste to confirm my suspicion.

Lesseth didn’t just have whiskey on her breath. She was whiskey.