Xyla still had half her chocolate bar waiting for her, and she crawled over the leaves to get it. I admired the view from behind, and then from in front as she crawled back. She snuggled up and took a bite of chocolate. “So what do I have that you want? You can’t have my trees.”
“I don’t want lumber, I can –” I thought about explaining the fact that I could buy it at the store, but that seemed complicated. “What I want is passage through the forest so I can explore the world, and you can make a passage, it seems. And I want information.”
“Yeah, you seem pretty ignorant.” Xyla bit off a half-square and then closed her eyes as if communing with it.
“As long as you are willing to answer my questions, and make a passage, I’ll keep bringing you chocolate.”
“And this?” she asked, opening her eyes and squeezing my crotch.
“And that, yes.” Enash would know most of what I wanted to know, I suppose, but his information might be a millenia out of date. Besides, better to get information from a horny dryad than a, well, horny undead demon necromancer. The dryad was pretty strange, but she was also the clear winner.
“I will want to reproduce at some point, you know. I can feel my biological clock ticking pretty loudly these days.”
“You don’t look that old.” She looked, honestly, in her twenties. Her complexion was flawless.
“I’m a little over two hundred years old, Abby,” she said. “Dryads never look old, unless they are sick.”
“Got it. See, there’s a thing I didn’t know.”
“Anyway, I promise you not yet. For one thing, I’d need to know my forest was protected while I planted myself, and I can’t be sure of that. In olden days elves would have guarded it for me, but they have retreated to the west. Anyway, I guess asking questions is a way for us to get to know each other,” Xyla said. “Ask away. Do you want to have sex while we talk, or do you need time to recover?”
My cock twitched to suggest it could be ready for a third round, but I didn’t want to put off the discussion any longer. “Recover,” I said briefly.
She ran her fingers through my hair, and then froze. “You have horns!”
“Do I look like a demon?”
She shook her head. “No, demons have much redder skin,” she said.
I changed the subject. “So where are we in the world?”
She looked at me really strangely. “How can you not know that?”
“Humor me? Assume I know nothing.”
“You are in the forest that elves called The Haunted Forest, once upon a time, but it is Xyla’s forest now. It sits in the middle of Jentar, with the elves to the west, the demon city of Asmaraan to the east, and the South Sea far to the south. Hills lie north, which are inhabited by trolls and beastkin, and the southern plains are ranged by nomads both beastkin and human.
“Jentar? What is that?”
She frowned. “Jentar is this continent.”
“How many continents are there?”
“The other is Arntar, and occasionally Orcs from Arntar raid and pillage here. You are from Arntar?”
“No. I’m from a third place. Just out of curiosity, who was the mighty demon wizard that cursed the orcs?” I had a bad feeling about it.
“His name was Enash,” Xyla said, confirming my bad feeling. “He was the strongest wizard ever and specialized in the spells of death. Supposedly it would take a wizard at least that strong to undo the curse. The elves decided they, too, had enough of him, and they banded together with the other races to kill him. Even from death, he fought them, and supposedly he had to be sealed up somewhere because he couldn’t be killed.”
Totally a different Enash. It’s a very common name among demon necromancers.
“Right.” I said, skeptically.
“Well,” Xyla said, looking annoyed. “I’m just telling you what the legends say, as accurately as I know it.”
I had to watch that tendency to respond to Enash when I was talking to someone else. “Sorry, did I sound skeptical? It just surprised me, that’s all. One guy causing a curse like that for all the orcs?”
“Wizards can get very powerful,” Xyla said. “I don’t suppose you have a really strong wizard where you come from, who can come and undo the curse?”
“We don’t have any wizards at all where I come from.”
“Priests? Sorcerers? Druids? Spellbenders?”
“Nope, none of those. No magic at all.”
“Oh, by Nature, that sounds horrible.”
“Well, it does cut down on the penis reduction curses.”
“Good point,” she said. “But those devices you used, they are magical, right? The noisy things that hurt plants?”
Again, it seemed a lot to explain. “It’s complicated. But they are mechanical, like, uh, a cart? You have carts here?”
