It had been interesting, to say the least, to visit Avonia and Tartarus, but I was happy to be home. I didn’t love traveling away from Xyla for one thing, and I told her so.
I imagined if I kept having to leave Valeria at home, or Gren, or Lesseth, and I thought it would be similar with them. I’m not about to tell you that all my wives were equal, or even all my loves. I just didn’t personally try to rank them. If I was to poke at it closely, I still didn’t know Lesseth nearly as well as the others, and I didn’t know Lysandra well at all. They all brought different things to the table.
A friend of mine likes to say there are two types of poly people – those who have hierarchies, and those who pretend they don’t. There’s some truth in that. But there’s some middle ground, too, where you don’t lean into the hierarchy, and you don’t try to foster it. Sure, no two things in this world are ever equal. That doesn’t mean you have to set one above another.
Except hammers. I definitely have a favorite hammer, and I only keep the other one around because sometimes it’s handy to have one on each floor of a house I’m working on, and I’ve never been able to find a duplicate of the really good one, which I found at a yard sale. Apparently the company was bought out by a rival, which promptly stopped making that model shortly after I was born. But I digress.
“Your mind looks like it’s a mile away,” Gren said.
We had that far to go to the crypt, and ergo the gate to my house, so I nodded. Then I realized the hammer was actually in the bag. “I was thinking about hammers.”
“Well,” Xyla chirped. “Good thing I’m getting nailed tonight!”
The rest of my wives groaned, which I thought was fair.
“Thank goodness he wasn’t thinking about screwdrivers,” Gren said. She had picked up some familiarities with earth tools, working with me.
Xyla just stared at her. “Too easy,” she said.
“You don’t need to set me up, I’m clever enough to manage on my own.”
Xyla was a priority. I needed to build something, though if I was thinking more about tools than about my lovelies. Maybe I could at least squeeze in some bicycle maintenance.
My zombies were all lined up, just as I’d left them. Well, those who weren’t walking a large circle from the troll village, to the orcs, and back to here. The smell of slowly rotting flesh. Home sweet home. Being a necromancer sounds super cool, but like most jobs, the devil is in the details.
“Uh, Abby?” Lysandra said.
“It’s okay, they’re on our side.”
Kathy was lounging on one of the chairs out front, cradling a laptop. She looked up as we parked the bikes. A bike rack! I could build a bike rack!
“Hi Kathy. What’s cooking?” Just asking the question, even as a metaphor, made me hungry for some good Earth food.
“You want the good news or the bad news first?”
I shrugged. “You know the news, you choose.”
“Well, the good news is that as the magic bubble expands, it pushes things like guns out of the way.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess that is good news. There’s no work around for bringing firearms to Amaranth. Not that I wouldn’t mind having just one.”
“Yeah. I was hoping, actually.”
“So how is that good news? It seems mixed, really.”
“Right. Well, the good news is no news. There’s no invading armies of orcs coming this way, business is booming, the trolls and orcs are getting along, Gruush and Inka are loving being trade representatives. Kendala still wants to do you, and badly, but she’s hell on wheels now – I mean, she’s gotten really fast with that bike. She can ride it better than me.”
“She also keeps making passes at Talos.”
I shrugged. “Not my problem.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d have my back on that.”
“I was never any good at monogamy. Is she having any success?”
“No. I’d call that a ‘not that I know of,’ but you know. He’s a paladin, and all. You’ve got one of your own, you know what that’s like.”
“Kind of stiff?” asked Gren, earning her a glare from Val.
“Not all the time, fortunately, but often!” Kathy winked.
“Okay. So what’s the bad news? Wait, you noticed the gun being pushed when I was just gone a little over a week?”
“Yep. That’s the bad news. I’d guess that in a few weeks it’ll be to the boiler, and given that it runs on natural gas –”
“Right.” If it pushed that far enough, the pipe bringing the gas would break, and I’d have a gas leak. Maybe the magic dome would stop the gas itself from coming through, but it could still fill the house and eventually, explode, as well as being toxic to breathe. Furthermore, that meant that the expansion wasn’t slowing down, but speeding up.
I needed to do something about the boiler. I could do that, although it would leave the house without heat for a while, and winter was on its way. Still, I could put in an electric heater to replace the radiators. All that was a short-term solution, and while it would require a lot of work and some expense, I had the money and I knew how to do the work.
I also had to do something about the gate, if I could. The only thing I knew to try was to start picking up the puzzle from the floor. Enash claimed that would bring about a huge swath of destruction on both sides of the gate – maybe enough to take out the two worlds. Enash had been wrong before, and when he wasn’t wrong he sometimes lied. Still, that was a last resort.
I needed to find someone who knew more about it than I did. So, I explained the problem as best as I could.
Lysandra said, “We have some experts at Avonia University who might be able to help,” she said. “But they’d probably need to see the gate, and magically analyze it.”
“There should be some knowledgeable people in Tartarus, too. People are always making gates from other worlds to summon demons and such, and while we don’t know much about making gates, there’s some people who are proficient in shutting them down. Exdoorcists, we call them.”
Sure. Why not call them that.
“Because they make a door an ex-door,” Lesseth explained to the others.
“Got that,” Val said.
“Yes,” Lysandra agreed.
“So,” said Gren. “Does that mean we need to go back?”
