Sandra fixed me up with a semi-automatic .30-06 rifle, and an old Colt .45 automatic pistol, both of which she said would stop a bear in its tracks. She warned me about the kick, showed me how to load it, and all that. I could go on about it, but it turned out none of it mattered.

  She also made the ent, after we were cuddling in the warm afterglow of sex, that if I didn’t move around so much, she’d think I could be “the one” myself. It was fttering, but I wasn’t sure I liked it much. The settling down part I was sidering. But being monogamous? Not so muothing against it for those who are.

  Maybe she meant that I’d be her “one” but I’d still be poly. That could work, but Sandra had a pretty healthy sexual appetite. There were people who got off on the idea of being monogamous with a polyamorous lover, but there was usually a of power exge to those retionships that I didn’t have with Sandra.

  So I kissed her goodbye like always. She said she had a date with Bill tomorrow, and I told her I hoped it went well. She told me to have fun with the new girl. And bae I went.

  The m I walked down to the basement with the rifle strapped to my back, the pistol in a holster, and a bunch of chocote bars for Xy as well as some other stuff in my backpack, which I wore on one shoulder. I held one end of aension cord in my hand, the other end being ected to a plug in the basement. I was naked, which was stra it was better than wearing clothes that wouldn’t fit the moment I went through the gate. I went down the rope dder a myself transform.

  I really o stop being turned on just by having tits. Someday.

  I got to the bottom, reached up to take the rifle off, and it wasn’t there. The pistol wasn’t in the holster, either. When I looked up I could see them through the transparent floor of the basement, just sitting there. The extension cord had e through just fine.

  Where’s the guns? Oh.

  Oh, was right. They didn’t pass through the supernatural equivalent of s, apparently. No magi Earth, no guns in Amaranth. I wondered what else wouldn’t work? Could I take down little bits of a gun through, and assemble them, sort of like the puzzle pieces made up the gate? Maybe, but that wasn’t a short term solution.

  “So, against the zombies. Will Drain Life work?” I had a feeling I khe answer.

  They aren’t living, dumbass.

  Right. I figured that.

  After all the turies, they are probably quite a bit weaker. But still, two elf children could probably take you down.

  I thought that was unfair, but maybe elf kids were tough. “Just zombies?” I asked.

  Basically. But powerful zombies. Or they were at oime. Now, I ’t be sure.

  I picked up the saw. “I’ve got this.”

  That might work.

  Might. That didn’t souig to me. It might work, or I might be torn apart by zombies. The tter made going upstairs and finishing some floors pretty attractive.

  “Maybe I could just make a wand?” I said. “What do we o do, get the right kind of stick?”

  Do you see an ent wand spell on your system dispy? No? Then you ’t do it, idiot.

  I took one of the chargers for the batteries I used for almost all my power tools out of my backpack, and plugged it into the extension cord. I put in aeen-volt battery. The little light went on. Firearms might not work, but power did, which meant I could probably wire i down here, too. Of course aension cord running doe dder wasly a best practice, but it roof of cept, and for now, it would do.

  I put on clothes, w if what I had bought oer was actually practical. I’d done a rush job, and probably hadn’t bought the highest quality because I was worried about money, but the models sure looked sexy in those clothes.

  “Okay, well, tell me where this treasure of yours is. I o know that, regardless.”

  I made notes and tried to dra. Acc to Enash, it was only about five miles away, north by north-west, in a little cave I’d barely be able to squeeze into, a hundred yards west of a rock that looked like an orc’s head with a very long nose. Rod cave were probably, by now, pletely rown based on what happeo the mausoleum.

  On the good side, it seemed unlikely anyone had found it retly, given that Enash’s tomb had been so pletely covered and seemingly fotten. If the cave had been plundered, it had probably happened a long time ago, and that was a risk I’d have to take, assuming I could even find it. Maybe Xy could help with that.

  Besides, I wao see her again.

  I revved the saw, and waited. I wondered if the forest would open up for me again, but instead Xy slipped through the brush into the clearing in front of the tomb, wearing only a handful of leaves.

  “Abby!” she said, running toward me. I put the saw down before she almost knocked me down with a hug. “Hi!”

  “Uh, happy to see you, too!”

  She looked down at my crotch. “Not yet, it seems.” She looked back up, and winked. “Did y chocote?”

  I smiled. “I did.” I reached in my backpad pulled out a bar. “Here you go. I could use your help with something.”

  “Mmm. And this isn’t poisoned, either?”

  “Why would I poison you?”

  Xy shrugged. It had a rather distrag effe her chest. “You probably wouldn’t. Not after having sex with me. Because I’m amazing. But I don’t really know much about you. I need more information.”