Even though there wasn’t magic in my world, I could do magic, and I didn’t want to lie to her when I was trying to get to know her better. Part of getting to know someone meant being honest and letting her get to know me. On the other hand, letting anyone know that the least popular wizard ever was a passenger in my body did not sound like a recipe for a long and healthy life.
The other problem I had was that I was getting sleepy, which wasn’t surprising since it was very late, and I’d just had sex. I liked Xyla, but I didn’t know that I felt totally safe falling asleep next to her yet. Besides, a woman who enjoyed casual sex might think that an overnight was close to a proposal.
“I should get home,” I told her.
She nodded. “To that odd building with no windows? It looks like it would make a better tomb than a home.”
She was more accurate than she knew. “Well, sort of. It’s complicated.”
“You say that a lot.”
“It’s true a lot.” I stood up, and started pulling my clothes back on.
Xyla rolled onto her back and propped herself up. “You don’t need clothes in my forest, Abby.”
“Well, I do back home, and I better be getting back there. Besides, wearing them is the easiest way to carry them.”
“You can stay here with me. Are you — mated?”
I shook my head. “No. I have partners, from time to time. Nothing permanent.”
“Ah,” she said, and that wasn’t enough to know how she felt about that. “Of course you do. You’re as beautiful as any woman and you have that extra special something, too. Do all women have, um – oh, you probably don’t even have men, do you? Why would you, if everyone is like you?”
“We have men,” I said. “And women. And me.” Well, kind of.
“There’s just one of you?”
I needed to think about what I was willing to tell Xyla, and what I wasn’t, before I stuck myself in a lie that would blow up on me later, or told a truth that wrecked everything.
“Did I do something wrong?” Xyla asked. “That you need to run off?”
“No, I just lost track of time. I need to get back home. For now, Xyla – a chocolate bar for each time you open a passageway through your woods for me?”
Xyla nodded. “That’s more than fair. If I get to keep this one.” She still had a quarter of it left. “So yummy,” she said.
I smiled. “You get to keep that one,” I agreed.
“Thank you for tonight, Abby. It’s been a while, and — you’re different. We could do that again sometime, if you like.”
I grinned. “We certainly can.”
I walked back through the woods, and the annoying voice chimed in.
That bit with the Dryad was hot. You coated her! We’d be better off with me in charge, of course, but that was awesome!
“Uh, thanks.” Xyla hadn’t consented to being watched, although I would be surprised if her forest creatures got an eyeful. Hell, I hadn’t consented to being watched. I’d managed not to think about Enash at all for a bit there.
I kept my mouth shut because I figured I might not enhance the mood. But those tits. That tight, tight pussy!
“Uh, yeah. I was there, you know.” Xyla hadn’t been the only one in that coupling with great tits, and it took some getting used to.
Well, this makes up for not jerking one out last night, anyway.
“Glad you approve. No, I take that back. I couldn’t care less if you approve. And honestly, thinking about you watching is a turn off, so if you want more of what you just saw, I’d keep your mouth shut about it if I were you.”
And people say I’m evil. You’re just mean. And barely worthy of the first circle, to boot.
Yeah, the first circle. Was that just his way of saying level? And how did I level, anyway?
I pulled up the system display, noting that I only had three endurance left. Yeah, that checked, I felt exhausted. Still 997 experience to go. “System, how do I get experience points?”
You know, if you were nicer to me, I might help you with things like that.
I shrugged. I was dead tired, and I wasn’t going to do any tasks. Mostly, I just wanted to get to bed, and that still required pulling my body up, hand over hand, up a rope. “Suit yourself, if you want to stay trapped inside someone barely of the first circle.”
Fine. You get points by killing things, and by turning them into zombies. Happy?
“So I get points by doing what you want me to do, huh?” I was skeptical.
No, you don’t get extra points for torturing people, or for their fear and despair. You get points for doing necromancer things. It has nothing to do with what I want. Although, of course, I became a necromancer because of a natural aptitude, which you clearly lack.
By that time I was in the crypt at the foot of the ladder and the door was bolted. I took off my clothes, put Abel’s clothes in my backpack, and climbed the latter naked, which was the easiest way to deal with the transformation. I pulled myself up the rope, feeling weary, and went upstairs to bed, where I fell asleep quickly.