“You’re not going off traveling again right away,” Xyla stated. Then she paused. “Are you? Tell me you’re not.”
“She can’t go in both directions, anyway,” Gren said.
For conquering Tartarus, you have earned 14,233 experience points. You have reached fourth level. You have reached fifth level.
For using sex to conquer tartarus, you receive a bonus of 7,117 experience points. you need 4395 experience points to reach sixth level.
“What the heck?” I asked.
“Abby?” several people asked at once, concerned by the look on my face.
“I just got a whole bunch of experience points,” I said.
Gren grabbed me and danced. She led; I was just sort of dragged along. “Yay! Happy day! Did something you do kill lots of people?”
“Uh, no. Or at least, I don’t think so.”
“What, then?” Valeria asked. “Did you get a lot of points for being righteous?”
“No, not that either. It seems I conquered Tartarus.”
“You what?” Valeria asked.
Lesseth started laughing, which caused her whole body to ripple like Jell-o.
“Explain, if you can,” I demanded.
“Well, one of two things happened. Either you have been recognized as the Uber Archfiend. It won’t be the first time such a thing has happened. Long ago, the ruler of Tartarus was a Demon Lord. But then someone, er, lorded it over him, if you know what I mean, and then that person was named a Demon Prince. And then the same thing happened to create an Archfiend.”
“I see. That doesn’t sound so bad. Although –”
“Yes. They will expect you to go and have ceremonial sex with Lysandra once every three months.”
“That doesn’t sound bad at all,” Lysandra said. “Or even more frequently. Or even non-ceremonially. Just as long as I can play with your breasts, Abby.”
“You can – no, not right now, we’re talking.”
“Mesmerizing melons,” Gren said.
“Can we stay on topic here?” Kathy said. “Not everyone is mesmerized. Although I admit they are fabulous.”
“On topic,” I interrupted. “So. What was the other thing that could have happened?”
“It’s possibly that the archfiend died, and that they credit you with doing him in. Didn’t you say that he took two pills when he was supposed to take one?”
“You mean he could have had a heart attack or something from over-exertion?”
Lesseth shrugged. “You’d have a better idea than I of how likely that is. But it’s been how long?”
“Four days. And a half.”
“Well. It shouldn’t have taken him more than a day to fuck all the princesses. There are only six of them, last I knew. So unless he lingered, if that had happened… well, you probably would have gotten the notification right away.”
“And really, if they thought I murdered him, that would make me Archfiend?”
“Yes. Although there would be a period when it would be considered good sport to try to murder you. Until the next ceremony. But what is life without risk?”
“Happy?” I suggested.
“Risk should only be taken for the right cause,” Valeria said.
“Would they all be trying to murder the Uber Archfiend, or whatever?” I asked.
Lesseth shrugged. “Who knows? Probably not, though. It wouldn’t be considered in good taste.”
“Oh. Well, we mustn’t be gauche, I guess.”
“Exactly,” Lesseth agreed.
“Wait,” Valeria said.
We all turned to her. She seemed to be trying to figure out how to say something.
“Are you all saying that I, a paladin of L’shan, am married to the chief of all demons?”
“Uh, yeah, either way, looks like doesn’t it?”
“Just a second.” She looked at me like she was trying to see through me. I didn’t like it much. Then she announced, “She’s still not evil.”
“Ssshhh,” Lesseth said. “Don’t tell the demons that. It’s a secret.” Her face lit up. “But of course! The Uber Archfiend has a spell that lets her appear good, even to paladins! It’s positively diabolical!”
“She does?” Valeria said, aghast.
“No, or at least I don’t think she does.” Lesseth looked at me.
“But we can lie about it!” Lesseth said.
“But I can detect lies,” Valeria said.
Lesseth grinned at her. “Not lies about the Uber Archfiend!”
“No, of course not. I’m lying.”
“You shouldn’t do that,” Valeria said.
“Look, I agree with you, mostly, Val,” I said. “But in this case, if the lie keeps the demons from causing trouble, and gives me a lever over them – isn’t that worth it?”
“But what if you really do have some sort of ability that stops lies from being detected, and that foils my ability to detect whether or not you’re evil?” Valeria asked.
“Then you’d just have to go by what you see and what you know of, like everyone else. Val, I’m not evil.”
“You could just be saying that.”
“If Abby was evil, would she tie you up?” Xyla asked.
“She hasn’t, for days,” Valeria said. “But point taken.”
“There’s a whole branch of philosophy devoted to the question of whether or not one can or should trust the evidence of ones one senses,” I said. “And this reminds me a little of that. In the end, where does not believing in what you see and hear get you? Except, possibly, for the inability to avoid a rock chucked at your head because you think it might not be real.”
“So you’re saying that since you don’t act evil, I should believe you’re not?” Valeria asked.
“Yeah. Also, that acting evil is what evil is, really.”
“So, you leveled up, Abby,” Gren said. “Let’s keep our minds on the most important stuff. What new abilities did you get? What new powers?”
“I haven’t checked yet,” I said.
“So let’s all give Abby some space, and let her check. Maybe she can close runaway gates, or stop the flow of magic, or turn straight chicks into gay girls! Because if you ask me for my definition of evil, it would be making us wait in suspense.”
Everyone nodded in agreement at that.