Xy still had half her chocote 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 chocote. “So what do I have that you want? You ’t have my trees.”

  “I don’t want lumber, I –” I thought about expining the fact that I could buy it at the store, but that seemed plicated. “What I want is passage through the forest so I explore the world, and you make a passage, it seems. And I want information.”

  “Yeah, you seem pretty ignorant.” Xy bit off a half-square and then closed her eyes as if uning with it.

  “As long as you are willing to answer my questions, and make a passage, I’ll keep bringing you chocote.”

  “And this?” she asked, opening her eyes and squeezing my crotch.

  “And that, yes.” Enash would know most of what I wao know, I suppose, but his information might be a millenia out of date.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 neahe dryad retty strange, but she was also the clear winner.

  “I will want to reproduce at some point, you know. I feel my biological clock tig pretty loudly these days.”

  “You don’t look that old.” She looked, holy, iwenties. Her plexion was fwless.

  “I’m a little over two hundred years old, Abby,” she said. “Dryads never look old, uhey are sick.”

  “Got it. See, there’s a thing I didn’t know.”

  “Anyway, I promise you not yet. For ohing, I’d o know my forest rotected while I pnted myself, and I ’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,” Xy said. “Ask away. Do you want to have sex while we talk, or do you ime 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 fihrough my hair, and then froze. “You have horns!”

  “Just tiny ones.”

  “Are you a demon?”

  “Do I look like a demon?”

  She shook her head. “No, demons have much redder skin,” she said.

  I ged the subject. “So where are we in the world?”

  She looked at me really strangely. “How 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 Xy’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 akin, and the southern pins are ranged by nomads both beastkin and human.

  “Jentar? What is that?”

  She frowned. “Jentar is this ti.”

  “How many tis are there?”

  “The other is Arntar, and occasionally Orcs from Arntar raid and pilge here. You are from Arntar?”

  “No. I’m from a third pce. 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,” Xy said, firming my bad feeling. “He was the stro 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 baogether 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 on name among demon neancers.

  “Right.” I said, skeptically.

  “Well,” Xy 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 get very powerful,” Xy said. “I don’t suppose you have a really strong wizard where you e from, who e and undo the curse?”

  “We don’t have any wizards at all where I e 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 redu curses.”

  “Good point,” she said. “But those devices you used, they are magical, right? The noisy things that hurt pnts?”

  Again, it seemed a lot to expin. “It’s plicated. But they are meical, like, uh, a cart? You have carts here?”

  “Yes.”

  Even though there wasn’t magi my world, I could do magid I didn’t want to lie to her when I was trying to get to know her better. Part of getting to know someo being ho aing her get to know me. Oher hand, letting anyone know that the least popur wizard ever assenger in my body did not sound like a recipe for a long ahy life.

  The other problem I had was that I was getting sleepy, which wasn’t surprising si was very te, and I’d just had sex. I liked Xy, but I didn’t know that I felt totally safe falling asleep o her yet. Besides, a woman who enjoyed casual sex might think that an ht 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 plicated.”

  “You say that a lot.”

  “It’s true a lot.” I stood up, and started pulling my clothes ba.

  Xy rolled onto her bad propped herself up. “You don’t need clothes in my forest, Abby.”

  “Well, I do bae, and I better be getting back there. Besides, wearing them is the easiest way to carry them.”

  “You stay here with me. Are you — mated?”

  I shook my head. “No. I have partners, from time to time. Nothing perma.”

  “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 think so.”

  I o think about what I was willing to tell Xy, and what I wasn’t, before I stuck myself in a lie that would blow up oer, or told a truth that wrecked everything.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Xy asked. “That you o run off?”

  “No, I just lost track of time. I o get bae. For now, Xy – a chocote bar for each time you open a passageway through your woods for me?”

  Xy 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 .”

  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.” Xy hadn’t seo being watched, although I would be surprised if her forest creatures got an eyeful. Hell, I hadn’t seo 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 enhahe mood. But those tits. That tight, tight pussy!

  “Uh, yeah. I was there, you know.” Xy 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 o st night, anyway.

  “Gd you approve. No, I take that back. I couldn’t care less if you approve. And holy, thinking about you watg 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 dispy, noting that I only had three endurance left. Yeah, that checked, I felt exhausted. Still 997 experieo go. “System, how do I get experience points?”

  No answer.

  You know, if you were o 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 wao 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 wao do, huh?” I was skeptical.

  No, you don’t get extra points for t people, or for their fear and despair. You get points for doing neahings. It has nothing to do with what I want. Although, of course, I became a neancer because of a natural aptitude, which you clearly ck.

  By that time I was in the crypt at the foot of the dder and the door was bolted. I took off my clothes, put Abel’s clothes in my backpack, and climbed the tter naked, which was the easiest way to deal with the transformation. I pulled myself up the rope, feeling weary, a upstairs to bed, where I fell asleep quickly.