  “What a ce.”

  “Well, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  I rying to figure out what I could say and what I couldn’t. “Okay.”

  “So?”

  What, did she wao take my clothes off? She’d seen that. “What?”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me ieically, you’re in my forest, so it’s all part of my domain anyway. But I’ll let you have this bit, if you let me see it.”

  I thought about the engravings on the walls. I should have studied them more carefully, but then, I should have done a lot of things that I hadn’t done because I was busy doing something else. It’s not as if I’d had time to read or py video games or anything. “Yes,” I said. “But it’s rather shog, I’m afraid. There was someone else here before me, you see.”

  “Show me!”

  I opehe door to let her in, with misgivings. I didn’t like beiive in a retionship, if that was what was growiween me and the pretty green dryad. After all, if someone would only love me if they didn’t know the real me, did they really love me? But some of the secrets I had seemed outside of who I am. Enash was not my fault.

  Daylight helped the pce, but with just the doors open, only so much of it was let in. The ceiling glowed a little because the light was on in the basement, but even light seemed to have trouble getting through if I wasn’t carrying it. The two magical torches were still afme, although I thought they were a bit dimmer. There’d been enough light to see by, but it certainly would look nicer with some electric lights. Xy took a few steps inside and looked around.

  “It’s like a tomb,” Xy said. “With a coffin and everything. It is a tomb.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  She whirled on me. And then ran by, back outside. Theurned again. “You’re a neancer, aren’t you?”

  I thought I uood her as. I was scary, and her trol over the vines of the forest didn’t mean muside the building. She didn’t like haviween her and her woods, either.

  “Do I look like a neancer?” I paused. That wasn’t right. “I’m not not a neancer, but I don’t really identify as – “ no that sounded me, too. “It’s really plicated. I expin?”

  “Please do,” she said. She was cute with her hands on her hips like that but not at the cost of having her mad at me.

  “So, if I wao do something horrible to you, I had my ce, didn’t I?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I was just too fast for you.”

  “Okay. So, here’s the story. I’m from another world. Not just another ti, another world entirely. That’s why I don’t know the names of your tis, or other things.”

  “A neancer from another world,” she said.

  Put like that, it didn’t souer. But I kept going. “This,” I gestured behio the tomb, “is the tomb of a neancer from your world, who was trying to get into mine. We don’t even have neancers in my world. ic of any kind, as I told you before.”

  Don’t tell her everything! She’ll use it against you!

  “Yeah, you said that. But how could a world even work without magic?”

  I shrugged. “It seems to work.”

  “So there are others like you, in your world?” She made curves in the air, and then a rather obse gesture.

  “No. Or ly.” I didn’t want to get too far afield. “This body was the neancer’s idea.”

  Oh fine, bme it on me. You love having those big bouncy breasts and that big --

  “It’s her body.” She frowned. “And you took it over. You take over bodies.”

  “Not as a general rule. He tried to take over mine. I think he messed up his spell, or didn’t uand the sequences of it, or something. He’s intelligent without actually being smart, if that makes sense.”

  It doesn’t.

  I ignored him. “Anyway, I ended up with the body he created, this body, while I’m in your world. And when I said I’m not not a neancer, I also seemed to have ended up with some very simple spells he had. First circle spells, I think they are called.”

  “Do you have another css?”

  Okay, so the css thing wasn’t just on the system dispy. “No. We don’t have character csses on my world, either, except in games.”

  “How does the system even work there, then?”

  “We don’t have a system. I think the system itself is magic, so it doesn’t work in my world.”

  “You know, if you were going to make up something, I’d think you’d make up something more believable.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, I probably would.”

  Heh. This is going to be good. She’s going to attack you, and you’ll have to kill her to defend yourself. Then you animate her and use her against my zombies. Looking forward to this.

  “You know, there’s one way to find out,” I said. “See that rope dder there? It leads up into my world.” I had a siing thought. Maybe she couldn’t go there, and she’d think I was lying. Or maybe, worse, she simply couldn’t survive without magic.

  “A whole new world,” she said, and I reized in her voice the same kind of curiosity I had. “Alright, Abby. I o see this.”

  She took a deep breath, and then walked in, straight for the dder.

  “I don’t know if it’s entirely safe,” I said.

  “What is?” she asked.

  She climbed up the dder, and I followed her. Those leaves really didn’t do much to cover from the angle I had, but now was no time to get distracted. Nothing happeo her when she reached the top, but half in and half out, she looked around.

  She picked up the object, which was the M1911 Colt .45 automatic pistol.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Don’t touch –”